The Bible, sometimes called the Holy Bible, can refer to one of two closely related religious texts central to Judaism and Christianity—the Hebrew or Christian sacred Scriptures respectively. Modern day Judaism recognizes a single set of...

The Tao Te Ching, roughly translatable as The Book of the Way and its Virtue, is a Chinese classic text. According to tradition, it was written around 600 BCE by the Taoist sage Laozi (or Lao Tzu, "Old Master"), a record-keeper at the Zhou...

No other book in the entire history of the world has exerted a greater influence on a larger number of people over a longer period of time than this slim volume. The spiritual cornerstone of the most populous and oldest living civilization...

In his own day the dominant personality of the Western Church, Augustine of Hippo today stands as perhaps the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity, and his Confessions is one of the great works of Western literature. In this intensely pe...

Augustine's City of God, a monumental work of religious lore, philosophy, and history, was written as a kind of literary tombstone for Roman culture. After the sack of Rome, Augustine wrote this book to anatomize the corruption of Romans' p...

The Rule of St. Benedict is a fairly short book, pocket-sized, and only 96 pages long. It is a good example of the statement, 'good things come in small packages'. Father Timothy Fry, OSB (which stands for 'Order of St. Benedict', and is us...

The Qur'an is a compilation of the Muslim faith's Final Revelation from God to mankind through the last Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon Him. The Qur'an has a wealth of information--both worldly wisdom and intellectual concepts--providing a...

An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith: An Anthology of the Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. This collection of forty hadith by one of the most famous compilers of hadith is generally regarded as the most popular anthology and the best introduction to th...

Ecclesiastical History of the English People With Bede's Letter to Egbert and Cuthberts Letter on the Death of Bede - This book is a "must read" for anyone studying English history. It was completed by the monk Bede in 731 AD and contains a...

The Book of Kells (Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais), sometimes known as the Book of Columba, is an illuminated manuscript in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was transcr...

The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It was created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice in Bohemia, and is now preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It i...

The Limbourg brothers, Paul, Jean, and Hermann, were a Netherlandish family of manuscript illuminators. All three died in 1416, presumably of the plague. Paul is thought to be the eldest and therefore the head of the workshop, but the firs...

An influence on Thomas More, Ignatius Loyola, John Wesley, and Dr. Johnson, the 15th-century priest & writer Thomas ? Kempis wrote many devotional works, culminating in this masterpiece celebrating man's dependence on God's boundless love....

Luther understands human nature and man's condition. He knows how Christians are and how they live...imperfectly! But, it is faith alone that justifies you in the eyes of God. Don't worry my brothers and sisters in Christ, God loves you in...

Some will see this book as nothing more than Martin Luther's combative apologetic against the doctrine of free will and works salvation. But this is precisely why this book ranks among the best ever written because it passionately, logicall...