Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, February, 1885

This is Wycliffe’s petition of right to the King and to the Parliament of England. We know nothing exactly like this document in the history of the past five hundred years. In one or two of the claims set forth in it, the document which bears to it the greatest resemblance is an anonymous petition addressed to King James in 1609, being “An Humble Supplication for Toleration and Liberty to enjoy and observe the Ordinances of Christ Jesus, in the administration of His Churches in lieu of human Constitutions.” But compared with Wycliffe’s petition, that other is narrow and restricted in its range. This of Wycliffe is, like his work, for all time. In it he seems to have gathered up the principles that governed his life, and to have expressed them so that this document may be regarded as a summary of principles, a sort of Enchiridion for the use of the statesmen and people of England.

It is more than doubtful whether Wycliffe appeared before the Archbishop at Oxford in 1382; and it is certain that no recantation ever proceeded from his lips or pen. In the absence of any adequate reason hitherto assigned for Wycliffe’s immunity or personal safety in a time so perilous, may the reason have been that, silenced in Oxford by the decree of the preceding year, Wycliffe left the university, and, retiring to his rectory of Lutterworth, enjoyed there the protection of the Bishop of Lincoln, John Bokingham? Within the very extensive diocese of Lincoln, we know that for a time Wycliffe’s “poor priests” enjoyed the episcopal protection. Is it too much to suppose that John Bokingham, who protected and gave episcopal sanction to Wycliffe’s preachers, extended his protection to Wycliffe himself? This “John Bokingham if this were the Bishop of Lincoln accounted of some very unlearned, was a doctor of divinity of Oxford, a great learned man in scholastical divinity, as divers works of his still extant may testify, and for my part, I think this bishop to be the man. The year 1397, the Pope bearing him some grudge, translated him perforce from Lincolne unto Lichfield, a bishopric not half so good. For curst heart he would not take it, but, as though he had rather have no bread than half a loaf, forsook both, and became a monk at Canterbury. He was one of the first founders of the bridge at Rochester.”33 Our conjecture if probable or true to fact, would explain not a little that has hitherto perplexed the biographers of Wycliffe.

But apart from this conjecture and all similar guesses and suggestions, perhaps the real cause of Wycliffe’s safety was the regard cherished for him by many of the nobility and leaders of the people, and the esteem in which he was held by the King’s mother – “the fair maid of Kent” – whose message, conveyed by Sir Lewis Clifford, brought the proceedings of the Lambeth Synod to an abrupt termination. Nor must the protecting influence of Richard’s wife, the Queen – Ann of Bohemia – be ignored. For in his book “Of the Three-fold Love” Wycliffe says: “It is possible that the noble Queen of England, the sister of Cæsar, may have and use the Gospel written in three languages – Bohemian, German, and Latin. But to hereticate her on that account would be Luciferian folly.” But after all the circumstances of the case have been considered, we may say with Fuller: “In my mind it amounted to little less than a miracle, that during this storm on his disciples, Wycliffe their master should live in quiet. Strange that he was not drowned in so strong a stream as ran against him, whose safety under God’s providence is not so much to be ascribed to his own strength in swimming as to such as held him up by the chin – the greatness of his noble supporters.”34 It would appear as if King Richard himself must be reckoned one at least among Wycliffe’s “noble supporters.” This seems to be implied in what appears to be a reference to himself, made in one of his last-written treatises, the “Frivolous Citations,” being the citations addressed by the Popes to those who were offensive to them. In that remarkable treatise the arguments in favor of papal citations are shown to be untenable and sophistical, and the assumption of temporal power by the Pope, as exercised in the citation of those not subject to his jurisdiction, is shown to be unjustifiable. From all this the conclusion is, that the Church should return to primitive and apostolic simplicity – the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ without the Pope and his statutes. In the fourth chapter he maintains that three things warrant any one cited to refuse obedience to the citation: necessary business, illness, and the prohibition of the sovereign of the realm: “Primum est gravis necessitas, quæ videtur maxima in custodia Christi ovium, ne a lupis rapacibus lanientur. Secundum est infirmitas corporis, propter quam deficit citato dispositio data a domino ad taliter laborandum. Et tertium est preceptio regia, quando rex precepit, sicut debet, suo legio, ne taliter extra suam provinciam superflue evagetur. Et omnes istæ tres causæ vel aliqua earum in qualibet citatione hujusmodi sunt reperte, et specialiter cum rex regum prohibeat taliter evagari.” All this he applies to his own case, in language implying that he had been cited to appear to answer for himself before the Pope: “Et sic dicit, quidam debilis et claudus citatus ad hanc curiam, quod prohibitio regia impedit ipsum ire, quia, rex regum necessitat et vult efficaciter, quod non vagat. Dicit etiam quod domi oportet ipsum eligere Pontificam Iesum Christum, quod est gravis necessitas eo, quod cum ejus omissione vel negligentia non potest Romanus Pontifex vel aliquis angelus dispensare.”35 The words seem to imply not only that he was cited to appear before the Pope, but that in declining to obey the papal summons, he could plead bodily infirmity, the will of the King of kings, and also the prohibition of the only earthly sovereign to whom he owed a subject’s duty. Shirley, writing in 1858, says – “From his retreat at Lutterworth they summoned him before the papal court. The citation did not reach him till 1384.”36 If so, then his tract “De Citationibus Frivolis” was one of the last of the many writings that proceeded from his pen.

