Wyclif, John

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

wik'lif, John (1324-1384), an English reformer. He was the son of a country squire. He was educated at Oxford. He rose to a high position in the university and attacked the abuses of the church. He is called the earliest Protestant, "the Morning Star of the Reformation." Not satisfied with controversy in Latin, the language of the church and the law court, Wyclif appealed to the people in English. He is the first English pamphleteer, the first English university man to address himself to the plowboy--to appeal to the people. Richard III drove him finally from Oxford to appease the friars and the clergy. Wyclif, with flowing robe, long gray beard, and piercing eye, retired, staff in hand, to a parish church, lived in a hovel, and forged a weapon against his enemies--nothing less than a translation of the Scriptures from the Latin into the language of the common people--the first English Bible, 1382. He died peacefully. Thirty years after his death the Council of Constance, the same that condemned John Huss, issued a decree that Wyclif's remains should be disinterred and burned. This was done, and his ashes were cast into a little brook that runs past Lutterworth into the Avon. The Avon leads into the Severn, and the Severn into Bristol Channel. The poetic fancy of Wordsworth makes the scattering of Wyclif's ashes symbolical of the spreading of his doctrine: As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear Into the Avon--Avon to the tide Of Severn--Severn to the narrow seas-- Into main ocean they--this deed accurst, An emblem yields to friends and enemies, How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed. Some prophet of that day said: The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea; And Wyclif's dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be. Wyclif's Bible did much in the entire absence of grammar, dictionary, and spelling book--that is, before their day--to fix the English language. Writers, however, could not turn to his Bible as we do to a dictionary, for it appeared before the invention of printing and copies had to be drawn off by hand. It was printed in 1850. The following verses from the first chapter of St. Mark give an idea of Wyclif's choice of words and spelling. We should remember that it preceded the King James Bible by two hundred years: The voyce of oon cryinge in desert, Make ye redy the weye of the Lord, make ye his pathis rihtful. And John was clothid with heeris of camelis, and a girdil of skyn abowte his leendis; and he oet locusts, and hony of the woode, and prechide, seyinge: A strengere than I schal come aftir me, of whom I knelinge am not worthi for to vndo, or vnbynde, the thwong of his schoon. I have baptisid you in water; forsothe he schal baptise you in the Holy Goost.