The geographical and temporal “reach of Wycliffite ideas” (3), fifteenth-century religious controversy, and the “deliberate assessment of the venues presently available to scholars for the exchange of ideas” (6) are the goals the editors set for this collection of essays in its introduction. The subsequent twelve essays range widely enough to fulfill these goals and yet unite to form a cohesive picture of late medieval Europe—not an easy task for a collection of essays. The historical, literary, theological, and manuscript analyses one and all provide give valuable insight into the influence of Wyclif on Europe and, as one of the authors put it, Europe on Wyclif, too. The collection is not an assertion of Wyclif's singularity but of the interconnectedness, mobility, fluidity, and diversity of ideas in late medieval Europe. Due to space, only a few of the essays will be discussed here.

John Van Engen's “A World Astir” depicts fifteenth-century religious experience beyond the simplicity of labels, especially heretical labels, with a more complicated sketch of religiosity. His essay takes such terms as “lollard” or “Hussite” from their nationalized contexts and places them “in a larger world of religion astir” (21) in the European Christian context of decidedly not-settled definitions and demarcations. Dissent did not (always) mean condemned heresy, and tensions could prove “creative as well as destructive” (13). The evidence he finds for a world astir comes from churchmen and canonists who debated whom to condemn and whom to include within religio christiana. The evidence also comes from the dissenters or reformers themselves, whose use of self-labels and law reflect that they were interested in the same thing. The evidence leads Van Engen to a vision of a slowly evolving religious culture built upon the reciprocal influence between centers (e.g., Rome or universities) and localities (e.g., reform groups). Centers and localities read and heard each other's ideas, sometimes with acceptance, sometimes not, but together they formed a common Christian culture with value placed on a (godly) community, on reading and writing, and on a (godly) sense of possession. They differed in degree or details on these issues, but these issues characterized all late medieval Christians. Whether the differences became so sharp as to cause strife or not depended upon circumstances and contingencies, not on contemporaries' intolerance of a diversity of ideas.

The other essays complement Van Engen's well. Pavlína Cermanová’s “Constructing the Apocalypse” is a detailed textual analysis of apocalyptic rhetoric and interpretation that shows the mobility of ideas from Lollards, especially from their Opus arduum valde, to many contingents of Hussites and into the Four Articles of Prague. Fiona Somerset's “Before and After Wyclif: Consent to Another's Sin in Medieval Europe” is an examination of Wyclif's explanation of theories of consent within a community that shows both Wyclif's influence on Europe—because Lollards and Hussites found his explanation of consent “electrifying in its potential” (142)—and Europe on Wyclif—because he looked to the previous century “for models for the kind of reform he wants to promote” (141). Pavel Soukup's “The Waning of the ‘Wycliffites': Giving Names to Hussite Heresy” is a painstaking analysis of the frequency of the use of specific terms for those whom we now call “Hussites” that reveals the veracity of Van Engen's assertion that centers and localities built a common culture. This is because trends over time in usage of terms indicate that the curia adopted terms from locals and then introduced the use of “Hussite” to refer to all reformers in the Czech lands only to later change to “Bohemians” at the Council of Basel when trying to find common ground with the reformers. As the politics of the situation changed, the curia found the use of different terms expedient. Jennifer Illig's “Preparing for Easter” is an inquiry into the English Wycliffite Sermons that demonstrates how Lollard preachers prepared their parishioners for receiving the Eucharist at Easter with sermons very similarly to orthodox preachers with admonitions towards virtuous living—this despite Lollard theological unorthodox arguments regarding the Eucharist elsewhere. The controversial and divisive arguments were not the focus of the sermons. Louisa Z. Foroughi's “‘If yt be a nacion’” is a study of Plimpton MS 259, a small late fifteenth-century yeoman's notebook containing Lollard tracts, that demonstrates both the importance of a “reading community founded on scripture” (265) in the vernacular for medieval notions of natio and the ability of the “average” person (a yeoman family) to participate “in the wide range of practices and beliefs available in the fifteenth century, without clearly differentiating between lollard and orthodox spirituality” (279–280).

Europe After Wyclif is well worth reading for scholars and researchers, and some of the essays may be appropriate for an advanced undergraduate seminar focused on a relevant topic. The editors have done a great service by collecting these essays together with the goal of illustrating the variety and nuance of the reach of Wycliffite ideas in late medieval Europe.