Before we make the briefest possible reference to the last and greatest work of Wycliffe – his translation of the Bible – we may here allude to the marvellous productiveness of the mind of this great Englishman of the fourteenth century. In this respect, as in other characteristics of his genius, there is only one other name in English literature that is entitled to take rank and place beside John Wycliffe, and that is the name of William Shakespeare. Chaucer and Langland and Gower, the contemporaries of Wycliffe, wrote much, and wrote so as not only to prove the previously unknown capabilities of the half-formed English language for giving expression to every variety of poetical conception, but these illustrious poets also so wrote as to be the forerunners and the leaders of those who, since the time when the English mind was set free by the Reformation, have marched, and continue to march, as the poets of England in splendid equipage in their proud procession through the ages. But the intellectual and literary productiveness of Chaucer and Langland and Gower comes far short of the truly extraordinary productiveness of the genius of Wycliffe. Nothing but ignorance of what Wycliffe did for the highest forms of thought in the University, for the dignity and independence of the State, for truth and freedom in the Church, and for virtue and godliness among the English people, and through them among all the nations of the world, can account for the indifference to the name and memory of Wycliffe, which prevails not in Oxford alone, but throughout the country: —

“To the memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen, his country has been singularly and painfully ungrateful. On most of us the dim image looks down, like the portrait of the first of a long line of kings, without personality or expression. He is the first of the Reformers. To some he is the watchword of a theological controversy, invoked most loudly by those whom he would most have condemned. Of his works, the greatest, ‘one of the most thoughtful of the middle ages,’ has twice been printed abroad, in England never.37 Of his original English works, nothing beyond one or two tracts has seen the light. If considered only as the father of English prose, the great Reformer might claim more reverential treatment at our hands. It is not by his translation of the Bible, remarkable as that work is, that Wycliffe can be judged as a writer. It is in his original tracts that the exquisite pathos, the keen delicate irony, the manly passion of his short nervous sentences, fairly overmasters the weakness of the unformed language, and gives us English which cannot be read without a feeling of its beauty to this hour.”38

