The Transformation of Europe 1300-1600

Book excerpt: This comprehensive survey of European history between 1300 and 1600 gentry subverts a conventional vision of Europe that divides the world between the late-medieval and early modern periods, emphasizing the distortion involved in that construction. Important changes toward "modernity" are evident, the book argues, as early as the fourteenth century; only in religious history does there appear to be some justification for retaining the traditional notion that "modern age" began with Martin Luther, though even in that arena the institutional break of the Protestants with Rome cannot conceal fundamental continuity of expression and attitude.