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/rˌɛfərmˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Reformation n.

The act of reforming, or the state of being reformed; change from worse to better; correction or amendment of life, manners, or of anything vicious or corrupt; as, the reformation of manners; reformation of the age; reformation of abuses. "Satire lashes vice into reformation."

Specifically (Eccl. Hist.), the important religious movement commenced by Luther early in the sixteenth century, which resulted in the formation of the various Protestant churches.

Synonyms: Reform; amendment; correction; rectification. Reformation, Reform. Reformation is a more thorough and comprehensive change than reform. It is applied to subjects that are more important, and results in changes which are more lasting. A reformation involves, and is followed by, many particular reforms. "The pagan converts mention this great reformation of those who had been the greatest sinners, with that sudden and surprising change which the Christian religion made in the lives of the most profligate." "A variety of schemes, founded in visionary and impracticable ideas of reform, were suddenly produced."

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Etymology of 'Reformation'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Reformation" Quotes from Famous Books

... notice the humorous though scurrilous attack made upon the Roman clergy in the "Letters of Obscure Men," published in Germany at the commencement of the sixteenth century. There was something novel in the idea of a series of ironical letters, and from their appearance, the steady progress of the Reformation may be dated. The greater part of them seems to have been written by Ulrich von Hutten, and are addressed to Ortuin Gratius, a professor of the University of Cologne, who had attacked Reuchlin, a celebrated Hebraist. The original quarrel was only about some translations of Rabbinical works, ...

— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... to the Reformation the story of Christendom is unbroken; the later Roman Empire is the Church-State of a Christian Prince, as modern Europe is the Church-State of a nominally Christian society. Mediaeval Europe thought of itself as nothing but the old world-state under religion; ...

— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... in their possessions, and place themselves above the power of the laws. James sought to found the basis of his power in the affections of his people. He attached the lower orders to him by the reformation of abuses, the temperate and equable administration of justice, the encouragement of the arts of peace, and the promotion of every thing that could diffuse comfort, competency, and innocent enjoyment ...

— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... papal consequences of such hardihood by the fact of residence in a Protestant country. Not that the Protestants of the time favored the heliocentric doctrine—we have already quoted Luther in an adverse sense—but of course it was characteristic of the Reformation temper to oppose any papal pronouncement, hence the ultramontane declaration of 1616 may indirectly have aided the doctrine which it attacked, by making that doctrine less obnoxious to Lutheran eyes. Be that as it may, ...

— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... sold her outright to the King of Prussia in 1791, and went to live in England on the proceeds. She had taken her part in the miseries and glories of the wars that desolated Germany, but after the Reformation, when she turned from the ancient faith to which she owed her cloistered origin under St. Gumpertus, her people had peace except when their last prince sold them to fight the battles of others. It is in this last transaction that her history, almost in the moment ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

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