ch. He retired to Lutterworth and, though he continued to write voluminously both in Latin and English, remained there undisturbed till his death. He was probably cited to Rome but he was too infirm to obey. Indeed he was probably paralyzed during the last two years of his life. A second stroke came in 1384 while he was hearing Mass in his church, and three days later he died. He was buried at Lutterworth, but the Council of Constance in 1415 ordered his remains to be taken up and cast out. This was done in 1428. It is impossible to understand Wyclif's popularity, the weakness of the ecclesiastical authorities, or even the character of his teaching, without taking into account the extraordinary condition of the country at the end of the fourteenth century. The discredit which had been brought on the principle of authority in Church and State and the popularity of revolutionary ideas have been touched upon in the article LOLLARDS, and the causes which explain the spread of Lollardy are responsible, to some extent at least, for Wyclif's own mental development. His earliest writings are mainly logical and metaphysical. He belonged to the Realist School, and claimed to be a disciple of St. Augustine, but it was his attitude in the practical and political questions of Evangelical poverty and Church government which gave him influence. The question of Evangelical poverty was a burning one throughout the fourteenth century. Originally a subject of bitter controversy within the ranks of the Friars Minor, it had received a wider extension, and the chief theological writers of the time had taken sides. When the papacy declared for the moderates, the extremists, with their literary supporters, Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham, and others, assumed an attitude of hostility to Rome, and soon found themselves advocating a church organization without property and practically under the control of the State. From the mendicants, then, Wyclif inherit...
