What if you had no Bible in your language to read? What if all you knew about Christianity was what the church officials taught you? That was where the Christians church were in John Wycliffe's time.
John Wycliffe (or Wyclif) was born in Hipswell, Yorkshire, England in 1328. He received his doctorate in theology in 1372, and then taught at Oxford University, where he was considered the best scholar and debater of his time.
The Christian church, then headed by the Pope Gregory XI in Rome, owned over one-third of England's land. The clergy were illiterate and often immoral. The high- church offices could be bought or given as political rewards.
Wycliffe, a devoted Bible student, criticized certain church doctrines as false, not Bible-based, but man-made. He wrote and preached against purgatory, the sale of indulgences, and transubstantiation, which is belief that Jesus is present in the Holy Communion elements. This was the beginning of the Protestant movement, which later John Hus, Martin Luther, and John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli continued.
In 1374, King Edward III of England challenged the Pope's demand for financial papal tributes. Wycliffe wrote the papers, upholding Parliament's right to limit the church's power. The next year the king sent Wycliffe to Belgium to consult with the papal representatives. The conference failed, but John of Gaunt, the 4th son of the king, stood with Wycliffe in the antipapal reform.
The following year Wycliffe wrote the doctrine of "dominion as founded in grace." On February 19, 1377, the bishop of London brought Wycliffe to trial. John of Gaunt went with Wycliffe. He became involved "in a brawl with the bishop." In fall, Parliament tried again to put into law the refusal to pay money or send riches to the Pope. Wycliffe was again confronted by the bishop, but because of his favor with the king's son, Wycliffe was dismissed without punishment.
Wycliffe next defied the doctrines of purgatory, indulgences, and transubstantiation. He included in his philosophy a belief in a direct relationship between people and God, without priestly mediation, that Christians could govern themselves without popes, and that the clergy should imitate the evangelical poverty of Christ and his disciples. He disbelieved in slavery and war. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courtenay condemned him as a heretic and banished him from the university.
Wycliffe relocated in Lutterworth, where his freedom took flight. Along with his students, he took on the enormous, but now famous, task of translating the Latin scriptures into English. They worked from a hand-written, 1000-year-old text.
After his death of a stroke on December 31, 1384, his students continued the translations, then distributed those Bibles to the poor and taught them how to read. Those who did this were called Lollards. Their work influenced the next reformer John Hus.
Years later in May of 1415, the Council of Constance ordered Wycliffe's corpse to be exhumed and burned, and the ashes to be thrown into the river. All his writings were to be burned.
Yet in 1942, a missionary organization took on his name, Wycliffe Bible
Translators, and continues to distribute the scriptures in over 2500 languages.
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