<論説>オールドキャッスルの乱について : ロラード運動の再考察

Abstract

まず、シェクスピアの『ヘンリーIV世』に登場することでよく知られているSir John Oldcastle の波瀾にみちた生活をできるだけ忠実にたどり、何故に彼が叛乱を起したかを解明する。いわゆる「オールドキャッスルの乱」は、彼のもつ個人的魅カ・異分子の冒険的参加、「神の共和国」実現を期すユートピア思想・その企図の伝逹組織などにおいて複雑な姿を示すが、基本的にはなお異端的宗教運動であった。にもかかわらず、それは外国僧院没収にみるような世俗的 Anti－clericalism の抬頭を背景に、ボヘミアのフジーテン運動に刺戟され、現状打破を求める騎士・地主・商人・職人とくに織工などを包含し、政治的叛乱の様相を帯びざるをえなかった。ここにロラード運動が叛乱的性格をもつものであるという印象が刻印され、もはや有力者の支持はえられず、この運動はかえって弱体化し、「地下運動」時代に入るのである。そしてここにもウイクリフ以来の教義的改革への道は、はやくも閉ざされた所以であるといえよう。

Oldcastle is well-hnown as Falstaff in Shakespeare's "Henry IV." To begin with, tracing his stormy career, we tried to explain why he raised the rebellion. Though the so-called "Oldcastle's Rebellion" has in it many complicated phases, such as Oldcastle's personal fascinations, the participation in the rebellion of the outsiders, the utopian concept of "God's commonwealth" to be realized, and the organization for delivering the notice of the project, it was still fundamentally a kind of a heretical movement. And yet it could not help carrying some political and riotious aspects with it, involving knights, gentries, merchants and artisans (especially weavers), who wanted to do away with the status quo, themselves being spurred by the Hussiten movement in Bohemia and by the influence of anti-clericalism as was seen in the confiscation of the alien priories. On account of these aspects of the rebellion, the Lollard movement, giving a strong impression that it had a riotious character, came to get no more support of the influential, and it turned into an underground movement. And herein we can find one of the reasons why the continued course of the doctorinal reform since Wyclif was held up as early as then in England.