Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIII

The Hampton Court Conference

The biggest impact that King James had on the Church of England—and perhaps even of English culture way beyond the Established Church—is the edition of the Bible which he commissioned and which was first printed in 1611 and which is popularly known as “The King James.” 

This was not the first English language bible.  Bits and fragments of the Scriptures had been put into the various vernaculars of Anglo-Saxon England as far back as Bishop Aldhelm (d. 709) and the Veneable Bede (d.735).  Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (d. 899) had portions of the Pentateuch, including the Ten Commandments put in Old English.  He also had about fifty of the psalms translated from the Latin Vulgate.  England’s Protoprotestant, John Wycliffe, produced an English translation of the Vulgate in the late fourteenth-century.  It is slavishly faithful to the Latin text even when, much like Pope Benedict’s current Missal, the borrowed syntax makes the English unintelligible.  Because it was translated from the Vulgate and not the original languages (Hebrew and Greek), later Protestant authors such as Tyndale and Coverdale ignored Wycliffe’s work, but Catholic translators preparing the Rheims Douai translation (1582) however borrowed considerably from it. 

The English reformer and Protestant martyr, William Tyndale, published an English version of the New Testament in 1525-26 and the Pentateuch in 1530.  When Tyndale died in 1536—execution by strangling at the hands of the (Catholic) Emperor’s executioner to whom he had been betrayed by agents of Henry VIII who, though he broke from Rome, had no use for Protestants—the work was not yet complete.  Tyndale’s translation betrayed several strong Protestant biases.  For example the Greek εκκλεσια was translated as “congregation” rather than “Church” to de-emphasize the scriptural roots of the Church as institution.  Similarly the word πρεσβγτερ (presbyter from which we get the English word “priest”) became “senior,” and the phrases “to do penance” became “repent.” 

Myles Coverdale was authorized by Henry VIII (after the break with Rome) to produce an English language bible.  This book was published in 1538 and is often called “The Great Bible.”  Coverdale drew heavily on Tyndale’s work, but avoided the problematic vocabulary choices that did not fit Henry’s Catholic (though not Roman) biases. While in exile in Geneva under Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) Coverdale collaborated on a more Protestant translation in English, the Geneva Bible.  This is the translation used by John Knox, William Shakespeare, John Bunyan and John Donne and it served the Church of England well for over fifty years.  It would continue to be used by the Puritan party—because of its Calvinist bias in translation—and would be the first English language bible brought to America first to Jamestown and later to Massachusetts Bay on the Mayflower.

The Geneva Bible pleased the Puritans, but the High-Church party was not overly happy with its Reformed bias and neither was King James.  Remember James did not like the Puritan approach to the Church as James saw the link between episcopacy and kingship: “No Bishops, no King.”  Within six months of his coronation,  James summoned a conference at Hampton Court where it was agreed that a new translation, freed of the Puritan bias against “The Church” and its bishops, be prepared. 

This decision marks a very important development in the Church of England.  In Elizabeth’s day Calvinism and the Puritan faction within the Church of England that held rigidly to Puritan doctrines were allowed pretty free rein in determining the direction of the Church of England.  A “High-Church” party, more minded towards both Armenianism and a more Sacramental worship had smoldered beneath the surface of the Church of England but could not make much progress in balancing the rabidly Protestant direction of the Puritan controlled Church.    (Armenianism taught the doctrine of free will as opposed to Calvinism’s double pre-destination by which a person had been determined by God from all eternity either to salvation in heaven or damnation in hell.)  Elizabeth was no Calvinist but to achieve her political goals she needed the support of the House of Commons in which the Puritan faction long held power.   James set on a different course than Elizabeth’s religion-by-political-convenience.  Under James the Crown would take the theological lead.  This policy would, in the long run, be disastrous but we will get to that story in time.  

At James’ invitation, forty-seven scholars—all but one, clergy—divided into six committees (two each for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and one for Westminster) divided up the work.  The committees included members of both the Puritan and the High Church parties, though the King made his wish clear that the Bible not be slanted towards the Presbyterian/Puritan ecclesiology.  The scholars were commissioned to work from the ancient languages (Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New and for the Apocrypha), though they drew on existing English Translations (Tyndale, Coverdale, the Bishop’s Bible, and even the Rheims-Douai) for guidance.  In 1611 they finished their work and printed their Bible.

