The Saved and the Damned: A History of the Reformation by Thomas Kaufmann (review)

Reviewed by: The Saved and the Damned: A History of the Reformation by Thomas Kaufmann Robert Christman The Saved and the Damned: A History of the Reformation. By Thomas Kaufmann. Trans. by Tony Crawford. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023 2017. 358 pp. This monograph is the translation of Thomas Kaufmann's Erlöste und Verdammte: Eine Geschichte der Reformation, first published in German in 2017. It represents the effort of this leading historian to provide an accessible overview of the Reformation and its historical impact on its five-hundredth anniversary. Not designed to break new ground, the book offers a succinct, yet summative and insightful picture and appraisal of the Reformation in the context of Western and global history. The key question the volume raises for this reviewer is how Kaufmann presents the Reformation and what he makes of it as an historical event five hundred years on. The book's title and subtitle reveal Kaufmann's perspective."The Saved and the Damned" places religion, specifically the issue of eternal salvation, at the Reformation's and the monograph's heart. "A History of the Reformation emphasis mine" indicates that he sees this event as internally cohesive, not as a series of distinct reformations. Kaufmann himself notes that his Reformation is not "all upheavals and new departures, all the changes occurring between the fifteenth century and the seventeenth century that led out of the 'Middle Ages'" (7), but a narrower historical episode and its consequences that "had a definite beginning: namely with Luther and his conflict with the papal church" (7). In fact, Martin Luther "is the only person without whom the 'story' of the Reformation cannot be told at all" (9). This understanding of the Reformation is, nonetheless, capacious. Kaufmann describes the Reformation as it manifested itself across the countries of Europe, while noting that in no case did it appear "independently of Luther and the events in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" (8). He tracks its progress and impact throughout the sixteenth century, explains End Page 72 how it has been understood across time, and discusses its current relevance. He divides his work into six chapters arranged chronologically and topically. In Chapter 1, "Luther and the Reformation," Kaufmann introduces his definition and understanding of the term "Reformation" and why Luther is central to it. Chapter 2, "European Christendom c. 1500," provides a snapshot of the structures, theology, and piety of the late middle ages. Chapter 3, "The Early Reformation in the Empire, 1517–30," introduces Luther, his struggle and the break with Rome, its implications within the empire, and Zwingli and the Reformation in Zurich. Chapter 4, "Post-Reformation Europe, 1530–1600," covers Calvin and the international Reformed tradition, the reformations in Scandinavia and England, the Catholic reformation, and the "Dissenters and Nonconformists." Much of his work in chapters three and four focuses on the intersection of religion and politics, rather than the social and cultural outcomes. But it is his last two chapters, "The Modern Reception of the Reformation" and "The Reformation and the Present: An Appraisal," that are unique. In the former he traces the arc of Reformation historiography from the sixteenth century to the present on both sides of the Atlantic, at the same time placing the character of the quincentenary celebrations into the historical sequence of Reformation anniversaries. In the latter, he provides a concise and insightful overview of the "direct and indirect or primary and secondary consequences" of the Reformation (273), from its impact on lay participation in the church and sexuality, to law and economics. Those who see the Reformation as a series of discrete chronological, geographic, or theological events may be critical of Kaufmann's narrower, German- and Luther-centric portrayal. However, Kaufmann's Reformation is not the old-fashioned product of the genius of one man, but the result of the complex interactions of primary, secondary, and tertiary ideas and events that ultimately have their point of departure in the thought and actions of Luther. He packs an enormous amount of information into this volume; North American readers coming to the Reformation for the first time may struggle with the sheer quantity. Moreover, it is evident that...