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Winner of John Nicholas Brown Prize
The 2007 John Nicholas Brown Prize is awarded
to Stephen Lahey for his Philosophy and Politics in the Thought
of John Wyclif (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
The "Philosophy" and "Politics" of the book's
title are the categories that have been put in tension in
studies in the past of Wyclif's work; they were thought to
represent two phases of his career as an academic and, later,
a monarchist and reformer.
Wyclif had spent a long career in working
out his realist metaphysics, and this work has attracted the
greater attention among modern scholars and been judged a
sophisticated system able to stand up to the nominalism of
William of Ockham and others. Wyclif's career, it was thought,
then took a turn toward an interest in political theory and
support of the monarchy and the baronial cause, and eventually
he became embroiled in the controversy with the mendicant
orders that had once supported him. Some of the works in this
"later phase" are related, De officio regis, De dominio divino,
and De civili dominio, but others seem to stand separately
from these, De blasphemia, for example, and it appeared that
Wyclif had not only turned away from his careful metaphysical
articulations but that he had strayed into an examination
of the secular world; or, to put it more succinctly, he abandoned
philosophy for politics and polemic. Many scholars tended
to agree with K. B. McFarlane's position that Wyclif's theology
was conditioned by his politics and that the two were neither
consistent nor original. Other scholars thought that the move
was largely expedient: a dissatisfied Wyclif, insufficiently
rewarded for his work, became the spokesperson for John of
Gaunt and others and a critic of the institution of the church
by offering some radical solutions to the issues of ecclesiastical
wealth, possessions, and power.
Stephen Lahey does not accept this scenario;
indeed, he argues that Wyclif's works on dominion, both civil
and ecclesiastical, are based in his realist epistemology.
One member of our committee said that "methodologically, Lahey
attempts to incorporate a much broader range of Wyclif's writings
and thought than have been brought to bear on these questions
in the past, and Lahey's procedure seems so obviously the
right thing to do that it makes one wonder why it hadn't been
done earlier." Lahey's project involves a sophisticated analysis
of what constitutes dominium, who has it, how it came into
being in a fallen world, and what the consequences of the
last were in terms of political power and its obligations
and responsibilities.
Another reviewer and a Wyclif scholar, Ian
Levy, succinctly states that it is Lahey's contention that
Wyclif's political writings, beginning with his 1374 De dominio
divino, should not be viewed as a departure from the metaphysical
system that he had been developing in the years before, but
rather as a natural manifestation of that system. In fact,
'Wyclif's conception of just human dominium is related to
God's dominium as is a particular to a universal' (4). As
a causal universal, divine dominium is both the creative source
and sustaining power of all genuine human dominium. And it
is through grace that each particular instance of just human
dominium continues to exist by participating in this universal.
All of this must be understood in light of the fact that Wyclif
envisioned God's relationship to the whole of creation in
terms of dominium, one in which God holds dominium over universals
first and then secondarily over particulars. The metaphysical
centrality of dominium, therefore, goes a long way towards
explaining why Wyclif fashioned his reform program around
it." (Church History 73 [2004], 201)
We think Lahey's book will be of interest
to historians, scholars in medieval philosophy, persons interested
in theories of political constructs, and scholars working
on fourteenth-century English medieval literature since, in
the last case, Wyclif has become part of that canon in recent
decades.
Respectfully submitted,
ROBERT BABCOCK
SUSAN BOYNTON
LAWRENCE CLOPPER, Chair
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