Three Treatises

1851

Storage Bliss PL W

Dublin: Hodges and Smith

Oxford professor and theologian, John Wycliffe (c. 1329-84), was one of the main instigators of religious reform in England. A prolific writer, Wycliffe condemned the Church’s ownership of property, the luxury and privilege enjoyed by the clergy, indulgences, confession, and even the papacy itself. In his treatise, De Ecclesia et Membris eius (above p. vi, ‘And þus [thus] it is a blynd fooly…’), Wycliffe states ‘it is blind folly… men should fight for the pope more than…for belief’. Wycliffe also promoted and oversaw the translation of Jerome’s Vulgate into Middle English. Because of his polemic, he was ‘ordered to be silent’ and Pope Gregory XI (d. 1378) issued papal bulls against him. Some years after his death, Wycliffe was declared a heretic, his body was exhumed, burned, and the ashes were cast into a river.