Church History Studies in Christianity and Culture 2009-3

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HURCH HISTOR S TUDIES IN C H R I S T I A N I T Y AND C ULTURE

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY VOLUME 78, NUMBER 3 SEPTEMBER 2009

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THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY PRESIDENT CHARLES H. LIPPY, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

PRESIDENT-ELECT RICHARD P. HEITZENRATER, Duke University

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY KEITH A. FRANCIS, Baylor University

EDITORS JOHN CORRIGAN AMANDA PORTERFIELD Florida State University

MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL Class of 2009 JOHN M. GIGGIE PATRICIA Z. BECKMAN TIMOTHY TSENG J. PATOUT BURNS CANDY GUNTHER BROWN Class of 2010 CHRISTOPHER BEELEY KATHLEEN SPROWS CUMMINGS STEVEN L. OLSEN QUINCY D. NEWELL Class of 2011 MARGARET BENDER SUSAN E. SCHREINER SCOTT W. SUNQUIST FR. AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P. Council Student Representative 2009–2010 BRANDON BAYNE

The Society was founded in 1888 by Philip Schaff, was reorganized in 1906, and was incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York in 1916.

Vol. 78

September 2009

No. 3

CHURCH HISTORY Studies in Christianity & Culture

Published quarterly by THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY

# 2009, The American Society of Church History

CHURCH HISTORY

Studies in Christianity and Culture

Editors John Corrigan Amanda Porterfield

Senior Assistant to the Editors Monica Reed

Assistants to the Editors Brooke Sherrard Shaun Horton Tammy Heise

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY Associate Editors Elizabeth A. Clark Thomas Noble Carlos Eire Hugh McLeod Dana Robert Myung Soo Park Enrique Dussel

Duke University Notre Dame University Yale University University of Birmingham Boston University Seoul Theological University Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

CHURCH HISTORY (ISSN 0009-6407)

ARTICLES 489

Billy Graham’s America GRANT WACKER

512

Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona CONSTANT J. MEWS

549

“I Am Wholly Your Own”: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta ANNA HARRISON

584

Luigi Lippomano, His Vicars, and the Reform of Verona from the Pulpit EMILY MICHELSON

606

“Family Values” and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda SETH DOWLAND

BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS 632

Harrison, Peter, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, and Livingstone, David, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins.............................................. Matthew Day

640

Curtis, Heather D., Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900, Opp, James, The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880 –1930, and Peters, Shawn Francis, When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law .................................................................. Pamela E. Klassen

647

Evans, Curtis J., The Burden of Black Religion, and Savage, Barbara Dianne, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion.......................................................... Clarence E. Hardy III

652

Giggie, John M., After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875– 1915, Rolinson, Mary G., Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920–1927, and Dallam, Marie W., Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer...................................................................... Beryl Satter

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Horsley, Richard, ed., Christian Origins, Burrus, Virginia, ed., Late Ancient Christianity, Krueger, Derek, ed., Byzantine Christianity, Bornstein, Daniel E., ed., Medieval Christianity, Matheson, Peter, ed., Reformation Christianity, Porterfield, Amanda, ed., Modern Christianity to 1900, and Bednarowski, Mary Farrell, ed., Twentieth-Century Global Christianity ............................................................................................. Philip Jenkins

BOOK REVIEWS 669 672 674 676 678 681 682 685 687 689 692 693 694 696 698 699 701 704 706

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NOTES

Spier, Jeffrey, ed., Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art ..................................................................................... Cherie Woodworth van Rhijn, Carine, Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period.......................................... Thomas F. X. Noble Hicks, Leonie V., Religious Life in Normandy, 1050—1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure .................................................. Sara Ritchey Rivard, Derek A., Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion ....................................................................... James A. Brundage Cole, Andrew, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer ................................................................................ J. Patrick Hornbeck II Stjerna, Kirsi, Women and the Reformation ............. Mary Elizabeth Anderson Reinis, Austra, Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519–1528) ............................................. Carlos M. N. Eire Webster, Charles, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and the Mission at the End of Time............................................................................................ Eric Lund Clossey, Luke, Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions ...................................................................................... Thomas Worcester Hampton, Stephen, Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I ........................................................ Paul S. Seaver Starkie, Andrew, The Church of England and the Bangorian Controversy, 1716–1721.................................................................. Charles Wallace, Jr. Lesser, M. X., Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729–2005......................................... David W. Bebbington White, Christopher G., Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830–1940 ............................... Robert C. Fuller Robinson, Edward J., Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the United States, 1914 –1968 .................................................................................. Dennis C. Dickerson Vromen, Suzanne, Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis........ Robert M. Ehrenreich Rosell, Garth M., The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism ..................... Darren Dochuk D’Elia, John A., A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America .... Kathryn Lofton Garnett, Jane, et al., eds., Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives.................................................................. Eileen Groth Lyon Humes, Edward, Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul ........................................................... Jeffrey P. Moran

709 711 713 716 718 720

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Smith, Christian, and Michael O. Emerson, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money..................... Joel A. Carpenter Shaw, Susan M., God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society .......................................................... Howell Williams Alexander, Dominic, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages ................................................................................ Laura Hobgood-Oster Lambert, Frank, Religion in American Politics: A Short History .......................................................................................... Randall Balmer Music, David W., and Paul A. Richardson, “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”: A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America ........ Paul Westermeyer Curran, Charles E., Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History ......................................................................... Aline H. Kalbian

BOOKS RECEIVED

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 489–511. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990400 Printed in the USA

Billy Graham’s America1 GRANT WACKER

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ILLY and I hit New York City at the same time, the summer of 1957. He was 38 and about to clinch his reputation as the premier evangelist in twentieth-century America. I was twelve and about to taste freedom. But not quite yet. Without my permission, my parents packed themselves and me into a steamy subway to go down to Madison Square Garden to hear the Great Man preach. I remember that he was witty and charismatic and at the end of the sermon thousands surged forward to give or recommit their lives to Christ. Beyond that, nothing stuck. Soon our first family vacation to the Big Apple was finished, and we headed back to the quiet of a small town in southwest Missouri. As a kid, I never could figure out what the big whoop over Graham was all about. I soon realized, however, that Graham’s core constituents—the millions of preponderantly white, middle-class, moderately conservative Protestants we might call “Heartland Americans”—did not share my puzzlement. They knew exactly what the big whoop was all about.2 1 I dedicate this essay to David M. Scholer (1938– 2008), scholar, friend, and role model, who stirred my interest in Graham many years ago. The Louisville Institute provided generous funding. On August 6, 2007, shortly before his ninetieth birthday, the Reverend Billy Graham talked with me in his home for more than an hour about his travels and ministry. Numerous friends and colleagues helped me research or conceptualize the project. I wish to thank the Duke/UNC American Religion Colloquium, The Center for the Study of American Religion at Indiana University/Purdue University, John Akers, Shane Benjamin, Anne Blue-Wills, Kate Bowler, Jim Bratt, Joel Carpenter, Mark Chaves, Liz Clark, Elesha Coffman, Charles Cook, Bob Cooley, Eileen Cooley, Mike Crisp, Seth Dowland, Paul Ericksen, Andrew Finstuen, Jean Ford, Leighton Ford, Ken Garfield, Phil Goff, Franklin Golden, Nathan Hatch, Brooks Holifield, Sarah Johnson, Michael Kazin, Jim Lewis, Mike Hamilton, David Heim, Dick Heitzenrater, Amy Beth Hougland, Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Elaine Maisner, George Marsden, Bill Martin, Kathleen McDermott, Mandy McMichael, Steven Miller, David Morgan, Rich Mouw, Harold Myra, Brooke Osborne, Brendan Pietsch, Allan Poole, Steven Porter, Wen Reagan, Maurice Ritchie, Garth Rosell, Steve Scholle, Bob Schuster, Jan Shipps, Warren Smith, David Steinmetz, Andrew Stern, Laura Stern, Skip Stout, Heather Vacek, Katherine Wacker, Kevin Walters, David Weaver-Zercher, Wayne Weber, Lauren Winner, John Wilson, Ken Woodward and, especially (as usual), Mark Noll. 2 The literature by and about Billy Graham is vast. Though a comprehensive bibliography does not exist, the Billy Graham Archives [BGA], Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College (Ill.), houses thousands of primary and secondary documents. See the online catalog at http://www.wheaton.edu/ bgc/archives/archhp1.html, especially the tabs for “Billy Graham,” “Searchable Online Data Base,” and “Collections.” The BGA excludes Graham’s personal papers, which are not available to

Grant Wacker is professor of Christian history and director of the Graduate Program in Religion at Duke University. On January 4, 2009, he delivered this paper as the presidential address to the American Society of Church History.

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In slightly more than two decades—roughly from 1949 to 1971—Graham moved from leader to celebrity to icon, and he retained that iconic status into the new millennium. Statistics pile up like snowdrifts. By the time he retired in 2005, reportedly he had preached to nearly 215 million people in person in more than 185 countries and territories, and to additional hundreds of

researchers until 25 years after his death. Graham’s autobiography, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham ([1997] San Francisco: Harper/Zondervan, rev. ed. 2007), weighing in at 801 pages, certainly is ample enough, yet it remains curiously non-revealing. More revealing is an early threepart autobiographical essay, “Billy Graham’s Own Story: ‘God Is My Witness,’” in McCall’s, April, May, and June 1964. Graham’s 27 books, published between 1952 and 2007, are mostly theological, sermonic, and devotional, but many of them contain autobiographical asides. For a complete list with publication dates, see Billy Graham Evangelistic Association/About Us/Biographies/Billy Graham/ Billy Graham/Biography, http://www.billygraham.org/MediaRelations_Bios.asp?id¼0, accessed January 22, 2009. Graham has won the attention of more than a score of biographers, ranging from admiring to hostile. By far the most comprehensive and in many ways the best is William Martin, Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991). Marshall Frady’s Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979) is overwritten and tendentious yet contains valuable insights into Graham’s relation to American culture. David Aikman’s Billy Graham: His Life and Influence (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007) is the best short biography, enhanced by its fluid prose and even-handedness. Stanley High, Billy Graham: The Personal Story of the Man, His Message, and His Mission (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956), though consistently positive, shrewdly captures the ingredients of Graham’s charisma. John Pollock’s authorized The Billy Graham Story ([1985] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, rev. ed. 2003) offers data, based on long association with the Graham family and organization, not available elsewhere. The monographic literature (including more than a score of M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations) is extensive. Four masterful treatments of aspects of Graham’s career are Andrew Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2009); Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (New York: Center Street, 2007); Steven P. Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); and Garth M. Rosell, The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008). Harold Myra and Marshall Shelley’s The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005) provides a perceptive analysis of Graham’s administrative style, an important yet rarely addressed subject. Journal and academic articles about Graham are too numerous even to begin to list, but four merit special notice: David Aikman, “Billy Graham—Salvation,” in David Aikman, Great Souls: Six Who Changed a Century ([1998] Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2003); Peter J. Boyer, “The Big Tent: Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism,” The New Yorker, August 22, 2005, 42–54; Larry Eskridge, “‘One Way’: Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 67:1 (March 1998): 83–106; and Steven P. Miller, “Billy Graham, Civil Rights, and the Changing Postwar South,” in Politics and Religion in the White South, ed. Glenn Feldman (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 157–186. . . . of 1957: Parts of the first and the final paragraphs of this article come from Grant Wacker, “The Billy Pulpit: Graham’s Career in the Mainline,” The Christian Century, November 15, 2003, 20, 26. . . . man preach: Contemporary newspaper coverage of the 1957 New York Crusade ran to hundreds of pages. For an uncritical though factually useful study, see Curtis Mitchell, God in the Garden: The Story of the Billy Graham New York Crusade (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957); for ephemera related to the event, see George Burnham and Lee Fisher, Billy Graham and the New York

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millions through electronic media. Those numbers probably swelled in the telling, but, with the possible exception of Pope John Paul II, Graham likely addressed more people face-to-face than anyone in history. He set multiple attendance records, including 1,120,000 in Seoul in 1973 (at that time, possibly the largest religious gathering on record). In 1997, HarperCollins’s first printing of his autobiography ran a cool million. Graham’s 27 books sold millions of copies and saw translation into at least 50 languages. Between 1955 and 2006, he won a spot on the Gallup Organization’s roster of “Ten Most Admired Men” 50 times, trumping his closest rivals, President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, who appeared “merely” 31 and 27 times. The list of honors bestowed on Graham grew so long that even he seemed to lose track. It suffices to say that the U.S. government gave him the two highest honors a civilian could receive: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983 and, with his wife, Ruth Bell Graham, the Congressional Gold Medal in 1996.3 Perhaps the most telling marks of Graham’s influence are simply anecdotal— cultural snapshots, we might call them. Four brief examples represent many. First, except for elected officials, Graham may have been the only person in the United States who needed no mailing address beyond his name. Just “Billy Graham” scratched on an envelope would do. Second, of the thousands of letters sent to Graham from children, one, posted in 1971, probably from a first- or secondgrader, seemed to speak for all. After requesting a free book, the young author signed off, “Tell Mr. Jesus hi.” Third, in 1988, on Graham’s seventieth birthday, the historian Martin E. Marty judged that he was, with the pope, “one of the two best-known figures” in the world. Finally, the Yale literary critic Harold Bloom

Crusade (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1957). . . . heartland Americans: For the demographic and social characteristics of “Heartland America,” see Martin, Prophet with Honor, 309, and Lowell D. Streiker and Gerald S. Strober, Religion and the New Majority: Billy Graham, Middle America, and the Politics of the 70s (New York: Association Press, 1972), 23, 39, 78–81. More anecdotally, see Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 161, and Elizabeth Kaye, “Billy Graham Rises,” George, December 1996, 140. 3 . . . electronic media: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association/About Us/Biographies/Billy Graham, http://www.billygraham.org/MediaRelations_Bios.asp?id¼0, accessed January 22, 2009. The BGEA web page does not specify the years that this figure embraces, but probably it runs from 1944, when Graham launched his evangelistic efforts at Chicagoland Youth for Christ, to his retirement in June 2005. . . . gathering on record: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 418. . . . cool million: Yonat Shimron, “Graham’s Life Is an Open Book,” The (Raleigh) News & Observer, April 30, 1997, A1. . . . 50 languages: Graham, Just As I Am, 284. . . . 27 times: Jeffrey M. Jones, “George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton Most Admired Again, Billy Graham Finishes in Top 10 for 50th Time,” Gallup News Service, December 29, 2006, cited in Aikman, Billy Graham, 2, 307; Alec Gallup and Frank Newport, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2005 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 482. . . . in 1996: For a lengthy though undoubtedly incomplete list of “Awards and Honors,” see Billy Graham Evangelistic Association/About Us/Biographies/Billy Graham/Billy Graham/Biography, http://www. billygraham.org/MediaRelations_Bios.asp?id¼0, accessed January 22, 2009.

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summed up the preacher’s impact with brilliant succinctness: “You don’t run for office among us by proclaiming your skepticism or by deprecating Billy Graham.”4 This register of statistics, awards, and cultural snapshots suggests that Graham’s reach, like that of his contemporaries Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr., extended beyond passing fame to enduring influence. For millions of Heartland Americans, he functioned very much as a Protestant saint. By the middle 1950s, he had eclipsed all competitors among postwar Protestant evangelists and, with the exception of George Whitefield in the eighteenth century, all in U.S. history. More important, by the middle 1960s, he had become the “Great Legitimator.” If the newspaper coverage of his ministry serves as a reliable index, his presence conferred sanctity on events, authority on presidents, acceptability on wars, desirability on decency, shame on indecency, and prestige on dessert recipes. Most important, by the middle 1970s, many deemed him “America’s pastor,” as the senior President George Bush called him in 2007 in Charlotte at the dedication of the Billy Graham Library—an event attended by all three living U.S. ex-presidents. As America’s pastor, he seemed to stand above the fray, transcending denominational boundaries, theological disputes, and partisan agendas. Graham symbolized, as his premier biographer, William Martin, suggested, Americans’ “best selves,” what they wanted to believe about themselves and their dedication to “fundamental verities.” That many Americans failed to live up to those verities was beside the point. Graham did.5 I could extend this inventory of the marks of Graham’s status at length, but I will close it with a recollection. At Duke, one of my first-year students once pointed out that Graham never won a Nobel Prize. Then she asked, with lethal perceptiveness, “Well, which is more important, to win a Nobel Prize—or for someone to notice that you have not?”6

4 . . . would do: The Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, N.C., exhibits an array of misaddressed and barely addressed envelopes, all successfully posted. See also Martin, Prophet with Honor, 551. . . . Jesus hi: Letter archived at BGEA, Charlotte, N.C. . . . the world: Martin E. Marty, “Reflections on Graham by a Former Grump,” Christianity Today, November 18, 1988, http:// www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/octoberweb-only/142-23.0.html?start¼3, accessed March 20, 2009. . . . Billy Graham: Harold Bloom, “Billy Graham,” in “The TIME 100: The Most Important People of the Century: Heroes and Icons,” Time, June 14, 1999, http://www.time.com/ time/time100/heroes/profile/graham01.html, accessed January 25, 2009. 5 . . . dessert recipes: I base this statement on my sampling of the thousands of pages of magazine and newspaper clippings, running from the middle 1940s to the present, in the BGA. See also Ken Garfield’s revealingly titled essay on Graham’s final crusade, “Faithful Flock to See a Legend: 80,000 More Gain Memory of a Lifetime,” The Charlotte Observer, June 26, 2005, 1A. . . . America’s pastor: Bush quoted in Leslie Boyd and John Boyle, Asheville Citizen-Times, in “Graham’s Spiritual Journey Finds Home,” USA Today, May 31, 2007, http://www.usatoday. com/news/religion/2007-05-31-billy-graham-library_N.htm, accessed August 5, 2007. . . . fundamental verities: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 383. 6 . . . have not: I remember the comment but, unfortunately, not the student’s name.

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I. AMERICA’S PUZZLE The reasons for Graham’s ascendency, longevity and, above all, singularity are not obvious. His early years offer few clues. The most remarkable feature of young Billy Frank’s childhood and adolescence is how unremarkable they really were. Born in 1918, he grew up near Charlotte, North Carolina, in the bucolic obscurity of a dairy farm. In high school he was, he later admitted, an ordinary student, mainly interested in girls, baseball, and fast cars. Fundamentalist education at Bob Jones College, Florida Bible Institute, and Wheaton College in Illinois launched him into a modestly successful career as a local pastor, itinerant evangelist, and Youth for Christ speaker.7 At first glance, Graham’s middle career years—the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s—are equally barren of clues. To many, he personified the proverbial stump orator, firing 240 words a minute. In an era when academic theologians and mainline ministers favored dialogue over proclamation, Graham unflinchingly presented his own version of the Good News as the only viable one. His hobnobbing with the rich, the famous, and the powerful troubled his friends and energized his foes. And then we heard his odious remarks about Jews and the media, uttered in private in President Richard Nixon’s office but secretly recorded in 1972 and revealed in 2002. Though Graham apologized in print and in person to Jewish leaders, the episode tarnished his record. Yet most disturbing, for all but the most ardent followers, was Graham’s political posture in the 1960s and early 1970s. His real or perceived support for the Vietnam War and his jut-jawed defense of Nixon during Watergate lingered long after most Americans had given up on both causes.8 7 . . . Christ speaker: Biographical data reside in countless sources. The basic outline of Graham’s life—who, what, when, and where—varies little from text to text, though emphases and evaluations differ dramatically. As noted, Martin’s Prophet with Honor offers by far the most detailed treatment. For a very readable article-length account, see William Martin, “Evangelicalism: Billy Graham,” Christian History & Biography, Issue 65/2000, http://www. ctlibrary.com/ch/2000/Issue65/1.12.html, accessed January 20, 2009. 8 . . . of clues: All of the “standard” biographies cover the real or perceived shortcomings noted in this paragraph. For a work that underscores them, see Cecil Bothwell, The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire: An Unauthorized Biography (Asheville, N.C.: Brave Ulysses Books, 2007). . . . a minute: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 96. . . . his record: For a transcript of the controversial parts of the conversation, see John Prados, ed., The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (New York: New Press, 2003), 240–255, esp. 244–246, 252. Press coverage was voluminous and often spirited. For a succinct summary, see William Martin, “Is Billy Graham an Anti-Semite?” beliefnet, March 2002, http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/ Christianity/2002/03/Is-Billy-Graham-An-Anti-Semite.aspx?p¼1, accessed February 2, 2009. For Graham’s lingering late-life regret about his words, see Laurie Goodstein, “Spirit Willing, Another Trip Down Mountain for Graham,” New York Times, June 12, 2005, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res¼9500E1DB1E38F931A25755C0A9639C8B63&sec¼&spon¼&pagewanted¼all, accessed March 20, 2009, and Graham in “Interview with Reverend Billy Graham,” CNN Larry King Live, aired December 25, 2005, Rush Transcript, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/25/

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Outsiders, noting Graham’s flaws and failures, subjected him to merciless criticism. Some of it was fair and thoughtful; much of it was unfair and thoughtless. Besides a steady flow of hate mail and occasional death threats, he received censure from all directions: the left, the right, the academy, the media, and the church. President Harry S. Truman led the charge. In 1950, when the young evangelist bungled a meeting with Truman, the president soured on him. Two decades later, Truman still remembered Graham as a “counterfeit.” “I just don’t go for people like that,” he grumbled. “All he’s interested in is getting his name in the paper.” In 1966, following Graham’s interdenominational crusades and ecumenical overtures, Bob Jones, Sr., president of Bob Jones University, judged that Graham was “doing more harm to the cause of Jesus Christ than any other living man.” When Graham held a crusade at the University of Tennessee in 1970 and invited President Nixon to speak, the student newspaper slammed the event as a “one-man circus” complete with an “elephant.” Shortly afterward, the novelist-satirist Philip Roth had Graham, the “Reverend Billy Cupcake,” saying, “‘I was in a European country last summer and one of the top young people there told me that the teenagers in his country want leadership more than anything else.” In 1982, following Graham’s visit to a Soviet Union disarmament conference, the conservative columnist George Will judged that Graham was “America’s most embarrassing export.” Will hoped that the preacher would “stop acting as though pious intentions are substitutes for intelligence, and excuses for irresponsibility.” Twenty years later, when the National Archives released Graham’s conversation with Nixon about Jews, the secular essayist Christopher Hitchens pounced. Hitchens called the aging evangelist an “avid bigot as well as a cheap liar,” “a gaping and mendacious anti-Jewish peasant.” White hair offered no protection.9

lkl.11.html, accessed March 20, 2009. . . . both causes: Again, all of the “standard” biographies address Graham’s troubled relation with Nixon. For particularly perceptive accounts, see Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, chaps. 16–22, and Richard Pierard, “Can Billy Graham Survive Richard Nixon?” Reformed Journal, April 1974, 7–13. 9 . . . and thoughtless: For examples, see Martin, Prophet with Honor, 182, 227, 300, 418, 459. . . . the paper: Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkley, 1973, 1974), 363. . . . living man: Charlotte News, March 4, 1966, quoted in Frady, Billy Graham, 248. . . . an elephant: Susan Hixon, in The (Knoxville) Daily Beacon, quoted in June Adamson, “Actions of Past Editors Remembered,” The (Knoxville) Daily Beacon, August 25, 1995, quoted in Roger Bruns, Billy Graham: A Biography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2004), 120. . . . anything else: Philip Roth, Our Gang (Starring Tricky and His Friends) (New York: Random House, 1971), 176– 183, quoted in Steven P. Miller, Billy Graham, 159. . . . for irresponsibility: George Will, “Let Us Pray for a Little Skepticism,” The Washington Post, May 13, 1982, A31. Will’s actual words were, “handcuffs are not America’s most embarrassing export,” but the context makes clear that Will meant that Graham filled that role. . . . antiJewish peasant: Christopher Hitchens, “The God Squad,” The Nation, April 15, 2002, 9.

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Graham’s multiple public identities make his success even more puzzling. He presented many faces. That the fiery anti-Communist of the 1940s differed from the irenic senior diplomat of the 2000s seems easy enough to explain. People change. But other variations are more elusive. Which was normative, the simple preacher or the savvy CEO? The down-home country boy or the uptown sophisticate? The humble servant of the church or the name-dropping servant of the White House? The tight-lipped confidant of presidents or the loquacious subject of press conferences and talk shows? All of those identities counted. The problem is that they continually appeared, disappeared, and reappeared throughout his career. Moreover, other hands contributed. Graham’s self-presentation was one thing, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s orchestration of his message was another, and the media’s marketing of his image was still another.10 The public saw countless faces, too. To begin with, for many Americans, Graham the evangelist blended into Graham the performer. His good looks clearly played a role. When Graham peered into the mirror, he saw the media’s construction of the American male ideal: six feet, two inches tall, 180 pounds, blue eyes, flaxen hair, and Hollywood handsome. Nordic features gave him a head start, but he made the most of them with jogging, weightlifting and, of course, golf. For many others, Graham’s hallmark was less the appearance than the voice, a timbered baritone of “vast range and power.” It reminded some of his exact contemporary, Walter Cronkite. In 1950, NBC offered the preacher one million dollars a year to host a talk show.11 Second and more important, for numerous Americans, Graham the evangelist blended into Graham the idyllic family man. That image took two forms, and both emerged in the popular magazines’ depiction of his sixty-year marriage to Ruth Bell Graham. On one hand, he endorsed hierarchical or complementarian gender roles in the family. On the other hand, he also insisted that marriage 10 . . . his career: Aikman, Great Souls, 3, 30, 32. . . . still another: I owe the point of this paragraph very directly to my Duke and UNC colleagues David Morgan and Laurie MafflyKipp. See also Frye Gaillard, Southern Voices: Profiles and Other Stories (Asheboro, N.C.: Down Home Press, 1991), 120– 123. 11 . . . of course, golf: Gilbert, Men in the Middle, 126–127; Curtis Mitchell, “Billy Graham’s Physical Fitness Program Can Help You,” Popular Science, May 1965, 61–64, 202–205; Fact Sheet by Loyd Doctor, Christ for Greater Los Angeles, November 21, 1949, quoted in Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 5. The dapper wardrobe complemented the physique, in 1970 even earning Graham a spot on one Best Dressed register. Charlotte News, January 28, 1970, cited in Martin, Prophet with Honor, 383. . . . and power: Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 18. For three of the countless references to the singularity of Graham’s voice, see Gaillard, Southern Voices, 126; Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr., “William Franklin Graham,” 20 Centuries of Great Preaching: Marshall to King (Waco: Word Books, 1971), XII: 302; Michael Luo, “In New York, Billy Graham Will Find an Evangelical Force,” New York Times, June 21, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/nyregion/21evangelical. html?pagewanted¼1&sq¼goodstein,%20billy%20graham%20&st¼nyt&scp¼5, accessed February 2, 2009. . . . talk show: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 152–153.

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should be companionate or equalitarian. Though the positions overlapped, the former predominated in the early years of his ministry, the latter in the later years. Increasingly, the companionate outlook prompted him to stress what many evangelicals had always stressed and what TV sitcoms were beginning to stress: that honesty, modesty, sobriety, gentleness and, above all, fidelity were both Christian and manly virtues. Yielding to desire was easy; resisting was hard.12 Third and most important, for myriad Americans, Graham the evangelist blended into Graham the man of character. Character was broader than Christian. It suggested a cluster of personal traits that people of all religious traditions—or none, for that matter—found admirable. Almost all visitors to the Graham household, including critics, came away saying that they found him to be a figure of warmth, humility, and sincerity. Indeed, the Time magazine journalists Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy likened his sincerity to “paint stripper, removing any pretense and pride.” Martin Marty famously ranked him among the “non-mean,” one who displayed the “fruit of the Spirit.” Virtually no one questioned his financial integrity, unpretentious lifestyle, or marital faithfulness. To be sure, many non-Heartland Americans perceived Graham’s character less benignly. They viewed him as a chaplain for the business establishment and as a conservative political partisan. He “certainly prays Republican,” charged the columnist Murray Kempton. Graham saw himself otherwise. Brushing off suggestions that he was either a role model or a man of affairs, he insisted that God had called him to be an evangelist, and only an evangelist. Both privately and publicly, he worried that he might fail the assignment. The historian David Aikman spoke for multitudes when he judged that the preacher’s achievement lay not in how he handled adversity but in how he handled success.13 12 . . . Bell Graham: For one of many examples, see Mrs. Billy Graham, “Inside Our Home,” Guideposts, December 1955, 1 –5. . . . or equalitarian: Contrast Billy Graham, “The Home God Honors,” sermon preached at the Los Angeles revival, 1949, in Revival in Our Time: The Story of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Campaigns (Wheaton, Ill.: Van Kampen, 1950), reprinted in The Early Billy Graham Sermon and Revival Accounts, ed. Joel A. Carpenter (New York: Garland, 1988), 68– 72, with Graham in David Frost, Billy Graham Talks with David Frost (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman/J. B. Lippincott, 1971), 39– 40; Aikman, Billy Graham, 275; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 159– 160, 586. . . . manly virtues: Christine Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), esp. chaps. 3, 4, and epilogue; Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), esp. part II; W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), esp. 191. The qualifier “many”—rather than “all”—is important. 13 . . . and sincerity: See, for example, Frady, Billy Graham, ix– x, 8– 14; Cathy Lynn Grossman, “The Gospel of Billy Graham: Inclusion,” USA Today, May 15, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/ news/religion/2005-05-15-graham-cover_x.htm, accessed March 20, 2009. For a wide variety of observers’ comments on Graham’s magnetic personal qualities—variously described as graciousness, warmth, humility, and sincerity—see Aikman, Great Souls, 3; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 124, 150, 197, 229, 325, 537, 602; Michael G. Long, Billy Graham and the Beloved Community (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006), ix. Ken Garfield served as the

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These considerations help focus the problem at hand. Given such unpromising beginnings, so many missteps, such mordant criticism, and so many public identities, how did Graham become the premier Protestant evangelist in the United States (and many other countries) and hold that perch, unrivaled, for nearly six decades? Asked differently, how did he become, as the historian James Morris put it, the “least colorful and most powerful preacher in the United States”? More important, what does his success say about twentieth-century America?14 I propose one answer to the puzzle of Graham’s singular eminence. It applies primarily to the American story but also, with important modifications, to its international corollaries. I can state it in a tidy sentence. A producer as well as a product of his age, Graham displayed a remarkable ability to adapt broad cultural trends for his evangelistic purposes. Sometimes he seemed to move by instinct, sometimes by design, and sometimes by both. The evidence strongly suggests that his approach was simultaneously heartfelt and pragmatic. I will sketch four instances of the pattern. Though they overlapped, I will note them in the order that they began to mark his public ministry conspicuously.

II. AMERICA’S SOUTHERNER The middle third of the twentieth century witnessed a vast process of social and cultural transformation that historians have called the “Southernization” of America. Massive population movements from the South to the North and West allowed Southern attitudes and practices to move outward. Southern emigrants carried Dixie’s earmarks with them. Elvis, NASCAR, and the California Gunbelt, dominated by ex-Southerners, symbolized the force of the impulse. So did Charlotte’s hometown boy.15

religion editor for The Charlotte Observer for twelve years and wrote hundreds of stories about Graham. Garfield said: “One of Graham’s strengths is that he was able to be this mythic, larger-than-life figure in the pulpit, while transforming himself into a warm and accessible farm boy from Charlotte when he stepped down and back into real life. . . . He had this ability to cut himself down in size in a way that deepened his ministry in warmth and humanity”: e-mail, March 23, 2009. . . . and pride: Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, xi. . . . the Spirit: Marty, “Reflections.” . . . Murray Kempton, New York Post, September 9, 1960, quoted in Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 92. . . . an evangelist: Graham, Just As I Am, xvi–xvii, 119, 420, 525, and 745. . . . the assignment: interview with John Akers, Durham, N.C., February 27, 2009; Graham, Just As I Am, 743. . . . handled success: Aikman, Great Souls, 58. 14 . . . United States: James Morris, The Preachers (New York: St. Martin’s, 1973), 387. 15 . . . the impulse: The literature on the Southernization of America (and the reverse) is extensive. Darren Dochuk ably summarizes it in “Evangelicalism Becomes Southern, Politics Becomes Evangelical,” in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present, ed. Mark A. Noll and Luke E. Harlow ([1990] New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 2007), esp. 300–303. Other key works include Peter Applebome, Dixie Rising: How the

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How did Graham represent the South, the region of his roots and, as he repeatedly said, his heart? Most noticeably, he spoke as a Southerner. Though he gradually modulated his distinctive accent—what one New York City journalist called “Carolina stage English”—he never lost it. In addition, Graham’s machine-gun facility with language and fondness for jokes and stories expressed the South’s emphasis on orality. “Next to fried foods,” quipped the North Carolina-born journalist Walter Hines Page, “the South has suffered most from oratory.” At the same time, if Southerners were talkers, they also were writers. No one would accuse Graham of being a great one, but he was prolific, and he esteemed the conversionary power of sentences clearly crafted.16 Graham was a Southerner in a second sense. He took care to present himself as a simple country boy, toughened when he was growing up by a daily predawn milking regime. That rustic image, furthered by admiring journalists and biographers, formed a big part of his appeal. Graham’s natal family fit the image. His parents, married for life, represented stable, hard-working, churchgoing, Psalter-singing Presbyterians—the center of the center of the Southern Protestant mainline. In a cover story on the South, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham aptly observed that the South tended “not to contradict but to exemplify, if sometimes in an exaggerated way,” what much of the nation thought and felt. As Americans hurtled toward a metropolitan future, Graham seemed to remind them of a receding world of small towns, summer nights, and stable values.17

South Is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture (New York: Random House, 1966); John Egerton, The Americanization of Dixie (New York: Harper & Row, 1974); James M. Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), esp. chaps. 1 and 6; Jack Temple Kirby, Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination ([1978] Athens: University of Georgia Press, rev. ed. 1986); John Shelton Reed, My Tears Spoiled My Aim, and Other Reflections on Southern Culture (San Diego, Calif.: Harvest Book/Harcourt Brace, 1993), esp. chap. 10. 16 . . . stage English: Boyer, “Big Tent,” 47. . . . from oratory: Page quoted without attribution in Reed, My Tears, 59. . . . clearly crafted: Graham’s daily newspaper column, “My Answer,” has run from 1950 to the present and reportedly has appeared in 200 newspapers with a circulation of 15 million to 20 million readers. It likely reached more people than his books. He did not pretend to write all of the columns himself but said they saw publication under his “supervision.” Graham, Just As I Am, 283; Billy Graham, My Answer ([1954] Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 9; Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 49; High, Billy Graham, 152. 17 . . . milking regime: Graham, Just As I Am, chap. 1, with the revealing title, “Down on the Farm.” . . . his appeal: See, for example, Frost, Billy Graham, “Billy Graham: The Dairyman’s Boy,” 89– 90; and Pollock, Billy Graham, 15–16. . . . Protestant mainline: Graham, Just As I Am, 22– 25; Patricia Daniels Cornwell, A Time for Remembering: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham (Minneapolis: Grason, 1983), 53–54. . . . and felt: Jon Meachem, “Just Ain’t That Different Anymore,” Newsweek, August 11, 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/150478, accessed January 27, 2009.

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Graham was a Southerner in a third sense. He inherited the region’s prevailing assumption that the private and the public realms overlapped. That notion certainly was not unique to the South, but it remained especially conspicuous in the area. Despite—or perhaps because of—a long tradition of subaltern violence, most folk supported a Christian social order policed by orderly Christians. In the “Christ-haunted South,” in Flannery O’Connor’s famous phrase, Christians, both white and black, presupposed their right to serve as its moral custodians. One especially clear case is Graham’s view of church and state. Though at one level he supported separation, at a deeper, more culturally encoded level, he advocated prayer and Bible reading in the public schools and posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings. When the prayer meeting let out, he knew how to play political hardball.18 Graham represented his region in one additional respect. He perennially assumed that the best way to get things done was to work with, not against, established authorities. To be sure, that notion reflected his genial temperament, but it also reflected the compatibility of his class location with that of the folk who ran things—two slices from the same pie. In the South, the most influential voices spoke from the pulpits and occupied the pews of the mainline churches. Think of First Baptist in Dallas (where Graham was a member for 55 years). Or Myers Park United Methodist in Charlotte. Or Hillsboro Church of Christ in Nashville. Or perhaps the (African American) Wheat Street Baptist in Atlanta. In those redoubtable institutions, respectable people worshiped in respectable ways on Sunday and ran respectable enterprises the rest of the week. The Southern mainline was broadly evangelical, but it was still mainline. It countenanced no extremism, theological or otherwise. It removed the welcome mat when millenarians, snake handlers, and Unitarian pacifists came to town. Its partisans were

18 . . . realms overlapped: Charles Reagan Wilson, “Preachin’, Prayin’, and Singin’ on the Public Square,” in Religion and Public Life in the South: In the Evangelical Mode, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson and Mark Silk (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), esp. 9; Paul Harvey, “At Ease in Zion, Uneasy in Babylon: White Evangelicals,” in Religion and Public Life in the South, ed. Wilson and Silk, 66–69; Seth A. Dowland, “Defending Manhood: Gender, Social Order, and the Rise of the Christian Right in the South, 1965–1995,” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2007, esp. chaps. 1–3. . . . public schools: For example, contrast Graham, Press Conference, Columbus, Ohio, January 28, 1963, 9– 10 (BGA CN24 B4 F9), with Graham, Press Conference, Charlotte, N.C., April 14, 1972, 7 –8 (BGA CN24 B1 F36). To be sure, sometimes Graham said such exercises should be “voluntary,” but he remained vague about what “voluntary” actually meant in a structured public school setting. Graham, Press Conference, San Diego, Calif., April 30, 1964, 4-5 (BGA CN24 B4 F13). See also “Billy Graham Voices Shock over Decision,” New York Times, June 18, 1963, 27; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 27. . . . public buildings: Graham interview in Sonja Steptoe, “10 Questions for Billy Graham,” TIME/CNN, November 21, 2004, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,785335,00.html, accessed February 4, 2009.

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mannered, neighborly, and well connected. They aimed not to see their name in the newspaper.19 Graham was part of the club. So was his wife, the decorous and quick-witted daughter of a conservative Southern Presbyterian surgeon. One might say, with a wink, that she taught her husband which fork to use at the state dinner with the queen. It is no surprise that Graham—the official unofficial chaplain to the nation’s power brokers—carried himself so effortlessly in the corridors of power.20 When, in 1940, Graham left Florida Bible Institute and headed north to Wheaton College, he rode the expansionist wave that bore millions of Southerners North and West. He later remembered that he felt out of place and alone. He may have been out of place, but he was not alone. He took the South with him.21

III. AMERICA’S VOICE Graham masterfully adapted his old-fashioned message to new media. He knew that the journalism giants William Randolph Hearst and Henry L. Luce had helped launch his career, and he never forgot the lesson. In an age increasingly given to hurried interviews, sound bites, and visual images, Graham took care to deliver his ideas in crisp and compelling forms. Reporters and academics endlessly and, one suspects, enviously analyzed his very smart print, radio, television, satellite, Internet, and advertising moves. Sympathetic observers touted them and unsympathetic ones lamented them, but no one doubted them. Standing behind it all was the well-oiled Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Executives traveled to its Minneapolis headquarters to examine its operations. A small army of professionals and staffers mediated Graham’s message and image with consummate skill and aggressive protectiveness.22 19

. . . the newspaper: Reed, My Tears, 139–141. For my sense of post-war Southern Protestant culture (including “ . . . Unitarian pacifists,” which I roughly remember but can no longer locate), I am deeply indebted to John Shelton Reed’s numerous books and articles. See also Wilson, “Preachin’,” 16– 20; Ted Ownby, “Evangelical But Differentiated: Religion by the Numbers,” in Religion and Public Life, ed. Wilson and Silk, 34; Samuel S. Hill, “Religion and Politics in the South,” in Religion in the South, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985), 146; Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), chap. 3; Elizabeth Hill Flowers, “Varieties of Evangelical Womanhood: Southern Baptists, Gender, and American Culture,” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2007, 108– 114. 20 . . . the queen: Aikman, Billy Graham, 114, 280, 287, and Cornwell, Time for Remembering, esp. chap. 16. . . . of power: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 276, 269, and 383. 21 . . . and alone: Graham, “Billy Graham’s Own Story,” 204. 22 . . . new media: For post-war evangelicals’ appropriation of new media, see the essays in Quentin J. Schultze, ed., American Evangelicals and the Mass Media (Grand Rapids, Mich.:

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The same savvy marked the crusade meetings, which were, after all, studio exercises in the communication arts. The services were orderly affairs, marked by few tears and considerable decorum. But not too orderly. Graham also knew how to put on a good show. Toe-tapping music and heart-warming testimonies made for a fine evening out—or, for that matter, home by the radio or television. The testimonies served a deeper purpose, too. They placed individuals’ spiritual struggles in the longer story of Christ’s redemption of the world. Graham remembered what many seminary-trained pastors forgot: that the arbiter of truth was not the theology textbook but the personal narrative.23 In Graham’s hands, the conversion experience, the centerpiece of the revival tradition, pivoted on classically American understandings of the importance of rational decisiveness. Graham told the story of his adolescent conversion countless times. It involved no special feelings, just a clear choice to stand up, walk to the front, and make a decision for Christ. To be sure, at the end of his crusade sermons, familiar, low-keyed hymns packed with nostalgia accompanied the invitation to step forward. And Graham allowed that for some, conversion might entail a measure of emotion. Nonetheless, audiences heard little cajoling, just the imperative, “Come. We will wait. You come.” Significantly, he called his weekly radio program The Hour of Decision. Premiering in 1950, it soon ranked as one of the mostly widely heard religious broadcasts in the country. Similarly, he named his monthly magazine Decision. Launched in 1952, it soon ranked as one of the most widely received religious periodicals in the country. The program and the magazine spoke the language of Heartland America.24

Zondervan, 1990), esp. Schultz’s introductory chapter. The book brims with references to Graham’s role in the media revolution. . . . the lesson: Graham, Just As I Am, xx, 149–150, 162, 213, 220. . . . aggressive protectiveness: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 25, 105, 543. Martin discusses the BGEA throughout; see the index entry on 721. See also Myra and Shelley, Leadership Secrets, 111 –112; William C. Christian, “Electronic Evangelism,” Business Automation, June 1962, 28– 33; William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Billy Graham: Revivalist in a Secular Age (New York: Ronald Press, 1960), chaps. 7– 8. 23 . . . or television: See, for example, the DVD Billy Graham, God’s Ambassador: The Story of Billy Graham’s Extraordinary Life and Ministry, Gaither Film Productions, 2006. For musical and preaching clips from the 1957 New York Madison Square Garden Crusade, which represent the tenor of most of the larger crusades, see BGA website, http://www.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/ exhibits/NYC57/11sample59.htm. . . . personal narrative: For reflections on the functions of personal testimony in the evangelical revival tradition, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), chap. 3. 24 . . . countless times: See, for example, Graham, Just As I Am, 29– 30. . . . broadcasts in the country: Exact data are hard to pin down. By one authority, more than 150 ABC-affiliated stations carried the first broadcast; within weeks, the program had won 20 million listeners. In 1997, 664 stations in the U.S. and 366 around the world carried it. J. Gordon Melton and others, eds.,

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The extraordinary planning that went into the crusade meetings sometimes obscures the obvious. Graham’s preaching remained the centerpiece. Faith, after all, came by hearing. He was not a great preacher. He knew it and almost everyone else did too, including his wife. Learned exegesis was not expected, and neither was eloquence. “Homiletically,” said W. E. Sangster, a leading cleric in England, “his sermons leave almost everything to be desired.” Noting that the average person sported a working vocabulary of 600 words, Graham spoke plainly, using vernacular terms, short sentences, and brief paragraphs. He also spoke directly. In a telling metaphor, Graham said that in his early work with Youth for Christ, “We used every modern means to catch the ear of the unconverted and then we punched them straight between the eyes with the gospel.” Nonetheless, he possessed the gift—The Gift—that elusive combination of voice, gesture, timing, vocabulary, organization and, above all, authority that proved inimitable.25 The typical sermon merits brief examination. After a couple of warm-up jokes, Graham invariably rehearsed a laundry list of statistics and anecdotes about the dire state of the world. This litany made everything feel more

“Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,” in Prime-Time Religion: An Encyclopedia of Religious Broadcasting (Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx, 1997), 28–29. “Radio Ratings: Radio’s Most Popular Programs of the Golden Age” shows that, for the 1951–1952 to 1955–1956 seasons (the only ones tabulated), the Hour of Decision topped all religious programs. Among the top 25 programs of all types, for each of those seasons, it ranked 14, 15, 7, 6, and 4. See http://www. old-time.com/ratings/index.html, accessed February 5, 2009. . . . periodicals in the country: Determining exactly how widely received is difficult. Since Decision accepted no paid advertising, the government did not require circulation data. Martin claims that by 1966 Decision went to 5 million American homes, making it “by far the most widely received religious publication in the country.” John Pollock said that by 1966, with a circulation of 3 million, it enjoyed the highest circulation of any religious periodical in America. Later, Pollock put the figure at 4 million in North America by 1969. Timothy T. Clydesdale set the circulation at 2.1 million in 1965, 5 million in 1975, down to 1.7 million in 1992. In 2009, the BGEA claimed a circulation of 600,000 worldwide. Martin, Prophet with Honor, 250; John Pollock, Billy Graham: The Authorized Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 241, and Pollock, Billy Graham Story, 110; Clydesdale, “Decision,” in P. Mark Fackler and Charles H. Lippy, eds., Popular Religious Magazines of the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1995), 206; BGEA: http://www.billygraham.org/mediaRelations/bgeaFacts.asp?p¼5, accessed January 31, 2009. 25 . . . his wife: Billy and Ruth Graham quoted without citation in High, Billy Graham, 49, 87–88; see also chap. 3. . . . be desired: W. E. Sangster, quoted without citation in High, Billy Graham, 49. . . . brief paragraphs: Pollock, Billy Graham Story, 141; Graham interview in Frost, Billy Graham, 73. . . . the gospel: Billy Graham, Revival in Our Time (Wheaton, Ill.: Special Edition for Youth for Christ International, 1950), 3, quoted in McLoughlin, Billy Graham, 38. . . . proved inimitable: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 583. For astute studies of Graham’s preaching style, see High, Billy Graham, chap. 3, and Fant and Pinson, “William Franklin Graham,” 295– 302. For an analysis of Graham’s sermons as “iconic and ritual events,” see Thomas G. Long, “Preaching the Good News,” in Michael G. Long, editor, The Legacy of Billy Graham: Critical Reflections on America’s Evangelist (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2008), chap. 1 (quotation page 13).

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urgent. Graham’s legendary ability to win converts—“inquirers,” he called them—rested on a more fundamental ability to capture an audience’s attention. He instinctively appreciated the evangelist Sister Aimee Semple McPherson’s recipe for rabbit stew: first, “you have to catch the rabbit.” In addition, Graham’s drumbeat quoting of the exact words of the King James Bible bestowed the power of immemorial tradition on his preaching. (He literally cut and pasted Bible passages into his skeletal sermon outlines.) The preacher’s self-deprecating humor helped seal the deal. He liked to tell about the man in an elevator who looked him up and down for about thirty seconds and said, “My, what an anticlimax.” And of the woman who strolled over to his restaurant table and alleged, “You look like Billy Graham.” To which he drolly responded, “Yes, people often say that.” The evangelist knew his audiences.26 Finally, and most important, whatever the stated text, the actual text of every sermon was John 3:16: “whoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” All messages demanded a decision. There was nothing new here. For two centuries, the call for a clear choice, up or down, had served as the evangelist’s stock-in-trade. Yet Graham sensed, better than most, the importance of pressing his hearers to stand up and walk to the front for all to see. Critics charged that the seemingly endless lines of inquirers, streaming forward from all parts of the crusade stadiums, betokened superficiality at best and mass suggestibility at worst. The preacher thought otherwise. Publicly declaring a new direction for one’s life implicitly acknowledged that things had gone wrong and that it was time to make them right.27 Taken together, Graham’s taped and published sermons, stretching over nearly six decades, reveal the perennial clarity of his message. Critics, of course, judged it not clarity but simplemindedness. That is what Reinhold Niebuhr said: too simple for a complex age. Yet partisans prized his focus on 26 . . . brief examination: Graham’s personal sermon notes are not available to researchers until 25 years after his death. The BGA holds “hundreds if not thousands” of video and audio sermons (some online), as well as many unedited sermon transcripts. One may purchase more than 300 pamphlet sermons, preached over many decades, from Grason, a division of the BGEA. For two anthologies, see Graham, The Challenge: Sermons from Madison Square Garden (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), and Graham, Blow Wind of God: Spirited Messages from the Writings of Billy Graham (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1975). . . . the rabbit: Aimee Semple McPherson quoted by her daughter, Roberta Semple Salter, interview with Matthew A. Sutton, New York, March 16, 2004, in Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 77. . . . an anticlimax: Graham, in “Why God Allows Suffering and War,” Houston Crusade, 1965, quoted in Bill Adler, ed. & comp., The Wit and Wisdom of Billy Graham (New York: Random House, 1967), 158; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 581– 583. . . . say that: E-mail from Graham’s sister, Jean Graham Ford, January 29, 2009. . . . his audiences: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 291, 581, 583. 27 . . . them right: I owe this point to Martin, Prophet with Honor, 551, 527. See also Aikman, Great Souls, 58, and Gaillard, Southern Voices, 127.

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the evangelical essentials of human sin and divine forgiveness. In the approaching darkness (or glorious light) at the end of history, there was, he insisted, no time to trifle with subtleties or fuss about matters in dispute. Corny jokes and butchered facts, always part of the deal, harmed Graham’s reputation about as much as they harmed Lyndon Johnson’s and Ronald Reagan’s—which is to say, except in Cambridge, Berkeley, and Chapel Hill, not much at all.28

IV. AMERICA’S ENTREPRENEUR No one person created the modern evangelical insurgence, but Graham, more than anyone, should be credited—or blamed, according to one’s mood—for channeling its explosive force and vitality. The Cold War and Vietnam eras formed the backdrop. The fears of the 1950s and the ruptures of the 1960s produced a yearning for consensus. Millions of Heartland Christians shared that yearning, and so did Graham. Weary of bony denominational structures and toxic theological debates, he pursued new ways to achieve old ideals. Graham’s constructive efforts manifested themselves in the leadership of parachurch evangelicalism and of cooperative evangelicalism.29 By the late 1930s, the trans-denominational coalition that historians later called parachurch evangelicalism was well established. Graham fell in step. At Florida Bible Institute, he rubbed shoulders with freelance paladins from a variety of traditions. At Wheaton College, he met future champions of the 28 . . . his message: Graham acknowledged that other hands helped research, edit, or write some of his speeches, articles, and newspaper columns, as well as his autobiography. If one assumes, as I do, that Graham’s principal historical importance lies in his role as a public figure, the distinction between words that he personally authored and those that others authored in his name is relatively unimportant. Graham, Just As I Am, 755– 757; Graham in “Candid Conversation with the Evangelist,” Christianity Today, July 17, 1981, 24; Graham in “Billy Graham: 25 Years an Evangelist, 55 Years a Man,” Eternity, November 1974, 29; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 138, 551; and Aikman, Billy Graham, 259–260. For a different interpretation, see Long, Billy Graham, 227– 232. . . . complex age: Reinhold Niebuhr, “Differing Views on Billy Graham,” Life, July 1, 1957, 92; Niebuhr, editorial, Christianity and Crisis, March 5, 1956, 18, quoted in Mark Silk, “The Rise of the ‘New Evangelicalism,’” in William R. Hutchison, editor, Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 286. For a brilliant analysis of the Graham-Niebuhr relation, see Andrew S. Finstuen, “The Prophet and the Evangelist: The ‘Public’ Conversation of Reinhold Niebuhr and Billy Graham,” Books and Culture, July/August, 2006, http://www. christianitytoday.com/bc/2006/julaug/3.8.html, accessed February 16, 2009. 29 . . . and vitality: For Graham’s seminal role “at the creation,” see Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), esp. chap. 12. . . . for consensus: See, for example, William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II ([1986] New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 5th ed.), chap. 13.

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independent foreign missions network. Graham gradually moved to the front of the pack. By the 1960s, he decisively and permanently had eclipsed all others. Over the years, he invested his considerable organizational skills and financial resources in the founding or support of a host of parachurch institutions. Besides his own Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, some of the more important ones included (in chronological order) Youth for Christ, Campus Crusade for Christ, Christianity Today, the Living Bible, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Samaritan’s Purse.30 If for Graham parachurch identification meant much, denominational identification meant little. The Southern Baptists ordained him when he was 21, but he always worshiped indiscriminately. (In this respect, he differed from his wife, who remained Southern Presbyterian to the end. He also differed from his lifelong associate, Grady Wilson. When a reporter asked Wilson what he would be if he were not Baptist, Wilson shot back, “I’d be ashamed.”) As early as 1963, Graham told Newsweek’s Ken Woodward that he found himself most comfortable in the evangelical wing of the Anglican Church. That outlook endured. In his sunset years, he asked the Reverend Richard Bewes, the rector of All Souls in London, to help officiate at his funeral.31 Graham’s parachurch instincts led to a growing openness toward other traditions—an openness that the historian Michael Hamilton aptly called “cooperative evangelicalism.” Graham started out, as the historian George Marsden put it, as a “purebred fundamentalist.” But he did not stay there. Virtually from the day Graham graduated from Wheaton, he began to pull away from the hard hitters on his right. He led the soft hitters like himself to a more open-minded attitude toward other traditions and toward the surrounding culture. Indeed, he soon grew uneasy with the combative connotations of the label “fundamentalist” and opted instead for the accommodative connotations of the label “evangelical” or, simply, “Christian.” The move was heartfelt, but it was also shrewd. Graham knew

30 . . . in step: Rosell, Surprising Work, 109–118. . . . all others: It is easy to forget that Graham emerged from a field of very real competitors. See ibid., esp. chap. 4, significantly titled, “A Band of Brothers.” . . . Samaritan’s Purse: Ibid., 109– 118, 102 n. 143, 206– 208, and John G. Turner, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), throughout. 31 . . . be ashamed: I have not been able to find the Wilson story in print, but it is a staple in BGEA oral tradition and fits Wilson’s style of humor. E-mails from Graham’s former associate minister and brother-in-law, Leighton Ford, February 4, 2009, and from John Akers, special assistant to Billy Graham, February 5, 2009. . . . Anglican Church: Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Autobiography of Billy Graham,” Commonweal, August 15, 1997, 22; “Entrepreneurial Religion,” in Woodward, Getting Religion: Belief, Behavior and Belonging from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of George W. Bush, A Memoir, forthcoming. . . . his funeral: E-mail from Leighton Ford, January 21, 2009.

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that millions of evangelically inclined believers warmed the pews of nonevangelical churches.32 From the early 1950s, Graham proved eager to work with believers anywhere. In 1990, he proudly told Time magazine that in 1981—back when Protestant-Catholic relations were just beginning to thaw—Pope John Paul II had grasped his thumb and said, “We are brothers.” When the pope died in 2005, Graham judged that the pontiff had been the “most influential force for morality and peace in the world in the past 100 years.” The venue for Graham’s remark was as significant as the remark itself: the nightly television talk show Larry King Live, a microphone to the world. Graham exhibited the same openness toward over-scrubbed mainliners on his theological left, under-scrubbed pentecostals on his theological right, and many folk who did not fit on any conventional theological map, including the Orthodox. He led millions of evangelicals to embrace the Christian world beyond their door, a globe filled with vibrant Anglicans in Britain, fervent Catholics in Poland, and exuberant charismatics in Africa. Jews too. Finding that he and Jewish leaders held much in common, Graham forged enduring ties with many of them at home and abroad. Repeatedly he said he would work with anyone who would work with him as long as they did not ask him to change his message. Many people saw Graham, but, as historian Sarah Johnson observed, it also is true that he saw many people, and they left their mark.33 32 . . . cooperative evangelism: Michael Hamilton, unpublished article manuscript in my possession. . . . purebred fundamentalist: George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture ([1980] New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2006), 233. . . . simply, Christian: Graham in “Candid Conversation,” 26; Graham in “Billy Graham Answers His Critics,” Look, February 7, 1956, page n/a; Graham in J. H. Hunter, “He Came—He Saw—He Conquered,” Evangelical Christian, May 1955, 215. . . . non-evangelical churches: Graham, Just As I Am, 284. 33 . . . are brothers: Graham interview with David Aikman, “Preachers, Politics, and Temptation,” Time, May 28, 1990, 14. Mandy McMichael, “Ties that Bind: Evangelicals and Catholics Together?” Ph.D. seminar paper, Duke University/University of North Carolina, 2008, carefully documents Graham’s growing embrace of Catholics. . . . 100 years: Michael Ireland, “Remembrance: Billy Graham: Pope John Paul II Was ‘Most Influential Voice’ in 100 Years,” Larry King Live, aired April 2, [2005], ASSIST News Service, http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/ BibleStudyAndTheology/Perspectives/ANS_PopeGrahamCaviezel.aspx, accessed February 1, 2009. The quoted material is Ireland speaking for Graham. In 1970, Graham told David Frost that Pope John XXIII and Dwight L. Moody ranked as the most important religious leaders of the twentieth century: Frost, Billy Graham, 77– 78. . . . in Africa: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 310, 332. . . . and abroad: See, for example, Graham, Just As I Am, 301, 509, 511, 353, 450, and Marc Gellman, “The Spiritual State: Words of Faith: A Rabbi Explains Why Billy Graham Is a Giant among Preachers,” Newsweek, June 8, 2005, http://www.newsweek.com/id/49787, accessed February 8, 2008. Graham insisted that he aimed to evangelize, not proselytize, Jews (though the distinction remained unclear): Graham, Just As I Am, 301, and Graham in James Michael Beam [Kenneth L. Woodward], “‘I Can’t Play God Any More,’” McCall’s, January 1978, 158. See also Martin, Prophet with Honor, 223, 658 n. 223; and David L. Altheide and John M. Johnson, “Counting Souls: A Study of Counseling at Evangelical Crusades,” The

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In 2006, The New Yorker journalist Peter Boyer perceptively argued that Graham “triangulated” American Protestantism. Until he came along, Boyer contended, two high-profile combatants dominated the landscape: liberals and fundamentalists, locked in mortal combat. Yet the preacher sensed that many Christians had grown weary of that antagonism. They were rooted in a deeper and wider but less conspicuous tradition of irenic evangelical conviction. They desired a faith that took seriously venerable theological affirmations and modern social needs. By the middle 1950s, he had determined to fly his flag as a cooperative evangelical. His fundamentalist friends never forgave him. Their attacks still rage on the Internet, suggesting the bitterness of an abandoned lover. Graham too suffered wounds, but he never looked back.34 A theological rationale undergirded cooperative evangelicalism. Though Graham was not a theologian and never pretended to be, he thought seriously about things that mattered. In the process, he changed. Official Graham sources rarely admitted any revising, let alone compromising, of evangelical cornerstones, yet it is easy to see the preacher softening some of the hard edges—most notably, his refusal to speculate on the final fate of the earnest non-Christian. In his maturity, Graham came to feel that his job was simply to preach the Good News and leave the rest to the wideness of God’s mercy.35

V. AMERICA’S COUNSELOR Finally, as Graham grew older, the nation’s expanding social vision powerfully influenced him, but that development was a long time coming and followed a zigzag path. To be sure, one thing never changed: his conviction that individual

Pacific Sociological Review 20 (July 1977), 336. . . . their mark: Sarah Johnson, personal conversation, Duke University, May 2007. See also Martin, Prophet with Honor, 206, 211, 224, and 294. 34 . . . cooperative evangelical: Boyer, “Big Tent,” 44. . . . abandoned lover: For one of countless examples, see Dr. Ernest Pickering, “Should Fundamentalists Support the Billy Graham Crusades,” pamphlet, 1957, posted on SharperIron, June 30, 2005, http://www. sharperiron.org/showthread.php?t=1081, accessed January 31, 2009. . . . looked back: Graham, Just As I Am, 251; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 218–224. 35 . . . that mattered: Contrary to the convention that Graham was an intellectual lightweight, Finstuen demonstrates that Graham, like his contemporaries Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, grappled with classic problems of human nature, albeit in the language of everyday life: Finstuen, Original Sin, esp. chaps. 3 and 5. . . . hard edges: Martin, Prophet with Honor, 576. . . . earnest non-Christian: Graham interviewed in Frost, Billy Graham, 60– 61; in Beam, “‘I Can’t Play God,’” 156, 158; in Larry King, Larry King Live, CNN, aired June 16, 2005, http:// transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/16/lkl.01.html, accessed February 11, 2009. See also Aikman, Billy Graham, 258– 259, 295. For some of these references and for insight on this subject, I am very directly indebted to D. Steven Porter, “Billy Graham and the Wideness of God’s Mercy,” Th.D. seminar paper, Duke University, 2008.

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conversion formed the only firm foundation for enduring social progress. Yet two things did change: his growing conviction that the movement from individual conversion to social reform required intentional implementation, and that the gospel, fully realized, required structural as well as spiritual solutions. Three sets of events defined Graham’s posture toward social engagement. The first was the Vietnam War, the second civil rights, and the third a cluster of issues broadly concerning global justice. The first ran from the middle 1960s to the middle 1970s; the second spanned his career; and the third extended from the late 1970s to the end of his active ministry. We might sum up most Americans’ verdicts on the three as, respectively, bad, mixed, and good. Though Graham’s view of the Vietnam War was tangled, and the public’s perception of his view was equally tangled, several overall comments seem warranted. First, he moved from clear support for the administration’s policies in the middle 1960s to professed uncertainty by the time it ended in 1973. Yet many Americans doubted that his uncertainty ran very deep. Into the 1970s, he made statements that appeared to minimize if not trivialize the human cost of the fighting, and he refused publicly to challenge the controversial invasion of Cambodia in 1970 or the even more controversial Christmas bombing of Hanoi in 1972. Second, Graham oscillated between noninvolvement and involvement. On one hand, he actually spoke very little about the geopolitical details of the conflict, effectively saying that as a preacher the question was above his pay grade. On the other hand, in public, with rare exceptions, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Presidents Johnson and Nixon. The title of a 1969 New York Times Magazine article spoke volumes: “The Closest Thing to A White House Chaplain.” Graham never seemed to suspect that his close personal and pastoral relationships with the two presidents might have influenced his judgment about their judgment. Finally, by the late 1970s, Graham acknowledged that in times past he had fallen into political partisanship, especially during the Nixon years. Repeatedly he said he regretted it.36 36

. . . seem warranted: All of the “standard” biographies examine Graham’s relation to the Vietnam War at length. For a particularly perceptive treatment, see Richard Pierard, “Billy Graham and Vietnam: From Cold Warrior to Peacemaker,” Christian Scholar’s Review 10:1 (October 1980): 37– 51. . . . pay grade: Graham, Just As I Am, 415. . . . house chaplain: Edward B. Fiske, “The Closest Thing to a White House Chaplain,” The New York Times Magazine, June 8, 1969, http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/graham.htm, accessed February 3, 2009. Graham disliked the chaplain title, yet simultaneously and, clearly unintentionally, showed why many found it credible. See Graham, Just As I Am, 450, and compare the first and final paragraphs on the page. See also Aikman, Billy Graham, 201, 214. . . . regretted it: Graham, Just As I Am, 445, 724. See also Martin, Prophet with Honor, 431, 472–473; Beam, “‘I Can’t Play God,’” 156; Kenneth L. Woodward, “Politics from the Pulpit,” Newsweek, September 6,

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Graham’s civil rights record, in contrast, won both censure and praise. Unsympathetic observers charged that he dithered on the integration of his Southern crusades; that in the middle 1960s, he urged firebrands on both sides to quiet down as if their causes were morally equivalent; that he never marched in the streets, went to jail, or threw his power and prestige behind fundamental structural reforms. Sympathetic observers, on the other hand, noted that he moved to integrate his crusades before Brown v. Board of Education; that he experienced threats on his life, the loss of friends, and the wrath of White Citizens’ Councils; that he forthrightly endorsed Martin Luther King, Jr. (until King attacked the Vietnam War); and that he won the support of prominent African American associates, numerous black pastors, and multitudes of minority lay followers. Politicians split, too. In Graham’s closing years, Jesse Jackson lamented the paucity of his efforts for racial justice. At the same time, Bill Clinton lauded him for taking a stand when he did not have to. One thing is clear: how Americans evaluated Graham’s relation to the civil rights movement depended on the criteria they deemed most important. If they placed priority on prophetic words and bold actions, he fell short. If they placed priority on the steady witness of a half-century of integrated crusades, he walked tall.37 Graham’s work for global justice represents a third posture, winning the praise of all but the most obdurate critics. His increasingly progressive record on health care, the environment, world hunger and poverty and, especially, the arms race, which he called “insanity, madness,” placed him near the front of evangelical Christians’ social conscience. As the evangelist’s vision widened to see the world and its suffering as one, the line between insiders and outsiders blurred. He sidestepped the Christian Right and largely avoided public association with discordant figures like Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell. In December 2005, television journalist Larry King asked Graham what he thought about his son, Franklin, calling Islam “evil and wicked.” Graham responded, “Well, he has [his] views and I have mine. And they are different sometimes.” No one should have been surprised. The previous June, The New York Times’s Laurie Goodstein asked

1976, quoted in William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway, 1996), 153. 37 . . . and praise: Again, all of the “standard” biographies treat Graham’s relation to the civil rights movement at length, ranging from very positive to very negative. Steven P. Miller, “Billy Graham,” and, more extensively, Billy Graham, offer a meticulous examination of this controversial subject. See also Martin, Prophet with Honor, 202, 296. . . . have to: For Jackson, see the interview with David Aikman, video, Billy Graham: Ambassador of Salvation, 2002, volume 1 in 6-part PBS series Great Souls, quoted in Aikman, Billy Graham, 145, 8. For Clinton, see Boyer, “Big Tent,” 44.

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Graham whether he anticipated a “clash of civilizations” between Christianity and Islam. His response was telling: “I think the big conflict is with hunger and starvation and poverty.” That same month, Graham preached his final crusade—fittingly, in Flushing Meadows, one of the most ethnically mixed sections of New York City. The diversity of the meeting’s counselors symbolized just how much his ministry had changed in sixty years. They represented more than 20 language groups, including Arabic, Armenian, Korean, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Tamil, and Mandarin Chinese.38 The mature Graham’s expanding social vision grew from an underlying conviction that people deserved a second chance. That ideal—not to be confused with conservative notions of can-do entrepreneurialism or with liberal notions of social reconstruction—simply said that all people should receive an opportunity to make more of themselves than their genes and circumstances might portend. With few exceptions, the thousands of letters that made their way each week to “Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota” spoke of suffering—husbands calling it quits, kids gone astray, jobs lost, and loneliness. Above all, loneliness. In historian Heather Vacek’s words, “Graham was a public figure holding private pain.” That role may have been his most enduring legacy. The letters make clear that he helped many wayfarers find fresh water in dry wells. Here, he drew on deep-running streams in the American tradition. Sister Aimee, the flamboyant evangelist of the preceding generation, had well understood the power of the promise of a second chance. And so had the Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan. Nothing was more American than believing that things old and broken really could become new and whole.39 38 . . . insanity, madness: Graham on CBS Evening News, aired March 29, 1979, quoted in Pierard, “Billy Graham and Vietnam,” 37. . . . social conscience: See Graham in “Candid Conversation,” 21–22; Graham in Colin Greer, “‘Change Will Come When Our Hearts Change,’” Parade, October 20, 1996, 6; Aikman, Billy Graham, 149, 155–156, 160; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 439, 521, 576; Gaillard, Southern Voices, 121– 122, 126. . . . Jerry Falwell: Aikman, Great Souls, 55; Martin, Prophet with Honor, 472; Ken Garfield, “Crusade Will Show a Softer Graham,” The Charlotte Observer, June 23, 2005, 1A. . . . different sometimes: Graham in King, “Interview with Reverend Billy Graham.” The transcript has Graham saying, “my views,” but, from the context, it is obvious that he meant “his views.” The previous June, in an interview with The New York Times’s Laurie Goodstein, Graham had distanced himself from Franklin’s 2001 statement, saying, “We had an understanding a long time ago, he speaks for himself. . . . Let’s say, I didn’t say it”: Goodstein, “Spirit Willing.” In the King interview, Graham added that Franklin “doesn’t hold that position now.” . . . and poverty: Graham in Goodstein, “Spirit Willing”; see also Boyer, “Big Tent,” 44, and Garfield, “Crusade Will Show a Softer Graham.” . . . Mandarin Chinese: Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 341, and BGEA, June 26, 2005, “Greater New York Billy Graham Crusade Updates,” http://www. billygraham.org/News_Article.asp?ArticleID¼104, accessed February 2, 2009. For the multiethnic and, to be sure, elegiac tone of that final crusade, see Gibbs and Duffy, The Preacher, 339–341. 39 . . . private pain: Heather Vacek, Duke/UNC American Religion Colloquium, November 18, 2008. The BGEA does not release data on the number of letters the organization has received. In

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VI. CONCLUSION For many decades Graham seemed invincible, but time exacts its toll. Now nearly 91 and frail, he quietly spends his days in his mountain home in Montreat, North Carolina. Ruth Bell Graham died in 2007. Except for a housekeeper and health care workers, he lives alone. In 2007, poll data suggested that nearly a third of Americans under the age of 30 did not recognize his name. The closing of the Graham era offers a fresh opportunity to consider what his story says about America’s story.40 For the cultural historian, Graham’s work provides a perch for viewing some of the most powerful changes that swept the postwar landscape. I have tried to provide glimpses of fruitful places to look. Neither romanticizing nor debunking him will take us very far. Rather the task is to see how he used the times to speak to the times. That analysis will exhibit the achievements and, inevitably, the shortcomings of a life played on the world’s stage. It also will help show how the angular fundamentalism of the 1940s became the expansive evangelicalism of the 2000s. Most important, it will illumine the reciprocal impact of religion and culture in modern America, an impact that included but extended far beyond conventional politics. Billy Graham holds a secure place on the Mount Rushmore of American religious icons. The challenge is to see how the man reveals the contours of the rest of the mountain.41

1974, Graham said that he received 5,000 to 10,000 letters a day when he was not on television and 100,000 a day when he was. He told Johnny Carson that the letters most often spoke of loneliness. See virtually any sampling of the letters housed at BGA CN 74 and CN 575; Graham, “Billy Graham: 25 Years an Evangelist,” 29; Graham on The Tonight Show, aired June 12, 1973, Track 1, BGEA DVD, dubbed August 2, 2007, in my possession. 40 . . . his name: The exact figure was 29 percent. “Public Expresses Mixed Views of Islam, Mormonism,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, September 25, 2007, http://pewforum. org/surveys/religionviews07/, accessed February 2, 2009. Stephen Prothero’s 2007 book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t includes an entry for Graham. In a review, the American religious historian Mark Oppenheimer judged that he would have omitted the entry for Graham because he was “irrelevant today.” Oppenheimer, “Knowing Not,” New York Times, June 10, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/books/ review/Oppenheimer-t.html?_r¼2, accessed March 22, 2009. 41 . . . Mount Rushmore: After I drafted this line, I discovered that David Aikman wrote a similar one in “What If Billy Graham Had Made Another Choice?” Nelson Newsroom, September 25, 2007, http://news.thomasnelson.com/2007/09/25/what-if-billy-graham-had-madeanother-choice, accessed March 20, 2009.

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 512–548. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990412 Printed in the USA

Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona1 CONSTANT J. MEWS

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ANCING is not often associated with Christian liturgy, at least in modern experience. Yet according to the Mitralis de Officio of Sicard, bishop of Cremona (1185 – 1215), composed about 1200, the circular dance (chorea) provides a key metaphor for understanding the liturgy of Easter.2 Sicard here draws together two earlier discussions of the subject, both from the twelfth century and of enormously wide influence, manifesting a more positive attitude toward dance than found in many early medieval commentators on the liturgy: the Gemma animae (Jewel of the soul) of Honorius Augustodunensis, composed for a monastic audience in the early twelfth century, probably in Germany, and the De ecclesiasticis officiis of John Beleth, a secular cleric writing probably in Paris circa 1150– 1160.3 While many scholars have observed the renewal of interest in the pagan authors within a literary context in the twelfth century, the witness of liturgical commentaries from the period has been little noticed. Sicard implies that the festivities of the pagan Saturnalia and its associated freedom

1 I am indebted to Dawn McGann for originally awakening my interest in liturgical dance, and am grateful to Donnalee Dox, Bruce Holsinger, and many others for discussing issues and translations in this paper. 2 Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis de Officiis 6.15, ed. Gabor Sarbak and Lorenz Weinrich, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis (CCCM) 228 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 545– 546; PL 213: 351D– 352B. Augustine Thompson draws extensively on the testimony of Sicard, including his comments about Easter, in Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125– 1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 335. Lorenz Weinrich suggests that the Mitralis, not widely circulated outside northern Italy, was written over several years, between 1191 and 1205: “Die Handschriften des ‘Mitralis de officiis’ des Sicard von Cremona,” in Franz J. Felten and Nikolas Jaspert, eds., Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift fu¨r Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 865– 876. 3 Honorius Augustodunensis, Gemma animae, PL 172: 541D–738B; Valerie I. J. Flint lists more than fifty surviving manuscripts in Honorius Augustodunensis, Authors of the Middle Ages (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1995), 164. John Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, ed. Heribert Douteil, CCCM 41– 41A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976); Douteil describes over one hundred and eighty surviving manuscripts, CCCM 41: 75*– 271*, assigning most of the ones he uses to the thirteenth century (CCCM 41: 13*).

