Abstract: Charles de Villers’s prize-winning treatise, On the Spirit and Influence of the Reformation of Luther (1804), when regarding its reception and distribution in Europe and North America, is his main work. It was one of the most wide-spread interpretations of the Reformation in the first half of the 19th century. Villers portrays the Reformation as a major force towards modernity and presents a striking thesis: in its social and political effects of liberation, the Reformation anticipates and replaces revolution.
