# John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 1

Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, in New York.
JOHN WYCLIF.
CHAPTER I.
THE CHARACTER OF WYCLIF.
OME sixty years ago one of the most graphic of our historical painters, Sir David Wilkie, completed for Sir Robert Peel a magnificent panel, which had occupied his thoughts for more than ten years. It represents John Knox, the Scottish Reformer, preaching before the Lords of Congregation at St. Andrew's, on the 10th of June, 1559. It was a time of strife and violence, when religious reform could only be won or defeated by the sword, and when the preaching of a man like Knox was often followed by speedy and startling results. Wilkie has introduced into his picture not merely the calm and ​complacent forms of Murray, Morton, and Argyll, but also, in the stalls above them, the archbishops of St. Andrew's and Glasgow, with Abbot Kennedy, the foremost champions of Rome, so soon to be overtaken by the rising tide of Protestantism. The preacher, terrible in his unrestrained zeal and fervour, bends low down over his pulpit, as though his eager soul and winged words would drag the body after them. A jackman in attendance on the archbishops, standing with his arquebus in his hand, glares fiercely at the bold iconoclast, as though he were on the point of avenging the insult to his master; whilst a young member of the university, standing near the pulpit, is on the alert to defend the preacher in case of need. It could not have been the Admirable Crichton, as Wilkie meant it to be, for James Crichton was not born until the following year; but we may take the figure as representing the liberal movement in the premier university of Scotland at one of its most brilliant epochs.
The whole scene is full of life and motion. The artist has made his picture speak, and we are reminded, as we look at it, of all the long struggle for religious reform in Scotland, which was now on the eve of completion. Not many days after the preaching of that sermon the old order of things was overthrown, the monasteries were dissolved, pictures and images were turned out of the churches, and the revolution to which Knox had devoted himself was accomplished. It would be strange if from such a scene and from such a character the mind did not revert to the events and the men of two hundred ​years ago, to the earlier reformation period in England, to the lords and bishops and abbots, to the men of action and the men of study, and, above all, to the zealous leader of the first assault on Rome.
Between John Wyclif and John Knox there is a curious and striking resemblance, in more points than one such a resemblance as occurs not infrequently between two historical characters who from similar beginnings have pursued a somewhat similar course in life. No one who has made himself familiar with the various portraits and engravings which preserve for us at any rate the traditional features of Wyclif can fail to be arrested when he sees the face of Knox, as Wilkie has reproduced it from earlier pictures. It is not so much that the exact lineaments correspond in such a way as to catch the attention of a casual observer, though even in this sense the parallel is sufficiently remarkable. The type and character of the two heads are the same; you cannot look at one without thinking of the other. The keen intelligent eyes, the drawn features with their ascetic cast, the resolute lips which bespeak an absolutely fearless heart, are present in all the pictures; and a grizzled patriarchal beard serves to deepen the similarity.
But if the physical resemblance between Wyclif and Knox is noteworthy, still more so is the parallel presented by the leading events of their lives. Both were born and bred in the Latin rite, and became conspicuous as secular priests of the Roman Church. Knox, at St. Andrew's, and Wyclif, at Oxford, clung to the courts of their beloved universities, and there, ​with a passionate zeal for truth, half led and half followed the men of their day in a moral revolt against the later doctrine of Rome. Both, between the age of forty and fifty, came to be recognised as teachers of religious liberalism; both became king's chaplains and received the royal protection; both protested against the idolatry of the mass and the undue exaltation of the priestly office; both were repeatedly charged with heresy; both defended themselves with the utmost energy, and flung themselves into the path of danger in spite of threats and condemnations. Both stirred and inflamed their hearers in scathing sermons, and both were inhibited from preaching by their earlier patrons when they had served the turn of the politicians. Both were struck down, by apoplexy or paralysis, at the same age, and both died a couple of years later—Wyclif hot with indignation over the papal crusade, and Knox with his latest breath denouncing the massacre of St. Bartholomew's. And the same epitaph might be written over the grave of each—"Here lies one who never feared the face of man."
