. Wyclif was also a persistent and public foe of the
mendicant friars. The views of this eminent reformer were courageously
advocated by his followers, and for nearly two generations they
continued to agitate the English people. It is easy to understand,
therefore, how Wyclif's opinions assisted in preparing the nation for
the Reformation of the sixteenth century, although it seemed that
Lollardy had been everywhere crushed by persecution. The Lollards
condemned, among other things, pilgrimages to the tombs of the saints,
papal authority and the mass. Their revolt against Rome led in some
instances to grave excesses.

NOTE J

In France, the religious houses suppressed by the laws of February 13,
1790, and August 18, 1792, amounted (without reckoning various minor
establishments) to 820 abbeys of men and 255 of women, with aggregate
revenues of 95,000,000 livres.

The Thirty Years' War in Germany wrought much mischief to the
monasteries. On the death of Maria Theresa, in 1780, Joseph II., her
son, dissolved the Mendicant Orders and suppressed the greater number of
monasteries and convents in his dominions.

Although Pope Alexander VII. secured the suppression of many small
cloisters in Italy, he was in favor of a still wider abolition on
account of the superfluity of religious institutes, and the general
degeneration of the monks. Various minor suppressions had taken place in
Italy, but it was not until the unification of the kingdom that the
religious houses were declared national property. The total number of
monasteries suppressed in Italy, down to 1882, was 2,255, involving an
enormous displacement of property and dispersion of inmates.

The fall of the religious houses in Spain dates from the law of June 21,
1835, which suppressed nine hundred monasteries at a blow. The remainder
were dissolved on October 11th, in the same year.

No European country had so many religious houses in proportion to its
population and area as Portugal. In 1834 the number suppressed
exceeded 500.

NOTE K

The criticism of Schaff is just in its estimate of the general influence
of the monastic ideal, but there were individual monks whose views of
sin and salvation were singularly pure and elevating. Saint Hugh, of
Lincoln, said to several men of the world who were praising the lives of
the Carthusian monks: "Do not imagine that the kingdom of Heaven is only
for monks and hermits. When God will judge each one of us, he will not
r