1
John
Wyclif: The Biography of a Legend
SAGE Publications, Inc.200610.1191/0967550706ab020oa
G.R.Evans
University of Cambridge, UK, gre1001@cam.ac.uk
Address
for correspondence: G.R. Evans, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge,
West Road, Cambridge CB3 9EF, UK; Email: gre1001@cam.ac.uk
The writings of the controversial
John Wyclif (d. 1384) were largely lost to view until the end of the nineteenth
century, but meanwhile a considerable biographical tradition had been created
and sustained. He became hero of the Reformation on the basis of rumour and
some centuries of polemic. This paper will consider some of the methodological
problems and problems of revision that faced his biographers at the time
when his works became available for them to read at the end of the nineteenth
and the beginning of the twentieth century, and which continue now that it
is also apparent that the writings in English with which he was long credited
are unlikely to be his work at all.
INTRODUCTION
John Wyclif, who died in 1384, was born probably in Yorkshire, and set off
like other ambitious young contemporaries to be a student at Oxford. After
he graduated, his intention seems to have been to begin a career as a parish
priest, but within a year or two he was back in Oxford, studying for a higher
degree, that of Doctor of Theology. This was a lengthy course, which took
the student into early middle age. As a new graduate in 1372, Wyclif seems
to have had higher ambitions. He was sent on a diplomatic mission on behalf
of the English Government to argue with the papal emissaries about whether
England should pay its overdue taxation to the Pope. He was apparently not
very successful as a diplomat, but the research he did in preparation awoke
in him a lifelong interest in the ques- tion of the nature of power or `dominion',
and he began to lecture and preach and publish treatises, which made him controversial.
He fell foul of the powerful vested interests of the religious orders in Oxford
and was `reported' to the Vatican as a dangerous dissident. There followed
a series
2
of attempts
to `try' him and have him `officially' condemned, which attracted lively interest
among ordinary people. Eventually, two years before he died, he was driven
from Oxford. He spent the last months of his life, before he died of a stroke,
revising his works, expecially his ser- mons. All this was left unfinished
and it remains hard to say what his intellectual achievement amounted to,
for fame became notoriety, and his name became linked with trends and movements,
the Lollardy in which others than he were the protagonists. The biography
of an author must in some sense be an `intellectual biog- raphy'. That may
make room for a touch of autobiography, for the author who is its subject
may speak for himself. The writings of the controversial John Wyclif were
not autobiographical in the sense that they were directly concerned with the
author himself and his life. There are remarkably few personal moments. But
they remain the speech of the living mind and in that deep sense the subject's
own record of his life and ideas. In Wyclif's case, there is a further factor.
Although his writings were largely lost to view until the end of the nineteenth
century, meanwhile a considerable biographical tradition had been created
and sustained. He became hero of the Reformation on the basis of rumour and
some centuries of polemic. This paper will consider some of the problems that
faced his biographers at the time when his works became available for them
to read at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century,
and which continue now that it is also apparent that the writings in English
with which he was long credited are unlikely to be his work at all. John Stacey
provides a convenient modern survey of the judgements made by Wyclif's biographers
and the commentators over the centuries, but omits the cluster near the centenary
of his death in 1884 which helped to prompt the editing of his Latin works
(Stacey, 1993: 12–25). In the first of the `modern' biographies, written
with the benefit of access to the corpus of the Latin writings in their new
editions, Workman identified our problem. `While Wyclif's works slumbered
undisturbed in Continental libraries, the works of Hus were printed at an
early date', he notes. `It was Hus not Wyclif whom Luther recognized as a
predecessor when he remarked that he had hitherto taught and held all the
opinions of Hus with- out knowing it. Luther seems to have owned a copy of
the Trialogue printed at Basle in 1525, but not to have understood the link
between Wyclif's ideas and those of Hus' (Workman 1926: 9). Workman could
see clearly that Wyclif's place in the legend as the `Morning Star of the
Reformation' rested upon reports of what he had written and not upon the
actual texts. A biographer examines unpublished original sources, letters
and diaries, and perhaps has the drafts and annotated manuscripts of the published
books of a more modern subject. Wyclif's works unedited could not be used
in quite that way. His books were burned publicly
3
in Oxford
in 1410. Copies of some of them had been taken to Prague where there was
interest in his ideas in the University. But they were scattered and the manuscript
tradition was far from coherent. Wyclif had died of a stroke in the middle
of revising his work, and it is impossi- ble to say what, if any, of the random
collection of surviving material constitutes his final intentions. The remainders
stand at an uncertain distance from the author. It would have been more than
a lifetime's work for any would-be individual biographer to get them into
a state in which they could have been relied on as sources. Even after the
Latin texts had appeared, the remaining sorting and dating has taken a further
lifetime (W.R. Thomson, 1983). It was the Wyclif Society that partly filled
the gap with its series of editions, insofar as was possible with the limited
skills of the period in the editing of medieval texts. In 1905, when the editorial
project was nearing completion, Buddensieg acknowledged, in the Preface of
his edition of the De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae in the Wyclif Society series,
that the historical Wyclif is still a dim and undefined character to our mind's
eye. We clearly discern but the chief features, the energetic bent for free
thought, and his deep feeling, centring in and drawing strength from the Gospel.
