Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Book of Prayer and Meditation

Luis de Granada · 1504–1588

A method of mental prayer with meditations for every day of the week, written in Spanish for ordinary readers rather than for religious.

The Catechisms

Peter Canisius · 1521–1597

Three catechisms for different ages, organised around wisdom and justice, and carefully phrased to answer Protestant teaching without naming it.

The Autobiography

Acta

Ignatius of Loyola · 1491–1556

Dictated reluctantly in the third person: the cannonball at Pamplona, the convalescent reading, the year at Manresa, the pilgrimage, and repeated arrests by the Inquisition.

The Biblical Commentaries

John Calvin · 1509–1564

Commentaries on nearly the whole Bible, written to lucid brevity, attending to the author's intention and refusing to find doctrine where the text does not put it.

The Sinner's Guide

Luis de Granada · 1504–1588

Motives for turning to God and a rule of life for those who do, addressed to people fully occupied with business, marriage, and property.

The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus

Ignatius of Loyola · 1491–1556

A religious order without choir office, without a habit, and without enclosure, governed centrally and free to be sent anywhere in the world at short notice.

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

John Knox · c. 1514–1572

An argument that female rule is contrary to nature, scripture, and justice, aimed at Mary Tudor and published months before Elizabeth came to the throne.

The Index of Prohibited Books

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

The Roman Inquisition

A list of forbidden books and authors, including entire vernacular Bibles, all of Erasmus, and works whose only offence was being printed by the wrong press.

Institutes of the Christian Religion

Institutio Christianae Religionis

John Calvin · 1509–1564

Begun as a short handbook for French evangelicals and grown over twenty-three years into four books on the knowledge of God the Creator, of God the Redeemer, of the grace of Christ, and of the church.

The Conquest of Abyssinia

Futuh al-Habasa

Arab-Faqih · 16th century

A Muslim chronicler's account of the invasion that destroyed most of Christian Ethiopia's churches and manuscripts in the 1530s and 1540s.

The First Book of Discipline

John Knox and colleagues

A blueprint for a reformed Scotland: a school in every parish, a college in every burgh, universities reformed, and church lands used for ministry, education, and the poor.

The Geneva Bible

The English exiles at Geneva

A scholarly translation with verse numbers, roman type, maps, and extensive marginal notes — some of which told readers when a king might be disobeyed.

The Scots Confession

John Knox and five others

Drafted in four days for the Scottish parliament, warm and narrative in style, defining the marks of the true church as the word preached, the sacraments rightly used, and discipline exercised.

The Belgic Confession

Guido de Brès · 1522–1567

A confession written for the persecuted Reformed churches of the Low Countries and thrown over a castle wall to the authorities with a plea for toleration.

An Apology of the Church of England

John Jewel · 1522–1571

A defence arguing that the English church has not innovated but returned to the doctrine of scripture and the first six centuries, and that Rome is the departure.

The Genevan Psalter

Clément Marot and Theodore Beza

All one hundred and fifty psalms in French metrical verse with tunes, sung in unison and unaccompanied by whole congregations.

The Heidelberg Catechism

Heidelberger Katechismus

Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus

A hundred and twenty-nine questions and answers arranged as guilt, grace, and gratitude — opening with what a person's only comfort in life and death is, and answering in the first person.

The Art of Doubting and Believing

Sebastian Castellio · 1515–1563

An argument that many scriptural questions are genuinely obscure, that certainty is not required for salvation, and that doubt is a discipline rather than a sin.

Acts and Monuments

John Foxe · 1516/17–1587

A vast history of Christian persecution culminating in the Marian burnings, built from trial records, letters, and eyewitness interviews, and heavily illustrated.

The Decrees of the Council of Trent

The Council of Trent

Doctrinal definitions on scripture and tradition, original sin, justification, and the seven sacraments, paired with reform decrees on bishops, preaching, and seminaries.

On Theological Sources

De Locis Theologicis

Melchor Cano · 1509–1560

A ranking of the sources of theological argument — scripture, tradition, councils, fathers, reason, history — and how much weight each can bear.

The Correspondence with Prince Kurbsky

Ivan IV and Andrei Kurbsky

A defector accuses the tsar of murdering his own servants; the tsar replies at enormous length that a ruler answerable only to God may do as he pleases with them.

Dialogues and Christian Doctrine

Coloquios y Doctrina Cristiana

Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua elders

A reconstruction of the 1524 debates between the first friars and Aztec priests, giving the Nahua side space to argue that their gods gave them life and food.

The Book of Her Life

Libro de la Vida

Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582

Written under obedience for her confessors, describing twenty years of unsatisfying prayer, then the transverberation, with constant nervous asides about her own unreliability.

The Roman Catechism

Catechismus ex Decreto Concilii Tridentini

The commission of the Council of Trent

A catechism written for parish priests rather than children, expounding the creed, sacraments, commandments, and Lord's Prayer at length.

The Second Helvetic Confession

Heinrich Bullinger · 1504–1575

Written originally as its author's private testament, and adopted across Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia within a few years.

The Way of Perfection

Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582

Practical instruction for her nuns on detachment, humility, and mental prayer, structured around the Lord's Prayer and full of dry humour about convent life.

Table Talk

Tischreden

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

Remarks taken down by students boarding in Luther's house, on theology, marriage, music, his own doubts, his bowels, and the devil.

The History of the Reformation in Scotland

John Knox · c. 1514–1572

A partisan and vivid account of the Scottish Reformation, including verbatim reconstructions of the author's own interviews with Mary Queen of Scots.

Key to the Sacred Scriptures

Clavis Scripturae Sacrae

Matthias Flacius Illyricus · 1520–1575

A biblical dictionary and a treatise on interpretation arguing that scripture is clear in itself and must be read according to its own idiom, context, and aim.

The Roman Missal

Pope Pius V and the Tridentine commission

A single order of mass imposed on the Western church, replacing local uses except those more than two centuries old.

The Thirty-Nine Articles

The Church of England

Doctrinal articles combining Reformed teaching on scripture, justification, and predestination with a conservative retention of episcopacy and the creeds.

An Admonition to the Parliament

John Field and Thomas Wilcox

A demand that England abolish bishops, the prayer book's ceremonies, and clerical vestments, and adopt a presbyterian discipline instead.

Examination of the Council of Trent

Martin Chemnitz · 1522–1586

A patient decree-by-decree response to Trent, arguing from scripture and the fathers rather than from Luther, and conceding points where honesty required.

The Warsaw Confederation

The Polish nobility

A sworn agreement among nobles of differing religions that they will not shed blood over faith, made a condition of every subsequent royal election.

The Magdeburg Centuries

Matthias Flacius Illyricus and colleagues · 1520–1575

Church history century by century, assembled by a team working from manuscripts, arguing that the papacy gradually corrupted an originally pure church.

The Confession of the Polish Brethren

The Minor Reformed Church of Poland

A catechism of the Polish anti-trinitarians, teaching one God the Father, a fully human Christ, believers' baptism, and refusal of the magistrate's sword.

The Right of Magistrates

Theodore Beza · 1519–1605

Written after the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre: lesser magistrates may lawfully resist a tyrant, since rulers hold office by a covenant with the people.

Commonplaces

Peter Martyr Vermigli · 1499–1562

Theological topics extracted from an Italian ex-Augustinian's biblical commentaries, arranged as a system after his death.

The Interior Castle

El Castillo Interior

Teresa of Ávila · 1515–1582

The soul imagined as a castle of many rooms with God at the centre. Teresa maps the seven dwelling places a person passes through, describing prayer with the practicality of a woman who also had convents to run.