Constant J. Mews is professor of history and director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology at Monash University, Australia.

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of expression (the so-called “December freedom”) can legitimately be used to explain the festivities that take place at Easter: All Christians ought to come together freely at the above mentioned daily offices to celebrate the glory of the resurrection, which will be revealed in us. This solemnity is therefore the jubilee of Christians, when quarrels are settled, offenses forgiven. Let those who had sinned be reconciled, let debts be canceled. Let work places not be opened, merchandise not displayed for sale except for those things without which a meal cannot take place. Let prisoners be freed, shepherds and servants not forced to service so that they are able to enjoy freedom and to delight in the festivity of future joy. Thus it is that in the cloisters of certain churches even bishops enjoy the December freedom with their clerics, even to descending to the game of the circular dance or ball (ludum choreae vel pilae)—although it seems more praiseworthy not to play; this “December freedom” is so called in that in the month of December, shepherds, servants, and maidservants were governed among the gentiles with a kind of freedom by their masters, so that they could celebrate with them after the harvest was collected. And note that the gentiles established circular dances to honor idols, so that they might praise their gods by voice and serve them with their whole body, wanting to foreshadow in them in their own way something of the mystery. For through the circling, they understood the revolution of the firmament; through the joining of hands, the interconnection of the elements, through the gestures of bodies, the motions of the signs or planets; through the melodies of singers, the harmonies of the planets; through the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet, the sounding of thunder; but what those people showed to their idols, the worshipers of the one God converted to his praise. For the people who crossed from the Red Sea are said to have led a circular dance, Mary is reported to have sung with the tambourine; and David danced before the ark with all his strength and composed psalms with his harp, and Solomon placed singers around the altar, who are said to have created sound with voice, trumpet, cymbals, organs, and other musical instruments.4 4 Sicard of Cremona, Mitralis 6.15, CCCM 228: 545– 546. The editors note that lines 472– 486 are copied from Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis 117a, 117d, 120a, ed. Douteil, CCCM 41, 219, 223, but not the dependence of lines 486– 499 on Honorius, Gemma animae 139, PL 172: 587CD; in both cases copied phrases are cited in italics, here and in further notes: “Ad supradicta hodierna officia omnes Christiani debent libere conuenire ad applaudendum gloriae resurrectionis quae reuelabitur in nobis. Haec solempnitas igitur est iubilaeus Christianorum, in qua discordes pacificentur, offensae remittantur. Qui deliquerant, reconcilientur, debita non exigantur. Ergasteria non aperiantur, uenalia non exponantur, exceptis illis sine quibus caena duci non potest. Captiui relaxentur, pastores et serui ad seruitia non artentur, ut libertate ualeant perfrui et in festiuitate futurae laetitiae delectari. Inde est quod in claustris quarundam ecclesiarum etiam episcopi [Beleth adds: uel archiepiscopi] cum suis clericis decembrica libertate utuntur, descendentes etiam ad ludum choreae uel pilae, quamuis non ludere laudabilius sit [Beleth: Licet autem magne ecclesie ut Remensis hanc ludendi consuetudinem

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That circular dances were practiced throughout the medieval period, indeed in a wide variety of cultures, is amply attested through the testimony collected by Curt Sachs in his influential history of dance, first published in 1937. His focus, like that of many subsequent dance scholars, was on dance as a manifestation of popular culture, rather than on what clerical commentators had to say on the subject.5 Other scholars have provided further testimony relating to the practice of dance within a Christian and even clerical context.6 Little attention, however, has been given to the contribution of liturgical commentators like Sicard of Cremona and his two major sources of inspiration, Honorius Augustudonensis and John Beleth. While there are subtle differences among these three writers, they share a common desire to appropriate the imagery of pagan culture for explaining Christian ritual and the festivities associated with it at major points in the year. This study

teneant, tamen non ludere laudabilius esse uidetur] et dicitur haec decembrica libertas, eo quod mense decembris pastores, servi et ancillae quadam libertate apud gentiles a dominis dominarentur [Beleth: festa agentes conuiuia post collectas messes], et collectis messibus cum eis conuiuarentur. Et attende, quod gentilitas ad plausum idolorum choreas instituit, ut deos suos, et uoce laudarent, et eis toto corpore seruirent, uolentes etiam in eis aliquid more suo figurare misterii; nam per circuitionem [Honorius: per choreas autem] intelligebant firmamenti reuolutionem, per manuum complexionem elementorum connexionem, per melodias cantantium harmonias planetarum; per corporum gesticulationes [Honorius: per corporis gesticulationem], signorum uel planetarum motiones [Honorius: motionem]; per plausum manuum et strepitum pedum crepitationes tonitruorum. Sed quod illi suis idolis exhibuerunt, cultores unius Dei ad ipsius praeconia conuerterunt [Honorius: Quod fideles imitati sunt, et in servitium veri Dei converterunt]. Nam populus de mari Rubro egressus, choream duxisse, et Maria cum timpano legitur praecinuisse, et David ante arcam totis uiribus saltauit et cum cithara psalmos cecinit, et Salomon circa altare cantores instituit, qui uoce, tuba, cimbalis, organis et aliis musicis instrumentis cantica personuisse leguntur.” 5 Curt Sachs, World History of the Dance, trans. Bessis Scho¨nberg (New York: Norton, 1965). 6 G. R. S. Mead, “Ceremonial Game Playing and Dancing in Mediaeval Churches,” in The Quest: A Quarterly Review (October 1912), reprinted in The Sacred Dance in Christendom, The Quest Reprint Series 2 (London: John M. Watkins, 1926), 91–110, alongside two other essays on sacred dance, originally published in The Quest: A Quarterly Review: “The Sacred Dance of Jesus” [October 1910]; “Ceremonial Dances and Symbolic Banquets in Mediaeval Churches” [January 1913]; H. Gougaud in his entry, “Danse,” in the Dictionnaire d’arche´ologie chre´tienne et liturgique [DACL] 4. 1 (Paris: Letouzey 1920), cols. 248–258, summarizing his earlier study, “La danse dans les Eglises,” Revue d’histoire eccle´siastique 15 (1914): 1– 22, 229–245. There is a rich summary in Yvonne Rokseth, “Danses cle´ricales du XIIIe sie`cle,” Me´langes 1945 des Publications de la Faculte´ des Lettres de Strasbourg, 3. Etudes historiques (Paris, 1947), 93–126. See also Rene´e Foatelli, Les Danses religieuses dans le Christianisme (Paris: Editions Spes, 1947); E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952); Marilyn Daniel, The Dance in Christianity: A History of Religious Dance through the Ages (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). J. G. Davies, Liturgical Dance: An Historical, Theological, and Practical Handbook (London: SCM, 1984) is noteworthy for his scholarly caution, although there is very little account of the medieval literature, apart from a list of references to condemnation of dances (49– 53). Jean-Claude Schmitt comments on the importance of dance in scripture, as well as in medieval tradition, in La raison des gestes (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 86–92.

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focuses on how Beleth and Sicard, developing a precedent established by Honorius, shifted away from the more negative attitudes of patristic and early medieval writers, as well as on the way their comments were attenuated in the thirteenth century, when a more hostile official attitude to popular Christian culture re-asserted itself in official edicts of the Church.

I. THE GAME

OF THE

PILA

AND THE

SURVIVAL OF RITUAL DANCE

The discussion by Sicard of Cremona of the game of ball ( pila) that he says was played in certain churches at Easter provides a good illustration of the fine line between ritual dance and clerical entertainment. He reports that “in the cloisters of certain churches even bishops play with their clerics, so that they even descend to the game of the circular dance or the pila.” Sicard adds the term circular dance (chorea) to Beleth’s statement that they descend “to the game of the pila.” Sicard also abbreviated Beleth’s rather negative comment that “although great churches, like that of Reims, keep this custom of playing, yet it seems more praiseworthy not to play.”7 In a separate passage, Beleth voices disfavor toward what he sees as a game (ludum) rather than a chorea, in ruling that if a cleric should die suddenly while playing a game such as the pila, he should be buried in the cemetery, but without the normal obsequies.8 While Sicard repeats Beleth’s comment that it would be better not to play this game, he gives a distinctly more positive explanation of what is going on, not found in Beleth, in clarifying that the game of the pila is in fact a chorea or circular dance. Sicard draws on Honorius’s explanation that chorus derives from chorea or circular dance, and that the Christian choir is simply putting to good use a pagan dance that celebrates the cosmic dance (chorea, according to Calcidius’s translation of Plato’s Timaeus). Sicard follows Beleth in explaining this apparent departure from convention as a “December freedom” celebrated at Easter, an allusion to Horace, Carmina 2.7 (age, libertate decembri, / quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere) in which the poet recalls the ancient Roman practice of a slave being permitted to speak his mind during the Saturnalia (December 17– 19). Festivities that in the Roman period had been understood as recalling a mythical age of Saturn were thought to be legitimately applied to those that took place at Easter.9 7 Sicard, Mitralis 6.15, CCCM 228: 546; PL 213: 352A preserves only the final phrase of Beleth, De eccl. off. 120a, CCCM 41A: 223: “Licet autem magne ecclesie ut Remensis hanc ludendi consuetudinem teneant, tamen non ludere laudabilius esse uidetur.” 8 Beleth, De eccl. off. 159r, CCCM 41A: 308. 9 For a thoughtful analysis of Horace’s use of the December freedom image within Saturnalian convention, see Michael Andre´ Bernstein, “‘O Totiens Servus’: Saturnalia and Servitude in Augustan Rome,” Critical Inquiry 13:3 (Spring 1987), 450 –474, developed within Bitter Carnival: Ressentiment and the Abject Hero (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).

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CHURCH HISTORY

John of Salisbury had employed the phrase in the mid-twelfth century to assert the value of proclaiming one’s opinion.10 Here, however, Beleth quotes the phrase without any sense of awkwardness to justify the practice of a senior ecclesiastic engaging in entertainment with his fellow clergy. These commentaries of Beleth and Sicard on the game of the pila provide further nuance to the analysis offered by Craig Wright of the role of the maze or labyrinth found in many great medieval cathedrals in the archdioceses of Reims and Sens. In Wright’s perspective, the fusion of pagan and Christian liturgical practice is a phenomenon of medieval culture as a whole. He argues that the maze, called the Daedalum after the builder of the maze in Crete and remembered by Isidore of Seville (560 – 636) as the place into which no one could enter to fight the Minotaur without a ball of thread, may have provided the original location of a clerical dance celebrated at Easter.11 According to Plutarch, Theseus’s rescuing of his companions from the Minotaur was still celebrated in his own day by the citizens of Delos. Marius Victorinus passed on this information, including detail about the dances supposedly established by Theseus, as well as the view that these dances imitated the movement of the universe—a notion that loosely echoes that of Honorius in the twelfth century.12 Isidore also transmitted the belief

Bernstein, “‘O Totiens Servus,’” reports the widespread phenomenon of such a ritual practice, such as occurs once a year in the Ashanti tribe of northern Ghana (454). 10 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, Prol. l. 89, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, CCCM 118 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), 24, and Policraticus 7.225, ed. C. C. J. Webb, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909), 2: 224– 225. 11 Craig Wright, The Maze and the Warrior: Symbols in Architecture, Theology, and Music (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 129– 158, especially 139– 151 on the dance at Auxerre, Sens, and Chartres, and 317 n. 35. See also Penelope Reed Doob, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990). 12 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 9, 29–37; cf. Isidore, Etymologiae 15.2.36, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912): “Labyrinthus est perplexis parietibus aedificium, qualis est apud Cretam a Daedalo factus, ubi fuit Minotaurus inclusus; in quo si quis introierit sine glomere lini, exitum inuenire non ualet. Cuius aedificii talis est situs ut aperientibus fores tonitruum intus terribile audiatur: descenditur centenis ultra gradibus; intus simulacra et monstrificae effigies, in partes diuersas transitus innumeri per tenebras, et cetera ad errorem ingredientium facta, ita ut de tenebris eius ad lucem uenire inpossibile uideatur.” Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, reports that the inhabitants of Delos celebrated a dance, celebrating how Theseus danced with other youth of his company who had been rescued from the Minotaur. The passage is alluded to by Marius Victorinus, Ars grammatica, in Grammatici latini, vol. 6, ed. Heinrich Keil (Hildesheim, 1960) 60: “Hoc genus in sacris cantilenis ferunt quidam instituisse Theseum, qui occiso Minotauro cum apud Delum solveret vota, imitatus intortum et flexuosum iter labyrinthi cum pueris virginibusque, cum quis evaserat, cantus edebat, primo in circuitu, dehinc in recursu, id est strophe et antistropho. Alii tradunt hoc sacrorum cantu concentum mundi cursumque ab hominibus imitari.”

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that Daedalus had invented walls and roofs in buildings, having been instructed in this by Minerva.13 The maze may thus have been seen as the floor of the universe. The four-square maze, sometimes with an image of Theseus and the Minotaur at its center, was often found on the floors of wealthy ancient Roman houses and burial vaults, based on a design that went back to an image used in the pottery and seals of Minoan civilization.14 The practice of integrating pagan imagery of the maze into Christian architecture may go back at least to the ninth century. Wright identifies the earliest known design of a circular maze in a manuscript from about 900, presumably by a scholar engaged in a conscious fascination with Roman mythology and architectural design. As Prudentius and Gregory the Great had used the image of Christ penetrating the labyrinth to conquer the devil, there may have been a continuity between late antique and Carolingian design that cannot easily be identified. Most surviving floor mazes at the base of French cathedrals are from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries but seem to have been introduced in a smaller size into churches in northern Italy in the twelfth century. Antiquarian drawings reveal that there was often an image of Theseus and the Minotaur at the center of the maze, signifying Christ and the Devil (as for example at Chartres). Few of these images have survived, except when recorded in manuscript. While we know that there was an octagonal maze at the great Gothic cathedral at Reims, constructed between 1211 to about 1290, such a maze also could have existed in the earlier Romanesque building.15 Although Wright implies that the fusion of pagan and Christian culture evident in the game of the pila and the dance around the maze was characteristic of the medieval period as a whole, the account of the game offered in the late thirteenth century by William Durand (1237 –1296), canon of Narbonne and bishop of Mende, suggests that already there was unease about the practice being performed in the church. In his Rationale divinorum officiorum, written in the late thirteenth century, Durand significantly abbreviates the account of Sicard and modifies small details.16 He describes the pila not as a dance, but as a game played by prelates and within their episcopal houses—repeating the observation made by Beleth and Sicard about their observing “the December freedom.” He repeats Beleth’s observation that someone killed playing the game of pila could be buried in

13 Ibid., 19.8.1: “In fabricis parietum atque tectorum Graeci inuentorem Daedalum adserunt; iste enim primus didicisse fabricam a Minerua dicitur.” 14 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 13– 16, 41–43. 15 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 50– 59. 16 William Durandus, Rationale diuinorum officiorum I– VIII, ed. A. Davril, T. M. Thibodeau, B. G. Guyot, CCCM 140– 140B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995– 2000).

518

CHURCH HISTORY

a cemetery, but without the normal obsequies.17 Importantly, however, he omits Sicard’s discussion of pagan and scriptural precedent for dancing, itself culled from the Gemma animae of Honorius Augustodunensis. Durand’s unwillingness to identify pagan inspiration for ritual dance suggests a shift in official attitude away from the relative openness evident in Honorius, Beleth, and Sicard. That the game of pila continued to be practiced in some places within the cathedral itself is evident from an account, preserved in Latin and probably from the sixteenth century, found by the abbe´ Lebeuf in the archives of Auxerre and published in 1726. It recalls the ritual described by Beleth in the mid-twelfth century as taking place in great churches, like that of Reims, at Easter. Having received the pilota [a leather ball] from the newest canon, the dean, or someone in his place, in former times wearing an amice on his head and the other clergy likewise, began antiphonally the sequence appropriate for the feast of Easter, Victimae paschali laudes. Then taking the ball in his left hand, he danced to the meter of the sequence as it was sung, while the others linked hand in hand did the dance around the maze (circa Daedalum). And all the while the pilota was delivered or thrown by the ringed dean alternately to each and every one of the dancers whenever they whirled into view. There was sport, and the meter of the dance was set by the organ. Following this dance, the singing of the sequence and the jumping having concluded, the chorus proceeded to a meal. There all of the canons of the chapter, the chaplains and officers, as well as certain of the noble citizens of the town, sat on benches in a circle (in corona). To each of them was served sweets, fruit tarts, and game of all sorts: boar, venison, and rabbit; and white and red wine was offered in moderation, each cup being refilled no more than one or two times. During this an appropriate sermon was read from the bishop’s seat or the pulpit. Thereafter, following the ringing of the larger bells from the towers, they proceeded to Vespers.18 17 Durandus, Rationale diuinorum officiorum 1.5.14. CCCM 140: 62: “Si uero quis subito moriatur in ludis consuetis, ut in ludo pile, sepeliri potest in cimiterio quia nemini nocere intendebat; sed quia mundialibus occupabatur aiunt quidam quod sepeliri debet sine psalmis et sine ceteris mortuorum obsequiis” [words from Beleth italicized]. 18 This translation is that of Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 139– 140, given without reference to the original Latin, supplied by Jean Lebeuf within his study, “Remarques sur les anciennes Re´jouissances Ecclesiastiques,” Mercure de France, May 1726, 911 –925, esp. 921–922: “Accepta pilota a proselyto seu tirone Canonico, Decanus, aut alter pro eo olim gestans in capite almutiam ceterique pariter, aptam diei Festo Paschae Prosam antiphonabat quae incipit Victimae Paschali laudes: tum laeva pilotam apprehendens, ad Prosae decantatatae numerosos sonos tripudium agebat, ceteris manu prehensis choream circa daedalum ducentibus, dum interim per alternas vices pilota singulis aut pluribus ex choribaudis a Decano serti in speciam tradebatur aut jaciebatur. Lusus erat et organi ad choreae numeros. Prosa ac saltatione finitis chorus post choream ad merendam properabat. Ibi omnes de Capitulo, sed et capellani atque Officiarii, cum

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This eye-witness account helps fill out the ritual described over three centuries earlier by Durand, Sicard, and Beleth. Wright interprets the passage as implying that the canons danced in a chain line through the maze, led by the dean, throwing the ball to one another as they created swirling circular patterns.19 Yet if we take the report literally, it seems that the dean or his substitute (originally the bishop or archbishop, according to Beleth) himself danced to the center of the maze, carrying the ball in his left hand, but would then throw it in turn to each of the canons dancing around the maze, as they sang Victimae paschali laudes. By the later Middle Ages, the practice had become a serious burden on cathedral clergy. A statute of 1398 explains that new canons should use their first month’s stipend for making the pila, resulting in efforts by a series of canons to reduce this financial burden. A statute of 1412 declared that it should be of a smaller size than usual, but able to be held or caught only with the left hand.20 Further complaints were apparently raised by a canon in 1471, resulting in a court case in 1531 that condemned the practice. This was upheld by four counselors of the French Parlement, four canons of Notre-Dame, and four doctors of the Sorbonne in 1535. Lebeuf recorded evidence for a similar ritual with the pila at Narbonne, although it took place not on the maze but on Easter Monday in the bishop’s

quibusque nobilioribus oppidanis in corona sedebant in subselliis seu orchestra; quibus singulis nebulae oblatae, bellariola, fructeta, et cetera hujusmodi cum apri, cervi aut leporis conditorum frustulo offerebantur, vinumque candidum ac rubrum modeste ac moderate una scilicet aut altera vice propinabatur, lectore interim e cathedra aut pulpito Homiliam festivam concinente. Mox signis majoribus ex turri ad Vesperas, etc.” Lebeuf’s article was reproduced anonymously in Constant Leber, Collection des meilleures Dissertations, Notices et Traite´s particuliers, relatifs a` l’Histoire de France (Paris, 1826), 9: 391–401, under the title “Lettre curieuse sur le jeu de la pelote et la danse des chanoines du chapitre d’Auxerre.” Wright does not mention that the letter had been quoted and discussed by Mead, “Ceremonial Game Playing and Dancing in Mediaeval Churches,” in The Quest: A Quarterly Review (October 1912), reprinted in The Sacred Dance in Christendom, 91–110, esp. 96– 98 (see n. 6 above). The Auxerre letter was also mentioned by Heers, Feˆtes des fous et carnavals (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 92–95. See too Penelope Reed Doob, “The Auxerre Labyrinth Dance,” Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Conference of the Society of Dance History Scholars, 15–17 February 1985 (Riverside, Calif.: Dance History Scholars, 1985), 132–142. 19 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 140; Mead, “Ceremonial Game Playing,” 99– 100, gently mocks the interpretation offered by Lebeuf that “the dean would catch hold of one of the canons by the hand and begin a dance, which was followed by the dancing of the other canons in a circle or in another mode, and of the ball being passed by the president to the players, and them passing it back to the president.” Mead writes that Lebeuf “proceeds to draw a comic picture of the grave church dignitaries breathlessly waltzing, with their violet cassocks tucked up to their waists and the ends of their amices fluttering in violent agitation behind them. He starts with a false notion of a jeu de paume, a secular merry game and dance at best, and then falls into quite unnecessary difficulties and contradictions” (100). 20 Lebeuf, Mercure, 915–916, and Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, 10 vols. (Niort: 1883–1887), 6:253 under pelota; see also documents identified by Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 321 n. 35.

520

CHURCH HISTORY

palace—precisely the detail added to Sicard’s Mitralis by Durand, himself a canon at Narbonne. According to a thirteenth-century record at Narbonne cathedral, a feast took place, involving pigmentum and wine with many dishes, after which the archbishop had to throw the pilota, a task that would be undertaken by the prefect of the city, if the archbishop was not present.21 Clearly, the ritual of the pila could easily degenerate into a game, accompanied by an extravagant feast, especially once it had been removed from the sacred context of the maze within the cathedral. Wright argues that there was a serious side to what might look like a game. He suggests that it was a Christianized version of a ritual dance in which the leader of the assembly descended into the labyrinth to confront Satan, in the same way Theseus rescued his companions from the Minotaur (as reported by Marius Victorinus). He explains that the dance was a type of liturgical procession by which clerics, led by the bishop, would move from the east end or choir of the church, representing paradise, down through the maze toward the west, representing hell. The confrontation with Satan was marked by a great cacophony before the procession returned out of the maze, back to paradise.22 At a profound level, the maze at the center of a cathedral floor visualized a path down to the underworld, where the bishop, representing Christ, overcame Satan at Easter. According to the Auxerre account, the chant Victimae paschali laudes was sung to a circular dance or chorea (carole, to use the medieval French word, from which the modern “carol” derives). The bishop and his clerics were effectively reenacting at Easter the clause in the Apostles’ Creed about Christ’s descent into hell by moving from the sanctuary through to the center of the labyrinth.23 The Auxerre account supports what Sicard has to say about the game of the pila (or pilota in the sixteenth-century record) as a sacred dance that symbolized the restoration of cosmic harmony at the most solemn moment of the liturgical year. It recalled Christ’s descent to the underworld and his conquest over Satan, and then the resurrection and restoration of humanity. Wright suggests various 21 Mead, “Ceremonial Game Playing,” 101, and with further discussion of the feast at both Auxerre (where it was called grolia or la grole´e) in “Ceremonial Dances and Symbolic Banquets,” 259– 262 (n. 5 above). 22 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 80–86. 23 On this element of the Apostles’ Creed (known from the fourth century) and liturgical reenactment of the theme of Christ’s descent in the second- or third-century Gospel of Nicodemus, see Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 80– 81, quoting a significant part of The Gospel of Nicodemus. On the medieval transmission and development of this text, see two works by Zbigniew Izydorczyk, Manuscripts of the Evangelium Nicodemi: A Census (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993) and The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1997).

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interpretations of the pila: that it was a ball of pitch stuffed into the mouth of the Minotaur, that it was the rising sun or, his preferred solution, that it was a symbol of cosmic harmony in a dance, echoing the dance of the firmament.24 Another possibility is raised by Isidore of Seville’s comment that no one could enter the labyrinth of Daedalus without a ball of thread, interpreted by Martianus Capella as a ball of string held by the creator in the left hand, from which the stars in their movements would be constructed.25 The dance could have originated as a symbolic reenactment of creation. It became a game involving the leader of the assembly entering the maze with a specially made ball, engaging in a confrontation with Satan, and then passing the ball in turn to each of the canons as they danced around the maze, re-creating as it were the rotation of the firmament. Even if the ritual originally developed as a conscious attempt to fuse pagan and Christian tradition at Easter, Beleth’s reserved attitude suggests that the dance was already degenerating into a game in the twelfth century. Durand implies that, by the thirteenth century, the dance was sometimes transferred away from the church to the adjoining cloister of the canons or even to the house of the bishop, reinforcing its secular character. During the fourteenth century, the vernacular drama of the harrowing of hell may have developed from a ritual originally enacted within the church.26 While it seems that the liturgical dance associated with the maze had stopped at most cathedrals by the sixteenth century, individuals were still privately walking the maze (the more pious shuffled on their knees, reciting the rosary).27 The octagonal maze at Reims was removed in 1778 by a canon of the cathedral, who was

24

Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 142. See n. 12; Martianus Capella recalls that the “labyrinthine Daedalus” was believed to have created a woman of outstanding beauty, holding in her left hand a solid ball of clothing, from which the entire universe would be created, De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii: 6.579, ed. J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1974), 204: “‘Nimirum’ inquam ‘ista, quae veniet, Apellen Polyclitumque transcendit; ita quippe memoratur posse omnia effigiare, ut labyrintheus Daedalus eam credendus sit genuisse.’ Et cum dicto prospicio quandam feminam luculentam radium dextera, altera sphaeram solidam gestitantem amictamque laevorsum peplo, in quo siderum magnitudines et meatus, circulorum mensurae conexionesque vel formae, umbra etiam telluris in caelum quoque perveniens vel lunae orbes ac solis auratos caliganti murice decolorans inter sidera videbatur.” 26 Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 84, referring to earlier studies, notably Ann Faulkner, “The Harrowing of Hell at Barking Abbey and in Modern Production,” in The Iconography of Hell, ed. Clifford Davidson and Thomas H. Seiler (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 1992), 141– 157. See also Karl Young, The Drama of the Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933). 27 Wright provides an image of what he calls “fashionable citizens of Chartres enjoying the pleasures of the maze, from an engraving of 1696,” in The Maze and the Warrior, 214, though he comments on an eighteenth-century reference to the maze at Sens taking two thousand steps (presumably on one’s knees) to accomplish (47). In his article of 1912, “Ceremonial Game Playing,” 99 n. 2 (n. 6 above), Mead comments that pilgrims to Chartres were still practicing the devotion of the rosary when moving through the labyrinth. 25

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CHURCH HISTORY

frustrated by the way children would play the game of skipping through the maze while the canons celebrated the divine office.28 Wright also comments on fascinating evidence for the survival of the ritual in southern France in the early nineteenth century. In “the Cretan dance of the Greeks,” which took place on feast days and Mardi Gras, a young man called Theseus, with fife and drum, held a ribbon in his left hand, the other end of which was held by a young woman. Theseus then led a dance in the form of a circular labyrinth. At a certain moment, the dancers would raise their arms, creating a labyrinth with the ribbon, through which the young man would weave until he had escaped the labyrinth into the arms of the person holding the chain.29 This account may record a secular equivalent to the dance of the pila, of comparable antiquity, but performed in a non-clerical milieu. Which of these two versions of the dance is older is difficult to say.

II. THE AMBIVALENT LEGACY OF SCRIPTURE AND LATE ANTIQUITY Sicard’s comments about how the gentiles invented circular dances (choreas) to honor the gods, adapted from a remark of Honorius that the word chorus derived from chorea or dance, were not without foundation. Lucian of Samosata (ca. 125–ca. 191) had defended dance against its critics by arguing that it was an essential feature of pagan worship.30 According to Livy, a solemn three-step tripudia was practiced by Salian priests in Rome—quite different from the more extravagant tripudia with yelling, practiced in Spain.31 Honorius and Sicard of Cremona both referred back to the frequent allusions to dance in the Old Testament.32 Although Jerome uses the word tripudium just once in his 28

Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 51–52. Wright, The Maze and the Warrior, 156–157 and 324 n. 100–101, quoting an anonymous report, “La Danse candiote,” Magazin pittoresque 6 (1838): 216. 30 Lucian of Samosata, The Dance, in Lucian with an English Translation [no. 45], ed. and trans. A. M. Harmon, vol. 5 (London: Heinemann, 1936), 209–289. 31 For example, Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.20.4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1982): carmina cum tripudiis sollemnique saltatu; 10.40.5: tripudium solistimum; 21.42.4: cum sui moris tripudiis; 23.26.9: tripudiantes more suo; 25.17.5: cum tripudiis Hispanorum; 38.17.4: et ululatus et tripudia. Hubert Petersmann argues that the Romans were less involved in sacred dancing than the Greeks, “Springende und tanzende Go¨tter beim antiken Fest,” reprinted in his collected papers, Lingua et Religio: ausgewa¨hlte kleine Schriften zur antiken Religionsgeschichte auf sprachwissenschaftlicher Grundlage, ed. Bernd Hessen, Hypomnemata: Supplement-Reihe 1 (Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2002), 89–104. He identifies the ancient tripudium as metrically equivalent to a short, followed by two longs. Isidore defines chorea as referring either to songs or leaping, Etymologiae 6.19.6, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912). 32 Sicard alludes to Exodus 15.19: “sumpsit ergo Maria prophetis soror Aaron tympanum in manu egressaeque sunt omnes mulieres post eam cum tympanis et choris”; II Sam. 6.5, 16: “David autem et omnis Israhel ludebant coram Domino . . . Michol filia Saul prospiciens per fenestram vidit regem David subsilientem atque saltantem coram Deo”; I Par. [¼I Chronicles] 13.8; 15.29: “porro David et universus Israhel ludebant coram Deo omni virtute in canticis et in citharis et lyris et tympanis et 29

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translation of the Bible, with reference to the rejoicing of the Jews (Esther 8.16), he uses it regularly in his scriptural commentaries to refer to those who dance (saltantes) with physical energy or to general exultation. His Vulgate translation of the Bible frequently employs in choro to refer to both dancing and singing, an ambiguity implicit within classical usage.33 The early Church Fathers were ambivalent, however, about ritual practices they considered too popular or physical in nature, and insufficiently focused on the spiritual.34 Christian development of antiphonal singing, reportedly instituted by Ignatius of Antioch after he had heard angels sing in this way, may have been a conscious attempt to counter the use of ecstatic dance in pagan practice.35 Beleth and Sicard recalled that certain Fathers (Flavianus and Diodorus, according to Honorius) were responsible for changing the choir from a circle (chorea) to two straight lines, as the original pattern was too confused.36 The willingness of Honorius and Sicard to argue that the circular dance (chorea) expresses the joy of Easter itself draws on a certain thread of patristic tradition that invoked imagery of dancing in a positive

sistris et cymbalis . . . Michol filia Saul prospiciens per fenestram vidit regem David saltantem atque ludentem et despexit eum in corde suo.” II Par. [¼II Chronicles] 5.12 etc. 33 Jerome, Commentarii in prophetas minores, In Abacuc 2.3.10, ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 76A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), 634: “tunc etiam superi, id est angeli in plausum suis manibus concreparunt, ut uictorem ueluti gestu quodam et tripudio eleuatarum manuum demonstrarent.” In Zachariam 2.8.5, CCSL 76A: 809: “gaudete, iterum dico gaudete, mentis laetitiam gestu corporis indicabunt, et tripudiante saltatu, dicent cum Dauid: saltabo et ludam in conspectu domini.” In Zachariam 3.12.10, CCCSL 76A: 868: “haec et alia illudentes, et quodam amentiae tripudio saltantes loquebantur.” Commentarii in iv epistulas Paulinas, Ad Ephesios 3, PL 26: 559: “certe tunc in populo dicta placuerunt, et quodam plausu ac tripudio sunt excepta.” Epist. 23.3, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 54 (Vienna, 1910), 213: “ille, quem ante paucos dies dignitatum omnium culmina praecedebant, qui, quasi de subiectis hostibus triumpharet, capitolinas ascendit arces, quem plausu quodam et tripudio populus romanus excepit, ad cuius interitum urbs uniuersa commota est.” Epist. 130.6, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL 56 (Vienna, 1918), 181: “parum loquor: cunctae per africam ecclesiae quodam exultauere tripudio.” 34 The patristic debt to pagan debate about dance is usefully covered by Davies, Liturgical Dance (n. 6 above). 35 “Cassiodorus,” Historia tripertita 10.9.1, ed. W. Jacob and R. Hanslik, CSEL 71 (Vienna, 1952), 696; PL 69: 1171D, quoting Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica 6.8. Cf. Ignatius, Epistolae ad Ephesios 4, PG 5: 648B; Ad Romanos 2.2, PG 5: 688B. 36 Honorius, Gemma animae 140, PL 172: 621AB; expanding on Cassiodorus, Historia ecclesiastica 8.5, ed. Jacob-Hanslik, CSEL 71: 473–476. Sicard, Mitralis 5 Prol. CCCM 228: 292, repeating Beleth, De eccl. off. 58d, CCCM 41A : 106, but adding that antiphons were like a dance: “Legitur enim in Tripertita historia, quod beatus Ignatius patriarcha Antiochenus audiuit angelos cantantes antiphonatim super montem quendam et exinde instituit antiphonas in ecclesia cantari et psalmos secundum antiphonas centonizari [Sicard: cum psalmis in choro, quasi chorea cantari]. Vnde dicuntur antiphone in respectu ad psalmodiam, sicut responsoria ad hystoriam. Et cum prius confuse et quasi in chorea cantarentur psalmi et antiphone, statutum est a patribus, ut seorsum chorus sederet et alternatim psalleret, id est una pars chori cantaret unum uersum psalmi et reliqua alium.” This goes back to Cassiodorus (in fact a translation of Greek church historians, commissioned by Cassiodorus), Historia ecclesiastica 10.9.1.

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vein. Chrysostom condemned secular dance but held that worthy dance should imitate that of the angels.37 Ambrose similarly employs tripudium and the related verb tripudiare (from which derives the English verb, to trip in the sense of dance) in commentary on Luke 7:32: “There is indeed a certain proper clapping of good actions and deeds, whose sound goes out into the world and results in the glory of good deeds, there is honest leaping by which the spirit dances, and the body rises with good works, when we hang our instruments on the willows.”38 Ambrose regularly contrasts indecent dancing with the morally correct use of the body when approaching baptism.39 The discussions of Honorius and Sicard stand in sharp contrast, however, with the attitudes of Augustine, who was distinctly more cautious in his attitude toward dance.40 Augustine interpreted the Psalmist’s injunction to celebrate in choro as about singing in choir, not as about dancing.41 37 Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum 48, PG 58: 492: “For where there is a dance, there also is the Devil. For God has not given us our feet to use in a shameful way but in order that we may walk in decency, not that we should dance like camels (for even dancing camels make an unpleasant spectacle much more than women), but in order to dance ring-dances with the angels. For if it is shameful for the body to behave thus, the more so is it for the spirit to do so. Thus dance the demons and thus dance the servants of the demons”: cited by E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances, 32. 38 Ambrose, Expositio euangelii secundum Lucam 6, ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), 177: “Docuit nos scriptura cantare grauiter, psallere spiritaliter; docuit etiam saltare sapienter dicente domino ad Ezechihel: plaude manu et percute pede; neque enim histrionicos fluxi corporis motus deus morum censor exigeret aut indecoros crepitus uiris plaususque femineos imperaret, ut tantum prophetam deduceret ad ludibria scaenicorum et mollia feminarum. Non congruunt resurrectionis reuelata mysteria et obprobria saltationis exacta. Est sane, est quidam proprius bonorum actuum factorumque plausus, cuius sonus in orbem exeat et bene gestorum resultet gloria, est honesta saltatio, qua tripudiat animus, et bonis corpus operibus eleuatur, quando in salicibus organa nostra suspendimus.” 39 Ambrose, De paenitentia 2.6, ed. Roger Gryson, Sources chre´tiennes 179 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), 160– 162: “Et ideo cavendum ne qui vulgari quadam sermonis huius deceptus interpretatione putet nobis saltationis lubricae histrionicos motus et scenae deliramenta mandari; haec etiam in adulescentula aetate vitiosa sunt. Sed saltationem eam mandavit quam saltavit David ante arcam domini. Totum enim decet quidquid defertur religioni, ut nullum obsequium quod proficiat ad cultum et observantiam Christi, erubescamus. Non ergo illa deliciarum comes atque luxuriae saltatio praedicatur, sed qua unusquisque corpus adtollat inpigrum, nec humi pigra iacere membra vel tardis sinat torpere vestigiis. Saltabat spiritaliter Paulus cum se pro nobis extenderet et posteriora obliviscens, priora adpetens contenderet ad bravium Christi. Tu quoque, cum ad baptismum venis, manus elevare, pedes, quibus ad aeterna conscendas, velociores habere admoneris. Haec est saltatio fidei socia, gratiae comes.” Backman observes the ambiguity of these texts of Ambrose, Religious Dances, 28–30; Davies argues that they cannot be used as evidence of actual dance, Liturgical Dance, 36–43, observing comments of Greek authors in the fourth century B.C.E. that there was by then little or no dancing in Greek tragic choruses. The evidence of Lucian’s dialogue on dance (n. 30 above), however, suggests that dancing was still an integral feature of theatrical performance in the second century C.E. 40 Augustine, De libero arbitrio 2.16.166, ed. W. M. Green, CCSL 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), 266; De musica 1, 6, PL 32: 1099, 1175, 1177; De ordine 2.11.34, ed. Green, CCSL 29: 126. 41 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos Ps. 149.7, CCSL 40: 2183 “Et chorus quid significat? Multi nouerunt chorum; et quia in ciuitate loquimur, prope omnes norunt. Chorus est consensio cantantium. Si in choro cantamus, concorditer cantemus.”

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Augustine uses saltatio in a consistently pejorative sense as concerning worldly dancing, and tripudium only when referring to Julian of Eclanum “dancing over” a particular issue.42 In two sermons, he refers to the practice of dancing at the tomb of St. Cyprian but explains that this is a practice that had ceased within his own lifetime.43 Augustine implies that such ritual dancing was tinged with a spirit of revolt.44 He alludes again to this custom in sermon 326, saying there should be praying rather than dancing at the tomb of the martyrs.45 His comments reflected a broader official trend in the early fifth century away from spurning death toward meditating on the terrors of the life to come. The custom of dancing to recall the death of the saint and his entry into paradise expressed an earlier Christian confidence in the victory of life over death.46 The willingness of Honorius and Sicard to invoke imagery of dance also stands in sharp contrast to the complaints of early medieval authors like Caesarius of Arles (ca. 469– 542), who berated Christians for performing dances (ballationes et saltationes) outside the churches of the saints “in a diabolic manner,” a practice that he blames on lingering pagan observance.47 His remarks are reproduced in a decretal attributed to Pope Eugenius (but perhaps from Eugenius, archbishop of Toledo) within an eleventh-century collection, with fascinating additional comment, that it was particularly 42

Ambrose, De patriarchis 10.44, ed. C. Shenkl, CSEL 32.2 (Vienna, 1897), 149: “exibunt et tripudiabunt sicut uituli resoluti uinculis”; De fuga saeculi 4.20, ed. Shenkl, CSEL 32.2: 180: “Qui enim delectatur hoc mundo et tripudiat in uoluptatibus corporis obnoxius est sensuum passionibus atque in his habitat et deuersatur.” Explanatio psalmorum xii 79.3, ed. M. Petschenig, CSEL 62 (Vienna, 1919), 134: “quasi interesset ipsis Christi et ecclesiae nuptialis copulae sacramentis, ita tripudiat et gaudet.” Cf. Augustine, Contra Iulianum 5, PL 44: 800–801, alluding to Julian of Eclanum, Libri iv ad Turbantium 3, ed. L. De Coninck, CCSL 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), 377. 43 Sermo 311, PL 38: 1415: “Numquidnam in hoc loco, etsi Psalmus cantandus est, ab aliquo saltandum est? Aliquando ante annos non valde multos etiam istum locum invaserat petulantia saltatorum. Istum tam sanctum locum, ubi jacet tam sancti Martyris corpus, sicut meminerunt multi qui habent aetatem; locum, inquam, tam sanctum invaserat pestilentia et petulantia saltatorum. Per totam noctem cantabantur hic nefaria, et cantantibus saltabatur. Quando voluit Dominus per sanctum fratrem nostrum episcopum vestrum, ex quo hic coeperunt sanctae vigiliae celebrari, illa pestis aliquantulum reluctata, postea cessit diligentiae, erubuit sapientiae.” 44 Augustine, Sermo 305A, Sancti Augustini sermones post Maurinos reperti, ed. G. Morin, in Miscellanea Agostiniana, vol. 1 (Rome, 1930), 58: “Qui erant, et quorum filii erant, quorum saltatione recenti et prope hesterna memoria de loco sancti martyris Cypriani prohibitae sunt? Certe saltabant ibi, et gaudebant ibi; et sollemnitatem ipsam, quasi gauderent, magnis uotis expectabant, et ad eum diem semper uenire cupiebant. Inter quos numerandi sunt? Inter persecutores martyrum, an inter filios martyrum?” 45 Sermo 326, PL 38: 1449; Backman, 34. 46 Eric Rebillard, In hora mortis: e´volution de la pastorale chre´tienne de la mort aux IVe et Ve sie`cles dans l’Occident latin (Rome: Ecole franc¸aise de Rome, 1994); see also Victor Saxer, Morts, martyrs, reliques: en Afrique chre´tienne aux premiers sie`cles: les te´moignages de Tertullien, Cyprien et Augustin a` la lumie`re de l’arche´ologie africaine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980). 47 Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 13.4, ed. G. Morin, CCSL 103 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953), 67.

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women who “led and held these dances,” and that in doing so they were imitating pagan custom.48 In this particular decretal collection, it is preceded by a canon from a Council of Toledo complaining about the same practice as taking place on saints’ feasts throughout Spain. Such condemnations of dancing outside the church on the occasion of feast days, as well as at weddings, were often repeated in the eighth and ninth centuries.49 There was also persistent condemnation of dancing at funerals, blamed on pagan practice inspired by the devil.50 Caesarius of Arles also was troubled by the practice of celebrating the New Year with drunkenness and feasting.51 That this was indeed a legacy of pagan culture is attested by Isidore of Seville, who describes the dancing held on that occasion as bacchanalian in nature. Christians would dress up as wild animals and even adopt an effeminate appearance.52 The Church never fully succeeded 48 Caesarius of Arles, Sermo 55.2, ed. Morin, CCSL 103: 241– 244; 242: “Sunt et alii, qui pro hoc solo desiderant ad natalicia martyrum convenire, ut inebriando, ballando, verba turpia decantando, choros ducendo et diabolico more saltando, et se subvertant, et alios perdant; et qui deberent exercere opus Christi, ministerium conantur implere diaboli.” There is very similar wording, with extra comment about women, in Collectio canonum in V libris 3.60, ed. M. Fornasari, CCCM 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), 342: “Sunt quidam et maxime mulieres quae festi ad sacris diebus atque sanctorum nataliciis non pro eorum quibus debent delectantur desideriis aduenire, sed ballando, uerba turpia decantando, choros tenendo ac ducendo, similitudinem paganorum aduenire curant.” 49 Translations of a number of such texts are included in Medieval Handbooks of Penance, trans. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), 273 (ballare vel saltare during any festival, in Iudicium Clementis, ed. Wasserschleben, Die latinischen Poenitentialbu¨cher der Angelsachsen, 176ff ), and 289 (ballare vel saltare in relation to marriages, Penitential of Silos. Burchard of Reims, Decretum 134, PL 140, 648B: Presbyteri, diaconi, subdiaconi, vel deinceps quibus ducendi uxores non est licitum, etiam alienarum nuptiarum evitent convivia, neque his coetibus admisceantur, ubi amatoria cantantur et turpia, aut obscoeni motus corporum choris et saltationibus efferuntur). 50 Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 333, quoting Burchard, Decretum 9.5 (PL 140, 963C): “Observasti excubias funeris, id est interfuisti vigiliis cadaverum mortuorum ubi Christianorum corpora ritu paganorum custodiebantur, et cantasti ibi diabolica carmina, et fecisti ibi saltationes quas pagani diabolo docente adinvenerunt; et ibi bibisti, et cachinnis ora dissolvisti, et, omni pietate et affectu charitatis postposito, quasi de fraterna morte exsultare visus es?” 10. 34 (838A) [from Council of Arles]: “Laici qui excubias funeris observant, cum timore et tremore et reverentia hoc faciant. Nullus ibi praesumat diabolica carmina cantare, non joca et saltationes facere, quae pagani diabolo docente adinvenerunt.” 51 Sermo 192.4, CCSL 104: 782. 52 Isidore of Seville, De ecclesiasticis officiis 1.41 CCSL 113, ed. C. W. Lawson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987), 46–47: “Ieiunium kalendarum ianuariarum propter errorem gentilitatis instituit ecclesia. Ianus enim quidam princeps paganorum fuit a quo nomen mensis ianuarii nuncupatur. Quem inperiti homines ueluti deum colentes in religione honoris posteris tradiderunt, diemque ipsum scenis et luxoriae sacrauerunt. Tunc enim miseri homines et, quod peius est, etiam fideles sumentes species monstruosas in ferarum habitu transformantur alii femineo gestu demutati uirilem uultum effeminant; nonnulli etiam de fanatica adhuc consuetudine quibusdam ipso die obseruationum auguriis profanantur; perstrepunt omnia saltantium pedibus, tripudiantium plausibus; quod que his turpius nefas, nexis inter se utriusque sexus choris, inops animi, furens uino, turba miscitur.”

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in establishing Easter as a more important feast than the New Year.53 In the eleventh century, New Year festivities were condemned by Peter Damian (1007– 1072), who reports that a certain priest, guilty of sexual promiscuity with another man’s wife, insisted on “leading dances” as boys sang, even on the kalends of January, when he was due to take vows as a monk.54 A prohibition by Pope Zachary I (741 –752) on those who led singers and dancing at festivities celebrating the New Year was reiterated by Gratian in the mid-twelfth century.55 Such practices were impossible to eliminate. By the early twelfth century, however, liturgical commentators were increasingly recognizing that pagan imagery could be used to explain Christian practice. Although Honorius Augustodunensis repeats traditional denunciations of pagan behavior in his Gemma animae, written in about 1106, he is more adept than Isidore in identifying rational reasons for ritual, as is evident in his account of how choir (chorus) derives from chorea, dancing that originally signified the dance of the heavens but was converted by the faithful Jews to the service of God.56 This notion of the celestial chorea could be derived from its use in the translation of Plato’s Timaeus by Chalcidius.57 This was part of a broader project of Honorius, well described by Donnalee Dox, to draw on pagan learning to elucidate Christian liturgy as part of his pastoral concern.58 Yet Honorius never describes any tripudium or chorea as part of the liturgy of the Christian community. He makes the briefest allusion to the feast of St. John the Evangelist (December 27) being devoted particularly to priests, and their putting a certain “brigand” (latronem) over them.59 Honorius gives only the slightest recognition here to pagan festivities that had in practice already become part of the Christian calendar.

III. JOHN BELETH AND

THE

SUMMA

DE ECCLESIASTICIS OFFICIIS

John Beleth, writing in France some fifty years later, went much further than Honorius in explaining the liturgy through pagan as well as scriptural 53 In the sixth century, Martin of Braga reports the continuing struggle over enforcement of the Kalends of April [25 March] over the Kalends of January as the beginning of the new year, in On the Castigation of Rustics (c. 574), translated within Christianity and Paganism, 350– 750: The Conversion of Western Europe, ed. J. N. Hillgarth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 57. 54 Peter Damian, Epist. 80, ed. Kurt Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, MGH, Briefe, 4 vols. (Munich, 1983–1989), 2: 413. 55 Gratian, Concordantia discordantium canonum 2.26.7, ed. E. Friedberg (1879), 1045. 56 Gemma animae I.140, PL 172: 587D– 588A. Quoted within n. 4. 57 Plato, Timaeus, Chalcidio interprete, ed. J. H. Waszink (London, 1975), 31, 33. 58 Donnalee Dox, The Idea of the Theater in Latin Christian Thought: Augustine to the Fourteenth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), esp. 74–85 on Honorius. 59 Gemma animae 3.11– 14, PL 172:646B–647A.

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imagery.60 Beleth was one of a number of intellectuals active during the episcopacy of Maurice de Sully (1160– 1196), a bishop who had risen to prominence from modest social origins and was widely remembered for his concern for the poor. Like Maurice, Beleth was committed to explaining Christian faith and ritual to a wider public.61 His willingness to interpret the game of pila as an example of “the December freedom” shows how he was willing—within limits—to invoke the festivities of the pagan Saturnalia to justify the celebrations associated with Easter. Whereas preachers from Caesarius of Arles to Peter Damian had bemoaned the practice of Christians continuing to celebrate the New Year in riotous fashion, Beleth acknowledged that one could find both scriptural and pagan authority to support popular celebrations that in fact Christians had been engaged in for centuries. He was interested in showing how such rituals could become part of a Christian liturgy. While cautious about abuses, he did not condemn outright the festivities that took place either over the Christmas and New Year season or at Easter. Beleth also was influenced by his own teacher, Gilbert of Poitiers (ca. 1075 – 1154), whose opinions on the reasoning behind liturgical practices he frequently cites.62 Beleth was educated at the Benedictine abbey of Tiron in the diocese of Chartres, and thus may have been exposed to the broader climate of enthusiasm for pagan culture associated with its school in the first half of the twelfth century. Beleth could have studied under Gilbert either at Chartres or at Paris, where Gilbert taught in the 1130s, prior to becoming bishop of Poitiers in 1142.63 As Beleth sometimes uses the present tense to say “master Gilbert proves . . . ” rather than “master Gilbert used to say,” he may have composed the original version of his Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis before Gilbert’s death in 1154.64 Because Beleth mentions in its third recension opinions of bishop Maurice de Sully, consecrated in 1160, and of Elisabeth of Scho¨nau (d. June 18, 1164), “a most religious woman still alive in Saxony,” he must have completed this version between 1160 and 1164.65 Beleth was inspired by a generation of reform-minded teachers to explain Christian ritual in ways that were accessible to his audience. 60

See above n. 4. Pierre Michaud-Quentin, “Les e´veˆques de Paris dans la seconde moitie´ du XIIe sie`cle,” in Huitie`me centenaire de Notre-Dame de Paris, ed. Gabriel Le Bras (Paris: Vrin, 1967), 26–30. 62 De eccl. off. c. 54Ag, 54Bi, CCCM 41A: 95, 96, c. 110 (CCCM 41: 92), c. 130d (CCCM 41A: 246), c. 138 g (CCCM 41A: 272–273). 63 The limited evidence relating to Beleth’s life is assembled by Douteil, CCCM 41:29*–31*. 64 De eccl. off. 54Ag, 54Bi, CCCM 41A: 95, 96: uoluit dici . . . ; 110zb, CCCM 41: 92: dicebat . . . ; 130zd, CCCM 41A: 246: probat . . . ; 138 g, CCCM 41A: 272: respondet . . . ; 138ga, CCCM 41: 129: dicebat . . . ; 147d, CCCM 41A: 287: ut magistro Gilleberto placuit. 65 Douteil (CCCM 41.30*–31*), commenting on references to bishop Maurice in c. 134 Bs and Bu (CCCM 41A: 258, 260) and Elisabeth of Scho¨nau in c. 146 (CCCM 41A: 282). 61

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From the outset of his treatise, Beleth’s stated goal was to remedy what he considered to be widespread ignorance about the meaning of the liturgy: In the primitive Church it was forbidden for anyone to speak in tongues unless there was someone who could interpret. For what use was it to speak, unless there was understanding? Thus was implanted the praiseworthy custom in the Church in certain regions that once the gospel was declaimed literally, it was immediately expounded among the common people. But what is to be done in our times when never or rarely is found someone who understands as he reads and listens, who notices as he sees and acts. Already what is said by the prophet seems to be fulfilled: “And he will be one priest as if from the people” [cf. Isaiah 24.2: “and the priest will be like the people . . .”]. It therefore seems that there should rather be silence than psalmody, rather silence than dancing (tripudiandum). But, lest the mouths of the singers be closed “to you, Lord, my God” [Ps. 24.1], let us apply, with God’s help, the remedy of a three-fold reading against this injury and speak firstly about ecclesiastical institutions, secondly about the explanations of different words, thirdly about the reasons for days.66 Beleth was here defending his exposition of the liturgy by alluding to a famous phrase of Augustine, “for what use is the integrity of speech which the understanding of the listener does not follow,” quoted by Abelard in his Theologia and Sic et Non to defend rational inquiry into Christian doctrine.67 Better than not singing psalms or dancing at all was giving rational explanations so that people would know what they were hearing, reading, seeing, singing, and doing. Beleth does not repeat Isidore’s complaint about pagan drunken festivities at the New Year but explains that dances (tripudia) take place on four feasts between Christmas and Epiphany, performed on each occasion by a different grade of cleric. By tripudio, it seems that he is here referring to a 66

De eccl. off. Prologus, CCCM 41A : 1 –2: “In primitiua ecclesia prohibitum erat, ne quis loqueretur linguis, nisi esset qui interpretaretur. Quid enim prodesset loqui, nisi intelligeretur? Inde etiam inoleuit laudabilis consuetudo in ecclesia in quibusdam partibus, ut pronuntiato litteraliter euangelio statim in uulgari populo exponeretur. Quid autem in temporibus nostris est agendum, ubi nullus uel rarus inuenitur legens uel audiens qui intelligat, uidens uel agens qui animaduertat? Iam uidetur esse conpletum, quod a propheta dicitur: Et Erit sacerdos quasi e populo unus [cf. Is. 24.2: et erit sicut populus sic sacerdos]. Videtur ergo potius esse tacendum quam psallendum, potius silendum quam tripudiandum. Sed ne claudantur ora canentium: Ad te, Domine, Deus meus, Deo auxiliante contra hoc dampnum triplicis lectionis adhibeamus remedium et primo dicamus de ecclesiasticis institutionibus, secundo de expositionibus diuersorum sermonum, tertio de rationibus dierum.” 67 De doctrina christiana 4.10, l.18, ed. J. Martin CCSL 32 (1962), quoted by Abelard, Theologia “Scholarium” 2.35, ed. Eligius-Marie Buytaert and Constant J. Mews, CCCM 13 (1987), 424; Peter Abailard. Sic et Non Prol. ll. 37–40, ed. Blanche Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 90.

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specific dance, although the word can be used simply as a metaphor, to mean “with joy”: a) What follows relates to feasts that follow the Nativity. At vespers of Christmas, there ought to be a celebration for everyone together, then the deacons assemble in tripudio and they sing the Magnificat with the antiphon of Saint Stephen, and the priest says the collect. The deacons themselves celebrate the night office, because Stephen was a deacon, and they will give blessings over the readings. The daily priest will celebrate the Mass. b) One collect can suffice for matins and for the Mass and for vespers. c) Thus let the priests do likewise on the feast of St. John [December 27], because John was a priest, and the boys on the feast of the Innocents [December 28].68 After describing the feast of the Circumcision (the octave after Christmas), he then comments on “the feast of subdeacons” or “On the feast of fools”: a) The feast of subdeacons, which we call “of fools,” is celebrated by some at Circumcision, by some at Epiphany or in the octave of Epiphany. b) There are four tripudia after the birth of the Lord in the Church: of levites, priests, boys, that is of lesser age and rank, and of subdeacons, a rank that is uncertain. So sometimes it is counted among holy orders, sometimes it is not counted, expressed by the fact that it does not have a fixed day and is celebrated with a confused office.69 Beleth does not criticize these festivities, other than to comment on the “confused office” of the tripudia celebrated by the subdeacons. A number of 68 De eccl. off. 69, CCCM 41A: 130 –131: “a) Sequitur de festiuitatibus sequentibus natiuitatem. Vespere natalis debent primo celebrari tote, postea conueniunt diaconi in tripudio et cantant Magnificat cum antiphona de sancto Stephano, et sacerdos dicit collectam. Nocturnos et officium crastinum celebrant ipsi diaconi, quia Stephanus diaconus fuit, et benedictiones super lectiones dabunt. Missam celebrabit ebdomarius. b) Vna autem collecta potest sufficere ad matutinas et ad missam et ad uesperas. c) Sic et diem modo facient sacerdotes de festo beati Iohannis, quia sacerdos fuit Iohannes, et pueri de festo Innocentum.” 69 De eccl. off. 72, CCCM 41A: 133– 134: “De festo subdiaconorum. Festum subdiaconorum, quod uocamus stultorum, a quibusdam fit in circumcisione [Parisian MSS add: ut in Parisiensi ecclesia], a quibusdam in Epiphania uel in octauis Epiphanie. Fiunt autem quatuor tripudia post natiuitatem Domini in ecclesia: leuitarum, sacerdotum, puerorum, id est minorum etate et ordine, et subdiaconorum, qui ordo incertus est. Vnde quandoque adnumeratur inter sacros ordines, quandoque non adnumeratur, quod exprimitur in eo, quod certum diem non habet et officio celebratur confuso.”

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Parisian manuscripts of the Summa include the detail that the Feast of Fools was celebrated at the Circumcision (January 1) in Paris.70 These various days of the Christmas season provided an occasion for each of the four major grades of cleric to celebrate the season in their own way. This was the context for those various aspects of the “December freedom” introduced at the outset of this essay, such as the game of ball that bishops and archbishops could play in the cloister.71 Just as he recognized that pagan practice could be appropriated to Christian worship at Easter, so he acknowledged that the festivities associated with pagan celebration of the New Year had become an acknowledged part of the liturgical cycle. While Beleth did not fully approve of all these practices, he recognized that they all had their place.

IV. BELETH

AND THE

VIGILS OF ST. JOHN

THE

BAPTIST

Beleth’s willingness to recognize the validity of pagan dance within a Christian framework is also evident in his account of the tripudia in relation to the feast of the birth of St. John the Baptist (June 24), a feast that he explains is still called a vigil, even though a fast had been instituted in its place. Unlike the tripudia of the Christmas season, those associated with the summer solstice seem to have been more popular in nature. Beleth reports that it used to be the custom that men would come to the church for the vigils of St. John with their wives and daughters carrying lighted candles, but as it frequently happened that girls who were virgins would be violated and that there was much opportunity for evildoing, the vigils were turned to fasts.72 Although Beleth speaks about sexual promiscuity at the vigil of St. John the Baptist as happening in the past, continuing legislation against these practices shows that he was speaking about an ongoing situation. Ever attentive to the reasons behind liturgical practice, Beleth devotes a lengthy discussion (ch. 136) to why the birth of John the Baptist should be celebrated rather than his death. Was there not an apparent contradiction between “being born in sin” and so filled with the Holy Spirit that he could preach the Savior? Beleth concludes that his birth was celebrated both 70

J. Heers writes on the Feast of Fools, but with little detail about the period before the later Middle Ages, Feˆtes des fous et carnavals (Paris: Fayard, 1983), 105–189. 71 De eccl. officiis 120a, CCCM 41A: 223. 72 De eccl. officiis 136a, CCCM 41A: 262: “Mos enim erat, ut in festiuitatibus uenirent homines cum uxoribus et filiabus suis ad ecclesiam et ibi cum cereis et luminaribus uigilarent. Sed frequenter contingebat in hiis uigilis puellas uirgines corrumpi et ad maleficia explenda maiorem opportunitatem haberi. Propterea factum est, ut uigilie in ieiunia conuerterentur.”

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historically and allegorically. Both pagans and Christians rejoice in his birth, which looks forward to the coming of grace. In the first two recensions of chapter 137 (De tripudiis), Beleth explains the lighting of torches during these tripudia as originally a practical response from philosophers to a health problem in mid-summer:

Aa) Now let us speak about the tripudia that customarily occur on this feast, of which there are three kinds. On the vigil of St. John the boys in certain regions collect bones and certain other impure things and burn them together, and thus smoke is produced in the air. They also make torches and go around the fields with torches. A third relates to a wheel that they make turn. Ab) That they burn impure things, they have this from the heathen. For in antiquity dragons would be excited to lust in this season because of the heat and frequently, flying through the air, would emit sperm in wells and fountains, resulting in the waters being infected, and then there was a lethal year because whoever drank from them either died or suffered a serious illness. Considering this, the philosophers ordered a fire to be made frequently and impure things and whatever gave out impure smoke to be burned far and wide around the wells and fountains. For they knew dragons can be put to flight through such smoke, just as elephants are driven away through their grunting. Alexander knew this well. For when he wanted to fight against Porus king of the Indians, who had led many elephants and put towers and fortresses on them from where the soldiers might fight, Alexander brought forward a multitude of pigs so that he could bring down those devices. And then he seized one piglet and made him scream loudly; hearing this, the swine began to grunt and they put to flight the elephants, once they had heard the grunting of the swine, and they destroyed whatever had been placed on top of them. And thus Alexander obtained victory. Ac) Or this can be referred to the New Testament. For the boys throw away and burn old things, so that through this it can be signified that the customs of the old Law ought to cease with the coming of the new Law. For it is said in the Law: “You shall eat the old things of the elders and you shall throw out the old for the new that is coming in” (Lev. 26.10). Ad) The torches or flares signify John, who was the light and lamp and precursor of the true light, who illuminates every man coming into this world (John 1.8 – 9). As it is said: He was a burning and shining lantern before the Lord, etc. (Is. 5.36).

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Ae) The wheel is turned to signify that the sun then climbs to the height of its circle and immediately returns. To suggest this, a wheel is turned.73 Although Beleth is not clear about this wheel, he does refer to a kind of tripudium, presumably performed by people dancing in a wheel. The two other kinds of tripudia involved the burning of bones by the pueri and a procession of torch bearers around fields. In the third recension of the Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, written between 1160 and 1164, Beleth revises this long account of the pagan roots of these rituals. He does not mention the tripudium that involved torchlight processions around the fields. He is also more scriptural in his explanation of other customs. While retaining a shortened account of the dangers presented by dragons, he relates them to scripture and deletes his earlier comment that the instruction to light flares came from philosophers: Ba) Bones of dead animals are burned in observances of ancient institution. For there are animals who are called dragons. As in the Psalm: “Praise the Lord from the earth, dragons” (Ps. 148.7), not tracones as certain liars say, namely earthquakes. Bb) And these animals fly in the air, swim in water, walk on earth, and sometimes are incited to lust in the air. So they often would emit sperm in wells and fluvial waters, and then a lethal year would follow. A remedy was therefore found against this, so that a funeral pyre was made from bones and thus the smoke might drive away 73

De eccl. off. 137, CCCM 41A: 267– 269: “Aa) Nunc dicamus de tripudiis, que in hoc festo fieri solent, quorum sunt tria genera, In uigilia enim beati Iohannis colligunt pueri in quibusdan regionibus ossa et quedam alia inmunda et insimul cremant, et exinde producitur fumus in aere, Faciunt etiam brandas et circumeunt arua cum brandis. Tertium est de rota, quam faciunt uolui. Ab) Quod autem inmunda cremant, hoc habent ex gentilibus. Antiquitus enim dracones in hoc tempore excitabantur ad libidinem propter calorem et uolando per aera frequenter spermatizabant puteos et fontes, ex quo inficebantur aeque, et tunc erat annus letalis, quia quicumque inde bibebant, aut moriebantur aut grauem morbus patiebantur. Quod attendentes philosophi iusserunt fieri ignem frequenter et passim circa puteos et fontes et inmunda ibi cremari et quecumque inmundum redderent fumum. Nam per talem fumum scibant fugari posse dracones, sicut elefantes per grunitum suum fugantur. Quod bene nouit Alexander. Nam cum pugnare uellet contra Porum regem Indorum, qui elefantes plures adduxerat et desuper turres et propugnacula fecerat, unde milites bellarent, ut illa machinamenta obrueret, Alexander multitudinem adduxit porcorum. Et tunc cepit unum procellulum et eum fortiter fecit eiulare, quod audientes sues grunnire ceperunt, et audito grunnitu suum elefantes fugerunt et, quecumque sibi superposita fuerant, diruerunt. Et ita uictoriam obtinuit Alexander. Ac) Vel potest hoc referri ad nouum testamentum. Abiciunt enim pueri uetera et comburunt, ut per hoc significetur, quod adueniente noua lete ueteris ritus debent cessare. Dictum est enim in lege: Vetera ueterum comedetis et superuenientibus nouis uetera proicietis. Ad) Brande siue faces significant Iohannem, qui fuit lumen et lucerna et precursor uere lucis, que illuminat omnem hominem uenientem in hunc mundum. Vnde illud: Erat lucerna ardens et lucens ante Dominum et cetera. Ae) Rota uoluitur ad significandum, quod sol tunc ascendit ad altiora sui circuli et satim regreditur. Ad quod innuendum uoluitur rota.”

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animals of this kind. And because this happened a lot in this season, it is also done now by people. Bc) There is another reason why the bones of animals are burned, because the bones of St. John were burned in the city of Sebaste by the heathen. Bd) Burning faggots are also carried because John was a burning lamp. Be) And a wheel is turned because the sun then turns in a circle and because one finds: “It suits me to be less, but for him to grow” [John 3.30]. They say: “This is said about him because the days then begin to shorten and they grow with the nativity.” But we say that sometimes they shorten before the feast of St. John and they increase before the birth of the Lord. But it is to be understood about the nativity in the mother, when each is conceived, namely Christ and John. John is conceived in the shortening days as in September, and Jesus in the lengthening days, as in April.74 This issue of whether John the Baptist had been sanctified in the womb, like Jeremiah, was one Beleth had included in his third recension of the previous chapter. In this version, he modifies his explanation of the tripudium involving a turning wheel by developing a parallel between the conception of Christ and John the Baptist and the spring and autumn equinoxes. He observes that a few days do shorten before the vigil of St. John the Baptist, and lengthen before the birth of Christ. Consistent with the more scripturally based tone of this version, he also adds more detail about John the Baptist as mediating between the Old and New Testaments. Beleth was here developing Honorius’s idea that the conception of John and of Christ corresponded to the seasons of spring and autumn, and of their birth to summer and winter. Honorius had observed that it was appropriate to fast at all of these seasons, because spring was the time of sowing seed, summer of harvesting seed, and autumn of collecting wine and oil and sowing seed again, while winter was for concentrating on gardens and 74

De eccl. off. 137, CCCM 41A: 267: “Ba) Comburuntur ossa mortuorum animalium in antique institutionis obseruantia. Sunt enim animalia que dracones dicuntur. Vnde in psalmo: Laudate Dominum de terra, dracones, non tracones, ut quidam mendosi dicunt, scilicet meatus terre. Bb) Et ista animalia in aere uolant, in aquis natant, per terram ambulant et quandoque in aere concitabantur ad libidinem. Vnde sepe spermatizabant in puteis et in aquis fluuialibus, et inde sequebatur letalis annus. Contra hoc ergo inuentum est remedium, ut de ossibus fieret rogus et ita fumus fugaret animalia huiusmodi. Et quia hoc tempore maxime fiebat istud, modo etiam fit ab hominibus. Bc) Est et alia causa, quare conburunter ossa animalium, quia ossa sancti Iohannis in Sebaste ciuitate a gentilibus conbusta fuere. Bd) Feruntur etiam facule ardentes, quia Iohannes fuit lucerna ardens. Be) Et rota vertitur, quia tunc sol descendit in circulo et quia inuenitur: Me oportet minui, illum autem crescere. Dicunt: Eo, quia tunc incipiunt dies decrescere, in natiuitate crescere, ideo dictum est. Sed dicimus, quod quandoque ante festum sancti Iohannis decrescunt et ante natale Domini crescunt, Sed intelligendum est de natiuitate in matre, quando scilicet conceptus et uterque, scilicet Christus et Iohannes. Conceptus est Iohannes in decrescentibus diebus ut in Septembri, et Ihesus in crescentibus ut in Aprili.”

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buildings.75 Unlike Honorius, however, Beleth explains the fire rituals associated with the tripudia of the feast of John the Baptist as solstice rituals, without any polemic against popular superstition. His explanation that the torches were originally a form of health control is consistent with his general desire to explain rationally existing rituals. He knows for example that the heathen and their philosophers gave different reasons for the names they applied to the days of the week. The heathen identified them after the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jove, Venus, and Saturn, thinking them to be gods, while philosophers understood them to be named after planets, from whose motion and nature all things obtained their growth. Beleth recognizes that people still use these pagan names in vernacular speech, even though scripture does not use these names, and while the liturgy identifies them as secunda feria, tertia feria, etc.76 He observes that pagan practice was often converted into Christian use: “And this is the changing of the right hand of the most High” (Ps. 76.11). He explains the division between laity and ecclesiastics in terms of a distinction already present in pagan antiquity: In the rite of the temples there were archiflamines, flamines, priests of both sexes. For among the heathens, just as there is now with us, there were religious communities of women and men. Among the poets, there were judges of songs, comedians, tragedians, and historians.77 Bishops, abbots, chancellors, archdeacons, deacons, and archpriests all took their ranks from heathen equivalents. Commenting on why the Feast of the Purification (February 2) is called candelaria, Beleth repeats the observation of Honorius that this practice was taken over from heathen custom. He mentions that it used to be the custom at Rome to walk around the city in procession with lighted candles, and that this practice was then taken over by Christians in honor of Mary.78 He is not alarmed by the pagan roots of such practices. Beleth is relatively restrained in his comments about rituals that lead to disorder. He repeats in his own way the observation of Honorius that the people used to celebrate vigils of the saints by coming to the church to sing praises during the night but subsequently celebrated them “with foul songs and dancing, drinking, and fornication.”79 75

Honorius, Gemma animae 3.41, PL 172: 685B. On the shortening of the days, see his Speculum ecclesiae, Sermo de sancto Iohanne Baptista, PL 172: 968B. 76 De eccl. off. 3, CCCM 41A: 8 –9. 77 Ibid. 12, CCCM 41A:31: “In ritu templorum erant archiflamines, flamines, sacerdotes in utroque sexu. Namque apud gentiles, sicuti modo apud nos est, erant et mulierum et uirorum religiosi conuentus. Inter poetas erant carminum iudices, comedi, tragedi, historiographi.” 78 De eccl. officiis 149b, CCCM 41A: 149; cf. Honorius, Gemma animae 3.24, Sacramentarium 94, PL 172: 649B, 798A. 79 Gemma animae 3.6, PL 172: 644CD; see Gratian, Decretum 3.3.2, ed. Friedberg 1:1353. Theodulf of Orleans repeats this in relation to fasts established to reduce drunkenness at vigils of great feasts like Christmas, c. 45, PL 105: 205CD; PL 138: 231 –236, 243–245.

536

CHURCH HISTORY

It used to be the practice for our fathers to keep these vigils on the vigils of feasts of this kind and for young men and girls, to assemble in churches, singers, and mockers, as still happens in several regions as in Poitiers and particularly on feasts of the patrons of churches. But since many inconvenient things followed it was established that fasts take the place of vigils so that excessive feasting and drunkenness would thus cease, which used to happen frequently there. And thus in this case the church made a dispensation. If anyone fasts and keeps vigils honestly, however, he does completely well. For a double good is a good.80 His comment that such great feasts and drunken orgies still take place in Poitiers is of particular interest given that his teacher was Gilbert of Poitiers, from whom the information may have come. Beleth’s treatise continued to be copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His relative openness to pagan tradition was very different from the effort of early medieval liturgists to distinguish Christian ritual from pagan practice. Subtle variations in the manuscript tradition provide rich insight into the way particular scribes sought to acknowledge local tradition. In using pagan practice to explain Christian civic ritual, Beleth was extending a technique developed earlier that century by Honorius Augustodunensis within a monastic context. He also prompted Sicard of Cremona to produce his own account of the meaning of ecclesiastical architecture, ceremony, and ritual. While Sicard gave less attention than Beleth to the phenomenon of dancing at the vigil of St. John the Baptist or other occasions, we cannot presume that such practices were not part of his experience, only that he did not seek to justify them, as he did for the feast of Easter.

V. THE FEAST OF FOOLS IN

THE

LATE TWELFTH CENTURY

Beleth’s relative openness toward ancient ritual practice was already coming into question by the late twelfth century. Some insight into shifting attitudes toward ritual dance can be glimpsed in a letter from Pope Alexander III to Peter abbot of Saint-Re´my, Reims, and to Fulco, his dean, issued November 8, 1170– 1172. It seems that students at Reims had been provoked to laughter by the priest leading a chorea, in turn making the priest so angry that he broke down the door and windows of the students’ house and tried to excommunicate them: We have heard from a request of certain students who live in the suburb of Saint-Re´my that when J., a priest of the suburb of Saint-Re´my, put aside 80

c. 11, CCCM 41A: 25.

