Diarmaid MacCulloch – författare

Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China.How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main facts, ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organization and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society.Taking in wars, empires, reformers, apostles, sects, churches and crusaders, Diarmaid MacCulloch shows how Christianity has brought humanity to the most terrible acts of cruelty - and inspired its most sublime accomplishments.'A stunning tour de force'Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year'A landmark in its field, astonishing in its range, compulsively readable, full of insight ... It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language' Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Guardian 'A prodigious, thrilling, masterclass of a history book' John Cornwell, Financial Times'Essential reading for those enthralled by Christianity and for those enraged by it'Melvyn Bragg, Observer, Books of the Year'Magnificent ... a sumptuous portrait, alive with detail and generous in judgement'Richard Holloway, The TimesDiarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is the author most recently of Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490 - 1700, which won the Wolfson Prize for History and the British Academy Prize.

The Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. 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 – 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 sex, or many contending voices in a symphony that is not at all complete. Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church introduces an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.

‘A richly entertaining history of the ways in which, for 3,000 years, the church has tied itself in knots over sex (and love and marriage) … fabulous’ ObserverThe Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? 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, bringing liberation for some and fury and fear for others.This book by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding by telling the 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. It beckons us to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity, an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.

'A masterpiece ... In its field it is the best book ever' GuardianWinner of the Wolfson Prize for history, Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 charts a seismic shift in European culture that marked the beginning of the modern world.At a time when men and women were prepared to kill - and be killed - for their faith, the Reformation tore the western world apart. Acclaimed as the definitive account of these epochal events, Diarmaid MacCulloch's history brilliantly re-creates the religious battles of priests, monarchs, scholars and politicians, from the zealous Martin Luther nailing his Theses to the door of a Wittenburg church to the radical Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order; from Thomas Cranmer, martyred for his reforms, to the ambitious Philip II, unwavering in his campaign against Europe's 'heretics'.Weaving together the many strands of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, ranging widely across Europe and even to the new world, MacCulloch also reveals as never before how these upheavals affected everyday lives - overturning ideas of love, sex, death and the supernatural, and shaping the modern age.'Magisterial and eloquent'David Starkey'A triumph of human sympathy'Blair Worden, Sunday Telegraph'From politics to witchcraft, from the liturgy to sex; the sweep of European history covered here is breathtakingly panoramic. This is a model work of history'Noel Malcolm, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year'Monumental ... Reformation is set to become a landmark'Lisa Jardine, ObserverDiarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is also the author of A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

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. Just about everything which followed in European history can be traced back in some way to the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation which it provoked. The Reformation is where the modern world painfully and dramatically began, and MacCulloch's great history of it is recognised as the best modern account.

Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China.How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main facts, ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organization and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society.Taking in wars, empires, reformers, apostles, sects, churches and crusaders, Diarmaid MacCulloch shows how Christianity has brought humanity to the most terrible acts of cruelty - and inspired its most sublime accomplishments.'A stunning tour de force'Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sunday Telegraph Books of the Year'A landmark in its field, astonishing in its range, compulsively readable, full of insight ... It will have few, if any, rivals in the English language' Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Guardian 'A prodigious, thrilling, masterclass of a history book' John Cornwell, Financial Times'Essential reading for those enthralled by Christianity and for those enraged by it'Melvyn Bragg, Observer, Books of the Year'Magnificent ... a sumptuous portrait, alive with detail and generous in judgement'Richard Holloway, The TimesDiarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. He is the author most recently of Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490 - 1700, which won the Wolfson Prize for History and the British Academy Prize.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, acknowledged master of the big picture in Christian history, unravels a polyphony of silences from the history of Christianity and beyond. He considers the surprisingly mixed attitudes of Judaism to silence, Jewish and Christian borrowings from Greek explorations of the divine, and the silences which were a feature of Jesus's brief ministry and witness. Besides prayer and mystical contemplation, there are shame and evasion; careless and purposeful forgetting. Many deliberate silences are revealed: the forgetting of histories which were not useful to later Church authorities (such as the leadership roles of women among the first Christians), or the constant problems which Christianity has faced in dealing honestly with sexuality. Behind all this is the silence of God; and in a deeply personal final chapter, MacCulloch brings a message of optimism for those who still seek God beyond the clamorous noise of over-confident certainties.

