The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation - Tapa dura

This is a fine book, beautifully produced, providing an easily accessible distillation of some of the best recent scholarship of the Reformation. A work of this kind is a vital resource for anyone concerned to understand what ideas, events and convictions compelled the sea changes in Christianity that took place in the sixteenth century, and, no less important, to understand the repercussions of these changes which are still felt today. (Anne Dillon, Times Literary Supplement)

This short volume does a magnificent job in providing a birds eye view of the Protestant Reformation, including appropriate maps. and illustrations that grip the historical imagination. (Mark Greengrass, University of Sheffield, Huguenot Society Journal)

...a scintillating collection of essays that challenges conventional views of the Reformation (Tablet, Lucy Wooding)

This book does a fine job of unfolding the intricately decorated and richly textured fabric of this extraordinary era. (Tablet, Lucy Wooding)

expert essays (Theology, Diarmaird MacCulloch)

an outstanding work of church history (Church of England Newspaper)

Splendid book (Catholic Herald)

Compelling collection...Brilliantly assembled by Peter Marshall (Literary Review Paul Lay)

it bears comparison with the very best studies and compendia... a a hearty 'bravo' is in order (Herald, Jonathan Wright)

Wonderful... It's a huge achievement by Marshall, and by OUP, that cleverly gets the ball rolling head of the 500th anniversary of Luther's posting of his Ninety-five Theses (Oxford Today)

The Reformation was a seismic event in history, whose consequences are still working themselves out in Europe and across the world. The protests against the marketing of indulgences staged by the German monk Martin Luther in 1517 belonged to a long-standing pattern of calls for internal reform and renewal in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany and then Europe as a whole in furious arguments about how God's will was to be discerned, and how humans were to be 'saved'.

However, these debates did not remain confined to a narrow sphere of theology. They came to reshape politics and international relations; social, cultural, and artistic developments; relations between the sexes; and the patterns and performances of everyday life. They were also the stimulus for Christianity's transformation into a truly global religion, as agents of the Roman Catholic Church sought to compensate for losses in Europe with new conversions in Asia and the Americas.

Covering both Protestant and Catholic reform movements, in Europe and across the wider world, this beautifully illustrated volume tells the story of the Reformation from its immediate, explosive beginnings, through to its profound longer-term consequences and legacy for the modern world. The story is not one of an inevitable triumph of liberty over oppression, enlightenment over ignorance. Rather, it tells how a multitude of rival groups and individuals, with or without the support of political power, strove after visions of 'reform'. And how, in spite of themselves, they laid the foundations for the plural and conflicted world we now inhabit.