Wyclyf, John (c. 1320–1384)

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WYCLYF, JOHN
(c. 1320–1384)

John Wyclyf, the scholastic philosopher and ecclesiastical reformer, was born in the north of England, near Richmond. He spent most of his adult life in and around Oxford; he served several parishes as priest and held a series of prebends that gave him a modest income. On several occasions he was asked his opinion in matters of government policy toward the papacy, and he appeared once before Parliament. In 1374 Wyclyf was a member of a royal commission of three that met with representatives of the papal Curia at Bruges to attempt to solve the impasse between England and the papacy over England's refusal to pay the Peter's pence. Later he became an adherent of and adviser to the duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, who protected Wyclyf when, under pressure from the English hierarchy, he was charged with heresy. Wyclyf retired, probably on Lancaster's advice, from active public life to his parish at Lutterworth in 1382. In that year he suffered a paralytic stroke but continued his prolific writing until his death, from a second stroke, two years later.

Wyclyf's literary life may be divided into three periods. During the first period, from about 1358 to 1372, he was primarily an academic philosopher, lecturing on logic and metaphysics in orthodox terms. During the second period, from 1372 to 1377 or 1378, he began to apply his realist philosophy to the problems of church and state, an application that resulted in his doctrine of dominion. In the last period, from 1377 or 1378 to 1384, he went much further in his investigation of the basis and structure of the Roman church and came to conclusions quite openly antipapal. During this period papal bulls were aimed against him (1377); he was twice haled before local bodies on orders from Rome; and many of his conclusions were specifically condemned, although he was not personally disciplined. These same conclusions, in addition to many more, were condemned by the Council of Constance in 1415.

Wyclyf's philosophical presuppositions colored all his thought. The transition from one period of his life to another was barely perceptible and he was able, late in his life, to refer to his earlier expressions with few apologies. In the atmosphere of mid-fourteenth-century Oxford, Wyclyf early had to take a position toward the universalia post rem of William of Ockham's nominalism, then popular and persuasive. He rejected its priority of the particulars over universals in favor of the older Augustinian tradition of universalia ante rem. Once he had accepted this position, he followed it to its logical conclusions and constructed a summa de ente in twelve books that, while not so systematic as most other summae of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, nevertheless dealt in great detail with the salient points of dispute between the nominalists, the doctores moderni, as he called them, and the protagonists of universal ideas.

The Summa de Ente

Following his early works on logic, written probably between 1360 and 1365, Wyclyf's Summa de Ente occupied him until at least 1370, when his attention was diverted to theology. The Summa in its final form consists of two books of six treatises each. The first book treats being in general, the doctrine of universals, and the nature and function of time. These questions are approached from the point of view of man and his cosmos. The second book is pure theology: God's intellection, his knowledge, his will, the Trinity, his ideas and his power to create outside himself. In Wyclyf's grand design the first book is anthropology and the second book is theology. Universals thus may be considered the human parallel of God's ideas. Knowing only the Timaeus of Plato's works, Wyclyf adhered to Plato as he knew him from Augustine. His realism was uncompromising. Universals exist ante rem, temporally and logically prior to the particular. "The idea is therefore essentially the divine nature and formally the ratio according to which God intelligizes [intelligit ] creatures." These ideas make up the creative mind of God. In a parallel fashion the universal (on man's level) is its singular. The singular participates in its universal, which is by nature a projection of an idea in the mind of God. As a creation of God's mind, the singular is incapable of annihilation. For God to allow a singular to be annihilated would be to permit the annihilation of a part of himself—an obvious impossibility.

As he articulated this line of thought, Wyclyf was led to examine the church's doctrine of transubstantiation. He reasoned that the church held that in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine was annihilated. From about 1379 he attacked the doctrine vehemently on purely logical and philosophical grounds. This position in turn was bitterly attacked by orthodox theologians and later formally anathematized at the Council of Constance. In view of his basic realism Wyclyf could not have done otherwise than he did.

The Church

About 1374 Wyclyf had begun a spirited defense of the doctrine of dominion. This concept of the sanctions of power was rooted in Augustine and had recently been propounded by Richard FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh in Ireland. Dominion or lordship is founded in grace, and he who is without grace has no proper right to exercise dominion. Applied to the religious hierarchy, it would have deprived many of the higher clergy of their power and emoluments.

In 1378 Wyclyf was led, by an incident involving the theory and practice of sanctuary, to examine the nature of the church and the relations of the papacy with the English crown. In the course of the dispute arising from the publication of his views, he came to the clear conclusion that the pope and the cardinalate were unnecessary and that in England the king should control the church, allowing for counsel and advice of theologians in matters of theology.

Wyclyf was a stout defender of the Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of predestination, which he related to and strengthened with his doctrines of universals and necessity. The implications of predestination did not favor a highly organized ecclesiastical organization; if a believer is predestined by God to salvation from all eternity, the church would soon have no reason for existence. Individualism in religious matters could hardly be tolerated by the establishment.

In the last years of his life Wyclyf composed a second summa, a Summa Theologica, also in twelve books. Not a summa in the thirteenth-century style, it was a series of polemical treatises concerned with problems in church or national polity, in defense of his contested opinions. In presentation he remained a Schoolman to the end, but his ideas were disruptive of the establishment, and opposition, at Oxford and in London, was determined and ruthless. The opposition to his efforts at reform is somewhat surprising, in view of his highly pronounced English nationalism; but English clerics were his bitterest opponents. In Wyclyf's view, his thought and action were consistent and consistently rooted in the doctrine of divine ideas, the creative rationes by which the universals existed before the particular and were exhibited in the particular, essentialiter, formaliter, et eternaliter.

Bibliography

The Wyclif Society published 33 volumes of Wyclyf's works (London, 1883–1922) but omitted some important philosophical treatises. See also S. H. Thomson, Joh. Wyclif Summe de Ente libb. I et II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930; reissued Boulder, CO, 1956), a Latin text with critical introduction; and A. D. Breck, ed., Joh. Wyclyf De Trinitate (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1962).

The standard life of Wyclyf is H. B. Workman, John Wyclif, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926). See also K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London: English Universities Press, 1952); and J. A. Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1961).

S. Harrison Thomson (1967)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy