The Reformation

Summary

The Reformation, published in 1957, is the sixth volume of Will Durant's Story of Civilization, subtitled A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564. It overlaps in time with The Renaissance but leaves Italy for the rest of Europe, and its subject is the breakup of Latin Christendom into rival churches and confessional states. Durant begins with the condition of the Church in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the Avignon papacy, the Great Schism with two and then three claimants to the papal throne, the conciliar movement that tried to reform the Church through general councils, and the protests of John Wyclif in England and Jan Hus in Bohemia, whose burning at the Council of Constance in 1415 foreshadowed later conflicts. He surveys the nations on the eve of revolt, including England, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, along with the northern humanists Colet, More and above all Erasmus, whose satire and Greek New Testament prepared minds for change. The central chapters belong to Martin Luther: the indulgence controversy and the Ninety-five Theses of 1517, the debate at Leipzig, the great treatises of 1520, the stand at Worms in 1521, the translation of the New Testament at the Wartburg, the Peasants' War of 1525 and Luther's harsh response to it, his marriage, and his quarrel with Erasmus over free will. Durant follows the Swiss reform of Zwingli, the Anabaptists and their catastrophe at Münster, Calvin's Institutes and his Geneva, and the burning of Servetus in 1553. England's break with Rome is told through Henry VIII, the death of Thomas More, the Protestant reign of Edward VI and the Catholic restoration under Mary. The volume also turns east to the Ottoman Empire under Suleiman, whose armies reached Vienna in 1529, and gives space to the Jews of Europe. Its final sections treat the Catholic response through Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits, the Roman reform under Paul III, and the opening of the Council of Trent, and survey the science of the period, including Copernicus, Vesalius and Paracelsus, ending with Calvin's death in 1564. Durant, raised Catholic and by then a skeptic, aims at fairness to both sides. He gives large weight to economic, national and political causes, such as German resentment of papal taxation and princes' appetite for church lands, while recognizing the sincerity of religious conviction among reformers, martyrs and Catholic renewers alike. He admires Erasmus's preference for reasoned reform and regrets the intolerance practiced by every party. Christian readers will find the theological substance of justification, Scripture and the sacraments summarized more briefly than its political consequences, so the book serves best as a narrative frame for reading Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, More and the confessions in their own words.

Plot or Argument

• A Church divided before the revolt

  Durant describes the Avignon popes, the Great Schism of 1378-1417, the councils of Constance and Basel, and the reforming heresies of Wyclif's Lollards and Hus's Bohemian followers as the prehistory of the sixteenth-century break.

• Nations and humanists on the eve

  Surveys of England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries and Germany around 1500 set out the economic and political conditions of each, while Erasmus, Colet and More represent a learned, satirical call for reform from within the Church.

• Luther and the German revolt

  From the indulgence preaching of Tetzel to the Diet of Worms, the Wartburg, the Peasants' War, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and Luther's last years, Durant narrates the German Reformation as a fusion of religious conviction, princely politics and popular grievance.

• Zwingli, the radicals and Calvin's Geneva

  The Swiss Reformation, the Anabaptist movement and the Münster kingdom of 1534-35, and Calvin's work as theologian and organizer in Geneva, including the trial and execution of Servetus, show the reform dividing into rival forms.

• England's royal Reformation

  Henry VIII's annulment crisis, the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, the executions of More and Fisher, and the religious swings under Edward VI and Mary illustrate a reformation directed from the throne.

• Beyond Christendom: Turks and Jews

  Durant turns to the Ottoman advance under Suleiman the Magnificent, which pressed on the Habsburgs throughout the German conflict, and to the life and persecution of Jewish communities in the period.

• Catholic renewal and the new science

  Loyola's conversion and the founding of the Society of Jesus, the reforming popes and the early sessions of Trent show the Catholic response, while chapters on Copernicus, Vesalius, Paracelsus and other scientists mark intellectual change beyond the religious quarrel.

Characters

• Will Durant, author and narrator-historian

  Lapsed Catholic and humanist skeptic who presents himself as a mediator between Catholic and Protestant readings of the period.

• John Wyclif, Oxford theologian (died 1384)

  Critic of papal authority and clerical wealth whose followers produced an English Bible; the starting point of the subtitle.

