Wycliffe’s conflict with the Roman church over the scriptures has been dwelt on. His own thoughts about his circumstances were characteristically expressed: “Why do you talk of seeking the crown of martyrdom afar? Preach the gospel of Christ to haughty prelates, and martyrdom will not fail you. What! I should live and be silent? Never! Let the blow fall: I await its coming.” But though Wycliffe clearly expected martyrdom, it never came to him. Wycliffe himself must have been surprised, and we certainly can see no explanation of it, except that the Lord had decreed concerning him: “Touch not mine anointed and do my prophet no harm.” Of course Wycliffe and his doctrines had been condemned at repeated Councils, and the Papal party had secured his expulsion from the University which he had adorned so brightly. But this only worked for the good of Wycliffe and the world. Spending his last year or so quietly in the parish of Lutterworth, he was able to put the finishing touches of his prodigious literary labours. Only one last Papal intrusion disturbed his peace, if he was indeed disturbed by it. Pope Urban the Sixth cited him to appear personally in Rome to answer for his doctrines. Wycliffe, however, did not trouble to take one step towards Rome. “A royal prohibition hinders my journey,” he said, “to wit, the injunction of the King of kings.” His formal reply to the papal citation took the form of a work whose very title did not flatter the Pope. It was called, “On Frivolous Citations”.
On the 28th December, 1384, Wycliffe was conducting worship in Lutterworth Church when he suddenly collapsed, struck down with paralysis. He was carried home in a chair, but only lived for three days. On the last day of the year, his soul went to Paradise: his body was later interred either in the church itself or in the churchyard. Now Wycliffe himself knew in its fulness the truth which he had translated for the benefit of others: “Sothli (truly) who euere ben lad by the spirit of God thes ben the ones of God. Forsothe ye han not taken eftsoone the spirit of seruage in drede, but ye han taken the spirit of adopcion of ones, in which we cryen, Abba, fadir. Forsoth the ilke spirit yeldith witnessyng to our spirit, that we ben the ones of God: forsoth if ones, and eyris, sothli eyris of God, trewli euene eyris of Crist; if nonetheless we do gidere suffren, that and we be glorified to giders. Trewli I deeme, that the passions of this tyme ben not euene worthi to the glorie to comyng, that schal be schewid in vs. Forwhi the abydinge of creature, abidith the schewinge of the ones of God.” Rom. 8, v. 14-19.
From the fourteenth century to the present day, the Roman Catholic Church has never wearied in its attempts to misrepresent the character and work of John Wycliffe. Although only a few illustrations of this fact can be included here, their name is legion.
Regarding Wycliffe’s translation of the scriptures, the Roman Catholic church has gone, first one way, then the other. We quoted earlier from the Canon of Leicester, Wycliffe’s contemporary, who attributed to Wycliffe the work of translating the Bible from Latin into English. Pope John XXII also, writing at the beginning of the 15th century, attributed the translation to “the pestilential and most miserable John Wycliffe of damned memory”. Thus, at a period of artistic poverty, when Europe had not yet stirred from her Medieval slumber, it was the policy of the Roman Catholic Church to lay the whole responsibility of translation on the shoulders of Wycliffe. Now, however, we have a different story—now that the world is alive at least to its literary debt to Wycliffe. Writing at the end of last century, Cardinal Gasquet claimed that Wycliffe had had nothing at all to do with the translation. Rather, he suggested, “so far as I have been able to discover from an examination of the two texts, there is nothing inconsistent with their having been the work of perfectly orthodox sons of holy Church”.
It is alarming to note the extent to which this falsification of history goes. In a book recently published, “Wycliffe and the Oxford Schools”, it is evident that this deplorable work goes on even at the level of University education. The main theme of this book seems to be that Wycliffe’s peculiar religious beliefs were the product of his philosophical principles. Note that it is maintained that to Wycliffe his philosophical tenets were of primary, and his spiritual beliefs of secondary importance. The implication is, of course, that Wycliffe was a purely rationalistic thinker, and one Roman Catholic commentator, writing immediately after Wycliffe, is quoted as saying of him: “I was quite astounded by his sweeping assertions . . . and by the vehemence of his reasoning.” Having made this concession to Wycliffe’s brilliance as a logician, the commentator goes on to say of him as a man of the church, “it was not long before I discovered him to be an open counterfeiter of scripture; I found that he twisted it to a meaning opposed to all the sacred commentators; that he confused scripture which was self-explanatory and concealed simple truths, and that with vain glosses he here modified and there rooted up the sacred words.” It is exasperating beyond words to find the name of Wycliffe associated with such an attitude to scripture. In his own day, the Roman Catholic Church castigated Wycliffe’s person and denigrated his work, simply because he did tenaciously hold to the word of God against the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. Now the idea is given prominence that Wycliffe was a rationalistic heretic who distorted scripture to accommodate his philosophical views. Falsification is too weak a word for this.
