Without time or resources for personal research, I find this work, and the introduction to Methodism, an excellent resource. Well written the author distills the historical records and narratives not only shaping the contures of The Reformation, the brutal honesty of the darker side destroys romantic myths and idealizations one may hold as a result of a superficial reading and understanding of the event that not only proved a watershed in theological positions but in the shaping of political and cultural beliefs and values. I highly recommend this book. So much valuable information in a condensed and inexpensive work.

Decent introduction to a complicated subject.

Peter Marshall did an excellent job of making the Reformation (actually, Reformations) understandable. Although I am still unclear on some of the theological and philosophical divides between Catholicism and Protestantism and their ideological offshoots, I have a much better grasp of the subject matter thanks to Marshall's clear writing.

In about 130 pages, Marshall explores the philosophical, cultural, and political effects of the religious movements collectively known as the Reformation. There is a valuable chronology at the back of the book that will make this a go-to reference material even after you've read the text. As with the other Very Short Introductions in the Oxford series, this has fairly short chapters that are broken down into several headings, which makes the book easy to read and easy to go back and find passages later.

For a potentially hot topic, the text seemed well balanced and did not appear to favor either religious camp, so there was a distinct lack of "us-versus-them" mentality in the text -- as it should be for an academic work.

Marshall also mentioned Max Weber and his "Protestant work ethic," in which Weber argued that it was the Protestant work ethic which drove Protestant nations to develop faster and more thoroughly than Catholic nations with similar resources at their disposal. Marshall offered some brief, but insightful, reasons why Weber may have been way off base in his conclusions, arguing cogently that it was a combination of factors that dictated how nations developed rather than a single philosophical difference.

I would recommend this as a first read on the Reformation, although there may be some names that person new to the subject would still need to look up. But these Very Short Introductions aren't "Dummies" books; despite the word "introduction" in the subtitle, there is a tacit assumption that you have some background in history or at least have heard some of the names mentioned in the text. This is not an insurmountable obstacle to reading the book, though.

If you want to know when, where, and how modern society started, this book gives an excellent overview and central themes that continue to this day. You’ll be able to recognize the different reformations that you are aligned with, and the roots of the secularizations springing from the sacred’s reformation.

Having read a truly excellent Very Short Introduction on St. Paul, I had high hopes for this offering on the Reformation(s). Unfortunately, there is a perceptible anti-Protestantism bias in the writing which overall is distractingly cynical. A more objective and less personal treatment would have increased my confidence in the information and been more edifying.

Grappling with the meaning of Mendelssohn's "Reformation" Symphony, and the composer's use of the well known Lutheran hymn "Ein Feste Burg," in his powerful final movement, I came upon Peter Marshall's compact, enlightening book on the Reformation published in 2009 by Oxford University. Lucid, thoughtful, wide ranging, at times even wry, this is a modern, even-handed dissection of the sixteenth century beginnings of the Protestant faith which explains the Catholic counter reformation as well. Marshall is a superb writer - well equipped for these short succinct history treatises - who packs his tight sentences with meaning, never wandering on incidentals while moving through his points effortlessly. He ends, eschewing overstatement, with this compelling thought: the Reformation advanced the meaning and purpose of human existence, enhanced the mutual obligations of people in a society and exposed "the balance of conscience and political obedience" in a rational society. I look forward to reading more of these short histories by the Oxford University Press.

This is the third book I have read in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series. And I continue to be impressed. I have done some reading on the reformation and taken two different History of Christian classes that included the reformation. But even at only 135 pages of content, this book was able to add to knowledge of the Reformation. The plan of this book is to debunk some of the myths while showing how much the different sides of the reformation really agreed. Here is the thesis statement from the book:

"Myths are not lies, but symbolically powerful articulations of sensed realities. It is probably safer to believe that all the myths about the Reformation are true, rather than that none of them are. The goal of producing a totally unmythologized account of the Reformation may be an unachievable, or even an undesirable, one. Nonetheless, this little book - drawing on the best, not always impartial, modern scholarship - will attempt to explain what sort of phenomenon the Reformation was, to assess its impact across religious, political, social, and cultural areas of life, and the character of its legacy to the modern world."

What I most appreciated was the focus on the areas of agreement theologically. Without glossing over areas of disagreement, the areas of disagreement were often exemplified by a "mentality widespread in the Reformation era, and still with us in various secular and religious guises: a desire to shore up the identity of the majority group by stereotyping and dehumanizing an excluded minority."

