Description

Easton Press leather edition Will Durant's "The Reformation: European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564," a COLLECTOR'S edition, published in 1992. Bound in camel tan leather, the book has camel tan moire silk end leaves, Symth-sewn binding, acid-free paper, a satin book marker, hubbed spine, gold gilding on three edges---in near FINE condition. Will Durant, who lived from 1885 – 1981, was born in Massachusetts to French-Canadian parents. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia, taught at Seton Hall and toured Europe in 1927. In taught in Egypt in 1930 and later visited Japan, Siberia, Russia and Poland. The Reformation covers the history of age of the Reformation, an age of certainty, of men proclaiming that they possessed absolute truth and were qualified to understand and speak for God. It did not matter that they also confessed themselves to be poor, ignorant sinners whose weaknesses caused them to frequently fall short of their goals. Tolerance was foreign to these men. Durant believed that a supreme and unchallengeable faith is a deadly enemy to the human mind. The high Spanish prelate Alvaro Pelayo, said: "Wolves are in control of the Church and feed on the blood" of the Christian flock. He quotes the Emperor Julian who said "there is no wild beast like an angry theologian." Durant also believed that "an excessive concentration of wealthy may fear a society to pieces by promoting revolution. As an example he reminded his reader that both the Inquisition and the witch-burning were expressions of an age afflicted with homicidal certainty in theology. "From barbarism to civilization requires a century, from civilization to barbarism needs but a day." "Order is the mother of civilization and liberty, chaos is the midwife of dictatorship; therefore history may now and then say a good word for kings." Erasmus believed that a God who punished sins that His creatures could not help committing was an immoral monster unworthy of worship or praise. He concluded that men should admit their ignorance, their incapacity to reconcile moral freedom with divine prescience or omnipresent causality and postpone the solution to the Last Judgment. Durant stated that Pope Paul III had character without moral, and intellect without wisdom. What put an end to the Middle Ages: the failure of the Crusades, the disillusioning capture of Constantinople, the resurrection of classic pagan culture, the expansion of commerce through the voyages of Henry the Navigator's fleet, and Columbus, and Vasco da Gama, the rise of the business class, and the successful revolt of Luther against the papacy, and the development of national states challenging the supranational authority of popes. Nowhere in contemporary Christendom---not even in Spain---were so many men and women burned for their opinions as during Reginald Pole's primacy of the English Church. Manners were grave and perfect, much better than hygiene, every Spainard was a gentleman, but few were knights of the bath. Beer and wine were the staple drinks at all meals, even breakfast. One of Thomas More's claims to fame was that he drank water. Throughout the fourteen century the Church suffered political humiliation and moral decay. Cardinals were chosen rarely for their piety, usually for their wealth or political connections or administrative capacity. They looked upon themselves not as monks burdened with vows, but as senators and diplomats of a rich and powerful state. The Church forgot the poverty of the Apostles in the needs and expenses of power. Catholicism proposed to meet the religious demands of people who had barely heard of Copernicus and Darwin, Spinoza or Kant. Much of the papal taxation was used to finance the central administration of the Church's functioning, but much went "to fatten ecclesiastical paunches, even to remunerate the courtesans that crowded Avignon." The Reformation broke the authority of dogma. The break with the past was violent and painful, but only a brutal blow could shake its grip on the minds of men. Luther taught that "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. . .She is the Devil's greatest whore. . .a whore eaten by scab and leprosy which ought to be trodden underfoot and destroyed." 1025 pages, including an index. I offer combined shipping.