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Wherever they went, they kindled among the people the desire to read the Bible. The principal theatre of their labors was Milan, and other places in the north of Italy and the south of France, where the hierarchy had a weaker hold on the people, and where many who were disgusted with the priesthood were likewise repelled by the obnoxious theology of the Catharists.

The departure of the Franciscans from the rule of poverty led the stricter party in that order to break off; and all efforts to heal the schism proved ineffectual. The Spirituals, as the stricter sect were called, in their zeal against ecclesiastical corruption did not spare the Roman Church; and they, especially the lay brethren among them, the Fratricelli, were delivered over to the Inquisition.

At the end of the twelfth century there were formed in the Netherlands societies of praying women, calling themselves Beguines, who led a life of devotion without monastic vows. Similar societies of men, who were called Beghards, were afterwards formed. Many of both classes, for the sake of protection, connected themselves with the Tertiaries of the monastic orders. Many, following the rule of poverty, became mendicants along the Rhine and, perhaps, through the influence of the sect of the Free Spirit a Pantheistic sect― adopted heretical opinions; so that the names Beguine and Beghard, outside of the Netherlands, became synonymous with heretic. A swarm of enthusiasts and fanatics, known by these appellations, cherished a sincere hostility to the corrupt administration of the Church.

the Waldenses are Dieckhoff, Die Waldenser im Mittelalter (1851); Herzog Die romanischen Waldenser (1853). Herzog has brought forward new information in his article on the Waldenses in his Real-Encyclopädie. The lately discovered manuscript of the Nobla Leyczon renders it highly probable that this poem was composed in the fifteenth century. On the date of the other Waldensian writings, and the interpolations which they have suffered, see Herzog's article. That the Waldenses have no existence prior to Waldo is conceded at present by competent scholars.

The existence and the number of this species of sectaries, whom the Inquisition could not extirpate, and who, it should be observed, were mostly plain and unlearned people, prove that a profound dissatisfaction with the existing order of things, and a deep craving, mingled though it was with ignorance and superstition, for the restoration of a more simple and apostolic type of Christianity, had penetrated the lower orders of society. Formerly they who were offended by the wealth and worldly temper of the clergy, had found relief by retreating to the austerities of monastic life within the Church. But the monastic societies, each in its turn, as they grew older, fell into the luxurious ways from which their founders had been anxious to escape. Now, as we approach the epoch of the Reformation, we observe the tendency of this sort of disaffection to embody itself in sects which assume a questionable or openly inimical attitude towards the Church. Yet it is well that the ecclesiastical revolution was not left for them to accomplish, but was reserved for enlightened and sober-minded men, who would know how to build up as well as to destroy.

II. The Conservative Reformers, the champions of the liberal, episcopal, or Gallican, as contrasted with the papal conception of the hierarchy; the leaders in the reforming councils, both by what these eminent men achieved and by what they failed to achieve, prepared the way for the great change from which they themselves would have recoiled in dismay. In carrying forward their battle they were led to expose with unsparing severity the errors and crimes, as well as the enormous usurpations of authority, with which the popes were chargeable. This could not but essentially lower the respect of men for the papal office itself. At the same time the discomfiture of these reformers, as far as their principal attempt is concerned, to reform the Church "in head and members,” a discomfiture effected by the persistency and dexterity of

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as

the popes and their adherents, could not fail to leave the impression on many minds that a more stringent remedy would have to be sought for the unbearable grievances under which the Church labored. It must not be forgotten, however, that Gerson, D'Ailly, and their compeers, were as firmly wedded to the doctrine of a priesthood in the Church, and to the traditional dogmatic system, were their opponents. At Constance, the Paris theologians almost outstripped their papal antagonists in the violent treatment of Huss during the sessions of the Council, and in the alacrity with which they condemned him and Jerome of Prague to the stake. It was a reformation of morals, not of doctrine, at which they aimed; the distribution, but not the destruction of priestly authority.

