Steven Edgar Ozment (February 21, 1939 – December 12, 2019) was an Americanhistorian of early modern and modernGermany, the European family, and theProtestant Reformation. From 1990 to 2015, he was the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History atHarvard University, andProfessor Emeritus until his death on December 12, 2019.

A son of Lowell Ozment and Shirley (Edgar) Ozment, he was born inMcComb, Mississippi, and raised in Camden,Arkansas. He attended theUniversity of Arkansas on a football scholarship, and transferred toHendrix College after two years, and graduated with a BA in 1960.^[1] He obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Drew Theological School in 1964, and a PhD at Harvard University in 1967.^[2] His dissertation, written under the supervision of Dutch intellectual historianHeiko Oberman, concerned the thought ofJohannes Tauler,Jean Gerson andMartin Luther.^[3]

Ozment taught at theUniversity of Tübingen,Germany, and atYale University andStanford University as well as Harvard. In 1977, he was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in the field of Renaissance history.

Ozment authored ten books. HisAge of Reform, 1250–1550 (1980), based on his lecture notes for two survey courses at Yale,^[4] won the Schaff History Prize (1981) and was nominated for the 1981National Book Award. Five of his books were selections of theHistory Book Club and several have been translated intoEuropean andAsian languages.

A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People came out in 2005. Ozment's study of the world of German artistLucas Cranach the Elder was published byYale University Press in June, 2013, under the title,The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation.

Ozment was married first to Elinor Pryor of Little Rock, with whom he had 3 of his children. He later married Andrea Foster of Norwich, NY and had 2 more children. They lived together in Newbury, MA, where Steven spent the majority of his academic life. He spent the last years of his life married to Susanna Schweizer.

• Homo spiritualis: a comparative study of the anthropology ofJohannes Tauler,Jean Gerson andMartin Luther (1509–16) in the context of their theological thought. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969.
• ed.,Jean Gerson: selections from A Deo exivit, Contra curiositatem studentium and De mystica theologia speculative.Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969.
• ed.,The Reformation inMedieval Perspective. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1971.
• Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century.New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1973.
• The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal ofProtestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975; 1977.
• co-author,The Western Heritage. New York, NY: MacMillan, 1979; 1983; 1986; 1990; 1994; 1997; 2000; 2003.
• The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980; 1981. (Reprinted with a new Forward in 2020.)
• ed.,Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research. St. Louis, MO: Center for Reformation Research, 1982.
• When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe.Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1983; 1985.
• co-author,The Heritage of World Civilizations. New York, NY: MacMillan, 1986; 1989; 1993; 1996; 1999; 2001; 2004.
• Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1986; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
• ed.,Religion and Culture in theRenaissance and Reformation. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1989.
• ed. & trans.,ThreeBehaim Boys: Growing Up in Early Modern Germany. A Chronicle of Their Lives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
• Protestants: The Birth Of a Revolution. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1993; 1994; London: HarperCollins, 1993.
• TheBürgermeister's Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1996; New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997.
• Flesh and Spirit: A Study of Private Life in Early Modern Germany. New York, NY: Viking/Penguin, 1999; 2001.
• Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2001.
• A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004; 2005; London: Granta, 2005.
• The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.

• 1939 births
• 2019 deaths
• Reformation historians
• Microhistorians
• Writers from Arkansas
• Writers from Mississippi
• Harvard University faculty
• Harvard University Department of History faculty
• People from McComb, Mississippi
• People from Camden, Arkansas
• People from Newbury, Massachusetts
• Stanford University Department of History faculty
• Yale University faculty
• 20th-century American historians
• 20th-century American male writers
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• Historians from Massachusetts
• Drew University alumni
• Hendrix College alumni
• Harvard University alumni
• American male non-fiction writers
• Intellectual historians

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