BRITAIN: John Wycliffe and the Lollards
Wycliffe, a Catholic priest, was fluent in Latin. Yet, he felt that it was wrong to use Latin, which he considered to be an elitist language, to teach the Scriptures. Knowledge of God’s law, he wrote, should be taught in the language which is easiest to understand, because what is being taught is the word of God. Thus, Wycliffe and his associates assembled a team to translate the Bible into English. It took some 20 years. In 1401, [Parliament] passed a statute giving bishops the power to imprison and torture heretics and burn them at the stake.
w09 6/1 pp. 8-11
We learn about the size of the Lollard movement … by the record of these trials… In 1431, the Bishop of Bath and Wells threatened with excommunication anyone who translated or copied the Bible.