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.
801–900
1 work
c. 843–850
Latin
Ratramnus of Corbie · d. c. 868
Written at the emperor's request against his own abbot's position, arguing that the eucharist is Christ's body in figure and mystery rather than in the manner of ordinary flesh.
1301–1400
1 work
c. 1350–1400
Middle High German
Theologia Deutsch
Anonymous
An anonymous treatise on how self-will is the whole of sin, and how the soul must let God act in it rather than claiming anything as its own.
1401–1500
3 works
c. 1488
Latin
Gabriel Biel · c. 1420–1495
A detailed commentary on the eucharistic prayer combining nominalist theology with the devotional temper of the Common Life.
c. 1484–1495
Latin
Gabriel Biel · c. 1420–1495
A summary of Ockham's theology, teaching that God accepts those who do what lies within them and rewards it with grace.
1498
Latin
Infelix Ego
Girolamo Savonarola · 1452–1498
Written in prison after torture and days before his execution: a meditation on mercy that finds no ground of hope in itself and rests entirely on grace.
1501–1600
12 works
1517
Latin
Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
Ninety-five propositions for academic debate, questioning what indulgences can actually do, what the pope's power over purgatory amounts to, and whether a Christian's whole life is not meant to be repentance.
October 1520
Latin
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
A reduction of the seven sacraments to two or three, and an argument that the mass is a promise to be received rather than a sacrifice to be offered.
August 1520
German
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
An attack on the three walls behind which Rome shelters, arguing that all baptised Christians are priests and that the laity may summon a council when the clergy will not.
1520
Latin
De Libertate Christiana
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
Built on a paradox — a Christian is a perfectly free lord subject to none, and a perfectly dutiful servant subject to all — worked out through faith that receives everything and love that owes everything to the neighbour.
May 1520
German
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
An answer to the charge that justification by faith destroys morality: the first good work is faith itself, and every other work flows from it through the commandments.
1523–1524
German
Argula von Grumbach · c. 1490–c. 1564
A Bavarian noblewoman challenges the University of Ingolstadt to debate her in German or Latin after it forced a student to recant, citing scripture throughout.
1523
German
Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall
Hans Sachs · 1494–1576
A shoemaker's allegorical poem welcoming Luther as a nightingale whose song wakes the sheep that the lion and the wolves have been keeping in the dark.
1525
Latin
De Servo Arbitrio
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
Luther's reply to Erasmus on free will, arguing that the human will is not neutral ground but is ridden by one rider or another, and that salvation is God's work from first to last.
1528
English
William Tyndale · c. 1494–1536
An argument that scripture should be read in the plain literal sense, that kings are answerable to God alone, and that the clergy have usurped both.
c. 1527–1529
German
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
A paraphrase of Psalm 46 for congregational singing, with the devil as a real adversary and one little word able to fell him.
1536, expanded to 1559
Latin
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.
c. 1559–1571
Scots
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.
17 of 1774 works