The image of Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five theses to a church door has long epitomised the dramatic turning point from religious dissent to religious reformation. Luther's act, however, was only one of dozens of critical moments in the struggle for religious reform in Europe and the quest among Christians for a purer faith between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries.

In this detailed yet approachable study, Peter G. Wallace adeptly interweaves the influential events of the early modern religious reformation with the transformations of political institutions, socio-economic structures, gender relations, and cultural values throughout Europe. In his examination of the European Reformation as a long-term process, Wallace reconnects the classic sixteenth-century religious struggles with the political and religious pressures confronting late medieval Christianity and argues that the resolutions proposed by reformers, such as Luther, were not fully realised for most Christians until the early eighteenth century.

'A skilful account of a long-term process of religious change that links the Middles Ages to the eighteeenth-century, and places religion in its multiple contexts.' - Dairmaid McCullough, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

List of Maps
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART ONE; THE WARP: THREADS OF REFORMATION HISTORIES 1350-1650
The Late Medieval Crisis: 1348-1517
Resistance, Renewal and Reform: 1415-1521
Evangelical Movements and Confessions: 1521-1559
Reformation and Religious War: 1550-1650
PART TWO: THE WEFT: MAKING SENSE OF THE LONG EUROPEAN REFORMATION
Settlements, 1600-1750: Church Building, State Building and Social Discipline
Rereading the Reformation through Gender Analysis
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

PETER G. WALLACE is Dewar Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.