The Morning Star of the Reformation: A Brief Sketch of John Wycliffe

The morning star is the first sign of light, the pointer to the coming, rising, glorious dawn. The star is a testimony to light in the midst of darkness, and hope in the midst of despair. This title, “The Morning Star,” was given to the man John Wycliffe, for he was the pre-cursor to that amazing sunrise in Western history known as the Protestant Reformation. John Wycliffe was the Morning Star of the Reformation.

Young John was born into a wealthy family, probably in Yorkshire, England, somewhere around 1330. The exact date has been somewhat hard to identify. He first appears in history in the year 1356 as a junior fellow at Merton College; it is this date that leads most historians to calculate his birth at 1330. In schooling the boy would quickly excel to the top of his class and most expected great things from him, he would not disappoint.

The writings of William of Ockham were very influential in his early studies and through his comprehension of theology and metaphysics the young John won recognition in philosophy. By 1361 he would be made the Master of Biallol College, and according to A.S.N. Lane by 1370 he was Oxford’s foremost philosopher and theologian (753). Between 1365 and 1372 he wrote a comprehensive treatment of philosophy, and in 1362 the Pope, himself, granted Wycliffe a canonry and prebend, an honor reserved for only the most deserving graduates. While serving in this capacity Wycliffe began to develop some “radical” theological and sociological concepts. His first break with the accepted Orthodoxy of the Catholic Church was on the issue of Lordship.

In his work Civil Dominion the theologian began to expound upon this idea, suggesting that only the godly could rule. In this treatise he stated that because of the corruptions within the church the state had the right, and indeed duty, to take possession of ecclesiastical property. K.B. McFarlane suggests that had Wycliffe’s superiors given him a more substantial position in the church, with good pay, they could have easily shut him up forever. He writes, “It is possible to believe in Wycliffe’s absolute sincerity as a reformer while at the same time suspecting that a plum or two (and the church had many at their disposal) even as late as the early 1370s might have shut his mouth forever” (27). This, however, is purely speculative and requires a view of the reformer that is skeptical. There is no indication, especially from his earliest days as a brilliant thinker, that he was either shallow or a pushover.

The idea that Wycliffe proposed, while not being highly accepted by the church, found him great favor with the crown and in the early 70s he entered the royal service. The governmental structure in which Wycliffe served was, of course, monarchical, at least on the surface. Behind the scenes, however, there was a group of lay politicians who were manipulating the circumstances. The royal power was slowly diminishing, and this backdrop is crucial to understanding the development of Wycliffe’s reformation theory.

When Wycliffe had bee made Warden of Canterbury Hall, in 1365, it would not be a long stay. He was quickly expelled due to his status as a secular priest, which forbid him from being the Warden, since only a monk could fill that position at Canterbury Hall (a rule enforced by its founder: bishop Islip). This termination ended the theologian’s time at Oxford and subsequently he involved himself in the political realm, even joining the political party of John of Gaunt, the third son of the king. It was in this sphere of work that Wycliffe’s theology began to change and flourish. Johann Loserth states, “He had given study to the proceedings of Edward I. England’s most popular king, and had not only attributed to them the basis of parliamentary opposition to papal usurpations, but had found a model therein for methods of procedure in matters connected with the questions of worldly possessions and the Church” (455). It was through the development of his understanding of political work that Wycliffe would find the method for reforming the church.

The reformers first official “run-in” with the church came over the issue of a tribute to be paid by England to the Roman Catholic Church; a tribute that Pope Urban V had renewed. Wycliffe voiced a loud opposition to this tribute and the Parliament, in 1366, as well, refused to pay it. The papal claim for tribute was revised a few years later and in 1374 Wycliffe, with several others, was sent as a delegate to Bruges to discuss the matter with the Pope’s ambassador. This of course would be the least confrontational of all his disagreements with the Church.

His favor with the King grew steadily. One friend is quoted as having said that he had “the ‘house of Herod’ to guide him” (McFarlane, 63). Wycliffe, in 1374, referred to himself as “in a special sense the king’s clerk” (McFarlane, 63). This favor is most visibly displayed in the man’s appointment to the rector of Lutterworth in April of that same year. Though not quite yet passionate about reform, the following year at Lutterworth would be filled with a study of papal claims and followed by a series of articles and pamphlets against the practices and doctrines of “Romanism”. These works had a wide spreading and an almost immediate impact. Young men began flocking to Wycliffe for teaching and training; the morning star was beginning to twinkle.

