Today I learned about Lollardy — a medieval English religious movement that had a huge influence on Protestantism. The movement was led by a preacher named John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was born around 1320. As a young priest, he lived through the Black Plague, which killed a third of the population of England in two years — including up to 40% of priests, who devotedly tended to the sick and dead.

The Black Plague caused a fracture in Europeans' religious and political worldview. Practically, the plague — the deadliest event in human history — made Europeans painfully aware of death. The Catholic Church was in the habit of selling prayer services to shave off years in purgatory. After watching millions of people die unprepared, these prayer services became more popular. In many ways, the plague increased the wealth of the church and the church's involvement in secular life. But, at the same time, the devastation reminded the poorer classes that all people are equal in the face of death.

The die-off caused an economic redistribution, making the poorer classes (temporarily) much wealthier. The poor now had more leisure time, which created a sense of moral crisis. Among the clergy, there was a panic that the workers were sitting around idly.

At the same time, the working class had grown resentful of the wealthy (who had fled the cities during the years of the plague, prompting conspiracy theories that the rich had someone created the plague) and distrustful of the church, which had failed to protect the laity.

John Wycliffe lived through the devastation of the plague, which would have shaken him to his core. Decades after the plague, he began preaching as a reformer. Wycliffe's movement was disparagingly labelled "lollards" — meaning people who speak nonsense. The Lollards criticized corruption in the church and called for religion for the people. Wycliffe created the first English translation of the Bible, on the principle that everyone should be able to read the Bible in their own language.

The heresy of the Lollards was tolerated by the church until 1381, when a Lollard preacher — John Ball — led the Peasants' Rebellion, which burned court records across England and marched on London. The rebels called for an end to unfree labor (serfdom) and free access to the land. The King heard the rebels demands and acquiesced — only to betray them the following day. He branded the rebels traitors and executed the leaders. After the rebellion was quashed, the broader movement of Lollardy was suppressed too, and the Lollards went underground.

However, the Lollards had a lasting influence. The Czech Reformer Jan Hus drew on the Lollard ideas in his Hussite Movement. Hus garnered much greater support in Bohemia, constituting a real threat to the papacy. In 1414, the Catholic Chuch held a counsel to address various crises in the church — including the insurrections of the Lollards and the Hussites. The church had promised amnesty to Hus. But, at the counsel, they betrayed him and burned him at the stake. The betrayal only inflamed Czech anger toward the church.

The Lollards had a significant lasting influence. More than a century after Wycliffe's death, when Martin Luther initiated the protestant reformation, his movement was called the "foster child" of Lollardy.

There are two major theories about the origin of capitalism: Max Weber argues that capitalism is a product of the Protestant Reformation, while Marx argues that is is a product of the English Enclosures. However, both of those movements can be traced back directly to the Black Plague and broader environmental and economic changes happening across Western Europe. At root was a change in worldview, whereby English peasants in particular began to see land and life as a scarce and tradable commodity. Ones time in this life could be traded for salvation in the afterlife, as wool can be traded for grain.