Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany.

Joel F. Harrington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xv + 315 pp. $49.95. ISBN: 0-521-46483-8.

This book is a product of the fruitful union between disciplines and methods that, over the past several decades, has come to characterize some of the best writing on the reformations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Harrington weaves together intellectual and social history in an effort to trace and evaluate changes in the conception, practice, and control of marriage. His work ambitiously crosses the chronological and confessional divides that have too often set the sixteenth century apart from its medieval context and the Protestant movement from its parallels among pre- and post-Tridentine Catholicism. The result is a lucid and useful study that serves as an excellent introduction to the history of marriage and the family in the early modern era.

Part 1 treats the nature and origins of sixteenth-century marriage reforms as outgrowths of the complex of problems inherent in the "duality" of marriage - lofty sacramentum and pragmatic remedium for those too weak for chastity - as defined by the medieval Church. The first great phase of marital reform (in the twelfth century, when reformers worked to extend ecclesiastical control over the looser, less reflective and less uniform practices then current) produced unforeseen consequences with which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reformers of all confessions found themselves grappling. Common concerns united them: the weakening of parental and community control in the formation of personal unions; the tangle of property and personal disputes bogged down in notoriously inefficient ecclesiastical courts. These created a cross-confessional consensus that marriage itself was in danger, and thus all of society as well. Reformers differed in the particulars of their solutions for it; Protestants placed new value on it while retreating from the extremes of both sacramental and remedial theory; Catholics sought relief in better enforcement of existing standards. Yet both sides agreed on the need for greater institutional control, and as Harrington's study of the continued influence of canon law demonstrates, both shared a remarkably similar set of coordinates.

The second part of this work comprises an attempt to evaluate the impact of reform through a case study of three regions in the Rhineland Palatinate: the Palatine-Electorate (Calvinist after 1560), the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer (Catholic throughout), and the Imperial City of Speyer (Lutheran after 1555). Each of these regions witnessed the convergence of reforming zeal with political authority, leading to the creation or reinvigoration of institutions aimed at exercising greater control over weddings, marriage, and families. Here too Harrington finds parallels in programs and outcomes: the zeal of reformers outstrips both the competence of institutions for enforcement and the consensus of those subject to them.

In this section, it may be Harrington's conclusions that outstrip his evidence; with a source base in the Palatinate that is both small and spotty, anecdotes are forced to carry the load of argumentation. Nevertheless, sufficient support is marshaled from comparative studies to lend credence to the author's claims. Recent studies reveal that lay culture proved remarkably resilient in the face of the social engineering attempted by religious reformers and temporal authorities. Harrington shows us that marriage was no exception.

ROBERT BAST University of Tennessee