Chapter 3 identifies the prominence of Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church) as a theological person and the Trinity’s first creation in John Wyclif’s Tractatus de Ecclesia (De Ecclesia). This chapter demonstrates that maternal imagery was integral to Wyclif’s presentation of the doctrine of Church antiquity and challenges perceptions of Wyclif as anti-institutionally and anti-materially predestinarian.

Identifying the principles of ecclesiological interpretation that John Wyclif applies to all biblical feminine imagery in his Tractatus de Ecclesia (De Ecclesia), Chapter 4 shows how Wyclif uses biblical materials to provide Lady Church with a narrative arc and a speaking part in the drama of salvation history.

The book ends with a review of the long and complex history of feminine imagery for the Church and presents major conclusions from the book’s case studies, such as the remarkable and previously unrecognized continuities and changes across the periodization divide established by the English Reformation. The Conclusion also reviews the analytical method used in the book’s case studies – which is adaptable to feminine imagery for the Church in sources outside the book’s scope – and evaluates the aptitude of the term “goddess” for Lady Church in the context of comparative religious studies.

Chapter 7 argues that feminine imagery is the most pervasive strategy in the fifteenth-century Lollard vernacular treatise The Lanterne of Liȝt for encouraging readers to identify affectively with Christ’s true Church while participating in the liturgical, sacramental, and charitable practices of mainstream ecclesiastical life. The chapter identifies a distinctive “ecclesial spirituality” of relating directly to Lady Church in historical circumstances that were hostile and deadly toward religious dissent.

The Introduction presents the topic of feminine imagery for the Church and the book’s method for examining this imagery in both expository and literary sources and across the traditional medieval and early modern periodization divide. It presents Lady Church both as a theological person with a transcendent ontological status not identical to the ecclesiastical institution and as a literary figure developed through drama, poetry, and literary techniques used in other genres.

Chapter 5 identifies how partisan figures in fourteenth-century England, such as John Wyclif and Roger Dymmok, sharpened feminine imagery for the Church, especially in debates over the legitimacy of ecclesiastical wealth. In his Trialogus, Wyclif presents Lady Church as a damsel in distress who was assaulted by the Donation of Constantine, while Dymmok in his anti-Lollard treatise presents Lollards as matricidal vipers and the endowed Church as a mother whose uterus and breasts nurture her educated clergy.