Saved and the Damned

Thomas Kaufmann, the leading European scholar of the Reformation, argues that the main motivations behind the Reformation rest in religion itself. The Reformation began far from Europe's traditional political, economic, and cultural power centres, and yet it threw the whole continent into turmoil. There has been intense speculation over the last century focusing on the political and social causes that lay at the root of this revolution. Thomas Kaufmann, one of the world's leading experts on the Reformation, sees the most important drivers for what happened in religion itself. The reformers were principally concerned with the question of salvation. It could all have ended with the pope's condemnation of Luther and his teaching. But Luther believed the pope was condemned to eternal damnation, and this was the root cause of the great split to come. Hatred of the damned drove people to take up arms, while countless numbers left their homes far behind and carried the Reformation message to the furthest corners of the earth in the hope of salvation. In The Saved and the Damned, Thomas Kaufmann presents a dramatic overview of how Europe was transformed by the seismic shock of the Reformation--and of how its aftershocks reverberate right down to the present day.

Thomas Kaufmann is Professor of Church History at the University of Gõttingen, President of the Society for Reformation History, and a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous books on Reformation history, including an acclaimed biography of Martin Luther.

- I. Luther and the Reformation - 1: A European Event - 2: Ideal and Actual Reformations - 3: One Reformation or Many? In the Beginning Was Luther - II. European Christendom circa 1500 - 1: Construction of a Continent - 2: Structures - 3: Nations and Powers in Europe - 4: The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - 5: Shared Spiritual and Clerical Cultures - 6: Cultural Awakenings - III. The Early Reformation in the Empire, 1517-1530 - 1: Thirteen Turbulent Years - 2: Martin Luther: A Portrait - 3: The Drop-out: A Young Augustinian Monk - 4: The Exegete of Wittenberg - 5: Luther's Break with the Pope - 6: The Imperial Diet of Worms, Rebellion, and Upheaval - 7: Zwingli and the Urban Reformation in Zurich - 8: Intra-Reformation Disputes - 9: Political Decisions of Church and State - IV. Post-Reformation Europe, 1530-1600 - 1: Language, Education, Law: Religious Culture Reformed - 2: Early Reformation Movements Outside the Empire - 3: John Calvin and the Reformed International - 4: The Royal Reformations in Scandinavia and England - 5: The Pacified, Restive Empire - 6: The Transformation of Roman Catholicism - 7: Dissenters and Nonconformists - 8: Latin Europe after the Reformation - V. The Modern Reception of the Reformation - 1: Reformation Jubilees: 1617 to 2017 - 2: Interpretation and Debate - VI. The Reformation and the Present: An Appraisal - 1: Time Accelerated: A Change or an Apocalypse? - 2: Impact on the Modern West - 3: Global Protestantism