This collection of seven essays by an impressive team of scholars led by Peter Marshall presents a scintillating state-of-the-art survey of the Reformation, one of the most far-reaching events in European history. Key to this volume is the appreciation that the Reformation was ‘not a kind of code … for conducting and resolving deeper clashes over political power and economic resources’, that ideas mattered and ‘had the power to motivate individuals to act in ways that were not always in their own material interests’ (pp v–vi). The book reflects on the processes of reformations that were extremely complex, unpredictable, far-reaching and, for all those reasons, are still controversial.

Bruce Gordon presents a rich and evocative chapter on ‘Late medieval Christianity’ that shows it to have been characterised by religious fervour and devotion, vitality in theology and biblical commentary, and creativity in religious architecture and artistic expressions. At the same time it experienced fragmentation and dissent in a diversifying society transformed by growing commerce, population growth, the printing press, humanist scholarship and encounters with new worlds. The later middle ages were not ‘a lost golden age’, nor a time of ‘irredeemable decay and decline’, but were something of both. Gordon offers a sagacious distillation of research on a kaleidoscopic subject, and concludes by dismissing ‘any notion of historical inevitability’ about the Reformation that followed.

Lyndal Roper succeeds in drawing a convincing and engaging impression of the extremely complicated, very human yet extraordinary Martin Luther. Her synthesis of the incredible volume of research focused on Luther over many decades is very impressive, and she brings the reader right up to date on the latest findings, about Luther’s family background for instance, the archaeological study of his family home, and the much-debated development of his theology. Exceptionally learned and lucid, this is as perfect an introduction to Luther as anyone could wish for. The same might be said of Carlos Eire’s chapter on Calvinism. It offers a useful biographical sketch of Calvin, and sets his ‘purest of all reformations’ in its context. Calvin shared with Luther a bleak Augustinian view of humanity as hopelessly corrupted by original sin, but Calvin added a new dimension with his doctrine of double predestination whereby the deity arbitrarily elected some people for salvation and condemned others to eternal damnation even before they were born. Some of his contemporary critics complained that he had made God in his own image; cold, intolerant and cruel. Eire quotes Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, later condemning Calvin’s deity as a ‘daemon of malignant spirit’. Yet Eire also emphasises the appeal of Calvinism for those who considered themselves to be ‘the elect’, and ‘tended to behave as the elect’ through preaching, teaching, and building godly communities characterised by ‘a lot of laws’ (pp 85, 89), including regulations about dress, dancing, dice, debauchery, et cetera, and the censorship of private correspondence as well as printed works. Brad S. Gregory’s chapter is focused on the radical Protestants who rejected the doctrinal claims of the magisterial Protestants; Luther and Calvin, and the founders of the Church of England (and its off-shoot in Ireland by implication). He surveys a ‘bewildering array of individuals, groups and churches who espoused and enacted an extremely wide range of divergent claims about what it was to be a Christian’ (p. 115). Though they were always small in number, Gregory makes the interesting point that without mandatory membership of state churches ‘Protestant preferentiality prospered’. Hence he argues that the extraordinary heterogeneity of American Protestantism reveals ‘the triumph of the reformation in its true essence’ (p. 151). For the other end of the denominational spectrum Simon Ditchfield explores ‘Catholic reformation and renewal’. Employing an unconventional structure, Ditchfield presents a new view of Roman Catholicism that tries to fully incorporate the global dimension. He challenges us to appreciate how Catholic missionary experiences outside of Europe affected the ways in which European Catholics thought about their own religious practices, and influenced Catholic missions conducted in Italy and France. This is an intriguing and strikingly illustrated thesis. It is a pity that, in a book about the Reformation, no attempt was made to relate those mission experiences to the Catholic church’s efforts to win over Protestant souls in the Old World.

Peter Marshall’s chapter on ‘Britain’s reformations’ starts off with references to Ireland that reflected his intention to consider the Reformation experiences of Ireland as well as Britain. However, the Irish references soon peter out and thereafter the text focuses overwhelmingly on the larger island. It may be that meshing the intricate narratives of the Reformation in England and Scotland exhausted the word limit and left little space for Ireland. The story of the failure of the Reformation in Ireland could otherwise have offered an interesting counterpoise to the tale of its progress in Britain.

This volume concludes with a wide-ranging assessment of the Reformation’s legacies by Alexandra Walsham. She addresses the questions of when and why the Reformation came to be regarded as a transformative, landmark event, and she considers the extent to which it really was so. She argues that the myth-making began in the lifetime of Luther himself, and that the writings and images produced by the first Protestants ‘laid the foundations of lasting historiographical myths about the significance and impact of the Reformation that still persist today’ (p. 227). As to the true impact of the Reformation, Walsham offers a sophisticated appraisal of its ‘contradictory’ consequences. Among them was the emergence of religious pluralism, which was initially anathema to Protestants as well as Catholics. There were changes to people’s lives caused by a convergence of social and economic as well as religious pressures. The Reformation fostered and complicated intellectual and cultural trends that were changing how people conceived of God and the natural and supernatural worlds. It critically shaped how individuals, communities and nations identified and defined themselves. Walsham declares that, ‘These developments must be seen less as a consequence of intrinsic features of these religions than of the energy generated by the clashes, confrontations and dialogues to which they gave rise’ (p. 268). Walsham’s chapter is a striking finale to a marvellous collection of essays.