The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1301–1400
95 works
c. 1349–1350
Greek
Gregory Palamas · 1296–1359
A compressed summary of his whole theology — cosmology, the human person as image, the distinction of essence and energies — in short numbered chapters.
c. 1340–1358
Latin
Jean Buridan · c. 1300–c. 1361
A revision of Aristotle's account of motion, proposing that a thrown body carries an impressed impetus that persists — and that the heavens may move by the same principle.
14th century
Latin
Anonymous
Guidance for solitaries living in cells attached to churches or bridges, on the hours, on manual work, and on how much contact with passers-by is permissible.
c. 1350–1400
Middle High German
Theologia Deutsch
Anonymous
An anonymous treatise on how self-will is the whole of sin, and how the soul must let God act in it rather than claiming anything as its own.
c. 1352
Middle High German
Rulman Merswin · 1307–1382
A vision of nine rocks rising from a pool toward a mountain, with an unsparing survey of the corruption of every rank of the church on the way up.
1354–1360s
Greek
Demetrios Kydones · c. 1324–1398
The Summa contra Gentiles and much of the Summa Theologiae rendered into Greek by a statesman who began learning Latin to read them.
c. 1354
Italian
Specchio di vera penitenza
Jacopo Passavanti · c. 1302–1357
Lenten sermons on confession and penance, illustrated with vivid cautionary tales of the damned appearing to the living.
c. 1351–1355
Latin
Nicole Oresme · c. 1320–1382
A method of representing changing qualities by geometric figures, effectively graphing motion against time, and proving the mean speed theorem.
1357
Middle English
John Thoresby · d. 1373
An archbishop's instruction, issued in Latin and English, that every priest teach his people the creed, commandments, sacraments, and works of mercy four times a year.
c. 1340–1359
Greek
Nikephoros Gregoras · c. 1295–1360
A history of the later empire that turns, in its second half, into a sustained polemic against Palamas by the leading opponent of hesychasm.
c. 1360
Greek
Nicholas Cabasilas · c. 1322–c. 1392
Union with Christ through baptism, chrismation, and the eucharist, written by a layman for laypeople, with no suggestion that the monastic life is required for it.
c. 1362
Middle High German
Henry Suso · c. 1295–1366
A spiritual autobiography, partly shaped by a nun who took his confidences down without telling him, describing extreme self-mortification later renounced as misguided.
c. 1350–1366
Latin
Rerum Familiarium Libri
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
Letters gathered and polished for publication, including several addressed to Cicero and Augustine as though they were living correspondents.
c. 1367–1374
Latin
Libellus de Antichristo
Jan Milíč of Kroměříž · c. 1325–1374
A Prague preacher identifies antichrist not with a future figure but with the corruption present in the church of his own day, and calls for reform beginning with the clergy.
c. 1368
Greek
Philotheos Kokkinos · c. 1300–1379
The life of the hesychast theologian by the patriarch who canonised him nine years after his death, written to settle the controversy for good.
1368
Latin
Statuta Antiqua
The Carthusian Order
The consolidated law of the Carthusian order, codifying the customs of two and a half centuries into a single body of statutes.
c. 1362–1369
Greek
John VI Kantakouzenos · c. 1292–1383
A memoir by an emperor who won a civil war, abdicated, became a monk, and then explained at length why everything he did had been necessary.
c. 1344–1373
Latin
Revelaciones
Birgitta of Sweden · c. 1303–1373
Seven books of visions from a widowed noblewoman who moved to Rome, rebuking popes for staying in Avignon and describing the nativity in a scene that changed European painting.
