TOBIT’S DOG AND THE DANGERS OF LITERALISM:

WILLIAM WOODFORD O.F.M. AS CRITIC OF

WYCLIFFITE EXEGESIS

Alastair Minnis

During the two centuries following the death of St Francis, the order
he had founded produced a remarkable number of Bible commenta-
tors of the highest rank. Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Odo
Rigaldis, William of Middleton, St Bonaventure, Guibert of Tournai,
Roger Bacon, Peter John Olivi, John Pecham, Nicholas of Lyre. . . . the list
goes on and on. Some of Lyre’s successors, however, have been neglected
or undervalued in recent scholarship—not least the Oxford Franciscan
who is the subject of this paper, William Woodford (c. 1330–c. 1397).
The acuity of Woodford’s attack on John Wyclif ’s literalistic theory of
exegesis marks him as one of the most formidable of the evangelical
doctor’s early opponents. And this academic achievement, inter alia,
earns Woodford a place of distinction in the Franciscan hall of fame.
As my guide in the pursuit of this argument, I have enlisted the services
of a strange but faithful creature—Tobit’s dog.
Tobit (or Tobias), the son of the Tobit from whom the Old Testament
Book of Tobit takes its title, had a dog. We have this on good scrip-
tural authority. The blind and impoverished Tobit sends his son to one
Gabelus, “in Rages a city of the Medes” (Tobias 4:21), to recover a loan
he’d given him many years before. Young Tobit is accompanied by an
angel, named Raphael—and by his dog (which is unnamed):1
And Tobias went forward: and the dog followed him (Tobias 6:1).2

1
What’s in a name? In De statu innocencie, viii, Wyclif remarks that we needn’t
concern ourselves unduly with speculation concerning the exact nature of the knowl-
edge enjoyed by Eden’s inhabitants—that is as inane a question as asking the name of
Tobit’s dog. Johannis Wyclif, Tractatus de mandatis divinis accedit Tractatus de statu
innocencie, ed. J. Loserth and F.D. Matthew (London: Trübner, 1922), 512–14. But,
as I shall argue below, in Woodford’s treatment Tobit’s dog takes on considerable
significance within a critique of Wyclif ’s literalism.
2
My Biblical citations in English follow the Douay Bible, as being closest to the
Latin Vulgate.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
42 alastair minnis

The expedition proves successful. Not only does young Tobit recover
all the money from Gabelus, but he also acquires a wife, and the gill
of a magical fish which (among other wonders) restores his father’s
eyesight. As young Tobit returns home to his aged parents (who have
given him up for dead), his dog puts in another appearance—running
ahead of the party and announcing its arrival.
Then the dog, which had been with them in the way, ran before; and
coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning
and wagging his tail (quasi nuntius adveniens blandimento suae caudae
gaudebat) (Tobias 11:9).
Typical canine behavior, as any dog-lover will attest. Peter of Celle,
c. 1115–1183, Bishop of Chartres 1181–83, was so taken with this
account that he drew upon it in describing the behavior of Mary
Magdalene, who, in order to announce the joyful news of Christ’s res-
urrection to the Apostles, rushed along the road showing her joy by
wagging her tail (sic),3 saying, “I have seen the Lord; and these things
he said to me” (John 20:18).
In similar vein, Bede—who thought the behavior of Tobit’s dog was
“charming”4—read the way it followed its master as an allegory of how
holy preachers followed in the Lord’s footsteps, when Christ “came
to save the Gentiles.” He adds that “teachers are called dogs because
they defend their founder’s spiritual home, property and sheep from
thieves and beasts, i.e. from unclean spirits and heretical men.”5 When
he reaches the passage describing Tobit’s homecoming, Bede warns us
not to undervalue the dog’s significance. “One must not dismiss with
scorn the figure of this dog”6—which is, after all, the companion of an

