The first organized revolt against the Church occurred in southern France, in the early thirteenth century, and the revolters (_Albigenses_) were so fearfully punished by fire and sword that it was not attempted there again. [Illustration: FIG. 86. JOHN WYCLIFFE (1320?-84) A popular English preacher (Drawn from an old print)] In 1378 there was a disputed papal election, and for nearly forty years there were two Popes, one at Rome, and one at Avignon in southern France, each attempting to control the Church and each denouncing the other as Antichrist. The discussions which accompanied this "Great Schism" did much to weaken the authority of the Church in all Christian lands. In England a popular preacher and Oxford divinity graduate by the name of John Wycliffe was led, by the sad condition of the Church there, to a careful study of the Bible. He came to the conclusion that many of the claims of the Popes and many practices of the Church were wrong (R. 147) and he refused to accept teachings of the Church for which he could not find sanction in the Bible. His revolt was as direct and vigorous as that of Luther, in German lands, a century and a half later (R. 148). So great was his zeal for reform that he and his scholars attempted a translation of the Bible [2] into English (see Figure 93), that the people might read it, and he and his followers (called _Lollards_) went about the country teaching what they believed to be the true Christianity. What had before in England been a widespread but undefined feeling of disaffection for the rich and careless clergy and monks, the work of Wycliffe organized into a political and social force. Due to the then close connection of the English and Bohemian courts, through royal marriages, Wycliffe's teachings were carried to Bohemia, where a popular preacher and university theologian by the name of John Huss (1373-1415) expounded them. He denounced the evil conduct of the clergy, and he and his followers tried to introduce several new customs into the Church. For this Huss was first excommunicated, and then burned at the stake as a dangerous heretic. [3] After a series of terrible massacres his followers were forced, in large part, to accept once more the old system. [Illustration: FIG. 87. RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN BOHEMIA Sacking a village in true German style (From a picture in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg)]