Since its first appearance in 1991, The European Reformation has offered a clear, integrated, and coherent analysis and explanation of how Christianity in Western and Central Europe from Iceland to Hungary, from the Baltic to the Pyrenees splintered into separate Protestant and Catholic identities and movements. Catholic Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages was not at all a uniformly 'decadent' or corrupt institution: it showed clear signs of cultural vigour and inventiveness. However, it was vulnerable to a particular kind of criticism, if ever its claims to mediate the grace of God to believers were challenged. Martin Luther proposed a radically new insight into how God forgives human sin. In this new theological vision, rituals did not 'purify' people; priests did not need to be set apart from the ordinary community; the church needed no longer to be an international body. For a critical 'Reformation moment', this idea caught fire in the spiritual, political, and community life of much of Europe. Lay people seized hold of the instruments of spiritual authority, and transformed religion into something simpler, more local, more rooted in their own community. So were born the many cultures, liturgies, musical traditions and prayer lives of the countries of Protestant Europe. This new edition embraces and responds to developments in scholarship over the past twenty years. Substantially re-written and updated, with both a thorough revision of the text and fully updated references and bibliography, it nevertheless preserves the distinctive features of the original, including its clearly thought-out integration of theological ideas and political cultures, helping to bridge the gap between theological and social history, and the use of helpful charts and tables that made the original so easy to use. Review from other book by this author: 'Now the standard introduction to the Reformation in Germany ' --History Review 'If you have been looking for a serious textbook to assign in your Reformation course, look no further: Euan Cameron's The European Reformation should be the text of choice for a long time to come. Broadly conceived while filled with vivid detail ... guided by a personal view, bracingly written - there's hardly a dull sentence in over 400 pages ... a superb achievement. Only a leisurely reading will do justice to the book's many strengths ... those readers who have learned to relish the subtlety and complexity of historical events will find much to enjoy and, of course, a great deal to learn in Cameron's presentation. ' --Gerald Strauss, Indiana University, German History, Vol. 10, 1992 'To call Dr Cameron's new book a tour de force would amount to a serious understatement. The work has involved a massive marshalling of recent scholarship in all fields of Reformation history. A masterly survey of princely and aristocratic Reformations from the German homeland through Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, England, Scotland and France ... with a sensitive study of the motivations of the powerful ' --Michael Mullett, University of Lancaster, History, Oct '92 'A new standard has been set with this one-volume survey of the Protestant Reformation, which should drive all others from the field. Cameron traces the movement from its late-medieval roots through the end of the sixteenth century with elegance, understanding, and a particularly impressive gift for lucid explanation. Perhaps the most significant aspect of this work is its documentation: ninety-odd pages of notes make the volume an extended historiographical essay in which the reader is guided toward the seminal scholarship on nearly every issue discussed in the text itself. Throughout, Cameron masterfully places the theological and intellectual developments of the sixteenth century within the broader context of social and political events ' --Robert J. Bast, University of Arizona, The Catholic Historical Review, April 1993 A fully revised and updated new edition of this authoritative account of the European Reformation Euan Cameron is Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation Church History, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and has taught previously at the University of Oxford and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of a number of other works on late medieval and early modern religious history, including The Reformation of the Heretics (1984), Waldenses: Rejections of Holy Church in Medieval Europe (2000), and Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion 1250-1750 (2010). He is the editor of Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (1999) and the sixteenth century volume in the Short Oxford History of Europe series (2006).