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

Abstract

and early twentieth centuries.3 No longer were scholars solely interested in the official and prescribed religious doctrines of the established churches and their religious leaders, as lay religious practices seemed to offer new and in some cases alternative readings of the Reformation. Moreover, no longer were social histo? rians prepared to accept the teleological and simplistic interpretations of earlier periods, which stressed that the Protestant Reformation offered up more modern and forward looking religions to replace a superstitious and outdated religion. With an emphasis on religious practices and the social relationships imbedded in those practices, social historians ofthe Reformation shifted attention away from older questions of why men such as Luther and Calvin left the Roman Catholic Church or questions about the doctrinal differences that most separated Protes? tants and Catholics. In their place social historians of the Reformation began to explore more sociaily infused questions such as who made the Reformation. That is, which social groups or cohorts?by estate, class, sex, occupation, family, etc.?actively sought to promote or to sustain the new religious movements, where, when and why? These questions also led to others, such as to whose ben? efit and to whose detriment did the Reformation serve?4 A whole host of new studies soon emerged to answer Bob Scribner's early query in the affirmative: there clearly was a social history of the Reformation after all. My purpose in this article is to summarize some ofthe most significant findings of social historians of the Reformation in the last twenty years or so, as well as to offer some thoughts on future areas of research. I make no attempt to be comprehensive here, so I cannot possibly mention every single contribution. What I shall try to do in the limited space afforded me is to indicate how the larger interpretations and narratives of the Reformation have changed or been revised as a result of the scholarship of social historians. I see several significant areas where social historians have made a difference, and I shall briefly describe the contributions of each of these: lay piety, or what some call popular religion; rituals; gender, marriage, and the family; confessionalization, a term coined by some German historians to describe the dual process of social disciplining and