The friar of Wittenberg by William Stearns Davis
"The Friar of Wittenberg" by William Stearns Davis is a historical novel written in the early 20th century. Set on the eve of the Reformation, it follows an Italian-bred German nobleman, the Graf von Regenstein (also called the Conte di Palaestro), whose love, ambition, and conscience pull him from the glittering, corrupt world of Leo X’s Rome toward the upheavals stirring in the German lands. Expect court intrigue, humanist sparkle and art,
and the first rumblings around Martin Luther that force the protagonist to choose between power and principle. The opening of the novel plunges into Vatican intrigue: Cardinals Forli and Rocca scheme to unseat the Archbishop of Bari, dangle that miter before the narrator, and quietly propose assassination, which he refuses. Between a viewing of a new Raphael and witty salon talk, Forli hires the notorious bravo Ettore Orosi; the narrator meets his clever beloved, Marianna, who urges him toward a church career. At a sumptuous Chigi banquet he rebukes Roman hypocrisy about Germans and indulgences, only to be seized when Orosi, caught in a failed attack on Bari, falsely names him as hirer. Before Leo X, the narrator will not betray Forli and Rocca, so the Pope soothes Bari with a new prebend, spares scandal, and banishes the young noble from Italy for a time. After a tearful parting, the scene shifts north: in a letter he chronicles a rough journey through Germany, a skirmish with road bandits, and his return to the grim family fortress of Regenstein, where he is welcomed at the gate. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.html.images | 880 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.epub3.images | 674 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.epub.images | 669 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.epub.noimages | 604 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.kf8.images | 1.3 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.kindle.images | 1.2 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77944.txt.utf-8 | 795 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77944/pg77944-h.zip | 591 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Davis, William Stearns, 1877-1930 |
|---|---|
| LoC No. | 12012133 |
| Title | The friar of Wittenberg |
| Original Publication | New York: The MacMillan Company, 1912. |
| Credits | Tim Lindell, Dori Allard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Luther, Martin, 1483-1546 -- Fiction |
| Subject | Germany -- History -- 1517-1648 -- Fiction |
| Subject | Germany -- History -- 1273-1517-- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77944 |
| Release Date | Feb 15, 2026 |
| Most Recently Updated | Feb 16, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 495 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |