This is a book review of The Reformation (The Pelican History of the Church vol. 3) by Owen Chadwick, published by Pelican Books in 1964 (revised 1972). This book is the third part of six of The Pelican History of the Church series.
This book summarises the key events in church history between 1500 and 1650, with a key emphasis on the Reformation, the theological, spiritual and political movement which changed the landscape of Europe. Chadwick’s summary of this period can be simply stated as follows: it reformed the church’s abuse of money, it encouraged a more reverent attitude towards God and it divided Western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant. Through this, the modern nation-state started to take shape, with kings and princes balancing the never-before-seen diversity of religion within their borders.
The key theological, spiritual and political aspects of the Reformation may be summarised in the below diagram:
This diagram is simply my opinion of key themes as described in the book and is by no means a comprehensive (or even accurate!) account of the period.
The structure of the book is organised by theme: firstly the theological implications of Luther and Calvin, followed by various political ramifications as the reformation spread across Germany and the Continent, and across the English Channel. There were some groups who disagreed with the spiritual aspect, while agreeing with the key doctrines, summarised by “justification by faith”. These I have labelled in the diagram above as “derivatives” of the Reformation. The second part of the book concentrates on the Counter-Reformation and the activities of the Jesuits and Catholic scholars to reform the Catholic Church from within. There is a brief discussion on missions and the Orthodox Church, and the book concludes with some description the key changes to Church worship compared to the Middle Ages.
This structure has some advantages: chiefly, it allows the progression of a narrative, following the key developments of theology and their implications. However, the disadvantage is that, inevitably some political events are repeated as they do not clearly belong in either the Reformation or Counter-Reformation stream of thought. The chronology is also hard to follow, in places.
The book also presupposes a great deal of knowledge of Church worship — it is envisaged that each book in the series be read in sequence, and so some medieval church terminology is glossed over. The geography of Europe is also far from clear to an Australian reader of the 21st century. Thus, various reader aids, such as detailed maps, a glossary of key terms and a timeline would have helped understanding.
The writing style of this book is quite erudite — the narrative is thin and Chadwick makes a great deal of effort to concisely provide an overview of all key characters and the implications of their decisions. This style of writing is not uncommon among general history works, especially those published by Pelican, but inevitably requires greater concentration to understand each character and its relationship to the (political) events of the time. The conclusion was also disappointing — one would have expected a tying together of the key themes and its relevance to the present day, but instead one receives a listing of key changes in Church worship and a somewhat philosophical link to the Age of Reason, the next volume in the series. This writing style would be more suited to an encyclopaedia entry, rather than a work of general history.
Overall, the book is useful and elucidates the complex relationship between the theological, spiritual and political events of the Reformation. It could also function as an adequate reference work. However, as the writing could have been more engaging, this book deserves a 3.5/5.
