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: 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.

Bard Thompson (1925-1987) was professor emeritus of church history at Drew University and dean emeritus of the Drew Graduate School in Madison, New Jersey.