# John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 11

Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, in New York.
CHAPTER XI.
WYCLIF THE EVANGELIST.
HE title of Doctor Evangelicus, bestowed on John Wyclif by certain of his contemporaries and successors, was unquestionably earned by the importance which he attached to the words of Holy Writ, by his heroic resolve to translate the Bible into English, and by his commission of the "Poor Priests," who were sent out for the express purpose of reading and preaching upon the English Scriptures.
His action in appointing and commissioning these enthusiastic preachers of the Gospel has been compared with that of Dominic and Francis a hundred and fifty years earlier. The parallel is not very close, but we can hardly doubt that the Reformer was inspired by those two conspicuous examples to ​adopt a similar method, in the hope of re-awakening the conscience of Christian men and women. He could think of no better way of rousing the spirits of his ignorant countrymen than to put the Bible in the hands of devoted missionaries, and to bid them take it as their text whenever and wherever they could get an audience together. If he gave them any definite rules for their guidance beyond this, the rules have not been handed down to us. The mendicant Orders have preserved their constitutions, which strike one as being almost too elaborate to have proceeded from the original founders of those Orders. The constitution of the Russet Priests may have been from first to last an unwritten law, as simple as the earliest Christian commission on record—"Go into the world and preach the gospel." At any rate that is practically the limit of our knowledge concerning them—with one exception hereafter to be mentioned. We do not know when the first Poor Priest was despatched, nor how many were commissioned, nor where they went, nor what was the measure of their success. We know their work, but not their names. We recognise the tree by its fruits, and the best evidence of their probably life-long labours is to be found in the conspicuous and astonishing vitality of so-called Lollardism throughout the next few generations. The teachings of Wyclif and his missionaries, based upon a simple and familiar treatment of the Bible, which had hitherto been jealously and mysteriously ​held, sank during these generations so deeply into the popular mind that the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found all England saturated with biblical knowledge. It is marvellous that such widespread results should have left behind them so little visible testimony of the process by which they were brought about.
But indeed the very silence of history as to the personality of Wyclif's Poor Priests, and as to the details of their appointment and mission, is eloquent of the simplicity, the enthusiasm, the single-minded devotion with which they set about their work. Knowledge of and reverence for Holy Writ, an unbleached sheepskin, a broad hat, and a pair of sandals made up their moral and material equipment. Some of them were certainly university men, whilst some had graduated by the side of the master whom they revered, in no other learning than that of "the sacred page." It may be that the more scholarly amongst them carried copies of the Bible, or of the Gospels.only, made industriously by their own hands, at Oxford, at London, or at Lutterworth. In the same way they may have taken with them a few of Wyclif's sermons, or notes from the sermons which they had heard him preach. But the humblest of them all, it is very easy to believe, had nothing more than a well-furnished memory, together with a tested power to move the hearts of their fellow-men.
Naturally the first translations made by Wyclif from the Latin Bible were taken in hand some time before the Poor Priests went forth on their mission. It is impossible to fix a date for the beginning of the ​work by Wyclif himself, or for its continuation by Nicholas Hereford at Oxford, John Purvey at Lutterworth, and their assistants. Nor would it be easy to say when Wyclif began to write for his contemporaries in English, or what is the date of his earliest English works which we now possess. But as to the motives which led him to translate the Bible for popular use, we are left in no doubt whatever. In a work, Of the Truth of Holy Scripture, written soon after his second escape from the hands of Courtenay, and before his English Bible was completed, he puts his case both clearly and fully. God's will, he says, is plainly expressed in the two Testaments taken together. Christ's law suffices for Christ's Church, without requiring the addition or substitution of another priest-made law, and the Christian who understands it has enough for his needs in this world. The direct message and voice of God to man in the words of Holy Writ, without any necessity for an intermediary—this was his "passionate conviction of truth"; and we can understand how such a declaration would shock the conventional orthodoxy of the fourteenth century.
