{"id":722,"date":"2021-04-15T14:01:49","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T14:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalcommentary.utoronto.ca\/?p=722"},"modified":"2022-10-06T20:50:42","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T20:50:42","slug":"stanislav-of-znojmos-commentary-on-john-wyclifs-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalcommentary.utoronto.ca\/?p=722","title":{"rendered":"Stanislav of Znojmo\u2019s Commentary on John Wyclif\u2019s Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Stephen LAHEY<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

J<\/span> ohn Wyclif (d.1384) is remembered primarily as a British forerunner of the Protestant reformation, under whose supervision the Bible was translated into English. His writings so angered the fourteenth-century church that his bones were exhumed and burned in 1428, in part because his words inspired the Czech reform movement associated with Jan Hus. Most of Wyclif\u2019s admirers today associate him with the Bible translation; indeed, the Wycliffe Bible Society continues to translate the work into every known language. When I gave a presentation on Wyclif\u2019s philosophy several years ago, a colleague later told me that he hadn\u2019t even known that Wyclif wrote philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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In fact, Wyclif was one of the most original philosophers in fourteenth-century Oxford. It is said that when his ecclesiastical prosecutors encountered his philosophical works, they were astonished at their depth and inventiveness. His reputation as an opponent of the papacy and the ecclesiastical status quo<\/em>, and his rejection of the coherence of transubstantiation, contributed to the subsequent readiness to dismiss Wyclif\u2019s philosophical works.[1]<\/sup><\/a> <\/a>The Early Modern rejection of scholastic philosophy as needlessly complicated sophistry meant that the milieu in which Wyclif thought and wrote would be forgotten for centuries. The late 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries saw the growth of interest in the history of philosophy, and as the decades passed, the wealth of scholastic thought began to be recovered.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Left to Right: Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Roman Catholic church played an important role in this. In the mid-19th<\/sup> century, Pius IX and his successor Leo XIII mounted a theological attack on Modernity, and the scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas was declared the chief teacher of Catholic thought for a church that refused to accept the hegemony of the Modern. Aquinas\u2019s predecessors, from Augustine of Hippo to Albert the Great, featured in Roman Catholic theology curricula in the first half of the 20th<\/sup> century, and Catholic philosophers began to construct a new scholasticism. In the middle of the 20th<\/sup> century, Thomas and his predecessors were introduced to philosophers outside the Catholic tradition by individuals such as Etienne Gilson, who argued that scholasticism was a tradition well worth the attention of professional philosophers. As time passed, Franciscans began to make convincing cases for members of their order who represented a different approach than that of Aquinas, thereby introducing John Duns Scotus and William Ockham to professional philosophers. The past forty years have seen a growth of interest in the scholastic tradition as it incorporated the differing approaches of Ockham and Scotus into the medieval theological discourse.  The scholastic thinkers I\u2019ve mentioned had large numbers of philosophical followers who developed their approaches: for example, Thomists flourished, and still flourish, within the Dominican order of friars, and Scotists do in the Franciscan order. Both have traditions reaching seven centuries back in time, and thanks to the Roman Catholic presence in the conquest of the Americas, and in Spanish colonialism in Asia, branches all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wyclif attracted attention towards the end of the nineteenth century, thanks to the pan-Slavic movement. A common visual portrayal of the \u201cpath to Protestantism\u201d as it was described from the mid-19th<\/sup> century was to portray John Wyclif and Jan Hus as \u201cforerunners\u201d to Luther.