III. But there were individuals before, and long before the time of Luther, who are appropriately called radical reformers; men who, in essential points, anticipated the Protestant movement. There were conspicuous efforts which, if they proved to a considerable extent abortive at the moment, left seed to ripen afterwards, and were the harbinger of more effectual measures. Of all this class of reformers before the Reformation, John Wickliffe is the most remarkable.1 Living in the midst of the fourteenth century, nearly a hundred and fifty years before Luther; not an obscure or illiterate man, but a trained theologian, a Professor at Oxford; not hiding his opinions, but proclaiming them with boldness; he, nevertheless, took the position not only of a Protestant, but, in many important particulars, of a Puritan. In his principal work he affirms that no writing, not even a papal decree, has any validity further than it is founded on the Holy Scriptures; he denies transubstantiation, and

1 Life and Sufferings of John Wicklif, by J. Lewis (Oxford, 1820); Life of Wicklif, by Charles Webb Le Bas (1846); John de Wycliffe, a Monograph, by Robert Vaughan, D. D. (London, 1853); Weber, Geschichte der akatholischen Kirchen u. Secten von Gross-Brittanien, i. 62 seq.; Hardwick, History of the Christian Church: Middle Age, p. 402 seq.

attributes the origin of this dogma to the substitution of a belief in papal declarations for belief in the Bible; he asserts that in the primitive Church there were but two sorts of clergy; doubts the Scriptural warrant for the rites of confirmation and extreme unction; would have all interference with civil affairs and temporal authority interdicted to the clergy; speaks against the necessity of auricular confession; avers that the exercise of the power to bind and loose is of no effect, save when it is conformed to the judgment of Christ; is opposed to the multiplied ranks of the clergy, popes, cardinals, patriarchs, monks, canons, and the rest; repudiates the doctrine of indulgences and supererogatory merits, the doctrine of the excellence of poverty, as that was held and as it lay at the foundation of the mendicant orders; and he sets himself against artificial church music, pictures in worship, consecration with the use of oil and salt, canonization, pilgrimages, church asylums for criminals, celibacy of the clergy.1 Almost every distinguishing feature of the mediæval and papal church, as contrasted with the Protestant, is directly disowned and combated by Wickliffe. How was it possible that he could do this so long, in that age, with comparative impunity, and die at last in his bed, when so many whom he immeasurably outstripped in his reformatory ideas paid for their dissent with their lives? The reason is found partly in the fact that he identified himself with the University of Oxford, and with the secular or parish clergy in their struggle against the aspiring mendicant orders, and still more in the fact that he stood forth in the character of a champion of civil and kingly authority, against ecclesiastical encroachments. He was protected by Edward III., whose cause against papal tyranny he had supported; and after Edward's death, by powerful nobles. He was strong enough to

1 Large extracts from the Trialogus are in Gieseler, III. iv. 8. § 125. n. 1. An analysis of it is given in Turner, History of England, v.

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withstand the opposition to his work of translating the Bible, and publicly to defend the right of the people to have the Scriptures in their own tongue. Not until the reign of Henry V., when the relation of the kings to the clergy was changed, was the persecution of the Wickliffites, or Lollards, as they were called, vigorously undertaken. They were not exterminated; but the principles of Wickliffe continued to have adherents in the poor and obscure classes in England, down to the outbreaking of the Protestant movement. It is remarkable that Wickliffe predicted that among the monks themselves there would arise persons who would abandon their false interpretations of Christianity, and, returning to the original religion of Christ, would build up the Church in the spirit of Paul.1

In the same rank with Wickliffe stands the name of John Huss. Before him in Bohemia there had appeared Militz and Conrad of Waldhausen, preachers animated with the fiery zeal of prophets, and lifting up their voices, in the face of persecution, against the corruption of religion. Still more was Huss indebted to Matthias. of Janow, whose ideas respecting the Church and the relations of clergy to laity involved the germs of changes more radical than he himself perceived. Huss was strongly influenced, likewise, by the writings of Wick

1 The following passage is from the Trialogus: "Suppono autem quod aliqui fratres, quos Deus docere dignatur, ad religionem primævam Christi devotius convertentur, et relicta sua perfidia, sive obtenta sive petita Antichristi licentia, redibunt libere ad religionem Christi primævam, et tunc ædificabunt ecclesiam sicut Paulus." See Neander, v. 172.

2 Historia et Monumenta Jo. Hus et Hieron. Pragensis (1715); Palacky, Documenta Magistri J. Hus, and the Geschichte Böhmens by the same author; Neander, Church History, v. 235 seq.; Gillett, Life and Times of John Huss (1871); the works of Van der Hardt and Lenfant upon the Council of Constance; L. Krummel, Geschichte d. Böhmisch. Reformat. im XV. Jahrh. (1866); Wessenburg, Die grossen Kirchenversammlungen des XV. u. XVI. Jahrh. (vol. ii. 1840); Czerwenka, Gsch. der Evang. Kirche in Böhmen, 2 vols. Leipzig, 1869-70.

8 Neander, v. 173 seq.; Jordan, Vorläufer des Hussitenthums in Böhmen (Leipzig, 1846).