In another place he lays it down that "Christen men and women, olde and young, shulden study fast in the New Testament, and no simple man of wit shuldebe aferdeunmesurably to study in the text of holy Writ. Pride and covetise of clerks is cause of their blyndnesse and heresie, and priveth them fro verie understonding of holy Writ. The New Testament is of ful autoritie, and open to understonding of simple men, as to the poynts that ben most ​needful to salvation. The texte of holy Writ ben wordes of everlasting life, and he that kepeth mekenes and charitie hath the trewe understondynge and perfection of all holy Writ. It seemeth open heresy to say that the Gospel with his truth and freedom suffiseth not to salvation of Christen men without kepynge of ceremonies and statutes of sinful men and unkunninge, that ben made in the tyme of Sathanas and Antichriste."
Wyclif, of course, exercised a notable influence on the history of English letters. He had been born into the early renaissance of literature, as well as into the early reformation of religion; and since he was himself, in each of these two domains, a not inconsiderable part of the epoch through which he lived, a brief glance at the literary aspects of his century may help us to appreciate his position as a pioneer of progress in the creation of the language which we speak and write to-day.
In and about the fourteenth century, English, in common with the other languages of modern Europe, made an important advance towards a definite written form. The central and western tongues had gradually developed themselves out of the interfused vocabularies and grammatical types of the Classical, Celtic, Scandinavian, and German stocks. Men of learning and imagination in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and England were only just beginning to find free literary expression in the familiar languages which they had been accustomed to use in their domestic and social intercourse. Latin was for the clergy, for philosophers and students; it could ​never be a fit medium for modern thought and fancy. And yet, where except in Latin could literary expression be found? "The delicacy," says Hallam, "that distinguishes in words the shades of sentiment, the grace that brings them to the soul of the reader with the charm of novelty united to clearness, could not be attainable in a colloquial jargon." Nor could such a jargon possibly attain to distinction and style where (as in our own country) the speech of the people was not the speech of the Court, the talk of the peasant was not the talk of those who owned the soil, the tongue of men who sought for justice was not the tongue of such as had to administer it. Where was genius to find her niche, until the language of everyday life, the language of the nation and not of the governing race, began to show its predilections, to set up its standard, to attract the notice and favour of men whose imaginations were already on fire and craving for utterance?
Whilst the Schoolmen were struggling bravely but lamely for freedom of religious life and thought, the French writers of fabliaux, pastourelles, and love songs, followed by the German minnesingers and meistersingers, broke the silence to which poetic souls had long been condemned, and lightly preluded the nobler strains of Dante and Petrarch. Higher elevation of thought and language it was impossible for poet to attain in those days than the height attained by the two devout Florentines, whose poems, religious and even devotional in their tone, largely secularized the mood and phraseology ​of religion for the interpretation of human interests and passions. Italy was naturally ahead of other countries in the dignity and suppleness of her new literature, for Italian and the Italians had been hellenised many centuries ago, and the younger race was inheriting the intellectual property of its ancestors. The literature of the northern nations was of slower growth, and their hellenisation was yet to come.
Before the middle of the fourteenth century there was little or nothing in England which could be called literature—no Greek at all, Latin with a mere savour of latinity, and of English no more than a few rude songs, mainly provincial and political, a few still ruder miracle plays, and a handful of hazardous translations from the Latin or French. It is true that as early as 1327 William of Shoreham had made his English version of the Psalms; and not long afterwards the hermit Rolle of Hampole made another version, followed by a didactic poem, The Pricke of Conscience. But Wyclif was a middle-aged man before Chaucer—indebted, like himself, to the protection and good-will of the Duke of Lancaster translated—The Romaunt of the Rose, and produced, in Anglo-Norman amalgam, The Court of Love.
