Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern Period, ed. Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-Lebeau

Abstract

Since their emergence in the 1970s and 1980s, the disciplining paradigm and its offshoot, confessionalisation theory, have come under sustained attack. The most vocal critics were the proponents of a history ‘from below’, whose research, ironically, would have been impossible were it not for the paper trail produced by the disciplining institutions that sprouted all over early modern Europe and other Christianised parts of the world. Therefore, whatever one’s position in the controversy (with which the contributors of the volume under review do not engage), there is no doubt that the disciplining institutions are crucial to the understanding of the period, which is why this collection of twenty-seven contributions, offering a comparative perspective on reformed consistories and Catholic inquisition tribunals, is of great interest and highly welcome. The comparison is not unproblematic, as the editors, Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, admit in their introduction. First, the nature of the two institutions is not entirely equivalent. Catholic inquisition tribunals were staffed with expert judges operating in highly formalised fashion on the basis of Roman law. They were equipped with powers to constrain (and torture) and were backed and assisted by state powers. Their remit was the moral sphere in the external forum (mainly heresy), while the internal forum (sin) was captured through confession. Indeed, in functional terms, consistories were not so much a mirror of the inquisition (although Lutherans tended to denounce them as such) but may rather be regarded as a replacement for sacramental confession, an aspect that William Monter mentions in the conclusion to the volume, where he reminds readers that what was at stake was largely a ‘Reformation of Penance’. For a full comparison of the disciplining institutions, confession would have to be included, but is of course not straightforward, given the sacramental secrecy that enshrouds it. Calvinist consistories intervened both in the external and internal forum of the moral sphere, but they did not possess a comparable punitive apparatus nor a basis in canon law, and, more importantly, they were staffed with pastors and laymen. Secondly, the state of research seems more developed for the inquisition tribunals, which, due to their highly institutionalised nature, left ever more detailed archival records.