ANTECEDENTS. Part 1: The Morning Star 1. John Wycliffe, the Lollards and the English Bible. Trevor Maher TODAY, STANDING by the quiet waters of

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1 Part 1: ANTECEDENTS The Morning Star 1 John Wycliffe, the Lollards and the English Bible Trevor Maher TODAY, STANDING by the quiet waters of the River Swift, a short distance from St. Mary s Church in the market town of Lutterworth, it is difficult to visualise the turbulent and chaotic times of medieval England. Nor is it easy to appreciate the great stature of John Wycliffe, regarded by many as the leading theologian of the Middle Ages, who spent the latter part of his life living in Lutterworth, teaching and preaching, often from the pulpit of St. Mary s. It was here in the church in December 1384 that he suffered the stroke from which he died. Wycliffe s career Although most of Wycliffe s time was spent at the University of Oxford, where he taught, wrote and developed his theological views, it was the graveyard in Lutterworth that was to witness the power and influence of Wycliffe s life some fortyfour years after his death. Wycliffe had demanded the reform of many of the Roman Church s teachings and traditions; and he had been driven on by his strong belief that for a man to serve God properly he must be able to read the Scriptures in his own language. It was principally for this that in 1428 his bones were exhumed on the orders of the Pope, after which his skeleton was burned and his ashes were scattered on the River Swift. 118 The order to burn Wycliffe s bones was a vain attempt to bolster the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and to restrict access to the Scriptures. As the English church historian Thomas Fuller later wrote: They burnt his bones to ashes and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring brook running hardby. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed the world over. 2 How true Fuller s words were! What Wycliffe had started in Oxford and continued in Lutterworth would in a few years sweep into Europe, with control of the Scriptures eventually being wrested from Rome and placed into the hands of ordinary men and women. 1. John Wycliffe is often referred to as the Morning Star of the Reformation. Like the planet Venus, he is regarded as the precursor of the light of dawn, because of the way he opened up the light of God s Word for the people of England. 2. Quoted from: Picture above: Wycliffe 1488 New Testament facsimile. (Reg Carr)

2 Dangerous times The world into which Wycliffe was born was difficult and dangerous; it was a time of social and economic discontent and change. There were political upheavals and wars, conflict between church and state, rulers who fought to maintain their stranglehold on the populace, and clergy who sought to enslave the common people with traditions and practices far removed from the teaching of Scripture. These factors and events, and in particular the Black Death, would cause the common people to be receptive to the work of Wycliffe in bringing forward the Bible in the English language. 3 Not much is known about Wycliffe s childhood. Born in Yorkshire to a landed family, he is known to have been at Oxford by 1345; and by he was Master of Balliol College. Although he was appointed rector at three different parishes between 1361 and 1374 (the last being Lutterworth, which he held until his death in 1384), Wycliffe still spent most of his time in Oxford teaching and studying, except for the periods when he was engaged on ecclesiastical business. 4 During his time in Oxford he became a Master of Arts, was ordained as a priest, became a Bachelor of Divinity, then a Doctor of Theology. He proved a man of exceptional ability, and gained a reputation as the most outstanding theologian in England (and, arguably, in all Europe). Students came from abroad to study under him, including a number from Bohemia, whose influence was to lead to dramatic events in Bohemia some thirty years after Wycliffe s death. 5 Wycliffe s views Between 1374 and 1381 Wycliffe s studies led him further and further away from the established church s teachings. He came to see that the Bible alone ought to be used to establish the doctrines and organisation of the Church. From 1374 to 1377 he developed eighteen theses on corruption within the Church, the need for it to return to poverty, and calling into question the Church s religious images, pilgrimages and shrines. In 1378 and 1379 he produced books on the Church, the office of the king and the authority of the Pope. He also condemned the clergy for their lack of Scriptural understanding and piety. Through his teaching and his writings, Wycliffe openly repudiated the doctrine of Transubstantiation, 6 which had been imposed in 1215 after two hundred years of wrangling among scholars and clergy. Such views could not go unchallenged, and Pope Gregory XI issued five bulls against Wycliffe, calling on King Edward III, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to act against him. The first complete Bible in English But Wycliffe s most enduring work arose from his determination to translate the whole of the Bible into English. He was motivated to do this after writing an essay on Divine dominion and civil dominion, in which he expressed his conviction that everything belongs to God and that all possessions come as a stewardship from Him. All men, Wycliffe believed, are personally responsible to God and will have to give