3
. . . Maria Magdalena, tanquam canis Tobiae, qui similiter fuerat in via, quasi nun-
tius resurrectionis ad apostolos veniens, blandimento suae caudae gaudebat. . . . Petrus
Cellensis, Sermo XVII: Feria Sexta Post Dominicam Primam Quadragesimae, Migne,
Patrologia Latina 202, col. 690C.
4
Here I follow Seán Connolly’s translation of Bede’s adverb pulchre (used twice in
this account) as “charmingly,” in Librum B. Patris Tobiae Allegorica Interpretatio, in
Tob 11:9; Migne, Patrologia Latina 91, col. 933D; trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit and
on the Canticle of Habakkuk (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 57.
5
Bede, In Tob. 6:1, cols. 927D–928A; trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 46. This may
be compared with St. Gregory’s assertion that “sometimes in scripture dogs represent
preachers,” who have been “chosen from among the unbelieving Jews. When they
declared the truth, coming out against thieves and robbers, they were barking loudly
on the Lord’s behalf.” Homilia in Evangelia, 40.2; Migne, Patrologia Latina 76, cols.
1302D–1303B; cf. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 46, n. 49.
6
Non contemnenda est figura canis hujus . . .

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
 tobit’s dog and the dangers of literalism 43

angel. Reiterating his previous allegorization of dogs as preachers, Bede

explains that “the reason why the dog ran ahead is that the teacher
first preaches salvation,” in preparation for its Lord, “the enlightener”
(illuminator), to cleanse men’s hearts. He “shewed his joy by his fawn-
ing and wagging his tail,” because:
. . . the tail which is the end ( finis) of the body suggests the end of a good
work, i.e. its perfection, or at any rate the reward which is granted without
end. The dog then showed his joy by wagging his tail when he saw once
more his master’s homestead from which he was absent for a long time;
teachers rejoice at the results of their work when they realize that by means
of their ministry Judea is to be brought together again by the Lord; they
rejoice at receiving an eternal reward and with this same reward common
to all the elect they cheer the hearts of those they preach to when they
promise them that Christ’s grace will come without delay.7
Here is clear evidence of Bede’s belief that, in the Book of Tobit, alle-
gorical meaning “excels the mere letter as much as the fruit excels the
leaves.”8 Understood spiritualiter, this text “is found to contain within
it the greatest mysteries of Christ and the Church.”9 And Tobit’s dog
has its part to play in the figuring of those mysteries.10

7
In Tob. 11:9, cols. 933C–934A; trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 57. Connolly pro-
vides an excellent rhetorical analysis of this passage (57, n. 111).
8
Et si quis eumdem etiam allegorice novit interpretari, quantum poma foliis, tantum
interiorem ejus sensum videt simplicitati litterae praestare. In Tob., pref.; col. 923C–D;
trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 39.
9
In Tob., pref., col. 923D; trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 39.
10
However, Bede also commends the literal sense of the Book of Tobit: this work is
“clearly of saving benefit for its readers even in its superficial meaning (superficie lit-
terae) inasmuch as it abounds in both the noblest examples and the noblest counsels for
moral conduct” (In Tob., pref.; col. 923D, trans. Connolly, Bede on Tobit, 39). A similar
affirmation of the text’s “excellent moral character” had been made by Cassiodorus
(Institutiones, I.vi.4–5), as Connolly points out, whilst emphasizing Bede’s “respect for
the basic, outward reading of scripture,” which “is matched by his belief in the literal
truth of its narratives” (20). The text’s tropological potential was exploited by Matthew
of Vendôme in producing his Tobias (c. 1182/87), a poem which attained wide currency
as a grammar school “set text,” becoming one of the octo auctores—on which see the
relevant comments by contributors to The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism 2: The
Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 38–40, 153–60. Ian Thomson and Louis Perraud attribute the success of
Matthew’s poem to its “didactic morality and rhetorical artifice,” the moral themes of
the Biblical text having been amplified “with occasional allegory and a moralisatio.”
Take for example the point at which the elder Tobit says farewell to his son, giving
him a series of commands (Tobit 4:3–21): Matthew expands this with “a gigantic
ethical excursus of 469 lines,” “slightly more than one-fifth of the whole poem”; here
young Tobit gets comprehensive advice on how to conduct himself not only on this
expedition but in life in general, including an account of the seven deadly sins and the