If there is nothing in such a parallel but a series of simple coincidences, still it may suffice to bring us from the very beginning almost into touch with the religious Reformer of the fourteenth century, by showing in how many essentials he was an antetype and counterpart of the enthusiast of the sixteenth century. Nor will it fail to suggest how near akin may be the pioneers of moral development in every age, even across the interval of five hundred years. If we were to look to our own day for parallels to ​the character and career of John Wyclif, we might find none so close and continuous as that which is afforded by the biography of Knox, but at any rate there would be no lack of brief and partial reminders to show how the spiritual needs of successive generations call forth the very qualities which are required to satisfy them, and how in this way also the history of Wyclif has tended to repeat itself. The adventurous pioneer of the college cloister or university lecture-room, the innovating spirit of the tractarian or the homilist, the missionary zeal which organizes and sends forth an army of Christian soldiers, the hardihood which converts a simple priest into a politician, a socialist, a champion of the dregs of humanity—we too have known them all within the limits of a lifetime, and each in many varying forms.
Wyclif was neither a Wesley nor a Simeon, neither a Wilberforce nor a Newman nor a Booth, and yet there is a sense in which he combined the qualities of all these men, vastly as they differ from each other. The distinction of his multiple character arises from the fact that he stands forth so prominently in an age which forms a joint and hinge of religious history. He possessed nothing whatsoever of that which we now understand by the spirit of sectarianism. His claim was to be recognised as abiding in the ancient ways of faith, as upholding or seeking to restore the faith which Christ had founded, and which Christ gave no man the power or authority to change. Standing firm on such a basis, it was impossible that he should be a heretic, or a ​schismatic, or a sectarian. Rome might be heretical, and that is what he called her. The Papacy might be Antichrist, and he fixed the name upon it. Clearly he was right or wrong according as the ground which he took up was evangelical or anti-scriptural—according as he interpreted aright or misinterpreted the message of Christ to the world.
Wyclif and his friends were the earliest protestants, not because they revolted against authority, and wanted a church unfettered by authority, but because they went back to the first and strictest authority of all, and rejected its merely human accretions. They did not carry their protest backward for more than three centuries. They held by the Fathers, and the earlier councils and canons, repudiating the new dogmas and definitions which had been imposed on the Church after the first millennium of the Christian era. The position occupied by this fourteenth-century school of Oxford criticism was one of great dignity and weight, which the prelates of that age could not easily attack. Apart from the royal favour which was accorded to the Wycliffites for many years, it was impossible for the archbishops and bishops to prosecute with a light heart the most distinguished Oxford men of the day, who for a time seem to have been backed by a majority of the resident members of the university. It must be clearly borne in mind that Wyclif's standing was that of a doctor and professor of theology, an ex-master of Balliol, a brilliant lecturer and preacher, a king's chaplain, and a trusted adviser of Parliament. He was, in short, one of the ​chief notabilities of his time, and, though the friars were not slow in detecting and denouncing his unorthodox views, their own unpopularity must have made it more difficult for the hierarchy of the Church to take action than it would have been if the Orders had held their peace.
If John Wyclif had been a protestant, and a heresiarch, and nothing more, or if he had been known to us mainly by his controversies and his writings, we might have been content to regard him with a somewhat perfunctory interest as "the morning-star of the Reformation," or as a scholastic theologian who wrote voluminous treatises in dry mediæval Latin and decidedly uncouth English. Truth to tell, the works of Wyclif are not and cannot be made very attractive to men and women of the present day. Their importance in the history of religious belief is incalculable, and to the systematic student of that history they will always be indispensable. For the general reader they are, in their complete form, not only superfluous but even a little misleading. At all events they do not show us the true or the most lovable Wyclif, any more than Milton's controversies with Salmasius show us the author of 'Lycidas at his best. Happily there is enough in the personal history of Wyclif, as a man rather than as a writer, and as an evangelist rather than as a controversialist, to excite interest and affection in no ordinary degree, and to warrant us in treating him as one of England's worthies.
