Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700

906 Pages·2005·12.8 MB·English

by  Diarmaid MacCulloch

PENGUIN BOOKS
REFORMATION
‘MacCulloch is a wonderful storyteller… he places people at the heart of
historical change… astonishingly learned and rich’ Daniel Swift, Spectator
‘Deserves to become the standard history of early modern Europe religion and
its legacy, synthesizing and assessing a quarter-century of international
scholarship… Like the best of historians, he helps us to understand why we are;
and why we need not be so’ Ronald Hutton, Independent
‘We are all children of the Reformation and this magisterial study shows us why
in its remarkable scope, both of width and depth… an astonishing delight’
Bernard Green, The Tablet, Books of the Year
‘Once embarked upon it, I found it impossible to put down’ Richard Chartres,
Church Times
‘A masterly synthesis… Rich, arresting, frequently provocative and always
interesting… This compelling and thought-provoking account is not just for
those interested in Reformation history. Anyone interested in what humanity can
do with a religious creed should read it’ Lucy Wooding, The Tablet
‘Magisterial… What is particularly impressive about MacCulloch’s book is its
freshness, and the skill with which it manoeuvres through sometimes complex
and arcane ideas’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year
‘It is difficult to imagine anybody writing a better book about the Reformation. It
is even handed, learned and profound. A serious work of scholarship, it is
admirably accessible. With great skill, MacCulloch enables his readers to enter
an intellectual world that seems light years from our own, and helps us to
appreciate the complexity of theological controversies that might seem abstruse
but which were at that time a matter of life and death’ Karen Armstrong, Los
Angeles Times
‘This is a big, bold book. The author has woven his own research, and the
researches of many others, into a synoptic panorama, strong in human interest.
MacCulloch’s Reformation looks set to become a book like Carlyle’s French
Revolution, necessary and unavoidable to anyone interested; and it is,
additionally, the work of an historian’s historian, splendidly accessible’ C. W.
Kemp, Prayer Book Society Journal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diarmaid MacCulloch was brought up in a country rectory in East Anglia and
studied in Cambridge, doing his doctoral research with Sir Geoffrey Elton. He is
a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, and Professor of the History of the Church
at Oxford University. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal
Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of London. His books
include Suffolk and the Tudors (1986; winner of the Royal Historical Society’s
Whitfield Prize), The Later Reformation in England 1547–1603 (1990), Henry
VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (1995), Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1996; winner
of the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff
Cooper Prize), and Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant
Reformation (2000).
DIARMAID MacCULLOCH
Reformation
EUROPE’S HOUSE DIVIDED
1490–1700
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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Published in Penguin Books 2004
12
Copyright © Diarmaid MacCulloch, 2003
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-192660-5
For Simon Yarrow
with whom I discovered Preston Bissett
Contents
List of Illustrations and Maps
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I A COMMON CULTURE
1 THE OLD CHURCH, 1490–1517
Seeing Salvation in Church
The First Pillar: The Mass and Purgatory
Layfolk at Prayer
The Second Pillar: Papal Primacy
A Pillar Cracks: Politics and the Papacy
Church Versus Commonwealth?
2 HOPES AND FEARS, 1490–1517
Shifting Boundaries
The Iberian Exception
The Iberian Achievement: The Western Church Exported
New Possibilities: Paper and Printing
Humanism: A New World from Books
Putting Renewal into Practice
Reform or the Last Days?
Erasmus: Hopes Fulfilled, Fears Stilled?
3 NEW HEAVEN: NEW EARTH, 1517–24
The Shadow of Augustine
Luther, a Good Monk: 1483–1517
An Accidental Revolution: 1517–21
Whose Revolution? 1521–2
Evangelical Challenges: Zwingli and Radicalism 1521–2
Zürich and Wittenberg 1522–4
The Years of Carnival 1521–4
4 WOOING THE MAGISTRATE, 1524–40
Europe’s Greatest Rebellion: 1524–5
Princely Churches or Christian Separation: 1525–30
The Birth of Protestantisms: 1529–33
Strassburg: New Rome or New Jerusalem?
Kings and Reformers, 1530–40
A New King David? Münster and Its Aftermath
5 REUNION DEFERRED: CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT, 1530–60
A Southern Revival
Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits
Hopes For a Deal: The 1541–2 Crisis
A Council at Trent: The First Session, 1545–9
Calvin in Geneva: The Reformed Answer to Münster
Calvin and the Eucharist: Protestant Divisions Confirmed
Reformed Protestantism: Alternatives to Calvin 1540–60
6 REUNION SCORNED, 1547–70
Crisis For the Habsburgs, 1547–55
1555: An Emperor’s Exhaustion, a Pope’s Obsession
A Catholic Recovery: England 1553–8
1558–9: Turning-points for Dynasties
The Last Session of the Council of Trent, 1561–3
Protestants in Arms: France and the Low Countries, 1562–70
PART II EUROPE DIVIDED: 1570–1619
7 THE NEW EUROPE DEFINED, 1569–72
Northern and Southern Religion
Tridentine Successes
The Catholic Defence of Christendom, 1565–71
Militant Northern Protestants, 1569–72
The Massacre of St Bartholomew, 1572
Poland 1569–76: An Alternative Future?
Protestantism and Providence
8 THE NORTH: PROTESTANT HEARTLANDS
Defining Lutheranism: Towards the Formula of Concord
The ‘Second Reformation’ in Germany
Baltic Religious Contests: Poland-Lithuania and Scandinavia
The Northern Netherlands: Protestant Victory
The Northern Netherlands: The Arminian Crisis
A Reformed Success: Scotland
Elizabethan England: A Reformed Church?
Ireland: The Coming of the Counter-Reformation