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clerical modesty and led a circular dance on a Sunday in the presence of clerics and laypeople, those students mocked and laughed at said priest; the same priest, encouraged by certain people, broke down the door and windows of the students with bold brashness, and put violent hands on some of those students; not content with these injuries, without the awareness of our venerable brother Henry archbishop of Reims and of his officials, he pronounced a sentence of excommunication on them the following day, without summons or confession, which the said archbishop had relaxed, as he ought. [The students claim their freedom has been injured.] . . . and if you find the said priest leading dances in the sight of clerics and laypeople and bringing a great injury for such a reason on the above-mentioned students, or subjecting them incautiously to anathema, punish him hard and roughly by our authority for such lightness, presumption, and audacity, taking away the remedy of appeal.81 The pope acted against the priest not for leading the dance, but for using excessive force against the students, who were able to gain papal protection for their freedom from excommunication. The students in Reims were provoked to laughter by a ritual dance that apparently involved “putting clerical modesty aside,” but to which the students clearly felt no commitment. The papal reaction suggests that on this occasion, the authorities were more on the side of the students than of a priest, keen to conduct what had become a very traditional practice. Within the diocese of Paris, attitudes were also changing. The death in 1196 of Maurice de Sully, and the election of Eudes de Sully (1165 – 1208; no relation of Maurice) as bishop of Paris signaled a pronounced shift in official policy. Eudes, related to the royal houses of both France and England, earned little respect from the historian Rigord.82 According to Peter of Blois, 81 PL 200: 746BC; Heinrich Denifle, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1899; reprinted Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1964), no. 5, 1:5– 6: “Audivimus ex transmissa conquestione quorumdam scholarium qui in burgo S. Remigii consistunt, quod cum I. presbyter de Burgo S. Remigii in die Dominico coram clericis et laicis, postposita modestia clericali, choreas duceret, scholaribus ipsis eumdem presbyterum exinde increpantibus et deridentibus, idem presbyter quorumdam favore cum furore et impetu ostium et fenestras scholarum ausu temerario fregit, et in quosdam ex ipsis scholaribus violentas manus injecit; et his injuriis non contentus, absque conscientia venerabilis fratris nostri Henrici Remensis archiepiscopi et officialium suorum, in ipsos non citatos nec confessos, proxime sequenti die excommunicationis sententiam promulgavit, quam idem archiepiscopus fecit, prout debuit, relaxari. . . . Et si inveneritis praedictum presbyterum choreas in conspectu clericorum et laicorum duxisse, et pro tali causa tantam praefatis scholaribus injuriam intulisse, aut ipsos ita incaute anathemati subjecisse, ipsum, auctoritate nostra, sublato appellationis remedio, de tanta levitate, praesumptione, et audacia dure et aspere puniatis.” 82 P. Michaud-Quentin, “Les e´veˆques de Paris,” 30– 32. Oeuvres de Rigord, Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe Auguste, ed. H. F. Delaborde, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882– 1885), 1:137: “Huic successit Odo natione Soliacensis, frater Heinrici Bituricensis archiepiscopi, longe a predecessore moribus et vita dissimilis.”

538

CHURCH HISTORY

Eudes shone more in piety than in erudition. After studying in Paris he lived with his brother, Henry, archbishop of Bourges, and traveled to Rome in 1187.83 In 1197, only a year after his installation as bishop, Eudes acted on complaints that had been made by the papal legate: We have heard by the trustworthy report of several people, that on the feast of the Circumcision of the Lord so many enormities and wicked acts are accustomed to be committed in the same Church that the holy place, in which the glorious Virgin chose a pleasing house for herself, ends up being greatly polluted not only by foulness of words, but also by the pouring of blood; and consequently the practice of such pernicious audacity has grown so strong that the most holy day in which the Redeemer of the world wished to be circumcised is generally called, not undeservedly, the Feast of Fools.84 Eudes quoted this edict from the papal legate, ordering any cleric guilty of improper action to be suspended from the choir and chapter. The liturgy of the feast of the circumcision (January 1) had to be observed with decorum and dignity. These reforms were doubtless related to the imminent completion of the nave of Notre-Dame. In a separate document, Eudes explained that he would rectify similar disorder during the feast of Stephen, the protomartyr (December 26), but arranged to pay compensation to the clerics involved in singing the Allelulia in three or four parts.85 The process of reform may also have involved creation of new ritual. In a careful study of the Play of Daniel from Beauvais cathedral, preserved along with the Office of the Circumcision, Margot Fassler has suggested that its dramatic account of how Daniel stood firm against the rioting and feasting in the court of Balthasar was deliberately intended to provide edification at a time of role reversal during the Christmas season.86 The play was written for the Feast of Fools and presented the theological significance to the celebrations that were under way. This was the dramatic equivalent of what Beleth himself was seeking to achieve, explanation of the deeper significance of ritual practice. 83 Peter of Blois, Epist. 126, PL 207: 375, reprinted Chartularium, ed. Denifle no. 3, 1:36: “Parisius, ubi magis unctione quam eruditione magistra puer litteras rapiebat.” 84 PL 212:70D–71A: “Ex fideli relatione quamplurium didicimus quod in festo Circumcisionis Dominicae in eadem Ecclesia tot consueverunt enormitates et opera flagitiosa committi, quod locum sanctum, in quo gloriosa Virgo gratam sibi mansionem elegit, non solum foeditate verborum, verum etiam sanguinis effusione plerumque contingit inquinari; et eatenus adinventio tam perniciosae temeritatis invaluit, ut sacratissima dies, in qua mundi Redemptor voluit circumcidi, festum Fatuorum nec immerito generaliter consueverit appellari.” 85 PL 212: 73AC. 86 Margot Fassler, “The Feast of Fools and Danielis Ludus: Popular Tradition in a Medieval Cathedral Play,” in Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony, ed. Thomas Forrest Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 65–99.

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That the papal legate had only limited success in eliminating perceived aberrations in local practice is evident from the Rationale divinorum officium produced in the late thirteenth century by William Durand. Quoting selectively from Beleth’s treatise, Durand explains that, in certain churches, the deacons come together in tripudio while singing the antiphon in honor of St. Stephen, the first deacon, after Christmas Day vespers, and do the readings of the night office and blessings after the Gospel (which they would not normally do), while priests performed the tripudium similarly on the vespers of the feast itself, in honor of St. John, patron of priests; the choirboys ( pueri) did so on the feast of blessed John, in honor of the holy Innocents. Durand repeats Beleth’s comment about subdeacons celebrating the feast of fools, in some churches on the feast of the Circumcision, in others on the Epiphany or the octave of Epiphany, but comments on its confused character: “Because the authority of the practice is not certain, as in the ancient canons it is sometimes called sacred, sometimes not, therefore the subdeacons do not have a fixed day for their celebration, and their feast is celebrated in a confused way.”87 Durand’s comment, derived from Beleth, reflects his disapproval of the practice. The contrast in the way Beleth and Durand present the feast of John the Baptist is particularly pronounced. Durand leaves out altogether Beleth’s detailed explanation of why torches were lit during outdoor processions on the eve of that feast. Instead he emphasizes that there should be a three-week fast prior to the feast of John the Baptist, in which there should be fasting and no weddings should be celebrated, indeed (quoting Isidore), “women, while they are being married, should be veiled, so that they may know they are always subject to men and because Rebecca, having seen Isaac, veiled herself.”88 His only reference to these festivities is a single comment, abbreviated from Beleth, about how the night office is celebrated in summer, “sometimes rather stormily, which they call Vigils from the old name, and 87

Rationale diuinorum officiorum 7.42.15 (CCCM 140B: 112–113): “Illud autem sciendum est quod, in quibusdam ecclesiis, in die Natalis Domini dyaconi, uesperis finitis, in honorem beati Stephani qui eximius dyaconus fuit, in tripudio conuenientes cantant antiphonam de sancto Stephano et sacerdos dicit collectam. Nocturnos etiam et officium crastinum celebrant et etiam benedictiones super lectiones dant, quod tamen facere non deberent. Et eodem modo faciunt sacerdotes in festo beati Stephani in uesperis, in honorem beati Iohannis quia ipse sacerdos fuit; et pueri in festo sancti Iohannis in honorem Innocentum. Subdyaconi uero faciunt festum, in quibusdam ecclesiis, in festo Circumcisionis, ut ibi dictum est, in aliis in Epiphania, et in aliis in octauis Epiphanie quod uocant festum stultorum. Quia enim ordo ille antiquitus incertus erat, nam in canonibus antiquis quandoque uocatur sacer et quandoque non, ideo subdyaconi certam ad festandum non habent diem, et eorum festum officio celebratur confuso.” See n. 74 above for a very similar passage in Beleth. 88 Rationale diuinorum officiorum 1.9.8. CCCM 140: 115: “Porro, secundum beatum Ysidorum, femine dum maritantur ideo uelantur ut nouerint se semper uiris suis subditas esse, et quia Rebecca uiso Ysaac se uelauit.”

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specially on the feasts of John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, and the Assumption, which are the special feasts of the season, and they begin to do this at the twilight on the feast of blessed John, in that he was himself the end of the old Testament and the beginning of the New.”89 Durand omits Beleth’s much fuller explanation of why the night office is now celebrated at dawn, namely that originally ministers and married people, men and women, used to rise to celebrate the night office, but they became carried away by nocturnal pleasures, so that only religious celebrate the night office. Durand also leaves out Beleth’s eloquent lament that in many churches, “boys rise before ministers of the church, sparrows sing before priests,” and that many are too lazy to arise at dawn, and in fact spurn the daily office. Durand describes what should happen at the vigils of John the Baptist rather than what actually took place, as we find in the treatise of Beleth. Durand repeats Beleth’s remarks about the game of the pila celebrated during “the December freedom,” mentioning that prelates may even indulge in dancing or singing with clerics in episcopal houses.90 This is not his own comment, however, but derives from a much fuller account by Sicard of Cremona. He also expands on Beleth’s comment about women and men being able to beat one another in the second and third days respectively after Easter, with an additional remark that women should not lead dances in this period.91

VI. THE IMPOSITION OF DISCIPLINE, 1200– 1500 The Rationale of Durand implemented a reforming program that was suspicious of dance that can be traced back to the beginning of the thirteenth century but would continue to be re-asserted at various moments in the later Middle Ages. The more positive attitudes toward dance manifested by Honorius, Beleth, and Sicard would gradually be overshadowed by another 89 Rationale diuinorum officiorum 5.3.6, CCCM 140A: 54– 55: “Porro in memoriam illius laudabilis consuetudinis et deuotionis antiquorum, in tempore estiuali celebrat Ecclesia nocturnum officium in tempore prime nocturne, licet quandoque tempestiuius—quod quidam uigilias sub antiquo nomine uocant [omitting Beleth: Fit autem hoc duplici de causa . . . quorum plurimi iam radiante sole ad illud officium surgere pigritamur, ymo quod uerius est, ut nocturnum preteream, diurnum officium non curamus.]—et specialiter in festiuitatibus beatorum Iohannis Baptiste, Petri et Pauli, et Assumptionis beate Marie que sunt precipue illius temporis sollempnitates et hoc facere incipiunt in ipso festo beati Iohannis in crepusculo pro eo quod ipse fuit finis ueteris testamenti et initium noui.” Abbreviated from Beleth, De eccl. off. 20e– f, CCCM 41A: 43– 44. 90 Rationale diuinorum officiorum 6.86.9, CCCM 140A: 445. 91 Rationale diuinorum officiorum 6.86.10, CCCM 140: 445: “Hiis tribus primis diebus, sollempniter est feriandum; in sequentibus uero, licet uiris ruralia opera, que magis sunt necessaria, exercere; sed feminis non licet nere, nunquam autem choreas ducere, quia, secundum Gregorium, melius est fodere et arare quam choreas ducere.” This expands on Beleth, De eccl. off. 120, CCCM 41A: 223.

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approach. At the same time as Eudes de Sully set about constructing a new fac¸ade to the cathedral of Notre-Dame (not completed until 1245), the bishop of Paris endeavored to establish his authority in the diocese through a series of statutes, “prohibitions and precepts to be observed by all priests.”92 These statutes, issued in 1203 in response to a request by Pope Innocent III for a general reform of the clergy of the archdiocese of Sens, differ from those issued in the twelfth century by provincial synods in issuing from the bishop himself, rather than from a collective assembly. The statutes relate to the behavior of priests and their liturgical duties, as essentially superior to those of any other cleric. No priest or chaplain was to keep in his house any woman other than his mother or sister. It is completely forbidden for all priests to play with dice or attend spectacles or be present at dances or enter taverns in order to drink, or to enter strange houses without an amice [ecclesiastical garb] and in company with a cleric or layperson or to wander through streams and squares; it is completely forbidden for them to wear winged capes [with wide sleeves] and unusual clothes.93 Even if the dances (choreae) referred to here seem to be secular in nature, there is another ruling included among liturgical matters: It is forbidden for priests to allow dances (choreae) particularly in three places: in churches, cemeteries, and processions.94 The prohibition seems to relate to circular dances taking place in liturgical contexts. While they are unlikely to be the tripudia referred to by John Beleth and Durand, these choreae may be more informal circular dances that involve mixing both clergy and people, as implied by the pope’s letter to the abbot of Reims. Other statutes relate to a perceived risk of challenge and pollution to the priestly rank. Priests are not allowed to let any unknown person, educated or not, preach, even outside the church or in the streets. The faithful are urged to contribute to the cathedral and to arm themselves against the Albigensians. Priests must only give blessed bread to women who come for purification after childbirth, and they must not be given the Eucharist unless they have expressly asked for it and they have confessed beforehand.95 92 Les statuts synodaux franc¸ais du XIIIe sie`cle, ed. Odette Pontal, Collection de Documents ´ inedits sur l’histoire de France 9, 4 vols. (Paris: Comite´s de travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1971–1995), 1: Les statuts de Paris et le Synodal de l’Ouest, 52. 93 Les statuts synodaux, ed. Pontal, no. 64, 1:74. 94 Les statuts synodaux, ed. Pontal, no. 88, 1:86: “Prohibeant sacerdotes ne fiant choree maxime in tribus locis, in ecclesiis, in cimiteriis et processionibus.” 95 Les statuts synodaux, ed. Pontal, nos. 82, 100– 101, 1:87 –89.

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Women in childbirth, Jews, and heretics are projected as representing that which is potentially polluting to the right order of society. These edicts were of immense influence in diocesan legislation elsewhere in France as in England. The prohibitions against dances in churches, cemeteries, and processions are repeated in statutes issued at Angers in 1219– 1220 and widely disseminated in the West of France, with more elaborate detail: Priests must forbid under pain of excommunication dances being conducted in the cemetery or in churches. Let them warn that they should not be elsewhere because, as blessed Augustine says, “it is better to dig and plough on feast days than to conduct dances.” What a serious sin it is to conduct dances and farandoles (ballationes) in a holy place can be judged by the penance enjoined according to the rigor of the canons: “if anyone makes or conducts farandoles before the churches of the saints, let him do penance for three years, having promised to make amends.”96 Augustine had uttered that grim warning against dancing, with reference not to feast days, but to commentary on Ps. 32.2, “Confess to the Lord on the harp,” in relation to the sabbath.97 The reference to farandoles (ballationes) was lifted verbatim from the polemic of Caesarius of Arles in the fifth century. Another statute (c.31) repeated a prohibition of the IV Lateran Council (c.16) on clerics exercising business activities and watching mimes, actors, or jugglers, as well as avoiding taverns (unless obliged by necessity to stop there). They were not to gamble, and had to have a suitable haircut and tonsure. Clerics in holy orders had to have clothes that were neither too long nor too short. There was also more detailed instruction about the fasts that should be observed at Lent and at the vigils of Christmas, Assumption, eight other feasts (including St. John the Baptist), and the feast of St. Mark (April 25) and Rogation days.98 These rulings, including those against dances in cemeteries and churches, are repeated by Henry, bishop of Sisteron in 1249 and the bishop of Nıˆmes in 1252. In the latter statutes there is a prohibition against declaiming cantilenae as well as against performing choreae.99 Given that Beleth’s Summa was still being widely copied in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it could well be that many local churches were still 96

Les statuts synodaux, ed. Pontal, no. 29, 1:156: “Prohibeant sacerdotes sub pena excommunicationis choreas duci in cimiterio vel in ecclesiis: monant etiam ne alibi fiant, qui ut dicit beatus Augustinus, ‘melius est festivis diebus fodere et arare quam choreas ducere.’ Quam grave peccatum sit in loco sacro choreas et balationes ducere, perpendi potest ex penitentia secundum rigorem canonum talibus injungenda: si quis balationes ante ecclesias sanctorum fecerit aut duxerit, emendatione pollicita, tribus annis peniteat.” 97 Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps. 32.2, En. 2.1.6 l.13, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, CCSL 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), 251. 98 Les statuts synodaux, ed. Pontal, no. 60, 1:176. 99 Les statuts synododaux, ed. Pontal, vol. 2. Les Statuts de 1230 a` 1260 Manuale Henrici 87, ed. Pontal (Paris, 1983), 223; Liber Synodalis of Nıˆmes, Arles, Bezie`res etc. No. 98, 2:346.

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clinging to liturgical practices that had been sanctioned by Beleth in the twelfth but now were disapproved of by Durand in the thirteenth. Statutes of the Faculty of Arts in 1252 (repeated in 1280) instruct that at the death of a student, a fellow student should be present with his nation (if it is a feast day, or otherwise if he has been summoned), but he is not to allow choreas to be held outside his house (college), and that he should read the Psalter when a regent master died.100 In 1276, however, the papal legate complained that on the particular feast days celebrated by a student nation, which should be celebrated with due solemnity, prayer, and works of mercy, students were engaging in feasting, drinking, and other loose behavior, including dances (choreas) and other activities, including taking arms and disturbing the community at large.101 Those held responsible for such behavior would incur excommunication. Whether these were simply dissolute versions of a ritual dance, or purely secular dances, is not fully clear. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that dancing continued to be performed in religious communities, even in the face of repeated attempts by episcopal authorities to crack down on excessively dissolute behavior. In the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales recorded a circular dance that took place in Wales on the feast of St. Aelivedha (Almedda) more with amazement than hostility. “Men or girls, now in the cemetery, now in a circular dance that is led round the cemetery with a song, suddenly fall on the ground as in a trance, initially as if led in ecstasy, then jumping up, as if seized by frenzy, they represent with their hands and feet, before the people, whatever work they have unlawfully done on feast days.”102 Gerald then describes how they reenacted various trades, concluding: “On being brought into the church and led up to the altar with their oblations, you will be astonished to see them suddenly awakened and coming to themselves. Thus, by the divine mercy, which rejoices in the conversion, not in the death, of sinners, many persons from the conviction of their senses, are on these feast days corrected and 100

Chartularium, ed. Denifle, no. 230, 1:230: “Ibit ad sepulturam scolarium diebus festivis, quando sciat, et feriatis diebus, quando fuerit citatus. Intererit omnibus congregationibus sue nascionis. Non sustinebit choreas duci in principio suo extra domum. Leget vel legi faciet psalterium magistro actu regente mortuo.” The phrase Non sustinebit choreas . . . domum is slightly misplaced from its original context when these statutes were repeated in 1280, no. 501, 1:586. 101 Ibid., ed. Denifle, no. 470, 1:540: “choreasque et alia nephanda exercere ludibria nichilominus presumentes.” 102 Gerald of Wales, Itinerarum Kambriae 2, ed. James F. Dimock, Rolls Series, 21/6 (London: HMSO, 1868), 32: “Videns enim hic homines seu puellas, nunc in ecclesia, nunc in coemeterio, nunc in chorea que circa coemiterium cum cantilena circumfertur, subito in terram comere, et primo tanquam in extasim ductus et quieus, deinde tanquam in phrenesim raptus exsilientes, opera quecunque festis diebus illicite perpetrare consueverant, tam manibus quam pedibus coram populo repraesentantes.” The passage is mentioned without a bibliographic reference by Sachs, World History of Dance, 252.

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mended.”103 The mimetic actions of the dance served to celebrate the redeeming power of a saint. Such behavior was seen as a natural extension of liturgy. A passion play from St. Gall, recorded about 1300, reports that the person playing Mary Magdalene “should dance with one girl and two young men.” The association of dancing and music with Mary Magdalene would be a normative feature of music and art until the sixteenth century.104 In the mid-thirteenth century, Eudes de Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, recorded with distaste the activity of both nuns and clerics in Normandy during major feasts, such as of St. Nicholas, the Holy Innocents or of Mary Magdalene, in dancing with laypeople or singing scurrilous songs.105 Even in the late fifteenth century, such processions were still being practiced. The nuns of the Paraclete, for example, went in procession some distance from the abbey with the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages to a particular cross, called Croix du Maıˆtre, during Rogationtide and at Ascension. After certain Latin responses were sung before the Cross, believed to have been established by Abelard himself, the nuns began to dance and sing vernacular songs, according to an edict of bishop Jacques Raguier issued August 4, 1499. The nuns had apparently resisted ecclesiastical complaints, claiming ancient authority for the practice and maintaining that they would make a gift to each of the young girls presented there. The bishop was unmoved by their petition.106 Not only were nuns seen by a local rural community to be particularly efficacious, but also they provided an opportunity for the status of young girls to be officially recognized by the community as a whole. The practices still observed by the nuns of the Paraclete in the late fifteenth century had persisted despite three centuries of episcopal condemnations. At the Council of Vienne (1311 – 1312) the authorities complained that clerics and laypeople were still performing dissolute circular dances (choreas) and singing cantilenas in cemeteries when they should be in the church in

103 Gerald of Wales, Itinerarum Kambriae 2, 33: “Demum vero intra ecclesiam cum oblationibus ad altare perductos, tanquam experrectos et ad se redeuntes obstupescas. Sic itaque divina miseratione, quae peccantium conversione magis gaudet quam eversione, multos, ultionem hujusmodi tam videndo quam senteniendo, festis de cetero feriando diebus, corrigi constat et emendari.” 104 H. Colin Slim, “Mary Magdalene, Musician and Dancer,” Early Music 8:4 (October 1980): 460– 473, quoting F. O. Knoll, Die Rolle der Maria Magdalena im geistlichen Spiel des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1934), 86; Eduard Hartl, Das Benediktbeurer Passionspiel. Das St Galler Passionspiel (Halle, 1952), 55. 105 Pierre Aubry, La Musique et les musicians d’e´glise en Normandie au XIIIe sie`cle d’apre`s le « Journal des visites pastorales » d’Odon Rigaud (Paris, 1906; rep. Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), 24–25. 106 Charlotte Charrier summarizes events, He´loı¨se dans l”histoire et dans la le´gende (Paris: Champion, 1933), 308– 309.

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prayer, and separately warned again nuns engaging in such dances.107 More detail is given in a similar ruling of the Council of Basel (1431 –1436) about various festivities and entertainments that occur on certain fixed feast days. Choreae and tripudia are used here to refer to two distinct activities: This holy synod detests that foul abuse practiced in certain churches in which on several fixed feasts of the year they bless with a pontifical mitre, staff, and vestments in the manner of bishops, some clothed like kings and princes, called in some regions the feast of fools or of innocents or of boys; some perform masks and humorous theater, others circular dances (choreas) and dancing (tripudia) of men and women, others move people to spectacle and laughter, others prepare feasts and banquets in that very place; it [the synod] decides and orders as much ordinary clergy as deans and rectors, under pain of suspension of all ecclesiastical income for a space of three months, that they no longer permit transgressors to exercise these or similar entertainments nor any commerce or affairs of business in the Church, which ought to be a house of prayer, or in the cemetery, and not neglect other remedies of the law in punishing them through ecclesiastical censure.108 The attempts of authorities, from Eudes de Sully to the assembled prelates at the Council of Basel, to impose order on ecclesiastical festivities were never wholly successful. Ancient traditions of festivity, especially those that marked important saints’ days and both the winter and summer solstice, were always celebrated with dancing, as they seem to have been even in late antiquity. The tripudia to which Beleth refers were ritual dances long integrated into the liturgy in certain churches. A statute of the cathedral of St. Stephen, Sens, laid down that “on these two feasts [of St. Stephen and St. Lupus], the 107 Concilia Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo et al. Concilium Uiennense 22 (Bologna: Istituto delle scienze religiose, 1973), 373, 378. There is limited comment on these moralists in a study that focuses on sixteenth-century debate, by Alessandro Arcangeli: “Dance under Trial: The Moral Debate 1200–1600,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 12:2 (Autumn 1994): 127– 155. 108 Concilia Oecumenicorum Decreta, Concilium Basileense, sessio 21, ed. Alberigo, 492: “Turpem etiam illum abusum in quibusdam frequentatum ecclesiis quo certis anni celebritatibus nonnullis cum mitra baculo ac vestibus pontificalibus more episcoporum benedicunt alii ut reges ac duces induti quod festum fatuorum vel innocentum seu puerorum in quibusdam regionibus nuncupatur alii larvales et theatrales iocos alii choreas et tripudia marium ac mulierum facientes homines ad spectacula et cachinnationes movent alii comessationes et convivia ibidem praeparant haec sancta synodus detestans statuit et iubet tam ordinariis quam ecclesiarum decanis et rectoribus sub poena suspensionis omnium proventuum ecclesiasticorum trium mensium spatio ne haec aut similia ludibria neque etiam mercantias seu negotiationes nundinarum in ecclesia quae domus orationis esse debet ac etiam coemeterio exerceri amplius permittant transgressores que per censuram ecclesiasticam alia que iuris remedia punire non negligant.”

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precentor should engage in dance, wearing gloves and rings, with a rod, and not more often.”109 The meaning of these instructions is clarified by an early fourteenth-century liturgical manuscript from the cathedral of Sens (Sens, Bibl. Mun. 6) that contains an extended wordless neuma, to be sung at the end of antiphons on the feasts of St. Stephen and of St. Lupus. The markings on the music are argued by Jacques Chailley to refer specifically to the dance undertaken during the singing of the plainchant.110 It is quite possible, as Yvonne Rokseth has suggested, that religious songs sometimes record circular dances (choreas) in relation to major feasts, like Easter or particular saints’ days.111 The term may also be rendered as “carol,” describing a particular kind of dance, performed to the ductia, “rapid in its ascent and descent” according to Johannes de Grocheio, writing in the late thirteenth century. Carols performed at Christmas and Easter are a residual legacy of these choreae.112 By the sixteenth century, the ritual dances described by Honorius, Beleth, Sicard and, in more muted form, by William Durand, were viewed by the authorities as the unwanted legacy of pagan tradition. Only in isolated places did these traditions persist, as at Besanc¸on (the bergerette) and at Limoges in the seventeenth century.113 Liturgical dance still survives in Spain on the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception, despite attempts by the Church in the seventeenth century to condemn the practice.114 An annual dance of pilgrims celebrated on the feast of St. Willibrord at Echternach in Luxemburg is first documented in 1603, when the abbot reprimanded clerics who wished to avoid engaging in the practice, and would survive attempts to

109 “Dum cantatur in choro . . . precentor in his duobus locis in chirotecis et annulis cum baculo debet ballare, et non plus per annum.” Quoted by Jacques Chailley, “Un nouveau document sur la danse,” Acta Musicologica Acta Musicologica 21 (1949): 18–24, esp. 20; see too Ducange, “ballare.” 110 Chailley, “Un nouveau document,” 21–24. 111 Rokseth, see above, n. 6. 112 Timothy McGee argues that a carol was the same as a ductia, Medieval Instrumental Dances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 19– 20. In the Ars musice, however, Johannes de Grocheio describes ductia as a kind of song, sung in choreis, namely in a carol or round dance, and as effective in leading the hearts of the young away from lovesickness, Die Quellenhandschriften zum Musiktraktat des Johannes de Grocheio. In Faksimile herausgegeben ¨ bertragung des Textes und U ¨ bersetzung in Deutsche, dazu Bericht, Literaturschau, nebst U Tabellen und Indices (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fu¨r Musik, 1972), 132: “Ductia vero est cantilena levis et velox et ascensu et descensu que in choreis a iuvenibus et puellis decantatur. sicut gallice. Chi encor querez amoretes. Hec enim ducit corda puellarum et iuvenum. et a vanitate removet. et contra passionem que dicitur amor hereos valere dicitur.” 113 See the anonymous essay from the Mercure de France (1742) reprinted by Leber, “Lettre sur une danse eccle´siastique qui se faisait a` Besanc¸on le jour de Paˆques; avec un supple´ment, par l’E´diteur”: Collection, 420– 440. 114 Lynn Matluck Brooks, The Dances of the Processions of Seville in Spain’s Golden Age (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1988).

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have it stopped by the archbishop of Trier in 1777 and later.115 Traditionally the dance or tripudium was restricted to men, and involved a row of dancers making three steps forward and one back (or sometimes five forward and two back), and then processing to behind the main altar, where a metal corona, carrying images of the apostles, was lowered over the dancers.116 Such survivals attest to a much larger range of practices that—like the game of pila—were considered an acceptable part of Christian ritual by liturgists like Beleth and Sicard of Cremona in the twelfth century, but which subsequently incurred official opposition from the Church. While the twentieth century has witnessed occasional moves to revive the tradition of liturgical dance, such experiments are far removed from the dancing at the tombs of the saints against which Caesarius of Arles and Isidore of Seville fulminated so strongly in early Middle Ages.

VII. CONCLUSION The complaints of early medieval moralists indirectly attest to the long and difficult process by which the Christian Church was obliged to come to terms with the way in which Christian liturgy had to co-exist with much older ritual practices—often involving dancing—associated with the New Year and other feasts of the agricultural calendar. By the twelfth century, however, liturgists like John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona were more positive in their use of pagan imagery to justify ritual practice, including dance. While Honorius Augustodunensis had initiated the application of classical learning to expounding the liturgy, the process was taken much further in the mid-twelfth century by John Beleth. A student of Gilbert of Poitiers and clearly oriented to a more secular milieu than Honorius, Beleth offered explanations not just for clerical rituals but for celebrations pursued outside the confines of the church, such as on the vigils of St. John the Baptist. He was interested in providing rational explanations for tripudia, ritual dances, performed to plainchant on particular feasts of the Church’s year. In the later twelfth century, Sicard drew on both Honorius and Beleth to describe the game of ball known as the pila, as a kind of dance, celebrated at Easter. Sicard turned to the testimony of the ancients to justify the use of dance at such a major feast. 115 J. Morris, “Dancing in Churches,” The Month (December 1892): 493–518, supplies a valuable description of the practice, supported by his summary of an account by Anton Joseph Binterim, De saltatoria quae Epternaci quotannis celebratur, supplicatione: cum praeviis in choreas sacras animadversionibus (Du¨sseldorf: Schaub, 1848). 116 Morris, “Dancing in Churches,” 503.

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By the turn of the thirteenth century, a more centralized ecclesiastical authority was starting to assert itself against manifestations of popular culture in various forms of tripudia and circular dances (chorea). In the late thirteenth century, the Rationale divinorum officiorum of William Durand modified much of what he found in Beleth, especially relating to pagan precedent for Christian liturgy. Durand was similarly sparing in what he took from Sicard of Cremona. The failure of subsequent ecclesiastical councils to abolish these practices over the next three centuries is itself testimony to the refusal to disappear of so many of the popular traditions described by Beleth, traditions that may themselves once have had a pagan origin, but which had long since mutated within a Christian context. Whether such practices were indeed Christian would always be a point of contention.

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 549–583. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990424 Printed in the USA

“I Am Wholly Your Own”: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta1 ANNA HARRISON

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William James long ago characterized the God of the thirteenthcentury Cistercian cloister of Helfta, in Saxony, as “full of partiality for his individual favorites,”2 he might have illustrated his claim with any number of passages from three of the surviving works composed by the nuns of Helfta, the Book of Special Grace, associated with Mechtild of Hackeborn (1241– ca. 1298/99), the Herald of Divine Love, associated with Gertrude of Helfta (1256 – ca. 1301/02), and the Spiritual Exercises, written by Gertrude.3 James drew his readers’ attention to the following account from the Herald: HEN

1 I am grateful to Anne L. Clark, Rachel Fulton, Anna Trumbore Jones, Kathryn M. Rudy, Anne Bagnall Yardley, and participants of the California Medieval History Seminar for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I remain indebted to Caroline Walker Bynum and Joel Kaye for their encouragement and conversation. I owe special thanks to the anonymous Church History reader. 2 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience ([1902] New York: Random House, 1929), 339. 3 Le He´raut, ed. and trans. Pierre Doye`re et al., 4 vols., Gertrude d’Helfta: Oeuvres spirituelles, Sources chre´tiennes 139, 143, 255, 331, Se´rie des texts monastiques d’occident 25, 27, 48 (Paris: E´ditions du Cerf, 1968–1986); Sanctae Mechtildis, virginis ordinis sancti Benedicti, Liber specialis gratiae accedit sororis Mechtildis ejusdem ordinis Lux divinitatis, vol. 2 of Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, ed. the monks of Solesmes [Louis Paquelin] (Paris: H. Oudin, 1877). For the process of the composition of the Herald and the Book of Special Grace and for their audience, see Margarete Hubrath, Schreiben und Erinnern: Zur “memoria” im Liber specialis gratiae Mechtilds von Hakeborn (Paderborn: Ferdinand Scho¨ningh, 1996); Margarete Hubrath, “The Liber specialis gratiae as a Collective Work of Several Nuns,” Jahrbuch der Oswald von Wolkenstein-Gesellshaft 11 (1999): 233–244; Laura Marie Grimes, “Writing as Birth: The Composition of Gertrud of Helfta’s Herald of God’s Loving Kindness,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 42:3 (August 2007): 329– 348; Anna Harrison, “‘Oh! What Treasure Is in This Book?’: Writing, Reading, and Community at the Monastery of Helfta,” Viator 39:1 (Spring 2008): 75–106. Les Exercices, ed. and trans. Jacques Hourlier and Albert Schmitt, Gertrude d’Helfta: Oeuvres spirituelles, Sources chre´tiennes 127, Se´rie des texts monastiques d’occident 19 (Paris: E´ditions du Cerf, 1967). For the composition and audience of the Spiritual Exercises, see Columba Hart, “Introduction,” in The Exercises of Saint Gertrude, trans. a Benedictine nun of Regina Laudis [Columba Hart] (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1956), and Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis, “Introduction,” in Gertrud the Great of Helfta: Spiritual Exercises, trans. Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Jack Lewis (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1989). There is a fourth work associated with the convent. Mechtild of Magdeburg

Anna Harrison is an assistant professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University.

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Suffering from a headache, she [Gertrude] sought, for the glory of God, to relieve herself by holding certain odoriferous substances in her mouth, when the Lord appeared to her to lean over towards her lovingly, and to find comfort himself in these odors. After having gently breathed them in, He arose, and said with a gratified air to the Saints, as if contented with what he had done: “See the new present which my betrothed has given Me!”4 James declared this passage one in a relentless series of “paltry-minded” “proofs” the Herald offers in evidence of Christ’s predilection for Gertrude.5 He dismissed the whole of this book as the musings of a personality so absorbed in love of God and so narrowly fixed on securing demonstrations of his love for her as to push from her purview “all human loves” and all “practical human interests.”6 A range of writers has since James been struck by the ardent assertions of the mutual love between the Helfta visionaries, Gertrude and Mechtild, and Christ that the convent literature records.7

(ca. 1208–1282/97) likely composed the final portion of the Flowing Light of the Divinity at Helfta, perhaps with the assistance of some of the nuns; Mechtild of Magdeburg, Lux divinitatis, in Sanctae Mechtildis. For the composition and audience of the Flowing Light, see Sarah S. Poor, Mechtild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 4 James, Varieties, 338, 1. 5 Ibid., 338. 6 Ibid., 336 and 335– 336. James, furthermore, described the Herald as the product of “inferior intellectual sympathies” (339). The modern reader who encounters the passage James quotes out of its original context may be tempted to dismiss it as mawkish and to agree with James. A contextualized reading lays bare the theological assumptions that inform the passage. As the Herald tells it, Christ, by his death, has freely paid a “debt of grace” for Gertrude (as for all human beings); he continues ceaselessly to make up for her ever-renewed deficiencies and offers Gertrude, in addition, a multitude of gifts (or spiritual gains), including his friendship. Although Christ has made the perfect satisfaction and although his mercy is a gift no human being can ever repay, he does demand something in return. Gertrude was confident that she met her obligations to make restitution to Christ through a wide variety of activities in which she participated. Christ informed her he would accept in union with and in memory of his mercy the least thing she did: lifting up a pebble or a straw; uttering a single word; showing kindness to anyone; reciting the Requieum aeternum for the dead; praying for the sinners or the just (Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:7:2, 100). In this context, the passage immediately preceding that which James quotes is instructive. It relates that Gertrude saw herself in Christ and him in her according to the biblical teaching: “If you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it to me” (Matt. 25:40). The Herald states plainly that Gertrude, regarding herself in her unworthiness as the least of all creatures was, by seeking to soothe her headache, tending to Christ (Le He´raut, SC 139, 1:11:10, 180). In doing so, she understood herself to return to him some of what she owed Christ. 7 See, for example, Alberta Dieker, “Mechtild of Hackeborn: Song of Love,” in Medieval Women Mystics: Wisdom’s Wellsprings, ed. Miriam Schmitt and Linda Kulzer (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996), 231– 242; Thomas Merton, “Saint Gertrude, Nun of Helfta, Germany,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 38:4 (2003): 451 –458.

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Scholars have also noticed, however, an interest in society and pronounced expressions of sociability in the Helfta writings. Indeed, virtually no major account of the nuns’ piety neglects to remark on the women’s preoccupation with community.8 In this article, I examine more deliberately than have previous studies the relationship between the Helfta nuns’ sense of self in relation to God and their sense of community. Because nowhere is the nuns’ sense of community felt more intensely than in their liturgical practices,9 and because nowhere do Mechtild and Gertrude experience more frequently the divine revelations and union with God that highlight their focus on the self than during liturgical observances,10 I do so through an examination of Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s reported experiences during liturgy.

8 Mary Jeremy Finnegan devoted a chapter to “Gertrude in Her Community” in The Women of Helfta: Scholars and Mystics ([1962] with additions, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 98– 112. Caroline Walker Bynum has observed the varieties of ways in which Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s sense of self was permeated by their relationships with others; “Women Mystics in the Thirteenth Century: The Case of the Nuns of Helfta,” in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 170–262. Questions that focus squarely on community have come to occupy pride of place in important studies of the past decade, such as Rosalynn [Jean] Voaden, “All Girls Together: Community, Gender, and Vision at Helfta,” in Medieval Women in Their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Hubrath, Schreiben; Hubrath, “Collective Work”; Grimes, “Writing as Birth.” 9 Studies that have commented extensively on the liturgical content of the Helfta spirituality are too numerous to cite. The most comprehensive introduction is Cyprian Vagaggini’s Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy: A General Treatise on the Theology of the Liturgy, trans. Leonard J. Doyle and W. A. Jurgens from the fourth Italian edition, revised and augmented by the author (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1976), 741 –802, which focuses on the relation between Gertrude’s mysticism and her liturgical piety. Especially insightful is Jean Leclercq’s “Liturgy and Mental Prayer in the Life of St. Gertrude,” Sponsa Regis 31 (1960): 1 –5, which is, however, too brief to offer satisfying demonstrations of his many provocative claims. Bruce W. Holsinger has examined the creative ways in which the Helfta nuns played with the liturgy in Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 240–253. 10 For both Mechtild and Gertrude, as for thirteenth-century women more generally, receiving the Eucharist and viewing the elevated host often precipitated union with Christ. For the close connection for thirteenth-century women between Mass and ecstasy, see Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century,” in Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone, 1991), esp. 125– 129. A great deal of attention has focused on the Mass and, more specifically, on the place of eucharistic devotion in the Helfta spirituality. See, for example, Gilbert Dolan, St. Gertrude the Great (London: Sands, 1913), esp. 26–27; Hilda Graef, “Gertrude the Great: Mystical Flowering of the Liturgy,” in Orate Fratres 20 (1945/46), esp. 171– 172; Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, 774– 775; Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta”; Cheryl Clemons, “The Relationship between Devotion to the Eucharist and Devotion to the Humanity of Jesus in the Writings of St. Gertrude of Helfta” (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1995); Olivier Quenardel, La communion eucharistique dans le He´raut de l’amour divin de Sainte Gertrude d’Helfta: situation, acteurs et mise en sce`ne de la divina pietas (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997). For the relationship of chant to visions in the Helfta literature, see Leclercq, “Mental Prayer,” and Margot Schmidt (“Mechtilde de Hackeborn,” in vol. 10 of

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Though it is now much contested, there has long been a tendency to see late medieval spirituality as centering increasingly on individual, inner experience rather than on group practice or on communal religious response, even when the context is religious or monastic community. Some scholars have argued that the surge during the late Middle Ages in subjective spirituality— characterized, in part, by a deliberate curling inward of attention to the self in relation to God—drained enthusiasm for the common life and compromised a coherent sense of liturgical community.11 Theologians and historians alike have pronounced non-clerical participants in Mass and the divine office both marginalized spectators and frankly self-preoccupied.12

Dictionnaire de spiritualite´ asce´tique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. M. Viller, F. Cavallera, J. de Guibert, A. Rayez, A. Derville, and A. Solignac [Paris: G. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1980], col. 875). Holsinger points out that the nuns provided even the melodies they sang with visionary significance (Music, Body, and Desire, 245– 246). For more general discussions of the relationship of chant to visionary experience, see Stephanus Hilpisch, “Chorgebet und ¨ berlieferung: Ausschnitte aus der Geschichte des Fro¨mmigkeit im Spa¨tmittelalter,” in Heilige U Mo¨nchtums und des heiligen Kultes, ed. Odo Casel (Mu¨nster: Aschendorff, 1938), 263–284; Peter Dinzelbacher, “Die Offenbarungen der hl. Elisabeth von Scho¨nau: Bildwelt, Erlebnisweise und Zeittypisches,” Studien und Mittelungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Orderns 97 (1985): 462–482; Jeffrey F. Hamburger, “Art, Enclosure, and the Pastoral Care of Nuns,” in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone, 1992), 80–81. 11 For a classic treatment of late medieval spirituality as careening toward an ever greater reliance on subjectivity, streaked with high emotion and fueled by a feverish intensity, see Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 173–243. For a now standard discussion of the dissolution of a sense of community during liturgy, see Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Missarum Sollemnia), trans. Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1988), esp. 103– 127. On this matter, see, in addition, Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 97; John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century: A Historical Introduction and Guide for Students and Musicians ([1991] Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 113–114; Barbara Haggh, “Foundations or Institutions? On Bringing the Middle Ages into the History of Medieval Music,” Acta musicologica 68 (1996): 87– 128, esp. 89; Frank C. Senn, Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1997), 122– 138. Clifford Hugh Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1984), 221– 233, identifies the thirst for introspective reflection as contributing to a waning commitment to monastic community. For signs of the splintering of community within the common life and speculation on its origins, see, for example, ibid.; Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 315–340; Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), esp. 193–206. 12 See, for example, Jungmann, Roman Rite, 117; Klauser, Western Liturgy, esp. 98; Dorothy Gillerman, The Cloˆture of Notre-Dame and Its Role in the Fourteenth Century Choir Program (New York: Garland, 1977), 154– 155 and 194–197; Senn, Christian Liturgy, 212; Jef Lamberts, “Liturgie et spiritualite´ de l’eucharistie au xiiie sie`cle,” in Actes du Colloque Feˆte Dieu, 1246– 1996 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut d’e´tudes me´die´vales de l’Universite´ catholique de Louvain, 1999), 81– 95.

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A growing body of research has demonstrated, nonetheless, that medieval women and men, lay and religious, perceived themselves as thoroughly engaged in liturgical observances and taken up with their corporate implications as well as purposefully promoting others’ active participation in the liturgy.13 Scholars such as Cyprian Vagaggini and Jean Leclercq as well as, more recently, Caroline Walker Bynum, Jeffrey Hamburger, Bruce Holsinger, and Anne Bagnall Yardley have, furthermore, told us much about the spiritual significance to religious women of the Mass and the office.14 There has, however, been little sustained examination of the sense of community among nuns as it relates to the liturgy. If we want to know more about religious women’s attitudes about community in the context of the liturgy, we would do well to turn to the works produced at Helfta, which constitute the largest body of female-authored writings of the thirteenth century. In the first section of this article, I situate the monastery’s liturgical life in relation to broader aspects of the Helfta piety, I illustrate the prominence of the liturgy in Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s spirituality, and I consider the nuns’ understanding of the relationship between an individual’s subjective religious experience and formal prescribed communal worship—a topic that preoccupied medieval nuns more generally and the men who had responsibilities for their spiritual care.15 The convent’s literature is flooded with accounts of its principal visionaries’ experiences while in office and Mass, and in this article’s second section, I examine such accounts for what they can tell us about the visionaries’ sense of relatedness to the sisters with whom they worshiped—and their sense of separateness and difference from them. My interest is thus in the sisters’ attitudes during liturgical observances toward community among themselves, although the women’s understanding of who comprised their liturgical community was more expansive than this focus suggests. My concern throughout is not, therefore, 13 See, for example, John Bossy, “The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200–1700,” Past and Present 100 (August 1983), esp. 33, 59–60, and 92; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), esp. 92– 154; Charles Caspers, “Augenkommunion or Popular Mysticism,” in Bread of Heaven: Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion, ed. Charles Caspers, Gerard Lukken, and Gerard Rouwhorst (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995), 90; Gary Macy, “Commentaries on the Mass During the Early Scholastic Period,” in Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1999), esp. 158; Jacqueline Jung, “Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches,” Art Bulletin 82:4 (December 2000): 622–657. 14 Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions; Leclercq, “Mental Prayer”; Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary; Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire; Anne Yardley Bagnall, Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (New York: Palgrave, 2006). 15 Hamburger, “Art, Enclosure,” 88– 89.

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on the liturgy per se or liturgy as practice. It is, instead, about liturgy as context, as place and moment where experience occurs. The Book of Special Grace and the Herald offer a wealth of information about what was on the Helfta nuns’ minds during the liturgical observances that structured their daily life, information that is available to us primarily in the content of visions attributed to Mechtild and Gertrude. Both works consist largely in accounts of revelations, ecstasies, and spiritual teachings ascribed to Gertrude and Mechtild, the monastery’s spiritual luminaries, and in their prayers. They contain, in addition, a variety of testimonies to the exemplary devotion of these two women as well as to the piety of the cloister’s female inhabitants considered collectively. The centrality of community to the nuns’ religiosity is exemplified by the endeavor that produced the Herald and the Book of Special Grace, which was a communal and collaborative one, calling on the collective resources of the female members of the household, and one with almost no discernible male involvement.16 Mechtild and Gertrude are the central figures of the work with which each is associated. According to the Book of Special Grace and the Herald, both women were revered by the nuns of their monastery as well as by clergy and laypeople. Each was counted a beneficiary of Christ’s tender solicitude, his loyal oversight, and his indulgent correction; each was estimated a member of his close circle of friends, the saints and the angels, and a confidant of his mother, with all of whom, moreover, each woman had frequent dealings. In addition, both Mechtild and Gertrude exercised spiritual authority that accrued to them in large measure through the visions and ecstasies of which they were reckoned recipients. They served their sisters and others as intercessors and spiritual counselors and were valued as interpreters of the religious life, which they (as the works with which they are associated recount) embodied in their devoted observance of monastic rule and custom, their lavish love of Christ, and their reverent (if not always ready) obedience to his biddings. The Helfta literature offers insight into the attitudes, ideas, and experiences of two remarkable women and their monastic family, and it is directed primarily to contemporary and future religious of the household. Mechtild joined in crafting the Book of Special Grace, and Gertrude participated in the production of the Herald. We should be wary, however, of identifying any particular devotion, teaching, or revelation with either person: recent work has shown that neither book is accurately characterized as a raw account of Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s self-disclosures or a simple recording of their 16 See, for example, Hubrath, Schreiben; Hubrath, “Collective Work”; Grimes, “Writing as Birth”; Harrison, “What Treasure Is in This Book?”

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sisters’ observations of the two women. Composing this literature was a decades-long process that called on the varied contributions of an indeterminate number of nuns, whose own perceptions and concerns inform the style and color the content of the Herald and the Book of Special Grace, and the nature of whose contributions to these works is impossible to determine with precision. Each book tells us about Mechtild and Gertrude as their thoughts and experiences were refracted through multiple collaborators for the well-being of their cloistered community.17

I. “COME AND READ, FOR I WILL HELP YOU”: LITURGY AND THE HELFTA SPIRITUALITY Daily Mass and the divine office were the sisters’ primary activities and the pivot around which other matters of the monastery turned. The sisters sometimes attended Mass twice in one day, and they may have spent the majority of their waking moments chanting the eight canonical hours. Supplementary liturgical observances, such as the office of the dead, and quasi-liturgical gatherings, including chapter—the daily meeting in which business of the monastery was conducted—further filled their schedule.18 The liturgy was, to the nuns, marked off as an occasion for concentrated praise of God; it was shot through with opportunity to move closer to Christ, especially when he was received in communion. In the revelations they received regularly during liturgical observance, Christ often came all by himself to Gertrude and Mechtild; as the Book of Special Grace and the Herald relate, he frequently came with others. Visions interspersed throughout both books indicate that the nuns’ liturgical piety, in keeping with broader trends in late medieval religiosity, was undergirded by the conviction that the living and the saints regard one another as confederates who all together offer praise to God. As Gertrude is said to have related about a vision that came to her on the Feast of All Saints in which she 17 See especially Kurt Ruh, “Gertrud von Helfta: Ein neues Gertrud-Bild,” Zeitschrift fu¨r deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 12:1 (1992): 1 –20, and Anne L. Clark, “An Uneasy Triangle: Jesus, Mary, and Gertrude of Helfta,” Maria: A Journal of Marian Studies 1 (August 2000): 37– 56. 18 For the celebration of Mass twice each day, see, for example, Le He´raut, SC 331, Missa, 1:1–5, 284. And see, on this point, Dolan, St. Gertrude, 26. It is unclear how often the nuns received communion. They may have done so more frequently than once a week at Sunday Mass; ibid., 39, and M. Camille Hontoir, “La de´votion au saint sacrement chez les premiers Cisterciens (XIIe – XIIe sie`cles),” in Studia eucharistica, DCC anni a condito festo sanctissimi Corpus Christi 1246– 1946 (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandle, 1946), 146– 147. On the office of the dead at Helfta, see Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, 797, and for its recitation by Cistercian nuns, see Ailbe J. Luddy, The Cistercian Nuns: A Brief Sketch of the History of the Order from Its Foundations to the Present Day (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1931), 15.

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beheld a multitude of saints assembled in the monastery’s chapel, it is as if God the Father were a powerful paterfamilias who gathered into one great banquet all his chosen companions in a festival of praise.19 In office and in Mass, the nuns perceived that their voices raised in praise of God were frequently joined by a chorus of saints.20 The sisters not only praised God with the saints, they also praised the saints themselves, and the saints responded with solicitude to the pleadings and needs of the nuns. When an interdict prohibited the nuns from receiving communion, and Mechtild was sad to be deprived of the opportunity to receive, Christ appeared to her, wiped the tears from her eyes, and promised: “Today you shall see miracles.”21 She did. From the procession through the monastery and into the chapel that announced the beginning of the Mass to the final priestly blessing, Christ, Mary, and the saints joined with the sisters in a Mass in which the women were offered communion that would otherwise have been denied them. Christ was the celebrating priest; John the Evangelist and John the Baptist both assumed the role of lector; Luke and John the Baptist officiated with Christ; and the numerous saints gathered in the chapel chanted the psalms. When the sisters came before the altar, Christ offered to each the host, and the Virgin Mary held a gold straw [ fistula aurea] to Christ’s side from which the sisters drank.22 Ensconced in their choir stalls, the nuns were thus not remote from a larger liturgical community, and the monastery’s chapel was far more crowded than might be supposed. As the Helfta literature tells it, public common worship was the arena in which the nuns experienced vividly, celebrated, and solidified the bonds linking in one association all the living and the dead, with the exception of those in hell. Theirs was a liturgical sensibility buoyed by confidence in human beings’ capacity to provide to one another mutual assistance that made porous death’s divide.23 Liturgical observances were flush with possibility for the sisters to participate in lessening the penalties of souls in purgatory, to facilitate the washing of God’s grace over all the living, and 19

Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:55:2, 454–456. See, for example, Liber, 1:12, 39–40, 1:27, 96. Ibid., 1:27, 95: “‘Hodie videbis mirabilia.’” 22 As Holsinger has observed, the word fistula is ambiguous (Music, Body, and Desire, 398 n. 161). It may refer to the straws sometimes used to receive consecrated wine at communion (Margaret Winkworth, Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love, trans. and ed. Margaret Winkworth [New York: Paulist Press, 193], 248 n. 50; Clemons, Devotion, 544). The nuns of Helfta may have used the word fistula to mean a musical instrument, a “celestial pipe” (Music, Body, and Desire, 247 and 398 n. 161). For the presence of three principal ministers in the celebration of Mass—in addition to the celebrant, a deacon and subdeacon—see Harper, Western Liturgy, 121. 23 For a fine discussion of the late medieval expression of the communion of saints, see Brian Patrick McGuire, “Purgatory, the Communion of Saints, and Medieval Change,” Viator 20 (1989). 20 21

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even to augment the joy of the saints themselves.24 On one occasion, so we read, Gertrude received the host and then saw her soul in the form of a tree, whose root was affixed to the wound in Christ’s side. She felt Christ’s humanity and divinity infuse her, and she prayed that Christ would give to others the favor he thus bestowed on her. Then seeing herself, she saw: [that] each kind [of fruit] in which the fruit of the tree appeared began to exude a most efficacious liquid; some of which, flowing into higher places, increased the joy of those [in heaven]; some of which, flowing into purgatory, mitigated the punishments of those there; and some of which, flowing onto the earth, augmented the sweetness of the grace of the just and the bitterness of penitence of sinners.25 In a variety of ways, therefore, the Helfta literature attests to a generous and coherent sense of the liturgical community.26 This was a community characterized, in great part, by an almost continuous offering of praise to God and by the busy productivity associated with joining Christ in the

24 On the purgatorial piety of the nuns, see, for example, Dolan, St. Gertrude, 168– 185, and Barbara Newman, “On the Threshold of the Dead: Purgatory, Hell, and Religious Women,” in From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). For intercessory prayer during Mass among the nuns of Helfta, see Clemons, “Devotion,” 548 –550. The nuns incorporated heaven’s inhabitants more than any other group into their sense of their liturgical community. Dolan (St. Gertrude, 144– 153) and Vagaggini (Theological Dimensions) remark on the nuns’ intense interest in the communion of saints, as does Schmidt (“Mechtilde de Hackeborn,” col. 875). I am aware of little discussion of the nuns’ attribution to themselves of the power to affect the experience of the saints in heaven, including the ability to increase their joy and their merit. See, for example, Liber, 1:11, 34–35, 1:31, 106, 1:32, 111, 5:2, 319; Le He´raut, SC 331, 5:1:1:28, 52, SC 331, Missa, 9:22–24, 298. On this matter, see Anna Harrison, “The Joy of the Dead and the Helfta Nuns” (working paper presented at Death: Mortality and Immortality in Early Cultures, annual meeting of the Group for the Study of Early Cultures, University of California, Irvine, November 2008), 1 –17. 25 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:18:6:20–25, 86: “coeperunt singula in quorum specie apparuit arboris fructus efficacissimum liquorem desudare; cujus pars defluens in superios, ipsis gaudium cumulavit; pars vero defluens in Purgatorium, poenas eorum mitigavit; pars autem defluens in terras, justis dulcedinem gratiae, et peccatoribus amaritudinem poenitentiae augmentavit.” 26 There are limitations to the nuns’ notion of community, nonetheless. Thus, for example, they acknowledged explicitly the household’s stewards as members of their congregation (congregatio), but indications that the nuns were curious and concerned about the religious experience of these individuals are rare and are noteworthy in large part because they are exceptional. See, for example, ibid., SC 143, 3:17:3, 76–78, and SC 143, 3:68:1:1–11, 274. Moreover, the nuns during Mass gave scant consideration to the laity who sometimes joined them in the chapel; on the few occasions the Helfta literature refers to lay parishioners, it does so incidentally. See, for example, ibid., SC 143, 3:16:3, 70. The nuns were, furthermore, for the most part indifferent to the experience of the priest celebrating Mass. For the relative silence in the Herald and Book of Special Grace with regard to clergy, see Voaden, “All Girls Together,” 82. For a perspective that insinuates the “inclusivity” of the nuns’ sense of community, see Else Marie Wiberg Pedersen, “Divine Communication: Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Imagery of the Trinitarian God,” Magistra 14:2 (Winter 2008): 53.

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work of salvation. It was one in which members cultivated the sharing with one another of the spiritual benefits associated with any one group or individual. Virtually the whole of the nuns’ life appears to have been permeated by the liturgy.27 The annual cycles of feasts and seasons, together with the hours of the office, provided the basic chronological structure by which the nuns ordered and measured their days and the shifting seasons.28 Moreover, the mark of the liturgy is evident everywhere in verbal communication within the cloister.29 When Christ and the nuns express their longing and love, and when they rejoice in the satisfaction that they bring one another, they call upon the familiar and pliant language of the liturgy. For example, Christ on one occasion addressed Gertrude and avowed his love for her using words associated with the legend of St. Agnes, which the sisters may have known as an antiphon sung during the ceremony of a nun’s consecration.30 “Behold,” Christ declared, “I see the person whom I have already desired; I have that person for whom I have hoped; I am joined with her whom I loved with complete devotion while on earth.”31 The language of the liturgy furnished the means by which the nuns eavesdropped on God’s conversations with his friends, the saints and angels, and listened to tales the holy dead told them about earthly exploits and eternal bliss. It was the language of quiet conversation, of homey and erotic intimacy, of awesome reverence, and of joyous worship that ran throughout the cosmos. It is not surprising that the liturgy helped to organize the sisters’ thought and provided a governing framework for the convent’s literary creations. The Spiritual Exercises, the only surviving composition of which Gertrude appears to have been sole author, is a series of loosely organized prayers, chants, and litanies that are saturated with the language of the liturgy and whose basic organization depends on liturgical ritual.32 The depth and breadth of the liturgy’s impress on the form and content of the Book of

27

Leclercq has made this observation (“Mental Prayer”), and he presents a clear and thoughtful treatment of this topic. See also Jean Leclercq, “De´votion prive´e, pie´te´ populaire et liturgie au moyen aˆge,” in E´tudes de pastorale liturgiques, Vanves, 26– 28 janvier 1944, Lex orandi, vol. 1 (Paris: E´ditions du Cerf, 1944), 149–173. 28 See, for example, Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:6:2:1– 6, 256– 258, SC 139, 2:9:1:1–6, 268, SC 139, 2:23:5:8– 10, 334. 29 Leclercq, “Mental Prayer,” 4, makes this point. 30 Le He´raut, SC 331, 304 n. 14a, and 305 n. 1. 31 Ibid., SC 331, Missa, 14:3– 5, 305: “‘Ecce quod concupivi jam video; quod speravi jam teneo; illi sum junctus in spiritu, quam in terris positus tota devotione dilexi.’” As Doye`re notes (ibid., SC 331, 305 n. 1), the ascription of this language to Christ is noteworthy not least because it attributes to Christ a yearning for union with the soul that parallels the soul’s own desire for Christ. 32 The first four of Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises draw liberally from the liturgies for baptism, clothing, consecration, and profession, and the final three exercises have the office as their “background”; Lewis and Lewis, “Introduction,” 11. See, in addition, Hart, “Introduction.”

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Special Grace and the Herald are conspicuous.33 Indeed, it may be that the nuns’ confidence in the fluency with which they spoke what they believed to be the language of the universal church contributed to the authority and significance with which they invested the Herald and the Book of Special Grace.34 They wrote in a language that was, to them, intelligible, personal, and universal; it was the language in which God revealed himself in his scriptures to the world and spoke in plain and caring conversation with them.35 Just as the women’s creative engagement with the liturgy colored the larger life of the cloister, so, too, did a nun’s more obviously personal piety come with her when she entered into communal public worship and inform her experience of it, as Jean Leclercq argued over half a century ago and as Jeffrey Hamburger has more recently observed.36 The Herald describes a vision of Christ’s side pierced by an arrow of light that appeared to Gertrude in the chapel as one element in an extended process of supplication, desire, and fulfillment.37 A few days earlier, Gertrude had asked someone to pray before a crucifix that her heart be wounded with the arrow of God’s love. Gertrude subsequently received the wound of God’s love. We know the wounding took place after Gertrude attended Mass; it may have been stimulated by it. The chapter in which Gertrude describes this interrelated series of events concludes with 33 Pierre Doye`re, “Gertrude d’Helfta,” in vol. 6 of Dictionnaire de spiritualite´ asce´tique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. M. Villier, F. Cavallera, J. de Guibert, Andre´ Rayez, Charles Baumgartner, and M. Olphe-Galliard (Paris: G. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1967), col. 334; Pierre Doye`re, “Introduction,” in Le He´raut, SC 139, 25– 30; Jean Leclercq, “Exercices spirituals,” in vol. 4, part 2 of Dictionnaire de spiritualite´ asce´tique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, ed. M. Villier, F. Cavallera, J. de Guibert, Andre´ Rayez, Charles Baumgartner, and M. OlpheGalliard (Paris: G. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1961), cols. 1907– 1908; Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism—1200– 1350, in vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 273; Lewis and Lewis, “Introduction,” esp. 11– 12; Hart, “Introduction”; Hourlier and Schmitt, “Introduction,” in Les Exercices, SC 127; Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, esp. 742 and 794 –796. 34 Those responsible for the production of the Book of Special Grace and the Herald insist that each work was written at God’s command, that Christ was the primary author of each, and that each revealed God’s interactions with and concerns for his special friends, especially Gertrude and Mechtild, who model for the reader a relationship with Christ that underscores their receptivity to him. See Harrison, “What Treasure Is in This Book?” for the spiritual significance to its authors of the Herald and the Book of Special Grace. 35 For Latin as the probable language of the composition of the Herald and the Book of Special Grace, see ibid. For Gertrude’s sense that she is speaking for all humanity, see Leclercq, “Mental Prayer,” 4, and Anna Harrison and Caroline Walker Bynum, “Gertrude, Gender, and the Composition of the Herald of Divine Love,” in Freiheit des Herzens: Mystik bei Gertrud von He[l]fta, ed. Michael Bangert, vol. 2 of Mystik und Media¨vistik (Mu¨nster: Lit Verlag, 2004). 36 Leclercq, “Mental Prayer,” and Hamburger, “The Visual and the Visionary: The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions,” in The Visual and the Visionary. Vagaggini (Theological Dimensions) has highlighted the intimate connection between public (liturgical) prayer and Gertrude’s private prayer as described in the Herald. For a similar assessment of Mechtild’s spirituality, see Dieker, “Song of Love,” 240. 37 Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:5:2, 248–250.

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Gertrude’s admission that she has not been sufficiently grateful for the wound, and she explains that, since she has profited little from this and other gifts from God, she must write about them for the benefit of others. She had in mind the composition of the Herald. As the Herald itself tells it, God’s condescension toward her drove Gertrude’s participation in the whole of the literary venture. Although Christ’s merciful gifts are unmerited, he did demand something in return: Gertrude was constrained to share her gifts with others.38 Her role in the making of the Herald was crucial to her endeavor to do so. The brief chapter charting Gertrude’s wounding and her response to this gift and to others is, therefore, about much more than the satisfaction of one woman’s want. It indicates that multiple discrete expressions of piety—a conversation between sisters, the prayer of a fellow nun—as well as other communal spiritual practices (in this case, the creation of the Herald ) were tightly interwoven with the routine of corporate worship. There was easy congress and continuity between the religiosity that thrived inside and outside the confines of the liturgy. However permeable the boundary between the spirituality of corporate religious worship and that which was alive outside the context of the liturgy, there seems to have been something about the liturgy that encouraged intellectual creativity, focused reflection on the self, induced vision, and provided a spur to ecstasy.39 Gertrude herself locates Mass, the elevation of the host, and reception of communion as those occasions on which she received extraordinary gifts from God, including his visible presence and 38

Clark emphasizes gift-giving in all directions in the Herald: “An Uneasy Triangle,” 51. According to Felix Vernet, few works of mysticism “are more overtly liturgical” than is the Helfta literature; Medieval Spirituality (London: Sands, 1930), 220– 223 and 270. Vagaggini (Theological Dimensions, 777) has examined the way Gertrude’s mysticism and her liturgical observances influenced each other. Ann Marie Caron has shown that Mechtild’s visions are structured according to the cycle of the liturgical year, and she has argued that Mechtild’s visions should be understood as “visionary commentaries” on the “mystical meaning” of the cycle; “Taste and See the Goodness of the Lord: Mechthild of Hackeborn,” in Hidden Springs Cistercian Monastic Women, vol. 3, bk. 2 of Medieval Religious Women, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 512–513. Sabine B Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz: Zur Mystik des Zisterzienserinnenklosters Helfta im 13 Jahrhundert (Stuttgard-Bad: Connstatt, 1991), 77, identifies Gertrude and Mechtild as “liturgical mystics.” McGinn (Flowering, 270) and Hamburger (“Art, Enclosure,” 493 n. 221) are among the latest in a long line of scholars to have noted the important place of the liturgy in the visionary spirituality ascribed to Mechtild and to Gertrude. For visionary experiences outside of liturgical contexts that are as tender, intimate, and dramatic as any that occur during Mass or office, see, for example, Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:7:1, 260, SC 143, 3:45:2– 3, 202–206; Liber, 2:26, 168– 171, 3:10, 209– 210, 3:31, 235– 236. Ulrike Wiethaus has argued that “by recording where she experienced ecstatic pleasures and insights, Gertrude in turn filled the literal places and thus daily routine of her monastery with the promise of spiritual encounters with the divine”; “Spatial Metaphors, Textual Production, and Spirituality in the Works of Gertrud of Helfta (1256–1301/2),” in A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, ed. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 136. 39

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union with him. After Mechtild received communion, Christ pressed her heart to his heart so that they became one mass, and about Gertrude we read that: When she approached and had received the body of Christ, she recognized that her soul was shining like crystal, bright with sparkling splendor, and that the divinity of Christ that she received in herself shone through the crystal like gold miraculously enclosed.40 Objects associated with corporate worship sparked visions and became integrated into their content. One Sunday, Gertrude was in her choir stall when, gazing at a painted image of Christ in a book, she saw a ray of light like an arrow entering and withdrawing from the wound in Christ’s side.41 The particular words the nuns heard or chanted during liturgical observances also triggered visions. Such revelations are sometimes vivid visual manifestations of the nuns’ verbal declamations of devotion, and they are illustrations (and confirmations)42 of the efficacy of communal song. As the sisters processed to chapel singing the responsory Vidi Dominum facie ad faciem, the Lord showed his face to Gertrude.43 When Mechtild sang the verse Ora pro populo, Mary got up from her throne, genuflected, and prayed for the congregation, and as the sisters made mention of each choir of saints, each did as Mary had done, offering on bended knee a prayer to Christ on behalf of the nuns.44 To the holiest sisters—as the Herald and the Book of Special Grace relate—the language of the liturgy was an object of limitless fascination and a regular source of thought about the saints, the self, and even the institutional history of religious orders and their place in salvation history. Thus, for example, we read that, on the Feast of St. Bernard, Mechtild reflected on the words In medio Ecclesia, and Christ instructed her in the Benedictine Order’s many salutary contributions to the universal church.45 The Helfta literature suggests that the nuns were quick to embellish liturgical celebrations with questions peculiar to each and to delve 40 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:37:1:31–34, 180: “Hinc accedens, dum sumpsisset corpus Christi, recognovit animam suam velut crystallum niveo splendore perlucidam et susceptam in se Christi divinitatem tamquam aurum miraculose inclusam per cystallum splendere.” 41 Ibid., SC 139, 2:5:2, 248–250. Hamburger (“The Visual,” 125 –127) comments on this passage to draw attention to the way nuns harnessed art to foster visionary experience. For the Helfta nuns’ use of hand-held books during liturgical observances, see Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 251. For a general discussion of the use in thirteenth-century monasteries of art or devotional objects seen or handled in private and in communal settings to induce and focus visionary experience, see Hamburger, “The Visual,” 131– 148, esp. 131. 42 See Bynum (“Nuns of Helfta,” 218) on the nuns’ assuredness of the power and utility of the monastic practices in which they engaged. 43 Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:21:1, 322. 44 Liber, 1:31, 105 –106. 45 Ibid., 1:28, 97– 98. Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s ruminations on a specific word or series of words routinely ushered in appearances of Christ or compelled the attention of his saints, who provided responses to their questioning thoughts.

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into details of an observance that especially intrigued them. When Mechtild at Mass heard the priest recite the collect Infirmitatem nostram respice, quaesumus and wished to understand it more fully, Christ obliged her, pausing to tease out the meaning of each word and fashioning something like a gloss that might have been lifted from a written document or fitted into one.46 Liturgical observance offered individual nuns the opportunity for intellectual productivity, perhaps paralleling, supplementing, or fueling the work a contemporary monastic reader might associate with the scriptorium.47 Gertrude and Mechtild emerge as lively and engaged participants in the liturgy, sensitive to the intricacy of the individual components that comprised each observance. The physical objects Mechtild and Gertrude saw and touched, the words they chanted and to which they listened, seeped into their imagination. They give rise to and became the stuff of visions, suffusing communal song, reception, or a gospel reading with tangled layers of meaning, charging everyday routine with sometimes exalted, sometimes elaborate, and often weighty intellectual meaning, as well as deeply personal significance. As the literature relates, prescribed communal observances were, for Mechtild and Gertrude, vibrantly supple: both women were prepared to seek and to find in Mass and in office a response to shifting needs and to experience, during the liturgy, the quickening of intellectual curiosities and of desires as well as their satisfaction. The Helfta nuns did not discount the practical difficulties of reconciling the inclination to tarry in meditative or mystical delights with the obligation to hold fast to behavior appropriate to liturgical observances.48 They certainly did not perceive the extravagant spiritual proclivities of an individual sister and her commitment to rigorous observance of common worship as in opposition to each other; scholars such as Hilda Graef and Cyprian Vagaggini are right to assert that the literature of Helfta provides relatively little evidence of the visionary’s exploits disrupting common religious observances.49 The nuns knew, nevertheless, that an active inner life might draw a sister’s concentration from communal worship.50 They were conscious that an 46 Ibid., 1:20, 74– 75. And see, for example, the extended gloss on the Alleluia of the Easter Mass: Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:27:4:264–266. 47 Holsinger has noticed that the “glosses” the nuns’ visions provided were not culled from authoritative texts; they are ones that the women themselves elaborated (Music, Body, and Desire, 243). He has argued that whereas women’s liturgical practice has often been seen as “inherently conservative,” the Helfta mysticism is exceptional for “the frequency with which it transforms the structure, practice, and meaning of Christian liturgy” (ibid., 242). 48 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:44:1– 2, 198 –202. 49 Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, 777– 778; Graef, “Flowering”; and see, too, MarieGenevie`ve Guillous, “La louange a` l’e´cole de sainte Gertrude,” Collectanea Cisterciensia 53 (1991): 175. 50 For example, Liber, 2:4, 140–141.

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individual’s spiritual ardor might drain her of the strength necessary to keep the rigorous schedule of Mass, office, and supplemental liturgical observances, that physical fortitude was essential to meet the taxing demands that chant exacted on the body.51 The visionaries did not always manage to balance the pull of revelation and ecstasy with the maintenance of public communal worship. Once, while the sisters were in choir, the Lord rushed from heaven with arms extended to embrace Mechtild, who became so wholly absorbed in God that members of the congregation were obliged to carry her as if lifeless from her stall.52 Revelations also readied their recipient for her liturgical labors and shook her free of thoughts that vied with liturgical services for her attention. When during vespers, Mechtild’s clothes were sprinkled with dust—a sign of a preoccupation that took over her mind—Mary appeared and with her hand wiped away the dust.53 The Book of Special Grace thus indicates that the content of the vision swept away the remnants of what prevented its recipient from fully engaging in the office and not that the vision itself was a source of Mechtild’s distraction. In addition, her revelations supported the visionary when her attention was divided.54 During Mass on the Feast of St. John before the Latin Gate, Gertrude was reflecting on writings about the special gifts John received from God; when she determined to shift her attention to what was being chanted, the saint himself appeared before her, and, “in a wondrous way” (mirabilis modus), enabled her to continue to attend to the writings about him and at the same time to understand each verse of the sequence sung in his honor.55 The Helfta literature, furthermore, documents the markedly practical assistance that Christ at times lent the sisters when their minds wandered from the business of the office during the canonical hours as well as when fatigue or weakness overwhelmed them. When Gertrude fixed her attention on the Baby Jesus at each note she chanted in office, she found she could sing more carefully.56 As the time for communion approached on the Feast of All Saints, Gertrude worried because 51 See, for example, Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:54:1, 232– 234, and SC 143, 3:59:1– 2, 242– 244. For examples of the physicality of Mechtild’s liturgical practice, see Liber, 3:7, 205, and 5:30, 366, and for the toll common worship took on the nuns’ bodies, see Dolan, St. Gertrude, 134. 52 Liber, 2:4, 140– 141. 53 Ibid., 1:13, 42–43. For dust as image of sin in the Book of Special Grace, see Rosalynn Jean Voaden, “Articulating Ecstasy: Image and Allegory in The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn” (Ph.D. diss., University of Victoria, 1990), 63. 54 Finnegan (Scholars and Mystics, 107) observes that, during the office, Gertrude was able to “remain in a state of contemplation while conforming to the actions of the community,” and Graef (“Flowering,” 173) remarks that Gertrude received the grace to follow the office while in ecstasy. 55 Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:34:3, 286. The Herald does not tell us on what specific texts Gertrude was reflecting or whether during Mass she was holding in her hands the writings in question. 56 Ibid., SC 139, 2:16:2, 290– 292.

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she had asked no one to help her; as the text relates, she had for a long time been unable to walk without assistance. Christ brushed away her concerns as he came to her side. Bracing her with the “arm” [ulna] of divine grace, he ensured that she was able to receive communion.57 During the course of liturgical observances, Mechtild’s union with God fortified her: as she sang, each breath she drew, she drew from the heart of God.58 A passage from the Book of Special Grace illustrates both that Mechtild’s intense commerce with God tired her, compromising her capacity to join in the office, and that Christ’s presence provided the enervated visionary with the support she needed to assume her liturgical duties. It suggests, furthermore, that coincidence of this sort formed a common pattern in Mechtild’s routine: many times it happened to her that when at matins she was fully with God in great fruition and sweetness—so that she seemed to have squandered all strength and was unable to read her lesson—the Lord said to her: “Come and read, for I will help you.” And beginning the reading in this way, she completed it with great constancy.59 Elsewhere we learn that as Mechtild read the Gospel during matins, the Lord so fully filled her with the sweetness of his grace that she was carried out of the choir onto a couch. Resting here, she asked Christ to wake her at the appropriate time; at prime (so we read) she beheld standing before her a beautiful young man, whose presence charged her with energy.60 The nuns of Helfta regarded a finely focused concentration on the self in relation to God as sometimes compromising an individual’s ability to join in liturgical practices conceived of as beneficial to others. They developed no elaborate or formal rationale reconciling individual religious experience and communal worship. The Herald and the Book of Special Grace provide evidence of the relative ease with which the nuns harmonized a bustling interior life with the demands of corporate worship. For much of her adult life, Mechtild was the convent’s chantress, in charge of liturgical celebration and responsible for leading the nuns’ chant in the divine office. Yet there is no indication in the Book of Special Grace that her visionary life undermined her in this role. In the nuns’ own depiction of their daily life, they claim to have worked out among themselves such challenges as exceptional individuals 57 Ibid., SC 255, 4:55:6, 460. For Gertrude’s concerns about her waning physical strength, see, for example, SC 255 4:34:1, 284. 58 Liber, 3:7, 205. 59 Ibid., 2:5, 141: “multoties sibi accidit ut, dum in Matutinis plena Deo in fruitione magna et dulcidine esset, ita ut omnem fortitudinem consumpsisse nec lectionem suam legere posse videtur, diceret ad eam Dominus: ‘Vade et lege; nam ego te juvabo.’ Sicque cum magna constantia lectionem incipiens eam complevit.” 60 Ibid., 2:6, 141–142. For Christ’s energizing presence in Gertrude’s life, see Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:13:1:1– 5, 282.

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among them brought to communal religious observances. Even as the Helfta literature acknowledges interruptions to communal observances that visions, ecstasies, and idiosyncratic physical manifestations of piety might bring about, it gives no indication that Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s sisters or their abbess regarded them as irksome. When disruptions did occur, the literature urges its cloistered readers to interpret them not as signs of laxity in observance but as testimonies to holiness: the picture Special Grace offers of Mechtild slipping from her liturgical duties and carried as if dead from the choir evokes Mary’s assumption as related in a vision that comes to Mechtild—the Book of Special Grace describes both women as “wholly absorbed in God.”61 Private, intimate encounters with Christ, Mary, and the saints sometimes hindered Gertrude and Mechtild from playing an active role in communal worship; frequently, as Vagaggini observed, they provided support that furthered the commitments associated with Mass and office.62 Special Grace and the Herald are sanguine about reconciling fervent individual piety with conformity to exacting communal standards of behavior. This seems to have been the case at least in part because the nuns detected that advantages redounded both to the individual visionary and to her sisters in consequence of such devotion.

II. “ENJOY ME, EACH OF YOU”: SELF AND OTHER IN LITURGICAL OBSERVANCES For the visionaries among the nuns, chanting with and to Mary and the saints in liturgy moved seamlessly to talking with them. The revelations and ecstasies that came to Gertrude and Mechtild while they were in the chapel or in chapter involved them in casual encounters and emotionally charged meetings with Christ’s mother as well as the saints and angels. Complex discussions with Mary and the saints and consequential exchanges with them sometimes occurred within discrete assignations and lingered over a single antiphon, sequence, or alleluia, for example; they sometimes took place over the course of several meetings, extending through many days and a number of liturgical events. Thus, for example, the solicitousness and sternness Mary exhibits toward Gertrude, the stance, at once placating and demanding, that Gertrude assumes before Mary, and the sometimes fraught tenor of their relationship are evoked in a series of visions of the Virgin that came to Gertrude in Mass on successive feast days.63 On the Feast of Christ’s Nativity, Gertrude received the 61

Liber, 1:26, 90 and 2:4, 140: “tota absorpta in Deum.” Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, 777. Gertrude’s Marian piety has generated much interest. See, for example, Dolan, St. Gertrude, 124–143; Wilhelm Preger, Geschichte der deutschen Mystik bis zum Tode Meister Eckharts, vol. 1 of Geschichte der deutschen Mystik nach den Quellen untersucht und dargestellt (Leipzig: 62 63

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Baby Jesus, fresh from his mother’s womb, and clasped him to her breast; some days later, on the Feast of the Purification, Gertrude’s own desires were at cross-purposes with the mother’s determination to wrest her Son from Gertrude.64 Addressing herself to Christ, Gertrude writes: while the procession was taking place in which you . . . chose to be carried to the temple during the antiphon cum inducerent, your virginal mother—with a severe expression on her face, as though she were not pleased with the way I was taking care of you, who are the honor and joy of her immaculate virginity—asked me to return you to her, you, the beloved little Boy of her womb. And I—remembering that it was because of the grace she found with you that she was given to sinners for their reconciliation and to the desperate for their hope—exclaimed in these words: “O mother of goodness, was it not for this that the fountain of mercy was given to you as your Son, so that you might obtain grace for those who need it and that you might cover with your copious charity the multitude of our sins and defects (1 Pet. 4:8)?” At this, her face took on the expression of serene goodness. It was as if she showed me that, although I merited apparent sternness for my evil deeds, she was, nevertheless, wholly filled up with internal charity, and she was pervaded to the marrow with divine charity. Her face soon lit up at my humble words, which had driven away all appearance of severity and replaced [it with] the serene sweetness that was natural to her temperament.65

Do¨rffling und Franke, 1874), 129, whose analysis of the role of Mary in Gertrude’s piety anticipates claims in Sharon K. Elkins, “Gertrude the Great and the Virgin Mary,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 66:4 (December 1997): 720– 734; Clark, “Unequal Triangle”; Gertrud Jaron Lewis, “Maria im mystischen Werk Gertruds von Helfta,” in “Vor dir steht die leere Schale meiner Sehnsucht”: Die Mystik der Frauen von Helfta, ed. Michael Bangert and Hildegund Keul (Leipzig: St. Benno Buch- und Zeitschriftenverlagsgesellschaft, 1998), 81–94. On Mechtild’s Marian piety, which has attracted less attention, see Philibert Schmitz, Les Moniales, vol. 7 of Histoire de l’Ordre de Saint-Benoıˆt (Lie`ge: Les E´ditions de Maredsous, 1956), 300 –301. 64 Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:16, 290– 298. Kate Greenspan provides several examples from thirteenth-century hagiographies of similar encounters between holy women and Mary; “Matre Donante: The Embrace of Christ as the Virgin’s Gift in the Visions of 13th-Century Italian Women,” Studia Mystica 13:2/3 (Summer/Fall 1990): 26– 37. 65 Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:16:3:1– 19, 292–294: “cum celebraretur Processio illa qua tu . . . in templum duci elegisti, inter Antiphonam: Cum inducerent, virginea mater tua te filiolum dilectum uteri sui reddi sibi a me repetiit vultu severo, quasi minus ad placitum sibi educassem te, qui es immaculatae virginitatis ipsius honor et gaudium. Et ego recolens quod ob gratiam quam invenit apud te, peccatoribus in reconciliatricem et in spem desperatis data esset, prorupi in haec verbis: ‘O Mater pietatis, immo ad hoc datus est tibi misericordiae fons in filium, ut omnibus gratia egentibus eam obtineas, et multitudinem peccatorum ac defectuum nostrorum operiat charitas tua copiosa.’ Inter quae illa benigna serenum et placibilem praetendens vultum, ostendit quod quamvis meis exigentibus malis mihi severa appareret repletam eam tamen usque ad summum visceribus charitatis, et pertransitam medullitus dulcedine divinae charitatis; mox enituit dum ad tam exigua verbula severitas praetensa discessit, et naturaliter ingentia serena dulcedo processit.”

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There is not a hint in the Helfta literature that heaven’s inhabitants are cocooned by the joy of eternity in serene indifference to the little victories, the trials, the impetrations of the living, or to their queries, anxieties, and devotions.66 During her conversations at matins with John the Evangelist on his feast day, Gertrude put to John questions about his earthly life and the content of his writings. The author of the fourth Gospel responded by relating to Gertrude his experience of the Last Supper, explaining to her his mission, and divulging to her aspects of his experience about which he had until then kept silent.67 At matins on Benedict’s feast day, Gertrude asked the saint what reward he received for his death; Benedict informed her that because he breathed his last while at prayer, his breath—more delicious than that of all the other saints—charms heaven’s inhabitants with its sweetness.68 When, singing with her sisters on the Feast of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, Gertrude worried that her attention to God diminished the praise counted as Elisabeth’s own, Elisabeth assured Gertrude that she accepted the nun’s song with infinite gratitude.69 The nuns believed that to enter into a fellowship with the saints was to approximate the closeness with Christ that belonged to his heavenly friends. Thus, we read, for example, that during matins John the Evangelist appeared to Gertrude and led her before Christ. John took Gertrude and placed her on the Lord’s right side, where Christ’s open wound lay—the wound that provided her with access to Christ’s heart, source of all sweetness and the gateway to his divinity.70 John subsequently granted Gertrude a vision by 66

Similar to Christ, the saints are easily moved by the sisters’ desires and requests and sensitive to them. Liber, 1:25, 88; Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:4:4:1–12, 64– 65. 67 Ibid., SC 255, 4:4:4, 64– 66. Theresa A. Halligan (The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn, ed. and trans. Theresa A. Halligan [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979], 41) remarks on the dramatic dialogue many of Mechtild’s visions contain. On the centrality of dialogue to the Herald and the Book of Special Grace, see Spitzlei, Erfahrungsraum Herz. Their conversations attest to a collegiality and mutual engagement between the visionaries and particular saints that—with the exception of Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s conversations with Christ—is without parallel in the Helfta literature. See, for example, Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s relationship with John; Liber, 1:6, 21– 24, and Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:4, 58–80. For Gertrude’s devotion to John and the influence of his gospel on her thought, see Dolan, St. Gertrude, 144–149; Michael Bangert, “A Mystic Pursues Narrative Theology: Biblical Speculation and Contemporary Imagery in Gertrude of Helfta,” Magistra 2:2 (Winter 1996): 3– 30. I am aware of no studies on the role that John the Evangelist plays in Mechtild’s devotions. Conversations between the individual visionaries and Christ are more numerous than conversations between the women and the saints. The nuns were, in fact, far more interested in the saints as a group than in individual saints among them. There is fairly little scholarship on the community of saints in the piety of Helfta. The most insightful consideration is Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions. 68 Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:11:4, 130. 69 Ibid., SC 255, 4:56, 462. 70 Ibid., SC 255, 4:4:3– 4, 62–66. John placed himself on Christ’s left side. He did so mindful that Gertrude could not easily penetrate as could he—now of one body with Christ—to the inside of Christ’s body.

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which she saw enclosed in Christ’s heart “the immense ocean of the divinity,” and in that ocean John swam, with delight and freedom.71 Surely this vision is something like a pledge and a beckoning toward like heavenly delights that Gertrude may hope will be her own. Through the accumulated weight of engagements such as this, Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s relationships with Mary and with a few of the saints—including John the Evangelist, John the Baptist, and Catherine of Alexandria—come to form distinctive patterns and to acquire the patina of a shared history.72 Christ fostered the women’s engagement with the saints, talking with the nuns about the saints’ exemplary lives, holy writings, and celestial joys as well as about the women’s devotion to the saints. During Mass on the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, Christ recounted to Mechtild the laudable emotions Mary Magdalene directed toward him;73 during Mass on the Feast of Pope Gregory, Christ and Gertrude spoke about Gregory’s writings and about the honor he received from his fellow saints because his literary labors excited others to devotion;74 on Bernard’s feast day, Christ related to Mechtild the glory that now belonged to Bernard, who because he was so filled with love of God enkindled this love in others.75 During liturgical observances, Christ himself showered Mechtild and Gertrude with his attentions.76 In such instances, the visionaries fixed their sight on God, who showed them who they were and ought to be. When Mechtild received Christ in communion, she heard him say: “I am in you and you are in me, and I will not leave you for eternity.”77 Gertrude relates that Christ on occasion kissed her ten times or more as she chanted a single psalm.78 Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s visions witness the mutuality of emotion that bound each woman with Christ, who repeatedly singled out each with a fierce proprietary love: “Your soul is mine,” Christ made known to Mechtild in the middle of Mass.79 Revelations received during liturgy were 71

Ibid., SC 255, 4:4:58– 9, 66: “immensus pelagus divinitatis.” See, for example, Liber, 1:32, 111, and Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:42, 332–336. Liber, 1:25, 86–87. 74 Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:10, 124. 75 Liber, 1:28, 97–98. 76 For Christ’s accessibility, see, for example, ibid., 2:20, 157– 158, and 2:23, 165– 166. On this matter, see Preger, Geschichte, 116–132, and Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta,” 185 and 210. In spite of occasional intrusions into their consciousness of doubts about Christ’s love for them, Mechtild and Gertrude are portrayed as enjoying security in Christ’s love for them and a strong sense of his nearness to their needs. It is sometimes Christ who aids the women in their relationship with the saints; he inserts himself repeatedly into the nuns’ dealings with his mother (see, for example, Liber, 1:44, 128). On Christ mediating between Mary and Gertrude, and for examples of this, see Elkins, “Gertrude,” and especially Clark, “Unequal Triangle.” 77 Liber, 1:1, 10: “Tu in me et ego in te, et in aeternum non derelinquam te.” And see ibid., 2:24, 166. 78 Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:21:4:18–26, 326. 79 Liber, 1:23, 82: “anima tua mea est.” 72 73

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characterized by the visionary’s candid and potent preoccupation with herself in relation to God—cowering before God the Father, luxuriating in Christ’s embrace, or comforted by his approbation. On the Feast of St. Matthew, Gertrude reclined on Christ’s breast and, as the priest elevated the chalice, she determined that she had contributed little to the offering since she suffered insufficiently for Christ; she then cast herself on God’s mercy as she threw herself on the floor at his feet. Christ immediately lay on the ground by her side and soothed her, saying that he could not live happily without her. In this moment, Gertrude knew Christ had selected her from among all souls, in heaven and on earth, as uniquely compelling his love.80 Visions such as those I have discussed display Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s steady fascination with their own internal state—with their feelings of remorse, shame, or gratitude. Gertrude and Mechtild, so the Herald and Book of Special Grace relate, were convinced that Christ—as well as Mary and the saints—spoke directly to them during the liturgy. They were sure that Christ was desirous of their presence in the liturgy and that he was attentive to their contributions to it: “Lord, what do you do when I pray or recite psalms?” Mechtild asked Christ. “I listen,” he replied.81 Indeed, the visionaries routinely placed themselves virtually at the center of the liturgy’s significance. A sense of the self as singular in the sight of God—as singularly adored and singularly unworthy of such adoration—flourished in a corporate setting. Exactly because it promoted encounter with Christ and brought with it a bevy of social relationships with the saints, the liturgy sharpened a sense of self, offering the nuns opportunities to plumb with delicacy and deliberation their own varying inner states and to wonder about self in relation to God and his heavenly friends.82 Within this context, Mechtild and Gertrude reveled in the sense that they were special—in their peculiar needs and wants and devotions, different from those of others and worthy of their own (and God’s) consideration—and they indulged in a relationship with Christ that they believed was marked off for him among his many relationships as precious, necessary, and vitalizing. 80 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:5:1, 26. And see, for example, ibid., SC 139, 3:21, 112–114, and SC 139, 2:14, 286. Vagaggini, Theological Dimensions, 758, comments on the loving encounters with Christ that Gertrude experienced in a liturgical setting. 81 Liber, 3:16, 217: “‘Domine, quid agis cum oro, vel psalmos lego?’ . . . ‘Ego ausculto.’” 82 The Helfta nuns were not, of course, unique in this regard, as literature on visionaries establishing relationships with the saints in the monastic context of the liturgy has shown. Scholars such as Barbara Newman and Anne Clark, for example, have drawn attention to the way in which the twelfth-century Benedictine nun Elisabeth of Scho¨nau drew on her experience of liturgy to cultivate relationships with the saints and mined the liturgy as a source of profoundly personal significance: Anne L. Clark, Elisabeth of Scho¨nau: A Twelfth-Century Visionary (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 101– 111; Barbara Newman, “Introduction,” in Hildegard of Bingen: Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 46– 47.

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Although often stimulated by moments in the office or Mass, her revelations frequently cast members of the congregation outside the visionary’s consideration and left her without recognition that she was in the choir. Such revelations suggest that Gertrude and Mechtild sometimes longed for distance between themselves and their sisters as well as for privacy and that they found both in abundance within corporate worship. Neither the Herald nor the Book of Special Grace describes the individual nun yearning to tear away from the routine rounds of common worship to sequester herself from her sisters so as to better search out God and savor him. It may be that the nuns’ intensely corporate life both created the hunger in an individual nun to carve out for herself a world apart from that of her sisters and provided her with numerous occasions to become skilled at obtaining that for which she longed—of attaining, that is, to an arena in which the self, insulated from fellow nuns, might enter into reverie and ecstasy as well as into conversation with Christ and his holy friends and family. Visions may have offered a welcome and delicious respite from the hubbub of communal life. They may have been a retreat from its humdrumness, providing entry into a larger community, crowded with chatty and diverse companions, with whom the visionaries cultivated complex one-on-one relationships. Their brushes with Christ, his friends, and his mother were sometimes winsome and welcoming, and they were at other times strained; over and over again (so the Helfta literature insists), God and the saints during the liturgy trained their reserves on moving Mechtild and Gertrude toward salvation.83 They encouraged both women’s cultivation of private relationships with them during liturgical observances, and they abetted the visionaries’ attention to their internal state. Christ and the saints also strove against the women’s sometimes inward focus, and the visionaries of their own accord liberally incorporated their 83 As the Herald and the Book of Special Grace depict it, living in a community in which the majority of waking hours was spent in the company of others brought with it an array of burdens. Gertrude and Mechtild express a weariness of the company of others and a longing to withdraw from the presence of people and seek solace in isolated association with Christ. See, for example, Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:47:1, 212. See Preger (Geschichte, 131) for Gertrude’s yearning to be alone with Christ. Scholars have long pointed to the desire on the part of late medieval religious for, as Penelope Johnson puts it, “respite from total togetherness” (Equal in Monastic Profession, 194). A. Mary F. Robinson (“The Convent of Helfta,” Fortnightly Review 40 [1886]: 641– 658) suggests that the visions that came to Gertrude and Mechtild delivered them from chronic tedium. Clark has noticed that her visions gave Elisabeth of Scho¨nau entry into a world more interesting to her than that of the convent (Elisabeth of Scho¨nau, 101) and the content of which helped to ease her “spiritual malaise” (ibid., 107). Hamburger remarks on nuns’ attempts to find arenas of privacy within the communal life (“Art, Enclosure,” 80–89 and 477 n. 92). Jo Ann Kay McNamara documents sisters’ efforts to protect their solitude: Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 332. For nuns’ manipulation of the liturgy to elevate their mood and lift themselves out of depression, see Yardley, Performing Piety, 145.

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sisters into their thoughts and actions. When, during a liturgical service, Gertrude or Mechtild brought into their exchanges with God a forceful focus on the self—on their feelings of unworthiness before his majesty, their fears about the public exposure of their revelations, their anxieties about not having sufficiently praised Mary—Christ, Mary, and the saints from time to time obliged the visionaries to expand the horizon of their concern, so that a reflection or revelation that begins with a starkly individualistic focus pans out to include other people. A movement from concentrated consideration of the self to a broader perspective that includes others is evident in the following vision, which Gertrude received during Mass. Gertrude was stung with a feeling of unworthiness, so that she dared not look up at the elevation of the host. Christ acknowledged Gertrude’s lowliness, but he did not permit her to remain in self-referential reflection, however accurate her selfassessment. He urged Gertrude to participate in the Mass rather than burrow into her humility, insisting that Gertrude further the salvation of others by gazing at the elevated host: When a skillful mother wishes something to be worked in silk or pearls, sometimes she places her little child in a higher place, so that the child can hold the thread or the pearl or help in another way. In this way, I have set you in an elevated place so that you take part in this Mass. If, truly, you extended your will to this task freely, [and] with whatever difficulties, you were willing to serve, so that this oblation would have full effect—in accord with its dignity—in all Christians, those living as well as those dead, in this way you [will] have helped me best in my work.84 Gertrude would have refused to raise her eyes to the host. Christ had other plans for her. He did not countenance in Gertrude a sinking into the self that would disassociate her from productive devotions by which each member of the liturgical community might help Christ in his work on behalf of all Christians.85 The revelations and reflections that came to Gertrude and Mechtild within Mass, office, and chapter contain numerous incidental remarks that indicate that a keen sensitivity to the needs and desires of other individuals as well as to the well-being of the nuns as a collective was an integral (if not always 84 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:6:1:9–18, 28: “‘Cum mater aliqua artificiosa operari voluerit de serico vel margaritis, quandoque parvulum suum in eminentiori loco ponit, ut sibi filum vel margaritas teneat vel aliquod tale adjuvanmen impendat. Sic ego te in eminentiori statuens Missae huic interesse disposui; tu vero si extenderis voluntatem tuam ad hoc quod libenter, quanto-cumque difficili labore, ad hoc servire velles, ut haec oblatio in omnibus Christianis tam vivis quam defunctis secundum dignitatem suam plenum sortiretur effectum, tunc optime, pro modulo tuo, me adjuvisti ad opus meum.’” 85 For the notion that viewing the consecrated host with devotion integrated the viewer more fully into the community of the faithful, see Caspers, “Augenkommunion,” 90.

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welcome) component of their liturgical life. They underscore the visionary’s attention to the piety of her sisters, as when the Herald relates that Gertrude noticed during chapter that, in the person of the prioress, the convent acknowledged its faults before the abbess and perceived subsequently that Christ offered absolution.86 And they draw attention to the benefits to herself of the visionary’s attentiveness: Gertrude on one occasion became aware of Christ’s presence in chapter exactly by the devotion she observed in her sisters.87 They convey, in addition, the visionaries’ consciousness (or the ascription by their sisters to the visionaries) of God’s gratification in their sympathy for their sisters and in pious practices in which the nuns engaged in common. When, at the introit of Christmas Mass, Gertrude held the delicate Baby in her arms, she linked her reception of this gift to prayers she had offered before the feast for someone in trouble.88 An awareness of God’s delight in the small favors she performed to further her sisters’ liturgical practices intruded into Gertrude’s thought: during Mass on another occasion, Gertrude noticed that her soul had been adorned with a garment encrusted with precious stones because at matins, although illness made her weak, she soldiered on to read a second time a nocturne with another sister.89 The nuns’ revelations often indicate Christ’s (or the saints’) approbatory recognition of the prayers the nuns recited together, and they sometimes contain his (or their) commentaries on such prayers. Thus, for instance, Mary appeared during Mass to Mechtild, and she conveyed to her the excellence of the prayer Ave Maria, explained to Mechtild the meaning of its component words, and related to her the sweetness that she, Mary, received from this prayer.90 In a pattern we find again and again, Mechtild and Gertrude include in their visions prayers for others and routinely bring back to individual sisters the messages, pledges, and prayers they collect in the course of their excursions.91 Thus, for example, when Mechtild prayed to St. Catherine on behalf of a particular sister, Catherine urged the sister, through Mechtild, to recite an antiphon for the saint.92 When Mechtild proferred to John the Evangelist the prayers of another sister, John instructed Mechtild to tell her, “I shall prepare a feast for all the saints out of all she 86

Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:2:13, 42. Ibid., SC 255, 4:2:8, 34. 88 Ibid., SC 139, 2:16:2, 290–292. 89 Ibid., SC 143, 3:61:1, 246–248. 90 Liber, 1:42, 126–127. As McGinn has observed (Flowering, 271), Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s visions and ecstasies “take place in and for the community.” 91 It would not be odd if portions of the material that comprises Gertrude’s Spiritual Exercises came to Gertrude as she participated in the liturgy, although there is no direct evidence for this. It is, after all, in the context of the liturgy that Gertrude sometimes receives prayers as spiritual gifts for other nuns. 92 Liber, 1:32, 111. 87

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has offered to me.”93 Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s revelations frequently concern the whole of the cloister, living and dead: Gertrude at Mass saw Mary sheltering under her mantle those who had commended themselves to her protection;94 Mechtild beheld the provost’s soul, which, in heaven, had assumed the form of a cloister and in whose beautiful windows sat souls in the form of statues—representations of deceased, holy members of the household.95 Visions that highlight Mechtild’s or Gertrude’s intimacy with Christ in the liturgy sometimes express simultaneously a sense of service. When, during Mass on the Feast of All Saints, Christ came to Mechtild and pressed his mouth to the mouth of her soul, his kisses were more than a mark of love, desire, or union. They were a granting to Mechtild of the power to praise and to pray—and to preach.96 The Herald and the Book of Special Grace insist that even while in the midst of spiritual exploits in which the visionary and Christ are wrapped in familiarity, a concern for the welfare of others might enter into the visionary’s reverie. When Gertrude kissed the wound in Christ’s side at each verse that she, together with her sisters, intoned in chapel, Christ expressed how welcome these kisses were to him. The modern reader may be struck by the graphic nature of the image and miss what comes next: Gertrude asked that Christ teach her a short prayer that others might recite and that would be equally pleasing to him as were her kisses.97 Christ complied with Gertrude’s request, impressing on her mind three brief verses, which, if uttered “in honor of the five wounds and kissing devoutly the same rosy wounds of the Lord,” would honor him as greatly as did her kisses.98 As this example illustrates, the Helfta literature attests to the fluidity with which the visionaries sometimes moved between engagement with Christ and purposeful attention to others. As the source of innovative meditation, this vision speaks to Gertrude’s desire to help her sisters bring pleasure to Christ, and it gives value to the day-to-day practices in which all the sisters might engage. From God’s vantage point—so the Herald conveys—there is no clear divide between Gertrude’s vision and the visualizing meditation Gertrude offers her sisters; if the point is to gratify God, they are

93

Ibid., 1:6, 23: “‘Ex omnibus his quae mihi obtulit, sanctis omnibus convivium praeparabo.” Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:48:4, 360–362. As Doye`re points out, the nuns of Helfta may have been aware of visual and literary representations of the Virgin thus depicted and sometimes termed Mother of Mercy (ibid., SC 255, 362 n. 1). 95 Liber, 5:10, 335. 96 Ibid., 1:1, 9. On this passage, see Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire, 243. For the visionaries’ priestly authority, see Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta,” esp. 224. 97 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:49:1, 216–218. 98 Ibid., SC 143, 3:49:1:24–25, 218: “in honorem quinque vulnerum Deo, et eadem rosea vulnera Domini devotius deosculando.” 94

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analogous.99 Thus, even as the Herald does not shirk from documenting difference among the sisters—the Lord, “beautiful and delightful,” placed his “sweet wounds” within Gertrude’s immediate reach, and expressed to her the satisfaction he took in her ministrations—it forebears a rigid distinction between the anonymous sisters, who are the intended recipients of the meditation, and the holy woman at its center.100 It bears witness to an ease in coupling and comparing the visionary forays of one respected sister with meditative prayers of a collective of anonymous nuns. Emphasizing (potential) commonality among all the nuns, the Herald calls attention to Gertrude’s exemplary familiarity with Christ, signals her preoccupation with her sisters in a moment of striking intimacy with him, and offers fellow nuns a means by which to approximate the quality of Gertrude’s relationship with Christ. The visions that came to the nuns in public communal worship sometimes highlight a remarkable coincidence between sublime introversion and conscientious sociability. During Mass and before communion, Mechtild peered at her own heart, which had assumed the shape of a house, and she saw this house cupped inside another, larger house, which was Christ’s heart. Mechtild entered her house—that is, she entered into her heart—and there she found Christ, who invited her to enter his divine heart. Mechtild did so, and right away: that blessed soul, filled with the Holy Spirit, saw fiery rays go forth from all her limbs, so that each person for whom she had prayed received a ray into herself. And after she communicated, she saw her heart as if liquefied with the heart of God into one mass of gold, and she heard the Lord say to her: “In this way, your heart shall adhere [to mine] in perpetuity.”101 99

The line between vision and visualization is sometimes a tenuous one. Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Image, 400– 1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 184; Barbara Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’? The Clash between Theory and Practice in Medieval Visionary Culture,” Speculum 80:1 (January 2005): 16. 100 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:49:1:4–7, 216: “apparuit ei Dominus quasi totus floridus et amoenus . . . praebuit dulcissimum vulnus.” Such visions seem to have brought enormous pleasure to their recipients, and it is clear they were sought after in part for this reason. Scholars have drawn attention to the encouragement the Helfta literature gives to its cloistered readership to cultivate visions: Clark, “Unequal Triangle,” 47, and Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say,” 22–25. Directions to visualization such as I describe above may have provided a platform from which the meditating nun might soar into visionary flight or enter into ecstasy. The Herald and the Book of Special Grace contain examples of and extol a broad range of routine practices (including corporate prayer, gazing at the elevated host, reading scripture) associated, according to Newman (ibid.), in monastic milieus of the later Middle Ages with fostering visionary experience: Anna Harrison, “Sense of Community among the Nuns of Helfta” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2007), 189– 192. 101 Liber, 1:19, 70: “illa beata anima Spiritu Sancto repleta de omnibus membris sui igneos radios progredi vidit, ita ut quilibet eorum pro quo oraverat radium ex ea in se susciperet. Et cum

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Although the larger passage from which I quote contains among the most vivid and beautiful of descriptions in the Helfta literature of mutual assimilation, there is, from a certain perspective, nothing extraordinary about it. Images of melting and merging appear frequently in the pages of the Book of Special Grace and the Herald, and both works emphasize a correspondence between the visionaries’ hearts and Christ’s heart, the exchange of hearts, and the incorporation of the heart of one into the heart of the other.102 What is noteworthy for my purposes is that sandwiched between the three-fold nest of hearts and a classical image of mystical union is an expression of concern for others. Twice enclosed and enclosing Christ’s heart, Mechtild engulfs and is engulfed by the divinity, two hearts become one mass, and Mechtild’s limbs emit rays of light to those for whom she has previously prayed. Even as Mechtild is nestled in Christ, the ties that bind her to others do not dissolve. Those whose needs have at other times pulled her into prayer on their behalf do not fall away from her consciousness. As Giovanna della Croce has observed, Mechtild, when she is absorbed into God, dispenses to others the riches she receives.103 At the most intimate part of the self, where God and self meet and seem to merge, others have access to the concerns of the visionary, who holds herself responsible for her sisters and whose desire to share with others the fruits of her experience is alive.104 Thus drawn to others, the visionary draws God to them. Indeed, the Herald tells us that God sometimes seeks union with select sisters precisely in order to bring other people to him.105 Mechtild and Gertrude were thus sometimes acutely

communicasset cor suum cum Dei Corde, velut massam auri in unum liquatum vidit, audivitque Dominum dicentem sibi: ‘Sic cor tuum in perpetuo adhaerebit.’” 102 See, for example, ibid., 1:1, 8 –11, 1:5, 18– 20, 2:29, 166– 167; Le He´raut, SC 139, 2:23:8, 336–338. For the connection in the Book of Special Grace between house, heart, and wound, see Voaden (“Articulating Ecstasy,” 44–48, and “All Girls Together,” 83), who comments on the intricacy of the passage to which I refer above. There is a large literature on the imagery of and devotion to the sacred heart in the Helfta literature. See, for example, Ursmer D. Berlie`re, La de´votion au Sacre´-Coeur dans l’Ordre de S. Benoıˆt (Paris: Abbaye de Maredsous, 1923), esp. 31–39, and Spitzlei, Erfahrunsraum Herz. The editor of the first Latin-text edition of the Herald, John Lansperg (1490–1539) of the Charterhouse of St. Barbara in Cologne, was himself a devotee of the sacred heart; Louis Gougaud, Devotional and Ascetic Practices in the Middle Ages, trans. G. C. Bateman (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1927). 103 Giovanna, della Croce, I mistici del nord (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1981), 28. 104 Bynum has argued that for Gertrude service and contemplation were not in conflict, and she did not need recourse to theory to reconcile the two. Bynum has noticed, in addition, “an absolute certainty in the priority of service” in Gertrude’s thought (and this seems to be Preger’s assessment as well [Geschichte, 125]) that I have not found—although individual passages in the Herald (for example, Le He´raut, 4:2:3, 24– 26) do support Bynum’s claim. Hubrath has argued that Mechtild and Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, respectively, are presented as models for the contemplative and active life; Hubrath, Schreiben, 11– 17, and Hubrath, “Collective Work,” 236– 239. I have found no such division. 105 See, for example, Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:18:4, 82.

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aware of their sisters in choir and sensitive to their needs exactly during moments of intimacy with Christ and union with him. In such situations, there is no indication that the concern for others or activity on their behalf distracted from, diminished, or otherwise undermined the enjoyment of such experiences for them or detracted from them as intimate and unitive. An attitude of accountability for the other who is sister may be at play in the numerous visions in which their fellow nuns are folded into the revelations Gertrude and Mechtild receive, and through which they claim the ability not only to discern phenomena surrounding their sisters, but, in addition, to uncover their sisters’ response to such phenomena. As the Herald and the Book of Special Grace depict them, Gertrude and Mechtild are eager that others should share in exactly the kinds of contact with God and his holy companions from which they themselves benefit, and they strive to bring experiences such as their own to their sisters. During Christmas Mass, Mechtild cradled the Baby Jesus in her arms, offered the Infant to each of her sisters in turn, and saw him recline on the breast of each nun and kiss each woman.106 Now and then, so their visions tell them, the prayers they offered precipitated Christ’s presence among those for whom they prayed. Thus we read that, during Ember Week in Advent, the season in which the nuns readied themselves for Christ’s coming and in which images of light figure prominently, In the Mass Veni et ostende, when she [Mechtild] prayed on behalf of all who desired to see God with their whole heart, she saw the Lord standing in the middle of the choir, his face shining as if a thousand suns, enlightening each person with a ray of sun.107 Mechtild and Gertrude regularly witnessed Christ moving among their sisters. Within the visions that the Helfta literature ascribes to both women, Christ, Mary, and the saints are over and over said to have come before an individual sister other than Mechtild or Gertrude as well as to the congregation as a whole, or they are said to have approached each person in choir.108 That is, a vision that comes to one person claims to lay bare events that incorporate another woman, or many women. Such revelations reveal God’s solicitous presence in the workaday doings of the monastery: Christ, so Mechtild perceived, walked alongside and approached each of her sisters 106

Liber, 1:5, 17. Ibid., 1:4, 13: “In Missa Veni et ostende, cum pro omnibus oraret qui Dei faciem toto corde desiderarent, vidit Dominum in medio chori stantem, cujus facies, velut mille soles radians, singulas personas solari radio illustrabat.” For Gertrude and Mechtild as mediators, through whom the divinity flowed to their sisters, see Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta.” 108 See, for example, Liber, 1:10, 34, 1:23, 84. 107

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as they processed from the chapel after terce, and when Mechtild asked why Christ was clothed as deacon, he replied: “No deacon in his ministry was ever as zealous in ministering as I am in serving the faithful soul.”109 It is often scarcely possible to distinguish a vision from the setting in which it takes place; the contents of a vision seem to overlay like an elaborate transparency the events and people that swirl around the visionary as she receives a revelation, or to draw them into a vision that is something like a tableaux vivant in the midst of chapel or chapter. In chapter on the Feast of the Annunciation, Gertrude beheld Christ and Mary seated in the abbess’ chair. As the community recited the Miserere, the Lord placed in his mother’s hand each word the sisters uttered under the form of a pearl; Mary mixed these with perfume, thereby sweetening the prayers of the sisters with the troubles each had endured previously and committed to Mary.110 Gertrude once beheld Christ feeding spiritually her liturgical community at the moment each member received the host from the priest: when the convent communicated, the Lord showed himself with great condescension to be present, so that he seemed to offer the saving host with his own venerable hand to each one who was approaching, while the priest, nevertheless, made the sign of the cross over each host.111 The phenomena attributed to sisters who figure in Mechtild’s or Gertrude’s revelations often parallel the phenomena associated with the visionaries themselves. Thus, for example, Jesus appeared as a boy of about ten years old during matins on the Feast of John the Evangelist, and each sister was filled with joy.112 On the Feast of St. Lawrence, Gertrude saw Christ draw into himself the desire of all those present at Mass and flow into them.113 As the congregation was communicating on another occasion, Christ stood in the middle of the choir; rays of light from his face illuminated the faces of Gertrude’s sisters, and Christ’s love for them caused the women’s hearts to liquefy.114 All the sisters interact with the saints; all receive the kinds of favors to which Mechtild and Gertrude are accustomed. The sisters—as they are reported to have done in the vision accounts—respond to Christ when they are in his company. When we read of Christ flowing into the sisters and of the melting of their hearts when they are bathed in the light of his love, or of 109 Ibid., 1:19, 64: “Numquam etiam aliquis diaconus tam studiosus in ministrando fuit, sicut ego cuilibet animae fidelis assisto minister.” 110 Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:12:1–2, 132– 133. 111 Ibid., SC 143, 3:38:3:1–5, 184: “dum conventus communicaret, exhibuit se Dominus tanta dignatione adesse, quod videbatur singulis accedentibus manu sua veneranda hostiam porrigere salutarem, sacerdote tamen quaslibet hostias signo cruciis consignante.” 112 Liber, 1:6, 21. 113 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:17:4, 78– 80. 114 Liber, 1:4, 13.

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Mary moving among the nuns and offering her Son to each, we might be reading one of the many similar phenomena associated with Gertrude or Mechtild. Gertrude’s and Mechtild’s experience of liturgy—so the Herald and the Book of Special Grace relate—thus underscores God’s nearness and accessibility to the whole community of women with whom they worshiped. In their revelations, the visionaries often perceived their sisters as equal beneficiaries with them of God’s presence, even while the sisters remained ignorant of this gift. In the many visions in which one woman claims to disclose events that incorporate another woman, or many women, the boundary between self and other blurs. I have found no unambiguous indication that Mechtild or Gertrude, or the anonymous contributors to the Book of Special Grace and the Herald, believed that the sisters who figure in Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s visions were themselves conscious of the content of these visions—either of the events Mechtild and Gertrude saw surrounding them or of the events in which they took part (or which took place within them!)—as the visions unfolded.115 And yet, when Gertrude sees Christ flowing into each of those present at Mass and hears him address the congregation and say, “I am wholly your own. Then enjoy me, each according to your desire,” Christ really is offering himself to all those gathered in chapel and all receive him—so the 115

Although the visionaries, as we read, claim to perceive the response of women who appear in their visions to the total content of the visions, the women do not themselves seem unaware of the visions in which they figure—at least not for the most part. Newman (“What Did It Mean,” 24) calls a “shared vision” a vision that one of the anonymous authors of the Book of Special Grace receives (for which see Liber, 5:24, 356– 357) and which incorporates Mechtild, an anonymous writer of the Book of Special Grace, and all the sisters as subjects of the vision. It is not entirely clear what Newman means by this. This vision appears to have come to one woman alone. Those vision accounts in which one nun’s revelations contain many nuns are different from the visions recorded in the Sister-Books or convent chronicles of the fourteenth-century Rhineland. In the Sister-Books, we find numerous descriptions of visions that come to the nuns as a group as well as reports of sisters individually and one after the other receiving similar visions. Peter Dinzelbacher, “A Plea for the Study of the Minor Female Mystics of Late Medieval Germany,” Studies in Spirituality 3 (1993): 91– 100; Gertrud Jaron Lewis, By Women, for Women, about Women: The Sister-Books of Fourteenth-Century Germany (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996); Rebecca L. R. Garber, Feminine Figurae: Representations of Gender in Religious Texts by Medieval German Women Writers, 1100– 1375 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 61– 104; Anne Winston-Allen, Convent Chronicles: Women Writing about Women in the Late Middle Ages ( University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). For a discussion of visions in the Helfta literature that may have come simultaneously to more than one nun, see Harrison, “Sense of Community,” 181– 189. See Le He´raut, SC 255, 4:2:9, 36–38, for one of a small number of visions that appears, perhaps, to have come at the same time to a group of nuns: “Cum vero praesentabantur ipsi corda magis in cognitione Dei illuminata, tunc obsequebantur angeli Domino de choro Cherubim. Quando autem corda se plus in virtutibus exercitantium, ad hoc serviebant de choro Virtutum. Et sic singuli angleorum chori ministrabant Domino quando corda sibi similium in virtutum meritis offerebantur. Illarum vero corda quae ob praedictam revelationem ad specialem devotionem non errant incitata, non deferebantur Domino per angelorum ministerium, sed in corporibus propriis apparebant in terra prostrata.”

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Herald insists.116 This matters. Exactly a central concern of the Helfta literature is to foster in its reader sensitivity to her liturgical environment so as to awaken in her awareness of the circumstances the visions claim to break open. The very effort to document Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s visions indicates a wish on the part of the authors to make palpable to their monastic community Christ’s proximity in the liturgy—as well as that of Mary and the saints. Such awareness, the literature makes clear, is pregnant with possibility: all the nuns may aspire to have for themselves the kind of mutually gratifying relationship with Christ that belongs to Mechtild and Gertrude.117 The Herald and Book of Special Grace summon the sisters to reach after productive pleasures such as seem to have come regularly to Gertrude and Mechtild. Revelations that introduce the visionary’s regard for her fellow nuns do not unreservedly document her sympathy for them or her relatedness to them in a common march toward God. Remarks scattered throughout the Book of Special Grace and the Herald and a number of revelations call attention, in addition, to tensions and animosities among the sisters, which sometimes come to the surface during liturgical observances.118 Thus, for example, Gertrude on one occasion prayed during Mass for a sister whom she found troublesome, and she and Christ spoke about why he appeared not to heed Gertrude’s repeated entreaties to reform the woman’s unruly temperament.119 In particular, the opportunity to receive communion seems not infrequently to have prompted unkind murmurings and spiritual one-upmanship and to have given rise to disagreement and to strife.120 The spiritual power associated with communion and the weight of the worry about reception that pressed on the sisters combined to make reception an 116 Ibid., SC 143, 3:17:4:21–22, 80: “Totus sum vester proprius. Ergo fruimini me quilibet vestrum pro desiderio suo.” 117 For the optimism of the Helfta literature, see, for example, Schmitz, Les Moniales, 7:299, and Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta,” esp. 193–194. For religious women’s attempts to open to their sisters the world within their visions, see McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 332. 118 The texts, especially the Herald, otherwise attest to acrimony within the cloister and irritation among its members with one another, as when a sister who remains anonymous grumbles to God about Gertrude, whom she regards as obstinate (Le He´raut, SC 139, 1:16:2, 210– 212), or when Mechtild asks God why Gertrude judges severely the failings of others (ibid., 1:11:9, 178). On tensions among the Helfta nuns, see Voaden, “All Girls Together,” 79. 119 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:9:4:15– 22, 40. 120 In the thirteenth century, communion became increasingly regulated by ecclesiastical authorities, and we find a heightened fascination with reception of the Eucharist, buoyed by the notion that reception was a principal occasion for affective response to his self-giving and for union with Christ. The piety of the period encouraged self-vigilance and self-appraisal as well as deliberate abstention from communion exactly because of the perception of the stringent requirements to communicate and because of the awe in which the host was held; see, for example, Caspers, “Augenkommunion.” On thirteenth-century theologians’ preoccupation with who might receive the Eucharist, concern for the disposition of the recipient, anxieties related to reception, and pressures exerted on Christians to receive, see Gary Macy, “Reception of the Eucharist According to the Theologians: A Case of Diversity in the 13th and 14th Centuries,” in Treasures from the Storeroom, 36–58, and Macy, “Commentaries on the Mass,” 142– 171.

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especially compelling topic of conversation at Helfta.121 The nuns were mindful that God would measure the strength of their desire and assess their worthiness to receive him, and they were cognizant that members of the congregation were primed to arrive at their own estimations. They were conscious of the care they needed to take to ready themselves for reception and sometimes expressed reluctance about communicating, believing they were unworthy to do so.122 Some sisters, aware that they communicated under the watchful eyes of others, confessed that they were scared of causing scandal when they approached the altar.123 Although Gertrude sometimes entertained scruples about communicating, she nonetheless expressed little patience for the trepidations of others. [Gertrude] saw one of the sisters approach the living sacrament with great fear, and turned away in disgust, as if in indignation, [and] the Lord reproved [her] affectionately in these words: “Do you not consider that I am no less worthily owed the reverence of honor than the sweetness of love? But because the defect of fragile human nature is unable to bring about both in one emotion, since you are members of one another (Rom. 12:15), it is right that what someone lacks in himself, he recuperates through the other; for example, he who with excessive sweet love submits to less feeling of reverence should rejoice that he is supplemented by him who extends greater reverence and should in return desire that he obtain the comfort of divine unction.”124 This vision both acknowledges and helps to resolve tension at the heart of the Mass.125 It portrays Gertrude as fomenting rifts in the liturgical community 121 See, for example, Le He´raut, SC 139, 1:14:2, 196– 197, SC 143, 4:7:4 –5, 102–104. This is a subject about which the sisters spoke regularly with one another and with the saints, and it is one about which Gertrude and Mechtild offered counsel. The literature does not, it is interesting to note, report conversations between the sisters and a confessor about reception. 122 See, for example, ibid., SC 139, 1:14:2, 196–198, SC 139, 2:5:1, 248, SC 143, 3:18, 80–104, SC 143, 3:34:1, 172 –174, SC 143, 3:38:2, 182–184; Liber, 2:14, 147, 3:6, 203, 3:22, 225– 226. 123 Le He´raut, SC 143, 3:18:22, 98– 100. 124 Ibid., SC 143, 3:18:19, 96: “Conspiciens unam ex Sororibus nimis trepidantem accedere ad Sacramenta vivifica sumenda, et inde se prae taedio quasi cum indignatione advertens, Dominus hoc pie in ea redarguit dicens, ‘Nonne consideras quod non minus digne mihi debetur reverentia honoris quam dulcedo amoris? Sed cum defectus humanae fragilitatis uno affectu nequeat utrumque aeque perficere, cum vos alterutrum ad invicem sitis membra, dignum est ut quod per se quaelibet minus habet, recuperet per alium: verbi gratia, qui nimis dulci amore affectus reverentiae minus obsequitur, pro se suppletum gaudeat ab illo qui magis intendit reverentiae et vicissim desideret illum obtinere solatia unctionis divinae.’” Gertrude’s reflections on the attitude the communicant ought to assume while approaching communion is more complex than this particular vision attributes to her. See, for example, ibid., SC 139, 2:19:2, 304– 306. On the anxiety Gertrude herself sometimes felt about communicating, see Dolan, St. Gertrude, 42–44. 125 It may be that Gertrude did need such correcting as the vision provides her; hers was a more acerbic personality than Mechtild’s, and she may have been a less emotionally generous and nuanced counselor than was Mechtild. Her sisters (and perhaps Gertrude as well) may have thought she might benefit from a tempering of her impulsivity and obstinacy (Le He´raut, SC

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and, through the medium of revelations that came to her in the context of the liturgy, as helping to solder these fractures. Christ’s response to Gertrude’s dismissal of her sisters’ anxieties seems calculated to calm nervous souls, asserting that to approach communion in love and to approach in fear are both courses agreeable to God; it appears intended to temper a tendency to compare and to compete in assuming the one right attitude toward reception. This vision contains more than an instruction in tolerance. God is due both fear, which accompanies reverent acknowledgment of his honor, and love, born (the overall context of the Helfta literature suggests) of the sort of familiarity with him to which Gertrude and Mechtild are privy. Because human nature is defective, one emotion cannot encapsulate the reverence and love to which God is entitled. God places the onus on the community to address the frailties of human nature that come to the fore when each person communicates. The different attitudes with which the sisters approach communion are complementary: the sisters supply for one another what each lacks. Right worship requires exactly the diversity of attitude that is troubling to the nuns. God uses a cause of conflict in community to create a body of worshipers whose devotion is, from his perspective, necessarily more complete than that of any one individual. This vision thus suggests that Gertrude found theological justification for varying attitudes toward communicating and that she made an effort to rejoice in exactly that which rankled her. Behind the notion that a variety of attitudes are complementary lies an insistence on the fragility of human nature. The nuns do not elaborate on expressions of such fragility evident in any one individual. They were more interested in diagnosing frailty as inherent in each individual, in recognizing it as a challenge to contentment in the common life, and in offering a remedy. From the perspective of the nuns, the fragility of each woman cries out for its corrective via community.126 As illustrated in the person of Gertrude, perception of the failings of one member of the community rouses recognition—with Christ’s intervention— of one’s own weakness and the importance of mutual reliance and assistance.

139, 1:16:2, 210– 212). For a comparison of the personalities of Gertrude and Mechtild, and the different estimation in which their sisters held them, see Preger, Geschichte, 116, 122, 127, and Robinson, “Convent of Helfta,” 647. For a comparison of the attitudes Mechtild and Gertrude assumed as counselors, see Bynum, “Nuns of Helfta,” esp. 187, 208, 212, and 225. Many readers of the Herald have commented on Gertrude’s forceful personality. See, for example, D. A. Castel, Les belles prie`res de ste. Mechtilde et ste. Gertrude (Paris: Maredsous, Descle´e de Brouwer-Lethellieux, 1925), xi –xii. 126 With a leap in logic that calls attention to the overriding preoccupation with community in the Helfta spirituality—and to the relative lack of interest in exploring interpersonal relationships between any two sisters—the Herald bypasses the notion that two individuals (one communicating in fear, another in love) can compensate for each other.

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Acknowledgement of individual vulnerability is bound up with optimism about the opportunities the liturgical community holds out to each of its members.

III. CONCLUSION Apprehensions about increasingly private and subjective demonstrations of piety and related anxieties about the fracture of communal religious experience have a long history stretching back into the Middle Ages;127 the sisters at Helfta were not detached from such concerns. They recognized the complexity, during liturgy, of holding tight simultaneously to meditation, vision, and ecstasy, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the obligations associated with corporate worship. Drawing on the resources they perceived that the liturgy held out to them, the nuns were sure of their ability to do so. More than the sisters’ successful juggling of responsibilities, desires, and delights is implied in the Helfta literature. The nuns invested considerable intellectual energy in elaborating on the relationship, during liturgical observances, between the individual sister and the company of women with whom she worshiped. The literature they composed insists that, within the communal context of the liturgy, the sisters carved out space for interiority in which self-exploration and contact with Christ, his mother, and his friends might take place. It indicates that a basic need for the other who is sister and responsibility for her were central to the sense of self cultivated during liturgical observances at Helfta. Animated by a robust sense of accountability for their sisters and a commitment to cooperating with Christ in the work of salvation, Mechtild and Gertrude—as the works with which they are associated relate—championed their liturgical community’s relationship with Christ and credited themselves with contributing to the increase of Christ’s happiness in part exactly by drawing their sisters toward him. The Helfta writings wed an insistent preoccupation with self in relation to God with a commitment to the liturgical community, which is both the context within which attention to the self flourishes and spiritual progress takes place as well as the beneficiary of the fruit of self-exploration and encounter with Christ, Mary, and the saints. Mechtild, Gertrude, and the anonymous authors who shared in the making of the Herald and the Book of Special Grace seem confident that, by opening up the visionaries’ interior lives for their readers, they were at once offering models for the sisters’ emulation and rendering visible precious and pervasive aspects of the daily routine of all the nuns, about which readers may otherwise have been insufficiently unaware. Among the central aims of 127

Hamburger, “Art, Enclosure,” 88–89; Huizinga, Autumn of the Middle Ages.

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this literature is to teach the reader about the exceptional sisters in her midst as well as about the inner workings of her community, and thus about herself— and so to shape her continuing experience of the liturgy.128

***** James was surely right to emphasize that the God of the Helfta writings inclined with preferential prejudice toward those who captured his affection. Passage upon passage in the Helfta writings calls attention to Mechtild’s and Gertrude’s heady confidence in themselves as occupying a distinguished place in the ensemble of Christ’s cherished friends. At Helfta, particular ties of affection bind the visionaries with Christ. James did not notice, however, that Gertrude and Mechtild perceived Christ as seeking out all their sisters, presenting himself as their just inheritance. When, in the middle of Mass, Gertrude heard Christ proclaim “I am wholly your own,” he offered himself not to her alone but to the whole assembled community of sisters.

128

Harrison, “What Treasure Is in This Book?”

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 584–605. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990436 Printed in the USA

Luigi Lippomano, His Vicars, and the Reform of Verona from the Pulpit1 EMILY MICHELSON

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UIGI Lippomano was a deeply worried man. He had heard that Lutheran ideas were being debated openly in Verona—even in such inappropriate places as “the piazzas, the workshops, the taverns, and even the women’s washrooms.”2 As bishop of Verona, responsible for the city’s spiritual health, he feared that he would see the city reduced to outright heresy. He felt increasingly stymied, watching his flock “become more corrupted every day” from inappropriate books and conversation, the “idle chatter of a few gossips.” And so, at a certain point, he had had enough. “How can I . . . stay silent,” he asked, “cross my hands, close my eyes, shut my ears, and act like a mute dog that cannot growl?”3 The result of his frustration and fury was a series of publications seeking to block the perceived threat of Protestant infiltration. Lippomano’s publication record demonstrates how Catholic reform, especially reform through preaching, took place at the local level. His overall approach is evident only from considering his own writings together with the works he supervised or commissioned as bishop. These works have previously been studied only in isolation, if at all. Collectively, however, they display consistent priorities not otherwise evident and provide a comprehensive picture of Lippomano’s complex agenda as a bishop.

1 Portions of this paper were presented at the 2005 Sixteenth Century Society and Conference, the 2007 winter meeting of the American Church History Society, and the 2007 ACMRS/RMMRA Annual Meeting, as well as to the University of Utah Department of History. I am grateful to friends and colleagues in these and other venues, and to the anonymous reviewers at Church History, for their suggestions. Research was carried out at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Biblioteca Casanatense and the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome, the Biblioteca Civica di Verona, the Biblioteca del seminario Vescovile di Verona, and at Columbia University. 2 Quotations in this paragraph come from the unpaginated dedicatory letter in Luigi Lippomano’s Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti li dogmi catholici, con la subversione di tutti i fondamenti, motivi, & ragioni delli moderni heretici fino al numero 482 (Venice, 1554). All translations by the author, unless otherwise indicated. 3 Girolamo Seripando also uses this expression in the Istruzione he presented, unsuccessfully, to the Council of Trent in 1546. See Alfredo Marranzini, Ministero episcopale del Cardinale Girolamo Seripando nell’ arcidiocesi di Salerno (1554– 1563) (Salerno: Elea, 1993).

Emily Michelson is a lecturer in the School of History at the University of St Andrews.

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Because he collaborated closely with members of his staff, Lippomano’s agenda for Verona embraced diverse and occasionally contradictory points of view. The works from Verona show how Catholic reform was a vibrant and diverse process at the local level, especially during the turbulent middle decades of the sixteenth century, and how episcopal reform was always a group effort.4 At the same time, a consistent set of concerns motivated Lippomano throughout his entire career. These priorities led him, in turn, to take risks with his reforming efforts that many other bishops avoided. While Lippomano held cautious positions regarding scripture and heresy, and carefully sought to regulate the dissemination of information, his deep concern for the spiritual state of his parishioners also pushed him into surprising candor. He was honest where other reformers were secretive. He believed in educating his congregations and in giving them more information whenever possible. He took advantage of new technology at hand, publishing books in different genres for educating the laity. He went out of his way to give them tools for understanding scripture. The same was true for heresy. Where other bishops argued for keeping the laity in the dark on both of these controversial issues, Lippomano made a point of stating heretical doctrines openly so that his congregants would know exactly what they were up against and how to fight back. Lippomano’s frankness extended even to his own emotions; he shared with his readers his ambivalence about his unusual strategy.

I. THE CATHOLIC CONTEXT During the first decades of the Protestant reformation, the same fears that plagued Lippomano haunted clergy throughout Italy, as they faced the unenviable task of teaching and protecting the faithful while Europe’s religious topography was turned upside down. Luther’s criticisms, and those of his followers, sounded dangerous and diabolical to priests like Lippomano, but they had to be reckoned with, not ignored. Closer to home, the Council of Trent had begun its irregular series of sessions, with no certainty as to its conclusion. Despite religious uncertainties everywhere—or perhaps because of them—the laity still had to be taught what it meant to be Catholic. Nowhere was this problem more evident than in teaching and preaching scripture. This was, of course, the traditional and most important task of preachers, with an unequivocal biblical mandate: Go ye into all the world, 4 Simon Ditchfield, “In Search of Local Knowledge: Rewriting Early Modern Italian Religious History,” Cristianesimo nella storia 19:2 (1998).

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and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15). In this era, it was also their most difficult task. For Catholics, sola scriptura was the worst of all the Protestant offenses. In Catholic eyes, Protestants arrogantly appropriated scripture and interpreted it for themselves, rejected the apostolic tradition that enabled them to understand it, contrived grossly disrespectful misreadings, and then offered ignorant laypeople the chance to do the same, at grave peril to their salvation. As a result, scriptural knowledge in a layperson was increasingly seen as an indicator of Protestant sympathy.5 Nonetheless, Catholics could not do without scripture, claim that it was unnecessary for their faith, or abandon their long-standing traditions of scriptural preaching. Scripture therefore became a central conundrum for Catholic preachers: how could they continue, or adapt, their tradition of preaching scripture without leading the faithful astray? Modern scholars have described the fate of scripture in sixteenth-century Italy as uniformly dismal, precisely because scripture teaching increasingly fell to bishops, not mendicant preachers.6 A typical analysis argues that, as the first generation of Catholic reformers passed away, “hardline” reformers, who considered the preaching of scripture a dangerous activity, gained the upper hand, and that this transition is reflected in the difference between the Council of Trent’s first decree on preaching, in 1546, and its last, in 1562. Looking closely at the decisions of one bishop, however, shows that scriptural exegetical preaching continued, though in a different format, and that it could be the cornerstone of a diverse and methodical program of diocesan reform. Diocesan preaching itself was in great flux during the Tridentine period. As required by the council fathers at Trent and Bologna, bishops increasingly returned to their dioceses, after centuries of absenteeism, to take up residence and enact reform. They paid increasing attention to the poor or uneducated laity, long ignored by the churchmen charged with ministering to them, whether in rural areas, small towns, or large cities—people who might never before have received a systematic catechetical education.7 Once home, bishops started to educate the secular clerics who worked for them. A great 5 This was especially pronounced in Italy, where vernacular Bible translations were forbidden. See Gigliola Fragnito, La Bibbia al rogo: La censura ecclesiastica e i volgarizzamenti della Scritura, 1471– 1605 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997), and Proibito capire: La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima eta` moderna (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2005). 6 Roberto Rusconi writes, for example, “nel lungo arco di tempo che separava i due decreti conciliari molte cose erano cambiate nelle correnti riformatrici: erano mutati i protagonisti, erano scoparsi i rappresentanti dell’evangelismo e dell’umanesimo cristiano, che insistevano per promuovere una predicazione realmente fondata sull’esposizione della Scrittura e in particulare del Vangelo”: Roberto Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix– xviii),” in Storia d’Italia, Annali (Torino: 1981), 1000. 7 For the sake of convenience, I will refer to “dioceses” and “parishioners.” Dioceses could include wealthy areas and educated, elite laymen, but this study will focus on the attention given to the uneducated laity through preaching.

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deal of the sermon literature produced in this century was intended to train and equip secular clerics in preaching for the first time. It also contributed to a revival of the homiletic style, which was well suited to the transmission of basic doctrine and catechism.8

II. LIPPOMANO’S BACKGROUND Luigi Lippomano’s entire career was marked by a deep and personal sense of the danger of what he called “the perfidious and evil Lutheran heresies, which . . . lacerate the church, spreading throughout a good part of Italy and elsewhere bringing moral infection.”9 These concerns came from direct experience, and he brought them to bear on his episcopacy in Verona.10 8 For issues of rhetoric in Italian preaching in Latin, see John O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c. 1450–1521 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979), and Frederick McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995). For rhetorical styles in Italian, see Lina Bolzoni, “Oratoria e prediche,” in Letteratura Italiana, ed. Alberto Asor Rosa (Torino: Einaudi, 1984), Carlo Delcorno, “Forme della predicazione cattolica fra cinque e seicento,” in Cultura d’ e´lite e cultura popolare nell’ arco alpino fra cinque e seicento, ed. Ottavio Besomi and Carlo Caruso (Boston: Mirkhaeuser Verlag, 1995), and Samuele Giombi, “Dinamiche della predicazione cinquecentesca tra forma retorica e normativa religiosa: Le istruzioni episcopali ai predicatori,” Cristianesimo nella Storia 13:1 (1992). Important English-language studies include John McManamon, Funeral Oratory and the Cultural Ideals of Italian Humanism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), and the collected articles in John O’Malley, Religious Culture in the Sixteenth Century, Collected Studies Series (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1993). For Catholic preaching during the early modern period, see Thomas Worcester, “The Catholic Sermon,” in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Juliet Taylor (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 3–34, and, in the same volume, Corrie Norman, “The Social History of Preaching,” 125–191. 9 Lettera, unpaginated, preceding Book II, Espositioni Volgare del Reverendissimo Monsignor Luigi Lippomano vescovo di Modone, et Coadiutore di Bergamo. Opera catholica & utilissima ad ogni Christiano (Venice, 1541). 10 In 1538 Lippomano was named coadjutor of Bergamo with the right of succession to his cousin, Pietro Lippomano. At the same time, he was also named titular bishop of Methone, in Greece, then under Turkish control. When Pietro was transferred to the episcopate of Verona in 1544, following the death of Gian Matteo Giberti, Luigi followed him. Five years later he succeeded his cousin as bishop. He held that position until 1558, when Paul IV transferred him back to Bergamo. For more information, see Giuseppe Alberigo, I vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento (Florence: 1959), and Hubert Jedin, Il Geschichte Des Konzils Von Trient, trans. Ernest Graf, 2 vols. (St. Louis: B. Herner, 1957). Alberigo’s information is updated and revised in Lorenzo Tachella, Il processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e Luigi Lippomano (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1979). Tachella also reprints much of the original documentation for Lippomano’s biography and much of Lippomano’s correspondence. For a more recent biographical profile of Lippomano, see Pino Simoni, Luigi Lippomano, vescovo e nunzio apostolico del cinquecento: Profilo bio-biografico (Verona: Archivio Storico Curia Diocesana, 1993). For his theological development, see Oliver Logan, The Venetian Upper Clergy in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries: A Study in Religious Culture (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1996). Both Alberigo and Tachella emphasize that Lippomano’s direct experience with heresy strongly influenced his pastoral work.

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When Lippomano arrived in Verona in 1549, his personal antipathy to heresy and his involvement in centers of Catholic power were already well established. He had participated actively in the Council of Trent’s fourth session, transferring with it to Bologna, and also taking part in the heated discussions of session VI on justification. (Later, when the Council convened for the second time, Julius III would name him its co-president.) His many diplomatic appointments had also exposed him to foreign, sometimes heterodox, ways of thought. In 1542 Paul III had sent him as nuncio to Lisbon, charged with convincing Portugal to adhere to the bull of convocation for the Council of Trent. In 1548 the pope sent him abroad again, this time as nuncio to Germany with Sebastiano Pighino, bishop of Ferentino. In Germany the two men were supposed to meet with Charles V and persuade him to support the Catholic clergy and distance himself from Protestant preachers. They were sorely disappointed, and wrote home, “we did not realize how changed the souls of these Germans are: nobody, neither monk, nor priest, nor layman has been willing to see us and recognize us as servants of His Holiness. May God illuminate their minds, so that our coming here will bear some fruit; for our part we will omit nothing in trying to win back these poor souls.”11 He and Pighino stayed in Germany until 1550 but returned home no more optimistic about the fate of Catholicism in Germany.12 Lippomano hated and feared Protestants for the rest of his life. This picture of Lippomano makes him seem rigidly defensive; a perfect embodiment of a fearful and reactionary Counter Reformation. Scholars of religious reform in Italy, especially Italian scholars, have traditionally divided reformers into opposing camps, pitting those they consider more broadminded, the spirituali, against the repressive intransigenti. In this view the opinions of the former group, influenced by humanism and a spirit of tolerance, eventually lost out to the latter, which was responsible for the Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books, and which resisted attempts at compromise.13 This model has been much debated in recent years, and 11 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, A.A. Arm. I –xVIII, vol. 6527, f. 91, quoted in Tachella, Il processo agli eretici veronesi nel 1550: S. Ignazio di Loyola e Luigi Lippomano, 15. 12 For a detailed account of the trip to Germany, see Jedin, Il Geschichte Des Konzils Von Trient. In 1555 Julius III sent Lippomano to Poland, where again Lippomano despaired at the growth of heresy and at the internal divisions plaguing the Catholic Church. For documents relating to his time in Poland, see H. D. Wojtyska, ed., Aloisius Lippomanus (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum, Fundatio Lanckoronski, 1993). 13 This binary thesis is most closely associated with Massimo Firpo. See, for example, Massimo Firpo, Inquisizione romana e controriforma: Studi sul Cardinal Giovanni Morone e il suo processo d’ eresia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992). For other examples, see Adriano Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G. M. Giberti (1495– 1543) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969) or Vittorio Coletti, Parole dal pulpito: Chiesa e movimenti religiosi tra latino e volgare nell’ Italia del medioevo e del rinascimento (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1983).

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persists alongside recent and compelling challenges.14 Attitudes to scripture are considered a barometer of reform; intransigenti tried to limit scriptural knowledge among laypeople. Lippomano, for such scholars, falls firmly into this category; they define his episcopate as the triumph of paranoia over tolerance, a “defensive and inquisitorial rigidification” of his predecessor’s work, lacking any positive content—“a Counter-Reformatory figure” with a “hierarchic, sacerdotalist, authoritarian ideology.”15 Given the timing of Lippomano’s episcopate in Verona, from 1549 to 1558, one might indeed expect an intransigente attitude. His appointment in Verona began shortly after that of Gian Matteo Giberti, who is beloved among scholars of reform in Italy not only for being one of the century’s first resident bishops, but also for having, they claim, an open-minded, tolerant, and loving approach to episcopal reform.16 As his critics have intimated, Lippomano was indeed more defensive and rigid than his predecessor in office—and with good reason. Unlike Giberti, he had to adhere to the decisions of the council of Trent, at which he had been present. Furthermore, he did not enjoy the same extensive support network among the Italian elite, which had allowed Giberti to implement his reforms in the face of anyone who challenged him. In addition, the situation in Verona had changed since Giberti’s death. Many of Giberti’s reform initiatives had lapsed or deteriorated. In his first year as bishop, Lippomano had to reexamine priests and clerics in many churches, make sure they knew their duties and their doctrine, and remove the ones who did not.17 Incidences of heresy were on the rise. In 1550, he presided over an extensive series of heresy trials in Verona.18 His letters show that he was increasingly worried about its spread. It is no surprise that he was more cautious than Giberti.

14 William Hudon describes the persistence of this model in late twentieth-century scholarship. See William Hudon, “The Papacy in the Age of Reform, 1513– 1644,” in Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J., ed. Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). See also Stephen Bowd, Reform before the Reformation: Vicenzo Querini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2002), and, for the period before 1550 especially, Anne Overell, Italian Reform and English Reformations, c. 1535– c. 1585 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 15 Prosperi, Tra Evangelismo, Logan, The Venetian Upper Clergy. These positions may all derive from Giuseppe Alberigo’s assessment of Lippomano in I Vescovi italiani al Concilio di Trento, 84– 88. 16 Giberti’s works are best known through Adriano Prosperi’s analyses. Prosperi sees Giberti as an example of what the church should have done—emphasized a message of love and positive reinforcement of Catholic behavior—and contrasts Giberti with later reformers whose approach he deems repressive and defensively anti-heretical. In addition to the biography cited above, see also Adriano Prosperi, “Di alcuni testi per il clero nell’Italia del primo cinquecento,” Critica Storica 7:2 (1968). 17 Tachella, Il Processo Agli Eretici Veronesi Nel 1550. 18 Ibid.

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Yet a holistic picture of his Veronese publications defies these expectations. Under these circumstances, the surprise is that he worked so hard both to teach his faithful explicitly about the dangers surrounding them and to create a secure environment for scriptural learning.

III. THE PREACHING GUIDE OF PAOLO ALENI Most scholars who discuss Lippomano draw their evidence solely from one work, a preaching guide by his vicar, Paolo Aleni, from 1552.19 They see this work as an example of how Catholic preaching became nothing but a polemical instrument against heresy, seeking only to create an obedient, unquestioning laity.20 Lippomano’s detractors are correct insofar as Aleni’s text, which Lippomano commissioned, takes a cautious, even polemical, approach to educating the faithful.21 In Aleni’s work, the preacher’s primary task is to instill right dogma and religious conformity. Aleni’s preaching guide hews closely to the line; he seems to feel that nothing should be left to the discretion of the individual preacher in an era when “heretics today assert that any preacher who is not explicitly against them is actually with them.”22 Scriptural exegesis is ignored in favor of doctrine: nowhere does he discuss the preaching of scripture, refer to the role of scripture in sermons, or suggest that teaching scripture is one of the goals of preaching. Instead, he reminds preachers of the Tridentine position, much debated at the first meeting of the Council, that Church traditions are of equal weight with scripture.23 Above all, Aleni is concerned that both preachers and congregants stay far from “novelty,” that is, heresy. 19

Aleni, Paolo, Argomenti che debbono essere predicati da tutti i predicatori della parola divina nella prossima Quaresima in tutta la citta` e diocesi di Verona, reprinted in Paolo Guerrini, “L’opera Riformatrice di un vicario generale di Verona nel biennio 1552– 53,” Il Concilio di Trento: Rivista commemorativa del IV centinario 2 (1942): 199, and translated in Roberto Rusconi, ed., Predicazione e vita religiosa nella societa` religiosa (Torino: Loescher, 1981), 309– 312. 20 Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix –xviii),” 997–998; Prosperi, “Di alcuni testi per il clero nell’Italia del primo cinquecento,” 158. 21 In the same year that Aleni wrote his treatise, Lippomano wrote him a letter from Trent regarding that year’s Lenten preaching. “I am very relieved to hear that the preachers did not misbehave,” he said, “but if they all behaved well, why should we be content that they did not say anything bad, if they said nothing good?”: Guerrini, “L’opera riformatrice,” 195. He tells Aleni to start keeping track of local Lutherans. Lippomano’s guiding hand reveals itself in Aleni’s interest in heresy. 22 Aleni, Argomenti, in Rusconi, Predicazione e vita religiosa nella societa` religiosa, 312. 23 “Praeter ea etiam quae a sacris Bibliorum litteris continentur milta a Christo et Apostolis tradita esse ostendant et ad nos per manus Episcoporum et aliorum recipienda quam quae ipsis sacris litteris expressa videmus”: Guerrini, “L’opera Riformatrice,” 199. The argument that Church traditions predated or were of equal weight with scripture was held for centuries but became newly relevant in the face of sixteenth-century Protestant challenges.

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This work does not, however, fully represent Lippomano’s episcopate. It is only a guide, and a very short one at that—it tells us what Aleni thought should happen but cannot reveal either what Lippomano thought or what his preachers might actually have said. For that, we need Lippomano’s own words, and texts of sermons. In addition, Aleni’s guide is just one of the works Lippomano commissioned. It gives only a partial picture of Lippomano’s preaching and reform. A close reading of two longer, more detailed works from Lippomano’s episcopate in Verona makes it impossible to see Lippomano in such stark terms. Though fearful and defensive, he cannot be dismissed as a “bad bishop.” These works reveal a more accurate picture of Lippomano’s thought and demonstrate a broader, more pastoral agenda in which Aleni’s restrictive approach is the exception, not the rule.

