About this edition

John Wyclif wrote the Dialogus sive Speculum Ecclesie Militantis (“Dialogue, or The Mirror of the Church Militant”) in 1379. Truth and Falsehood argue over whether the clergy should hold lands and revenues. Truth’s answer is Wyclif’s: the clergy should live on alms and tithes, as Christ did, and the endowment of the church is the source of its corruption.

The Latin

The text is Alfred W. Pollard’s edition for the Wyclif Society (London, 1886), which is in the public domain. Pollard printed the only English manuscript and collated three Vienna manuscripts; his marginal summaries are shown beside the text as he printed them, in his words, not ours.

We checked Pollard’s text word by word against six independent witnesses: the Fordham transcription and the OCR of five scans of the printed book. Where the witnesses disagreed, or agreed on a form that is not a Latin word, the word was read on the page image of the printed book. Each chapter records how its Latin was established, at the end of its notes. The page numbers in the text link to Pollard’s printed pages on the Internet Archive.

The English

The translation is new. It keeps Wyclif’s technical vocabulary fixed, one Latin term to one English rendering, because his arguments depend on the reader recognising a term when it comes back; the glossary lists them. It keeps every connective in the argument: “for”, “therefore”, “now” (for the second premise of an argument), and “but”. Words the English needs and the Latin does not have are in square brackets.

The notes identify Wyclif’s sources, record where the manuscripts differ from Pollard’s text, and explain how a difficult sentence has been construed. Sources were checked against the texts themselves, not quoted from memory.

How to cite

Cite by Pollard’s page and line, as “Dial. 27.5”. Every page has an address: /p/27 opens the chapter at Pollard’s page 27.

Credits

Translation and notes: Wilson Pruitt, for Wroot Press. The Fordham transcription comes from The Latin Works of John Wyclif, edited by J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Christopher Adams and hosted by Fordham University Libraries; we are grateful for it. Mark Thakkar’s study of earlier Wyclif translations, “Duces caecorum” (Vivarium 58, 2020), shaped the method. Page images: the Internet Archive.

This is a working draft. Corrections are welcome: wilson@wrootlabs.com.