Wycliffe, John

(c. 1330–84)

   Theologian and Polemicist.

   Wycliffe was probably born in Yorkshire and he was educated at the University of Oxford. He was a highly influential figure in the university and became an advisor to John of Gaunt, the Regent of England. He openly criticised the wealth of the Church and by 1377 he was being condemned by the ecclesiastical establishment. Later he was to develop his own doctrine of the Eucharist which denied transubstantiation. He was the author of a Summa Theologica and innumerable pamphlets, and he encouraged his followers to make an English translation of jerome’s Vulgate. By 1381 he was condemned by the university and, after Wat Tyler and John ball’s Peasants’ Revolt, for which he was partially blamed, he retired from public life. Forty-four years after his death, his body was exhumed and burnt as a heretic. Wycliffe has been described as the ‘Morning Star of the Reformation’. He insisted that Scripture was the ultimate guide to faith and he was critical of current ecclesiastical abuses. His followers were known as Lollards, but they were not perceived as a separate party until after Wycliffe’s death. They were successfully suppressed by the Parliamentary statute of De Heretico Cumburendo which drove the movement underground. However, Wycliffe’s disciples took their ideas abroad and, through the activities of Jan hus, they were very influential in Bohemia.

   J.H. Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wycliffe (1952);

   L.J. Daly, The Political Theory of John Wyclif (1962);

   K.B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginning of English Non-Conformity (1952);

   J. Stacey, Wyclif and Reform (1964).