Bücher von Preserved Smith

The present work aims to set before the public the history, as told by the participants and eye-witnesses themselves in all the unreserve of private correspondence, of the most momentous crisis in the annals of Europe. It is impossible here to appreciate the importance of the Reformation; I have done it, partially, elsewhere, and hope to return to it in future. Suffice it to say that the revolution which goes by this name wrought an upheaval in the political, social and religious structure of Europe and prepared the ground for our modern civilizaiton. Every element of the movement is reflected in these letters: the return to the Bible, the revolt from ecclesiastical abuse and from papal authority, the economic and social reform, the growing nationalism and awakening subjectivism. The launching of the 'Ninety-five Theses' is described and their working on the minds of men portrayed; the summons of Luther before his ecclesiastical superiors first at Heidelberg and then at Augsburg, the great debate with Eck at Leipsic, the trumpet call to spiritual emancipation in the pamphlets of 1520, the preparation of the bull of excommunication and the burning of the same, and finally, as a fitting climax, the memorable appearance of Luther before the Emperor and Diet at Worms, are all set before our eyes. --from the Preface

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was the most important literary figure of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The first truly international author of the Renaissance, his influence upon his immediate contemporaries and following generations can hardly be overestimated. He was the arbiter of letters of his day, the first name in classical scholarship, the finest biblical scholar, the best satirist, and first, or nearly first in a score of other fields of intellectual endeavor. He was also a remarkable personality, perhaps the only important man in Europe who was able to keep his head through the incredible ferment of ideas and beliefs that permeated the age; he never yielded to extremes. He was the great stabilizer of his day. This present work, written by one of America's foremost historians, is the standard English-language work on Erasmus. Extremely readable and fluent, it is also very thorough and very profound in its insights. It makes use of every known source of information on Erasmus to accomplish its threefold purpose: to present the known facts of Erasmus's life, to exhibit his literary genius, and to examine his intricate relations with the important figures of the Reformation and the Renaissance. It makes clear his almost unbelievable virtuosity in letters, analyzes his subtle personality, and explains how this unassuming, quiet, modest man really controlled the ideological destiny of Europe for decades. For many years the study of Erasmus has been somewhat neglected, since we were still too close to the controversies and biases that had come down to us from his time. Now, however, it is being recognized more and more surely that he was a remarkable example in both achievements and orientation, and that our present culture owes much more to him than we had admitted. No student of philosophy, literature, European history, history of religions, theology, or of cultural history can afford to be without this book.Preserved Smith (July 22, 1880 - May 15, 1941) was an American historian of the Protestant Reformation. He was the son of Henry Preserved Smith, a noted scholar of the Old Testament, and inherited his name from a line of Puritan ancestors stretching back to the seventeenth century. He attended Amherst College and Columbia University, where he received his PhD in 1907, and continued studies at the Sorbonne and the University of Berlin. Like his mentor James Harvey Robinson at Columbia, he had a high respect for science and a belief that knowledge of history was a way to improve human prospects for the future. He taught at Cornell University as a member of the Department of History from 1923 to 1941.

This two-volume work, published in 1930-4, is a remarkable and readable overview of the emergence of modern society in the wake of the Protestant reformation. Its starting point is the scientific revolution which, from the mid-sixteenth century, became the driver of rapidly evolving cultural, social and political changes.