The title for Chapter 10 is misleading. The Holy Roman Empire counts as central Europe. Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania might be too far east to belong to central Europe. France is not usually understood as a part of central Europe. With its Atlantic coastline it is clearly a western European commonwealth. I imagine that by "central" MacCulloch means territory between north and south. But even this perspective is inadequate. We can assume that the northern region of the Empire belongs to the Northern Protestant heartlands. Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania are not situated between a Protestant north and a Catholic south.

This geographical quibble does not prevent us, however, from seeing the tremendous challenges that faced Catholicism in the Empire and in France. You should know what the "daunting obstacles" (445) to Catholicism were in the Empire and why "by the late 1580s, France had ceased to be a functioning commonwealth" (466). The story in both places, as MacCulloch tells it, is one of initial opposition to what he would call Counter-Reformation or Tridentine Catholicism with its eventual triumph.

One explanation for the endurance of Catholicism in the Empire has to do with the Catholic bishops. Their "general faithfulness" (446) probably has something to do with the Ecclesiastical Reservation of the Peace of Augsburg (1555). The principle of cuius regio, eius religio did not apply in ecclesiastical states, for "any bishop or prelate of the imperial Estates who converted to the new faith would automatically lose office and imperial territory" (452). A Catholic bishop was also a secular authority in the Empire. If he chose to become a Lutheran, he could not take his subjects with him.

In France, the Catholic League (also called the Holy League or Union) steadfastly opposed all attempts of the monarchy to mediate a settlement between warring factions of Huguenots and Catholics by granting limited forms of religious toleration to the former. The Leaguers were "intransigents in opposition" (466), and MacCulloch compares them with Puritans (468) because they shut down the carnival society, the Conards, in Rouen. In this context, MacCulloch refers to the time before the suppression of the Conards as "the innocent days before the world turned bad" (468). What do you think he means by this? Did Reformation controversies contribute to the deterioration of "the world"?

MacCulloch's focus on the delayed Counter-Reformation in France is on different forms of spirituality, although he does point out the revaluation of the diocesan clergy primarily at the cost of the Jesuits (479). The Catholic resurgence in the seventeenth century was far from uniform, however. Jansenism revived the haunting "shadow of Augustine" (480) and stood athwart Molinism. Are these the "two rival styles of Catholicism" (484) evident in France or in Habsburg lands, or is MacCulloch thinking of something else?

MacCulloch displays his commitment to Europe by adding a section on Transylvania. You will be hard pressed to find a survey of Reformation history that mentions this eastern region. Despite its connections to the western Reformed Protestantism, Transylvania developed a different form of Church organization or polity and thus reminds us that "Reformed Protestantism can never be simply identified with Calvinism" (460). Yet "Transylvania's eventual failure after so much reformed excitement was a severe blow to the morale of eastern European Calvinism" (464). Do we know why "Calvinism" failed in Transylvania?

We have come far enough in our reading to take stock of the meaning of the Reformation. Scott Hendrix reintroduces us to some key players (Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin) and cites O'Malley's article in the Catholic Historical Review. He self-consciously takes us in a different direction from a trend in Refomation studies that emphasizes a plurality of Reformations. The various reformers (magisterial, Anabaptist, Catholic--was Ignatius Loyla a Church Reformer?--) may have adopted different strategies, but they all shared a common agenda.