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
44 alastair minnis

But it would seem that sometimes a dog is just . . . a dog. I cannot

resist recalling Samuel Johnson’s remark, “I would rather see the por-
trait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can
show me in the world.”11 The Franciscan theologian William Woodford
seems also to have been capable of such thinking, at least for polemical
purposes, to judge by the second of the Quattuor determinationes he
wrote against Wyclif at Oxford in the period 1389–90. Woodford was
writing some five years after Wyclif ’s death, in 1384. But Woodford had
known him personally—as foe, certainly, and perhaps initially as friend.
To quote Anne Hudson, it seems that Wyclif and Woodford had been
“acquaintances in Oxford, and indeed that their relations at one stage
were fairly close and apparently amicable. Comments in Woodford’s
work make it clear that they were accustomed to exchange notes on
matters of common interest.”12 Woodford’s opposition to Wyclif dates
to 1376 at least, when he wrote a treatise De dominio civili clericorum, a
refutation of Wyclif ’s views on civil dominion. It continued until around
1397 when, at the request of Archbishop Thomas Arundel, Woodford
wrote a justification of the condemnation of 18 propositions extracted
from Wyclif ’s work. Indeed, the Quattuor determinationes themselves
seem to go back quite a long way, reflecting his early period of opposi-
tion to Wyclif. Their primary target is a (somewhat mysterious) treatise
by Wyclif termed De religione. I say “mysterious” because this work
seems to have evaporated as a discrete text, Wyclif having incorporated
materials from it into his De civili dominio and De apostasia. According
to Eric Doyle’s dating, that ur-treatise De religione was written no later
than December 1376.13 The fact that Woodford was still obsessing about

Ten Commandments. Ian Thomson and Louis Perraud, Ten Latin Schooltexts of the
Later Middle Ages: Translated Selections (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Mellen
Press, 1991), 238, 240. The standard edition of the Latin poem is by Franco Munari,
in Mathei Vindocinensis opera, II: Piramus et Tisbe, Milo, Epistule, Tobias, Storia e
letteratura: raccolta di studi e testi 152 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1982).
The original text long retained its appeal. Particularly interesting is the fact that, in
the Coventry heresy trials of 1486–1522, Tobit is named as one of the books of the
Bible which Lollards had in their possession; presumably these references are to por-
tions of the Lollard Bible. Cf. Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522, ed. and trans. Shannon
McSheffrey and Norman Tanner, Camden Fifth Series 23 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 42.
11
Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. George Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1897), ii, 15.
12
Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 46.
13
Eric Doyle, “William Woodford, O.F.M., and John Wyclif ’s De Religione,”
Speculum 52 (1977): 329–36. See further Eric Doyle, “William Woodford on Scripture

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
 tobit’s dog and the dangers of literalism 45

it in 1389–90, when he produced the Quattuor determinationes, may

be taken as evidence of the impact which Wyclif ’s early doctrine had
on him, and of the vigor with which he reacted against it.
That must suffice on issues of dating. Next, a few words on the scope
of the Quattuor determinationes themselves. Their key target is the
belief, which Woodford attributes to Wyclif, that present-day religion
is full of human institutions and traditions which have no Biblical prec-
edent—and therefore they should be removed, a scenario which would
be quite destructive of much Catholic practice. One consequence of this
dangerous doctrine is that religious orders (including the Franciscans)
are an excrescence which should be cut away from the Church. In his
first determination Woodford argues that the origins of the religious
life may be found in apostolic times; it certainly cannot be deemed a
later addition, and the founders of the various orders definitely did
not sin in instituting them. The second determination, my main text
in this paper, offers a reductio ad absurdum of Wyclif ’s view that every
truth which is conducive to salvation is to be found in the Bible. In the
third and fourth determinations, Woodford refutes Wyclif ’s views on
“private religions” (i.e. orders which adulterate scriptural truth with
merely human laws and traditions).
And so, finally, we may focus on the second determination, the
home of Tobit’s literal dog. Here Woodford attacks Wyclif ’s doctrine
of scriptura sola,14 which he locates in statements like the following:
As a matter of faith (ex fide) we hold that every truth is to be found
in Scripture (omnis veritas est ex scriptura), and the more necessary
are the truths the more openly they are expressed (ut necessarior est
expressior).15

and Tradition,” Studia Historico-Ecclesiastica: Festgabe für Prof. Luchesius G. Spätling,

O.F.M., ed. Isaac Vázquez, Bibliotheca Pontificii Athenaei Antoniani 19 (Rome:
Pontificium Athenaeum Antonianum, 1977), 481–502.
14
The meaning and significance of this doctrine remain matters of scholarly con-
troversy. For differing views, see Paul de Vooght, Les sources de la doctrine chrétienne
d’après les théologiens du XIV e siècle et du début du XV e (Bruges: Desclée, De Brouwer,
1954), esp. 184–85; Michael Hurley, “Scriptura sola: Wyclif and his Critics,” Traditio
16 (1960): 275–352; Doyle, “William Woodford on Scripture and Tradition”; and
Jeremy O. Catto, William Woodford, O.F.M. (c. 1330–c. 1397) (unpub. D. Phil. thesis,
Oxford, 1969), 491–502.
15
Cf. Wyclif, De apostasia, ed. M.H. Dziewicki (London: Trübner, 1889), 10; appar-
ently recycled from De religione.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
46 alastair minnis