A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, FINANCIAL TIMES, GUARDIAN, BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR'This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years' Hilary Mantel'A masterpiece' Dan Jones, Sunday TimesThomas 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.

A brilliant kaleidoscope on the Reformation from its leading scholar and 'one of the best historians writing in English today' (Sunday Telegraph)The Reformation which engulfed England and Europe in the sixteenth century was one of the most highly-charged, bloody and transformative periods in their history. Ever since, it has remained one of the most contested.Diarmaid MacCulloch is one of the leading British historians of this turbulent and endlessly fascinating era. Many essays in this volume expand upon his now classic Reformation: Europe's House Divided, tracing, for example, the evolution of the English Prayer Book and Bible or reassessing the impact of the Reformation on Catholicism. Henry VIII and his archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, are both central presences, and MacCulloch swiftly dispatches some of the received wisdom about them. Throughout the book, he brilliantly undermines one persistent English tradition of interpreting the Reformation - that it never really happened - and establishes that Anglicanism was really a product of Charles II's Restoration in 1660 rather than the 'Elizabethan Settlement' of 1559. The inexhaustible variety of the Reformation is seen in a delightful mix of writings on angels, Protestant opinions about the Virgin Mary and such diverse personalities as William Byrd, John Calvin and the extraordinary seventeenth-century forger Robert Ware, some of whose malicious fantasies have polluted parts of Reformation history ever since.All Things Made New shows Diarmaid MacCulloch at his best - learned, far-seeing, sometimes subversive, and often witty. At the end of his essay on the great Elizabethan divine Richard Hooker, he writes 'The disputes which currently wrack Western Christianity are superficially about sexuality, social conduct or leadership style: at root, they are about what constitutes authority for Christians. The contest for the soul of the Church in the West rages around the question as to how a scripture claiming divine revelation relates to those other perennial sources of human revelation, personal and collective consciousness and memory; whether, indeed, there can be any relationship between the two.' There is much wisdom, as well as much enjoyment, in this book.

The Reformation which engulfed England and Europe in the sixteenth century was one of the most highly-charged, bloody and transformative periods in their history, and has remained one of the most contested. In this dazzling book, Diarmaid MacCulloch explores a turbulent and endlessly fascinating era. 'A masterly take on the Reformation ... absorbing and compelling, full of insights' Linda Hogan, Irish Times'One of our very best public historians ... as this collection triumphantly confirms, MacCulloch writes authoritatively and engagingly on a remarkably diverse range of topics in the history of Christian culture' Peter Marshall, Literary Review'Written with elegance and sometimes donnish wit ... he wears his learning lightly' Robert Tombs, The Times'Dazzling ... prodigiously learned ... MacCulloch has a gift for explaining complicated things simply' Jack Scarisbrick, Catholic Herald

Edward VI died a teenager in 1553, yet his brief reign would shape the future of the nation, unleashing a Protestant revolution that propelled England into the heart of the Reformation. This dramatic account takes a fresh look at one of the most significant and turbulent periods in English history. 'A challenging, elegant and persuasive biography of an unjustly neglected king' Jerry Brotton, author of This Orient Isle'MacCulloch puts the young Edward at the centre of the action ... as this excellent and lively study shows, his ghost continues to haunt the history of Anglicanism' Sunday Times 'This is Reformation history as it should be written, not least because it resembles its subject matter: learned, argumentative, and, even when mistaken, never dull' Eamon Duffy, author of The Stripping of the Altars'One of the best historians writing in English today' Sunday Telegraph

Although the young Edward VI's death in 1553 led to resounding defeat for his Protestant allies, his reign has a significance out of all proportion to its brief six-year span. For during its course England's rulers let loose an explosive form of Christianity within the realm. In this lavishly illustrated book, MacCulloch underlines the significance of Edward's turbulent and neglected reign. As well as the young king's life and beliefs he takes a fresh look at the ruthless politicians who jostled for position around him and explores the strange afterlife of Edward's attempt at the religious transformation of his kingdom. In this MacCulloch traces a connection through the civil wars of the 17th century up to the present day.