An unbroken chain of evidence, stretching across the five centuries which have passed since his death, ​might easily be traced out to show how the tradition of Wyclif's character and achievements—as distinct from any concise written history—has been preserved and handed down in the memory of his countrymen. In the sixteenth century, as one would naturally expect, the protagonist of reform was constantly cited, whether for honour or for reproach, though as yet very little had been rediscovered of his half-obliterated writings. Dr. James, of New College, who was Bodley's librarian at the close of that century, wrote a warm Apologie for John Wickliffe, partly in answer to a vicious attack from the Jesuit Parsons. "The early Reformer," says James, "was beloved of all good men for his good life, and greatly admired of his greatest adversaries for his learning and knowledge, both in divinity and humanity. He writ so many large volumes in both as it is almost incredible. . . . Of Ocham and Marsilius he was informed of the pope's intrusions and usurpations upon kings, their crowns and dignities; of Guido de S. Amore and Armachanus he learned the sundry abuses of monks and friars in upholding this usurped power; by Abelard and others he was grounded in the right faith of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; by Bradwardine in the nature of a true soul-justifying faith against merit-mongers and pardoners; finally, by reading Grosthead's works, in whom he seemed to be most conversant, he descried the pope to be open antichrist, by letting [preventing] the gospel to be preached, and by placing unable and unfit men in the Church of God."
​Foxe the martyrologist wrote lives of Wyclif, Thorpe, and Cobham, with very inadequate materials so far as the first of the three is concerned. Wyclif, he says, "tooke great paines, protesting (as they said) openlie in the schooles that it was his chiefe and principall purpose and intent to revoke and call back the Church from her idolatrie to some better amendment." And he adds: "The whole glut of monks and begging friers were set on a rage or madnesse which (even as hornets with their sharpe stings) did assaile this good man on every side." Even Netter of Walden—one of the adversaries referred to by James—admitted that he was "wonderfully astonished at his [Wyclif's] most strong arguments, with the authorities which he had assembled, and with the vehemence and force of his reasons."
These are but casual testimonies to the repute of Wyclif in the two centuries succeeding his death. William Thorpe, one of the younger contemporaries of the Reformer, paid his master a high tribute in the course of his examination for heresy before Archbishop Arundel. "Master John Wyclif," he said (as quoted by Bale), "was considered by many to be the most holy of all the men in his age. He was of emaciated frame, spare, and wellnigh destitute of strength; and he was absolutely blameless in his conduct. Wherefore very many of the chief men of this kingdom, who frequently held counsel with him, were devotedly attached to him, kept a record of what he said, and guided themselves after his manner of life."
​These three sentences, it may be observed, are the most valuable piece of evidence which we possess—beyond what may be gathered from occasional references to himself in Wyclif's works—as to his personal characteristics and physical appearance; and they are confirmed by all the side-lights which we are able to obtain of him.
Wyclif's temper in controversial argument was by no means always equable and to say this is only to admit that he had the temper and the method of his day. He takes himself to task in one of his books, on The Truth of Holy Scripture (written in 1379), for his shortcomings in this respect. "In order that there may be no lack of material," he says, "for the strife which my censors have raised over me, I will say that I have adopted out of the Scriptures a threefold rule of life. First, that I should cleanse myself by taking more diligent heed concerning the charge which is brought against me, that I too readily impart a sinister, vindictive zeal into my legitimate line of argument—if I may be said to have any. As for the imputation of hypocrisy, hatred, and rancour under a pretence of holiness, I fear, and I admit it with sorrow, this has happened to me too frequently, by reason whereof I deserve to suffer much greater blame than has yet been cast upon me. Whilst I importune my God with prayer in respect of my spiritual faults, which it is for God alone to know, I will strive more diligently to be on my guard henceforth about the other matter. Secondly, whilst the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, he ​tries to besmirch the good repute of such as he cannot devour on the ground of open wickedness, that he may destroy them in this way by the blame of evil tongues. I, then, being ignorant of any open crime laid to my charge, will patiently endure reproach, seeing that the Apostle says, 'It is a small thing to be judged of you, or of any man's judgment.' Thirdly, whilst I defend myself against their reproaches, I will entreat that the spite and vengeance of my detractors may not add yet another torment to the wounds which I had before."
