num_pages: 96
description: Sometimes you have to raise the body up to burn it down. So it was with Wyclif, who rested forty-two years under chancel stone condemned by the Papacy, protected by the Crown. Finally, a bishop came with a few men, spades, shovels, a horse and cart. By then, not much was left of Wyclif—hair and skin gone, his bones slipped out of place inside the simple alb they’d buried him in. The bishop gathered what he could. Beside the River Swift, he lit a pile of wood and tossed the bones on one at a time, cursing the heretic from limb to limb. Afterwards, they shoveled ash into the water and no one even thought the word martyr.
language: English
title: Burning Wyclif
titlecomplete: Burning Wyclif (Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry)
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 44
series: Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Poetry
publisher: Texas Tech University Press