Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450-1650
by Carlos Eire, Yale University Press, £25
Carlos Eire suggests that “discontent and cries for reform were endemic” in pre-Reformation Europe. He writes of a “powder keg” and of “volatile elements” that were “everywhere in plain view”. Apparently, “only an obtuse observer could have failed to notice their presence”.
It all sounds rather gloomy, but what of recent scholarship that has revealed the vitality of late medieval Christianity? There were, to be sure, those who grumbled about shortcomings, but this was nothing new and, crucially, the climacteric of Reformation took almost everyone by surprise.
