The age of the Reformation

Abstract

The concept of the Reformation as a significant and selfcontained period, with characteristics and central events and even perhaps a particular ethos of its own, has had a long life as such historical categories go. Even those who disagree with the traditional interpretation of the early sixteenth century have commonly concentrated their attack on the notion that it marks the beginning of modern times. Some historians of thought trace the middle ages right through the sixteenth century and see nothing novel in yet another controversy within the church; they would put their marker at a point where predominantly religious thinking is replaced by secular (scientific) attitudes of mind. Authors of such reappraisals do not deny the special character of the years 1520–60 looked at by themselves, but others – partisans of either Catholicism or Protestantism – are willing to do even that. If one is prepared to treat the Reformation as a temporary aberration (a chapter which even after 400 years might still be closed) or as a mere return to the true way – analyses which, though historically invalid, may be denominationally necessary – one will rob the period of much of its cohesion by doubting its spiritual and intellectual content. It is also possible to argue that the Counter-Reformation and the religious wars which extended into the next century are properly part of the same story. But historians, so ready as a rule to revise the periods into which for convenience sake they divide the subject-matter of their study, have on the whole allowed the ‘age of the Reformation’ to survive.

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