Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation

by Bard Thompson

Humanists and Reformers portrays in a single, expansive volume two great traditions in human the Italian Renaissance and the age of the Reformation. Bard Thompson provides a fascinating survey of these important historical periods under pressure of their own cultural, social, and spiritual experiences, exploring the bonds that held Humanists and Reformers together and the estrangements that drove them apart.
In the section of the book devoted to the Italian Renaissance, an opening historiography is followed by accounts of the struggles that underlay the Renaissance, the Renaissance papacy and the rebuilding of Rome, the growth of capitalism, and the rise of the monarchies and the city states. Separate histories of Venice, Milan, and Florence are provided, with special attention given to the Florentine humanists. Painters, sculptors, and architects of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento are also given full scope, including close-ups of Michelangelo and Raphael. Finally, the decline of the Renaissance in Italy is discussed as well as the voyages of discovery.
The section devoted to the age of the Reformation includes detailed coverage of Erasmus and the major figures of the Northern Renaissance. It also extensively covers the Reformers and their Luther, Zwingli, the Anabaptists and the left wing of the Reformation, Calvin, and the Counter-Reformation. The complex history of the Tudors to 1558 and the reign of Elizabeth I occupy the last large sections of the book.
Throughout this volume Thompson gives special attention to subjects of note from both periods in engaging Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, the emergence of printing, Andrea Mantegna, Titian and the Venetian painters, Leonardo da Vinci, Giannozzo Manetti, Benozzo Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, Raphael's Vatican Stanze, Michelangelo's Medici tombs, art and poetry in early sixteenth-century France, Zwingli's thought, St. Peter's Basilica, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Genres: History, Theology

742 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Bard Thompson (1925-1987) received a PhD at Union Theological Seminary in 1952. Before coming to Lancaster Seminary in 1961 he served on the faculties of Candler School of Theology and the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Liturgies of the Western Church (1961) and co-author with Howard Paine of Book of Prayers for Church and Home (1962). His lecture "The Heidelberg Catechism and the Mercersburg Theology" constituted his inaugural address as professor of church history at Lancaster Theological Seminary.