books of Queen's College, as paying rent for rooms as a “pensioner” or “commoner” for the years 1371-1372, 1374-1375 and 1380-1381. It has thus been commonly assumed (e.g. by Loserth) that the reformer was at one time in residence at Queen's, the date being given as 1363. It is probable, however, that the John Wiclif of the Queen's College accounts is the same as the John Wyclif who appears in the College computus for 1371-1372 as one of the “almonry boys” of the College, and, therefore, certainly not the reformer.[1]
These questions, even that of the wardenship of Canterbury, are, however, essentially unimportant, unless we are prepared with Woodford to impute mean motives to a great man. What is certain is that long before Wycliffe had become a power outside Oxford his fame was established in the university. He was acknowledged supreme in the philosophical disputations of the schools, and his lectures were crowded. His influence was, however, purely academic, nor does it seem to have been inspired at the outset by any conscious opposition to the established order in the church; and, as Loserth points out, it was not until he was drawn into the arena of the politico-ecclesiastical conflicts of the day that Wycliffe became of world-importance. It has been generally assumed that this happened first in 1366, and that Wycliffe published his Determinatio quaedam de dominio in support of the action of parliament in refusing the tribute demanded by Pope Urban V.; but Loserth has shown that this work, which contains the first trace of that doctrine of dominium or lordship which Wycliffe afterwards developed in a sense hostile to the whole papal system, must be assigned to a date some eight years later. Wycliffe, in fact, for some years to come had the reputation of a good “curialist.” Had it been otherwise, the pope would scarcely have granted him (January 1373) a licence to keep his Westbury prebend even after he should have obtained one at Lincoln (Col. Papal Letters, ed. Bliss and Twemlow, iv. 193). Moreover, it is uniformly asserted that Wycliffe fell into heresy after his admission to the degree of doctor (Fasc. Ziz. p. 2), and the papal document above quoted shows that he had only just become a doctor of theology, that is in 1372.
This, of course, does not mean that Wycliffe's tendencies may not already have been sufficiently pronounced to call attention to him in high places as a possibly useful instrument for the anti-papal policy of John of Gaunt and his party. Evidence of royal favour was soon not wanting. On the 7th of April 1374, he was presented by the crown to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which he held until his death; and on the 26th of July he was nominated one of the royal envoys to proceed to Bruges to confer with the papal representatives on the long vexed question of “provisions” (q.v.). It is probable that he was attached to this mission as theologian, and that this was so is sufficient proof that he was not yet considered a persona ingrata at the Curia. The rank he took is shown by the fact that his name stands second, next after that of the bishop of Bangor, on the commission, and that he received pay at the princely rate of twenty shillings a day. The commission itself was appointed in consequence of urgent and repeated complaints on the part of the Commons; but the king was himself interested in keeping up the papal system of provisions and reservations, and the negotiations were practically fruitless.
After his return to England Wycliffe lived chiefly at Lutterworth and Oxford, making frequent and prolonged visits to London, where his fame as a popular preacher was rapidly established. It is from this period, indeed, that dates the development of the trenchant criticisms of the folly and corruption of the clergy, which had gained him a ready hearing, into a systematic attack on the whole established order in the church. It was not at the outset the dogmatic, but the political elements in the papal system that provoked his censure. The negotiations at Bruges had doubtless strengthened the sympathy which he already felt for the anti-curial tendencies in English politics from Edward I.'s time onwards, and a final impulse was given by the attitude of the “Good Parliament” in 1376; in the autumn of that year he was reading his treatise on civil lordship (De civili dominio) to his students at Oxford. Of its propositions some, according to Loserth, were taken bodily from the 140 titles of the bill dealing with ecclesiastical abuses introduced in the parliament; but it may perhaps be questioned whether Wycliffe did not rather inspire the bill than the bill Wycliffe. However this may be, the reformer now for the first time publicly proclaimed the revolutionary doctrine that righteousness is the sole indefeasible title to dominion and to property, that an unrighteous clergy has no such title, and that the decision as to whether or no the property of ecclesiastics should be taken away rests with the civil power—“politicorum qui intendunt praxi et statui regnorum” (De civ. dom. i. 37, p. 269). It was unlikely that a doctrine so convenient to the secular authorities should long have remained a mere subject of obscure debate in the schools; as it was, it was advertised abroad by the indiscreet zeal of its orthodox opponents, and Wycliffe could declare that it was not his fault if it had been brought down into the streets and “every sparrow twittered about it.”