IV. LIPPOMANO’S TREATISE

ON

HERESY

Lippomano’s comprehensive work on heresy and doctrine—the treatise Confirmatione et stabilimento di tutti li dogmi heretici (1553)—gives a better indication of his priorities. It was the careful result of collaboration between Lippomano and two of the curates who oversaw his diocese: Maffeo Albertini, canon of the cathedral of Verona since the days of Gian Matteo Giberti; and Giovanni Del Bene, a nobleman who was also archpriest of the church of St. Stefano.24 Lippomano asked these two men to compose the work during his travels in Germany, which had acquainted him with Protestant thought. Upon his return home, Lippomano spent twenty months rewriting the sections on heresy, based on his experiences abroad, until he had increased the volume of the book again by half. The treatise was explicitly intended as a work of Catholic doctrine, meant to counter Lutheran gossip among Verona’s “plebeians and lower classes . . . so that poor people, who are not learned, and who have good minds (which may sometimes have been assaulted by these scoundrels, or taught wrong by false preachers), will have a book [that] . . . will teach them to stay firm in the Catholic faith.”25 Confirmatione et stabilimento explains in full Lippomano’s positions on major tenets of Catholicism, including the topics of scripture and heresy. 24 For more information on all three of these men in a Veronese context, see G. B. Pighi, Cenni storici sulla chiesa veronese (Verona: Archivio storico Curio Vescovele, 1987), II:198–218 and III; Appendice, 18– 17); Luigi Federici, Elogi istorici dei piu illiustri ecclesiastici veronesi (Verona: Tipografia Romanzini, 1818), II:23– 50; Antonio Cartolari, Cenni sopra varie famiglie illustri di Verona (Verona: I Vicentii e Franchini, 1855); 1– 6; Scipione Maffei, Verona illustrata (Milan: Societa` Tipografica de Classici Italiani, 1825), 397. 25 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p. Unless otherwise specified, dedicatory letters are written by the book’s author.

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The title page of the treatise boasts that the reader “will see that no similar work has ever fallen into your hands, in which you have a full confutation of all of Lutheranism.” Indeed, the Confirmatione et stabilimento became the most exhaustive and most important vernacular polemical work of its era.26 It was also by far the longest and most detailed, at over 600 pages, and the only one to go through three Italian editions, one of which (1553) attempts to be pocket-sized.27 The book’s sole purpose was to teach the uneducated faithful, in detail, why Catholics were right and Protestants were wrong. This was not an obvious course of action. Many Catholic reformers in Italy felt that ignorance was the best protection for the laity. Influential churchmen throughout the century, from Gasparo Contarini to Tommaso Badia, master of the Sacred Palace, had decided not to waste time teaching theology to people with no education, lest they be tempted by the arguments of the “other side” or led astray by complicated doctrines poorly understood. It was safer simply to teach people what good Catholics should do, and direct them to consult their superiors and obey the church in case of questions.28 Lippomano’s treatise took the reverse tactic, laying out Protestant ideas and then refuting them with Catholic responses. 29 Lippomano flaunted his desire to be overt by organizing his work so as to highlight the views of his antagonists. 26

Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 65, 243–246. Between mid-century and the end of the council of Trent, at least four other preachers produced similar vernacular theological treatises, none as popular as Lippomano’s. They form a subset within Italian vernacular religious literature and polemical works against Protestants (in Latin or Italian). These fields are too vast to be discussed here, but, for an introduction, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465– 1550: A Finding List, Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance 194 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1983), as well as Jared Wicks, “Roman Reactions to Luther: The First Year (1518),” Catholic Historical Review 69 (October 1983); David V. N. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518– 1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); and Ronald K. Delph, “From Venetian Visitor to Curial Humanist: The Development of Agostino Steuco’s ‘Counter’-Reformation Thought,” Renaissance Quarterly 47:1 (1994). 28 The teaching of controversial “difficilia fidei”—in particular, justification, free will, grace, and predestination—were hotly debated. Gasparo Contarini, who wrote two treatises on preaching, and Tommaso Badia, master of the Sacred Palace and the overseer of all sermons delivered to the pope, wanted to restrict their teaching to learned audiences. Others, such as Gian Matteo Giberti and the preacher Agostino Museo, argued that laypeople could be taught correct doctrine based on scripture. Contarini criticized Museo for having discussed predestination in a public sermon in 1537. See Giombi, “Dinamiche della predicazione.” The standard medieval position on this issue can be found in ST, 2a.2ae, qu. 10, ar. 7, where Aquinas explains that heresy should be discussed publicly only if it had already been introduced into a population or parish. 29 Lippomano’s book bears some debt to Latin treatises against heresy. While it does not follow the structure of early polemical works such as those of Irenaeus and Tertullian, it resembles more recent works of Catholic polemic. Alfonso de Castro’s Adversus omnes haereses [1539] also begins with broad definitions and descriptions of heresy in the first of its 14 books, emphasizing the misinterpretation of scripture, but treats its subjects alphabetically rather than thematically. It appeared in four Italian editions between 1545 and 1555. 27

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His introduction explicitly told his readers that the book contained “all the topics in which these innovators have introduced false doctrine, and deceive the world with seeming reason and scriptural authority, which they understand and interpret falsely.”30 By citing the misuse of scripture, and considering it the main weapon in the heretics’ arsenal, Lippomano demonstrated that he defined heresy primarily as a scriptural problem. Above all, Lippomano took advantage of the new printing technology at his disposal to bolster his methodology. Throughout the treatise he was careful to print the heretical arguments he refutes in italics so that readers could easily distinguish them from the Catholic position.31 Lippomano, a high-ranking bishop and envoy to Protestant countries, had read heterodox works, and his knowledge allowed him to state multiple opinions at length.32 Paradoxically, his fear of heresy drove him to a position of openness and trust regarding the laity. He so worried about heresy that he was willing to let laypeople engage in polemic, based on their own reading, and to become familiar with both heretical and Catholic ideas. Though written primarily to keep people away from new doctrines, this work openly discussed those doctrines alongside more orthodox alternatives. Lippomano felt that he had taken a bold step in writing so openly. In fact, he explained, he was originally reluctant to do so, fully conscious that the decision to write a book of Catholic doctrine for the unlearned was neither easy, nor obvious, nor without danger: I do not want anybody to come to me and say, “I am amazed at your effort, and I think it is presumptuous and foolhardy to divulge matters of faith in this way, when our holy fathers always kept them in such reverence and silence from common people and women, and to reduce these sacrosanct issues to fables and songs until they reach every base and lowly person.” But I say to you, whoever you are, that I regret in my very soul doing this task, but necessity forces me to it . . . Can these scoundrels be allowed to give 30

Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p. The development of Italic type, intended to emulate Italian vernacular handwriting, was originally used independently of Roman type. Only in the second quarter of the century did printers adopt it to create distinctions within a text: Warren Chappell, A Short History of the Printed Word (Vancouver: Harley & Marks, 1999); Twyman, The British Library Guide to Printing History and Techniques (London: The British Library, 1998). The only other Catholic author from this period to take this risk was the Englishman John Gwynneth, whose treatise from the same year, “A declaracion [sic] of the state wherin all heretics do lead their lives,” was set up as a Catholic-Protestant dialogue, with the speakers marked “Catholic” and “Heretic.” Yet even Gwynneth’s work did not separate the opinions by paragraph, as Lippomano does, or by typeface; Gwynneth used the same gothic typeface for his whole work: John Gwynneth, A Declaration of the State wherein all Heretics Do Lead their Lives, London, 1554. 32 Other theologians—Ambrogio Catarino Politi, for example—employed a “state-and-refute” approach, but never for a genre that claims to appeal to the laity and the ignorant: See Compedio d’errori et inganni luterani (1564). 31

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Christians forbidden books in order to seduce them, and profane what is sacred, while a pastor is forbidden to give them a book with which to resist the evildoers and preserve themselves, or, if they have already caught some of the contagion, with which to heal themselves immediately?33 Lippomano was deeply ambivalent about writing his treatise. On one hand, he recognized the need to appeal to “common people and women” who might be “seduced” by the heretical books if he did not step in. On the other, he considered those people “base and lowly”; he felt that theological and doctrinal matters were beyond them. Writing a treatise, for him, was a desperate measure for desperate times, occasioned by the “depraved discussions of those enemies of truth” and spurred on by the “reading of vernacular books printed and given out in secret.” Warning the laity of this threat was a necessary counter-offensive strike, using the weapons of the enemy.34 Nonetheless, having made the decision, he embarked on the task wholeheartedly and included a vigorous plea in his own defense: How can I not say to a simple man, “My son, be careful, they are trying to deceive you, and give you poison disguised as the honey of sweet words. Look well to your own deeds, because they will lead you to hell with this new doctrine.” Will every scoundrel be free to blather about whatever he wants, speak ill of the Blessed Virgin, and of the saints of God, scorn the sacraments of the Church which are the source of our well-being, scoff at the chastity, poverty, and obedience of the religious, while the bishop, whom God has chosen to supervise his people, does not speak, or throw himself into the fray as a strong bulwark, or prevent the little lambs of Christ, redeemed by his precious blood, from being attacked by these evil wolves? This is not an error I will make, nor do I want their ruin attributed to me on the Day of Judgment, because I was silent.35 In other words, Lippomano felt that writing his treatise was a critical step in protecting his flock from imminent and extreme danger. This selfjustification reveals that, for Lippomano, scripture was not a topic for speech. “Chatter” or “gossip” or “blather” led to “speaking ill,” “scoffing,” 33

Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p. Lippomano, like many Catholics, feared that Protestant ideas were spreading through books and must therefore be refuted by them. Such an attitude reflects a shift from the earliest Catholic assumption that sermons were the primary vehicle of new doctrine. In a sermon from 1539, Cornelio Musso laments the spread of heresy through preaching: “pur e` nel mondo, ove si nomina Christo, che quasi per tutto si predicano l’heresie, che in vece di grano si semina loglio: che molti falsi predicatori homai communemente son fatti seduttori”: Cornelio Musso, I tre libri delle prediche II:3, 121–122. Modern scholars confirm this assessment; see Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix– xviii),” 987– 988. 35 Confirmatione et stabilimento, dedicatory letter, n.p. 34

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and ultimately “ruin.” This passage also reminds modern readers again that Italians in the sixteenth century had no assurance that Italy would remain Catholic. To them, the threat of widespread apostasy throughout the peninsula was entirely plausible. Lippomano’s frankness extended to the topic of scriptural teaching, which, unlike Aleni, he discussed at length. Indeed, he provided one of the most thorough justifications of the Catholic position available in the vernacular. Much of his argument confirmed the views discussed and eventually adopted at Trent. Lippomano emphasized the impropriety of ill-prepared people discussing complicated doctrine, and the resulting need for scriptural interpretation to be regulated by a suitable authority. Above all, Lippomano worried about the practical dangers of laypeople reading on their own, as he imagined Protestant converts doing. He feared that untrained readers would approach scripture literally. Their carnal natures would lead them directly to sordid, immoral interpretations. Readers would learn to gratify their basest instincts, he argued, from reading about Judah approaching a prostitute. They would learn idolatry from the animal sacrifices in Leviticus, envy and inebriation from the stories of Noah after the flood and Joseph in Egypt, and magic and soothsaying from the stories of Moses and Daniel.36 The real benefits of scripture required more thought: “we seek the fruits of scripture, which is the spirit, and which are not said to be manifest. Thus the fruit of the spirit is found with much effort, and sweat, and worthy practice in reading.”37 Because scripture is so prone to misinterpretation, access to it had to be carefully controlled. At first glance, Lippomano’s argument seems as defensive and restrictive as his worst critics believe, and as Aleni’s treatise implies. Lippomano argued strongly against vernacular translations of scripture. Not even the liturgy needs to be understood, he explained; the point of reciting prayers is the glorification of God, not the edification of the self. Lippomano argued that God had reasons for delivering scripture in only the three “princely” languages of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Scripture would lose some of its mysterious reverence if made too readily available; too many translations would lead to chaos and confusion.38 For Lippomano, the natural order of the universe was at stake in this debate. Lippomano believed that every stratum and group in society had a distinct purpose; if one group were to take up the tasks of another, the whole would disintegrate. Thus ignorant laypeople who acted like teachers 36

Confirmatione et stabilimento, 46r. Confirmatione et stabilimento, 46v. Such views on vernacular translations predate the Protestant threat; arguments about the difficulty of scripture derive from Augustine, and also appeared in the sermons of elite mendicant preachers of the era. 37 38

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and learned doctors disrupted all of Christian society; the learned should govern society the way the head governs the body. Teaching scripture to the unlearned meant giving them only the dose that suited their current social standing. Strict conceptions of the social order were common enough in early modern Europe, but Lippomano explained explicitly what this meant for scripture: For commoners, it is enough to know the commandments of the law, of which there are ten, if they want to go to heaven, and that they know that there are two precepts of charity, in which all the law and the prophets are resolved, and that they are to love God above everything, and one’s neighbor as oneself . . . . These are things that every faithful Christian knows, or should know, which they learn with their mother’s milk, because they are the foundations of our faith. And when to their disgrace they don’t know them, they can easily learn them from their curates, preachers, or other spiritual fathers. So it is not necessary to read the Holy Scriptures to know this . . . so that none will see so many heresies in Italy and in other parts of the world, as you see today among base and plebeian persons, and even among women.39 Lippomano’s focus here on social order recalls the pastoral context in which he wrote, and the specific practical concerns that occupied him. Protestant successes were a real threat in Verona during his episcopate and, in Catholic eyes, the appeal of the Protestant message was to empower the socially disenfranchised by allowing them to read scripture. In response, Lippomano cast lay access to scripture as a dangerous source of confusion. It would impede, not speed, the path to salvation by destroying trust in Christ and deference to clergy. Again, Lippomano’s antipathy toward “base and plebeian” commoners is clear. Their job was to receive doctrine, or digest it like milk, without it passing through the brain where it could be subject to questioning. At the same time, the problem of teaching scripture remained, and Confirmatione et stabilimento proposed a solution: scripture must be declared and taught publicly, ideally by a bishop in a sermon: Common people should not read scripture for themselves but must rather listen to others who make them understand and explicate it, and who are practiced in this, such as preachers, readers, prelates, and curates. And for this reason we give sermons to the populace, and preach, and read in church, so that those whose God-given office it is to teach perform their duties, and educate the people entrusted to them . . . but the common people must not read scripture by themselves, when they don’t understand it, nor can they understand it, unless the master interpret it for them . . . 39

Confirmatione et stabilimento, 49.

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the Holy Church has ordained an easy means [for learning scripture], that people go to hear the word of God, and frequent sermons.40 Lippomano made scripture learning an entirely aural process. This approach may have been both cautious and orthodox, but the underlying intent was radical because, unlike Aleni’s guide, Lippomano’s treatise emphasized the need for frequent, careful explications of scripture despite its many dangers. Learning scripture orally solved a number of problems. It addressed, though perhaps did not satisfy, the indisputable lay desire for access to scripture. It ensured that proper interpretations would accompany exegesis, and that the clergy would have closer oversight of lay religious activity. Finally, it placed the burden on the “preachers, readers, prelates, and curates,” increasing the need for the clergy, too, to play their proper role in society and to live up to the standards set for them. This is the solution that the council of Trent would ultimately adopt when it decreed, in its twenty-fourth session, that “the bishops shall themselves in person, each in his own church, announce the sacred Scriptures and the divine law . . . and this at least on all Lord’s Days and solemn festivals; but, during the season of the fasts, of Lent and of the Advent of the Lord, daily, or at least on three days in the week, if the said bishop shall deem it needful.”41 Lippomano’s treatise shows an early and energetic endorsement of this model, with details about how it should be done, and an emphatic belief that Catholic traditions need not be abandoned. Lippomano’s conclusions about how to teach scripture were multifaceted; on the one hand, he believed that scripture must be carefully controlled and almost never read; on the other, he directed preachers to undertake frequent scriptural teaching instead. His charge to the clergy is only one small section of a long text, but it reveals the most about his agenda as bishop. It shows concern for the spiritual needs of his flock, a practical understanding of how to meet those needs, and a fundamental commitment to distributing, rather than withholding, information.

V. MODEL SERMONS IN VERONA Lippomano laid out his agenda in theory in his treatise but also made sure it happened in practice. He commissioned a volume of sermons for novice preachers called Sermoni ovvero homelie.42 Model sermons, especially in Latin, were an established tradition that flourished with the coming of the 40

Confirmatione et stabilimento, 48v, 50v. J. Waterworth, trans. and ed., The Council of Trent: The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and Oecumenical Council of Trent (London: Dolman, 1848). 42 Sermoni overo homelie devote del Reverendo M. Giovanni del Bene veronese sopra gli Evangelii di tutto l’anno, secondo l’ordine della Santa Madre Chiesa, utili ad ogni fedel Christiano (Venice, 1562). 41

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printing press.43 This example, however, had close ties to Lippomano’s treatise. Both works were entrusted to the same author, Giovanni Del Bene. Both were written in the vernacular explicitly for lay readers as well as clerical. Like the treatise, Sermoni ovvero homelie stemmed directly from Lippomano’s concerns about heresy in Verona. The introductory letter, written by the author’s brother, explained that Lippomano had requested the work in reaction to the “heretics . . . who have sown every sort of error and false doctrine among the ignorant in these calamitous times.” The sermons were intended to provide a remedy for an endangered population “fed with rotten poisonous nourishment, and lacking true and solid spiritual food.”44 Sermoni ovvero homelie is intended to guide secular clerics who were taking up the burden of preaching for the first time. It provides a year’s worth of short, straightforward de tempore sermons for Sundays and festivals.45 A novice preacher could use them as inspiration for his own sermons, or adopt them verbatim. While the book was by no means the first or only example of model sermons, it is a noticeably comprehensive and pedagogically minded illustration of the genre, produced at a moment when Catholic scriptural preaching was under particular scrutiny.46 In other words, when Lippomano’s treatise told his lay readers that they could learn their scripture in church, it was no idle promise. He went on to commission a work that taught his clergy exactly what they were supposed to do, and how to do right by their congregations. These sermons indicate Lippomano’s pastoral agenda more accurately than Aleni’s guide, not only because we know that he read and approved of them, but also because they were intended to have the broadest reach of all Veronese works. Lippomano read the book of sermons after it was written, showed it to his superiors, and approved it for publication. Furthermore, it was published fully ten years after Aleni’s guide, and was much more widely distributed. Aleni’s treatise never reached a broad readership, whereas 43

For an overview of the model sermon genre between 1470 and 1520, see Anne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the Coming of the Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). 44 Dedicatory letter by Nicolo del Bene, unpaginated, Sermoni overo Homelie Devote del Reverendo M. Giovanni del Bene Veronese sopra gli Evangelii di tutto l’anno, secondo l’ordine della Santa Madre Chiesa, utili ad ogni fedel Christiano ( Venice, 1562). 45 Del Bene also includes sermons for special Masses, such as church dedications, feast days, or the office of the dead. If a feast day is missing, he sends the reader to another as a substitute. 46 Long before and long after the Reformation, the Catholic Church produced standard lectionaries with scriptural selections for preaching, in the vernacular, organized according to the liturgical year, usually called Epistole et Evangelii in Italian. Del Bene’s sermons include much more rudimentary explanation than is typical for the genre. Remigio Fiorentino’s 1567 edition of the Epistole et Evangelii, for example, includes personal annotations on each sermon but does not provide basic definitions, as Del Bene does. Epistolae et Evagelii [sic] che si leggono tutto l’anno alla Messa, secondo l’uso della Santa Romana Chiesa, nuovamente tradotti in lingua toscana dal R.P.M.R. Remigio Fiornetino ( Venice, 1567).

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Del Bene’s volume went through six editions in the twenty years following its publication. These sermons indicated what messages Lippomano wanted a congregation to hear on Sundays. In terms of scripture, they started from the same premise as the treatise: lay scriptural reading, unsupervised, would disrupt the world. Different members of society must approach scripture differently. For Del Bene, as for his supervisor, the Protestants’ worst sin was the way they taught scripture, not only because they gambled with the souls of the faithful, but also because their teaching ruptured the social order: Some will say: It seems today that . . . artisans are the ones who talk scripture and Saint Paul all day. They are wrong, they are wrong! Those people don’t want to learn, as is their office. They want to teach, which is not their duty, and they will realize it someday when nobody believes them because of their blinding presumption and temerity. You might say to me, isn’t preaching and teaching free to anyone (if they are speaking of godly matters)? . . . But not everyone is a learned Doctor, nor can everyone prophesy.47 At first glance, such words seem to reinforce the restrictive social hierarchy of Lippomano’s treatise. For the unlearned, scripture could be heard, understood, contemplated, and comprehended intimately, but only passively, through the explanations of trained priests. But these limitations did not, in fact, prevent the laity from having access to scripture. Rather, they reveal how sermons could, in fact, provide a layperson with a thorough catechetical education. Del Bene’s goal was to reach complete beginners and leave them with a working knowledge of scripture, mediated through its liturgical context. As the title indicates, these sermons are homilies: informal running paraphrases of scripture. The homily, a sermon form from the patristic era, experienced a revival in the sixteenth century as a vehicle for inexperienced preachers teaching an unlearned laity.48 Del Bene’s sermons are the simplest form of homily. Lippomano’s endorsement of this form shows a pastoral approach that is in tune with the basic needs of his flock, long before Borromeo and other preachers recommended its use. The sermons form a continuous commentary on the gospel, embellished with interpretations and moral lessons, but never straying far from the text. This approach is evident from the first sermon, which begins, without preamble, by identifying the period of Advent and explaining its spiritual function. It then proceeds directly to exegesis, saying, “Now that we have begun this way . . . let us enter into the declaration of the holy Gospel text for today.” 47

Sermoni, 263r. See Benjamin Wood Westervelt, “The Prodigal Son at Santa Justina: The Homily in the Borromean Reform of Pastoral Preaching,” Sixteenth Century Journal 32:1 (Spring 2001). 48

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Del Bene paraphrases the gospel fully into the vernacular as though reading aloud: “Saint Luke, in the twenty-first chapter, narrates that Our Lord Jesus said to his disciples, ‘there will be signs in the sun, and moon, and stars.’”49 The sermon structure thus closely follows the gospel narrative. While it includes other scriptural quotations, it uses no patristic or medieval commentaries. Throughout his sermons, Del Bene refers explicitly to his intent to follow the text: “Continuing in the first chapter, of which we covered a great deal the other day.”50 He also provides context. When he discusses apparitions in the gospel of Luke, he mentions disputed interpretations of the location of Galilee, compares versions of the story from Luke and Mark, and tries to relate a chronological version of events that reconciles both gospels.51 Above all, Del Bene believed that scripture must be understood. For him, scripture was the ultimate weapon against all demonic temptations, but it was no talisman. To be useful, it had to be comprehended, even if an artisan’s comprehension differed from a theologian’s: “Whoever has scripture, and the holy commandments of God at hand, can answer to and confound the enemy; thus the Lord always answered the Devil with scripture . . . . So we see that it isn’t enough to have scripture at hand, if you don’t understand it, because the enemy uses it himself too, as he commonly does through the mouths of heretics.52” Del Bene argued that because of heretics, Catholics must learn not to avoid scripture for its dangers, but to comprehend it, in order to beat the heretics at their own game. This argument avoids, without explicitly contradicting, Lippomano’s conservative stance on Bible translations by providing a safer alternative.53 In these sermons, Del Bene’s overall goals and vision for laypeople went far beyond rote obedience. In his approach to Catholic reform, to scripture, and to heresy, Del Bene showed concern for the spiritual state of his readers. He emphasized the internal renewal of faith and piety as much as possible, and balanced negative messages with positive Catholic values whenever he could. While he spoke harshly of heretics, as often as not, he invoked them only in order to goad his readers into being better Catholics. He turned the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, for example, into an explanation of the role of faith and a plea for good works. His readers, he says, should not only obey but should “delight in the divine things necessary for their 49

Sermoni, 1r. Sermoni, 10r. 51 Sermoni, 171r–v. This style of verse-by-verse would be adopted in a more widespread way because of the lectureships in scripture instituted by the council of Trent. 52 Sermoni, 60v– 61r. 53 Biblical translations were illegal in Italy and suggesting them was increasingly dangerous, especially after the establishment of the Roman Inquisition. 50

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health.”54 His words reflect a vision of Catholicism that fostered personal devotion and individual faith. The point, for Del Bene, was not simply to crush heretics, but to create Catholics. Although the volume was inspired by fear, it combated heresy through education as well as through obedience. Del Bene’s work, which has received no extensive scholarly attention, shows that actual sermons present a more complicated approach to reform than Aleni’s theoretical guide. They could simultaneously foster individual Catholic piety and construe devotion as a shield against heresy. They could give their audience tools for understanding scripture and maintain a close grip on its interpretation. Above all, Del Bene’s sermons show that, in Verona, preaching could emphasize positive Catholic behavior, demand true devotion and intent, and also transmit a detailed understanding of scripture, even while keeping the laity on a very short leash.

VI. LIPPOMANO’S EARLY WORKS The approach outlined in Lippomano’s treatise, and then enacted in Del Bene’s sermons, was different from Aleni’s guide for preachers, but in fact it was consistent with Lippomano’s earliest pastoral works. Earlier in his career he had produced two volumes of devotional sermons: the Espositioni and the Sermoni. These works shared the same concerns that would later define Lippomano’s episcopate in Verona: a serious approach to preaching, deep concern for the needs of his flock, angry abhorrence of heresy, and a willingness to be explicit both about heresy and, where possible, about scripture. Such characteristics marked all of Lippomano’s career, and not solely his work in Verona. Lippomano published both the Espositioni and the Sermoni in 1541, when he was coadjutor of Bergamo. Both works were intended for devotional reading, not oration, but relied heavily on sermon forms. The Sermoni is a collection of twenty-two sermons for major festivals of the liturgical year, each dedicated to a particular person or group in Bergamo.55 The Espositioni, written for a group of convertite (penitent prostitutes) in Bergamo and Rome, explain liturgical texts.56 54

Dedicatory letter, Sermoni ovvero Homelie. Sermoni del Reverendo Luigi Lippomano coadiutore di Bergamo sopra tutte le principali feste dell’anno (Rome, 1541). 56 Espositioni Volgare del Reveren. M. Luigi Lippomano . . . Sopra il Simbolo Apostolico cioe` il credo, sopra il Pater nostro, e sopra i dua precetti della charita, etc. ( Venice, 1541). The work was republished five more times over the next thirty years. It employs an exegetical format, devoting each espositione to the explanation of a particular phrase, but substitutes the texts of the prayers for the texts of scripture. Roberto Rusconi identifies this development in more elite sermons later 55

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Lippomano’s explicit comments on preaching in the Sermoni show that episcopal reform and lay education interested him long before he arrived in Verona. In this work, Lippomano railed against elite orators, who were almost always mendicants, both for their preaching habits and for the content of their sermons. He complained that they only preached in well-known cities before famous and learned people, instead of visiting villages and towns, preaching to humble men, and including women. Otherwise, they “are committing a great error, because the Lord does not want to make distinctions among people and things . . . and wants everyone to be saved. Everywhere, no matter how lowly a place it is, it is necessary to preach the word of God, as the Apostles did.”57 Misguided preachers, he said, also defeated their own purposes by bringing in unnecessary works from the secular world in order to dazzle their audiences: “The Gospel says, preach to every creature. Does it say, perhaps, to teach the doctrine of Plato, or the philosophy of Aristotle, or the eloquence of Cicero, or the beautiful Tuscan of Boccacio, or the fairy tales, dreams, and revelations of the simple folk— as, to our disgrace, we often hear people preach these days?”58 With evident relief, he noted that in the past twenty years “God has rekindled the intelligence of these preachers,” who had begun to return to a more straightforward style free of extraneous material. Through his conviction that preaching is pedagogy, Lippomano showed his early support for new models of episcopal reform. Both works also display the attitude toward heresy that would become Lippomano’s trademark: a deep-seated anxiety alongside a willingness to articulate and rebut specific Protestant doctrines. In 1541, when these works were published, many Catholic reformers still hoped for reconciliation. Lippomano himself had not yet traveled to Protestant countries or confronted heterodoxy directly. Yet hints of his later attentiveness to heretical arguments still appear in these works. He devoted two Sermoni to explaining and then

in the century: see Rusconi, ed., Predicazione e vita religiosa nella societa` religiosa. The Franciscan preacher Franceschino Visdomini published a similar volume of devotional readings for nuns 25 years later that corroborates Lippomano’s approach. Although his Discorsi follow the gospel texts of the liturgical year, they too emphasize devotion over the teaching of scripture. Visdomini uses far fewer references to scripture than Lippomano does. Echoing Lippomano’s prayer-centered approach, Visdomini only engages in line-by-line exegesis once, explicating a prayer that the nuns would have recited for that feast day: Discorsi Morali sopra gli evangelii correnti (Venice, 1566). 57 Sermoni, 95. 58 Sermoni, 96. For changes in preaching styles from the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century, see Delcorno, “Dal ‘Sermo Modernus’ alla retorica ‘Borromea’”: Carlo Delcorno, “Rassegna di studi sulla predicazione medievale e umanistica,” Lettere italiane 33 (1981); Rusconi, “Predicatori e predicazione (secoli ix– xviii)”; and Bolzoni, “Oratoria e prediche.”

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discrediting various heretical theological positions that disturbed him.59 The fear of heresy also partly inspired the Espositioni. In a dedicatory letter to the nuns, Lippomano explained that three factors led him to write: continual war and bloodshed; the faltering behavior of those who were Christian in name only; and the insidious spread of Lutheran thought. In 1541, Lutheran ideas had not taken over “a good part” of Italy, but Lippomano’s statement reflects his fear that they would, long before his career in Verona. Finally, these two works demonstrate that when Lippomano did use sermon literature to explicate scripture, it was a deliberate choice. In the Espositioni, he admitted that his audience of penitent prostitutes, rarely a well-schooled population, “cannot read, or . . . don’t want to make the effort, or . . . ought not to read sacred books.”60 Instead, he focused on devotional acts and pious thoughts, and chose to explicate common prayers rather than scriptural passages. At the same time, he asked the convertite to remember the centrality of scripture to all the moral lessons in his book: I know that there will be some among you, who have little or no knowledge of sacred scripture, and who will be amazed at how I have been able to produce such a great volume as this one out of two small commandments. But, on the other hand, anybody well versed in scripture knows that the entire Mosaic law, and the psalms, and the prophets contain nothing else but these two, and also knows that the New Testament is made of nothing besides these two, and that everything ever written by Origen, Basil, the two Gregorys, Cyprian, St. Thomas, and all the Greek and Latin doctors, ancient and modern, has all been merely to teach us to observe these two. I am truly certain that he will really marvel at how I have been able to fit in one small book such vast and profound material.61 Reducing scripture to its moral lessons, and freeing the convertite from the obligation to learn scripture, was a pragmatic position for Lippomano to take with this audience. It shows that he sought to meet his readers at their level, and to adapt his writing to their needs. At least one reader appears to have taken that message to heart; a copy from 1541 shows marginal notes summarizing daily devotions to recite, drawn from the Espositioni: twelve for the articles of the faith, seven for the sacraments, ten for the commandments, and two for love and charity.62 59

Respectively, that prayer is unnecessary and that the soul flies directly to heaven; he does not associate these positions with Protestant thought. 60 “Ognuno che non ha lettere, et anchora chi ne ha, ma non vuole fatica, o non degna leggere i libri sacri”: Espositioni, 3r. 61 Espositioni, 121r. 62 “Ricordati di far (p.ma futura) tutto quelle (prediche), cioe dodici prediche sopra i 12 articoli . . . sette sopra i setti sacramentiti . . . dieci sopra i divini comandamenti della legge, duo sopra l’amor e

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The Sermoni, in contrast, employed the same thorough homiletic techniques Lippomano would later endorse as a bishop. They eschew the questions, metaphors, and long explanations so common to formal oratory, as well as the scholarly linguistic discussion appropriate to learned clergy.63 Instead, the sermons retell and then interpret biblical stories verse by verse, explaining how each passage is organized and comparing it to other passages. Lippomano encouraged his readers to contemplate the text on their own, asking such questions as, “What did the evangelist intend by so carefully expressing here so many proper names?” He used the Sermoni to imbue in his audience a thorough and thoughtful acquaintance with scripture.

VII. CONCLUSIONS Taken together, Lippomano’s works show, first, that his initiatives in Verona were deeply personal and fundamentally collaborative. They remind us that episcopal reform is best understood as a series of local efforts undertaken with the support and participation of both the bishop and his staff. Lippomano’s own deeply held beliefs influenced everything he wrote. At the same time, his best-known work was the product of collaboration and revision. His episcopate must therefore be judged equally by the works of his employees. Secondly, and perhaps due to such collaboration, they show that reform efforts could also be messy and not uniform. Multiple points of view reached the faithful concurrently in Verona. Lippomano’s hatred of heresy and his strong pastoral sense sat awkwardly with his disdain for lay intelligence. His vicars, too, put their own spin on their works. Aleni’s guide for preachers and Del Bene’s model sermons presented very different visions of preaching and even of how to be a good Catholic. They both earned Lippomano’s approval. Lippomano’s episcopate shows how messages of reform could

charita di dio”: These notes appear in the edition possessed by the Library of Congress Rare Book Room (BT70.L57 1541). 63 For the clergy, Lippomano published his Greek and Latin biblical commentaries and a collection of saints’ lives. As Lippomano points out in his introduction to his Genesis commentary, clergy were supposed to study scripture and to own at least one devout book. In these works, Lippomano pays attention to all four forms of biblical interpretation, shows a marked preference for allegory, and freely discusses Hebrew etymology in his own commentaries. (See his Catena in Genesim ex authoribus ecclesiasticis plus minus sexaginta, iisque partim Graecis, partim Latinis, connexa [Paris, 1546].) Oliver Logan mentions that Lippomano’s efforts to help the clergy were probably unsuccessful; with 24 commentaries (including his own), they were too dense and unwieldy for any printing press in Italy, and would have been an intellectual and financial burden for many: Logan, The Venetian Upper Clergy, 184– 185 and 204 n. 36.

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vary even in one city and in one year. Even at it its most microscopic level, Catholic reform was a diverse and sometimes contradictory process. Part of the contradiction lies in Lippomano’s own position on scripture and his approach to reform, which discourage easy categorization into repressive or tolerant styles. In Lippomano’s case, strong feelings about heresy led, surprisingly, to openness: he and his staff had a strong anti-heretical slant to their pastoral work, but that slant only made them unusually willing to trust the Veronesi by discussing heretical doctrine with them and by telling them what the “enemy” was thinking. Similarly, Lippomano cringed at the thought of artisans with Bibles, especially Bibles in Italian, but nonetheless engineered one of the most thorough examples of year-round scriptural preaching that remains from the sixteenth century. Verona typifies a model of Catholic reform where scripture continues to have a central role in Catholic education. Furthermore, these scriptural sermons are filled with faithful positive messages about Catholicism, and with tools for creating educated and devout Catholics. Lippomano’s pastoral instincts and his misgivings are inseparable. Lippomano’s publications show how preachers were indispensable in influencing Catholic identity in Italy in the long run. In one form or another, preachers addressed in detail the most pressing doctrinal and catechetical questions of the era. Lippomano’s works demonstrate the very concrete ways that reformers created, and re-created, a sense of positive Catholic identity among their own population. In a suddenly unfamiliar world, with rapidly expanding borders, the careful efforts of individuals—local priests, bishops, and preachers, not only in Italy but in all of Europe—gradually built up religious affiliations that ultimately defined Europe for centuries.

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 606–631. # 2009, American Society of Church History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990448 Printed in the USA

“Family Values” and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda SETH DOWLAND

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URING his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter promised social conservatives that, if elected, he would convene a conference examining how the federal government could support American families. That promise—alongside Carter’s description of being “born again” and his well-documented Christian devotion—thrilled American evangelicals. They provided him with a crucial bloc of support in the 1976 election. Four years later, Carter finally made good on his campaign pledge when he convened the White House Conference on Families. Carter declared that the conference would “examine the strengths of American families, the difficulties they face, and the ways in which family life is affected by public policies.”1 He recruited a panel of organizers and asked them to focus on how government policy might better support family life. If Carter was hoping to placate evangelicals who had soured on him since the 1976 election, he failed. The diverse group of conference organizers Carter assembled insisted that a conference on families must examine the pressures facing homosexual and single-parent families, and they refused to define a family as a heterosexual, two-parent household. These decisions led conservative Christian political leaders to repudiate the meeting. Jerry Falwell’s political action group, the Moral Majority, dubbed it “the AntiFamily Conference,” and Alabama governor Fob James announced that his state would not send any delegates “because the conference appears to oppose Judeo-Christian values.” Conference speakers, declared the Moral Majority Report, were “activists who hold the traditional family and its 1 Jimmy Carter, “White House Conference on Families Appointment of Wilbur J. Cohen as Chairman,” 14 April 1978, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project (Santa Barbara: University of California), available at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ ws/?pid=30666; accessed 23 January 2009. I would like to thank Steve Berry, Elesha Coffman, Brantley Gasaway, Matt Harper, Sarah Johnson, Grant Wacker, Jackie Whitt, and two anonymous readers for their helpful critiques of this article. I would also like to thank session participants and audience members from the 2007 American Academy of Religion meeting panel “Religion and the Politics of the Common Good,” where I initially presented a version of this paper and received thought-provoking feedback.

Seth Dowland is a lecturing fellow and associate director of the Thompson Writing Program at Duke University.

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morals in contempt.” As a result, according to religious conservatives, the White House Council on Families would “heap scorn and ridicule on the American family.”2 For three decades, leaders of the Christian right have deployed rhetoric such as this in order to promote “family values.” They contended that abortion, feminism, and homosexuality represented a multifaceted “attack” on the family, which they defined as “the fundamental institution of society, an immutable structure established by our Creator.”3 Christian right leaders envisioned the family as the central unit of American society, and they framed their political activities throughout the 1980s and 1990s as a defense of the “traditional” family. The centrality of the family to the Christian right’s sense of its mission extended even to the names of its institutions: two of the most important institutions in the contemporary Christian right are Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Yet the rise of “family values” as the rallying cry of the Christian right was neither inevitable nor predictable. The triumvirate of political positions that came to constitute the core of “family values”—opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights—did not command much attention from evangelicals before 1975.4 In fact, most evangelicals who spoke publicly about these issues in the early 1970s supported the Equal Rights Amendment and equivocated on abortion. Gay rights, to be sure, never found favor among conservative Christians, yet it seemed a marginal issue until the end of the decade. In short, on these three issues, evangelicals in the early 1970s seemed ambivalent. Over the course of the 1970s, however, a small cadre of evangelical ministers developed a political philosophy that connected defense of the “traditional family” with opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights. Christian right leaders defined traditional families as those with two heterosexual parents, with the husband as the head and, preferably, the primary breadwinner. Though some scholars have argued that this type of nuclear family was never typical among Americans,5 the image of a working father, a stay-athome mother, and well-scrubbed children carried significant appeal among conservatives in the wake of the 1960s. And Christian right leaders developed a political rhetoric that connected the demise of these “traditional” 2

“The Anti-Family Conference,” Moral Majority Report, 14 March 1980, 2. Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 4 I focus here on abortion, feminism, and gay rights because opposition to these issues was universal within the Christian right. Other issues, of course, factored into the family-values agenda, and I will discuss those issues at the end of the article. 5 See, for instance, Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 8 –22 and passim. 3

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families with feminism and gay rights. For instance, Jerry Falwell said that ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (a key initiative among 1970s feminists) “could sanction homosexual marriage, send mothers and young girls into combat, and generally injure the dignity of the traditional family.”6 Likewise, early campaigns against abortion connected that practice to prochoice advocates’ devaluation of motherhood and, by extension, the family. Critics of the Christian right called its agenda narrow-minded and divisive, but the genius of the movement was to frame opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights as “defense of the family.” After all, who was going to argue against families? By the end of the 1970s, the Christian right had devised rhetoric that made liberal reformers enemies of the family and positioned “family values” as mainstream fare. Opposing abortion, feminism, and gay rights, in the view of the Christian right, would benefit all Americans. Some traditional political conservatives dissented, wondering why they ought to care about these issues. For instance, a letter writer to the politically conservative periodical Human Events declared, “Whether or not we agree with the lifestyle of the homosexual, we, as conservatives, cannot deny his right to live according to his own conscience without the interference of the government.”7 This statement confirmed sociologist Ted Jelen’s observation that the Christian right faced a formidable barrier in legislating morality in a society that considered the primary role of government to be the defense of individual rights.8 Americans viewed with suspicion any political movement that encroached on individual liberties. Yet the Christian right worked around this problem by establishing the family as an institution instrumental to America’s success. “If America is to return to original greatness,” wrote Falwell, “we must . . . support the traditional monogamous family as the only acceptable form.”9 Falwell and others suggested that America became great because it nurtured “traditional” families. Thus, according to the rhetoric of the Christian right, opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights became markers of mainstream identity. The family values agenda enabled the Christian right to bridge some longstanding boundaries, even as it reinforced or redefined others. For instance, evangelicals’ embrace of political activism encouraged them to unite with pro-life Catholics, an alliance that horrified some fundamentalists. Likewise, the Christian right’s conflation of church and state offended some Baptists who considered that principle sacrosanct. Grassroots activists, many of them 6 Jerry Falwell, “America Was Built on Seven Great Principles,” Moral Majority Report, 18 May 1981, 3. 7 “Conservative Forum,” Human Events, 9 July 1977, 14. 8 Ted G. Jelen, “Political Esperanto: Rhetorical Resources and Limitations of the Christian Right in the United States,” Sociology of Religion 66:3 (Autumn 2005): 303 –321. 9 Falwell, “America Was Built on Seven Great Principles,” 3.

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stay-at-home mothers, joined with lawmakers to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment and to protest Roe v. Wade. The rhetoric of family values facilitated these unusual alliances. It was capacious enough to accommodate Americans of differing theological orientations and political commitments yet specific enough to provide a common vision for leaders, activists, and fellow travelers. In fact, the triumph of the Christian right in defining “family values” as a capacious yet specific policy agenda has created a situation that encourages both shrill and triumphalist narratives about the movement. Critics have published a raft of titles recently that accuse the Christian right of wanting to establish a theocracy, of kowtowing to the most craven corporate interests, and of fomenting bigotry throughout the heartland.10 These studies, written mainly by journalists, vary in the quality of their research, but they share a fixation on the more extreme claims of Christian right leaders. Conversely, evangelical leaders have written narratives of the Christian right that emphasize the guiding hand of providence and the sinister machinations of liberals—narratives that fail to treat the movement with careful historical scrutiny.11 Neither of these approaches satisfactorily explains how the Christian right won significant influence. This article aspires to join the growing body of studies that treat the Christian right with sympathy, probe its leaders’ claims with scrutiny, and explain how the movement’s political agenda captured widespread support. To date, sociologists have provided some of the best studies of the movement.12 This article adds a historical 10

See, for instance, Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War (New York: Crown, 2007); Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Metropolitan, 2004); Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (New York: Free Press, 2006); Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006); Jeff Sharlet, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2008). 11 See, for instance, Charles W. Colson, “The Lures and Limits of Political Power,” in Piety & Politics: Evangelicals and Fundamentalists Confront the World, ed. Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Cromartie (Washington: Ethics & Public Policy Center, 1987), 171–185; Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980), 21–70; Tim F. LaHaye, The Battle for the Mind (Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1980), 181 –195; Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead (Falls Church, Va.: Viguerie, 1981), 123– 136. 12 Sociologist William Martin’s 1996 volume on the Christian right, developed in conjunction with a PBS series and recently updated, is the most thorough treatment of the movement: William C. Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway, 2005). Martin’s colleague D. Michael Lindsay recently published a study of evangelical powerbrokers that provides a helpful distinction between “cosmopolitan” and “populist” evangelicals. This distinction—alongside Lindsay’s chapter on evangelicals in politics—further clarifies the story Martin lays out. I should note, too, that most of the figures in this article are populist evangelicals, whose efforts, according to Lindsay, are more visible but may ultimately prove less permanent: D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How

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dimension to the story of the Christian right, showing that Christian right leaders developed the family values agenda through a series of contingencies that was hardly predictable, much less inevitable.

I. THE IMPORTANCE OF ABORTION In January 1973, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 in Roe v. Wade to protect women’s right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy. Overturning that decision became (and remains) the preeminent political task of social conservatives. Many of these social conservatives hailed from evangelical churches, and they identified the Roe decision as the critical issue that awakened them from long political slumber. “The abortion issue,” recalled Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler, “is the stick of dynamite that exploded the issue.”13 Likewise, Jerry Falwell said that on “the morning of January 23, 1973”—the day after the Roe decision—“I felt a growing conviction that I would have to take my stand.”14 Though it took several years for Falwell to follow through on his conviction, abortion clearly occupied a central role among the constellation of issues Christian right leaders spotlighted in their mobilization of conservative Christians. Yet evangelicals’ initial response to Roe v. Wade hardly matched their recollections of immediate indignation. Falwell issued no statements on the decision until 1975, a silence he attributed to preoccupation with a government investigation of his organization’s finances in 1973.15 Polls of Southern Baptists in the half-decade before Roe showed an overwhelming majority in favor of “therapeutic abortion,” albeit not abortion on demand. Though some conservatives in the SBC agitated for a stronger stand against

Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15–37, 218– 223. One of the best historical studies of the Christian right is Daniel Kenneth Williams, “From the Pews to the Polls: The Formation of a Southern Christian Right” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2005). Other helpful studies include Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (Boston, Mass.: South End, 1989); Darren Dochuk, “From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Southernization of Southern California, 1939–1969” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2005); Robert C. Liebman, Robert Wuthnow, and James L. Guth, The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation (Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine, 1983); Michael Lienesch, Redeeming America: Piety and Politics in the New Christian Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Christian Smith, Christian America?: What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Clyde Wilcox, Onward Christian Soldiers?: The Religious Right in American Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996). 13 Oral Memoirs of R. Albert Mohler, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. 14 Jerry Falwell, If I Should Die before I Wake (Nashville, Tenn.: T. Nelson, 1986), 31– 32. 15 Jerry Falwell, Strength for the Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 336.

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abortion after Roe, moderates blocked the discussion of an anti-abortion resolution at the 1974 convention.16 Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical journal launched by Billy Graham in the 1950s, took a strong stand against abortion under the direction of editor (and Southern Baptist minister) Harold Lindsell, but few magazines followed its lead. While grassroots pro-life activists expressed indignation about the Roe decision, most evangelical Protestant leaders and institutions responded tepidly at first.17 Why did evangelicals remain a minority faction in the pro-life coalition through most of the 1970s? In 1973 two factors mitigated against conservative Christians’ opposition of Roe. First, the language the Court used to legitimate abortion drew on conservative rhetoric. The Fourteenth Amendment, said the Court, “protects against state action the right to privacy.” In other words, the Supreme Court employed an individual rights rationale that favored women’s prerogative in reproductive choices against the state’s interference. Early abortion foes knew the consequences of Roe could be dire. By defining abortion as an issue “belonging to the private sphere, more like a religious preference than a deeply held social belief,” the Court’s decision appealed to those who rejected governmental interference into private decisions.18 Evangelicals, who had developed sensitivity to governmental intrusion on their beliefs in the decades after the 1925 Scopes trial, increasingly guarded against any attempts to infringe on their religious liberty. By framing abortion as an individual right, the Court predisposed some political conservatives to support Roe.19 Second, and more important, Catholics spearheaded the earliest campaigns against abortion.20 In the early 1970s, about 70 percent of the members of 16 Edward E. Plowman, “Southern Baptists: Unity the Priority,” Christianity Today, 5 July 1974, 41– 42. Before Roe, some Protestant denominations even argued for the expansion of abortion rights. Southern Baptists, for instance, resolved in 1971 “to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother”: “Resolution on Abortion,” Southern Baptist Convention http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=13 (accessed 23 January 2009). That said, the SBC was not nearly as conservative in 1971 as it would become in the 1980s, so this resolution hardly represented a consensus view in the denomination. 17 The clearest statement by Christianity Today on the Roe decision is “Abortion and the Court,” Christianity Today, 16 February 1973, 32– 33. On the relative silence of other conservative Protestants in the first years after Roe, see Williams, “From the Pew to the Polls,” 285–300. 18 Kristin Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 141. 19 In fact, throughout the 1970s, it was unclear that Republicans would champion the pro-life cause. Catholics, who constituted a majority of the pro-life coalition for most of the 1970s, tended to vote Democratic, and some prominent Democrats opposed Roe. The pro-life coalition remained almost equally split between Senate Republicans and Democrats until 1979, and a majority of pro-life supporters voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan in 1980. See Greg D. Adams, “Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution,” American Journal of Political Science 41:3 (July 1997): 723–730. 20 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 126–137.

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the National Right to Life Commission claimed membership in the Catholic Church.21 Catholics’ leadership of the pro-life movement made it less likely that conservative Protestants would join it. A 1984 study of the pro-life movement found that few activists had expressed any public opposition to abortion before 1967 (when California legalized abortion), and almost all of the earliest activists were Catholic. Catholics’ overwhelming majority in the nascent anti-abortion coalition persisted at least through 1978.22 Given the historic enmity between Catholics and conservative Protestants, it is hardly surprising that evangelicals felt some discomfort about joining the pro-life movement in the early 1970s. As the evangelical theologian Harold O. J. Brown put it, “At that point, a lot of Protestants reacted almost automatically—‘If the Catholics are for it, we should be against it.’”23 Rightto-life groups did receive a surge in Protestant membership after the Roe decision—especially from younger women with small children—but on the whole, evangelicals seemed hesitant to enter the pro-life coalition until the mid-1970s.24 Evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer sought to change that. Born and reared among conservative Presbyterians in Pennsylvania, Schaeffer established a Christian community called L’Abri (“the shelter”) in Switzerland during the 1950s. From L’Abri, Schaeffer published his views on a variety of subjects. Schaeffer rejected fundamentalism’s notion of “purity” as misguided and even heretical. Christians, he contended, needed to engage secular culture as part of a holistic presentation of the gospel. “The Lordship of Christ,” argued Schaeffer, “covers all of life and all of life equally.” He presented conservative Christian views on a host of subjects, from the environment to the arts. Schaeffer contended that “secular humanists” had embedded an anti-Christian philosophy in American laws and government. Now, Schaeffer argued, Christians had to fight back. “Our loyalty to the God who gave the law,” wrote Schaeffer, “requires that we make the appropriate response . . . to such a tyrannical usurping of power.”25 By the end of the 1970s, Schaeffer had emerged as the foremost evangelical opponent of abortion, which he portrayed as the primary issue demanding Christian response. In Whatever Happened to the Human Race, which Schaeffer co-wrote with the future surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, he 21 Donald T. Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 135. 22 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 127– 128. 23 Quoted in Martin, With God on Our Side, 193. Martin also discusses the discomfort with which Protestants received Billy Graham’s affirmations of John Kennedy, and Brown claims that a “lingering anti-Catholic bias” led Protestants to take up the anti-abortion fight surprisingly late. 24 Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 144– 157. 25 Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1981), 19, 17, 131– 132.

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argued, “Of all the subjects relating to the erosion of the sanctity of human life, abortion is the keystone.” Schaeffer contended that the permissibility of abortion meant America had abandoned respect for human life. The book connected abortion to a host of dehumanizing practices, including euthanasia, torture, and suicide. The final pages of Whatever Happened to the Human Race featured various figures pictured in cages: AfricanAmerican slaves, Jewish immigrants, a handicapped girl, and a premature infant. Schaeffer concluded that “we must stand against the loss of humanness in all its forms.” He saw abortion as murder of innocents, and his book popularized that interpretation among conservative Protestants.26 Perhaps more important, Schaeffer disseminated a view of political involvement that encouraged—even demanded—that evangelicals cooperate with non-evangelicals in order to achieve political success. Schaeffer advanced the notion of a culture war, and he suggested that political quiescence was untenable in the face of practices like abortion. He argued that evangelicals needed to adopt “co-belligerence,” or cooperation with nonevangelicals, as a political tactic. In A Christian Manifesto, he wrote, “It is time for Christians and others who do not accept the narrow and bigoted humanist views rightfully to use the appropriate forms of protest.”27 Schaeffer believed that the dire straits in which Christians found themselves in the late 1970s demanded cooperation with all who would join the fight against abortion. Evangelicals responded. A comment by Jimmy Draper, president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1982 – 1984, typified Christian right leaders’ view of Schaeffer’s influence. Draper said, “Francis Schaeffer was the first one to say, hey, listen, there’s a war going on with our culture, and our worldview’s in danger, and we need to stand for the things that God has revealed to us.”28 Evangelicals’ embrace of Schaeffer’s culture war ideal represented the critical first step in mobilizing conservative Christians. Among evangelicals, Jerry Falwell emerged as the foremost proponent of Schaeffer’s doctrine of “co-belligerency.” Falwell’s leadership of the movement 26 Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1979), 31, 198, pictures following p. 198. 27 Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, 110. Schaeffer’s comment revealed the ways that conservative Christians drew on the rhetoric of the civil rights movement. On this point, see David John Marley, “Riding in the Back of the Bus: The Christian Right’s Adoption of Civil Rights Movement Rhetoric,” in The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, ed. Renee Christine Romano and Leigh Ford (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 346– 362. Jon Shields’s recently published book offers an expanded treatment of the ways the Christian right revived the democratic impulses of 1960s liberal activism: Jon A. Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009). Cf. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s,” Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2009; John G. Turner, “Civility and Boldness,” Books & Culture (May/June 2009): 18–19. 28 Oral Memoirs of James T. Draper, Jr., The Texas Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

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was surprising. In the 1960s he had advocated political quiescence and fundamentalist “separation” from doctrinal rivals. But he changed in the late 1970s. In his political newsletter Moral Majority Report, Falwell wrote, “In itself, the political process is not ‘dirty.’ It has been corrupted by wicked, sinful men and by the neglect of God’s people to be the moral conscience of our leaders.” Christians, said Falwell, must fight “the spiritual war where Satan is active—in the political arena.”29 And in order for conservative Protestants to fight successfully in the political arena, they would have to cooperate with those whose theology differed from theirs. Falwell contended that “those of us in the leadership of Moral Majority are aware of the vast theological issues that separate Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons, etc. We are not fighting to unite any of these factions. We are fighting to maintain [the] religious freedom of this nation so that we can maintain our religious practices regardless of how different they may be.”30 These words reflected Schaeffer’s influence on Falwell. In fact, Schaeffer called Falwell in 1978 to encourage Falwell in his efforts against moral decay in America.31 Falwell subsequently popularized many of Schaeffer’s views through his books, periodicals, and public appearances. In May 1979, Falwell inaugurated the political action group Moral Majority. That month, a handful of conservative Republicans, including a Catholic (Paul Weyrich) and a Jew (Howard Phillips), met with Falwell at the Holiday Inn in Lynchburg to discuss forming a political action committee. Weyrich reportedly coined the new group’s name, Moral Majority, and Falwell emerged as the leader.32 In an early promotional brochure, the Moral Majority described its philosophy as “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral, and pro-America.” The brochure also suggested that a coalition of at least 170 million “moral” Americans existed: 50 million to 60 million “idealistic moralists,” more than 60 million “religious moralists,” and 60 million born-again Christians.33 The organization clearly intended to reach each of these groups, crossing once unbridgeable divides. Most notably, the Moral Majority targeted Catholics for cooperation. Falwell claimed that thirty percent of Moral Majority’s budget came from Catholic contributions, and Moral Majority Report regularly published letters and articles from Catholic supporters.34 “I do hope others will join me in giving 29

“6 Questions Asked Most of Christians in Politics,” Moral Majority Report, 15 May 1980. Jerry Falwell, “Falwell Defends Assault by Bob Jones: Morally Concerned Must Unite Clout,” Moral Majority Report, 14 July 1980, 4. 31 Falwell’s associate Norman Keener recounted this phone call in a letter to Edith Schaeffer dated 24 May 1984, shortly after Francis Schaeffer’s death. Francis Schaeffer: letters folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 32 For a description of the Holiday Inn meeting, see Martin, With God on Our Side, 199– 200. 33 “Your Invitation to Join the Moral Majority,” Moral Majority: Informational Booklets folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 34 The claim that 30 percent of the Moral Majority’s budget came from Catholic contributions appeared in Kenneth Baker, “Catholics and Moral Majority,” Moral Majority Report, 20 April 1981, 14. 30

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you our prayerful support (which I have already given you),” wrote one Catholic nun. “I think Dr. Jerry Falwell is brave, devoted to Christian living and unafraid to speak out.”35 Falwell’s advertisement of Catholics’ support displayed his commitment to political alliances with non-fundamentalists. Moreover, Catholics’ strong and consistent stance against abortion endeared them to evangelicals who had grown increasingly strident in their pro-life position by the end of the 1970s. In his 1987 autobiography, Falwell celebrated Catholics’ early opposition to Roe and lamented that “the voices of my Protestant Christian brothers and sisters, especially the voices of evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, remained silent” in the first few years after the decision.36 Aligning himself with abortion’s earliest opponents reflected Falwell’s wholesale adoption of Schaeffer’s doctrine of co-belligerency.37 Cooperating with Catholics was not a trivial step for Falwell to take. In fact, this new alliance triggered the breakup of some older ones. Fundamentalist stalwart Bob Jones, Jr., issued a denunciation of Falwell and the Moral Majority. In a letter to alumni of Bob Jones University dated June 10, 1980, Jones censured Falwell’s alliance with anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly (“a devout Roman Catholic”) and called Falwell “the most dangerous man in America as far as Biblical Christianity is concerned.” Jones viewed cooperation with Catholics as an unpardonable breach of fundamentalist “separation.” As a leader of southern fundamentalists, Jones’s condemnation of the Moral Majority effectively excommunicated Falwell from the right-most flank of conservative Christianity. Stung by the criticism, Falwell replied, “I am indeed considered to be ‘dangerous’ to liberals, feminists, abortionists, and homosexuals, but certainly not to Bible-believing Christians. . . . God has called me to do what I am doing today.”38 Falwell rejected the proposition that his political activities compromised his faith, yet he understood that building alliances with Catholics had occasioned turmoil among his spiritual compatriots. The legalization of abortion, in Falwell’s estimation, had made that turmoil unavoidable. Roe, said Falwell, showed him “that this time preaching would not be enough.” He decided that “it was my duty as a Christian to apply the truths of Scripture to every act of government.”39 This decision marked a 35

“Letters from America,” Moral Majority Report, 1 May 1980, 11. Falwell, Strength for the Journey, 335. Catholics’ firm opposition to abortion made some of them heroes among evangelicals. Most notably, the late Richard John Neuhaus and his periodical First Things won widespread acclaim among evangelicals, notably George W. Bush. Time even named Neuhaus one of the country’s 25 most influential evangelicals in 2004. 38 Falwell, “Falwell Defends Assault by Bob Jones,” 4– 5. Jones’s June 10 letter to alumni “preacher boys” was reprinted in its entirety in the same issue of Moral Majority Report (14 July 1980). 39 Falwell, Strength for the Journey, 337. 36 37

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break with both previous generations of fundamentalists and Falwell’s own statements. In a 1964 sermon called “Advancing through Prayer,” Falwell had chided ministers who used their pulpits to call for civil rights legislation. “God never called the church to be a social reformer,” Falwell said. “The church has not been called to a political ministry of lobbying in Washington for any kind of legislation.”40 This stance emanated from southern fundamentalists’ belief that the separation of church and state meant that Christians were to abstain from political activity.41 He also might have added that, for the first half of the twentieth century, southern society’s racial and gender hierarchies, which most white Christians endorsed, faced few real threats. The civil rights movement changed that. By the early 1970s, white conservative Christians understood that standing on the political sidelines would not ensure the perpetuation of “traditional” values. Some of these Christians had mobilized in the fight against civil rights, though countless more resisted the movement through declarations like Falwell’s, decrying the defilement of the church with secular politics. But abortion, said Falwell, caused him and others to turn the corner. Political action was no longer taboo—it was essential. Even so, many conservative Protestants in the late 1970s still conceived of abortion as a “Catholic issue,” which necessitated a new approach to the issue. Catholic leaders defined abortion as a “life issue,” and Falwell gradually adopted that rhetoric. But he also connected opposition to abortion with defense of the family. The Family Manifesto, a lengthy policy statement released by several Christian right organizations in the mid-1980s, declared, “We proclaim that parental responsibility for reproductive decisions is joint. Hence we deny that reproduction is solely a ‘woman’s choice.’”42 The document’s authors used the language of pro-choice advocates to show how Roe threatened the family structure authorized by the Bible. By relegating the family’s primary function—reproduction and rearing of children—to 40

Jerry Falwell, “Advancing through Prayer [unpublished sermon],” 1964, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. Falwell made a similar remark in his more widely cited 1965 sermon, “Ministers and Marches.” 41 The historian Leo P. Ribuffo, among others, has shown that fundamentalists did not hold that stance throughout American history. An “old Christian Right” existed well before men and women like Falwell came on the scene. But political quiescence, at least on the national stage, had been the rule among conservative Christians for at least a generation: Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983). Also see Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003). 42 “Family Manifesto,” Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va.

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“private” decisions that women could undertake apart from their husbands, Roe posed a threat. Conservative Christians perceived the language of Roe, which described abortion as a “woman’s choice,” as a direct assault on the gendered family order instituted by the Bible. Portraying abortion as an assault on motherhood was crucial. Sociologist Kristin Luker discovered a high degree of correlation between the primary occupations of women and their position in the abortion debate. Women who worked outside the home were more likely to support abortion rights. Homemakers, Luker reported, felt that abortion devalued motherhood, which had once represented women’s social and biological destiny. After Roe, motherhood became simply one of several choices available to women.43 This choice, in the eyes of abortion foes, demeaned the mothering roles that most of them cherished. They believed abortion fostered “a world view that deemphasizes (and therefore downgrades) the traditional roles of men and women.” Female abortion foes’ experience as mothers and homemakers predisposed them to reject Roe’s disregard for their “family values.”44 Of course, the rhetoric Christian right leaders deployed in opposition to abortion did not portray Roe solely as an assault on motherhood. Moral Majority flyers talked about a “holocaust” and compared abortion advocates to defenders of slavery. “In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 that a slave was not a person but the property of his owners,” read one such flyer, invoking the Dred Scott decision. Likewise, said the Moral Majority, “In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 that an unborn human being was not a person but the private property of his mother. . . . Again, the self evident truth of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness was denied.”45 Spurred on by Schaeffer’s vision, evangelical leaders in the early 1980s had characterized abortion as an unmitigated evil. Their ability to do so depended on a host of factors, including the far-reaching nature of the Roe decision and the subsequent spike in abortions performed in the United States.46 Yet the escalation in the Christian right’s anti-abortion rhetoric in the early 1980s obscured both an early hesitancy to engage the issue and the 43

The advent of birth control presented this question to an earlier generation of mothers, and those who entered the pro-life movement before the late 1970s largely rejected artificial methods of contraception (including condoms, the pill, and intrauterine devices). As the anti-abortion movement grew in the early 1980s, a greater diversity of opinion on the legitimacy of artificial contraception emerged: Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 165– 168. 44 Ibid., 159–175, quote on 162. 45 “Judgment Without Justice,” The Old-Time Gospel Hour News, n.d., Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 46 Almost 1.3 million American women received abortions in 1977, up from 193,000 in 1970: Susan B. Hansen, “State Implementation of Supreme Court Decisions: Abortion Rates since Roe V. Wade,” The Journal of Politics 42:2 (May 1980): 375.

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connection of pro-life positions to a program of “family values” that coincided with conservative Christians’ worldview. “Pro-life activists believe that men and women are intrinsically different,” Luker wrote. “They subscribe quite strongly to the traditional belief that women should be wives and mothers first.”47 The correlation of “traditional” understandings of gender roles and opposition to abortion reflected the efforts of Schaeffer, Falwell, and other Christian right leaders to connect Roe with a widespread assault on “family values.” It also helps explain why the Christian right demonized the women’s movement in the years after Roe, just as feminism appeared poised to win wide acceptance among evangelicals.

II. FIGHTING FEMINISM Many abortion rights advocates hailed from the ranks of the women’s movement, which won notable gains during the 1970s. The United Nations designated 1975 as the International Women’s Year, sanctioning the movement’s goal of making women full and equal participants in civil societies. During that year, the UN convened a summer conference in Mexico, which produced a report emphasizing women’s contributions to peacemaking and tying their full participation in governments to the promotion of disarmament.48 Some U.S. feminists derided the IWY as a token gesture, but mainstream media endorsed the achievements and mission of feminism. For instance, Time said that “feminism has transcended the feminist movement. In 1975 the women’s drive penetrated every layer of society, matured beyond ideology to a new status of general—and sometimes unconscious—acceptance.”49 The women’s movement, like the civil rights movement before it, had won popular support, albeit conditional and fleeting. Feminists seemed poised to accelerate their drive for full equality. Evangelicals initially appeared excited about the advances of feminism. A 1974 editorial in Christianity Today endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment, and a survey in the same issue reported that Christians favored it by a 3-to-1 margin.50 Evangelicals in 1974 also witnessed the publication of Letha 47

Luker, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, 159, 161. The text of the resolution can be found at “1st World Conference on Women, Mexico,” http:// www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1453.html (accessed 28 April 2009). 49 “Great Changes, New Chances, Tough Choices,” Time, 5 January 1976. 50 CT conducted a survey of 250 “conservative and liberal” Christians on issues related to women’s rights, including ordination, submission, and the ERA. The 87 respondents included 23 women. Though such a small sample is far from representative—and CT offered no description of its survey methodology—these articles, in the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, indicated that in 1974, the “party line” of conservative Christianity did not necessarily include opposition to ERA. “Editorial: Some Thoughts for the ERA Era,” Christianity Today, 27 September 1974, 48

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Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty’s All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation, which became the most important text in the nascent evangelical feminist movement. Scanzoni and Hardesty’s book deployed some familiar feminist arguments, such as the contention that cultural conditioning, not biology, played the largest role in creating notions of “masculine” and “feminine.” But unlike most feminists, Scanzoni and Hardesty enlisted the support of the Bible. They wrote that “from the beginning” of the church, “women participated fully and equally with men.” The church must therefore “face up to the concrete implications of a gospel which liberates women as well as men.”51 Although many of Scanzoni and Hardesty’s conclusions parroted the claims feminists had been making for years, their use of biblical arguments in support of “women’s lib” awakened Christians to the possibility that scripture might support feminism. Feminist Alice Mathews called All We’re Meant to Be “a shot heard round the evangelical world.” She recalled that “once books and journal articles appeared by reputable evangelical feminist scholars writing and speaking within the limits of accepted evangelical interpretive guidelines, shock waves coursed through the evangelical scholarly community.”52 Scanzoni and Hardesty enabled conservative Christians to claim biblical support for feminist positions. While not all evangelicals agreed with Scanzoni and Hardesty, some of the most prominent ones conceded the fundamental worthiness of the women’s movement. Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell, whose 1976 book The Battle for the Bible condemned evangelicals who did not subscribe to biblical inerrancy, admitted that “women, evangelical or not, have legitimate grievances.” He believed that women “should have the same rights as men; equal pay for the same jobs; [and] the right and freedom to pursue any career.”53 Likewise, former Christianity Today editor Carl F. H. Henry declared that “this is a moment in history . . . when able evangelical women are needed in all the professions and vocations now opening to both sexes— medicine, law, the mass media, politics, and much else.”54 Neither of these conservative stalwarts agreed with Scanzoni and Hardesty’s contention that

36– 38; Cheryl Forbes, “Survey Results: Changing Church Roles for Women?” Christianity Today, 27 September 1974, 42– 44. 51 Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty, All We’re Meant to Be: A Biblical Approach to Women’s Liberation (Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1974), 60, 205. 52 Alice Mathews, “The Struggle for the Moral High Ground: Christians for Biblical Equality vs. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,” Journal of Biblical Equality 4 (July 1992): 98, 95. 53 Harold Lindsell, “Egalitarianism and Scriptural Infallibility,” Christianity Today, 26 March 1976, 45. 54 Carl F. H. Henry, “Reflections on Women’s Lib,” Christianity Today, 3 January 1975, 26.

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the Bible sanctioned the ordination of women. Indeed, the debate over women’s ordination divided—and continues to separate—evangelical churches. Yet Lindsell and Henry’s measured outlook on the broader women’s movement reflected little of the Christian right’s subsequent hostility toward feminism. Conservative Christians’ openness to feminist advances in the early 1970s depended in part on the seemingly benign wording of the Equal Rights Amendment, feminism’s most notable policy goal. The ERA, which passed Congress in 1972, read like a simple guarantee of women’s full and equal participation in modern society: Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. Most evangelicals felt the ERA represented the fulfillment of women’s push for equal rights, and they raised hardly a peep when thirty states ratified the constitutional amendment in the first year after it passed Congress. The ERA appeared destined to garner the thirty-eight states needed for ratification. Yet conservative Christian activists led by Phyllis Schlafly blunted and eventually halted the ERA’s momentum. Schlafly, a Catholic from Alton, Illinois, won the hearts of conservative Republicans in the 1950s and 1960s by opposing communism and nuclear disarmament. A Choice Not An Echo, her 1964 book endorsing conservative senator Barry Goldwater for the GOP presidential nomination, sold more than three million copies and solidified Schlafly’s place as the “sweetheart of the silent majority.”55 In 1972, Schlafly turned her attention to the ERA, organizing a network of grassroots activists—mostly women—opposed to the amendment. They agreed with Schlafly that the amendment was “anti-family, anti-children, and proabortion.”56 How did Schlafly arrive at such a drastic interpretation of the ERA? Schlafly contended that the ERA’s benign appearance masked its sinister potential. She claimed to support “any necessary legislation” needed to redress inequalities between women and men in employment opportunities or income, but Schlafly thought all the necessary legislation had already passed Congress.57 “There is no way,” she wrote in the politically conservative magazine 55 I borrow this phrase from Carol Felsenthal, The Sweetheart of the Silent Majority: The Biography of Phyllis Schlafly (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981). 56 Donald T. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 218. 57 Ibid.

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Human Events, that the ERA “can extend the effect of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 . . . the Education Amendment of 1972 . . . [or] the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974.” Rather, “the Equal Rights Amendment is a big takeaway of the rights that women now have. It will take away the right of a young woman to be exempt from the draft . . . invalidate the state laws that make it the obligation of the husband to support his wife financially . . . [and] wipe out the right [for a wife] to receive Social Security benefits based on her husband’s earnings.”58 Writing for the Moral Majority Report a few years later, Schlafly described the ERA to evangelicals in more dire terms. The ERA, she wrote, would eliminate “the traditional family concept of husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker,” restrict motherhood to “the very few months in which a woman is pregnant and nursing her baby,” and embed “the first anti-family amendment in the Constitution.” She also argued that the amendment would protect bigamists, legalize prostitution, and defang rape laws. In short, “the social and political goals of the ERAers are radical, irrational, and unacceptable to Americans.”59 Most of Schlafly’s charges depended on tenuous and unlikely legal developments. She arrived at her conclusions based on a reading of the law that emphasized the most extreme possible eventualities of ERA ratification. In the article for Moral Majority Report, Schlafly used the book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code, authored by future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen-Fasteau, as “a good index to what the ERA would do.” While Schlafly rightly highlighted that the federal government funded Sex Bias, concluding that Ginsburg and Feigen-Fasteau’s book would provide the blueprint for post-ERA legislation required a leap of logic. Schlafly based her assertion on Ginsburg’s status as one of the nation’s “most widely-quoted pro-ERA lawyers” and Feigen-Fasteau’s role as “director of the Women’s Right’s Project for the ACLU.” The federal government funded their study, but Sex Bias was an advocacy document. In fact, the preface of Sex Bias admitted that an ongoing Department of Justice study of gender discrimination in U.S. laws would ultimately decide which of the book’s recommendations to follow. Schlafly’s usage of Ginsburg and Feigen-Fasteau’s study allowed her to exaggerate the potential effects of the ERA.60 This sleight of hand helped Schlafly to convince a large subset of evangelicals that feminists misrepresented their hopes and desires. Women, 58 Phyllis Schlafly, “Can Federal Bureaucrats Buy Passage of Equal Rights Amendment?” Human Events, 15 May 1976, 10. 59 Phyllis Schlafly, “How ERA Would Change Federal Laws,” Moral Majority Report, January 1982, 9; Sex Bias in the U.S. Code: A Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1977, iii. 60 Schlafly, “How ERA Would Change Federal Laws,” 9.

