To the Reader

THE prospective reader deserves a friendly notice that The Reformation is not quite an honest title for this book. An accurate title would be: “A History of European Civilization Outside of Italy from 1300 to 1564, or Thereabouts, Including the History of Religion in Italy and an Incidental View of Islamic and Judaic Civilization in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.” Why so meandering a thematic frontier? Because Volume IV (The Age of Faith) in this “Story of Civilization” brought European history only to 1300, and Volume V (The Renaissance) confined itself to Italy, 1304-1576, deferring the Italian echoes of the Reformation. So this Volume VI must begin at 1300; and the reader will be amused to find that Luther arrives on the scene only after a third of the tale has been told. But let us privately agree that the Reformation really began with John Wyclif and Louis of Bavaria in the fourteenth century, progressed with John Huss in the fifteenth, and culminated explosively in the sixteenth with the reckless monk of Wittenberg. Those whose present interest is only in the religious revolution may omit Chapters III-VI and IX-X without irreparable loss.

The Reformation, then, is the central, but not the only, subject of this book. We begin by considering religion in general, its functions in the soul and the group, and the conditions and problems of the Roman Catholic Church in the two centuries before Luther. We shall watch England in 1376-82, Germany in 1320-47, and Bohemia in 1402-85, rehearsing the ideas and conflicts of the Lutheran Reformation; and as we proceed we shall note how social revolution, with communistic aspirations, marched hand in hand with the religious revolt. We shall weakly echo Gibbon’s chapter on the fall of Constantinople, and shall perceive how the advance of the Turks to the gates of Vienna made it possible for one man to defy at once an emperor and a pope. We shall consider sympathetically the efforts of Erasmus for the peaceful self-reform of the Church. We shall study Germany on the eve of Luther, and may thereby come to understand how inevitable he was when he came. In Book II the Reformation proper will hold the stage, with Luther and Melanchthon in Germany, Zwingli and Calvin in Switzerland, Henry VIII in England, Knox in Scotland, and Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, with a side glance at the long duel between Francis I and Charles V; and other aspects of European life in that turbulent half-century (1517-64) will be postponed in order to let the religious drama unfold itself without confusing delays. Book III will look at ‘the strangers in the gate”: Russia and the Ivans and the Orthodox Church; Islam and its challenging creed, culture, and power; and the struggle of the Jews to find Christians in Christendom. Book IV will go “behind the scenes” to study the law and economy, morals and manners, art and music, literature and science and philosophy of Europe in the age of Luther. In Book V we shall make an experiment in empathy—shall attempt to view the Reformation from the standpoint of the imperiled Church; and we shall be forced to admire the calm audacity with which she weathered the encompassing storm. In a brief epilogue we shall try to see the Renaissance and the Reformation, Catholicism and the Enlightenment, in the large perspective of modern history and thought.

It is a fascinating but difficult subject, for almost every word that one may write about it can be disputed or give offense. I have tried to be impartial, though I know that a man’s past always colors his views, and that nothing is so irritating as impartiality. The reader should be warned that I was brought up as a fervent Catholic, and that I retain grateful memories of the devoted secular priests, and learned Jesuits, and kindly nuns who bore so patiently with my brash youth; but he should note, too, that I derived much of my education from lecturing for thirteen years in a Presbyterian church under the tolerant auspices of sterling Protestants like Jonathan C. Day, William Adams Brown, Henry Sloane Coffin, and Edmund Chaffee; and that many of my most faithful auditors in that Presbyterian church were Jews whose thirst for education and understanding gave me a new insight into their people. Less than any man have I excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest urchin in the streets.

I thank Dr. Arthur Upham Pope, founder of the Asia Institute, for correcting some of the errors in the chapters on Islam; Dr. Gerson Cohen, of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, for checking the pages on the Jews; my friend Harry Kaufman of Los Angeles for reviewing the section on music; and, pleno cum corde, my wife for her unremitting aid and illuminating comments at every stage in our co-operative labor on this book.

If the Reaper will stay his hand, there will be a concluding Volume VII, The Age of Reason, which should appear some five years hence, and should carry the story of civilization to Napoleon. There we shall make our bow and retire, deeply grateful to all who have borne the weight of these tomes on their hands, and have forgiven numberless errors in our attempt to unravel the present into its constituent past. For the present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for our understanding.

WILL DURANT

Los Angeles, May 12,1957