Robert J. Bast and Andrew C. Gow, eds. Continuity and Change: The Harvest of Late-Medieval and Reformation History: Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on His 70th Birthday.

Leiden: Brill, 2000. xv + 1 color pl. + 430 pp. bibl. index. $97. ISBN: 9-0041-1633-8.

The late Heiko Oberman (1930-2001) had a long and distinguished career at three universities: Harvard (1958-66), Tubingen (1966-84), and Arizona (1984-2001). At Harvard Oberman worked primarily as a church historian interested in intellectual history, especially in the relationship between the intellectual currents of the later Middle Ages and the Reformation. It was during his Harvard years that Oberman wrote what may prove to have been his most important book, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism, a vigorous rethinking of the theological significance of the Ockhamist movement. Oberman challenged the frequent attempts by many different historians to marginalize Nominalism as an example of what they regarded as the sharp intellectual decline of the late Middle Ages from the golden heights scaled by the philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth century.

But Heiko Oberman's legacy can be found not merely in his written works but in the large number of graduate students he taught, many of whom have already led distinguished careers in research and writing. The present book is as much a tribute to Oberman as a teacher and colleague as it is to Oberman as a scholar. It is, after all, his second Festschrift. An earlier Festschrift was presented to him on his sixtieth birthday by his Harvard students. The current Festschrift was offered to him by his Arizona students on his seventieth (and, as it happened, his final) birthday. The book is very much a celebration of the Arizona years. It contains essays by eight younger scholars who studied with him in Arizona, one of whom earned a doctorate elsewhere (Bast, Tyler, Milway, Dykema, Gow, Gregory, Manetsch, Haude), three Arizona colleagues (Weinstein, Bernstein, Karant-Nunn), one former Tubingen student now a professor at Erlangen (Hamm), and eight senior colleagues from the international scholarly community (Nederman, Brady, Estes, Tracy, Pettegree, McGinn, Backus, Van Engen).

The essays cover a wide spectrum of topics that engaged Oberman from issues of the governance of church and state in the late Middle Ages and Reformation to questions of religious life and thought. There is no single theme in the book and no overarching thesis. The book is introduced by two biographical reminiscences rather than by a scholarly overview that ties the various essays together. The essays are grouped under four headings, but the organization remains loose and allows for a great diversity of subject matter. Van Engen, who is known for his work on the devotio moderna, examines the use of the Sayings of the Fathers by the New Devout, while Bernard McGinn examines the role played by Jewish philosophers in the writings of some medieval scholastics. Long-time collaborators with Oberman, James Tracy and Thomas Brady, discuss the restrictions on non-Calvinist refugees in the province of Holland in the late sixteenth century and the bishops of the Holy Roman Empire on the eve of the Reformation. Susan Karant-Nunn writes on the social location of baptism in early modern Germany, and Brad Gregory tackles the important theme of the Renaissance of Christian martyrdom. Former student Peter Dykema compares late medieval manuals for priests with Conrad Porta's Pastorale Lutheri, while former student and editor Andrew Gow casts a critical eye on Luther's Hebrew exegesis. In short, the volume offers a rich "harvest" of some of the best work on the frontiers of late medieval and early modern studies, including the essays I have lacked the space to mention in this short review. All of the authors attempt to honor Oberman by honoring the high scholarly standards he exemplified in his own work. The book is therefore well worth reading as a fitting tribute to an historian who left an important mark on late medieval and early modern studies in the twentieth century.

DAVID C. STEINMETZ

Duke University