The Roots of the Reformation

Renowned historian G. R. Evans revisits the question of what happened at the Reformation. Contravening traditional paradigms of interpretation, Evans charts the controversies and challenges that roiled the era of the Reformation and argues that these are really part of a much longer history of discussion and disputation. Evans takes up several issues, such as Scripture, ecclesiology, authority, sacraments and ecclesio-political relations, and traces the shape of the charged discussions that orbited around these through the patristic, medieval and Reformation eras. In this, she demonstrates that in many ways the Reformation was in considerable continuity with the periods that preceded it, though the consequential outcome of the debates in the sixteenth century was dramatically different.

G. R. Evans is professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge and was British Academy Research Reader in Theology from 1986 to 1988. She has written on a wide range of medieval authors including Augustine, Gregory the Great, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux and Alan of Lille. She has also written The Language and Logic of the Bible (Cambridge University Press) and Faith in the Medieval World (InterVarsity Press).