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The Reformation: A History
by Authors:
Diarmaid MacCulloch
Hardcover Description:
Diarmaid MacCulloch wrote what is widely considered to be the authoritative account of the Reformation—a critical juncture in the history of Christianity. "It is impossible to understand modern Europe without understanding these sixteenth-century upheavals in Latin Christianity," he writes. "They represented the greatest fault line to appear in Christian culture since the Latin and Greek halves of the Roman Empire went their separate ways a thousand years before; they produced a house divided." The resulting split between the Catholics and Protestants still divides Christians throughout the Western world. It affects interpretations of the Bible, beliefs about baptisms, and event how much authority is given to religious leaders. The division even fuels an ongoing war. What makes MacCulloch's account rise above previous attempts to interpret the Reformation is the breadth of his research. Rather than limit his narrative to the actions of key theologians and leaders of the era—Luther, Zingli, Calvin, Loyola, Cranmer, Henry VIII and numerous popes—MacCulloch sweeps his narrative across the culture, politics and lay people of Renaissance Western Europe. This broad brush approach touches upon many fascinating discussions surrounding the Reformation, including his belief that the Latin Church was probably not as "corrupt and ineffective" as Protestants tend to portray it. In fact, he asserts that it "generally satisfied the spiritual needs of the late medieval people." As a historical document, this 750-page narrative has all the key ingredients. MacCulloch, a professor of history as the Church of Oxford University, is an articulate and vibrant writer with a strong guiding intelligence. The structure is sensible—starting with the main characters who influenced reforms, then spreading out to the regional concerns, and social intellectual themes of the era. He even fast forwards into American Christianity—showing how this historical era influences modern times. MacCulloch is a topnotch historian—uncovering material and theories that will seem fresh and inspired to Reformation scholars as well as lay readers. --Gail Hudson
Average Customer Rating:
Thorough but a hard read
This was a very thorough book and I won't go into it since the other reviews cover that well.
I am suprised that no one has really mentioned the difficulty in understanding concepts presented in the book. The author glosses over things that he assumes the reader already knows. I have taken a college level course in religion, so I am not unfamiliar with basic concepts, but my knowledge of Erasmus and Animism is lacking (not to mention a few others). Without this you miss much of the detail. I finished the book but I cannot say that my knowledge of specific incidents grew much. I think I got more out of this book in terms of overall impression of the life and times with respect to the church.
Overall a quality book. Not everyone may be ready for it though.
Useful, but conventional, account of the Reformation
MacCulloch's book is indeed a fine overview of the Reformation across Europe. But as regards Britain, he fails to understand the importance of the Reformation as an expression of our national sovereignty and independence.
The Reformation in Britain was largely created by ordinary people, who had less emotional and financial investment in the old order than did the clergy and the landed class. The people of Britain opposed the Church's pomps, ceremonies, fasts and holy days, its cults of saints and veneration of images and relics, and its beliefs in ghosts, angels and demons. They opposed mysteries, signs and wonders, and obsessions with Dooms and Last Days. They opposed shrines and pilgrimages, indulgences (remissions of punishment for sins), pardons, the Latin Mass and the cult of intercession on behalf of the dead in Purgatory. They opposed the monastic ideal, which neglected the service of widows, children and the poor in the selfish quest of personal salvation.
They opposed the hierarchical, compulsorily celibate, mediating priesthood, and a church hierarchy that claimed proprietorial rights over what people should think and believe. They opposed church decrees (canon law) and the power of the Pope. They forbade appeals to the Pope and payments such as annates and `Peter's pence'. They opposed the claims of revealed religion and the all-embracing medieval Western church which sought to override the sovereignty and independence of Britain.
They moved against the religious corporations, the Pope's fortresses, which ran vast estates and made huge profits. In 1535 the monasteries' total net income was £140,000, when the Crown's was £100,000. The monasteries were rentiers for two-thirds of their income, from whole estates put out to farm, from rents taken from smallholders, from tenements and from woods. Even their historian, Dom David Knowles, admitted, "monks and canons of England ... had been living on a scale of personal comfort and corporate magnificence ... which were neither necessary for, nor consistent with, the fashion of life indicated by their rule and early institutions."
By the Act of Supremacy of 1534, the monarch became the head of the Church of England, able to appoint its leading officials and determine its doctrine. The Church would no longer be a part of an international organisation, but a part of the British state, tamed and subordinate. Henry VIII permanently suspended the study of canon law in England's universities.
A series of laws between 1532 and 1540 destroyed monastic life in England and Wales and in half of Ireland too. In 1535 Henry ordered visits to the smaller monastic houses to ensure that they "shall not show no reliques, or feyned miracles, for increase of lucre." The Act of Suppression of 1536 ended 376 of the smaller houses. In 1538 Henry dissolved the friaries, which were centralised on the papacy. He dissolved the gilds, voluntary organisations where clergy prayed for the gild's membership.
The Injunctions of 1538 opposed "wandering to pilgrimages, offering of money, candles or tapers to images or relics, or kissing or licking the same, saying over a number of beads, not understood or minded on." In 1539 Henry suppressed the rest of the houses. The Injunction of 1547, Edward VI's first year, was to "destroy all shrines, covering of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindles or rolls of wax, pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry and superstition." The state finally dissolved the chantries - chapels where priests sang masses for the founder's soul - and abolished the laws against heresy.
In the parishes of England, all that sustained the old devotion was attacked. The church furniture and images came down, the Mass was abolished, Mass-books and breviaries surrendered. The altars, veils and vestments, chalices and chests and hangings all were gone, the niches were empty and the walls were whitened.
Land and properties were seized and sold to landowners and capitalist farmers, making the settlement impossible to reverse. Queen Mary tried to re-establish Catholicism, but few monasteries were re-established and few new chantries founded; few shrines were retrieved and few gilds revived. Purgatory was not preached and the Pope was still unpopular. Without the support of the religious orders, Mary's effort was doomed. Her failure proved that there was no going back. Monasticism, a major factor in the medieval world ever since the fall of the Roman Empire, was over.
The Reformation made the Bible available in English, stimulating reading and the English language and ending the priestly monopoly of learning. It urged people to go `ad fontes', back to the sources. It stimulated people to think for themselves, actively to compare and assess, rather than passively contemplate and acquiesce. Doubts were welded into a systematic and self-confident confrontation with all religious tradition, against all orthodoxy.
The Reformation enabled the development of science and of industry, of history and archaeology, promoting the rational investigation of empirical evidence instead of relying on texts and authorities, and ignoring the pressures from church and state. Amid the complexities and divisions of the Protestant world, there was more room to manoeuvre, to question and innovate.
Finally, the Reformation asserted the sovereignty and independence of Britain, a nation free from foreign ownership and control, "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks" in Milton's magnificent words.
A fascinating read of relevance today
Here is a long detailed read but then so is his subject. The Reformation set in place many of the characteristics of the Western World. MacCulloch gradually reveals how that all happened -- the intellectual, technical and social pressures. I guarantee you will end up being surprised and intrigued at the importance today of what went on hundreds of years ago. Sometimes the detail can discourage the reader especially about areas of Europe that are not very familiar. But the landscape he draws is amazing and the intensity of feelings that he shows held by every-day people is a lesson to us all.
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DVD's
Thorough but a hard read 