John Wyclif may or may not have had all these English manuscripts, and others which succeeded them, under his notice, at one time or another in his active intellectual life. That he read some of them, the Psalms, the Pricke of Conscience, the Againbite, the translation of the Manuel des Péché's, ​and the Vision of Piers Plowman is most probable; for copies would surely be at Oxford, and such as were not there he would hardly fail to see in London. It would be rash, however, to assume that the ardent devotee of scholastic theology, the earnest-minded student whose ambition was to earn distinction amongst the secular clergy, the prominent ecclesiastic whose soul was immersed in the stern realities of the day, was attracted to any sort of profane writing outside the limits of religious exposition and devotion. There is little evidence in his own writings of a taste for dealing with lighter topics, or for greater freedom of imagination and treatment. On the other hand, this is not what we should expect to find in connection with the serious controversies in which he was engaged. We know that Wyclif was a bright and pleasant companion in everyday life and at the table, for his enemies twisted it into a charge against him. There is no reason why he should not have read the diverting fables of Sir John Mandeville, or even some of the sugared lays and translations of the courtly Chaucer. It is not out of the bounds of possibility that he should have seen before he died one or more of the stories which Chaucer subsequently collected in the Canterbury Tales.
Be this as it may, there is no room for doubting that Wyclif had pored over the manuscripts at Balliol and Merton, and the costly treasures of Bishop Aungervile, better known as Richard de Bury, lately removed for safe keeping to Durham College, hard by Balliol, where two centuries nearer ​to our own time the foundations of Trinity were to be laid. In one or other of these calm retreats he would find sundry versions and paraphrases of sacred history, more or less fragmentary, more or less freely rendered by monks or clerks of the northern or western shires, of the midlands or the south-east. One such manuscript, the Cursor Mundi, produced about the time of Wyclif's birth, and soon widely popular as a metrical version of Bible history, would certainly be found at Oxford, together with sermons in English, and Scripture stories in verse which were occasionally read in the churches.
Wyclif, it must be confessed, would have fair reason to think that the partial translations of the Bible which had been made up to his own day could be improved upon without much difficulty. When they were not intended as mere service-books, which was the case with the different versions of the Psalms, these Scriptural paraphrases had the character of story-books for diversion. No serious attempt had been made to turn the whole of Scripture, or even the New Testament, into an accurate English equivalent. The prejudice against such a proceeding was too strong to be lightly faced; it was common to all Christendom, and has never been overcome in countries which have adhered to the Latin rfte. Wyclif was prepared to face it, but he felt it necessary, as we have seen, to justify and explain his action with considerable deliberation. He cannot have entertained any delusions as to the reception which his English Bible would meet with from the ecclesiastical authorities, and from the seculars and ​regulars who prided themselves most upon their orthodoxy. If, as is likely enough, he had nursed the idea of his translation from a comparatively early age, it may well have been that his denunciation as a heretic by the Pope, and Courtenay, and the friars, finally nerved him to carry out his half-formed intentions.
It was a bold venture in every way. Wyclif was more the cleric than the man of letters, and, great as were his services in promoting the formal and academic use of his mother tongue, in clearing and widening the sources of what was soon to become a broad and limpid stream, and in cutting as it were the matrix of the type in which the English Bible was to be printed and perpetuated for all time, there is assuredly no necessity to claim for him the laurels of literary excellence.
That which especially connects Wyclif with the course of English literature and the development of the English language is the fact that the moment of his arrival at maturity—maturity as a man, as a religious thinker, as a political seer, and as a social innovator coincided with the definitive triumph of the English tongue. Long despised by the Norman Court and aristocracy, from the French queens and their favourites down to the humblest hanger-on of the ruling classes, and equally despised by the clergy, monks, friars, and lawyers, whose debased Latin was their only current coin of speech, the language of our English forefathers suddenly, almost dramatically, stood forth as the dominant tongue in every department of the national life. The formal ​re-instatement of English was a jubilee gift which Edward gave to his country in 1362, when Parliament ordered legal pleadings to be conducted in the popular speech, on the ground that French was "much unknown." The date of this statute may be taken as the first turning-point of the English language and literature, as it was within a little of being the turning-point of religion in England. The change itself, to be sure, had not been so sudden as its formal sanction was striking and authoritative. The mass of the people, it need not be said, had always spoken English—a varying and undigested English, without standard or model for three hundred years, in one part favouring a German type, in another French, and in some cases even tending to a sort of spurious latinisation, but still essentially the English of Alfred and Edward and Harold.
