In just two years it will be the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, traditionally marked by that day when an Augustinian monk and university professor named Martin Luther proposed 95 topics for academic debate at the University of Wittenberg. But what was the Protestant Reformation, really? Did it begin in 1517? How long did it last? Was there one reformation, or many? What were its consequences? And which of its consequences are overstated?

Our guest today to help us think through these questions is Ron Rittgers. He is the Erich Markel Chair of German Reformation Studies, and Professor of History and Theology at Valparaiso University, and the author of two books on the Protestant Reformation: The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany, and The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, the last of which appeared in 2013 as a volume in the series Oxford Studies in Historical Theology.

For Further Investigation

Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, second edition

Hans Hillerbrand, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols.

Hans Hillerbrand, The Division of Christendom: Christianity in the Sixteenth Century

Hans Hillerbrand, The Historical Dictionary of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation

Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations, second edition.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History

Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe

Ron Rittgers, The Reformation of the Keys

Ron Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany

James D. Tracy, Europe’s Reformations, 1450-1650: Doctrine, Politics, and Community, second edition.