The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
1301–1400
95 works
c. 1294–1302
Middle High German
Die rede der underscheidunge
Meister Eckhart · c. 1260–1328
Table talk for young friars on obedience, detachment, and why a person who has learned to find God in one place will find him everywhere, including in the stable.
1302
Latin
Giles of Rome · c. 1243–1316
An argument that all temporal authority and even all lawful property derive from the pope, so that a ruler outside the church holds nothing rightfully.
c. 1302–1303
Latin
John of Paris · c. 1255–1306
A middle position: kings hold power from the people and not from the pope, church property belongs to the community rather than the pope personally, and a pope may be deposed.
18 November 1302
Latin
Pope Boniface VIII · c. 1230–1303
A bull declaring that there is one church outside which there is no salvation, that both swords are the church's, and that submission to the Roman pontiff is necessary for salvation.
1305
Latin
Arbor Vitae Crucifixae Iesu
Ubertino da Casale · 1259–c. 1329
A life of Christ that turns into an apocalyptic indictment, identifying two recent popes with the beasts of Revelation and the church that persecutes the Spirituals with Babylon.
1311–1312
Latin
The Council of Vienne
The council that suppressed the Templars, ruled on Franciscan poverty, condemned propositions attributed to the beguines, and ordered chairs of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic in the universities.
c. 1308–1318
Middle High German
Meister Eckhart · c. 1260–1328
Written for a queen in grief: consolation not by softening loss but by arguing that whoever is wholly given over to God cannot be robbed of anything that matters.
c. 1312–1317
Latin
Monarchia
Dante Alighieri · 1265–1321
Three books arguing that a universal empire is necessary for peace, that Rome held its authority by right, and that the emperor receives it from God directly and not through the pope.
c. 1300–1324
Arabic
Misbah al-Zulma
Abu al-Barakat ibn Kabar · d. 1324
An encyclopaedia of Coptic Christianity — doctrine, canon law, liturgy, the calendar, and a catalogue of the church's Arabic and Coptic books.
c. 1308–1320
Italian
Divina Commedia
Dante Alighieri · 1265–1321
A poet lost in a dark wood is led down through hell, up the mountain of purgatory, and out through the spheres of heaven, meeting the dead of his own city at every level and arriving at a vision of the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
c. 1300–1327
Middle High German
Meister Eckhart · c. 1260–1328
Sermons preached to nuns and laypeople on the birth of the Word in the soul, the ground where God and the soul are one, and the counsel to pray God to be rid of God.
c. 1323–1324
Latin
Bernard Gui · c. 1261–1331
An inquisitor's manual describing the beliefs of Cathars, Waldensians, and Spiritual Franciscans, with model interrogations and the sentences appropriate to each.
12 November 1323
Latin
Pope John XXII · c. 1244–1334
A bull declaring it heretical to assert that Christ and the apostles owned nothing whatever, overturning what the Franciscans had been taught to believe for a century.
c. 1323
Latin
Summa Logicae
William of Ockham · c. 1287–1347
A complete logic built on the claim that only individuals exist and universals are signs in the mind, with the principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
1324
Latin
Defensor Pacis
Marsilius of Padua · c. 1275–c. 1342
Authority belongs to the whole body of citizens; the clergy have no coercive power at all; and a general council, not the pope, is the church's highest authority.
c. 1310–1324
Latin
Speculum Humanae Salvationis
Anonymous
Each scene of Christ's life paired with three Old Testament or legendary prefigurations, in verse designed to be read alongside pictures.
c. 1305–1330
Greek
Semeioseis Gnomikai
Theodore Metochites · 1270–1332
A hundred and twenty essays on philosophy, the limits of knowledge, the vanity of political office, and the author's own fall from power into exile.
1326
Latin
Rechtfertigungsschrift
Meister Eckhart · c. 1260–1328
A reply to the inquisitors of Cologne, answering each extracted proposition and insisting that he may have erred but cannot be a heretic, since heresy is a matter of the will.
c. 1328–1330
Middle High German
Henry Suso · c. 1295–1366
A dialogue between the Servant and Eternal Wisdom, moving from the sweetness of divine love to the passion, and including a hundred short meditations for daily use.
