PENGUIN BOOKS REFORMATION ‘MacCulloch is a wonderful storyteller… he places people at the heart of historical change… astonishingly learned and rich’ Daniel Swift, Spectator ‘Deserves to become the standard history of early modern Europe religion and its legacy, synthesizing and assessing a quarter-century of international scholarship… Like the best of historians, he helps us to understand why we are; and why we need not be so’ Ronald Hutton, Independent ‘We are all children of the Reformation and this magisterial study shows us why in its remarkable scope, both of width and depth… an astonishing delight’ Bernard Green, The Tablet, Books of the Year ‘Once embarked upon it, I found it impossible to put down’ Richard Chartres, Church Times ‘A masterly synthesis… Rich, arresting, frequently provocative and always interesting… This compelling and thought-provoking account is not just for those interested in Reformation history. Anyone interested in what humanity can do with a religious creed should read it’ Lucy Wooding, The Tablet ‘Magisterial… What is particularly impressive about MacCulloch’s book is its freshness, and the skill with which it manoeuvres through sometimes complex and arcane ideas’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year ‘It is difficult to imagine anybody writing a better book about the Reformation. It is even handed, learned and profound. A serious work of scholarship, it is admirably accessible. With great skill, MacCulloch enables his readers to enter an intellectual world that seems light years from our own, and helps us to appreciate the complexity of theological controversies that might seem abstruse but which were at that time a matter of life and death’ Karen Armstrong, Los Angeles Times ‘This is a big, bold book. The author has woven his own research, and the researches of many others, into a synoptic panorama, strong in human interest. MacCulloch’s Reformation looks set to become a book like Carlyle’s French Revolution, necessary and unavoidable to anyone interested; and it is, additionally, the work of an historian’s historian, splendidly accessible’ C. W. Kemp, Prayer Book Society Journal ABOUT THE AUTHOR Diarmaid MacCulloch was brought up in a country rectory in East Anglia and studied in Cambridge, doing his doctoral research with Sir Geoffrey Elton. He is a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, and Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of London. His books include Suffolk and the Tudors (1986; winner of the Royal Historical Society’s Whitfield Prize), The Later Reformation in England 1547–1603 (1990), Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (1995), Thomas Cranmer: A Life (1996; winner of the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize), and Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (2000). DIARMAID MacCULLOCH Reformation EUROPE’S HOUSE DIVIDED 1490–1700 PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London , England WC2R 0RL Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London , England WC2R 0RL www.penguin.com Published in Penguin Books 2004 12 Copyright © Diarmaid MacCulloch, 2003 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser ISBN: 978-0-14-192660-5 For Simon Yarrow with whom I discovered Preston Bissett Contents List of Illustrations and Maps Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction PART I A COMMON CULTURE 1 THE OLD CHURCH, 1490–1517 Seeing Salvation in Church The First Pillar: The Mass and Purgatory Layfolk at Prayer The Second Pillar: Papal Primacy A Pillar Cracks: Politics and the Papacy Church Versus Commonwealth? 2 HOPES AND FEARS, 1490–1517 Shifting Boundaries The Iberian Exception The Iberian Achievement: The Western Church Exported New Possibilities: Paper and Printing Humanism: A New World from Books Putting Renewal into Practice Reform or the Last Days? Erasmus: Hopes Fulfilled, Fears Stilled? 3 NEW HEAVEN: NEW EARTH, 1517–24 The Shadow of Augustine Luther, a Good Monk: 1483–1517 An Accidental Revolution: 1517–21 Whose Revolution? 1521–2 Evangelical Challenges: Zwingli and Radicalism 1521–2 Zürich and Wittenberg 1522–4 The Years of Carnival 1521–4 4 WOOING THE MAGISTRATE, 1524–40 Europe’s Greatest Rebellion: 1524–5 Princely Churches or Christian Separation: 1525–30 The Birth of Protestantisms: 1529–33 Strassburg: New Rome or New Jerusalem? Kings and Reformers, 1530–40 A New King David? Münster and Its Aftermath 5 REUNION DEFERRED: CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT, 1530–60 A Southern Revival Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits Hopes For a Deal: The 1541–2 Crisis A Council at Trent: The First Session, 1545–9 Calvin in Geneva: The Reformed Answer to Münster Calvin and the Eucharist: Protestant Divisions Confirmed Reformed Protestantism: Alternatives to Calvin 1540–60 6 REUNION SCORNED, 1547–70 Crisis For the Habsburgs, 1547–55 1555: An Emperor’s Exhaustion, a Pope’s Obsession A Catholic Recovery: England 1553–8 1558–9: Turning-points for Dynasties The Last Session of the Council of Trent, 1561–3 Protestants in Arms: France and the Low Countries, 1562–70 PART II EUROPE DIVIDED: 1570–1619 7 THE NEW EUROPE DEFINED, 1569–72 Northern and Southern Religion Tridentine Successes The Catholic Defence of Christendom, 1565–71 Militant Northern Protestants, 1569–72 The Massacre of St Bartholomew, 1572 Poland 1569–76: An Alternative Future? Protestantism and Providence 8 THE NORTH: PROTESTANT HEARTLANDS Defining Lutheranism: Towards the Formula of Concord The ‘Second Reformation’ in Germany Baltic Religious Contests: Poland-Lithuania and Scandinavia The Northern Netherlands: Protestant Victory The Northern Netherlands: The Arminian Crisis A Reformed Success: Scotland Elizabethan England: A Reformed Church? Ireland: The Coming of the Counter-Reformation