Meaning of Reformation | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An improvement (or an intended improvement) in the existing form or condition of institutions or practices, etc.; intended to make a striking change for the better in social, political or religious affairs or in the conduct of persons or operation of organizations.
   countable, uncountable
2. The religious movement initiated in the 16th century against the Roman Catholic Church, leading to more than a century of internecine conflict that ended with a durable division between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.
   historical
3. Change or correction, by a court in equity, to a written instrument to conform to the original intention of the parties.
   countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“[…] olde men long nusled in corruption, scorning them that would seeke reformation […]”

The New Arcadia

“And like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, Shall show more goodly, and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off.”

“It is good also, not to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident; and well to beware, that it be the reformation, that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change, that pretendeth the reformation.”

“[…] satire lashes vice into reformation, and humour represents folly so as to render it ridiculous.”

“All sorts of legal instruments may be reformed by equity, when the errors, which have been committed in the execution of them, are mutual mistakes or a mistake of one party combined with the fraud of the other. Thus, reformation has been decreed of all kinds of deeds of conveyance, including leases, mortgages, deeds of trust, marriage and family settlements. Likewise, bonds of all kinds, policies of insurance, assignments or release of mortgages, executory contracts for the sale of lands, the indorsement of a note, agreements for the establishment of a highway, military orders. So may, also, judgments and other records be corrected or be reformed.”

“Who or what is a Catholic? This Greek word has become one of the chief battlegrounds in western Latin Christianity […] How can the word describe all of these things and still have any meaning? I have written this book about the sixteenth-century Reformation in part to answer that question. The Reformation introduced many more complications to the word; in fact there were very many different Reformations, nearly all of which would have said that they were simply aimed at recreating authentic Catholic Christianity. For simplicity’s sake I will take for granted that this book examines multiple Reformations, some of which were directed by the Pope. From now on I will continue to use the shorthand term ‘Reformation’, but readers should therefore note that this is often intended to embrace both Protestantism and the religious movements commonly known as Tridentine Catholicism, the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation: the revitalized part of the old Church which remained loyal to the Pope. ’Catholic’ is clearly a word which a lot of people want to possess. By contrast, it is remarkable how many religious labels started life as a sneer: the Reformation was full of angry words. […] Reformation disputes were passionate about words because words were myriad refractions of a God one of whose names was Word: a God encountered in a library of books itself simply called ‘Book’ – the Bible. It is impossible to understand modern Europe without understanding these sixteenth-century upheavals in Latin Christianity. They represented the greatest fault-line to appear in Christian culture since the Latin and Greek halves of the Roman empire went their separate ways a thousand years before; they produced a house divided. The fault-line is the business of this book.”

CEFR level