John Wyclife

John Wyclife

Introduction

The heart and centre of this paper is to critically investigate the feature of John Wyclife. Our subject adds us back to the fourteenth century. Europe in the fourteenth 100 years presents a image which has more of unhappiness than of gladness in it. Edward III is on the throne of England; his glorious triumphs depart a train of misery behind them, but the conflict with France directs to good outcomes in so far as it encourages the development of nationwide feeling and the beginnings of vernacular literature. John XXII lives at the glimpse of Rome, but Rome is at Avignon, so to talk, for the Babylonish Captivity has currently begun. The Papal assertions had arrive to their zenith in Boniface VIII, who opened the fourteenth 100 years with a magnificent and financially money-making Jubilee, and announced with better audacity in his Bull "Unam Sanctam" "that it was entirely essential to salvation for every human animal to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." "Pride goeth before decimation, and an haughty essence before a fall" (Prov. xvi. 18). From that time a down turn may be traced in the treasures of the Papacy. It is glimpsed first of all in the tacit proposal of Boniface VIII and his successors to the Kings of France. The Papacy becomes the animal of a municipal power, and that municipal power is not even an Italian government. Hence the magnificence of Avignon, while Rome, abandoned by the Popes, declines into a state of anarchy, and is in hazard of mislaying all her very vintage prestige.



Wycliffe's Early Days

Such were some of the happenings in Europe when John de Wycliffe was a baby in the nursery; and his mother, Catherine, the woman of the manor of Wycliffe; marvelled, as all fond mothers manage, what assess her child would make in the world. We understand exceedingly little about his early life. He was a Yorkshireman of the North Riding, and he had all the sturdiness and self-reliance of expectation of the Yorkshireman, as well as other characteristics, which life at Oxford did not do well in impairing. The little manor of Wycliffe was close to Richmond, and as a young man John should have discerned that the archdeaconry of Richmond was habitually held by an absentee, either a foreign Cardinal or Bishop or a highly ranked domestic of the King. This bad was so general that it was before his eyes while he went, and we can realise the disputes in his sermons contrary to the earnings of a therapy being dispatched out of the homeland to an absentee cardinal.

In 1342 the fief of Richmond passed from the hands of its previous lords of John of Gaunt, and Richmond became one of the names of the dwelling that was after renowned by the title of Lancaster. This intended that John of Gaunt became John Wycliffe's overlord-a detail which is not without its bearing on some happenings in the vocation of the future ...