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.
1401–1500
95 works
1401
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
Tests for visionary claims — the visionary's humility, obedience, physical health, and whether the revelation serves anything beyond the visionary's own standing.
1402
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
Lectures on what makes an act sinful, on the binding force of human law, and on when a Christian's conscience may resist an ecclesiastical command.
written 1333; printed from 1470s
Latin
Manipulus Curatorum
Guido de Monte Rochen · 14th century
What a parish priest must know to administer the sacraments and hear confessions, written for clergy with little formal training.
1405
Old French
Christine de Pizan · c. 1364–c. 1430
Reason, Rectitude, and Justice help the author build a walled city peopled by virtuous women from scripture, history, and legend, in answer to misogynist authorities.
1402–1408
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
An attempt to give mystical experience a place inside academic theology, defining contemplation as knowledge reached through love rather than through argument.
1409
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
An argument that the church may act to heal itself when the papacy will not, since the church exists for the salvation of souls and not for the convenience of its officers.
written 1376; widely copied thereafter
Latin
Directorium Inquisitorum
Nicholas Eymerich · c. 1316–1399
A systematic manual of inquisitorial law and procedure, defining heresy, listing condemned propositions, and prescribing the conduct of trials.
c. 1410
Latin
Dietrich of Niem · c. 1345–1418
A curial official's insider history of the schism, naming names and describing the financial machinery of the rival papal courts without much charity.
1410
Latin
Dietrich of Niem · c. 1345–1418
A distinction between the universal church, which cannot err, and the Roman church, which plainly can — with the conclusion that a council may depose both claimants.
c. 1409–1410
Middle English
Nicholas Love · d. c. 1424
An English version of the Pseudo-Bonaventure meditations, expanded with passages defending the eucharist and the church against Lollard objections.
1413
Latin
De Ecclesia
Jan Hus · c. 1372–1415
The church defined as the whole body of the predestined, whose head is Christ — so that a pope in mortal sin is no true head, and obedience is owed to commands only insofar as they accord with scripture.
1414
Latin
Jacob of Mies · c. 1372–1429
An argument from scripture and the fathers that laypeople should receive the cup as well as the bread, and receive often rather than once a year.
c. 1400–1430
Latin
The Brethren of the Common Life
Arrangements for households of men or women living together in shared work and prayer without vows, supporting themselves by copying manuscripts.
6 April 1415
Latin
The Council of Constance
A decree declaring that a general council holds authority immediately from Christ, and that everyone including the pope must obey it in matters of faith, schism, and reform.
1414–1415
Latin
Jan Hus · c. 1372–1415
Letters smuggled from prison to friends in Bohemia, refusing to abjure opinions he was not shown to have held, and asking pardon of anyone he had offended.
1416
Latin
Pierre d'Ailly · 1351–1420
A defence of the council's authority over a pope, distinguishing the church as a whole from the Roman church and locating infallibility in the former.
1416
Latin
Poggio Bracciolini · 1380–1459
A humanist at Constance describes, with reluctant admiration, the eloquence and composure of a heretic he watched defend himself and then burn.
9 October 1417
Latin
The Council of Constance
A decree requiring general councils to meet at fixed intervals — five years, then seven, then every ten — so that the church could correct itself without waiting for a crisis.
1418
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
Written in exile after Constance in imitation of Boethius, on how to keep hope when reform has failed and the church one worked for looks no better.
c. 1418
Old Church Slavonic
Epiphanius the Wise · c. 1350–c. 1420
The monk who founded the Trinity monastery north of Moscow, blessed Prince Dmitry before Kulikovo, refused the office of metropolitan, and made his own shoes.
1420
Latin
The Hussites of Prague
Four demands: free preaching of the word, communion in both kinds for the laity, clergy stripped of worldly property, and public sins punished regardless of rank.
1420
Czech
The community of Tábor
The demands of the radical Hussite wing: no purgatory, no images, no vestments, worship in barns if necessary, and a community holding goods in common.
c. 1409–1420
Latin
Jean Gerson · 1363–1429
The four gospels harmonised into a single continuous narrative in a hundred and fifty chapters, with the sources marked throughout.
c. 1400–1450 in Ge'ez
Ge'ez
Ta'ammera Maryam
Anonymous
Marian miracle stories translated from Arabic and greatly expanded with Ethiopian material, read liturgically and illustrated in brilliantly coloured manuscripts.
c. 1420–1422
Latin
Lawrence of Březová · c. 1370–c. 1437
A moderate Hussite's account of the revolution and the first crusades against it, critical of the radicals at Tábor as well as of the crusaders.
c. 1420–1424
German
Ulrich Richental · c. 1360–1437
A townsman's illustrated account of the council — who came, what they wore, what the town charged for lodging, and the burning of Hus described as he saw it.
c. 1420–1429
Greek
Symeon of Thessalonica · d. 1429
A complete explanation of Orthodox worship — the church building, all the sacraments, the funeral rites, the ordinations — by the last archbishop of the city before it fell.
c. 1418–1427
Latin
De Imitatione Christi
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
Four short books of counsel on self-knowledge, inner detachment, the consolations of the interior life, and the sacrament — written in aphorisms brief enough to stop a reader on almost every page.
c. 1425–1444
Italian
Bernardino of Siena · 1380–1444
Sermons preached in town squares for hours at a stretch and taken down verbatim by listeners — on usury, on gossip, on family life, on the holy name of Jesus.
1429–1430
Old French
Joan of Arc · c. 1412–1431
Dictated letters to the English commanders, to the citizens of towns, and to the Hussites of Bohemia, opening in the name of Jesus and Mary and signed with a cross.
c. 1425–1440
Latin
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
Conferences to young canons on humility, silence, the danger of curiosity, and the ordinary discipline of a house of the Common Life.
1431; nullification trial 1456
Latin
The court of Rouen
The verbatim record of the interrogation of an illiterate peasant girl by university theologians, including her answers about her voices and about whether she was in God's grace.
1433
Latin
De Concordantia Catholica
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
A programme for reform of church and empire built on consent: all legitimate authority rests on the agreement of those subject to it, in councils and in states alike.
1433–1437
Latin
The Council of Basel
Decrees abolishing annates, regulating appeals to Rome, requiring provincial synods, and restricting the papacy's financial claims on local churches.
c. 1436–1438
Middle English
Margery Kempe · c. 1373–after 1438
A brewer and mother of fourteen from Lynn dictates her life: a breakdown after childbirth, a vow of chastity negotiated with her husband, pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome, and the loud weeping that made people want her burned.
c. 1438; published 1475
Italian
Catherine of Bologna · 1413–1463
Seven weapons against temptation, written by an abbess who also describes her own long assault by doubts about whether anything she believed was true.
7 July 1438
Latin
The clergy and crown of France
A royal ordinance adopting the Basel reforms in France: elections to bishoprics restored, appeals to Rome limited, papal taxation curtailed.
22 November 1439
Latin
The Council of Florence
A summary of Catholic teaching for the Armenian church, containing the first conciliar list of exactly seven sacraments with the matter and form of each.
6 July 1439
Latin
The Council of Florence
The decree of union between the Greek and Latin churches, settling the filioque, purgatory, papal primacy, and the eucharistic bread — signed by all the Greek delegates but one.
1439
Greek
Basilios Bessarion · 1403–1472
An argument to the Greek delegation at Florence that the Latin and Greek fathers say the same thing about the Spirit in different words, and that union is therefore honest.
1–40 of 95 matching · 1774 in the Library