The Reformation: A History

by Patrick Collinson

“No revolution however drastic has ever involved a total repudiation of what came before it .”

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Christianity, Audiobook, Theology, Church History

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Professor Patrick Collinson was a distinguished and much published author in the field of early modern history. A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1988, he was Regius Professor of History at the University until 1996. He also held a number of academic distinctions, including Fellowship of the British Academy.

Collinson authored his 1957 doctorate on Elizabethan Puritanism under J. E. Neale, and was a lecturer at the University of Khartoum and King's College London. He was professor at the University of Sydney in 1969, then at the University of Kent at Canterbury and the University of Sheffield. His 1967 monograph, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, had a great impact on historians' understanding of the movement. The work showed Puritanism to be a significant force within the Elizabethan Church instead of merely a radical group of individuals. By the time of his retirement in 1996, he was one of the doyens of English Reformation history. His short summation of the period, The Reformation, was published in 2003.
Collinson's work laid the foundations, in many ways, for what historians of the English Reformation currently term the 'Calvinist Consensus' in the latter decades of the sixteenth and reign of James I/VI. As such, the belief Puritanism was anything but religiously radical in relation to English, and indeed British, culture stands as one of his great achievements as an historian.

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can see that many of the other reviews for this book have not been as happy with it as I have been. I assume the problem is that they know much more about this period than I do and so are annoyed at how much is left out. But he does make it clear that compared to other books on the period that go for over 800 pages he is going to give a brief overview of the major themes of both the reformation and the counter-reformation – and I believe he has done this admirably.

As I said, I came to this book knowing bits and pieces of the history of the reformation, but not totally sure how those pieces fit together. This definitely gave more than just a helicopter view of the period.

I quite like it when I learn that things I had always assumed happened were actually myths invented after the fact. So, Luther saying at the Diet of Worms, “Here I stand, I can do no other” – probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that he never said this in as many words. However, what he did say was pretty much the same thing, if in many, many more words. That history remembers the pithy (even at the expense of accuracy) should not really come as a shock to anyone. This is compared in this book to Galileo saying “Yet it moves” – something he also almost certainly never actually said, but which so perfectly sums up the story that we ought to just accept it as true and be done with it.

To say the reformation was 'one thing' is to miss the point. The reformation in Germany, Scandinavia, England and France were all quite different in intent and in outcome. And we could play the ‘what-if’ game forever here if the fancy took us – what if Henry VIII had lots of sons? What if they had burnt Luther for heresy? What if the printing press had not been invented for another fifty years? Because this was clearly a revolution in theology sparked by and enflamed by the printing press.

What is also interesting in this book is that the counter-reformation is presented as more the Catholic reformation. There were clearly aspects of the Catholic Church’s response to the reformation that were reactions against the reformation (even reactions designed to repress the ideas behind the reformation) – however, it is also clear that the Catholic Church itself was reformed in this process. This is not meant to negate the fundamental differences between what Calvin and Luther were calling for in their reforms – the whole personal relationship with god that is unmediated by anything other than the scriptures was never going to be acceptable to the Catholic Church, but all the same, the Catholic Church was not nearly the same beast in 1660 as she had been in 1490.

Wonderful stuff in this about Protestant art too – given this was a religion on iconoclasts (read, the Christian version of the Taliban gleefully destroying the artistic masterpieces of centuries in the name of religion) it was fairly obvious (I guess, although I'd never really thought about it before) that the reformation would struggle to produce any truly great art. But then, one does have to account for Dürer, that most wonderful of drawers, and his affection for Luther. There is a lovely line here about protestant artists going from painting god to painting churches, from painting portraits of the saints to painting portraits of the rich – but in the end it would be hard to claim that no good art came out of the reformation, though much less hard to claim it still cost us dearly in the wilful destruction of vast amounts of our cultural heritage.

There is also an interesting discussion of Weber and whether his idea that the reformation was a necessary pre-condition of capitalism has been appropriately understood or if this idea is not really quite overstated. This is an idea with a long history in Europe – much the same thing is said by Marx, I believe, and as is pointed out here there have been mumblings along these lines ever since the reformation. The standard line being backward Catholic countries not even bothering to keep up with the go-getter spirit of the Protestant north. This has inspired me to read some Weber and see what he had to say about this for myself.

