Title: Looking for a balanced study of the Reformation?
Review: Don't look here.Chadwick's book is steeped in the conventional and now-discredited "Whig" view of history, which posits that the Reformation was both inevitable and progressive. It is typified by sentences like the following from Chadwick: "The Reformation came because limitation of the power of the Church was necessary to the further development of efficient government."This view has since been demolished by the likes of Eamon Duffy, who has shown that much of the Reformation was a violent, top-down imposition -- a "revolt of the rich" as another scholar put it.Readers are advised to consult Diarmaid MacCulloch's masterful "The Reformation: A History," a book likely to be the standard work on the subject for years to come.
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