From the comments box:
Could you recommend an English-language history of the continental reformation that is fair to both Catholic and Protestant claims (something akin to Duffy's "Stripping of the Altars")?Immediately purchase Stephen Ozment's Age of Reform 1250-1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (Yale, 1981).
I don't agree with everything he says about medieval theology, especially as it relates to Dominican and Franciscan mysticism. However, it is an excellent introduction to the economic, philosophical, cultural, theological, and political circumstances that led up to the "perfect storm" of the Reformation (primarly on the continent).





