It persisted in part because Wycliffe’s ideas would not die out. In the generation after his, for example, the Bohemian priest Johann Huss embraced Wycliffe’s idea that all people had a right to a Bible in their own language. He commenced a great translation project. When church officials quoted canon law at him to show that his actions were wrong, he quoted scripture back at them and declared that the Bible trumped church councils. This was too much. The church arrested Huss and burnt him at the stake in a fire fueled with copies of the vulgate Bibles he had been promoting. In short,
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