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
c. 1430–1440
Armenian
Thomas of Metsoph · c. 1378–1446
An eyewitness account of Timur's campaigns through Armenia, the massacres and deportations, and the survival of the church under successive conquerors.
1440
Latin
De Falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione
Lorenzo Valla · c. 1407–1457
A demonstration that the document by which Constantine supposedly gave the West to the papacy is a forgery — proved from its Latin, its anachronisms, and its silences.
1438–1444
Greek
Mark of Ephesus · 1392–1444
The encyclicals and treatises of the one Greek bishop at Florence who refused to sign the union, on the filioque, purgatory, and the impossibility of agreement by formula.
1440
Latin
De Docta Ignorantia
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
God as the coincidence of opposites, approached only by knowing that we do not know — with a universe that has no circumference and no fixed centre.
c. 1440
Latin
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
Short lives of the founders and early members of the Devotio Moderna, written by a man who had known many of them personally.
c. 1425–1441
Latin
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
The fourth book of the Imitation, circulating separately for much of its history: a dialogue between Christ and the communicant on approaching the sacrament.
c. 1440–1443
Czech
Sít víry
Petr Chelčický · c. 1390–c. 1460
The church as a net torn by two great whales — pope and emperor — and an argument that a Christian may not swear oaths, hold office, own another's labour, or take up arms at all.
c. 1444–1457
Latin
Lorenzo Valla · c. 1407–1457
Notes comparing the Vulgate against Greek manuscripts and finding the Latin wanting in dozens of places, including words on which doctrines had been built.
c. 1300s; block-printed from c. 1450
Latin
Biblia Pauperum
Anonymous
Pages pairing a scene from Christ's life with two Old Testament prefigurations and four prophets, designed to be read as much by picture as by text.
c. 1430–1471
Latin
Denys the Carthusian · 1402–1471
Commentaries on the whole Bible, on Dionysius, on Peter Lombard, plus treatises on contemplation, on death, and on reform — filling forty-two printed volumes.
1450
Latin
Idiota de Sapientia
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
An unlettered spoon-carver in the Roman forum instructs a professional orator and a philosopher, arguing that wisdom cries out in the streets and not only in books.
15th century
Latin
Anonymous
Instructions for priests attending the dying: what to ask, what to read aloud, how to prompt the acts of faith and contrition, and what to do when speech fails.
c. 1441–1450
Ge'ez
Mashafa Berhan
Zar'a Ya'eqob · 1399–1468
An emperor's treatise ordering the observance of both Sabbath and Sunday, condemning magical practices, and defining correct devotion to Mary and the cross.
c. 1440–1456
Latin
John of Capistrano · 1386–1456
The preaching of a friar who crossed central Europe drawing enormous crowds, campaigned against Hussites and Jews, and helped raise the army that relieved Belgrade in 1456.
1453
Latin
De Visione Dei
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
Written for monks with a painting whose eyes follow every viewer: an exercise in which each brother sees the gaze fixed on him alone, and learns from it how God sees.
1453
Latin
De Pace Fidei
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
Written weeks after Constantinople fell: representatives of every nation and religion meet in heaven and find that beneath the variety of rites there is one faith.
c. 1449–1453
Latin
Juan de Torquemada · 1388–1468
A systematic defence of papal authority against conciliarism, arguing that a council's authority derives from the pope and not the reverse.
c. 1453–1460
Greek
Anakalema tes Konstantinopoles
Anonymous
A vernacular lament for the city, addressing the empress of cities directly and describing Hagia Sophia's icons weeping.
c. 1440–1454
Latin
Summa Theologica Moralis
Antoninus of Florence · 1389–1459
Moral theology for a commercial city, treating banking, exchange, partnership, wages, and the just price with the detail of someone who heard merchants' confessions.
c. 1455
Greek
Gennadios Scholarios · c. 1400–c. 1473
A summary of Christian doctrine written at the sultan's request by the first patriarch appointed after the conquest, phrased to be intelligible to a Muslim reader.