The King James has served well not only the Church of England or the Anglican Communion, but most Protestant denominations.  Only the mid-twentieth century did other translations become popular among Protestant groups and even today there are various religious groups that will not accept any other translation as the revealed Word of God.   But in the King James were planted the seeds of a religious division that would eventually bring down the monarchy and tear England—and its Church—apart.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXII

The Chapter House of York

Minster

In our previous post we looked at John Wycliffe, the English priest and Oxford scholar who towards the end of the fourteenth century challenged the wealth of the Church.  The Lollards are said to be his followers but I suspect that Lollardy was a movement somewhat independent of Wycliffe but which found his teachings consistent with their beliefs and sort of hitched their cart to his horse.  There seems to have been a general agitation in England about the power and wealth of the institutional Church even before Wycliffe and certainly a resentment of the political influence of the Church both on the Crown and on the daily life of Englishmen. 
Wycliffe, even though he was a priest himself and had a rather comfortable living as the rector of Lutterworth, was scandalized by the wealth and worldliness of the clergy.  Moreover, there seems to have been some personal rancor in Wycliffe towards the hierarchy and the religious orders because of the way his own career at Oxford had been thwarted when Archbishop Langham replaced him as head of Canterbury Hall with a monk.  But personal issues aside, Wycliffe had legitimate reason for criticizing the Church and its hold over the economic and political structures of England.  I am not inclined to think that his voice was the trumpet that gave out the tune to which everyone else danced, however.  I think rather that Wycliffe was simply the scholar who systematically developed a theology that articulated what many people in England had already felt.  In other words, he gave voice more than he gave leadership to the rebellion against the Church.
Moreover, I estimate Wycliffe to have been sincere in his criticism while I think others were motivated by other and less noble reasons.  Wycliffe’s chief protector, John of Gaunt—uncle of the King (Richard II) and Regent during the King’s minority, and other nobles were jealous of the immense wealth in land held by the Church.  Their support for Wycliffe was based in their desire to secularize the lands belonging to the monasteries and to the various bishoprics of England and put these lands at the disposal of themselves and their fellow nobles.  Land represented wealth—land provided rents from the vast populations that lived on them and worked the land.  These rents were going to the Churches and abbeys and being poured into immense building projects of the medieval cathedrals and monasteries.  The rents were also providing for the vast libraries of the monasteries, the silk and brocade vestments used in worship, the gold and silver bejeweled altar ornaments.  Of course the production of such artifacts created employment among thousands of craftsmen, builders, quarrymen, and others hired by the Church, but they also provided what had become a very luxurious lifestyle for the monks and for the clergy. 
The pomp of the clergy not only excited the jealousy of the nobility, but alienated many of the working class folk as well.  Priests and friars talked about the poverty of Christ and his disciples but they themselves lived far from simple lives.  Pious folk would see Christ hanging naked on the crucifix but then be puzzled by the vestments worn by the clergy at his altar and even more disgusted by the elegant horses they rode or fine houses in which they lived attended by servants.  At the same time that the Church had accumulated so much corporate wealth, many individual priests charged exorbitant fees for baptisms and weddings and funerals.  The clergy had become a cash-making profession rather than a vocation of preaching the Gospel.  People felt trapped—their salvation depended on these rites but these rites were available only for great charge.
Thus when Wycliffe came along and said that the clergy should be poor and humble folk, ministering to the poor and humble as a peer and not as a great person who made his power felt over lesser ones (remember Matthew 20:25?)—his message resonated with many people.  When Wycliffe said that the True Church was not a collection of prelates and priests but of those pious souls of pure heart and good intention—souls known with certainty only to God—people felt inspired.  The clergy, on the other hand, felt threatened and betrayed—here, one of their own, was undermining their control and power.  They struck out at Wycliffe.   He was several times made to answer charges of heresy though he was never, in his lifetime, convicted.  Posthumously the Council of Constance condemned his writings and his exhumed corpse was burned as a heretic.  But striking at Wycliffe’s cadaver did not destroy the movement.  Those who adhered to his ideas were called “Lollards” from the middle Dutch word, lollaerd, a mumbler or one who mutters. 
There were many Lollards in late fourteenth and in fifteenth-century England. It wasn’t an organized movement.  There was no Lollard hierarchy.  Most continued going to Mass,  were married at the Church porch (as was the custom of the day),  had their children baptized, their dead buried with the rites of the Church.   One thing that did distinguished them from “good Catholics” was that they often possessed copies of the scriptures in English—Wycliffe had provided the first English translation since the days of King Alfred.   They would meet and discuss the scriptures.  Sometimes their ideas took them far afield of Catholic orthodoxy in regard to the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist or the ability of the priest to absolve sins.  They were seen as much a threat to the State as to the Church since over time they more and more became a movement among the working classes which resented not only the wealth of the Church but the wealth and political power of the nobility.  They would be the first to rally to Protestant ideas in the sixteenth century but in the meantime were often arrested, tried, and burned at the stake for their lack of religious orthodoxy and their political radicalism.  At Lambeth, the London residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, there is the famous “Lollards’ Tower” which was used as a prison for Lollards awaiting execution.  But we can see cracks appearing in the fabric of Catholic England a century and a half before Henry VIII.    And those Lollards who did die for their religious convictions became the heroes in the minds of many people—not for their distorted ideas of Christian doctrine but for the courage they showed in facing down the institutional Church even to the cost of their lives.  sanguis martyrum semen christianorum. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church XXI