We know what he was, but don't know how he grew to be what he was. (Buddensieg,
1905) WYCLIF THE LEGEND Let us begin with the legendary Wyclif, for when the
subject has an estab- lished reputation so colourful and so durable, that
reputation arguably becomes a biographical fact in its own right. Modern biography
presents the life of an individual in its particularity, attempting to render
as exactly as possible the man or woman in the circumstances. By contrast,
the typ- ical medieval biography is a saint's Life. For a collection, see
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina (Brussels, 1899–1901) and Supplementum
(Fros, 1896), which gives a survey of more than 9000 texts. Hagiography had
its own strong conventions, which have more to do with norms than with the
peculiar features of individual lives. Nor did the genre confine itself to
the kinds of event that find a place in modern biography. The conventions
include `evidences' that God is acting miraculously in such lives and fore-
sees their exceptional holiness. For example, it is common for the sub- ject's
mother to have had a vision when pregnant of the future greatness of her child.
Hagiography thus took its subject to be holy to a degree that manifested itself
in miracles, and supernatural events are taken to be tes- timony to the sanctity
of the subject. Lessons are drawn so that the reader may not fail to be led
in the right direction by his or her reading, which
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is envisaged
as a form of devotional exercise. The purpose of hagiography was edification
and to that end it sought to depict its subject as an exam- ple to others.
No one tried formally to canonize Wyclif but from the earliest biographical
notices there were energetic attempts to make him a hero or a villain, and
to attach an air of sanctity to him in his person of hero. This polarizing
and simplification of opinion about him showed a surprising continuing power
to infect the judgement even of the most sober and scholarly, as research
aspired to something closer to modern levels of rigour and sophistication
and his Latin writings steadily appeared from the hands of the editors of
the Wyclif Society editions. For example, writing in the late 1890s, R. Corbett
Cowell made use of Lewis Sergeant's work in `The heroes of the nations' series,
as he acknowledges in his prefatory note, and also of Burrows' Wyclif's place
in history, as well as Lechler, Vaughan, Lewis and Wylie, without any apparent
conscious- ness of the widely differing purposes and scholarly pretensions
of these works (Corlett Cowell, 1897). A tour of these Lives is instructive.
The legend of which Wyclif was hero was largely manufactured in the sixteenth
century, The edgy John Bale (1495–1563), a convert to Reformation ideas
and full of the zeal of the convert, compiled a mordant account of the `Wycliffite
Martyrs', A brief chronicle concerning the examination and death of Sir John
Oldcastle (London, 1544), and a list of English writers. It is he who famously
calls Wyclif stella matutina, `Morning Star' of the Reformation. The Protestant
apologist John Foxe (1516–87) put Wyclif first in his own list of `martyrs'
in his first Latin version of 1554 (despite the fact that Wyclif was never
actually martyred), claiming for him the distinction of being the author in
whose time the persecution of the witnesses to the truth first began. (Only
in later editions did Foxe add an account of the history of the primitive
Church and of dissidents before Wyclif.) In the English version of the Acts
and Monuments of 1563, Foxe draws on John Bale in his `Morning Star' passage
(Aston, 1984: 244–47). Foxe himself had an enormous influence. The
Book of Martyrs was approved by the English bishops and went through four
editions before Foxe's death. It led later generations to polarize the events
and the context of Wyclif's story into a tale of good and bad, white and black.
`There were not a few by whom it pleased the Lord to work against the bishop
of Rome, and to weaken the pernicious superstition of the friars; but our
countryman was specially raised up to detect more fully and amply the poison
of the Pope's doctrine, and the false religion set up by the friars' (Clarke
and Townsend, 1843–49: II, 47–48). Foxe points the modern biographer
to a further dimension of the difficulty of genre, for as a theologian, Wyclif
was dealing with perennial questions in the terms and with the emphases of
contemporary controversy. He
5
imputes
to Wyclif a sixteenth-century view of the then state of things. `After he
had a long time professed divinity in the University of Oxford, and perceiving
the true doctrine of Christ's gospel to be defiled with the inventions of
bishops, orders of monks, and dark errors, and after long deliberating with
himself, with many secret signs, and bewailing the gen- eral ignorance of
the world, could no longer bear it, he at last determined to remedy such things
as he saw to be out of the way' (Clarke and Townsend, 1843–49: II,
49). Foxe here credits Wyclif personally with much that was going on among
his contemporaries independently of his efforts, and at the same time translates
the discussion to make it fit the six- teenth century's emphases. The problems
Wyclif sought to check, Foxe suggests, stemmed from a neglect of those fundamental
topics of Christian theology in which the theologians of his own day were
particu- larly interested: `As to faith, – consolation, – the
end and use of law, – the office of Christ – our impotency and
weakness, – the Holy Ghost, – the greatness and strength of
sin, – true works, – grace, and free justification by faith, – the liberty of a Christian man; of all these things wherein con- sists the
sum of our professions, there was no mention, and scarcely a word spoken'
(Clarke and Townsend, 1843–49: 48). Yet several of these are the priorities
of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and they were not really Wyclif's
own preoccupations at all. This problem of the mismatch between the perennial
and the historical and contextual was noted by Wyclif's first modern biographer.
`Abstraction from environ- ment is the defect of much theological writing,
and presupposes that there is a sort of constant, invariable truth, independent
of the age, the measure of which in any man it is the biographer's task to
discover' (Workman, 1926: viii). The first substantial early modern Life was
the work of John Lewis, The history of the life and sufferings of the Reverend
and Learned John Wiclif, DD (1719). This made fair, though by modern standards
uncritical, use of historical evidence; it had its own axes to grind and its
own polemic. Lewis remarks, for example, that `the Papists were very angry
at the publication of [Foxe's] history, in which their lies and cruelty were
so fully exposed and accordingly ... represented it as a huge fardle of most
notorious lies and falsehoods' (Lewis, 1719). Lewis provided authors of the
first half of the nineteenth century with a starting point for accounts that
tend to the adulatory and the polemical. Robert Vaughan wrote The life and
opinions of John Wycliffe as a young man, but when it came to the question
of a second edition nearly a quarter of a century later, he decided, on maturer
reflection, to write an entirely new book, John de Wycliffe, DD (London, 1853).