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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While the Czechs were still subjects of Austria-Hungary, a strongly nationalist movement emerged in Bohemia. Prague had long been the second city of the Empire, but its Slavic identity had long been silenced by German culture and authority. With the Obrozen\u00ed<\/em>, the Czech National revival stimulated by Josef Jungmann\u2019s Czech dictionary in 1835, the concept of a uniquely Czech identity became popular. The historian Frantisek Palack\u00fd presented Jan Hus as the first historical figure to embody this national identity, and Hus quickly became associated with the growing nationalist movement. Konstantin H\u00f6fler worked vigorously to disprove this idea, publishing a large number of his editions of important documents from the Bohemian reformation. In 1884, the German theological scholar Johannes Loserth published Wiclif und Hus<\/em>, in which he argued that all that the Czechs identified as peculiar to Hus was, in fact, simply copied from Wyclif, whom Hus admired. Loserth was one of a number of German and English scholars who had begun to develop modern editions of Wyclif\u2019s theological Latin works, to establish a strong Anglo-Saxon presence in the birth of Protestantism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is my painting of a number of notable figures in the historiography of the Bohemian Reformation; H\u00f6fler and Loserth are at the lower left.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

 Czech scholars responded to Loserth with bitter arguments emphasizing the uniquely Czech nature of the Hussite movement, and in the process, an interest began to develop in Prague in the philosophical debates that were going on when Hus was a student. Wyclif\u2019s philosophical works had arrived in Prague shortly after his death, and became quite popular among the Bohemian theology students and masters in the decades that followed. As the Czech scholarship on this period developed, Wyclif\u2019s philosophical thought began to appear important for understanding the genesis of Hussitism in the ideas of Jan Hus, Jakoubek St\u0159ibro, and other young reformers in Prague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hus presented as the Ur-Czech.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Hus and Jan \u017di\u017eka as proto-Marxists.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Czech medieval scholarship throughout the 20th<\/sup> century featured attention to the relation of Wyclif to Hus, but the Soviet dominance that began in 1948 directed the studies away from philosophy and towards what was regarded as \u201cproto-Marxism\u201d in Wyclif. During the course of these decades, few Czech scholars pursued Wyclif`s philosophy. Vil\u00e9m Herold, Ivan Mueller, and Franti\u0161ek \u0160mahel devoted themselves to the task, and developed a picture of the Wyclif school in Prague that preceded the death of Hus in 1415. Foremost in that school was a man remembered in the Czech lands for his subsequent opposition to Hus, Stanislav of Znojmo (d. 1414).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanislav\u2019s story is one of wrongful neglect. Before 1409, he had been the leader of the Bohemian Wyclif school, writing remarkable commentaries on Wyclif`s works and giving well attended lectures on Wyclif`s thought. As his students became increasingly critical of the Church in Prague, and of the results of the Papal Schism, Wyclif\u2019s works became increasingly dangerous, and were finally condemned in 1410. Stanislav had been called, along with his younger prot\u00e9g\u00e9 St\u011bpan Pale\u010d, to give an account for himself in Rome, and after being imprisoned in Bologna, recanted from his support from Wyclif. Both Stanislav and St\u011bpan returned to Prague, prepared to pursue their students\u2019 errors with vigor. Stanislav did so until his death several years later, and St\u011bpan accompanied Hus to Constance, where he did his utmost to convince the reformer to renounce the position that led to a heresy trial. Hus refused, and died at the stake in 1415. With that, the memories of Stanislav and St\u011bpan were associated with Hus\u2019s death, and their works were left in forgotten codices in libraries throughout Bohemia and Moravia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the controversy between Germans and Czechs continued in the early 20th<\/sup> century, one of the editors of the Wyclif Society published an edition of De Universalibus,<\/em> a treatise he imagined to be by Wyclif. Wyclif had indeed written a treatise on the subject, but what Dziewicki had edited was Stanislav\u2019s commentary on Wyclif\u2019s treatise. Ivan Mueller edited and published Wyclif\u2019s treatise of that name in 1985, when Wyclif\u2019s philosophical thought was gaining interest among professional historians of philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I began my doctoral work on Wyclif in 1990, on the advice of my dissertation director A.S. McGrade, a respected expert on fourteenth-century thought. In the years that have followed, my interest in Wyclif led me to the study of the reception of his thought in Prague. After learning Czech, I began to benefit from the research of Herold and \u0160mahel and their students, and came to recognize the importance of Stanislav in the transmission and interpretation of Wyclif`s thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stanislav\u2019s