The reformation was not a western European event, but historians have neglected the study of Protestantism in central and eastern Europe. This book aims to rectify this situation. It examines one of Europe's largest Protestant communities in Hungary and Transylvania. It highlights the place of the Hungarian Reformed church in the international Calvinist world, and reveals the impact of Calvinism on Hungarian politics and society.

Scholars have associated Calvinism with print and literary cultures, with republican, liberal, and participatory political cultures, with cultures of violence and vandalism, enlightened cultures, cultures of social discipline, secular cultures, and with the emergence of capitalism. Reflecting on these arguments, the essays in this volume recognize that Reformed Protestantism did not develop as a uniform tradition but varied across space and time. The authors demonstrate that multiple iterations of Calvinism developed and impacted upon differing European communities that were experiencing social and cultural transition. They show how these different forms of Calvinism were shaped by their adherents and opponents, and by the divergent political and social contexts in which they were articulated and performed. Recognizing that Reformed Protestantism developed in a variety of cultural settings, this volume analyzes the ways in which it related to the multi-confessional cultural environment that prevailed in Europe after the Reformation.

This collection of essays, edited by Graeme Murdock, Penny Roberts, and Andrew Spicer, developed from a one-day conference 'Religion and Violence in Early Modern France: The Work of Natalie Zemon Davis' which was held in June 2008 at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Five of the papers published here were initially delivered on that occasion, but the conference also sought to learn from the differing perspectives of violence outside sixteenth-century France. This concern is also reflected in this collection, which seeks to offer new insights and approaches to the relationship and significance of religion and violence as well as paying tribute to the immense contribution made in this field by the writings of Natalie Zemon Davis.