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.
1001–1100
1 work
c. 1063–1070
Latin
Otloh of Sankt Emmeram · c. 1010–c. 1070
A monk's record of his own doubts — whether scripture is true, whether God exists at all — and the visions and reasoning by which he worked through them.
1401–1500
1 work
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.
1501–1600
1 work
c. 1563; published 1937
Latin
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.
1601–1700
1 work
written c. 1609–1620; published 1633
English
John Donne · 1572–1631
Sonnets and hymns of argumentative, physical, and often desperate address to God — asking to be battered, and admitting he cannot repent without help.
1801–1900
1 work
1880
Russian
Bratya Karamazovy
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1821–1881
A patricide and its aftermath in a provincial Russian town, carrying inside it the century's fiercest indictment of God over the suffering of children and, set against it, a monk who answers with love rather than argument.
5 of 1774 works