The Age of the Reformation

E-text prepared by Al Haines
Transcriber's note:
In the original book, its various chapters' subsections were denoted with the section symbol (§). In this e-text, that symbol has been replaced with the word SECTION . Where two of these symbols were together, they have been replaced with the word SECTIONS .
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the section they appear in, rather than to the end of the chapter containing that section.
The original book had many side-notes in its pages' left or right margin areas. Some of these sidenotes were at the beginning of a paragraph, some were placed elsewhere alongside a paragraph, in relation to what the sidenote referred to inside the paragraph. In this e-text, sidenotes that appeared at the beginning of a paragraph in the original book are placed to precede their reference paragraph. All other sidenotes have been enclosed in square brackets and placed into the paragraph near where they were in the original book.
Some of the dates in this book are accompanied by a small dagger or sword symbol, signifying the person's year of death. Since this symbol doesn't exist in the ASCII character set, I've substituted d. for it.
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. This has been done only in the book's main chapters (I-XIV), not its front matter. For its Bibliography and its Index, page numbers have been placed only at the start of each of those two sections.
PRESERVED SMITH, Ph.D.
New York Henry Holt and Company
American Historical Series General Editor Charles H. Haskins Professor of History in Harvard University
Copyright, 1920 by Henry Holt and Company
The excuse for writing another history of the Reformation is the need for putting that movement in its proper relations to the economic and intellectual revolutions of the sixteenth century. The labor of love necessary for the accomplishment of this task has employed most of my leisure for the last six years and has been my companion through vicissitudes of sorrow and of joy. A large part of the pleasure derived from the task has come from association with friends who have generously put their time and thought at my disposal. First of all, Professor Charles H. Haskins, of Harvard, having read the whole in manuscript and in proof with care, has thus given me the unstinted benefit of his deep learning, and of his ripe and sane judgment. Next to him the book owes most to my kind friend, the Rev. Professor William Walker Rockwell, of Union Seminary, who has added to the many other favors he has done me a careful revision of Chapters I to VIII, Chapter XIV, and a part of Chapter IX. Though unknown to me personally, the Rev. Dr. Peter Guilday, of the Catholic University of Washington, consented, with gracious, characteristic urbanity, to read Chapters VI and VIII and a part of Chapter I. I am grateful to Professor N. S. B. Gras, of the University of Minnesota, for reading that part of the book directly concerned with economics (Chapter XI and a part of Chapter X); and to Professor Frederick A. Saunders, of Harvard, for a like service in technical revision of the section on science in Chapter XII. While acknowledging with hearty thanks the priceless services of these eminent scholars, it is only fair to relieve them of all responsibility for any rash statements that may have escaped their scrutiny, as well as for any conclusions from which they might dissent.