Confessional Polemics Research Articles

Книжная печаль: о чем переживали составители автобиблиографий XVI в.?

The article examines a type of “autobiographical sadness” — the author’s feelings associated with the creation and publication of books. Varied manifestations of self-reflection and emotions are found in texts of the autobibliographic genre, which flourished in the era of humanism and early printing. The synthesis of bibliography and biography, which had Greek and Roman prototypes and was characteristic, among others, of humanist handbooks in bibliography, contributed to the explicit expression of the authorial “self” in such seemingly technical, dry and “objective” works. The very structure of these handbooks implied the inclusion of an article about its compiler in the text. In this article, two examples of such texts are analyzed — namely, the autobibliographies by the Swiss polymath Conrad Gessner and by the English clergyman and historian John Bale. Written only three years apart (in 1545 and 1548, respectively), they nevertheless differ significantly, in both the organization of the biographical narrative and in the nature of book presentation. The article shows that the peculiarity of these texts is largely due to differences in the self-identification and self-presentation of their authors. While for Bale the acquisition of the true faith and confessional polemics were of fundamental importance, Gessner, though also a Protestant, places his own formation as a humanist author and interaction with book publishers in the focus of the story.

“Like a Magician Who Tricks the Eyes”: Demonism, Epistemological Uncertainty, and Religious Heterodoxy in Seventeenth-Century Ukraine

This paper situates early modern Ukrainian demonological discourse within the framework of the major religious, cultural, and political disruption that affected Ukraine between 1596 and 1686. I will argue that the confessional struggles that followed the Union of Brest, the period of civil war known as “The Ruin,” and the eschatological expectations of the year 1666 contributed to a perception of increased diabolic activity but also to the problem of recognizing the possible discrepancies between reality and non-reality. How could one distinguish true visions from illusory phenomena, if the devil could enter the mind through “bad thoughts” and threaten the stability of one's cognitive experience? Furthermore, if there was more than one church, how could one distinguish between true and false doctrine? These questions, in turn, prompted early modern Ukrainian Orthodox intellectuals to question the role and reliability of sensory perception and human cognition, with issues of epistemology and deception becoming increasingly entangled with confessional polemics and religious dispute.

Was a Confessional Agreement in Early Modern Europe Possible? On the Role of the Sandomir Consensus in the European Debates

The purpose of this article is to present the continuity of irenic thought in early modern times using the example of a confessional agreement concluded in 1570 in Poland, called the Sandomir Consensus (Consensus of Sandomierz). The initiators and authors of the document were Calvinists at the time, but the document’s theologians soon attributed it to the post-Hussite community of the Bohemian Brethren. Here, the point of departure is the 1605 publication of the history of the Bohemian Brethren in Heidelberg, with an appendix containing the Consensus. The article explains the meandering origins of this historical interpretation: its roots in confessional polemics, as well as its legacy, to prove that irenicism was not a marginal or apolitical movement but actively contributed to shaping modern attitudes toward religion.

Visualizing Generational Change in Early Modern Law Dissertations

In the seventeenth century, German jurisprudence saw important thematic and methodological shifts. This article employs a distinctive visualization approach to examine whether these changes can be attributed to specific age cohorts or whether they were adopted across generations. Interrogating the metadata of over 20,000 legal dissertations defended at German universities, it visualizes relative frequencies of title keywords and decomposes them by the dissertation supervisors' age at the time of publication. The increasing use of bilingual titles that combined Latin and the German vernacular can be attributed to younger age cohorts who entered the profession after the end of the Thirty Years' War, nuancing explanations of shifts in early modern academic language as primarily driven by the intention and initiative of eminent individuals. In contrast, the sudden drop in mentions of controversia in the 1610s was a much broader and swifter cross-generational shift, possibly indicating a shared desire to avoid association with the increasingly established genre of confessional polemics. Finally, the late emergence of dissertation titles mentioning territory suggests that one of the most consequential legal-political concepts of the century faced more academic inertia than assumed and adds to our knowledge of the connection between career motives and subject choice.

