1382]
Courtenay's Triumph.
323
have been extinguished. Wyclif's presence had been so large, his influence over the thought of the University had been so commanding, that he had broken the narrower groove in which his own life began, whilst the groove which he made for others had been broken by the Church. After Wyclif, no scholar could be a Schoolman; and the new founts of scholarship, such as the spirit of inquiry, the hardihood of logic, the candour of an open mind, were in some sense under a ban. All studies and all books except those prescribed by special statutes were henceforth forbidden. Everything written by Wyclif, or by any of those who were alleged to have been his followers, was confiscated and destroyed. The golden age of Oxford had come to an end.