For such a short book it is overflowing with information, so much so I think I will need to read another, longer book on this period to really come to terms with it. I haven’t even touched on the reformation and its relationship to the enlightenment. Now, there is a theme worthy of consideration and contemplation. That one depended on the other is almost certainly true, but whether or not the reformation proved always to be a positive boon for enlightenment thinking, now that is quite another matter. The material presented here on the Anabaptists, of whom I knew virtually nothing, is also utterly fascinating.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

The three ughs

Ugh No 1. – I thought I’d better grab up a short account of the Reformation as some essential background info for Wolf Hall which I’m about two thirds through, wow, what a beast that is. In Wolf Hall there is an account of the burning of a Lollard. These were religious radicals who attempted an original Reformation in the 14th and 15th centuries. This particular Lollard was an old woman who was said to have proclaimed that the bread in the Mass is just bread, same as at the bakers, and the figures of the saints are just sticks of wood, nothing more. So they tie her up and load on the fuel and torch her and have a good time watching the old woman howl and writhe. One kindly woman ensures that young Thomas Cromwell has a front row view. The crowd gets a bit irritated if the smoke obscures their view of the writhings of the old woman. So the Reformation was kind of all like that. For your opinions, we will think of a very cruel way to kill you, and we will gain the Lord’s favour by so doing, and indeed, so meritorious is this kind of thing in the eyes of the Lord that you get points by just watching. And points mean prizes, and the prize is : years knocked off the time you will serve in Purgatory. (You know what Purgatory is, right, it’s being in a motel room with a busted tv which is only showing Fox News and, randomly, an Australian porn channel from the 1980s, for 300 years. And when the tv goes off, they pipe the complete works of Boney M through on some kind of hidden speaker. You could spend twelve years just trying to find the speaker so you can break it, but you never do. It’s Purgatory.)
Well, this kind of universal hideousness gets an UGH from me, I don’t want to think about it, it’s horrible.


Ugh No 2. - on top of the cruelty-seen-as-good-for-you and the sanctified sadism, you get the completely alien brains of these religious people, which was all people in these centuries. In their brains, beliefs matter, more than anything can conceivably matter to the likes of us except the lives of our children. So a guy will meditate many years about whether, as in the above example, the bread and wine in the Mass actually transubstantiates, becomes the flesh and blood of the Christ or just consubstantiates, becomes like the flesh and blood of the Christ or even, OMG OMG, doesn’t change at all, and merely symbolises the flesh and blood of the Christ. Don’t know about you, but to me, this is very alien thinking. Who in the name of all that creepeth upon the earth gives a flying flootle about it? Well, we don’t now, but by Christ, they did then. The afterlife loomed larger than their actual life, it was really real to them, and what you thought/believed was going to make a difference to how it panned out for you, and God was not the merciful type in to their minds at all, quite the reverse, he was the roasting, crimping and carving and the boiling of babies kind. That was God, Satan was worse. It was a real Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds outlook. It was Ingmar Bergman on a bad day. Now Wolf Hall shows that sensible people could negotiate their way around all this bad craziness, but it was like stepping around the Nazis in 1942, it took nerve and a lot of tact and intelligence. You could find yourself in a sticky situation quite rapidly, after one quick phone call to the Inquisition and a swift tightening of Jennifer’s daughter or the horrible Pear of Anguish. As an atheist, I just can’t for the life of me understand why people couldn’t say yeah, okay, no prob, Pope Clement IV is a cool ruler, yeah, let me have three of them indulgences, hey, 25 ducats, it’s a bargain, see you round bro. But they were all like ARRGH EVERYTHING MATTERS MY ETERNAL SOUL WILL FRY FOR A GAZILLION YEARS BECAUSE I HICCUPPED AT MASS AND PART OF JESUS WENT UP MY NOSE OH NO NOW I HAVE TO BURN TWENTY HERETICS BEFORE GOD WILL SMILE AT ME AGAIN.

Ugh No 3. The blurb on the back of this book says “it is clear, crisp, epigrammatic and memorable… it is great fun to read.”

