John Wycliffe (Wyclliffe John)

(ca. 1330-1384)
Born c.. 1330, probably near Richmond (Yorkshire). The name of the family was under the name of the nearby village. In the life of Wycliffe distinguish three periods: 1) to 1373 - an academic, 2) 1374-1378 - Political and 3) 1379-1384 - heretical.
In 1372 or 1373 Wycliffe at Oxford University, received a master's degree Theology, spending almost a quarter century on the student's desk. Wrote numerous works on logic and philosophy at university and gained reputation as an outstanding polemicist-scholastic, but the church hierarchy was moving slowly, and the high positions he did not suggest. In 1360 became the master (head) Balliol College, Oxford University. After his appointment to the post of priest in Fillingame (in 1368 he moved to Ladgershall, county of Buckinghamshire) was forced to leave teaching. Then, until 1381, excluding a brief period when he was head of Canterbury College in Oxford University, he lived in Cambridge, taking a room at Queens College.

The King's service Wycliffe received shortly before 7 April 1374, when Edward III appointed him parish priest in Latteruerte. He was charged with protecting the anticlerical course son King Edward, Prince of Wales. In the summer of 1374 Wycliffe was in Bruges, . helping to defend Nuncio of Pope Gregory XI position of the Government, . were protesting against the imposition of the English clergy papal taxation and against the papal appointment of their candidates for positions in the Church of England,
. From 1374 to 1376 he worked in Oxford over the two treatises on divine authority (De Dominio Divino) and the secular authorities (De Civili Dominio), who graduated in 1378. They affirmed the right of the sovereign to deprive the clergy who have committed sins, their sources of income.

Prince died in 1376, but his brother, John of Ghent, called Wycliffe in London that he made in his sermons against the Episcopal system of government and the other critics. Preacher coped with the task so well that the collection of his theological opinions were sent to Rome to study, and most Wycliffe was summoned senior English bishops in the Cathedral of St.. Paul. John Ghent present at the interrogation (February 19, 1377) and so much controversy with the Bishop of London, William Courtney, that the judges at a loss to discontinue the proceedings. No further steps against Wycliffe has been taken until, . until December 18 in England were not made public papal bulls, . instructing him to arrest and investigate about those of his delusions, . which affect the church leadership,
. But after that he was protected by the university authorities and his friends at court. The next attempt to bring him to court at Lambeth (March 1378) was upset widowed Princess of Wales. His political abilities Wycliffe last demonstrated in Gloucester Parliament in October 1378, which defended the right for violation of the sanctity of the temple royal officials in Westminster Abbey.

In response to accusations Wycliffe church began to criticize the Catholic practice and doctrine. During this period he led his followers to take up the translation of the Bible into English (see. as the Bible). The death of Gregory XI and the ensuing papal schism (TN. Great Schism, 1378-1417) saved him from further persecution by Rome. His former political allies, though not sympathetic to his ideas, still defended him from his enemies in England. In 1381, acting probably on the advice of John of Ghent, Wycliffe retired from Oxford in a relatively isolated place (Latteruert) after the commission of his university a small majority condemned his views on the Eucharist as heretical. This decision was confirmed with a more rigorous formulation of the cathedral in Blekfrayare (London) Archbishop of Canterbury in May 1382, when a handful of his remaining students forced to renounce his views. By that time, however, the teachings of Wycliffe spread beyond the university and maintained in the form of vulgarize efforts of a small number of zealous, but uneducated preachers. Lollardy, so called members of the sect, periodically disturb the secular and ecclesiastical authorities until the Reformation. Wycliffe died of a stroke in Latteruerte December 31, 1384. His ideas were perceived in continental Europe, especially among the Hussites, followers of the Czech reformer Jan Hus (c.. 1369-1415).