This very original investigation into the conceptual origins of the English Reformation as a historical framework is largely predicated on an etymological study of the word reformation, or reformatio. While its reliance on linguistic interpretation makes the thesis more suggestive than provable, the book nevertheless presents a good deal of new information and posits an interesting case for where the idea of the English Reformation as we know it today came from, while attempting to ground its conclusions in events taking place within a formative period of early modern English history. The parameters for such an inquiry are somewhat arbitrary and, ultimately, inconsistently applied throughout the author's analysis, but he does take us on a fascinating journey through the uses of reformation as a concept between 1400 and 1700.
Guyer argues that reformatio had conciliar origins, and he traces this through the proceedings of church councils from Constance (1414–1418) to Trent (1545–1563), asserting that the connective tissue was the term's stress on order and unity “in head and in members.” The English church gradually withdrew from these international discussions, especially after the break with Rome, and yet Henry VIII and Edward VI possessed no coherent idea of reformation to help guide their religious policy thereafter. Rather, it was John Knox who, in his history of the Scottish Reformation, reconfigured reformation into a local, even apocalyptic event, thereby associating it with violence or “righteous revolt” against religious and political tyranny.
Elizabeth I refused to go down that path or implement a fuller, more comprehensive reformation along continental lines, where conflict remained central to its meaning. Reformation thus became a suspect term within England, having little affinity with Lutheran, Reformed, or post-Tridentine movements.
This trend continued into the early Stuart period, where James I, who ruled in Scotland before ascending the English throne, rejected the reform example of his countrymen. Sensing uncomfortable similarities between Scottish Presbyterians and English Puritan firebrands, Jacobean historians championed peaceful, monarchical religious change and bemoaned the “sacrilege” they believe occurred in the second, more radical phase of Edward's reign.
During the English Civil Wars, in reaction to the religious turmoil of the time, establishment forces formulated the idea, similar to our modern understanding, of an English Reformation occurring during the mid-Tudor period. Peter Heylyn, chaplain to Charles I, contended it was begun by Edward and completed by Elizabeth. Other royalist sympathizers similarly opposed calls by religious radicals for further change, fearing Scottish incitement of rebellion in England. John Milton was not alone in thinking that by not finishing the job, Edward and his successors had betrayed the divine plan for godly reform. It was within this context then that “our English Reformation” was born, with even Charles I himself circumscribing its totality within the actions of Edward's and Elizabeth's governments.
With the Restoration, a full-fledged historiography laying out the contours of this English Reformation emerged, associating it with monarchical order, pre-revolutionary Anglicanism, and, above all, peace. In the process, defenders like Gilbert Burnet and Thomas Fuller clearly differentiated the Church of England from nonconformity. For Guyer, had the civil war radicals won the day, the English Reformation would be centered on the mid-Stuart rather than the mid-Tudor period. He believes it is therefore a mistake to see the Laudians as the outliers in rejecting the Reformed origins of the English Reformation when they were actually the first to conceptualize it and write its history.
Such a conclusion, while thought-provoking, illustrates a vulnerability that hovers over much of the book when taking contemporary interpretations at face value and relying almost completely on a particular set of conceptual appropriations to define a historical moment or era. There were contemporary counternarratives that acknowledged continental influences throughout the seventeenth century, but Guyer believes these were marginal, though without providing much justification for saying so. He asserts that Luther was largely absent from the English narrative, but we know his central teachings about justification by faith alone and sola scriptura were omnipresent in evangelical rhetoric, and yes, also in the early historiography, even if he was not specifically named or if few read his writings. And when contemporaries did discuss or reference him, it was usually admiringly. If there was so little recognition of this foreign influence in the seventeenth century, then perhaps that is not really where “our English Reformation” originated, but later, when the deeper continental connections were recognized and written into the story. (Or is English Reformation only a chronological concept?) In addition, just because reformation does not exist within a particular discourse does not mean it was not a galvanizing force, since such language was clearly intrinsic to the commonwealth idiom of the mid-1500s.
Historiographical frameworks are fuzzy, very subjective determinations and are hard to pin down linguistically. The violence vs. theology dyad used here with the former being determinative can be overly reductive. And while reformation, being a capacious term, may be appropriated and traced etymologically, it can also be inferred and understood conceptually, and serve as a historical marker, without the word possessing a necessarily shared or presumed meaning. The author assumes as much himself on occasion. The semantics of reformation with all its versatility of meaning allow this study to move along any number of trajectories, but it seems to want to go in a particular direction, and at times the choice of evidence seems predetermined. That can be a problem when the rationale for why that must be the path taken is not convincingly articulated, which is the case here.
I do not want to belabor these points because there is much to admire in Guyer's well-researched and mostly sharply argued book. He laudably wants to complicate our understanding of the English Reformation, which he believes was created to facilitate—before becoming essential to—Anglicanism's own mythology about its origins. Whether or not one fully accepts the author's main thesis, he does lay out nicely the processes by which historical periods are constructed within particular contexts, and how synthetic descriptors—like English Reformation—might be applied in hindsight.
