§ 40. JOHN WYCLIF. 315
views they had been anticipated by Marsiglius of Padua and the other assailants of the papacy of the early half of the 14th century.
John Wyclif, called the Morning Star of the Reformation, and, at the time of his death, in England and in Bohemia the , Evangelical doctor,^ was born about lo24 near the village of JW^yclif, Yorkshire, in the diocese of Durham. ^ His own writings give scarcely a clew to the events of his career, and little can be gathered from his immediate contemporaries. He was ^f Saxon blood. His studies were pursued at Oxford, which had six colleges. He was a student at Balliol and master of that hall in 1361. He was also connected with Merton and Queen's, and was probably master of Canterbury Hall, founded by Archbishop Islip.^ He was appointed in succession to tlie livings of Fillingham, 1363, Ludgershall, 1368, and by the king's appointment, to Lutterworth, 1374. The living of Lutterworth was valued at X 26 a year.
Wyclif occupies a distinguished place as an Oxford schoolman, a patriot, a champion of theological and practical reforms
1 Fasciculi, p. 362.
2 Leland's Itinerary placed Wyclif's birth in 1324. Buddensieg and Rashdall prefer 1330. Leland, our first authority for the place of birth, mentions Spresswell (Hipswell) and Wyclif-on-Tees, places a half a mile apart. Wyclif's name is spelled in more than twenty different ways, as Wiclif, accepted by Lechler, Loserth, Buddensieg and German scholars generally ; Wiclef, Wicliffe, Wicleff, Wycleff, Wycliffe, adopted by Foxe, Milman, Poole, Stubbs, Rashdall, Bigg; Wyclif preferred by Shirley, Matthew, Sergeant, the Wyclif Society, the Early English Text Society, etc. The form Wyclif is found in a diocesan register of 1361, when the Reformer was warden of Balliol College. The earliest mention in an official state document, July 26, 1374, gives it Wiclif. On Wyclif's birthplace, see Shirley, Fasciculi, p. x sqq.
8 A Wyclif is mentioned in connection with all of these colleges. The question is whether there were not two John Wyclifs. A John de Whyteclyve . was rector of Mayfield, 1361, and later of Horsted Kaynes, where he died, 1383. In 1.365 Islip, writing from Mayfield, appointed a John Wyclyve warden of Canterbury Hall. Shirley, Note on the two Wiclifs, in the Fasciculi, p. 513 sqq., advocated the view that this Wyclif was a different person from our John Wyclif, and he is followed by Poole, Rashdall and Sergeant. Principal Wilkinson of Marlborough College, Ch. Quart. Rev., October, 1877, makes a strong statement against this view; Lechler and Buddensieg, the two leading German authorities on Wyclif's career, also admit only a single Wyclif as connected with the Oxford Halls.
310 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
and the translator of the Scriptures into English. The papal schism, occurring in the midst of his public career, had an important bearing on his views of papal authority.
So far as is known, he confined himself, until 1366, to his duties in Oxford and his parish work. In that year he appears as one of the king's chaplains and as oi)posed to the papal supremacy in the ecclesiastial affairs of the realm. The parliament of the same year refused Urban V.'s demand for tiie payment of the tribute, promised by King John, which was back 33 years. John, it declared, had no right to obligate the kingdom to a foreign ruler without the nation's consent. Wyelif, if not a member of this body, was certainly an adviser to it.^
In the summer of 1374, Wyelif went to Bruges as a member of_the_cpi]ami^sioji_a^pointedJ)y_j^
with Fnin(^eand^tcLtreaj^with_thej>ope's agents on thejilling of ^cclesiasticaj^ appointments in England. His name was second in the list of commissioners, following the name of the bishop of Bangor. At Bruges we find him for the first time in close association with John of (iaunt, Edward's favorite son, an association which continued for several years, and for a time inured to his protection from ecclesiastical violence. 2
On his return to England, he began to speak as a religious reformer. He preached in Oxford and London against the pope's secular sovereignt}', running about, as the old chronicler has it, from place to place, and barking against the Church. ^ It was soon after this that, in one of his tracts, he styled the Wshop of Rome "the anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest of - Roni(!, and the most cursed of clippers and cut-purses." He Jmaiiitaiiied that he " has no more power in binding and loos-
' So Lechler, who advances strong arguments in favor of this view. Loserth, who is followed by Hashdall, brings considerations against it, and places Wyclif's first appearance as a political reformer in 1370. Stndien zur Kirchenpol., etc., pp. 1, 32, 35, 44, (iO. A serious diificulty with this view is that it crowds almost all the Reformer's writings into 7 years.
2 John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was the younger brother of the Black Prince. The prince had returned from his victories in France to die of an incurable disease. a Chron. Angl, p. 115 sq.