Roger Dymock, Determinationes contra XII haereses Lollardorum (2)

Dedication to Richard II with arms of the diocese of Ely and full foliate border
MS Ii.4.3, f. 1r
Roger Dymock, Determinationes contra XII haereses Lollardorum
London or Cambridge?, ca 1400

This copy of the treatise is only decorated with illuminated initials and a border on the opening page whose initial contains the arms of the diocese of Ely, perhaps suggesting that it was made for a cleric of that diocese. Dymock, formerly prior of the Dominican convent of Boston in Lincolnshire, became Regent Master at Blackfriars in London, where he wrote this work. He lists a series of twelve heretical statements which the Lollards allegedly had stated, written and posted on the doors of Westminster Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral. Among their errors which he quotes is a denial of the sacrifice of the Mass containing this sentence: ‘the servise of Corpus Christi imad by frere Thomas is untrewe and peyntid ful of false miraclis, and that is no wondir, for frere Thomas that same time, holding with the Pope, would have mad a miracle of an hen egge’. This rude reference to St Thomas Aquinas’s supposed writing of some of the texts for the liturgy of the feast of Corpus Christi must have been particularly offensive to a Dominican! Other Lollard views which Dymock refutes are their rejection of prayers for the dead, auricular confession, indulgences, cults of relics of the saints, and the use of images in churches.

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