De heretico comburendo or the Suppression of Heresy Act 1400 (2 Hen. 4. c. 15) was a law passed by Parliament under King Henry IV of England in 1401 for the suppression of the Lollards. It punished seditiousheretics with burning at the stake. This law was one of the strictest religious censorship statutes ever enacted in England,[1] affecting preaching and possession of Lollard literature.
Meaning and linguistics
De heretico comburendo is a Latin phrase meaning "Regarding the burning of heretics". An alternate spelling is De haeretico comburendo, reflecting the proper ancient and Middle Ages spelling (by the second century the diphthong ae had been changed in pronunciation from [ae̯] to [e]; most texts today use the spelling without the letter a). See Latin spelling and pronunciation for more information.
Details
The statute declared there were "divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect…preach and teach…divers new doctrines, and wicked heretical and erroneous opinions contrary…of the Holy Church, and…they make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, they hold and exercise schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people, and as such they may excite and stir them to sedition and insurrection, and make great strife and division among the people, and…do perpetrate and commit subversion of the said catholic faith…".[2]
De heretico comburendo urged "that this wicked sect, preachings, doctrines, and opinions, should from henceforth cease and be utterly destroyed", and declared "that all and singular having such books or any writings of such wicked doctrine and opinions, shall really with effect deliver or cause to be delivered all such books and writings to the diocesan of the same place within forty days from the time of the proclamation of this ordinance and statute".[2]
"And if any person ... such books in the form aforesaid do not deliver, then the diocesan of the same place in his diocese such person or persons in this behalf defamed or evidently suspected and every of them may by the authority of the said ordinance and statute cause to be arrested". If they failed to abjure their heretical beliefs, or relapsed after an initial abjuration, they would "be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear into the minds of others".[2]
History
Radical English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford wrote several books that inspired what would become the Lollard movement, which was considered seditious by the state and heretical by the Church. The Lollards went beyond Wycliff in several areas, explicitly rejecting the authority of the Church.[3]: 321, 322
The Oxford Constitutions, established in 1409 by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, were further punitive measures intended to punish heresy in England that grew in large part out of the De heretico comburendo
The Suppression of Heresy Act 1414 clarified the procedures by which heresy charges could be brought and prosecuted by state officials.
According to Edward Coke, in Hil. 9 Jac. I.[Note 1] he was consulted about whether "this writ De heretico comburendo lieth" upon a conviction for heresy before an "Ordinary" court. According to Coke the magistrates "certify the King, that a writ De heretico comburendo lieth upon a conviction before the Ordinary, but that the most convenient and sure way was to convict a heretic before the High Commissioners." His editor adds that the writ is abrogated by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1677 (29 Cha. 2. c. 9).[4]
Section 6 of the Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1) (1559) repealed the statutes but it was not until March 1677 that a bill to take away the Crown's right to the writ was introduced in the House of Commons. It passed in that session. The writ was abolished by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1677 in England, and in 1695 in Ireland.
Controversy: Vernacular Bibles
Although partial English translations and metrical paraphrases of the Bible had existed for hundreds of years, the Middle English translations published under the direction of John Wycliffe in the 1380s, known as Wycliffe's Bibles, were the first complete translations and the first to gain widespread acceptance and use. De heretico comburendo does not mention language or translation.
According to some scholars, English Church authorities condemned editions of the Wycliffite translations not only because they deemed the commentary sometimes included with the work to be heretical, but because they feared a vernacular translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, absent appropriate catechesis, would lead the ignorant laity to reject Church authority and fall into heresy.[1] (De heretico comburendo was an Act of the English parliament, not by the Church.)
