Skip to content

The Library

Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

1577 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.

1501–1600

The Sixteenth Century

3 works

1529

English

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.

Western · Dialogue

1522–1524; published 1548

Spanish

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.

Catholic (Jesuit) · Retreat manualLukeMatthew

1582; Old Testament at Douai 1609–1610

English

The Rheims New Testament

Gregory Martin and the English College

An English Catholic translation from the Vulgate, made by exiles and deliberately literal, with notes answering Protestant readings verse by verse.

Western · Translation