Europe and the Faith by Hilaire Belloc — Read

This is perhaps the greatest of all historical questions, after the original question: "What was the Church in the Empire of Rome? " A true answer to this original question gives the nature of that capital revolution by which Europe came to unity and to maturity and attained to a full consciousness of itself. An answer to the other question: "What was the Reformation? " begins to explain our modern ill-ease.

A true answer to the question: "What was the Reformation? " is of such vast importance, because it is only when we grasp _what the Reformation was_ that we understand its consequences. Then only do we know how the united body of European civilization has been cut asunder and by what a wound. The abomination of industrialism; the loss of land and capital by the people in great districts of Europe; the failure of modern discovery to serve the end of man; the series of larger and still larger wars following in a rapidly rising scale of severity and destruction-till the dead are now counted in tens of millions; the increasing chaos and misfortune of society-all these attach one to the other, each falls into its place, and a hundred smaller phenomena as well, when we appreciate, as today we can, the nature and the magnitude of that fundamental catastrophe.