Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet By Lyndal Roper
A New Statesman, Spectator, History Today, Guardian and Sunday Times Book of the Year, Shortlisted for The Wolfson History Prize 2017 & The Elizabeth Longford Prize 2017
On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they were known all over Germany. So powerful were Martin Luther’s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Luther’s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.
But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roper’s magisterial new biography goes beyond Luther’s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Here is a full-blooded portrait of a revolutionary thinker who was, at his core, deeply flawed and full of contradictions. Luther was a brilliant writer whose biblical translations had a lasting impact on the German language. Yet he was also a strident fundamentalist whose scathing rhetorical attacks threatened to alienate those he might persuade. He had a colorful, even impish personality, and when he left the monastery to get married (“to spite the Devil,” he explained), he wooed and wed an ex-nun. But he had an ugly side too. When German peasants rose up against the nobility, Luther urged the aristocracy to slaughter them. He was a ferocious anti-Semite and a virulent misogynist, even as he argued for liberated human sexuality within marriage.
A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Lyndal Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure. The force of Luther’s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effects—both good and ill. By bringing us closer than ever to the man himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a fully three-dimensional portrait of its founder.
“This is a smart, accessible, authoritative biography of one of the most dynamic figures in European history. Lyndal Roper writes with clarity and discernment, so that nothing stands between the reader and her grimly fascinating subject; she earths the reformer, situating him psychically as well as geographically in a Germany she describes as vividly as if we lived there: mining towns as well as lecture halls, courts as well as cathedrals. She creates a context for a man who arouses both admiration and horror in the modern reader. Here he stands: never more vocal, more controversial, more compelling“
Hilary Mantel
“‘A magnificent study of one of history’s most compelling and divisive figures“
Richard J Evans
“Excellent and wholly absorbing biography… Roper’s biography, distinguished by the excellence of its writing and research, is the beginning of wisdom in all things Reformation, anti-Roman and, alas, proto-Hitlerite.”
Guardian
“…a superb evocation of Luther’s Germany, in all its torment and strife…Roper captures so well his coarseness and cruelty, as well as his intellectual/spiritual originality and literary finesse.”
A N Wilson, for New Statesman Book of the Year
“This is Luther warts and all…. Roper does more than any previous biographer to explain Luther’s inner motivations… and this book will continue to bring the reformer and his theology to life for generations to come.”
Bridget Heal, History Today Book of the Year
“[Roper] is brilliant… at resurrecting Luther and placing him in all his pomp, genius and sometimes virulent hate at the centre of a period of extraordinary history. No previous biography has, in this correspondent’s view, made Luther so thrillingly real”
Hugh Macdonald, The Herald
“fresh and captivating… a fascinating portrait of a challenging hero.“
Alexandra Shepard, History Today Book of the Year
“Impeccable scholarship and painstaking fair-mindedness characterize his deeply illuminating biography. Roper has mined the correspondence, and Luther’s charisma and complexity shine through the letters… a richly satisfying book”
The New York Times
“[Martin Luther is] exemplary history: imaginative yet empirical, rounded and profound“
Financial Times
Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet – Book
By Lyndal Roper On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a shy monk named Martin Luther nailed a piece of paper to the door of the Castle Church in the university town of Wittenberg. The ideas contained in these Ninety-five Theses, which boldly challenged the Catholic Church, spread like wildfire. Within two months, they…
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