Читать книгу Martyrs and Mystics - Ed Glinert - Страница 16

LAMBETH PALACE, Lambeth Palace Road

The London residence and offices of the Archbishop of Canterbury date back to the thirteenth century. It was here in April 1378 that John Wycliffe, the first man to translate the Bible into English, was ordered to appear before William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, accused of heresy after rejecting the idea of transubstantiation – that the Communion wafer actually becomes the body of Christ during the service. As the trial began a message came to the judges from the Queen Mother, Joan of Kent, forbidding the council to pass sentence upon Wycliffe, which left them dumbfounded. This gave him some time to resubmit his case. He also handed the judges a statement of his principles:

1. The Pope of Rome has no political authority.

2. All popes are sinners just as other men and need to be reproved.

3. The Pope has no right to the national resources of England.

4. Priests have no power to forgive sins.

5. Neither the Pope nor his priests have the power of excommunication.

6. The Church is a plunderer of the world’s goods.

7. No tithes should be paid to Rome.

8. The Mass is blasphemous.

The archbishop reprimanded Wycliffe for his teachings, but the trial ended inconclusively.

Wycliffe’s followers, the Lollards, were imprisoned here in 1434–5 in what was known as the Lollard’s Tower, destroyed by Second World War bombs but since rebuilt.

→ William Tyndale translates the Bible into English, p. 250

THOMAS TANY BIBLE BURNING SITE, St George’s Fields, Lambeth Road

Thomas Tany, a London silversmith, was found in St George’s Fields in December 1654 burning the Bible, armed with a sword and pistols. He had rowed over the Thames towards the Houses of Parliament earlier that day, trying to deliver a petition which backed his claim that he was directly descended from Aaron, Moses’ brother, High Priest of the Israelite, when God gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. The petition also alleged that Tany was now Theauraujohn, High Priest of the Jews, who would soon rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem with himself as High Priest.

By a remarkable coincidence, the same day that Tany was jailed John Reeve, a local tailor, supposedly received a divine visitor who told him he had been chosen as the Lord’s ‘last messenger’. With his cousin, Lodowick Muggleton, Reeve formed the Muggletonian sect (→ p. 16), which later condemned Tany as a ‘counterfeit high priest and pretend prophet, the spawn of Cain’.

Tany was sent to jail, but while he was inside a series of fires began to blaze in the City. Tany claimed that these were a sign of the imminent destruction of the world. A more likely explanation came with the arrest of an arsonist who may have been in his pay. The self-styled ‘High Priest’ later perished at sea while journeying to the Holy Land ‘to recover Jerusalem for the true Jews’.

→ Prophet John Wroe, p. 200