Wyclif

About this book

John Wyclif, who lived from the late twenties to the early eighties of the fourteenth century, was long ago given the title "The Morning Star of the Reformation." Protestants have admired him for his attacks on the wealth and corruption of the medieval Church and for his denunciation of the Papacy. Above all, he is thought of as the Oxford and Lutterworth preacher who first gave people the opportunity to read the Bible in English. Wyclif is less well known as a philosopher, even though he occupies a unique position in the history of thought. For he was the last of the great Oxford schoolmen who produced a synthesis of Christian and Aristotelian ideas which is perhaps the greatest intellectual legacy of the Middle Ages. His defense of realism in philosophy against the nominalists of his age contains many arguments that are still topical today. Dr. Kenny aims to do justice to Wyclif's philosophy as well as to his theology, and to reassess, in an ecumenical age, his significance as a religious reformer. - Back cover.