The special pleading is unashamed. This is a book with a message, but it is
the message of a new century. `There is but too much reason for directing
the attention of the men of our time to a topic of this
6
nature.
The corruptions unmasked and denounced so boldly by Wycliffe, are still rooted
in the social state of Europe, and still find lodgement among ourselves' (Vaughan,
1953: iv). TOWARDS A MODERN BIOGRAPHY Social and patriotic themes were to
prove significant ingredients in the nineteenth-century Wyclif biography.
The Wyclif legend allowed of appli- cation to the concerns of a new era, just
as it had in the sixteenth century. But now the fashion was for social comment.
`Wyclif's work lived in England during the fifteenth century, and was, probably,
the principal factor in the gradual emancipation of the people during that
epoch. ... the Lollards ... were by thousands silently preparing the way for
the great Reformation which the nation was to undergo in the days of Henry
VIII' (Corlett Cowell, 1897: 122–23). `The purity and sanctity of domestic
life would have perished from the household had he succeeded in forcing his
socialistic principles upon the men and women of England' (Stevenson, 1885:
ix). For Buddensieg, John Wyclif is `the great reformer, in whom the characteristics
of the Christian and the Englishman meet and combine in almost equal fullness,
as do in Luther Christianity and Germanity' (Buddensieg, 1883: viii). All
this reflects a nineteenth-century pattern of scholarly enthusiasms, which
had their value; without them we should not have the long series of editions
of texts and publications of learned soci- eties on which much modern scholarly
work on the theology of the Middle Ages still depends. The notions of national
`identity' that inspired Wyclif's nineteenth-century German editor belong
to another age. Within a few years of writing this Preface, Buddensieg published
his John Wyclif, patriot and Reformer, enlarging upon his social and political
theme. `England owes him her Bible, her present language, the reformation
of the Church, her religious, and to a very large degree, her political liberty
(Buddensieg, 1884: 13). Gotthard Lechler's biography of Wyclif, John Wycliffe
and his English precursors, was first published in Leipzig in 1878, with an
English trans- lation and abbreviation by Peter Lorimer, and was reprinted
in 1884. This was the landmark biography of the modern list, and with it begins
in earnest the conscious process of getting ahead of the evidence of Wyclif'ss
own writings, but now in full awareness that when they were available they
might radically change the picture. In his 1878 Preface, Lechler pleads, `should
the Clarendon Press determine to include in the series of the Select Works
an additional number of Wyclif's Latin writings', that it will follow his
advice `that works of an earlier date than 1381 should be selected', and that
`most of all, the publication of the De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae is to be
recommended; and next to this a collection of 40 Latin
7
sermons,
preserved in the Vienna MS. 3928, and which reflect an earlier stage of Wyclif's
opinions'. He thought an edition of the De Ecclesia was urgently needed too
(Lechler, 1884: vi–vii). He was himself to become one of the editors
of the Wyclif Society editions. Paradoxically, Lechler wanted to use the Life
he was writing to stir sufficient interest in Wyclif to make it a practical
proposition to get his writings edited, in order that the more satisfactory
Life could be attempted. His English translator, Peter Lorimer, was enthusiastic
about the result of the dipping and extracting Lechler had already done. `Never
before has the whole teaching of the Reformer – philosophical, theological,
ethical, and ecclesiastical, been so copiously and accurately set forth; and
never before has so large a mass of classified quotations from all his chief
scientific writings been placed under the eyes of scholars' (Lechler, 1884:
ix). The hagiographical language is still there in the excited prose. Lechler
calls Wyclif, `a character of the genuine Protestant type, whose portraiture
it may not be without use to freshen up again in true and vivid colours in
the eyes of the present generation' (Lechler, 1884: vii). Lorimer, in his
Translator's Preface, shares his assumption and his enthusiasm, to the point
of including a poem addressed to Wycliff, describing his sentiments as he
translated `Lechler's learned page' (Lechler, 1884: ix). `It is a singu- lar
fact', he adds, `that five hundred years should have passed away before it
became possible to do this service of justice to the memory of so great a
man – the very `Morning Star of the Reformation' (Lechler, 1884: 6).
