In some respects, as in ecclesiastical politics, for instance, the fourteenth century, when viewed as the outcome of the thirteenth century, may seem disappointing, something of a misfit or an anticlimax; thus we may ask whether the episcopal appointments of the fourteenth century were what men like Innocent III had intended. But in the realm of religious literature we can see, in the clearest and most satisfactory way, the achievement of the fourteenth century as the logical outcome of forces at work in the thirteenth century and earlier.

There were three factors at work, which were closely interconnected. In the first place there was the disciplinary legislation of the Church; this was the product of the great movement for ecclesiastical reform, which had been going on from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, culminating in the Lateran Council of 1215 and in the synodal constitutions of the English bishops in the thirteenth century, which followed the lead of the Lateran Council. These constitutions provided, among other things, an elaborate programme of religious instruction for the laity; and this was all the more necessary because of the great social and economic phenomenon of the age, the revival of town life and the consequent rise of an educated laity. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the educated layman in late medieval ecclesiastical history.