Owen Chadwick. The Early Reformation on the Continent.

(Oxford History of the Christian Church.) Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford, 2001. vi + 446 pp. index, bibl. $90. ISBN: 0-19-826902-1.

This venerable scholar has spent his mature lifetime illuminating the history of Christianity. Now in advanced age he presents his perspective on "the early Reformation," that is, the Protestant Reformation to about the 1560s. In his designation of this phase as "early," he conveys his awareness that in the last two decades, partly under the influence of intra-Christian ecumenism with its need to include Catholicism, specialists have moved the end of the Reformation era back from 1555 to perhaps 1618 (e.g., the contributors to Andrew Pettegree, ed., The Early Reformation in Europe [Cambridge, 1992]). Essentially, then, this book surveys what used to be called the Reformation proper.

Nearly devoid of documentation, the chapters treat theology only summarily while devoting far more attention to social aspects of religious change. A brief history of the reformed Bible includes the struggle over the Apocrypha. A treatment of scholarship and religion reveals Chadwick's intimate familiarity with the life of Erasmus, in whose career and indecision he sees "the entire personal problem of the origins of the Reformation ... encapsulated" (60). The cities, the fulcra of religious change, shared an ambition to bring church affairs and assets under their control. This chapter ranges from Switzerland to Hamburg and is rich in unusual detail, but an assertion like the following leaves me wondering what Chadwick means: "Historians have talked of a 'semi-democratization' within the constitution of the towns" (92). I do not perceive either Bernd Moeller or Peter Blickle to be advancing a theory of "semi-democratization." Other blithe statements throughout the volume seem similarly just off the historiographic mark.

A chapter on the conversion phase, both individual and collective, introduces a topic of fundamental gravity. We still know too little about this key aspect of the encounter between souls and advancing doctrinal innovations. Chadwick is surely right, in examining clerical concubinage and marriage, to regard the broad populace as accepting of either under conditions compatible with the public welfare.

A chapter entitled "The New Services" brings in, among others, fascinating anecdotes on the use of organs and the links between organs and hymn-singing. Additional treatments of the new church orders, creeds and catechisms, and education fit nicely under the rubric of establishing a new ecclesiastical and spiritual polity. A segment, "In the Country," is curiously removed from "The City." It nonetheless presents the difficulties of inculcating the rural population, achieving a qualified pastorate, and maintaining order in remote hamlets. Final chapters, in no apparent sequence, are "Resistance Justified," which includes much on the Schmalkaldic War and theological conflicts within Lutheranism; "Radicals," on peasants, Anabaptists, and the debacle in Munster; "Toleration," mainly from the traditional intellectual point of view; and "Unbelief" and its limitations. The activities of women are regularly described.

Chadwick's familiarity with a vast array of primary texts and his fundamental erudition, especially in connection with the German-speaking lands, shine forth, underscored by myriad and unusual riveting examples. Likewise, we see the author's general awareness of and response to the passing historiographic scene. As for specific recent milestones in Reformation studies, one cannot be sure that he has read them. The short select bibliography at the back tends to deepen my suspicion, for the works cited are overwhelmingly dated. Omitted are most of the pathbreaking works that define our field today, such as those by Bob Scribner, Heinz Schilling, and Andrew Pettegree.

The egregious flaw in this book is its lack of editing. It is no coincidence that as I write this, an essay entitled, "Where Have All the Proofreaders Gone?" has just appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education (Robert McHenry, November 15, 2002, B5). No copyeditor's pencil has improved Chadwick's text--or if it has, it strove in vain. The following single sentence on Martin Luther will make the point:

To be told by Rome that he was suspect for heresy, then that he was a notorious heretic; to defend himself in the home of the Fugger bankers at Augsburg in an interview with the able Dominican Cardinal Cajetan (was there a treasure of the Church from which popes could dispense pardons?--Luther realized that he believed in no such treasure, the meeting was more a shouting match on Cajetan's side than a debate); to be at imminent physical risk (Cajetan was empowered to seize him, a senior Austin Friar in Germany--the Curia avoided asking Staupitz--was ordered to seize him, his elector Frederick was asked by Rome to seize him and was sent the honor of the Golden Rose in the hope that he would seize him, friends including Staupitz were thinking up schemes to save him from certain death, there was even a plan that he should be apparently kidnapped to take him to a safe place); to discover that an academic was willynilly a political object; to appeal from a pope who was not properly informed to a pope better informed; then, seeing that the pope was informed, appealing from the pope to a general council--there was still a long way to go for his mind; for in January 1519 he drafted a submissive letter to the pope--that he cannot bear the pope's anger; he cannot retract on indulgences because it would hurt the Church if he did; he said he regarded the power of the Roman Church as above everything except the authority of Jesus Christ. (126)

Every reader will constantly have to surmount prose obstacles of this magnitude. This is Oxford University Press' fault and sadly detracts from the usefulness of this book.

SUSAN C. KARANT-NUNN

The University of Arizona