1367–1371
Latin
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
A reply to young Aristotelians who called him unlearned, arguing that knowing what virtue is matters less than wanting it, and preferring Cicero and Augustine to the schools.
c. 1348–1374
Latin
Vita Christi
Ludolph of Saxony · c. 1295–1378
An enormous meditative life of Christ, gathering patristic comment and asking the reader at every scene to be present in it, to look and to listen.
c. 1370–1375
Greek
John VI Kantakouzenos · c. 1292–1383
A former emperor's refutation of Islam, drawing on the Latin Qur'an translation and on earlier Greek polemic, written as the Ottomans crossed into Europe.
c. 1375
Middle English
Anonymous
An English version of a French treatise on the commandments, the creed, the seven sins, and the gifts of the Spirit, written for lay readers.
c. 1375
Middle English
Anonymous
Counsel from an unnamed director to a young contemplative: God cannot be reached by thinking, so put every thought — even good ones — under a cloud of forgetting, and press toward him with a naked intent of love.
c. 1375–1376
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
An argument that all lawful authority depends on being in a state of grace, so that sinful clergy hold their endowments unjustly and the crown may take them away.
c. 1370–1380
Italian
Catherine of Siena · 1347–1380
Nearly four hundred letters to popes, queens, mercenaries, and prisoners — including one telling the pope to be a man and come back to Rome.
c. 1370–1390 in three versions
Middle English
William Langland · c. 1332–c. 1386
A dreamer searches for Truth through a field full of folk, meeting Lady Meed, the seven deadly sins, and finally Christ jousting in Piers's armour.
1377
Old French
Livre du ciel et du monde
Nicole Oresme · c. 1320–1382
A translation of and commentary on Aristotle for the king of France, arguing at length that nothing observable rules out the earth turning daily on its axis — and then declining to believe it.
1378–1379
Latin
The cardinals of Rome and Avignon
The competing manifestos of 1378: one body of cardinals declaring Urban VI validly elected, the same body months later declaring the election void under duress and choosing another.
1377–1378
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
An argument that scripture is wholly true and sufficient, that it belongs to every Christian, and that church tradition must be measured against it rather than the reverse.
1377–1378
Italian
Il Dialogo della Divina Provvidenza
Catherine of Siena · 1347–1380
A conversation between a soul and God the Father, built on the image of Christ as a bridge over the flood, and unsparing about corrupt clergy.
c. 1374–1384
Latin
Geert Groote · 1340–1384
The correspondence and resolutions of a licensed preacher who gave up a comfortable career, attacked clerical concubinage, and gathered men and women into households of shared life without vows.
c. 1375–1400
Middle English
Anonymous
A father grieving a daughter dead before her second birthday sees her across a river as a queen of heaven, and argues with her about whether that can be just.
1380
Latin
Epistola Concordiae
Conrad of Gelnhausen · c. 1320–1390
An argument that a general council may be summoned without a pope's consent when the church's welfare requires it, since the church is greater than any officer of it.
c. 1379–1381
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
A denial of transubstantiation on philosophical grounds: an accident cannot exist without a subject, so the bread must remain bread while being also Christ's body sacramentally.
1379–1381
Latin
Henry of Langenstein · c. 1325–1397
A call for a general council to judge both claimants, arguing that neither obedience can be certain and that the faithful must not be left in doubt about their own sacraments.
c. 1379–1381
Latin
Pierre d'Ailly · 1351–1420
Early writings on the schism arguing that the church cannot be bound to an uncertain obedience, and that a council represents it more fully than a doubtful pope.
c. 1382–1383
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
Truth, Falsehood, and Wisdom debate the whole of theology, summarising his mature positions on God, creation, the sacraments, and the corruption of the orders.
c. 1380–1395
Middle English
Anonymous
A shorter, warmer sequel by the author of The Cloud, answering a disciple's questions and insisting the work is simply to offer God the naked fact that you are.
c. 1382–1395 in two versions
Middle English
John Wycliffe's circle
The whole Bible translated from the Vulgate into English, first word for word and then revised into readable idiom, with a prologue defending vernacular scripture.
c. 1376–1406
Old Church Slavonic
Cyprian of Kyiv · c. 1336–1406
The correspondence and service-book revisions of a Bulgarian-born metropolitan who brought Byzantine hesychast practice and corrected texts into the Russian church.
41–80 of 95 matching · 1774 in the Library