Reformation Europe: 1450-1650 History 215b / Religious Studies 283b Yale University Spring Semester 1999 Course Description

Around the year 1500, when the era known as the Middle Ages was giving way to the Renaissance, Western Europeans still shared a common religion and identity as members of the Roman Catholic Church. Suddenly, in 1517, this uniformity began to crumble, and the very fabric of Western culture was irrevocably altered. By 1550, Western Christendom was no longer monolithically Catholic, but rather splintered into various conflicting churches, confessions, sects, and factions, each of which had its own set of truths and its own plan for reforming the church and society at large. This period of rapid and unprecedented change in Western history has been assigned several names, but is most commonly known as the Reformation. Though this term has traditionally referred to the birth of Protestantism, it can also encompass the renewal and change that simultaneously occurred within Catholicism.

Why did this happen? How did such a change occur? What were its characteristics? What was its significance for Western society and culture? How can this metamorphosis help us to better understand Christianity in particular and religion as a whole? These are some of the larger questions that will guide this survey of the Reformations of the sixteenth century, both Protestant and Catholic. In this course we will trace the history of the contending factions within Protestantism and Catholicism. We will also analyze the relation between ideology and the process of change in the context of the political, social, and economic realities of the age.

Readings in the works of Luther, Karlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, and others will be used to focus on the development of Protestant ideology. Readings in Ignatius Loyola and Teresa of Avila will be used to shed light on the ethos of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Readings in current scholarship on selected topics will be used to examine not only the interaction of ideology and social change, but also the way in which history is conceived.