About this Book

In this definitive study, the author accomplishes two important tasks. First, he contrasts the theological perspectives of earlier biographies with the results of more modern research into Luther's socio-economic context, psychological relationshps, late medieval and humanist thought, university curricula, and political factors. Second, in keeping with his theory that the historical discipline "must make its results accessible to a wider audience" unless it wishes to encourage the "historical amnesia which it so often laments", the author communicates the findings of technical Reformation scholarship to the public in a comprehensible style. -- Book jacket.