Portrait: John Wycliffe
Portrait · forerunner
John Wycliffe
c. 1330 – 1384 · Oxford · Scripture above the pope
Later depiction: no contemporary portrait is known. Sources
- Bornc. 1330, Yorkshire (England)
- Where he was activeOxford, then the parish of Lutterworth
- LegacyThe first complete Bible in English, and the idea that Scripture judges the Church
An Oxford theologian and Master of Balliol College, Wycliffe is one of the most respected minds in England when he begins to challenge the wealth and temporal power of the Church. From 1376 he argues that authority is forfeited through sin, that the pope is not the master of the Church, and that Scripture alone is the rule of faith: On the Truth of Holy Scripture is the title of one of his major treatises (1378).
In 1379-1380 he rejects transubstantiation, which costs him the support of his protectors. Condemned in London in 1382, he is nevertheless neither imprisoned nor burned: he withdraws to his parish of Lutterworth, where he dies in 1384. It is there that his disciples complete what will be his legacy: the translation of the whole Bible into English, from the Latin Vulgate, copied by hand and spread by itinerant preachers, the “Lollards”.
The Council of Constance condemns his teachings in 1415, and in 1428 his bones are exhumed and burned, and his ashes thrown into the River Swift. But his writings have already reached Bohemia through Czech students who came to Oxford: Jan Hus reads them, defends them, and dies for them. Wycliffe has been nicknamed “the Morning Star of the Reformation”.
Why he matters for today’s churches
Wycliffe is the first to say, using the methods of university scholarship, what the Reformation would say a century and a half later: the Bible above the institution, and the Bible for everyone. Every evangelical church that puts a Bible in everyday language into its members’ hands carries on what he began at Lutterworth.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
(BSB) — a verse that sums up his conviction: Scripture to guide every believer
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