• Jan Hus, Bohemian preacher

  Reformer burned at the Council of Constance in 1415 despite a safe-conduct, a precedent Luther's contemporaries remembered.

• Desiderius Erasmus, humanist scholar

  Editor of the Greek New Testament and satirist of clerical abuses whom Durant admires as the voice of moderate reform.

• Martin Luther, Augustinian friar and reformer

  Central figure of the book, portrayed with his courage, earthy eloquence, inner struggles and vehement polemics.

• Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain

  Ruler at Worms who tried for decades to restore religious unity while fighting France and the Turks.

• Huldrych Zwingli, Zurich reformer

  Swiss leader who differed with Luther over the Lord's Supper and died in battle at Kappel in 1531.

• Henry VIII, king of England (1509-1547)

  Monarch whose marriage crisis led to the English break with Rome.

• Thomas More, humanist, Lord Chancellor and martyr

  Author of Utopia, executed in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy over the Church.

• John Calvin, theologian and pastor of Geneva

  Author of the Institutes whose discipline in Geneva and role in the Servetus case Durant examines closely; his death in 1564 ends the volume.

• Michael Servetus, Spanish physician and anti-Trinitarian writer

  Burned in Geneva in 1553; his book Christianismi Restitutio also contains an early description of the pulmonary circulation.

• Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus

  Former soldier whose conversion and Spiritual Exercises lead the Catholic renewal.

• Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman sultan (1520-1566)

  Conqueror of Hungary whose siege of Vienna in 1529 threatened Christian Europe during its internal quarrel.

Lessons

• Conscience before the emperor

  Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms in 1521, where he refused to recant unless convinced by Scripture and plain reason, is the dramatic center of the volume. Durant presents it as both a religious act and a political event made possible by the protection of Frederick the Wise. Students can weigh what it cost Luther to stand there and what made his stand survivable when Hus's had not been.

  • What did Luther say were the only grounds on which he would recant?
  • Why did Luther survive Worms when Hus did not survive Constance a century earlier, according to Durant?
  • Is a conscience bound by Scripture the same thing as a private opinion? How would Luther answer?

• Faith, money and princes

  Durant gives a great deal of weight to non-theological causes: the flow of German money to Rome, the sale of indulgences, princes' desire for church property and independence from the emperor, and the printing press. Students should examine his evidence and ask whether a full account must also take seriously the theological questions about grace, justification and authority that the reformers themselves put first.

  • List the economic and political causes of the Reformation that Durant names. Which seem strongest?
  • Where in the book does Durant explain what Luther actually taught about justification by faith?
  • Can a historian explain a religious movement fully without judging whether its claims were true?

• Erasmus, Luther and the middle way

  Durant clearly sympathizes with Erasmus, who mocked abuses and edited the Greek New Testament but would not break with Rome and debated Luther on free will. Their exchange of 1524-25 lets students compare two Christian humanists' understanding of grace, reform and peace, and ask whether moderation in that crisis was wisdom or evasion.

  • What did Erasmus and Luther disagree about in their debate on the will?
  • Why did Erasmus refuse to join the Reformation even while criticizing the Church?
  • Does Durant's admiration for Erasmus shape how he judges Luther?

• Every party's persecutions

  The volume records burnings, drownings and executions carried out by Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed and Anglican authorities alike: Hus, the Anabaptists, More and Fisher, Servetus, and the Protestants under Mary. Durant laments intolerance in general. Students can study how sixteenth-century Christians justified the punishment of heresy, and how the courage of martyrs on each side bears on their own convictions.

  • What reasons did Calvin and the Genevan council give for executing Servetus?
  • How did Thomas More face death, and what did he refuse to swear?
  • What arguments for or against punishing heresy appear in the book, and which come from the period itself?

Context

Durant published The Reformation in 1957, during a period of renewed Catholic-Protestant conversation in the United States and in the years just before the Second Vatican Council. He had been raised a devout Catholic in New Jersey and had studied for the priesthood before leaving the faith, and he approached the sixteenth century hoping to write something both Catholic and Protestant readers could accept as fair. His interpretation draws on the economic and nationalist explanations favored by mid-century historians and on the large German, English and Catholic scholarship then available.

