He opined that the church had no power to excommunicate.
The friars had become mere beggars and the church was still
wealthy. He proposed that all goods should be held in common by
the righteous and that the church should hold no property but be
entirely spiritual. He believed that people should rely on their
individual consciences. He thought that the Bible should be
available to people who could read English so that the people
could have a direct access to God without priests or the pope.
Towards this end, he translated it from Latin into English in
1384. His preachers spread his views throughout the country. The
church then possessed about one-third of the land of the nation.
William of Ockham, an Englishman educated at Oxford and teaching
theology in Paris, taught that the primary form of knowledge came
from experience gained through the senses and that God might cause
a person to think that he has intuitive knowledge of an existent
object when there is in fact no such object.
Most great lords were literate. Many stories described good men,
who set an example to be followed, and bad men, whose habits were
to be avoided. Stories were written about pilgrimage vacations of
ordinary people to religious sites in England. Will Langland's
poem "The Vision of William Concerning Piers Plowman" portrays a
pilgrimage of common people to the shrine of Truth led by a
virtuous laborer.
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