Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

A Dialogue Concerning Heresies

Thomas More · 1478–1535

A defence of images, pilgrimage, and the unwritten tradition against Tyndale, arguing that the church precedes and authenticates the scripture.

The Works

Maximus the Greek · c. 1475–1556

Translations, textual corrections, and treatises by an Athonite monk brought to Moscow to revise the service books, who was imprisoned for decades for his corrections.

On Translating: An Open Letter

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

A defence of adding the word alone to justified by faith, and a description of how hard it is to make Hebrew speak German without sounding like a foreigner.

The Augsburg Confession

Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560

Twenty-eight articles presented to the emperor, stating what the evangelical churches teach and what abuses they have corrected, phrased as conservatively as honesty allowed.

On the Errors of the Trinity

Michael Servetus · c. 1511–1553

An argument that the Nicene formula is unscriptural and philosophically confused, and that the church went wrong at the moment it adopted the word substance.

The Mirror of the Sinful Soul

Le Miroir de l'âme pécheresse

Marguerite de Navarre · 1492–1549

A long devotional poem on the soul's nothingness and God's mercy, in which the speaker is by turns God's daughter, mother, sister, and wife.

Chronicle, Book of Time and Historical Bible

Sebastian Franck · c. 1499–c. 1543

A world history sympathetic to heretics, arguing that the true church has been invisible since the apostles and that God speaks in every age and nation.

Apology of the Augsburg Confession

Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560

A long defence answering the Catholic Confutation article by article, with the treatment of justification running to more than a third of the whole.

The German Bible

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

The whole Bible from Hebrew and Greek into a German shaped, as its translator said, by listening to the mother in the house and the common man in the market.

A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation

Thomas More · 1478–1535

Written in the Tower awaiting execution, framed as Hungarians discussing the Turkish threat, and really about how to face the loss of everything including one's nerve.

The Coverdale Bible

Miles Coverdale · 1488–1569

The first complete printed English Bible, made from Latin and German rather than the original tongues by a translator who admitted he knew neither well.

Lectures on Galatians

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

Luther's own favourite among his books, on Christian freedom, the uses of the law, and the conscience that must learn to look away from itself.

Sublimis Deus

Pope Paul III · 1468–1549

A bull declaring that the peoples of the Americas are rational beings capable of the faith, must not be enslaved, and are to keep their liberty and property.

The Smalcald Articles

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

Luther's own statement, written when he expected to die, of what could be negotiated at a council and what could not — the article of justification standing first and immovable.

Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre

Marie Dentière · c. 1495–1561

A former abbess turned reformer defends women's right to read and expound scripture, and criticises the Geneva ministers by name for their treatment of her.

Foundation of Christian Doctrine

Menno Simons · c. 1496–1561

A former priest sets out a peaceable Anabaptism after the catastrophe at Münster — believers' baptism, discipleship, non-resistance, and separation from violence.

The Great Bible

Miles Coverdale · 1488–1569

A revision produced under royal authority and chained in every parish church by order of the crown, with a title page showing the king distributing the word.

On the American Indians

De Indis

Francisco de Vitoria · c. 1483–1546

A dismantling of every justification offered for the conquest — discovery, papal grant, sin, unbelief — concluding that the Indians were true owners of their lands.

On the Church and the Authority of the Word of God

Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560

An argument that the church's authority is ministerial rather than legislative — it announces the word and cannot make new articles of faith.

On the Law of War

De Iure Belli

Francisco de Vitoria · c. 1483–1546

When war may be waged, by whom, and within what limits — including that difference of religion is no just cause and that the innocent may never be deliberately killed.

Reply to Sadoleto

John Calvin · 1509–1564

An answer to a cardinal's courteous invitation to Geneva to return to Rome, arguing that the reformers left not the church but its corruptions, and imagining the last judgement.

The Letters of Spiritual Counsel

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

Letters to the bereaved, the anxious, the dying, and the suicidal, including several to people in the despair he called Anfechtung and knew himself.

The Ecclesiastical Ordinances

John Calvin · 1509–1564

Four orders of ministry — pastors, teachers, elders, deacons — with a consistory of ministers and lay elders charged with the discipline of the whole city.

History of the Indians of New Spain

Toribio de Benavente Motolinía · c. 1482–1569

An early friar's account of the conquest's aftermath — mass baptisms, epidemics, the destruction of temples — by a man the Nahuas named for his poverty.

The Catechism of the Church of Geneva

John Calvin · 1509–1564

Instruction by question and answer, opening with the chief end of human life: to know God by whom we were created.

On the Jews and Their Lies

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

A late treatise calling for synagogues and Jewish homes to be burned, books confiscated, and Jews driven from the land.

The Second Democrates

Democrates Alter

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda · 1490–1573

A justification of the conquest arguing from Aristotle that some peoples are slaves by nature and may rightly be subjected for their own good.

The Book of Homilies

Thomas Cranmer and others

Official sermons to be read in parishes where the clergy could not preach, on scripture, salvation, faith, good works, and obedience to authority.

The Spiritual Exercises

Exercitia Spiritualia

Ignatius of Loyola · 1491–1556

Not a book to read but a thirty-day programme to be led through: structured meditations on sin, the life of Christ, the passion and the resurrection, with rules for telling which interior movements come from God.

The Sermons

Hugh Latimer · c. 1487–1555

Plain, funny, furious preaching before the king and at Paul's Cross about enclosures, bribery, absentee clergy, and the poverty of English farmers.

The Book of Common Prayer

Thomas Cranmer · 1489–1556

One book putting the whole worship of a church — daily prayer, communion, baptism, marriage, burial — into the language of the people, with a lectionary that walks a congregation through most of the Bible in a year.

The Decades

Heinrich Bullinger · 1504–1575

Fifty sermons covering the whole of Christian doctrine, written for clergy who needed a course of instruction they could preach through.

The Letters

Francis Xavier · 1506–1552

Letters from India, the Moluccas, and Japan on baptisms, language difficulties, the failures of Portuguese colonists, and his plan to enter China.

On the Kingdom of Christ

De Regno Christi

Martin Bucer · 1491–1551

A programme for a Christian commonwealth presented to Edward VI — poor relief, education, marriage law, and the reform of worship — written in English exile.

In Defence of the Indians

Bartolomé de las Casas · 1484–1566

The argument delivered at Valladolid against Sepúlveda: the peoples of the Americas are rational, their societies ordered, and no one may be made Christian by force.

The Domostroi

Attributed to Sylvester of Novgorod

A manual for the Orthodox household covering prayer, obedience, servants, cooking, laundry, brewing, and the correction of wives and children.

The Hundred Chapters

Stoglav

The Council of Moscow

A hundred rulings on icon painting, clerical conduct, folk customs, and liturgical practice, including the two-fingered sign of the cross and the double alleluia.

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Bartolomé de las Casas · 1484–1566

A province-by-province catalogue of atrocities against the peoples of the Caribbean and the mainland, addressed to the future Philip II.

The Restoration of Christianity

Christianismi Restitutio

Michael Servetus · c. 1511–1553

A complete alternative theology rejecting the Trinity and infant baptism, containing in passing the first European description of the pulmonary circulation of the blood.

Concerning Heretics, Whether They Are to Be Persecuted

Sebastian Castellio · 1515–1563

An anthology of passages against persecution — from the fathers, from Luther, even from Calvin's own early work — published under a pseudonym after Servetus was burned.