their own account to Him. It is therefore vital that all men should know what God requires of them, through the Scriptures. By the middle of the fourteenth century, relatively few parts of the Scriptures existed in English. These included the Psalter (eighth century), the Heptateuch (Genesis-Judges) and the Wessex Gospels (tenth century), and the New Testament Letters (early fourteenth century), which were available in English exclusively for members of religious houses. In Wycliffe s time the majority of the population were illiterate. The version of the Bible read and studied by educated men like 3. The main background events of Wycliffe s life ( ) were: the Hundred Years War ( ); the Black Death (1348, which destroyed thirty to forty per cent of the population); the emergence of English as the national language (used in the law courts from 1362 and in Parliament from 1363); the Great Schism ( , during which there were two rival popes, in Rome and Avignon); and the Peasants Revolt (1381). 4. In Wycliffe served as Edward III s theological counsellor. In 1374 he was part of the King s delegation in Bruges and Brussels which negotiated with a papal delegation on matters of authority between Church and State and on outstanding dues to the Pope. Wycliffe strongly disagreed with the compromise positions proposed and left the delegation before the negotiations were concluded. 5. The Bohemian clergyman John Hus ( ) was deeply influenced by Wycliffe s teachings. Summoned by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund to answer questions about his views before the Council of Constance in 1415, Hus was condemned as a heretic and burned. The same council also declared Wycliffe a heretic, even though he had been dead for thirty-one years! 6. The Roman Catholic teaching that the bread and wine in the Eucharist become the actual body and blood of Christ. 119

3 A selection of Wycliffite Bible expressions and phrases present also in the King James Version a coat of many colours (Gen. 37:3) milk and honey (Ex. 3:8) graven image (Ex. 20:4) honour thy father and thy mother (Ex. 20:12) vanity of vanities (Eccl. 1:2) a drop of a bucket (Isa. 40:15) new wine into old bottles (Mt. 9:17) he that is not with me is against me (Mt. 12:30) in the beginning was the Word (Jno. 1:1) Jesus wept (Jno. 11:35) itching... ears (2 Tim. 4:3) the... patience of Job (Jas. 5:11) the great whore (Rev. 17:1) It seems remarkable that, notwithstanding the 220-year gap that separates the Wycliffite Bible from the KJV, so many expressions that are familiar to readers of the 1611 version can be found in the fourteenth-century Middle English translation. Wycliffe was Jerome s Latin Vulgate, which was by then a thousand years old. Apart from the clergy, very few ordinary people were educated in Latin, which was the language of church services and of formal Bible readings. The common people were thus entirely dependent on their religious leaders for what little spiritual knowledge and instruction they received. Wycliffe was determined to change this by bringing the Bible to the people in their own language. It is ironic that Wycliffe s expulsion from the University of Oxford because of the numerous books, tracts and essays he had written, setting out the errors of the Church and the corruption of the clergy provided him with even greater opportunity to work on translating the Bible into English. How much of what is now known as the Wycliffite Bible was actually translated by Wycliffe himself is something on which scholars are divided. 7 He was undoubtedly the driving force behind the work; but it clearly also involved some of his supporters, notably Nicholas de Hereford 8 and John Purvey. Without the benefit of the printing press, the production of multiple copies of Wycliffe s Bible must have been frustratingly slow, the New Testament first appearing in and the Old Testament in These first versions of Wycliffe s translation followed a somewhat rudimentary word for word principle, 120 and it was not until after Wycliffe s death that John Purvey finished his revision, in which he adopted a more fluid sense for sense approach. 9 From 1388, copies of these two versions of Wycliffe s English Bible circulated among ordinary men and women. For the first time, therefore, ordinary men and woman could hear all parts of the Word of God being read in English; and those fortunate enough to have a copy of their own were able to study the Bible for themselves. 10 Not 7. The Wycliffite Bible is the name now generally given to a family of Bible translations made during the late fourteenth century under Wycliffe s general direction or at his instigation. Produced before the advent of printing, they were manuscript texts, laboriously copied and embellished by many hands. 8. There is a Wycliffite manuscript Bible in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, which breaks off in the middle of Baruch 3:20, where a note has been added in Latin by another hand which reads here ends the translation of Nicholas of Hereford an indication that others besides Wycliffe were involved in the translation. 9. The first version of the Wycliffite Bible was translated word for word from the Latin because the Bible was regarded as the codification of God s law, so care was taken to ensure that the Latin and English texts could be seen to be identical. Purvey s later revised edition (completed around 1388) was composed in idiomatic English, as a result of which it rapidly achieved popularity.

