The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Reformation
John Wycliffe
c. 1330–1384EnglishPre-Reformation reformer
The Oxford scholar who put the Bible into English a century and a half before it was legal.
Summary
- Lived c. 1330–1384, English.
- Stood in The Reformation (1500–1600).
- Hangs on The Reformers.
- Tradition: Pre-Reformation reformer.
The life
John Wycliffe was Oxford's leading philosopher when he began arguing that Scripture, not the papacy, is the final authority, and that ordinary English people should be able to read it. The Bible that bears his name, translated from the Latin Vulgate by Wycliffe and his circle, was copied by hand and smuggled across England by traveling preachers his enemies nicknamed Lollards. He died of a stroke at his parish in Lutterworth, still legally a priest in good standing.
Thirty-one years later the Council of Constance condemned him as a heretic and ordered his body taken out of holy ground. Nothing was done for years, until Pope Martin V pressed the order and, in 1428, Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, had the bones dug up, burned, and thrown into the River Swift.
The historian Thomas Fuller saw the picture in it, writing in 1655: the brook carried the ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the sea"and thus the Ashes of Wickliff are the Emblem of his Doctrine, which now is dispersed all the World over."
What was happening while he lived1 moments · AD 600–1500
- 1382–1395The Bible in English, and the LollardsJohn Wycliffe (d. 1384) argued that Scripture, not church custom, is the final authority, and that a plowman had a right to read it. The English Bible that carries his name came out of his circle, translated from the Latin, hand-copied, and carried around by poor preachers called Lollards. Scholars still debate how much Wycliffe translated himself.
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search John Wycliffe at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Argued that Scripture belonged to the people in their own tongue, and set in motion the English Bible that carries his name, made by his Oxford circle a century and a half before Tyndale. They burned his bones, and the river carried the ashes to the sea.
Hangs on The Reformers: The men who put the Bible back into the people's hands and the church back under it.
Standing beside himThe Reformation · 19 on this stretch of wall
Preached Christ as head of the church in Prague's own language, and sang at the stake in 1415.
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Sent ninety-five theses against indulgences to his archbishop, and later, before the emperor, would not take back a word of what he had written.
Finished what Tyndale could not and printed the first complete English Bible from a press, and four years later put the Great Bible in every parish church.
Put the church's prayers into plain English, then took back his own recantation and burned for it.
Translated the New Testament from the Greek so a plough-boy could read it, and paid for it at a stake in 1536.
Left a safe parish to shepherd hunted believers, and taught them to follow Christ without ever picking up a sword.