Sword & Trowel 2017: Issue 1
that a young John Calvin lodged while a student in Paris. He and La Forge were good friends, and we may conjecture that La Forge’s influ- ence might have helped push young Calvin across the boundary between Erasmus-inspired Catholic reform (which Calvin at that point accepted) into outright Protestantism. La Forge died as a martyr along with many Parisian Protestants in 1534; Calvin escaped to Switzerland, and from there wrote a moving defence of the Parisian martyrs, including his Wal- densian friend. The Lollards, English and Scottish followers of the 14th
-century reformer
John Wycliffe, also embraced the Ref- ormation at an early stage. Various examples of progress from Lollardy to Lutheranism have been discov- ered and documented by modern scholars: for example, John Stacey and Lawrence Maxwell, prominent Lollard guildsmen, both became Lu- therans in the 1520s and distributed Lutheran books. Probably old Lol- lardy and new Protestantism began to merge together from around the time that William Tyndale’s English New Testament began circulating in 1525-6. The English Church authori- ties tended to see all heresy in terms of Lollardy; in 1523, Bishop Cuth- bert Tunstall of London wrote, ‘It is no question of pernicious novelty; it is only that new arms are being added to the great crowd of Wycliffite heresies.’
The Hussites of Bohemia, disciples of the 15th
also embraced the Reformation. Luther had early been strengthened in his reforming convictions by read-
page 30 Seeds of the Reformation -century reformer Jan Hus,
ing some of the writings of Jan Hus. These astonished him; Hus seemed to be saying so many of the same things Luther was now saying. ‘We are all Hussites without knowing it!’ Luther exclaimed. ‘St Paul and St Au- gustine are Hussites!’ The United Bohemian Brother- hood, one of the main Hussite bodies, gave a warm welcome to the new Protestant movement. Their leader, John Augusta, positively spar- kled with enthusiasm for Luther. In 1532, Augusta published a Brother- hood confession of faith for which Luther himself wrote a preface. In 1536 Augusta actually visited Wit- tenberg, and Luther helped to get a revised Hussite confession of faith printed in 1538. Luther’s enthusiasm for the Brotherhood was strongly expressed in 1542, when he told Au- gusta that the Bohemian Brotherhood were to be the apostles to the Bohe- mians, as Luther and his co-workers were apostles to the Germans. So in various ways, Italian Walden- sians, British Lollards, and Bohemian Hussites all helped to create a fertile and receptive soil for the Reforma- tion.
Voices of reform
Alongside the Renaissance, Erasmus, and these pre-Reformation movements of evangelical dissent, there were individual church voices of reform in the 15th
century which,
to one degree or another, at least put the idea of reform into the air. Let us look at four. First, Lorenzo Valla, one of Lu- ther’s heroes. Valla was a native of Rome, ordained to the priesthood
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