The reformation and the ascent of the North

Abstract

Among the Reformation’s many features one of the most striking is its manifestation at the junction where the geopolitical power relationship between North and South begins to be reversed. What follows seeks to appraise the Reformation’s historical impact by locating its place in the long-range history of the wider Euro-Mediterranean area. Euro-Mediterranean: because while the Reformation is anything but a Mediterranean affair, it coincides and interacts with the start of that decided shift, from the South to the North, of the centre of gravity of international relations. At its political heart, within the Christian world, it ushered a Nordic rebellion against the established powers of the South, namely the Church of Rome and the imperial Hapsburg dynasty, symbiotically and for their own ends both promoters of European unity in the form of some neo-Carolingian Single European Christian Empire.