Lechler was not unaware that the passage of time does not necessarily make
it possible to gain a more accurate perspective and he also recog- nized that
much depends on whether the researcher is sympathetic to the Reformation or
not, when approaching `the same class of facts' (Lechler, 1884: vii). He was
less conscious, perhaps, of the degree to which he him- self was importing
the assumptions of his time, and imputing attitudes to Wyclif, particularly
an English patriotism. A cluster of adulatory English biographies followed
in the tradition Lechler had begun to establish, but retaining a lively stream
of `hagio- graphical' language, within the tradition that had kept Wyclif's
name vis- ible and made him an object of interest. In a popular little book,
William Chapman outlines a medieval world in which a series of episodes and
individuals held `sacred the cause of truth' but merely as `the forerunners
of a still greater spirit', Wyclif, destined `to confer the never-dying bless-
ings of liberty upon his country' (Chapman, 1883: 20). `Wiclif was emi- nently
a patriot. ... his patriotism was of the highest and noblest type, for he
sought, by diffusing light from his own great stores of knowledge, to teach
the people to govern themselves' (Chapman, 1883: 34–35). In a pamphlet
in an overheated style, and having more of the air of a sermon than of a biography,
Henry Varley asserts that `Scarcely is there any
8
darkness
in him who we call “the Morning-star of the Reformation”; his
beams unsullied lengthen out their lines of light over the centuries' (Varley,
1884: 2). `There are many aspects in which we may contemplate this heroic
soul; he is a jewel cut in many facets' (Varley, 1884: 2). Lewis Sergeant
published a biography of John Wyclif in 1893, the seventh in the series, Heroes
of the nations, a book he intended `to popularise the picture of John Wyclif'
(Sergeant, 1893: 3). The other heroes in the series at the time of publication
were Nelson, Gustavus Adolphus, Pericles, Theodoric the Goth, Sir Philip Sidney
and Julius Caesar. Lewis's idea was that `the pioneers of moral development
in every age, even across the interval of five hundred years' may be `near
akin' (Sergeant, 1893: 4). His particular hero, John Wyclif, is identified
by the way he `stands forth so prominently in an age which forms a joint and
hinge of religious history' (Sergeant, 1893: 5). Sergeant expressed a consciousness
of a need to stand back from too hasty an attempt to analyse the evidence
of Wyclif's writ- ings in detail, even if he had thought it appropriate, until
the Wyclif Society had completed its work. In any case, it was his view that
`truth to tell, the works of Wyclif are not and cannot be made very attractive
to men and women of the present day. ... For the general reader they are,
in their complete form, not only superfluous but even a little misleading'
(Sergeant, 1893: 7, iii). The irony of the adoption by extreme protestants
of apparent veneration for a saint was not lost on Roman Catholic critics.
Joseph Stevenson, a Jesuit for whom Wyclif was anything but a hero pointed
to the impact of `the last day of December, 1884 ... the five hundredth anniversary
of the death of this messenger of evil' (Stevenson, 1885: vii). Stevenson
thought well of F.D. Matthew's `carefully written sketch' in the prefaces
to some of Early English Text Society editions. There is an example in The
English works of Wyclif, hitherto unprinted (Matthew, 1880: i–li).
Stevenson also approves of N. Pocock's `masterly communication' addressed
to `The Guardian' and a pamphlet by Wordsworth, bishop of Lincoln. But he
thought very differently of other works, he notes (Stevenson, 1885: xiii–xiv).
Other biographies coming out in connection with this event were close to being
hagiographical, he accused. `Watch the crowd as it hurries by to worship at
the shrine of the Saint of Lutterworth' (Stevenson, 1885: vi–vii).
The “agents” of this new cult, as they march past, scatter their
pamphlets, tracts and fly-sheets, far and wide, and the credulous ones of
the people good-humouredly pick them up, are converted to the doctrines, believe
the statements, and subscribe to the funds of the Wyclif Society. ... The
nation is chidden for having so long permitted the glories of this “Morning
Star of the Reformation” to remain in obscurity. ... We should feel
no surprise were we
9
to
read that a pilgrimage was about to be organized in order that his disciples
might visit the church which Wyclif desecrated by saying the Mass which he
believed in his heart to be a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit. (Stevenson,
1885: vi–vii) `We find them professing a veneration, at once exaggerated
and unautho- rized' (Stevenson, 1885: vii). Stevenson's ire had been awakened
by several testimonies to the cultic status of Wyclif. This admiration for
Wyclif, now so conspicuous, is no new thing. It has been steadily on the increase
for some years past. It has shown itself by the dedication of a church to
his memory at Birmingham, and by giving his name to a small place of education
at Oxford, called Wyclif Hall [founded 1877]. One would like to know why it
should have been so called. (Stephenson, 1885: x) Stevenson suggests that
the name may have been chosen for the new foundation simply because it ...
sounded well, and implied a sort of general recognition and acceptance of
`the principles of the Reformation.' But if it had a deeper meaning it could
only be that the training which it professes to give its pupils is intended
to be in conformity with that which the scholars and divines of the Oxford
of five hundred years ago had cast out from among them as an unclean thing,
and with one voice had declared to be abominable and heretical. (Stephenson,
1885: x–xi) The question can be answered. Robert Baker Girdlestone,
in a pamphlet, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, its nature and object (Oxford, 1878),
puts forward the view that a degree in theology is not adequate training for
the ministry. He was a Biblical scholar and thought himself well able to judge.
