THE SCHOOLMEN in teaching, preaching, and writing Between 1360, when he was master of Balliol, and 1372, when he took his DD, he produced a philosophical Summa whose most important volume is a treatise on universals, designed to vindicate realism against nominalist sophistry In his maturity he wrote a theological Summa which began with two books of banal orthodoxy, moved through several books of hardy innovation, passed into overt heresy, and ended in barren polemic The volumes of this work covered the whole range of medieval theology Three of them dealt with issues of law and property, and proposed the controversial theses that evil clerics should be disendowed and that even laymen, if sinners, had no right to ownership of property Several other volumes, on Church, king, and papacy, analysed the structure of the Christian Church and society, castigated abuses, and proposed reforms In one of his latest works, on the Eucharist, he presented a novel interpretation of the Mass, the centre of medieval spirituality One of Wyclif’s most startling innovations was his proposal for communism, based on his theory of dominium, or ownership He argued thus On the one hand, someone who is in sin has no right to property You can only possess something justly if you can use it justly; but no sinner can use anything justly because all his actions are sinful On the other hand, if you are in a state of grace, as an adoptive son of God you inherit the whole realm of God But if each Christian in grace is lord of all, he must share his lordship with all other Christians in grace All the goods of God should be common This is proved thus Every man should be in a state of grace; and if he is in a state of grace, he is lord of the world and all it contains So every man should be lord of the universe But this is not consistent with there being a number of men, unless they ought to have everything in common Therefore all things should be in common Surprisingly, Wyclif’s writings on dominion, radical though they were, did not seem to have caused him trouble with the authorities during his lifetime The secular authorities used them in support of the taxation of the clergy, and ignored their implications with regard to the laity However, the increasing hardihood of Wyclif’s speculations made his position in Oxford less and less tenable When he denounced the popes and questioned papal claims, he could Wnd sympathizers—at a time when a disgraceful schism was splitting Christendom in two—even among the higher clergy When he, a secular priest enjoying several beneWces, called 101