The story of learning in the Middle Ages has been patiently reconstructed from a great many sources, and one of its principal themes has rightly been the preeminent service of the Christian Church in the preservation of classical writings, the stimulation of thought, and the instruction of its members. The distinction is not always carefully drawn, however, between the enthusiasm felt by clerical individuals and the institutional policies of the Church. A detailed enumeration and analysis of its official pronouncements about education may qualify the general impression and, by eliminating certain misconceptions, leave a clearer path for tracing the rise of schools after the barbarian invasions. The legislation will not reveal the whole attitude of the ecclesiastics, since the Middle Ages were less likely to define their institutions than we are, but it provides an indication that should not be minimized.

The history of the great Disruption in the Scottish Church of a century ago has already been related in detail by various writers. Other students have described specific aspects. For instance, in a stimulating, thematic essay, Laski has outlined the political theory of the schism; from the vantage point of seventy-five years and the Baedeker of Figgis he saw the path of the Disruption more clearly than the seceders. This present paper, however, is concerned not with the Scottish phase or with Laski's pluralistic bias: it relates an English extension of the schism and suggests a few implications of that extension.

Among the outstanding figures of the period of the “flowering of the Czech Reformation,” Peter Chelčický occupies a prominent, and in some respects à unique, position. Although not as well known as John Hus, from certain points of view Peter is more important, certainly more original, than the great Czech Reformer, insofar as in his radical biblicism he went far beyond the latter. Moreover, his influence lived on in the Unity of Brethren and affected the course of history more than Utraquism did. His unyielding and unequivocal insistence on the separation of church and state, and to a somewhat less degree his pacifism, raised him to the rank of a pioneer of the future types of Christianity.