The Library
1277 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.
701–800
4 works
734
Latin
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
Written months before his death to a former pupil now a bishop, complaining of absentee clergy, fraudulent monasteries founded as tax shelters, and dioceses too large to serve.
c. 755
Latin
Chrodegang of Metz · c. 712–766
A rule for cathedral clergy living in common — shared meals, a daily chapter meeting, a dormitory — without the vow of poverty a monk would take.
c. 786
Latin
Paul the Deacon · c. 720–799
Patristic sermons selected and arranged for every day of the church year, commissioned by Charlemagne to give clergy something reliable to read aloud.
789
Latin
Admonitio Generalis
Charlemagne and his court
Eighty-two chapters ordering the clergy of the empire to correct their books, learn the creed and the Lord's Prayer, preach in a language people understand, and open schools.
801–900
1 work
c. 816–821
Latin
Concordia Regularum
Benedict of Aniane · c. 747–821
Benedict's rule set clause by clause beside every other monastic rule the compiler could find, to show that it summed them all up.
901–1000
4 works
910
Latin
William the Pious of Aquitaine · d. 918
A duke gives land for a monastery and then renounces all authority over it, placing it directly under Rome and forbidding any lord, bishop, or king to interfere.
c. 930–940
Latin
Collationes
Odo of Cluny · c. 878–942
Three books of moral criticism aimed at clergy and nobility alike, unsparing about simony, violence, and the appetites of the powerful.
c. 973
Latin
Regularis Concordia
Æthelwold of Winchester · c. 904–984
A single customary imposed on all English monasteries, including the earliest description of the Easter sepulchre ceremony in which monks act out the visit to the tomb.
c. 994–996
Latin
Abbo of Fleury · c. 945–1004
A defence of monastic exemption from episcopal control, arguing from canon law that monasteries answer to Rome and describing the three orders of Christian society.
1001–1100
6 works
c. 1042
Latin
Peter Damian · c. 1007–1072
The founder of Camaldoli, who wandered Italy establishing hermitages and once tried to get himself martyred in Hungary without success.
c. 1049
Latin
Liber Gomorrhianus
Peter Damian · c. 1007–1072
An unsparing denunciation addressed to the pope concerning sexual misconduct among the clergy and the practice of confessors absolving their own partners.
c. 1057–1058
Latin
Humbert of Silva Candida · c. 1000–1061
An argument that ordinations bought with money are not merely illicit but void, and that lay rulers have no business investing bishops with ring and staff.
1059
Latin
Pope Nicholas II · d. 1061
A ruling that the cardinal bishops shall choose the pope, with the rest of the clergy and people assenting afterwards and the emperor's role reduced to a courtesy.
1075
Latin
Pope Gregory VII · c. 1015–1085
Twenty-seven bald propositions entered in the papal register: the Roman church has never erred, the pope alone may depose emperors, and he may be judged by no one.
c. 1081–1083
Latin
Anselm of Lucca · 1036–1086
A canon law collection assembled to support the reform papacy, with a book on the lawful use of force against schismatics that had no real precedent.
1101–1200
2 works
c. 1148–1153
Latin
De Consideratione
Bernard of Clairvaux · 1090–1153
Advice to a former monk now pope: the litigation will swallow you, you are not the successor of Constantine, and you must keep time for yourself or lose your soul.
c. 1191–1197
Latin
Verbum Abbreviatum
Peter the Chanter · d. 1197
Practical moral theology on usury, tithes, luxury, the ordeal, and the duties of the powerful, arguing that too much subtle disputation starves the pastoral life.
1201–1300
4 works
c. 1217–1219
Latin
Richard Poore · d. 1237
Diocesan statutes applying the Fourth Lateran reforms in England: what a parish priest must know, how to hear confessions, and what must be kept in a parish church.
c. 1235–1253
Latin
Robert Grosseteste · c. 1168–1253
Correspondence of a reforming bishop, including a refusal to install the pope's nephew in an English benefice on the grounds that the order was contrary to the gospel.