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argued Schlafly, wanted to tend their homes and care for their families. The acronym of her antifeminist coalition, STOP ERA (Stop Taking Our Privileges), revealed the organization’s philosophy. Convinced that the ERA would make it impossible for women to assume the roles of wife and homemaker—the privileges most STOP ERA members desired to protect— activists mounted a massive campaign aimed at state legislators. A typical anti-ERA letter sent to Ohio legislators read, “Those women lawyers, women legislators, and women executives promoting ERA have plenty of education and talent to get whatever they want in the business, political, and academic world. We, the wives and working women, need you, dear Senators and Representatives [sic] to protect us.” And then, tellingly: “We think this is the man’s responsibility.”61 STOP ERA materials reflected a gender essentialism that placed men in the role of providers and protectors while women appeared as domestically inclined nurturers. Some STOP ERA campaigns featured well-coiffed conservative women bringing freshly baked sweets to legislators’ offices. The contrast between conservative women’s femininity and feminists’ aggressiveness was not lost on lawmakers. According to historians Donald Mathews and Jane Sherron DeHart, “the perceived lack of civility of ‘women’s libbers’ seemed to offend” U.S. Senator Sam Ervin, “possibly because it indicated disrespect for themselves as well as other women.” Ervin, the Senate’s chief opponent of the ERA, felt that the “‘physiological and functional differences’ between the sexes [were] so natural and sacred as to have had a moral economy based upon them.”62 STOP ERA members agreed with Ervin’s assessment and, taking their cue from Schlafly, took pains in both word and deed to highlight their femininity. Yet these domestic desires did not prevent them from entering public life— especially when feminists were threatening the sanctity of home and family. It is instructive that the most famous picture from her 1952 campaign for Congress featured Schlafly in an apron cooking breakfast. Yet she ran this picture in a bid for legislative office—not exactly a “domestic” responsibility. Schlafly deftly constructed a public persona that emphasized the primacy she gave her family, even as she undertook larger and larger political initiatives. Indeed, Schlafly’s contention that women wanted most to tend their homes and care for their families demanded that she give primacy to her role as wife and mother. It was jarring for feminists to encounter a woman who held degrees from Washington University and Harvard (as Schlafly did) positing that men are inclined to pursue “higher intellectual activities,” whereas women “tend more toward conformity than men—which 61

Quoted in Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 224. Donald G. Mathews and Jane Sherron De Hart, Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA: A State and the Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 43, 36. 62

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is why they often excel in such disciplines as spelling and punctuation.”63 Declarations such as this caused an exasperated Betty Friedan to tell Schlafly, “I’d like to burn you at the stake!”64 But the conservative Christian women who flocked to Schlafly’s banner understood her point. Women could engage in public affairs and intellectual activities, but their primary desire was to care for home and family. They perceived feminism as a denigration of women’s noblest calling. Schlafly’s political activities seemed legitimate to antifeminist women because she framed them as a defense of her right to be a wife and mother. As in the abortion debate, women who opposed the ERA possessed a worldview fundamentally different from the feminists who supported the amendment. Specifically, conservative Christians rejected feminists’ claim that physiological traits represented the only meaningful differences between the sexes, because they believed the Bible delineated clear distinctions between men and women. “We proclaim that male and female were established in their diversity by the Creator,” said the authors of the “Family Manifesto.” This created diversity, the authors contended, “extends to psychological traits which set natural constraints on gender roles. . . . The role of the male is most effectively that of provider, and the role of the female one of nurturer.”65 In conservatives’ minds, feminists’ rejection of gender essentialism challenged the created order. God had ordained certain roles for men and women, and the ERA threatened them. For instance, conservatives worried that the ERA would mandate government-funded daycare and paternity leave, measures they believed would denigrate women’s primary responsibility for rearing children. (One Moral Majority radio commentator referred to the possibility as “Big Mother” government.66) Convinced that “women’s lib . . . flies in the face of the Scriptures,”67 conservative Christians increasingly viewed the ERA as a frontal assault on faith and family. Not all evangelicals endorsed the Christian right’s antifeminism, but the STOP ERA forces mustered enough support to defeat the amendment. Only one state (Indiana) ratified the ERA after 1975, and four state legislatures (Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, and Kentucky) voted to rescind their initial ratification of the amendment. Fifteen states never ratified the ERA. A 1978 effort by feminists to extend the deadline for ratification won them extra 63

Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Christian Woman (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard, 1981), 27, 26. Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 12. 65 “Family Manifesto,” Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 66 Charlie Judd, “Listen America Radio Broadcast,” 12 April 1988. Transcript available in Listen America Radio folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 67 Rus Walton, “Will Baptists Ever See through Carter?” Human Events, 25 September 1976, 14. 64

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time but alienated some state legislators who felt the deadline extension unfair. Subsequent widely publicized campaigns in Illinois, North Carolina, and Florida resulted in defeat for ERA supporters, and the deadline for ratification finally arrived on June 30, 1982. Schlafly marked the occasion with a celebratory dinner.68

III. GAY RIGHTS At the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston, feminists ratified an alliance with homosexual rights groups. Feminist organizers thought that the prominence of lesbians within the women’s movement, along with the intolerance that homosexuals faced in American society, demanded that they support gay rights. As such, delegates to the 1977 National Women’s Conference approved a National Plan of Action that called for the end of discrimination according to sexual preference. Betty Friedan, who had long argued that associating feminism with gay rights would hurt the women’s movement, said, “As someone who has grown up in Middle America and has loved men—perhaps too well—I’ve had trouble with this issue. But we must help women who are lesbians in their own civil rights.” The delegates agreed, overwhelmingly passing a plank supporting gay rights. When the vote tally was announced, lesbians roared their approval, releasing yellow and green balloons throughout the convention hall that said, “WE ARE EVERYWHERE.”69 Conservatives hoping to rally evangelicals against feminism could hardly have scripted a better scenario. Feminism had linked itself with gay rights, creating a bond between the two movements that persisted for years. In the early 1990s, Concerned Women for America founder Beverly LaHaye remembered, “The lesbians flooded into that conference and attached themselves to the feminist movement, and never again were the feminists able to shake the lesbians from their agenda.”70 Perhaps more tellingly, in 1988 a Moral Majority radio broadcaster described the ERA as “essentially a gay rights bill.”71 In the early 1970s, conservative Christians displayed tolerance and even support for feminism. Yet by making gay rights an integral part of the feminist agenda, women’s rights advocates associated their movement with one that conservative Christians unequivocally repudiated. 68

Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism, 276 –281. “What Next for U.S. Women,” Time, 5 December 1977. 70 Quoted in Martin, With God on Our Side, 164. 71 Judd, “Listen America Radio Broadcast,” 12 April 1988. 69

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The gay rights movement emerged as an important player in national politics during the late 1970s. Previous generations had considered homosexuality an aberration. Major medical associations listed homosexuality as an abnormality, and mainstream media rarely acknowledged gays. While many Americans viewed homosexuals as relatively harmless “queers,” that attitude depended on the vast majority of homosexuals remaining in the closet, concealed from public view. “We make a distinction,” wrote one conservative, “between the gay who is quiet and keeps his lifestyle to himself, and the exhibitionist.”72 Sentiments like that persisted long after the early 1970s, but as gays began to demand rights and recognition, society began to display more openness toward homosexuals. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, and sixteen states repealed sodomy statutes between 1971 and 1976. A 1975 Time magazine cover featured an Air Force officer declaring, “I am a homosexual.”73 These developments frightened Christian right leaders, who talked about homosexuals as a sort of fifth column that had infiltrated the highest reaches of American government. In 1980, for instance, Falwell recounted a conversation with President Carter. “I asked the president,” Falwell said, “‘why do you have known practicing homosexuals on your staff in the White House?’ Carter replied, ‘Well, I’m president of all the American people; I believe I should represent everyone.’” To that Falwell answered, “Why don’t you have some murderers and bank robbers and so forth?” The Carter campaign subsequently released tapes that proved this exchange never occurred. When reporters challenged him, Falwell described his fabrication of the exchange with Carter as an “anecdote which we use not to specifically refer to what was actually said,” a comment that created a firestorm about Falwell’s credibility.74 Yet Falwell’s supporters questioned the media’s “attack” on their leader rather than Falwell’s flimsy justification. The willingness of some evangelicals to grant Falwell latitude in this incident depended in part on their views of homosexuality. They saw gays as a threat to America. In fact, Falwell cited the prevalence and permissibility of homosexuality as a sign of America’s downfall. “History proves that homosexuality reaches a pandemic level in societies in crisis or in a state of collapse,” Falwell wrote. 72

Morrie Ryskind, “What in the World Are We Coming To?,” Human Events, 3 November 1979, 11. 73 See Philip Jenkins’s chapter, “Mainstreaming the Sixties,” for analysis of how elements of the 1960s counterculture won official endorsements in the 1970s: Philip Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 24–36. 74 “Falwell Lied About Carter, White House Aide Says,” Lynchburg News, 7 August 1980, A2.

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“If homosexuality is deemed normal, how long will it be before rape, adultery, alcoholism, drug addiction, and incest are labeled as normal?”75 One of Falwell’s colleagues agreed. “There are absolutes in this world,” said Moral Majority radio commentator Charlie Judd. “Just as jumping off a building will kill a person, so will the spread of homosexuality bring about the demise of American culture as we know it.”76 Conservative Christians thought American culture’s increasing openness toward “alternative lifestyles” was a major problem. That homosexuals could win positions of power in American society signaled impending doom to evangelicals. Christian right leaders foretold this doom by portraying homosexuals as threats to the family. “Most of us, while feeling sorry for the homos,” said one, “believe they should not be given posts of importance, lest our children come to regard the gay life as ‘normal.’”77 Conservative Christians opposed assigning homosexuals any positions of authority over children because many of them believed that homosexuality fostered child abuse. In 1977, Dade County, Florida, passed a measure prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Anita Bryant, a Southern Baptist and former singer, led a campaign against the measure. She described the county ordinance as an “attempt to legitimize homosexuals and their recruitment plan for children.” Bryant called her campaign “Save Our Children,” and she distributed leaflets that tied homosexuals to several recent child abuse cases. The media aided Bryant’s campaign by disseminating statistics exaggerating homosexuals’ propensity for pedophilia. For example, reports in 1977 suggested that more than one million boy prostitutes were working in the United States. Bryant leveraged these reports to argue that the nondiscrimination law would abet homosexuals’ activities rather than protect their human rights. “THERE IS NO HUMAN RIGHT TO CORRUPT OUR CHILDREN,” declared a Save Our Children campaign flyer. Voters agreed. In June 1977, just five months after Dade County had passed the nondiscrimination law, voters rejected the measure in a referendum by a 2-to-1 margin.78 Tellingly, the Bryant campaign chose to focus on how the gay rights movement was anti-children rather than on biblical injunctions against homosexuality. To be sure, scriptural passages prohibiting homosexuality had provided Bryant initial motivation. Yet she framed her activities in terms designed to appeal to a broad cross-section of potential voters. Human 75

Falwell, Listen, America!, 157, 159. Charlie Judd, “Listen America Radio Broadcast,” 28 December 1987. Transcript available in Listen America Radio folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 77 Ryskind, “What in the World Are We Coming To?,” 11. 78 Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 120–122. 76

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Events noted that blacks and Latinos overwhelmingly supported the Bryant campaign, suggesting that a campaign to “save” the children held wide appeal.79 The success of the Save Our Children campaign displayed conservative Christian activists’ growing political dexterity. They had learned how to transform “biblical” issues into “pro-moral” or “pro-family” issues that attracted people from a variety of theological perspectives. Social conservatives—many religious, some not—flooded the precincts in Florida to reject the Dade County ordinance. The political success of this “silent majority” depended on Christian right leaders lessening the emphasis they gave to an explicitly Christian rationale for fighting gay rights and spotlighting reasons that right-thinking citizens ought to fight against homosexuals’ political advances.80 The portrayal of homosexuals as pedophiles allowed the Christian right to link gay rights with abortion and feminism as yet another example of the government’s attack on the family. In his 1980 polemic Listen, America!, Falwell unpacked the logic of this characterization. “Homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves, so they must recruit,” he wrote. “Why must they prey upon our young?” Falwell drew on the words of Dr. Harold Voth, a leader of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, in order to answer his question. Homosexuals, explained Dr. Voth, were not fully mature. Being fully mature “include[s] the capacity to mate and live in harmony with a member of the opposite sex and to carry out the responsibilities of parenthood. Mature people are competent and masterful . . . they can replace themselves with healthy children who become healthy men and women.” Falwell used this diagnosis to illustrate the threat homosexuals posed to American families. Because homosexuals “prey[ed] on” the nation’s children, the gay rights movement represented a brazen attempt by the government to justify child abuse.81 And the support of feminists for gay rights further discredited the women’s movement in the eyes of the Christian right. Falwell linked support for abortion, feminism, and gay rights in an unholy trinity that provided the Christian right with its foremost foils. “Family values” became the rallying cry of the movement.

79

“Will White House Cool It on Counterculture?” Human Events, 18 June 1977, 3. On the role of fear—specifically, fear of homosexuals—in late twentieth-century evangelicalism and conservative politics, see Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 76– 78, 216–220; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 119– 125. 81 Quoted in Falwell, Listen, America!, 160. 80

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IV. CONCLUSION: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND POLITICAL CONSERVATIVES Falwell represented an extreme wing of evangelicalism; not all evangelicals followed his lead. Almost as soon as the Moral Majority formed, evangelical detractors emerged to warn the faithful against identifying the “family values” agenda with the gospel. Critics included not only leftist evangelicals like Jim Wallis and Ronald Sider, but also moderate academics like Mark Noll, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch. Evangelist Billy Graham, chastened by his overly close relationship with disgraced President Richard Nixon, warned Christian right leaders “to be wary of exercising political influence.”82 And leaders to the right of Falwell, like Bob Jones, considered his political activities to be a breach of fundamentalist separation. Yet pollsters and sociologists have demonstrated the influence of the Christian right.83 This influence stemmed from its ability to frame family values as a matter crucial to the survival of the country. By the end of the 1970s, Christian right leaders had connected governmental attempts to protect abortion, advance feminism, and defend gay rights with conservatives’ sense of national decline. They saw opposition to these movements as essential to restoring America’s strength. Falwell wrote, “The family is the fundamental building block and the basic unit of our society, and its continued health is a prerequisite for a healthy and prosperous nation. No nation has ever been stronger than the families within her.”84 By portraying abortion, feminism, and gay rights as a tripartite assault on the family, the Christian right connected a pervasive sense of America’s decay to issues that resonated with evangelicals.85 I have argued that opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights constituted the heart of family values, but other issues certainly occupied

82

Billy Graham, “An Agenda,” Christianity Today, 4 January 1980, 25. On the political influence of the Christian right, see John C. Green, “The Christian Right and the 1994 Elections: A View from the States,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28:1 (March 1995); John C. Green and James L. Guth, “The Christian Right in the Republican Party: The Case of Pat Robertson’s Supporters,” The Journal of Politics 50:1 (February 1988); John C. Green and James L. Guth, “Religion, Representatives, and Roll Calls,” Legislative Studies Quarterly 16:4 (November 1991); John C. Green, James L. Guth, and Kevin Hill, “Faith and Election: The Christian Right in Congressional Campaigns 1978– 1988,” The Journal of Politics 55:1 (February 1993); John C. Green, Mark J. Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox, “Social Movements and Party Politics: The Case of the Christian Right,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40:3 (September 2001); James L. Guth, The Bully Pulpit: The Politics of Protestant Clergy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997); James L. Guth and John C. Green, “Politics in a New Key: Religiosity and Participation among Political Activists,” The Western Political Quarterly 43:1 (March 1990). 84 Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (New York: Bantam, 1980), 104. 85 Critchlow, The Conservative Ascendancy, 131–142; Jenkins, Decade of Nightmares, 109–111, 120– 123. 83

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much of the Christian right’s attention. Jerry Falwell, for instance, spotlighted the growing drug problem and the ubiquity of “smut” as further evidence of American decline. His book Listen, America! decried secularist advances in television, music, and education.86 Similarly, Tim LaHaye charted no fewer than 25 entities contributing to the decline of family values in 1979, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, Hollywood movies, government bureaucrats, and public education.87 Other members of the Christian right created their own lists of grievances and bogeymen. Nobody in the movement limited family values quite as sharply as I have here. And yet, I want to suggest that opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights stood at the center of the family values agenda, for a couple of reasons. First, these three issues posed existential threats to the gendered order evangelicals championed. The “gendered order” I refer to here indicates a worldview—often unspoken—that regarded differences between men and women as the fundamental markers of human identity. In 1988 several leading Christian right organizations, including the Moral Majority, the Eagle Forum, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the American Family Association, issued the “Family Manifesto,” which spelled out this belief. “We deny that sexual difference is solely a matter of reproductive biology,” declared the manifesto’s authors. “Sexual differentiation extends to psychological traits which set natural constraints on gender roles.” Situating a discussion of gender in a document on the family underlined the Christian right’s belief in the family as “the fundamental institution of society, an immutable structure established by our Creator.” By attempting to redefine Americans’ conception of families, feminism and gay rights directly threatened conservative Christians’ belief in a gendered order. Abortion, according to the Christian right, represented not only the murder of innocents but also an assault on motherhood. The Christian right’s political agenda responded primarily to these threats. Conservatives labeled their opposition to abortion, feminism, and gay rights as the defense of “family values,” and they were not shy about its importance: “government must support family parenting as the first premise of its social, economic, and fiscal policy.”88 The emphasis conservative Christians placed on “family values” grew out of their understanding of gendered order.89 86

Falwell, Listen, America!, 162–209. LaHaye, The Battle for the Mind, 141. 88 “The Family Manifesto,” Moral Majority: Policy Documents, Family Manifesto folder, Archives, Pierre Guillermin Library, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Va. 89 For a sustained analysis of conservative Christians’ understanding of “gendered order,” see Sally K. Gallagher, Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003). 87

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Second, Francis Schaeffer’s cultural critique, which motivated many Christian right leaders to action, asked evangelicals to abandon their fixation with relatively inconsequential “bits” and focus on “totals,” or those key issues that threatened the survival of humanity. In fact, Schaeffer thought Christians could disagree on a host of issues. He articulated progressive views on race and economics in the 1960s and embraced high art and culture that American evangelicals had previously deemed too risque´. To be sure, Schaeffer muted his progressive stances by the mid-1970s, as his politics fell more and more in line with the Christian right. And he never publicly denounced the movement. Quite the contrary: Schaeffer spent his last years writing books and filming movies that advanced the cause of the Christian right. Yet Schaeffer did caution Jerry Falwell in private about both his approach (too dogmatic) and his unwillingness to tolerate dissent on issues such as arms control and taxes.90 He urged leaders of the Christian right to focus on issues related to life and family, and those issues stood at the center of the movement’s agenda.91 Moreover, focusing on abortion, feminism, and gay rights—issues that commanded almost universal opposition among evangelicals and Christian right sympathizers—allowed the movement to portray a partisan agenda as a commonsensical program that most Americans agreed with implicitly. In so doing they aligned themselves with the New Right, which latched onto Richard Nixon’s declaration that a “silent majority” of Americans were fed up with noisy liberals and their assault on traditional values.92 Far from thinking of themselves as trying to impose morality on an unwilling populace, Christian right leaders framed the movement as a long-overdue return to widely held values. Hence the name of Falwell’s political action group: Moral Majority. Yet the Christian right’s usage of the silent majority trope differed somewhat from Nixon’s original formulation. Rather than promising to end government’s intrusion on the lives of hard-working Americans, the Christian right intended to legislate standards that would prohibit amoral behavior. The family values agenda bore only a marginal relationship to traditional political conservatism. Defense of individual rights had gone too far. Abortion, the ERA, and gay 90 Barry Hankins, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008), 109–135, 200–204. 91 Francis’s son, Frank Schaeffer, has questioned his father’s initial motivation for opposing abortion in a recent memoir: Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Cambridge, Mass.: Carroll & Graf, 2007), 265–267. Cf. Os Guinness, “Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God,” Books & Culture, March/April 2008, 32–33. 92 See Matthew D. Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5.

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rights proved to Christian right leaders that they could not expect a laissez-faire approach to government to guarantee the perpetuation of traditional values. In pursuing the family rights agenda, then, Christian right leaders did not fit neatly into the realm of political conservatives. Yet they believed the turmoil of the times demanded a new approach to politics. By convincing themselves that they represented a majority of Americans—and by convincing enough Americans that a liberal minority had launched a covert war on the family— Christian right leaders made “family values” an essential element in the Republican agenda. Many longtime party members chafed at the emergence of the Christian right in the early 1980s, but the movement has demonstrated remarkable staying power. This staying power depended in part on the Christian right’s ability to frame defense of the family as essential to protecting the common good. Where critics see them as intrusive moralists, Christian right leaders portrayed the defense of family values as the necessary antidote to almost all of America’s ills.93 As Carter found out in his ill-fated White House Conference on Families, by 1980 “the family” was no longer a neutral term. That reality represented perhaps the greatest triumph of the Christian right. By painting their opponents as enemies of the family, movement leaders gave their sectarian agenda the potential for wide appeal. Longstanding divides—between Catholics and evangelicals, or between political activists and conservative Christians—broke down as the Christian right rallied supporters of the “traditional family.” Believers who had once defined their vision according to biblical terms recognized the political power of recasting their agenda as a matter of family values. This transition took shape rapidly in the late 1970s, but it was hardly predictable. The emergence of family values as the centerpiece of the Christian right agenda occurred as movement leaders defined a particular vision of America in a capacious rhetoric of public interest and common good. In so doing, they set terms for political debate that continue to resonate.

93 The historian Grant Wacker has demonstrated the pervasiveness within evangelicalism of the “custodial ideal,” which frames Christianity as the custodian of American culture and situates that ideal in the South, where a majority of Christian right leaders lived and worked: Grant Wacker, “Uneasy in Zion: Evangelicals in Postmodern Society,” in Reckoning with the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, ed. D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995), 376–393. Also see Grant Wacker, “Searching for Norman Rockwell: Popular Evangelicalism in Contemporary America,” in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Leonard I. Sweet (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 289–315.

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 632–668. # 2009, American Society of Church History Printed in the USA

BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS Is This My Recompense To Thee? Adam’s Long Shadow in the History of Science doi:10.1017/S000964070999045X

The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. By Peter Harrison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii þ 305 pp. $95.00 cloth. Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins. By David Livingstone. Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. xii þ 306 pp. $35.00 cloth. According to Sigmund Freud’s stratigraphic portrait of modernity, science has produced three dislocating shocks. First, Nicolaus Copernicus bumped us from the center of the universe by making the earth just another planet. Second, Charles Darwin knocked us from the pinnacle of creation by making us just another accidental product of natural history. Finally, Freud himself deposed us from the throne of Cartesian rationality by demonstrating the power of the unconscious. As he put it in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, the ego “is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind.”1 There is, however, some irony in Freud’s vision. Although his history of science tells a stirring tale of adolescent humiliation—sadly, we are not nearly as important as we thought we were—we nevertheless remain at the narrative center of things. That is, even though science may wound our infantile narcissism, it is still about us inasmuch as the measure of a scientific discovery’s significance is how dramatically it affects our self-image. I think the intuition that science matters when it matters to us is basically sound, so long as it is tempered by the recognition that “us” is notoriously unstable. For one thing, since the decision to include someone as a part of “us” falls out from the messy work of making and remaking groups, it is fully exposed to the sometimes awful contingencies of time and place.

1 Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XVI, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1953–1974), 285.

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Moreover, to be one of “us” often means being tone-deaf to the ways in which groups represent local convictions and native arrangements as universal truths and transcendental necessities. Think of the Spanish colonialists who assumed that the Indians shouting “Ma c’ubah than” were sharing the name of this newly discovered land—rather than politely informing their uninvited guests that “we do not understand your words”—and you begin to get the point.2 What all of this suggests is that a prescient history of science should have an ear for the taciturn narcissism that masks the profound arbitrariness of the experimental life. Historians of science must keep track of the endless work required to make the ethos of the scientific life appear as though it is implied by “the way things in sheer actuality are.”3 Regardless of what one is prepared to say about the universality of scientific discoveries, these breakthroughs only exist because of the peculiar questions that are asked and the distinctive practices that are performed by utterly idiosyncratic historical actors. In what follows, I would like to discuss two recent books that keep this perspective in mind and thus make suggestive moves toward writing what might be called a history of “narcissistic” science. Although each book is hunting different game, they are united by the suspicion that unmistakably local concerns about biblical anthropology have been at the heart of scientific reflection since the seventeenth century.

ADAM

I. SO WRONG, SO LONG: AND THE EPISTEMIC CONSEQUENCES OF SIN

In The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Peter Harrison assembled a sweeping case for rethinking the origins of the Scientific Revolution. Painted in broad strokes, his argument was that the Protestant turn away from allegorical forms of biblical exegesis—and toward interpretive strategies that emphasized scripture’s plain sense—“created the conditions which made possible the emergence of modern science” (266). The project was daring, imaginative, and immaculately researched. For The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Harrison has changed his target but not his method. The book is a model of what probing intelligence, historical curiosity, and impeccable scholarship can accomplish. This time around the goal is nothing less than a genealogy of empiricism. That is to say, rather than congratulating early modern science for its 2

Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Basic, 1999), 99. 3 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic, 1973), 127.

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advocacy of Baconian experimentalism, Harrison sets out to explain why so many seventeenth-century natural philosophers were ready to believe that thinking small actually represented a step forward. After all, as he notes, there were lots of people—especially on the Continent—who “expressed considerable impatience with the mass of observations and experiments demanded by the Baconian regime, and were disappointed by the modesty of the conclusions drawn from them” (242). On his account, this shift in natural philosophical ambition was an unforeseen consequence of the Reformation’s turn toward the bleak Augustinian portrait of our post-lapsarian condition. By Augustine’s lights, “whoever maintains that human nature at any period required not the second Adam for its physician, because it was not corrupted in the first Adam, is convicted as an enemy to the grace of God.”4 Where the thirteenth-century Thomistic synthesis had yielded a surprisingly robust portrait of reason that had remained more or less untouched by sin, the official voices of early modern Christian reform concluded with Augustine that all had been lost with Adam. “Now, after sin, when Adam and Eve see that they are naked, they are made ashamed, and they look for girdles with which to cover their disgrace,” Luther observes in his Lectures on Genesis: “Yet how much greater disgrace is there in this, that the will is impaired, the intellect depraved, and the reason entirely corrupt and altogether changed!”5 Or, as a philosophy professor of mine liked to joke: Don’t think. It can only get you into trouble. According to Harrison, however, this breed of epistemic despair represents a kind of felix culpa in the history of science. In his judgment, Protestant suspicion about our cognitive faculties marks “the starting point for the methodological discussions of the early modern period and was particularly important in the development of what became known as the experimental philosophy” (87 – 88). Indeed, he suggests that it was only because of this pessimistic assessment of the mind’s tendencies that natural philosophers worried about a productive “method” of inquiry in the first place. Francis Bacon observed in Novum Organon that when the intellect is left to determine its own path it impulsively skips over details and leaps to generalities for one simple reason: it is lazy. A strict regime of epistemic discipline was required to produce reliable results, an instrument of the mind designed explicitly “to either prompt the intellect or deliver it from error.”6 The Fall of Man makes the case that Augustinian theological anthropology was the midwife to the early modern scientific ideals of experimental 4 St. Augustine, “Book Two: On Original Sin,” in Anti-Pelagian Writings, Nicene and PostNicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 5 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 249. 5 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis: Volume One, Chapters 1 –5, ed. Jarislov Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 166. 6 Francis Bacon, New Organon, ed. Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 33.

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observation and inductive reasoning. Or, as Harrison makes the point, “what ultimately drives experimentalism and its relatively modest vision of what can be achieved in the realm of natural philosophy is not a particular conception of God and how he makes his decisions, but rather a view of human nature” (220). Harrison thinks that by the time Isaac Newton appears on the natural philosophical scene, much of the distinctively theological force behind these epistemological and methodological issues was eclipsed. Virtuosi such as Robert Boyle and John Locke had already elaborated the Augustinian portrait of crooked post-lapsarian reason into a generalized vision of a mind constrained by natural limitations. In Locke’s case, for example, he concluded that our “senses, faculties and organs” were very well adapted to the “conveniences of life, and the business we have to do here,” but for this very reason “it appears not that God intended we should have a perfect, clear and adequate” understanding of the world.7 Broadly speaking, Harrison sees Newton standing at a defining moment in Christian theology’s engagement with natural philosophy—the turning point where the previous interest in original sin and its consequences was eclipsed by a physico-theological concern with “design” in the natural world. From this point on, we are told, the “religious legitimacy of new forms of knowledge increasingly came to rest on their capacity to deliver a robustly theistic view of the natural world, rather than whether their methods accorded with a quite specific conception of human nature” (241). If there is any criticism to make about The Fall of Man, it is that the argument is really about how Augustinian theological anthropology changed the direction of English natural philosophy rather than early modern natural philosophy in general. Yet, Harrison is acutely aware of this fact. As he confesses in the conclusion, his focus on “the development of experimental science in the English context leaves open a number of important questions about experiment and its justifications in Europe during this period” (251). Thus, much like the “blessed fault” that occupied the early Protestant theologians of mind, the book’s one limitation is actually a gift of sorts. We now have a new set of historical problems to solve regarding the curious emergence of “science” in the West.

II. EACH SECOND AN HEIR TO THE FIRST: ADAMIC GENEALOGY AND THE BIRTH OF NATURAL HISTORY Over the past decade or so, DNA analysis has put the boot to Mormon theological claims about the Israelite pedigree of Native American Indians 7

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding ([1894] Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 402.

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or, as the Book of Mormon christened them, the “Lamanites.” Wherever the legendary “lost tribes of Israel” landed, it was not in North America. Although Joseph Smith is perhaps the most familiar practitioner of what might be called “fabulous biblical genealogy,” he was not alone. By the midseventeenth century, British colonials in New England, including Thomas Thorowgood (America, or the Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race [1650]), and John Eliot (“The Learned Conjectures of the Reverend John Eliot on the Origins of the Indians” [1653/1654]) were already advancing similar cases for a genealogical link between the American Indians and the ancient Israelites.8 In the nineteenth century, European colonialists in Africa would postulate various lines of fabulous descent to relate the Hottentots, Xhosa, and Zulus to the lost tribes.9 No matter where English and European explorers traveled, the wandering Children of Israel always seemed to have arrived there first. David Livingstone’s Adam’s Ancestors adds a new and fascinating chapter to the history of fabulous biblical genealogy. Rather than focusing his attention on the earnest attempts of some to link a newly “discovered” people with Abraham and, through him, Adam, Livingstone examines something altogether different: the abiding interest in establishing ties that unite a contemporary community to its ancestral, pre-Adamite roots. That is to say, his project is to document a discourse that folded the orthodox biblical account of human origins from a single set of parents in on itself like a Mo¨bius strip, and searched the horizon for evidence of humans who existed before Adam. Livingstone’s story really begins in the mid-seventeenth century, as the French Protestant Jew Isaac La Peyre`re begins to experience the aftershocks that spread across Europe after the publication of Men Before Adam (1665). According to La Peyre`re, Adam was not the patriarch of all humanity—just the Jews. So too, the Hebrew scriptures did not provide a truly universal history—they only revealed the history of the Jews and thereby provided the foundation for the Christian message of universal salvation. By this single stroke of exegetical innovation, Livingstone writes, a raft of biblical puzzles could be resolved: “Here was a ready-made explanation for Cain’s fear, after his banishment from the Garden of Eden, that he would encounter hostile individuals seeking to kill him; it delivered a population to inhabit the city he built; it provided a possible answer to the question about where his wife came from” (34). Yet, nothing in this world comes for free. The cost of his hermeneutical gambit was that La Peyre`re had to transgress the orthodox 8 See Richard Cogley, “John Eliot and the Origins of the American Indians,” Early American Literature 21:3 (Winter 1986/1987): 210– 225. 9 See David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996).

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contention, put in place by Augustine and the Church Fathers, that genealogical descent from Adam was a necessary and sufficient condition for being human.10 The genie of polygenism had been let out of its bottle. Soon after polygenic explanations of human diversity appeared on the scene, they quickly raised issues that extended well beyond the intricacies of biblical interpretation. The ferment of early modern bodies of naturalist knowledge played a critical role in debates over the plural origins of human races as concerns about theological orthodoxy and heresy were harnessed to discoveries about skeletal structures and cranial capacities. Without putting too fine a point on things, the fundamental question for the Enlightenmentera natural history of human origins was this: based on the available evidence, were the varieties of dark-skinned people fully human, or did they straddle the ontological divide between humans and animals? A great deal rested on how one answered this question, Livingstone notes, because “underlying these scientific preoccupations were fundamentally political fixations: the elaboration of moral maps of the globe, the ethics of plantation economics, and the management of domestic polities” (79). In this way, the accumulation of natural knowledge and the techniques of biblical exegesis joined forces with an eye toward governing populations with increasing precision. Power-knowledge, indeed. Perhaps the single most intriguing aspect of Adam’s Ancestors is Livingstone’s claim that pre-Adamic theories were often more appealing after Darwin’s “dangerous idea” than before. One often hears—especially in a year that marks the bicentennial of Darwin’s birthday, and the sesquicentennial anniversary of The Origin of Species (1859)—that unearthing our evolutionary pedigree meant the death of Adam and Eve. Patricia Williams conveys this message with splendid precision when she writes that, with Darwin, “Adam and Eve do not merely die. A coup supplants them. Their high office and authority pass to critical thought in general and science in particular.”11 In contrast to this received wisdom, Livingstone contends that “for a significant body of opinion the coming of evolution meant the birth, not the death, of Adam” (137). In this context, Alexander Winchell’s Adamites and Preadamites (1878) provides a theological North Star by which others might navigate a path that harmonizes the natural sciences and the Bible. 10

Reflecting on the question of the Plinian “monstrous races,” Augustine concludes: “either these things which have been told of some races have no existence at all; or if they do exist, they are not human races; or if they are human, they are descended from Adam”: St. Augustine, “City of God,” in City of God and On Christian Doctrine, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 315. 11 Patricia Williams, Doing without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original Sin (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001), 63.

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Where pre-Adamism had been used previously to buttress the heterodox thesis of human polygenism, it was now modified so that Christians could safely embrace both the seemingly heretical Darwinian Unity of Descent and the solidly orthodox Augustinian Unity of Descent. According to Winchell’s inventive strategy, pre-Adamites were used to account for the evolutionary history of early hominids: they were a part of the natural history of the human body’s descent with modification. However, Adam was preserved as the discrete source for uniquely human existence because here was where the supernatural history of the soul and its salvation begins. It was now possible to be an innovative Darwinian and a traditional Creationist at the same time—a position, Livingstone points out, that comes awfully close to describing the Catholic Church’s current stance on what a theologically sound interpretation of human evolution must preserve. The irony is that where pre-Adamites once had the pungent whiff of heresy about them, they are now a refuge for conservatives who wish to uphold a biblical scheme of history while acknowledging the insights of modern evolutionary biology. What should one conclude from this unexpected turn of events? “Pre-adamism’s migration from heresy to orthodoxy, from its role as a weapon of skepticism to a tool of fundamentalism,” we are told, “speaks to the contingency of theological labeling” (220). This is almost certainly true. Yet, I can’t help thinking that there are other, more audacious conclusions to draw as well. As Livingstone has revealed in arresting detail, “The question of human origins was not simply about science and species; it was about society and sex, cultural identity and racial purity. Bloodlines mattered—economically, politically, spiritually” (169). Given the way that the human sciences have functioned as a form of public hygiene, protecting “society” from an ever-expanding catalogue of dangers that has included miscegenation, one of the intriguing questions to emerge from Adam’s Ancestors is whether the practices of fabulous biblical genealogy were an essential condition of possibility for the emergence of these sciences. Perhaps it is time to stop thinking that during the “Enlightenment” the nascent human sciences took up the question of descent from Adam with remarkable urgency, and begin thinking that the issue of Adam’s ancestors and descendants is what ushered the human sciences into existence in the first place.

III. CONCLUSION When the curtain rises on the second scene of Milton’s Paradise Lost, we find Adam and Eve confronting the awful significance of their indiscretion. Shocked by the accusation that she is the one to blame for succumbing to

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temptation, Eve defends herself by asking: “Being as I am, why didst not thou, the head,/Command me absolutely to go with thee?” Adam, in turn, is dumbfounded by this measure of feminine insolence and angrily responds: “Is this the love? is this the recompense of mine to thee, ungrateful Eve, expressed/Immutable, when thou wert lost, not I/Who might have lived and joyed immortal bliss,/Yet willingly chose rather death with thee?”12 The story of Adam, Eve and the Fall has been an ide´e fixe of the Western imagination for millennia. But what, if anything, has the story compensated us for this unrelenting devotion? Forget about what Eve owes Adam. How does Adam repay us? When we read The Fall of Man and Adam’s Ancestors together, an interesting answer begins to emerge. On the one hand, as Harrison carefully documents, modern scientific reflection first took shape against a horizon dominated by Adam’s haunting silhouette. The techniques and instruments of Baconian investigation were all ad hoc remedies for what had been lost in the Fall. On the other hand, as Livingstone demonstrates, it is impossible to recount the history of the human sciences—much less English and European colonialism—without noticing the ways in which a given population’s imagined descent or non-descent from Adam represented a kind of switchpoint for how they would be analyzed and governed. Since the seventeenth century, part of what it has meant to be a particular kind of Western subject has been determined to some degree by an Adamic pedigree. Simply but dramatically put, Adam has played a crucial role in giving us our science and our selves. In this limited sense, then, maybe the Creationists are right after all. Maybe we really are Adam’s children. Matthew Day Florida State University

12

John Milton, Paradise Lost (London: H. Washbourne & Co., 1858), 278.

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Keeping the Faith, Discerning the Divine: Terms and Conditions in New Research on Christianity and Healing in North America

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990461

Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860 – 1900. By Heather D. Curtis. Lived Religions. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xvi þ 272 pp. $49.95 cloth. The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada, 1880 – 1930. By James Opp. McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, series 2, volume 36. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. x þ 274 pp. $65.00 cloth. When Prayer Fails: Faith Healing, Children, and the Law. By Shawn Francis Peters. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. x þ 263 pp. $29.95 cloth. Approaching the subject of Christianity and healing in North America is a fraught task for the scholar of religion. In a historical context so profoundly shaped by biomedical models of human physiology, on what grounds, besides materialist reduction, can scholars account for the claims of those who argue that God heals? One measure of this quandary is the shifting terminology used to describe the phenomenon itself—from faith cure, to faith healing, to divine healing. Giving different emphasis to the “faith” of the distressed or the interventions of the “divine,” faith healing and divine healing are categories that, when employed by scholars, themselves indicate a host of implied methodological and theoretical concerns. Keeping in mind that this is not terminology of fixed precision, one could hazard the claim that “faith healing” is a largely etic category used by outsiders to imbue spiritual healing with a hint of quackery. By contrast, “divine healing” is an emic category preferred by practitioners, and scholars, who want to take claims of healing by spiritual means seriously. (In some uses, the divine healing movement can also delineate a particular late nineteenth-century precursor to pentecostalism.) Whether in the specter of charlatanism or of the Holy Ghost, the terminology of modern Christian healing is haunted by convictions about the limits of what is possible when repairing the body in a biomedical age.

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Raymond Cunningham, a pioneer of historical research on the intersection of Protestantism and healing in the United States, chose the phrase “faith cure enthusiasm” (512) when writing in Church History in 1974 (“From Holiness to Healing: The Faith Cure in America, 1872 –1892” 43:4 [December 1974]: 499– 513). Cunningham defined faith cure or faith healing as a late nineteenth-century movement rooted in holiness perfectionism that came to justify supernatural healing through the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement (that is, that Jesus’ death bore away not only sin but also bodily disease). Cunningham argued further that faith cure was a response to the concomitant rise of biblical criticism and medical science, as well as to a variety of religiously oriented mental therapeutics such as Christian Science. There is little about Cunningham’s remarkably even-handed analysis that has been disputed by later scholars, save for his preference for the term “faith cure enthusiasm.” What distinguishes his research from newer work, however, is his wide-ranging interest in the ways healing was a practice and concern not only of evangelical but also of “liberal” Protestants. One year later, in 1975, historian David Edwin Harrell published his own pioneering work, All Things are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press). For his part, Harrell largely preferred the term “divine healing” when describing the work of mid-century U.S. Protestant healers such as Oral Roberts. Rooting twentieth-century pentecostal divine healing in a longer tradition of “ecstatic Christianity” that included Methodists and Quakers, Harrell argued that healing was key to the popularity of post-war pentecostal revivals, and to the later charismatic revival within “mainstream” Protestant churches. Framing divine healing as reclamation of the “supernatural” via the potent conduit of individual faith, Harrell was careful to avoid either disparaging or endorsing its claims of bodily reparation. This approach to the methodological challenges of studying religious healing led one reviewer, Ernest Sandeen, to bemoan Harrell’s book as a mere “catalogue” of charismatic healers (The American Historical Review 81:4 [October 1976]: 1004). Others appreciated Harrell’s judicious tone, as did Grant Wacker in a 1975 review, although he remained unconvinced by the importance Harrell attributed to “faith healing” as the key to the rise of mid-century pentecostalism (Church History 45:3 [September 1976]: 397). The three books under consideration in this review orient themselves differently to what Wacker described as the “grave methodological problems” of the historian of Christian healing. Historians James Opp and Heather Curtis both take the “epistemological gaps” between biomedicine and evangelical healing as their starting point. Opp and Curtis both attend to the ways that biomedicine in North America has become fundamental not

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only to epistemologies of the body, but also to social, political, and economic structures, thus marginalizing non-biomedical approaches within a complex of overlapping spheres of authority, including “mainstream” Protestantism and the law. Shawn Peters, by contrast, points not to epistemological gaps, but to epistemological affinities, often unintended, between U.S. legal cultures and “faith healing.” Focusing on heart-wrenching cases where Christian parents have watched their children die without seeking medical attention, Peters describes how parental convictions and practices of faith healing have often been effectively supported, or at least forgiven, by the U.S. legal system. Little interested in the epistemological nuances of faith or divine healing, Peters subsumes these categories under his concept of “religion-based medical neglect,” drawn from child health advocate Rita Swan, a former Christian Scientist whose child died of bacterial meningitis. Reading these books together offers an excellent opportunity to ponder truly grave methodological problems, as Opp and Curtis call for methodological empathy with their subjects, while Peters tells a story of “faith-based abuse” (151). James Opp’s prize-winning book, The Lord for the Body, is a groundbreaking work in the history of Christianity in North America, both for its sophisticated theoretical awareness and for its topic. That his focus is Canada adds to the importance of his original contribution, in that scholarship on Christian healing has largely ignored the cross-border flurry of healing evangelists, despite the fact that so many of the healing celebrities and movements of the twentieth century had Canadian roots or connections. Opp describes his task as contributing to a “history of the body,” whereby he situates faith healing as a “cultural practice” with “devotional or transcendental intent” (9). Drawing critically from Michel Foucault, medical anthropology, the history of medicine, and religious studies, Opp argues that the best way to understand the shape of faith healing from 1880–1930 is to understand it as a historical process of countercultural resistance rooted in personal experience: “it is only through the space of personal religious experience that the points of resistance evident within the practice of divine healing could emerge” (8). Turning to church and secular newspapers, memoirs, archival records, and photographs, Opp masterfully tells a series of local, regional, and crossborder stories about the changing fortunes of divine healing in Canada. He focuses on the faith homes started in the nineteenth century, largely by women; the intensely anti-medical Dowieites and their conflicts with the new coalition between public health and the Canadian legal system; and the rise of the spectacular and highly orchestrated pentecostal healing revivals of the 1920s, largely led by men. Opp focuses throughout his chronological account on three related themes: the gendered aspects of faith healing movements; the significance of the spaces, both domestic and public, in which discourses and practices of faith healing took place; and the

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competing epistemologies of embodiment that shaped faith healers, their followers, and their Protestant and medical detractors.1 Opp explains that he uses the terms faith healing and divine healing “interchangeably,” with the awareness that the “divine healing movement” was a particular coalition that spanned the 1870s – 1900s but which was no longer a cohesive movement by the 1920s and 1930s (12). A movement that attracted—and was led by—some of the most respected public figures of late nineteenth-century Ontario, including a mayor of Toronto, divine healing was eventually discredited by analogy to more vitriolic anti-medical healers, such as John Alexander Dowie, who had a sizable Canadian following. By the time the pentecostal healing revivalists took the stage in Canadian cities after 1910, they had lost the public backing of most “respectable” Canadian Protestants, though that did not stop Methodist, Presbyterian, and Anglican laypeople from attending their revivals in large numbers. The care with which Opp depicts the conflicting ways of “knowing the body” (209) at work in debates (and fights) over faith healing makes his work a model of methodological and theoretical rigor. Heather Curtis and James Opp share the honor of having won the Brewer Prize (in 2008 and 2005 respectively) for the dissertations that were the bases for the books under review. Curtis’s lyrical and convincing work focuses entirely on the divine healing movement within the United States, broadening Opp’s periodization of the movement to 1860 – 1900. Similarly to Opp, Curtis roots her analysis in questions of epistemology and practice, or, more specifically, on the changing ways that Protestants read the significance of bodily suffering. Arguing that divine healing fostered a “devotional ethics” in which the suffering body was no longer to be endured but instead overcome through “acting faith” (94), Curtis traces this changing theological interpretation of suffering with keen attention to its ritualization and institutionalization. Along with her epistemological framing of healing practices, Curtis also shares with Opp a number of common themes: the complicated ways gender shaped both changing valuations of suffering and the leadership of the divine healing movement; the “social geography” of divine healing, especially in the contours of the faith home; and the significance of personal testimony not only for spreading the message of the divine healing movement, but also for the cultivation of what could be called healing subjectivities. Curtis’s last chapter advances a revealing argument about the growing connection in the 1890s between divine healing and social service as evidence for the “working alliance” between evangelicals and liberals that put social reform above theological differences (170). 1 My summary of Opp’s book is partly drawn from an earlier review I published in Studies in Religion/Etudes Religieuses 38:1 (2009).

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Describing her approach as a “retrospective ethnography,” Curtis’s nuanced attention to the nexus of embodiment, affect, and theological conviction is a welcome antidote to the widespread trope that has limited Protestant subjectivity to a question of belief. Though she does not directly engage with theoretical conversations about how habituation and ritual practice cultivate religious selves and communities—which draw largely from the work of anthropologists such as Talal Asad—Curtis offers compelling evidence that could helpfully complicate the overly simplistic portrayals of Protestant practice often inhabiting (or inspiring) such theories. For example, in her discussion of the controversy around Maria Woodsworth’s practice of “trance evangelism,” Curtis clearly demonstrates how even within the divine healing movement there were debates about what constituted appropriate use of emotions, rituals, and bodily states in the service of healing. While outsider Methodist James Buckley condemned Woodsworth and other faith healers as proponents of “religious emotion” that threatened “self-control,” critics from within the divine healing movement, such as Christian and Missionary Alliance founder A. B. Simpson, concluded that the “excesses” of Woodsworth should be contained by both theological and ritual means. In Curtis’s words, “rites such as anointing served as the boundary markers that delineated faith cure from the fraudulent performances of medical impresarios as well as from the dangerous exhibitions of demonic power on display at Spiritualist se´ances” (138). Curtis’s critical empathy with her subjects, along with her attention to conflicts within the movement, are key to the success of her narrative, but at times she edges toward taking her sources too much at face value. As Curtis details, many faith homes worked on the “faith principle of financing” (150), in which God was understood to provide the necessary money in mysterious ways. Ostensibly open to all, faith homes that were guided by the faith principle provoke the suspicion (at least in this reader) that visitors with the means to give more generously might have been more welcome than others. By not explicitly discussing the economic or racial mix of the visitors, Curtis leaves the suspicion to linger: did the women who sought respite from their iatrogenic narcotic addictions at faith homes kick their morphine habits simply by “relying solely on God for healing” (163), or did their status as presumably white, middle-class Protestants (they had doctors and could afford narcotics) help to gain them entry into such homes where they had the leisure to cultivate the required faith? Curtis succeeds at her goal of drawing a compelling portrait of the “devotional disciplines” of the divine healing movement that both establishes its “orthodox” genealogy and its difference from later movements of divine healing such as pentecostalism (17). She shows that even within the divine healing movement itself, quandaries of categorization bedeviled its leaders, as they distinguished between injuries deserving of medical treatment and

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illnesses warranting the Great Physician (156). In effect, she demonstrates that proponents of divine healing were just as constrained by grave methodological problems of knowing the suffering body as scholars are today. Shawn Peters, the author of several books on religion and U.S. law, takes a very different approach from Opp and Curtis, both in terms of method and theoretical starting point. Peters’s book is based largely on court cases and newspaper accounts of these cases. Starting with a 1997 example of a U.S. toddler who died of untreated complications from hemophilia, Peters then turns to a brief historical survey of Christian healing. He then engages in more specific analyses, starting with the Peculiar People in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century British courts, and then moving to U.S. examples. Beginning with cases drawn from early twentieth-century and present-day Christian Science, Peters then shifts to more recent examples from a Philadelphia church called the Faith Tabernacle, a Massachusetts-based community called The Body, and a small pentecostal church in Oregon. Peters writes vivid accounts of the intense bodily suffering of children who died from a host of causes that could have been treated with biomedicine but were not: hemophilia, bowel obstruction, ruptured appendix, and meningitis. Perhaps the most gut-wrenching account is of the death by asphyxiation of a young autistic boy named Terence Cottrell, Jr., who died while being pinned to the floor by the minister of a storefront church in Milwaukee as he exorcised the boy in front of the congregation and the boy’s mother. With such graphic cases, Peters presents a compelling portrait of the tragic extremities of faith healing with more persistence than either Opp or Curtis. The most compelling aspect of Peters’s analysis is his contention that in many ways, the state, through the U.S. federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, as well as through the legal system, has been complicit in what he calls “religion-based medical neglect” (6). Christian Scientists have long been active lobbyists for legal exemptions for parents who do not provide their children with medical care, and Peters documents their mixed success in legal contexts. He also shows, however, that even when parents have been found guilty of contributing to the deaths of their children, they were rarely sentenced to jail. In effect, Peters argues that these parents put their faith in God ahead of the lives of their children, as well as ahead of their respect for U.S. law and its sanction of appropriate use of biomedical therapies as a parental responsibility. Furthermore, he contends that the courts have often effectively sided with the parents. Of all three books, When Prayer Fails comes up against the gravest of methodological problems. Most of Peters’s narratives of individual cases are written with a kind of immediacy such that they give the air of being based on direct interviews with the people involved. Instead of his own primary research, however, Peters largely depends on newspaper accounts, as well as

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court cases, journal articles, or personal communication with Rita Swan, the former Christian Scientist to whom Peters seems to attribute an authority beyond question. Though at times Peters attempts the kind of critical empathy achieved by Curtis and Opp, the layers of interpretation within the sources that stand between his account and the experience of the parents he describes make this virtually impossible. Given the troubling tales Peters is telling, at least a temporary stopping point in critical empathy would be both intensely difficult and necessary—though I am not suggesting that I could achieve it. Even pausing to consider such questions as how class and theology shaped the late twentieth-century alliance between Christian Scientists and pentecostals in pursuit of religious exemptions from the law, or resting longer with questions of how parents can bear to see their children suffer in this way, would allow Peters to make a more persuasive argument. In a related vein, Peters could have benefited from a range of theoretical contributions that would speak in different ways to the question of the intersection of religion, U.S. law, and medically preventable deaths of children. For example, Winnifred Sullivan’s body of research on religious freedom, Carol Delaney’s work on sacrifice and, for a comparative perspective, Lori Beaman’s research on religious freedom in Canada would have provided helpful interlocutors whose arguments could frame an analysis that did not deny the troubling details of the cases, but that more fully attended to the complexities of the mutual imbrication of U.S. law and Christians seeking legal exemptions for spiritual healing. Perhaps, in the end, Peters directs his critical empathy in another direction; in his back cover blurb, Ronald Numbers describes how Peters “empathetically shows” the struggles of the legal system as it faces such grim cases. All three books point to the ways that writing about spiritual healing calls for scholars to cultivate openness about their own epistemological starting points. As James Opp argued, scholars cannot (and should not) hope to answer the question of whether faith healing “works.” However, as both Curtis and Opp recognize, neither can scholars who set themselves the task of analyzing spiritual healing hope to avoid such questions entirely, and that terminological and methodological clarity is of great importance in negotiating such terrain. That they have provided us with such cogent arguments and compatible narratives about the rise of Protestant healing in nineteenth-century Canada and the United States is a happy and timely convergence of the best kind of scholarship. Their books are important contributions to the study of North American Christianity even beyond the limits of healing, however one defines it. Pamela E. Klassen University of Toronto

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The End of the “Black Church”: New Directions in African American Religious History doi:10.1017/S0009640709990473

The Burden of Black Religion. By Curtis J. Evans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xx þ 372 pp. $24.95 paper. Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion. By Barbara Dianne Savage. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. 360 pp. $27.95 cloth. The supportive blurb Robert Orsi supplies for the back cover of Barbara Savage’s new book, Your Spirits Walk Beside Us, promises a “new history of African American religion” that refuses to present that history as a “sacred narrative” but instead offers to grapple with the “powerful but ambivalent Christian legacy in African American life.” This new history, in fact, has been emerging for some time. Savage’s work is one of many in recent years that attempts to place established African American Protestant churches within a broader cultural context that sees Christianity’s centrality in black life as a deeply contested reality. For many years, black religious history in the United States seemed to consist of three important moments: the conversion of many of those enslaved to evangelical Protestantism before and during the Civil War, the rise of black denominations during the nineteenth century, and the crucial participation of black churches and religious leaders who helped define the civil rights movement for the nation and the world. From “the invisible institution” of Al Raboteau’s seminal Slave Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) to the increasing numbers of monographs that cover black religious life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, stories of a heroic and often political “black church” have shaped how we view all of black religious history. But in recent years, scholars have increasingly argued, as Curtis Evans does in his marvelously meticulous The Burden of Black Religion, that the very notion of a black church “has obscured . . . differences among African Americans” and “rendered invisible or regressive those black religious groups and practices that do not fit” the broadly shared expectations that black churches be “progressive or prophetic” (165). Like other important recent works including Judith Weisenfeld’s Hollywood Be Thy Name (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) and Anthea Butler’s Women in the Church of God in Christ (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), the two books reviewed here focus most directly on the

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decades leading up to the Second World War in their efforts to remake the study of (black) religion in the United States. Black religion became a modern culture in the increasingly urban and pluralistic terrain of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, and any study that grapples with those years must navigate a black religious culture that, while still defined by prominent Christian congregations, was increasingly shaped by those outside the sway of established churches and their male leadership. Indeed, even though Evans’s history of Americans’ conception of black religion spans the time from the antebellum period to the 1950s, the first inspiration for this important study was his initial focus on the interwar period. Following advice he received from his graduate school professors to “look at sociological studies of African American religion in the 1930s and 1940s,” Evans found himself transfixed by “black sociologists” of that period who insisted that African Americans were not “innately religious” despite what a (white) public might believe (vii). In his early chapters Evans registers how this widespread belief emerged from the “romantic racialists” of the 1830s when black people were seen in the eyes of white (and many black) missionaries as “emotionally extravagant” in their religion. After the War, white (religious) elites north and south saw the newly emancipated as “primitive or culturally inferior” because of their distinctive emphasis on “bodily religious expression” that made African Americans “unfit for productive citizenship in a reconstructing nation” (65, 68). The slightly overstuffed narrative Evans offers of how primitivism shaped white conceptions of African Americans since slavery and later shaped widely held white perceptions of black cultural and biological inferiority is not entirely new. But what sets Evans’s work apart is his ability to trace how “older notions of a unique [black] spirituality” would eventually combine with the rise of a new “social scientific notion of ‘the black church’” in the thought of W. E. B. Du Bois (142). Du Bois helped establish more than any other thinker how black religion would be understood by several generations of black artists, intellectuals, and activists. Informed observers like Charles Long have long gestured at the importance of Du Bois and the rise of social scientific approaches in the 1930s and ’40s to the very emergence of the study of black religion in the modern period. But where Savage declares that “there is no such thing as the ‘black church’” at the outset of her book (9), Evans carefully illuminates how a Du Bois deeply reliant on “German social thought” almost single-handedly created “the developing language of the singular Negro Church” in ways that linked social science with long-held notions of an intrinsic religiosity within black people (162). After this exploration of Du Bois in chapter 4, Evans in later chapters further demonstrates how black artists and activists managed to extend these notions of a distinct black spirituality into their various cultural and political

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domains. Typically they managed to transmute black religion into a folk culture to be exploited for art and identity while overturning Victorian mores of the past. “During the first three decades of the twentieth century,” Evans observes, “the modernist movement reconfigured the meaning of the primitive” in ways that “challenged received canons of artistic form and representation” (188 – 189). At times, I wonder whether the ambiguously referenced “burden” of black religion Curtis pronounces in the title of his impressive first book is actually the burden Curtis and many of us feel as contemporary scholars of (black) religion in the United States. For scholars lodged in secular academies, the most identifiable people from the past are scholars and artists like Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston, who found themselves by choice and temperament on the outskirts of established religious communities. When many of these observers (with the notable and partial exception of Hurston) considered the role black congregations play in society, they saw institutions that were central to black life but mismatched for the modern age. Echoing Milton Sernett’s Bound for the Promised Land (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), Evans argues that the Great Migration helped shape these perceptions. It helped foster the new expectations of “the church’s mission,” which generated “scholarly studies on black [religious] life” and pushed “black religious and secular leaders” in the North to agitate for church authorities to move their congregations “from internal to external concerns” in an increasingly tumultuous world (172). But however Evans ultimately understands this burden he references, to what extent can Evans truly separate the burden of black religion from blackness itself in a land where, as Michael Gomez has so ably described in Exchanging Our Country Marks (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), black racial formation has coincided with and reinforced the Christianization of the descendants of Africans? These questions are never explicitly answered, but what is clear is that in focusing on the study and interpretation of black religion in U.S. culture and how it is perceived by the outside world, men’s voices are privileged over women’s. The focus on how black religion is interpreted serves to obscure the inner and lived religious lives of everyday black believers in favor of outside observers and the externally recognized (male) representatives of the faith. Savage in fact offers a more focused presentation of how early scholars began to interpret and understand black religion’s status just as it was emerging as a modern culture in the early decades of the twentieth century. Savage’s treatment of Benjamin Mays, Charles Johnson, Carter Woodson, Arthur Fauset, and Du Bois has more narrative drive than Evans’s account with a keener sense of the internal dynamics of black (religious) life in the

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years of the Great Migration. Savage’s story does not become enmeshed in complicated genealogies that connect differing conceptions of “the black church” to older claims of an intrinsic black religiosity. Instead, Savage more directly establishes the political stakes for the early interpreters of black religion in the early decades of the twentieth century. For Savage, segregation and inequity are never far from her analysis of “the politics of black religion.” In her analysis, “the black church” is an “illusion” that Savage bracingly declares from the outset of her noteworthy book is in fact “a political, intellectual, and theological construction” that ultimately serves as “an all-purpose stand-in for the dearth of other black institutions” (9). At the same time, Savage manages to offer a fuller and more textured picture of black religious culture even while she analyzes how black religion has been constructed, studied, and interpreted in a politically fraught environment. She does this in part by focusing on the practical assessments of women leaders like Nannie Burroughs and Mary McLeod Bethune as they considered the role black churches might play in the public square even as their religious commitments shaped their own pursuit of civic engagement. Savage’s portraits of civically minded religious women and her insistence in seeing “southern black liberal Protestants” like Benjamin Mays as religious actors and exponents in their own right paved the way to better understand religiously inflected activism to come. In focusing on these portraits Savage invites us into the inner dynamics of twentieth-century black religious culture in ways Evans’s account cannot. But even as Savage highlights the forgotten (religious) leaders who paved the way for the modern civil rights movement in the postwar era, she is not as surefooted in her later chapters as she is in the early ones. As she casts the black freedom movement as a “religious rebellion,” Savage sketches how participants in political struggle saw their (religious) leaders, their comrades and themselves as Christ-like figures who, whether they were religious or not, saw themselves, in their bodily sacrifice, as instruments for American redemption. Her attempt to knit together believers and nonbelievers within a common language of activism carries tremendous promise for the future study of religion and the civil rights period, and it leavens a far too truncated treatment of the “politics of black religion” in the postwar period. She acknowledges that much of the “burgeoning historical literature about the civil rights movement” simply accepts the “political role of religion . . . as a ‘natural’ part of black life” (273). Here Savage’s book ultimately fails to frame the civil rights movement with the precision she brings to understanding the early figures of Du Bois, Woodson, and Mays. I wonder whether an approach like Evans’s, which more forcefully considers the origins of the presumed naturalness of black religion, might have anchored a more focused analysis for the postwar period in Savage’s account.

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In any case, readers can see a certain failure in imagination from the very beginning of her book when Savage describes the religiously inflected Southern-based freedom movement of the 1950s and ’60s as a “startling departure” from the political narratives of African Americans we have for the prewar period (2). But instead of calling the “religious revival” that marks much of political activism of the 1950s a “miracle” that seems detached from what came before, we need more analysis of how Southerners like Howard Thurman, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Martin Luther King redefined churches for the political square and managed to sacralize political activity in ways religious authorities like J. H. Jackson of Chicago would contest. But, whatever their limitations, both of these recent studies, along with Weisenfeld’s recent innovative work on black religion’s representation in American film, have been impressive in their deconstruction of the central singular narratives of “the black church” that have guided the study of black religious culture since its inception. They mirror the work of Ann Taves’s Fits, Trances, and Visions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999) (not to mention Leigh Eric Schmidt’s Hearing Things [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000]), which deconstructs the modern study of religion in the United States, even as she contextualizes the emergence of an emphasis on (religious) experience among progenitors of evangelicals, religious liberals, and academic psychologists. But unlike Taves, they have largely left those who are the object of study mute before their scholarly gaze; their voices are partially sacrificed to more fully render the contested nature of black religion in an increasingly pluralistic age. In the end perhaps no study has embraced the lively eclecticism of black religion in the twentieth century like Colleen McDannell’s commentary on government-sponsored photographs of black religious institutions as found in various urban locales during the 1930s and ’40s in the concluding chapters of her peerless Picturing Faith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004). Specialists in the study of black religion have yet to develop a synthetic history that appreciates the unruly quality of African American religious culture while recognizing how a wide spectrum of religious belief and disbelief, identity and practice shared a common language and sense of exilic reality in the Babylon that was America. Even so, these two studies in their deconstruction of “the black church” represent a new direction in the study of black religion. They lay the groundwork for new critical histories that more fully grapple with the variegated quality of black religious culture in the modern era. Clarence E. Hardy III Yale Divinity School

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Black Religious and Political Cultures of the Southern and Northern United States

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990485

After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875– 1915. By John M. Giggie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xviii þ 317 pp. $21.95 paper. Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920 –1927. By Mary G. Rolinson. The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xiv þ 287 pp. $22.95 paper. Daddy Grace: A Celebrity Preacher and His House of Prayer. By Marie W. Dallam. Religion, Race, and Ethnicity. New York: New York University Press, 2007. viii þ 265 pp. $20.00 paper. A focus on the religious and political creativity of the oppressed links the three books under review here. John M. Giggie’s After Redemption analyzes African American political, religious, and cultural life in the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta from the 1870s through the 1910s, a period known as the nadir of black political life, while Mary Rolinson’s Grassroots Garveyism studies the same region during the 1920s. Both do a meticulous job of excavating the worldviews of their black Southern subjects. Marie W. Dallam’s Daddy Grace is a respectable piece of scholarship but is not in the same league as Giggie’s and Rolinson’s works. It is limited by Dallam’s (false) claim to an insider perspective, which boils down to a refusal to subject Grace or his House of Prayer to critical analysis. While historians routinely point to religious life as among the most important resources available to twentieth-century African Americans, left unexplored is precisely where and how that religious culture developed. John Giggie’s After Redemption answers that question through a close look at the Mississippi and Arkansas Delta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when white supremacy was arguably at its most vicious. During the very years when Delta blacks were stripped of the “daily hope of living without the threat of being scorned, mocked, raped, beaten, or killed” by white assailants, they created denominational schools, colleges, presses, leadership networks, and

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material culture that would profoundly influence twentieth-century black life (xvi). Giggie starts with a beautiful chapter on train travel in the black religious imagination. Trains symbolized both freedom (to travel) and oppression (as whites consigned blacks of all classes to the dirtiest and most dangerous cars on the train). Giggie shows how the thrill of the ride as well as anxiety over potential white acts of brutality were incorporated into the form, structure, and imagery of sermons; into evangelists’ accounts of their dreams or visions; and into early blues music, in which the terror of the ride led to prayers for salvation and hence to religious transformation. The following chapter demonstrates Giggie’s contention that the “black church” is too narrow a rubric to capture Delta religious life by detailing the shifting relations between black fraternal lodges and black churches. Delta lodges grew more prominent in the 1880s, as hardening Jim Crow restrictions pushed black men to seek alternative, black-controlled seats of organizational power. Lodges provided life insurance and business loans to their members. The fraternities memorized histories that glorified Africa’s role in the development of civilization. At a time when public spaces for Delta blacks were shrinking, lodge members paraded in uniforms bedecked with symbols indicating their dedication to Masonic principles of human equality. By the mid-1880s, however, the lodges came under attack by black church officials, who felt that black men were favoring their lodges over their churches, and by black women, who were upset by their marginalization from what had become a key fixture of black organizational life. By the 1890s, a rapprochement was reached, as lodges agreed to ban Sunday parades and to support churches financially. By the early twentieth century, Giggie shows, Delta blacks had created forms of religious life that incorporated the rituals and material culture of the lodges in new and creative ways. Giggie next shows how Delta blacks incorporated consumer goods and modern purchasing and advertising techniques into their religious lives. This shift was partially triggered by the pressing economic needs of black churches and their associated women’s conventions, religious schools and colleges, associations, newspapers, and printing presses. Desperately in need of cash, the black religious press began advertising and sometimes selling consumer goods. Given that white Southern merchants made shopping a humiliating experience for black customers, Delta blacks often preferred to make purchases through their religious presses. They used carefully selected consumer goods to demonstrate a new ideal, that of the “Black Christian Home.” This was home as extension of the church, housing thrifty, pure, and temperate family members and decorated with uplifting images of black heroes. The book concludes with the early twentieth-century emergence of the black Holiness movement, which Giggie explains as a reaction to a profound sense of

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political despair, on one hand, and a desire to purify a Delta religious culture that had come to seem overly invested in material signs of success, on the other. As the innovators of the Holiness movement saw it, the impressive late nineteenthcentury “thickening” of the black Delta’s denominational culture had brought with it abuses, such as ministers who used their religious authority to pitch consumer goods. Its leaders wondered if their community had displeased God by placing too much emphasis on the fancy uniforms and secret oaths of the lodges. They worried that the emphasis on propping up denominational district organizations might interfere with one’s ability to experience sanctification. Holiness leaders’ vision of a church modeled on that of Jesus’ day, in which any believer could potentially be sanctified and experience the apostolic powers of healing, testifying, and prophesying, struck a deep chord; it soon became the fastest growing black denomination in the nation. Yet Giggie shows that the Holiness movement’s explosive growth was partially a result of its appropriation of trends it claimed to oppose. Its leaders worked with the National Baptist Publishing House to distribute Holiness literature. They adopted methods previously used within Baptist networks, such as women’s Bible bands, to their own ends. They embraced many of the values that had characterized the Black Christian Home, such as purity, temperance, and simplicity in dress. While many Holiness leaders opposed lodges, some adopted their practices, from teaching a version of black history similar to that of the lodges to creating networks of sick and burial relief societies. In a brief conclusion, Giggie shows that Delta blacks’ religious world incubated many of the benchmarks of early twentieth-century black culture, from musical styles to groups such as the 1930s Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which built on Delta blacks’ decades of organizing in churches and lodges. In sum, the image of a black culture crushed under the weight of post-Reconstruction white violence is profoundly misleading. Instead, those were years of organization and innovation within black religious life, whose repercussions enabled Delta blacks to minimize the evils of segregation and, ultimately, to help overturn it. Mary G. Rolinson’s Grassroots Garveyism shows that although scholars have largely studied Marcus Garvey’s impact in the urban North, the overwhelming majority of his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) divisions were in the rural South, with particular strength in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta and in Southwest Georgia. Her “evidence-driven discussion” uses painstaking analysis of UNIA and governmental records, recently available census records, Garvey’s Negro World newspaper, and interviews with Garveyites and their offspring to recover the “elusive intellectual history” of rural black Southerners while also presenting a brilliant, compelling, and completely convincing revision of the meaning of Garveyism as a whole (9, 13). According to Rolinson, Garvey was popular because he articulated what Southern rural African Americans already believed—that blacks were best off

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organizing along lines of race rather than class, that racial purity (understood as black men’s right to protect black women from harassment by white men who “won’t leave our girls alone”) was essential, that self-defense was honorable, and that Africa should be redeemed from white colonization and made the seat of a new, black-directed capitalist nation that would fight for the rights of black people everywhere (54). Like Booker T. Washington, Garvey promoted selfsufficiency and the virtues of rural life, values that appealed to black tenant farmers. Garvey’s promotion of a black-controlled Africa echoed the agenda of African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, who had pushed the idea of a black homeland in Africa in the widely distributed Christian Recorder. As Negro World letters show, the “redemption” of Africa under black control was particularly appealing to African American farmers who craved not Northern wages, but land of their own. Rolinson next deals with what many scholars have described as Garvey’s 1922 “conservative turn,” when he berated blacks for their laziness and publicly agreed to the color line. She argues that, if Garvey were to reach rural Southern blacks, he needed to make his rhetoric “palatable” to Southern whites while still speaking to the concerns of Southern blacks (62). This Garvey achieved from 1922 onward, when he emphasized separatism and race purity—goals embraced by many rural Southern blacks. In short, Garvey’s seemingly accommodationist posture allowed the UNIA to thrive in the rural South. Rolinson points out that the UNIA grew because of the dedication of hundreds of “unselfish and determined” organizers. She presents gripping portraits of the unsung organizers who worked to keep up with the “ravenous demand” for UNIA divisions in the rural South (95). Rolinson finds that circuit-riding ministers were among the UNIA’s best organizers. She pinpoints the locations of all UNIA divisions in the rural South and finds that the Arkansas and Yazoo-Mississippi Delta was “the most purely pro-Garvey region in the U.S.” (98). She also finds strong concentrations of Garveyites in the Albany, Georgia, region, which, like the Mississippi Delta, would later be a hotbed of civil rights activism. Pulling together a range of scattered evidence, Rolinson compiles a portrait of the average Southern Garveyite, who was a literate, married, middle-aged tenant farmer with children that he sent to school. Many Garveyite households included daughters who stayed at home rather than working for whites. The typical Garveyite lived in a majority-black area, which likely made the UNIA idea of a “separate black sphere” both realistic and attractive (112). These were communities where decades of struggle against white oppression had left many thoroughly disenchanted with interracial approaches and hence ready for a movement that favored race separatism, race pride, and self-defense as an immediate strategy, with the redemption of Africa as a Christianized, modernized continent free of white control as the long-range solution.

