Reference
- The European ReformationsBetween 1000 and 1500 in Western Europe there was a renewal of church life at every level. The pope's authority to intervene in political disputes reached unprecedented levels. A form of theology known as ‘scholasticism’ developed, with 13th century writers such as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus achieving great theological sophistication.
The 16th century gave rise to a major upheaval within Western Christianity the Reformation - that had origins in the Renaissance, with its demand for a return to the original sources of Christianity in the New Testament. Alarmed at what they perceived to be the gap between apostolic and medieval visions of Christianity, individuals such as Martin Luther (1483-1546) and Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531) pressed for reform. For Luther, how people enter into a right relationship with God - the ‘doctrine of justification’ - needed radical revision in the light of scripture.
Although the need for reform was widely conceded within the church, such reforms proved hugely controversial. Luther and Zwingli found themselves creating reforming communities outside the mainline church instead of reforming it from within, as they had hoped. By the time of John Calvin (1509-64) and his reformation of Geneva, Protestantism had emerged as a distinct type of Christianity, posing a potent threat to the Catholic Church.
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Perspectives
The Reformation
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation represented the greatest upheaval in Western society since the collapse of the Roman Empire a millennium before. The consequences of those shattering events are still felt today--from the stark divisions between (and within) Catholic and Protestant countries to the Protestant ideology that governs America, the world's only remaining superpower. In this masterful history, Diarmaid MacCulloch conveys the drama, complexity, and continuing relevance of these events. He offers vivid portraits of the most significant individuals--Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Loyola, Henry VIII, and a number of popes--but also conveys why their ideas were so powerful and how the Reformation affected everyday lives. The result is a landmark book that will be the standard work on the Reformation for years to come. The narrative verve of The Reformation as well as its provocative analysis of American culture's debt to the period will ensure the book's wide appeal among history readers.
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation
The Reformation was a seismic event in history, whose consequences are still working themselves out in Europe and across the world. The protests against the marketing of indulgences staged by the German monk Martin Luther in 1517 belonged to a long-standing pattern of calls for internal reformand renewal in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany and then Europe as a whole in furious arguments about how God's will was to be discerned, and how humans were to be "saved".However, these debates did not remain confined to a narrow sphere of theology. They came to reshape politics and international relations; social, cultural, and artistic developments; relations between the sexes; and the patterns and performances of everyday life. They were also the stimulus forChristianity's transformation into a truly global religion, as agents of the Roman Catholic Church sought to compensate for losses in Europe with new conversions in Asia and the Americas.Covering both Protestant and Catholic reform movements, in Europe and across the wider world, this beautifully illustrated volume tells the story of the Reformation from its immediate, explosive beginnings, through to its profound longer-term consequences and legacy for the modern world. The storyis not one of an inevitable triumph of liberty over oppression, enlightenment over ignorance. Rather, it tells how a multitude of rival groups and individuals, with or without the support of political power, strove after visions of 'reform'. And how, in spite of themselves, they laid the foundationsfor the plural and conflicted world we now inhabit.
1517
Martin Luther's posting of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517 is one of the most famous events of Western history. It inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, and has for centuries been a powerful and enduring symbol of religious freedom ofconscience, and of righteous protest against the abuse of power.But did it actually really happen?In this engagingly-written, wide-ranging and insightful work of cultural history, leading Reformation historian Peter Marshall reviews the available evidence, and concludes that, very probably, it did not. The theses-posting is a myth. And yet, Marshall argues, this fact makes the incident all themore historically significant. In tracing how - and why - a "non-event" ended up becoming a defining episode of the modern historical imagination. Marshall compellingly explores the multiple ways in which the figure of Martin Luther, and the nature of the Reformation itself, have been remembered andused for their own purposes by subsequent generations of Protestants and others - in Germany, Britain, the United States and elsewhere.As people in Europe, and across the world, prepare to remember, and celebrate, the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting of the theses, this book offers a timely contribution and corrective. The intention is not to "debunk", or to belittle Luther's achievement, but rather to invite renewedreflection on how the past speaks to the present - and on how, all too often, the present creates the past in its own image and likeness.
The European Reformation
Since its first appearance in 1991, The European Reformation has offered a clear, integrated, and coherent analysis and explanation of how Christianity in Western and Central Europe from Iceland to Hungary, from the Baltic to the Pyrenees splintered into separate Protestant and Catholic identities and movements. Catholic Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages was not at all a uniformly 'decadent' or corrupt institution: it showed clear signs of cultural vigour and inventiveness. However, it was vulnerable to a particular kind of criticism, if ever its claims to mediate the grace of God to believers were challenged. Martin Luther proposed a radically new insight into how God forgives human sin. In this new theological vision, rituals did not 'purify' people; priests did not need to be set apart from the ordinary community; the church needed no longer to be an international body. For a critical 'Reformation moment', this idea caught fire in the spiritual, political, and community life of much of Europe. Lay people seized hold of the instruments of spiritual authority, and transformed religion into something simpler, more local, more rooted in their own community. So were born the many cultures, liturgies, musical traditions and prayer lives of the countries of Protestant Europe. This new edition embraces and responds to developments in scholarship over the past twenty years. Substantially re-written and updated, with both a thorough revision of the text and fully updated references and bibliography, it nevertheless preserves the distinctive features of the original, including its clearly thought-out integration of theological ideas and political cultures, helping to bridge the gap between theological and social history, and the use of helpful charts and tables that made the original so easy to use.
