Lollards (redirected from Lollard)

Lollards

Followers of John Wycliffe in late medieval England. The pejorative name (from Middle Dutch lollaert, “mumbler”) had been applied earlier to European groups suspected of heresy. The first Lollard group centred on some of Wycliffe's colleagues at Oxford led by Nicholas of Hereford. In 1382 the archbishop of Canterbury forced some of the Oxford Lollards to renounce their views, but the sect continued to multiply. The accession of Henry IV in 1399 signaled a wave of repression. In 1414 a Lollard rising was quickly defeated by Henry V; it brought severe reprisals and marked the end of the Lollards' overt political influence. A Lollard revival began c. 1500, and by 1530 the old Lollard and the new Protestant forces had begun to merge. The Lollard tradition predisposed opinion in favor of Henry VIII's anticlerical legislation. The Lollards were responsible for a translation of the Bible by Nicholas of Hereford, and their core teachings included an emphasis on personal faith and the authority of the Bible and the rejection of clerical celibacy, transubstantiation, and indulgences.

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Lollards

in late medieval England, a name given to followers of unorthodox philosopher John Wycliffe. [Christian Hist.: EB, VI: 306]

See : Apostasy

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Lollards

participants in a 14th-century peasant-plebeian movement in England and in certain other Western European countries as well; the movement took on the character of an anti-Catholic heresy.

The Lollards first appeared in Antwerp around 1300. They emerged in England in the early 1360’s (the preaching of J. Ball), although the term “Lollards” was first used officially in English sources in 1387. Intensification of social contradictions during the second half of the 14th century facilitated the rise of the Lollards. Preaching on village streets and in market areas, the Lollards, following the example of J. Wycliffe, rejected the privileges of the Catholic Church and called for the secularization of its property. At the same time, the Lollards considerably increased the social resonance of their preaching. They sharply criticized the injustices of the feudal structure, demanding the elimination of the corvée, the tithe, and taxes and the equalization of estates. Though the Lollards never came out with a direct appeal for an uprising, their preaching helped shape the popular masses’ social demands.

The Lollards played an important role in the ideological preparation of the Wat Tyler revolt of 1381, and J. Ball served as one of its leaders. Suppression of the revolt was followed by persecution of the Lollards; executions began after the adoption of a statute in 1401 on the burning of heretics. Many Lollards were forced to resettle on the Continent and in Scotland. In England itself there remained supporters of the Lollards right up to the beginning of the 16th century, thereby facilitating the preparation of the English Reformation.

REFERENCES

Petrushevskii, D. M. Vosstanie Uota Tailera, 4th ed. Moscow, 1937.
Gairdner, J. Lallardy and the Reformation in England...., vols. 1–4. London, 1908–13.

G. R. LEVIN