WYCLIFFE, JOHN

Wycliffe, John: translation

(Wyclif)

(ca. 1330–1384)

John Wycliffe was an English theologian, Oxford master, and religious reformer, who challenged papal control of the English church, condemned clerical greed and immorality, and defied the power of the medieval church hierarchy.He is also responsible for the first English translation of the Bible. Although his teachings were officially condemned and he was forced into retirement, Wycliffe’s numerous followers, known as LOLLARDS, formed a religious movement that spread his ideas for generations after his death. His works also influenced the reforming activities of Jan HUS in early 15th-century Prague.

Wycliffe was probably born at the Yorkshire village of Hipswell, near Richmond, into a wealthy family. In 1354, he began his studies at Oxford, receiving a bachelor of arts degree from Merton College in 1356. He became master of Balliol College by 1360, but left that post in 1361, when he was made rector of Fillingham in Lincolnshire.He was appointed canon at Westbury-on-Trym in Gloucestershire in 1362, but was studying theology at Oxford in 1363, renting a room at Queen’s College. Wycliffe was appointed rector of Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire in 1368, but that same year was back at Oxford studying theology. In 1371 he was made canon of Lincoln, and finally, in 1374, the king appointed Wycliffe rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, a living he kept until his death. Though appointed to several clerical positions, Wycliffe clearly spent the majority of his time between 1354 and 1381 at Oxford, where he lectured in philosophy and, after 1371, in theology, becoming a doctor of theology in 1372.

Beginning in the early 1370s,Wycliffe appears to have gained the favor of the royal house, in particular of Edward the Black Prince, his wife Joan of Kent, and his brother JOHN OF GAUNT. In 1376 Gaunt enlisted Wycliffe’s aid in a campaign against the so-called Good Parliament, which had appointed royal councilors to advise the Crown, including Gaunt’s enemy William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester.Prior to this, in 1374, Wycliffe was sent to Brugge, Belgium, as a representative of King EDWARD III to negotiate with envoys from the pope concerning the payment of tribute to Avignon (the papal see). It can be assumed that Wycliffe was dissatisfied with the negotiations, because from 1374 onward, he began to attack papal authority over the English church. Wycliffe asserted that Christ was the only true sovereign of the church, and that the power of popes, bishops, and priests was dependent upon their state of grace. In a time of widespread clerical abuses,Wycliffe’s doctrines seemed an attack on all religious authority.Wycliffe held that no official could claim legitimate authority based simply on the fact that he occupied a certain position, but must be in a state of grace.

Wycliffe promulgated his doctrines through treatises in Latin and through his own preaching in English, basing his arguments chiefly on Scripture but also on St. AUGUSTINE, GREGORY THE GREAT, ROBERT GROSSETESTE, and to some extent Marsilius of Padua and William OCKHAM. Over the years, his anti-papal stance became more and more pronounced. He argued that the Scriptures were the chief authority for Christians, and believed that the Bible should be available to people in the vernacular. Accordingly, his followers initiated a project of translating the Bible from St. JEROME’s Latin Vulgate into English.Wycliffe himself may have been responsible for an incomplete translation of the New Testament, but the bulk of the work on the translation was done by his disciples Nicholas Hereford and, in its final form in about 1395, John Purvey.

If the Bible was the only source of Christian doctrine,Wycliffe argued, then any aspect of the contemporary church that had no basis in Scripture was unjustified. For Wycliffe, this included the wealth of the clergy, the monastic life (which he saw as separating individuals from the life of the Church), pilgrimages, and indulgences.Wycliffe further argued that sacraments performed by priests in a state of sin were not valid, and this led to his assertion that the sacraments of the church were not in fact absolutely requisite for God’s grace. Finally, he denied the doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief in the “real presence” of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist). These and similar doctrines brought the wrath of the orthodox church down upon him.

In 1377, Pope Gregory XI condemned 18 of Wycliffe’s conclusions as “erroneous,” and asked for his arrest, but Wycliffe’s royal protectors prevented any formal action against him at that time. However, a commission in Wycliffe’s own Oxford condemned him as a heretic and threatened him with excommunication because of his teaching on the Eucharist.Wycliffe also lost the support of John of Gaunt when some of his more radical followers were embroiled in the PEASANTS’ REVOLT of 1381. In 1381,Wycliffe retired from Oxford to live quietly in Lutterworth, though he continued to write. The following year William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, condemned 24 of Wycliffe’s arguments as heresies, though in particular Wycliffe’s teaching on the Eucharist was denounced. But Wycliffe himself was never physically threatened, and continued writing at Lutterworth until he succumbed to a stroke on December 31, 1384.

The great number of followers Wycliffe had created in Oxford soon developed into a radical movement of “Lollards,” who subsequently spread throughout England and, ultimately, linked Wycliffe’s doctrines to the English Reformation under Henry VIII. Through his influence on Jan Hus,Wycliffe also had an impact on the continental Reformation via Hus’s Moravian followers and Martin Luther. In terms of literature, perhaps Wycliffe’s most important contribution is his encouragement of the production of the Lollard Bible, the first complete Bible in the English language.

■ Hall, Louis Brewer.The Perilous Vision of John Wyclif. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983.

■ Kenny, Anthony.Wyclif. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

■ Lahey, Stephen E.Philosophy and Politics in the Thought of John Wyclif. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

■ Levy, Ian Christopher.John Wyclif: Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the Parameters of Orthodoxy. Milwaukee:Marquette University Press, 2003.

■ Stacey, John.John Wyclif and Reform. Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1964.

■ Wyclif, John.On Simony. Translated by Terrence A. McVeigh. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992.

■ ———.On the Truth of Holy Scripture. Translated with an introduction and notes by Ian Christopher Levy. Kalamazoo: Published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) by Medieval Institute Publications,Western Michigan University, 2001.