`It is not enough that they should be able to talk learnedly about the authenticity
of Daniel, the date of Job, the deutero-Isaiah, the Elohist controversy, or
the Synoptic Gospels. They must read God's Word from another point of view,
if it is to be the means whereby they may convince men of sin, show them the
path of pardon, and lead them in the way of righteousness.' Some can get what
they need to equip them for this work by consulting the pro- fessors; some
will become lay helpers in a parish with an enlightened incumbent who can
direct their studies; some will go to theological col- leges. But there are
those who are reluctant to leave Oxford, and these can stay on in their own
rooms and 15 minutes' walk will bring them to Wycliffe Hall; some will wish
to reside at Wycliffe Hall and, conversely, they can enjoy the advantage of
attending the lectures in the University. `The teaching at Wycliffe Hall is
designed to be practical and devotional,
10
not
controversial, and to be supplementary to – not a substitute for – the work of the Divinity Professors.' All this is worth mentioning because
Girdlestone anticipates Stevenson's criticism. People are bound to ask `how
far it is intended to subserve the purposes of one particular party in the
Church'? Girdlestone does not think it essential to adhere to any particular
position in the conspectus of `doctrines which have many sides'. But he does
think it indispensable `to be absolutely certain that there is one `Remedy
... namely, the Gospel'. Wycliffe Hall had as its mission `to help men in
their studies' so that they might achieve `an accurate, comprehensive and
sympathetic study of the Scriptures, viewed in relation to the human heart
and to the age in which we live'. So this was a Wycliffite enterprise only
in the sense that Wycliffe was still being credited with having called for
a reliance upon Scripture, direct teaching of ordinary people about the Bible,
and its translation into English, so that they might read or hear it for
themselves. Girdlestone's pamphlet includes a list of lectures for October
Term 1878, among them `Personal dealings with the careless and the anxious'
and `Reformatory work amongst London lads'. THE WYCLIF SOCIETY Stevenson's
acerbic irony was unleashed on the Wyclif Society: But Oxford has done something
more effectual than this. ... Oxford contributed largely towards the publication
of his English version of the Bible, it has given us three volumes of his
miscellaneous writings ... and it has employed a learned German professor
to edit a new edition of the Trialogus. ... And now it joins the movement
which invites us to contribute to the formation of a more comprehensive undertaking,
the prospectus of which lies before us. ... the magnitude of the systemical
efforts which are being made at the present moment for the publication of
the whole of Wyclif's writings ... apparently the project will succeed, and
we hope it will. It is important that we should know what really were Wyclif's
opinions, and the originators of the undertaking assure us that we cannot
do this until all his works are printed. (Stevenson, 1885: xii–xiii)
Much energetic activity was generated in connection with the Wyclif Society's
scheme of publishing Wyclif's Latin writings. Until within the last few years,
England has been singularly ungrateful to the memory of one of her greatest
men. She seems to have forgotten that not only is John Wiclif the father of
her prose but that he was also the first to do
11
battle
for the maintenance of evangelical faith and English freedom with a foreign
power that openly denied to Englishmen the privilege of both. (Buddensieg,
1883: v) Thus warmly wrote Rudolf Buddensieg, the late nineteenth-century
Dresden schoolmaster who gave up all his leisure for more than a quarter of
a century to his great project of bringing the writings of his hero into print.
Buddensieg found it `painful' that Wyclif's `most important works should have
been until now allowed to lie buried in manuscript' without its apparently
occurring to him that the lack of early printed editions might be an indication
of the uncertainty in the minds of the early publishers of their actual importance
(Buddensieg, 1884: 13). It was Buddensieg who explored the repositories in
such regions as Bohemia, Moravia and Lower-Austria, and discovered the whereabouts
of many of the manuscripts now known of Wyclif's writings, including a set
carried off to Sweden by the Moravians during the seventeenth century (Buddensieg,
1884: vi–viii). Buddensieg describes the foundation of the Wyclif Society
`by the energetic F.J. Furnivall and his helpers' in March 1882. Their adoption
of a scheme of publishing Wyclif's writings brought to fruition an idea adumbrated
earlier in the century, which had been the occasion of W.W. Shirley's earlier
attempt to list the extant writings of Wyclif. He had done so in preparation
for the proj- ect of getting the Oxford University Press to publish a selection
from his works (Shirley, 1865). The Wyclif Society's willingness was a great
relief to Buddensieg, for he says that he could not persuade the delegates
of the Oxford University Press to undertake publication. He had captured
the interest of the English enthusiasts who formed the Wyclif Society, by
writing a letter to the Academy in September 1881 (Buddensieg, 1883: vi).
The editors enlisted were D.D. Matthew, A.W. Pollard, Edward Harris, Charles
Sayle, M.H. Dziewicki, Johann Loserth, Rudolf Beer, Rudolf Buddensieg, Herzberg-Fränkel,
R.L. Poole (Whitney, 1927: 98–114). M.H. Dziewicki was a Roman Catholic.
He explains in the Introduction to his edition of the De Ente (London, 1909),
p. vi, that when he was `offered the position of editor of Wyclif's Latin
works', he consulted a clergyman in London. `He told me that a translation
into the vernacular would be for- bidden, but that a mere edition of the Latin
text was another thing.' Dziewicki came to believe that this advice was technically
in error but he continued to consider that `as a layman asking counsel', he
was `right in accepting it.' The editors had a strong sense that they were
repairing an important gap. `The Wyclif Society was founded in 1882 to remove
from England the disgrace of having till then left buried in manuscript the
most important works of her great early reformer, John Wyclif. ... Till the
12
Wyclif
Society started, only one treatise of importance, the Trialogus, had ever
been printed, out of the great mass of the Reformer's Latin writings.' This
was re-edited by Lechler in 1869, with more than a hint of a patriotic pride
in what the Society was doing. In Germany Dr. Lechler had printed a few short
pieces; and two volumes of Polemical Tracts, edited by Dr. Rudolph Buddensieg
of Dresden, and in part paid for by the King of Saxony, were adopted and issued
as the Wyclif Society's volumes for 1882 and 1883. We cannot desire that German
scholars and princes should complete the work which falls by right to Englishmen.
(Dziewicki, 1893: 1–3) There was some sensitivity over the extent of
the German contribution. A congratulatory survey identifies R.L. Poole as
`one of the chief support- ers' of the Wyclif Society but emphasizes that
`the lion's share of the edit- ing was taken by Dr. Loserth with thirteen
volumes' (Whitney, 1927: 98). Furnivall and Buddensieg, the chief drivers
of the project, did not prevent some of their editors from expressing bewilderment
as the works of Wyclif emerged at their hands. Reginald Lane Poole was one
of the most sober and judicious of the Wyclif Society editors. When he edited
the De Civili Dominio, his first interest lay in establishing the credentials
of the double Vienna manuscript from which he worked (MSS 1341 and 1340).
