John Wycliffe was born in the village of Hipswell, near Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, during the mid-1320s, though the exact year remains a subject of historical debate. He entered the intellectual life of Oxford around 1345, a time when the Black Death was ravaging England and reshaping the social order. The plague left a deep and abiding impression on Wycliffe, giving him very gloomy views regarding the condition and prospects of the human race. He saw the high mortality rate among the clergy not merely as a tragedy, but as an indictment of an unworthy priesthood. While other writers viewed the plague as God's judgment on sinful people, Wycliffe interpreted it as evidence that the church had fallen into sin and deserved to lose its property and power. This early trauma set the stage for a life dedicated to challenging the established order, transforming him from a quiet scholar into the evening star of scholasticism and the morning star of the English Reformation.
The Politics of Divine Dominion
In 1374, Wycliffe became part of a group negotiating in Bruges on behalf of the English Government with papal envoys, a diplomatic mission that likely initiated his connection with John of Gaunt, the powerful Duke of Lancaster. This political engagement marked a turning point, as Wycliffe began to write tracts that attacked the temporal rule of the clergy, the collection of annates, and the practice of simony. His great work De civili dominio, or On Civil Dominion, argued that the Church had fallen into sin and therefore ought to give up all its property, insisting that clergy must live in poverty. This theory of dominion meant that men in mortal sin were not entitled to exercise authority in the church or state, nor to own property. The tendency of high state offices to be held by clerics was resented by powerful nobles like John of Gaunt, whose power was challenged by the wealth and power of the clergy. Wycliffe's ideas provided a theological justification for the royal divestment of church property, suggesting that church wealth could fund the government's military needs and that the state had a corrective role when ecclesiastical authority was abused.The Trial at St Paul's Cathedral
On the 19th of February 1377, Wycliffe was summoned before William Courtenay, the Bishop of London, to a convocation at St Paul's Cathedral to face charges regarding his ideas on lordship and church wealth. The exact charges were never fully examined, but the atmosphere was charged with political tension. A hostile crowd gathered at the church, and at the entrance, party animosities began to show. John of Gaunt, accompanied by armed supporters including the Earl Marshal Henry Percy, declared that he would humble the pride of the English clergy and their partisans. Gaunt confronted Courtenay about whether Wycliffe could sit, and the assembly broke up in an angry exchange. This dramatic intervention saved Wycliffe from immediate condemnation, but it also marked the beginning of open attacks upon him. Anti-Gaunt riots followed the next day in London, and the English clergy were irritated by the encounter. The Pope, Gregory XI, sent five copies of a bull against Wycliffe on the 22nd of May 1377, denouncing 18 theses drawn from De Civili dominio as erroneous and dangerous to Church and State. Despite the pressure, Wycliffe was asked to give the king's council his opinion on whether it was lawful to withhold traditional payments to Rome, and he responded that it was.