Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/283



CHAPTER XII.

THE DECISIVE STEP.

HE great Schism in the Roman Church, followed by a double line of Popes between the years 1378 and 1415, and the division of Christendom into two camps, with two hostile Supreme Pontiffs and Vicars of Christ, was evidently a more injurious fact for Rome and for Christianity than the long sojourn of the Papacy in its "Babylonian Captivity." The latter fact had in itself been sufficiently discrediting, for, though force took the Popes to Avignon, it was demoralisation rather than force which kept them there. But the Schism was infinitely worse than the Captivity.

It only needed a strong and startling situation such as that which was produced by this Schism to 219