Those two words, ‘medieval Europe’, conjure up images of splendor and power, knights and castles, monasteries and missionaries, plague and privation. Recently, however, when we visited the Medieval Europe Exhibition at the Canadian Museum of History, I came away with a completely different feeling. Among the armour, jewellery, tapestry, and everyday utensils, many artifacts pointed […]
church history
Resources for Luther and the Reformation
As I paged through piles of books while preparing this article, I was reminded that there is one resource each of the reformers would have placed at the top of a Reformation resource list, the Bible. All treasured it, all based their lives on it, and some died for it. Obviously, you cannot truly understand […]
Review: Katharina, Katharina by Christine Farenhorst
Katharina Schutz, curious, talkative, and impulsive, notices everything around her: Frau Bauer, the neighbor across the street whose babies all died; the light in the studio where she learns to weave; cousin Ursula’s bitterness; the different priests; and the ever-present need to be good enough to earn favor for those who have died. And in […]
Review: The Reformation by Stephen Nichols
Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed a document onto a cathedral door bulletin board*. That one event, the culmination of years of protest by many, ushered in the Reformation and also, according to Nichols, took the world from the middle ages to modern times. But does the Reformation still matter […]