The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation

Comprising four volumes, 1,200 articles, and more than 1.3 million words,the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation is a unique compendium ofcontemporary scholarship focusing on the entire range of religious and socialchanges wrought by the Reformation, including not only issues of church polityand theology but also related developments in politics, economics, demographics,art, and literature. This broadly cast, interdisciplinary definition allows fora picture of the Reformation that escapes the narrow confines of theology andecclesiology in favor of a comprehensive social and intellectual history of notonly Western Europe and the British Isles but also southern Europe, Scandinavia,and east-central Europe in the early modern period. The unique breadth ofcoverage makes it an unparalleled source of information on the personalities andevents of the era.Topical categories of coverage include sites, regions, and polities;historical events; religious groups and movements; ecclesiastical institutions;creeds, confessions, and texts; theology; social history; and popular religion,as well as biographies and Reformation studies. The alphabetically arrangedarticles range from brief 300-word biographies of minor figures to majorinterpretive and synthetic treatments of topics such as the Eucharist,Lutheranism, the Catholic Reformation, cities, Calvinism, women, the RadicalReformation, law, education, Jews, humanism, the Bible, social welfare,justification, and art. Related entries cover such subjects as saints andsainthood, literacy, the French Wars of Religion, the Augsburg Confession, theCouncil of Trent, music, the Holy Roman Empire, persecution, apocalypticism,peasants, and magistracy.Setting the issues of theology and ecclesiology within the broader context ofthe social and intellectual history of the era, the Oxford Encyclopedia of theReformation transcends the bounds of denominational encyclopedias anddictionaries of Reformation history currently available, with contributorsrepresenting a variety of national and academic perspectives. An index and anextensive system of cross-references give the reader easy access to the networkof interrelated articles throughout the encyclopedia. Offering exhaustiveinterdisciplinary and international coverage of all aspects of the Reformation,this work has no peer in either scope or depth.