The Church in England in the fourteenth century was rife for trouble and John Wycliffe was just the man to stir the hornet’s nest.  We have seen the anti-papal legislation of the Statutes of Provisors and of Praemunire that tried to limit papal power in England and, even more important, to stem the flow of English gold to Rome.  Geoffrey Chaucer would chronicle the amusing idiosyncrasies and corresponding dispiriting decay of the English religious scene at the end of the fourteenth century in the Canterbury Tales.  This was Wycliffe’s world.
John Wycliffe was born c 1323 in the Yorkshire village of Hipswell and after local primary school found himself at Oxford, probably about the age of fifteen as was then usual.  Though he would accept a number of Church appointments, Oxford would always remain the center of his life.  His career seems to have begun at Baliol, and he studied natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and theology.  Advancement to degrees was not the fairly straightforward things it is today and it took him over thirty years before he attained the doctorate in theology.  In the meantime he had served as the Master at Baliol and later as the head of Canterbury Hall—a residence for men preparing for the secular priesthood.  Wycliffe himself was a secular priest.  After only a few years at Canterbury Hall, the new Archbishop—Simon Langham—replaced Wycliffe as head of the Hall with a monk.  Wycliffe appealed his deprivation to Rome but without satisfaction.  Wycliffe seems to have turned against the monastic and religious clergy from this point. 
There was another event at this time that poisoned the feelings of many English towards the papacy.  If you remember our entry on King John, I mentioned that John had been forced to cede England to the Pope and receive it back as a feudal holding.  This was, as I said, largely symbolic but it did involve the paying of an annual tribute of one thousand silver marks.  This was at the time equivalent to about  £ 660; today it would be several million dollars.  In any event, over the years the tribute had ceased being paid to the pope and no one noticed.  Then in 1365 Pope Urban V demanded the tax once again.  Parliament—remembering the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire—reacted strongly and declared that King John and, indeed no king or other person, had the authority to cede the sovereignty of England and no tribute would be paid.    The pope backed down but anti-papal feeling was running high in England.  And remember at this time the popes were living in Avignon where they were very much disposed politically in favor of the French, the enemies of England. 
As a theologian, Wycliffe was particularly interested in the scriptures and espoused the older patristic approach of doing theology based in the scriptures rather than the new scholastic approach which saw theological principles in the light of Aristotelian logic.  His study of the scriptures gave him a desire that they should be available to the common people—at this time there was no English translation and the scriptures were available only in Latin.  Granted, more people knew Latin in the fourteenth century—any educated man (and the relatively few educated women) knew Latin—but that still was only a handful of the population.  Wycliffe had been “given the rectory” of Lutterworth—that is, appointed the rector (we would say pastor) of Lutterworth parish in Leicestershire and while he continued his work at Oxford he spent considerable time in the parish and it was there he made the first English translation of the scriptures in an attempt to make them accessible to the common person. 
Wycliffe’s reading of the scriptures soured him on the wealth and power of the institutional Church.  The Gospels, in particular, can do that. The extravagance of the papal court at Avignon was a scandal to him and the greed with which churchmen accumulated salaries and appointments in order to have more luxurious lives stood in sharp contrast with the poverty of Christ and his apostles.  Wycliffe saw the religious orders to be no better. The monasteries held vast wealth in lands and Church ornaments.  Orders such as the various mendicant groups—Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians—once founded in poverty had become known for good food and drink, comfortable life, and immoral behavior.  Wycliffe saw the hope for renewal of the Church in secular priests who would live poor lives among the people teaching and preaching the scriptures.   
Wycliffe believed that the true Church of Christ was a pure and poor Church, very different from the Institutional Church of the hierarchy and monks.  He spoke of an “invisible Church of the elect”—an idea that would surface two centuries later with John Calvin.  This “invisible Church” was comprised of those holy souls whom God had predestined to salvation.  No one knew with certainty who were among these forechosen.   You could look at a Sunday congregation or a pilgrimage assembled at Canterbury or the throngs of faithful gathered to see the Pope and only God knew who belonged to him and who did not.  Such a view made not only the hierarchy but the clergy themselves irrelevant to the plan of salvation and it is not surprising that the Church’s axe fell on the priest of Lutterworth.  Gregory XI dispatched to England five copies of a bull condemning Wycliffe in May 1377.  But Wycliffe had a protector in John of Gaunt, the uncle of Richard II and, during Richard’s minority, his regent.  Joan of Kent, the King’s mother, as well as Henry Percy, the Lord Marshal of England also supported him.  It was a question of England vs. the foreigner—always a flash point for the English. Many of the nobility supported Wycliffe because they were jealous of the land that the Church had accumulated and wanted to seize it; the London mob was also pro-Wycliffe as they too resented the wealth and power of the Church while they lived with struggle and hard work and had little to show for it. But in the end it was his Englishness that saved Wycliffe.  Wycliffe was one of them and represented England; the Pope was a foreign prince and they resented a foreign prince claiming authority in England.  Perhaps the bishops and even the Crown had eventually caved in to the papacy but in the hearts of many English, they still wanted independence. 
Wycliffe was indicted several times in episcopal courts and had to defend his doctrines but he never was convicted of heresy nor was he deprived of his living.  On December 28^th 1384, the feast of the Holy Innocents, while saying Mass in his parish church, he suffered a stroke and three days later he died.  He was buried beneath the floor of his church. 
Wycliffe’s ideas spread through the universities of Europe and in Prague they were taken up by an energetic and evangelical young chaplain, Jan Hus.  Hus was not so fortunate as Wycliffe.  He was charged with heresy and when he came to the Council of Constance to defend himself, the Emperor broke faith with the safe conduct he had been guaranteed and Hus was burned at the stake as a heretic.  The same council posthumously declared Wycliffe a heretic and at the orders of Pope Martin V, his body was exhumed some  31 years after his death, burned, and his ashes thrown into a local river.  But Wycliffe’s influence survived where his ashes did not.   

