Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society. With a new foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers, this modern classic is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of students and scholars.

Reforms of Christian Life presents a new narrative of the role of the Barnabites and Angelics, the Ursulines and the Somascans (founded in Northern Italy in the 1530s by Battista da Crema, Angela Merici, and Girolamo Miani) within sixteenth-century Italian reform movements. While historiography has considered these companies under the category of ‘Catholic Reformation,’ this book argues that they promoted an ‘unconventional’ view of perfection and of the Church that was alternative to both Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism and through which they wanted to reform society, rather than the ecclesiastical institution. By highlighting the complex articulation of perceptions of ‘Christian life,’ and by exploring neglected connections among devout milieus, Mazzonis considers the sodalities in continuity with a fifteenth-century ascetic-mystical current and in relation to contemporary institutes such as the Jesuits and the Oratorians, irenic reforming circles like that of Juan de Valdés, and post-Tridentine ecclesiastical reformers including Charles Borromeo. This volume shows that reforming trends were more varied and fluid than previously thought and contributes to cultural and gender analyses of the religious mentality of the period. Reforms of Christian Life is a useful tool for students and scholars of medieval and early modern religious and cultural history.

The Reformation transformed Christian Hebraism from the pursuit of a few into an academic discipline. This book explains that transformation by focusing on how authors, printers, booksellers, and censors created a public discussion of Hebrew and Jewish texts.

An important aspect of the Italian Renaissance was church reform. This book examines the nature of that reform - especially in Venice, Florence and Rome - as viewed through the unpublished manuscripts of a Venetian nobleman who became a Camaldolese hermit: Vincenzo Querini (1478-1514). This book sets Querini's personal journey to reform in the context of Venetian society, as well as against the backdrop of political crisis, cultural revival, and monastic renaissance in Italy generally. Querini's attempt to reform himself, the Roman Catholic Church, and the whole of Christendom are of interest to historians seeking to revise the chronology of early modern church reform since he employed a range of scriptural, humanist, conciliar, monastic, and mystical methods that had medieval antecedents but were also imitated by reformers after the Reformation.