Abstract

While some theologians in the fourteenth century had drawn attention to certain anomalies involved with transubstantiation, they nevertheless made their peace with this scholastic theory believing it to be settled doctrine. The principal exception to this rule of scholarly accommodation was John Wyclif whose increasing dissatisfaction with transubstantiation resulted in his censure and expulsion from Oxford in 1381. Although Wyclif came to see transubstantiation as a unique evil emblematic of so much that was wrong with the late medieval Church, and so attacked it on various fronts, this paper will focus on Wyclif’s metaphysical objections: this doctrine (he said) was fundamentally incoherent and none of his fellow schoolmen could offer a satisfactory explanation of how precisely it worked. In the event, however, Wyclif found it very difficult to articulate a doctrine of real presence shorn of the scholastic overlay that he had so vehemently rejected. The rejection of transubstantiation would subsequently form a mainstay of Wycliffite calls for ecclesiastical reform in England. While in Bohemia various theories of eucharistic presence were circulating that ran the sacramental spectrum. Of special interest is Jakoubek of Stříbro whose doctrine of substantial remanence was similar to Wyclif’s own, but more subtle and profound in its formulation. This paper examines the various permutations in both England and Bohemia of this broad rejection of transubstantiation and also considers some of the immediate responses that it evoked from Thomas Winterton, William Woodford and Thomas Netter in England and Andrew of Brod in Bohemia.