keyword: John

John

• Poverty, Reform, and Holistic Solutions: Situating the poor in the disendowment programme of John Wyclif
  Issue: Leeds Medieval Studies, 4 (2024)
  Hannah Kirby Wood
  This paper offers a new socially oriented reading of the place of the poor in John Wyclif's reformist vision for the Church. Wyclif's dependence on the lay lords as agents of his programme of disendowment has been read as deference to aristocratic interests, with his allusions to the poor construed primarily as rhetorical justification of a policy aimed at enriching the lay elite. This paper challenges this prevailing interpretation by highlighting the holistic nature of Wyclif's programme and by pushing back against the equation of benefit with direct financial remuneration. By examining Wyclif's imagined ripple effects of the enrichment of the lay lords, his departures from usages of the poor in the rhetorical tradition, and his encouragement of small-scale acts of disendowment at the level of the individual, this paper argues that improving the plight of the poor was not simply an expedient talking point, but rather an integral facet of Wyclif's programme.