just an advisory--I will be travelling and at meetings the next week or so and my posts may be somewhat sporadic --hope not, but no promises.

Roots of the Reformation IV: The Bohemian Reformer



Jan Hus being burned at the stake
Bethlehem Chapel, Prague

 Wycliffe found a posthumous disciple in a land far distant from his English countryside.  Jan Hus was a devout young man who had spent his youth as a church chorister and altar-server in order to finance his education at the Charles University in Prague where he received first his bachelor’s and then his master’s degrees in Theology in 1396.  Four years later he was ordained priest and then, two years later, was named Rector of the University and University Preacher at the newly constructed  Betlémská Kaple or Bethlehem Chapel.  It was at this time that he was exposed to the writings of John Wycliffe, dead these sixteen years or so. Wycliffe’s writings radicalized the young priest and he used his university pulpit to call for reform in the Church and particularly reform of the clergy.

This was a tumultuous time in the Bohemian Church where the Archbishops usually stood loyal to the Roman claimant to the papal throne and the King—Wenceslaus IV—did not.  (We haven’t looked at the great Schism yet, but there is a slight mention of it on February 4^th 2011 post. Wenceslaus’ opposition to the Roman Claimants—Boniface IX succeeded by Innocent VII succeeded by Gregory XII was because Wenceslaus had been elected King of the Germans and was thus entitled to be crowned Emperor, but the Roman Popes were reluctant to acknowledge the claim and have him crowned.) 

