The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

For reasons sincere and cynical, Latin was held to be the language of the Holy Book and ever more must be kept inviolate. Wycliffe had threatened the very voice of the Universal Church of the One Invisible God. It is a terrible example of the power in language. The Church was not finished with him yet. The Emperor Sigismund, King of Hungary, called together the Council of Constance in 1414. It was the most imposing council ever called by the Catholic Church. In 1415 Wycliffe was condemned as a heretic and in the spring of 1428 it was commanded that his bones be exhumed and removed from consecrated ground. With the Primate of England looking on, Wycliffe’s remains were disinterred and burned, thus, presumably, it was thought, depriving him of any possibility of eternal life. For when the Last Judgement came and the bodies of the dead rose up to meet those souls chosen to live with God, Wycliffe would be unable to reunite body and soul and so, if he had not already perished in hell, as they prayed for and hoped, he would certainly perish at the last.