Reformations

Author: Carlos M. N. Eire
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300220685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 914

Book Description
This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today. The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

English Reformations

Author: Christopher Haigh
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198221622
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 381

Book Description
English Reformations takes a refreshing new approach to the study of the Reformation in England. Christopher Haigh's lively and readable study disproves any facile assumption that the triumph of Protestantism was inevitable, and goes beyond the surface of official political policy to explorethe religious views and practices of ordinary English people. With the benefit of hindsight, other historians have traced the course of the Reformation as a series of events inescapably culminating in the creation of the English Protestant establishment. Dr Haigh sets out to recreate the sixteenthcentury as a time of excitement and insecurity, with each new policy or ruler causing the reversal of earlier religious changes. This is a scholarly and stimulating book, which challenges traditional ideas about the Reformation and offers a powerful and convincing alternative analysis.

The Unintended Reformation

Author: Brad S. Gregory
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067426407X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

The European Reformations

Author: Carter Lindberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444360868
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
Combining seamless synthesis of original material with updated scholarship, The European Reformations 2nd edition, provides the most comprehensive and engaging textbook available on the origins and impacts of Europe's Reformations - and the consequences that continue to resonate today. A fully revised and comprehensive edition of this popular introduction to the Reformations of the sixteenth century Includes new sections on the Catholic Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the role of women, and the Reformation in Britain Sets the origins of the movements in the context of late medieval social, economic and religious crises, carefully tracing its trajectories through the different religious groups Succeeds in weaving together religion, politics, social forces, and the influential personalities of the time, in to one compelling story Provides a variety of supplementary materials, including end-of-chapter suggestions for further reading, along with maps, illustrations, a glossary, and chronologies

Europe's Reformations, 1450–1650

Author: James D. Tracy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742579131
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Book Description
In this widely praised history, noted scholar James D. Tracy offers a comprehensive, lucid, and masterful exploration of early modern Europe's key turning point. Establishing a new standard for histories of the Reformation, Tracy explores the complex religious, political, and social processes that made change possible, even as he synthesizes new understandings of the profound continuities between medieval Catholic Europe and the multi-confessional sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This revised edition includes new material on Eastern Europe, on how ordinary people experienced religious change, and on the pluralistic societies that began to emerge. Reformation scholars have in recent decades dismantled brick by brick the idea that the Middle Ages came to an abrupt end in 1517. Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses fitted into an ongoing debate about how Christians might better understand the Gospel and live its teachings more faithfully. Tracy shows how Reformation-era religious conflicts tilted the balance in church-state relations in favor of the latter, so that the secular power was able to dictate the doctrinal loyalty of its subjects. Religious reform, Catholic as well as Protestant, reinforced the bonds of community, while creating new divisions within towns, villages, neighborhoods, and families. In some areas these tensions were resolved by allowing citizens to profess loyalty both to their separate religious communities and to an overarching body-politic. This compromise, a product of the Reformations, though not willed by the reformers, was the historical foundation of modern, pluralistic society. Richly illustrated and elegantly written, this book belongs in the library of all scholars, students, and general readers interested in the origins, events, and legacy of Europe's Reformation.

The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations

Author: Ulinka Rublack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199646929
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 849

Book Description
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online

Teaching the Reformations

Author: Christopher Metress
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038425222
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Teaching the Reformations" that was published in Religions

Reformations Old and New

Author: Beat Kümin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351905775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Book Description
This collection of essays examines the practical impact of religious change in Central and North Western Europe from the 15th to the 17th century. It focuses on the effects of reform on clergy, church resources, ecclesiastical patronage, education and poor relief. The title reflects the elementary conclusion that there was no one monolithic experience of ’Reformation’, that initiatives were taken for very different reasons, and that they displayed innovative as well as conservative features. While offering a great breadth of original research and subject matter, all authors devote particular attention to three main themes: the blend between continuity and change, the share of religious factors in socio-economic developments, and the identification of winners and losers. Taken together, the essays illustrate the scarcity of unambiguous trends, the tenacity of socio-economic structures, the modification of religious dogma by the ’real’ world, and the conspicuous benefits of religious change for the social élites.

Saints, Sacrilege and Sedition

Author: Eamon Duffy
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1472909178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Book Description
Eamon Duffy publishes a book on the broad sweep of English Reformation history, including a study of Late Medieval religion and society.

Crisis and Renewal

Author: R. Ward Holder
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 0664229905
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
This latest volume in the Westminster History of Christian Thought series introduces readers to the events and ideas that propelled the various religious reformations of sixteenth-century Europe. A splendid introduction to this momentous period, Crisis and Renewal examines the historical and theological developments that dramatically changed the religious landscape of Europe and continue to have important effects today. Discussion questions and other aids make this an excellent book for classroom use. Designed particularly for undergraduate courses in theology and religion, the Westminster History of Christian Thought series offers reliable and accessible introductions to Christian thought for each major period in Christian history--the early church, the medieval era, the Reformation, the modern age, and the contemporary period--and concludes with a volume on American religious thought.