WYCLIF, JOHN. - English heresiarch, born, apparently, at the castle of Wycliffe-on-Tees, in Yorkshire, property of the family, probably in 1324 (Herbert B. Workmann, his latest biographer, places his birth in 1328), died at Lutterworth on 31 Dec. 1384.
I. LIFE
He possessed all the characteristics of a Yorkshireman: a proud and punctilious spirit.His family and his village have remained Catholic down to the present day. W. soon left his ancestral land to become and remain always an “Oxford man,” that is, an intellectual enamoured of his learning and his ideas. He probably arrived at Oxford around 1345; but from 1349 to 1353 he had to interrupt his studies because of the Black Death. In 1353 he became a master at Balliol College and rector or curate of Fillingham. When he was ordained priest is unknown. In 1363 he appointed a vicar to replace him and returned to Oxford. Already in the preceding year he had obtained another benefice; he thus practised the “plurality” of benefices as well as “absenteeism,” abuses characteristic of that time which he was later to criticize so vigorously. His theological studies, begun in 1363, were crowned by his degree in the autumn of 1372. In 1368 he had exchanged the parish of Fillingham for that of Ludgershall. From 1370, while still a mere bachelor, he had begun to teach, commenting on the Sentences of P. Lombardo. His De benedicta Incarnatione dates from 1370; in 1375 he entered the service of the crown of England as peculiaris regis clericus. This was to be of great importance to him. The Apostolic See was then at Avignon, where one French pope succeeded another. France was at war with England; this increased among the English their distrust of the Holy See. W. soon became the leader of an anti-papal movement in England, presenting himself as a religious reformer and reformist theologian.
II. WORKS
From as early as 1374 W. devoted himself to extensive theological activity. He had obtained from the Crown a highly lucrative parish at Lutterworth (south of Leicester), renouncing the benefice of Ludgershall. Subsequently, by appointing a substitute there as well, he was able to return to Oxford, after taking part in a diplomatic mission to Bruges. He then published, one after another, the following works, which form a kind of theological summa: De dominio divino (1375); De civili dominio (1375);De veritate Scripturae (1378); De Ecclesia (1378), which was later extensively used by G. Huss; De Ordine christiano (1379); De apostasia (1379); De Eucharistia (1379); Confessio (May 1381); De blasphemia (March 1382); Trialogus (autumn 1382), the latter being considered one of the most important; Opus evangelicum e De citationibus frivolis (1383-84); De quator sectis novellis (Aug. 1384). He also published tracts, occasional writings, and promoted a new English translation of the Bible. He then placed himself at the head of that reform of the Church insistently called for by all since the Council of Vienne. He gathered around himself popular preachers and, on his own initiative, sent them throughout the country under the name of “poor priests” (poor priesters), a name soon changed in popular speech into that of Lollards, lollards (from lollen or lullen, to perform a song of praise).
III. CONDEMNATION
To answer for such innovations, he was summoned in February 1377 by Bishop Guglielmo di Courtenay to St Paul’s in London. But W. was under the high protection of the Court. Pope Gregorio X condemned him and summoned him to appear before his tribunal. This summons, however, was regarded as an attack on English liberties, and W. responded with a Protestatio and certain Conclusiones in which he identified the Pope with the Antichrist. W. soon found himself embroiled in all the social movements of his troubled age. Having fallen out with the Court, he sided with the rebellious peasants in 1381. Guglielmo di Courtenay, who became archbishop-primate of Canterbury on 9 September 1381, held a Synod from 17 to 21 May 1382: all W.’s doctrines were condemned there. Two other Synods struck at his friends in Oxford. After this W. was forced to leave the University and withdraw to his parish of Lutterworth. Struck by paralysis in November 1382, he recovered, returned to his work, and entered the years of his most intense activity. On 28 December 1384, while attending Mass in his parish church, a new attack carried him to the grave three days later. He was given a religious funeral, since he had not been expressly excommunicated. The Council of Constance condemned his writings on 4 May 1415 and ordered the exhumation of his remains. The bishop of Lincoln, on whom Lutterworth depended, had been a disciple of W. and did not carry out the order; but on 9 December Pope Martino V renewed the Council’s sentence, and Bishop Fleming had W.’s bodily remains exhumed and burned; his ashes were cast into the Swift (spring of 1428).IV. DOCTRINE
