You wrote:
“The Lollards. Bunches of them.”
Nope. None. No Lollard was ever burned for reading the Bible in his own tongue.
“Of course, the CHARGE was heresy, but the proof was that they knew scripture in English.”
Everyone in England knew the scriptures in English. That’s the language in which it was read to them and explained to them at Mass and in open air preaching. Even the translators of the KJV admitted the Bible existed in English long before they came along.
“And what greater heresy could the Medieval Church have, then following scripture instead of the Pope?”
Following the pope IS scriptural as people knew even then. People who try to separate the Bible from the Church which wrote it are the ones in the wrong.
“Everyone in England knew the scriptures in English. That’s the language in which it was read to them and explained to them at Mass and in open air preaching.”
You might want to brush up on your history.
Thomas Arundel was the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England from 1399 on. In 1400, he pushed through the passage of “the De Heretico Comburendo statute in 1401, which recited in its preamble that it was directed against a certain new sect “who thought damnably of the sacraments and usurped the office of preaching.” (1913 Catholic Encyclopedia} It empowered the bishops to arrest, imprison, and examine offenders and to hand over to the secular authorities such as had relapsed or refused to abjure. The condemned were to be burnt “in an high place” before the people.” - Wiki
In 1408, he turned to scripture, pushing through the Constitutions of Oxford. “We therefor decree and ordain, that no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue, by way of book, libel or treatise; and that no man can read any such book...”.
“By the constitutions of Oxford of 1408, it was illegal—on pain of death—to read the Scriptures in English without a bishop’s licence. To reinforce this, in April 1519 one woman and six men were burned to death at Coventry for teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles Creed in English.” - Brian H Edwards
Of course, the Holy Catholic Church COULD have sponsored a translation, but it did not. Henry Knighton, an ecclesiastical chronicler of the time (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08670b.htm) wrote that Wycliffe’s work made scriptue “more open to the laity, and even women who were able to read, than formerly it had even been to the scholarly and most learned of the clergy...this precious gem of the clergy has been turned into the sport of the laity”. The first authorized English translation didn’t occur until the Great Bible in 1539...150 years after the Lollards started dying, and 2 years after Tyndale was strangled, then burnt for the heresy of claiming we are saved by grace through faith, and not by works.
The open air sermons of the 1300s and 1400s would include perhaps a sentence, and often less, of scripture translated from Latin - IF the preacher or priest knew enough Latin to do so - many did not. Those that did would cite part of a verse, and then preach their thoughts about it - a horrible style of preaching too often found in Protestant Churches to this day! However, having sat through many of them, I do so with my Bible in my lap, and I read the context...and sometimes corner the preacher afterward!
But the idea that “Everyone in England knew the scriptures in English” is simply false. Too many good men died giving us an English translation. And yes, there were some earlier than Wycliffe & his friends, but those were not distributed outside the Church.
“People who try to separate the Bible from the Church which wrote it are the ones in the wrong.”
The Church did not write the Old Testament, and the Apostles or close associates wrote the New.
And if we’re talking about the time of Wycliffe, who was the Pope? There were several at the time, leading Wycliffe to joke that ‘we knew the Pope had cloven feet, but now he has a cloven head to go with it’!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism
Show me in scripture where it says to follow the Pope. We are to follow Jesus.