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Cross-Referencing in Wyclif’s Latin Works

1999; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 11; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0143045900002283

2632-9913

Anne Hudson,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

One of the most immediately striking features of all of Wyclif’s major writings, whether philosophical, theological, or polemical, is the frequency with which cross-references are found both between different chapters or parts of the same work and between works other than the current one. The frequency of cross-referencing is variable. In the philosophical works and the intermediate tracts traditionally placed before the twelve-part Summa theologie , links are not enormously numerous. The first text to show a plethora of them is De civili dominio: here on average one instance occurs roughly every other page, more frequently in parts I and III, in other words some 600 in all. This habit continues with slight abatement in De veritate sacre scripture , and into De ecclesia . Thereafter the remaining parts of the Summa show a diminishing number, still further reduced in the De eucharistia . Cross-referencing is relatively common in the three long sets of sermons composed after Wyclif’s retirement to Lutterworth, and in the Sermones quadraginta written dum stetit in scholis . The device is obviously in origin an academic one, and it is worth observing that some of the major works which were written after Wyclif left Oxford have few if any: in the Trialogus the virtually complete absence of internal Unkings could be explained as the result of a perception that the orderly organization of the whole obviated the necessity for such an aid, but this explanation does not seem relevant to the final Opus evangelkum . Cross-referencing has previously been observed by students of Wyclif, and has traditionally been used in the attempt to order his vast output chronologically, and to put dates to individual works. But this is to jump to conclusions – to assume that the references are authorial and that the works in which they occur were composed as a whole at one time. The discussion here will suggest that there are questions to be answered in regard to the former assumption, and substantial objections to the latter. More modestly, I hope here to use the cross-references to throw light on the ways in which Wyclif’s works were written, put together, and ‘published’.