Works<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pavel Spunar\u2019s catalogue of Czech authors from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth-centuries lists 55 known works of Stanislav, of which 45 survive. These include 11 sermons, 11 questions, 10 theological treatises, 6 expressly philosophical works, and 17 others, of which one, the commentary on Aristotle\u2019s physics, is not Stanislav\u2019s work. Of these, seven theological works and four philosophical works deserve a brief account because of their direct connection to Stanislav\u2019s reading of Wyclif`s works. Our purpose here is to gain a general overview of the subjects to which Stanislav devoted his most attention as a thinker, both before and after 1409.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Works in Philosophical Theology<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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De Corpore Christica. <\/em>1405<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This treatise, which appears to be opposed to the remanentist position of Wyclif, has been revealed to have had a more complicated history than first appears. The whole of it is nine chapters long, of which there are 13 manuscript versions. There are two others consisting of only the first three chapters, and two consisting of chapters 4 through 9. Jan Sedl\u00e1k published an edition of the whole in 1905, along with an interesting article revealing that the treatise is really two conjoined arguments.[2]<\/sup><\/a> <\/a> Hus had commented in a letter that Stanislav had at one time admitted to being dubious about Wyclif\u2019s remanentist views, despite his otherwise great admiration for his thought. In fact, Hus cites a portion of the otherwise lost Sentences <\/em>commentary of Stanislav comparing Wyclif\u2019s Eucharistic views to being the thorns naturally accompanying any beautiful rose.[3]<\/sup><\/a> <\/a> Sedl\u00e1k establishes that Hus was not simply being disagreeable about his teacher, who had expressly denied the remanentist position later. In fact, he establishes that Stanislav\u2019s earlier position is conjoined with Jan \u0160t\u011bkny\u2019s anti-remanentist sermon to make it appear that Stanislav was merely giving the other side a fair shake. The telling evidence is that the remanentist section begins with Stanislav`s favorite opening phrase, \u2018It would not seem meritless to investigate\u2026\u2019 This appears occasionally throughout his works, frequently as the beginning of a chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jan Sedl\u00e1k, Eucharistick\u00e9 trakt\u00e1ty Stanislava ze Znojma <\/em>Hlidka 23, 1906<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tractatus de Peccato et Gracia.<\/em>  1410<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Stanislav demonstrates his understanding of Wyclif`s moral theology by summarizing and quoting sections from Trialogus <\/em>and De Mandatis Divinis<\/em>. These two treatises contain the heart of Wyclif\u2019s conception of what he called the Law of Love. He envisioned a Christian world in which all members of the church lived in simplicity, with regular preaching and pastoral guidance provided by \u201cevangelical lords\u201d, priests aware that their flocks\u2019 salvation depend upon their words and the exemplary lives of Christ. In De Officis Pastoralis <\/em>Wyclif had argued that preaching had more salvific power, and contained as much capacity to administer grace, as any of the seven sacraments. Naturally this meant that Wyclif\u2019s theology of grace was a departure from the sacramentally ordered position common in medieval Christianity. He regarded himself as directing religious teaching away from the inventions of recent times, and back to the moral curriculum established by the Fathers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanislav\u2019s editor, Zuzana Silagov\u00e1, notes that the treatise stands out as the commentary in which Wyclif`s teachings receive Stanislav\u2019s fullest support. \u201cWhile Stanislav communicates Wyclif\u2019s teaching in other treatises, it does not completely take over: indeed, he often polemicizes against them. Here it appropriates word for word entire passages from De Mandatis Divinis <\/em>and Trialogus <\/em>but in a generally truncated form\u2026\u201d p. xii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a prose summary covering up to p. 39 of 179<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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De Felicitate<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This treatise, among Stanislav\u2019s earlier works, articulates the final ideal human state. It builds from Wyclif\u2019s description of the human condition in De Actibus Anime<\/em>, moving from a general discussion of the role of faith and the moral virtues in happiness to a topic that Wyclif