A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders.

Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop's Tale: Mathias Hovius Among His Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. x + 387pp. $27.95. ISBN: 0-300-08342-4.

Readers who enjoy narrative history based on a thorough investigation of primary and secondary sources combined with an imaginative reconstruction of events will hold this book in the highest regard. This wonderfully written study of the pastoral activity of the third archbishop of Mechelen in the Spanish Netherlands appeals to a scholarly and general readership alike. Harline and Put have made a valuable contribution to the growing and fascinating field of early modern Catholicism. Their book ought to be published as a paperback in order to facilitate its use in undergraduate and graduate courses.

A Bishop's Tale is not a biography. It begins in 1580 with Mathias Hovius, a cathedral canon, escaping in a peasant's smock from Mechelen, recently stormed and occupied by rowdy Protestant forces. It continues with Rome's approval of Hovius as archbishop in 1595 and proceeds chronologically, documenting his episcopal labors until his death in 1620. Almost every chapter is organized around a specific date or series of dates corresponding to a particular event or circumstance and the archbishop's corresponding response. His initiatives include the convoking of a provincial council in 1607 and the establishment of a seminary. Episcopal reaction to events predominates, however, in the narrative about an archbishop with the fitting motto "Patience Conquers the Mighty." Hovius comes across not as a visionary with a grand religious strategy, but as a hard-working prelate completely dedicated to the spiritual and material needs of his diocese.

The authors made "the unusually well-documented, highly praised, obviously zealous, and little-studied Mathias Hovius" (305) the subject of their research in order to uncover the wider world of seventeenth-century Catholicism. While they concede that "in an absolute sense" Hovius's perspective is "obviously limited, restricted to a small area," they ably demonstrate their claim that his perspective in a relative sense" is immense: "it puts him in the middle of a myriad of other people and impersonal forces and shows how these too contributed to the shaping of religious life -- a task he presumed was primarily his" (306).

We encounter, among others, the Archdukes Albert and Isabella, protectors of the interests of church and state; Hendrik Heynot, the irascible pastor of Opwijk, exacting more than his share of the tithe in the opinion of the village magistrates; Jan Berchmans, the saintly and intelligent boy from Diest, moving from one school to another within a complex web of diocesan politics; Madam Joanna Boisot, an aristocratic Benedictine nun of Grand Bigard west of Brussels, repeatedly defying the strictures of cloister; Sister Cornelia vande Vinne of the Augustinian Black Sisters, under suspicion of robbing one of her home-care patients in Leuven. The morally dubious behavior of cathedral and collegiate canons served as a frequent source of irritation for Archbishop Hovius. For example, Henri Wiggers, the Dean of St. Sulpitius's in Diest, delighted in fishing, hunting, merchandizing, drinking, and gambling more than in singing the divine office with his fellow canons. To be sure, laypeople also inhabited the religious world of the archbishop. They went as pilgrims to the shrine of Our Dear Lady on the Sharp Hill, complained about noisome pastors, observed Sabbath rest imperfectly, and asked for annulments.

A Bishop's Tale addresses diverse themes, including the fortunes of Catholicism during confessional warfare and detente, popular religion, the enclosure of nuns, diocesan tensions with the Society of Jesus, clerical education and discipline, and the practical extent of episcopal power. At times, Hovius succeeded in enforcing his will, but usually "bishop and flock negotiated" what was religiously appropriate (212). Support from the Archdukes was often necessary, and while Hovius could usually depend on their assistance, it sometimes came with qualifications. The papacy proved a less reliable ally, inclined to subordinate a bishop's reform efforts to the consolidation of its own central authority. Supremely patient, Hovius persevered, even if he could not always achieve what he wanted. As in Hovius' inability to realize perfectly his ideal of the good pastor, so too in many other aspects of his pontificate, it is evident that the church of the Catholic Reformation was not "the monolith it was later imagined t o be" (161). Harline and Put have successfully evoked the rich variety of the world of early modern Catholicism.