On 30 September – 1 October 2026, members of the Lollard Society participated in the conference Peter Payne: A Forgotten Great European at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. co-organised by Elizabeth Solopova, Henrike Lähnemann, Hannah Schühle-Lewis and James Howarth. Focussing on an outstanding individual, the workshop explored connectedness in European cultural development and the emergence, as a result of joint artistic and scholarly endeavour, of modern local and common European identity. The keynote lecture was given by our director, Professor Michael Van Dussen. This lecture and many of the other presentations are available to watch in full on the conference website.
More about Payne
Peter Payne (d. 1455/6?), known in Bohemia as ‘Peter Engliss’, was an influential English scholar, theologian and diplomat whose career spanned two universities and several European countries. A prominent supporter of the reformist theologian John Wyclif (d. 1384), Payne became principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1410.
Payne played an important role in the English Wycliffite movement. Medieval sources suggest that he introduced Sir John Oldcastle (d. 1417), the rebel and Lollard leader, to Wycliffite ideas. He also supported two Bohemian scholars, Mikuláš Faulfiš and Jiří of Knínice, who travelled to England to copy Lollard texts. Payne provided them with a letter, authenticated with the university seal, declaring that Wyclif was an outstanding scholar who had never been condemned for heresy. Taken to Prague, the letter was published by Jerome of Prague in 1409. Jerome was later burned at the stake alongside Jan Hus, the leader of the Bohemian reform movement, following their condemnation at the Council of Constance in 1414. Payne may also have acted as an intermediary in correspondence between Hus and the English Wycliffites.
In 1413, Payne left England to avoid prosecution. After travelling through Germany and possibly Switzerland, where he met representatives of European reform movements, including the Waldensian emissary Friedrich Reiser, he settled in Prague in 1414. He quickly became a leading figure in the Hussite movement.
In Prague, Payne wrote several theological and polemical works and compiled detailed indices of Wyclif’s writings. He was registered as a Master of Arts at Prague University, where he taught and examined students. His standing as an English Wycliffite and defender of Hussite beliefs also made him a valued diplomat. He led several Hussite delegations to European rulers, including King Sigismund of Germany and Bohemia and King Władysław of Poland, from 1420 onwards. He also served as a mediator and adviser to different Hussite factions.
Payne continued to defend Hussite beliefs on the international stage. He was chosen to represent their position in a debate with Catholic clergy in 1429 and at the Council of Basel in 1433. The key issues included utraquism (the right of laypeople to receive communion in both kinds, bread and wine), freedom to preach the word of God, and clerical poverty.
His career was not without danger. Arrested in 1438, he was imprisoned before being ransomed by Hussite towns. Nevertheless, he remained an influential public figure, serving as a negotiator and respected arbitrator in doctrinal disputes within the Hussite movement into the early 1450s. He is believed to have died in Prague.
Keynote lecture: Michael van Dussen (McGill University), ‘Peter Payne’s Europe’
In the early 15th century, when English Church officials were closing in on the expanding Wycliffism, a proto-Protestant reform movement, Peter Payne, once Principal of St Edmund Hall, fled the country to begin a remarkable career in Central Europe. He became Wyclif’s surrogate in Bohemia and one of the leading representatives in nearly every Hussite delegation, including at the Council of Basel. This talk shows how Payne navigated his delicate situation in Europe and, in the process, gained a reputation (or notoriety) as an emblem of European Wycliffism. Today Payne remains an iconic figure of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural connectedness in European intellectual life and social development.
Bodleian manuscripts featured in the post-talk Show & Tell session:
- Linc. Lat. 106 (Netter, Doctrinale fidei catholice, vol. 2)
- Linc. Lat. 118 (Gascoigne, Liber de veritatibus, the second part)
- Bodl. 55 (Floretum)
- Tanner 86 (containing Juan Palomar’s Replicacio to Payne’s defense at Basel)