RELIGIOUS LIFE 55

government, had accumulated enough energy to
burst the bonds of medievalism. The fifteenth
century was at the end of an age.

It is interesting to note that Wiclif (d. 1384),
one of England's greatest men, was ordained in
York. He stands out as a "daring and inspired
pioneer" who strove to provide the land with
priests who were true and earnest shepherds. He
attempted the superhuman task of reviving true
religion among a people that had become to a certain
extent dull, irreverent, ignorant, and thoroughly
superstitious.

By the fifteenth century the Church was suffering
from those ills which needed and later gained drastic
treatment. The Church had done almost miraculous
work in the first few centuries of its existence, if we
think only of the success with which it substituted
its system of morality for that of pagan Rome. The
fifteenth century followed those centuries when the
Church of England, under the direction of great and
earnest men, was doing its work with conspicuous
success. Yet, the very forces that enabled the Church
to make itself a living power in the Dark Ages, the
early centuries embracing the Fall of Rome, the
Empire of Charlemagne, and the kingship of Alfred
the Great, became harmful to its continued activity
beneficially in many directions. The inadequacy of
its work in these centuries appears in the lack of
spiritual activity and in the predominance of the
material side of religion. The mediseval Church
suffered badly from excessive conservatism, which
led towards sloth and a complacent inactivity.
The morbid element showed itself during the fifteenth
century mainly in lack of real earnestness, in the
enjoyment of luxurious laziness, and in the steady
neglect of the age to revise its Christianity. The