I'm studying the history of Calvinism?

Question

I'm looking for some good resources to use to study the history of calvinism/the reformation. (Not the actual theology...I'll get to that later). Do you know of any good website, articles, or books on this subject? Unbiased info would be the best, but anything will help.

Answer 1

The university of Virginia has a religious web site that gives the history of most religions and denominations, I haven't checked it out but it would be worth a look. Just do a search and it will come up I'm sure.

Answer 2

"All the great heresies_save this one of Mohammedanism_seem to go through the same phases.

First they rise with great violence and become fashionable; they do so by insisting on some one of the great Catholic doctrines in an exaggerated fashion; and because the great Catholic doctrines combined form the only full and satisfactory philosophy known to mankind, each doctrine is bound to have its special appeal.

Thus Arianism insisted on the unity of God, combined with the majesty and creative power of Our Lord. At the same time it appealed to imperfect minds because it tried to rationalize a mystery. Calvinism again had a great success because it insisted on another main doctrine, the Omnipotence and Omniscience of God. It got the rest out of proportion and went violently wrong on Predestination; but it had its moment of triumph when it looked as though it were going to conquer all our
civilization_which it would have done if the French had not fought it in their great religious war and conquered its adherents on that soil of Gaul which has always been the battle ground and testing place of European ideas.

After this first phase of the great heresies, when they are in
their initial vigour and spread like a flame from man to man, there comes a second phase of decline, lasting, apparently (according to some obscure law), through about five or six generations: say a couple of hundred years or a little more. The adherents of the heresy grow less numerous and less convinced until at last only quite a small number can be called full and faithful followers of the original movement.

Then comes the third phase, when each heresy wholly disappears as a bit of doctrine: no one believes the doctrine any more or only such a tiny fraction remain believers that they no longer count. But the social and moral factors of the heresy remain and may be of powerful effect for generations more. We see that in the case of Calvinism today. Calvinism produced the Puritan movement and from that there proceeded as a necessary consequence of the isolation of the soul, the backup of corporate social action, unbridled competition and greed, and at last the full establishment of what we call "Industrial Capital- ism" today, whereby civilization is now imperilled through the discontent of the vast destitute majority with their few plutocratic masters. There is no one left except perhaps a handful of people in Scotland who really believe the doctrines Calvin taught, but the spirit of Calvinism is still very strong in the countries it originally infected, and its social fruits remain."
-EWTN
http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT

Answer 3

http://www.reformed.org/

http://www.ccel.org/

http://www.calvin.edu/library/database/card/

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/calvinism-history/history.htm