Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450-1650 by Carlos Eire, Yale University Press, £25
Carlos Eire suggests that “discontent and cries for reform were endemic” in pre-Reformation Europe. He writes of a “powder keg” and of “volatile elements” that were “everywhere in plain view”. Apparently, “only an obtuse observer could have failed to notice their presence”.
It all sounds rather gloomy, but what of recent scholarship that has revealed the vitality of late medieval Christianity? There were, to be sure, those who grumbled about shortcomings, but this was nothing new and, crucially, the climacteric of Reformation took almost everyone by surprise.
Eire does concede that few “had any inkling of how intense, painful and messy” change would be, but also insists that “as the 16th century dawned, many knew that a change for the better was inevitable”.
He cautions against Reformation trajectories that are too neat and tidy: we should not caricature Humanism or the Renaissance as “a unified anti-Catholic juggernaut”. Yet the book’s over-brewed sense of inexorability is hard to miss in the early pages: the whole first section carries the ominous title of “On the Edge”.
The goal, one assumes, is to heighten the drama, but the oscillation between sweeping statements and more circumspect analysis is rather confusing. The reader should persevere, however, because the marrow of the book – a narrative account of events between 1517 and the mid-17th century – is first-rate. Eire accepts the concept of multiple Reformations wholeheartedly and works hard to stress regional and theological diversity.
The hundred or so pages on Luther are splendid, but just as much care is taken with the Swiss Reformation: a tale that “tends to get second billing”, despite its global consequences.
The bewildering world of the “radical” Reformation – countless sects and sub-sects – is ably portrayed while close attention is paid to developments within Catholicism. A pleasing balance is found between the reaction to Protestantism and self-generated revitalisation, while links to late medieval reform are expertly teased out.
Eire’s volume is billed as “a narrative for beginners and non-specialists”. It would take an ambitious neophyte to launch his studies with a 900-page blockbuster, but there would be rich rewards.
Eire is extremely well-versed in the scholarly literature and “much of the text is a dialogue with colleagues”. But he has the sense to keep abstruse academic debates hovering in the wings.
The volume’s tone will also seduce the general reader. Eire has a talent for pithy observations – all the doctrinal squabbles made the Reformation an “age of hairsplitting” – and only rarely does the quest for engaging prose spiral out of control. On Ignatius Loyola being wounded at Pamplona and embarking on the spiritual journey that led to the Jesuits’ founding, we get: “It all began with a cannonball, and one hell of a wound.”
“Given the complexity of the Reformations,” Eire writes, “summing up is a gamble.” Causation, as we’ve seen, can be tricky and charting consequences is no less perilous. Eire warns us against using the Reformation to “pinpoint the birth of modernity”. But for all the vim of his analysis, a rather conventional picture emerges: there is much talk of scepticism, toleration, and desacralisation resulting from disenchantment with the hubbub of the 16th and 17th centuries.
This should not diminish our admiration for Eire’s courage. He has taken on a massive subject, and if some of his interpretations provoke debate, so much the better. “It is always left up to historians,” Eire writes, “to argue about how, when and why things changed” and this is not nearly as straightforward as it may sound. With next year’s 500th anniversary of Luther’s initial protest, perhaps some of the burden will be taken from Reformation historians’ shoulders, though I’m not sure if we should dread or relish the prospect.
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