As Doyle notes, a similar statement is found in the later De veritate

sacrae scripturae, though here the phrase about “express” declaration
is omitted:
Inasmuch as all truth is in Holy Scripture, it is clear that every disputa-
tion, every signification of terms, or linguistic science (omnis terminorum
significatio vel sermocinalis scientia) which does not have its origin in
Holy Scripture, is profane.16
Woodford scrupulously explains his understanding of the phrase “every
truth” as used by Wyclif: he believes his opponent is not talking about
every truth in general, but rather every truth necessary for salvation.
Furthermore, Woodford assumes that such truths are declared more
or less “expressly” in the literal/historical sense of Scripture—and not
in an anagogical, allegorical or tropological sense, “since by these one
could not know which was catholic truth and which was not, nor that a
heresy was a heresy.”17 Here Woodford accesses the notion, as frequently
cited in thirteenth-century hermeneutic theory (and reiterated by the
great fourteenth-century postillator Nicholas of Lyre), that “from the
literal sense alone may any argument be drawn. . . .”18 To quote Thomas
Aquinas’s version of this doctrine,
All argument must derive from this alone, and not from what is said in
the allegorical sense, as Augustine says in his letter against Vincent the
Donatist.19 For no part of Holy Scripture loses any of its force because
of this, for nothing necessary to faith is contained within the spiritual
sense which Scripture does not openly convey elsewhere through the
literal sense.20
In short, the literal sense enables certainty in argument. Woodford regards
that as common ground occupied by his opponent and himself. He then
offers two arguments which mark their irreconcilable differences.
First, there are many truths that Christians should believe, truths
which are conducive to their salvation, which are not to be found in

16
De veritate sacrae scripturae, ed. R. Buddensieg (London: Trübner, 1904), I, 138;
trans. Ian Christopher Levy, John Wyclif, On the Truth of Holy Scripture, TEAMS
Commentary Series (Kalamazoo MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001), 112.
17
Following Doyle’s summary: “Woodford on Scripture and Tradition,” 491.
18
Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism. c. 1100–c. 1375: The Commentary Tradition,
rev. ed. by Alastair Minnis and A. B. Scott with David Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1991), 268; cf. 204, 242.
19
Epistola XCIII.viii.24; CSEL 24, 469–70.
20
Summa theologica, 1a 1, art. 10, ad 1um; trans. in Minnis and Scott with Wallace
(eds.), Medieval Literary Theory, 242.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
 tobit’s dog and the dangers of literalism 47

the Bible. Here is how the argument works. Different truths are found
in the different Gospels; in particular, St. John (who wrote his Gospel
after the other Evangelists) expressed many evangelical truths not to be
found in the previous Gospels. These truths did not become evangelical
when John wrote them down; they became evangelical when Christ
uttered them. Woodford’s denigration of mere textuality continues
with the claim that, even if all the books of the New Testament were
destroyed, we would still be obliged to believe the truths which Christ
had uttered. After all, Christ Himself never committed anything to
writing. Oral tradition may therefore be defended robustly. Several of
the apostles left us nothing in writing, but their teachings were passed
down by others. And so on and so forth. If some of these arguments
seem familiar to Middle English scholars, it is probably because a
version of them is found in Nicholas Love’s preface to his translation
of the Pseudo-Bonaventurean Meditationes vitae Christi (c. 1410),21 a
translation famously authorized by Archbishop Arundel himself. Some
recent scholars have attacked Love’s statement for what they regard as its
attempt to keep layfolk away from the solid and potentially subversive
truths of Scripture itself, offering them instead establishment-pleasing
hearsay and anodyne imaginings.22 Whatever the truth of that sugges-
tion (which I, for one, regard as too simplistic), it seems quite clear
that Woodford is not driving a wedge between the Biblical record and
extra-Biblical tradition. Rather, as Doyle nicely puts it,
Woodford understood Scripture and tradition to be intimately combined
in a balanced and harmonious unity. They flow from the same unique
source of all doctrine: Christ Himself. All that has been revealed is derived
from the one Evangelical Source, so that Scripture and tradition form one
deposit of God’s Word committed to the Church.23
Now for Woodford’s second crucial argument. The statement that cer-
tain crucial truths are not to be found in Scripture is followed by the