Theologians and Their Bellies

Abstract An analysis of the role and meaning of the epithet “theologaster,” coined by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his letter from Paris in 1497, can reward us with insights into the interplay of Reformation, scholastic, and humanist forces in the sixteenth century. Although Erasmus rarely used the term in his later correspondence or in his works, the epithet gained some popularity among the humanists and the reformers. During the confessional debates, both sides, the Catholics and the Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire and in France, reached for this same epithet as an argument and a weapon with which to demonstrate the incompetence of their opponents. The term, however, can rarely be found in the confessional polemics in Poland, despite the enormous popularity of Erasmus in the region. The history of the epithet sheds light on the importance of the humanist legacy for the confessional era.

У истоков неосхоластической трактовки кантиан­ства: от Ч. Бальдинотти до Й. Клейтгена

The article considers the first experience of interpretation and criticism of the Kantian doctrine of knowledge on the part of neo-scholastic thinkers in 1st half of the 19th century. It is shown that the transition from confessional polemics, which hadn’t philosophical in­terpretation, to the presentation and analysis of Kantian epistemology in Cesare Baldinotti’s treatise “Tentaminum metaphysicorum” (1817), when scholar takes an under­standing of Kantianism as radical skepticism. At the same time, he left unanswered ques­tions about what type of traditional concepts Kantianism refers, and how it can be de­scribed in the language of scholasticism. The first problem was solved by the Italian thinker Gaetano Sanseverino, who tried to correlate Kantianism with models traditionally opposed to scholasticism (like averroism). The second problem was solved by Jaime Balmes and Joseph Kleutgen, who outlined the boundaries of the compromise between scholasticism and Kantianism, trying to describe Criticism in terms of Thomism and show possible intersection points between these doctrines. As a result of these efforts, it becomes clear that the mechanical transfer of solutions developed in medieval scholas­ticism to the problems of modern European philosophy is not a successful polemic strat­egy. It was necessary to update the scholastic philosophy in a modern European context, which was subsequently carried out by Matteo Liberatore and the Neo-Thomists who fol­lowed him.

Reconstruction of argumentation about the possibility of natural theology in confessional polemics at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries

This article describes the problem of the possibility of natural theology, as it was understood in the discussion between Catholics and Protestants at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The topic is relevant because on the one hand, the category theologia naturalis by this time accumulated a lot of theological and philosophical values, and it is for some traditions a system-forming category that identifies the relation of certain concepts of early modern science. On the other hand, it formed a point around which arguments for and against fundamental decisions were built in the field of ontology, epistemology, anthropology, etc. Thus, the problem of natural theology, its possibilities, composition, and connection with the theology of Revelation (theologia revelata) is a fundamental factor in the development of confessional thought in the early modern period. In studying this problem, emphasis is placed on the ways to conceptualize the idea of natural theology, since this factor determined some strategy of argumentation, that a thinker chooses, justifying a positive or negative assessment of the significance of this problem. A special attribute of the approach is the consideration of how the problem of the possibility of natural theology was understood within the agenda of a specific strategy of theological and philosophical argumentation (in particular, in William Ames’ theological works). The approach allowed us to reveal an authentic understanding of the scope and structure of the problem of the possibility of natural theology, characteristic of authors at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as to describe ways to systematize various arguments into a single strategy for positive or negative evaluation of the phenomenon of natural theology.

Searching for the true religion: the Church History of the Magdeburg Centuries between critical methods and confessional polemics

AbstractThe Magdeburg Centuries (1559–74) constituted the first attempt at a comprehensive Lutheran church history. Written as a collaborative project and starting its account in the Apostolic age, the Centuries aimed also to describe the theological changes of their own century, although the printed version extended only to the thirteenth century. In its development, the project was closely connected to the so‐called Chancery of God, a propaganda office of strict Lutheran theologians in Magdeburg which worked against the emperor, the Catholic Church and confessional opponents in Wittenberg. Written during a time of political threats, the work was driven by apocalyptic thinking and a certain scepticism about authorities. The search for historical testimonies of religious truth, the critical methods of a humanist education, the deconstruction of myths, and the writing for specific confessional goals intermingled and informed the compilation of excerpts from historical sources. The authors of the Magdeburg Centuries used these different techniques according to their needs.

