Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Bob Scribner

Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 561-563
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2953600 .
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Book Reviews

561

the control of books, and the control of persons. The seventh, and longest, chapter
focuses on the autos-da-f6.The eighthtreatsthe statutorycharacterof the tribunals,and
the ninth the representationsof the tribunals,including those of their dealings with
New Christians,with Protestants,and with theiriconographies.The book containsforty
plates, heavily and articulatelyused by Bethencourt,very few of which overlap with
the twenty-seven in my own Inquisition (New York, 1988). The book has extensive
bibliographyand annotation.
The book serves two ideal purposes:for the first time, it offers an effective methodology of comparisonamong the mountainsof recent detailed scholarshipon particular
tribunalsor regions;indeed it could not have been writtenwithoutthe detailed workin
Spanish,Portuguese,and ItalianarchivesthatBethencourtmeticulouslyand accurately
credits. Second, it offers the nonspecialista very useful access to ways of aligning the
inquisitorialtribunalswith each other and with the society of ancien re'gimeEurope
of which they were a constituentpart. Unlike many specialists in inquisitionhistory,
Bethencourtis awareof modem scholarshipin the study of organizations;PierreBourdieu, Clifford Geertz, HerbertSimon, and JeffreyAlexanderturn up in the footnotes
along with Jean-PierreDedieu and Jaime Contreras.Bethencourtis also very familiar
with many of the most interestingaspects of the recent historiographyof early modem
Europe-the study of ritualgesture, the theater-state,art history,and architecture.He
seems to have missed very little in the way of a very large and ambitiousbibliography
(e.g., ElizabethVodola's 1986 study of excommunicationin the Middle Ages, and the
1961 second edition of HenriMaisonneuve;Bethencourtalso fails to note thatthe work
cited on p. 508, n. 110 is a false imprint).One of the strongestappeals of this book is
the access it offers early modem historiansgenerallyto inquisitorialmaterialsandtheir
detailed scholarship.
For all of its broad sweep, Bethencourt'sstudy also offers a wealth of illustrative
detail, much of it from his own archivalresearch.When the inquisitorsof Goa complained in 1620 that their shabbytreatmentby the Portugueseviceroy demeanedthem
in the eyes of "pagans,Moors, and other enemies of the faith" (p. 85) and deprived
them of the respect due a properroyal tribunal,they knew whereof they spoke-and
any readerfamiliar with Dostoyevsky'sGrandInquisitorshould also hear these complaints. Bethencourt'sstudy offers a comparativebasis for the great and small aspects
of inquisitorialhistory that are also part of the history of early modem Europe-and
now can and should be studiedas such.
EDWARD PETERS

Universityof Pennsylvania
Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. By Mark U. Edwards,Jr.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1994. Pp. xiii+225. $40.00.
It was once commonly assumedthatthe GermanReformationowed its rapidand spectacular spread to the impact of printing and the vast proliferationof Luther'sideas
throughthe printmedium. Some years ago, that conventionalwisdom was called into
question by historians skeptical about both the dominantrole of print in a predominantly oral cultureand the assumptionthatprintedtexts were received and internalized
in exactly the way their authorsintendedthem.Attemptsto quantifyGermanpamphlet
output,most notablythroughthe impressiveand prematurelyabortedTiubingenproject
associated with Hans-JoachimKohler, added to our knowledge of the aggregatepro-