4 that many had their own individual copies, for in the main these Bibles were read aloud to the people by the so-called Poor Priests. 11 These Poor Priests were living embodiments of Wycliffe s belief that it was necessary for the Church to return to poverty in order to preach the gospel effectively. Organised by Wycliffe in the latter part of his life, these itinerant preachers were largely responsible for the birth of the Lollard movement after Wycliffe s death. Found guilty of heresy In the wake of the Peasants Revolt, Wycliffe was charged and found guilty of heresy at the Blackfriars Synod in As a consequence, his writings were forbidden and the king (Richard II) decreed that any who believed Wycliffe s condemned doctrines should be imprisoned. Wycliffe himself was summoned before a synod at Oxford; and, although he was frail from the effects of a recent stroke, he defended his work before the assembled clergy in the following robust terms: With whom think you ye are contending? With an old man on the brink of the grave? No! With the Truth Truth which is stronger than you, and will overcome you. Surprisingly, Wycliffe was not excommunicated, nor was he removed from his position at Lutterworth. 13 But two years later, while preaching from his pulpit on 28 December 1384, he suffered a second stroke, from the effects of which he died three days later. It remains a curious fact that at the time of his death Wycliffe was still a member of the Church. As noted earlier, it was not until thirty-one years after his death that he was formally declared a heretic, and it was a further thirteen years before his body was exhumed and burned and his ashes thrown into the Swift. These posthumous humiliations are clear indications of the influence that Wycliffe s work was exerting, not only throughout England, but also on the continent of Europe. It was because of the widening circulation of Wycliffite Bibles, too, that the English clergy, meeting in Oxford in 1408, formally outlawed Wycliffe s principal writings On the truth of the Holy Scriptures (1378) On the Church (1378) On the power of the Pope (1379) On the Eucharist (1380) the translation of the Scriptures into the English vernacular without the permission of a bishop. Any person discovered with an English Bible could be charged with heresy. 14 The Lollards Although Wycliffe s ideas were radical and powerful, he was a reformer, not a revolutionary. Following his death, the Lollard movement, based on his writings and teachings, took shape and began to spread. It is thought that the term Lollard came into use by 1387, and that the name has its origins in the Flemish word for mumbler. 15 There is no evidence that Wycliffe himself was directly involved in the movement, 16 but it was certainly the vehicle by which his ideas were spread and the value of his Bible translation was shared. Although some of their teachings were erroneous, like Wycliffe the Lollards believed that Christianity should be firmly based on the Bible, that everyone should have access to an English 10. The fact that almost 200 Wycliffite Bibles survive today is an indication of the large numbers of copies that must have been made both before and after Wycliffe s death. 11. The Poor Priests were itinerant preachers originally sent out from Oxford by Wycliffe around At first they lived in poverty and journeyed about the country, wearing simple russet gowns and preaching as the Dominicans had done. Later, some, if not most, of them were laymen. They were quietly effective as a means of spreading Wycliffe s views as well as of communicating the Word of God in English. 12. Wycliffe was convicted on ten counts of heresy and sixteen so-called errors! The synod also claimed that Wycliffe s teachings were a contributory factor in the Peasants Revolt of the previous year. 13. Wycliffe may have been protected by the powerful John of Gaunt ( ), who effectively ruled England during the minority of Richard II in the 1370s and 80s, and who was himself a man of anti-clerical opinions. Richard II s wife, Anne of Bohemia ( ), is also believed to have been an admirer of Wycliffe s work. She was a religious-minded woman who sent copies of Wycliffe s writings back to Bohemia. 14. Known as the Constitutions of Oxford, these laws remained in effect for nearly 130 years, until King Henry VIII licensed Matthew s Bible in According to their detractors, the followers of Wycliffe were men who learn the gospels by heart in the vernacular and mumble the one to the other. Quoted from Derek Wilson, The People s Bible (Oxford, Lion Hudson, 2010), p Even so, most people associated Wycliffe so closely with the movement that at one time his Bible translation was known as the Lollard Bible. 121