21
Nicholas Love’s “Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ,” ed. M.G. Sargent (Exeter:
Exeter University Press, 2004), 10–11.
22
See in particular the comments of Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural
Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation
Debate and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70 (1996): 822–64 (853–54),
and “Conceptions of the Word: The Mother Tongue and the Incarnation of God,”
New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997), 85–124 (esp. 94); also Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite
Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 147–72.
23
Doyle, “Woodford on Scripture and Tradition,” 493.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
48 alastair minnis

statement that certain truths, or at least facts, are found in Scripture yet
are of no evident consequence for our salvation. In other words, the
fact that something is explained or described with utter clarity in the
literal-historical sense of Scripture does not ipso facto make it important
for us. And this brings us back to Tobit’s dog:
Prima ergo veritas erat haec. Non eo quo veritas est magis necessaria ad
salutem . . . ipsa est expressius contenta in sacra scriptura. Patet haec primo,
quia quod Deus [est] tres Personae est multo magis necessaria ad salutem
quam quod Barabus erat latro vel Tobias habuit canem. Sed haec veritas
‘Deus est tres Personae’ non est ita expresse contenta in sacra scriptura sicut
ista: ‘Barabus erat latro’ vel ‘Tobias habuit canem’, quia utraque istarum
explicite et expresse habetur in sacra scriptura. . . . Patet haec secundo,
quia quod Filius est Patri consubstantialis est veritas magis necessaria ad
salutem quam quod ‘Tamar sedit in bivio’ . . .24
So, then: certain truths which are more necessary to salvation (such as,
“God is three persons” or “the Son is consubstantial with the Father”)
are less explicitly or expressly contained in Scripture than are the truths
that Barrabas was “a notorious prisoner” (as the Douay Bible puts it;
Matt 27:17),25 that “Thamar sat in the cross way” (i.e. at a crossroads;
Gen 38:14),26 and that Tobit had a dog.
It might be objected: read literally and historically, these passages
indeed seem to have no major consequence for our salvation, but,
understood morally, they may well be important—witness Bede’s
interpretation of Tobit’s dog as a zealous teacher preparing the way
for its Lord, or Peter of Celle’s reading of that creature’s excitement
as a figure of Mary Magdalene’s eager rush to tell the good news of
Christ’s resurrection. But Woodford has eliminated allegorical read-
ing from the debate, thereby engaging with Wyclif on what he regards
as his opponent’s own ground. From the literal sense alone may any
argument be drawn . . .
It might also be objected: Woodford claims he will take Wyclif ’s
doctrine as referring only to truths which are conducive to our salva-
tion. But such truths as “Barrabas was a notorious prisoner,” “Thamar
sat at the crossroads,” and “Tobit had a dog” are not conducive to our

24
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 703, fol. 77r.
25
Matt 27:15–26 recounts how the mob demands the release of Barrabas and the
execution of Christ.
26
Like a common woman, to allure her father-in-law, Juda, into sleeping with her
and impregnating her.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
 tobit’s dog and the dangers of literalism 49

