Martin Luther

Starred review from January 9, 2017
Timed to coincide with the anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of the “Ninety-Five Theses,” Roper’s biography is a demonstration of her skill not only as a historian but also as a storyteller. She begins with an overview of Luther’s life and work, then explains her own personal involvement with Protestant theology and the study of religious history. It is important to note that her aim is to write a holistic biography, not just to recount the highlights of a combative life or explain why the theses were controversial. The book is arranged chronologically, and Roper starts with Luther’s family, using a variety of sources, including portraits, to discuss his background. Roper keeps her story tightly focused, never wandering too far from Luther and his intellectual work over the course of his life. A definite strength of the volume is Roper’s ability to explain complex intellectual events clearly; for instance, her discussion of the Diet of Worms and Luther’s later anti-Semitic writings are well-organized and impartial. Roper is willing to allow her subject to stand in full complexity without seeking to simplify away difficulties of character and action. This volume will be of great appeal to scholars, but it is also extremely readable and will find a welcome audience among history enthusiasts. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates.

January 15, 2017
A substantial new look at the life of Martin Luther (1483-1546), published to coincide with the 500-year anniversary of his revolutionary theses.Refreshingly, Roper (Modern History/Univ. of Oxford; Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany, 2004, etc.) does not take for granted any of the received wisdom from previous scholars regarding the life of this fearless, self-styled prophet. There are numerous biographies of Luther, a fact the author acknowledges in the introduction, but she finds that the long closure of Eastern Germany to scholarship has skewed the interpretation of Lutheranism by emphasizing the Reformation activity in the cities of the south rather than in Luther's "home social and cultural context," namely Wittenberg and environs, in Saxony-Anhalt. For example, Roper shows how Luther's vision narrowed after his release from the Castle of Wartburg, and he attempted to reign in the speeding reforms he put into play while the genie of his revolutionary ideas, so to speak, was out of the bottle. The author examines his close influences and friendships, neglected elsewhere, such as with Andreas Karlstadt (and with many others he fell out with), and his artistic collaboration with Lucas Cranach the Elder, an official painter of Wittenberg who essentially molded the reformer's public image in his published works. Roper emphasizes how novel, even feminist, his ideas were about marriage and sex, as he had to act as essentially a matchmaker for the nuns who were leaving the convents in response to Reformation ideas. These included the mature, strong-willed Katharina von Bora, who became Luther's wife and the mother of their children. Roper also shows how uncompromising Luther could be--e.g., in rejecting the humanism of Erasmus; excoriating the peasants who rose up for better treatment during the War of the Peasants of 1524-25; and espousing vehement anti-Semitism. An engaging, enlightening study of the historical effects of one galvanizing personality.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
Roper says this is a psychobiography, though not in the mold of the most famous one, Erik Erikson's psychoanalytic Young Man Luther (1958), a work rooted in its subject's early psychosexual development. She is more concerned with the mature man who, at 34, launched the Protestant Reformation by posting 95 theses on Christian faith on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. She doesn't elide Luther's background as son of a prosperous silver mine owner-operator and his literate wife (who probably assured Martin's education) nor the conflict with his father over choosing scholarly monasticism rather than the family business. By the time of the theses, that conflict was long resolved. Yet Luther continued to develop, eventually repudiating all but two sacraments, priestly celibacy, monasticism, and clerical privilege and establishing the Protestant sine qua non of the fellowship of all believers. Facilitating Roper's pursuit is the ocean of writing Luther and his fellow reformers produced with great candor, vehemence, and rancor. Luther wasn't an easy man, and he fell out with many great associates, cowed others, and disconcerted much of his wider following by refusing to rebel against secular as well as religious authority (more disconcerting nowadays is his hallucinatory anti-Semitism). Arguably the most consequential figure in Western history between Jesus and Napoleon, Luther fully merits the grace and perceptiveness of Roper's fine book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 15, 2016

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther issued his Ninety Five Theses, which began a revolt that split Western Christianity in two. Roper, the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in history at Oriel College, Oxford, chronicles the man who was both revolutionary and reactionary.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2017

Roper (history, Oriel Coll.; Witch Craze) writes a voluminous and highly readable biography of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and his sweeping Reformation. Luther, the man, is unpacked in detail, beginning with his youth in a mining community. The central episodes of his life are examined, including his initial commitment to the Augustinian Order, his doubts about purchased penance, and his intense intellectual tournaments with Rome's agents and theologians. This book also considers Luther's supporters (Johann von Staupitz), his opponents (Johannes Eck), and his complicated friendships (Andreas Karlstadt). Roper not only investigates the theological struggles in Luther's life, she also considers the wider social, economic, and political landscape. Lucas Cranach's contemporaneous portraits of Luther appear regularly in the text, as do many archival pamphlets and woodcuts. Roper successfully portrays Luther the complicated reformer: a man who resisted the abuses of the Catholic Church, wielded powerful control of the blossoming printing press, and made penetrating insights. She also investigates Luther's darker shadow, most notoriously his anti-Semitism. VERDICT Rich with detail, scholarly but accessible, Roper's great biography of this critical, courageous, confrontational, and controversial figure provides a perfect work for the 500th anniversary of his Ninety-Five Theses. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16.]--Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017

Roper (history, Oriel Coll.; Witch Craze) writes a voluminous and highly readable biography of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and his sweeping Reformation. Luther, the man, is unpacked in detail, beginning with his youth in a mining community. The central episodes of his life are examined, including his initial commitment to the Augustinian Order, his doubts about purchased penance, and his intense intellectual tournaments with Rome's agents and theologians. This book also considers Luther's supporters (Johann von Staupitz), his opponents (Johannes Eck), and his complicated friendships (Andreas Karlstadt). Roper not only investigates the theological struggles in Luther's life, she also considers the wider social, economic, and political landscape. Lucas Cranach's contemporaneous portraits of Luther appear regularly in the text, as do many archival pamphlets and woodcuts. Roper successfully portrays Luther the complicated reformer: a man who resisted the abuses of the Catholic Church, wielded powerful control of the blossoming printing press, and made penetrating insights. She also investigates Luther's darker shadow, most notoriously his anti-Semitism. VERDICT Rich with detail, scholarly but accessible, Roper's great biography of this critical, courageous, confrontational, and controversial figure provides a perfect work for the 500th anniversary of his Ninety-Five Theses. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16.]--Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.