Books on the Reformation

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Would anyone be able recommend some good books on the history of the Reformation? I would prefer something that is relatively easy for the average layperson to read, that is unbiased, or at least not written from a Protestant point of view. Thanks! 😃
 
cowgirl89 said:
Would anyone be able recommend some good books on the history of the Reformation? I would prefer something that is relatively easy for the average layperson to read, that is unbiased, or at least not written from a Protestant point of view. Thanks! 😃
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From the way you pose the question, I’d guess you would appreciate Belloc’s CHARACTERS OF THE REFORMATION and HOW THE REFORMATION HAPPENED. They have the same faults much of Belloc’s histories have; they are not balanced (and I say that as one who loves, and has collected Belloc, for around 45 years).

Might be what you’re looking for, though. Definitely not from a protestant point of view.

GKC
 
cowgirl89 said:
Would anyone be able recommend some good books on the history of the Reformation? I would prefer something that is relatively easy for the average layperson to read, that is unbiased, or at least not written from a Protestant point of view. Thanks! 😃
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Diarmaid MacCulloch’s *The Reformation: A History *is pretty good. No one is unbiased–MacCulloch is an ex-Anglican whose sympathies on the whole lie with Anglicanism. He’s certainly not biased in favor of the Lutheran/Reformed wings of the Reformation. Catholics will find some things that they think he doesn’t quite get right.

Euan Cameron’s *The European Reformation *is also good, but more clearly Protestant in orientation (though in my opinion fair).

Among Catholic authors, Henri Daniel-Rops wrote about church history in general and the Reformation in particular. He was a literary scholar rather than a church historian, and I’m not deeply familiar with his work, but on the whole I hear good things about it. John Bossy’s *Christianity in the West 1400-1700 *is a good, thought-provoking survey of what he would see as general themes in late medieval Western Christianity and the changes wrought by the Reformation. Eamon Duffy’s *The Stripping of the Altars *focuses on the English Reformation and is quite polemical, but gives a wonderful account of the world of late medieval Catholicism destroyed by the Reformation. (More than 100 years ago, Johannes Janssen did something similar for Germany, but his work is very long.) Louis Bouyer’s *The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism *is a theological critique of Protestantism that includes what I consider a more or less fair and reasonable (though of course biased in favor of Catholicism) account of the major ideas of the Reformation.

Edwin
 
cowgirl89 said:
are they accurate though?
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If you’re talking about Belloc, I would say definitely not. He is extremely biased, though a brilliant and entertaining writer. You can get similar critiques from more scholarly writers (Bossy and Duffy, for instance).

Another Catholic scholar I didn’t mention is Brad Gregory. His *Salvation at Stake *is a very fair-minded survey of martyrdom in the Reformation era. I didn’t know he was Catholic just from reading the book. The book got a lot of criticisms from the scholarly community, mostly because he took some swipes at scholars who think they can understand sixteenth-century people better than those folks understood themselves.

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
If you’re talking about Belloc, I would say definitely not. He is extremely biased, though a brilliant and entertaining writer. You can get similar critiques from more scholarly writers (Bossy and Duffy, for instance).
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Belloc may be biased and accurate at the same time. He got a lot of supporting facts wrong, but the conclusions mostly right.
 
spoiltvictorian said:
Belloc may be biased and accurate at the same time. He got a lot of supporting facts wrong, but the conclusions mostly right.
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Some say yes, some no.

I love reading him. But I don’t consider his views exhaustive or definitive.

GKC
 
spoiltvictorian said:
amazon.com/Heresies-Harold-O-J-Brown/dp/1565638670/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227029783&sr=1-3

Harold O.J. Brown’s “Heresies.”

-Recommended by discerning Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants.
-Brown likes the Chesterbelloc and people who like the Chesterbelloc like Brown.

He was a wise, brilliant man full of Christian charity, and God rest his soul. 🙂
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I liked Brown, and did not know he was deceased. I well recall, when his PROTEST OF A TROUBLED PROTESTANT first came out, how he was described as a “young” minister.

GKC
 
An audio program which Ken Hensley covers the causes of the Protestant reformation in:
John Calvin - Inside the Protestant mind.
Though this CD focuses mainly on John Calvin, Ken gives a very good explanation of why the reformation happened.

Ken Hensley an ex-Baptist minister who converted to the Catholic church.
Ken gives what I think is an open honest explanation of the many different reasons why it happened the way it did.

In this CD, Ken doesn’t really attack John Calvin the way he seemed to in his Luther CD. He just explains why the evangelicals believe the way they do.
 
Long series but the 5 (soon to be 6) volumes of Dr. Warren Carroll’s History of Christendom covers the whole enchilada, including the Reformation.
 
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