John Wycliffe

=== Attack on monasticism ===
The battle against what he saw as an imperialised papacy and its supporters, the "sects", as he called the [[monasticism|monastic]] orders, takes up a large space not only in his later works, such as the ''Trialogus'', ''Dialogus'', ''Opus evangelicum'', and in his sermons, but also in a series of sharp tracts and polemical productions in Latin and English (of which those issued in his later years have been collected as "Polemical Writings").

In the 1380 ''Objections to Friars'', he calls monks the pests of society, enemies of religion, and patrons and promoters of every crime.<ref name=Murray/> He directed his strongest criticism against the [[friars]], whose preaching he considered neither scriptural nor sincere, but motivated by "temporal gain".<ref name=Estep/> While others were content to seek the reform of particular errors and abuses, Wycliffe sought nothing less than the extinction of the institution itself, as being repugnant to scripture and his theology of apostolic poverty,<ref name="Lahey"/> and inconsistent with the order and prosperity of the Church.<ref name=Vaughn/> He advocated the dissolution of the monasteries.