1. THE LATER MIDDLE AGES: STUDIES

 

Eamon Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) paperback, $19.  A magnificently illustrated one-volume history of the papacy originally designed to accompany a 6-part television series.  Duffy, a Reformation historian by training, threads his way with finesse through a complex, many-sided history.  His well-written & smooth narrative sometimes glides over debates between scholars.  A superb point-of-entry and overview.

 

Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) paperback, $20.  An entertaining study of the wildest of the fringe (and often heretical) groups that made headlines in the late Middle Ages and the early Reformation.  See the chapter on the bizarre Anabaptist experiment in Munster.

 

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c.1400-c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) paperback, $22.

Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) hardcover, $35.  NEW.

Johan Huizinga, Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997) paperback, $18.  A fresh translation of Huizinga’s 1919 classic.

Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen & Cary J. Nederman, eds., Heresy in Transition: Transforming Ideas of Heresy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005) hardcover, $100.

Jules Lubbock, Storytelling In Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) hardcover, $45.  NEW.

Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2003) paperback, $28.

Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979) paperback.

Heiko A. Oberman & Charles Trinkhaus, ed., The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Reformation Religion (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974).

Heiko A. Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992).

Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (reprint of 1963 edition: Baker Book House, 2001) paperback, $40.

Heiko A. Oberman, The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994) paperback, $30.

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) paperback, $21.

Matthew Spinka, John Hus at the Council of Constance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965).

Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

 

 2. JEAN GERSON & LATE MEDIEVAL REFORMERS: STUDIES & TEXTS

 

H. Lawrence Bond, trans., Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1997) paperback, $25.

Anna Borelli, trans. and ed., Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonrola: Religion and Politics, 1490-1498, Italian Literature and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) hardcover, $60.  NEW.

D. Catherine Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) paperback, $60.  NEW.

J.H. Burns & Thomas Izbicki, ed., Conciliarism and Papalism, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) paperback, $24.   Translations of key texts.

Peter J. Casarella, Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance (Washington: Catholic Univeristy of America Press, 2006) hardcover, $75.  NEW.

Nancy J. Hudson, Becoming God: The Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007) hardcover, $60.  NEW.

Brian Patrick McGuire, Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005) paperback, $30.

Brian Patrick McGuire, A Companion to Jean Gerson, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition (Leiden / Boston: E.J. Brill, 2006) hardcover, $124.  NEW.

Brian Patrick McGuire, trans. Jean Gerson: Early Works, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1998) paperback, $25.

 

 3. ERASMUS & RENAISSANCE HUMANISM: STUDIES

 

Albert Rabil, Jr., ed., Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 volumes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988) paperback.  A superb and wide-ranging study of humanism in many and varied aspects.  Essays are by leading experts and trace developments in each region of Europe and in each aspect of humanism.  A fine place to start one’s research.

 

Cornelius Augustijn, Erasmus: His Life, Works, and Influence, trans. G.C. Grayson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) paperback, $20.  Erasmus was perhaps the most complex personality of the period.  A first-rate scholar, a skilled popularist with a talent for satire, Erasmus would in many respects set the agenda for the Reformation.  Yet when push came to shove, he would side with the Catholics and become Luther’s most penetrating critic.  The best biography to date.

 

Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1998) paperback, $18.  Catholics revere More as a martyr and saint, while some Protestants (including certain scholars) revile him as a narrow-minded persecutor.  Kenny tries to sort through all this and give a good brief portrait of a complex and thoughtful man.  I find the work of Richard Marius, Thomas More: a Biography (reprint: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) unduly negative.

 

William J. Bouwsma, The Waning of the Renaissance, 1550-1640 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) paperback, $17. With a nod to Johann Huizinga’s classic study of the later Middle Ages, Bouwsma examines the complex threads of the later Renaissance and shows that it was not so much the beginnings of modernity as an era that was self-contained and had a definite end.  An important revisionist interpretation.

 

Raymond W. Chambers, Thomas More (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1958).  The classic biography which shaped the image of More portrayed in Robert Bolt’s play and movie Man for All Seasons.

John D’Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchman on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1991).

Constance M. Furey, Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) hardcover, $65.

Meredith J. Gill, Augustine in the Italian Renaissance: Art and Philosophy from Petrarch to Michelangelo (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005) hardcover, $85.

Lisa Jardine, Erasmus, Man of Letters: The Construction of Charisma in Print (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) paperback.

Anthony Kenny, Thomas More, Past Masters Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed., Michael Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979) paperback, $33.

Paul Oskar Kristeller & Philip P. Wiener, ed., Renaissance Essays (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1992; reprint of 1968 edition).

Jill Kraye, ed., Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) paperback, $24.

James McConica, Erasmus, Past Masters Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) paperback.  An excellent brief summary of his life and work.

Charles G. Nauert, Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) paperback, $22.

John O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, 1450-1521 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979).

John O’Malley, Rome and the Renaissance: Studies in Culture and Religion (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981).

John C. Olin, ed., Six Essays on Erasmus (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979) paperback, $20.

James Overfield, Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

Roy Porter & Mikulaus Teich, eds., The Renaissance in a National Context (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Erika Rummel, Erasmus, Outstanding Christian Thinkers (New York: Continuum, 2004) paperback, $25.

Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, Harvard Historical Studies, 120 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) paperback, $20.

Erika Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation Germany, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) hardcover, $55.

C.B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler & Jill Kraye, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) hardcover, $60.

Carol Thysell, The Pleasure of Discernment: Marguerite de Navarre as Theologian, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) hardcover, $52.

Charles Trinkhaus, The Scope of Renaissance Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983).

Evelyn Welsh, Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500, Oxford History of Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) paperback, $20.

 

 4. ERASMUS & THE RENAISSANCE HUMANISTS: TEXTS

 

Erika Rummel, ed., The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1990) paperback, $23.  The University of Toronto is currently translating the complete works of Erasmus (some 70 volumes).  Rummel has drawn on these high quality translations to create the best anthology of Erasmus.

 

Robert M. Adams, ed., Desiderius Erasmus: The Praise of Folly, Norton Critical Editions (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989) paperback, $13.  The text, together with classic essays.

Peter Elmer, Nick Webb, & Roberta Wood, ed., The Renaissance in Europe: An Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) paperback, $21.

Lisa Jardine, ed., Erasmus: The Education of a Christian Prince with a Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) paperback, $20.

John C. Olin, ed., Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975) paperback.

Thomas More, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963-1998).

Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy, and Burn All Jewish Books: A Classic Treatise Against Anti-Semitism (1511), Studies in Judaism and Christianity, trans. Peter Wortsman (New York: Paulist Press, 2000) paperback. Reuchlin was Philip Melanchthon’s uncle and a great Hebrew scholar.

 

 

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Revised: April 2, 2008

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  William Harmless, SJ