Imagine growing up in an England where the Bible existed only in Latin, locked away in the language of priests and Oxford scholars. It was in that closed world that John Wycliffe, a respected professor and theologian, decided that the Scriptures also belonged to the common people, not only to the clergy.
Born around 1330 near Wycliffe-on-Tees, in Yorkshire, he arrived at Oxford while still young. He became a master of Balliol College and later a doctor of theology, recognized for his sharp logic and dense writings on philosophy and canon law.
His studies led him to question the temporal power of the Church: the ownership of land, the wealth of the clergy, and the pope’s authority over civil affairs. In 1377, Pope Gregory XI condemned nineteen of his propositions as dangerous errors.
For years, Wycliffe escaped harsher punishment thanks to the protection of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, one of the most powerful men in England. That support, however, also had political motives: the duke saw in Wycliffe a useful ally for weakening the wealth and power of the clergy, not merely a theologian he agreed with. Around 1378, when Wycliffe’s ideas became too radical even for that alliance, Gaunt’s support cooled. His theory that only those living in a state of grace possess legitimate dominion over property and authority was seen, both by contemporaries and by later historians, as one of the weakest points of his thought, of uncertain practical reach and potentially destabilizing.
Even so, Wycliffe did not back down from his central conviction. He argued that final authority rested in Scripture, not in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and came to insist that the Bible should circulate in English, the language of the common people, and not only in Latin.
The translation that bears his name did not come entirely from his own pen: collaborators such as Nicholas of Hereford and John Purvey carried out much of the work, and more recent studies suggest that his personal role in the actual translation may have been smaller than tradition credits him with. Even so, the initiative and the theological conviction behind it were his.
He also trained lay preachers, later called Lollards, who carried the translated Bible and the preaching of the gospel to homes and villages throughout England. Wycliffe stated that he disapproved of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, but his ideas, even without his consent, were invoked by some of its leaders.
Persecuted by the hierarchy, he left Oxford that same year and withdrew to the parish of Lutterworth, where he died in 1384 after a stroke. Decades later, the Council of Constance declared him a heretic, and his bones were exhumed and burned in 1428.
Today he is remembered as the morning star of the Reformation: the light that announced, more than a hundred years before Martin Luther, that the Word of God belongs to every people, in whatever language they speak.
