Description
A Century of Giants
Volume 9: A.D. 1500 to 1600
In an Age of Spiritual Genius, Western Christendom Shatters
Any Christian, regardless of denominational theology, may look with honest awe upon those on all sides of the great 16th century struggle to clarify and purify the faith – especially the three figures on the cover of our ninth volume, Luther (top left), Loyola (right) and Calvin (below). For both good and ill, their clashing theological certainties inspired a colorful cast of monarchs, soldiers and explorers, bishops and reformers, in a contest that shaped much of our world today, from the opening of the New World, to the breaking of westward Islamic expansion, to the setting of the modern calendar.
(Click on the image below to view a reduced resolution sample chapter drawn from the book so you get a sense of its writing style.)
Chapter One
A divided Christendom and a young emperor face the Muslim peril
Chapter Two
Martin Luther’s incendiary and acerbic writing splts Europe
- Gutenberg, the secretive, much sued inovator wh made Luther possible
- Erasmus seeks to unite Luther and Rome, but Rome declares both heretical
Chapter Three
As religions clash, Catholics and Protestants fend off the Turks
- Misreading Luther’s message, peasants in their thousands are slain
- Zwingli fights Luther for years, then weeps when they cannot agree
Chapter Four
The anarchic origins of Christianity’s Anabaptist movement
- When reform renegades opt for war, death and depravity engulf Munster
Chapter Five
John Calvin puts reform to work in a model biblical city
- For two centuries women and some men are tried and burned as witches
Chapter Six
Henry’s infatuation and his quest for an heir chart England’s destiny
- The king’s gifted confidant, Thomas More, was a man who could not be broken
Chapter Seven
Knox’s clash with the Scottish queen helps turn Britain Protestant
Chapter Eight
Loyola’s Jesuits become the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation
- Losing a game of billiards, Francis Xavier takes the faith on an Asian odyssey
Chapter Nine
Trent and the eighteen years of conflict that saved the papacy
- Teresa of Avila meets John of the Cross, and they chart a new way to God
- An outline of the major issues of the Reformation
- Rome reacts to the print revolution with an index of forbidden books
- Even popes respect the reforming zeal of Charles Borromeo
- Ten days that never happened: the Gregorian calendar is born in Rome
Chapter Ten
Greed and cruelty vie with devotion and faith in Spanish America
- Our Lady of Guadalupe: the apparition that founded a nation
Chapter Eleven
At Malta and Lepanto the ‘unbeatable’ Turks are beaten at last
Chapter Twelve
Huguenots and Catholics embroil France in a 36-year bloodbath
- A prophet in denial: the sixteenth-century court near Nostradamus
Chapter Thirteen
Out of strife, carnage, and insurrection the Dutch nation is born
Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth of England stills the storm without a civil war
- The Catholic light is dimmed in England, but never extinguished
