Wyclif developed a monarchist political theory out of the realist metaphysical program he had articulated in Summa de ente, prior to 1376. Unlike many medieval political theorists, Wyclif perceived a strong tie between an ontological position, in his case realist, and the just articulation of church and state. His understanding of the fundamental term of mastery, dominium, provides the basis for this unified understanding. Dominium had become a word with two commonly united referents, namely the master-slave relation and property ownership. Wyclif combined the two senses in his use of the concept, and conceived of dominium as a relation holding between two relata. God’s dominium relation to creation originates in the act of creation, implying that true lordship/ownership is only possible for a creator. Divine dominium serves as a universal by causality for all cases of just human dominium, of which there are three possible kinds. Pre-lapsarian dominium entailed communitarian enjoyment of creation without the burden of property ownership or artificial mastery, but was lost with the Fall. Postlapsarian human dominium relations are founded in ownership and mastery, and are artificial approximations of the ideal for which human beings were created. The Incarnation has made possible two interrelated species of just human dominium; the first, an apostolic poverty imitative of the life of Christ and fully realized in the early church, and the second, a just human lordship designed specifically to protect the former in a world still rife with sin. Wyclif argued that the church should retain this rejection of private ownership, and vigorously attacked its political and proprietary interests as indicative of Antichrist’s control over the institution intended to save mankind. Grace has provided an antidote to the fall of the earthly church, though; a civil lord or king may, and should, divest the church in his realm of all political and proprietary concerns. In so doing, the civil lord would be serving God and his subjects by providing the basis for the just evangelical lordship first realized by the apostolic church. Wyclif described this politically reformative vision in De civili dominio and De officio regis, and articulated his ecclesiol-ogy in Depotestate pape and De ecclesia. While Gregory XI compared his vision to that ofMarsilius ofPadua, Wyclif’s political thought is intimately connected with his understanding of the true nature of the church, and with his soteriology, and should not be considered apart from his theology.
See also: > Adam Wodeham > Atomism > Henry of Ghent > Oxford Calculators > Realism > Richard Fitzralph > Robert Grosseteste > Robert Holcot
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> Thomas Bradwardine > Walter Burley > Walter Chatton > William Crathorn > William of Ockham
World History