1267
Latin
Opus Maius
Roger Bacon · c. 1219–c. 1292
A programme for reforming learning sent to the pope: study languages, correct the biblical text, take mathematics seriously, and test claims by experience rather than authority.
c. 1283
Catalan
Ramon Llull · c. 1232–c. 1316
A young man rises from hermit to abbot to bishop to pope, reforms the whole church, and then resigns to become a contemplative — with the Book of the Lover and the Beloved embedded in it.
1301–1400
10 works
c. 1352
Middle High German
Rulman Merswin · 1307–1382
A vision of nine rocks rising from a pool toward a mountain, with an unsparing survey of the corruption of every rank of the church on the way up.
c. 1367–1374
Latin
Libellus de Antichristo
Jan Milíč of Kroměříž · c. 1325–1374
A Prague preacher identifies antichrist not with a future figure but with the corruption present in the church of his own day, and calls for reform beginning with the clergy.
c. 1375–1376
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
An argument that all lawful authority depends on being in a state of grace, so that sinful clergy hold their endowments unjustly and the crown may take them away.
1377–1378
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
An argument that scripture is wholly true and sufficient, that it belongs to every Christian, and that church tradition must be measured against it rather than the reverse.
c. 1374–1384
Latin
Geert Groote · 1340–1384
The correspondence and resolutions of a licensed preacher who gave up a comfortable career, attacked clerical concubinage, and gathered men and women into households of shared life without vows.
c. 1382–1383
Latin
John Wycliffe · c. 1328–1384
Truth, Falsehood, and Wisdom debate the whole of theology, summarising his mature positions on God, creation, the sacraments, and the corruption of the orders.
c. 1380–1396
Middle English
Walter Hilton · c. 1340–1396
Two books of measured guidance on reforming the image of God in the soul, written first for an anchoress and then extended to anyone living in the world.
c. 1376–1406
Old Church Slavonic
Cyprian of Kyiv · c. 1336–1406
The correspondence and service-book revisions of a Bulgarian-born metropolitan who brought Byzantine hesychast practice and corrected texts into the Russian church.
c. 1388–1393
Latin
Matthias of Janov · c. 1350–1393
A vast work on the church, arguing for frequent lay communion, contrasting the apostolic church with the present one, and identifying antichrist with corruption inside it.
1395
Middle English
Anonymous
A manifesto nailed to the doors of Westminster Hall condemning clerical wealth, celibacy, transubstantiation, pilgrimages, images, and war.
1401–1500
11 works
1410
Latin
Dietrich of Niem · c. 1345–1418
A distinction between the universal church, which cannot err, and the Roman church, which plainly can — with the conclusion that a council may depose both claimants.
1413
Latin
De Ecclesia
Jan Hus · c. 1372–1415
The church defined as the whole body of the predestined, whose head is Christ — so that a pope in mortal sin is no true head, and obedience is owed to commands only insofar as they accord with scripture.
9 October 1417
Latin
The Council of Constance
A decree requiring general councils to meet at fixed intervals — five years, then seven, then every ten — so that the church could correct itself without waiting for a crisis.
1420
Latin
The Hussites of Prague
Four demands: free preaching of the word, communion in both kinds for the laity, clergy stripped of worldly property, and public sins punished regardless of rank.
1433
Latin
De Concordantia Catholica
Nicholas of Cusa · 1401–1464
A programme for reform of church and empire built on consent: all legitimate authority rests on the agreement of those subject to it, in councils and in states alike.
1433–1437
Latin
The Council of Basel
Decrees abolishing annates, regulating appeals to Rome, requiring provincial synods, and restricting the papacy's financial claims on local churches.
7 July 1438
Latin
The clergy and crown of France
A royal ordinance adopting the Basel reforms in France: elections to bishoprics restored, appeals to Rome limited, papal taxation curtailed.
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. 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.
1–40 of 47 matching · 1277 in the Library