The Reformation: A History

Collinson also examines the interplay of spiritual and temporal matters in the spread of religious reform to all corners of Europe, and at how the Catholic Counter-Reformation used both coercion and institutional reform to retain its ecclesiastical control of Christendom. Powerful and remarkably well written, The Reformation is possibly the finest available introduction to this hugely important chapter in religious and political history.

The religious reformations of the sixteenth century were the crucible of modern Western civilization, profoundly reshaping the identity of Europe's emerging nation-states. In The Reformation, one of the preeminent historians of the period, Patrick Collinson, offers a concise yet thorough overview of the drastic ecumenical revolution of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. In looking at the sum effect of such disparate elements as the humanist philosophy of Desiderius Erasmus and the impact on civilization of movable-type printing and "vulgate" scriptures, or in defining the differences between the evangelical (Lutheran) and reformed (Calvinist) churches, Collinson makes clear how the battles for mens' lives were often hatched in the battles for mens' souls.

Collinson also examines the interplay of spiritual and temporal matters in the spread of religious reform to all corners of Europe, and at how the Catholic Counter-Reformation used both coercion and institutional reform to retain its ecclesiastical control of Christendom. Powerful and remarkably well written, The Reformation is possibly the finest available introduction to this hugely important chapter in religious and political history.

The New York Times - John Keane

Patrick Collinson's short, splendid survey of the Reformation reminds us that Christian champions of religious freedom in that era were as profoundly intolerant of heterodoxy as their Christian opponents were. Both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation had in common a dogmatic yearning to bring Christianity to the rural populations of Europe: to make the Ten Commandments a matter of individual habit, if need be with the help of much zealous moralizing or, if that failed, red hot irons, swords and crossbows.

Patrick Collinson is Regius Professor of Modern History, Emeritus, Cambridge. A renowned scholar of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, his books include The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, The Religion of Protestants, and (as editor) The Sixteenth Century (Short Oxford History of The British Isles). He is a fellow of the British Academy and holds the CBE. He lives in Derbyshire and Cambridge.