Module Information

This module gives students the opportunity to study the sixteenth and seventeenth Reformation in a comparative and trans-national way including not only the European, but the North American context as well. It introduces students to the study of religious belief, central to early modern cultures, and therefore draws upon the disciplines of history, theology and religious studies. The course will complement the department’s existing suite of early modern modules, and will be of great interest to students on the medieval and early modern degree scheme, as well as to history undergraduates more generally.

Historians now tend to look at the Reformation as a process rather an event. The idea of Europe’s Long Reformation, stretching from the early sixteenth century until at least the end of the seventeenth, if not beyond, has become increasingly accepted. This module adopts this perspective, and looks at the Protestant and Catholic Reformations throughout Europe, and in North America. The module, therefore, deals with a series of inter-related questions and themes. It looks at the magisterial reformers in some detail, and examines the different ‘reformations’ which they advocated. It then looks at how those different ‘reformations’ became entwined with larger dynastic and political concerns throughout Europe. Adopting a series of case studies, varying both chronologically and geographically, the module tries to do justice to the nature and variety of Protestant belief and spirituality, and looks at what it actually meant in real terms to be a Protestant in this period. The Reformation revolutionized not only theology and worship, but also popular belief, political engagements and domestic relationship. The module also examines some of the debates about the relationship between the Reformation and the emergence of modernity, with a particular focus on, individualism, democracy, capitalism and even secularization.