Wycliffe's Bible

Up until this point, religious texts were not allowed to be translated into the vernacular.This restricted the texts to a small and educated part of the population. Once John Wycliffe translated the bible into Middle English, access was suddenly granted to the common people and catapulted literacy during this time. By translating the bible, Wycliffe gave power to the common people and allowed them to not just trust what they hear from members of the clergy.

This video is made by the Wycliffe Bible Translation initiative and it brings up many good points about how translating the bible can give people with little access to texts in their own language a way to grow as literate people. This is essentially what happened when the bible was translated into the vernacular in the 14th century.