John Wycliffe Challenges Teaching of the Catholic Church

Forerunner of the Reformation Movement

In the mid to latter 14^th century, the English Catholic Church faced the prospect of growing doctrinal challenges through the teaching of John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor. A believer in predestination, Wycliffe followed the theological teachings of St. Augustine, ultimately, however, resurrecting the old “Donatist” heresy and denying the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. His views continued with the English Lollard movement after his death as well as, more notably, the ministry of Jan Huss in Bohemia. Although there are some parallels to Luther and Calvin in the 16^th century, Wycliffe’s beliefs should not be equated with any notion of a pre-Reformation theological system.

 

Questioning Church Doctrines

 

As a popular lecturer at Oxford, Wycliffe developed a following as well as aristocratic support. His attack on church wealth, notably property, attracted the greed of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who protected Wycliffe until he died. Denying church tradition, Wycliffe asserted that the only law of the church was scripture and produced a vernacular Bible by 1384.

 

Wycliffe also taught that sinful priests, and even bishops, could be outside of God’s law thus calling into question their presumed ability to transform the bread and wine into the body of Christ (the transubstantiationist view of the Eucharist). This view, based in part on his understanding of Augustinian thinking, resembled the Donatist heresy of the early church, against which Augustine had battled.

 

Eventually denying transubstantiation altogether and attacking the mendicant orders that had initially supported him, Wycliffe was condemned and excommunicated. His “poor priests,” however, continued to preach his ideas, persecuted in earnest by the English King Henry V in the early 15^th century. The Lollard movement, although surviving underground, was all but rooted out. Wycliffe died at his Lutterworth parish in 1384, although his remains were unearthed forty years later and burned.

 

Wycliffe’s Influence in Bohemia

 

Wycliffe’s teaching came to Bohemia through Anna, wife of the English king Richard II. A Bohemian princess, her presence in England induced students from the University of Prague to study at Oxford where they were influenced by Wycliffe’s writings. Jerome of Prague, one of Wycliffe’s greatest supporters in Bohemia, is frequently credited with disseminating the controversial ideas in Bohemia.

 

In the first decade of the 15^th century, Jan Huss, a reformist Bohemian priest, began to preach the ideas of Wycliffe as they related to church wealth and adherence to scripture. Huss did not accept Wycliffe’s views on the sacraments, particularly his rejection of transubstantiation. As medieval scholars Tierney and Painter comment, “…Huss was a preacher and reformer rather than a theologian and scholar.” (591)

 

Huss is most often identified with Martin Luther through his opposition to the selling of ecclesiastical indulgences. His attack on the practice reached a height in 1412, resulting in his condemnation and excommunication. Although given a “safe conduct” to the Council of Constance in 1415 by the Holy Roman Emperor-elect Sigismund, he was burned at the stake during the conference.

 

The “Hussites,” though suppressed, would eventually grow into the Moravian Church, a pietistic group of Protestant evangelical believers most well known for migrating to the English colonies of North America. These “Moravian Christians” established enclaves in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, notably at Old Salem in Winston-Salem.

 

To what extent were these movements the seeds of the 16^th century Reformation? Church Historian Williston Walker suggests that, “Their religious earnestness commands deep admiration, but in spite of Luther’s recognition of many points of agreement with Huss, the Reformation owed little to their efforts.” (274)

 

Sources:

 

Thomas B. Costain, The Last Plantagenets (Doubleday & Company, 1962).

Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter, Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475, 5^th Ed. (McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1983).

Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church 3^rd Ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).

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