The Age of Reform 1250–1550

AN INTELLECTUAL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF LATE MEDIEVAL AND REFORMATION EUROPE

STEVEN OZMENT

With a New Foreword by CARLOS EIRE and RONALD K. RITTGERS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College.

Copyright © 1980 by Yale University.

Foreword copyright © 2020 by Yale University.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.

ISBN: 978-0-300-20355-4 (pbk.)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932733

For Heiko and Toetie

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers

Preface

1. The Interpretation of Medieval Intellectual History

2. The Scholastic Traditions

How Man Is Saved: Theories of Salvation from Augustine to Gabriel Biel

How Man Truly Knows: Theories of Knowledge from Augustine to Ockham

What Scripture Means: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages

3. The Spiritual Traditions

Critics of Scholasticism

Monastic Piety

The Franciscan Movement

Varieties of Mystical Experience

4. The Ecclesiopolitical Traditions

Secular and Theocratic Concepts of Government

The Pre-eminence of Peter

Royal and Papal Apologists

The Schism and the Rise of the Conciliar Theory of Church Government

The Council of Constance

The Conciliar Movement After Constance

Summary

5. On the Eve of the Reformation

The Growth of Monarchy

Population, Money, and Books

Religious Culture

6. The Mental World of Martin Luther

Young Man Luther

Luther and Scholasticism

Luther and Mysticism

7. Society and Politics in the German Reformation

Imperial Politics in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

Lutheran Social Philosophy

The Revolt of the Common Man

8. Humanism and the Reformation

Erasmus and Luther

Protestant Reformers: Biblical Humanists or New Scholastics?

Protestantism and Humanist Educational Reforms

9. The Swiss Reformation

Zwingli and Zurich

Conrad Grebel and Swiss Anabaptism

The Working Out of Zwinglianism

10. The Sectarian Spectrum: Radical Movements within Protestantism

11. Calvin and Calvinism

Young Calvin

Political Revolt and Religious Reform in Geneva

Strasbourg and Martin Bucer

Calvin’s Geneva: 1541–64

Were Calvinists Really Protestants?

12. Marriage and the Ministry in the Protestant Churches

13. Catholic Reform and Counter Reformation

The Quest for Catholic Reform: From Constance to Trent

The Society of Jesus

14. Protestant Resistance to Tyranny: The Career of John Knox

15. The Legacy of the Reformation

List of Abbreviations

Index

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About The Age of Reform 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe

Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges.

The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society.

With a new foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers, this modern classic is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of students and scholars.

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Table of Contents