Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/309



CHAPTER XIII.

CONDEMNED AT OXFORD.

HE time had come when Wyclif had reached his last stage of heresy, and he made up his mind to declare boldly against the miraculous and non-natural element in the sacrament of the altar. After many meanders, as we have seen above, the Reformer found himself at the centre of the labyrinth, with his doubts resolved and his resolution taken.

According to Netter of Walden, he began to lecture at Oxford against the docrine of transubstantiation ("incepit determinare materiam") in the summer of 1381; but the actual date of the inquiry which was held in this year by Chancellor Berton, at the instance of the archbishop and bishops, is somewhat in doubt. Easter, as Dr. Shirley points out in 243