Synopses & Reviews
This book offers a brief, but comprehensive, account of religious belief and experience in Europe between the Westphalia settlements in 1648 and the French Revolution. The book is organized around large European regions such as Central and Northwestern Europe (including Britain), Southern Europe and North and Eastern Europe. Within each chapter Professor Ward discusses the churches in their political, social and intellectual context. With its maps, glossary and guide to further reading, this promises to be a major aid to students of Christianity under the ancien régime.
Review
"Probably the most prolific, and arguably the most learned, religious historian of his generation, W. R. Ward...has produced an admirable synthesis of his many years of labor on the history of early modern Christianity in Britain and continental Europe....a compressed and compact narrative that will repay reading, and then reading again." David Hempton, Books & Culture
Review
"He covers the ground with such speed and complexity that the result is a compressed and compact narrative that will repay reading, and then reading again." Books & Culture
Table of Contents
Preface and Prospectus; Glossary; 1. Peace and conflict: church and state in Central and Northwestern Europe; 2. Christianity in Southern Europe; 3. Catholicism in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern Habsburg lands; 4. The religion of the Protestants; 5. Revival moves westward; 6. The enlightenment and its precursors; 7. The churches in Northern and Eastern Europe; 8. Religion after the Seven Years War.