Wycliffite spirituality

by J. Patrick Hornbeck

Both in its own time and subsequently, the Lollard or Wycliffite movement of religious reform in late medieval England has been described in predominantly negative terms: historians, theologians, and literary scholars have emphasized the ways in which Wycliffites and their supporters rejected the doctrines of the institutional church, argued against such practices and structures as permanent endowment and the papacy, and constructed themselves as a remnant of true Christians persecuted by Antichrist. Luckily, however, there are other sources of evidence for the spiritual and devotional...