John Wycliffe

John Wycliffe (born c. 1330, Yorkshire, England—died December 31, 1384, Lutterworth, Leicestershire) English theologian, philosopher, church reformer, and promoter of the first complete translation of the Bible into English. He was one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation. The politico-ecclesiastical theories that he developed required the church to give up its worldly possessions, and in 1378 he began a systematic attack on the beliefs and practices of the church. The Lollards, a heretical group, propagated his controversial views.

Early life and career

Wycliffe was born in the North Riding of Yorkshire and received his formal education at the University of Oxford, where his name has been associated with three colleges, Queen’s, Merton, and Balliol, but with some uncertainty. He became a regent master in arts at Balliol in 1360 and was appointed master of the college, but he resigned in 1361 to become vicar of Fillingham, the college’s choicest living, or church post. There is some doubt as to whether or not he became soon afterward warden of Canterbury Hall, a house for secular (pastoral) and regular (monastic) clergy; but there was a petition from the university to the pope in 1362 to “provide” for him, and he was given a prebend (a stipend) at Aust in the church of Westbury-on-Trym. He drew his prebend while residing elsewhere, a practice he condemned in others. In 1363 and 1368 he was granted permission from the bishop of Lincoln to absent himself from Fillingham in order to study at Oxford, though in 1368 he exchanged Fillingham for Ludgershall, a parish nearer the university. He became a bachelor of divinity about 1369 and a doctor of divinity in 1372.

Political activities and theories

On April 7, 1374, Edward III appointed Wycliffe to the rectory of Lutterworth in place of Ludgershall, and about this time the theologian began to show an interest in politics. He received a royal commission to the deputation sent to discuss with the papal representatives at Brugge the outstanding differences between England and Rome, such as papal taxes and appointments to church posts. In this work, Wycliffe showed himself to be both a patriot and a king’s man.

He complemented this activity with his political treatises on divine and civil dominion (De dominio divino libri tres and Tractatus de civili dominio), in which he argued men exercised “dominion” (the word is used of possession and authority) straight from God and that if they were in a state of mortal sin, then their dominion was in appearance only. The righteous alone could properly have dominion, even if they were not free to assert it. He then proceeded to say that, as the church was in sin, it ought to give up its possessions and return to evangelical poverty. Such disendowment was, in his view, to be carried out by the state, and particularly by the king. These politico-ecclesiastical theories, devised with ingenuity and written up at inordinate length, may be criticized as the work of a theorizer with a limited sense of what was possible in the real world. Exhibiting an ingenuousness and lack of worldly wisdom, he became a tool in the hands of John of Gaunt (1340–99), Duke of Lancaster and a younger son of Edward III, who, from motives less scrupulous than those of Wycliffe, was opposed to the wealth and power of the clergy.

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Wycliffe preached acceptably in London in support of moderate disendowment, but the alliance with Gaunt led to the displeasure of his ecclesiastical superiors, and he was summoned to appear before them in February 1377. The proceedings broke up in disorder, and Wycliffe retired unmolested and uncondemned. That year saw Wycliffe at the height of his popularity and influence. Parliament and the king consulted him as to whether or not it was lawful to keep back treasure of the kingdom from Rome, and Wycliffe replied that it was. In May Pope Gregory XI issued five bulls against him, denouncing his theories and calling for his arrest. The call went unanswered, and Oxford refused to condemn its outstanding scholar. Wycliffe’s last political appearance was in the autumn of 1378 when, after Gaunt’s men killed an insubordinate squire who had taken refuge in Westminster Abbey, he pleaded for the crown before Parliament against the right of sanctuary. Wycliffe defended the action on the ground that the king’s servants might lawfully invade sanctuaries to bring criminals to justice.

Wycliffe’s attack on the church

He returned to Lutterworth and, from the seclusion of his study, began a systematic attack on the beliefs and practices of the church. Theologically, this was facilitated by a strong predestinarianism that enabled him to believe in the “invisible” church of the elect, constituted of those predestined to be saved, rather than in the “visible” church of Rome—that is, in the organized, institutional church of his day. But his chief target was the doctrine of transubstantiation—that the substance of the bread and wine used in the Eucharist is changed into the body and blood of Christ. As a Realist philosopher—believing that universal concepts have a real existence—he attacked it because, in the annihilation of the substance of bread and wine, the cessation of being was involved. He then proceeded on a broader front and condemned the doctrine as idolatrous and unscriptural. He sought to replace it with a doctrine of remanence (remaining)—“This is very bread after the consecration”—combined with an assertion of the real presence in a noncorporeal form.

Meanwhile, he pressed his attack ecclesiastically. The pope, the cardinals, the clergy in remunerative secular employment, the monks, and the friars were all castigated in language that was bitter even for 14th-century religious controversy. For this exercise, Wycliffe was well equipped. His restless, probing mind was complemented by a quick temper and a sustained capacity for invective. Few writers have damned their opponents’ opinions and sometimes, it would appear, the opponents themselves, more comprehensively.

Yet most scholars agree that Wycliffe was a virtuous man. Proud and mistaken as he sometimes was, he gives an overall impression of sincerity. Disappointed as he may have been over his failure to receive desirable church posts, his attack on the church was not simply born of anger. It carried the marks of moral earnestness and a genuine desire for reform. He set himself up against the greatest organization on earth because he sincerely believed that organization was wrong, and if he said so in abusive terms he had the grace to confess it. Neither must his ingenuousness be forgotten. There was nothing calculated about the way in which he published his opinions on the Eucharist, and the fact that he was not calculating cost him—in all probability—the support of John of Gaunt and of not a few friends at Oxford. He could afford to lose neither.