On The Debate Of The Lollards’ Image-Worship

The Lollards is an important research field for the analysis of the social and religious situation during the pre-religious reforms in England.As an English influential religious heresy in local,the Lollards represented the attitude of the intellectual community towards the Roman Catholic Church.Exploring its ideas helps to clarify the diversity and complexity of that era.The negation of "image" and"image-worship" is the core view of the Lollards’ image theory.This paper uses this as an entry for pointing to sort out and analyze the image’s viewpoints of the Lollards,Wycliffe and Orthodox Churches,and explores the collisions and conflictions of thoughts between England’s intellectuals and the Orthodox Church in the late Middle Ages,which studies the essence and significance of the debate over image in England 14th-15 th century.The full text consists of three major parts:the foreword,the text and the conclusion.The foreword introduces the Latin and Old English literature collections,compiled and translated by western scholars,and teases out the achievements of this topic in Chinese and foreign academic circles in detail.The author thinks that the study of Lollards by foreign scholars focuses on the Lollards’ development history,the relationship between Lollards and Wycliffe,and its influence on the English Reformation.Domestic academic research is weak,still just regarding them as a religious heresy.The text part consists of four chapters.The first chapter discusses the image in the Christian world.This section defines the "image","icon" and the connotation of"image-worship",analyzing the essential difference between the Orthodox icon and the western Catholic image,which especially focus on interpretation of the regional characteristics of the England’s image.The author emphasizes that the exquisite and ornate image,to a certain extent,strengthens the religious repose of the followers of England to the "image",and thus arouses the image debate of Lollards.The second chapter highlights the interpretation of the Lollards’ concept of image.The author presents that the Lollards who fundamentally negates the significance of image,regards image-worship as a kind of pagan idolatry and advocates that believers should construct religious piety by reading the Bible.The third chapter mainly analyzes Wycliffe and Orthodox Church’s opinions that are contrary to the Lollards’image.In author’s view,Wycliffe emphasized that image should be respected under the guidance of the church clergy;and the Catholic Church,as the strongest opponent of the debate with the Lollards,not only banned the propagation of the Lollards in connection with the secullar rulers,but also organized The Oxford Academic Group criticized its image concept.The fourth chapter focuses on exploring the background of the era of the debate on the image of the Lollards.The author analyzes the 14th-15th century England from the perspective of the impact of the Black Death,the formation of nation-state,the historical origins of polytheism,and the dawn of rationalism.It is believed that the debate on the image of the Lollards has both the benefits of the development of the times and the back-feeding this era and has had a profound effect on the developmentof England’s history.The conclusion summarizes the full text and further deepens the understanding of the debate of this image-worship.