Well, this is from p 68-9 :

By 1536 Calvin and Melancthon had achieved the Wittenberg Concord, reconciling the south German cities and Saxony. Even Luther did not absolutely reject it, although Swiss cities did and worked their way towards the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, essentially a Zurich-Geneva axis. Bucer’s own position, close to Calvin’s, was a version of Zwinglianism, and when, after the Schmalkaldic War, Strassburg had a Lutheran straightjacket imposed upon it he went into exile in England

I didn’t really think that was much fun to read. Who is this damned book for ? Not the student of the period, who already has a nine volume history of the Reformation and is eagerly devouring volume 7 as we speak; so must be the general reader (me! Me!) but look, does a general reader really want this kind of thing? Opening lines of chapter 9 :


Cuius regio, eius religio. The pithy phrase was coined in the early seventeenth century to convey the gist of the Religious peace of Augsburg.



To the rack with you Mr Collinson ! And may God have mercy on his prose.

[jcg · Rating 3 out of 5]

To call this book 'A History' may be a little grand - 'A Brief Overview' would be a more appropriate description. Patrick Collinson has read extensively and knows his facts, but lacks the storyteller's skill of linking all of those facts into a coherent narrative. He describes the trees without giving a sense of the forest.

The book is rather like a semester's worth of lectures. Background knowledge is assumed, the way a professor will assume that the students have completed their assigned reading.

Collinson's premise seems to be that the Reformation wasn't really necessary and that it wasn't the turning point in European history that other historians have made it out to be. On the whole, his sympathies seem to be with the Catholic Church. He minimizes the faults of the Church and maximizes the Church's positive aspects while maximizing the faults of the protestants and minimizing their positive attributes.

He subtly denigrates protestant leaders, calling Calvin 'the French cuckoo'. Catholic priests executed under Elizabeth I were heroic martyrs, but no such heroic status is given to burned protestants. He points out that an orthodox Catholic reached the 'justification by faith alone' conclusion before Luther. The triumphant Church of the Catholics is contrasted with the 'mundane, passive, receptive church' of the Protestants. He notes that the Church was reforming and healing itself with the Catholic Reformation before the reactionary Counter-Reformation. He praises reforming popes such as Innocent III without pointing out that Innocent III's reforms were in answer to the demonstrably Christian lives of the Cathars, that he waged a bloody and devastating crusade against the Cathars, and that it was Innocent III who authorized torture as a means of extracting confessions from heretics. He portrays the Dominicans and Franciscans in a positive light without mentioning their bloody history as Inquisitors, torturers and persecutors.

The most interesting and important contribution of the book is the integration of the English Reformation into the European Reformation. The English Reformation is often dismissed as a political manoeuvre on the part of King Henry VIII, but it was much more complex than that and Collinson touches on it all too briefly.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collinson is the dean of English Puritan studies and his book is a brief, comprehensive, synthesis of Reformation history. It is not a simple introduction to the topic though, instead it is more of a mature scholar's reflections and insights on the Reformation, its causes and influences, and on the history of history writing on the Reformation. I have read many books on the time period and he provided insight upon insight, revealing small details and big opinion. At times I disagreed, mostly I was entertained and informed, once or twice I was annoyed (my provincialism showing on slights to the US, once to the Midwest). I found him balanced and not at all sectarian in his writing, though with a bit of pro-Luther bias, which is understandable in someone who had to teach the topic.

[Blaine Welgraven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collinson’s overview of the English Reformation, as well as his analysis of how the major Christian denominations viewed the arts, are among Reformation’s best sections.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had my eye on this book for several years. A review by Trevor McCandless prodded me to go ahead and see what it had to say. The one thing that Trevor said in his review that caught my attention was, "The material presented here on the anabaptists, of whom I knew virtually nothing, is also utterly fascinating." I happen to be interested in anabaptist history, so I wanted to see what the book said that impressed Trevor as being "utterly fascinating." Now that I've read it I concluded that it must have been the story about the Münster Rebellion that he found so fascinating.
"...an extraordinary piece of apocalyptic theater was played out to its inevitably bloody conclusion. Jan of Leiden sat on the throne of David with the golden apple of global empire in this hand, ruling with operatic pomp a polygamous realm in which there was competition to see who could acquire the most wives. The king executed one of his own sixteen (some said twenty-two) wives for being cheeky and trampled on her body."

This book has the characteristics of a transcript of a scholar lecturing on the subject of the reformation, but who is being limited to 8 hours of lecture time. The author is obviously well informed on subject, but is forced to provide a cursory overview summary of the history of the time.

