Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:34:27.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Letter of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Richard Wyche  and
Christopher G. Bradley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The dissident priest Richard Wyche, Judged a recalcitrant heretic by the church and condemned to die at the hands of the state, was burned at the stake in London in 1440. Almost four decades earlier, he had been interrogated by ecclesiastical officials in Durham. A record of his ordeal survives, extraordinarily, in the autobiographical narrative translated below.

Type
Little-Known Documents
Information
PMLA , Volume 127 , Issue 3 , May 2012 , pp. 626 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aers, David. Sanctifying Signs: Making Christian Tradition in Late Medieval England. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Bradley, Christopher G. “Trials of Conscience and the Story of Conscience.” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 24.1–2 (2012): 28–45. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Copeland, Rita. Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forrest, Ian. The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gesta cum Richardo Wycz. 15th cent. MS III.G.11, folios 89v–99v. Natl. Lib., Prague.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne, ed. The Testimony of William Thorpe. Introd. Hudson. Two Wycliffite Texts: The Sermon of William Taylor 1406, The Testimony of William Thorpe 1407. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. 24–93. Print. Early English Text Soc. os 301.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne, ed. “Which Wyche? The Framing of the Lollard Heretic and/or Saint.” Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy. Ed. Bruschi, Caterina and Biller, Peter. York: York Medieval, 2003. 221–37. Print.Google Scholar
Hudson, Anne, ed. “William Thorpe and the Question of Authority.” Christian Authority: Essays in Honor of Henry Chadwick. Ed. Evans, G. R. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. 127–37. Print.Google Scholar
Jurkowski, Maureen. “The Arrest of William Thorpe in Shrewsbury and the Anti-Lollard Statute of 1406.” Historical Research 117 (2002): 273–95. Print.Google Scholar
Kelly, Henry Ansgar. “Inquisition, Public Fame, and Confession: General Rules and English Practice.” The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England. Ed. Mary Flannery and Katie Walter. Woodbridge: Boydell, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Kendall, Ritchie D. The Drama of Dissent: The Radical Poetics of Nonconformity, 1380–1590. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Matthew, F. D., ed. “The Trial of Richard Wyche.” English Historical Review 5.19 (1890): 530–44. Print.Google Scholar
Penn, Stephen. “Wyclif and the Sacraments.” A Companion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian. Ed. Levy, Ian. Leiden: Brill, 2006. 241–92. Print.Google Scholar
Rex, Richard. “‘Which Is Wyche?‘: Lollardy and Sanctity in Lancastrian London.” Martyrs and Martyrdom in England, c. 1400–1700. Ed. Freeman, Thomas and Maye, Thomas. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007. 88–106. Print.Google Scholar
Schirmer, Elizabeth. “William Thorpe's Narrative Theology.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 267–99. Print.Google Scholar
Somerset, Fiona. Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiner, Emily. Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Steiner, Emily. “Inventing Legality: Documentary Culture and Lollard Preaching.” The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England. Ed. Steiner, and Barrington, Candace. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002. 185–201. Print.Google Scholar
Summers, Joanna. Late-Medieval Prison Writing and the Politics of Autobiography. Oxford: Clarendon, 2004. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Nolcken, Christina. “Richard Wyche, a Certain Knight, and the Beginning of the End.” Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Aston, Margaret and Richmond, Colin. New York: St. Martin's, 1997. 127–53. Print.Google Scholar
Major premise: Anyone transgressing canon law is a heretic.Google Scholar
Minor premise: No heretic can consecrate the host.Google Scholar
Conclusion: Therefore, no one transgressing canon law can consecrate the host.Google Scholar
But if no one breaking man's (church or canon) law can consecrate, then a fortiori no one transgressing God's law can do so. Thus, a priest in a sinful state cannot consecrate—contrary to orthodox doctrine.Google Scholar