Renaissance and Reformation : The Intellectual Genesis

This book presents a revisionist examination of the development of European intellectual culture between the high middle ages and 1550.

It draws particular attention to the roles of Marsilio Ficino and Erasmus and analyses major aspects of the work of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, before moving on to Petrarch, Valla, Pico della Mirandola, the devotio moderna, More, Luther, Calvin and their contemporaries.

It establishes radically new perspectives on the Renaissance and the Reformation, and on the continuity between them.

Choice highlights the "prodigious and scholarly originality of this book," and comments that "the main thesis holds and Levi provides a rich historical context," while Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung notes "the huge picture of the cultural and social development of Europe" calling the book "one of the rare historical masterpieces in which intellectual clarity is combined with a fullness of nuance."