or the Suppression of Heresy Act 1400 (2 Hen. 4. c. 15) was an act of the Parliament of England passed under King Henry IV of England in 1401 for the suppression of the Lollards. The act punished seditious heretics with burning at the stake. The act was one of the strictest religious censorship statutes ever enacted in England,

urged "that this wicked sect, preachings, doctrines, and opinions, should from henceforth cease and be utterly destroyed", and declared "that all and singular having such books or any writings of such wicked doctrine and opinions, shall really with effect deliver or cause to be delivered all such books and writings to the diocesan of the same place within forty days from the time of the proclamation of this ordinance and statute".

In March 1401 William Sawtrey became the first Lollard to be burned.

The Oxford Constitutions, established in 1409 by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, were further punitive measures intended to punish heresy in England that grew in large part out of the De heretico comburendo

The Suppression of Heresy Act 1414 (2 Hen. 5. Stat. 1. c. 7) clarified the procedures by which heresy charges could be brought and prosecuted by state officials.

According to Edward Coke, in Hil. 9 Jac. I. he was consulted about whether "this writ De heretico comburendo lieth" upon a conviction for heresy before an "Ordinary" court. According to Coke, the magistrates "certify the King, that a writ De heretico comburendo lieth upon a conviction before the Ordinary, but that the most convenient and sure way was to convict a heretic before the High Commissioners." His editor adds that the writ is abrogated by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1677 (29 Cha. 2. c. 9).

The act was extended to Ireland by Poynings' Law 1495 (10 Hen. 7 c. 22 (I)).

Section 6 of the Act of Supremacy 1558 (1 Eliz. 1. c. 1) (1559) repealed the statutes but it was not until March 1677 that a bill to take away the Crown's right to the writ was introduced in the House of Commons. It passed in that session. The writ was abolished by the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1677 (29 Cha. 2. c. 9) in England, and in 1695 in Ireland.

The whole act was repealed for Ireland by the Statute Law (Ireland) Revision Act 1872 (35 & 36 Vict. c. 98).

Controversy: Vernacular Bibles

Although partial English translations and metrical paraphrases of the Bible had existed for hundreds of years, the Middle English translations published under the direction of John Wycliffe in the 1380s, known as Wycliffe's Bibles, were the first complete translations and the first to gain widespread acceptance and use. De heretico comburendo does not mention language or translation.

According to some scholars, English Church authorities condemned editions of the Wycliffite translations not only because they deemed the commentary sometimes included with the work to be heretical, but because they feared a vernacular translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate, absent appropriate catechesis, would lead the ignorant laity to reject Church authority and fall into heresy. (De heretico comburendo was an act of the English parliament, not by the Church.)

See also

  • Britain in the Middle Ages
  • History of the English Bible
  • Inquisition
  • Censorship of the Bible

Notes

References

  • Extracts of the De heretico comburendo
  • Annotated text , see (B) on the page
  • Full text transcribed from Danby Pickering's Statutes at Large.