The Wycliffite Bible (1382, 1388) John Wycliffe (c.1330-1384) was an Oxford theologian and forerunner of the Protestant Reformation in his belief that scripture, rather than the pope or church tradition, was the only authoritative source of Christian teaching.  He was thus one of the first to translate the Bible into vernacular English.  Two students actually produced the translations, one literal and one more free.  Both are based on the Latin Vulgate and therefore include the apocrypha; some later copies also include the apocryphal Christian Letter of Paul to the Laodiceans (fourth century C.E.; cf. Col 4:16). Pope Martin V condemned the 1415 version of this Bible, jailed the student translators and forced them to recant, and exhumed Wycliffe's body so that it could be burned and its ashes scattered.   Texts The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, ed. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850.   Online Text John Wycliffe, Early (1850) - complete online text hosted by "The Bible in English," part of the Electronic Text Center of Cornell University Library.   Studies Frestedt, Sven L.  The Wycliffe Bible, 3 vols, Stockholm Studies in English 4, 21, 28.  Stockholm: Almquvist & Wiksells, 1953-1973.   Ghosh, Kantik.  The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 45.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. © 2017 Catherine Murphy, Associate Professor cmurphy@scu.edu   Dept of Religious Studies, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053