The Early Reformation in Europe.

Andre Pettregre had the sensible idea of asking these questions: Why did Luther's reformation spread so rapidly in the first thirty years of its existence in some places and not in others? How, exactly, did the process work by which Scandinavia seems to have a Lutheran state church so rapidly while other places (Switzerland) got mixed results and still others, conspicuously, Italy and Spain, resisted the clarion call for Luther's reform despite strong reforming waves in those countries? The editor's opening essay sets out this rather complicated agenda in a readable and coherent survey.

Pettegre commissioned a number of scholars (none from North America) to address specific areas from Spain to Hungary and respond to that query by surveying the best scholarship available for those discrete places. Space forbids me the leisure to give in capsule the results of this survey, but it is important to note some of the useful observations made by the authors. Peddegre himself notes that when the first impression of Luther as an Erasmian critic/reformer gave way to the picture of Luther as heretic/rebel, the perceived shift stiffened reactions to his ideas. Most of the authors note how powerful printed books and pamphlets were in the dissemination of Reformation ideas. Success or failure of the reform depended, in many places, on whether there was a leader powerful enough to articulate the reform and, also, whether that leader lived in an area where sociopolitical realities permitted such a voice.

Most of the authors resist the stereotypical image of a thoroughly corrupt church tottering on the edge of collapse. The widespread corruption of the higher and lower clergy as well as the hatred many felt for papal/episcopal/parochial taxation must be weighed against the vigorous stream(s) of lay piety found in countries as different as those along the Mediterranean and in England. Nor is class analysis avoided; authors ask why reform ideas got such an informed heating among artisans in France? How much did "advanced" ideas of reform filter down from the learned salons of Italy? And why did the early English reformers share with their medieval counterparts (the Lollards) and the Swiss reformers such a burning hatred for shrines, pilgrimages, and other sacramentals?

This collection, especially in its less expensive paperback format, well may serve as an ancillary for courses on the Reformation. Some of the essays focus so unremittingly on political forces that religious issues themselves get marginalized while others are a lode of interesting data for religious understanding. Thus, for example, one must have a large appetite for royal politics to stay with the essay on Scandinavia while the one on Spain focuses almost entirely on theological issues. My bias, of course, is for the latter.

It is always sad to fall back on the reviewer's cliche, but I must say that this collection is a mixed bag: all of the essays are highly competent but some, from my perspective, are more meaty than others. It is not a book to read as a continuous narrative but, both for its essays and its bibliographies, it makes a good reference volume for those interested in church history in general and Reformation history in particular.