Martin Luther and his Revolt against the Church 91 The student of the Protestant Revolt must always remember that almost all accounts of the period are partisan; most of them, especially the older ones, are so biased as to be wholly unreliable. 1 Even apart from religious bias, Luther's character strangely fascinates many writers, but is utterly repellent to others. The works mentioned below are all of them either Protestant or Catholic in sympathy, but they are scholarly and in the main accurate. Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution (Epochs of Modern History), is an admirable little book, which deals briefly with the whole course of the Protestant Revolt in the various countries of western Europe. Beard, Martin Luther. The best life in English. Chapter IV, "Luther's life prior to his Revolt"; Chapter VII, "Luther's appeal to the Nation in 1520"; Chapter IX, "The Diet of Worms." The work was never completed, owing to the death of the writer. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modem Thought and Knowledge (Hibbert Lectures, 1883), by the same author, is very suggestive and valuable. Creighton, History of the Papacy, Vol. VI, Chapter III, "Luther's Life before 1521," and Chapter V, " The Diet of Worms." Excellent. Janssen, History of the Ger?nan People, Vol. III. The most cele- brated modern Catholic work in this field. Very valuable, especially to those who know only the traditional Protestant views. Spalding (archbishop of Baltimore), The History of the Protestant Reformation, in a Series of Essays, 2 vols. This work is not a system- atic history, and is chiefly concerned with the alleged misrepresentations and errors of the less judicious Protestant writers. Ranke, History of the Reformation, Vol. I, Book II. Bax, German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages, 1894. A rather slight work, but clear and brief. See especially Chapters I, V, and VII, on the conditions in town and country. First Principles of the Reformation, or the Three Primary Works of Dr. Martin Luther, edited by Wace and Buchheim, Philadelphia, contains a correct, if rather lifeless, translation of Luther's " Theses," his letter of 1520 to Leo X, his "Address to the German Nobility," "Babylonish Captivity of the Church," and " Liberty of the Christian." Very valuable to one who cannot read German and Latin. Luther, Table Talk, translated by Hazlitt (Bohn Library). See under C, below, p. 93. B. Addi- tional read- ing in English. Partisan character of the books on the Protes- tant Revolt. 1 See my paper in the American Historical Review, January, 1903, on " The Study of the Protestant Revolt."
