Crumpe, Henry

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CRUMPE, HENRY

Irish Cistercian monk involved in the Wyclifite controversy; fl. 1376–1401. Crumpe joined the cistercians at Baltinglass Abbey, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. At Oxford, where he became a doctor of theology, he gave a sermon opposing wyclif's views on subjecting both clergy and Church property to secular control (c. 1376), and in 1380 he was one of 12 doctors who condemned Wyclif's doctrine of the Eucharist. In 1382 Crumpe was named regent

master of the Cistercian students at Oxford, but in June of the same year he was suspended from "scholastic acts" because of opposition from the pro-Wyclif faction in the University—opposition aroused especially by Crumpe's calling Wyclif's followers lollards at the Black Friars council of Abp. William courtenay. In the following month he appealed to the archbishop and the king's council and was reinstated.

Returning to Ireland, Crumpe attacked the mendicants for hearing confessions of parishioners and was himself condemned for heresy by the bishop of Meath (March 1385). By 1391 Crumpe was back at Oxford, where his continued opposition to the mendicants and his opinions on the Eucharist—which were then dangerously close to Wyclif's—led to his denunciation before the king's council and his condemnation in 1392 by the archbishops of Canterbury, York, and Dublin. He abjured any heresy and returned to Ireland. In 1401 he was condemned to silence by the pope for opposing the porti uncula indulgence extended to the dominicans of Drogheda. His works include Determinationes scholasticae, Contra religiosos mendicantes, Responsiones ad objecta, De fundatione monasteriorum in Anglia, Vita s. Edithe, and Vita s. Ethelrede.

Bibliography: Fasciculi zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wyclif cum tritico, ed. w. w. shirley (Rerum Britanicarum medii aevi scriptores 5; 1858) 113, 289, 311–312, 314, 343, 346, 348–356,358. d. knowles, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, Eng. 1948–60) 2:89–92. a. b. emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A. D. 1500 (Oxford 1957–59) 1:524–525.