1322–1332
Latin
Postilla Litteralis
Nicholas of Lyra · c. 1270–1349
A commentary on the entire Bible insisting on the literal sense first, and drawing throughout on Rashi and other Jewish exegetes whose Hebrew he could read.
c. 1332–1334
Latin
Opus Nonaginta Dierum
William of Ockham · c. 1287–1347
A line-by-line refutation of the papal bulls on Franciscan poverty, written in three months, arguing that a pope who teaches heresy forfeits his office.
c. 1334–1347
Latin
William of Ockham · c. 1287–1347
An immense unfinished dialogue on heresy, papal error, and where authority in the church finally rests — canvassing every position without always declaring for one.
1336
Latin
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
A letter describing a climb up a mountain for no reason but the view, and the shock of opening Augustine's Confessions at the summit on a passage rebuking such curiosity.
c. 1334–1336
Latin
Robert Holcot · c. 1290–1349
A commentary crammed with classical anecdote, moral tales, and cheerful digression, and unusually generous about what pagans could know of God.
c. 1338–1341
Greek
Gregory Palamas · 1296–1359
A defence of monks who claimed to see the uncreated light, distinguishing God's unknowable essence from the energies by which he is genuinely shared.
c. 1300–1350
Latin
Meditationes Vitae Christi
Pseudo-Bonaventure
The gospel expanded with imagined detail — what Mary said to the midwife, how Joseph carried the child — and instructions to picture each scene as though present.
c. 1338–1341; survives in fragments
Greek
Barlaam of Calabria · c. 1290–1348
An attack on monks who claimed to see divine light with bodily eyes, dismissing their breathing techniques and accusing them of an ancient heresy.
c. 1340
Latin
Exigit Ordo Executionis
Nicholas of Autrecourt · c. 1299–1369
An argument that nothing can be demonstrated beyond the principle of non-contradiction — not causation, not substance, not other minds — leaving only probability.
1340
Greek
Gregory Palamas and the monks of Athos
A declaration signed by the leading monks of Mount Athos affirming that the light of Tabor was uncreated and that the saints genuinely participate in God.
c. 1330–1361
Middle High German
Johannes Tauler · c. 1300–1361
Preaching on the ground of the soul, on suffering as the shortest road, and on the ordinary work of a cook or a farmhand as no less a vocation than choir.
c. 1335–1340
Middle Dutch
Die geestelike brulocht
Jan van Ruusbroec · 1293–1381
Three lives — active, interior, and contemplative — built on the cry that the bridegroom comes and we must go out to meet him, ending in a union that does not abolish the distinction between God and the soul.
c. 1343
Latin
Incendium Amoris
Richard Rolle · c. 1300–1349
A hermit's account of the physical warmth, sweetness, and song he experienced in prayer, described with a confidence that irritated more cautious contemporaries.
1343–1344
Latin
Gregory of Rimini · c. 1300–1358
A commentary combining Ockham's logic with a severe Augustinianism on grace, and holding that unbaptised infants suffer real punishment.
c. 1344
Latin
Thomas Bradwardine · c. 1300–1349
A mathematician's defence of grace and predestination, arguing more geometrico against contemporaries he thought had made salvation depend on human initiative.
c. 1340–1350
Middle Dutch
Jan van Ruusbroec · 1293–1381
On the difference between the faithful servant, the secret friend, and the hidden son of God, and on the common life in which contemplation and action are one act.
c. 1347–1353
Latin
Secretum Meum
Francesco Petrarca · 1304–1374
An imagined dialogue in which Augustine cross-examines the author about his desire for fame and his love for Laura, and the author declines to be cured.
1348–1349
Middle English
Richard Rolle · c. 1300–1349
A guide written in English for a woman becoming a recluse, on temptations, on the degrees of love, and on how to keep the heart occupied.
c. 1333–1348
Old French
La Légende dorée
Jean de Vignay · c. 1282–c. 1350
Voragine's saints' lives translated into French for the queen, one of the many vernacular versions that carried the collection across Europe.
c. 1340–1360
Middle English
Anonymous
Nine thousand lines on human wretchedness, death, purgatory, doomsday, and the pains of hell and joys of heaven, written for readers with no Latin.
c. 1349–1350
Greek
Gregory Palamas · 1296–1359
A compressed summary of his whole theology — cosmology, the human person as image, the distinction of essence and energies — in short numbered chapters.
1–40 of 95 matching · 1780 in the Library