WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

6. The Force of Speech Revisited: The Wycliffite Heresy and the Taking of Infidel Lands
Vladimiri’s argument against Hostiensis and the Prussians succeeded to such an extent
that, in returning to the question about the ownership of the Canaries twenty years later, Italian
scholars refused to turn to Falkenberg’s use of Hostiensis to justify the legitimacy of a crusade
against infidelity. 102 This was in large part because Vladimiri was able to link Hostiensis’s
arguments against infidelity to that of the heresies “Wicklephistarum et Hussonistarum” ‘of the
Wycliffites and Hussites.’ As we have seen, by framing Hostiensis and the Order’s justification
of taking infidel lands as one of representation, Vladimiri suggests that what is at the bottom of
“the Prussian heresy” is what lies at the heart of Wycliffite and “Ockhamist” discussions of
semantics: that an idea, like sovereignty, has no being outside its human representation and that
therefore, to misrepresent it is to imply its absence. For Vladimiri, the Order saw a difference
between fidelity and infidelity because they thought of authority as representation and so infidels
were not made in the image of God but represented his law distinctly from God’s true sheep. For
Wyclif, a reader could understand scripture directly because there was an immediate authorial
value to “virtute sermonis nostri” ‘the strength of our speech’—to representation—and hence the
immediate and “true” interpretation of Scripture was also the representation of its values.
Although Vladimiri never really elaborates upon this connection, the association of
Hostiensis to Wyclif was clear to the fathers at Constance, who seemed to view the Order’s
argument for the taking of infidel lands as consonant with Wyclif’s heresy. This position is best
explained by John Rocha in recapitulating the Order’s arguments as detailed by Falkenberg:
102 Muldoon Popes 119-120.
Et primo pro qualificacione prime, que talies est: Rex Polonorum, cum sit malus presidens, est
ydolum et omnes Poloni sunt ydolatre et serviunt ydolo suo Jaghel. Prima distinctio: Dico
premittendo duas distinctiones iuxta unum sincathegramma videlicet, cum “et unum cathegramma
scilicet, ydolum.” Prima distinctio est ista: Quod hec dictio, cum ‘potest accipi causaliter vel
concomitanter et temporaliter.’ Primo modo accipit apostolus ad Hebreos primo, cum ait: Cum sit
splendor glorie et figura substancie eius etc. sedet ad dexteram maiestatis in excelsis, hoc est:
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