The vein of satire is manifest under the calm dignity of this passage. If Wyclif ever sacrificed his dignity it was by allowing his satire to run to excess, and losing the measure of invective whilst denouncing that which had excited his indignation. Yet it is thoroughly true, as observed by Dr. Shirley—who more than any one man has put this generation on the track of exact knowledge in regard to the life and character of the Reformer—that Wyclif "possessed as few ever did the qualities which give men power over their fellows. His enemies," Dr. Shirley adds, "ascribed this power to the magic of an ascetic habit; the fact remains engraven upon every line of his life."
Yet on this question of asceticism, and on the charge of his enemies that he employed it for purposes of display, Wyclif himself deserves to be heard. "It is far from being true," he says in the book already quoted, "that in the company of my followers I obtrude on the eyes of simple men an excessively abject and penitential air, together with a ​parade of virtue. For amongst my other faults which give me ground for alarm this is one of the greatest, that, by consuming the property of the poor in superfluous food and garments, I fail to afford a pattern to others, whereby the light and rule of a holy life such as I ought to lead might shine through my priestly guise in the sight of the congregation. Nay, I confess with pain that I eat frequently, greedily, and delicately, leading a social life; and if I were to try, like a hypocrite, to make false pretence in this regard, they who sit with me at table would bear witness against me."
JOHN WYCLIF. THE DENBIGH PORTRAIT.
​vocations for an intellectual mind, was his lack of the robust health and decided taste which were necessary to one who aimed at becoming either a soldier or a merchant, or even a manager of the family estate. Wyclif was the son of a gentleman of good means. He probably owned or had a claim upon the advowson of the rectory of Wycliffe. But if weakness led him to adopt the life of a clergyman, ambition constrained him to follow an active and public career. The known facts of his life chime in with the hypothesis that he was always a man of indifferent health; and yet the fiery soul sustained him in many a hard battle with friars and monks, with the English hierarchy and the papal court. If we were to judge from his fighting attitude alone, it would be difficult to consider him as anything else than a vigorous, hardy, and indefatigable man.
When Wyclif's bones were torn from their grave in Lutterworth churchyard, by an English bishop at the command of a Roman pope, when they were consumed to ashes and thrown into the Swift, thence to be borne, as Fuller said, from brook to river, and from river to ocean, until the seeds of his doctrine had sprung up in every land, Rome was but giving effect to a logically necessary conclusion. The position which Wyclif had taken up against the later teaching of the canons, was absolutely uncompromising. "From the eleventh century," he practically said, "the dogma of the Church has been perverted. The popes have been wrong, the councils have been wrong, the decretals are full of heresy. If Rome will not unsay her false doctrine, the ​national Churches must repudiate her claim to lead them. She has built up a crazy superstructure on the true foundation; we must sweep it away, and get back to the life and words of Christ." To Rome, that meant death, and for the Roman Curia it was a simple act of self-preservation to crush Wyclif beneath its censures, and to do all that was possible to bury his record in obscurity. The necessary steps were interrupted by the Schism; thirty years had passed since the death of Wyclif when the Councils of Rome and Constance took the completion of the work in hand. It was then too late. The writings of the famous Doctor had passed into the keeping of the English and Bohemian universities. The scholars of that day either concealed them or refused to give them to the flames. The doctrines of Wyclif had spread throughout England, Germany, and Austria, and neither the terrors of the Inquisition nor the agonies of a thousand martyrdoms could expel them again.
Nevertheless Wyclif and Wyclifrism have been under the ban of Rome from that day to this. No doubt there must have been a few in every generation, ecclesiastics and scholars for the most part, who would be acquainted with the manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the main facts of Wyclif's life and work, with the contemporary testimony of his friends and enemies, and with, at any rate, some of his writings. Thomas Netter, who was born before Wyclif died, made a collection of papers relating to the controversies and condemnations of the heretical Doctor, under the title ​of Fasciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif cum Tritico—"Bundles of Tares . . . together with Wheat." Would it were possible to suppose that Netter, who was confessor to the grandson of John of Gaunt, Wyclif's patron and protector for something like fifteen years, had preserved these materials for the purpose of justifying rather than gibbeting the last of the English Schoolmen! Such, at all events, has been their effect in the long run. Bishop Bale of Ossory, who followed Netter after an interval of a century, possessed and made great use of his manuscript, which he did much to elucidate; and many others in more recent times have found it exceedingly serviceable for Wyclif's defence. Amongst these was Foxe, a friend of Bale, who probably owed to the latter nearly all his materials for the account of Wyclif in the Acts and Monuments. Throughout the later reformation period, and in the seventeenth century, the story of Wyclif must have been familiar in England through the works of Foxe, James, Thomas Fuller, and others; but hardly any of these writers knew more than they had been told by Netter, Bale, and the English chroniclers.
