[538] ‘Quando concurrebam cum eo in lectura sententiarum.’ I do not know the precise meaning of the phrase: cf. Mun. Acad. 393, ‘Statutum est quod duo Magistri in theologia, si velint, possunt concurrere disputando.’
[539] See the curious account in the Continuatio Eulogii Historiarum of the council of bishops and lords held at Westminster under the presidency of the Black Prince in 1374, the subject of discussion being the papal tribute. Four doctors of theology were present, namely, the Provincial of the Friars Preachers, J. Owtred, monk of Durham, an opponent of the friars (see MS. Ball. Coll. 149, ff. 63-5), J. Mardisle, Friar Minor, and an Austin Friar. The Archbishop said, ‘The pope is lord of all; we cannot refuse him this,’ ‘quod omnes praelati seriatim dixerunt.’ The Dominican refused to give an opinion, and suggested a hymn or mass. The monk used the old argument about the two swords. Mardisle promptly retorted with the text, ‘Put up again thy sword into his place,’ showing that the two swords did not mean spiritual and temporal power; ‘et quod Christus temporale dominium non habebat, nec Apostolis tradidit sed relinquere docuit;’ which he proved by a learned appeal to scripture, authorities, and history. The subsequent proceedings are very humorously told; Eulog. Hist. III, 337-8. Four Mendicant B.D.’s were, at John of Gaunt’s wish, present at Wiclif’s trial in 1377, to support him by argument in case of need. Lechler, I, 369, and note.
[540] Mun. Acad. p. 208. He is called merely ‘Frater Johannes ... Doctor,’ the surname and Order being omitted; but his ‘heresies’ are those of the Franciscans.
[541] Lechler, I, 586. Of the twelve doctors who condemned Wiclif’s doctrines at Oxford in 1381 (or beginning of 1382), six were Mendicants; Tyssyngton was the only Minorite. Wood, Annals, I, 499.
[542] These are clearly stated in his treatise ‘De Blasphemia, contra Fratres,’ Select English Works, III, 402 seq.; Trialogus, Lib. IV, cap. 27-32. Ibid. cap. 37, another charge is added, namely, the opposition offered by the friars to the ‘Poor Priests,’ of which Wiclif says: ‘Revera inter omnia peccata, quae unquam consideravi de fratribus, hoc mihi videtur esse sceleratissimum propter multa; emanavit enim integre ex unicordi consilio et consensu omnium horum fratrum.’ The ‘Poor Priests’ resembled the early Friars Minors in many points, e.g. as itinerant preachers: perhaps Wiclif, when organizing the former, was led to look more closely into the ideal which the latter professed to follow; and if so, he may well have been shocked at the contrast between that ideal and the reality. One change in the life of the friars—their gradual approximation to the seclusion of the older Orders, may be illustrated by two passages from Matthew Paris and Wiclif (allowance being made for the prejudices of the writers). The friars, says the Benedictine historian, ‘wandered through cities and villages,’ and ‘had the ocean for their cloister’ (Chron. Majora, V, 529). Wiclif attacks them for living ‘closed in a cloister,’ instead of going about among the people, ‘to whom thy maie most profite ghostlie ... Charitie showld drive Friars to come out amongst the people and leaue Caymes Castels that bin so needeless and chargeous to the people.’ (Two Short Treatises, &c., p. 21.)
[543] Select English Works, III, 424.
[544] Wyclif, Latin Works, Sermones, II, xlvii. Jusserand, La Vie Nomade, p. 186 seq.; Rogers’ Introd. to Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum, p. 123.
[545] He accuses them, e.g. of ‘stinking covetise,’ of ‘simonie and foule marchandise;’ they are ‘worse enemies and sleers of man’s soule than is the cruel fende of hell by himself;’ some of them are ‘damned divels;’ Two Short Treatises, Select English Works, passim. Latin works, Sermones, II. Cf. Polit. Poems (Rolls Series), I, 266:
‘Ther shal no saule have rowme in helle
Of frers ther is suche throng.’
[546] Two Short Treatises, cap. 48 (printed by Vaughan, p. 254).