One little factoid the caught my attention was that many of the quotations credited to Shakespeare, were first collected by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam in his book,Adagiorum Chiliades (the thousand proverbs), also referred to as Adagia. That book was in turn the fruit of Erasmus' vast reading in Classical literature. This shows that "there is nothing new under the sun." Erasmus must have been an incredibly intelligent person. He arose from an impoverished youth to become a leading scholar of his time. By the 1530’s, the writings of Erasmus accounted for 10 to 20 percent of all book sales. He is most famous for his Greek translation of the New Testament (later used as the basis for the King James Version). And as additional proof of his intelligence, he maintained a middle road in the religious debates and ended up angering both sides, including Martin Luther of the Protestants and many conservative Catholics. I sometimes get the impression that Erasmus was the only sane and logical person alive at the time.

Patrick Collinson is at his best toward the end of the book when he discusses the changes to the lives of the people who lived through the time. He glosses over the Thirty Years War and many other details. The fact that he has one chapter about the Anabaptists and that he mentions that there was a peaceful (and sane) branch of the Anabaptists is proof enough for me that the author is trying to be even handed. Some historians of Reformation history credit the Anabaptists for the Peasants' War and for the Münster Rebellion, and nothing else.

Literacy was on the increase in the 16th Century, however most people of the time still could not read. Nevertheless, much of what was printed at the time was heard as those who could read, read aloud.
"... people in the sixteenth century read aloud (most, it seems, lacked the capacity to read silently)..."

Was the Reformation required for the modern world to come into being?
"If the Reformation represented an emancipation of the mind and the untrammeled communication of knowledge, which was not all what Luther and Calvin intended, then it was equally a precondition for what has been labeled the Scientific Revolution. ... ... Whether the Reformation was simply its cause is a question to hand over to historians of the Enlightenment."

Based on today's standards, 16th Century political and religious leaders were conservative and the common people very superstitious (execution of witches was common). So it's hard to imagine how their fighting over obscure religious issues allowed movement toward the enlightenment, scientific revolution, industrial revolution, expansion of capitalism and others things that made our modern world. Nevertheless, the Reformation seems to have introduced the concept of religion being something that could be ignored or changed in ways that would have never occurred to the medieval mind. Thus the grip of religion was loosened, and people with ambitious goals could pursue secular matters with limited interference from the revealed wisdom of the past.

[Cris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this up on a whim, but I'm sure I expected more political history than this book focuses on. Instead, this book spends much more time on tracing ideas rather than political facts and is accordingly more unwieldly. Few dates. Many anecdotes. Beaucoup biographies. I don't recommend this as a book for people with little historical background, not because they lack the background but because Collinson has too much background of his own in a short book. And it can be overwhelming. The proficient student of history will not be bored though. Confused sometimes, but not bored. (Did I miss something? Did he mention that before? What index is he talking about? Why is he reverting to French?) To be sure it is a work where he rambles amusingly and eloquently about some of his favorite peeves, including deconstructive history (many reformations, less important reformations, an ongoing reformation) but in focusing on his abbreviated version of events he makes many assumptions that the rushed and bewildered reader then has to go back and unpack to either accept or refute. Like swallowing a fish whole and then looking for the spine. Various well known themes are in the book, the effects of the printing press on the reformation, the seeds of Marxism in some 'religious' movements and a look at the role and effect of princes choosing the religion of their states. But these are too obvious and basic for Collinson, who spends much more time talking about Erasmus laying eggs.....

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a history class because this year marks the 500th anniversary of Luther posting the 95 Theses.

So the Reformation was a big deal-- and the author certainly drives the point home. I tend to avoid European history (especially from this time period), but I found that this particular book is written for people like me. It's easy to follow, even witty at times. It makes some compelling arguments and paints a picture of not only the political and social backdrop against which Martin Luther and other reformers lived, but also the entire movement's profound impact on several categories of life, whether those be politics, art, etc.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is good but too short (and uneven) to be an adequate brief history. It’s excellent for a while – a broad brush approach with important, illustrative details and valuable insights. Then it’s sometimes sets of short strings of details without strong links or much analysis. It gets very good again at points, but it isn’t the one short work on the Reformation if you're only going to read one. Still, it’s well worth reading. Collinson asks a lot of good questions and challenges assumptions and received wisdoms, clearly the results of deep study and reflection on the subject.

