Like Richard Rolle, Wiclif was a Yorkshireman by birth. Of his career at
Oxford little is known until 1360, when he is described as 'master of
Balliol'. From Balliol he was presented to the living of Fillingham,
and, after a series of preferments, he accepted in 1374 the rectory of
Lutterworth, which he held till his death in 1384.
Wiclif's life was stormy. His acknowledged pre-eminence as a theologian
and doctor in the University did not satisfy his active and combative
mind. 'False peace', he said, 'is grounded in rest with our enemies,
when we assent to them without withstanding; and sword against such
peace came Christ to send.' He lacked neither enemies nor the moral
courage to withstand them.
At first, under the powerful patronage of John of Gaunt, he entered into
controversies primarily political, opposing the right of the Pope to
make levies on England, which was already overburdened with
war-taxation, and to appoint foreigners to English benefices. On these
questions popular opinion was on his side.
He proceeded to attack the whole system of Church government, urging
disendowment; rejecting the papal authority, which had been weakened in
1378 by the fierce rivalry of Urban VI and Clement VII; attacking
episcopal privileges, the established religious orders, and the abuse of
indulgences, pardons, and sanctuary. Still his opinions found a good
deal of popular and political support.
Then in 1380 he publicly announced his rejection of the doctrine of
transubstantiation. From the results of such a heresy his friends could
no longer protect him. Moderate opinion became alarmed and conservative
after the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Richard II was no friend of
heretics. John of Gaunt, himself unpopular by this time, commanded
silence. And in 1382 the secular party in Oxford were compelled, after
a struggle, to condemn and expel their favourite preacher and his
followers. Wiclif retired to Lutterworth, and continued, until struck
down by paralysis in the last days of 1384, to inspire his 'poor
preachers'—the founders of the Lollard sect which lived on to join
forces with Lutheranism in the sixteenth century—and to develop in a
series of Latin and English works the doctrines that later came to be
associated with Puritanism.
His authorship is often doubtful. In the interests of orthodoxy the
early MSS. of his writings were ruthlessly destroyed, as in the famous
bonfire of his works at Carfax, Oxford, in 1411. And his followers
included not only the simple folk from whom later the 'poor priests'
were recruited, but able University men, trained in his new doctrines,
bred in the same traditions, and eager to emulate their master in
controversy. So his share in the famous Wiclif Bible (ed. Forshall and
Madden, Oxford 1850) is still uncertain. Part of the translation seems
to have been made by Nicholas of Hereford, and a later recension is
claimed for another Oxford disciple, John Purvey. But Wiclif probably
inspired the undertaking, for to him, as to the later Puritans, the word
of the Bible was the test by which all matters of belief, ritual, and
Church government must be tried; and he was particularly anxious, in
opposition to the established clergy and the friars, that laymen should
read it in their own language. Contemporaries, friend and foe, ascribe
the actual translation to him. John Huss, the Bohemian reformer, who was
martyred in 1416 for teaching Wiclif's doctrines, states that Wiclif
'translated all the Bible into English'. Arundel, Archbishop of
Canterbury, is equally positive when he writes to the Pope in 1412 that
'the son of the Old Serpent filled up the cup of his malice against Holy
Church by the device of a new translation of the Scriptures into his
native tongue'.
The first selection, chapter xv of the _De Officio Pastorali_ (ed.
Matthew, pp. 429 f.), states the case for translation. In the second
(ed. Matthew, pp. 188 ff.) some essential points of Wiclif's teaching
are explained.
In abuse of his opponents he maintains the sturdy tradition of
controversy that still survives in Milton's prose. The style is rugged
and vigorous; the thought logical and packed close. And it is easy to
see the source of his strength. In an age whose evils were patent to
all, many reproved this or that particular abuse, but the system as a
whole passed unchallenged. Wiclif, almost alone in his generation, had
the reasoning power to go to the root of the matter, and the moral
courage not only to state fearlessly what, rightly or wrongly, he found
to be the source of evil, but to insist on basic reform. It is difficult
nowadays, when modern curiosity has made familiar the practice of mining
among the foundations of beliefs, society, and government, to realize
the force of authority that was ranged against unorthodox reformers in
the fourteenth century. If the popular support he received indicates
that this force was already weakening, Wiclif must still be reckoned
among the greatest of those who broke the way for the modern world.