Lollardy


Lollardy was the political and religious movement of the Lollards from the mid-14th century to the English Reformation. Lollardy evolved from the teachings of John Wyclif, a prominent theologian at the University of Oxford beginning in the 1350s. Its demands were primarily for reform of the Roman Catholic Church. It taught that piety was a requirement for a priest to be a "true" priest or to perform the sacraments, and that a pious layman had power to perform those same rites, believing that religious power and authority came through piety and not through the Church hierarchy. Similarly, Lollardy also emphasized the authority of the Scriptures over the authority of priests. It taught the concept of the "Church of the Saved", meaning that Christ's true Church was the community of the faithful, which overlapped with but was not the same as the official Church of Rome. It taught a form of predestination. It advocated apostolic poverty and taxation of Church properties. It also denied transubstantiation in favor of consubstantiation.