Reformation and Renaissance History and Literature Anthology I

This anthology gathers the voices, visions, and conflicts that shaped the spiritual and literary birth of the Reformation. It begins with the thunder of indulgence preaching and papal ambition, moves through the defiant conscience of Luther and his challengers, and ends in the pastoral and poetic flowering of the new Protestant age. Through theological treatises, bulls, sermons, and poetry, these works reveal a civilization in the throes of reform — where the word, once chained to Latin pulpits, became the weapon and the song of a new faith.

Readings and Authors Dates

• John Tetzel — ca. 1465–1519

• Life of Julius II — Anonymous / Contemporary (early 1500s)

• Desiderius Erasmus — Julius Excluded from Heaven, Enchiridion militis Christiani — 1466–1536

• Martin Luther — 95 Theses (1517); To the Christian Nobility (1520); A Sincere Admonition (1522) — 1483–1546

• Julius Köstlin — Life of Luther — 1826–1902

• Exsurge Domine (Pope Leo X) — 1475–1521

• Decet Romanum Pontificem (Pope Leo X) — 1475–1521

• Augsburg Confession — by Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560)

• Thomas Müntzer — Sermon Before the Princes, Protestation to the Common People — 1489–1525

• Edict of Speyer — Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, 1526

• Jean Gerson — Opus Tripartitum — 1363–1429 (printed by François Regnault, fl. 1500–1530)

• Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples — Commentarii Initiatorii in Epistolas Pauli — ca. 1455–1536

• Pierre Viret — selections — 1511–1571

• Guillaume Farel — selections — 1489–1565

• Heinrich Bullinger — Sermons (The Decades) — 1504–1575

• Geoffrey Chaucer — The Canterbury Tales — ca. 1343–1400

• Francesco Petrarch — Secretum Meum (My Secret Book) — 1304–1374

• Desiderius Erasmus — Enchiridion militis Christiani — 1466–1536

• Hans Sachs — Die Wittembergisch Nachtigall — 1494–1576