The great fame that Wycliffe had is due in large part to the fact that his debates were brought before the public, the layman. The majority of his followers were educated laymen and some nobles; they were not theologians or ecclesiastics. By 1376 his teachings were being echoed in the sphere of the common man. So Loserth writes, “While he would at first have preferred to have these matters restricted in discussion to the classroom, he soon wanted them proclaimed from the very roof and would have temporal and spiritual lords take not of them” (457). Wycliffe saw corruption, self-indulgence, and materialism invading the “Bride of Christ”. He maligned the priests who stored up earthly possessions, and he boldly declared an opposition to the Church’s acceptance of this decadence. That stance alone would have made him favorable among the laity, but he followed up with a call to rectify these abuses. He was not merely complaining about his lack of these possessions, as some throughout history have suggested, but was clearly calling for a return to faithfulness to Scripture. Obedience to God’s written word was his desire.

Finally in 1377 the Church responded with a formal trial, or at least they tried. Wycliffe’s works from the mid to late 70s said a number of un-acceptable things; the most heretical being that king was above pope. On May 22 of this year Pope Gregory XI received a list of Wycliffe’s propositions, eighteen of which were condemned. The Papal bull did not find it’s way to England until the end of the year, but by mid November all were aware that Wycliffe was now officially a heretic. He was not immediately arrested, though the Church had made it clear that if Oxford withheld the rebel rouser they would lose many, if not all, of its privileges. McFarlane points out, with good humor, that though “He had the princes of the church against him does not, in fact, seem to have greatly troubled Wycliffe” (81). There were several attempts to put the man on trial but each time his patron, John of Gaunt, intervened on his behalf. John and his son Henry Percy were faithful protectors of their protégé. In the final stages of his life Wycliffe’s reform began to target not simply the abuses in the practice of the church, but the Church’s doctrines as well.

In 1378 he wrote a work in which he stated that the final authority in all things was not the pope, but Scripture. A.S.N. Lane states, “In…The Truth of Holy Scripture…he portrayed the Bible as the ultimate norm, by which the church, tradition, councils and even the pope must be tested. Scripture contains all that is necessary for salvation; there is no need for additional traditions” (753). It was this major conviction that eventually led the reformer to encourage a translation of the Bible into the modern English. The Word of God must not be only for the clergy, but for all man. Though he encouraged the translation there is doubt surrounding just how much Wycliffe himself was involved in that work. Nonetheless Wycliffe’s reforms had moved well beyond a mere declaration of corruption within the church. Now the reformer boldly proclaimed that it was the Church’s leaders, not he, who were the heretics.

Though his call for reform would not lead to any major changes to the Church his influence would be lasting. This first call paved the way for future protestations; specifically that of Luther’s and the Puritans. Martin Luther, in 1517, would be able to depend upon the work that Wycliffe had done nearly two centuries prior. When Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31 it was the subject of indulgences that initiated it. Wycliffe, however, had done his own writing on this subject. In his work On Indulgences he speaks to this issue.

I confess that the indulgences of the pope, if they are what they are said to be, are a manifest blasphemy, inasmuch as he claims a power to save men almost without limit, and not only to mitigate the penalties of those who have sinned, by granting them the aid of absolution and indulgences, that they may never come to purgatory, but to give command to the holy angels, that when the soul is separated from the body, they may carry it without delay to its everlasting rest…(Lindberg, 15).

His followers The Lollards, Wycliffe’s own evangelists, also helped prepare the way for the English Reformation in the time of the reign of King Henry VIII. Their work in distributing the Wycliffe Bible and by an engendering of general discontent with the Roman Church tilled the ground for the planting of the Reformation seeds. The man’s own personal writings would influence the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus as well.

The church’s final response came in 1428 when the dug up the bones of Wyclif and burned them to ash. Lane gives the following fitting quote from one later chronicler: “They burn his bones to ashes and cast them into the Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus the brook conveyed his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas and they into the main ocean. And so the ashes of Wyclif are symbolic of his doctrine, which is now spread throughout the world” (754). While it is the sad truth that his battle for reform did not bring about any great changes in his own life, it, like his ashes, in time, finally spread all the way to Christian Europe; and that “Morning Star” was a lamp unto the feet of those who came after him.

Works Cited:

Kenny, Anthony. Wyclif. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
Lane, A.S.N. “John Wyclif.” Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Ed. Timothy
Larsen. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003. 753-754.
Lindberg, Carter. The European Reformations. Malden: Blackwell, 1996.
_____________. The European Reformations Sourcebook. Malden: Blackwell, 2000.
Loserth, Johann. “John Wyclif.” The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious
Knowledge. Ed. Samuel Jackson. XII. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977. 454-467.
McFarlane, K.B. John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Non-conformity. London:
English Universities Press, 1952.