A great debt is due from the present generation to the Rev. John Lewis, who, in 1720, published at Oxford his History of the Life and Sufferings of John Wickliffe, and collected as many facts and documents as were at that time within his reach. That he should now and then have jumped a little too confidently to his conclusions, and made use of one or two works which had not been sufficiently authenticated, is by no means a matter of surprise. ​More than a century later, Dr. Shirley edited the Fasciculi for the Rolls Series, adding an introduction and notes which have stood the test of further research with conspicuous and exceptional success. From that time forward it has no longer been possible to reproach English historians and biographers with ignoring or neglecting the importance of Wyclif in the annals of his country, and especially of the English national Church.
Much has been done within the past few years, and especially since the five-hundredth anniversary of Wyclif's death, to re-illumine his darkened record, and to ensure a wider circulation for his principal works. The disinterested labours of the Wyclif Society, and of a considerable number of English and German scholars, have gone far to atone for a long neglect. The time has almost come when John Wyclif may find a worthy and competent biographer, who will be able to set forth the story of his life with a reasonable approach to finality. Meanwhile, it may not be unserviceable to cast that story in a connected and popular form, and at any rate to attempt an estimate of Wyclifs true position in history. Such, indeed, has been the aim of the present writer, who has sought to collect into a focus all that has been accurately ascertained or felicitously surmised concerning one of the most attractive characters in the later Middle Age.
It is impossible to feel at all confident that the true features and character of John Wyclif are presented in any of the portraits which have been ​handed down to us. It would be strange indeed if we could trace back the origin of even one of these portraits from the nineteenth century into the fourteenth without a lingering doubt on the subject of its authenticity. Of the existing pictures, whether they are based on knowledge or on imagination, some half-dozen appear worthy of attention; and it is at any rate conceivable, as we look at them, that these should refer to the same original. Allowing for differences of age and aspect, there is a certain family likeness running through them all.
So far as the dates can now be ascertained, the oldest picture is a small half-length woodcut in Bale's Summary of the Famous Writers of Greater Britain, published in 1548, more than a hundred and sixty years after Wyclifs death. Bale was a converted monk, who, having been rewarded for his labours and sufferings with the bishopric of Ossory, tried in vain to effect a settlement amongst the "wild Irish" of that see. He was an indefatigable student and collector of manuscripts. It is to him that we owe the preservation of Netter's Tares of John Wyclif with Wheat, and it may well be that he had discovered in some old copy of the English Bible, or other manuscript of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, a sketch of the Reformer's face by a contemporary hand. When we remember that many a valuable parchment has disappeared from view since the antiquaries of the Tudor and Stuart periods had an opportunity of copying or quoting them, we cannot deny the possibility that such a sketch may have been lost to sight whilst the copy survives. ​Bale's picture is a sharp profile, turned to the left, and represents Wyclif preaching or lecturing from a stone pulpit, with his right hand and index finger raised in front of him, and his left hand resting on a closed book. He appears to be about fifty years old; and the sketch is very much what a Tudor draughtsman might have produced from the thumbnail of one of Wyclif's personal disciples. The same woodcut is transferred to A True Copye of a Prolog, possibly the work of Purvey, first printed in 1550.
