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This book was an excellent synthesis of many different movements in the 16th century that resolved in different ways. The way England, France, the Netherlands, and the Germanies each differed in their approach to the Reformation and how many different personalities and groups played their part is an exciting story. The complicated ways that geopolitical and material ends affected religious ends is fascinating and not always consistent or logical. Belloc reminds us that reading into the past is basically a lie. Nothing is predetermined and those who lived through those times had no inkling of what the result would be in their own lifetimes, much less hundreds of years after. I revised my thinking a bit and now see Queen Elizabeth as much less powerful and Martin Luther as much less influential than I had previously thought, surpassed by the Cecils and Jean Calvin.
