Post History

I posted this as a comment to [the very helpful answer][a] (from my POV) from @gmcgath‭. It struck me that it would be more useful as an additional answer, by way of complmenting the general outlook of that answer.

My summary restatement of the idea is: the Reformation is **one thing** (the general religious upheaval in Christian Europe in the 16th century),<sup>1</sup> or it is **many** (the distinctive variety of local, regional, national expressions of those upheavals) — but **it is not "two"**. And the Unitarian movement is not connected with this scenario at all (and so, a red herring).

Three items of bibliography reinforce this main take away:

(1) So, for example, the singular "The Reformation" in the title of the authoritative Volume 2 of the [New Cambridge Modern History][5] \[NCMH\] (also on [Archive.org][6]).

(2) Carter Lindberg, *[The European Reformations][1]*, 2nd edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. (The [first edition][2] can be borrowed at Archive.org.)

(3) Walter Klaassen, *[Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant][3]*, 3rd edition. Pandora Press, 2001. Klaassen provided a summary of his thesis in [a 1985 article][4] which can now be found online.

These titles make clear how they support this answer: the clue is the singular of the NCMH volume, the plural in Lindberg's title, while Klaassen's subtitle provides his thesis statement pointing again towards "many".


[a]: https://christianity.codidact.com/posts/281154/283902#answer-283902
[1]: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_European_Reformations/4cTb-zKfjS8C?hl=en&gbpv=0
[2]: https://archive.org/details/europeanreformat0000lind
[3]: https://www.worldcat.org/title/anabaptism-neither-catholic-nor-protestant/oclc/1004557841/editions?editionsView=true&referer=br
[4]: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/neither-catholic-nor-protestant
[5]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/new-cambridge-modern-history/363F67C4328A2F013E2A0F7107836EB7#
[6]: https://archive.org/details/newcambridgemode00elto_126