The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-12-28
A OUTNCENTENARY.

Five hundred years ago to-day John Wyclif,
the Morning Star of the Reformation, and the
first to translate the entire Bible into the
English tongue, was smitten with paralysis
while hearing mass in his church, at Lutter
worth, and three days later (Dec. 81, 1884,
died
By nature controversialist and Prot
estant, and for thirty years a priest and
pamphleteer Wyclif had no little to do with
the intellectual and spiritual renaissance
which characterizes the last half Of the four
teenth century This revival was not con-
fined to England alone. There was an awak-
ening of thought throughout Europe. In
Italy the literary fire of the Augustan age
was rekindled in Dante, the first modern
poet. Seven years after his death was born
Godfrey Chaucer, the father of English po-
etry, ard with him was ushered in new era
for the English language and literature. AT
the middle of the fourteenth century the
times were ripe for the fusion of the Norman
and Anglo Saxon tongues, and the establish
ment of the English language on the basis
that mas made E,e English for the expression
of thought TO the modern world what Hebrew,
Greek and Latin were to the ancients.
The long rivalry between France and Eng
land had found vent during the fifty years
reign of Edward III, in series of wars which
10 t6a Oh nd fbo
glish yeomanry at once became a power in
Europe In 1862 Edward enforced by statute
the use of English in all Judicial pleadings.
The confusion Of the transition period from
old to modern English had largely passed
away. Compositions containing English,
French and Latin in one writing no longer
appeared English character was asserted in
Magma Charta; chivalry had modified the bar
barsms Of feudalism The crusades had opened
the way between the East and the West.
But up to the age of Chaucer, Wyclif, Mande
vile and Langelande, no great thinker or
writer had linked his thought with the Ian
guage of the common English people. En-
gIish poetry before these was limited to the bal
lads of Robin Hood and the Rhyming Chron-
iclers. The learned works were written in
Latin and Norman French was the language
of the lighter songs and the romances of
Arthur of Alexander and of Charlemagne.
To this confusion of tongues, Latin,
French and English, came the gay,
genial and childlike Chaucer alive to
all that is fresh and beautiful in nature,
and in his humorous satire not less sparing
of the clergy and the abuses of the church
than Robert Langelande whose allegory Of
Piers Plowman was a powerful aid in the work
Mandeville the Bayard Taylor of his century,
would have had alone mighty influence On
English speech; but all who lived and wrote
in the latter half of the fourteenth century are
but pigmies when compared with the mighty
two, who brought the English tongue to high
water mark, and so impressed upon it the
stamp of their minds, and bent back upon it
the radiance Of all their lives that for cen
fury and half after Chaucer and Wyclif no
great name appears in the annals of English
literature. Chaucer showed the power of tho
long-neglected mother tongue to reflect the
appearance of nature and the customs and
manners of men, Wyclif saw in it the potent
means of discriminating priestridden people
from the shackles of scholasticism, and plac-
ing in their hands the words of comfort and
the precepts Of holy living found in the Latin
gospels, so long withheld from the common
people For the first time the simple words of
Christ were to sound in the ears of the entire
English people, laty as well as clergy, and in
the language of their daily lives; "Blessid be
pore men in spirit, for the kingdom of hev-
enes is herun." and BLESSED ben thei that
mournen, for thei schal be comfortd." 'For-
sothe, when Jhesus hadde comen down fro the
hill, many companies folewiden hymn. And
lool leprouse man cummiynge worshipide