It is impossible without a vigorous effort of the imagination to realise the condition of our ancestors between the middle of the eleventh century and the middle of the fourteenth, divided as they were in heart and sympathy from the ruling race by this most effectual of all barriers, and thrown back upon themselves not only in matters connected with law and government, but also, as it must have been to a very large extent, in religion and social life. Everyone remembers the patriotic complaint, that "children in school, against the use and manner of all other nations, be compelled for to leave their own language and for to construe their lessons and their things in French; and so they have since Normans first came to England." There must have been the ​same jealous feeling in regard to the preference given to the Norman-French at Court, in public offices of all kinds, and in trials at law, as well as to the use of Latin in religious services. It is easy to conceive the wonderful reaction which would follow the adoption of English where French had formerly been used, and the definite recognition of the national tongue for almost every public purpose. And nowhere would the reaction and relief be greater than in the religious domain, when Wyclif's Poor Priests brought the gospel home to the poor, and "monkish Latin" gave place to the English Bible.
Wyclif's prose was a little more scholastic than Mandeville's, and takes more of an academic character from the original text out of which it was translated. It is true that Mandeville's work is a translation, as he expressly states, for he seems to have made his first observations in Latin. "Ye shall understand," he says, "that I have put this book out of Latin into French, and translated it again out of French into English, that every man of my nation may understand it." But a version from the Latin Vulgate was not likely to be so free or supple as a traveller's version from his own Latin text.
Before taking a few samples of Wyclif's English, it may be interesting to quote a short passage from The Voiage and Travaile of Mandeville, in order that the style of these two pioneers of written prose may be compared. Evidently the language which they wrote was the familiar language spoken by educated Englishmen of their day, with this ​distinction, that the writers were three-tongued men, who more or less pedantically used new-fangled words from the Latin and French, whereas the English speakers who knew no Latin would allow a marked predominance to French or to English types, according to their descent and early associations.
"For als moche," Mandeville writes, "as it is longe tyme passed that there was no generalle passage ne vyage over the see, and many men desiren for to here speke of the holy lond, and han therof gret solace and comfort; I John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the town of Seynt Albones, passede the see in the year of our Lord Jhesu Christ MCCCXXII, in the day of Seynt Michelle; and hidreto have ben longe tyme over the see, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse londes, and many provynces and kingdomes and iles . . . where dwellen many dyverse folkes, and of dyverse maneres and lawes, and of dyverse schappes of men."
It is almost entirely a matter of spelling whether this language is plain and simple to us or not. In most essentials the three-tongued men of the fourteenth century spoke and wrote the colloquial speech of to-day.
Wyclif's Bible, though it occupied several hands, is fairly homogeneous throughout. Probably the whole of it passed under his review; and moreover the complete text was subsequently revised by Purvey, who had been his fellow-worker from the beginning. But we are most certain to find Wyclif's English in the Gospels, which were his special and ​original charge. In them alone we shall find sufficient evidence, apart from external knowledge, that the Wyclif Bible was translated from the Latin Vulgate, that the translator had at least some little acquaintance, if only at second hand, with Greek, that his constant aim was to make his version clear and simple for the simplest English folk, that with this aim he added glosses where it occurred to him that the text required them, that his vocabulary was plentifully recruited from the French, though to nothing like the same degree as the language of his contemporary Chaucer, and that so far as Wyclif's English was provincial it had certain characteristic elements of the Northern dialect. There is also a distinct impression of pedantry in Wyclif, beyond what we find in the prose works of Chaucer and Mandeville—though the Tale of Melibeus and the introduction to the Voiage and Travaile are quite pedantic enough to have been written by theologians. Wyclif is extremely literal, and nurses the Latin constructions of the Vulgate, at the cost of occasional vagueness. All these points are illustrated in the following passages—in which the only modernisation of spelling is the use of the later characters g, gh, th, v, and y.
