Abstract
It is commonplace to treat the Wycliffite or lollard dissenters of late medieval England as “strongly antipapal,” to borrow the words of one historian. To the contrary, however, a close examination of John Wyclif’s views of the papacy as well as the theological and polemical writings of those who followed in his footsteps and the records of contemporary heresy trials reveals a surprising degree of moderation. Wyclif and later lollards criticized the abuses of the medieval papacy but did not demand its abolition as an institution; instead, they argued that the papacy (like the clergy as a whole) should be brought back, forcibly if needs be, to a set of ideal standards of behavior that Wyclif and other dissenting writers associated with the apostolic era.
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