This course is designed to explore aspects of the Reformations in Europe in the sixteenth century.

1. Identify some of the leaders of the Reformations and critically evaluate some of their theological ideas.

2. Critically evaluate some of the different ways of understanding Christian experience.

3. Understand the way to approach an historical text and be able to place the text within an historical context.

4. Critically examine some of the historical approaches  of the study of  Reformations  in Europe in the sixteenth century.

This course will be taught using lectures and class discussion.  Throughout the course, the tutor will seek to facilitate the discussion.

Intellectual Skills:

3.Understand the way to approach an historical text and be able to place the text within an historical context.

4.Critically examine some of the historical approaches  to the study of  Reformations  in Europe in the sixteenth century.

Discipline Specific (including practical) Skills:

5. Represent their own views and those of others sensitively and  intelligently with fairness  and integrity 

6. Expound some understanding of the need to examine the development and expression of religious belief within its particular historical context.

7. Offer an explanation and analysis of historical background

Transferable Skills:

Communicate information, ideas,  perceptions, arguments, principles and theories by a variety of means written and oral.

Successfully reproduce, reflect upon and interact  with the experiences, ideas and  arguments of others

Critical engagement with  and reflection  on  the convictions  and  behaviours of others

Use It skills to  enhance learning and understanding

Give some account of their own beliefs, commitments and prejudices

Formative assessment

Students will write an essay of 2000 words.

Final Assessment for the course:

This course is examined by an essay of 2000 words and a 1½ hours  written examination.

Reformation or Reformations?

Reformations  within the Catholic Church

Martin Luther: ‘Man between God and the Devil’

Luther’s struggle with Authority

The Reformation in Switzerland: Zurich

The Call for Greater Reform: The Swiss Brethren

The Reformation in Switzerland: Geneva

Calvin’s Institutes and  reformation  in  Geneva

The Radical Reformation

The Reformation in  England: Reformation from Above or Below

Henrician and Edwardian reforms

Thomas Cranmer and the  reformation movement

The Reformation  in Wales

Women and the Reformation

Queen Mary and the re-emergence of  traditional religion

The Elizabethan Solution

Catholic  Reformation: the Council of  Trent

The Legacy of Reformations

Please see Background Reading List for an indicative list.

Indicative Reading and Resource List:

Bagchi, David  and David Steinmetz (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Balke, Willem, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals ( Grand Rapids, 1981).

Brigden, Susan. London and the Reformation ( Oxford, 1989).

Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, New York, 1959.

_______________.  Erasmus of Christendom, New York, 1969.

Brendlar, Gerhard. Martin Luther, Theology and Revolution, Oxford, 1991.

Brooks, Peter Newman. Cranmer in Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989).

Chadwick, Henry. 'Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy', in B. Bradshaw and E. Duffy, Humanism, Reform and Reformation (Cambridge, 1989).

Clasen, Claus- Peter, Anabaptism, A Social History, 1526-1618, London 1972.

Daniell, David, William Tyndale (YUP, 1994).

Dickens, A.G. The English Reformation, revised 2nd edition  (London, 1989).

_____________.'The Shape of Anti-clericalism and the English Reformation', in E.I. Kouri and T. Scott Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton (London, 1987).

Deppermann, Klaus, Melchoir Hoffman, Social Unrest and the Apocolyptic Visions in the Age of the Reformation ( Edinburgh,, 1987)

Dowling, Maria. Humanism in the Age of Henry VIII (Beckenham, 1986).

Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars, Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, London 1992.

Dickens, A.G. The Counter Reformation, London, 1968.

Ebeling, Gerhard. Luther: An Introduction to His Thought.

Elton, G.R. Reform and Renewal, Cambridge 1973.

_________ Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1977).

___________.Reform and Reformation (London, 1977).

Evans, G.R. Problems of Authority in the Reformation Debates, CUP, 1992.

Fox, Alistair, and John Guy. Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform, 1500-1550 (Oxford, 1986).

Guy, J.A. The Public Career of Sir Thomas More (Brighton, 1980).

________. Tudor England. (Oxford, 1988).

Gritsch, Eric W. Thomas Muntzer Minneapolis, Fortress Press,, 1989)

Haigh, Christopher, The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge, 1987)

Harder, Leland, ed. The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism (Scottdale: Penn: herald Press, 1985)

Hutter, Jakob, Brotherly Faithfulness, Epistles from A Time of Persecution (New York: Hutterian Brethren, Plough Publishing House)

Ives, Eric. Anne Boleyn, (Oxford, 1986).

King, John N. English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, 1982).

Lassen, Peter James The Economics of Anabaptism, 1525-1560 ( London. 1964)

Lindberg, Carter, The European Reformations, 1995.

Loades, D.M. The Oxford Martyrs (London, 1970).

__________. The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England, 1553-1558 (London, 1979).

Matheson, Peter, ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Muntzer ( Edinburgh, 1988).

______________. The Rhetoric of the Reformation, 1998.

MacCulloch, D. Thomas Cranmer, YUP, 1996.

MacCulloch, D. Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, Penguin books, 2004

McGrath, Alister E. Luther's Theology of the Cross. Oxford, 1985.

__________________. The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, Oxford, 1987.

________________. Reformation Thought, An Introduction. Oxford, 1988.

__________________. A Life of John Calvin.Oxford, 1990

_________________. Luther's Theology of the Cross.(Oxford, 1985). Mullett, Michael A. Martin Luther (Routledge, 2004)

Oberman, Heiko A.  Luther, Man Between God and The Devil. New Haven, Conn., 1989.

________________.  The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought, Edinburgh, 1986.

________________.  The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications, 1994.

Ozment, S.E., The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, Chicago, 1971.

Parker, T.H.L. John Calvin, 1975.

Reardon, Bernard M. G. Religious Thought in the Reformation (London, 1981

Rex, Richard, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, 1993.

Ridley, Jasper. Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962).

Rowell, geoffrey, ed. The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism, 1992.

Scott, Tomas, Thomas Muntzer, Theology and Revolution in the German Reformation (London. 1989).

Stephens, W.P. The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, Oxford, 1986.

_____________. An Introduction to the Thought of Huldrych Zwingli, 1991.

Scarisbrick, J.J. Henry VIII (London, 1968).

Slavin, Arthur J. 'Defining Divorce', in Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol.XX, No. 1 (Spring, 1989).

Snyder, C. Arnold, Anabaptist History and Theology, 1995.

Swanson, R.N. Catholic England, Faith Religion and Observance before the Reformation, 1993.

Wallace, R.S. Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation, Edinburgh, 1988.

Wendel, F.  Calvin: The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought. New York, 1963.

Williams, Neville. Henry VIII and His Court (London, 1971).

Williamss, George H. The Radical Reformation ( London, 1962).

Yoder, J. H. The Legacy of Michael Sattler ( Scottdale,Penn,: Herald Press, 1973).

Zachman, R.C. The Assurance of Faith, Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin, (Fortess Press), 1993