Robert Colman is said to have been a Minorite of Norwich[1624]. He was S.T.P. and Chancellor of the University in 1419[1625]. In 1428 he attended as Minorite D.D. the diocesan synod at Norwich, where inquisition was made into the heresies of William Whyte[1626]. He is said to have induced Walter Clopton, Knight, chief justice of England, to enter the Order in his old age[1627]. Leland says:
‘Illud non est silentio praetereundum, catalogum illustrium Franciscanorum accurate Colemannum laudare, ac peritissimum carminis pronunciare’[1628].
Matthias Döring studied at Oxford in his youth[1629], and perhaps entered the Franciscan Order there. He was certainly a Minorite in 1422, when he matriculated at Erfurt as ‘lector Minorum’[1630]. He seems to have been lecturing in the Franciscan Convent at Erfurt some time before this event; his lectures on the first book of the Sentences were finished on April 21st, 1422. He may have been at Oxford about 1415 and perhaps took the degree of B.D. there. In 1423, at any rate, he appears as B.D., and became Provincial Minister of Saxony in 1427[1631]. He was one of the representatives of the University of Erfurt at the Council of Basel in 1432, where he played a leading part[1632]. In 1433 he was sent by the Council as ambassador to Eric, king of Denmark. Soon after this he returned to Erfurt. In 1438 he wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Confutatio primatus papae,’ with the object of enlisting the support of the secular princes on the side of the Council against the pope. He seems himself to have been a trusted friend of his Margraf, Frederic of Thüringen.
In his relations to his Order he appears as a consistent champion of the Conventuals against the stricter Observants. In 1443 he was elected General Minister of the former, and held the office till 1449. In 1455 his name occurs among the Conventual Provincial Ministers; after a struggle with the Archbishop of Magdeburg on behalf of the Conventuals he resigned the Provincialate in 1461, and retired to Kyritz, leaving the Archbishop in possession of the field. Döring however seems to have been left in peace till his death, July 24th, 1469. His chief works besides the treatise already mentioned were a defence of Nicholas de Lyra against Paul Burgos, written between 1434 and 1440 (printed several times; e.g. at Basel, 1507); a defence of the miraculous blood of Wilsnach; and his Chronicle; the latter was compiled from notes taken at different times from the end of the thirties onwards; and embraces the period from 1420 to 1464. It has been twice edited, by Mencken and by Riedel; both editions are said to be inaccurate.
William Russell, ‘of the Convent of Stamford in the diocese of Lincoln,’ argued that a religious might lie with a woman without mortal sin; this thesis was discussed and condemned in the Convocation of Canterbury at St. Paul’s on October 12th, 1424, and Russell submitted to the decision of the clergy[1633]. On May 15th, 1425, he again appeared before Convocation to answer the charge of having publicly held and preached on Jan. 28th, 1425, that tithes need not be paid to the parish priest, but might be applied by the tithe-payer ‘in pios usus pauperum’[1634]. At this time Russell was warden of Friars Minors of London[1635]. At first he tried to defend his doctrine, then submitted. The Archbishop enjoined on him, as a penance, that he should next Sunday after service solemnly renounce his error in set form[1636] at Paul’s Cross. At the time appointed Russell did not appear and was in consequence excommunicated. The proceedings against him dragged on for some time. On July 11th, a letter of the University of Oxford in condemnation of his doctrines was exhibited, and later a similar letter from Cambridge; and on the 13th it was decreed
‘that he should be judged and condemned as a heretic and schismatic.’
Meanwhile, Russell, now no longer warden, fled to Rome ‘to defende the forsaide erronye doctrine’[1637]. On August 12th, 1425, he was imprisoned by order of the Pope, first in the Pope’s, then in the ‘Soldan’s’ prison. The following January he escaped from prison and fled to England, where he was received for one night by the Friars Minors of London. He seems to have remained at large for more than a year. He surrendered or was captured in March, 1427, and on the 21st of that month, in accordance with the papal decision, he read in English a complete recantation of his doctrine on tithes at Paul’s Cross[1638], and was then handed over to the Bishop of London to be imprisoned during the Pope’s pleasure. He was at liberty again in 1429 when he incepted as D.D. at Oxford, and paid £10 to the University instead of giving a feast to the Regents[1639]. The University showed its hatred of his teaching by adding to the oaths which had to be taken by every inceptor in every faculty[1640], a disavowal of Russell’s teaching on tithes[1641]. The oath has already been quoted at length in Chapter VI.
Super Porphyrii Universalia compendium, by William Russell, Friar Minor.
Comment. in Aristotelis Praedicamenta, anonymous, but probably by the same author.
MS. Oxford:—Corpus Christi Coll. 126, fol. 1, and fol. 4.