When K. B. McFarlane wrote his biography of John Wycliffe he was surprised to find that the hero who emerged was not Wycliffe himself but his implacable opponent, William Courtenay, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1381 to 1396. ‘Justice has never been done to Courtenay’s high qualities, above all to the skill and magnanimity with which he led his order through the crisis that now threatened it’, he wrote admiringly, adding by way of explanation that, ‘Since the reformation his has been the unpopular side.’ The impression McFarlane gave is that there were two ecclesiastical camps in late fourteenth-century England: heretical and orthodox. The fabric of English church life was fractured then, for ever, by the beliefs and work of Wycliffe and his adherents; was not McFarlane’s biography entitled John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity? Yet McFarlane’s assessment of heresy was that this was far from being a monolithic movement; indeed, in a private letter he wrote, ‘Wycliffe was merely an extremist in a widespread reform movement.’
As obras inglesas de John Wycliffe inseridas no contexto religioso de sua época: da suma teológica de Aquino ao concílio de Constança , dos espirituais fransciscanos a Guilherme de Ockham