The Social History of the Reformation: Recent Trends and Future Agendas

Historical Research on the Self and Emotions

“…(For a review, see Holt, 2003.) City governments instituted strict new controls over dress and comportment, institutionalizing marriage as a public act, limiting or prohibiting drinking, dancing, prostitution, adultery, and homosexuality.…”

“…Research on the social history of the Renaissance and Reformation period (approximately 1450-1650) revealed that new religious currents were most strongly felt in the cities. (For a review, see Holt, 2003. ) City governments instituted strict new controls over dress and comportment, institutionalizing marriage as a public act, limiting or prohibiting drinking, dancing, prostitution, adultery, and homosexuality.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2003

“…In a landscape so densely populated by ecclesiastical historians who frequently cannot see the social wood for the theological trees, Holt’s broad perspective on trends in the social history of the Reformation is entirely welcome. Taking as his point of departure Bob Scribner's famous puzzlement, expressed in 1976, about whether there was indeed any such thing as a social history of the Reformation, Holt emphasizes those areas (including popular religion, ritual, gender, confessionalization, and cultural transmission) in which the tradition of history from below has made a genuine difference to Reformation scholarship. Walsham’s work epitomises all that is best about the historiographical trajectory sketched by Holt.…”

“…Taking as his point of departure Bob Scribner's famous puzzlement, expressed in 1976, about whether there was indeed any such thing as a social history of the Reformation, Holt emphasizes those areas (including popular religion, ritual, gender, confessionalization, and cultural transmission) in which the tradition of history from below has made a genuine difference to Reformation scholarship. Walsham’s work epitomises all that is best about the historiographical trajectory sketched by Holt. In the Journal of British Studies , she investigates the decision of Catholic leaders to translate the Bible into English in the early 1580s, and traces the impact of the dissemination of the Rheims New Testament on the persecuted Catholic community.…”

From the Social History of the Reformation (1960-1980) to the Reformation as Communication Process (1990-2000)

“…12 In all, as Mack Holt has recently remarked, these studies of the German urban Reformation showed that "the local social context and specific political situation mattered far more in determining the confessional outcome in any one city than any universal explanation could possibly provide". 13 Besides these two interpretive approaches, some historians have focused on the urban mental and cultural universe and its interaction with the Reformation. This sociocultural approach rejected Moeller's oversimplified depiction of urban cultural realities in sixteenth-century Germany.…”