mentions but does not explore deeply, that of the beatific vision of God. The question of whether and how blessed souls perceive God in paradise had been of considerable interest at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and Wyclif\u2019s philosophical theology, partially consonant with Thomism and Scotism, but in other ways more Platonist, gives Stanislav the opportunity to analyse a theologically interesting problem. Throughout Stanislav\u2019s description of the expansion in our capacity for joy and understanding, he touches upon some of Wyclif\u2019s favorite talking points, including the need for recognizing the reality of universals, the need for a skilled preacher to be sensitive to the varying kinds of predication used in Scripture, the indivisibilist understanding of time, and the threats posed by clerical abuses. The treatise draws on Wyclif\u2019s understanding of the nature of the soul and its union with the body, and the relation of the intellectual interior self to the exterior physical self as described in De Composicione Hominis <\/em>and De Actibus Anime<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanislas Sousedik, ed. \u201cStanislai de Znoyma: Tractatus de Felicitate\u201d Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum <\/em>XIX 1974 pp. 65-126<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have summarized 1-13 of 19 chapters<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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De Vero et Falso<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This treatise explains Wyclif\u2019s correspondence theory of truth most fully, showing how a true proposition maps onto a truth about being. Wyclif\u2019s position, termed \u201cpropositional realism\u201d, holds that what contemporary philosophers call \u201cstates of affairs\u201d, or more loosely \u201cfacts\u201d are what Adam Wodeham called \u201ccomplex significables\u201d. These are isomorphic with the true propositions we use to identify them. The true predication of something about a subject needs to be carefully explained, which may not be terribly complex for a statement like \u201cThe stone is grey\u201d, but becomes more difficult for statements like \u201cNo bat is a fish.\u201d To what does the expressed subject \u201cNo bat\u201d refer? Is there something that is \u201cnot being a fish\u201d? Wyclif struggles with some of these more difficult questions throughout his philosophical works, which reasoning Stanislav recounts and assesses. In some places, he advances Wyclif\u2019s position to provide answers Wyclif did not perceive, but in others, notably the question of the reality of complex significables, he differs from Wyclif. The only contemporary discussion of this treatise is Gabriel Nuchelman\u2019s description of some of the problems about true conjunctions and disjunctions dating to the mid-1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V.Herold, ed., De Vero et Falso <\/em>Prague 1973<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have the whole summarized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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De Universalibus<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

This treatise, initially assumed to have been Wyclif\u2019s treatise of the same name when M.H. Dziewicki edited it and published it in 1905, is Stanislav\u2019s thorough examination of Wyclif\u2019s metaphysics. After a brief discussion of Wyclif\u2019s doctrine of divine ideas, much discussed in Prague at the time, he assesses Wyclif\u2019s doctrine of universals, how they have reality, and how they inhere in their particulars. Problems with Wyclif\u2019s thought on identity and difference, relations between kinds of universals, and the nature of specific properties in a creature\u2019s nature dominate the next dozen or so chapters. Finally, he turns to some more difficult problems with Wyclif\u2019s propositional realism, dealing with necessity and truths about counterfactuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M.H. Dziewicki, ed., Iohannis Wyclif Miscellanea Philosophica II <\/em>London 1905<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have all 21 chapters summarized<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Other Treatises<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Several other works of Stanislav address Wyclif\u2019s thought, primarily with the intent of refuting it. Stanislav wrote them after his decision to renounce Wycliffism in 1409, and they show a thorough understanding of Wyclif\u2019s positions, far superior to the refutations of other opponents like Thomas Netter of Walden. Still, they cannot be considered commentaries, as they were intended primarily to show the untenability of positions deemed dangerous by the church, and are assessed on dogmatic, rather than philosophical, grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n