salvation: therefore, Woodford’s argument is unfair. But this objection

is ineffective. For Woodford has seized upon the principle expressed
by Wyclif as ut necessarior est expressior: the more necessary a truth
is to salvation, the more expressly/explicitly it is stated in Scripture.
Woodford’s point is that this is patently untrue. It would be hard to find
a more explicit statement than “Tobit had a dog,” yet the importance
of this fact in terms of leading us towards salvation is hardly obvious.
Conversely, the statement “God is three persons” is highly necessary in
respect of our salvation, yet it is not quite explicitly stated in Scripture.
A later critic of Wyclif, Bishop Reginald Pecock (d.c. 1460), also saw the
potential of this argument. In his Repressor of Over-Much Blaming of
the Clergy, Pecock devised a more racy version thereof by enumerating
the many things which Wyclif ’s followers do that are not specifically
mentioned in the Bible, including the wearing of breeches, cloaks
and gowns; telling the time with clocks; brewing ale; singing, playing
and laughing for “esement”; and using the English language to make
known the Old and New Testaments to layfolk. Indeed, they might
well find it difficult to sit on the privy, or get up from it, because they
have to base their behavior on what is “groundid expresseli in Holy
Scripture”! And Lollard women cannot find any Biblical warrant for
such activities as washing, bathing or wearing coverchiefs (of silk or
linen) on their heads.27
The question of Pecock’s intellectual relationship and affinities with
Woodford is yet to be explored. Indeed, the number of things that
remain to be done on Woodford’s behalf are legion. His Quaestiones
LXXII de sacramento altaris (composed 1383/84) is of crucial impor-
tance for our understanding of Wyclif ’s Eucharistic teaching—yet it is
still in manuscript, which is quite a surprise given the attention being
paid to such Wycliffite doctrine in modern scholarship. Also unedited
are his treatise against the Welsh Lollard Walter Brut (which survives,
alas, only in a fragment)28 and his two apologetic treatises in defense of
mendicancy, both of which were prompted by Wycliffism and one of
which specifically addresses the famous antifraternal polemic of Richard
FitzRalph, Archbishop of Armagh.29 The Quattuor determinationes have

27
The Repressor of Over-Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, Rolls Series
19 (London: Longmans, 1860), 117–24.
28
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 3381, fols. 115r–124v.
29
Two other works are, however, available in print: Woodford’s De causis condem-
nacionis articulorum 18 damnatorum Johannis Wyclif was included in Edward Brown’s

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
50 alastair minnis

been edited, but in a thesis produced c. 1932 which is available only by

courtesy of the Oxford Greyfriars. Woodford is, it would seem, suffer-
ing from a publication deficiency—further evidence of which may be
found in the fact that the most substantial study of his thought, Jeremy
Catto’s 1969 dissertation, remains unpublished and may be consulted
only in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.30
Along with this publication deficiency has gone a comprehension
deficiency, one spectacular example of which was Paul de Vooght’s
contention that Woodford more or less invented the idea of scriptura
sola and foisted it upon Wyclif, thereby hereticating exegetical theory
which was perfectly orthodox.31 This view has comprehensively, and
quite convincingly, been refuted by both Eric Doyle and Jeremy Catto.
To quote Catto, Woodford “found it [i.e. a literalist sola scriptura
doctrine] in De religione and he never forgot it.”32 And yet, doubts
concerning Woodford’s abilities and competence have lingered. Anne
Hudson has remarked that his “discussion of Wycliffite positions appears
curiously blinkered and beside the point.” “The overall impression made
by a reading of Woodford’s works,” she continues, “is of a large and
stately warship sailing imperturbably through the night on a pre-set
course which never brings it within a hundred miles of its ostensible
target.”33 A wonderfully memorable statement, to be sure, but (I believe)
an exaggeration at least as far as Woodford’s critique of Wycliffite
literalism is concerned.34
In my own view, the worst one can say about Woodford’s critique is
that it leaves out one quite crucial, albeit somewhat paradoxical, aspect
of the heretic’s hermeneutics, viz.: in Wyclif ’s thought, literalism is not
to be seen as necessarily involving denigration or dismissal of the other
senses of Scripture. Let me offer a brief summary of the situation as I

Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum (London: Chiswell, 1690; reprinted

Tucson, AZ: Audax Press, 1967), I: 190–265, and Eric Doyle’s critical edition of the
De dominio civili clericorum was published in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 66
(1973): 49–109.
30
Catto, “William Woodford” (for the full reference see n. 14 above).
31
De Vooght, Les sources de la doctrine chrétienne, 168–200.
32
Catto, “William Woodford,” 501. De Vooght’s study was severely hampered by the
fact that he did not make use of the second of Woodford’s Quattuor determinationes,
which Doyle and Catto studied extensively.
33
Hudson, Premature Reformation, 48.
34
And certainly not endorsed by Ghosh, who terms Woodford’s critique at once
“acute” and “attractive,” “broadly sceptical and essentially humane” (The Wycliffite
Heresy, 85).

