Liber tertius

XVllIINTRODIJCTION.It must be iu knowleilgcd tliuL up to this time nuljub}" in Enylandluid su e,mphatical!v demanded the secularizatiuu uf church-pruperly. Hiswere calls which cuuhl nut but excite all passiuns.Hithertu |uhn ui Gaunt had held his hand pi-utectingly uver Wyclif,but it is a t|uestiun i( it was struny enuugh, and abuve all \i it wasinclined tu nrutcct him h'um the st(,)rm nuw threateninii; iVum Rume.The Manuscripts.The first and second books of De Ci^ ili Dominio are to be foundin (od. 1341 of the Vienna Court Librar\-. As Reginald Lane Poolegives an exact description of this MS. there is no need to sa}' moreabout it here. I did nut cu[)y the text of the second book myself, butused Herzberg Frankcrs copy, which was placed at my disposal by theWyclif Society. But last October I had an opportunitv of looking atthis MS. and that of the third b(jok. The Text of the second bookbegins at folio 153 codex 1341. The most im|)ortant observation seemsto me tu be that the arrangement. of the tract is the same as in codex 1294.(See De Ecclesia, Introduction XVII.) So the copy may be by thecupyists of this MvS. tliat is Nicolaus Faulfiss and Georg" von Knyehniczin luigland in thc year 1407, or as a])pcars more probable to us, asthe writing to all appearance is a different one, it was copied from acopy made by these two. And so MS. 1341 has the same character. Inall are found similar brief epitomes in the margin, with signs to show towhat line in the text thev refer.Our supposition, if correct, namely that De Civili Dominio belongsto those works which were copied by Faulfiss and Knyehnicz, two youngstudents, would explain the flagrant mistakes occurring in the MS. Itis in the first place e\ident that the copyists liad tu contend with greatditficulties, as the learned terniinologv found in Wyclif caused themtrouble cnough. We have no means of estimating the degree in whichtheir difhculties were increased, when they set to work now at Oxford,now at Kemerton near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire (see DeEcclesia p. 47), by the copy from which they vvorked. But both thetablcs n[ ctHitcnls al ihc cinl, lo wliicii \vc rclcr ihosc dcsiring further inrormalion.Dc Civ. noni, I, p. 443-460, II 27.^-283, III 64.S— 681.