Wyclif and the Lollards

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2011

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss John Wyclif and the Lollards.John Wyclif was a medieval philosopher and theologian who in the fourteenth century instigated the first complete English translation of the Bible. One of the most important thinkers of the Middle Ages, he also led a movement of opposition to the Roman Church and its institutions which has come to be seen as a precursor to the Reformation. Wyclif disputed some of the key teachings of the Church, including the doctrine of transubstantiation. His followers, the Lollards, were later seen as dangerous heretics, and in the fifteenth century many of them were burnt at the stake. Today Lollardy is seen as the first significant movement of dissent against the Church in England.With:Sir Anthony KennyPhilosopher and former Master of Balliol College, OxfordAnne HudsonEmeritus Professor of Medieval English at the University of OxfordRob LuttonLecturer in Medieval History at the University of NottinghamProducer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:46.5	the program.
0:47.5	Hello one of the oldest parts of Lambeth Palace, the London residents of the Archuish of Canterbury,
0:55.2	was built in the 1440s and used as a prison.
0:58.0	Known as Lollard's Tower, it's named after a religious group whose members were hunted down and many of them burnt at the stake in the 15th century.
1:06.0	The Lollards were followers of John Wickcliffe, a philosopher and theologian who disputed many of the key traditional teachings of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.
1:15.0	His ideas are condemned as heretical and his supporters persecuted.
1:19.0	Whitcliffe has been called the Morning Star of the Reformation for his early zeal to change the church
1:24.2	and although his movement ultimately failed it profoundly influenced later reformers
1:28.5	he also fully started the Bible American, Master of Baylian College Oxford as indeed was John Wickcliffe 650 years ago.
1:55.0	Anthony Kenny, what do we know of Wickcliffe's early career?
1:58.0	Well, we know that he was a Yorkshireman probably from the North Riding and he had a fairly conventional
2:06.8	Oxford career to begin with.
2:10.3	Oxford was one of the two great medieval universities of Paris and Oxford
2:16.0	and it had already been home to two very distinguished philosophers earlier in the century,
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