The mind of Wycliffe was constitutionally of large capacity – strong, many-sided, intense. The strength and the luminousness of his understanding, operating through an emotional nature of great tranquillity and depth, found for themselves unimpeded expression in the force and energy of a self-determining and resolute will. His deliberations, not his passions, prompted, directed, and controlled his actions. Hence the decisiveness of his conclusions; hence also the heroic pertinacity with which he adhered to his convictions, and, whether amidst compliments or curses, prosecuted his work. For to him personally, dominion signified the lordship of the intellect over the emotions, the sovereignty of conscience over the intellect, and the monarchy of God over all. The “possessioner” of rich and varied mental endowments, he put forth all to use. For in all the departments of learning and science, John Wycliffe was second to none whose names adorn the annals of Oxford University and are the glory of England. Wycliffe’s works, when known in Oxford and in this country will not only vindicate what we have said, but will show that if his constitutional abilities were singularly great, his industry was indefatigable, and his studious course splendidly progressive. “Proscribed and neglected as he afterwards became, there was a time when Wycliffe was the most popular writer in Europe.”39 Contact with his mind through his works, seems to have had a remarkably infectious influence on the men of his time and on the following generation. Hence the unexampled measures taken not by William Courtenay alone, but by successive Popes and by the Council of Constance (1415), to suppress the heresies of Wycliffe. This influence of contact with his spirit in his writings, shows itself very notably in the case of the able and critical historian, Milman. Milman’s own mind was of great capacity and force. But the vigor and enthusiasm of that mind seem to reveal themselves more in the chapter on Wycliffe than in any other section of his great work. There is an unusual glow – one might say fervor – as of sympathetic appreciation, in the greater part of that chapter.40

Shirley’s statement that “Wycliffe is a very voluminous, a proscribed, and a neglected writer,” is verified by the catalogue which Shirley himself, at the cost of considerable labor scattered over a period of some ten or twelve years, compiled, and published in 1865. By compiling and publishing this catalogue, Professor Shirley rendered great service not only to the memory of Wycliffe but also to English literature. Bale, Bishop of Ossory (1563), the author of many most valuable but now little appreciated, because little known, works, in his “Summarium,”41 first published in 1547, gives a list of 242 of Wycliffe’s writings, with their titles. Lewis, in 1820, by some modifications and additions of Bale’s list, extends the number to 284. A catalogue was also prefixed by Baber to his reprint of Wycliffe’s New Testament (Purvey’s amended edition) in 1810. And Dr. Vaughan (who has got but scrimp justice at the hands of some), in his “Life and Opinions of Wycliffe,” 1828 and 1831, and in his “John de Wycliffe: a Monograph,” 1853, gave catalogues which had the effect of setting a few others to work in the endeavor to determine with certainty the number of the genuine writings left by Wycliffe. This work was undertaken and prosecuted with no little labor and critical ability by Professor Shirley; but death at an early time arrested the progress of the work which he had projected – the editing and publishing of “Select Works of Wycliffe.” Men die, but the work dies not. To the third volume of “Select English Works of John Wycliffe,” 1871, edited by Thomas Arnold, there is prefixed a “List of MSS. of the Miscellaneous Works,” and a “Complete Catalogue of the English Works ascribed to Wycliffe, based on that prepared by Dr. Shirley, but including a detailed comparison with the list of Bale and Lewis”42 Of Dr. Lechler’s services in this as in every other respect we do not speak: they are inestimable. The example set by him, and by Dr. Buddensieg of Dresden, and Dr. Loserth of Czernowitz, ought to stimulate Englishmen, and more especially the graduates, fellows, and doctors of Oxford, to vindicate the University against the charge so justly and repeatedly made against it, of having treated with indifference and neglect the name and memory of one of her most illustrious sons. It is anything but creditable to Oxford that German scholars and princes should do the work which ought to be done by Englishmen – and of all Englishmen by the men of Oxford. Do these learned men know that in English literature there is a short treatise bearing the title “The Dead Man’s Right?”43 It is time that they should study it, and give to it such effect as only the men of Oxford can give, in relation to the memory of the man who asserted and maintained, in perilous and most hazardous times, the rights of Oxford University against those who would reduce that noble institution, that renowned seat of learning, to the level of one of the outhouses of the Vatican Palace or of the Pope’s privy chamber, at Avignon or at Rome.

From the lists or catalogues of Wycliffe’s works, it is evident that his writing was like his mind – steadily, splendidly progressive. To the earlier period of his life belong the works on logic, psychology, metaphysics, and generally what may be called his philosophical writings. To the second period of his life belong his applied philosophy in the form of his treatises on politico-ecclesiastical questions. To the third period belong his works on scientific theology; and to the fourth and concluding period belong his works on applied theology, or practical and pastoral divinity.

“The earliest work to which, so far as I know, a tolerably exact date can be assigned, is the fragment “De dominio,” printed by Lewis, and which belongs to the year 1366 or 1367. We may confidently place the whole of the philosophical works, properly so called, before this date. About the year 1367 was published the “De Dominio Divino,” preluding to the great “Summa Theologiæ,” – the first book of which, “De Mandatis,” appears to have been written in 1369; the seventh, the “De Ecclesia,” in 1378; the remainder at uncertain intervals during the next five years. The “Trialogus” and its supplement belong probably to the last year of the Reformer’s life.”44

In a letter of Archbishop Arundel, addressed to Pope John XXIII. in 1412, it is said of Wycliffe that, “In order to fulfil the measure of his wickedness, he invented the translation of the Bible into the mother tongue.” Of this, the great and crowning work of Wycliffe’s life, Knighton says: —

“Christ delivered his Gospel to the clergy and doctors of the Church, but this Master John Wycliffe translated it out of Latin into English, and thus laid it out more open to the laity, and to women who could read, than it had formerly been to the most learned of the clergy, even to those of them that had the best understanding. In this way the Gospel-pearl is cast abroad, and trodden under foot of swine, and that which was before precious both to clergy and laity, is rendered, as it were, to the common jest of both. The jewel of the Church is turned into the sport of the people, and what had hitherto been the choice gift of the clergy and of divines, is made for ever common to the laity.”45

It was for this very end that the “Word of God written” might be forever common to the people, as accessible to them as to the most privileged orders, that Wycliffe seems at an early time in his life to have entertained the great idea and formed the purpose of giving to his countrymen a version of Holy Scripture in the English language. For, although we cannot here enter into details, it would appear from the careful, learned, and elaborate preface to the magnificent edition of Wycliffe’s Bible by Forshall and Madden,46 that the progressiveness characteristic of Wycliffe’s views and work was apparent in the translation of the Bible. With all deference to the opinions of those who believe that man’s works spring full-formed from the human brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, there is reason for believing that so early as 1356, or about that time, Wycliffe began his work of translating the Scriptures, and that, with many interruptions or intermissions, he continued to prosecute his great enterprise till he had the joyful satisfaction of seeing the translation of the New Testament completed in 1380. The idea had grown in his mind, and the work grew under his hand. He could now put a copy of the Evangel into the hands of each evangelist whom he sent forth. Up to this time he could but furnish his poor preachers with short treatises and detached portions of Scripture. But now he could give them the whole of the New Testament in the language of the people of England. It was a great gift, and it was eagerly desired by multitudes who had been perishing for lack of knowledge. And but for the opposition of the hierarchy, the book and the evangelist might now have had free course in England. The work of translating the Old Testament was being prosecuted by Nicolas Hereford, when he was cited to appear before the Archbishop. Two MS. copies of Hereford’s translation in the Bodleian Library “end abruptly in the book of Baruch, breaking off in the middle of a sentence.47 It may thence be inferred that the writer was suddenly stopped in the execution of his work; nor is it unreasonable to conjecture, further, that the cause of the interruption was the summons which Hereford received to appear before the synod in 1382.”

“The translation itself affords proof that it was completed by a different hand, and not improbably by Wycliffe himself. Hereford translates very literally, and is usually careful to render the same Latin words or phrases in an uniform manner. He never introduces textual glosses. The style subsequent to Bar. iii. 20 is entirely different. It is more easy, no longer keeps to the order of the Latin, takes greater freedom in the choice of words, and frequently admits textual glosses. In the course of the first complete chapter the new translator inserts no less than nine such glosses. He does not admit prologues. The translation of this last part of the Old Testament corresponds with that of the New Testament, not only in the general style, but also in the rendering of particular words.”48