When a Female Pope Meets a Biconfessional Town: Protestantism, Catholicism, and Popular Polemics in the 1630s

The early modern afterlife of Pope Joan has been remarkably little studied, perhaps because its contours have seemed familiar: Joan’s existence was embraced by Protestants for its challenge to the apostolic succession of the papacy and rejected by Catholics for the same reason. This role reversal, which cast Protestants as defenders of monastic chronicles and Catholics as their critics, offers ostensible proof for the mercenary use of history in confessional polemics. This article uses an overlooked 1635 defence of the popess, the longest ever written, as a case study to argue the opposite: debates over Pope Joan could be vehicles for popular confessional grievances and identities, and they can teach us much about the difficulties facing the Catholic and Reformed churches in the 1620s and 1630s. Written in Dutch by a German minister of the Church of England, this lengthy treatise possesses a significance well beyond the local conditions – a public disputation in a small biconfessional town in the Duchy of Cleves – that gave rise to its publication.

August Tittel (1691–1756): The (Mis)fortunes of an Eighteenth-Century Translator

August Tittel, a Lutheran pastor, translator, ‘minor author’, and fugitive, was best known to contemporaries for his German translation of Humphrey Prideaux’s The Old and New Testament Connected and for his turbulent life. Together with his printed oeuvre, Tittel’s extant correspondence, especially with his patron Ernst Salomon Cyprian, allow us a close scrutiny of the life and work of a minor and troublesome member of the Republic of Letters. Despite its peculiarities, there is much in his career which is indicative of broader trends in early eighteenth-century scholarship, e.g. networks of patronage and a German interest in Jansenist and English biblical scholarship, theology, and confessional polemics. This view of the Republic of Letters ‘from below’ sheds light on a class of minor scholars, which often evades the radar of modern scholarship, but was an essential part of the early modern Republic of Letters.

Lives & Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church ed. by Timothy Schmeling

