For these social movements have always a common cause and reach a
predetermined result.
In the eleventh century the convent of Cluny, for example, had an enormous
and a perfectly justified hold upon the popular imagination, because of
the sanctity and unselfishness of its abbots. Saint Hugh won his sainthood
by a self-denial and effort which were impossible to ordinary men, but
with Louis IX the penitential life had already lost its attractions and
men like Arnold rapidly brought religion and religious thought into
contempt. The famous Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, born, probably, in
1175, died in 1253. He presided over the diocese of Lincoln at the precise
moment when Saint Louis was building the Sainte Chapelle, but Grosseteste
in 1250 denounced in a sermon at Lyons the scandals of the papal court
with a ferocity which hardly was surpassed at any later day.
To attempt even an abstract of the thought of the English Reformation
would lead too far, however fascinating the subject might be. It must
suffice to say briefly that theology had little or nothing to do with it.
Wycliffe denounced the friars as lazy, profligate impostors, who wrung
money from the poor which they afterwards squandered in ways offensive to
God, and he would have stultified himself had he admitted, in the same
breath, that these reprobates, when united, formed a divinely illuminated
corporation, each member of which could and did work innumerable miracles
through the interposition of Christ.
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