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Rolinson also examines the UNIA’s “politics of protection,” or its emphasis on black men’s duty both to protect and to patrol the activities of black women. The context, Rolinson reminds us, was a world in which black women worked as maids or farmers, often under the supervision of white men, and, unfortunately, often vulnerable to harassment or rape by white men. Rural blacks were therefore far more likely to prefer the “strictly enforced social separatism” championed by Garvey. The UNIA called for black men to police interracial liaisons, and cast such policing as the maintenance of race purity; it thereby made the defense of black womanhood something that whites were forced to support as well. Rolinson does not deny the patriarchal nature of this strategy, but she points out that the insistence on race purity, black women for black men only, and black male patriarchal control echoed what white men claimed to want in regards to white womanhood. Rolinson’s concluding chapter shows that the 1930s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People benefited from the groundwork laid by the 1920s UNIA—this despite the hostile relations between the two organizations. The Southern Tenant Farmers Union benefited as well; its organizational structure drew from the UNIA and subsequently influenced the modern civil rights movement. Garvey’s vision of race pride and armed self-defense remained strong in Southern rural areas well into the 1960s, when the Deacons for Defense demanded black leadership for black people. In sum, Rolinson argues, we have misunderstood Garveyism by casting it as a “back-to-Africa” scheme. Instead, “grassroots Garveyism” acted as a “seedbed” of black thought that bridged the 1920s and the 1960s. Scholars have ignored the “prevalence of grassroots Garveyism in almost every African-American cultural, political, and intellectual movement since the 1930s,” Rolinson points out (195). Thanks to Rolinson’s wonderful book, we will do so no longer. Marie W. Dallam’s Daddy Grace offers a serviceable biography of Marcelino Manuel da Graca, the founder of the House of Prayer, a largely African American religious sect. Da Graca was born in Cape Verde in about 1881 and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1900. By 1922, he had changed his name to Charles M. Grace and opened his first House of Prayer in a racially mixed neighborhood of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Grace initially attracted followers through claiming powers of divine healing, though he soon admitted that he healed few of those who sought his help because of “flaws in their faith” (68). His House of Prayer offered a religious “product” that combined Holiness and pentecostal traditions (39). It also offered an extremely busy seasonal cycle of ceremonial celebrations, incorporating pageantry similar to that of Cape Verdean Catholicism. Grace spent the 1920s and 1930s founding Houses of Prayer in black communities throughout the United States. By the 1940s, Grace had turned his attention to real estate. His properties were for his private use, though his

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followers, Dallam argues, “felt personal prestige” through their association with Grace, a man who owned “a vast empire of real estate” (86). He died in 1960, leaving behind chaotic financial records that gave rise to numerous lawsuits. After some skirmishes over succession, Walter McCollough (or “Sweet Daddy McCollough”) emerged to lead the House of Prayer. More interested in social justice issues than Daddy Grace had been, McCollough invested not in “trophy properties” but in housing for low-income African Americans (175). By the time of McCollough’s death in 1991, the House of Prayer had moved from a cult to an “established sect” and an accepted part of the American religious spectrum (179). Dallam’s book is the most thorough biography of Daddy Grace to date. One can see in it, as well, the continuation of several themes of black religious life identified by Giggie and Rolinson, from the allure of Holiness religious expressions to the importance of lodges. (Sweet Daddy McCollough had been a Prince Hall Mason, and Daddy Grace made parades and uniforms central to House of Prayer ritual life.) Yet the book is flawed in several respects. First, Dallam claims that she will present a “view from the inside” (11). This is a fundamentally false approach, however, since Dallam is an academic and not a House of Prayer member. Instead, her “inside” approach simply means that she reads her material as “sympathetic[ally]”—or noncritically—as possible (11). For example, Dallam tells us that House of Prayer members were required to participate in “auxiliaries” that met seven days a week. Members provided their own uniforms and paid weekly dues as well as fines for “unexcused” absences. Yet Dallam offers no interpretation of the auxiliaries’ activities or cultural style. Instead, she sums up the House of Prayer’s allure in terms so bland that they could apply to virtually any religious body. People joined the House of Prayer, she writes, because of the “fun” and “vibrant social life of the church, the honor of being associated with a powerful organization, a life-altering spiritual experience within the church, and the appeal of Daddy Grace himself” (83). Dallam also downplays race as a category of analysis. Instead, she seems to side with Daddy Grace, who denied that he was black and stated that he had never experienced racial discrimination (though Grace was on the “lighter end” of the Cape Verdean racial spectrum, Dallam notes, his complexion marked him as “black” in the United States) (52). As Dallam summarizes, “Grace did not want race to be part of how he, as a man trying to improve the religious lives of Americans, was evaluated, and he resented the suggestion that race had any significant impact on his work” (54). She makes this position her own, refusing to investigate why House of Prayer members are overwhelmingly African American. Finally, Dallam’s biography is marred by the fact that its subject, Daddy Grace, is simply not a very interesting person—at least as Dallam describes

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him. She claims that Grace had an “indescribable charm,” but none of that charm comes through here (68). Instead, we learn that Grace had a “lack of dynamism in speaking” (66). He enjoyed talking about his properties. He was not particularly charitable. He wore flamboyant clothing, grew his hair and fingernails long, enjoyed being “fanned by maids in attendance,” and was not, Dallam insists, a homosexual (67). And that is about all we learn about Daddy Grace’s character from this well-meaning but determinedly non-analytic biography. Beryl Satter Rutgers University at Newark

A People’s History of Christianity doi:10.1017/S0009640709990497

Denis R. Janz, general editor Christian Origins. Edited by Richard Horsley. A People’s History of Christianity 1. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005. xv þ 318 pp. $35.00 cloth. Late Ancient Christianity. Edited by Virginia Burrus. A People’s History of Christianity 2. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005. xv þ 318 pp. $35.00 cloth. Byzantine Christianity. Edited by Derek Krueger. A People’s History of Christianity 3. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2006. xv þ 252 pp. $35.00 cloth. Medieval Christianity. Edited by Daniel E. Bornstein. A People’s History of Christianity 4. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009. xviii þ 409 pp. $35.00 cloth. Reformation Christianity. Edited by Peter Matheson. A People’s History of Christianity 5. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007. xviii þ 309 pp. $35.00 cloth.

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him. She claims that Grace had an “indescribable charm,” but none of that charm comes through here (68). Instead, we learn that Grace had a “lack of dynamism in speaking” (66). He enjoyed talking about his properties. He was not particularly charitable. He wore flamboyant clothing, grew his hair and fingernails long, enjoyed being “fanned by maids in attendance,” and was not, Dallam insists, a homosexual (67). And that is about all we learn about Daddy Grace’s character from this well-meaning but determinedly non-analytic biography. Beryl Satter Rutgers University at Newark

A People’s History of Christianity doi:10.1017/S0009640709990497

Denis R. Janz, general editor Christian Origins. Edited by Richard Horsley. A People’s History of Christianity 1. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005. xv þ 318 pp. $35.00 cloth. Late Ancient Christianity. Edited by Virginia Burrus. A People’s History of Christianity 2. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005. xv þ 318 pp. $35.00 cloth. Byzantine Christianity. Edited by Derek Krueger. A People’s History of Christianity 3. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2006. xv þ 252 pp. $35.00 cloth. Medieval Christianity. Edited by Daniel E. Bornstein. A People’s History of Christianity 4. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009. xviii þ 409 pp. $35.00 cloth. Reformation Christianity. Edited by Peter Matheson. A People’s History of Christianity 5. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007. xviii þ 309 pp. $35.00 cloth.

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Modern Christianity to 1900. Edited by Amanda Porterfield. A People’s History of Christianity 6. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2007. xiv þ 352 pp. $35.00 cloth. Twentieth-Century Global Christianity. Edited by Mary Farrell Bednarowski. A People’s History of Christianity 7. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2008. xx þ 443 pp. $35.00 cloth. The People’s History of Christianity represents a creative venture in historical synthesis. It is a series of seven volumes incorporating some ninety essays, and encompassing the whole sweep of Christian history from apostolic times to the present. The series has many strengths. The standard of writing is high throughout, with most authors striving to make their work accessible and readable, and contributors represent a broad cross section of the best scholars currently active in the history of Christian faith and practice. The series thus represents an important survey of the state of research and knowledge in the early twenty-first century, an important sample of what active scholars in the field are doing. Particularly rewarding in each volume are the introductions by the editors in charge of that particular era or topic, who must be congratulated heartily for their heroic efforts to synthesize issues and debates, and to explain historiographical problems. In every case, the volume editors supply an essential orientation. Although it is difficult to imagine a specialist in a given period not being able to find something new or surprising in the relevant volume here, the series is consciously targeted at lay readers as well as scholars. Individual volumes are attractively presented, with well-chosen illustrations. The text also features many sidebars containing relevant quotations. These visual features help make the books accessible to students and general readers, who also can refer to the suggestions for further reading helpfully placed after each chapter. The series can be unhesitatingly recommended for anyone interested in discovering the state of the art in Christian history. Having said so much that is positive, I must challenge some of the working assumptions on which the series was conceived. For one thing, what exactly makes this series distinct from other superficially similar ventures, such as the splendid Cambridge History of Christianity that has appeared more or less simultaneously over the past five years or so? The two series show considerable overlap of theme and approach in their desire to expand the traditional boundaries of church history. So why a People’s History? The clearest justification for the venture is presented by the general editor, Denis R. Janz:

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It is church history, yes, but church history with a difference: “church,” we insist, is not to be understood first and foremost as the hierarchicalinstitutional-bureaucratic corporation; rather, above all it is the laity, the ordinary faithful, the people. Their religious lives, their pious practices, their self-understandings as Christians, and the way all of this grew and changed over the last two millennia—this is the unexplored territory in which we are here setting foot. (I:xiii) As Professor Janz says, the notion of people’s history—history from below, grassroots history—is anything but new within the historical profession and can be traced back at least a century. Yet, having said this, he remarks that “only quite recently has the discipline formerly called ‘church history’ and now more often ‘the history of Christianity’ begun to open itself up to this approach.” What has been studied almost exclusively until now is the religion of various elites, whether spiritual elites, intellectual elites, or power elites. Without a doubt, mystics and theologians, pastors, priests, bishops, and popes are worth studying. But at best they all together constitute perhaps 5 percent of all Christians over two millennia. What about the rest? Does not a balanced history of Christianity, not to mention our sense of historical justice, require that attention be paid to them? (I:xiv) The series’ goal is thus to seek out what can be known about the religious consciousness of “ordinary” believers. A couple of problems come to mind here that affect our reading of several contributions to the collection. The idea of People’s History is itself ambiguous. As Duke Ellington once remarked, all music must by definition be folk music, as he had never heard any musical compositions presented by horses. By the same token, all religious history is people’s history, and no clear boundaries separate elites from The People. I would point, for instance, to a sizable number of mystics who were actually People—Margery Kempe being one celebrated example. As we will see, the problem of defining The People surfaces in a number of chapters in these volumes. Moreover, the stark division posited here between official and non-official religion is antiquated at best and simply unfounded at worst. It actually suggests a degree of distance from the literature that is puzzling. Also startling is the notion that grassroots religious history is anything like as innovative as Professor Janz and some of his colleagues here suggest. We can illustrate this point from any number of periods, but, put simply, it has been a very long time indeed since historians confined their attention to the religious sensibilities of the top 5 percent of the population. At least since the nineteenth century, the study of popular heresy has been a major field within medieval history, and that perforce meant trying to determine the

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opinions of those ordinary men and women who joined the Lollards, Waldensians, or Cathars. If that does not constitute an attempt to write a People’s History of Christianity, what does? And similar emphases have long dominated historical research and writing in later periods. When did historians of the Reformation last feel free to ignore the Radical Reformation, that unavoidable theme for anyone with the slightest acquaintance with Luther’s life and work? The deeper we dig into the records of church courts and inquisitions, as scholars have been doing for more than a century, the more conscious we are of everyday religious behavior in the medieval and early modern eras. In the English-speaking world, at least since the 1930s, the normal, mainstream focus of historical endeavor in seventeenth-century studies has been on the broad masses, whose religious sentiments allegedly surfaced in fringe movements like the Quakers, Ranters, and Diggers. By the 1960s, under the influence of the radical movements of that time, historians searched ever further afield in the religious undergrowth, as their quest for popular authenticity led them to devote wildly disproportionate attention to bizarre spiritual eccentrics like the Muggletonians, the flakiest of the flaky. Meanwhile, historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have long been fascinated by the role of those ordinary believers who formed the Methodist movement, which may or may not have saved England from a political revolution comparable to that which overwhelmed the French ancien regime. We are shortly to celebrate the centennial of that particular debate, which was initiated by French historian E´lie Hale´vy before the First World War. Far from being a radical innovation of the contemporary avantgarde, a grassroots approach to Christian history was in fact the mainstream for most of the twentieth century and a fair chunk of the nineteenth. To make that objection is not simply to nitpick at Professor Janz’s laudable scholarly agenda. Rather, realizing these long antecedents must make us appreciate that we really have explored these particular territories in the past, and, on those previous visits to Terra Cognita, we made some errors and missteps that it would be wise not to repeat. Suppose, for instance, that we are trying to identify authentic popular religion. As we saw earlier, that effort led some distinguished scholars of seventeenth-century England to write at great length on marginal sects that barely had enough members to constitute a nut group. Conversely, historians paid far less attention to the real religious mainstream of England during that era, which was rather to be found in the large majority of the population who faithfully adhered to the established church and who never dabbled with spiritual eccentricity or sectarianism. In fact, their views tended to harmonize much more closely with those of the clergy, the “elites.” Women, particularly, were notoriously conservative in their allegiances to older and more ritualistic forms of faith.

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The scholarly problem, then as now, was that historians notionally aspire to study ordinary lived religion—People’s Christianity—while in practice they tend to be attracted to the fringe and bizarre, to the innovative and radical, especially when such marginal thinkers and movements produce ideas that moderns find congenial. And the more we study the historically excluded and marginalized, the underdogs, the greater the risk we run of missing the ordinary lived religion of the vast majority of believers, who become the forgotten norm. This has long been a problem in historical writing, and in the present day a like problem affects our perceptions of emerging global Christianity. It is the eccentric prophetic and independent churches that attract the fieldwork and scholarship, rather than the sober mainstream congregations that we often take for granted. We have here, indeed, a recurring dilemma in church history: how do we actually find authentic popular religion, in any era or region? Do we study the faith of the mainstream, which is relatively conservative and traditionalminded and which by definition has numbers on its side; or do we venture into the religious fringe, in the knowledge that it might exercise little or no broad influence? Do we address ourselves to the Great Church or to heresies, to establishment or dissent? Obviously, neither approach in itself supplies a full or adequate solution, as we must of necessity study both mainstream and fringe, always remembering that the two are invariably in dialogue with each other. Cults and sects are the laboratories of orthodoxy, and the harebrained extremism of one generation can become the mainstream faith of the next. But it can be difficult to remember that any worthwhile study needs to integrate both manifestations of religious activity. With this caveat in mind, how do the various authors go about the task of understanding the religious lives of “the ordinary faithful, the people”? How, indeed, do they define this amorphous creature? In such a sizable collection of essays, it is impossible to list each and every contribution, nor will I attempt to single out the best examples of scholarship, but I will rather select representative studies. Many authors in the collection seek to illuminate the lives of the marginalized and condemned, those groups whose views were classified as heretical. Undoubtedly, such essays have a place in this collection, especially when they are such thoughtful pieces as J. J. Buckley’s account of the Mandaeans, whose theological roots may trace back to the first or second centuries, or Grado G. Merlo’s piece on medieval Western “Heresy and Dissent.” But how much space should editors allot to dissenters as opposed to established traditions? It is in this area particularly where we discern the different stamp that each editor has placed on his or her volume, and how each has interpreted the mandate to observe matters from the grassroots, from below. On this

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spectrum, Richard Horsley’s “Christian Origins” is much the furthest to the left in orientation, the most determined to present early Christianity as the voice of the dispossessed, with the greatest weight placed on the supposed role of slaves and peasants. Other volumes lean to more balanced perspectives of Christianity and its social role, with Derek Krueger’s Byzantine volume as the churchiest, so to speak, in that its contributors make the greatest use of “establishment” sources from within the mainstream church. Significantly, this volume has the least to say about heretics and dissidents of any stripe, with even the Bogomils and other Dualists receiving short shrift. Other editors vary in their openness to established voices, but no later book veers as far as Horsley’s toward a classic Friedrich Engels – eye view of the earliest Jesus movement as social insurgency. (That comment is not meant as an insult: Engels actually had shrewd things to say on the subject, and even some that were surprisingly witty.) On other matters, the different volumes demonstrate much more consistency, so it really is possible to trace themes and issues across eras. If there is a single theme that surfaces again and again, it is that of lay piety, and the relationship between the official goals held by the church and the practical realities prevailing at the level of the street or the village square. Often, weary clergy had to browbeat and intimidate their parishioners to force them to conform to church standards. Much more worrying for clergy, though, were those eras—like the twelfth century and the early sixteenth—when laypeople themselves were avidly pursuing holiness as they conceived it and were anxious to ensure that their clergy conformed with them. Those were the eras ripe for schisms and heresies. Inevitably, too, in light of modern historical scholarship, many authors devote their attention to women’s matters and to issues of family and sexuality. The more scholars explore Christian history, the more astonishing it is that historians ever tried to ignore or underplay women’s contributions at any point in that story. Through the various volumes of the People’s History, through every era of church history, we repeatedly see examples of women’s roles as spiritual leaders and innovators. Barbara Rossing shows how central “Prophets, Prophetic Movements, and the Voices of Women” were in many Christian communities in the earliest centuries, while Elizabeth A. Clark tells us about some female spiritual athletes of late antiquity in her “Asceticism, Class, and Gender.” In the contemporary context, Mercy Amba Oduyoye analyzes the work of “African Women Theologians.” Other scholars meanwhile address the spiritual lives of “ordinary” women, usually as faithful members of the mainstream church of their day, and we can learn much by tracing the long continuities of women’s religious practices through the centuries. Alice-Mary Talbot describes “The

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Devotional Life of Laywomen” in Byzantine society; Roberto Rusconi describes the confessional as a location for “Hearing Women’s Sins” in the medieval and early modern west; Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks describes Reformation-era concepts of gender in “Women and Men, Together and Apart.” For the modern era, we have Margaret Bendroth’s study of “Gender and Twentieth-Century Christianity.” Women’s roles and perspectives also permeate many other chapters not explicitly addressing that theme. Throughout these volumes, we often perceive the agenda of the Annales school of historical writing, which as far back as the 1920s urged the necessity of writing histories of such critical everyday themes as death and childhood, marriage and sexuality; of perceptions of time, nature, and space. In fact, such a list provides an approximation of the contents list of several of the People’s History volumes, which use universal experiences as a means of understanding the thought-worlds of non-elite communities. Death, for instance, is a central theme running through the volumes, and not just the spectacular or heroic death of martyrs. We read here of “Death and Dying in Byzantium” (Nicholas Constas), of “Death and Burial in the European Middle Ages” (Bonnie Effros), and of “New Ways of Confronting Death” in early modernity (Carlos Eire). Also derived from Annales is the interest in the history of childhood, a concept that really would have startled scholars prior to the early twentieth century: why on earth, they would have asked, must anyone waste time on something so self-evidently trivial? Yet as several authors explain here, not only has Christianity often shaped the concept and treatment of children, but a vast amount of time and effort on the part of the churches has gone into socializing the young—and concepts of childhood have altered radically through the centuries. In the early church context, Cornelia B. Horn explores “Children’s Play as Social Ritual,” while the Byzantine volume offers a study of “The Religious Lives of Children and Adolescents” (Peter Hatlie), and Karen E. Spierling discusses themes of “Baptism and Childhood” in the Reformation era. Together with the attention paid to women, such chapters contribute mightily to understanding the ordinary lay experience within the churches. Given the very broad sweep of these volumes, then, we might well ask what unfortunate People have failed to make the cut. One odd and troubling omission is the wider global Christianity of Asia and Africa, at least outside the Christian heartlands of Asia Minor and the Mediterranean littoral. Ethiopia and Nubia receive virtually no attention in the first six volumes, and neither do regions like Mesopotamia (incredibly, given its importance), Armenia, or southern India. Nor is much attention paid to Christian missions into Central and Eastern Asia. Unfortunately, these absences are not made up in the seventh and final volume, which explicitly confines itself to “Twentieth-Century

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Global Christianity,” without much sense of historical roots. This neglect is unfortunate because it suggests that the modern-day expansion of Christianity outside the Euro-American world is a radical new departure, rather than a resumption of an age-old reality. Missing the Middle Eastern story also means that we all but ignore the experience of Christians living under Muslim rule, an experience that through much of the Middle Ages and beyond defined a very large portion of the world’s Christians. Teofilo Ruiz offers a sound account of “Jews, Muslims and Christians” in the Middle Ages, but his focus is heavily on the Iberian peninsula, and he says little about (for instance) Egypt’s Copts or Asia’s numerous and widespread Nestorians, Jacobites, and Melkites. From such accounts, we would never guess that Christians still comprised a majority of most Middle Eastern countries at least three or four centuries after the rise of Islam. Even in a People’s History, these teeming worlds of black, yellow, and brown Christians remain unexplored. Another issue that comes to mind is just how far the authors have succeeded in diverting attention from “spiritual elites, intellectual elites, or power elites” and toward “the People.” The answer is mixed, and reasonably so, because we simply can’t understand the world of ordinary Christian believers except insofar as they absorbed and reflected the ideas of “mystics and theologians, pastors, priests, bishops, and popes” (I:xiv). Our long-standing attention to elites is not just a byproduct of available sources, a matter of who happened to leave behind the richest archival material to which scholars can turn for information. Elites mattered because people cared what they thought and often viewed them as heroes and role models. One nice example of the interplay between elite and non-elite Christians comes in Jaclyn Maxwell’s exploration of Byzantine lay piety ca. 400, which she illustrates through the extensive sermons and homilies of John Chrysostom, an elite figure par excellence. She shows us not just what John thought people should do, but what they were actually doing and, more particularly—in his view—what they were doing wrong. When we read the chapter, we know more about John himself, but also about the ordinary faithful. Actually, such accounts make us think of the limitations of the grassroots history. Yes, when we write from an elite perspective, we certainly omit much that is critically important about the lives of ordinary people. But conversely, a traditionally oriented account does include things that are absent in a grassroots or populist perspective or that are, at best, present only in the margins. For one thing, a People’s History conceived on these lines says little about academic theology, nor about the impact of new kinds of Bible scholarship or translation. Surely, one might argue, what was being discussed in the ivory towers of Cambridge or Tu¨bingen could have little impact on the “other 95 percent.” Yet that elite scholarship always had a

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nasty habit of sneaking into popular discourse, as several authors here acknowledge. Any study of Reformation Christianity, for instance, must of necessity address the influence of the vernacular scriptures and, to a lesser extent, of vernacular liturgy and hymns. While no chapter explicitly addresses these matters, they pervade Elsie McKee’s account of “The Emergence of Lay Theologies” and Peter Matheson’s “The Language of the Common Folk.” In the Reformation volume and later books, the differences between elite and popular-oriented approaches shrinks steadily, as the People’s History project approximates ever more closely to a conventional account of church life and development. By the time we get to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this series might not be spending much time on the workings of the church as a hierarchical-institutional-bureaucratic institution, but it is assuredly dealing with elite ideas and how they percolate down into the mass consciousness. This top-down theme is evident in the spread of secularization, the growing popular acceptance of science, and the general appropriation of skeptical approaches to Bible criticism: see especially Ronald Numbers’s chapter on “Vulgar Science.” Hymns, too, offer another area where the elite/popular distinction fades to nonexistence. Throughout Christian history, hymns have offered a wonderful means of spreading doctrine and cementing group loyalty: they are the ultimate weapons of mass instruction. While Protestants delude themselves that they rely on biblical authority alone, in practice they are adherents of the Bible-and-hymnbook. The People’s History often finds occasion to acknowledge the central importance of hymns and music, most explicitly in chapters on “Spirituals and the Quest for Freedom” (Cheryl A. KirkDuggan) and “Evangelicalism in [Contemporary] North America” (Mark Noll and Ethan Saunders), but music appears elsewhere in accounts of vernacular religious culture. Although some hymns authentically sprang from folk culture, many others were the work of elite believers or clergy, of prolific figures like Martin Luther and Charles Wesley. Centuries-old European hymns still circulate around the globe, where they continue to reshape emerging global Christianity. Incidentally, hymns and the music of faith represent another curious lacuna in the volume on modern global Christianity. Without its extraordinarily rich music life, contemporary Christianity would have nothing like the upward trajectory that it is currently enjoying across Africa and Asia, where some claim we are living in the greatest age of Christian hymn-composition. Looking at the People’s History volumes together, it is not easy to make general observations about broad themes that run through the whole course of that story. We are after all dealing with some 2,400 pages of text, and each volume has its particular theme or approach. Yet with those

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qualifications in mind, some images and ideas do resurface time and again— some familiar to mainstream Euro-American believers, others less so. Some of these long continuities appear broadly Catholic in their character, others charismatic, although the two categories overlap at many points. I will focus on three issues that surface in different forms in every era and that are intimately linked to theories of sanctity and holiness: these are, respectively, the concept of sacred space; the role of healers and healing; and the idea of charismatic prophecy. Sacred space represents one such persistent theme. However much later Protestants condemn shrines and pilgrimages, such institutions have throughout Christian history been profoundly important, whether with church blessing or without. People have always sought sanctity in particular locations, which are commonly associated with heroic forms of Christianity, with idealized ascetics and martyrs. This quest for sacred landscapes is apparent whether we are looking at Egypt in the fourth century, Germany in the sixteenth, or much of Catholic Latin America today. Even in Catholic Europe, in the early twenty-first century, Christian pilgrimage seems to be enjoying a continent-wide revival of striking proportions. Equally persistent has been the search for healing in mind and body, the belief that Christ’s promise of abundant life was not confined to mere spiritual health. The more we look at patterns of lived religion in the Christian past, the more parallels we see to the kind of charismatic or miracle-oriented faith that dominates emerging global Christianity. So potent has this healing theme been historically that its decline in quite modern times must be seen as a leading cause of secularization. The more Christian communities realized the physical, material causes of disease, the less interested they were in spiritual solutions, and the more easily they turned from the churches. From this perspective, the real detonators of European secularization were not so much Charles Darwin and Karl Marx as Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming. We might suggest a two-phase process here. At first, Euro-American Christians realized they could not turn to the churches for healing from cholera, influenza, or polio, but only gradually did they give up seeking spiritual solutions to their psychological ailments, to their compulsions and addictions. When churches could offer only the familiar resources of secular therapy and counseling, they finally abdicated the claim to offer healing of any kind, and their status and popularity declined accordingly. It remains to be seen whether global South churches will pursue a similar trajectory. Also running through Christian history has been the prophetic impulse. Churches over the centuries have struggled to cope with prophets and visionaries and, in some eras, have been successful in appropriating them for the faith, giving them the status of saints and holy hermits. In others, such

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figures have been declared heretical and appear as the dreaded leaders of seditious or insurrectionary movements, like the military millenarians who were such an alarming feature of medieval and early modern Europe. Whether inside or outside the church, prophets and visionaries have constantly tested the limits of Christian doctrine, forcing Church authorities to decide on the finality of the revelation received in the Bible and the councils. Not just in modern times, churches have always had to confront claims that true spiritual authority is found in ecstasy as much as in sober reasoning. Christianity has always spawned its prophets, healers, and miracle-workers, and these have been central to the success of the faith. This historical record helps us understand just why the most conspicuously successful forms of Christianity in the modern world are the pentecostal and charismatic churches, with their emphasis on direct access to the divine, through prophecies and healings, visions and dreams, and their tumultuous Spirit-filled worship style. Particularly in the global South, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, pentecostalism clearly represents the cutting edge of Christian expansion, and even the older mainstream churches have been forced to absorb its doctrines and practices. Although this charismatic Christianity is often seen as a new departure, a historical view shows that it is anything but new. When modern charismatics speak in tongues, when they offer healing, they are following in the footsteps of the most ancient churches—of People’s Christianity, if we like. Perhaps, in our lifetimes, the People’s History is coming full circle. Philip Jenkins Pennsylvania State University

Church History 78:3 (September 2009), 669–722. # 2009, American Society of Church History Printed in the USA

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES doi:10.1017/S0009640709990126

Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art. Edited by Jeffrey Spier, with contributions by Mary Charles-Murray, Johannes G. Deckers, Steven Fine, Robin M. Jensen, and Herbert L. Kessler. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, in association with the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 2007. xvi þ 311 pp. $65.00 cloth. The title of this book suggests that it studies early illustrated Bibles—certainly an interesting and worthy topic, especially where it might illuminate the way early Christians (Jewish converts and gentiles) appropriated and interpreted Jewish scriptures and traditional stories. The book is actually much broader than that, and thus appealing to a broader audience, but potentially frustrating in its multiple focus points. The central theme of the book is the transformation of pagan visual traditions into Christian ones during the transformation of Roman (and, more broadly, Mediterranean) culture and society as the western Roman empire declined politically. The book thus awkwardly bridges the more familiar story of the “fall of the Roman empire” and the rise of Catholic Europe out of that rubble with the more important, but less well known, story of the continuation of the Christian Roman empire in the east. (Many of the same artifacts and topics are dealt with in the larger and more lavish exhibition catalogue, Byzantium 330–1453, from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, published in 2008.) Picturing the Bible deals with much more than texts; it includes a broad range of early Christian art and artifacts (on topics beyond biblical texts and stories and in multiple genres—sculptures, medallions, everyday objects, reliquaries, vases, crosses, church decorations in mosaics, murals, carvings and liturgical objects, even epitaphs and graffiti, as well as manuscript illustrations. The “pictures” thus range from minute (a carved gem) to monumental (a sculpture of the Emperor Constantine), from private use (a magical amulet) to public, and from deliberate and intentional to ephemeral and accidental (early graffiti mocking the crucifixion), and from sacred to mundane (a household lamp). As an annotated catalogue for an exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, in its second half the book discusses specific objects that were available for loans, while its first half—the scholarly essays—deals thematically with broader questions: the meaning of the images (particularly

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where they depart from scriptural accounts), their role first in the underground Church and then the imperial, official Church and, more surprisingly, Jewish visual symbolism. (Jewish religious art—or visual representations of any kind—had previously been thought to be scant and unimportant.) About the beginning of the third century, purely Christian images began to appear, but these almost never included crosses, the Crucifixion, the Nativity, or other scenes that became key to Christian narrative representation. The Baptism of Christ was the first purely New Testament image to appear, followed by the Adoration of the Magi in the fourth century. The themes that appeared most often in early Christian visual art were Christ as the Good Shepherd, Jonah being regurgitated by leviathan (as a prefiguring of the Resurrection, Jonah appeared ten times more frequently than any other biblical figure), and Noah and the Ark. Even those depictions of figures familiar today—Moses, for example—differed significantly from what we expect from later Christian art. Moses was shown striking the rock with his staff to bring water, not as lawgiver in front of the burning bush or as savior leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. Some choices of images may reflect not the appeal of certain stories but simply the availability of the texts to early Christian communities: Daniel is depicted, but not Joseph, Joshua, or David; Susannah but not Solomon. Syncretism of pagan traditions did not bother the early Christians, and explains some apparently odd choices. The Good Shepherd carrying his lamb was a clear echo of pastoral depictions of Dionysus. More surprisingly, depictions of Jonah resting nude under his vine were not uncommon, and are not adequately explained by the frequency of the Jonah-whale-resurrection motif. (Why depict this part of the story, why is Jonah nude, and why reclining?) When shown against customary depictions of the sleeping youth Endymion, however, the borrowing is convincing. (Endymion was always shown nude because he was a model of classical male beauty.) Biblical figures might also be depicted alongside those from classical myths—Jesus alongside Bellerophon and the chimera, for example. Illustrations of stories or events from the Hebrew Bible greatly outnumber those from the Christian scriptures, showing not only how aggressively the early Christian communities appropriated and repurposed the Jewish tradition (the promise of God to Noah, the covenant of God with Abraham, the allusions to resurrection in Ezekiel’s vision of bones), but also how much richer, more colorful, and more concrete these stories were than the Christian texts. It is harder to illustrate the theology of Paul than to show Noah and the ark. Surprisingly, there are few crosses. Crosses may have been used, either as private, personal jewelry or as the focal point of liturgical services, as early

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as the fourth century, but crosses of any kind are rare before the sixth century, when the symbol was adopted to support imperial authority—the cross then appears both as the emperor’s scepter and on coins. The imperial support for Christianity (and vice versa, the use of Christian symbolism to support the emperor) marked an important transformation for Christian art, not only in bringing it up from the underground (literally, from the catacombs as funerary art) and facilitating the infusion of vastly more material sponsorship (the creation of large and richly adorned churches). The image, too, of Christ changed as he became, in new depictions, an omnipotent God. Lastly, Picturing the Bible turns to illuminated codices, and again the surprise is in how much the early Christian tradition differed from what we expect from medieval Christianity. Christian Bibles departed from antique tradition, first, in their form—the codex itself—and then in their uses, as a liturgical object (to be placed on the altar, seen and not heard—antique texts were designed as scripts for spoken texts) and later as an object for private reading. While it became natural, in medieval Europe, to expect that biblical illustrations would accompany the text they are keyed to, this was a relatively late development. Bible production of late antique Christianity promoted the development of vellum and precious inks, as well as such innovations as capitals to mark textual breaks, charts to organize texts and lists, tables of contents, and section divisions. The flat pages of the codex (in contrast to rolls) provided a new space for larger portraits and illustrations, and the covers of codices could testify to the treasures of the Word within through their own richly jeweled decorations. The biggest gap in this book is the absence of icons—even if none were available for the exhibition, it is a bit disorienting to have no discussion of their origin and the role they played in visual tradition. And as this book is meant mostly as an introduction to the subject of early religious art, it would have been very helpful to have a more explicit discussion of differences in philosophical approach, between “art” (as it is understood by modern art historians) and images (as they were understood by pre-modern believers). An excellent articulation of this is found in Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Though somewhat heterogeneous in its explication and topics (as the result of contributions from six authors), overall Picturing the Bible presents a rich account of the strange transformation in the visual tradition of what have become, by now, familiar biblical stories. Cherie Woodworth Yale University

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Shepherds of the Lord: Priests and Episcopal Statutes in the Carolingian Period. By Carine van Rhijn. Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007. viii þ 246 pp. $87.00. Nearly three dozen documents were issued between the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the tenth to which the name “Episcopal Statutes” has been applied. Although much of this material has been known for a long time, its proper study has only recently become possible with the publication of the Capitula (or Statuta) episcoporum by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in four volumes between 1984 and 2005. Van Rhijn’s is the first book to tackle this material and to try to make sense of it as a distinct corpus. She notes that Capitula episcoporum is not a coherent genre because the various capitula differ significantly among themselves and because the capitula bear close similarities to the acts of church councils and also to the capitularies of the Frankish kings. The items in the MGH edition have two things in common: they were all written by bishops, and they are primarily addressed to priests. In the Admonitio Generalis of 789 Charlemagne and his key advisers announced a broad program of reform with ideas of correctio and emendatio at its heart. In the next decade or two both conciliar acts and capitularies spelled out the precise dimensions of the reform that was desired. This general legislation had very little to say about priests. At about the same time, a number of well-connected bishops, Haito of Hasel, Ghaerbald of Lie`ge, and Theodulf of Orle´ans, issued the earliest of the episcopal statutes. They aimed to draw priests into the work of reforming the laity of the Carolingian world. They wished to enhance their own communications with their priests and to consolidate their authority over their dioceses. To accomplish these ends, the bishops wished for priests to live ordered lives under rules analogous to those followed by monks; to provide exemplary models of outstanding Christian behavior; and to preach and teach. The underlying idea was that the grand reform aspirations of the court could not possibly be achieved unless they reached every village and hamlet in the empire. By drawing the priests into the reform program, the bishops effectively made them into a coherent group and extended to them their own ministerium. For several decades no new episcopal statues were issued (with one possible exception). Then beginning in about 850 a significant number of them began to appear. The new statutes appeared in troubled times marked by civil wars and Viking invasions. Increasing lay control over the church was disrupting bishops’ control over their dioceses. The documents appeared only in the

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West Frankish kingdom (or along its Lotharingian flank) that was older and better organized than the East. Episcopal autonomy was greater after 850, because episcopal ecclesiology asserted the spiritual leadership of kings— earlier initiatives had come from Charlemagne himself—and because kings were weaker than before. In these circumstances, moreover, priests were both more imbricated in local society and more willing to challenge the authority of their bishops. The church councils that continued to meet in the West rarely took up either the large reform themes or the provisions touching diocesan management that were prominent in Charlemagne’s councils. The later statutes tended to draw their material from earlier statutes or from collections such as those of Ansegis and Benedictus Levita. The bishops did not innovate and they spoke less resolutely in their own voices. After helpfully characterizing the two main periods of statute activity, van Rhijn turns to priests. She focuses mainly on what bishops said about priests and on some large-scale generalizations about them. Apart from one or two anecdotes, van Rhijn does not assess the degree to which ideals and reality matched each other. This book is not a history of the Carolingian priesthood. That book is still very much needed, and van Rhijn lays some of the foundation for it. Carolingian priests were expected to be models of good behavior. In particular they were to avoid involvement with women and otherwise not to cause scandal by drinking, fighting, and cursing. They were expected to be reasonably well educated and knowledgeable in the law of the church, in elementary theology, and in correct liturgical practice. They were to celebrate the sacraments properly, to preach and to teach—in Latin and in the vernacular. A different kind of study might have told us how effectively these rather lofty ideals were carried out. On some general points van Rhijn has interesting and important things to say. She argues that the poverty and oppression of priests has probably been exaggerated. Priests came from a variety of social and economic backgrounds and, in view of the endowments of rural churches, most priests can be assigned to the local land-owning elite. Most priests seem to have served in the areas of their birth and had continuing family connections. Thus priests lived amid laypeople and had a kind of double identity. Coming together twice each year in synods and once at the chrism Mass meant that priests had opportunities to forge horizontal bonds and even to thwart the will of their bishops. These too are subjects that would repay further investigation. Carine van Rhijn has written a useful book. She has thought hard about the episcopal statutes, and she has made sense of them. The book is repetitive and reveals some niggling errors, for example in tabulations of manuscripts or in a paragraph where she is speaking about Einhard and then slips and calls him

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Alcuin. One wishes that van Rhijn had asked one of her many Anglophone friends to vet the manuscript. Thomas F. X. Noble University of Notre Dame

doi:10.1017/S000964070999014X

Religious Life in Normandy, 1050 – 1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure. By Leonie V. Hicks. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 33. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. x þ 246 pp. $90.00 cloth. Since the publication of Henri Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace (1974), scholars of religion increasingly have begun to consider the effects of space on the experience of the sacred. Entering this vibrant field of investigation is Professor Leonie Hicks, whose Religious Life in Normandy, 1050–1300 examines the daily practices of Norman clergy and laity in the years 1050– 1300. Hicks argues that, during these years, as church reformers sought to demarcate and define exclusively sacred space, clergy and laity worked both in cooperation and disputation to create contested, “lived” spaces in various putatively sacred arenas such as churches, monasteries, leper houses, and hospitals. Hicks organizes her investigation of sacred space into four analytical categories: display, reception and intrusion, enclosure, and family. The first chapter, on monastic display, is dependent on the work of Penelope Johnson, Barbara Hanawalt, and Roberta Gilchrist and maintains that religious communities in Normandy used various mediums of display, such as clothing and architecture, to articulate their collective identity. Clothing, Hicks argues, was one of the most visible and portable means of display, capable in some instances of controlling access to the wider world, like when a wimple acts as a “portable cloister.” On a more communal level, the chapter house displayed penitential punishments that reaffirmed obedience to the rule and heightened a sense of the ecclesiastical power to punish. This chapter, much like the remaining three that follow, serves as a detailed catalog of examples, though regrettably the author neglects to analyze the cataloged material in any conclusive sense. For example, in a section on public penance as a form of display, the author, rather than drawing more general conclusions from her observation that the visitation records of Archbishop Eudes of Rouen only imposed severe public penances on men, notes simply that “a fuller study of the gendered implications of penance is needed” (46). It would seem that this particular study of “space, gender and social pressure” in Norman religious life,

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Alcuin. One wishes that van Rhijn had asked one of her many Anglophone friends to vet the manuscript. Thomas F. X. Noble University of Notre Dame

doi:10.1017/S000964070999014X

Religious Life in Normandy, 1050 – 1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure. By Leonie V. Hicks. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 33. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. x þ 246 pp. $90.00 cloth. Since the publication of Henri Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace (1974), scholars of religion increasingly have begun to consider the effects of space on the experience of the sacred. Entering this vibrant field of investigation is Professor Leonie Hicks, whose Religious Life in Normandy, 1050–1300 examines the daily practices of Norman clergy and laity in the years 1050– 1300. Hicks argues that, during these years, as church reformers sought to demarcate and define exclusively sacred space, clergy and laity worked both in cooperation and disputation to create contested, “lived” spaces in various putatively sacred arenas such as churches, monasteries, leper houses, and hospitals. Hicks organizes her investigation of sacred space into four analytical categories: display, reception and intrusion, enclosure, and family. The first chapter, on monastic display, is dependent on the work of Penelope Johnson, Barbara Hanawalt, and Roberta Gilchrist and maintains that religious communities in Normandy used various mediums of display, such as clothing and architecture, to articulate their collective identity. Clothing, Hicks argues, was one of the most visible and portable means of display, capable in some instances of controlling access to the wider world, like when a wimple acts as a “portable cloister.” On a more communal level, the chapter house displayed penitential punishments that reaffirmed obedience to the rule and heightened a sense of the ecclesiastical power to punish. This chapter, much like the remaining three that follow, serves as a detailed catalog of examples, though regrettably the author neglects to analyze the cataloged material in any conclusive sense. For example, in a section on public penance as a form of display, the author, rather than drawing more general conclusions from her observation that the visitation records of Archbishop Eudes of Rouen only imposed severe public penances on men, notes simply that “a fuller study of the gendered implications of penance is needed” (46). It would seem that this particular study of “space, gender and social pressure” in Norman religious life,

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as the subtitle reads, would be just such an opportunity to offer new arguments about the gender dynamics at work in Eudes’s use of public space to exert social pressure by disciplining male bodies. In a chapter on “reception and intrusion,” Hicks investigates the uncomfortable tension arising from the fact that sacred space required at once the removal of the offending presence of the laity and at the same time their “reception,” which sustained donations. As the author notes, “there was a continuing conflict between the duties to provide hospitality, the financial needs of communities, and the need to maintain enclosure as sacred space set aside for the worship of God” (60). The third chapter then takes up the subject of enclosure, which raises a similar set of tensions. One difficulty involves the relationship between monks and nuns and their interaction with the outside world—that claustration required the maintenance of sacred space while at the same time it depended on enough public visibility to guarantee donations. Another tension deals with monks’ relationship to one another. Monastic communities consisted of people who cloistered themselves in order to remain separate from society, living apart from the world and yet, in the bonds of communal living, opportunities for isolation were scarce. Enclosure, the author concludes, was not limited to physical space but also extended to psychic space evidenced by monastic dress, custody of the body, mental observance of the monastic rule, and the laity’s respect for it. In the final chapter, on family, Hicks observes that families consist of “the first point of contact between religious and secular spheres,” thus addressing the themes she has already investigated—display, reception and intrusion, and enclosure—and, like them, introducing tension into the community. Family ties affected monastic space by the physical fact of their intrusion into the community and by interfering in the lives of members by recalling them from the cloister. At the same time, family ties could never be severed entirely because communities depended on them for endowments. Although Hicks does not directly address the mental and contemplative space occupied by family in the daily round of prayers for the deceased, she does account for the practice of family burials on monastic ground and the presence of tombs in the sacred space of the cloister. Like the priest’s wife (a subject she tackles in chapter 2), family members’ ties to their professed loved ones created ambiguity, blurring the boundaries between laity and clergy in their ongoing obligations to one another. Hicks’s source material for this study includes chronicles, statutes, miracula, and, by far the most frequently cited sources, the visitation records of Archbishop Eudes of Rouen and Abbot Stephen of Lexington. It should be noted that the vast majority of her research deals with monastic life and not with broader “religious life” as experienced in the sacred space of cathedrals, hospitals, parish churches, and leper houses. Hicks believes that her choice

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of sources will take this study beyond the lifeless boundaries of an institutional history of the Church in Normandy to the “lived” activities of medieval Christians. In this effort, she is successful, illustrating through extensive textual examples that sacred space was indeed contested, co-owned, and lived in by both the clergy and laity. Her overall argument is that sacred space was dynamic, that spatial practice was “fluid and allowed for an interaction of different groups in society” (161). The reader, however, expects something a bit more incisive than this argument, particularly with regard to “religious life,” or how the experience of religion in Normandy was heightened or hampered by such fluidity. In a similar manner, Hicks introduces the reader, straightaway on page 2, to her theoretical underpinnings, all big names of the spatial turn in the humanities such as Bourdieu and Lefebvre. But then these theoreticians of space vanish when Hicks proceeds to the body of the book; we never see her integrate her source material into the theoretical underpinnings that she has professed as crucial to her interpretation. It seems that a deeper consideration of, for example, the habitus that emerged from the daily occupation of a particular Norman religious space might yield greater insight into the “religious” life of medieval Normandy, and of how its various spaces served to create and deepen one’s religious experiences. Religious Life in Normandy is thus illustrative of the codependence of laity and clergy in sacred space, though it is much more of a reporting on, a glimpse into, the life of the religious, rather than an analysis of religious life. That is, it does not investigate the practices of sacred space and how they contributed to religious experience; it is rather more of a record of various social interactions among clergy and laity as they took place in sacred spaces. Sara Ritchey University of Louisiana

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990151

Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. By Derek A. Rivard. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. xii þ 332 pp. $39.95 paper. Medieval religious practice featured numerous blessing ceremonies that sought to protect people and property from malign elements in the natural and supernatural worlds. Present-day Christians within the Catholic tradition still continue this practice, although it is probably used rather less frequently now than it was in the Middle Ages. Derek Rivard’s study of medieval blessings

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of sources will take this study beyond the lifeless boundaries of an institutional history of the Church in Normandy to the “lived” activities of medieval Christians. In this effort, she is successful, illustrating through extensive textual examples that sacred space was indeed contested, co-owned, and lived in by both the clergy and laity. Her overall argument is that sacred space was dynamic, that spatial practice was “fluid and allowed for an interaction of different groups in society” (161). The reader, however, expects something a bit more incisive than this argument, particularly with regard to “religious life,” or how the experience of religion in Normandy was heightened or hampered by such fluidity. In a similar manner, Hicks introduces the reader, straightaway on page 2, to her theoretical underpinnings, all big names of the spatial turn in the humanities such as Bourdieu and Lefebvre. But then these theoreticians of space vanish when Hicks proceeds to the body of the book; we never see her integrate her source material into the theoretical underpinnings that she has professed as crucial to her interpretation. It seems that a deeper consideration of, for example, the habitus that emerged from the daily occupation of a particular Norman religious space might yield greater insight into the “religious” life of medieval Normandy, and of how its various spaces served to create and deepen one’s religious experiences. Religious Life in Normandy is thus illustrative of the codependence of laity and clergy in sacred space, though it is much more of a reporting on, a glimpse into, the life of the religious, rather than an analysis of religious life. That is, it does not investigate the practices of sacred space and how they contributed to religious experience; it is rather more of a record of various social interactions among clergy and laity as they took place in sacred spaces. Sara Ritchey University of Louisiana

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990151

Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion. By Derek A. Rivard. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. xii þ 332 pp. $39.95 paper. Medieval religious practice featured numerous blessing ceremonies that sought to protect people and property from malign elements in the natural and supernatural worlds. Present-day Christians within the Catholic tradition still continue this practice, although it is probably used rather less frequently now than it was in the Middle Ages. Derek Rivard’s study of medieval blessings

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seeks to discover how these rituals contributed to the formation of the medieval religious mentalite´. Modern scholars often describe medieval blessings as quasi-magical ceremonies that ordinary people treasured in the hope that they would inspire God to come to their aid in difficult circumstances—and, Rivard adds, to placate and petition a deity that they feared might be “somewhat capricious” (60). Popular demand for blessings of various kinds, according to the conventional view among historians, essentially constrained members of the clerical elite to fashion rituals that would furnish the laity with the reassurance, solace, and comfort they desired. Rivard, like some other recent scholars, questions the usefulness and adequacy of what he calls “this simplistic bipolarity.” He argues instead that the dynamics of the relationship between “official” and “unofficial” views on blessings and similar ceremonies in the medieval church were considerably more complex than the two-dimensional model might suggest (8 – 10, 21– 23). Rivard based his study of medieval blessings on liturgical texts that appear in many of the numerous collections of ceremonial formulas for services conducted by bishops and other clerics that are commonly described as pontificals. The pontificals he has chosen to examine begin with the midtenth-century Romano-German pontifical of Mainz and end with the late thirteenth-century pontifical of William Durandus. The blessings that Rivard analyzes sought to secure God’s favor for an impressively broad spectrum of persons, places, and things. He deals in detail with blessings for fields, gardens, seeds, wells, and harvests, as well as houses, bridal chambers, marriage beds, furnaces, hearths, ovens, dishes, kitchen utensils, the sea and the ships that sail on it along with the nets and other maritime equipment that they carry, cemeteries, churches, vestments and sacred vessels, sick or disabled persons, pregnant women, pilgrims—including crusaders and other travelers—knights together with their armor and weapons, and participants in ordeals or trials by battle, as well as the instruments used in those affairs. The author provides translations of many of these blessings and for most of them helpfully includes the Latin text in the notes (which mercifully appear in their proper place at the foot of the page). His translations are relatively literal and mostly accurate, although they often lack much in the way of literary grace. An ample twenty-page bibliography closes his book. This is unfortunately marred at times by bizarre peculiarities in his citations. Thus, for example, he quite properly lists Paris as the place of publication for Migne’s Patrologia Latina but then gives the publisher as “Parisiis.” Similarly, he identifies the publisher of Moeller’s Corpus benedictionum as “Turnhout” and claims that the publisher of Gregory Dix’s Treatise on the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus is Henry Chadwick. Such blunders presumably reflect haste in note taking combined with haphazard proofreading.

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Rivard concludes that blessings provide us with a window into medieval ideas about cosmology. They reflect popular conceptions of God in a variety of roles: as a protector of farmers, soldiers, sailors, and travelers. He is in addition characterized as a purifier, a defender, a healer, and a judge. The authors of blessing rituals seem to have viewed God above all as a zealous protector of his people and their interests, although they nonetheless needed to implore him from time to time to save them from imminent perils. Blessings no doubt served to reassure the faithful of God’s presence among them. They also assumed his willingness to intervene in the problems that beset individual persons, and this may well have helped to assuage their religious uncertainties. They implicitly predicated a quasi-contractual relationship between God and his faithful servants in which their obligations to him were balanced by his obligations to them. The texts that Rivard examines show fluctuations over time in the ways that their authors viewed the function of the blessings they composed. Blessings of knights and weapons composed between the tenth and twelfth centuries, for instance, addressed the duty of monarchs and other potentates to protect their weak and powerless subjects, such as widows, orphans, and other disadvantaged persons, from external enemies—perhaps Vikings or Huns. By the middle and latter part of the thirteenth century, however, Rivard finds a change in the focus of these rites. Later blessings laid less emphasis on the function of knights as defenders against worldly enemies. Instead, they stressed the obligation of soldiers to cultivate spiritual virtues: they admonished knights to be steadfast and faithful Christians, as well as soldiers, guardians of the peace, and protectors of the defenseless, if they wished to merit salvation. Rivard’s study of medieval blessing rituals sheds helpful light on the ways that medieval churchmen and their flocks viewed their relationship to God, to nature, and to their society. James A. Brundage University of Kansas, Emeritus

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990163

Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer. By Andrew Cole. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xx þ 308 pp. $99.00 cloth. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Not so, argues Andrew Cole, if the rose in question is the Wycliffite heresy, and the “other name” is “lollardy,” that near-ubiquitous epithet employed by ecclesiastical officials, poets, and

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Rivard concludes that blessings provide us with a window into medieval ideas about cosmology. They reflect popular conceptions of God in a variety of roles: as a protector of farmers, soldiers, sailors, and travelers. He is in addition characterized as a purifier, a defender, a healer, and a judge. The authors of blessing rituals seem to have viewed God above all as a zealous protector of his people and their interests, although they nonetheless needed to implore him from time to time to save them from imminent perils. Blessings no doubt served to reassure the faithful of God’s presence among them. They also assumed his willingness to intervene in the problems that beset individual persons, and this may well have helped to assuage their religious uncertainties. They implicitly predicated a quasi-contractual relationship between God and his faithful servants in which their obligations to him were balanced by his obligations to them. The texts that Rivard examines show fluctuations over time in the ways that their authors viewed the function of the blessings they composed. Blessings of knights and weapons composed between the tenth and twelfth centuries, for instance, addressed the duty of monarchs and other potentates to protect their weak and powerless subjects, such as widows, orphans, and other disadvantaged persons, from external enemies—perhaps Vikings or Huns. By the middle and latter part of the thirteenth century, however, Rivard finds a change in the focus of these rites. Later blessings laid less emphasis on the function of knights as defenders against worldly enemies. Instead, they stressed the obligation of soldiers to cultivate spiritual virtues: they admonished knights to be steadfast and faithful Christians, as well as soldiers, guardians of the peace, and protectors of the defenseless, if they wished to merit salvation. Rivard’s study of medieval blessing rituals sheds helpful light on the ways that medieval churchmen and their flocks viewed their relationship to God, to nature, and to their society. James A. Brundage University of Kansas, Emeritus

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990163

Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer. By Andrew Cole. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xx þ 308 pp. $99.00 cloth. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet? Not so, argues Andrew Cole, if the rose in question is the Wycliffite heresy, and the “other name” is “lollardy,” that near-ubiquitous epithet employed by ecclesiastical officials, poets, and

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others in late medieval England to deride John Wyclif’s followers. Cole’s study presents a series of refreshing and compelling readings of the works of such canonical authors as William Langland and Margery Kempe, situating them in relation to the emergence of Wycliffism and its effect on the literature of late medieval England. Cole’s goal is to treat Wycliffism as “an emergent fund of ideas, forms, and rhetorics that helped various medieval authors think anew about the past and the present . . . about, fundamentally, what it means to write” (186). In short, he suggests, Wycliffism provided not just a context but the most significant context within which late medieval English authors wrote. This volume will repay careful reading not only by literary scholars but also church historians, cultural and political historians, and theologians interested in the Wycliffite controversy and its historical, theological, and literary afterlives. Cole’s prose is lucid and accessible, even to the non-specialist, and the conclusions he offers are thought provoking. Without doing too much violence to the intricacy of its arguments, the volume can be divided into two parts: the first dealing with the invention of Wycliffism as a discrete and dangerous heresy, and likewise of “lollardy” as a category of both condemnation and approbation; and the second dealing with the resonances of Wycliffism that can be traced in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer (the Man of Law’s Tale, the Parson’s Tale, and preeminently the Treatise on the Astrolabe), Thomas Hoccleve (“The Address to Sir John Oldcastle” and the Regiment of Princes), John Lydgate (“Procession of Corpus Christi”), and Margery Kempe. What links the two is perhaps the most crucial, a threepage “intermezzo” titled, simply, “Wycliffism is not ‘lollardy.’” Specialists may quibble with particular aspects of Cole’s readings of individual writers, but readers interested more generally in the history of the late medieval church in England and its response to the Wycliffite heresy may find greatest value in Cole’s trenchant discussion (in chapter 1) of the proceedings of the so-called “Blackfriars Council,” which met in 1382 and condemned twenty-four propositions drawn from Wyclif’s writings. The conventional wisdom has held that the council marks a turning point in the repression of heresy in England: it declared certain topics off-limits and, over time, medieval authors responded by censoring their works. The view has also been that its actions were, in the short term at least, relatively ineffective. Cole sets out to demolish both of these theses, showing through a careful reconstruction of extant documents that Archbishop William Courtenay used the council to “overcome the jurisdictional distinctions between church and university” that had protected Wyclif throughout his career (5). In a delightful chapter that is simultaneously detective story and political thriller, Cole shows that Courtenay’s primary charge against Wyclif and his followers was that they had preached without authorization outside Oxford. He goes on to demonstrate that the very day the council approved

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its decrees, one of Courtenay’s fellow bishops, William Wykeham of Winchester, provided just the proof the archbishop required: a mandate to the vicar of Odiham requiring him to prevent certain Wycliffites from “usurping the office of preacher” (12). But had these men actually done so? No, Cole argues; there is no evidence. “In more plain terms, Wykeham made it up—inventing the very problem that Courtenay would amplify” in his later mandate claiming that the Wycliffites were “conspiring to infect the whole realm by preaching their heresies outside of Oxford” (14). Over time, Courtenay and his suffragans used similar devices to construct Wycliffism as a coherent heretical movement with a discrete set of doctrines. This carefully researched, sensibly iconoclastic account of the politics of the Blackfriars Council is paradigmatic of Cole’s approach in this volume. But what, to ask the larger question, does Wycliffism have to do with “lollardy”? Cole first investigates (in chapters 2 and 3) the complex invention and re-invention of “lollard” as a term of both abuse and praise. There is not space to describe in detail his readings of the so-called “loller” passages in Piers Plowman or his analysis of the word’s appearance in dissenting as well as mainstream texts, for instance, John Clanvowe’s The Two Ways and the anonymous The Fyve Wyttes. Yet what is more significant, indeed what should be required reading for scholars of medieval and Reformation literature, theology, and ecclesiastical history, is Cole’s short “intermezzo,” where he aims to deconstruct the scholarly cliche´ that Wycliffism and lollardy are synonymous. Instead, to treat these terms as mutually equivalent is “an error of historical condescension . . . a foisting of our preferences onto those of the past” (73). Wycliffism may have been a (relatively) coherent set of beliefs and practices, even if we lack the evidence to investigate those beliefs and practices in all their diversity; “lollardy” was (and still is) in the eye of the beholder. For ecclesiastical authorities it was a tool to censure individuals who stood outside the religious mainstream; for Wycliffites it was a shorthand term for ideas about “lay moderation and Christian discipleship”; and for non-Wycliffite authors such as Langland it had an altogether wider range of meanings (72). Cole’s point is that we must take careful note of the ways in which “lollard” was used and not used, for the absence of the term from a particular text may be just as important as its presence. This is a volume that hardly shies away from controversial claims, and therein lies much of its value: Cole has served up a hearty helping of provocative, challenging theses about the religious controversies that dominated the late medieval church in England and shaped the works of the most prominent writers of the age. It would be to our discredit not to engage these ideas in the dialogue they demand. J. Patrick Hornbeck II Fordham University

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doi:10.1017/S0009640709990175

Women and the Reformation. By Kirsi Stjerna. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2009. x þ 271 pp. $94.95 cloth; $39.95 paper. Few would dispute that the Reformation had a significant impact on views of women and their roles in society. Where scholars disagree is in their assessments of this impact. Did the Reformation bring freedom and new opportunities to women, or did it instead result in new restrictions? In her latest work, Women and the Reformation, Kirsi Stjerna makes a valuable contribution to this debate. She clearly demonstrates that no simple answer exists to this question, but that the place of women in the Reformation is just as complex as the history of the period as a whole. Stjerna’s work is divided into two parts. The first begins with the medieval context and explores how the roles and views of women were affected by the Reformation. While in the Middle Ages women had important leadership positions as mystics and prophets, as members of convents, and as mothers and wives, the Protestant Reformation brought changes to these roles. The reformers’ rejection of the idea of a direct experience of God, unmediated by word or sacrament, brought a virtual end to the vocations of mystic and prophet. Nonetheless, some Protestant women, particularly among the Anabaptists and spiritualists, continued in these roles and had a lasting influence on their communities. The closing of the convents in Protestant territories meant the loss of the most important institution for fostering education, literary activity, and theological reflection among women. And, unlike their male counterparts, women could not turn to the universities for a replacement. Nonetheless, many women embraced the freedom they found in Protestant teachings and gladly left their convents for a newly sanctified life in the “world,” particularly as wives and mothers. As Stjerna concludes, the Protestant Reformation produced changes in women’s sense of themselves, even if little changed for the better in their social setting. The result was both gains and losses in the lives of sixteenth-century women (39). To illustrate these trends, Stjerna next introduces readers to ten women whose lives were both shaped by and provided shape to the Reformation in a variety of contexts. A chapter or shared chapter is devoted to each so that these brief biographies make up the bulk of the book. They also are its most intriguing part. The women come from Germany, Scandinavia, France, Switzerland, and Italy. Perhaps the only area not well represented is England, although central female figures of the English Reformation are mentioned in part I. The women are all Protestants, primarily Lutheran or Calvinist; Stjerna mentions her regrets that the scope of the work would not allow for Roman Catholic women to be included as well (4). Finally, the women encompass a wide range of societal roles. Katharina von Bora Luther became a model for Protestant women by leaving the covenant and embracing fully the vocations of wife and mother. Despite

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male opposition, Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schu¨tz Zell, Marie Dentie`re, and Olimpia Fulvia Morata were women who claimed the full promise of the priesthood of all believers, serving the church as theologians, teachers, and preachers. Elisabeth von Brandenburg, Elisabeth von Braunschweig, Marguerite de Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and Rene´e de France used their political and social status to support the Reformation both publicly and privately in their territories. From a combined perspective of social and theological history, the chapters review how the Reformation influenced the lives of these women and highlights their contributions to the movement. Each begins with a portrait and brief genealogy. The text is clearly written and engaging, although a few small stylistic redundancies occur throughout. Stjerna builds on previous studies of these women, combining biographical introductions with primary source materials. The inclusion of writings by the women themselves is a particularly valuable attribute of this work. One hopes Stjerna will follow this book with a full anthology of writings from Reformation women. (The back cover of the book indicates the existence of an accompanying website that includes writings by the women, but the URL is no longer valid.) A substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources also has been created for each chapter. Notes are included as well, but Stjerna reveals that they had to be pared down for the sake of clarity and flow of the text (7). These notes are in the form of in-text citations, and one wonders why endnotes or footnotes were not used simply in order to keep the original detail. Then again, the text is meant to be an introduction to the subject, not an in-depth study. The book will work well in general courses on the Reformation but should be used in conjunction with other materials because it assumes previous knowledge. Additionally, it can serve nicely as the starting place for more in-depth research, providing a guide to other valuable resources. For all those interested in the place of women in the Reformation, this book will be a wonderful asset. Mary Elizabeth Anderson Saint Olaf College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990187

Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519– 1528). By Austra Reinis. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. viii þ 290 pp. $114.95 cloth. Three decades after the history of death first made its appearance in France, principally among medievalists and early modernists, the subject eventually

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male opposition, Argula von Grumbach, Katharina Schu¨tz Zell, Marie Dentie`re, and Olimpia Fulvia Morata were women who claimed the full promise of the priesthood of all believers, serving the church as theologians, teachers, and preachers. Elisabeth von Brandenburg, Elisabeth von Braunschweig, Marguerite de Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret, and Rene´e de France used their political and social status to support the Reformation both publicly and privately in their territories. From a combined perspective of social and theological history, the chapters review how the Reformation influenced the lives of these women and highlights their contributions to the movement. Each begins with a portrait and brief genealogy. The text is clearly written and engaging, although a few small stylistic redundancies occur throughout. Stjerna builds on previous studies of these women, combining biographical introductions with primary source materials. The inclusion of writings by the women themselves is a particularly valuable attribute of this work. One hopes Stjerna will follow this book with a full anthology of writings from Reformation women. (The back cover of the book indicates the existence of an accompanying website that includes writings by the women, but the URL is no longer valid.) A substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources also has been created for each chapter. Notes are included as well, but Stjerna reveals that they had to be pared down for the sake of clarity and flow of the text (7). These notes are in the form of in-text citations, and one wonders why endnotes or footnotes were not used simply in order to keep the original detail. Then again, the text is meant to be an introduction to the subject, not an in-depth study. The book will work well in general courses on the Reformation but should be used in conjunction with other materials because it assumes previous knowledge. Additionally, it can serve nicely as the starting place for more in-depth research, providing a guide to other valuable resources. For all those interested in the place of women in the Reformation, this book will be a wonderful asset. Mary Elizabeth Anderson Saint Olaf College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990187

Reforming the Art of Dying: The ars moriendi in the German Reformation (1519– 1528). By Austra Reinis. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2007. viii þ 290 pp. $114.95 cloth. Three decades after the history of death first made its appearance in France, principally among medievalists and early modernists, the subject eventually

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made its way into Germany and England and the Protestant Reformation. Among the pioneers, two historians have claimed a place of honor with their broad surveys: Craig Koslofsky with his Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany, 1450 –1700 (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), and Peter Marshall with his Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Though focused on two very different Reformations, these two books described and analyzed similar sets of changes, arguing that Protestantism reconfigured not only the map of the afterlife, but also the social and financial obligations that had linked the living and the dead in medieval Christendom. As one might expect, these broad surveys are now being followed by more narrowly focused studies that seek to shed more light on smaller details, in one way or another. One such example is Reforming the Art of Dying, a painstakingly exhaustive analysis of a handful of texts published in Germany during the first decade of the Protestant Reformation. The texts in question are printed sermons, devotional manuals, and catechisms that offered instruction in the ars moriendi, or the art of dying well—an “art” developed in the late Middle Ages, both as ritual and as a genre of devotional literature. In nearly every way, the ars moriendi developed as a response to the medieval Catholic notion that one’s salvation was decided at the moment of death, a sentiment commonly expressed in the Latin adage salus homini in fine consistet. The central, unquestioned assumption behind this emphasis on the “end” ( fine) rested squarely on belief in free will and the necessity of performing good works, avoiding sin, and availing oneself of the sacraments of the Church, especially penance, extreme unction, and the Eucharist. Those familiar with Reformation theology might be puzzled by the survival of this genre among early Protestants, given the fact that the medieval ars moriendi focused on what the dying person might be able to do at the last moment to gain salvation. After all, Luther’s battle cry of “faith alone,” which turned the world upside down by changing merely one letter in the adage salus hominis in fine consistit—with fide (faith) replacing fine (whatever one might do at the end )—seemingly left salvation entirely in the hands of God rather than the individual. If salvation was determined solely by God in his eternal realm rather than by the individual at the deathbed and nothing could be done at all to earn salvation, what advice was there to give at the moment of death? Reforming the Art of Dying answers this question thoroughly, paying careful attention to even the finest of details. Although the bulk of this book is descriptive rather than analytical, Reinis does sustain an argument throughout, claiming that the Protestant ars moriendi was very different from that of medieval Catholicism, despite obvious similarities. The main difference, as Reinis sees it, is that while the Catholic art of dying stressed

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uncertainty and anxiety about salvation, focusing on the moment of death as the ultimate battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, the new Protestant art of dying sought to comfort the dying and reassure them of their salvation. This is pure intellectual history, focused solely on the theology and rhetoric of a few texts, and the analysis is guided by a simple dichotomy: as Reinis sees it, the theology pertains to the intellect and the rhetoric to the emotions. The crucial figure is Luther, naturally, whose “Sermon on Preparing to Die” (1519) is seen as the touchstone for all others who dealt with the subject. Most of the other authors are of lesser stature. Only three are relatively well known to specialists: Johann Oecolampadius, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Georg Spalatin. Others, such as Johannes Odenbach, Jakob Otter, and Kaspar Gu¨ttel, are obscure enough to challenge all experts. In some ways, then, Reinis deals with what might be called popular culture, but she does so without any apparent interest in that subject. Her sole focus, from start to finish, is the content of these texts. We learn very little about the authors, save for the barest of details, or about the circumstances under which the texts were written and disseminated. We also learn little about how these texts were used or who used them. When all is said and done, it is also somewhat difficult to figure out why these particular texts were chosen or why the scope of the study was limited to one decade. In the last few pages, almost as an afterthought, Reinis takes issue with one of the most significant theses to have emerged from recent work on the history of death in this period—the suggestion that one of the most salient features of the Protestant Reformation was its tendency to segregate the dead from the living. Unfortunately, she offers little convincing proof for her argument, merely affirming that burial customs and funerary monuments kept the dead sufficiently close to the living, despite the fact that Protestants ceased praying to the dead saints in heaven and for the dead souls in purgatory, and that they also stopped pouring money into those devotions. This is a book with a limited audience. In many ways, it still reads like a dissertation and gives the impression of having a doktorvater and two other professors as its sole intended readers—a trait quite common in this Ashgate series. Moreover, with a price tag of more than a hundred dollars, it is destined solely for a few university libraries. Its greatest merit is that it convincingly documents how one aspect of medieval piety was transformed in Germany between 1519 and 1528, in a handful of texts. Ironically, its close attention to theological and rhetorical details is also its sole shortcoming. Reforming the Art of Dying proves overwhelming at times, not because its myriad details are insignificant, but rather because they are often strung together without much analysis and compared and contrasted repeatedly, with little apparent regard for their relative significance or their social and political context. Those who are impatient may simply read

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chapter 7, which contains the gist of the whole book; all others will also find much to ponder in the rest of its pages. Carlos M. N. Eire Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990199

Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. By Charles Webster. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv þ 326 pp. $40.00 cloth. Though Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, has been most extensively studied with regard to his place in the history of medicine, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the religious dimension of his reforming efforts. This book continues that endeavor by offering a broader look at Paracelsus’s aspirations and his place within the social and intellectual environment of sixteenth-century Germany. Charles Webster shows how this controversial physician developed an audacious program of “root and branch reform” (1). His interest in medicine was only part of a larger vision of a new world order that included extensive changes in both church and society. Viewing Paracelsus as a religious controversialist as well as a medical reformer, Webster notes in particular how his sense of living at a critical moment, at the end of time, energized his pugnacious campaign for the rejection of many traditional beliefs and practices. A brief summary of the life of Paracelsus is in order at the start of a book of this sort, but Webster takes a wider approach by first reflecting on positive and negative aspects of socioeconomic life in the sixteenth century. He notes the comfortable status physicians generally enjoyed in society, in contrast to Paracelsus, who faced a life of considerable adversity and perpetual wandering because he was constantly “swimming against the prevailing tide” (9). The review of Paracelsus’s life is quite brief, but this introduction includes some interesting reflection on features of his personality and his sense of mission. It includes an analysis of why he was so widely demonized during his lifetime. Before examining features of Paracelsus’s thought, Webster inserts a chapter about how Paracelsus and his followers successfully used the medium of print to circulate his ideas. Chapter 2 examines the range of sixteenth-century literary genres and print outlets, showing how Paracelsus excelled in the production of pamphlets, each of which contributed an element to his broad program of reform. This chapter also includes assorted reflections on the significance of his

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chapter 7, which contains the gist of the whole book; all others will also find much to ponder in the rest of its pages. Carlos M. N. Eire Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990199

Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and Mission at the End of Time. By Charles Webster. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv þ 326 pp. $40.00 cloth. Though Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, has been most extensively studied with regard to his place in the history of medicine, recent scholarship has drawn attention to the religious dimension of his reforming efforts. This book continues that endeavor by offering a broader look at Paracelsus’s aspirations and his place within the social and intellectual environment of sixteenth-century Germany. Charles Webster shows how this controversial physician developed an audacious program of “root and branch reform” (1). His interest in medicine was only part of a larger vision of a new world order that included extensive changes in both church and society. Viewing Paracelsus as a religious controversialist as well as a medical reformer, Webster notes in particular how his sense of living at a critical moment, at the end of time, energized his pugnacious campaign for the rejection of many traditional beliefs and practices. A brief summary of the life of Paracelsus is in order at the start of a book of this sort, but Webster takes a wider approach by first reflecting on positive and negative aspects of socioeconomic life in the sixteenth century. He notes the comfortable status physicians generally enjoyed in society, in contrast to Paracelsus, who faced a life of considerable adversity and perpetual wandering because he was constantly “swimming against the prevailing tide” (9). The review of Paracelsus’s life is quite brief, but this introduction includes some interesting reflection on features of his personality and his sense of mission. It includes an analysis of why he was so widely demonized during his lifetime. Before examining features of Paracelsus’s thought, Webster inserts a chapter about how Paracelsus and his followers successfully used the medium of print to circulate his ideas. Chapter 2 examines the range of sixteenth-century literary genres and print outlets, showing how Paracelsus excelled in the production of pamphlets, each of which contributed an element to his broad program of reform. This chapter also includes assorted reflections on the significance of his

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renaming of himself, his use of German to communicate his ideas, and stylistic characteristics of his writings. Paracelsus himself sometimes shrewdly decided to delay publication of certain writings because of their controversial nature and at other times could not find a publisher who would dare to circulate his iconoclastic views. Webster contends, however, that he confidently wrote for a “notional audience” he hoped would develop over time—a “putative book club” (50). Editors after his death adeptly packaged his ideas in marketable forms and produced 345 editions of his writings between 1560 and 1658. The rest of the book focuses on five topics: Paracelsus’s belief that spiritual enlightenment was a precondition of attainment of any of his objectives, his call for reform of all of the learned professions, his ideas about matter and magic, similarities and differences between his reform proposals and those of other radical contemporaries, and the apocalyptic consciousness that inspired his sense of mission. From the very start, Paracelsus was equally critical of the authorities who controlled the church and the medical profession. To explicate the religious side of Paracelsus’s mission, Webster concentrates especially on De septem punctis idolatriae cristianae, a short tract he wrote in Salzburg in about 1525 but never published. This seldom-studied Flugschrift shows his widespread familiarity with theological debates of that era and the comprehensiveness of his dissatisfaction with the state of the church. Webster notes how this “concise encyclopedic guide to abuses within the Roman church” (77) both reveals the independence of Paracelsus and echoes the sentiments of a wide range of religious critics of that day. Webster points out that Paracelsus’s critique of the medical establishment never strayed far from the language and concepts he used in his early anticlerical diatribes. All of the learned professions manifested similar vices: arrogance, dependence on vacuous learning, habitual deference to traditional authorities, and base interest in economic gain. For Paracelsus, nothing short of a complete reappraisal of traditional values was needed. Along with this he stressed the importance of enlightenment through the joint action of the Holy Spirit and what he called the Light of Nature (129). While explicating the basics of Paracelsus’s natural philosophy, Webster contends that his speculative engagement with nature went beyond the scope of science as we think of it today. The Christian side of Paracelsus’s thought is evident in his Trinitarian perspective on the theory of matter and in the analogies he drew between health and salvation in connection with his macrocosm-microcosm theory. Seeing examples in the Bible of magic and access to prophetic powers, Paracelsus developed his own unique conflation of medicine, magic, and kabbalah. Walter Pagel’s important study of Paracelsus stressed his debt to NeoPlatonic and Gnostic sources. Webster acknowledges these influences but

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associates his overall perspective more closely with medieval mystics and a number of radical Protestants. Paracelsus rejected both Catholicism and magisterial Protestantism with equal fervor and also criticized Anabaptism, but Webster refutes the claim that he adopted a disengaged approach to religious issues. Webster shows that there is considerable convergence between his views and the perspective of various Anabaptist radicals who had spiritualist and apocalyptic leanings. Webster systematically explores these points of agreement and their roots in earlier sources such as the Joachimite apocalyptic tradition and the spirituality of German mystics such as Tauler. A tribute on the cover of this book claims that it will undoubtedly replace Pagel’s classic study. This is an overstatement because Pagel and others still provide a fuller analysis of Paracelsus’s scientific theories. Aspects of this book may also be challenging for those who are looking for an entry point to the study of Paracelsus. Nevertheless, it will provide a valuable resource for contextualizing his thought and clarifying its scope and focus. (A final minor note: it is unfortunate that the woodcuts placed at the start of each chapter are so small. Webster regularly comments on them to illustrate central themes, but it is hard to discern the features he is talking about.) Eric Lund St. Olaf College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990205

Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. By Luke Clossey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii þ 331 pp. $99.00 cloth. This book began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley; the book’s title surely suggests an unusually large topic for a Ph.D. thesis. In fact the topic is considerably narrower than the title indicates, and this study focuses on Jesuit missions in China and Mexico, their links with each other, and their links with Germany in the seventeenth century. Responding to a historiography that has emphasized the vertical structure of the Society of Jesus, under a superior general and the pope in Rome, Clossey investigates a horizontal global network of Jesuits and Jesuit work in three very different parts of the world. Communication and transportation were, by twenty-first century standards, incredibly slow and unreliable in the 1600s. Clossey highlights two somewhat contradictory outcomes of this situation for Jesuit missionaries.

