Christian writers from continental Europe 35–1983

Clement of Rome (c. 35 – c. 99) led the church at Rome in the generation after the apostles and wrote the earliest Christian document to survive outside the New Testament. His one surviving letter was sent to Corinth around AD 96, where a faction had deposed the church's elders, and it argues from Scripture for humility, order and love before closing in prayer for the sick, the imprisoned and the emperor. Three generations later it was still being read aloud in Corinthian worship.

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

Clement of Rome

The Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth

John Cassian 360–435

John Cassian (c. 360–435) spent some fifteen years among the desert fathers of Egypt asking them how to pray, and the rest of his life writing down their answers in Latin for monks in southern France. His Institutes and Conferences carried the whole desert tradition into the Western church; Benedict told his monks to read the Conferences aloud every evening. Ordained deacon by John Chrysostom, he later carried the appeal of Chrysostom's supporters to Rome.

Gregory the Great 540–604

Gregory the Great (c.540–604) was Prefect of Rome who renounced the city’s highest civil office to become a monk, and the reluctant pope who wrote the West’s most influential manual of pastoral ministry, the Pastoral Rule. He fed Rome through famine and plague, ransomed captives, and sent the mission that converted the English.

Anselm of Canterbury 1033–1109

Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) was a monk of Bec who became an unwilling archbishop and was exiled twice for refusing to treat the church's offices as the king's property. He is remembered for the argument at the heart of the Proslogion, but that book is a prayer from first line to last, written by a man who said he did not seek to understand in order to believe, but believed in order to understand. His private prayers changed how the medieval West prayed.

Bernard of Clairvaux 1090–1153

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) entered a struggling new monastery at twenty-two bringing thirty companions with him, and was an abbot at twenty-five for the remaining thirty-eight years of his life. He made a pope, pursued Abelard to condemnation, preached a crusade that failed catastrophically, and in the same years wrote On Loving God and eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs. His answer to how much God should be loved was that there is no measure.

Thomas à Kempis 1380–1471

Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471) was a German-born Dutch monk who spent roughly seventy years in a single monastery outside Zwolle, copying manuscripts, keeping his community's chronicle, and teaching its novices. Formed at Deventer among the Brethren of the Common Life, he wrote for those young men four small booklets of counsel that became The Imitation of Christ — after the Bible, the most widely read Christian book ever written.

Four Books of Counsel for the Inner Life

Thomas à Kempis

The Imitation of Christ

Martin Luther 1483–1546

6 sermons

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was the German monk whose recovery of justification by faith alone sparked the Protestant Reformation. Driven into a monastery by terror in a thunderstorm and then into peace by a verse in Romans, he posted his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, defied pope and emperor at the Diet of Worms, translated the New Testament into German at the Wartburg, and gave the church its hymns and catechisms. His last written words were, “We are beggars. This is true.”

John Calvin 1509–1564

4 sermons

John Calvin (1509–1564) was the leading theologian of the second generation of the Reformation and the pastor of Geneva for over twenty years. A French lawyer and humanist turned reformer after a “sudden conversion,” he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion — the fullest statement of Reformed faith — and shaped Protestantism across Europe through his preaching, his commentaries on nearly the whole of Scripture, and the Academy of Geneva.

Teresa of Ávila 1515–1582

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) was a Spanish Carmelite nun, mystic and reformer who taught that prayer is “an intimate sharing between friends.” She founded the reformed Discalced Carmelites, wrote The Interior Castle, and in 1970 became the first woman named a Doctor of the Church.

Blaise Pascal 1623–1662

4 books in the library

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a French mathematician, physicist and Christian thinker whose experiments on the vacuum and work on probability made him famous across Europe. On the night of 23 November 1654 he met the living God in an experience he recorded in his Memorial and carried sewn into his coat for the rest of his life. His Provincial Letters and the unfinished defence of the faith published after his death as the Pensées remain among the most searching Christian writings ever composed.

Translated by Thomas M'Crie

The Provincial Letters

Translated by W. F. Trotter

Pensées

Translated by M. L. Booth and O. W. Wight

Letters and Minor Works

The Life of Blaise Pascal

By Madame Périer, His Sister

Jeanne Guyon 1648–1717

Jeanne Guyon, born in 1648 in Montargis, France, became a leading voice of Christian mysticism. Drawn early to deep prayer, she dedicated her life to interior surrender and spiritual renewal. Her teachings stirred both devotion and controversy, eventually leading to imprisonment. She died in 1717, but her writings still influence Christian spirituality today. Her autobiography remains a classic of spiritual literature. Guyon's emphasis on pure love and abandonment to God challenged formal religion.

A Short and Easy Method of Prayer

Jeanne Guyon

Translated by A. W. Marston

George Müller 1805–1898

4 books in the library

George Müller (1805–1898) was a Prussian-born evangelist who, after a dissolute youth that included theft and a spell in prison, was converted at a prayer meeting in Halle in 1825 and gave his life to living by faith. Settling in Bristol, he founded the Ashley Down orphanages, where he housed and fed more than ten thousand orphans over his lifetime without ever once asking a human being for money — relying on prayer alone and keeping meticulous records of the answers.

From George Müller's Narratives

Answers to Prayer

The Lord's Dealings with George Müller

The Life of Trust

Corrie ten Boom 1892–1983

6 sermons

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) was a Dutch watchmaker who, with her family, hid Jews from the Nazis in a secret room in their Haarlem home. Arrested and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, where her sister Betsie died, she survived to travel the world for decades preaching God’s forgiveness — even to a former guard of the camp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed Hitler from the first days of the regime, led the Confessing Church's illegal seminary at Finkenwalde, and wrote The Cost of Discipleship with its contrast of cheap and costly grace. Drawn into the resistance conspiracy against Hitler, he was arrested in 1943 and hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9 April 1945, six days before its liberation.

Where to start reading

Clement of Rome

The Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

Clement of Rome

59 chapters·1 hr 1 min read

11 chapters·55 min read

Thomas à Kempis

The Imitation of Christ

Four Books of Counsel for the Inner Life

115 chapters·4 hr 44 min read

The Imitation of Christ

Thomas à Kempis

Translated by Thomas M'Crie

The Provincial Letters

The Provincial Letters

19 chapters·8 hr 57 min read

Jeanne Guyon

A Short and Easy Method of Prayer

Translated by A. W. Marston

A Short and Easy Method of Prayer

Jeanne Guyon

17 chapters·1 hr 19 min read

From George Müller's Narratives

Answers to Prayer

Answers to Prayer