What have the English ever done for us? This central question guided participants in a one-day workshop, organised by Fred Smith and Kate Shore, exploring the European impact and legacy of England’s early modern reformations. Once seen as insular and introverted, historians have increasingly come to recognise the extent to which England’s reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, developed in close and intimate dialogue with religious changes elsewhere throughout Europe. However, the history of Europe‘s many reformations and counter-reformations is still often told without much reference to England. Indeed, it is often assumed that England’s reformations had relatively little to offer their continental counterparts: as Diarmaid MacCulloch once suggested, ‘the flow of ideas in the [English] reformation seems at least at first sight to be a matter of imports from abroad, with an emphatically unfavourable balance of payments.’ The workshop, held in Balliol College, Oxford, on 27 March 2025, sought to interrogate this narrative by bringing together an international group of historians, literary scholars and theologians.

Over the course of 12 papers and lively discussion, a number of things became clear. The first was the extent to which England’s reformations were a topic of considerable interest throughout early modern Europe. Information about English events travelled quickly: Charlotte Methuen (University of Glasgow) emphasised how well-informed German Lutherans were about English affairs. Indeed, after Anne Boleyn was executed on 19 May 1536, Philipp Melanchthon was not only aware of the event but also passing on details in correspondence only ten days later. English reformations captured the imagination of their wider European peers and were integrated into the literary traditions of other countries. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin (University College Dublin) brought to life the Italian tale of Il Cappuccino Scozzese by Giovanni Battista Rinuccini (1592-1653), which used a fictionalised life of George Leslie, a Scottish Capuchin monk, to unpick the tensions of religious conversion and familial relationships. Deborah Forteza (Covenant College, Georgia, USA) explored the different ways in which the tale of Henry VIII appeared in Spanish literature, from history writing to comedic plays. There was engagement with English reformations as far afield as Greece: Anatasia Stylianou (Humfrey Wanley Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library) detailed the exploits of Venetian Greek Nikandros Noukios (c. 1500-1556) who came to England and wrote a Greek account of the early English reformation.

Many of the papers also underlined the dense networks of connections linking England with Europe. James Kelly (University of Durham) spoke about those English Catholics who joined religious orders on the continent, whilst Morten Fink-Jensen (The Saxo Institute, Copenhagen) drew out the Anglo-Danish connection: Miles Coverdale received a very warm welcome in Denmark in 1555 and, in the seventeenth century, the University of Oxford was the place to study for future Danish theologians and politicians.

English reformations, then, were far from unknown on the continent. However, many papers went further by considering the extent to which such communications networks and perceptions helped inform religious change in Europe. A recurring theme tackled by many of the papers was just how difficult it is to pin down ‘influence’ – a problem confronted head on by Dorothea Wendebourg (Humboldt Universität, Berlin) in her paper exploring the influence of the English Reformation in the Holy Roman Empire. As Wendebourg explained, the role of German reformers in shaping the contours of English reformations is well-known and extensive. However, all relationships, no matter how imbalanced, are at least to some extent reciprocal – we just have to approach the question of ‘influence’ more omnivorously. In particular, Wendebourg underlined the importance of looking beyond a traditional focus on theological influence (English reformations were, undeniably, somewhat derivative of European ideas in this sphere) to consider instead the European significance of England’s reformations in more liturgical, ecclesiological and administrative senses. Once we do this, she argued, we can begin to see German reformers engaging more creatively and constructively with English ideas. This was an idea taken up by Kate Shore (Lincoln College, Oxford) in her paper, which explored the printing and circulation of German and Latin translations of Thomas Cranmer‘s writings, especially the Edwardian Order of Communion (1548). Meanwhile, Fred Smith (Balliol College, Oxford) underlined the significance of Mary I’s programme of Protestant persecution for informing French approaches to heresy in the 1550s: the French Cardinal, Charles de Guise, consciously appropriated aspects of the Marian inquisitorial campaign‘s structural organisation for use in France. Several of the participants also stressed that the influence of the English Reformation on Europe was not limited to the sixteenth century: Fink-Jensen, Wendebourg and Shore, for example, all stressed the importance of English Puritan writings for German and Danish proto-pietism in the seventeenth century and beyond.

However, perhaps the theme that came through most strongly across many of the papers was the profound European influence of English reformations in a more rhetorical sense – the power of ‘The English Reformation‘ as a narrative to conjure with. Wendebourg, for example, underlined the importance of that narrative for German reformers for whom the success of Protestantism outside Germany proved the catholicity and thus legitimacy of their reformation. The rhetorical force of the English Reformation was perhaps at its most potent in relation to martyrdom. Mirosława Hanusiewicz-Lavallee (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland) discussed the reception of English martyrs in Poland-Lithuania. Lacking their own martyrological tradition, Polish translators repurposed English martyrological narratives, particularly those of John Foxe and Edmund Campion. Anne Dillon (Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge) echoed Hanusiewicz-Lavallee’s thoughts for the Spanish context: lacking their own continuity of martyr witness, Spanish charterhouses decorated their interiors with paintings of English martyrs. Meanwhile, James Kelly emphasised that English monasteries and convents in continental Europe became a powerful representation of the persecuted church on one’s doorstep. This gave such communities a powerful religio-cultural caché which helped them become standard bearers of Catholic reform. Katy Gibbons (University of Portsmouth) reflected on the ways in which European narratives also shaped the identity of English martyrs: Thomas Percy’s political involvement in the Northern Rebellion of 1569 made him an uncomfortable figure of veneration for English Catholics, but, in the rest of Europe, he could be sanitised and added to the tales of English Protestant persecution. Gibbons also emphasised the importance of the networks of religious orders in amplifying the stories of English martyrs. Details could be lost in translation, but the narratives of the English Reformation, with its tales of life and death, became a powerful tool and shorthand in the literature, religious writings and art of early modern Europe.

Ultimately, what the workshop really highlighted is that, despite its location on the geographical periphery, England was an important part of European conversations about religious change. By changing our frame of reference and looking at the English Reformation through European eyes, we can not only gain a new understanding of the English Reformation itself – its significance, idiosyncrasies and legacy– but also encourage historians to think more carefully about the ways in which religious ideas propagate, interact and merge.

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