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The Reformation and the Decay of Medieval Ideals*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Over a generation ago Lucien Febvre wrote a short article on the origins of the Reformation which he called “Une question mal posée.” Today the question remains just as “mal” as it ever was, and the modern historian who ventures forth into these eristic fields of study will find that time has in no way mitigated the full vigor of the historiographical and theological controversy that surrounds the Protestant Reformation. Some scholars have endeavoured to find the secret of the upheaval in the political machinations of unscrupulous princes and the dynastic ambitions of rival sovereigns. Others of a more social and economic bent prefer some variant of the school of economic determinism. The institutional historian tends to see the Reformation as part of the growth of the centralized national state while yet others say that the revolt was the result of corruption and abuse within the mother institution itself—the Catholic Church. Those who see the movement as part of the vast intellectual revolution of the era, hail the Protestant revolution as the “coming-of-age” of medieval Europe—the emancipation of the laity and the lay mind from the tutelage of the ecclesiastical. It is unnecessary to enumerate further. The only point which I have to contribute along these lines is to say that all of these suggested reasons fail to explain adequately three aspects of the Reformation which historians at least have tended to ignore.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1955
References
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