Steven Ozment (1939–2019)

Steven Ozment was a highly respected historian specializing in early modern European history and the history of the Protestant Reformation. Although a Southern native, he spent most of his professional life in New England, beginning his teaching career at Yale University and then spending over thirty-five years on the faculty at Harvard University. He once said that his “attraction to the Reformation era [was] a result of growing up in the deepest, darkest Arkansas and winding up in the Northeast. That experience made me interested in transitions.”

Steven Edgar Ozment was born on February 21, 1939, in McComb, Mississippi, one of the three children of Lowell Ozment, who was a doctor, and Shirley Edgar Ozment. Ozment grew up in Camden (Ouachita County). He initially attended the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County) on a football scholarship, but after two years (during which he said he “got beat up pretty bad”) and now married, he transferred to Hendrix College in Conway (Faulkner County) where he earned his BA in 1960. After graduating from Hendrix, Ozment earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from the Drew Theological School of Drew University in New Jersey in 1964. He then began a PhD program at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation, a study of late medieval thinkers Johannes Tauler, Jean Gerson, and Martin Luther, under the supervision of the highly regarded Reformation scholar Heiko Oberman, completing his degree in 1967.

Following graduate school, he first taught at Yale, and in 1977 he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Renaissance history. He was recruited by the Harvard History Department, which he joined in 1979, remaining there until he retired in 2015 as the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History. In addition to Yale and Harvard, he taught at the University of Tübingen in Germany and Stanford University. While he was a dedicated mentor to countless graduate students, supervising around twenty dissertations, he was also a popular undergraduate instructor who appreciated the engaging storytelling that characterized his lectures, as well as the colorful wardrobe that became one of his trademarks.

Ozment established a reputation as one of the preeminent scholars in his field. His book The Age of Reform, 1250–1550 was a seminal work and was a finalist in the history category for the National Book Award in 1981. His other scholarly studies included Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (1973); The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (1975); When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (1983); Magdalena and Balthasar: An Intimate Portrait of Life in 16th Century Europe Revealed in the Letters of a Nuremberg Husband and Wife (1986); Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution (1992); The Bürgermeister’s Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town (1996); A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (2004); and The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation (2013).

He was also a co-author of a couple of popular textbooks: The Western Heritage, which was published in 1979 and had reached an eleventh edition by 2012, as well as an Advanced Placement edition, and The Heritage of World Civilizations, which was released in 1986 and then revised every three to four years into the early 2000s.

Ozment also edited a number of works, including The Reformation in Medieval Perspective (1971), Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (1982), and Religion and Culture in the Renaissance and Reformation (1989). In addition, Ozment edited and translated Three Behaim Boys: Growing Up in Early Modern Germany. A Chronicle of Their Lives (1990).

Ozment loved the outdoors, especially fishing, biking, and swimming, as well as spending time with his children and grandchildren. Ozment was married three times, first to Elinor Pryor, with whom he had three children, then to Andrea Foster, with whom he had another two children, and finally to Susan Schweizer. Ozment died on December 12, 2019, in Rye, New Hampshire, from the effects of Alzheimer’s.

For additional information:
Fahrenthold, David A. “Steven Ozment Brings History Home.” Harvard Crimson, February 7, 1997. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/2/7/steven-ozment-brings-history-home-psteven/ (accessed February 28, 2025).

Obituary for Steven Edgar Ozment. Remick & Gendron Funeral Home; https://www.remickgendron.com/obituaries/Steven-Ozment/#!/Obituary (accessed February 28, 2025).

“Steven Edgar Ozment, 80.” Harvard Gazette, May 5, 2022. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/steven-edgar-ozment-80/ (accessed February 28, 2025).

William H. Pruden III
Ravenscroft School