If the position at which Wycliffe had now arrived was originally inspired, as Loserth asserts, by his intimate knowledge of and sympathy with the legislation of Edward I., i.e. by political rather than theological considerations, the necessity for giving to it a philosophical and religious basis led inevitably to its development into a criticism not only of the political claims but of the doctrinal standpoint of the church. As a philosopher, indeed, Wycliffe was no more than the last of the conspicuous Oxford scholastics, and his philosophy is of importance mainly in so far as it determined his doctrine of dominium, and so set the direction in which his political and religious views were to develop. In the great controversy between Realism and Nominalism he stood on the side of the former, though his doctrine of universals showed the influence of the criticisms of Ockham and the nominalists. He is Platonic in his conception of God as the forma rerum in whom the rationes exemplares exist eternally, being in fact his Word, who is omnia in omnibus (1 Cor. xv. 28) ; every creature in respect of its esse intelligibile is God, since every creature is in essence the same as the idea, and all rationes ideates are essentially the same as the Word of God (De dominio divino, pp. 42, 43). There is one ens, the ens analogum, which includes in itself and comprehends all other entia—all universals and all the individual parts of the universe (De dom. div. pp. 58 sq.). The process by which the primary ens is specificated, or by which a higher and more general class passes into sensible existence, is that it receives the addition of substantial form whereby it is rendered capable of acquiring qualities and other accidents (ibid. pp. 48 sq.). To Wycliffe the doctrine of arbitrary divine decrees was anathema. The will of God is his essential and eternal nature, by which all his acts are determined; it was thus with the creation, since God created all things in their primordial causes, as genera and species, or else in their material essences, secundum rationes absconditas seminales (ibid. p. 66). God's creation is conditioned by his own eternal nature; the world is therefore not merely one among an infinity of alternatives, an arbitrary selection, so to speak, but is the only possible world; it is, moreover, not in the nature of an eternal emanation from God, but was created at a given moment of time—to think otherwise would be to admit its absolute necessity, which would destroy free-will and merit. Since, however, all things came into being in this way, it follows that the creature can produce nothing save what God has already created.[2] So then all human lordship is derived from the supreme overlordship of God and is inseparable from it, since whatever God gives to his servants is part of himself, from the first gift, which is the esse intelligibile, i.e. really the divine essence, down to those special gifts which flow from the communication of his Holy Spirit; so that in him we live and move and have our being. But, in giving, God does not part with the lordship of the thing given; his gifts are of the nature of fiefs, and whatever lordship the creature may possess is held subject to due service to the supreme overlord. Thus, as in feudalism, lordship is distinguished from possession. Lordship is
- ↑ See H. T. Riley's remarks in the Second Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, appendix, pp. 141 sq. The appearance of a John Wyclif on the books of Queen's led to the common mistake, repeated in Milman's Hist. of Latin Christianity (bk. xiii. ch. vi.), that Wycliffe began his university career at Queen's College. The whole question is argued at length by Dr Rashdall in the Dict. Nat. Biog.
- ↑ This leads to the question of predestination and free-will, in which Wycliffe takes a middle position with the aid of the Aristotelian distinction between that which is necessary absolutely and that which is necessary on a given supposition. God does not will sin, for he only wills that which has being, and sin is the negation of being; he necessitates men to perform actions which are in themselves neither right nor wrong; they become right or wrong through man's free agency.