1458
Latin
De Beryllo
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
A short work using the image of a lens through which the invisible becomes visible, on how the mind may glimpse the coincidence of opposites in God.
1459
Latin
Reformatio Generalis
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
A programme handed to the pope proposing that reform begin at Rome and work outward, with visitors sent to every province and no exemptions for anyone.
c. 1458–1461
Latin
Fortalitium Fidei
Alonso de Espina · d. c. 1464
A four-part attack on heretics, Jews, Muslims, and demons, urging the Spanish crown to establish an inquisition against converts suspected of relapsing.
c. 1450–1465
Latin
Denys the Carthusian · 1402–1471
A verse-by-verse commentary gathering the whole patristic and scholastic tradition on the psalter and adding a contemplative application to each psalm.
1461
Latin
Cribratio Alkorani
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
A close reading of the Qur'an in Latin translation, looking for what in it is true and can be built on rather than only for what can be refuted.
c. 1455–1462
Greek
Doukas · c. 1400–after 1462
A history of the last Byzantine century culminating in the fall of Constantinople, written by a Greek in Genoese service with painful sympathy for both sides.
c. 1467
Greek
Michael Kritovoulos · c. 1410–c. 1470
A Greek Christian writes an admiring history of the sultan who took his city, presenting Mehmed as a legitimate heir to the Roman emperors.
1457–1467
Czech
The Unitas Fratrum
The agreements by which a group of Chelčický's readers separated from both Rome and the Utraquist church and chose their own ministers by lot.
written 1366; printed from 1470s
Latin
De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
Two hundred and fifty-four dialogues in which Reason answers Joy, Hope, Sorrow, and Fear on everything from wealth and fame to gout, exile, and the death of a child.
first printed 1471
Latin
Thomas à Kempis · c. 1380–1471
The first printed edition of the Imitation, followed by some hundred more before 1500 — one of the most reprinted books of the incunable age.
1474
Latin
Marsilio Ficino · 1433–1499
An argument that religion is natural to humanity and that Christianity perfects what the Platonists and the ancient sages half-saw.
c. 1468–1475
Old Church Slavonic
Afanasy Nikitin · d. c. 1475
A merchant from Tver travels to India and records, with real distress, that he has lost track of the Christian calendar and cannot keep the fasts or Easter.
c. 1468–1477
Greek
George Sphrantzes · 1401–c. 1478
A courtier's diary-like record of the last emperors, ending with his own enslavement, the loss of his children in the sultan's household, and his retirement to a monastery.
c. 1470–1489
Latin
Wessel Gansfort · c. 1419–1489
Writings on prayer, the eucharist, indulgences, and the authority of scripture over papal decree, circulated in manuscript among a small circle.
1469–1482
Latin
Marsilio Ficino · 1433–1499
Eighteen books arguing the immortality of the soul from Platonic principles, placing the human soul at the centre of a hierarchy binding matter to God.
written c. 1149; printed from 1483
Latin
Marcus · 12th century
An Irish knight is taken through hell and purgatory by his guardian angel and shown, in graphic detail, the punishment fitted to each of his own sins.
1484, expanded 1488 and 1498
Spanish
Tomás de Torquemada · 1420–1498
The operating rules of the Spanish Inquisition: how to publish an edict of grace, take denunciations, sequester property, and conduct an auto-da-fé.
1486
Latin
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · 1463–1494
Propositions drawn from Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew sources, including the Kabbalah, offered for public disputation in Rome at the author's own expense.
1486
Latin
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · 1463–1494
God tells Adam he has no fixed place or nature, and may sink to the brutes or rise to the divine as he chooses — an opening speech for a debate never held.
1486–1487
Latin
Malleus Maleficarum
Heinrich Kramer · c. 1430–1505
A manual arguing that witchcraft is real, that it is chiefly a crime of women, and setting out how to identify, interrogate under torture, and execute the accused.
41–80 of 95 matching · 1774 in the Library