John Wyclif 1320--1384
In his book on the history of England, Robert Tombs provides the following pen portrait of the significance of John Wyclif.
Wyclif was, among other things, a critic of Church corruption, which meant mainly its wealth. His advocacy of Church disendowment won approval in elite political circles and support in Oxford. His other ideas were even more far-reaching, including attacks in the 1370's on papal authority and on transubstantiation, the doctrine that the sacramental bread and wine really became the body and blood of Christ. This caused horror among the orthodox and denunciation of Wyclif as "the great heresiarch," the first major English heretic and the most subversive thinker of the later Middle Ages, who influenced the Bohemian Hussite movement and indirectly Martin Luther. Wyclif's writings were repeatedly condemned by the Pope, but he was sufficiently protected by his patrons to be allowed to retire unmolested to his benefice at Lutterworth, where he died in 1384. In 1428 his remains were exhumed and burned on papal orders. [Robert Tombs, The English and Their History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), p.133.]Wyclif's person and work were protected by his court connection with John of Gaunt. It is interesting with the benefit of hindsight to see that so many of the issues upon which he wrote and for which he advocated, preceded Martin Luther and the Reformation by 150 years. Clearly he was a prophet born out of due time.
Consequently, it is not surprising that the Roman Catholic Church responded to the Reformation in much the same way that it responded to John Wyclif a century and a half before. But one of the most significant aspects of Wyclif's work was to translate the Bible into the common English language of the day.