It was only a few years before Hus’s preaching that John of Nepomuk had been murdered on the orders of King Wenceslaus.  Although hagiographers say he was murdered for refusing to divulge the queen’s confession to the jealous and suspicious Wenceslaus, it seems that he was murdered in retaliation for his installing an Abbot contrary to the King’s wishes, an Abbot who was loyal to the Roman Claimant, and the story of the Queen’s confession is a later embellishment.  Nevertheless in popular mythology the confession story stands and he is the symbol of protecting the secrecy of the confessional.  Beneath the conflict we can see that there is stress between the Crown and the Church and this gives us some  background for Hus.  The Roman party represented vested clerical interest; the Royal party—while probably indifferent to the issue of clergy morals—were the anti-clerical party if for no other reason than the clergy supported the Roman Claimant to the papacy.  You will notice that I am not saying that Wenceslaus supported the Avignon Claimant (Benedict XIII) for he really wasn’t enthused about Benedict and when a third papal line emerges with the Pisan Claimants Alexander V and then John XXIII, Wenceslaus will support them.  I know this is confusing but bear with me.  Suffice it to say that the clergy supported the Roman Pope; the King  and anti-clerical party did not.      

In 1403 the Archbishop of Prague was Zbynĕk Zajic who held office for political reasons and was without a serious theological background.  Like the King he (initially) did not support the Roman Claimant to the Papacy (Gregory XII).  Initially he supported Hus and his Reform preaching even though the clergy wanted the preaching stopped because Hus, in his enthusiasm with Wycliffe’s ideas, was denouncing them for their considerable wealth and poor morals.  

But then Hus got caught in a web of intrigue between the King Wenceslaus and the Archbishop.  The Archbishop switched his support to the Roman Pope, Gregory  XII, while the King (and Hus) supported Alexander V—the claimant who emerged from the Council of Pisa’s attempt to end the Western Schism.   Under Hus’ direction and with the king’s blessing, Wycliffe’s doctrines pervaded the University and spread throughout Bohemia.  Hus’ rode a wave of popularity because so many of the peasants and urban working classes resented the wealth of the Church and its vast estates.   

Hus’ call for the Church to disentangle itself from its vast wealth and its access to political power was a lost cause with the Catholic Church—and all three of its popes.  The Roman, Avignon, and Pisa claimants were all opposed to Wycliffe ‘s ideas as each wanted to be sole Pope of a wealthy and powerful Church.  As said above, Wenceslaus had thrown his lot in with the Pisan Claimant, Alexander V, and Hus, dependent on the King for his support of Hus’ calls for Reform, followed suit.  But when Alexander’s successor, anti-pope John XXIII declared a crusade against the king of Naples who was sheltering the Roman pope Gregory XII Hus found himself in a very uncomfortable position.  Hus could not support violence.  And when John offered indulgences to those who supported the crusade, Hus condemned the crusade and its sale of indulgences  saying that no pope or bishop could command believers to take up the sword   He reminded his followers of the Gospel command to “love your enemies; pray for your persecutors.   Hus’ followers then burned the bulls of anti-pope John XXIII,  not in loyalty to Gregory but in opposition to any pope—the institutional church, whichever of its claimants being Pope, was in their eyes only a coven of simoniacs.  Now the clergy had their revenge on Hus. The theology faculty of the University did not support Hus but many people did, especially from the lower classes.

Wenceslaus’ brother Sigismund of Hungry had outmaneuvered him in seeking the Imperial Crown and while he was not officially crowned until 1433 he was elected “King of the Romans”—the title of an Emperor-in-waiting in 1411.  He was Emperor in all but title and one of the expectations put on him—one of the reasons Wenceslaus who had a better claim to the title had been deposed from it in 1400—was to end the Great Schism.  To this end, Sigismund called a Council for Constance in 1415 and Hus was summoned to it to answer for his ideas.    The Council condemned both Wycliffe and Hus. 

