Book Review: The Reformation by Will Durant

The Reformation by Will Durant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Reformation was the outgrowth of and the downfall of the humanism of the Renaissance, together both movements ended the Middle Ages while dividing Europe civilization in the process. The Reformation is the sixth volume of Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization as he explores how the rest of Europe outside of Italy transitioned from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era as Christendom divided and as Europeans expanded their footprint across the world.

This volume is unique in Durant’s series as it was originally supposed to be combined with The Renaissance but given the length and depth of the research would have resulted almost twice the size of the longest book in the series. This volume is a continuation of The Age of Faith outside of Italy as well as paralleling the events through the end of the Council of Trent. After setting the stage for Luther’s protest in the first third of the book, Durant then turned to the period from Luther’s thesis to the death of John Calvin in which northern Christianity split away from Rome and developed into different sects aiming for reform, the final third of the book was Durant looking at Islam and Jewish developments followed by cultural accomplishments and then the Catholic Counter-Reformation. This volume was a change from previous volumes as Durant concentrated most of the text on a 50-year period instead of the ebbs and flows of history and society over the course of centuries. The fact that most of this period centered around religion, Durant is able for the most part to keep his contempt for belief at bay though he does go a little off in the Epilogue in synthesizing the developments of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Yet throughout the book, Durant notes that the religious developments were a reaction the pagan influences of the Renaissance along with the budding of nationalism that would be supercharged once the church came under the purview of the state.

The Reformation is a unique book as Will Durant must literally dedicate the majority of his writing towards religion instead of culture, yet he is able to hide his contempt to look how the reforming of Christianity influenced and was influenced by centralizing of various nation-states as Europe entered the Early Modern Era.

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