Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/752

Rh 710 WYCLIFFE suspicion of unfairness. The bulls truly stated Wycliffe s intellectual lineage ; lie was following in the error of Marsiglio of Padua ; and the articles laid against him are concerned entirely with questions agitated between church and state how far ecclesiastical censures could lawfully affect a man s civil position, and whether the church had a right to receive and hold temporal endowments. The bulls were addressed (May 22) to the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishcp of London, the university of Oxford, and the king. The university was to take Wycliffe and send him to the prelates; the latter were then to examine the truth of the charges and to report to the pope, Wycliffe being meanwhile kept in confinement. The execution of the papal bulls was impeded by three separate causes, the king s death on the 21st June ; the tardy action of the bishops, who enjoined the university to make a report, instead of simply sending Wyclifi e to them ; and the unwillingness of the university to admit external authority, and, above all, the pope s right to order the imprisonment of any man in England. The con vocation, indeed, as the St Albans chronicler l states with lamentation, made serious objections to receiving the bull at all ; and in the end it merely directed Wycliffe to keep within his lodgings at Black Hall for a time. If the university was disposed to favour the reformer, the Government was not less so. John of Gaunt was for the moment in retirement ; but the mother of the young king appears to have adopted his policy in church affairs, and she naturally occupied a chief position in the new council. As soon as parliament met in the autumn of 1377 Wycliffe was consulted by it as to the lawfulness of prohibiting that treasure should pass out of the country in obedience to the pope s demand. Wycliffe s affirmative judgment is contained in a state paper still extant ; and its tone is plain proof enough of his confidence that his views on the main question of church and state had the support of the nation. 2 Indeed he had laid before this same parliament his answer to the pope s bulls, with a defence of the soundness of his opinions. His university, moreover, confirmed his argument ; his tenets, it said, were true (i.e., orthodox), though their expression was such as to admit of an incorrect interpretation. But Wycliffe was still bound to clear himself before the prelates who had summoned him, and early in 1378 he appeared for this purpose in the chapel of Lambeth Palace. His written defence, expressed in some respects in more cautious language than he had previously used, was laid before the council; but its session was rudely interrupted, not only by an inroad of the London citizens with a crowd of the rabble, but also by a messenger from the princess of &quot;Wales enjoining them not to pass judgment against Wycliffe ; and thus a second time he escaped, either without sentence, or at most with a gentle request that he would avoid dis cussing the matters in question. Meanwhile his &quot;pro- testatio &quot; was sent on to Rome. In the autumn of this year Wycliffe was once more called upon to prove his loyalty to John of Gaunt. The duke had violated the sanctuary of Westminster by sending a band of armed men to seize two knights who had taken refuge there. They resisted, and one of them was killed. After a while the bishop of London excommunicated all concerned in the crime (excepting only the king, his mother, and his uncle), and preached against the culprits 1 When he says that the bull was only received at Oxford shortly before Christmas, he is apparently confounding it with the prelates mandate, which is dated December 18 (Lewis, appendix xvii.) Chron. Angl, p. 173. 8 In one text of this document a note is appended, to the effect that the council enjoined silence on the writer as touching the matter therein contained (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 271). This, if true, was appar ently a measure of precaution. publicly at St Paul s Cross. The duke, fearing the anger of the Londoners, arranged that the ensuing parliament should be held at a safe distance, at Gloucester, and, it was rumoured, proposed to bring before it a sweeping scheme of spoliation of church property. Wycliffe was required to write an apology for the duke s actions at Westminster. His paper, which is still preserved, and forms part of the De Ecclesia, seeks, without excusing the homicide, to lay down the limits within which the privilege of asylum is permissible, and maintains that the duke was right in invading the sanctuary in order to bring escaped prisoners to justice. But the duke s whole behaviour seems to have been high-handed, and Wycliffe can with difficulty be excused from a charge of subserviency to his patron. The year 1378 forms a turning point in Wycliffe s career. The schism in the papacy caused by the election in September of Clement VII. in opposition to Urban VI. slowly decided Wycliffe towards a more revolutionary attitude with respect to the Roman see, a power which he now convinced himself was at the root of the disorders of the church. He set on foot an active propaganda, choosing the two special means of sending forth his &quot; poor &quot; or &quot; simple priests &quot; to preach pure doctrine throughout the country, and of making the first complete English version of the Bible.. This latter work was mainly executed by Wycliffe himself, but his friend Nicholas Hereford did part of the Old Testament. Afterwards the whole was revised by John Purvey, who assisted Wycliffe in his parish duty at Lutterworth, and finished his edition probably not long after the reformer s death. Most existing copies are of the latter redaction, which is printed in parallel columns with the older one in the great edition of the version edited by J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden (Oxford, 1851). Wycliffe s translation of the Bible, and still more his numerous English sermons and tracts, establish his now undisputed position as the founder of English prose writing. Wycliffe s itinerant preachers were not necessarily intended to work as rivals to the beneficed clergy. The idea that underlay their mission was rather analogous to that which animated Wesley four centuries later. Wycliffe aimed at supplementing the services of the church by regular religious instruction in the vernacular ; and his organization included a good number of men who held or had held respectable positions in their colleges at Oxford. The influence of their teaching was soon felt throughout the country. The common people were rejoiced by the plain and homely doctrine which dwelt chiefly on the simple &quot; law &quot; of the gospel, while they no doubt relished the denunciation of existing evils in the church which formed, as it were, the burthen of such discourses. The feeling of disaffection against the rich and careless clergy, monks, and friars was widespread but undefined. Wycliffe turned it into a definite channel (he was now persuaded that the friars were as bad as the m onks) ; he insensibly passed from an assailant of the papal to an assailant of the sacerdotal power ; and in this way he was led to reject the distinctive symbol of that power, the doctrine of tran- substantiation. It was in the summer of 1381 ;i that Wycliffe propounded at Oxford a set of theses, substituting for the accredited doctrine of the church one which 3 This is the date given in the Fasciculi Zizaniorum. Wood, how ever, makes Berton chancellor in 1380 and 1382. But if Wycliffe s heresy was first put forth in the latter year there seems to be hardly time for the condemnation and then for the archbishop s summons to the London council in May. It is safest therefore to leave the date of the Fasciculi Zizaniorum undisturbed. The Peasants Revolt in June 1381, and the murder of Archbishop Sudbury, may sufficiently account for the interval between the Oxford and the London pro ceedings.