Between known men and visible saints

the long version

This is a doctoral dissertation, examining the assortment of religious dissenters who fall between very late Lollardy ('known men') and early English Separatism ('visible saints'). Many, but not all, of these had roots in late Lollardy but, for all that Wycliffe is often accounted 'the morning star of the Reformation', did not find official Protestantism any more to their taste than Catholicism had been. In most cases, this was because many Lollard groups, having lived an underground, sectarian existence, had moved away from Wycliffe's ideas to focus more narrowly upon biblicism and the 'pure' group. Though almost none became Anabaptists, they were often denounced as such — and indeed, there frequently were affinities. The book explores the radicals' principal theological concerns and shows that these were, at their heart, ecclesiological.