Composition

Published by Simon & Schuster in 1957 as Volume VI of The Story of Civilization, after The Renaissance (1953). Will Durant is the sole credited author; Ariel Durant was first named co-author on the next volume, The Age of Reason Begins (1961). The book remains in print and was reissued as an ebook in 2011.

Reception

The volume was widely read and has been valued for its breadth, including chapters on the Ottomans, the Jews and science that many Reformation surveys omit. Specialists in Reformation history have noted that its theological discussions are brief and that later research on popular religion, the Catholic reform and the radical reformers has moved beyond it. Readers on each side have found points to dispute in its portraits of Luther, Calvin and the popes, which is in part a sign of its effort at balance.

Comparisons

• Selected Sermons and Reformation Treatises

  Durant summarizes Luther's treatises of 1520 and his preaching; reading Luther directly shows the theological urgency about grace and faith that a political narrative can only partly convey.

• On Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio)

  Erasmus's Diatribe of 1524 opened the debate Durant presents as the parting of humanism and the Reformation; the text shows how cautiously and courteously Erasmus framed his case.

• Institutes of the Christian Religion

  Durant gives a short account of the Institutes before turning to Genevan discipline; the work itself shows the systematic theology behind the church order he describes.

• Utopia

  More's imagined commonwealth, written before the Reformation, includes a measure of religious toleration that students can set beside his later role in prosecuting heretics and his own execution, both narrated by Durant.

• Foxe's Book of Martyrs

  Foxe's martyrology became the Protestant memory of the Marian burnings Durant recounts; comparing the two shows the difference between a partisan witness and a historian seeking balance.

• On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

  Published in 1543, the year of Copernicus's death, the book Durant places among the scientific advances of the age; its preface addressed to Paul III shows the astronomer seeking a churchman's protection.

• On the Fabric of the Human Body (Preface)

  The Fabrica, also of 1543, anchors Durant's account of Renaissance anatomy north and south of the Alps and corrects Galen from dissection.

• The Age of Reason Begins

  The next volume continues from 1558 through the wars of religion, the Thirty Years' War and the scientific revolution, showing what the divisions narrated here became.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening on Avignon and the Schism. Ask how a Church with rival popes could still claim universal authority, and what the councils tried to do about it.
• Hus at Constance. Keep his fate in mind when Luther is summoned to Worms a century later.
• Indulgences. Note exactly what Durant says was being sold, what the Church taught about it, and what Luther objected to.
• The Peasants' War. Watch how Durant judges Luther's response and whether he explains Luther's reasons.
• Martyrs on every side. Keep a list of those executed for religion in the book and by which authority.

Key terms and names

Indulgence

A remission of temporal punishment for sin granted by the Church, whose sale to fund building in Rome provoked Luther's theses.

Conciliarism

The view that a general council of the Church holds authority above the pope, advanced during the Great Schism.

Justification by faith

Luther's teaching that a sinner is declared righteous before God through trust in Christ rather than through works.

Anabaptists

Radical reformers who rejected infant baptism and often the bearing of the sword; persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike.

Act of Supremacy (1534)

The English statute declaring the king supreme head of the Church of England.

Society of Jesus

The religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, central to Catholic education and missions.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Who are the two figures named in the subtitle, and what years does the volume cover?
2. Comprehension What happened at the Diet of Worms in 1521, and where did Luther go afterward?
3. Comprehension Why was Thomas More executed, and under which king?
4. Interpretation How does Durant weigh religious conviction against economic and political interest in explaining why German princes supported Luther?
5. Interpretation Does Durant judge Calvin's role in the death of Servetus by the standards of Calvin's own century or by later ones? Find evidence for your answer.
6. Interpretation Why does Durant include the Ottoman Turks in a history of the Reformation?
7. Big Question When the visible Church is corrupt, what does faithfulness require: staying to reform it, as Erasmus and More chose, or separating, as Luther and Calvin did?

Faith Connections

• Romans 1:16-17 (Scripture)

  Luther later described his discovery of the meaning of the righteousness of God in this passage as the turning point of his life, and it lies at the theological heart of the movement Durant narrates.

• John 17:20-23 (Scripture)

  Christ's prayer that his followers be one is the standard against which the divisions recorded in the book, and the efforts at reconciliation that failed, can be weighed.