Reviewed by: Lives & Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church ed. by Timothy Schmeling Mark Mattes Lives & Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church. Edited by Timothy Schmeling. Introduction by Robert Kolb. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016. 320 pp. This handbook introduces readers to Lutheran theologians active in the era of Lutheran Orthodoxy (1580–1700). Twenty-one theologians, including nineteen Germans, one Dane, and one Swede, are showcased. Each entry follows a pattern: a sketch of each theologian’s life, a list of his writings in the original Latin or German along with English translations (if they exist), and a short original translation of a seminal, representative writing. The theologians presented are Aegidius Hunnius (1550–1603), Philipp Nicolai (1556–1608), Georg Dedekenn (1564–1628), Leonhard Hutter (1563–1616), Valerius Herberger (1562–1627), Friedrich Balduin (1575–1627), Conrad Dieterich (1575–1639), Johann Heermann (1585–1647), Swedish Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius (1581–1646), Danish clergyman Jesper Rasmussen Brochmand (1585–1652), Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), Solomon Glass (1593–1656), Balthasar Meisner (1587–1626), Johann Conrad Dannhauer (1603–66), Johann Rist (1607–67), Paul Gerhardt (1607–76), Abraham Calov (1612–86), Johann Andreas Quenstedt (1617–88), Sebastian Schmidt (1617–96), Christian Scrivber (1629–93), and Heinrich Müller (1631–75). Many of these [End Page 122] theologians were university professors but some were parish pastors or court preachers. Robert Kolb introduces the volume with an interpretive essay about the significance of Lutheran Orthodoxy. He notes that Orthodoxy has been criticized as offering a “theologically sterile monolith” with “dogma alienated from the faithful” (9). Critics have targeted Orthodoxy for its dependence on Aristotelian theological categories. Kolb sees things differently. Aristotelian categories provided all the confessional camps, not only Lutheran but also Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Reformed, a common language to engage one another—usually polemically—and a means to deliver their biblical message. Kolb concedes that Aristotelian categories sometimes distorted the clarity of the Christian message, but all the theologians involved sought to preach the faith, and connect it to the lives of ordinary men and women (12). Similar to the proto-Pietist Johann Arndt (1555–1621), many of the Orthodox highlighted “union with Christ” as the heart of Lutheran spirituality. But that was not at the expense of the oral, outward proclamation of the gospel which Arndt also accentuated. In contrast to Orthodox polemics against Catholics or the Reformed, the era produced Georg Calixt (1586–1656) who as a harbinger of the current ecumenical movement sought an irenic coming together of various confessional groups. The Orthodox theologians not only provided a legacy of Orthodoxy but also set up the conditions for a dispute about what constitutes orthodoxy. For instance, Hunnius maintained that faith was not a “meritorious cause” but an “instrumental cause” of divine election of sinners to salvation (30). Such a notion was to lead to the theological conviction that God elects humans in view of their faith (intuitu fidei) which in the nineteenth century C. F. W. Walther rejected as incompatible with the gospel and so created a firestorm of controversy in many Lutheran synods. Orthodox theologians were not fixated on doctrinal polemics. Many were active in producing hymns and devotional literature. Of note is Philipp Nicolai’s Mirror of the Joys of Eternal Life, which in addition to Arndt’s True Christianity, was a much used devotional [End Page 123] resource. It would seem that the difference between Pietism and Orthodoxy was not over the centrality of devotion in the Christian’s daily life or the priority of sanctification over justification, but instead Pietism’s disdain of confessional polemics. On a different note, Friedrich Balduin’s work dealt with the use of casuistry to assist a pastor in helping a parishioner deal with morally ambiguous matters that challenge the conscience, for example, whether divorce is permissible for fornication but not a spouse’s unbelief (108ff). The era was one of violence, manifested in the Thirty Years’ War, and plagues that intermittently rampaged Europe. Many of these theologians knew the cross in their daily life and their faith stances reflected this. In the last seven decades many Lutheran theologians have sought to distance themselves from Orthodoxy. When the...

Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? and the Politics of the Thirty Years War

For early modern Lutherans Heinrich Schütz's Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich? would have evoked fears of religious persecution. Its text, from the narrative of Paul's conversion in Acts 9, appears in seventeenth-century devotional writings and confessional polemics about persecution. Moreover, recently uncovered archival evidence shows that Schütz performed his concerto in 1632 at a state-sponsored political festival marking the first anniversary of the Battle of Breitenfeld, a major Protestant victory in the Thirty Years War. Here Schütz's concerto clearly stoked fears of persecution, because the celebrations touted the battle as a victory over Catholic oppression. The political context in 1632 might also explain some of the piece's most notable features. Its unusually brief text and vivid music do not illustrate the whole story of Saul's conversion but solely the moment at which Christ intervened to put a stop to persecution. Schütz's listeners would have heard in Saul's example a parallel to the victory they were celebrating in 1632 and the persecution they feared from their Catholic and imperial adversaries. This performance of Saul, the only one known from Schütz's lifetime, shows how his music partook in a broader campaign of Protestant propaganda designed to reinforce the confessional and political divisions that fueled this phase of the war.

In Praise of Messiness, or What is Gained by Losing Strong Periodization?

