Reviewed by: The Reformation of Historical Thought by Mark A. Lotito Robert Kolb The Reformation of Historical Thought. By Mark A. Lotito. Saint Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2019. xx + 542 pp. In its first half-century the University of Wittenberg gained such great prominence because of the contributions of its theological leadership that the significant contributions of their colleagues in other disciplines, including astronomy and botany, are often ignored. Therefore, this refreshing and carefully crafted assessment of the critical role that Philip Melanchthon, with Luther's support, played in the introduction of history as a discipline in the Western European university curriculum is most welcome. Because the Wittenberg professors regarded God's movement of and in human history as the framework for understanding biblical revelation, the study of the total story of humankind, "profane" and "sacred," had momentous relevance for the Wittenberg theological enterprise. The Wittenberg approach to presenting that story also had a major impact on Western European understanding of culture and society. Lotito begins his study by probing the biblical and ancient Graeco-Roman foundations for historical interpretation in the Middle Ages, elements of which continued to provide Melanchthon and his Wittenberg colleagues essential tools for placing the sixteenthcentury present into its historical context. Chiefly relying on the Danielic prophecy of the four monarchies, Melanchthon pursued differing political goals over the thirty years in which he revised and expanded the Chronicle of Johannes Carion, Melanchthon's major historical work. It reflects the pressures placed upon Wittenberg by changing political circumstances, as Melanchthon used history to oppose French and Italian claims on imperial dignity and to interpret Habsburg intentions and those of other princes in a light positive for Wittenberg reform. Melanchthon's humanistic interests in ancient historians, including Sallust, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Tacitus, blossomed into concrete materials for use by scholars and the educated public through his relationship to Johannes Carion (1499–1537), with whom he had studied in Tübingen before his move to Wittenberg and Carion's to the court of Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg in 1518. There Carion served as a counselor to the elector, who used him [End Page 453] for general counsel, diplomatic missions, and above all astrological analysis of the future. Carion quickly seized upon the medium of print as an instrument for sharing such analyses; Lotito pursues his and Melanchthon's use of the medium in a most helpful manner, enhancing his presentation with apt illustrations, chiefly of title pages and historical charting of the rise and fall of the empires that shaped world history. Appearance in print was accompanied for astrologers, as for theologians, by controversy, and Carion engaged in public disputes with critics of his predictions. Most important, Carion constructed a Chronicle, which used his astrologically and astronomically shaped understanding of the course of world history, for instance, dating events in connection with reports of comets and other heavenly events. Through his extensive revisions of Carion's Chronicle Melanchthon pursued his reformation of historical thought and of the place of history in the curriculum and the popular mind. In 1532 Carion brought the first edition of the Chronicle to Wittenberg to obtain Melanchthon's aid in polishing his text. Melanchthon immersed himself in the task, extensively revising Carion's work, so that its subsequent printings—of which there were many—were more his work than Carion's. After Carion's death in 1537, Melanchthon extended its coverage into the Middle Ages. At his death—he had gotten to Charlemagne's time—his son-in-law Caspar Peucer, professor of medicine and leader of "Crypto-Philippist" sacramental thinking in Wittenberg, took over the task and published a completed overview of world history, with focus on the German empire, in 1572. In the forty years after Melanchthon first aided Carion in revising his first edition, the text had gone through wide-ranging, extensive alterations by Melanchthon's and Peucer's hands. Lotito traces the publication of further editions of the German original and of the Latin translations, first by the Wittenberg student Hermann Bonnus, and then by the Parisian printer Jacques de Puys. He recounts the assault waged by Caspar Peucer against the pirated version produced...