| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
xxxiii, 540 pages, [8] unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [417]-524) and index. |
| Contents |
Mansfeld and mining -- The scholar -- The monastery -- Wittenberg -- Journeys and disputations -- The Leipzig debate -- The freedom of a Christian -- The Diet of Worms -- In the Wartburg -- Karlstadt and the Christian city of Wittenberg -- The Black Bear Inn -- The Peasants' War -- Marriage and the flesh -- Breakdown -- Augsburg -- Consolidation -- Friends and enemies -- Hatreds -- The charioteer of Israel. |
| Summary |
This definitive biography reveals the complicated inner life of the founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism ushered in a century of upheaval that transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history. On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther's broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther's ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today. But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper's magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther's theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called "the last medieval man and the first modern one." Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married ("to spite the Devil," he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage. A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther's personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects -- both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder. - Publisher. |
|
Offers a biography of the founding leader of the Protestant Reformation that delves into the man's inner life, showcasing the stark contradictions that made up his personality and influenced history. |
| Subject |
Luther, Martin, 1483-1546.
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Luther, Martin, 1483-1546. (OCoLC)fst00040681
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Reformation -- Germany -- Biography.
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Lutheran Church -- Germany -- Clergy -- Biography.
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Lutheran Church -- Clergy.
(OCoLC)fst01004005
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Reformation. (OCoLC)fst01092555
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Germany. (OCoLC)fst01210272
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Lutheran Church -- Germany -- Clergy -- Biography.
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BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious.
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HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century.
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RELIGION / Christian Theology / History.
|
| Genre/Form |
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
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Biography. (OCoLC)fst01423686
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Biographies.
|
| ISBN |
9780812996197 (hardcover) |
|
0812996194 (hardcover) |
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