European Reformations

About this book

"Revision is perhaps too strong a word for what follows, because I am not "re-visioning" the narrative of my text. I remain convinced of the "truism" expressed so succinctly by Heiko Oberman (1994b: 8): "[W]ithout the reformers, no Reformation. Social and political factors guided, accelerated and likewise hindered the spread and public effects of Protestant preaching. However, in a survey of the age as a whole they must not be overestimated and seen as causes of the Reformation, nor as its fundamental preconditions." So, while my rewrite begins with the original preface, my narrative remains basically the same. What I have done is more supplementary in the sense of expanding the narrative to include more material on the British Isles, Roman Catholic reforms, and women. The following expansion is very modest, for the field of Reformation studies has exploded in the decade and a half since the first edition. Merry Wiesner-Hanks (2008: 397) notes that just in the field of women and the Reformation: "It is now nearly impossible to even know about all the new scholarship, to say nothing of reading it." Add in the resources available on the World Wide Web and there is more than enough material for a lifetime let alone a semester course! The massive growth in scholarship on the Reformations is a cause for excitement, but at the same time the growing concentration on microstudies threatens to replace the forest with detailed studies of every tree in it. "How is one to teach a subject that finds itself in that condition? If Reformation Studies are to enjoy any continuing vitality, there must be more to them than the ever-closer scrutiny of the religious entrails and financial dealings of the weighty parishioners of Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh" (Collinson 1997: 354). Yet, as noted above, there are a number of texts to guide us through this forest of new growth, as well as summaries of the state of the field such as the splendid volume edited by David M. Whitford, Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research (2008) that includes web resources along with bibliography. Additional material that follows and supplements the narrative of my text is available in my edited volumes The European Reformations Sourcebook (primary sources, 2000a) and The Reformation Theologians (chapters on Humanist, Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, and "Radical" theologians, 2002)"--