"And Marye seyde, My soule worschipe the Lord, and my spirit joiede in God myn heelpe.
"For he lokide the mekenes of his hondmayden; lo forwhi of that, blisful me schulyen seyn alle generaciouns.
"For he hath do to me grete thingis that mighti is, and his name holy.
​"And the mercy of him fro kinredis into kynredis, to tho that dreeden him.
"He dyde myght in his arm; he scateride the proude fro the thought of his herte.
"He putte doun the myghti of seete, and he highede the meke.
"The hungrynge he fillide with goodis, and the riche he lefte empty.
"He resseyvede Israel his child; he thoughte of his mercy.
"Ashe spak to oure fadris, to Abraham and to his seed into worldis."
"And he, gon out, biganne to preche, and diffame, or publishe, the word."
"He blasfemeth; who may forgeve synnes, no-but God alone? The whiche thing anoon knowen by the Holy Ghost, for thei thoughten so withinne hemself, Jhesus seith to hem, what thenken yee these thingis in youre hertis?"
"And whenne he passide, he saw Levi Alfey sittynge at the tolbothe, and he seith to hym, Sue thou me. And he rysynge suede hym."
"No man seweth a pacche of rude or newe clothe to an old clothe, ellis he takith awey the newe supplement, or pacche, and a more brekynge is maad. And no man sendith newe wyn in to oolde botelis, or wyn vesselis, ellis the wyn shal berste the wyn vesselis, and the wyn shal be held out."
"And thei hav nat roote in hemsilf, but thei ben temporal, that is, lasten a lityl tyme; afterward tribulacioun sprongen up, and persecucioun for the word, anoon thei ben sclaundrid."
​"As a corn of seneveye, the which whann it is sowun in the erthe is lesse than alle seedis that ben in erthe; and whanne it is bredd, or quykened, it stygheth up in to a tree, and is maad more than alle wortis, or erbis; and it shal make grete braunchis, so that briddis of hevene mowe dwelle undir the shadewe therof."
"Sothly Jhesus resceyved hym nat, but seith to hym, Go thou in to thin hous to thine, and telle to hem how many thingis the Lord hath don to thee, and hadde mercy of thee. And he wente forth, and bigan for to preche in Decapoly, that is, a cuntree of ten citees."
"Yit him spekynge, messageris camen to the prince of synagoge, seyinge, For thi doughtir is deed; what traveilist thou the maistir ferthere? Forsothe the word herd that was seide, Jhesus seith to the prince of the synagoge, Nyle thou drede, oonly byleve thou."
"And anon he spek with hem, and seide to hem, Triste ye, I am; nyle ye drede."
"And aftir sixe dayes Jhesus took Petre, and James, and John, and ledith hem by hem selve aloone in to an high hil; and he is transfigurid byfore hem. And his clothis ben maad schynynge and white ful moche as snow, and which maner clothis a fullere, or walkere of cloth, may not make white on erthe. And Helye with Moyses apperide to hem, and thei weren spekynge with Jhesu."
"Forsothe of the fyge tree lerne ye the parable. Whanne nowhisbraunche schal be tendre, and leevys ben sprongen out, ye witen for somer is in the nexte. ​So and whanne ye schulen se alle these thingis been maad, wite ye that it is in the nexte, in the doris. Treuly I seye to you, for this generacioun schal not passe awey, til alle these thingis be don. Hevene and erthe schal passe, forsothe my wordis schulen not passe. Treuly of that day or our no man woot, neithir aungelis in hevene, neithir the sone, nobut the fadiẛ."
