Diarmaid MacCulloch

The Reformation was the seismic event in European history over the past 1000 years, and one which tore the medieval world apart. Not just European religion, but thought, culture, society, state systems, personal relations - everything - was turned upside down.

Thomas Cromwell is one of the most famous - or notorious - figures in English history. Born in obscurity in Putney, he became a fixer for Cardinal Wolsey in the 1520s. After Wolsey''s fall, Henry VIII promoted him to a series of ever greater offices, and by the end of the 1530s he was effectively running the country for the King. That decade was one of the most momentous in English history: it saw a religious break with the Pope, unprecedented use of parliament, the dissolution of all monasteries. Cromwell was central to all this, but establishing his role with precision, at a distance of nearly five centuries and after the destruction of many of his papers at his own fall, has been notoriously difficult.Diarmaid MacCulloch''s biography is much the most complete and persuasive life ever written of this elusive figure, a masterclass in historical detective work, making connections not previously seen. It overturns many received interpretations, for example that Cromwell was a cynical, ''secular'' politician without deep-felt religious commitment, or that he and Anne Boleyn were allies because of their common religious sympathies - in fact he destroyed her. It introduces the many different personalities of these foundational years, all conscious of the ''terrifyingly unpredictable'' Henry VIII. MacCulloch allows readers to feel that they are immersed in all this, that it is going on around them.For a time, the self-made ''ruffian'' (as he described himself) - ruthless, adept in the exercise of power, quietly determined in religious revolution - was master of events. MacCulloch''s biography for the first time reveals his true place in the making of modern England and Ireland, for good and ill.

The Bible observes that God made humanity a for a while a little lower than the angelsa If humans are that close to angels does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it Much of the political contention and division in societies across the world centres on sexual topics and one third of the global population is Christian in background or outlook In a single lifetime Christianity or historically Christian societies have witnessed one of the most extraordinary about turns in attitudes to sex and gender in human history There have followed revolutions in the place of women in society a new place for same sex love amid the spectrum of human emotions and a public exploration of gender and trans identity For many the new situation has brought exciting liberation a for others fury and fear This book seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding through telling a 3000 year long tale of Christians encountering sex gender and the family with noises off from their sacred texts The message of Lower than the Angels is simple necessary and timely to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity The reader can decide from the story told here whether there is a single Christian theology of se

Diarmaid MacCullochs magnificent new history is the most authoritative and wide-ranging account of these epochal and often bloody events. He brilliantly describes the changing late medieval world into which Luther, Calvin and the other reformers erupted. He proposes an original new understanding of the often confusing origins of the exceptionally violent disagreements that divided men and women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries disagreements for which they were prepared to kill and be killed. He examines the personalities of the leading Reformers and their opponents, and the mix of ideas, prejudices and accidents that shaped the various versions of Protestantism and Catholicism. He illuminates the complex battles between religious and secular powers, and shows how the resolution of these conflicts eventually redrew the map of Europe. He ends with the Enlightenment: a movement that would not have been possible without the Reformation, but which denied many of its most dearly held assumptions.

Una obra que se ocupa de la Cristiandad de manera universal, desde sus orígenes en el judaísmo y siguiendo los principales ejes de la fe cristiana, de corte clásico, que sigue cronológicamente la evolucion del cristianismo y sus ramificaciones. Gracias a su tematica, el lector actual conocera cuestiones casi olvidadas acerca del mensaje de Jesus y la compilacion del Nuevo Testamento, asi como su difusion por todos los rincones del mundo: Africa, Asia, America o Europa. Es un libro que aborda toda su historia intelectual, sin olvidarse de monjes y cruzados, santos y herejes, traficantes de esclavos y abolicionistas. Vivimos una epoca de intensa conciencia religiosa, salpicada de actos violentos que se cometen en nombre de Dios y donde creyentes y no creyentes cuestionan valores como la religion y la tradicion.