ABSTRACT
From Abelard's day to the late 1400s, more than seventy-five universities started. By 1490, seventy of these were still functioning. The Roman Catholic Church had passed its highwater mark and was in many respects in a slow decline. There were still many pious believers, but every level of the church had dark comers needing reform. There had been recurring efforts to reform abuses since the early days of the Christian movement. In late-fourteenth-century England, an Oxford lecturer voiced almost all the criticisms that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others would level at the political/religious establishment more than a century later. This was John Wycliffe, the mouthpiece of a strong anticlerical group in the English court. Annually, England paid a large “tribute” to the pope. But in 1366, the English king, Edward III, refused to pay and assigned Wycliffe to write a justification.3 He complied, arguing that charity begins at home and that England needed the money more than did Rome.
