Then [Margery] went forth with our Lady [i.e. Mary] and with Joseph
[Mary’s husband], bearing with her a vessel of sweetened and spiced
wine. Then they went forth to Elizabeth, Saint John the Baptist’s
mother, and, when they met together, both of them worshipped each
other, and so they dwelled together with great grace and gladness twelve
weeks.... And then [Margery] went forth with our Lady to Bethlehem
and purchased her lodging every night with great reverence, and our
Lady was received with a glad manner. Also she begged for our Lady
fair white clothes and kerchiefs to swaddle her son when he was born,
and, when Jesus was born, she prepared bedding for our Lady to lie in
with her blessed son.^10
This was the Gospel story (see, for example, Luke 1:39–40 and 2:4–7) with a new
protagonist!
Others began to rethink the role of the church. In England, the radical Oxford-
trained theologian John Wyclif (c.1330–1384), influenced in part by William of
Ockham (see p. 266), argued for a very small sphere of action for the church. In his
view, the state alone should concern itself with temporal things, the pope’s decrees
should be limited to what was already in the Gospels, the laity should be allowed to
read and interpret the Bible for itself, and the church should stop promulgating the
absurd notion of transubstantiation. At first the darling of the king and other powerful
men in England (who were glad to hear arguments on behalf of an expanded place
for secular rule), Wyclif appealed as well (and more enduringly) to the gentry and
literate urban classes. Derisively called “lollards” (idlers) by the church and
persecuted as heretics, the followers of Wyclif were largely, though not completely,
suppressed in the course of the fifteenth century.
Considerably more successful were the Bohemian disciples of Wyclif. In
Bohemia, part of the Holy Roman Empire but long used to its own monarchy (see
above, p. 145), the disparities between rich and poor helped create conditions for a
new vision of society in which religious and national feeling played equal parts. There
were at least three inequities in Bohemia: the Germans held a disproportionate share
of its wealth and power, even though Czechs constituted the majority of the
population; the church owned almost a third of the land; and the nobility dominated
the countryside and considered itself the upholder of the common good. In the hands
of Jan Hus (1369/71–1415), the writings of Wyclif were transformed into a call for a
reformed church and laity. All were to live in accordance with the laws of God, and
