SOURCE: Wilks, Michael. “Wyclif and the Wheel of Time.” In Wyclif: Political Ideas and Practice: Papers by Michael Wilks, edited by Anne Hudson, pp. 205-21. Oxford, England: Oxbow Books, 2000.

In the following essay, Wilks details Wyclif's belief in the circularity of history as understood in Christian terms.

During the 1370s Wyclif wrote to defend a monarchy which made extensive use of bishops and other clergy in the royal administration and yet was faced with aristocratic factions encouraged by bishops like Wykeham and Courtenay who espoused papal supremacy, if not out of conviction, at least as a very convenient weapon to support their independence against royal absolutism. At first sight Wyclif's attempts to define the right relationship between royal and episcopal, temporal and spiritual, power seem as confused as the contemporary political situation. His works contain such a wide range of theories from orthodox two swords dualism to a...