[Jack R.]

A historical essay on the Reformation as opposed to a "history" of the period, as Collinson gives plenty of space to wrangle with his contemporaries-- but for its brevity, there is a chronological and thematic thoroughness that could easily be lost.

While at the book's end he resigns from establishing the influence of the Reformation in the making of the modern world, he does say the following about the cultural-theological outcome of the event:

"Luther's doctrine of justification by faith alone had freed mankind from morality, but equally it had freed man for morality.... For here was the essential difference between what would now take shape as Protestantism and Catholicism as would be constituted by the Council of Trent: two versions of Western Civilization. It was essentially as anthropological difference. What is man? Was his creative in the image of God carried forward triumphantly in his salvation in Christ, which is what Counter-Reformation mannerist painting and exuberant baroque churches...tell us? Or was he a humble, receptive creature, nobody without the overwhelming grace of God, an idea that is reflected in the plainness of modesty of Protestant places of worship, which are mere receptables of the saving Word?.... The contrast is between a triumphant Church and a mundane, passive, receptive Church." (57)..

In other words: justification entails civilization.

[Bill Hooten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably should not have rated this 3 stars, but gone with 4 stars. The reason for the three stars is because of my own personal need. Going to give 3 lessons on the Reformation, and this really gave more information than I wanted (needed). That's not the books fault, but it just make it difficult for me to concentrate on all that I read. I really liked the timeline in the front of the book, and found that to be valuable (and maybe a little too detailed). But if you are looking for a good introduction to the Reformation, I would not hesitate to recommend this book.

[Chris Everritt · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars simply because it was the kind of book I was looking for but you should probably find another book. It had the pizazz typical of a book about religious history.

This is a much bigger subject than can be fully addressed in one book. It felt more like an outline of the history of The Reformation rather than a book on the history of The Reformation.

Key takeaway: As a fully surrendered disciple of Jesus, I don’t know if I should be encouraged or discouraged that all parties in Christian history are awful (Calvinist, Lutherans, and Catholics).

[Anita · Rating 2 out of 5]

i read this book to fulfil the goal read a book about the reformation. it was a hard read. i didn't really learn anything i didn't already learn in high school. it was about as entertaining as a college textbook. that said i'm sure it was a nice book for the subject material. if you need to learn or are interested in the reformation it is informative and comprehensive. however, it just isn't for me. glad to be done with it.

[Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief synopsis of The Reformation. A good amount of assumed religious background knowledge in this one, which luckily I have but for the lay person I can only assume might be a bit of a slog.

Author cannot get out of his own way sometimes with extremely long meandering sentences that quite forget how they started.

Overall the information presented was good, and the questions posed, were thought-provoking.

Probably worth it for the couple of maps and comprehensive timeline alone.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe just not what I was looking for. Decent background and history, but pleased by author's own correcting straw men of mistaken impressions of the reformation. Snarky comments throughout about issues/ people that didn't sit well with me in what I wanted to be a basic history. Read whole book trying to subtract author's biases....

[Yeongbae K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought the book because I wanted to learn more about the subject. I was disappointed in the superficial narrative.

Even though there was some breadth, there was not much depth.

I do not recommend the book.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and a short read but suffers as much from being short as it does from the writing style of the author. Too much background information is assumed to be known and very little meat is provided to the history and processes mentioned.

[John Crippen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was glad that I had already listened to The Rest is History podcasts about Luther and the Reformation before reading this. Collinson's history is definitely is not an introduction to the Reformation, but many of the chapters were interesting.

[Rickard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Feels like I should have studied theology a couple of years before reading this book to really enjoy it.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

nice summary of reformation

[Ally Tobler · Rating 1 out of 5]

read this for school! i hate religion

[Chris Saltmarsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes interesting, sometimes a drag

[Derrick Surratt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good concise history of the Reformation.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most incredibly informative book on the Reformation out on the market. It is comprehensive and attentive to detail without being overwhelming. It is probably the best source for the non-academic as well as a great review for any scholar.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ch. 2: Was the reformation all that unique? Luther "himself boasted that whereas others had concerned themselves merely with external abuses of the system, only he had attacked the corrupt theology of the Church in the name of what he claimed to be the true Christian Gospel and Word of God." "... Luther's single-minded concentration on the Word brought about real and revolutionary change." (p. 29)

