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Europe's Reformations, 1450-1650 (Critical Issues in History) |  | Author: James D. Tracy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Category: Book
Buy New: $36.30
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New (5) Used (7) from $15.35
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 1915969
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 416
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0847688348
Dewey Decimal Number: 274.06
EAN: 9780847688340
ASIN: 0847688348
Publication Date: November 3, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Europe's Reformations establishes a new standard for historians of the Early Modern era, and Tracy's revelatory conclusions must be addressed by all future scholars of this crucial turning point in world history.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Thorough collection and analysis of reformation (religious) history August 4, 2009
SL
A very good book which details lots of in-depth research and still maintains a judicious flow of concepts (I guess that's hard! looking at the scope chosen and am still very shocked at the author's mastery of huge volume of data). The aim is quite obvious - to analyse the interaction between Church of many denominations and State of many European countries across 15-17th century, in order to expand and enrich this connection, whirlpool of wars, politics, religious history (esp. conclusion!), doctrines are drawn within. One of the great strengths of this book is the seeming neutrality towards subjects studied, including faith tradition and numerous 'characters' in past history. There are equal amounts of time spent on Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Byzantium, Catholics, etc. Even the idea of confessionalization is more described than prescribed.
Readers for sure would share different opinions while reading this book, nonetheless interesting features of the book are: electoral princes, canon law, Charles V, confraternities, Huguenots, Tridentine Catholicism. This is my first time reading his more lengthy work, so generally speaking, I am not very sure how much he was cautiously influenced by Heiko Oberman, Weber or Troeltsch. The book's many figures (illustrations?) are Spirit-filled, and writing is reader-friendly. The Glossary needs to be expanded, and sometimes the contents of 'politics' and 'society' can be integrated, I just feel there is no dramatic distinction between them. But in all, a very comprehensive book that one can always re-read.
 Fascinating history July 28, 2005
Q (my office)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very informative and well-written history. This book is not just a religious history, but also a general history of europe from 1450 to 1650: culture, society, politics, economics, and art. He makes the valuable point that religion and politics are always intertwined, and that we need to consider both. The trend today among revisionist historians is to reduce everything to power and self-interest. Tracy argues, on the other hand, that religious ideas tend to have a life of their own. Politics is vitally important of course, but ideas are also important. Tracy's discussions of theological issues are a model of clarity and insight. Tracy is mildly revisionist, insisting that the Reformation is more about an ideal (sometimes a reality) of "holy community" than about individualism. This claim seems to have become the new dogma among Reformation historians; compare Diarmaid MacCulloch's recent history of the Reformation. Tracy divides the book into 3 main sections: Doctrine, Politics, and Society. The section on politics is often extremely dense and boring; it seems often merely a list of wars and battles.
I agree with the previous reviewer that there are way too many endnotes. Many of the endnotes are simply unnecessary: words in common usage, such as "salvation," are noted and defined in the endnotes. The fact that the endnotes are in back of the book and not at the bottom of the page is extremely inconvenient. The problem here is that the reader never knows when an endnote is actually important or not, so he or she is forced to go to the back and interrupt the reading. If something is important enough to be noted, then it should go in the text; if not, leave it out. 'Nuff said.
An excellent book with a flaw October 20, 2003
Bruce Bogin (rural France)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a truly excellent book which has unhappily and regrettably and, in my opinion, a totally avoidable flaw. This book, except for the flaw, richly deserves five stars. I shall first address the flaw. In a word this book is plagued by far too many notes, which are collected at the back of the book and to which the reader must turn each time a note is indicated. The book is 300 pages long and it has 938 notes. This is an average of slightly more than three notes per page, but when one considers that there are illustrations on some pages and that some pages have no notes, one can see that many pages have six or seven or more notes. I counted 12 notes on one page. A long time ago I read an essay in which the author compared having to look at notes in a book to having to answer the doorbell on one's wedding night. Certainly in Professor Tracy's otherwise superb book, the newlyweds would have neither rest nor bliss. It is distracting to have to turn to the back, read the note, return to the page of text and have to find one's place and then back up a bit to pick up the context. In my view, and I studied the notes closely, not less than two-thirds and probably three-quarters could have been woven into the text with very little violence to it, and it would have made the text ever so much more readable. And I want to say that there is a great deal of information in the notes. Having said all that, I wish to emphasize that this is truly an excellent work on the various reformations in the period 1450 to 1650 which is one of the most important eras in recent history and which gave rise to the Europe that we know today. Professor Tracy is a superb writer. His prose is readable and comprehensible. The book reads easily and well, and at the same time Professor Tracy gives the reader an absolute abundance of information, including insights into some of the leading players which give the reader the ability to view them as people and very human people at that and not just cardboard cutouts on the backdrop of history. I rather suspect from Professor Tracy's ability to write readable and current English that his lectures are as interesting and exciting as his book, and I quite envy the students who have the opportunity to take his courses. I am in hopes that my criticism will reach him, and that together with his editors he will weave the 938 notes or at least most of them into the text for the next edition of his book. This book should be read and will be enjoyed by anyone who is interested in political and religious patterns of today's Europe and how they got that way. Despite the flaw I have enjoyed the book immensely, and my knowledge of the subject is the greater for it.
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