Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation

Humanists and Reformers portrays in a single expansive volume two great traditions in human history: 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 thought: 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 excursuses: Castigliones Book of the Courtier the emergence of printing Andrea Mantegna Titian and the Venetian painters Leonardo da Vinci Giannozzo Manetti Benozzo Gozzolis Procession of the Magi Raphaels Vatican Stanze Michelangelos Medici tombs art and poetry in early sixteenth-century France Zwinglis thought St. Peters Basilica and Foxes Book of Martyrs.