John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (1320-1384) was an ordained Catholic priest and seminary professor at the University of Oxford. After his conversion to Christ, he led a movement which questioned the legitimacy of the Catholic Church, including many of its practices and teachings such as the Papacy, masses, transubstantiation, monasticism, veneration of saints and the elite status of the clergy. He became a leading voice for evangelical Christianity in England, paving the way for the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. It is for this reason he has been called the “Morning Star” of the Reformation. One of his most important achievements was the translation of the Latin Vulgate into Middle English, completed in the early 1380’s.
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The “Morning Star” Of The Reformation
John Wycliff (1320-1384) For a century or more before his birth numerous problems arose in England which were contributing factors to John Wycliffe's ecclesiastical non-conformity. Due to his power-struggle with Pope Innocent IIl. King John I in 1213, yielded feudal sovereignly to the Papacy. That situation proved to be a very great detriment to England. As a result of that agreement between king and pope, 12,000 English pounds were annually taken from the English coffers and sent to the Papal See at Rome. Furthermore, large numbers of foreign ecclesiastics were brought into the British Isles. Those alien clerics, who owed greater allegiance to the Papacy or their native lands than they did to England, swarmed all over the nation and even infiltrated into some of…
