On the last day of December 1384, John Wycliffe died. This servant of the Lord has often been called “The Morning Star of the Reformation.” Like the gleaming planet Venus that fades away with the rising sun, so also John Wycliffe died on the last day of the year and gradually faded away as the Son of Righteousness began to dawn upon Europe, a land held fast in the darkness of superstition and fear. Wycliffe had reflected the true light of God, and his translation of the Bible into the English language gave promise that a day of glorious revival was coming!

John Wycliffe was born around 1324, in the small village of Hipswell in northern England. Little is known of his childhood and early life. He emerged on the public scene at Oxford around the time he was twenty years old. A promising scholar, he was a serious-minded student who drank in all the knowledge that the university could offer.

Soon after Wycliffe’s arrival at Oxford, the Black Death descended upon England, after already having wreaked havoc in continental Europe. Also known as bubonic plague, this dreadful disease was spread from infected rats to fleas and then to humans. It struck with devastating power. First, large lumps, or buboes, would form in the groin or armpits. Then severe headaches and a high fever would strike. Nausea would bring about waves of vomiting which soon thereafter resulted in the vomiting of blood. Eight out of ten people who contracted the plague died within a week. Sometimes death would come within a day from the onset of symptoms!

Over the course of the plague, it is estimated that more than 75 million people died in Europe and Asia, all as a result of the Black Death. This figure was approximately one-third of the population and on the low end of estimates! Bubonic plague was the worst in large cities. Mass burials were conducted. Sometimes there was no one left to bury the dead, resulting in towns full of putrefying bodies that rotted where they lay.

This terrible pandemic sobered all of Europe. Death was very near. Other factors also made the time ripe for revival and spiritual renewal. Previously, in 1301, a great comet appeared and was very bright in the night sky for several weeks. Many thought it signaled the end of the world. The rise of radical Islam and the encroachment of Muslim hordes into the Balkans and Spain gave alarm that Armageddon was soon at hand. A schism in the papacy resulted in the simultaneous rule of two popes, confusing the medieval church. Lax morals among monks and nuns gave the common people a disgust for the established clergy and a longing for pure and undefiled religion.

John Wycliffe was the man of the hour. He survived the Black Death and began writing and teaching at Oxford about the brevity of life and the importance of preparation for eternity. In 1356, he completed his bachelor of arts and wrote a small treatise called The Last Age of the Church. In the book, he warned about God’s judgment against sin.

By 1361, Wycliffe was master at Balliol College in Oxford. During these tumultuous days, a political movement in England against Pope Gregory XI brought the humble Oxford scholar to the attention of King Edward III. Pope Gregory was attempting to interfere in matters of civil government in England, and Master Wycliffe took the side of the king. He wrote a book called On Civil Dominion. The book denounced the Roman Catholic Church for its corruption and argued that church land holdings in England should be relinquished and turned over to proper English officials.

One of the king’s powerful sons—John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster— formed a deep friendship with John Wycliffe and commended the English preacher to his father, the king. When Gregory XI denounced Wycliffe for his writings and summoned him to London, John of Gaunt defended Wycliffe and gave him armed protection. Gregory eventually issued a bull of condemnation, a solemn papal letter sealed with a bulla, against Wycliffe.

By this time, John Wycliffe was convinced that England was in need of spiritual revival. What could better bring about revival than the perfect and pure Word of God, especially if it were in English? Greek and Hebrew were largely unknown in England at the time, but Wycliffe was a scholar of Latin, the Bible translation available at that time.

Slowly and patiently, John Wycliffe began translating the Vulgate, or the Latin Bible, into the vernacular language of his own people. From the parsonage of his parish church in the village of Lutterworth, Wycliffe labored at the translation of the New Testament. He gathered around him a group of like-minded young men whose hearts the Lord had touched with a fire for His truth.

In the days before printing presses, these young preachers carefully copied Wycliffe’s New Testament by hand. These disciples were called poor priests by some. Over the course of time, they acquired the name of Lollards.

There is debate over the origins and meaning of the term Lollard. Some say that it originated from the Dutch word lollaerd, which means “mumbler” or “mutterer.” Others say that the name comes from the German word lollon, which means “singer,” from the devotion with which these zealous preachers sang the Psalms in English. Others say that it meant “lazy vagabond.” Still, others say that the word came from the Latin lolium, which means “weed,” a word used in the parable of the tares.

Whatever men called them, these despised Lollards changed the course of England and eventually the destiny of Europe. They were hunted and persecuted wherever they went. When caught, their English Bibles were hung by chains to their necks as they were burned to death, burning both the preacher and the Bible together. Yet their teachings spread all over England, even to the continent, and gave courage to the like-minded Waldenses. A Bohemian priest named Jan Hus was exposed to the teaching of the Lollards and began to spread the truth of the Gospel in eastern Europe.

The Lollards denied transubstantiation, asserting that Christ cannot be sacrificed in the Mass and that the bread and wine cannot be transformed into the body and blood of the Lord by any words chanted at the altar. They asserted that salvation was by faith and not by baptism or sacraments. They believed the Bible should be read and taught in the vernacular and not in Latin.

On December 28, 1384, John Wycliffe suffered a stroke while conducting a church service in Lutterworth. He lingered for three days and then died just before the new year. But the Bible he loved and translated can never die. It lives on and will live forever, when all other human productions have passed away. John Wycliffe knew that the Bible was an eternal book, the Holy Book of God.

Thirty years after the death of John Wycliffe, the Council of Constance decreed that all of Wycliffe’s writings should be burned wherever found. Wycliffe was declared a heretic, and his corpse was exhumed from the ground and burned to ashes. The ashes were scattered in contempt upon the River Swift. The Swift flows into the Avon which flows into the Severn which itself flows out at the Bristol Channel to the oceans of the world. Instead of symbolically silencing Wycliffe, the symbolism of their hateful gesture demonstrated the power of the truth to spread throughout the world.

It is a remarkable testimony to the influence of John Wycliffe and his Lollard preachers that, in spite of the wrath of fire and sword, over 250 handwritten copies of the Wycliffe manuscripts still exist today! These include twenty complete Bibles and ninety-three complete New Testaments.

Truly, as the great hymn “The Bible Stands” testifies in its opening lines:

The Bible stands like a rock undaunted
’Mid the raging storms of time;
Its pages burn with the truth eternal,
And they glow with a light sublime.

Sources and Further Reference:
Wilson, John Laird. John Wycliffe, Patriot and Reformer: The Morning Star of the Reformation, A Biography (1884). Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2009.