In Praise of Messiness, or What is Gained by Losing Strong Periodization? Nancy Bradley Warren (bio) In his extraordinary book Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn, David Wallace has a chapter entitled “Genoa,” a version of which appeared prior to its inclusion in the book under the title “Chaucer and the Slave Trade.” In a synopsis of that chapter, which is found in the book’s introduction, Wallace writes, “A first visualization of Chaucer crossing the lines of the slave trade comes as a shock . . . : it messes with every kind of periodization and disciplinary division that has structured our . . . thinking; Chaucer and slavery have inhabited quite different parts of the English curricular woods. But in coming to Genoa, Chaucer undoubtedly crosses global circuits of trade that had long linked . . . Genoa to Caffa and Alexandria” (5–6). Messing with periodization has become something of a trend in medieval studies recently. It has certainly been central to my own recent work. Let me begin by recounting briefly something that messed with my sense of the relationship of the medieval and the early modern in a big way, a big enough way that it led to my most recently published book.1 Then, I want to spend some time contemplating the implications and benefits for medievalists and early modernists alike of messing with the categories of “medieval” and “modern.” Several years ago, I encountered this passage in a text by an early British female author: When I lay in my bed of sorrow . . . then ugly shapes and a fearful view of hellish figures and monstrous apparitions presented themselves unto my mind. . . . And in the instant thereof there was the figure of the face of a man exulted and lifted up. Whereupon I settled the eye of my mind most fixedly, beholding well the countenance of that face which was so dolorous [End Page 138] and sorrowful as no heart can imagine. . . . And in the very same instant of my beholding that face my heart was stirred up to apprehend with a deep impression, the sorrows of Christ’s death, hanging upon the cross, sweating water and blood in the garden, his stripes, buffets and spittings in his face, with a meditation thereupon. And immediately in the same instant all the said fearful shapes vanished away to the great consolation of my mind. For I was most assuredly persuaded in my heart that Jesus Christ together with God his heavenly father and the Holy Ghost . . . did vouch-safe to visit me in this my bed of sorrow.2 Now, I am trained as a medievalist, specifically as a scholar of medieval female spirituality. So, when I read this passage, I found something very familiar to me. It sounds quite like passages I have found in the writings of various medieval female mystics and visionaries; it especially reminded me of the sixteenth revelation (particularly chapters 66–69) in the Long Text of Julian of Norwich’s Showings. However, this passage does not come from the writings of a medieval mystic or visionary. Rather, it is from the meditations of a Protestant English gentrywoman named Grace Mildmay, who lived from 1552 to 1620. Accounts of English religious culture have historically tended to be organized so that Catholicism and Protestantism, the medieval and the early modern, are mutually exclusive “others.” I hasten to add (lest I offend my early modernist colleagues) that such binarism, though still pervasive, is not, of course, universal, and I am certainly not the first to challenge it (and I do so rather less combatively than some others, since I now see myself as almost as much of an early modernist as a medievalist). An excellent departure from this either/or perspective is Anthony Milton’s Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640. Alexandra Walsham’s scholarship also provides exemplary models of a more nuanced stance as in, for example, her book Church Papists: Catholics, Conformity, and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England. Other more recent efforts to paint a more subtle picture of the religious landscape in early modern England are found in the essays collected in the volume Catholics and the...

:Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

:<i>Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy</i>

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemics in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy. By Michael J. Halvorson. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2010. xviii + 263 pp. $107.96 cloth.

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemics in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy. By Michael J. Halvorson. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2010. xviii + 263 pp. $107.96 cloth. - Volume 81 Issue 2

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

Heinrich Heshusius and Confessional Polemic in Early Lutheran Orthodoxy

Through a Netherlandish Looking-Glass: Philips van Winghe and Jean l’Heureux in the Catacombs

This chapter focuses on the investigation of the Roman catacombs by two Early Modern scholars from the Netherlands - Philips van Winghe and Jean L’Heureux [Macarius]. Examining Van Winghe drawings and notes as well as Macarius’s treatise on early Christian Iconography (Hagioglypta), it discusses why these two foreigners in Rome exhibited a sensitivity to the style of the art of the catacombs absent in their Italian contemporaries, who appreciated catacomb art only for its value as historical evidence or holy relic. It proposes that it was Van Winghe and Macarius’s northern origins, experience living in a denominationally heterogeneous (Catholic-Protestant) region, and ‘outside’ status in the caput mundi that made them less committed to the confessional polemics of the Counter-Reformation and more open to an artistic style that deviated from the classical norms of the Italian Renaissance.

“Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte.” Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer wissenschaftlichen Reihe (review)

Reviewed by: “Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte.” Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer wissenschaftlichen Reihe William Bradford Smith “Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte.” Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer wissenschaftlichen Reihe. By Peter Walter. [Katholische Leben und Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung, Heft 68.] (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag. 2008. Pp. 82. €16,90. ISBN 978-3-402-11086-7.) This slim volume constitutes an expanded version of the keynote address given by Peter Walter at the centenary celebration of the founding of the series Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte. The series was the brainchild of Joseph Greving (1868–1919), a scholar of early Catholic controversial literature. Walter begins by noting how strongly Ludwig Pastor, at the time the pre-eminent Catholic scholar of the sixteenth century, opposed the use of the term Reformation in the series title, preferring Glaubensspaltung. Words have meaning; Pastor’s disagreement was that the term Reformation was itself an attack on Catholicism. His concern was hardly irrational in the aftermath of the Kulturkampf in Bismarck’s Germany. Greving viewed matters differently. His goal was to establish a series devoted to the study of Catholic thought in the sixteenth century, but one that would be free from all confessional polemic. In the one hundred years since its founding, the series has continued to provide a venue for scholars interested in the Catholic perspective on the Reformation era through the publication of monographs, essay collections, and other documents. In addition to the 152 volumes of the RST, the society has published three subseries. Walter describes the Corpus Catholicorum as the “flag ship . . . so to say, the raison d’être” (p. 31) of the society. This series of editions of the correspondence and writings of Catholic theologians, politicians, and religious was initiated in 1919 as a response to the Corpus Reformatorum. The “little series,” Katholisches Leben und Kämpfe im Zeitalter der Glaubensspaltung begun in 1927, includes short monographs, few longer than 100 pages. In 1967, in a reflection of the new mood after the Second Vatican Council, “Kämpfe” was replaced with “Kirchenreform,” the title the series carries to this day. The society also published Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen, a series begun in 1900 and taken over in the 1960s. Walter chronicles the changes in editorial policy in the main series, with occasional side glances at the history of the various subseries. In the 1950s and 1960s, under the leadership of Hubert Jedin and August Franzen, the RST turned more toward the Counter-Reformation. Under subsequent editors, most notably Erwin Iserloh and Klaus Ganzer, the original focus on the early-sixteenth century was revived. Walter ends by considering the future direction of the series. He notes that it is no longer necessary to found a series to publish a book—there are a number of publication series devoted to Reformation history; the older confessional obstacles that once hindered Catholic scholars have disappeared. Moreover, the older focus of the series— Luther’s earliest Catholic opponents—seems to have run its course. What [End Page 351] more, Walter asks, remains to be said about Eck or Cochlaeus? Hence the new direction of the series, focusing on areas of concern in more recent scholarship. Walter identifies three areas of research as the future of the series: continuities and discontinuities between the late Middle Ages and the early-modern era; reception theory; and Catholic Confessionalization. All three subjects are represented in the publications of the main and subseries over the past decade, and will likely to be fruitful areas of research for some time. This is a useful little volume for students of early-modern Catholicism. The appendices contain a complete bibliography of the four series, and the essay details the strengths and weaknesses of the series. It would be particularly useful for graduate students embarking on a major research project: the monographs and essay collections in the series have consistently been first-rate, while the document collections provide access to a wide range of materials pertaining to both religious and secular history not found elsewhere. Walter has also done a service to remind us of the contribution of Greving, a pioneer of modern Catholic historiography. William Bradford Smith Oglethorpe University Copyright © 2010 The Catholic University of America Press

The Penitents’ Treasury: Indulgences in Latin Christendom, 1175–1375 (review)

