John Wycliffe was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, 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 the luxury and pomp of local parishes and their ceremonies.
Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed 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.
Year 1401 (MCDI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.
Sir Frederic Madden KH was an English palaeographer.
William Langland is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem translated the language and concepts of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by a layman.
Middle English Bible translations (1066-1500) covers the age of Middle English, beginning with the Norman conquest and ending about 1500. Aside from Wycliffe's Bible, this was not a fertile time for Bible translation. English literature was limited because French was the preferred language of the elite, and Latin was the preferred literary language in Medieval Western Europe.
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 (WYC) is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of English theologian John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from approximately 1382 to 1395. These Bible translations were the chief inspiration and chief cause of the Lollard movement, a pre-Reformation movement that rejected many of the distinctive teachings of the Catholic Church. In the early Middle Ages, most Western Christians encountered the Bible only in the form of oral versions of scriptures, verses and homilies in Latin. Though relatively few people could read at this time, Wycliffe's idea was to translate the Bible into the vernacular, saying "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ's sentence".
William Sawtrey, also known as William Salter was an English Roman Catholic priest and Lollard martyr. He was executed for heresy.
The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards is a Middle English religious text containing statements by leaders of the English medieval movement, the Lollards, inspired by teachings of John Wycliffe. The Conclusions were written in 1395. The text was presented to the Parliament of England and nailed to the doors of Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral as a placard. The manifesto suggests the expanded treatise Thirty-Seven Conclusions for those that wished more in-depth information.
There are two pseudo-Chaucerian texts called "The Plowman's Tale".
Francis Aidan Cardinal Gasquet was an English Benedictine monk and historical scholar. He was created Cardinal in 1914.
Murdoch Nisbet was a Scottish notary public in the diocese of Glasgow who created one of the earliest Bible translations into Scots. Living in the parish of Loudoun, Ayrshire, Nisbet's work as a notary public brought him into contact with local religious dissidents. He participated in a conventicle where he illicitly conducted readings of his translation. In 1539, Nisbet "digged and built a Vault in the Bottom of his own House" to hide his New Testament manuscript and conventicle activities.
Events from the 1380s in England.
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.
Bible translations in the Middle Ages discussions are rare in contrast to Late Antiquity, when the Bibles available to most Christians were in the local vernacular. In a process seen in many other religions, as languages changed, and in Western Europe languages with no tradition of being written down became dominant, the prevailing vernacular translations remained in place, despite gradually becoming sacred languages, incomprehensible to the majority of the population in many places. In Western Europe, the Latin Vulgate, itself originally a translation into the vernacular, was the standard text of the Bible, and full or partial translations into a vernacular language were uncommon until the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.
Nicholas [of] Hereford was an English Bible translator, Lollard, reformer on the side of John Wycliffe, Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford and Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1382. He was a Doctor of Theology, which he achieved at Oxford University in 1382.
The General Prologue of the Wycliffe Bible, also the Great Prologue of the Wycliffe Bible, is a 15-chapter explanation, generally attributed to John Purvey, of translation procedures in his later version of the Wycliffe Bible translation done originally by John Wycliffe in 1382–1384.
Margery Baxter was an outspoken and unorthodox Lollard from Martham, England. She was brought to trial twice and flogged at church.
The Oldcastle Revolt was a Lollard uprising directed against the Catholic Church and the English king, Henry V. The revolt was led by John Oldcastle, taking place on the night of 9/10 January 1414. The rebellion was crushed following a decisive battle on St. Giles's Fields.
