Special Collections holds a wide variety of materials from and about the Protestant Reformation. A significant portion of these holdings reside in the Heiko A. Oberman Library, which was gifted to Special Collections after the scholar’s death. The library was compiled, in part, during the years that Oberman served as the Director of the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, which he founded at the University of Arizona. Other holdings include several translations of bibles, as well as political broadsheets and pamphlets, the latter written by Martin Luther and contemporaries.
The exhibit is organized around the following themes - Late Medieval Catholicism: Lay Piety and Clerical Theology; Back to the Sources: The Renaissance and Humanism; The Role of Printing in Medieval and Reformation Europe; Luther’s Life and Theology; The Bible, Pre- and Post-Reformation; Other Reformers: The Diversity of the Protestant Movement; Confessional Conflicts in Europe; Impact on Daily Life; and The Afterlife of the Reformation, 16th to 21st Century. Co-curating the exhibit are Rare Books Librarian Roger Myers, Regents’ Professor Susan Karant-Nunn and Heiko A. Oberman Professor Ute Lotz-Heumann.