But he also reflects in his Preface upon the difficulty of the editing `due
to the peculiar nature of Wyclif's Latin'. His theory is that it `belongs
to a time when scholars were ceasing to think in Latin', a hypothesis which
rests upon his confidence, now known to be misplaced, that Wyclif was `one
of the founders of English prose writing' (Poole, 1885: xviii). The De Compositione
Hominis was edited for the Wyclif Society in 1884 by Rudolf Beer. The work
had taken him a long time to complete, although he claims that `the principles
which must guide our editors are well understood' and that `the volumes which
have already appeared have helped to develope [sic] them'. His problem has
been that he cannot under- stand the work he is editing. He feels that to
be impossible until `the pub- lication of the whole of his obscure Latin writings'
is completed, `which must surely explain and complement one another' (Beer,
1884: 5). The obscurity would have disappeared with better acquaintance with
the work of Wyclif's contemporaries, but we surely hear a note of disappointment
here, coupled with a lingering hope that when the set is complete all will
be revealed and with it Wyclif's legendary greatness and the compelling power
of his arguments to stir a generation to dissent. Alfred W. Pollard and Charles
Sayle edited the De Officio Regis for the Wyclif Society in 1887. They claimed
for it a position `as the eighth book of Wyclif's great
13
Summa',
hypothesizing a degree of planning on Wyclif's part for which there is in
fact no evidence (Pollard and Sayle, 1887: vii). `After the publication, by
the Wyclif Society, of the De Compositione Hominis, of the De Ente Praedicamentali,
and of the three volumes of Logica, lately issued, enough is now known of
this philosopher's general system and trend of thought to render a synopsis
of his philosophy quite possible' (Dziewicki, 1902: V). The introduction upon
the scene of the writings of Wyclif was disturb- ing to some of the editors.
Matthew recognized that a close acquaintance with what he believed to be Wyclif's
mind in the English writings did not inspire admiration. `It cannot be denied
that there is a certain sameness which makes these tracts rather tiresome
to read continuously' (Matthew, 1880: xlviii). Nor could he speak very highly
of him on the basis of his Latin writings. He mentions the story of Wyclif's
charm. Judging from his works it is rather difficult to discern in what the
charm consisted. They are marked by learning and earnestness, and are occasionally
relieved by touches of witty or humorous sarcasm ... Nor do we find in him
what may be called the religious genius; the deep insight into spiritual things,
the vivid sense of the invisible presences, which at times carries Luther,
as it does St. Bernard or St. Theresa, into mystical rapture. (Matthew, 1880:
xlviii) The truth was that Wyclif's works were not proving to support the
claims for his greatness. With appeals for subscribing members the Wyclif
Society kept itself in being until its project was completed, for the journal
Wyclif Society proved not to be a good earner. All the subscriptions to it
lapsed at the end of 1887 (Dziewicki, 1893: 1–3). The Foreword to Opera
Minora (ed. J. Loserth, 1912), says the Wyclif Society's work is now nearly
done and `thus the Wyclif Society has raised to that great thinker's memory
a monument more beautiful and more lasting than bronze or marble could have
been ... His Latin works, now being published by the Wyclif Society for upwards
of fifteen years, are almost unread in his own native country' (Dziewicki,
1902: V). `The task undertaken by the Wyclif Society, in connection with the
five hundredth anniversary of Wyclif's death, is now coming to its end' (Foreword
to the Opera Minora). The Wyclif Society's edition of Wyclif's works has still
not been superseded. The state of the known manuscripts is one good reason.
But the quality and importance of the works is likely to be another, for Wyclif
has no modern Buddensieg and the Society, having completed its task, ceased
to exist. Yet none of Buddensieg's claims for Wyclif stands up now, either
historically or, in an era of ecumenism, theologically.
14
THE ENGLISH
WYCLIFFITE WRITINGS Although the Wyclif Society's project was to edit the
Latin works, there was also contemporary enthusiasm for what were believed
to be Wyclif'ss English writings, and especially for what was erroneously
believed to have been Wyclif's role in the making of the first English translation
of the Bible. Matthew said in the preface to his early English Text Society
editions, `My object has been to complete the publication of Wyclif'ss English
works' (Matthew, 1880: xlv–xlvi). `Wycliffe ... resolved to trans-
late the New Testament into English, so that his countrymen might read in
their own language the glad tidings of the glorious Gospel. Up to this time,
the Word of God had been locked up from the knowledge of the people ... Wycliffe
was not acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek tongues, but he was a sound Latin
scholar, and set himself to turn the Latin Testament into English.' When it
was published, Wycliffe's New Testament was a best- seller and `the new doctrine
which Wycliffe and his itinerant preachers had proclaimed all over the country
were found to be contained in this book, which the people were now for the
first time put in possession of' (Robinson, 1879: 7–8). `The other
great work which gave impetus to the new movement was Wyclif's translation
of the Bible into the native tongue of Englishmen as it was then spoken. ...
