Lutterworth
Town in Leicestershire where John Wycliffe was rector. He died here in 1384, and his bones were later dug up from his grave here by order of the Council of Constance.
Lutterworth lay in the medieval diocese of Lincoln. A papal bull of 1377 names John Wycliffe as rector of its church (Gregory XI, Bull to Oxford (1377)). John Foxe, writing in the sixteenth century, says that Wycliffe returned to the parish and died there on St Silvester’s day, 31 December, under the year 1384 (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 3, p. 53). In 1415 the Council of Constance ordered his body and bones to be exhumed and cast out of church ground (Council of Constance, session 8); Foxe reports that this was carried out forty-one years after the burial and that the ashes were thrown into the river (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 3, pp. 94–96). See Wycliffe and the First English Bible.
What happened here
- about 1382, estimated dateWycliffe and the First English Bible
The teaching of the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe is condemned at London in 1382. A hostile chronicler says that he put the Gospel into English; the whole Bible is translated in those decades, and a constitution of 1409 forbids such versions without a bishop’s approval.
Primary sources
Bull to the University of Oxford against John Wycliffe
- Gregory XI, Bull to Oxford (1377)sourcebooks.fordham.edu
Acts and Monuments
- Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 3, p. 53archive.org
- Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 3, pp. 94–96archive.org
Decrees of the Council of Constance
- Council of Constance, session 8papalencyclicals.net