Wycliffe, JOHN (whose family name is also spelt Wyclif, Wiclif, Wickliffe, and in some thirty other ways), is believed to have sprung from a family which held the manor of Wycliffe on Tees, and to have been born at Hipswell, near Richmond, Yorkshire, about 1325. Of his early life we know nothing, except that he distinguished himself at Oxford, where he was a popular teacher. The first authentic mention of his name is in 1360, when he was master of Balliol College. He resigned the mastership soon afterwards on taking the college living of Fillingham. This he exchanged in 1368 for Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire, probably to be nearer Oxford, where his chief interests centred. Meanwhile he had for a short time held the wardenship of Canterbury Hall, having been appointed by Archbishop Islip, and deprived by Islip's successor, Simon Langham. These changes involved the question whether the hall should belong to monks or to secular priests, and Wycliffe attempted to defend his position, but after three years' litigation the papal court decided against him.
Wycliffe was already known beyond the university, and held some office, probably that of royal chaplain, at court, where he was consulted by the government, and occasionally employed as a pamphleteer. Thus on one occasion we find him defending the refusal of tribute demanded by the pope, and on another writing an apology for John of Gaunt as to infringement of the right of sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. In 1374 he was presented by the crown to the rectory of Lutterworth (q.v.), and later in the same year was sent as a commissioner to Bruges to treat with ambassadors from the pope concerning provisions and reservations of ecclesiastical benefices, abuses that caused much indignation in England. Wycliffe was no doubt chosen as a recognised opponent of papal intrusion, but less zealous colleagues were associated with him, and nothing of importance was accomplished. On his return he was appointed to a prebend at Westbury, which he at once resigned, probably because he could not consistently hold such preferment.
The next years were full of strenuous activity, which gained him support among the nobles and the London citizens. As yet the chief error charged against him was his maintenance of a right in the secular power to control the clergy and even to withdraw endowments. Such teaching was specially offensive at a time when a party among the nobility, headed by the Duke of Lancaster, was endeavouring to exclude churchmen from the great offices of state which they had been accustomed to hold. The resentment of the bishops showed itself in a summons to Wycliffe to appear before the archbishop in St Paul's, on February 19, 1377. He obeyed, but before the council could get to business it was broken up by an unseemly quarrel between the Bishop of London and the Duke of Lancaster. The pope now took the matter in hand, and in May addressed a series of bulls to the king, the bishops, and the university of Oxford, bidding them to imprison Wycliffe and make him answer before the archbishop and the pope. It was several months before any attempt was made to obey the pope's commands, and when at last some half-hearted proceedings were undertaken, they were interrupted by a mob and put an end to by an order from the young king's mother. The prosecution had little effect upon Wycliffe's position, for while it was going on he was consulted by the Great Council as to the right of forbidding the papal agents to take money out of the realm.
The whole fabric of the church was now (1378) shaken by the election of a second pope; the spiritual allegiance of Europe was divided, and the shock was increased by the scandalous methods to which the rivals resorted in their strife. The schism affected Wycliffe deeply. Hitherto he had attacked the manifest abuses in the church, but he now began to strike at its constitution, and declared that it would be better without pope or prelates. He denied the priestly power of absolution, and the whole system of enforced confession, of penances, and indulgence, that was bound up with it. Up to this time his controversial works had been written in Latin, and couched in the scholastic forms of which he was a master; he now appealed to the people in their own language, and began to issue the series of popular tracts which gained him the distinction of being the first writer of English prose. He organised a body of itinerant preachers, his 'poor priests,' who spread his doctrines widely through the country, and, most important of all, he began his translation of the Bible, of which as yet there was no complete English version. The work seems to have been carried through rapidly with the aid of his disciples, and was extensively circulated. See BIBLE, p. 127.
Thus far his novel views had met with much acceptance both among the gentry and the people, but he entered upon more dangerous ground when in 1380 he assailed the central dogma of transubstantiation. A convocation of doctors, called together by the chancellor of Oxford, condemned his theses and forbade him to maintain them in the university. He refused to obey, and appealed to the king, but the court was not prepared to defend formal heresy. In 1382 Archbishop Courtney convoked a council at the Blackfriars' Convent and condemned Wycliffite opinions as represented in twenty-four theses. Wycliffe's followers were arrested, and after some time were all compelled to recant. For some unknown reason Wycliffe was not judged. He withdrew from Oxford to Lutterworth, where, in spite of a stroke of paralysis, he continued his incessant literary activity. His work in the next two years, uncompromising in tone, is astonishing in quantity, and shows no falling off in power, but on the 28th December 1384 he was again struck with paralysis, and died on the 31st. He had received a summons to appear before the pope, but had excused himself mainly on the ground of ill-health.
The characteristic of Wycliffe's teaching was its insistence on inward religion in opposition to the formalism of the time. As a rule he attacked the established practices of the church only so far as he thought they had degenerated into mere formal or mechanical uses. Thus he admits that confession may commonly be useful, and that in such cases it is a duty to resort to it, but maintains that it is a matter that rests with a man's conscience. The law which enforced confession once a year made it, he thought, a matter of form, and gave an opportunity of mischief to bad or incompetent priests. He allowed the use of images as an incentive to devotion, but denounced as idolatrous any regard for the image itself. In like manner he maintained the duty of receiving all the ordinances prescribed by the church, while saying that under special conditions they may be dispensed with, as 'God is not bound by sensible sacraments.' There has been much misapprehension of his celebrated doctrine of 'dominion as founded in grace.' According to this no one has true dominion over anything unless he is in a state of grace. This has been supposed to mean that the truly religious have a right to seize all possessions, and has been naturally scouted as subversive of society. But with Wycliffe the doctrine was purely ideal. Lordship, he says, has nothing to do with civil possession, but in the truest sense everything belongs to him for whom all things work together for good, while the wicked has no real lordship over possessions that only help him to final condemnation. The practical value of the doctrine lay in its appeal to the conscience; by an analogy with the feudal law he tried to bring home to every one his responsibility to God as his chief lord. Of the personal appearance and demeanour of Wycliffe we know little, and his portraits cannot be relied on as authentic. We are told that he was thin and worn, and that he added to wide accomplishments a charm of manner which won the regard of all with whom he had to do. His bitterest opponents had no charge to bring against his character, and his courage is shown by the frankness with which in his latest writings he maintained his opinions, although they had been publicly condemned. The influence of his teaching was wide-spread in England, and, though persecution prevented its appearance, it continued to work up to the time of the Reformation. It was manifested more strikingly in Bohemia, where Huss (q.v.) avowed himself an admirer and pupil of Wycliffe, large parts of whose works he adapted and published as his own. Thirty years after Wycliffe's death forty-five articles extracted from his writings were condemned as heretical by the Council of Constance, which ordered the bones of the heretic to be dug up and burned, a sentence executed thirteen years later.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Wycliffe's Bible (two versions in parallel columns, 1850); Select English works (3 vols. 1869-71); English works hitherto unprinted (1880); Latin works (Wyclif Soc., 17 vols. 1882-92). See, besides earlier Lives by Lewis (1723) and Vaughan (1828), John Wycliffe and his English Precursors, by Lechler (trans. by Lorimer, 1884), R. L. Poole's Wycliffe and Movements for Reform (1889), Loserth's Wyclif and Hus (1884), L. Sergeant's study (1892), G. M. Trevelyan's Age of Wycliffe (1899), and works cited at LOLLARDS.