ABSTRACT
There is a common conception that the late Middle Ages prior to the Protestant Reformation was populated with monkish academicians and corrupt churchmen. On the academic side of this caricature, Scholasticism and its endless disputations over minutiae had devolved to where learned monks sat around with their students and debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin; and on the clerical side, the Church had sunk into systemic corruption and abuses, like selling indulgences to the poor ignorant masses in order to fund their extravagant building projects. As in most caricatures, there is some truth to this picture. But the over-emphasis of this fact obscures other important elements. The story should be told of the social and cultural influences that contributed to making the climate ripe for Reformation. However, since this book is primarily an account of the history of thought, in this chapter we’ll highlight some of the crucial ideas and their progenitors that formed the background for the momentous episodes of the sixteenth century.
