The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

John Wycliffe, the "Morning Star of the Reformation," was born near Richmond, Yorkshire, about 1324. He became a fellow, and later master of Balliol College, Oxford, afterward held several rectorships—the last being that of Lutterworth, upon which he entered in 1374. For opposing the papacy and certain church doctrines and practices, he was condemned by the university, and his followers—known as Lollards—were persecuted. Something of his life in connection with these matters is fitly dealt with by Smyth in connection with his account of the famous translation.

FTER the early Anglo-Saxon versions comes a long pause in the history of Bible translation. Amid the disturbance resulting from the Danish invasion there was little time for thinking of translations and manuscripts; and before the land had fully regained its quiet the fatal battle of Hastings had been fought, and England lay helpless at the Normans' feet. The higher Saxon clergy were replaced by the priests of Normandy, who had little sympathy with the people over whom they came, and the Saxon manuscripts were contemptuously flung aside as relics of a rude barbarism. The contempt shown to the language of the defeated race quite destroyed the impulse to English translation, and the Norman clergy had no sympathy with the desire for spreading the knowledge of the Scriptures among the people, so that for centuries those Scriptures remained in England a "spring shut up, a fountain sealed."

Yet this time must not be considered altogether lost, for during those centuries England was becoming fitted for an English Bible. The future language of the nation was being formed; the Saxon and Norman French were struggling side by side; gradually the old Saxon grew unintelligible to the people; gradually the French became a foreign tongue, and with the fusion of the two races a language grew up which was the language of united England.

Passing, then, from the quiet death-beds of Alfred and of Bede, we transfer ourselves to the great hall of the Blackfriars' monastery, London, on a dull, warm May day in 1378, amid purple robes and gowns of satin and damask, amid monks and abbots, and bishops and doctors of the Church, assembled for the trial of John Wycliffe, the parish priest of Lutterworth.

The great hall, crowded to its heavy oaken doors, witnesses to the interest that is centred in the trial, and all eyes are fixed on the pale, stern old man who stands before the dais silently facing his judges. He is quite alone, and his thoughts go back, with some bitterness, to his previous trial, when the people crowded the doors shouting for their favorite, and John of Gaunt and the Lord Marshal of England were standing by his side. He has learned since then not to put his trust in princes. The power of his enemies has rapidly grown; even the young King (Richard II) has been won over to their cause, and patrons and friends have drawn back from his side, whom the Church has resolved to crush.