This study throws new light on the relationship between the counties and central government, and on the changing political and religious views of both gentry and people at the time of the English Reformation. Winner of the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize.

‘A richly entertaining history of the ways in which, for 3,000 years, the church has tied itself in knots over sex (and love and marriage) … fabulous’ ObserverThe Bible observes that God made humanity ‘for a while a little lower than the angels’. If humans are that close to angels, does the difference lie in human sexuality and what we do with it? 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, bringing liberation for some and fury and fear for others.This book by Oxford's Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church seeks to calm fears and encourage understanding by telling the 3000-year-long tale of Christians encountering sex, gender and the family, with noises off from their sacred texts. It beckons us to pay attention to the sheer glorious complexity and contradictions in the history of Christianity, an epic of ordinary and extraordinary Christians trying to make sense of themselves and of humanity’s deepest desires, fears and hopes.

This book unravels a polyphony of silences from the history of Christianity and beyond. MacCulloch considers Judaeo-Christian borrowings from Greek explorations of the divine, and the silences which were a feature of Jesus's brief ministry. Besides prayer and contemplation, there are shame and evasion; careless and purposeful forgetting.Many deliberate silences are revealed: the forgetting of histories inconvenient to later Church authorities, and Christianity's problems in dealing honestly with sexuality. Behind all this is the silence of God. In a deeply personal conclusion, MacCulloch brings a message of optimism for those still seeking God beyond the clamour of over-confident certainties.

A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, FINANCIAL TIMES, GUARDIAN, BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR'This is the biography we have been awaiting for 400 years' Hilary Mantel'A masterpiece' Dan Jones, Sunday TimesThomas 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.

Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was the archbishop of Canterbury who guided England through the early Reformation—and Henry VIII through the minefields of divorce. This is the first major biography of him for more than three decades, and the first for a century to exploit rich new manuscript sources in Britain and elsewhere.Diarmaid MacCulloch, one of the foremost scholars of the English Reformation, traces Cranmer from his east-Midland roots through his twenty-year career as a conventionally conservative Cambridge don. He shows how Cranmer was recruited to the coterie around Henry VIII that was trying to annul the royal marriage to Catherine, and how new connections led him to embrace the evangelical faith of the European Reformation and, ultimately, to become archbishop of Canterbury. By then a major English statesman, living the life of a medieval prince-bishop, Cranmer guided the church through the king's vacillations and finalized two successive versions of the English prayer book.MacCulloch skillfully reconstructs the crises Cranmer negotiated, from his compromising association with three of Henry's divorces, the plot by religious conservatives to oust him, and his role in the attempt to establish Lady Jane Grey as queen to the vengeance of the Catholic Mary Tudor. In jail after Mary's accession, Cranmer nearly repudiated his achievements, but he found the courage to turn the day of his death into a dramatic demonstration of his Protestant faith.From this vivid account Cranmer emerges a more sharply focused figure than before, more conservative early in his career than admirers have allowed, more evangelical than Anglicanism would later find comfortable. A hesitant hero with a tangled life story, his imperishable legacy is his contribution in the prayer book to the shape and structure of English speech and through this to the molding of an international language and the theology it expressed.

