John Wycliffe
(1324-1384)
Born: 1324 at Hipswell, North Yorkshire Died: 28th December 1384 at
Lutterworth, Leicestershire
John Wycliffe is remembered as the
"Morning Star of the Reformation" and one of Oxford University's last
great medieval Schoolmen. He was an English statesman as well as a theologian,
once representing the King on the continent in negotiations with the legate of
the pope. Although the papacy was, at this time, dominated by the King of
France, even to the point of its removal from Rome to the French city of
Avignon, Wycliffe defended the political rights of England. He is best
remembered, however, as the prime mover in first translating the Bible into the
common language of the English people.
Born in Yorkshire in 1324, he chose
not to return to his family estate after attending Oxford University. Instead,
he presided over a rural parish in Leicestershire, nearer libraries and other
scholars. He organized a band of poor preachers, known as the Lollards, who
went from village to village, teaching the Bible to all who would listen. He
was probably the exemplar for the pious country parson in the Canterbury Tales
of his contemporary, Chaucer.
He challenged a number of Roman
Catholic doctrines with arguments which centuries later would echo during the
Protestant Reformation. He spoke out against the monastic system, the sale of
indulgences for the forgiveness of sins and the doctrines of baptismal
regeneration and transubstantiation. He proclaimed predestination and salvation
by faith alone, in a time of great fear and superstition. In the late summer of
1348, the Black Plague had reached England and Wycliffe heard reports of the
death of half the population! This had much to do with his ideas of personal
reverence for God.
Ultimately Wycliffe was
excommunicated from the church, but he was not physically harmed before he died
from a stroke. The effect of Wycliffe's teaching extended far beyond the
British Isles. King Richard II's first wife, Anne of Bohemia, was daughter of
the Holy Roman Emporer, Charles IV. When she died prematurely in 1394, her
attendants carried Wycliffe's ideas to the very Imperial Court in Prague. There
they were taken up by theologians at Charles' University, such as Jan Hus.
At the same time it ordered Hus to be
burned at the stake outside of the city, the Council of Constance, in 1415,
decreed that Wycliffe's remains in England should be dug up, his bones burned
and the ashes scattered on the water. His incorporeal remains, however, were
like raindrops which fell over all of England, producing fertile soil for
William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer and later English Reformers.