Hus had travelled to Constance under a promise of safe-conduct issued by Sigismund and initially he lived in Constance as a free man, but was gradually imprisoned under ever more severe terms.  Sigismund was troubled by his arrest—and the danger of Hus’ being killed—but was assured that the pledge of safety he had given Hus was not binding as one did not have to keep one’s word with a heretic.     Hus was found guilty of heresy and, refusing to recant, was burned at the stake on July 6 1415.  His remains were thrown into the Rhine.

Hus did not follow all of Wycliffe’s ideas and one must be very careful to distinguish between them.  Wycliffe was a Nominalist and therefore could not accept the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Hus, on the other hand, proposed a doctrine called “impanation” in which Christ’s flesh and blood become the bread and the bread becomes Christ’s flesh and blood.  This is similar to but not exactly what Luther would teach and which is called “consubstantiation.”  In other words, Hus affirmed the Real Presence though he rejected the idea of “Transubstantiation” as an explanation for it. 

What really brought condemnation down upon Hus—and posthumously upon Wycliffe—was their identification of the Church not with the Institutional or hierarchical Church, but with the community of true believers.  Their understanding of the Church made papacy and hierarchy superfluous, indeed made an ordained clergy more or less superfluous, though neither ever taught that non-ordained could administer the Sacraments.  Their opinions—formed by the Donatist heresy—did however insist that unworthy ministers could not effectively celebrate the Sacraments.  Whereas Wycliffe’s followers were long to remain as an underground movement subversive to but within the Church, following Hus’ death, masses of people—primarily about the poor and the peasantry—went into open breach with the Catholic Church forming communities of their own.  The Moravian Brethren (sometimes called the Moravian Church) continue Hus’s heritage today.  A later group, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church broke away from the Catholic Church in the first quarter of the twentieth century and while they claim the name “Hussite” and their clergy are educated by the Hussite Theology Faculty in Prague, they reflect more the Old Catholic heritage that separated from Rome over questions of modernism and papal infallibility.   

The Roots of the Reformation III: Long before Luther

Howden Minster, an English
pre-Reformation Chuch

John Wycliffe is another proto-Protestant—one of those religious leaders who anticipated Luther in calling for a reform of the Church and whose preaching and teaching led to the formation, not of an alternative Church or community of believers, as with Peter Waldo and his Waldensians, but of groups of followers who existed as a dissenting movement that technically remained within the Catholic Church but without subscribing to many of its doctrines. 

Wycliffe, born 1328, was a Yorkshire man from the North of England which always had a different religious tradition than London and the southern counties, a tradition that looked less to Rome for leadership and a stronger sense of both Englishness and of the distinctive “Ecclesia Anglicana” heritage.  He was a scholar at Baliol College, Oxford where he studied mathematics, natural philosophy (the physical sciences), English and Roman Law, English history, theology and Philosophy.   This was an amazing spectrum of studies and he could well be called a Renaissance man although there was as yet no Renaissance, at least in England. Philosophically, he was a disciple of Ockham and the Nominalists and as such he was what we would call today, a deconstructionist.   He rejected “realism” and thus such doctrines as “transubstantion” did not sit easy with him.  Indeed, the one source of authority he recognized was The Bible—to which he had great devotion and which he managed to have translated in its entirety to English (from the Latin Vulgate) so as to be accessible to the common people.  His study of scripture convinced him that many of the doctrines of the Church—such as papal supremacy—were unsubstantiated by Scripture or even contrary to it.  Moreover, he differed from Catholic orthodoxy on several other points.  Influenced by the ancient Donatist doctrines, for example, he believed that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the worthiness of the minister.

Despite his lack of strict religious orthodoxy, he was recognized for his academic brilliance and Archbishop Simon Islip appointed him head of Canterbury Hall—an Oxford foundation which was meant to provide education for twelve priests or candidates for priesthood from the Archdiocese of Canterbury.  Islip’s successor, Simon Langham, replaced Wycliffe with a monk, however, and while Wycliffe appealed his case to the papal court the appeal was unsuccessful.  This may account in part for Wycliffe’s turning against both monasticism and the papacy.  

