Talk:John Wycliffe

‘Precursor’ to the Reformation?
This article claims that the Lollard movement (and, presumably, Wycliffe himself) “was a precursor to the Protestant Reformation,” citing Heavy Words Lightly Thrown by Chris Roberts. No page number is provided. I do not doubt that the Lollard movement (and Wycliffe himself) was, in some loose and analogous sense, a ‘precursor’ to the Protestant Reformation, but this should be made less ambiguous. The word ‘precursor’ normally means a predecessor. The reason I add this is that, as far as we know, neither Wycliffe nor the Lollard movement was widely known by the Protestant Reformers until the Reformation had started. There is evidence that Wycliffe and the Lollard movement (as well as people like Jan Hus) were used by the Protestant Reformers once they knew who they were, but that is not the same as saying that they were ‘precursors’ to the Reformation. As far as I’m aware, Luther, for instance, had never heard about Jan Hus until Johann Eck brought him up in a debate. It would be better, I think, to say that in the course of the Reformation, Wycliffe (and others) became an influence on the Protestant Reformers, and held to be ‘precursors’ to the Protestant Reformation in a loose and analogous sense. Wycliffe and the Lollard movement weren’t ‘precursors’ to the Protestant Reformation in the same sense as, say, british medieval Watchmen were the precursor of the modern english police force. Carissimi (talk) 19:34, 18 July 2013 (UTC)


 * From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wyclif/
 * Wycliffe was a Christian Platonist and his rejection of certain doctrines that aligned with a handful of material Protestant doctrines, such as transubstantiation, comes from his understanding of Platonic essence as being, not from exegesis. Any alleged continuity between the two is anachronism in the same way we might call Islam a forerunner to the Protestant separation from Rome.
 * Worth investigating the nature of this and other "Proto-Protestant" articles on Wikipedia for bias. 170.249.188.94 (talk) 16:21, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Cart before horse

 * A related issue is why having a Church Council declaring you a heretic makes you a pre-cursor to Protestantism. It is phrased back-to-front. The thing that made Wycliff a pre-cursor, to the extent he was, was not the declaration of a Council but his actual theology and the revolutionary acts of the Lollards that sprang out of it. I have removed the phrase with weasel word "effectively".


 * As to Carissimi's point above about Luther never having heard of Wycliffe or Hus, I don't think it is a super convincing claim: the sensational events at the Council of Constance (and Lollards & Hussites) were only as far from Luther's time as WWWI is from our own, and of clear professional interest to any theologian. (Erasmus was certainly aware of them: indeed he claimed that Luther's doctrine of that everything happens by pure necessity was only found in Wycliffe's teachings and Manichaeus'.)


 * One way to look at the Lollards and the Hussites w.r.t. Protestants is to see to what extent the issues that they really believed in matched e.g. Lutheranism. We see that the Hussites were willing to re-integrate as long as they had communion under both kinds, married priests and so on: nothing to do with Luther's revised Paulinism. The Lollards (under Wycliffe's Dominium theology) believed that a sinner could not have authority over saints, whether secular or spiritual, hence their murder of that Archbishop: this has no equivalent in Luther.


 * The polemical agenda at work is that some Protestants want to legitimise their cause by saying there was always a subterranean movement of true religion at work, which surfaced occasionally (but divorced from politics); similarly, some Catholics want to delegitimise Protestantism by denying any common threads between different dissenting movements (or by pointing out that the threads had non-violent Catholic expressions too).


 * I think being aware of these agendas and biases--which are endemic to sources--is useful for editors in knowing how to phrase and balance articles. For example, "proto-protestant" might better be called "so-called proto-protestant" because it is an analytical/polemic interpretation of facts, not a historical fact.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 03:55, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Public Declaration problems
In the section "public declaration", it is said that one of John Wyncliffe's great works was the Summa Theologica. The Summa Theologica was written by Thomas Aquinas, not John Wyncliffe — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.208.82 (talk) 19:00, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

My deletion of the OR tagged section on 9/9/2013
This was tagged by someone as possibly being OR in 2007. I think wikipedia needs to delete sections of articles as historically important as this, when an OR tag has been on it that long.76.218.104.120 (talk) 03:21, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Basal positions in philosophy
This section in John Wycliffe is very clear in its meaning and implication, so clear that I even wonder if it is spurious.

While I agree with the positions expressed as more than merely consistent with Wycliffe's teachings, a reference to the source of these claims would be highly desirable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.116.82 (talk) 15:39, 14 May 2017 (UTC)


 * This is an old thread. But yes: the section on philosophy manages to avoid the practical implications of his positions: which mean it provides nothing useful on why Wycliffe might be considered a seditionist/heretic to politicians, or why the violent Lollard movement might owe itself to his teaching, etc. The section on philosophy treats it as an armchair box-ticking exercise, rater than something with real politca implications. I have added a bit more about Dominium. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:40, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Lollardy which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:44, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Year of Birth
- the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says Wycliffe was born c. 1320 (here), but the current Encyclopædia Britannica says c. 1330 (here). In the absence of other reliable sources the year of birth should be changed to c. 1330 as per Britannica. - Epinoia (talk) 04:39, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Wycliffe's Age
It says, "Wycliffe was 64 years old" at the time of death. How do we know this if we don't know when he was born? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.176.231.124 (talk) 23:19, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Reliable source?
A link was added to the "Anti-Wycliffe synod" section to the website for WebTruth.org - is this a reliable source? Their "About Us" page says, "We believe in the divine inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, creation in six days, mankind under condemnation because of the fall, eternal judgment for unrepentant sinners, justification by faith alone, the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, His full deity, sinless humanity, atoning death, bodily resurrection and His pre-tribulational, pre-millennial return." Because the source is biased doesn't mean that they get historical facts wrong, but the WebTruth article on Wycliffe is anonymous and cites only one source, and that's about Wycliffe's exhumation 30 years after his burial, so it seems rather sketchy as a source for the Wikipedia article on Wycliffe - I feel we need a better source - Epinoia (talk) 22:58, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Early life
"From his frequent references to it in later life, it appears to have made a deep and abiding impression upon him.". I have a feeling that means Bradwardine's book, not the plague. Is that right? 82.69.198.222 (talk) 16:50, 11 August 2021 (UTC)