I've been planning to read a biography of Martin Luther for a few years now, at least since John Elliot Gardiner's book about Bach described the Lutheran world. Martin Luther is an extremely consequential person in world history, and I had the sense that he changed society in ways that go far beyond religion. I came across Renegade and Prophet, appropriately enough, at the Book Loft of German Village in Columbus Ohio.
The foremost thing I learned from Renegade and Prophet is that Martin Luther was an unpleasant character. He was quick to anger, vicious and foul-mouthed toward opponents and erstwhile friends, and approached theological questions based on how they affected him. He frequently turned on his closest advisors when they disagreed with him, and he had derogatory nicknames for his enemies. I'm tempted to call him Trumpian but I pray to God that Trump will have nowhere near the impact.
The ideas that spurred the Reformation were quite widespread at the time, with many thinkers arguing against the practices that Luther condemned in his Ninety-Five Theses. Roper does a nice job of describing the society Luther grew up in and the intertwining of religion and politics in the sixteenth century. She also explains the theological niceties that separated Luther from other reformers such as Calvin and Zwingli.
I started to lose interest in second half of the book as Luther retreats into isolation and gets ever more cranky. During this period, other participants take the leading role in the Reformation (most notably Georg Spalatin and Philipp Melanchthon), but this is a biography of Luther not a history of the Reformation.
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