After his death his movement slowly ebbed away, but the seeds were in the soil and became fertile when the real Reformation broke through.
Now this shows you cannot reform the Roman church on the basis of sectarian criticism, even if this criticism is as radical as it was in Wyclif. You can reform only in the power of a new principle, the power of a new relationship to God. This is what the Reformers did.
Counter-Reformation; Roman Catholicism.
Now I am at the end of the pre-Reformers and should come to the Reformation.
But before doing so, I will go to the Counter-Reformation development of the Roman church, from the Council of Trent up to the present day, in order to get: rid of this part which is so important for you that you must – no, not :get rid,” because it is one of the most important things we must learn: what is, really, the Roman Catholic church, with which we live on every place together? Do we really know what it is? You know much about the Reformation, and it is important that you learn about the history of the Church and also the history of the Roman church after the Reformation.
Through councils, there were many attempts in the Reformation period to overcome the splits. There were many councils – the great one of Worms and Augsburg, in which the Reformation got its final formulation and its classical expression. But the demand for a general council never stopped and finally a council was called to the place which you call Trent – Triente, in the southern slopes of the Alps, a very beautiful place. And there, for several decades, continuously interrupted, sessions took place from which the Reformers were actually excluded.
So instead of becoming a universal council, it became a council of the Counter- Reformation.