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
 tobit’s dog and the dangers of literalism 51

see it. Wyclif may be regarded as having actually reaffirmed the value
of the “spiritual senses” of Scripture, going against an academic trend
which tended to relegate allegory to the realm of persuasive argument
and preaching. This trend is writ large in Nicholas of Lyre’s mighty
Postilla litteralis, where (following Thomist hermeneutics) the literal
or historical sense is afforded special importance, being regarded as
the sense intended by the human (though of course divinely inspired)
author. As I argued in my monograph Medieval Theory of Authorship,
thirteenth-century Parisian schoolmen granted this human auctor of
Scripture more agency than before, as an instrumental efficient cause
working under the primary efficient cause, God.35 Wyclif, I believe, was
deeply uncomfortable with such developments. Moving beyond the
general notion that the Bible was divinely inspired, he believed that
“each syllable of Scripture is true because it is a divine emanation,” as
J.A. Robson puts it in his Wyclif and the Oxford Schools.36 And because
the Bible in its entirety is the single and singular Word of God, we are
not permitted to dissect it, or suppose that some parts lack sufficient
authority, or emphasize the diversity of human acts of authorship in
ways which might seem to compromise or constrain divine authorship.
It must be read in its unity and integrity according to the sense of its
auctor. And that auctor is God. All the senses of Scripture, therefore,
collapse into one. In a specific case we may wish to specify one as
“literal” and another as “allegorical,” but all are expressions of the
intention of one and the same author-God, and equally valid in the
grand scheme of things (if not in syllogistic argument). Thus authorial
intention becomes coterminous with the divine will, and the “human
authors” of Scripture (as Lyre termed them) are subsumed in divine
authorship and authority. Viewed in this light, Wycliffite literalism is
inseparable from Wycliffite allegorism.
These hermeneutics are complicated indeed; little wonder that they
survive only partially in later Lollard thought. Particularly telling is
the fact that the anonymous authors of the “General Prologue” to the
Wycliffite English Bible avoided them, choosing rather to appropriate

35
Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle
Ages, 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1988), esp. Chapter 3.
36
Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961),
146. See further the crucially important discussions by Beryl Smalley, “The Bible and
Eternity: John Wyclif ’s Dilemma,” in Journal of the Warburg and Cortauld Institutes 27
(1964): 73–89, and Ian Christopher Levy, “John Wyclif ’s Neoplatonic View of Scripture
in its Christological Context,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003): 227–40.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute
52 alastair minnis

what Nicholas of Lyre (together with Richard FitzRalph) had to say

about the senses of Scripture. There one may find, for example, the
belief that from the literal sense alone may any argument be drawn; the
other senses are not “authentik . . . of beleeue” unless they are grounded
openly in the text of Holy Scripture at some other point.37 If Woodford
may be likened to a stately warship which didn’t get within a hundred
miles of its quarry, it may be added that those who took John Wyclif
as their flagship were sailing a similar distance away, and paying little
attention to some of their leader’s most ambitious signals. Furthermore,
Woodford is perfectly capable of scoring a palpable hit. The remarks
on which he focuses were certainly made by Wyclif, and his response
to them is absolutely fair comment (as was the comparable response of
Bishop Reginald Pecock). This level of accuracy is all the more remark-
able given that Wyclif is the most elusive of targets, a thinker capable
of driving forward several arguments (which may seem mismatched or
even contradictory) at the same time, sometimes talking like a Thomist
exegete while at other times sounding remarkably like Plotinus.
In other words, the fact that Woodford does not give us the full
story does not mean that the part he does tell is a misrepresentation
or falsification. “All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all
answers is contained in the dog,” declared Kafka.38 Well, maybe not all
of them—but certainly some of them, as far as our understanding of
Woodford’s critique of Wycliffite literalism is concerned. Clearly, “one
must not dismiss with scorn the figure of this dog.”39

37
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, in the Earliest English
Versions, made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. Josiah
Forshall and Frederic Madden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850), I: 43, 52–55.
FitzRalph is named in Ch. 12 (48). On the significance of his Summa in quaestionibus
Armenorum for the Wycliffite General Prologue, see Alastair Minnis, “ ‘Authorial
Intention’ and ‘Literal Sense’ in the Exegetical Theories of Richard FitzRalph and
John Wyclif,’ ” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 75, section C, no. l (Dublin,
1975). See further the relevant discussion in the fourth chapter of my forthcoming
book, Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature: Valuing the Vernacular
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
38
Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog,” in Kafka, Complete Stories, trans. W. and
E. Muir, ed. N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1971), 290.
39
To reiterate the words of Bede, as translated by Seán Connolly; cf. n. 6 above.

Alastair Minnis - 9789047429746

Downloaded from Brill.com11/13/2020 06:35:01PM
via Pontifical Biblical Institute