A period in European history marked by efforts to reform the Christian Church
A retelling of Durant's section on Erasmus's wandering years: the Adages and their success, his pleas to patrons and refusal of offices that would bind him, his study of Lucian, the satirical account of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, his tutoring trip to Italy and work for Aldus in Venice, his dismay at Rome and Julius II, and Henry VIII's invitation back to England.
A retelling of Durant's section on Erasmus as satirist: his years at Cambridge, the Praise of Folly and its attack on scholars, theologians, monks and popes, the dialogue Julius Excluded from Heaven, a balanced judgment on its unfairness, and the Colloquies, the schoolbook that scandalized authorities and became a bestseller.
A retelling of Durant's section on Erasmus's greatest scholarly work: his release from monastic vows, the Basel edition of the Greek New Testament with a new Latin translation, the annotations that criticized relic-mongering, compulsory celibacy and human additions to Christ's law, its reception and influence on Bible translation, and Erasmus's honors from Charles and Pope Leo X.
A retelling of Durant's portrait of Erasmus as thinker: his hastily written handbook for a Christian prince, his passionate case against war in the Complaint of Peace, his cosmopolitan rejection of nationalism, the limits of his political realism, and the private doubts he rarely allowed himself to publish while remaining loyal to the philosophy of Christ.
A retelling of Durant's closing portrait of Erasmus as a person: his bachelor life in Flanders, his health, wine and money, his appearance in the portraits of Massys, Dürer and Holbein, his faults and virtues, his indifference to science and art, his mastery of Latin and his famous letters, the humanists' hopes for Leo X, and the warning he sent in September 1517 that a great upheaval was near.
A retelling of the opening section of Durant's chapter on Germany on the eve of Luther: the rising prosperity and the angry peasants of the late fifteenth century, the Bundschuh revolts, the silver mines and money economy, the rise of the Fugger banking house of Augsburg, monopolies and rising prices, the first outcry against capitalists, and the splendor of the free cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg.
A retelling of Durant's section on the German state at the end of the fifteenth century: the decline of the knights and the robber barons Götz von Berlichingen and Franz von Sickingen, the Swabian League, the self-seeking princes who would later shelter the Reformation, the emperors Frederick III and Maximilian I, Habsburg marriage politics, and Maximilian's patronage of scholars and artists.
A retelling of Durant's portrait of everyday German life before the Reformation: a robust, hard-drinking and generous people, public baths and the looser morals of the time, marriage, large families and strict discipline, comfortable timber houses, severe criminal punishments, fashion and festivals, and a growing national feeling that would help break the power of Rome.
A retelling of Durant's survey of German art at the close of the Middle Ages: the European demand for German craftsmen, late Gothic building, the sculptors Veit Stoss, Peter Vischer and Adam Kraft of Nuremberg, stained glass and the minor arts, the rise of woodcut, engraving and etching, and the painters from Schongauer and the Holbeins to Matthias Grünewald and his Isenheim altarpiece.
A retelling of Durant's biography of Dürer: his Nuremberg apprenticeship and self-portraits, his two journeys to Italy, his portraits, altarpieces and drawings, his woodcuts and engravings from the Apocalypse and the Passions to Knight, Death and the Devil, Saint Jerome and Melencolia I, his unhappy household, the Netherlands journey of 1520–21, his lament for Luther, the Four Apostles and his death.
A retelling of Durant's section on German humanism before Luther: the spread of printing, schools and universities, patrons such as Peutinger and Maximilian, the scholars Agricola, Wimpfeling, Trithemius, Celtis, Hessus and Mutianus, Reuchlin's defense of Hebrew books against Pfefferkorn and the Cologne Dominicans, the satire Letters of Obscure Men, and why humanism was swallowed by the Reformation.
A retelling of Durant's section on German literature just before Luther: popular plays and jests, Till Eulenspiegel, Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, Thomas Murner's sharper satires, and the life of the knight-poet Ulrich von Hutten, his Rome letter against papal venality, his gift of Valla's exposure of the Donation of Constantine to Leo X, and his ride to Augsburg as Luther was summoned in 1518.
