Published five hundred years after the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, traditionally understood as the birth of Protestantism, this handbook presents an overview of current approaches to and research on the Protestant Reformations. The plural of the title is deliberate and intended to highlight the multiple forms of religious expression that resulted from the division of European Christianity in the early modern period. ‘Reformations’ is understood not as a series of movements that originated with Luther's Ninety-Five Theses but instead as the diverse cultural impact of religious changes that emerged in the later Middle Ages. While other handbooks may focus on theology, politics or social structures, this collection of essays stands out as an introduction to the cultural history of early modern Protestantism.
As Ulinka Rublack points out in her introduction, this volume differs from existing handbooks because of its expanded chronological and geographical scope. Its chapters describe developments from the early fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth century, and they address not only confessional variations within Europe but also the spread of Protestant Christianity to the Americas, Africa and Asia. Rublack also highlights themes common to several of the chapters: the formation of distinct and distinctive Protestant cultures, the spectrum of orthodox and minority positions, the gendered understanding of morality and behaviour, and the varied nature of Protestant spiritual experience and its artistic expressions.
For a work as long as this, an overview of the chapters must suffice as a summary of the Handbook's contents. The volume is divided into six parts. The four chapters of part i, ‘The New Theology’, are concerned not with traditional theological topics but with religious beliefs and experience more generally: questions of evil and grace (Christopher Ocker), spiritual experience (Alec Ryrie), perceptions of time (Robin Barnes) and the problem of political obedience (Glenn Burgess). The first chapter in part ii, ‘Geographies and varieties of the Reformations’, highlights the difficulties of mapping the spread of Protestantism and depicting the reality of religious pluralism (Graeme Murdock). The chapters that follow are somewhat more traditional in their accounts of the German Lutheran (Thomas Kaufman), Swiss (Randolph Head), Reformed (Mack Holt), British (Felicity Heal) and Radical (C. Scott Dixon) Reformations, but they focus on the emergence of confessional cultures rather than on the reformers usually associated with these movements. There are also chapters on the Bohemian Reformations (Howard Louthan), the relation of Protestantism to Catholicism (Philip Soergel) and to non-Christian religions (Andrew Gow and Jeremy Fradkin), and the development of a more comprehensive vision of universal reformation advocated by individuals and groups who are marginalised in standard accounts (Howard Hotson). The chapters on Pietism (Ulrike Gleixner) and Protestantism outside Europe (Mark Häberlein) in this section demonstrate most clearly the inclusion of long-term and global developments. Part iii, ‘Communicating the Reformations’, considers the role of print (Andrew Pettegree), the spoken, visual and ritualised word (Helmut Puff), the reformation of liturgies (Susan Karant-Nunn) and the significance of epistolary exchanges (Mark Greengrass). Part iv looks at ‘Sites, Institutions and Societies’, with chapters on university scholars (Michael Heyd) and on education (Charlotte Methuen) more generally, legal courts (Joel Harrington), rural society (Beat Kümin), civic religions (Guido Marnef) and European nobilities (Ronald Asch). Part v, ‘Identities and Cultural Meanings of the Reformation’, begins with an essay emphasising the role of cultural history in creating a new narrative of the Reformations (Craig Koslofsky). The remaining chapters discuss visual and material culture (Bridget Heal), music (Christopher Boyd Brown), views of the body (Herman Roodenburg) and of sexual difference (Kathleen Crowther), the natural and the supernatural (Ute Lotz-Heumann), commerce and consumption (Christine Johnson) and natural philosophy (Alisha Rankin). The two chapters in the final section, ‘Assessing the Reformations’, compare the reformation of early modern European Christianity with contemporaneous reform movements in other religious traditions around the globe (Merry Wiesner-Hanks) and consider how the Reformation has been commemorated in the past as a counterpoint to discussions of how it should be observed in 2017 (Bruce Gordon).
Reflecting remarkable editorial discipline, the chapters are all about twenty pages long, and each provides a short bibliography of works in English for further reading. Such short chapters cannot devote much space to individuals, events or ideas but instead highlight general features. Although there is a conscious effort to cover all of Europe, the majority of contributors work on either German or British history, and those areas receive the greatest attention. A recurring theme is whether the Reformation should be linked with the development of ‘modernity’, whether this is seen positively or negatively. The authors acknowledge gradual change over time, but the volume as a whole presents a relatively static picture of early modern Protestant cultures. The dominant Protestant Churches in Europe – Lutheran, Reformed/Calvinist and Anglican – receive the most attention, but they are not presented as normative, and both the diversity within these Churches and the existence and impact of minority forms of Protestantism are addressed.
The Handbook of the Protestant Reformations documents the contribution of cultural history to the field of Reformation Studies. It will be most useful to graduate students and scholars wanting to familiarise themselves with recent research trends, but it offers all readers a broader way of thinking about the impact of religious change in the early modern period.
