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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Same chapters, on anatomy

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

• 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.

• 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.

• Surveys of social life in the European nations

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