Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/130

 twenty. So far, then, as there is any force in these considerations, it may be inferred that Wyclif was not more than twenty years old in 1340; and this would point to 1320 as the earliest probable date of his birth. Since he died a fairly old and broken man in 1384, it does not appear to be safe to assign a later date.

During the third and fourth decades of his life, Wyclif must have been accumulating the stores of learning on which his academic repute was primarily founded. Above all he would be deeply immersed in the study of the Schoolmen, with whose writings he afterward showed a familiar acquaintance. It has been said that he probably had the opportunity of listening to Bradwardine and Ockham. Marsiglio's Defensor Pacis would be easily within his reach. The famous Bishop Grosteste, whom the Schoolmen called Lincolniensis, was still a name to charm with in Oxford. The Franciscan Bacon thought him pre-eminent in the sciences, and even John Tyssyngton—a doughty opponent of Wyclif—declared that he paled the modern doctors as the sun paled the moon. Matthew of Paris wrote of him that" he was a manifest confuter of the pope and the king, the blamer of prelates, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the support of scholars, a preacher to the people, the persecutor of the incontinent, the sedulous student of all scripture, the hammer and the despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable." Strike out the single word "king," and this character would