The Old Western Culture Great Books List
Old Western Culture is a great books curriculum with a distinctly Christian “great books” reading list. It includes all the famous favorites you’ll recognize from series like the Britannica Great Books of the Western World, but also includes books that are often left out of modern editions for various reasons, most often because they are from the “Age of Faith.” We include more works from the early Church Fathers, Medieval period, and the Reformation. These are deeply influential and formative books on Western civilization, and worthy of inclusion in great books series. These books are part of our Christian and cultural inheritance, and Old Western Culture exists to help you and your children receive that inheritance!
The Old Western Culture Reader Series is a sixteen-volume set. Below are the works included in the series that students using the Old Western Culture curriculum read over four years in high school. In some cases, students do not read the full work, especially for works of philosophy. But even in those cases, it is larger swaths of the original text, not small excerpts.
We also have an Essentials List for Old Western Culture for parents or students who want a different pace through the curriculum.
Year Three: Christendom
Unit One: Early Medievals
- The Rule of Saint Benedict by St. Benedict
- Wars of Justinian by Procopius
- History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours
- Book of Pastoral Rule by Gregory the Great
- The Dialogues by Gregory the Great
- The Confession of St. Patrick by St. Patrick
- Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus by St. Patrick
- The Life of St. Columba by Adomnan of Iona
- The Voyage of Brendan by Anonymous
- Beowulf by Anonymous
- Ecclessiastical History of the English People by Bede
- Life of Charlemagne by Einhard
- Life of Alfred by Esser
- The Fount of Knowledge by John of Damascus
Unit Two: Defense of the Faith
- Proslogium by Anselm of Canterbury
- Monologium by Anselm of Canterbury
- History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
- The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine
- The Conquest of Constantinople by Geoffrey de Villehardouin
- The Life of St. Louis by Jean de Joinville
Unit Three: The Medieval Mind
- Compendium by Thomas Aquinas
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Unit Four: The Reformation
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Clericis Laicos & Unam Sanctam by Boniface VIII
- Defensor Pacis by Marsilius of Padua
- Sacrosancta & Frequens by The Council of Constance
- Julius Exclusus, Erasmus of Rotterdam,
- Ninety-Five Theses, Letter to the Christian Nobility, Babylonian Captivity of the Church, & The Freedom of the Christian by Martin Luther.
- Exsurge Domine by Leo X
- The Schleitheim Articles by Michael Sattler
- Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Philip Melanchthon
- Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
- The Decree of Trent by The Council of Trent
- Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola
- Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism by Zacharias Ursinus
- Book of Common Prayer by the Church of England
- Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe
- An Admonition to Parliment by Field and Wilcox
- The Laws of Ecclesastical Politie by Richard Hooker
- The Faerie Queene, Amoretti, Epithalimion by Edmund Spenser
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