The Reformation
A distinguished historian presents a lively history of the Reformation, the sixteenth-century movement that gave birth to such Protestant denominations as Lutherans, Calvinists, Huguenots, and Presbyterians and profoundly transformed the religious, political, social, and cultural face of Europe.
All Things Made New
The most profound characteristic of Western Europe in the Middle Ages was its cultural and religious unity, a unity secured by a common alignment with the Pope in Rome, and a common language - Latin - for worship and scholarship. The Reformation shattered that unity, and the consequences arestill with us today. In All Things Made New, Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of the New York Times bestseller Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, examines not only the Reformation's impact across Europe, but also the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the special evolution of religion inEngland, revealing how one of the most turbulent, bloody, and transformational events in Western history has shaped modern society.The Reformation may have launched a social revolution, MacCulloch argues, but it was not caused by social and economic forces, or even by a secular idea like nationalism; it sprang from a big idea about death, salvation, and the afterlife. This idea - that salvation was entirely in God's hands andthere was nothing humans could do to alter his decision - ended the Catholic Church's monopoly in Europe and altered the trajectory of the entire future of the West.By turns passionate, funny, meditative, and subversive, All Things Made New takes readers onto fascinating new ground, exploring the original conflicts of the Reformation and cutting through prejudices that continue to distort popular conceptions of a religious divide still with us after fivecenturies. This monumental work, from one of the most distinguished scholars of Christianity writing today, explores the ways in which historians have told the tale of the Reformation, why their interpretations have changed so dramatically over time, and ultimately, how the contested legacy of thisrevolution continues to impact the world today.
Reformation - The Individual Before God
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Diarmaid MacCulloch discusses the Reformation, Protestantism, Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli , John Calvin, the Counter Reformation, and the Thirty Years War.
John Wycliffe Advocates for the Translation of the Bible
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John Wycliffe, a theologian, railed against the corruption in the Catholic Church. He fought for the right of all believers to have equal access to words in the Bible. Scholars secretly translated the Latin Bible into English, yet retained some Latin words.
Protestant Reformation
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowThe Catholic Church grew more corrupt as it spread throughout the world, which eventually lead to the Protestant Reformation. Three experts explain the lasting effects of the Reformation.
Luther and the Reformation
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowTravel expert Rick Steves sheds light on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by visiting key sites (including Erfurt, Wittenberg and Rome), and explores the complicated political world of 16th-century Europe, from indulgences to iconoclasts, and from the printing press to the Counter-Reformation.
Online Resources
- "Great Reformation in the Manners of Mankind"Utopian Thought in the Scottish Reformation and Enlightenment
- Calvinists and LutheransContesting the European Reformation
- Huldrych Zwingli: Reformation in ConflictThe Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli was a pioneering and domineering voice during the early sixteenth century, especially at the genesis of the Protestant Reformation. Despite his stature, Reformation historiography has sadly relegated Zwingli to a lesser status behind reformers such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin. However, his contribution to the changing religious ethos of Reformation Europe was pivotal, yet always accompanied by controversy.
- John Wycliffe and the Prebend of AustIn the case of Wycliffe, the dean informed the bishop (in rather poor Latin) that Also Master John Wynkele [sic], canon and prebendary in the same [church], whom I inducted as dean into corporal possession of the same prebend, who also [took] a corporal oath to observe the statutes and customs and observances of the same collegiate church, who ought to provide a chaplain in the same according to the form expressed above, and has altogether maintained none but has wholly withdrawn for one whole year last past, nor has he made any residence from the time of his arrival. 24 Immediately after receiving this letter, Whittlesey (who was staying at his manor of Alvechurch, Worcs.) issued the third document on 28 June, ordering the dean to cite all the canons who were non-resident and at fault in not providing vicars to appear before the bishop within twenty days to show cause why they should not face the sequestration of their prebends.
- On Cathars, Albigenses, and good men of LanguedocThis essay proposes a re-evaluation of how Cathars, Albigenses, and the heresy of the good men are studied. It argues that some commonplace notions about the Cathars, virtually unaltered for over a hundred years, are far from settled — especially when inquisition records from Languedoc are taken into account. It is this historiography, supported by a tendency to see heresy in idealist and intellectualist bias, suggests how the history of the Cathars and the good men might be rethought.
- THE WALDENSESRead more about the Waldenses.
- THE WALDENSES: SKETCH OF THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER AND SENTIMENTS OF THE WALDENSES THE CONFESSION Of FAITH OF THE WALDENSESOn reading the "History of the Waldenses by Mr. Jones," we could not but compare the situation of the Waldenses in a moral sense with the literal situation of the Hebrews in Goshen.