Inventing the Origins and Influence of Lollardy

Abstract

John Wyclif did not inspire Lollardy; the Lollard movement produced Wyclif. Heretical movements of the later Middle Ages were no more attractive to women than religious orthodoxy. In short, these are the central theses of two recent works on Wyclif and the Lollards. Both in fact are at once provocative and troubling. Provocative because they suggest new ways in interpreting old themes but troublesome insofar as they undermine established historiographical understanding. In the enterprise of doing history, returning ever and again to the sources, testing, testing, retesting and examining is in itself a weary task if the results are consistently the same. Of course if one continues to ask the same questions of the same sources then it follows that the same answers should recur. Just when we were becoming familiar with the answers historians and students of Wyclif and Lollardy have been giving us, McSheffrey and the contributors to the Wyclif volume have changed the questions resulting in a different set of answers or directions. What might appear disconcerting on the surface is in fact an invitation to a venue of discovery.