The book starts with a brief history of the Reformation. Marshall takes a broad view of what the Reformation consisted of, so it looks at Luther to the mid 1700 when the main religious wars of Europe were concluding. In many ways, a brief overview history like this can be better than the detailed history that can occasionally lose the forest for the trees.

The rest of the book spends times looking at how the Reformation affected the understanding of Salvation, the politics of Europe, the formation of society and culture, the way that Christianity look at others outside of Christianity and the legacy of the Reformation.

For me, the two most interesting parts were the view of salvation and culture. Marshall starts with discussion of salvation with this quote:

"The Christian metanarrative hinges on two fixed points of reference. Humanity lost the friendship of God through an act of primordial rebellion: the `Fall' of Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world, an `original sin' that marked and stained the natures of their descendants henceforth. But God himself took the initiative in restoring that friendship, assuming a human identity in Christ, who, in an ultimate act of love and sacrifice, suffered death on the cross and `atoned' for Adam's sin. The door to Salvation, shut in the Garden of Eden, was potentially open once more. This much was agreed by all mainstream thinkers of the Reformation era. Contention raged over how individual Christians might actually proceed through that door, the role of the Church in preparing them to do so, and whether the door was open for all or just for a few."

It may not be clear in that quote, but Marshall includes the Catholic theologians of the era as agreeing and has a good section on the Council of Trent and why in most areas Catholics and Protestants agreed about much of their theology.

It is interesting to me that culture was one of the areas that was more likely to have real disagreements. Principally this is because of different understandings of the role of art. I knew that Luther wrote a lot of hymns and encouraged congregational singing. But I did not know that was an innovation. Prior to Luther, there was choral singing, but it was not in the church. Luther moved choral singing into the church as part of worship. But many other of the arts did not have a similar advantage. Visual arts were mostly banned from Protestant churches because of a difference of opinion about the first commandment. (Protestants tend to view "you shall make no graven images" as the second commandment. While Catholics tend to view it as a modifier on the first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me".) So early Protestants (and some today) view any artistic representation of not only God, but any visual art as suspect because it is creating an image. This is not that much unlike the difference between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic church 800 years earlier, with the Roman Catholics on the opposite side.

On the whole, this was a very good introduction to the Reformation and I think did a good job of minimizing some of the mythology of the protestant world that is still perpetuated and still is detrimental toward proper understanding of Catholics as part of the universal body of Christ.

This book can be useful as an introduction to deeper Reformation study, or as a summary for someone with casual interest. It contains brief chapters summarising the various 'reformations' that sparked across Europe, differing ideas about salvation, politics, society, culture and relations to other contemporary religions.

Short an sufficient.

Concise, entertainingly written, and well-balanced! An excellent introduction which debunks many popular views on this turbulent period without being unnecessarily revisionist.

This book by Peter Marshall, in the excellent OUP Short Introduction series, is superb. The Reformation can be a broad, diffuse and often contentious subject and Marshall handles its various elements very clearly and fairly. He takes no particular partisan stance and this will make the book equally acceptable to Protestant and Catholic alike. He accepts that although dating the start of the Reformation is fairly easy with Luther and a few notable predecessors, deciding when it ended is more of an issue. Marshall takes us through the causes and development of the Reformation's various stages from the church-reforming 'blunt instrument' of Luther to the 'sniper-rifle' precision theology of Calvin. He explains the disagreements between Lutherans and Calvinists and how they each influenced the history of Europe in different ways, not least in the Catholic Counter-Reformation that they unleashed. He traces the impact of the reformed churches and their interactions with the state, and summarises this well at the end. Marshall also examines specific themes relating to the Reformation and its world-view on things: art, theatre, music, witchcraft and others. He makes the link between how what was produced by the Reformation interlinked with the development of the Enlightenment, a more secularly driven movement, and his series of paradoxes at the end of the book may bring a wry smile too. Not all movements achieve quite what they set out to. This is a brilliant survey of the Reformation and one of the very best of the Short Introduction series.

A very thorough but succinct review of the events leading up to and surrounding the reformation, with a nod to the societal and political factors surrounding the events of the reformation. The book does presuppose some basic awareness of historical and geographic facts, but is relatively easy to read and understand. A very nice introduction.

The author provides a thorough analysis of the Reformation considering the theological, political and social aspects. I highly recommend the book to interested readers on the topic.