At some date which it is not possible to determine, Wyclif composed a number of sermons on the subject of the Sunday Gospels. The title which he gave to the book was The Sonedai Gospelis, Expowncd in Partie, and these discourses (collected and published with others in 1382) are not so much sermons as skeletons, which a preacher might readily clothe with additional words and thoughts of his own. It is highly probable that Wyclif prepared some homilies of this kind for the use of his Poor Priests, to the less eloquent of whom they would manifestly be a great assistance. They include occasional directions for preachers, which could not be verbally repeated to a congregation. Here, for instance, is the concluding paragraph of the sermon for the first Sunday after Trinity—the Gospel for the day relating to Lazarus and Dives.
"In this Gospel may preestis telle of fals pride of riche men, and of lustful lyf of myghty men of this worlde, and of longe peynes of helle, and joyful blis in hevene, and thus lengthe their sermoun as the tyme axith. And marke we how this gospel tellith that this riche man was not dampned for extorsioun or wrong that he dide to his neighbore, but for he ​failide in werkes of mercy; and thus shulde we warne both o man and other how sum men shall be dampnyd more felly for raveyne, and sum shal be dampnyd more softly, for misusinge of Goddis goodis."
The frank courage of the writer is stamped on all his sermons, and it is easy to understand how the outcry would arise, even amongst the secular clergy, against himself and the men whom he sent forth to preach. For in the mildest of these discourses there is no respect of persons, and neither Pope nor prelate, priest nor monk, is spared when he neglects his office for his own gain or convenience. On the fourth Sunday after Trinity, the Gospel dealing with the mote and the beam, we have the following suggestion:
"Here may men see that sugettis shulden blame prelatis when they seen opynly greet defaultes in hem, as defaulte of Goddis lawe in keeping and teeching; for this is a beeme bi which the fende bindeth his hous, and thei shulden knowe thes as thei shulden fele the lore (loss) thereof."
Wyclif began to preach sermons in English in 1361, if not earlier, and it is possible that some of the discourses in "The Sunday Gospels" were prepared at Fillingham, or at Ludgarshall. Others smack more of controversy, and deal so roundly with the religious Orders in particular that a considerably later date must be assigned to them. Thus in the sermon for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity there is a sharp touch for the Pope and the Orders.
"We shulden bewar of peril of ypocrisie, for many feynen hem in statis, and done reverse in her lyf, ​and yit thei seien thei ben perfiter than waren the first clerkis of Crist. And thus enemyes of Cristis religioun chalengen to be of his Ordre, algif they done even the contrarie to name that thei beren; as the Pope shulde be moost meke man, moost servysable and moost pore, as we ben taught in Seint Petir, that was Pope next after Crist. And now men seyen that the Pope mote nedis reverse this ordenaunce, and have more power for to do thingis that touchen excellence; and thus bishopis that shulden be clerkis and pore men, as apostlis weren, ben moost lordis of this world, and reversen apostlis lyf. Sum tyme weren mounkes lewede men, as seintis in Jerusalem; and thanne thei kept him silf fro synne, as seynt Bernard berith witnesse, but now monkes ben turned into lordis of this worlde most ydel in Goddis travaile, and seyen that thei ben betre monkes than weren the first seintis. And so freris, that weren bretheren in Crist, and not chargeous to the Chirche, neither in noumbre ne in clothing, ne in mete ne in housynge, ben even turned agen fro the first lyf of hem, and yet bi ther ypocrisie thei blynden the Chirche many gatis, and thus names of offices and names of virtues also ben changed bi ypocrisie, and cursed men reulen the world."
It will be convenient here to add a few words on the other English works of Wyclif, known or alleged to be his. It may be said at once that there are many manuscripts of the fourteenth century which we are unable with any degree of confidence to assign to their true authors; and this general statement ​applies to the works of Wyclif amongst others. More than seventy distinct English works, over and above the Latin documents and treatises which are historically connected with him, have at different times been ascribed to him. Indeed Bishop Bale brought up the number of his Latin and English works to something like three hundred; but he did not claim to have seen them all, and still less did he insist on their authenticity.
