Oberman's magisterial work transfers discussion of late medieval Christian thought from the private studies of the specialist to more general use and understanding, and explains the significance of the ideas of the time. Although this 'Late Medieval Reader' does not exhaust the riches of the period between the High Middle Ages and the Reformation era, it introduces the reader to aspects of such major themes as conciliarism, curialism, mysticism, scholasticism, the spirituality of the Devotio Moderna, and the impact of Renaissance humanism.The theme of the Forerunners has grown out of the consideration that the justified rejection of a confessional reading of the past has been succeeded by an equally unhistorical disjunction of the Medieval and Reformation periods. Without a grasp of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the medieval basis of modern thought is incomplete, since Reformation and Counter Reformation seem to arise 'out of the blue'.

General readers will enjoy learning about Saint Francis in this book and how hagiography shaped the public stories of medieval saints.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.