Manuscripts

Queens’ MS 27

John Wycliffe (1320–84), De Veritate Scripturae
In Latin
England, c. 1420–40

The presence of many anti-Wycliffe writings in the fifteenth-century catalogue of Queens’ College Library (Queens’ MS 30) would appear to attest to pre-Reformation Queens' intense disapproval of Wycliffe and the anticlerical, biblically-centred reforms he sought. It is interesting therefore that the Library subsequently became home to this rare source of Wycliffe’s theological work, De Veritate Scripturae [The truth of the Scriptures]. In it Wycliffe proffers his view that the laws of Church and State are valid only in so far as they are grounded in scripture, and that scriptural meaning should be known not just to the clergy, but also through preaching to the laity.

Queens’ MS 27 is one of only four extant early sources of De Veritate Scripturae. It was given to the College by the classicist and Queens’ Fellow Joseph Wasse (1698–1713, d. 1738), who entered the following inscription in the volume: ‘Bought of Mr Ward Bookseller in Leicester Jan. 28th 1721. I take it to be Wicliff, and never published. There seems to be a copie of þis book in þe Bodleian Library Numb. 3021.32.’