• Acts 5:27-32 (Scripture)

  The apostles' reply that they must obey God rather than men was invoked by sixteenth-century Christians of several confessions who faced death for their convictions.

• Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520) (Great Conversation)

  One of the treatises Durant summarizes, it states the reformer's teaching on faith and works in his own words and in a gentler tone than his polemics.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: By 1500 the papacy's loss of prestige through Avignon, the Schism and Renaissance worldliness, the growth of national monarchies, German resentment of Roman taxation, northern humanism and the printing press had prepared Europe for revolt; Luther's protest against indulgences supplied a spark and a theology, and princes, cities and peoples took it up for religious and secular reasons together; the reform then split into Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist and Anglican forms while Rome answered with its own renewal; therefore the Reformation was a religious revolution inseparable from the economic and political transformation of Europe, and its intolerance on all sides was the price of an age that equated unity of faith with the safety of the state.

Rhetorical device: balanced portraiture. Durant presents major figures such as Luther, Calvin, More and the popes by setting their virtues and faults side by side, so that each portrait ends in a weighed judgment rather than a verdict for one party.

Debate: Resolved: Erasmus's refusal to break with Rome was wiser than Luther's separation.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Durant presents both Thomas More and Michael Servetus as men who died for conscience at the hands of Christian authorities. Compare their cases as he tells them, and argue what each man's death teaches about the relation between conscience, truth and the power of the state.

Comparison with On Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio): Read the opening of Erasmus's Diatribe on free will beside Durant's account of the Erasmus-Luther quarrel. Argue whether Durant represents Erasmus's position fairly and what he leaves out of Luther's reply.

Medical Lens

The book contains a distinct scientific strand. Durant's chapters on science in the Reformation era treat Paracelsus's attack on Galenic orthodoxy and his chemical remedies, Vesalius's Fabrica of 1543 and its correction of Galen by dissection, and Servetus, whose theological treatise contains an early European description of the passage of blood through the lungs. Syphilis and recurrent plague appear as conditions of sixteenth-century life. Luther's spiritual trials (Anfechtungen), periods of depression and physical illnesses are discussed in the biographical chapters; modern psychiatric readings of his temperament are interpretations and should not be presented as diagnoses. Luther also wrote on whether Christians may flee the plague (1527), a pastoral text relevant to epidemic ethics; whether Durant mentions it should be checked. All medical claims are Durant's mid-century synthesis.

• Chapters on science and medicine in the Reformation era

  Paracelsus at Basel and his challenge to Galen and Avicenna, chemical medicines, and his wandering career.

  Physicians Doctors Pharmacology Poisons Ancient Medicine
• Same chapters, on anatomy

  Vesalius at Padua, the Fabrica of 1543, and the shift from reading Galen to dissecting the human body.

  Anatomy Dissection Physicians Doctors
• Chapter on Calvin's Geneva and the Servetus case

  Servetus as physician and theologian, and the description of pulmonary circulation in the book for which he was condemned.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying
• Biographical chapters on Luther

  Luther's spiritual terrors in the monastery, his later bouts of depression, and his physical ailments, read by some later writers in psychological terms.

  Melancholia Depression
• Surveys of social life in the European nations

  Plague outbreaks and the spread of syphilis as recurring features of sixteenth-century European life.

  Plague Epidemic Syphilis Venereal

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write an exchange of letters in 1525 between Erasmus and Luther after the Peasants' War, each explaining what the uprising shows about the dangers or necessity of reform.

• Essay

  Durant stresses the economic and political causes of the Reformation. Using Luther's own account of the indulgence controversy, argue whether those causes or the theological dispute better explain the events of 1517-1521.

• Classroom

  Make a map of Europe in 1555 and color each region by its official religion after the Peace of Augsburg, then mark where each martyr or reformer named in Durant's chapters lived and died.

• Fiction

  Narrate the night before Thomas More's execution from the point of view of his daughter Margaret Roper, using the details Durant gives of his imprisonment and trial.

Further Reading

• Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, Roland H. Bainton

  Classic 1950 biography roughly contemporary with Durant's volume.

• The Reformation: A History, Diarmaid MacCulloch

• The Stripping of the Altars, Eamon Duffy

  Study of English popular Catholicism before and during the Reformation.

• Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague, Martin Luther

• Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, Walter Pagel