Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/48



CHAPTER II.

THE SEETHING OF EUROPE.

ERHAPS the fairest test of the true greatness and importance of any man who has played his part in the shaping of history may be found in the disposition of his admirers to consider, not merely what he did for his country and his age, but also what his circumstances and antecedents had previously done for him. It is a truism to say that every man, great or small, is a product of the conditions which surround him; but only when we find ourselves face to face with an original and creative mind do we think it worth while to ask how this mind was itself created—how, in fact, the moulder of one generation had been moulded by the generations which preceded him.

Few men better deserve or more justly claim such treatment than John Wyclif, who was 22