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It will be noted why it’s good to have Contarini around.That’s a very good question. I wish there were more such books. Unfortunately scholarship on the early sixteenth century tends to focus on the Reformation. I was at one time thinking of writing my dissertation on early-sixteenth-century Catholic interpretations of Romans, and my advisor urged me to do this without primarily emphasizing how they interacted with or responded to Protestant arguments. He made the point that there were a number of theologians and exegetes who were simply doing the Catholic thing without interacting with Protestants much at all. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of scholarship on them.
John O’Malley’s book The First Jesuits makes the point that Ignatius Loyola didn’t really think that much about Protestantism initially–the Jesuit mission to fight Protestantism didn’t develop till a little later. The book is an excellent description of the Jesuits as a reform/renewal movement within Catholicism (as a Protestant, I’d always thought of them as the “anti-Protestant” order, so this was helpful).
Thomas Tentler’s Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation is a much-heralded study of penitential practices.
John Bossy’s *Christianity in the West 1400-1700 *is a great survey of the period (fairly controversial but very influential). He addresses the Reformation but not primarily from a confessional point of view. I would strongly recommend this book–it’s influenced my thinking immensely.
In the 19th century, Johannes Janssen’s History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages does in a sense for Germany what Duffy did much later for England. Like Duffy, Janssen has a polemical purpose (show that the Reformation destroyed a flourishing Christian culture), and obviously his work is seriously dated now. But his research was very detailed, and I believe that some of it may have been based on archival materials we no longer have, so it’s worth study even apart from its value to Catholic apologists (or in spite thereof!). I have only dipped into it, but would like to read it through some day (it’s a multivolume work).
Another multivolume 19th-century work of Catholic history is Ludwig Pastor’s *History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. *This, again, is still in high regard today. There are things in it that I would question (such as his overly sharp dichotomy between a “true,” or Christian Renaissance, and a “false,” pagan Renaissance), but it’s well worth looking at.
Johannes Huizinga’s *The Waning of the Middle Ages *(arguably better translated as “Autumn of the Middle Ages”) is another fairly old work, but very influential. I think it’s probably too generalizing and impressionistic, but it’s a classic work worth reading as a general description of late medieval culture.
Another Dutch scholar, Heiko Oberman, wrote a detailed study of the 15th-century theologian Gabriel Biel called *Harvest of Medieval Theology *(with deliberate reference to
Finally, Heiko Oberman’s *The Harvest of Medieval Theology *deliberately plays on Huizinga’s title. It’s a detailed study of the 15th-century theologian Gabriel Biel. I recommend it with reservations, since it has a strong Protestant bias and is very much written with the Reformation in mind (exactly what you don’t want). But it’s one of the most in-depth and thoughtful studies of late medieval theology, and it gives a lot of insights into that theology.
Getting closer to the Reformation, Oberman’s student (and my teacher) David Steinmetz wrote a study of Johann von Staupitz, Misericordia Dei (Staupitz was Luther’s confessor). Steinmetz also wrote a book called *Luther and Staupitz *which points out the important ways in which Staupitz’s late medieval Augustinianism differed from Luther’s theology. Perhaps Steinmetz’s most generally useful book (for non-specialists) is *Reformers in the Wings, *which describes twenty Reformation-era figures who aren’t quite as famous as Luther or Calvin. Five of these are Catholics, and Steinmetz’s accounts of two of them in particular (Geiler von Keysersburg and, of course, Staupitz) give good descriptions of aspects of pre-Reformation theology.
There are a number of other very important works on late medieval theology. I’ll just mention a few names of scholars you should look out for: Paul Vignaux, Gordon Leff, William Courtenay, Francis Oakley, Brian Tierney.
Looking at Della’s response, I’m reminded that I didn’t address the specifically liturgical aspect of your question. The classic work on the history of the Mass is Josef Jungmann’s *The Mass of the Roman Rite. *(Some traditionalists don’t like it because they think it’s too negative about aspects of the history of the Mass.) The recent Oxford History of Christian Worship also has a lot of good information, as does a volume called The Study of LIturgy.
Edwin
Edwin
GKC