The fact of the matter seems to have been that the attempts which were made to suppress the writings of Wyclif and the Lollards, and which in some instances succeeded, led to the concealment of many manuscripts by their possessors, whether in England or across the seas, without preserving any detailed account of their origin or authorship. When the age of sense or freedom returned, and it became possible to bring these treasures to the light, there would naturally be a disposition to claim them all as Wyclif's, whereas a considerable number may have been the works of Nicholas Hereford, of Purvey, John Aston, and other Wycliffites. There are, indeed, comparatively few cases in which the original manuscript bears an inscription of such a kind as to settle its authorship beyond dispute.
A PAGE FROM THE PLESHY BIBLE (WYCLIF'S). OWNED BY THOMAS OF WOODSTOCK, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, SON OF EDWARD III. Egerton MSS., British Museum, reduced to about one-third linear.
​recent students, after repeated siftings, have still associated with his name, we may be well content to cling for the present to every one, so long as no conclusive proof is brought forward on behalf of another author.
It was in 1865 that Dr. Shirley, then Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, printed his Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif—of which he enumerated ninety-six in Latin and sixty-five in English. In the following year he proposed to the Delegates of the University Press "to prepare for publication selected English works of Wyclif in three volumes," and with the sanction of the Delegates he engaged Mr. Thomas Arnold to edit the selection. Dr. Shirley died soon after this arrangement had been made, and he was therefore unable to mature his views with regard to the authenticity and chronology of the writings which had been assigned to Wyclif. The Catalogue of 1865, whilst it very largely reduced the lists of Bale and Lewis, and showed an advance upon the knowledge of Vaughan, Todd, and others, was confessedly tentative, and there are several numbers in respect of which the compiler was more than doubtful. Acting on Dr. Shirley's hints Mr. Arnold, in the introduction to his Select English Works of John Wyclif (1869-1871) reduced the list of authentic works to forty-one, whereof he printed the greater number.
The tendency of this selection and restriction was evidently on the right lines. Many manuscripts had been dealt with by earlier writers on hearsay only, or with a knowledge of no more than the first few ​words. Shirley and Arnold examined them more carefully, and weeded out a considerable number, of which it is possible to say definitely that, whoever may have written them, John Wyclif did not. Mr. F. D. Matthew, in 1880, edited for the Early English Text Society The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, including (for reasons which appeared sufficient to him) sundry tracts already rejected, or relegated to a "doubtful" class. The three books just mentioned may be said to have prepared the way for a thoroughly critical edition of the English writings of Wyclif. But it is questionable if in any case a canon of authenticity could be set up which would be universally accepted by those who are competent to form an opinion.
Mr. Arnold's reduced list of forty-one "probably genuine" English works includes a large collection of sermons on the Sunday Gospels and Epistles, and on the Gospels for saints' days, together with exegetical works on the Canticles and other items of the service-books; tracts on the heresies and errors of the Friars, on the Eucharist, on the Apostasy of the clergy, on the Schism of the Roman Pontiffs, on Church Temporalities and the condition of the clergy, with sundry letters, statements, and petitions such as will be found quoted or referred to in the present volume.
The manuscripts on which we have to rely in the last resort for the authenticity of Wyclif's works are fairly numerous, at any rate for the sermons. Eighteen or twenty, in the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, or in public or private libraries elsewhere, ​were collated for Mr. Arnold's edition. They are dated (by internal evidence rather than by continuous description from their origin onwards) as belonging to the later years of the fourteenth century, and various periods of the fifteenth. The same description applies to the sixteen or more manuscripts from which the tracts and miscellaneous works are taken—manuscripts preserved in the Bodleian and other university libraries, and in the Harleian and Cottonian collections at the British Museum. The difficulties of deducing positive belief from the evidence afforded by these manuscripts are various. Experts in palaeography can go a long way towards fixing the date of any particular manuscript, so as to make us fairly confident that we know the time of its production within a few decades. But even when we are assured that such and such a volume of manuscript was the work of a copyist who lived about the close of the fourteenth century, we may not have made any great advance towards a definite conclusion. The volume itself, and the separate tracts of which it is composed, may be without title or preface, and without collateral evidence of any sort; and there are certainly cases where collections of distinct works were attributed to Wyclif in the fifteenth century though it is manifest on closer inquiry that more authors than one were responsible for them. It is conceivable that either the copyist or the collector may have too lightly brought together the writings of different people; and in this way Wyclif has received credit or discredit for many a production of his contemporaries or immediate successors.
