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Reformation historian Scott Hendrix has argued that the various movements of the Reformation shared a vital commonality: They were all attempts to make sixteenth-century Europe more authentically Christian. Where earlier research emphasized the theological differences and disputes among the reformers, Hendrix saw a fundamental coherence in the common goal of Christianization. In this volume, nineteen Reformation historians respond by treating diverse aspects of Reformation scholarship and employing their own research to test the usefulness of this Christianization thesis. In their discussions of late medieval reform movements, Luther s attempts at reform, changes for women and the family, efforts to reform piety, and the theological controversies of the late Middle Ages and the Reformation, an interpretive debate develops about the viability of macrohistory and the significance of the Reformation as an epoch in European history.

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