21 May — the anniversary of an unusual synod. It was 641 years ago, and involved heresy, Lollardy, and an earthquake in the Straits of Dover. The full story also takes in a little light beheading and posthumous excommunication…
The cause of the gathering of these men of the cloth was to try renegade priest John Wycliffe, who had dangerous ideas about translating the Bible into English, opposing the wealth and power of the church, and — gasp!— rejecting transubstantiation.
Putting the Bible above the church was just about OK, but suggesting that the communion bread didn’t literally turn into a bit of Jesus was beyond the pale, so holy chaps gathered at Greyfriars in London to have it out with him, WHEN SUDDENLY…
The epicentre of the 1382 Dover Straits earthquake is, as its name suggests, thought to have been in the English Channel, linked to a tectonic structure called the Northern Variscan thrust front. Its effects were felt in the Low Countries, and in south east England…
In London, both St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey were damaged, and a waterquake shook ships at anchor. This was not considered a good omen at first. An earlier attempt to try Wycliffe had been interrupted by the Peasants’ Revolt, which had seen the previous Archbishop of Canterbury beheaded.
“Startled and terrified,” according to James Wylie, in his History of Protestantism, “the members of the court, turning to the president, demanded an adjournment”, but new archbish William Courtenay… er, kept his head…
and was above these weak fears. So turning to his brother judges, he delivered to them a short homily on the earthly uses and mystic meanings of earthquakes, and bade them be of good courage and go on. “This earthquake,” said he, “portends the purging of the kingdom from heresies. For as there are shut up in the bowels of the earth many noxious spirits, which are expelled in an earthquake, and so the earth is cleansed, but not without great violence: so there are many heresies shut up in the hearts of reprobate men, but by the condemnation of them the kingdom is to be cleansed, but not without irksomeness and great commotion.”
Or at least he thought on his feet and said God (and the earthquake) were on his side, not Wycliffe’s.
Courtenay won the day. Ten of Wycliffe’s 24 propositions — the ones relating to the sacrament — were declared heretical, and the others (largely about church institutions) were henceforth simply “erroneous”, and it all paved the way for persecution of his proto-Protestant followers.
One of Wycliffe’s trials (although not this particular one) was given somewhat dramatic treatment in a 19th century mural for Manchester Town Hall by Ford Madox Brown.
The 21 May 1382 trial became known as the Earthquake Synod, and was one of many moves to stamp out Lollardism, which continued even after Wycliffe’s death. In May 1415, for example, he was posthumously declared a heretic, and his corpse was exhumed, burnt and chucked in a river.
Still, at least the church had seen off those beastly reformers, and would never hear from their like again.
Odd This Day part deux
Also today, I don’t have what you might call exact dates, but… it would have been the birthday of Great King Rat, had he not died on the 44th anniversary of his birth from syphilis.
But, then, he was a dirty old man, and a dirty old man was he.
