Durant Will - The Reformation : a history of European civilization from Wyclif to Calvin, 1300-1564

WILL DURANT was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, on November 5, 1885. He was educated in the Catholic parochial schools there and in Kearny, New Jersey, and thereafter in St. Peters (Jesuit) College, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Columbia University. New York. For a summer he served as a cub reporter on the New York Journal, in 1907, but finding the work too strenuous for his temperament;, he settled down at Seton Hall College, South Orange, New Jersey, to teach Latin, French, English, and geometry (1907-11). He entered the seminary at Seton Hall in 1909, but withdrew in 1911 for reasons he has described in his book Transition. He passed from this quiet seminary to the most radical circles in New York, and became (1911-13) the teacher of the Ferrer Modern School, an experiment in libertarian education. In 1912 he toured Europe at the invitation and expense of Alden Freeman, who had befriended him and now undertook to broaden his borders.

Returning to the Ferrer School, he fell in love with one of his pupilswho had been born Ida Kaufman in Russia on May 10, 1898resigned his position, and married her (1913). For four years he took graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in biology under Morgan and Calkins and in philosophy under Woodbridge and Dewey. He received the doctorate in philosophy in 1917, and taught philosophy at Columbia University for one year. In 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began those lectures on history, literature, and philosophy that, continuing twice weekly for thirteen years, provided the initial material for his later works.

The unexpected success of The Story of Philosophy (1926) enabled him to retire from teaching in 1927. Thenceforth, except for some incidental essays Mr. and Mrs. Durant gave nearly all their working hours (eight to fourteen daily) to The Story of Civilization. To better prepare themselves they toured Europe in 1927, went around the world in 1930 to study Egypt, the Near East, India, China, and Japan, and toured the globe again in 1932 to visit Japan, Manchuria, Siberia, Russia, and Poland. These travels provided the background for Our Oriental Heritage (1935) as the first volume in The Story of Civilization. Several further visits to Europe prepared for Volume 2, The Life of Greece (1939), and Volume 3, Caesar and Christ (1944). In 1948, six months in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Europe provided perspective for Volume 4, The Age of Faith (1950). In 1951 Mr. and Mrs. Durant returned to Italy to add to a lifetime of gleanings for Volume 5, The Renaissance (1953); and in 1954 further studies in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and England opened new vistas for Volume 6, The Reformation (1957).

Mrs. Durants share in the preparation of these volumes became more and more substantial with each year, until in the case of Volume 7, The Age of Reason Begins (1961), it was so great that justice required the union of both names on the title page. And so it was on The Age of Louis XIV (1963), The Age of Voltaire (1965), and Rousseau and Revolution (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1968).

The publication of Volume 11, The Age of Napoleon, in 1975 concluded five decades of achievement. Ariel Durant died on October 25, 1981, at the age of 83; Will Durant died 13 days later, on November 7, aged 96. Their last published work was A Dual Autobiography (1977).

to editions referred to in the Notes

The letters C, P, J, and R after an authors name indicate
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and rationalist respectively

A BBOTT, G. F. (P), Israel in Europe, London, 1907.

A BRAHAMS, I SRAEL (J), Chapters on Jewish Literature, Phila., 1899.

A BRAHAMS, I SRAEL (J), Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Phila., 1896.

A BRAM, A., English Life and Manners in the Later Middle Ages, London, 1913.

A CTON , J OHN E., L ORD (C), Lectures on Modern History, London, 1950.

A DAMS , B ROOKS (P), Law of Civilization and Decay, N. Y., 1921.

A DDISON , J ULIA, Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages, Boston, 1908.

A GRICOLA, G., De re metallica, tr. Herbert and Lou Hoover, London, 1912.

A LLEN, J. W. (P), History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, London, 1951.

A LLEN, P. S. (P), The Age of Erasmus, Oxford, 1914.

A LTAMIRA, R., History of Spanish Civilization, London, 1930.

A MEER A LI , S YED, Short History of the Saracens, London, 1934.

A RCINIEGAS , G ERMAN, A MERIGO and the New World, N. Y., 1955.

A RETINO , P IETRO, Works: Dialogues, N. Y., 1926.

A RMSTRONG , E DWARD (P), The Emperor Charles V, 2v., London, 1910.

A RNOLD , S IR T HOS., and G UILLAUME, A LFRED, Legacy of Islam, Oxford, 1931.

A RNOLD , S IR T HOS., Painting in Islam, Oxford, 1928.

A RNOLD , S IR T HOS., The Preaching of Islam, N. Y., 1913.

A SCHAM , R OGER , The Scholemaster, London, 1863.

A SHLEY , W. J., Introd. to English Economic History, 2v., N. Y., 1894 f.

B ACON , F RANCIS , Philosophical Works, ed. J. M. Robinson, London, 1905.

B ACON , F RANCIS, Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, 6v., London, 1870.

B AEDEKER , K ARL, Belgique et Hollande, Paris, 1910.

B AEDEKER , K ARL, Munich, N. Y., 1950.

B AINTON , R OLAND (P), Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, N. Y., 1950.

B AINTON , R OLAND (P), Hunted Heretic: The Life of Michael Servetus, Boston, 1953.

B AINTON , R OLAND (P), The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Boston, 1953.

B AKELESS , J OHN, The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe, Harvard, 1942,

B ALDASS , L UDWIG V ON , Hans Memling, Vienna, 1942,

B ALDASS , L UDWIG V ON, Jan van Eyck, Phaidon Press.

B ARNES, H. E., Economic History of the Western World, N. Y., 1942.

B ARON, S. W. (J), Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3V., N. Y., 1937.

B ATIFFOL, L., The Century of the Renaissance, N. Y., 1935.

B AX , B ELFORT, German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages, London, 1894.

B AX , B ELFORT, The Peasants War in Germany, London, 1899.

B EARD , C HAS . (P), Martin Luther and the Reformation, London, 1896.

B EARD , C HAS . (P), The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge, London, 1885.

B EARD , M IRIAM, History of the Business Man, N. Y., 1938.

B EAZLEY , C. R., Prince Henry the Navigator, London, 1901.

B EBEL , A UGUST , Woman under Socialism, N. Y., 1923.

B EER , M., Social Struggles in the Middle Ages, London, 1924.

B ELL , G ERTRUDE, Poems from the Divan of Hafiz, London, 1928.

B ELLOC , H.(C), How the Reformation Happened, London, 1950.

B EUF , C ARLO, Cesare Borgia, Oxford, 1942.

B LOK, P. J., History of the People of the United Netherlands, 3v., N. Y., 1898.

B LOMFIELD , S IR R., History of French Architecture from the Reign of Charles VIII till the death of Mazarin, 2v., London, 1911.

B LOMFIELD , S IR R., Short History of Renaissance Architecture in England, 1500-1800, London, 1893.