THE REFORMATION --- A HISTORY by MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Viking, 2004

    PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pvii-viii)

      The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation it provoked are one of the great discontinuities in European and world history. The dramatic changes that began when Martin Luther proclaimed his 95 theses in Wittenberg in 1517 were of a different order to anything that had gone before.

      In the following 200 years, the Christian world broke apart and the nature not just of religion but also of politics, thought, society, and culture all changed utterly. The book describes the changing late medieval world into which Luther, Calvin and the other social reformers erupted. This is a new understanding of the often confusing origins of the exceptionally violent disagreements that divided men and women of the 16th and 17th centuries. They were prepared to kill and be killed for their disagreements!

      The book examines the personalities of the leading reformers and their opponents and the mix of ideas, prejudices and accidents that shaped the various versions of Protestantism and Catholicism. In addition, to popes, scholars, reformers, religious battles, and secular powers, the book is about the impact of the Reformation on ordinary people. It is about sex and love, and the changing sense of being a man or woman, and on beliefs about life after death, and punishment in this earthly life, and beliefs in witches and ghosts.

      The book shows the power of ideas to both ruin lives or rebuild them, to bring hope, fear, hatred, anger, or joy to common people as well as the political elite.

    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS (pxiii-xvi)

    INTRODUCTION (pxviii-xxiv)

    PART 1 --- A COMMON CULTURE (p1-303)

      1) The old church --- 1490-1517 (p1-50)

      2) Hopes and fears --- 1490-1517 (p51-102)

      3) New Heaven: New Earth --- 1517-1524 (p103-153)

      4) Wooing the magistrate --- 1524-1540 (p154-206)

      5) Reunion deferred: Catholic and Protestant --- 1530-1560 (p207-261)

      6) Reunion scorned --- 1547-1570 (p262-303)

    PART 2--- EUROPE DIVIDED --- 1570-1619 (p305-527)

      7) The new Europe defined --- 1570-1619 (p307-336)

      8) The north --- Protestant heartlands (p337-387)

      9) The south --- Catholic heartlands (p388-427)

      10) Central Europe --- religion contested (p428-468)

      11) Decision and destruction --- 1618-1648 (p469-484)

      12) Coda: a British legacy --- 1600-1700 (p485-527)

    PART 3--- PATTERNS OF LIFE (p529-684)

      13) Changing times (p531-556)

      14) Death, life, and discipline (p557-586)

      15) Love and sex --- staying the same (p587-607)

      16) Love and sex --- moving on (p608-644)

      17) Outcomes (p645-683)

        [1] Wars of Reformation (p646-650)

        [2] Tolerating difference (p651-656)

        [3] Crosscurrents --- Humanism and Natural Philosophy (p656-664)

        [4] Crosscurrents --- Judaism and doubts (p664-673)

        [5] The Enlightenment and beyond (p674-683)

    APPENDIX OF TEXTS --- Creeds, Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, and Hail Mary (p685-688)

    NOTES (p689-744)

    FURTHER READING (p745-750)

    INDEX (p751-792)

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