Wycliffe’s work was really done when the whole Bible was published in the English language. And although he set himself to improve, correct, and amend his own and Hereford’s translation, yet he could now, as at no previous time, say, “Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” Not long after this he died in peace at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, on the 31st of December 1384. And notwithstanding the ridicule of all who snarl at Mr. Foxe for counting him a martyr in his calendar, he really lived a martyr’s life, and died a martyr’s death: he lived and died a faithful witness of the truth. If he was not in spirit a martyr, there never was a martyr in the history of the Church; and if his persecutors were not in spirit tyrants whose purpose was to add Wycliffe’s name to the roll of martyrs, there never were those who persecuted the saints unto bonds, imprisonment, and death. What else means the decree of the Council of Constance in 1415, which not only cursed his memory, as that of one dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered his body (with this charitable caution, “if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful people”), to be taken out of the ground and thrown far off from any Christian burial? In obedience to this decree – being, as Godwin says, required by the Council of Sena so to do49– Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutterworth in 1428, sent officers to ungrave the body of Wycliffe. To Lutterworth they come, take what was left out of the grave, and burning it, cast the ashes into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. “Thus hath this brook conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, and these into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”50

With Fuller’s graphic record of the action of the servants of Bishop Fleming of Lincoln we might conclude our review of the work of this truly great and good man; but we cannot conclude without saying that the decree of the Constance Council and the action of the Lincoln bishop reveal at the same time the power of Wycliffe’s doctrines and the impotence of the papal opposition to Wycliffe and to Lollardism. Truth dies not: it may be burned, but, like the sacred bush on the hillside of Horeb, it is not consumed. It may fall in the street; it may be trodden under foot of men; it may be put into the grave; but it is not dead, – it lives, rises again, and is free. The bonds only are consumed; and the grave-clothes and the napkin only are left in the sepulchre. The word itself liveth and abideth forever. It has in it not only an eternal vitality, but also a seminal virtue. It is the seed of the kingdom of God. Some of the books of Wycliffe were put into the hands of John Hus in the University of Prague. Of Hus it may be said that, like the prophet, he ate the books given to him. He so appropriated them, not in the spirit only, but also in the letter, that the doctrines, and even the verbal expressions, of Wycliffe, were reproduced and proclaimed by him in Bohemia. This is demonstrated by Dr. Loserth in his recent work, “Wycliffe and Hus.”51

The story of the Gospel in Bohemia is really a record of the work of Wycliffe in a foreign land, where he was regarded as little less than “a fifth evangelist.” The heresies of Wycliffe, condemned by the Council of Constance, were the Gospel for which John Hus and Jerome of Prague died the death of martyrs. But not only so.

“When I studied at Erfurth,” says Martin Luther, “I found in the library of the convent a book entitled the ‘Sermons of John Hus.’ I had a great curiosity to know what doctrines that arch-heretic had propagated. My astonishment at the reading of them was incredible. I could not comprehend for what cause they burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill. But as the very name of Hus was held in so great abomination, that I imagined the sky would fall and the sun be darkened if I made honorable mention of him, I shut the book with no little indignation. This, however, was my comfort, that he had written this perhaps before he fell into heresy, for I had not yet heard what passed at the Council of Constance.”52

Germany through Luther owes much to John Wycliffe. Germany acknowledges the obligation, and through Lechler, Buddensieg, Loserth, and others, it is offering its tribute of gratitude to the memory of the earliest of the Reformers. For, although the fact is ignored by many, the Reformation was but the exposition and developed application of the doctrines of John Wycliffe. It was Shakespeare who said of the great Lollard chief of England – Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham – “Oldcastle died a martyr!”53 But it is one of the most coldly severe and critical of historians who says: —

“No revolution has ever been more gradually prepared than that which separated almost one-half of Europe from the communion of the Roman See; nor were Luther and Zwingle any more than occasional instruments of that change, which, had they never existed, would at no great distance of time have been effected under the names of some other Reformers. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the learned doubtfully and with caution, the ignorant with zeal and eagerness, were tending to depart from the faith and rites which authority prescribed. But probably not even Germany were so far advanced on this course as England. Almost a hundred and fifty years before Luther, nearly the same doctrines as he taught had been maintained by Wycliffe, whose disciples, usually called Lollards, lasted as a numerous though obscure and proscribed sect, till, aided by the confluence of foreign streams, they swelled into the Protestant Church of England. We hear indeed little of them during some part of the fifteenth century; for they generally shunned persecution, and it is chiefly through records of persecution that we learn the existence of heretics. But immediately before the name of Luther was known, they seem to have become more numerous; since several persons were burned for heresy, and others abjured their errors, in the first years of Henry VIII.’s reign.”54