​The writings of Wyclif have undergone a fate which somewhat curiously recalls the history of Aristotle's works after his death. Circumstances conspired to bury the Metaphysics and Politics, and perhaps other writings of Aristotle, in oblivion. After more than two centuries they were re-discovered, brought by Apellicon from the Troad to Athens, and carried thence by Sulla to Rome. Then they disappeared again, and for many centuries the philosophy of the Stagyrite was preserved for Europe by the scholars of Syria, Arabia, and other Mahomedan lands. Moreover the earlier disciples of Aristotle wrote Aristotelian discourses on a variety of subjects, some of which have been or may yet be accepted as genuine works of the master, though it would be idle to expect unanimity of opinion amongst scholars in every particular case.
Most of what has been said of Wyclif's English writings will apply equally well to his Latin works. The canon is undetermined, and perhaps, so far as the minor tracts are concerned, it could never be definitely established. As for the philosophical treatise De Esse, the De Compositione Hominis, the De Dominio Divino, De Civili Dominio, and De Ecclesia, the Trialogus, the De Veritate Sanctae Scripturae, and a few more, in which we find autobiographical details, or on which controversies arose in his life-time, there is no room for question; but in other cases it is clear that Latin writings have been attributed to Wyclif about the authenticity of which it is impossible not to entertain a doubt.
Amongst the English works which have been ​generally attributed to Wyclif is one which was first printed in the reign of Edward VI., in the year 1550. It is thus described on the title-page: "The true Copye of a Prolog, zvritten about two hundred years past by John Wycliffe . . . the Original whereof is found written in an old English Bible, betwixt the Old Testament and the New." We do not seem to possess any better evidence of the authenticity of this Prologue than is supplied in the title just quoted; and it must be confessed that the worthy Reformer who reproduced it was somewhat easily satisfied on the point of authorship. Unquestionably, if we could accept this as a genuine production of Wyclif it would possess great interest and value, as being descriptive of his work and method as a translator of the Bible. But neither the style nor the language of the Prologue, of which an extract is here added (with the spelling modified), will warrant us in agreeing that it is his work.
"Though covetous clerks are mad through simony, heresy, and many other sins, and despise and impede Holy Writ as much as they can, yet the unlearned people cry after Holy Writ to know it, with great cost and peril of their lives. For those reasons and other, with common charity to save all men in our realm which God will have saved, a simple creature hath translated the Bible out of Latin into English. First this simple creature had much labour with divers companions and helpers to collect many old Bibles and other doctors, and common glosses, and to make a single Latin Bible fairly correct, and then to study it anew, the text with the commentary and ​other doctors, as he could obtain them, and especially Lire (Nicolas de Lyra) on the Old Testament, who gave him great help in his work. Again he had to take counsel with old grammarians and divines, concerning hard words and hard sentences, how they might best be understood and translated; and again, to translate as clearly as he could according to the sentence (meaning), and to have many good and skilful companions at the correcting of the translation."
The difficulty of assigning this Prologue to John Purvey, as some have done, is almost as great as that of assigning it to Wyclif. It certainly affords a good instance of the facility with which early manuscripts have at different times been attributed to the Evangelical Doctor.
ST. MARY'S, OXFORD. TOWER PARTLY CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH WYCLIF.