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‘Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy’s Wealth’: Pecock’s Exculpation of Ecclesiastical Endowment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The life and works of Reginald Pecock continue to fascinate, though they are a well-reaped field from which little new can be gleaned. Students of Pecock have naturally concentrated on the sensational and significant aspects of his career and writings: political historians on his trial and deposition, and the political motivations which may have lain behind these; ecclesiastical historians, following Gascoigne, on his defence of the abuses of the late-medieval Church, especially of non-preaching and non-resident bishops. Historians of thought have seen a modern rationalist exalting thejudgement of reason above the dogmas of Faith and Scripture. Historians of doctrine have been concerned by his rewriting of the Apostles’ Creed, omitting the descent into hell. Biblical historians have questioned whether he used the later Lollard Bible, or undertook his own translation of the Vulgate. Protestant historians have with Foxe claimed as their own a bishop whose attack on the Lollards paradoxically demonstrated his close affinity with them; the less evangelically committed have praised a tolerant protagonist anxious to enter into dialogue with his opponents rather than to coerce them with ‘fire, sword or hangment’. Historiographers have welcomed a scholar possessed of a Renaissance sense of history. Linguistic historians have detailed his contribution to the development of the English language by his pioneering use of it as a vehicle for theological assertion.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987
References
1 For example, Jacob, E. F., ‘Reynold Pecock, Bishop of Chichester’, Essays in Later Medieval History (Manchester, 1968), pp. 1–34 Google Scholar. What the political motivations were has never been clear, and modern work has tended to discount them—for example, Jacob, p. 16. See the discussion by Patrouche, J. F., Reginald Pecock (New York, 1970), pp. 24–8 Google Scholar.
2 ‘Episcopi non tenenturpredicare’, ed., Thorold Rogers, J. E., LocieLibro Veritatum (Oxford, 1881), pp. 15, 26–8, 31, 40 Google Scholar and passim. See Pecock’s defence of his position in Abbreviatio Reginaldi Pecock, Appendix to The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, RS, 2 vols (1860) 2, pp. 615–18.
3 For example, Emerson, E. H., ‘Reginald Pecock Christian Rationalist’, Speculum, 31 (1956), pp. 235–42 Google Scholar.
4 Green, V. H. H., Bishop Reginald Pecock (Cambridge, 1945), pp. 174–81 Google Scholar.
5 Wager, C. A., ‘Pecock’s Repressor and the Wyclif Bible’, Modern Language Notes, 9 (1894), pp. 97–9 Google Scholar; Green, V. H. H., ‘Bishop Pecock and the English Bible’, Church Quarterly Review, 129 (1939-40), pp. 281–95 Google Scholar.
6 Foxe, J., ‘The History of Reynold Pecock, Bishop of Chichester, Afflicted and tormented by the false Bishops for his Godliness and Profession of the Gospel’, Acts and Monuments, ed. Cattley, S. R. (London, 1837), 3, pp. 724–35 Google Scholar.
7 Nuttall, G., ‘Bishop Pecock and the Lollard Movement’, Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, 13 (1937-9), pp. 82–6 Google Scholar.
8 Haines, R. M., ‘Reginald Pecock: a Tolerant Man in an Age of Intolerance’, SCH 21 (1984), pp. 125–37 Google Scholar. (Quotation from The Book of Faith, ed. J. L. Morison (Glasgow, 1909), p. 174.)
9 Ferguson, A. B., ‘Reginald Pecock and the Renaissance Sense of History’, Studies in the Renaissance, 13 (1966), pp. 147–65 Google Scholar.
10 Schmidt, F., Studies in the Language of Pecock (Uppsala, 1900)Google Scholar; Zickner, B., Syntax und Stil in Reginald Pecock’s ‘Repressor’ (Berlin, 1900)Google Scholar; Hoffman, A., Laut- und Formenlehre in Reginald Pecock’s ‘Repressor’ (Greifswald, 1900)Google Scholar.
11 The table of 8 ‘meanal’ virtues leading to the 3 tables of 7, 8, and 8 ‘endal’ virtues summarizing a man’s duty to God, himself, and his neighbour, which Pecock regarded as more comprehensive than the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament or the dominical commandments of the New, are enumerated at length in The Reule of Crysten Religioun, ed. W. C. Greet, EETS, os 171 (1927), The Poore Mennis Myrrour and The Donet, ed. E. V. Hitchcock, EETS, os 156 (1921) and The Folewer to the Donet, ibid., 164(1924).
12 The dullness of Pecock’s writing is frequently remarked: it is ‘turgid’: Haines, p. 133, ‘pedantic’: Jacob, p. 34, ‘dry’: Ramsey, J. H., Lancaster and York (Oxford, 1892), 2, p. 202, etcGoogle Scholar.
13 Abbreviatio, Repressor, pp. 615–18.
14 See above, n. 2. Non-preaching bishops was the point in the sermon which captured public notice: for example, the concise note in Bale’s Chronicle, ed. Flenley, R., Six Town Chronicles of England (Oxford, 1911), p. 121 Google Scholar: Item the Sonday the xv day of may Sir Reignold Pecok Bisshop of seint Asse preched at Powles crosse and declared that Bisshops wer not bound to preach.’
15 Locie Libro Veritatum, pp. 99–100.
16 ‘Bishop Pecock, his Character and Fortunes’, Dublin Review, 76 (1875), p. 52, commenting on Hook, W. F., Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (London, 1867), 5, pp. 178–82, 293–311 Google Scholar.
17 Repressor, i, p. 275—ii, p. 415.
18 Ibid., p. 275.
19 Ibid., pp. 276–80.
20 Ibid., pp. 281–7.
21 Ibid., pp. 287–90.
22 Ibid., pp. 290–1.
23 Ibid., pp. 292–6.
24 Ibid., p. 297.
25 Ibid., pp. 310–15.
26 Ibid., pp. 316–20.
27 Ibid., pp. 303–8, 341–9.
28 Ibid., pp. 321–31.
29 Ibid., pp. 331–3.
30 Ibid., pp. 334–8.
31 Ibid., pp. 350–65. See Green, V. H. H., ‘The Donation of Constantine’, Church Quarterly Review, 135 (1942-3), pp. 39–93 Google Scholar.
32 Repressor, pp. 369–70.
33 Ibid., pp. 371–3.
34 Ibid., pp. 380–96.
35 Ibid., pp. 413–15.
36 Loci e Libro Veritatum, p. 100.
37 Repressor, pp. 409–12.