John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, purported biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford. He became an influential dissident within the Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism. Wycliffe questioned the privileged status of the clergy, who had bolstered their powerful role in England, and advocated radical poverty of the clergy.
Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that was active in England from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The Lollards' demands were primarily for reform of Western Christianity. They formulated their beliefs in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.
William Tyndale was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of most of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
Year 1401 (MCDI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Thomas Arundel was an English clergyman who served as Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of York during the reign of Richard II, as well as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1397 and from 1399 until his death, an outspoken opponent of the Lollards. He was instrumental in the usurpation of Richard by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV.
Sir John Oldcastle was an English Lollard leader. From 1409 to 1413, he was summoned to parliament as Baron Cobham, in the right of his wife.
Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500.
John Purvey was an English theologian, reformer, and disciple of John Wycliffe. He was born around 1354 in Lathbury, near Newport Pagnell in the county of Buckinghamshire, England. He was a great scholar, permitted to enter all priestly ranks on 13 March 1377, or 1378. It has been assumed by scholars that Purvey became acquainted with Wycliffe's ideas in Oxford. In around 1382, Purvey lived with Wycliffe at Lutterworth, Leicestershire, along with Nicholas of Hereford and John Aston, and became one of Wycliffe's disciples.
Wycliffe's Bible or Wycliffite Bibles or Wycliffian Bibles (WYC) are names given for a sequence of Middle English Bible translations believed to have been made under the direction or instigation of English theologian John Wycliffe of the University of Oxford. They are the earliest known literal translations of the entire Bible into English. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395.
William Sawtrey, also known as William Salter was an English Roman Catholic priest and Lollard martyr. He was executed for heresy.
Nicholas Love, also known as Nicholas Luff, was first a Benedictine and then a Carthusian monk in medieval England, and became the first prior of Mount Grace charterhouse in Yorkshire. He was the translator and reviser of a popular devotional treatise which was used by the Church authorities to counter the teaching of John Wycliffe. In his later years he convinced Henry V of England to attempt to reform Benedictine monasticism in England, but died before measures could be taken.
The Suppression of Heresy Act 1414 was an Act of the Parliament of England. The Act made heresy an offence against the common law and temporal officers were to swear to help the spiritual officers in the suppression of heresy. Justices of the peace were given the power of inquiry; to issue an order to arrest; and to hand over the suspected heretic to the ecclesiastical court for trial.
The ex officio oath developed in the first half of the 17th century, and was used as a form of coercion, persecution, and forcible self-incrimination in the religious trials of that era. It took the form of a religious oath made by the accused prior to questioning by the Star Chamber, to answer truthfully all questions that might be asked. It gave rise to what became known as the cruel trilemma where the accused would find themselves trapped between a breach of religious oath, contempt of court for silence, or self-incrimination. The name derives from the questioner putting the accused on oath ex officio, meaning by virtue of his office or position.
Henry Knighton was an Augustinian canon at the abbey of St Mary of the Meadows, Leicester, England, and an ecclesiastical historian (chronicler). He wrote a history of England from the Norman conquest until 1396, thought to be the year he died.
The Ecclesiae Regimen, also Remonstrance, xxxvii Conclusiones Lollardorum, or Thirty Seven Articles against Corruptions in the Church, is a church reformation declaration against the Catholic Church of England in the Late Middle Ages. It had no official title given to it when written and the author(s) did not identify themselves in the original manuscript. This public declaration by the English medieval sect called the Lollards was announced to the English parliament at the end of the manifesto Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards published in 1395.
Margery Baxter was an outspoken and heretical Lollard from Martham, England. She was brought to trial twice and flogged at church.
In England, burning was a legal punishment inflicted on women found guilty of high treason, petty treason, and heresy. Over a period of several centuries, female convicts were publicly burnt at the stake, sometimes alive, for a range of activities including coining and mariticide.
Dives and Pauper is a 15th-century commentary and exposition on the Ten Commandments written in dialogue form. Written in Middle English, while the identity of the author is unknown, the text is speculated to have been authored by a Franciscan friar. Dives and Pauper is structured as a dialogue between two interlocutors, a wealthy layman (Dives) and a spiritual poor man with many similarities to a friar (Pauper). The text engages with orthodox Catholic theology, and further discusses many questions relevant to Wycliffism, an English movement which criticised doctrines and abuses of the Church, which was condemned as heretical by church authorities.
Proto-Protestantism, also called pre-Protestantism, refers to individuals and movements that propagated various ideas later associated with Protestantism before 1517, which historians usually regard as the starting year for the Reformation era. The relationship between medieval sects and Protestantism is an issue that has been debated by historians.
Censorship of the Bible includes restrictions and prohibition of possessing, reading, or using the Bible in general or any particular editions or translations of it.
