The brings together the best scholarship into an array of topical chapters that present current knowledge and thinking in ways useful to the specialist and accessible to students and to the educated non-specialist. Forty-one leading scholars in this field of history present the state of knowledge about the grand themes, main controversies and fruitful directions for research of European history in this era. Volume 1 ( ) described the people, lands, religions and political structures which define the setting for this historical period. Volume 2 ( ) covers the early stages of the process by which newly established confessional structures began to work their way among the populace.