Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490 - 1700 / Diarmaid MacCulloch / Allen Lane, 2003 / Hardcover

ISBN: 9780713993707 / 978-0713993707 

ISBN-10: 0713993707

Pages 864

The Reformation, which began in 1519 when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, is the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years. The medieval world was torn apart, and not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down. Just about everything which followed in European history - and because of the Pilgrim Fathers, in America too - can be traced back in one way or another to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. This is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began.

The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation it provoked are among 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 preceded them. In the following two hundred years, the Western Christian world broke apart and the nature not just of European religion but 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's magnificent new history is the most authoritative and wide-ranging account of these epochal and often bloody events. He brilliantly 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. He illuminates the complex battles between religious and secular powers, and shows how the resolution of these conflicts eventually redrew the map of Europe. He ends with the Enlightenment; a movement that would not have been possible without the Reformation, but which denied many of its most dearly held assumptions.

But this is not simply a book about popes, scholars and reformers, religious battles and secular powers. MacCulloch examines the impact of the Reformation on everyday lives - on sex and love, on the changing sense of being a man and being a woman, on beliefs about life after death and punishment in this life, on belief in witches and ghosts. He shows the power of ideas to ruin lives and rebuild them: to bring hope, fear, love, hatred, laughter, anger and joy to the humblest as well as the most exalted places in our continent.

Acclaim for Diarmaid MacCulloch's THOMAS CRANMER

Winner of the Whitbread Biography Prize and the James Tait Black and Duff Cooper Prizes

'Diarmaid MacCulloch's magisterial work is the first important biography in three decades ... This is a work which is as formidable in size as it is impressive in scholarship' P. D. James, Sunday Times

'Thomas Cranmer is a massive, powerful and unexpectedly moving reappraisal... This is a model biography, wise, revealing and wholly absorbing' Miranda Seymour, Independent

'In this unfailingly lively, shrewd and humane biography, exhaustive but never exhausting, MacCulloch has penetrated the imperturbable exterior. In the process he has provided an unrivalled picture of the inner workings of the early Reformation in England' Eamon Duffy, The Times Higher Education Supplement

'Only very rarely can the biographer of a major figure in history hope to make such a difference to our knowledge of a life ... So three cheers for MacCulloch!' Patrick Collinson, The Times Literary Supplement

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Allen Lane (January 1, 2003)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 864 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0713993707
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0713993707
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.18 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.61 x 2.17 x 9.61 inches