§ 119.1. =Wiclif and the Wiclifites.=--In England the kings and the Parliament had for a long time withstood the oppressive yoke of the papal hierarchy. Men too like John of Salisbury, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and Thomas Bradwardine had raised their voices against the inner corruption of the church. =John Wiclif=, a scholar of Bradwardine, was born about A.D. 1320. As fellow of the University of Oxford, he supported in A.D. 1366 the English Crown against the payment of tribute to the papal court then at Avignon, admitted by John Lackland (§ 96, 18), of which payment had now for a long time been refused. This secured him court favour, the title of doctor, and a professorship of theology at Oxford; and in A.D. 1374 he was chosen as member of a commission which was to discuss at Brügge in the Netherlands with the papal envoys the differences that had arisen about the appointing to ecclesiastical offices. After his return he openly spoke and wrote against the papal “antichrist” and his doctrines. Gregory XI. now, in A.D. 1377, condemned nineteen propositions from his writings, but the English court protected him from the strict inquiry and punishment threatened. Meanwhile Wiclif was ever becoming bolder. Under his influence religious societies were formed which sent out travelling preachers of the gospel among the people. By their opponents they were called Lollards (§ 116, 3), a name to which the stigma of heresy was already attached. Wiclif translated for them the Scriptures from the Vulgate into English. The bitterness of his enemies now reached its height. Just then, in A.D. 1381, a rebellion of the oppressed peasants that deluged all England with blood broke out. Its origin has been quite gratuitously assigned to the religious movement. When he had directly repudiated the doctrine of transubstantiation, a synod at London, in A.D. 1382, condemned his writings and his doctrine as heretical, and the university also cast him out. Court and Parliament could only protect his person. He now retired to his rectory at Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where he died on 31st December, 1384.--For five centuries his able writings were left unprinted, to moulder away in the obscurity of libraries. His English works have now been edited by Matthews, London, 1880. Lechler of Leipzig edited Wiclif’s most complete and comprehensive work, the “_Trialogus_” (Oxford, 1869), in which his whole theological system is developed. Buddensieg of Dresden published the keen antipapal controversial tract, “_De Christo et suo adversario Antichristo_” (Leipzig, 1880). The Wiclif Society, instituted at the fifth centenary of Wiclif’s death for the purpose of issuing critical editions of his most important works, sent forth as their first performance Buddensieg’s edition of “twenty-six Latin controversial tracts of Wiclif’s from MSS.