This narrative description and analysis of the European Reformations of the sixteenth century begins with a chapter on the history and historiography of Reformation scholarship and concludes with an extended reflection on the Reformations\' religious, social, and cultural legacies. The storyline sets the initia Reformationis in the context of late medieval social, economic, and religious crises, and traces its differentiation through a series of internal and external crises into various Reformation movements which acquired specificity through confessionalization.