One other attempt to “touch” the Lords anointed may be mentioned. It is the claim that, at the end of his life, Wycliffe modified his views on the Lord’s Supper, and that he can thus be said to have recanted. A Mr Froude has written that Wycliffe “read a confession of faith before the bishops, which was held satisfactory”. That this claim is entirely without foundation is seen by the Roman church’s own subsequent dealings with Wycliffe. If he did recant, why was he afterwards ejected from the University by the influence of Archbishop Courtenay, and forbidden to preach again in Oxford? Of course the final word in this dispute is really spoken by a Council of the Roman Catholic Church which sat at Constance from 1414-18. This Council, having condemned Hus and Jerome to cruel deaths, then took up the case of John Wycliffe. Forty-five propositions were attributed to Wycliffe, and condemned. The finding of the Council went on: “The Holy Synod doth further declare and define the said John Wycliffe to have been a notorious heretic, and to have died obstinate in heresy, by excommunicating him and condemning his memory, and doth judge that his body and bones, if they can be distinguished from those of the faithful, shall be disinterred, or dug out of the ground, and cast at a distance from the sepulchre of the church.”
This decree was issued in 1415, and for thirteen years it lay unexecuted. In 1428, however, Clement VIII commanded the Bishop of Lincoln to carry out the Council’s decree without further delay. Some time in 1428, therefore, a group of Roman Catholic churchmen descended, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, on the little town of Lutterworth. Like hyenas around a dead lion, the churchmen congregated on Wycliffe’s tomb. His coffin was rudely wrested from the ground, and hurriedly conveyed to the banks of the nearby Swift. Not content with their terms of reference, the company then made a fire, and burned the bones to ashes. These ashes they threw into the stream, an act which was to occasion the now famous words of Fuller: “Truly this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; then into the main ocean: and thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”
The terms in which the Council refer to Wycliffe’s memory, and the action they enjoin regarding his bodily remains must bury for ever the question of Wycliffe’s recantation. Yet the question may linger in the mind—if he did not recant, why was he spared a martyr’s death? The answer to this question can only be that circumstances were such that, for the time, the hands of the Roman Church were tied. Wycliffe was a national hero. Had not King and Parliament in time of war, asked Wycliffe for his written judgment on the question of restraining alms from Rome? Again, though the Roman Church raged against Wycliffe’s presumption in giving the Bible to the common people, there were thousands, perhaps millions in the country who sang his praises on this account. Probably more important than both these aspects of his general popularity, however, was the fact that Wycliffe did have friends in high places. Reference was already made to the Queen Mother’s intervention at Lambeth. Richard II’s wife Anne was also an owner of Wycliffe’s Bible, and an earnest student of his works. We may take it that, while she lived, the true church was not without a “nursing mother”. It is well known, of course, that not long after Wycliffe’s death the spirit of persecution, always smouldering in the Roman Catholic Church, burst out into open flame. William Sawtree was the first to be consumed in 1401, and other noble martyrs followed. We are not surprised at this storm which ultimately broke over the heads of Wycliffe’s followers. What we marvel at is, how long it was delayed. We have to say of that delay, “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes”, for that lull gave a space for the glorious truth to be fulfilled, “Behold a sower went forth to sow”. In the years of persecution which followed, men may have feared that the seed which Wycliffe had sown must be forgotten and die. But that could not be. The time had to come, and did, when Christ in a measure said to his church, “Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone”.
But in the joy of that summer, when it came, men could not forget the work of Wycliffe. They might well cherish his memory, for, in the words of Milton, “Wycliffe was honoured by God to be the first preacher of a general reformation to all Europe. Had it not been for the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wycliffe, to suppress him as a schismatic or innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Hus or Jerome—no, nor the name of Luther or Calvin—had ever been known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours”.
J.T.