What days and nights of toilsome study does this monument of consecrated
industry and holy ambition represent' (Varley, 1884: 31, 33). `He stands in
the front rank of the world's mightiest and noblest men. ... Our Bible, our
liberties, our conception of religious truth, and our Protestantism, are inalienably
bound up with the name of John Wyclif, the greatest of English Reformers'
(Corlett Cowell, 1897: 128). The work of Anne Hudson and others has now established
beyond reasonable doubt that Wyclif did not make a translation of the Bible
and that none of the surviving Wycliffite writings in English can safely be
said to be his (Hudson and Gradon, 1983–96). LIFE AND LEGEND H.B. Workman's,
John Wyclif: a study of the English medieval church (1926), was written with
the benefit of access to the Wyclif Society editions which, for all their
imperfections, at least provide a conspectus of the majority of the texts
of Wyclif's surviving Latin writings. `The weak- ness of much writing on Wyclif
has lain in an insufficient knowledge of his Latin writings, studied chronologically,
and an uncritical acceptance of the English works' [which Workman himself
could not know are not attributable to Wyclif at all], he admitted (Workman,
1926: vii–viii). But even Workman, always workmanlike and sober in
his judgements, overestimated the personal impact of Wyclif; the legend died
hard.
15
`His
influence is beyond dispute', he claims. He accords him the status of `politician',
when he was merely sent on a single diplomatic mission, which failed; and
intellectual `leader', when he was manifestly only one among many fellow
academics discussing the same subjects; and `a master of English' when we
have no identifiable words in English from him at all (Workman, 1926). It
is not at all easy to say what Wyclif's real achievement was. No work in English
that can be attributed with certainty to Wyclif survives; nor is there any
evidence that he actively got the work of translating the Bible into English
under way or was even directly involved in it, although he was a prolific
author and the Wyclif Society editions fill a shelf. Not a single `great book',
or any book of lasting importance, bears his name. We can point to no quotation
so memorable that it echoes down the years. He was not the only one among
his contemporaries putting forward the par- ticular arguments which came to
be associated with his name and the only `English freedom' he fought for was
the refusal to pay taxation decades overdue to the papacy from the Kingdom
of England; even there he was acting as one of a diplomatic mission and not
as a solitary hero. The biographical task in a case like this resembles that
of a picture restorer. Layers of varnish and overpainting have to be cleared
away, with- out accidental removal of any part of the `real' picture, in circumstances
where it is not at all clear where the `real' picture begins. But the Latin
writings must form part of the real picture. The modern biographer has choices
to make when confronted with a subject whose chief claim to interest lies
in the fact that he became such a legend. It is important to try to fix any
elements of fact in the legend; but it is the historical reality which forms
the biographer's proper subject- matter. Any other choice would turn biography
into fiction. There is the option of looking at the history of the life through
the lens of the legend that later emerged about the life, but no modern biographer
should allow such inventions as those that litter some of the late nineteenth-century
lives. `It was the appearance of a treatise on “The Kingdom of God”,
which Wyclif had been composing in his quiet country vicarage, that first
showed how wide was the gulf between him and the Established Church of his
day' (Varley, 1884: 19). `The other great work which gave impetus to the new
movement was Wyclif's translation of the Bible into the native tongue of Englishmen
as it was then spoken. ... What days and nights of toilsome study does this
monument of consecrated industry and holy ambition represent' (Varley, 1884:
31, 33). In this case, the task is complicated by the fact that the historical
evi- dence is thin in the areas conventionally important to a biographer,
although it is comparatively rich in the wider reach of contextual events
in which the subject's life must be placed. That stage of life which generally
16
gets
the reader reading on from the beginning of a biography is the account of
childhood and early youth. There is no cosy nursery world in Wyclif's story.
Wyclif had no Boswell to record what he said; there is no equivalent of Luther's
`Table talk'. We have to make do with chance scraps. About 1372, one of those
who challenged Wyclif to public intel- lectual duels in an Oxford `disputation',
gave it as his opinion that Wyclif was `deep' (profundus), spoke well and
with distinction (pulchre dictum et egregie) and was a solemn and learned
figure both in speech and in knowl- edge (Doctor tam solemnis in scientia
et sermone) (Shirley, 1858: pp. 12, 14, 19, 67, 456; Workman, 1926: 121).
Wyclif says that he himself had not always lived an ascetic life. He admitted
that `in excess of eating and clothing' he has not set the priestly example
he should have done. He has consumed goods that might have benefited the poor
(Buddensieg, 1905–07: I.360, 363). He admits to losing his temper easily.
`I have often lapsed into indignation or irritation' (Buddensieg, 1905–07:
I.366). He says he prays about this and tries to break himself of the habit.
