MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. - Fortress Press announced the release of Great Christian Thinkers: From the Early Church Through the Middle Ages by Pope Benedict XVI.

In brief portraits, Pope Benedict XVI offers engaging, perceptive, and edifying sketches of some of the great thinkers and writers of Christianity. Pope Benedict discusses notable theologians from East and West but also many figures whose primary witness was as ascetics, poets, mystics, and missionaries. His pieces are not only illuminating historical sketches but also often surprisingly personal reflective meditations on the perennial changes of theology, spirituality, devotion, and corporate religious life—in short, of thinking about and wrestling daily with the mysteries that envelop all our lives and struggles.

Always with an eye to their deepest religious convictions and struggles, the Holy Father presents these great thinkers' importance for the church and for Christian life today.

"Taken from Pope Benedict's addresses to public audiences Great Christian Thinkers is an accessible treasure-trove of reflections of some of the most significant thinkers and writers of Christianity—70 in all. The contents are divided into four parts: Part 1—Heirs of the Apostles. Part 2—Great Teachers of the Ancient Church. Part 3—Monks and Missionaries. Part 4—Mystics, Mendicants, and Scholastics. An excellent resource for the classroom, personal reading, and small group discussion."
—The National Federated Priests Council

Pope Benedict XVI was, as Joseph Ratzinger, already a distinguished theologian and professor of theology at the Universities of Münster, Tübingen, and Regensburg and author of more than seventy-five books in biblical, historical, and theological aspects of Christianity before his election as pope in 2005.