Reviewed by: The Penitents’ Treasury: Indulgences in Latin Christendom, 1175–1375 R.N. Swanson The Penitents’ Treasury: Indulgences in Latin Christendom, 1175–1375. By Robert W. Shaffern. (Scranton: University of Scranton Press. 2007. Pp. x, 240. $40.00 clothbound, ISBN 978-1-589-66139-4; $25.00 paperback, ISBN 978-1-589-66136-3.) For English-reading medievalists, an accessible modern history of medieval indulgences has long been a desideratum. Robert Shaffern’s volume, following several articles which have considerably advanced appreciation of the role and significance of indulgences in medieval Catholicism, goes far toward its provision. This is, though, a short book for its subject. Its positive yet measured assessment offers a much-needed corrective to a traditional historiography often tainted by confessional leanings and trapped in the dregs of Reformation debates, but it cannot cover everything. The theoretical evolutions are well covered, but practical experience of the acquisition and distribution of indulgences receives much less attention. Chronologically the book is also limited by its terminal dates. The first appears something of a figment: 1175 has little real significance, and chapter 2, on “The Emergence and Variety of Indulgences,” deals extensively with the eleventh-century origins and the pre-history [End Page 123] in earlier penitential regimes. Attempts to push the formal history of indulgences back much before Urban II’s momentous pronouncement at the Council of Clermont in 1095 (whatever he intended it to convey) are shown to be mistaken. The other cut-off date, “1375” (actually 1378 and the outbreak of the Great Schism), is real, and appears somewhat arbitrary—yet avoids the complexities of the last stages of the pre-Reformation history of indulgences. While “1375” avoids those later issues (including the debate provoked by Wyclif in England in the 1370s and 1380s), they are not totally ignored. The historiographical ghosts of Reformation debates are confronted head-on in the book’s first chapter, an excellent survey of “Indulgences and the Persistent Historiography of Confessional Polemics.” Tracing the rival partisan histories of the past five centuries, this chapter concludes with discussion of more recent “unpolemical” studies and the gradual emergence of a new historiography that reexamines indulgences to relocate them in the history of the medieval Church—a project to which Shaffern’s own volume is a significant contribution. If Urban II’s Clermont promise added an uncertain gene to the pool that produced later indulgences, other essential ingredients were the consolidation of the ideas of Purgatory and the Treasury of Merits. Chapter 3 concentrates on the treasury and its evolution from c. 1150 through to its formal adoption and promulgation by Pope Clement VI in 1343. Purgatory receives attention in chapter 4, on “Indulgences, the Saints, and Devotionalism at the End of the High Middle Ages.” Here, Shaffern also shows that saints were not as averse to endorsing indulgences as has sometimes been claimed. The last two chapters turn to “Controversies and indulgences prior to the Great Western Schism.” Chapter 5 examines and dissects uses of the phrase “a pena et culpa” and the vexing issue of the application of indulgences to the dead (a vexation that continued until 1476—far beyond the book’s terminal date). Chapter 6 works in detail through John of Dambach’s wide-ranging tract De quantitate indulgenciarum. Written in defence of the Dominicans and their distribution of indulgences in Germany before 1363, Shaffern identifies it as “the first independent canonistic treatise on indulgences” (p. 179). A short conclusion—“Unde indulgentiae?”—draws together the main strands of arguments that readers unwilling to abandon stereotypes may find scandalously revisionist: “[i]n sum, the traditional interpretation, which depicted pardons as spiritually stultifying, ought now to be laid to rest” (p. 214). Given the subject’s complexity, and the underappreciated role of indulgences in late-medieval religious life and practice, Shaffern has to condense and select. Despite its brevity, this is a valuable and welcome volume, which fully serves its purpose in providing an up-to-date introduction, offering a balanced judgment, and helping to plug a substantial gap in existing scholarship. [End Page 124] R.N. Swanson University of Birmingham Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

Les frontières du sacré

This article studies biconfessional communities and families, gender roles, confessional polemics, and conversion narratives, specially through the example of Poitou. The goal is to explain how two religious groups were constructing confessional difference and coexistence. The article offers a conceptualization of three ways confessional boundary was constructed. In the first, the two groups shared concerns and blured confessional identities ; in the second, they maintained their identities clear, but they reach agreements in order to each group could keep their place in the community ; in a third form, religious boundaries were strong and Protestants were pressured to convert.