562

Book Reviews

duction process, but still told us little about audience and reception. MarkEdwards's
slim but richly informativevolume tackles this problemin terms of the productionof
in a single city (Strasbourg),concenReformationpropagandaand counterpropaganda
tratingon the crucial years 1518-25. This approachhas a numberof advantages.It
focuses on a single but well-documentedlocal context, eminentlyjustifiable because
sixteenth-centuryopinion formationwas intensely local and regionalized.By concentratingon propagandait directs attentionto a process thatinvolvedreception,response,
and feedback from its protagonists.Thus, although it tells us little about the wider
receptionof Luther'sideas by an oral culturecontainingreadershipsof mixed levels of
literacy,it enables Edwardsto trace the unfolding dramaof the Reformationdebate
"fromthe perspectiveof what contemporariesknew and when they likely knew it,"and
especially how Lutherwas "re-presented"by readerswho became authors(pp. 4-5).
Edwardsbelongs to the school of "believers"in the powerful efficacy of the printing
press, but he is fair to the skeptics. He also accepts the argumentthat the printingand
reprintingof Luther'sworks enables the analyst to make reliable inferences about the
interestsand convictionsof the readingpublic. Happily,this is not used as an analytical
presupposition,althoughEdwardsresortsto an altogethermore broad-brushedassumption to prove efficacy, namely,that what actually changed in the Reformationcorresponded closely to the changes that Lutherand other reformershad advocatedon the
basis of their new ideas. This ignores a whole sheaf of questions about power and
politics in the implementationof reformprograms,but does not impairthe importance
of what this book has to offer.
The scholarlybasis for Edwards'sanalysis is found in a computer-basedquantification of the output of religious works by the Strasbourgpresses for the chosen years,
which is then comparedto the best availableinformationfor outputof the works(Latin
andGerman)of Luther,otherevangelicalpublicists,andCatholiccontroversialists.This
enables valid conclusions to be drawn about the relative weighting of what was on
offer to the readingpublic, the targetedaudiences,and the projectedmessage. Edwards
confirms that Lutherwas the dominantfigure on the publishing scene in these years,
accountingfor 80 percent of all religious output,althoughit is in exploringhow other
authorsunderstoodand recycled Luther'smessage that Edwardscontributessignificantlyto ourunderstandingof the propagandaprocess. By trackingthe evolving themes
in the debate as the readingpublic would have encounteredthem in the local press, he
is able to create a revised narrativeabout the developmentof the Reformationdebate.
This reveals Luther as having been perceived differently in his Latin and German
works, appearingin the latter as a traditionalreformerconcerned with pastoral and
devotionalissues, but who especially stressed reliance on Christratherthan works as
the only sourceof salvation.The breachwith the papacy and the increasinglytrenchant
critiqueof the establishedchurchwas until 1520 a matterconfinedto a Latinatereadership. Only in 1521 did the issue become for the generalpublic a matterof papaltyranny
versus the testimony of Scripture,Luther'sauthoritybeing given weight by the wellestablishedimage of him as a divinely inspiredprophet.However,Luther'sinsistence
on reliance on Scripturealone, and on Christianfreedom, quickly led to "misunderstandings"of his intendedmessage, while by 1524 the reformershad begun publicly to
fall out among themselves aboutimages, the pace of reform,and the understandingof
the Eucharist.These disputesled to Lutherbecoming marginalizedas a regionalauthor,
writing largely for a northand centralGermanaudience.The rift of the GermanPeasants' War looms large in this interpretation,which stresses the importantdifference
between what Lutherintended to say and what he was perceived as saying. Edwards
thus challenges the view, formedby concentrating,often in retrospect,on the unity and

Book Reviews

563

coherence of Luther'stheology,that the Reformationmovementswere from the outset

cohesive and coherent, and that the appearanceof other varieties of religious reform
occurredmerely as deviances from a centralnormativemessage. This is an excellent
and importantbook, replete with more illuminatinginsights and judicious judgments
than can be mentioned in a short review.Although it does not seriously question the
relationshipof printingto other forms of disseminationof ideas, it definitelybrings us
closer to the complex ways in which the printedword operatedin opinion formation,
while offering an importantargumentthatimplies a radicallydifferentgeneralinterpretation of the GermanReformation.
BOB SCRIBNER

HarvardDivinity School
Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. By LondaSchiebinger.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Pp. ix+289. $25.00.
This is a study, or rathera collection of separatestudies, demonstratingsome of the
ways in which male naturalphilosophershave been led by theirown notions of sexuality and genderto interpretthe naturalworldin accordancewith those same views. The
book consists of six chapters,the firstfour of which have appearedin earlierforms in
journalsor anthologies,and a conclusion thatseeks to point to the broadersignificance
of these historical investigations.The result, like the author'searlier book The Mind
Has No Sex? Womenin the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge,Mass., 1989) is
not only an indispensableadditionto feminist historical studies, but also an important
contributionto our understandingof the developmentof certainthemes in the history
of naturalhistory and the humansciences. Unlike her earlierbook, however,the focus
of these investigationssometimes seemed, to me at least, to drift away from the main
point into fuzzier areas. The occasional loss of precise focus might be partly due to
the pioneeringnatureof Schiebinger'sexplorations;it is difficultin unchartedterritory
not to be distractedby the strangeand wonderfulthings lying just off the path. Nevertheless, the problem seems to be at least partly caused by the author'sown approach
to her subject matter. She seems to see her work as "historicalexpose" (p. 212), a
phrase evocative of investigativejournalism ratherthan scholarship,and sometimes
the readeris left wantinga more detailedandmore disciplinedconsiderationof the evidence.
In the first chapter,for example, on the developmentof the idea of plant sexuality,
principallyby CarolusLinnaeusand ErasmusDarwin,thereis only the briefestindication of the ideological backgroundto their work.The finalparagraphs(pp. 38-39) suggest that Enlightenmentefforts to redefinethe natureof sexuality and to reaffirmpreEnlightenmentsexual roles, againstfeminist claims for equality,were a majorfactorin
the acceptanceof Linnaeus'staxonomyof plantsbased on their sex organs.It is a pity
this importantclaim was not more clearly signaled earlierin the piece (as it stands,I
am not sure that a readerunfamiliarwith the argumentof The Mind Has No Sex? or
with Thomas Laqueur'sparallelclaims in The Making of Sex: Body and Genderfrom
the Greeksto Freud[Cambridge,Mass., 1990], would get the message), and not more
specifically demonstratedby quotationfrom suitablehistorical sources. It would have
been useful, also, to know more about those thinkers who, we are told, rejected the
notion of plant sexuality.Insofaras Schiebingerdiscusses the opposition, she concentrates on the scientific argumentsand the moral outrageof those who evidently found