Beyond Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Preaching and Exampla in the Context of Lollard Heresy

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The medieval period was long regarded as an 'age of faith' before the reason of the Enlightenment. This view has been challenged by more recent scholarship, which sheds light on how, even in the later middle ages, fundamental questions of belief were being debated. Although treated with intolerance and ultimately suppressed by the Church, the Lollard heresy of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries exposed genuine anxieties in clerical and lay communities. The efficacy of the sacraments, the right to access and interpret scripture, notions of predestination: all were debated, potentially undermining the Church's authority on Earth. I propose to explore these anxieties by examining the exempla (moral and religious fables, usually involving miracles) which are included in sermons and other religious writings in order to identify how writers and preachers sought to address questions and anxieties that may have been brought to the fore by Lollardy, but had been perennial concerns throughout the middle ages. The research does not assume that Lollardy was the cause of the concerns, therefore, but acknowledges the way in which it acted as a catalyst for debate.