Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620, by Arnoud S.Q. Visser

Abstract

That Aurelius Augustine (354–430), the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was a towering figure within western thought goes without saying. His impact upon successive thinkers has been both wide-ranging and profound. And yet, Arnoud Visser here persuasively demonstrates that, during the Reformation, readers of Augustine from very diverse backgrounds were able to appropriate him in ‘radically different ways’ (p. 7). In his monograph, Visser examines the fascinating subject of how Augustine’s thought has been variously interpreted in the years following the revolutionary invention of the printing press and, more broadly, issues related to the relationship between humanism and the Reformation, the history of reading, and the material culture of books and manuscripts during the middle ages and Reformation. Visser’s is an impressive study which will be welcomed by an extremely wide range of scholars including those who research early modern religious thought and life, the patristic era, the Renaissance, technology and its influence upon society, and Augustine himself, his life, thought and legacy.