5 version of it, and that everyone should be allowed to interpret its meaning for themselves. During the 1390s an extensive compilation known as the Lollard Floretum was produced, 17 which enjoyed a wide circulation, along with the Bible translation. In 1395 the Lollards posted a notice of their beliefs outside Westminster Hall, in a document known as The Twelve Conclusions of The Lollards, in which they listed what they saw as the errors of the Roman Church. 18 The movement gained support across society, with nobility and artisans alike uniting in their promulgation of Wycliffe s teachings. The effects were felt in England, France, Bohemia and many parts of Europe; and they continued for well over a century. Although the relationship between the Lollard movement and Wycliffe remains uncertain, there is no question that the reaction of the English clergy against it was both swift and ruthless. In 1401 a law prescribing the burning of heretics was enacted. 19 The precise number who died under this law is unknown; but there are many accounts of Lollards paying the ultimate price for their faith. Lollardy was also seen as a threat to the state due to the involvement of a prominent and high-ranking Lollard, Sir John Oldcastle, in a plot against the king in The Lollards thus became associated with treason, and so the movement met combined opposition from both Church and State. This opposition obliged the movement to exist underground, which makes it difficult to know how widespread it actually was. Nevertheless, a contemporary comment provides at least some insight into its inroads into the population, since it was said that every second man you meet is a Lollard. 20 William Sawtrey, who was burned at the stake in 1401, is often cited as the first Lollard martyr; but many trials were held as the Church attempted to root out the alleged heretics. The Lollards had no leader or organisational structure; and, as the early-sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation took hold, Lollardy itself gradually merged into that general movement towards a more Bible-based theology. But if the Lollards eventually disappeared from the historical record, they had at least bequeathed to the common people a passion for an open English Bible. The Morning Star The morning star, the planet Venus, is the first light that dispels the gloom of the dark night, leading ultimately to a brighter dawn; and this is how John Wycliffe is seen by many. In releasing the Word of God from the Latin-bound grip of the Catholic clergy, he helped to dispel some of the moral and spiritual darkness of his age. In some sense, at least, the words of Isaiah could be applied to his work: The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined (9:2). To Wycliffe goes the honour of bringing about the first complete translation of the Scriptures into English. 21 Whilst he clearly held some erroneous views, he nevertheless made it possible for the English to hear and read the Word of God s salvation in their own language. And for that, we all have every reason to be grateful. Isaiah says, Lord, who believed to our hearing? For faith is of hearing, but hearing by the word of Christ. (Rom. 10:16,17, Wycliffite version) 17. The Floretum was a manuscript compendium of Wycliffe s own writings, a Lollard sermon-cycle and a copy of the vernacular Glossed Gospels. 18. An elaborate refutation of these twelve alleged errors was written for Richard II a few years later. It was subsequently presented to Parliament, but no follow-up was made. See: H. S. Cronin, The twelve conclusions of the Lollards, The English Historical Review, 22 (1907), pp This was the infamous De Heretico Comburendo ( On the burning of heretics ), the chilling text of which can be read at: Quoted from: Or, to be more precise, Middle English. Even in a modern spelling version, Wycliffe s translation is not all that easy to follow for a modern reader. Take, for example, this short passage from Romans: Therefore, reign not sin in your deadly body, that ye obey to his covetings. Neither give ye your members arms of wickedness to sin. But give ye yourselves to God as they that live of dead men, and your members arms of rightwiseness to God (6:12,13). [Wycliffe] that wretched and pestilent fellow, of damnable memory, that son of the old serpent, the very herald and child of Antichrist [who] to fill up the measure of his malice, devised the expedient of a new translation of the Scriptures into the mother tongue. From a letter to the Roman Pope from Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury,