and in prose on secular and religious subjects. While
he was at Aachen, in addition to a number of literary
efforts that were primarily liturgical and homiletic, he
composed in honor of the Carolingians a History of the
Bishops of Metz (Historia episcoporum Metensium);
after returning to Monte Cassino he produced a number
of other works including his last and most important,
History of the Lombards (Historia Langobardorum).
This last work, which was never fi nished, covers the
story of the Lombards from their semilegendary begin-
nings through the reign of King Liutprand (712–744).
Paul’s history is a typical eighth-century product, relying
heavily on the materials available to him: Pliny; Isidore;
Gregory of Tours; a work on the Lombards (now lost)
by Secundus of Nun from Trent, who was a member
of the court circle of King Agilulf (r. 590–616); Bede;
and several much shorter and less reliable Lombard
chronicles—an interesting commentary on the literary
materials available at Monte Cassino in the late eighth
century.
See also Charlemagne; Gregory of Tours;
Isidore of Seville, Saint; Wyclif, John
Further Reading
Belting, Hans. “Studien zum beneventanischen Hof im 8. Jahr-
hundert.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 16, 1962.
Bethmann, L., and G. Waitz, eds. Pauli Historia Langobardo-
rum. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum
Langobardicarum et Italicarum, Saec. VI–IX. Hannover:
Hahn, 1878.
Goffart, Walter. Narrators of Barbarian History: Jordanes,
Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1988.
Paul the Deacon. History of the Lombards, trans. William Dud-
ley Foulke. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1974.
Katherine Fischer Drew
PECOCK, REGINALD
(early 1390s-ca. 1460)
Theologian, religious educator, and bishop tried for
and convicted of heresy. Pecock was a fellow of Oriel
College, Oxford (ca. 1414–24); rector of St. Michael’s,
Gloucester (1424–31); rector of St. Michael Royal (also
called St. Michael in Riola) and master of Whittington
College (1431–44); bishop of St. Asaph (1444–50); and
bishop of Chichester (1450–58). He was unusual in that
he tried to bring the Lollards out of error by means of
logical persuasion in vernacular treatises, especially
in his Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy.
Ironically the legal ground for his trial may have been
an ecclesiastical statute originally designed to suppress
Lollardy, not only because he wrote in English but also
because he stressed the authority of reason, and particu-
larly of syllogistic logic, over that of the church doctors,
of the scriptures, and sometimes of the church itself.
Pecock’s position on these issues was not as extreme
as his accusers asserted, but enough evidence was found
in his works (many of which, he pointed out, had cir-
culated without his approval) to convict him of heresy
in 1457. Upon conviction he was offered the choice of
recanting or being burned at the stake. He publicly ab-
jured and handed over fourteen of his books, which were
consigned to fl ames. Although he was reinstated in his
bishopric for one more year, his enemies were soon able
to remove him from offi ce and have him placed under
restrictive house arrest at Thorney Abbey in 1459. Not
long after, perhaps within a year or so, he died there.
Pecock wrote or planned to write some 30 to 50 books
in Latin and English, but only a few have survived. We
know of at least some of those that perished by their
mention in the surviving works, which in probable
chronological order are these: The Rule of Christian
Religion (ca. 1443); The Donet (ca. 1443–49); The Poor
Men’s Mirror (an extract of part 1 of The Donet); the
“Abbreviatio Reginaldi Pecok” (ca. 1447); The Folewer
to the Donet (ca. 1453–54); The Repressor of Over Much
Blaming of the Clergy (written ca. 1449, published ca.
1455); and The Book of Faith (ca. 1456).
Pecock’s extant English treatises are notable for
their prose style, which is strongly shaped by the at-
tempt to render theological and philosophical concepts
in a relatively nonlatinate English, leading to frequent
neologisms (e.g., un-away-fallable; folewer for “se-
quel”; eendal and meenal for “pertaining to ends” and
“pertaining to means”). His language is often abstract
and syntactically complex, especially in his expositions
of logical arguments. He thoroughly reorganized the
standard religious instructional topics (vices and virtues,
sacraments, articles of faith, etc.) into a nontraditional
arrangement of 31 virtues. Not surprisingly, given the
destruction of many of his books and the dense, com-
plex style of those few that survived, Pecock’s works
had little infl uence on later writers. Nonetheless, they
remain worthy of study for what they reveal about the ca-
pacities of late ME prose as a medium for philosophical
discourse and the degree to which 15th-century English
religious instruction could—and could not—diverge
from institutionally approved form and content.Further Reading
Primary Sources
Babington, Churchill, ed. The Repressor of Over Much Blaming
of the Clergy. 2 vols. Rolls Series. London: Longman, Green,
Longman, & Roberts, 1860.
Greet, William Cabell, ed. The Reule of Crysten Religioun. EETS
o.s. 171. London: Humphrey Milford, 1927.
Hitchcock, Elsie Vaughan, ed. The Donet and The Folewer to
the Donet. EETS o.s. 156, 164. London: Humphrey Milford,
1921–24.PECOCK, REGINALD