"Published with the assistance from the foundation established in memory of Amasa Stone Mather of the Class of 1907, Yale College" -- Title verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The interpretation of medieval intellectual history -- The scholastic traditions. How man is saved : theories of salvation from Augustine to Gabriel Biel ; How man truly knows : theories of knowledge from Augustine to Ockham ; What scripture means : the interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages -- The spiritual traditions. Critics of scholasticism ; Monastic piety ; The Franciscan movement ; Varieties of mystical experience -- The ecclesiopolitical traditions. Secular and theocratic concepts of government ; The pre-eminence of Peter ; Royal and papal apologists ; The schism and the rise of the conciliar theory of church government ; The Council of Constance ; The conciliar movement after Constance -- On the eve of the Reformation. The growth of monarchy ; Population, money, and books ; Religious culture -- The mental world of Martin Luther. Young man Luther ; Luther and scholasticism ; Luther and mysticism -- Society and politics in the German Reformation. Imperial politics in the first half of the sixteenth century -- Lutheran social philosophy ; The revolt of the common man -- Humanism and the Reformation. Erasmus and Luther ; Protestant reformers : biblical humanists or new scholastics? ; Protestantism and humanist educational reforms -- The Swiss Reformation. Zwingli and Zurich ; Conrad Grebel and Swiss Anabaptism ; The working out of Zwinglianism -- The sectarian spectrum : radical movements within Protestantism -- Calvin and Calvinism ; Young Calvin ; Political revolt and religious reform in Geneva ; Strasbourg and Martin Bucer ; Calvin's Geneva : 1541-64 ; Were Calvinists really Protestants? -- Marriage and the ministry in the Protestant churches -- Catholic reform and Counter Reformation. The quest for Catholic reform : from Constance to Trent ; The Society of Jesus -- Protestant resistance to tyranny : the career of John Knox -- The legacy of the Reformation.

Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges.