*LOTILARD (from MDutch Lollacrd, name of a semi-monastic sect of Brabant, from /o//ca, to sing softly, to hum: connected with Ger. /u//c», Eng. lull. probably onomatopoetic in origin). A name first given to a semi-monastic society which arose in Antwerp and Brabant about 1300, the members of which devoted themse!ves to the care of the sick and burial of dead. They are also called Alexians (from their patron, Alexins. q.v.) and Cellites. The name was after wards given to those who, during the closing years of the fourteenth and a large part of the fifteenth century, were credited with adhering to the religious and economic views advocated by John Wiclif (q.v.) The lindens of the Lollards was a body known as the 'Poor Priests,' called together by NViclif to preach a simple gospel in the smaller villages of Central England and to counteract the influence of the begging friars. Oxford was the central point whence they went forth and whither they returned. The Lollards were at one time very numerous, and were to be found among all classes of the population. The examinations of those who were arrested or pun ished as heretics after \Vielif's death in 1384 indicated their common doctrinal position. With minor differences. they agreed in condemning the
use of images in the churches, pilgrimages to the tombs of the saints, the temporal lordship of the clergy, Papal authority in administration, eccle siastical decorations, the ceremony of the mass, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the waging of war, and the infliction of capital punishment. Lollardism was by no means confined to the southern portion of the British Islands, hut pene trated into Scotland. where it received the an cient traditions of the Culdees (q.v.). In the year 1494 Arehbishop B]acader caused twenty persons to be summoned before the King (James IV.) and the great couneil, and indictments were found on substantially the same grounds as in England, with the additions that masses eannot profit the dead and that priests may lawfully marry. Certain of the Lollards, both in England and Scotland, developed economic theories of a socialistic nature, and this had much to do with their persecution and downfall. Consult: Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. iii. (5th ed., Oxford, 1895) Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. ii. (London, 1882) ; and the works mentioned in the article on Join WICLIF.