The Reformation

Hardcover, 792 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2003 by Viking Adult.

ISBN:: 978-0-670-03296-9
OCLC Number:: 52846469

"The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation it provoked are one of the great discontinuities in European and world history. The dramatic changes that began when Martin Luther proclaimed his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg in 1517 were of a different order to anything that had gone before. In the following two hundred years, the Christian world broke apart and the nature not just of religion but also of politics, thought, society and culture all changed utterly. The course of history down to our own time has been decisively shaped by this revolution." "Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the changing late medieval world into which Luther, Calvin and the other reformers erupted. He proposes an original understanding of the often confusing origins of the exceptionally violent disagreements that divided men and women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - disagreements for which they were prepared to kill and be killed. He examines the personalities of …

"The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation it provoked are one of the great discontinuities in European and world history. The dramatic changes that began when Martin Luther proclaimed his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg in 1517 were of a different order to anything that had gone before. In the following two hundred years, the Christian world broke apart and the nature not just of religion but also of politics, thought, society and culture all changed utterly. The course of history down to our own time has been decisively shaped by this revolution." "Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the changing late medieval world into which Luther, Calvin and the other reformers erupted. He proposes an original understanding of the often confusing origins of the exceptionally violent disagreements that divided men and women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - disagreements for which they were prepared to kill and be killed. He examines the personalities of the leading Reformers and their opponents and the mix of ideas, prejudices and accidents that shaped the various versions of Protestantism and Catholicism."--BOOK JACKET.

4 editions

Ben Waber reviewed A Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch

An Epic, Insightful Tome

5 stars

This is the absolute one stop shop for all things Reformation, providing both a blow by blow recounting of the period and insightful analysis of the developments that occurred during this time. As the critical bridge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, and certainly a major precondition of the latter, understanding how this package of movements grew out of ideal ideological conditions and profoundly shaped the following world is extremely important, and here you'll get a ton of insight on how the excesses of the Church and doomsday theories of the day snowballed by intersecting with other political forces throughout Europe. This book is extremely long (great for very long flights as long as you're not lugging around the physical version), but if you're going to write a single book on a massive topic this is how you do it. Highly recommend

Ben Waber

rated it

May 5

Subjects

Christianity
Church History
Religion
History
Reformation

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