John Wycliffe

Life and work

Wycliffe was an accomplished Oxford philosopher and theologian who, from the 1370s, began articulating increasingly radical positions: that civil and ecclesiastical authority depended on a state of grace (so that corrupt clergy forfeited legitimate authority), that scripture alone should be the final standard for Christian doctrine, and, most provocatively, that the doctrine of transubstantiation lacked scriptural support.

His views won him aristocratic protectors, including John of Gaunt, which shielded him for a time even as his teachings were condemned by church authorities. Wycliffe's followers, known as Lollards, spread his ideas among both clergy and laypeople in England.

Wycliffe sponsored and inspired the first complete translation of the Bible into English, produced by his followers (the degree of his personal hand in the translation itself is debated by scholars), aiming to give ordinary readers direct access to scripture without dependence on clerical mediation — a direct challenge to church control of biblical interpretation.

Though he died of natural causes in 1384, the Council of Constance in 1415 posthumously condemned Wycliffe as a heretic; his bones were exhumed, burned, and scattered into the River Swift in 1428, a symbolic act intended to erase his influence that instead cemented his later reputation as a forerunner of the Reformation.

In their own words

"Englishmen learn Christ's law best in English. Moses heard God's law in his own tongue; so did Christ's apostles."attributed

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: John Wycliffe