Wycliffe's anxiety to reach the people and foster a higher spiritual life among them led him to have the Bible translated into English. He also prepared a great number of sermons and tracts in English. He is the father of English prose, and it has been well said that "the exquisite pathos, the keen, delicate irony, and the manly passion of his short, nervous sentences, fairly overmaster the weakness of the unformed language and give us English which cannot be read without a feeling of its beauty to this hour."
Influence of Wycliffe's teaching.
Wycliffe and his "simple priests" were charged with fomenting the discontent and disorder which culminated in the Peasants' War. Whether this charge was true or not, it caused many of his more aristocratic followers to fall away from him. But in spite of this and the denunciations of the Church, Wycliffe was not seriously interfered with and died peaceably in 1384. While his followers appear to have yielded pretty readily to the persecution which soon overtook them, his doctrines were spread abroad in Bohemia by another ardent reformer, John Huss, who was destined to give the Church a great deal of trouble. Wycliffe is remarkable as being the first distinguished scholar and reformer to repudiate the headship of the pope and those practices of the Church of Rome which a hundred and fifty years after his death were attacked by Luther in his successful revolt against the mediæval Church.[204]
The papal court moves back to Rome, 1377.
114. In 1377 Pope Gregory XI moved back again to Rome after the popes had been exiles for seventy years, during which much had happened to undermine the papal power and supremacy. Yet the discredit into which the papacy had fallen during its stay at Avignon was as nothing compared with the disasters which befell it after the return to Rome.
Election of Urban VI, 1378.
Gregory died the year after his return and the cardinals assembled to choose his successor. A great part of them were French. They had found Rome in a sad state of ruin and disorder and heartily regretted the gay life and the comforts and luxuries of Avignon. They determined therefore to select a pope who would take them back to the banks of the Rhone. While they were deliberating, the Roman populace was yelling outside the conclave and demanding that a Roman be chosen, or at least an Italian. A simple Italian monk was accordingly selected, Urban VI, who it was supposed would agree to the wishes of the cardinals.
Election of an anti-pope, Clement VII.
The new pope, however, soon showed that he had no idea of returning to Avignon. He treated the cardinals with harshness and proposed a stern reformation of their habits. The cardinals speedily wearied of this treatment; they retired to the neighboring Anagni and declared that they had been frightened by the Roman mob into selecting the obnoxious Urban. They then elected a new pope, who took the title of Clement VII, returned to Avignon, and established his court there. Urban, although deserted by his cardinals, had no intention of yielding and proceeded to create twenty-eight new cardinals.