The doctrines of W., condensed into 45 propositions, were condemned at the Council of Constance (4 May 1415), and subsequently in two bulls of Martin V in 1418. They correspond to the 24 propositions already proscribed by the Synod convened by William of Courtenay in May 1382. W. attributes dominium, or sovereignty, to God alone, distinguishing it from potestas, possessio, and usus. Sovereignty or dominion belongs only to God and, under God, to the temporal sovereign. W. therefore excludes the “eminent dominion of the papacy” over civil goods; he rejects both the direct and indirect power of the pope in the civil sphere. But, even in the case of legitimate temporal sovereigns, W. subordinates the exercise of their power to the state of grace. No one is a temporal sovereign if he is in a state of rebellion against the eternal sovereign. A man who is in a state of mortal sin can possess neither sovereignty nor property (prop. 15, condemned at Constance; Denz-U, 595). On the contrary, “every man in a state of grace has real sovereignty over the entire universe,” a proposition implying the communism of the elect. In reality, however, since God alone knows the elect, W.’s propositions were reduced to revolutionary ideas, without any practical result.W. admitted two principles concerning biblical matters. The Bible contains the whole of Revelation, and is distinguished by itself from every profane writing. No text of the Fathers, popes, or councils has value except insofar as it rests upon the Bible. The Bible is the law of God, the one and complete Code of human faith and morality. All the evils of the Church arise from ignorance of the Bible. Knowledge of the Bible is a condition of salvation, at least as regards the New Testament; according to W., the Bible is accessible to every intelligence, even the least capable.
It was above all in ecclesiological matters that W. erred, giving rise to the heresy of John Hus. Most of the 45 propositions of W. condemned at Constance belong to the doctrine of the Church. According to W., the Church comprises three parts: the Church triumphant in heaven, the Church militant on earth, and the “sleeping” Church in purgatory. This last expression seems to indicate that W. does indeed admit purgatory, but a purgatory without any punishment, since the souls there are “sleeping.” W. speaks chiefly of the Church militant and defines it as the totality of the predestined: universitas praedestinatorum. The true members of the Church, therefore, are only the elect, the only ones known to God; one may be found in the Church, and may even be a leader of the Church—a priest, bishop, or pope—without nevertheless truly belonging to the Church, if one is not predestined. The visible Church is not the invisible Church. The predestined form the Body of Christ, but the preseciti (or reprobate) form the body of Antichrist. The struggle between the City of God and the City of the devil is the whole of human history. The propositions condemned at the Council of Constance concern above all the denial of the right of ownership among ecclesiastics (propp. 10, 32, 33, 36, 39), and since the entire medieval ecclesiastical system was founded upon “benefices,” the whole Church of that time was radically condemned. The religious Orders that possessed property were no less attacked than beneficed clerics (propp. 44, 45, 20-24, 31-36). The mendicant Orders, which had dared to censure W. concerning his Eucharistic doctrine, were not spared by him. The 24th proposition, in fact, stated: “The friars are obliged to earn their living by manual labor and not by going begging.” It may therefore be affirmed that W. condemned the entire ecclesiastical system then in existence and considered valueless any censures that the Church might possibly issue against him. After the condemnation inflicted upon him by the Pope, W. became the declared enemy of the papacy: “the Pope,” he said, “is not the head, the life, or the root except, perhaps, of those who act wickedly within the Church.”
W. also rejected wholesale what the Church taught concerning indulgences (prop. 42). As regards the Eucharist, W. professed realism in philosophy in the most absolute and uncompromising manner, that is, the transcendent reality of universals. Everything that exists is just as necessary as God, and everything occurs according to an absolute necessity (prop. 27); consequently, nothing can be annihilated, and bread and wine therefore can be neither annihilated nor transubstantiated. The substance of the bread and wine remains together with the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ. The dogma of transubstantiation is a heresy dating back no further than Innocent III. He professed consubstantiation, which Luther was later to adopt. Of Penance he retained only contrition, judging Confession superfluous and useless (prop. 7); he asserted that the Sacrament of Orders is not necessary either for consecrating the Eucharist or for hearing confession and granting absolution.
W.’s errors had a great influence in England, where they were spread by the Lollards. His posthumous activity relates above all to the heresy of John Hus and the Hussites. As regards Luther, it is certain that he became acquainted with Hus, and through Hus with W., only after he had already professed all his particular errors; it cannot therefore be maintained that he underwent their direct influence.