Ch. 3: Words were important for the reformation. Its emphasis on the Word, the Bible, as the sole and absolute authority in religious matters ("the Church was to be validated by the bible, not the bible by the Church"), is a case in point. Also, the reformation, along with the invention of the printing press, contributed to the transformation of vernacular languages into national languages and a concomitant rise in nationalism. The vernacular Bible, in particular, "was the most important vehicle for what we may call cultural nationalism..." (43) In England, for example, "the poetics of the seventeenth century, from John Donne to John Milton, is saturated with the richly tentacular tropes and metaphors of the bible, while the speech of every day became peppered with scriptural phrases that rivaled Erasmus's proverbs: "the burden and heat of the day," "filthy lucre," "God forbid," "the salt of the earth," "the powers that be," "eat, drink, and be merry," (44)

[James Varney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally speaking, these Modern Library Chronicles are excellent. It's also a great idea: short, compact histories on an event or topic written by a top shelf academic. I loved Pipes' on "Communism," for instance. This short history, written by a Cambridge prof, reads well and certainly does provide a grounding in the Reformation. I found it a bit easier to keep track of who's who than I did with Paul Johnson's "The Renaissance," which is also in this series. Wanting to know more about the Reformation (and not knowing *that* much to begin with), the book did provide a solid overview; served its purpose. Collinson is particularly good on character sketches - I have a much more nuanced opinion now of Calvin. But the philosophy and theology parts are more opaque. I still don't have a great idea of what "Calvinism" *is* and how it differs from Luther. I suppose a deep dive into all that is too much to ask of this book, given its size and intent. But I gave it 3 stars rather than 4 out of a sense of disappointment. I'm glad I read it, but I wanted more.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Knowing the personal erudition that Collinson brings to the table, I am somewhat stunned that he produced such a mess, let alone bring it to publication. Collinson rambles over time and space, and by that I meant he rarely locates his discussions in any one period or geographic location, unnecessarily darkening the waters for anyone not already well versed in the major figures and events of the Reformation period, Even so, this little work, barely over 200 pages, is supposed to stand as a survey of the Reformation. Call me crazy, but surveys are usually picked up by novices in the field. All the fundamentals are here, don't get me wrong, but they are included in discussions that are so rambling and poorly organized that a newcomer might just walk away wondering what this Luther character actually did, or when he did it. Reads more like a transcript of the good ole professor ruminating upon some basic historiographical questions after one too many sherries.

[Tomlikeslife · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was one of three books my wife had to read for one of her history courses. She suggested I read it since I was interested in the Reformation. While I had to admit I am now more informed on what the Reformation was all about it how it influenced European history, I was sorely disappointed in Patrick Collinson's writing style and how he presented the material. I don't think he was writing to the lay person but he was concentrating on his fellow academics. He would make references to dates or events and expect that you knew what he was talking about. The only chapter I really liked was the one on how the Reformation affected the arts. This was the only chapter that he seemed to just report the facts. The rest of the book I never had a good idea what he believed in.
I'm hoping to find a better book to read on the Reformation since this one left me with a lot more questions than it answers.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew when I started that a book with such a title could be little more than an overview of the title's subject. The author alludes to that fact in the text, and seems not to care that his work really only scratches that surface. That aside, there are some interesting bits to whet the appetite of, I think, both the amateur and the potential scholar. For me, the most intriguing bit was in the epilog wherein the author introduces me to Max Weber, even though Collinson pans the English translations of Weber's work, and even calls the German text to task for being hard to read. But the subject of the connection, rightly or wrongly, between Protestantism and progressivism (capitalist/Marxist? - which) bears investigation. For that the listen was worth it.

[Rick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book. I hardly think it is "the finest available introduction" or a "Concise history" of the Reformation. It really doesn't take the approach of either really. It is more accurately called 'some thoughts on the Reformation that you might like if you have ready about a dozen books on the subject already".
Collinson also has a frustrating writing style. He fails to emphasize his key points. I found myself often backtracking to figure out key points he was trying to make in his chapters.
The two stars are for the last chapter and the odd pearls of wisdom scattered throughout the rest of the book.
The book in general, though, did not deliver what it promised.