John Wyclif (or Wycliffe) (C.1320-84)

John Wyclif was master of Balliol College at Oxford and a brilliant theologian and lecturer. His studies of the Scriptures led him to the conviction that priests and friars ought to live in poverty and that the state ought to seize the property of churchmen who lived immoral lives. He also questioned the secular power of the pope. While bitterly opposed by the clergy, his views gained wide acceptance. For a time, he was given the support and protection of John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster, who acted as king while Richard II was still a minor.

In 1377 Wyclif was called to answer for his teachings before Bishop Courtenay at St Paul’s Cathedral. The duke of Lancaster accompanied Wyclif to this meeting and engaged Courtenay in a heated argument. Before Wyclif had a chance to speak, the meeting broke up in confusion. Later that year, however, the pope condemned Wyclif ’s writings and in March 1378 Wyclif appeared before the archbishop at Lambeth Palace and was ordered to stop spreading his views. Only his influence at the royal court saved him from more severe punishment. Wyclif ’s teachings grew even more radical after his hearing at Lambeth Palace. He argued that if the Bible was the only authority in matters of faith, ‘all Christians and lay lords in particular, ought to know Holy Writ and to defend it’. He held that if the pope insists on maintaining unscriptural doctrines ‘he is very antichrist’, and that the doctrine of transubstantiation was philosophical nonsense not deducible from Scripture. He was forced, along with a number of others who sided with him, to leave Oxford in 1382.

Wyclif was an amazingly prolific writer, and he continued his work from 1382 to 1384 at his parish church in Lutterworth. He died of a stroke in December 1384 while conducting mass and was buried in the churchyard. In 1428 his remains were exhumed and burnt by papal order. A monument to Wyclif may be seen today in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. The first Bible in Middle English associated with Wyclif s name was the work mainly of Nicholas of Hereford, though others including Wyclif himself may have been involved. It was a literal version from the Latin Vulgate intended for use by the clergy, and it appeared in 1384—the year of Wyclif ’s death. Several years later a revision was produced by John Purvey, Wyclif ’s secretary, which was more idiomatic and intended for the general reader. In 1408 the Constitutions of Oxford forbade the production or use of vernacular Scriptures except with official sanction, but Wyclifite Bibles were circulated and read secretly all, throughout the fifteenth century.