Like many of the Oxbridge dons, Wycliffe was supported by being given “a living” or “a rectory” which meant he was pastor of a parish which paid a handsome salary—handsome enough both to support him in his academic work and to pay for a “vicar” to actually live in the parish and tend to its pastoral needs.  Wycliffe held a number of rectories in his life but probably actually ministered only in the last two-- Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire and Lutterworth in Leistershire.  But from these rectories, when he was no longer teaching at Oxford, he issued a series of pamphlets and other materials that attacked corruption in the Church.  His Donatism shown through in his affirming that the “real” Church was not the represented  by the hierarchy and the visible society of baptized believers, but the association of those believers, known only to God, who were to be saved.  This naturally led him to a doctrine of predestination in which God not only knew but determined who would  be saved and who was to be lost.

Wycliffe not only undermined traditional Catholic Doctrines, but he directly assailed the papacy.  Remember that through most of this time the papacy was located at Avignon, just across the Rhone River from the realms of the King of France but very much under his influence.  The popes were mostly French at this time, as were the majority of the cardinals.  And the French were the enemies of the English.  This was not only the time of the Avignon papacy but of the Hundred Years War between France and England.  Wycliffe’s anti-papal polemics found a patriotic ear among the English. Wycliffe assailed the papacy for its wealth and claimed that various practices such as annates were simply simony.  Annates were the practice by which a man elevated to an ecclesiastical post—bishop, Archbishop, Abbot, even a canon or somewhat minor official—paid the pope the first year’s revenues of his new position.  We will hear much about them in this series.  Simony is the crime/sin of buying and selling Church office.   

As much as Wycliffe hated the papacy he hated monasticism even more.  He was a secular priest and he resented to claims to holiness that the monks made when often they were not only no better than himself and other parish priests, but when in fact they led lives far more indolent.  Initially supported by the Mendicant Orders—who themselves were often in mutual hatred with the Monastic Orders—Wycliffe soon turned on them too for their lack of holiness.  Read the medieval literature, Chaucer, Boccacio and others, and you will see that monks were seen to be lazy gluttonous characters more given to sleep and drink than to prayer, and friars (the mendicants) were womanizers and cheats.  These caricatures did not come out of thin air.  Not all monks were lazy and not all friars were lechers, but there was a need—a serious need—for reform in the clergy. 

The English Church, like the Church most place sin Europe, had great wealth in the centuries before the Reformation.  Bishops and Abbots, by virtue of their office, were great landowners and peers of the Realm.  Generations of bequests, donations, endowments, and monastic dowries—all usually made in grants of income-producing land and properties—made abbeys, cathedrals, and even parish churches very wealthy.  Great Lords and simple yeoman farmers alike were constrained in giving a tenth of the produce of their fields and orchards to the clergy in tithes.  The clergy had other customary charges that brought them revenue—the burial cloths and candles from funerals, wedding and christening fees, stipends for the blessing of fields and vineyards and orchards, and mass offerings.  While parish vicars were often underpaid, rectors of churches—often absentee—could usually count on a handsome income and as for canons, bishops, and other prelates, want was not at their doors.  Wycliffe—himself the holder of comfortable benefices—proposed the sending out of “poor priests” who would preach the gospel to the poor and evangelize the ordinary English man or woman. It would have been a brave step because the Church was losing its credibility fast among the middling sort of folk.   

Wycliffe’s rants were popular for a variety of reasons.  The popes were unpopular due to their alliances with England’s enemies; the Church did control great wealth and vast lands in a society where many were, or perceived themselves to be, on the margins of survival; the clergy needed reform; the English bible nourished people spiritually and rendered the ministrations of the clergy somewhat superficial.    Wycliffe also had a protector in the King’s uncle John of Gaunt who was extremely influential, especially during King Richard’s minority. 

Wycliffe’s ideas were condemned by a synod of English bishops in 1382 but he was not deprived of his living and no action was taken against him in his life time.  He suffered a stroke while attending mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1384 and died three days later.  But that is not the end of the story. 

We will see that many of his themes—especially the authority of scripture,  popular religion and the role of the Bible, and the wealth of the Church,  will continue to surface and threaten the hegemony of the hierarchical Church.  The failure of the Church to heed the calls to Reform will eventually lead to the struggle of the Reformation.  Hus’ doctrinal ideas on the Eucharist, on the nature of the Church as a “spiritual reality,” on the need for ministers to be men of integrity in order to minister effectively, on scripture alone, and on predestination will survive and later even return with a vengeance.  We will see what happens when the Church fails to “read the signs of the Times” as John XXIII called it to do when he called a Council in our own times.