Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in contextThe rule of moderation: violence, religion and the politics of restraint in early modern England

Abstract

Varieties of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English radicalism in context, edited by Ariel Hessayon and David Finnegan, Famham & Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2011, xiv + 271 pp., £65.00/$124.95 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-7546-6905-0The rule of moderation: violence, religion and the politics of restraint in early modern England, by Ethan H. Shagan, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 2011, xiii + 381 pp., £19.99/$32.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-521-13556-6Despite their repeated efforts, historians are never immune to making anachronisms and misinterpretations. We either use modern terms to designate early modern phenomena or, conversely, we too often understand early modern terms in their modern sense, which inevitably influences our approach to a given subject. These two books aim to rectify this each in their own way and ought as a result to be read together. Both came out the same year and are arranged chronologically; they respectively cover the first and second half of the early modern period, with an overlap on the seventeenth century and the English Revolution in particular. Both brilliantly challenge our understanding of two key-related notions characterising the turmoils of the early modern period: radicalism and moderation. Since one can hardly go without considering the other, a combined reading seems more appropriate and fruitful in the present case.Shagan's Rule of Moderation focuses on the English Reformation and therefore should be considered first. Right from the introduction, the author debunks our modern idea of by looking at contemporary definitions of the term. Moderation, as he demonstrates, denoted an exertion of authority through restraint and often proved aggressive, coercive, brutal, and violent. In other (modern) words, early modern was immoderate, a definition that the editors of Varieties find sometimes unnecessarily restrictive (12).After considering the moral of sin, the passions, and women in Part I, Shagan examines its political implementation in Tudor England. His account of the execution of six priests (three Catholics and three Evangelical reformers ) by Henry VIII in 1540 is a fascinating case in point of royal via media in a heterodox religious landscape. The Anglican middle way was not one of compromise and negotiation between two extremes or radicalisms, but rather a powerful weapon enforcing Royal authority and public order. Subsequent chapters explore the rhetoric of in a religious context in the Elizabethan period, showing how Anglicans used to enforce their authority, whilst nonconformists did the same to emphasise self-discipline as part of a moderation (177).Although some of its contributors also draw on early Reformation heterodoxy, Varieties does not begin until the English Civil Wars. The book is the product of an interdisciplinary conference held in 2006 at Goldsmiths, London. It offers a fresh and much needed look at the subject with twelve essays challenging modern semantics applied to early modern case studies. The editors do a remarkable job at surveying definitions and approaches to radicalism in their introduction. They successively examine the nominalist approach to radicalism (2), which advocates purging modern concepts from the early modern reality, and a substantive approach, especially favoured by Marxist historians seeking to legitimise their own political views by constructing an English radical tradition (13-17). Hessayon and Finnegan object to these two approaches, settling instead for a third one called functional. Despite the risk of anachronisms and inconsistencies it involves, this functional approach uses radicalism as a workable term easily understood by the modern reader, but also calls in return for greater and systematic contextualisation in order to truly grasp its practical implications.Like Tudor and Stuart moderation, the twelve case studies in Varieties suggest not one, but many forms of radicalism in the seventeenth century. …