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Martin Luther: renegade and prophet (2016)

by Lyndal Roper

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376967,417 (3.83)5
Biography & Autobiography. History. Religion & Spirituality. Nonfiction. HTML:From â??one of the best of the new [Martin Luther] biographersâ?ť (The New Yorker), a portrait of the complicated founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history.
 
â??Magnificent.â?ťâ??The Wall Street Journal
â??Penetrating.â?ťâ??The New York Times Book Review
â??Smart, accessible, authoritative.â?ťâ??Hilary Mantel
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 Lutherâ??s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Lutherâ??s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.
But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roperâ??s magisterial new biography goes beyond Lutherâ??s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called â??the last medieval man and the first modern one.â?ť 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 (â??to spite the Devil,â?ť 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 Lutherâ??s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effectsâ??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 creat
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Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
"In " a magnificent study of one of history's most compelling and divisive figures" (The Wall Street Journal), Lyndal Roper investigates the leader of the Reformation -- the movement that split Christendom and upended Europe for centuries -- who was, at his core, a deeply flawed man full of contradictions. A distinguished historian of early modern Europe, Roper looks deep inside the heart of this singularly complex figure, and her magisterial new biography goes beyond Martin 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." By bringing us closer than ever to Luther himself, she opens up a new vision of the Reformation and the world it created and draws a full-blooded portrait of it founder." From the back of the book
  salem.colorado | Sep 4, 2023 |
The Lutheran church is about to celebrate the recognition of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. This is when Luther wrote his critique of the Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences, which led to a split within the church. It was the spark that ignited the future church, thanks to the invention of the printing press.

With this time, there will be countless number of books about Luther, the Reformation, theology, etc. I think I counted 8 within the next year. The one that continued to catch my eye was this one by Lyndal Roper. It was one of the first out of the gate, but it also took a path that I was interested in, namely how Luther's home town and upbringing created the man he was to become.

Roper looks at his beginnings and continues to point back to issues that Luther's hometown faced as motivating factors for why Luther did what Luther did. She goes in depth into his life, paints him as a scholar and a man who knew his stuff.

Roper also looks at the impact of the Reformation in the larger context as well. She shows it wasn't just a religious uprising, but a complex and intricate transformation with some issues having nothing to do with the church.

I think this would be a great book on any Lutheran's desk. ( )
  Nerdyrev1 | Nov 23, 2022 |
Roper's biography of Luther was one of the books I relied most heavily on in researching _The Magic Battery_. It shows the development of Luther's ideas and the motives for his break with the Catholic church. At the same time, it presents many details of what it was like to live in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century. Luther was a complex person. He attacked the corrupt practices of the Catholic Church of his time, yet he wrote an anti-Judaic tirade that was worthy of a Nazi. The book gave me a much clearer understanding of what the Lurheran Reformation was all about and what it set into motion. ( )
  GaryMcGath | Jun 16, 2020 |
I don’t need to add any comments, I think that two reviews here are well done and capture my thinking. Particularly the review by meandmybooks which is very well done.

However, even though I wanted to learn about Luther and the origin of the reformarion, I really don’t care to know about Luther’s hemorrhoids, and other skatological issues the author covers. ( )
  xieouyang | May 1, 2020 |
It's a complete coincidence that I finished this on Reformation Day, as I'm neither Lutheran nor a huge Luther fan girl (and rather less a fan after reading this), but there it is. Luther was an authoritarian and a bully, and he could be a spiteful, crude, vicious hypocrite, spewing hate at Catholics, Jews, and fellow Evangelicals who failed to accept his doctrines as “gospel,” but there's no denying the lasting significance of the religious reform movement that he so powerfully and effectively put in motion. And it seems plausible that putting reform in motion required a passionate, stubborn, even a pig-headed man.

Lyndal Roper's long research has produced a detailed, nuanced study of her complex and often contradictory subject. While I found his misogyny, social conservatism, and antisemitism repugnant, his religious insights and convictions, hard won and deeply considered, offered an emphasis that was sorely needed at the time. Roper only brushes on one of Luther's contributions which I value very highly indeed – his emphasis on hymns and congregational singing – but she spends more time on another that I think he “nails” – his insistence (in contrast and in conflict with Zwingli's followers) on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

It seemed to me that Roper did a fine job of balancing her presentation, providing a rich but not overwhelming level of detail about Luther's family and cultural background, personal history, political context, and religious controversies, and not going overboard with ideas about his “psychological” motivations. I finished this with a far better appreciation of Luther's contributions to the Reformation, both positive and negative, and to the doctrines of Anglicanism, my branch of the church, than I began with, and enjoyed Roper's ability to create an engaging study of her prickly and combative subject. ( )
1 vote meandmybooks | Oct 31, 2017 |
Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
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Biography & Autobiography. History. Religion & Spirituality. Nonfiction. HTML:From â??one of the best of the new [Martin Luther] biographersâ?ť (The New Yorker), a portrait of the complicated founding father of the Protestant Reformation, whose intellectual assault on Catholicism transformed Christianity and changed the course of world history.
 
â??Magnificent.â?ťâ??The Wall Street Journal
â??Penetrating.â?ťâ??The New York Times Book Review
â??Smart, accessible, authoritative.â?ťâ??Hilary Mantel
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 Lutherâ??s broadsides against papal authority that they polarized a continent and tore apart the very foundation of Western Christendom. Lutherâ??s ideas inspired upheavals whose consequences we live with today.
But who was the man behind the Ninety-five Theses? Lyndal Roperâ??s magisterial new biography goes beyond Lutherâ??s theology to investigate the inner life of the religious reformer who has been called â??the last medieval man and the first modern one.â?ť 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 (â??to spite the Devil,â?ť 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 Lutherâ??s personality, she argues, had enormous historical effectsâ??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 creat

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