John Wycliffe transubstantiation, monasticism, and the very existence of the Papacy. Beginning in the 16th century, the Lollard movement was regarded as the precursor to the Protestant Reformation. Wycliffe was accordingly characterised as the evening star of scholasticism and as the morning star of the English Reformation. Wycliffe's writings in Latin greatly influenced the philosophy and teaching of the Czech reformer Jan Hus ( 1369–1415), whose execution in 1415 sparked a revolt and led to the Hussite Wars of 1419–1434. Wycliffe was born in the village of Hipswell near Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, in the mid-1320s. His family
John Wycliffe rather than in the "visible" Catholic Church. To Wycliffe, the Church was the totality of those who are predestined to blessedness. No one who is eternally lost has part in it. There is one universal Church, and outside of it there is no salvation. His first tracts and greater works of ecclesiastical-political content defended the privileges of the State. By 1379 in his "De ecclesia" ("On the Church"), Wycliffe clearly claimed the supremacy of the king over the priesthood. He rejected the concept of purgatory, and disapproved of clerical celibacy, pilgrimages, the selling of indulgences and praying to saints. So