The painting lodged in the rectory of Wycliffe-on-Tees by Dr. Zouch (d. 1815), and intrusted to the charge of his successors in the benefice, is said to be the work of the Flemish portrait-painter, Antonio Moro, who was employed by Philip and Mary in 1554, and who subsequently settled in Madrid. It is unfortunate that Dr. Zouch did not (apparently) leave behind him any precise information as to the history of this picture. It would have been interesting to know on what evidence he vouched for it as "original," seeing that the subject is not quite what one would have expected from a painter who enjoyed the patronage of two particularly bigoted Catholic monarchs. If this picture is Moro's, one would be disposed to date it before 1554. Whitaker suggests in his History of Richmondshire that Moro may have seen Bale's woodcut; and he observes that the two portraits are sufficiently alike to warrant the suggestion. The likeness cannot be called striking, but it is hard to say whence the painter derived his inspiration if not from the woodcut. ​presents the Reformer at a more advanced age, though somewhat less advanced than in what are known as the Dorset and Denbigh portraits. At any rate there is less of an impression of feebleness than in the latter two, both of which show Wyclif leaning on a staff. There is certainly a family likeness in these three pictures. The deep-set eyes, prominent nose, shrunken cheeks, full grey beard, grave yet tender mouth, and slightly stooped shoulders are common to all. The Moro portrait was engraved by Edward Finden for Mr. John Murray, and published by him in 1827.
The Dorset canvas, now kept at Knole Park, has been engraved and reproduced more frequently than any of the rest. In this picture Wyclif holds the staff in his right hand; the face is turned slightly to his left, and the beard divides by a hand's-breadth on the chest. Like the Denbigh portrait, it is half-length, whilst Moro's is a bust. The Dorset (engraved by George White) is set in an oval frame, with the legend: "Joannes Wiclif S. T. P., Rector de Lutterworth | A tabula penes Nobilissimum Ducem Dorsettiae." The first Duke of Dorset died in 1765, and the portrait does not seem to be earlier than the eighteenth century. The Dorset family, it may be mentioned, were in possession of the Groby (Leicestershire) estates; and the portrait of course professes to represent the Reformer as he appeared in the last year or two of his tenure of the rectory of Lutterworth. There is another engraving of the same picture signed by Jan Vanhaecken.
Of the Denbigh portrait we have a fine engraving ​(fronting the title-page of Lewis's Life of Wyclif) "by James Eittler, from a drawing by W. Skelton, taken from a picture in the possession of the Earl of Denbigh." A copy of the portrait hangs in Lutterworth Rectory, and another (by Kingsby?) in the hall of Balliol College, Oxford. In this, as in the Dorset picture, the right hand holds a staff; but the left hand rests upon a book, the face turns to its right, and the beard is not divided.
A strangely characteristic portrait is preserved in Queen's College, Cambridge,—a half-length, face turned slightly to the left, age about fifty or fifty-five, vigorous and somewhat aggressive in attitude. It approaches more nearly to the type of Bale's woodcut than to that of the three portraits last mentioned. A mezzotint engraving in an oval frame was prepared by Richard Houston for Rolt's Lives of the Reformers, 1759, with the following inscription: "Johannes Wickliffe. Obijt A: 1384. A Tabula in Coll. Reg. Cantab." One could almost imagine the "regius clericus" in his full strength and dignity, just about the time when John of Gaunt was coming to close grips with the wealthy English prelates, coolly shaping his lips to whistle away the first angry criticisms of the friars.
In the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum there are a few cognate engravings, of which the best and the original is that of H. Hondius, reproduced in the present volume. This print bears the inscription: "Ioannes Wiclefus Anglus," and is entered in Bromley's Catalogue with the date 1599. It is in fact one of the series included in ​Verheiden's Præstantium . . . Theologorum . . . Effigies, published in 1602. Evidently the attitude, face, hair, and details of dress are the same in the Cambridge portrait and the engraving of Hondius. One is simply a variation upon the other; and if a guess may be hazarded without knowing the history of the Queen's College portrait, I should say that the latter is based upon Hondius.
A meretricious French print, by B. Picart, dated 1713, represents a framed picture of Wyclif suspended by a rope between two pillars in front of a tomb, and apparently fanning the flames in which his books are being consumed. There is also an engraved plate, bearing the title of The Parallel Reformers, and drawing a comparison between Whitfield and Wyclif, with a not very faithful reproduction of the Hondius engraving. Bromley mentions two other prints, "in Boissard," and by Des Rochers, which I have not seen, and these probably exhaust the list of Wyclif pictures, or at any rate of distinct types and noteworthy variations.