This collection of essays by leading scholars and researchers in early Tudor studies provides an up-to-date discussion of the politics, policy and piety of Henry VIII's reign. It explores such areas as the reform of central and local government, foreign policy, relations between leading politicians, life at Court, Henry's first divorce and the break with Rome, literature and the government's exploitation of it, and the growth of evangelical religion in Henry's England. Particular consideration is given to the controversies which have arisen about the reign among modern historians, and there is an effort to assess the personality of Henry himself.

The English Reformation was the event which chiefly shaped English identity well into the twentieth century. It made the English kingdom a self-consciously Protestant state dominating the British Isles, and boasting an established Church which eventually developed a peculiar religious agenda, Anglicanism. Although Henry VIII triggered a break with the Pope in his eccentric quest to rid himself of an inconveniently loyal wife, the Reformation soon slipped from his control, and in the reigns of his Tudor successors, it developed a momentum which made it one of the success stories of European Protestantism. In this book, MacCulloch discusses the developing Reformation in England through the later Tudor reigns: Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. He provides a narrative of events, then discusses the ideas which shaped the English Reformation, and surveys the ways in which the English reacted to it, how far and quickly they accepted it and assesses those who remained dissenters. This new edition is fully updated to take account of new material in the field that has appeared in the last decade.

This second volume takes up the story where the first left off. Like its predecessor it has three features which make it different from other histories, so that it is aimed at the widest possible audience. First, it does not separate church history from the wider history of the world in which it is set. Christians live in that wider world, and political, social and economic developments often determine the life of the church. Secondly, it provides direct quotations from the written sources. To make sure that the account covers British and American, as well as French and European, history, an English-speaking historian joins the French author. 'The approach is ecumenical, covering with good balance the full range of denominational developments in the Western church and its missionary outreach ...In general this is a clear, well-written account ...the language is accessible not only to an adult but also to a student readership' (Expository Times).

First published in 1987, this book has been a primer for theological college students, undergraduates, lay readers and all interested in the history and development of Christianity. Now published in a new and attractive edition with an updated bibliography, Diarmaid MacCulloch still manages to argue his case convincingly that history need not be boring. He takes his readers from the earliest days of the fledgling Christian Church to the end of the twentieth century and enables readers to put characters, movements and places in their wider context and make connections between them.

Tudor Rebellions, now in its seventh edition, gives a chronological account of the major rebellions against the Tudor monarchy in England from the reign of King Henry VII until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.The book throws light on some of the main themes of Tudor history, including the dynasty’s attempt to bring the north and west under the control of the capital, the progress of the English Reformation and the impact of inflation, taxation and enclosure on society, and makes comparisons with the other Tudor realm of Ireland. This new edition has been revised once more to take into account the exciting and innovative work on the subject in recent years and bring the historiographical debates right up to date. The primary sources, alongside the narrative history, allow students to fully explore these turbulent times, seeking to understand what drove Tudor people to rebel and what sort of people were inclined to do so. In doing so, the book considers both ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, and the concerns of both the noble and the unprivileged in Tudor society.With supplementary materials including a chronology, who’s who and guide to further reading along with a selection of maps and images, Tudor Rebellions is an invaluable resource for all students of Tudor history.

Tudor Rebellions, now in its seventh edition, gives a chronological account of the major rebellions against the Tudor monarchy in England from the reign of King Henry VII until the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603.The book throws light on some of the main themes of Tudor history, including the dynasty’s attempt to bring the north and west under the control of the capital, the progress of the English Reformation and the impact of inflation, taxation and enclosure on society, and makes comparisons with the other Tudor realm of Ireland. This new edition has been revised once more to take into account the exciting and innovative work on the subject in recent years and bring the historiographical debates right up to date. The primary sources, alongside the narrative history, allow students to fully explore these turbulent times, seeking to understand what drove Tudor people to rebel and what sort of people were inclined to do so. In doing so, the book considers both ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, and the concerns of both the noble and the unprivileged in Tudor society.With supplementary materials including a chronology, who’s who and guide to further reading along with a selection of maps and images, Tudor Rebellions is an invaluable resource for all students of Tudor history.