Paperback. Blue title and Wycliffe image on the black and blue cover.

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A Post Reformation view of John Wycliffe (c.1320–1384) provides that he was the “Morning Star” of the Reformation. He attacked the errors of the Roman Church, sought reform in the Church and translated the Scriptures in English. This view satisfies the need to find the voice of reformation in the medieval Church agreeable to the views of the Reformers in the 16th Century and later.

Yet in any thorough examination of his life, this hagiographic view begins to tarnish. Kenneth Bruce McFarlane who was a renowned Medieval Scholar in his book; ‘John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity’ (reprinted as ‘The Origins of Religious Dissent in England’) provides an excellent study of Wycliffe. From this it can be noted that Wycliffe wrote almost exclusively in Latin. Although he held Church Livings, he was until his ejection from Oxford an absentee Incumbent. As well as income from the Living he held, he was a Canon of Westbury-on-Trym, and then became Prebend of Aust, to neither of which he provided any ministry, until forced to pay a substitute to do his duties (in this he differed little to his contemporaries).

Where Wycliffe gains the admiration of the Reformers, is that he argued against Papal and ecclesiastical power, and argued that the state had power to deprive erring clerics of their income, and could in times of necessity use the Church’s wealth. Wycliffe argued against transubstantiation, and that the bread and wine, remain just that, and that Christ is only figuratively or symbolically present. Even accepting this much, it is still a fact that he was a man of his time, and enjoyed the income from a system which allowed absentee incumbents, and for which he sought no reform. As to the Bible translation under his name, McFarlane writes;

“What part Wycliffe himself played in it is as doubtful as so much else in his life. But the tendency of modern scholarship has been to reduce his share of the work to a minimum. He inspired it and he may have supervised it, but there is no reason to believe that he himself was responsible for a single sentence. That he ever wrote anything in the vernacular is open to question; his Latin works can in any case left him with time for little else”

Thus John Wycliffe may have influenced the Bible’s translation, but there is no claim during his lifetime that he had any hand in translation. This was claimed at least a generation after his death! If Wycliffe did have a part in translation, the proof escapes us. The demand for an English Bible was not very great. There was a demand by Lollard Preachers to have a text in English, but most ordinary folk were illiterate, and in any case lacked the money to purchase the costly scribe written manuscripts. Wycliffe’s colleagues were certainly involved – Nicholas Hereford and John Trevisa who is mentioned in the original preface to the King James Bible – Epistle and Dedicatorie, which is omitted from modern printings as being a translator;

“even in our King Richard the seconds dayes, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seene with divers, translated as it is very probable, in that age.”

Several generations on from when those of Norman extract saw themselves as English, English as a language for academics was just coming into its own (with Latin still predominating in academic circles) and so the demand for an English Bible was actually quite low. The Lollards were suppressed, and the demand slowed down if not ended. Because of the fact that it is almost certain that John Wycliffe did not have a hand in translating the bible into English, Scholars write about the “Wycliffite” Bible or Version.

McFarlane cuts through the myths that surround Wycliffe, and presents the facts. It is only when he was censured for heresy that he retired to a quiet life in his Parish of Lutterworth, otherwise he would have continued as an absentee Incumbent. He desired preferment but never got it – perhaps this goes some way to explaining his dislike of the hierarchy. There was certainly no push for reform, and so it is difficult to see how he was the “Morning Star of the Reformation”.