William Thorpe, a `Lollard' who had been in Oxford from about 1377, described
John Wyclif to the inquisitors who were examining him on his own beliefs in
1407. Wyclif, he said, was spare, thin, a man of moderate and harmless habits
and able to win the affection of those who knew him. `They loved him dearly'
(eum dulciter amabant), he said (Shirley, 1858: xlv). This does not provide
much to go on by way of even a thumbnail sketch of the person. For the most
part, we must try to `hear' the tone of voice of utterances which now survive
only in written form, mainly in long Latin monographs written with skills
now unfashionable and unfamiliar. The Wyclif Society editors were right that
Wyclif was no stylist. His writing is almost wholly without elegance, awkward
and often unclear (Poole, 1885: xviii–xix). There is barely enough
to allow us to put a face to him and sketch the dis- tinctive roundnesses
and roughnesses of individuality – almost no surviv- ing letters and
no memorials from devoted personal friends to preserve the touching vulnerabilities
and moments of humour that define a man as surely as the major events of a
life and its achievements. A LIFE IN CONTEXT It is much easier to set the
man in context. We know a good deal more now that was known at the end of
the nineteenth century about the Oxford in which Wyclif spent most of his
life, the academic rivalries and conflicts and the way his thinking was formed
by his studies and the arguments he had with his colleagues. The evidence
for that survives in copious quanti- ties in his own writings as well as in
those of his opponents and contem- porary commentators. That enables him to
be classified as an example of
17
a relatively
familiar figure, the medieval academic who is perceived to be saying things
which present a potential stumbling block to the souls of the faithful. The
controversial reputation he actually acquired in his life- time was in reality
probably not much different from that of other Oxford figures who got into
trouble with the authorities. Troublesome academics were quite a common feature
of medieval Europe once the universities came into being in the course of
the twelfth century. So in this respect he is a type, though an unlucky example
of his type, for he was pursued with a remorseless others did not have to
face. There was no legacy of important and influential writings. There were
copies of Easton's work in monastic libraries but not of Wyclif's. Netter's
Doctrinale became an early printed book, for example in 1571, but almost nothing
of Wyclif's was rushed into print in the sixteenth century. Wyclif's Trialogus,
at best a late minor work in which he tried to present some of his ideas in
a popular form, was published at Worms in 1525 (and in Latin, at Basle in
1525), `now that the sun is shining again, driv- ing back the darkness and
thickest mists inimical to light', as its additional prologue says. But there
was no attempt to publish the rest of his oeuvre in the sixteenth century,
even though this was an age in which the impor- tant books of antiquity and
the Middle Ages were coming off the new presses of Europe in a torrent. John
Bale made a list of titles of Wyclif's works which he had found in manuscript
but even with this as a starting- point, the trail of the early printed material
in England is thin. Item after item in Thomson's modern review has only the
Wyclif Society editions of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Thomson,
1983). Wycliffes wicket (London, 1546), and again (London, 1548), expounded
by W. Tyndall and I. Frythe, was a snippet of Wyclif's arguments on the Eucharist.
J. Wycliffe, The dore of Holy Scripture appeared in London in 1540. The true
copye of a prolog written about two c yeres paste by Iohn Wycliffe (London,
1550) prints the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, which was not Wyclif's
work at all, `the originall whereof is founde written in an olde English Bible
betwixt the olde Testament and the Newe', which we are assured is the lean
and hungry look attributed to him. `He did florish in Oxford longe while',
explains the publisher. He was protected under Edward III but not under Richard
II. Verses follow, faithfully depicting the mythical reformer. Yet dyd thys
good man never alter his stile But wrote mani volumes whils he was alive To
extinguish errour, and truth to revive. Above all, a biographical judgement
has to be arrived at about the scale of Wyclif's personal achievement within
the trends and movements with which his name became associated. Here again
the definitive work has
18
been
done by Anne Hudson (Hudson, 1987). Some Wycliffite and Lollard ideas were
Wyclif's own; some later flowed from his work; some were given currency by
his friends and followers rather than Wyclif himself. But it is certain that
he did not as a matter of historical fact do all the things the legend said
he did. Those of Wyclif's ideas which had chimed with the thinking of ordinary
people who were `angry with the system' were not new. They simply joined a
river of similar ideas which was already flowing strongly, and had been doing
so in Europe for at least two centuries. There is no evidence that it was
Wyclif in particular who stim- ulated Englishmen's enthusiasion for them,
though he made his contribu- tion; it seems that popular preachers were already
disseminating them in the years when he was becoming infamous and the object
of disapproving notice by the authorities. In other words, his name was linked
with some- thing which was already happening. If he did not really `start
anything', did he crystallize anything, give it definitive statement? Again,
it is hard to show that he did, because of the lack of important books, and
even any significant remarks to be quoted in a conclusion such as this. In
the inter- national world of exchange of academic ideas, it seems that he
was merely a contributor to scholarly debate who got entangled in some heated
eccle- siastical politics, and that is how we should rate him if he had not
notori- ously been condemned and if Asam Easton and other contemporaries had
not made him a villain and Foxe and Bale had not set about making him a hero.
CONCLUSION The lesson is perhaps that the Wyclif `story' has proved surprisingly
durable because it became detached so early from the hard and disappoint-
ing evidence about the true achievement of an individual and became an extremely
flexible and useful legend. Stevenson, a Jesuit, observed of Wyclif that he
had proved a highly adaptable figure: `He is a Papist and a priest, but he
finds himself quite at home among the members of the Tract Society in London
and the Free Kirk in Edinburgh' (Stevenson, 1885: v). For Buddensieg, John
Wyclif is `the great reformer, in whom the charac- teristics of the Christian
and the Englishman meet and combine in almost equal fulness, as do in Luther
Christianity and Germanity' (Buddensieg, 1883: viii). All this reflects a
nineteenth-century pattern of scholarly enthusiasms, which had their value; without them we should not have the long series of editions of texts and publications
of learned societies on which much modern scholarly work on the theology of
the Middle Ages still depends. The notions of national `identity' that inspired
Wyclif's nineteenth-century German editor belong to another age. Within a
few years of writing this preface, Buddensieg published his John Wiclif,
19
patriot
and Reformer (London, 1884), enlarging upon his theme. `England owes to him
her Bible, her present language, the reformation of the Church, her religious,
and to a very large degree, her political liberty' (Buddensieg, 1884: 13).
Wyclif is still being credited with some of the legendary features (J. Thomson,
1983: 355–62). The modern biographer who wishes to portray the real
Wyclif is left to tell a much less engaging tale and one of which it must
be asked repeatedly whether its subject has been worth the attention he has,
historically, received.
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1962: John Wyclif, radical dissenter. Humanities Monograph Series 1, 1.
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NOTE
ON CONTRIBUTOR G.R. EVANS is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual
History in the University of Cambridge and author of a forthcoming biography
of John Wyclif. She has published on a series of patristic and medieval authors
and topics and on ecumenical theology and issues in modern higher education.