Were The Lollards a Sect?

Abstract

Historians should not need Wyclif to alert them to the dangers of words. Even if our professional futures are unlikely to be threatened, as his was, by the challenging of accepted terms, the words we use can lead us into false positions, and we sometimes need, like Wyclif, to probe the historical dimension of our terminology. What exactly do we mean when we call Wycliffites or Lollards a ‘sect’? How does our word relate to contemporary usage? Do we import alien interpretations by failure to recognize semantic change? If ‘sect’ is a word that leads us into something of an impasse, this paper does not attempt the impossible of pointing to a way out; my aim is merely to indicate some of the hazards of the linguistic terrain and to suggest that looking at the term may itself tell us something useful about Wycliffites and contemporary attitudes towards them.

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