Second paragraph of third chapter:
In 1513, Luther decided that his main lectures in the coming year would deal with the Psalms. There was nothing untoward in this. The book of Psalms was generally considered by Christian theologians the most obviously “Christological” book in the Old Testament, and was therefore a favored subject for commentary throughout the Middle Ages. Notwithstanding Luther’s insinuation that the Bible was unknown to professional theologians, lecturing on a part of the Bible (especially this part) was not at all unusual. The academic pursuit of theology from the thirteenth century onwards had been based on one particular textbook, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, on which dozens, if not hundreds, of medieval commentaries and lecture series survive. But this textbook was the starting point for the study of theology, not its be-all and end-all. Scholars lectured on the Sentences, as Luther had done, by way of apprenticeship, to prove themselves as theologians, and theology students started by attending lectures on the Sentences, but the Bible was by no means ignored.
I got this for Anne a few years back, as it’s closer to her interests than mine; but I also vaguely knew Richard Rex and his wife Bettina from Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy in Cambridge University, at the very start of his career, so I was interested to see what has become of him.
And it’s quite a good book. The intellectual context needs a lot of unpacking for the reader unfamiliar with sixteenth-century Christian theology, but Rex takes us through Luther’s thought processes about what Luther was thinking, saying and teaching, as well as guessing at his (much-explored) psychological impulse to resist authority. I’d have liked maybe a little more on the micropolitics of the German statelets which created a context where (some) governments were more receptive to religious innovation than might have been the case in earlier centuries.
Rex does enlarge at length on the technological revolution of printing, which made the spread of new ideas possible, and which left the ecclesiastical authorities reeling. I must say I found strong similarities to the rise of social media today, and the ability of new political forces to seize the momentum and disrupt existing authority. There is a vivid description of Worms during the Reichstag meeting, festooned with posters of Luther and with the Elector Frederick ready to print off the pro-Luther side of the story for mass consumption as soon as it happened. Meanwhile the Pope had no idea what was happening.
Not a book for beginners, but certainly OK for my level of prior knowledge (better than the bio of Calvin that I read in 2022). You can get The Making of Martin Luther here.
This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is A Tall Man In A Low Land: Some Time Among the Belgians, by Harry Pearson.
