"The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation it provoked are one of the great discontinuities in European and world history. The dramatic changes that began when Martin Luther proclaimed his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg in 1517 were of a different order to anything that had gone before. In the following two hundred years, the Christian world broke apart and the nature not just of religion but also of politics, thought, society and culture all changed utterly. The course of history down to our own time has been decisively shaped by this revolution." "Diarmaid MacCulloch describes the changing late medieval world into which Luther, Calvin and the other reformers erupted. He proposes an original understanding of the often confusing origins of the exceptionally violent disagreements that divided men and women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - disagreements for which they were prepared to kill and be killed. He examines the personalities of the leading Reformers and their opponents and the mix of ideas, prejudices and accidents that shaped the various versions of Protestantism and Catholicism."--BOOK JACKET.