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associates his overall perspective more closely with medieval mystics and a number of radical Protestants. Paracelsus rejected both Catholicism and magisterial Protestantism with equal fervor and also criticized Anabaptism, but Webster refutes the claim that he adopted a disengaged approach to religious issues. Webster shows that there is considerable convergence between his views and the perspective of various Anabaptist radicals who had spiritualist and apocalyptic leanings. Webster systematically explores these points of agreement and their roots in earlier sources such as the Joachimite apocalyptic tradition and the spirituality of German mystics such as Tauler. A tribute on the cover of this book claims that it will undoubtedly replace Pagel’s classic study. This is an overstatement because Pagel and others still provide a fuller analysis of Paracelsus’s scientific theories. Aspects of this book may also be challenging for those who are looking for an entry point to the study of Paracelsus. Nevertheless, it will provide a valuable resource for contextualizing his thought and clarifying its scope and focus. (A final minor note: it is unfortunate that the woodcuts placed at the start of each chapter are so small. Webster regularly comments on them to illustrate central themes, but it is hard to discern the features he is talking about.) Eric Lund St. Olaf College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990205

Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. By Luke Clossey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii þ 331 pp. $99.00 cloth. This book began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley; the book’s title surely suggests an unusually large topic for a Ph.D. thesis. In fact the topic is considerably narrower than the title indicates, and this study focuses on Jesuit missions in China and Mexico, their links with each other, and their links with Germany in the seventeenth century. Responding to a historiography that has emphasized the vertical structure of the Society of Jesus, under a superior general and the pope in Rome, Clossey investigates a horizontal global network of Jesuits and Jesuit work in three very different parts of the world. Communication and transportation were, by twenty-first century standards, incredibly slow and unreliable in the 1600s. Clossey highlights two somewhat contradictory outcomes of this situation for Jesuit missionaries.

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On the one hand, the “decentralizing nature of distance” (56) meant that Rome could not easily supervise or direct what Jesuits did in the Americas or in Asia. An exchange of letters could take years, if the letters arrived at all, and thus local initiatives could not and did not always wait for Roman directives. On the other hand, the abundance of letters that is extant provides a rich window onto what Jesuits did, and what they thought about what they did. Clossey’s main sources are the letters of fifty-three Jesuits who traveled between Germany and China and/or Mexico. By “Germany,” Clossey means the Holy Roman Empire, more or less, and by “German” Jesuits he means those belonging to the German Assistancy, a grouping of Jesuit provinces that in the seventeenth century included an Austrian and a Bohemian province in addition to three provinces covering territory corresponding roughly to what we now call Germany. Clossey points out that German princes, bishops, and other benefactors were key to the financing of the Jesuits in China, though in theory, at least, the Portuguese monarch was committed to supporting them. Dynastic and ethnic rivalries abounded in Europe, and these traveled with Portuguese, Spanish, and other colonizers as they traveled to Asia, the Americas, and elsewhere. Indeed, such rivalries helped motivate European exploration and exploitation of the rest of the world. But Clossey points out that the members of a Jesuit province were often diverse in their nationalities and places of birth; the international vocation of Jesuits was frequently in tension with the national agendas of monarchs and the xenophobia that such agendas encouraged. Though Jesuits at times found their approaches to evangelization in tension with papal perspectives or directives, the Society of Jesus also received help from some popes in overcoming royal reluctance to admit foreign Jesuits. Clossey does an excellent job of exploring the motives of Jesuit missionaries, motives that included zeal for the Christianization of the world, perhaps at the price of martyrdom, but also motives that were less heroic, such as wanderlust, interest in the exotic, and mere sightseeing. That other Catholic missionaries could be the biggest obstacle to Jesuit success in spreading the gospel is clear from Clossey’s presentation. For example, he points out that a Franciscan missionary in Mexico thought it suitable to instruct the native population on the meaning of hell by burning alive their dogs and cats. It is not difficult to imagine how such cruelty and violence would have alienated anyone from Christian teachings, making any further apologetics useless. This reviewer found but one set of factual errors in this otherwise meticulous study. Clossey states that Jesuit novices became “formed scholastics” when they took vows at the end of the novitiate; he also suggests that these men became “spiritual coadjutors” sometime prior to becoming “professed” fathers (27 – 28). A more accurate account of Jesuit formation would be this: a novice who took vows became an “approved scholastic,” and he then undertook the studies and work necessary for ordination to priesthood.

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Sometime after ordination, and when he had completed tertianship (a kind of third year of novitiate), he was considered fully formed. He could then be called either to the “grade” of spiritual coadjutor, with the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, or to the “grade” of professed father, in which case he also took a fourth vow regarding availability to be missioned, by the pope, anywhere in the world. Clossey insists that the principal mission of Jesuits concerned salvation, for their own souls, and the souls of those to whom they were sent. Reacting against anachronistic interpretations of Jesuit history that would play down efforts to convert peoples to Catholic Christianity, he asserts in his conclusion the “centrality of soteriology in early-modern Catholicism” (245). He states that every decree of the Council of Trent dealt with “the salvation of souls” (248), even if Trent did not issue a decree on missions. Clossey proposes the rather awkward term Global Salvific Catholicism as more specific and more accurate than Early Modern Catholicism, a terminology that has been advanced by John O’Malley. Seeing a focus on salvation as continuous with late medieval religion, Clossey cautions against application of the adjective “modern” to Catholicism—whether the Jesuit version or otherwise—circa 1500–1800. But Clossey gives too little attention to how Jesuits understood and explained salvation. Was salvation necessarily a premodern concept? The Jesuit founder, Ignatius of Loyola, believed that God could be found in all things. Where did Jesuit missionaries find God, and where did they encourage others to find God? Jesuit history has been a hot topic in recent decades, especially for the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This book makes a significant contribution to a growing understanding of the history not only of the Society of Jesus, but of Catholicism after Trent, of European cultural and political history, and of the complexity of cultural encounters between Europeans and others. Thomas Worcester College of the Holy Cross

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990217

Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I. By Stephen Hampton. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 296 pp. $240.00 cloth. In 1716 William Nicolson, the bishop of Carlisle and almoner to George I, preached the Spital Sermon at St. Bride’s before the assembled London magistracy. His text was Ephesians 2:8 – 9: “For by grace are ye saved

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Sometime after ordination, and when he had completed tertianship (a kind of third year of novitiate), he was considered fully formed. He could then be called either to the “grade” of spiritual coadjutor, with the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, or to the “grade” of professed father, in which case he also took a fourth vow regarding availability to be missioned, by the pope, anywhere in the world. Clossey insists that the principal mission of Jesuits concerned salvation, for their own souls, and the souls of those to whom they were sent. Reacting against anachronistic interpretations of Jesuit history that would play down efforts to convert peoples to Catholic Christianity, he asserts in his conclusion the “centrality of soteriology in early-modern Catholicism” (245). He states that every decree of the Council of Trent dealt with “the salvation of souls” (248), even if Trent did not issue a decree on missions. Clossey proposes the rather awkward term Global Salvific Catholicism as more specific and more accurate than Early Modern Catholicism, a terminology that has been advanced by John O’Malley. Seeing a focus on salvation as continuous with late medieval religion, Clossey cautions against application of the adjective “modern” to Catholicism—whether the Jesuit version or otherwise—circa 1500–1800. But Clossey gives too little attention to how Jesuits understood and explained salvation. Was salvation necessarily a premodern concept? The Jesuit founder, Ignatius of Loyola, believed that God could be found in all things. Where did Jesuit missionaries find God, and where did they encourage others to find God? Jesuit history has been a hot topic in recent decades, especially for the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. This book makes a significant contribution to a growing understanding of the history not only of the Society of Jesus, but of Catholicism after Trent, of European cultural and political history, and of the complexity of cultural encounters between Europeans and others. Thomas Worcester College of the Holy Cross

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990217

Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I. By Stephen Hampton. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 296 pp. $240.00 cloth. In 1716 William Nicolson, the bishop of Carlisle and almoner to George I, preached the Spital Sermon at St. Bride’s before the assembled London magistracy. His text was Ephesians 2:8 – 9: “For by grace are ye saved

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through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Essentially Stephen Hampton has set out to explain why a bishop, apparently favored by the Crown, should be preaching on the theme that one is justified by faith alone a long generation after the supposed triumph of Arminianism at the Restoration of Church and Crown in 1660. After all, Reformed Protestantism was supposed to have been discredited by the Civil Wars and Interregnum, by the Puritan Revolution, and while the Reformed faith might survive among some of the Dissenting churchmen, the Reformed divinity and its adherents were supposed to have been purged from the restored episcopalian church by the Act of Uniformity in 1662. Certainly Archbishops Sheldon and Tillotson were known to be hostile to a Reformed soteriology, so what Hampton has set out to explain is how it came about that a minister and bishop as late as 1716 was still publicly preaching in defense of so central a Reformed understanding of justification. Hampton’s intention is not to overturn our traditional understanding of the later Stuart church as set out by John Spurr, Nicholas Tyacke, and others, a church split on ecclesiological understandings between the High Churchmen and the Latitudinarians but presumably not over fundamental theological issues. It is that latter point that Hampton challenges, for he demonstrates convincingly that the Reformed tradition survived within the Anglican Church among an influential minority of churchmen well into the eighteenth century. When the Reformed theologian William Delaune published a collection of his sermons at the end of his life in 1728, he confessed that his views were no longer fashionable, but the fact remains that Delaune had been president of St. John’s College, Oxford, and Lady Margaret professor of divinity, a position he gained in 1715 by election in competition with an Arminian churchman. In Hampton’s view, these Reformed churchmen were a coherent group united by patronage and friendship and particularly influential at Oxford. They openly repudiated a Genevan ecclesiology and traced their theological roots to the Elizabethan and early Stuart churchmen in the Reformed tradition. Despite being firm episcopalians, they saw themselves as very much a part of the European Reformed movement opposed to Arminian, Socinian, and later Arian thought. They numbered such influential figures as Thomas Barlow, Lady Margaret professor of divinity and archdeacon of Oxford, who became bishop of Lincoln in 1676; John Hall, master of Pembroke and Lady Margaret professor following Barlow, who became bishop of Bristol in 1691; William Beveridge, a Cambridge product and eventual bishop of St. Asaph in 1704; John Wilkins, warden of Wadham, who became bishop of Chester in 1668; Seth Ward, the Savilian professor of astronomy during the Interregnum, who became bishop of Exeter in 1662;

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Edward Reynolds, a former Presbyterian, who became bishop of Norwich at the Restoration; John Hacket, appointed bishop of Lichfield and Coventry in 1661; John Pearson, Lady Margaret professor at Cambridge, who became bishop of Chester in 1673; and a host of lesser luminaries, such as John Wallis, William Jane, Robert South, and Thomas Tully. Sponsoring these men were two of the chief ecclesiastical politicians of the period, Robert Morley, bishop of Winchester from 1662, and Henry Compton, bishop of Oxford from 1674 and London from 1675. Hampton devotes the major part of his study to a detailed analysis of three controversies: the Reformed responses to George Bull’s Arminian Harmonia Apostolica (1670), to William Sherlock’s A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1690), and to Samuel Clark’s The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), which led to the so-called Arian controversy, an antiTrinitarian move that Hampton argues should more properly be termed subordinationism. Underlying these controversies was a different understanding of the attributes and nature of God, an understanding set out at length in Archbishop Tillotson’s sermons, published in a series of volumes posthumously between 1694 and 1704. In each case Hampton proceeds by a careful exposition of the Arminian position followed by the Reformed response: thus, the analysis of Bull’s Harmonia is followed by a detailed examination of Thomas Tully’s response in his Justificatio Paulina (1674), Sherlock’s A Vindication by Robert South’s Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock’s Book and Tritheism Charged upon Dr. Sherlock’s New Notion of the Trinity, both published in 1695, and Tillotson by a series of lectures given by John Pearson as Lady Margaret professor of divinity, not in answer to Tillotson but as an exemplary statement of the Reformed understanding of the doctrine of God. Again, in each case the principal argument by Tully, South, and Pearson is followed by a shorter examination of other Reformed theologians, demonstrating their shared understanding as opposed to that of their theological opponents. This is not an easy book. The treatises examined were works of sophisticated theologians, and Hampton does not simplify their arguments. Much of these academic treatises were in Latin, and Hampton provides translations in his text and the Latin in footnotes. On the other hand, if the book is difficult and the analysis subtle, Hampton writes with enviable clarity and precision. It is a study that anyone interested in the theological controversies of the late Stuart church will have to read; in light of that consideration, it is a pity that Oxford University Press has priced it beyond the reach of most academics. Paul S. Seaver Stanford University

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CHURCH HISTORY doi:10.1017/S0009640709990229

The Church of England and the Bangorian Controversy, 1716– 1721. By Andrew Starkie. Studies in Modern British Religious History 14. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2007. vii þ 261 pp. $85.00 cloth. This exhaustive yet pointed study examines what J. C. D. Clark has called “the most bitter domestic ideological conflict of the [eighteenth] century” (1) and what might be read as an Enlightenment anticipation of the North American “culture wars” of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the internecine quarrels of world Anglicanism. The author, Andrew Starkie, is both a meticulous scholar and an engaged parish priest in the Church of England. His book began life as a Cambridge dissertation, supervised by Mark Goldie, and he has read and digested the hundreds of politically and theologically charged newspaper columns, pamphlets, books, and published sermons in which the controversy played itself out. Though Starkie does not make an explicit connection in his monograph, one can easily imagine the early eighteenth-century equivalent of the twenty-four-hour electronic news cycle, the blogosphere, and YouTube videos. Of course, the Bangorian controversy produced a more sustained (and more substantial) print media blitz in which all sorts and conditions weighed in: Whigs and Tories, partisans of both high and low church, Latitudinarians and the fiercely orthodox, Dissenters and Non-jurors and even Huguenots and a sometime French Catholic. Kudos to Starkie for delving into the morass, unraveling the various combatants in their respective contexts, and coming up with a complex and compelling analysis. The spark for it all was a single sermon, preached by the theologically liberal, politically whiggish Benjamin Hoadly (1676 – 1761), the newly consecrated bishop of Bangor, who was also concurrently a London-area rector and chaplain to the king. Titled “The Nature of the Kingdom, or Church, of Christ,” and based on the text “My kingdom is not of this world,” it was preached in March 1717 before George I and was published at his behest within two weeks. The message that the Church had no authority over the consciences of Christians fit well the political and ecclesiastical program of early Hanoverian rule and the Whig faction then in power. It did not sit well with powerful segments of the Church, however, and the first pamphlet in opposition was published in early May by Andrew Snape, master of Eton, a Tory, and a formidable controversialist. Within another week the Lower House of the Convocation—the Church’s governing assembly—received a report that condemned Hoadly for “Several Dangerous Positions and Doctrines,” but before the complaints could be sent to the Upper House for action, the government prorogued the Convocation, which did not meet

693

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

again for 130 years. However, the controversy continued unabated for another four, and we are in Starkie’s debt for sorting it out. After locating the debate in its various “intellectual, ecclesiastical, political, and cultural” contexts (15) in the first four chapters (chapter 4 is an especially masterful, densely packed “anatomy of the controversy”), Starkie proceeds with a close reading of three themes he sees as central to the wide-ranging debate. One is the rhetorical usage of “popery” and “Reformation” by both sides in the argument (chapter 5). A second (chapter 6) is “the hermeneutics of heresy,” which turns out to be Hoadly’s hermeneutics, possessing in Starkie’s view a “Machiavellian dimension” as well as a Lockean reliance on human understanding and a Deistic dependence on natural reason (see 130–135). The most interesting theme, that of his chapter 7, is “the politics of piety,” which helpfully complicates our views of arid rationalists (Hoadly and friends claimed a pious sincerity for their positions) and of aesthetic moralists worried about only the externals of religion on the high church side. Discussions of passions, affections, devotion, and the eighteenth-century “e word” (enthusiasm)— familiar to most students of Puritanism and Methodism—get rare treatment from an Anglican perspective, precisely because piety is key to the controversy. The book features a complete bibliography and a most helpful set of appendices that chart the pace of the pamphlet war and map the debate (who was answering whom and for how long; the various intricate sub-issues raised and answered by both sides, and so on). The volume’s one visual, a frontispiece engraving of a pleasant-faced bewigged Andrew Snape, reinforces Starkie’s conservative revisionist approach to the controversy. Not everyone will agree with that view of the eighteenth-century Anglican Church, or its implications for the twenty-first-century Church. Nevertheless, Starkie’s book is immensely important for our understanding of a key early modern intersection of intellectual, ecclesiastical, political, and cultural history. Charles Wallace, Jr. Willamette University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990230

Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729 – 2005. By M. X. Lesser. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. xii þ 693 pp. $145.00 cloth. This huge volume reprints the two previous bibliographies by the compiler, a doyen of Edwards scholarship, that cover the years down to 1978 and down to 1993, inserting previous omissions and adding an entirely new section

693

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

again for 130 years. However, the controversy continued unabated for another four, and we are in Starkie’s debt for sorting it out. After locating the debate in its various “intellectual, ecclesiastical, political, and cultural” contexts (15) in the first four chapters (chapter 4 is an especially masterful, densely packed “anatomy of the controversy”), Starkie proceeds with a close reading of three themes he sees as central to the wide-ranging debate. One is the rhetorical usage of “popery” and “Reformation” by both sides in the argument (chapter 5). A second (chapter 6) is “the hermeneutics of heresy,” which turns out to be Hoadly’s hermeneutics, possessing in Starkie’s view a “Machiavellian dimension” as well as a Lockean reliance on human understanding and a Deistic dependence on natural reason (see 130–135). The most interesting theme, that of his chapter 7, is “the politics of piety,” which helpfully complicates our views of arid rationalists (Hoadly and friends claimed a pious sincerity for their positions) and of aesthetic moralists worried about only the externals of religion on the high church side. Discussions of passions, affections, devotion, and the eighteenth-century “e word” (enthusiasm)— familiar to most students of Puritanism and Methodism—get rare treatment from an Anglican perspective, precisely because piety is key to the controversy. The book features a complete bibliography and a most helpful set of appendices that chart the pace of the pamphlet war and map the debate (who was answering whom and for how long; the various intricate sub-issues raised and answered by both sides, and so on). The volume’s one visual, a frontispiece engraving of a pleasant-faced bewigged Andrew Snape, reinforces Starkie’s conservative revisionist approach to the controversy. Not everyone will agree with that view of the eighteenth-century Anglican Church, or its implications for the twenty-first-century Church. Nevertheless, Starkie’s book is immensely important for our understanding of a key early modern intersection of intellectual, ecclesiastical, political, and cultural history. Charles Wallace, Jr. Willamette University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990230

Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729 – 2005. By M. X. Lesser. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. xii þ 693 pp. $145.00 cloth. This huge volume reprints the two previous bibliographies by the compiler, a doyen of Edwards scholarship, that cover the years down to 1978 and down to 1993, inserting previous omissions and adding an entirely new section

694

CHURCH HISTORY

dealing with titles down to 2005. It contains publications that reproduce, discuss, or even allude to Jonathan Edwards and is far more than a list, since each entry contains a summary of content, always accurate and often perceptive. The introductions to the three sections are urbane and fairminded. The latest introduction registers an intriguing change in the nature of the output, characterizing it as “increasingly evangelical and, regrettably, partisan” (456). More than half of the content of the third bibliography derives from the 2003 tercentennial. Intriguingly, the first volume of the Yale edition of Edwards’s Works, published in 1957, appears on 211, so that nearly two-thirds of the content relates to items that have appeared since that date (though it has to be said that the volume of the summaries tends to increase over time). The indexes of authors and titles and of subjects will be invaluable for the researcher trying to track down elusive commentary. Altogether this work will be essential for any future work on Edwards. David W. Bebbington University of Stirling

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990242

Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830 – 1940. By Christopher G. White. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. xii þ 269 pp. $45.00 cloth. The liberal religious tradition has adopted many strategies over the course of American history. It faces the challenge of identifying intellectual categories that steer a middle course between biblical theology and nonreligious humanism. Christopher White joins a group of scholars that recognizes that a recurring tactic has been to invoke the authority of psychological science for explicating—and advocating—a distinctively religious, yet nonsectarian, orientation to life. White draws attention to the biographical moorings of religious liberalism’s affinity for psychology. Science and religion compete for Americans’ allegiance not just on a cultural level, but also in the lives of individuals. Henry Ward Beecher, Andrew Jackson Davis, G. Stanley Hall, and Edwin Starbuck are but a few of the many Americans whose conversion experiences failed to produce the long-lasting certainty they had been led to expect. Their uncertainties deepened as they gained exposure to their eras’ scientific thought. Torn between the promptings of head (science) and heart (biblical religion), they seized on psychology as a “middle way” that promised to mediate between their conflicting loyalties.

694

CHURCH HISTORY

dealing with titles down to 2005. It contains publications that reproduce, discuss, or even allude to Jonathan Edwards and is far more than a list, since each entry contains a summary of content, always accurate and often perceptive. The introductions to the three sections are urbane and fairminded. The latest introduction registers an intriguing change in the nature of the output, characterizing it as “increasingly evangelical and, regrettably, partisan” (456). More than half of the content of the third bibliography derives from the 2003 tercentennial. Intriguingly, the first volume of the Yale edition of Edwards’s Works, published in 1957, appears on 211, so that nearly two-thirds of the content relates to items that have appeared since that date (though it has to be said that the volume of the summaries tends to increase over time). The indexes of authors and titles and of subjects will be invaluable for the researcher trying to track down elusive commentary. Altogether this work will be essential for any future work on Edwards. David W. Bebbington University of Stirling

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990242

Unsettled Minds: Psychology and the American Search for Spiritual Assurance, 1830 – 1940. By Christopher G. White. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. xii þ 269 pp. $45.00 cloth. The liberal religious tradition has adopted many strategies over the course of American history. It faces the challenge of identifying intellectual categories that steer a middle course between biblical theology and nonreligious humanism. Christopher White joins a group of scholars that recognizes that a recurring tactic has been to invoke the authority of psychological science for explicating—and advocating—a distinctively religious, yet nonsectarian, orientation to life. White draws attention to the biographical moorings of religious liberalism’s affinity for psychology. Science and religion compete for Americans’ allegiance not just on a cultural level, but also in the lives of individuals. Henry Ward Beecher, Andrew Jackson Davis, G. Stanley Hall, and Edwin Starbuck are but a few of the many Americans whose conversion experiences failed to produce the long-lasting certainty they had been led to expect. Their uncertainties deepened as they gained exposure to their eras’ scientific thought. Torn between the promptings of head (science) and heart (biblical religion), they seized on psychology as a “middle way” that promised to mediate between their conflicting loyalties.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

695

Psychology has, of course, prompted different kinds of intellectual journeys in the lives of religiously unsettled Americans. Some have borrowed psychology’s prestige to buttress their biblical faith. Others, however, adopted psychological lines of thought only to find themselves beset with doubt and confusion, eventually leading them to abandon religion altogether. Yet for the most part (and certainly in the cases of Beecher, Davis, Hall, Starbuck, and others featured in White’s narrative), psychology has provided a vocabulary that leads to religious innovation, fostering the invention of new religious possibilities. White insightfully points out that the rise of psychology in American thought has rarely evidenced the kind of irreversible trend to secularization that some historians have claimed. As he copiously documents, psychological theories have persistently abetted religiousness in quite unexpected ways. Psychology is rich ground for mining metaphors of humanity’s intimate connection with a divine order of things. For this reason it has a natural affinity for the liberal religious tradition that has historically championed certain identifiable theological themes: confidence in human nature; a belief in God’s immanence in nature and human nature; an ecumenical conviction that ultimate truth can be found in different religious traditions; and an interest in harmonizing science and religion. Because psychology can both allude to mysterious inner processes and simultaneously suggest technical measures for bringing such processes under willful control, it provides a progressive vocabulary for stating the deepest truths about the spiritual universe. Virtually all religious liberals who seize on psychology for spiritual reassurance do so in hope of discovering criteria that distinguish between good and bad forms of religion. William James put this agenda as succinctly as any when he confessed his belief “that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function” (146). Good religion invariably meant modes of belief and feeling that readily accommodate the categories of modern culture. Bad religion, in contrast, resists such negotiated compromise. The psychologists of religion demonstrated that humanity’s greatest potentials flow from distinctively religious mental functions while yet sundering these life-enhancing capacities from any doctrinal base. In this way psychology provides a yardstick for separating healthy from unhealthy types of religion while showing how religion functions to adjust people to new life-cycle stages. At times White’s narrative loses its central thread. It is not always clear, for example, whether he is arguing that religiously charged ontological assumptions shaped the development of psychological theory or that psychology imparted new ontological moorings for liberal Protestantism. This is in part due to the narrative’s inconsistent attention to the formative

696

CHURCH HISTORY

role played by America’s metaphysical tradition in the evocation of both the liberal wing of the nation’s formal religious institutions and the religious wing of the nation’s psychological theories. Unsettled Minds is, to be sure, a well-researched and expansive treatment of an enduring theme in American religious life. White succeeds in illuminating the process whereby Americans repeatedly turn to psychology to mediate between otherwise competing cultural allegiances and, in the process, demonstrate remarkable religious creativity. Robert C. Fuller Bradley University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990254

Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the United States, 1914 – 1968. By Edward J. Robinson. Religion and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008. xii þ 243 pp. $39.95 cloth. Two salient characteristics have shaped scholarship about the institutional infrastructure of African American Christianity. Emphasis has been placed on the seven large historically black religious bodies of Baptists, Methodists, and pentecostals, and the smaller but influential enclaves of African Americans in largely white Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopal, and Methodist Episcopal denominations. Blacks in these church organizations, despite their doctrinal diversity and worship styles, embraced a public theology aimed at challenging and destroying racist institutions and practices that oppressed them. Edward J. Robinson in his study, however, demonstrates that the religious landscape among African Americans included a broad range of clergy and churches whose perspectives and practices showed a remarkable divergence from the standard narrative that scholars of black religion have advanced. Like an older and recently revised literature about new urban religions, Robinson’s research on the black Churches of Christ, though grounded in the rural American South, presents African American Christianity as a multifaceted phenomenon. His scholarship adds to the complexity of black religious expression and belief and discourages scholars from making easy generalizations about these experiences. He focuses on the Southern-based Churches of Christ, a majority-white religious body that emerged out of the Stone-Campbell movement. Their Restorationist doctrine required them to emulate the beliefs and practices of the early New Testament church. In 1906, the C of C parted with the

696

CHURCH HISTORY

role played by America’s metaphysical tradition in the evocation of both the liberal wing of the nation’s formal religious institutions and the religious wing of the nation’s psychological theories. Unsettled Minds is, to be sure, a well-researched and expansive treatment of an enduring theme in American religious life. White succeeds in illuminating the process whereby Americans repeatedly turn to psychology to mediate between otherwise competing cultural allegiances and, in the process, demonstrate remarkable religious creativity. Robert C. Fuller Bradley University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990254

Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the United States, 1914 – 1968. By Edward J. Robinson. Religion and American Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2008. xii þ 243 pp. $39.95 cloth. Two salient characteristics have shaped scholarship about the institutional infrastructure of African American Christianity. Emphasis has been placed on the seven large historically black religious bodies of Baptists, Methodists, and pentecostals, and the smaller but influential enclaves of African Americans in largely white Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopal, and Methodist Episcopal denominations. Blacks in these church organizations, despite their doctrinal diversity and worship styles, embraced a public theology aimed at challenging and destroying racist institutions and practices that oppressed them. Edward J. Robinson in his study, however, demonstrates that the religious landscape among African Americans included a broad range of clergy and churches whose perspectives and practices showed a remarkable divergence from the standard narrative that scholars of black religion have advanced. Like an older and recently revised literature about new urban religions, Robinson’s research on the black Churches of Christ, though grounded in the rural American South, presents African American Christianity as a multifaceted phenomenon. His scholarship adds to the complexity of black religious expression and belief and discourages scholars from making easy generalizations about these experiences. He focuses on the Southern-based Churches of Christ, a majority-white religious body that emerged out of the Stone-Campbell movement. Their Restorationist doctrine required them to emulate the beliefs and practices of the early New Testament church. In 1906, the C of C parted with the

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

697

Disciples of Christ because the latter, whom they described as “digressives,” used musical instruments in worship and organized missionary societies to facilitate evangelism. Because the C of C believed that these and other practices lacked scriptural support, they adopted an ecclesiology based on biblicism and radical exclusivism. Hence, all churches, grounded in manmade traditions, were inauthentic, and only the C of C was truly Christian. African Americans joined the Stone-Campbell movement both before and after the Civil War and comprised a small but significant segment of the Disciples of Christ. Some, like Marshall Keeble, transferred to the C of C and embraced its beliefs. Despite the influence of such black clergy as his father-in-law, Samuel Womack, white editors and writers played a larger role in shaping Keeble’s understanding and regurgitation of C of C doctrine. Through his powerful preaching, he attracted black converts and spearheaded black congregations primarily in the American South and in a few urban areas in the North and West. Additionally, Keeble was unimpressed with the emancipationist ethos and institutional independence that characterized black churches. He found little in the black religious heritage important enough to influence or inform his unyielding biblicist and radical exclusivist perspectives. He also criticized black pentecostalism for its emphasis on the Holy Spirit and its failure to embrace the primacy of water baptism after conversion. Keeble consciously set black C of C adherents in opposition to the salient attributes of black mainline and pentecostal churches. Keeble distinguished himself and his colleagues from other black religionists in two other significant areas. First, the C of C, lacking a formal ecclesiastical structure, relied on its leading journals and college lectureships to define and enforce its orthodoxy. Keeble espoused the views of these Southern white biblicists, most of whom defended racial segregation in both sacred and secular settings. Keeble uncritically imparted their religious and scriptural interpretations to black and white listeners, seldom refining what he learned to address the segregated situation in which he ministered. Second, his successful evangelism drew from the financial contributions of southern whites who willingly financed Keeble’s revivals and aided his establishment of separate and dependent black congregations. Though some black preachers whom he trained believed that no biblical basis existed for segregation, Keeble offered only tepid encouragement to these voices of dissent and rarely raised any protest himself. The irony of his acceptance of C of C doctrine lay in Keeble’s private admiration of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his liberationist preaching and activism, and his public declaration that this Baptist believer was not authentically Christian. Robinson exhaustively enumerates nearly every revival that Keeble and his black colleagues conducted. Despite the energy they expended, many of the congregations they started remained small, and several eventually closed.

698

CHURCH HISTORY

The lack of demographic analysis leaves unexplored the consequences of Keeble’s church-planting strategy. His dependence on random assistance from white C of C supporters prevented him from identifying target populations and areas with greater growth potential than the disparate places where he preached. Robinson also examines Keeble within the restricted confines of and interactions with C of C blacks and whites. Though derisive of other churches, he and other blacks in the Churches of Christ lived in the same segregated communities as the persons whose congregations they derided. How did they function as community residents where they confronted the same privations and humiliations as fellow African Americans? What was their place in an all-black social order where they battled and resisted the white hegemony and violence heaped on this proscribed population? Did Keeble consciously offer a salve or an emotional escape from this social misery? Whatever the answer to these questions, Robinson’s study of black Churches of Christ broadens the discourse about the black religious experience and discourages any easy generalizations about the complicated history of African American Christianity. Dennis C. Dickerson Vanderbilt University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990266

Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis. By Suzanne Vromen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiii þ 178 pp. $24.95 cloth. This is the first in-depth study of the rescue of Jewish children in Belgium during the Holocaust. Although the title focuses on nuns, Suzanne Vromen—a sociologist—interviewed 28 survivors, eight nuns, two resisters, and one priest, providing a comprehensive, readable, and balanced analysis of the fears, motivations, and dangers faced by all involved. The opening chapter focuses on the children, particularly their struggles with being left by their families; arriving at the convents; adapting to strict, Catholic regimens; coping with pressures—sometimes put upon them, sometimes self-induced— to convert; and re-adapting to life after the war. Chapter 2 is devoted to the challenges the nuns faced from hiding Jewish children, including the issue of responsibility for accepting the children, the need to instruct them quickly to avoid denunciation, the effort required to fend off Nazis and collaborators, and the tension between their humanitarian impulse to save the children and their Christian impulse to convert Jews. Vromen shows the nuns to be intelligent, devout individuals who mostly accepted the challenges of hiding

698

CHURCH HISTORY

The lack of demographic analysis leaves unexplored the consequences of Keeble’s church-planting strategy. His dependence on random assistance from white C of C supporters prevented him from identifying target populations and areas with greater growth potential than the disparate places where he preached. Robinson also examines Keeble within the restricted confines of and interactions with C of C blacks and whites. Though derisive of other churches, he and other blacks in the Churches of Christ lived in the same segregated communities as the persons whose congregations they derided. How did they function as community residents where they confronted the same privations and humiliations as fellow African Americans? What was their place in an all-black social order where they battled and resisted the white hegemony and violence heaped on this proscribed population? Did Keeble consciously offer a salve or an emotional escape from this social misery? Whatever the answer to these questions, Robinson’s study of black Churches of Christ broadens the discourse about the black religious experience and discourages any easy generalizations about the complicated history of African American Christianity. Dennis C. Dickerson Vanderbilt University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990266

Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and Their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis. By Suzanne Vromen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiii þ 178 pp. $24.95 cloth. This is the first in-depth study of the rescue of Jewish children in Belgium during the Holocaust. Although the title focuses on nuns, Suzanne Vromen—a sociologist—interviewed 28 survivors, eight nuns, two resisters, and one priest, providing a comprehensive, readable, and balanced analysis of the fears, motivations, and dangers faced by all involved. The opening chapter focuses on the children, particularly their struggles with being left by their families; arriving at the convents; adapting to strict, Catholic regimens; coping with pressures—sometimes put upon them, sometimes self-induced— to convert; and re-adapting to life after the war. Chapter 2 is devoted to the challenges the nuns faced from hiding Jewish children, including the issue of responsibility for accepting the children, the need to instruct them quickly to avoid denunciation, the effort required to fend off Nazis and collaborators, and the tension between their humanitarian impulse to save the children and their Christian impulse to convert Jews. Vromen shows the nuns to be intelligent, devout individuals who mostly accepted the challenges of hiding

699

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

Jewish children without the support or knowledge of their superiors in the Belgian Catholic Church. Chapter 3 examines those people in the resistance—Jews and non-Jews—who risked their lives acting as couriers and conduits between scared, forlorn families and the convents in order to save Jewish children. The final chapter is devoted to memory and commemoration, especially how these heroic acts were initially ignored but later recognized and memorialized by Jewish and Catholic organizations alike. Robert M. Ehrenreich United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990278

The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism. By Garth M. Rosell. Grand Rapids, Mich.: BakerAcademic, 2008. 270 pp. $19.99 paper. It is rare in academic circles to read about a scholar’s love for his subjects, yet such adoration flows freely through the pages of Garth Rosell’s The Surprising Work of God. This profound admiration stems naturally from Rosell’s own past. The son of mid-twentieth-century preacher Merv Rosell, one of the many evangelists his book lauds, Rosell readily admits his place in the history he tells: I loved being around them. I loved hearing them preach. I loved having my father tell me stories about them. But most of all, I remember the sense of absolute wonder and awe that would suddenly come over my father when his comments would turn . . . to a discussion of the surprising work of God in their midst. (15) What follows this refreshingly honest admission is an equally stimulating account of the “remarkable individuals” who revitalized American evangelicalism between the 1930s and 1950s. Rosell’s text is meant to inspire as much as instruct, and, as evidenced in the church leaders’ glowing endorsements printed on its opening page, it clearly hits this mark. Each chapter contains teaching moments for evangelicals today, and in the book’s last pages Rosell summarizes what any reader will sense he was getting at all along: that study of the evangelical movement in the midtwentieth century “can be of help to the contemporary church” for the way it proved faithful to “historic orthodoxy” and was “activist in style, optimistic in mood, reformist in strategy, Bible-centered in authority, Christ-centered in ministry, mission-centered in outreach, evangelistic in practice, and ecumenical in spirit” (221). As pedagogy, The Surprising Work of God thus proceeds with a sincerity of purpose drawn from its author’s personal and pastoral side. To read Rosell’s rich, descriptive prose detailing Harold Ockenga’s intellectual life, the

699

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

Jewish children without the support or knowledge of their superiors in the Belgian Catholic Church. Chapter 3 examines those people in the resistance—Jews and non-Jews—who risked their lives acting as couriers and conduits between scared, forlorn families and the convents in order to save Jewish children. The final chapter is devoted to memory and commemoration, especially how these heroic acts were initially ignored but later recognized and memorialized by Jewish and Catholic organizations alike. Robert M. Ehrenreich United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990278

The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism. By Garth M. Rosell. Grand Rapids, Mich.: BakerAcademic, 2008. 270 pp. $19.99 paper. It is rare in academic circles to read about a scholar’s love for his subjects, yet such adoration flows freely through the pages of Garth Rosell’s The Surprising Work of God. This profound admiration stems naturally from Rosell’s own past. The son of mid-twentieth-century preacher Merv Rosell, one of the many evangelists his book lauds, Rosell readily admits his place in the history he tells: I loved being around them. I loved hearing them preach. I loved having my father tell me stories about them. But most of all, I remember the sense of absolute wonder and awe that would suddenly come over my father when his comments would turn . . . to a discussion of the surprising work of God in their midst. (15) What follows this refreshingly honest admission is an equally stimulating account of the “remarkable individuals” who revitalized American evangelicalism between the 1930s and 1950s. Rosell’s text is meant to inspire as much as instruct, and, as evidenced in the church leaders’ glowing endorsements printed on its opening page, it clearly hits this mark. Each chapter contains teaching moments for evangelicals today, and in the book’s last pages Rosell summarizes what any reader will sense he was getting at all along: that study of the evangelical movement in the midtwentieth century “can be of help to the contemporary church” for the way it proved faithful to “historic orthodoxy” and was “activist in style, optimistic in mood, reformist in strategy, Bible-centered in authority, Christ-centered in ministry, mission-centered in outreach, evangelistic in practice, and ecumenical in spirit” (221). As pedagogy, The Surprising Work of God thus proceeds with a sincerity of purpose drawn from its author’s personal and pastoral side. To read Rosell’s rich, descriptive prose detailing Harold Ockenga’s intellectual life, the

700

CHURCH HISTORY

wave of youth rallies that swept the country after World War II, and the bitter controversies that accompanied Billy Graham’s revivals in the late 1950s, is to gain direct access to the thoughts, emotions, expectations, and frustrations that evangelical leaders encountered in this formative period. This is where the insider’s perspective translates into powerful storytelling. As history designed to instruct, The Surprising Work of God proceeds with scholarly diligence and care. Soon after Harold Ockenga’s death in 1985, Audrey Ockenga donated her husband’s papers to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary with a request that Rosell tell her spouse’s story in light of “the mid-twentieth century rebirth of evangelicalism” (11). In his writing it becomes evident that Rosell, professor of church history at Gordon-Conwell, not only honors that commitment, but also takes full advantage of it by carrying out a thorough read of Ockenga’s papers. Rosell’s impressive command of American religious history further strengthens his work and allows him to draw important connections between Ockenga’s life and key developments in modern American Protestantism. In his first five chapters—the strongest of the book—Rosell provides a concise history of the evangelical tradition from John Winthrop and its Puritan roots to Jonathan Edwards and its revivalist heritage, then turns to Ockenga as testament of this tradition’s staying power in American society. After tracking Ockenga’s personal life, from its beginnings in a Chicago suburb, through its pivotal turn at Princeton Seminary in the late 1920s, to its vocational triumphs in the pulpit at Park Street Church in Boston, he devotes several pages to the religious awakening this cleric helped spark in the 1940s. Here The Surprising Work of God shines, and offers fresh insight into the internal processes by which Ockenga shaped the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and energized the broader alliance of pastors, lay leaders, and initiatives it came to represent. In the years immediately following the NAE’s founding in 1943, he explains, a new generation of evangelists (a “band of brothers”) that included Merv Rosell, Jack Shuler, Jack Wyrtzen, Percy Crawford, Torrey Johnson, Billy Graham, and many others, embraced Ockenga’s vision for postwar evangelicalism and began selling it to the public through mass evangelism. For a decade extending into the 1950s, these crusaders crisscrossed the continent, holding revivals in Los Angeles, Boston, and many points in between, and extended their reach beyond the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans into uncharted, un-evangelized territory. In the last four chapters of his work, Rosell takes this story to what he deems its unfortunate conclusion—evangelicalism’s fragmentation over Graham’s New York Crusade in 1957—then pauses for further assessment of Ockenga’s worldview. Here he provides brief and surface coverage of the evangelical leader’s notions of race, poverty, Catholicism, ecumenism, and social activism, before reaching the point he is most interested in: Ockenga’s rigorous intellectualism and its impact on evangelical thought.

701

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

Clearly dictated by Rosell’s own convictions, The Surprising Work of God passionately conveys the commitments that drove Ockenga’s “new evangelicalism,” even if it does so through a rather narrow lens. There is much to learn from his account but also a lot that is tantalizing left unsaid. Rosell’s focus on lesser-known revivalists and a relatively understudied decade in evangelicalism’s history—the 1940s—fills a void in religious historiography, yet barely touches on some of the broader cultural contexts in which this mid-century revival took place. As Rosell tells it, the formation of the NAE, for instance, seemed to transpire in a vacuum with inter- and intra-denominational politics the only real concern. True, Ockenga’s vision for the NAE was principally theological, but to read the words he spoke at this organization’s inaugural gatherings—sermons Rosell reconstructs—is to glimpse a much larger agenda undertaken by a broader constituency of Americans who saw the tumult of war as an opportunity to redefine their nation’s identity and purpose, and sense of mission to the world. When calling on his allies to fight the “terrible octopus of liberalism” and remake evangelicalism into a “vanguard” able to counter communism in the race for global dominance, Ockenga seemed willing to invest his faith community in a much larger project of cultural and political reconstruction (97, 103). Yet Rosell does not pursue this line of analysis and prefers instead to accept Ockenga’s words (and actions) at face value as a product only of priestly thinking. Because of Rosell’s insular approach, Ockenga’s life itself sometimes seems one-dimensional, devoid of internal tensions, contradictions, and complexity. What Rosell compellingly demonstrates, though, is that Ockenga’s life—and by extension mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism’s—was never devoid of drama or large-scale significance. Meant to edify the saints, Rosell’s book should, in this respect, also excite scholars about fresh possibilities for the study of evangelicalism in the modern era. Darren Dochuk Purdue University

doi:10.1017/S000964070999028X

A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America. By John A. D’Elia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxviii þ 274 pp. $45.00 cloth. The situation is familiar. A man—a faithful man—spends much of his life on a quest to explain himself and to show the world the meaty substance to his

701

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

Clearly dictated by Rosell’s own convictions, The Surprising Work of God passionately conveys the commitments that drove Ockenga’s “new evangelicalism,” even if it does so through a rather narrow lens. There is much to learn from his account but also a lot that is tantalizing left unsaid. Rosell’s focus on lesser-known revivalists and a relatively understudied decade in evangelicalism’s history—the 1940s—fills a void in religious historiography, yet barely touches on some of the broader cultural contexts in which this mid-century revival took place. As Rosell tells it, the formation of the NAE, for instance, seemed to transpire in a vacuum with inter- and intra-denominational politics the only real concern. True, Ockenga’s vision for the NAE was principally theological, but to read the words he spoke at this organization’s inaugural gatherings—sermons Rosell reconstructs—is to glimpse a much larger agenda undertaken by a broader constituency of Americans who saw the tumult of war as an opportunity to redefine their nation’s identity and purpose, and sense of mission to the world. When calling on his allies to fight the “terrible octopus of liberalism” and remake evangelicalism into a “vanguard” able to counter communism in the race for global dominance, Ockenga seemed willing to invest his faith community in a much larger project of cultural and political reconstruction (97, 103). Yet Rosell does not pursue this line of analysis and prefers instead to accept Ockenga’s words (and actions) at face value as a product only of priestly thinking. Because of Rosell’s insular approach, Ockenga’s life itself sometimes seems one-dimensional, devoid of internal tensions, contradictions, and complexity. What Rosell compellingly demonstrates, though, is that Ockenga’s life—and by extension mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism’s—was never devoid of drama or large-scale significance. Meant to edify the saints, Rosell’s book should, in this respect, also excite scholars about fresh possibilities for the study of evangelicalism in the modern era. Darren Dochuk Purdue University

doi:10.1017/S000964070999028X

A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America. By John A. D’Elia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xxviii þ 274 pp. $45.00 cloth. The situation is familiar. A man—a faithful man—spends much of his life on a quest to explain himself and to show the world the meaty substance to his

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intellectual struggles. He writes and writes and writes, grappling along the way with condescending peers, departmental brouhaha, denominational provincialism, financial trials, irritating children, and an unloving wife. Through it all, he persists, dreaming of the day when his book, his magnum opus, makes it clear: he has the answer. And once the world sees that he has the answer, his life—his motley, muddy little life—will be redeemed. And maybe too his subject will be saved from the dustbin, placed now by his genius at the center of every conference panel, journal forum, and dissertation prospectus. Because the man and his fantasy are familiar, you can guess how it ends. Watching from a distance, you wish you could stop the carnage before it begins, grabbing the hand of the faithful man and directing him inward (to his church, his employer, or his home) rather than relentlessly, obsessively outward to the phantom of academic celebrity. Because the book will never do the thing he wants, because books (like children, like parishioners, like students) are uncontrollable beyond your clenching stare. They will be reviewed and contorted in ways you could not imagine, replying to your rectitude with assessments that “the author’s approach and methodology, his understanding of contemporary critical scholarship, and his attitude to its findings all seem to raise rather serious questions” (136). The balloon pops in an empty room; what you believe you made has now been unmade in a single sentence. “Stricken right down to the core,” you “abandon the dream of engaging” the world beyond your particular pews, descending instead into spiritual grief, into the solace of the classroom, and maybe into alcoholism (140, 147). The book is George Eldon Ladd’s Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (1964), and the reviewer was Norman Perrin, then a professor at the University of Chicago. Jesus and the Kingdom took Ladd, a thirty-year member of the Fuller Seminary faculty, ten years to complete as he sought to mold an evangelical exemplar for secular eyes. Initially, it seemed Ladd had done the impossible, publishing a critical study on a purely biblical topic with a house (Harper and Row) outside the evangelical mainstream. “Evangelicals have done relatively little in the area of solid scholarship,” Ladd wrote his editor at Harper, and “the old line scholars have tended to look down upon Evangelicals for their uncritical Biblicism” (126). Through this book, he wanted to demonstrate the growing erudition among evangelical scholars, he wanted to describe the Kingdom of God as the dynamic rule of Christ in history, and he wanted to model a methodology that he believed reconciled God’s presence in the human activities of history. In short, he wanted in one volume to convince scholars that his methodological objectivity was not compromised by (what he called) his “historic premillennism”; rather, it was enhanced by it, providing an even

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703

more dynamic view of the past. When Perrin attacked Ladd’s “biblical realism” by suggesting that Ladd possessed an “uncritical view of the Gospels as historical sources,” he effectively negated the entire venture (136). Canadian-born and New England – educated, Ladd emerged from an impoverished childhood ceaselessly hustling for uplift. “While it is difficult to quantify with precision the impact [of] Ladd’s difficult upbringing,” D’Elia summarizes with journalistic breeze, “the related themes of inferiority, obsession with status, and his desperate need to be heard remained apparent until his death” (4). D’Elia records the multiple private and public ways Ladd tried to resuscitate the evangelical sophistication he believed directed the early twentieth-century publication of The Fundamentals and the Scofield Reference Bible. In D’Elia’s rendering, Ladd becomes an indifferent family man, a beloved teacher, and a relentless operator, seeking to connect the work of seminarians and believers to scholarship produced in non-sectarian universities. To that end, he joined academic organizations, wrote letter after letter to scholars far afield from Pasadena, and published fourteen books. Although biblical critics from the secular ranks never incorporated Ladd’s research, when the members of an evangelical academic society were asked in 1984 (two years after Ladd’s death) to identify the theologian who had influenced them the most, George Ladd shared top billing with John Calvin. A Place at the Table plots itself in neat chronological segments, with the first chapter addressing Ladd’s childhood and education, the second his first five years at Fuller, the third his next five years, and so on. With an amazing trove of personal letters and memoranda at his disposal, D’Elia relates with journalistic panache Ladd’s debates with John Walvoord, his support of the Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible, and his explication of Rudolf Bultmann’s theology for conservative readers. Through this ramble in academe, D’Elia supplies a vivid sidebar to the sweeping histories of modern Christian intellectuals authored by Gary Dorrien, Mark Noll, David Russell, and, most significantly to this study, George Marsden’s institutional history of Fuller Seminary, Reforming Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987). Unlike those craftsmen, D’Elia’s style is occasionally halting, and he leaves interpretive reflection to subsequent scholars. But as a parable of modern scholarly practice and a report from the front lines of seminarian intellectualism, the story of Ladd is indispensible. Insofar as D’Elia’s goal is to explore “why Ladd wrote rather than simply an examination of what he wrote,” A Place at the Table will be most interesting to scholars of American evangelicalism rather than those academic theologians to whom Ladd directed such keening energy (xviii). That even a biography of Ladd will receive more attention from those interested in his identity politics than those benefiting from his contributions to biblical

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criticism is an irony in which neither he, nor his current inheritors, would find much pleasure. Kathryn Lofton Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990291

Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives. Edited by Jane Garnett, Matthew Grimley, Alana Harris, William Whyte, and Sarah Williams. London: SCM, 2007. xii þ 308. $34.99 paper. This collection is likely to be an essential marker in the historiography of modern British religious history. It challenges the secularization paradigm put forth in works such as Callum Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain (New York: Routledge, 2002) and Steve Bruce’s God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002). Instead of exploring the accepted narrative of the decline of Christianity in the modern period and the acceleration of this process in the 1960s and 1970s, the essays in this volume seek to study its transformation. The authors have set out a new research agenda that focuses on the key concepts of authenticity, generation, and virtue. Their conclusions provide a rich and nuanced explanation of the place of Christianity in British national life and should lead other scholars to reconsider a simple narrative of secularization in the modern period. This work has its origins in a two-day workshop at St. John’s College, Oxford, in 2005. The volume is divided into three parts—one for each of the new categories of analysis. Within each category there is a series of case studies. Two aspects of authenticity are considered: experience and performance. Liturgy, music, and community are integral to the Christian’s experience, and hence each of these is considered in separate essays. Alana Harris considers the changes to the liturgy in both the Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer. She demonstrates that both the proponents of reform and those who argued for the status quo grounded their arguments in the assertion that their view provided a more authentic representation of the practices of the early church. Ian Jones and Peter Webster examine church music and show a similar contested view of authenticity. They also chart a subtle though important shift away from located “authenticity” within the music itself to an emphasis on the attitude of the worshiper. Matthew Guest explores shifting understandings of Christian community and authentic fellowship. He highlights the possibilities and challenges posed by the Vurch

704

CHURCH HISTORY

criticism is an irony in which neither he, nor his current inheritors, would find much pleasure. Kathryn Lofton Yale University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990291

Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives. Edited by Jane Garnett, Matthew Grimley, Alana Harris, William Whyte, and Sarah Williams. London: SCM, 2007. xii þ 308. $34.99 paper. This collection is likely to be an essential marker in the historiography of modern British religious history. It challenges the secularization paradigm put forth in works such as Callum Brown’s The Death of Christian Britain (New York: Routledge, 2002) and Steve Bruce’s God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002). Instead of exploring the accepted narrative of the decline of Christianity in the modern period and the acceleration of this process in the 1960s and 1970s, the essays in this volume seek to study its transformation. The authors have set out a new research agenda that focuses on the key concepts of authenticity, generation, and virtue. Their conclusions provide a rich and nuanced explanation of the place of Christianity in British national life and should lead other scholars to reconsider a simple narrative of secularization in the modern period. This work has its origins in a two-day workshop at St. John’s College, Oxford, in 2005. The volume is divided into three parts—one for each of the new categories of analysis. Within each category there is a series of case studies. Two aspects of authenticity are considered: experience and performance. Liturgy, music, and community are integral to the Christian’s experience, and hence each of these is considered in separate essays. Alana Harris considers the changes to the liturgy in both the Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer. She demonstrates that both the proponents of reform and those who argued for the status quo grounded their arguments in the assertion that their view provided a more authentic representation of the practices of the early church. Ian Jones and Peter Webster examine church music and show a similar contested view of authenticity. They also chart a subtle though important shift away from located “authenticity” within the music itself to an emphasis on the attitude of the worshiper. Matthew Guest explores shifting understandings of Christian community and authentic fellowship. He highlights the possibilities and challenges posed by the Vurch

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

705

and other online communities. These three essays together illuminate the need to consider fluid and varied understandings of both individual and group experiences. Performance is another important category for analyzing authenticity. William Whyte looks at the faithful expression of one’s identity in his consideration of homosexuality and the priesthood. Distinctions between orientation and action and between role-playing and one’s true self have become crucial in the determination of authentic performance. Mark Chapman’s essay provides a preliminary look at whether authentic Christian expression could be found in the traditions and language of the Established Church and the move toward new forms of ministry, especially in the unchurched areas of the inner city. Grace Davie provides a look at the paradoxical decision of Prince Charles to postpone his marriage to Camilla Parker-Bowles so that he might join the archbishop of Canterbury and the prime minister as part of the official delegation representing Britain at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. No heir to the British throne, archbishop of Canterbury, or prime minister had ever attended such an event before, let alone prioritized it over a royal wedding. This essay is tantalizing in setting out a question but somewhat disappointing in not providing at least some preliminary answers to the issues it raises. A second key category for analysis in this volume is generation. The essayists argue that intergenerational transmission and generational transformation involve “more than just tracing how cohorts hand on an unchanging and stable tradition” (124). The more dynamic definition that they assert suggests a much slower and more piecemeal transformation of women’s roles and moral attitudes. Hugh McLeod, Charles Taylor, Callum Brown, and others have placed particular emphasis on the 1960s generation as pivotal to the declining influence of Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century. William Whyte, Holger Hehring, and Jane Garnett challenge this supposition in interesting ways in their essays on women’s liberation, the campaign for nuclear disarmament, and the Internet. A study of Christian language is central to any consideration of modern belief and practice. Essays on art (George Pattison), children’s literature (Bernice Martin), and architecture (William Whyte) provide a perspective on how Christian language might be variously interpreted and redefined. In their work, we see that Christian language remains very strong even within the secularizing narrative. This is clearly demonstrated in the enormous popularity of works like Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996], The Subtle Knife [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997], and The Amber Spyglass [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000]) and Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003). Bernice Martin argues that “something more and

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intriguing is happening in popular culture than can be caught in terms like ‘secular’ or ‘post-Christian’” (187). The final key concept for the new research agenda set out by the essayists in the volume is that of virtue. Harriet Harris points to a keen interest in virtue theory at present but a decided lack of attention to any virtues themselves. There is much more that might be developed in this part of the research agenda. Education and economics are briefly touched upon in somewhat inconclusive essays. The final set of case studies considers the common good. Here it is argued that the public role of Christianity in Britain is an under-explored topic. Essays by Raymond Plant on liberalism, religion, and the public sphere, Matthew Grimley on public intellectuals, and Robert Tobin on the evolution of national and religious identity in Ireland all provide wonderful forays into this question. It is hoped that much more work will be done in this area. Conceptualizing the common good has certainly been contested ground, yet it may be argued that this is an area of Christian discourse that has wide acceptance far beyond a professedly Christian community. What are the implications of this for a secularization paradigm? The contributors to this volume were clearly limited in terms of the length of their pieces, but many of the ideas and arguments introduced here hold much promise for further work. This is a collection that should be seriously considered by all scholars of modern church history. Eileen Groth Lyon State University of New York at Fredonia

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990308

Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. By Edward Humes. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. xx þ 380 pp. $15.95 paper. It is an enduring problem for lawyers and constitutional scholars that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, seldom see cases that have been intelligently designed to test abstract conceptions of the law. Instead, the courts must tie their rulings to the specific circumstances of a case— plaintiffs who happen to feel wronged, defendants who find themselves in the line of litigious fire, attorneys who bring their own idiosyncrasies and resources to the proceedings. Even cases about such central constitutional issues as the separation of church and state become mixed up in chance. Edward Humes’s Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the

706

CHURCH HISTORY

intriguing is happening in popular culture than can be caught in terms like ‘secular’ or ‘post-Christian’” (187). The final key concept for the new research agenda set out by the essayists in the volume is that of virtue. Harriet Harris points to a keen interest in virtue theory at present but a decided lack of attention to any virtues themselves. There is much more that might be developed in this part of the research agenda. Education and economics are briefly touched upon in somewhat inconclusive essays. The final set of case studies considers the common good. Here it is argued that the public role of Christianity in Britain is an under-explored topic. Essays by Raymond Plant on liberalism, religion, and the public sphere, Matthew Grimley on public intellectuals, and Robert Tobin on the evolution of national and religious identity in Ireland all provide wonderful forays into this question. It is hoped that much more work will be done in this area. Conceptualizing the common good has certainly been contested ground, yet it may be argued that this is an area of Christian discourse that has wide acceptance far beyond a professedly Christian community. What are the implications of this for a secularization paradigm? The contributors to this volume were clearly limited in terms of the length of their pieces, but many of the ideas and arguments introduced here hold much promise for further work. This is a collection that should be seriously considered by all scholars of modern church history. Eileen Groth Lyon State University of New York at Fredonia

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990308

Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul. By Edward Humes. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007. xx þ 380 pp. $15.95 paper. It is an enduring problem for lawyers and constitutional scholars that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, seldom see cases that have been intelligently designed to test abstract conceptions of the law. Instead, the courts must tie their rulings to the specific circumstances of a case— plaintiffs who happen to feel wronged, defendants who find themselves in the line of litigious fire, attorneys who bring their own idiosyncrasies and resources to the proceedings. Even cases about such central constitutional issues as the separation of church and state become mixed up in chance. Edward Humes’s Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

707

Battle for America’s Soul might not live up to the ambitions of its subtitle, but it does an excellent job of tracing the ways in which a major trial over the legality of teaching creationism in the public schools hinged in part on the personalities and predilections of its leading participants. A Pulitzer Prize – winning journalist, Humes in 2005 traveled to the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, to observe a federal district court trial over the Dover Township school board’s attempt to introduce intelligent design into high school biology. ID supporters argue that many features of life on earth are too complex to have evolved in the way that scientists believe. For example, they assert that the eye shows clear evidence of design. It is functional only when all its parts are in place, so the completed eye could not have evolved by discrete stages. Although ID supporters are pretty certain that the unnamed “designer” of such complexity is the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, their strategic silence on the matter allows them to portray ID as a secular alternative to Darwinian evolution. In the years leading up to the Dover case, they had reason to be cautious. Prior Supreme Court rulings had already banned public schools from teaching creationism as a violation of the Establishment Clause, and the Court had ruled as well that creationism’s lineal descendant, scientific creationism, was still a religion, despite the lip service it paid to science. However, in the early 1990s a small group of conservative Christians, led by the Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson and funded by a conservative think tank, the Discovery Institute, developed ID as a strategy to attack evolution while skirting First Amendment objections to creationism. They felt a sense of urgency. Like other creationists, ID activists saw evolution as central to the modern materialist worldview, and thus responsible for a host of social ills, ranging from abortion and crime to the secularization of the public sphere. As part of their long-term plan for the “regeneration” of this endangered American society, Johnson and his allies aimed directly at the “trunk” of the problem—Darwinian evolution. Although they hoped to develop ID someday as a robust alternative approach to evolutionary science, they decided early on that their chances for success were better in the politicized world of public education than in the laboratory and peerreviewed scientific journals. Their strategy consisted of pushing schools to “teach the controversy” between evolution and ID, raising doubts about evolution with the ultimate goal of replacing Darwin with ID. In 2005, the Dover School Board presented them with an opportunity to test that approach when a majority of the board voted to make the ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, part of the biology curriculum, even though the biology teachers in Dover, much like their counterparts across the nation, spent precious little time on evolution in the first place. The driving forces on the board had discussed their move with the Discovery Institute and had also

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received assurances that the Thomas More Law Center—an organization devoted to defending conservative religious causes—would represent them in the lawsuit that was sure to follow. As expected, the move provoked a court case, but Humes explains that the controversy also almost tore the community apart as well, as neighbor turned against neighbor in the war for the public schools. As became clear in the testimony for Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District before the Federal Circuit Court, the board majority did not follow the script the Discovery Institute had written. Where Discovery presented ID purely as a secular alternative, its supporters on the board were initially very public about their religious motivations and unapologetic about branding their opponents “atheists.” Only before the court did they claim that religion had never played a part in their decision. The judge was later to excoriate them for lying, and lying quite poorly, about their religious intent. Intelligent design did have its day in court, though. Several of ID’s leading lights took the witness stand, but under fierce questioning from the plaintiffs’ attorneys (coordinated by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State) these worthies fared poorly, at one point admitting that ID had produced almost nothing by way of scientific research, at another admitting that ID’s elastic definition of “science” could just as well open the schoolhouse door to astrology and other pseudosciences. In this most gripping part of the book, Humes paints a vivid picture of the ways in which the plaintiffs’ attorneys tore the witnesses apart. Finally, the plaintiffs produced a “smoking gun” proving that Of Pandas and People was, quite literally, just creationism in a new package. A researcher discovered that the authors of Pandas had taken the manuscript of an avowedly creationist textbook and simply replaced all references to “creation science” with the phrase “Intelligent Design.” In the end, the judge in the case had little trouble finding for the plaintiffs, but in his long opinion he also went to great lengths to discuss the merits of the testimony that experts on both sides of the case had laid out before him. Along the way, he allowed that, whatever else it might be, ID was not science, and it did not belong in the public schools. Although Humes offers fine thumbnail sketches of the contending forces and handles the intellectual arguments well, his intent is more to narrate than to analyze. He favors the plaintiffs but is remarkably sympathetic to most of the proponents of ID. His narrative does not end happily. ID leaders and the school board majority fall into mutual recriminations; wounds in the community heal slowly, if at all; and evolution’s defenders, despite their victory, recognize that this is but one battle in a larger war. The judge in Kitzmiller, who faced conservative condemnation and even death threats in

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

the wake of his decision, perhaps knows better than anybody that no court case can lay to rest the controversy over evolution in this most pious of nations. Jeffrey P. Moran University of Kansas

doi:10.1017/S000964070999031X

Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money. By Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson, with Patricia Snell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiv þ 274 pp. $24.95 cloth. Americans, and American Christians in particular, pride themselves on being a generous people. According to the authors of Passing the Plate, that is a rather generous use of “generous.” Giving more than non-religious people is fairly easy to do, since their average giving rate nationwide is 1.1 percent. American Christians, by contrast, give an average of 2.9 percent. The faithful of other religions in America give more—3.3 percent—a figure that is pumped up a bit by the 5.8 percent giving rate of Mormons, who are not treated as Christians by the authors, despite their own claims to that identity. All of the biblical traditions teach abundant generosity, and many aspire to, if they do not mandate, the Hebrew Bible’s principle of a tithe (10 percent). Yet survey data over the past twenty years show that between a fifth and a quarter of all Americans, including Protestants and Catholics, give nothing at all to any charities, religious or secular. Sociologists frequently discuss a “free rider” problem in American congregations, but its financial scope is astonishing. Sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emerson, together with research expert Patricia Snell, use their well-practiced techniques of massaging older national survey data, creating some current data of their own, and organizing focus group interviews in several regions to develop a nuanced national portrait of American Christians’ giving. The statistics they cite about Americans’—and particularly American Christians’—relative stinginess are readily available, but the reasons behind their parsimony are not well known. Why don’t American Christians give away more money? What they discover is that the problem goes deep. It is not because American Christians do not have the means to give more, or the knowledge of greater needs, or an understanding of the Bible’s teaching about giving. American Christians have the capacity to give away many billions more than they do, and a pretty fair sense of their opportunities and obligations. They could change the world if they all tithed. So what hinders them?

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

the wake of his decision, perhaps knows better than anybody that no court case can lay to rest the controversy over evolution in this most pious of nations. Jeffrey P. Moran University of Kansas

doi:10.1017/S000964070999031X

Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money. By Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson, with Patricia Snell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xiv þ 274 pp. $24.95 cloth. Americans, and American Christians in particular, pride themselves on being a generous people. According to the authors of Passing the Plate, that is a rather generous use of “generous.” Giving more than non-religious people is fairly easy to do, since their average giving rate nationwide is 1.1 percent. American Christians, by contrast, give an average of 2.9 percent. The faithful of other religions in America give more—3.3 percent—a figure that is pumped up a bit by the 5.8 percent giving rate of Mormons, who are not treated as Christians by the authors, despite their own claims to that identity. All of the biblical traditions teach abundant generosity, and many aspire to, if they do not mandate, the Hebrew Bible’s principle of a tithe (10 percent). Yet survey data over the past twenty years show that between a fifth and a quarter of all Americans, including Protestants and Catholics, give nothing at all to any charities, religious or secular. Sociologists frequently discuss a “free rider” problem in American congregations, but its financial scope is astonishing. Sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emerson, together with research expert Patricia Snell, use their well-practiced techniques of massaging older national survey data, creating some current data of their own, and organizing focus group interviews in several regions to develop a nuanced national portrait of American Christians’ giving. The statistics they cite about Americans’—and particularly American Christians’—relative stinginess are readily available, but the reasons behind their parsimony are not well known. Why don’t American Christians give away more money? What they discover is that the problem goes deep. It is not because American Christians do not have the means to give more, or the knowledge of greater needs, or an understanding of the Bible’s teaching about giving. American Christians have the capacity to give away many billions more than they do, and a pretty fair sense of their opportunities and obligations. They could change the world if they all tithed. So what hinders them?

710

CHURCH HISTORY

There are three main obstacles, the authors say, beginning with the socioeconomic currents in which we swim: Americans act and think “poor,” despite their affluence, because they have succumbed to consumerist inducements to go deeply into debt and to spend almost all that is left on luxury items. Second, a deeper cultural current of expressive individualism makes American Christians resist any communal claims on their personal freedom regarding their giving. The expressive side of our values pushes against proactive planning about one’s giving. American Christians largely prefer to give “as I feel led,” or according to “what I feel that I can give now,” rather than to make pledges and to budget their annual giving. Many argue that spontaneous giving is more spiritual. But Smith, Emerson, and Snell show that planned, budgeted giving consistently outperforms ad hoc giving and more often enables those who plan to approach the goal of a tithe. A third, even deeper, cause, the authors argue, is that Americans worship the golden calf. Personal finance is one of those “sacred” subjects that Americans fiercely guard against discussing. The great American hush-up about these matters reminds the authors that “taboo” is an important part of Durkheim’s definition of “the sacred.” What to do about it? In a refreshing addition to the analytical section of the book, the authors give out some advice. They say there are two approaches that, if they become more widespread, will change religious communities’ giving dramatically. The first is to encourage people to give by making sure they understand the ways in which lives are changed and the world is blessed by their generosity. People love to learn that their generosity can make positive things happen. Conversely, the appeal to mundane necessity, such as meeting the congregation’s budget and paying all the bills, energizes no one and makes for grudging giving. Second, the authors argue that people should be encouraged to plan and budget their giving. Especially in a culture that exerts relentless pressure to spend every discretionary dime, “giving as you feel led” is a losing proposition. The authors find that as much as pastors say they care deeply about teaching their parishioners the ways of righteousness, they neglect to give instruction about the spiritual discipline of stewardship and the joy of seeing God’s work advance thereby. Churches need to do more teaching about money and giving. This book is a stunner. It dispels some myths about religious giving, such as who gives more, proportionately, well-off or low-income? Answer: lowincome. Does “talking about money too much” turn off givers? No, it is more a matter of how you talk about money. If you have an embarrassed, diffident, “sorry, but we have to talk about this” approach, people cringe. If you give people news about the amazing things that their generosity helped to make happen, they want to hear—and give—more.

711

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

The readers of this historical journal will ask what value this book might have for their work. Its deepest probe into the past mentions a survey taken in the 1920s, so it has little to say about how the patterns they discover came to be, or how deep they run in our past. Historians need to ask more probing questions about the financial and philanthropic trends and climates of earlier times. This book probably will serve future historians in ways similar to how we now read the works of Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd and their “Middletown” research teams, in order to better understand religion and society in the 1920s and 1930s. Smith, Emerson, and their research colleagues have done outstanding work describing and analyzing important features of American Christianity in our time. It is historians’ responsibility to trace the trajectories that propelled us to this point. Joel A. Carpenter Calvin College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990321

God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society. By Susan M. Shaw. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. xiv þ 301 pp. $40.00 cloth. Susan Shaw was “raised right.” As a southern “lady,” she crossed her legs, properly addressed elders, dressed up for church, and dutifully memorized a weekly Bible verse. Shaw grew up in Georgia in the 1960s and 1970s, and her identity was inextricably linked to her southern culture and religion as a Southern Baptist. From the time she was a young girl through college, for Shaw life outside of home and school meant church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights, not to mention a few social outings, prayer circles, visitations, missionary speakers, and choir tours sprinkled throughout the week. Shaw maintained her link with Southern Baptist culture and went to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for graduate work. After eight years of teaching at Baptist colleges and finding a church home in another denomination, Shaw is now a professor of women’s studies at Oregon State University. In God Speaks to Us, Too, she blends memoir, interviews, and history to explore the ideological and pragmatic contradictions of women in Baptist life. Using her own experiences as well as those of family and friends to frame her initial questions, Shaw branches out to conduct more than 150 interviews with a variety of Baptist women, including those who no longer attend Baptist churches. She seeks to understand how participants construct their identities, particularly in relation to gender and the Southern Baptist Convention’s

711

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

The readers of this historical journal will ask what value this book might have for their work. Its deepest probe into the past mentions a survey taken in the 1920s, so it has little to say about how the patterns they discover came to be, or how deep they run in our past. Historians need to ask more probing questions about the financial and philanthropic trends and climates of earlier times. This book probably will serve future historians in ways similar to how we now read the works of Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd and their “Middletown” research teams, in order to better understand religion and society in the 1920s and 1930s. Smith, Emerson, and their research colleagues have done outstanding work describing and analyzing important features of American Christianity in our time. It is historians’ responsibility to trace the trajectories that propelled us to this point. Joel A. Carpenter Calvin College

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990321

God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, and Society. By Susan M. Shaw. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. xiv þ 301 pp. $40.00 cloth. Susan Shaw was “raised right.” As a southern “lady,” she crossed her legs, properly addressed elders, dressed up for church, and dutifully memorized a weekly Bible verse. Shaw grew up in Georgia in the 1960s and 1970s, and her identity was inextricably linked to her southern culture and religion as a Southern Baptist. From the time she was a young girl through college, for Shaw life outside of home and school meant church on Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday nights, not to mention a few social outings, prayer circles, visitations, missionary speakers, and choir tours sprinkled throughout the week. Shaw maintained her link with Southern Baptist culture and went to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, for graduate work. After eight years of teaching at Baptist colleges and finding a church home in another denomination, Shaw is now a professor of women’s studies at Oregon State University. In God Speaks to Us, Too, she blends memoir, interviews, and history to explore the ideological and pragmatic contradictions of women in Baptist life. Using her own experiences as well as those of family and friends to frame her initial questions, Shaw branches out to conduct more than 150 interviews with a variety of Baptist women, including those who no longer attend Baptist churches. She seeks to understand how participants construct their identities, particularly in relation to gender and the Southern Baptist Convention’s

712

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changing ideological stance on women over the past three decades. Some of the methodological challenges of this work include sorting out exactly what a current or former Southern Baptist identity entails as well as the changing and contested meanings over who and what is considered a part of Southern Baptist culture. Shaw incorporates into her personal narrative the historical origins of Southern Baptists, the changing roles of women over the last several decades of the twentieth century, and most important, the era of the early 1980s through the early 1990s when theological conservatives took control of the denomination, thus altering the roles and expectations for women in Southern Baptist churches, seminaries, and ministry. In order to connect the diverse experiences of Southern Baptist women, Shaw organizes their shared identities around eight broad themes that categorize Baptist women’s lives: experiences of salvation and baptism; the authority and importance of the Bible; food, hospitality, and friendship; race; missions; submission and family; relationship to feminism; and soul competency. She includes perspectives from conservative women, like Dorothy Patterson, who support the current Southern Baptist Convention, view the Bible as inherent and infallible, embrace a gendered hierarchy and complentarianism between husband and wife, and reject feminism. More moderate women, such as Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler, the former executive director of the Women’s Missionary Union and active Cooperative Baptist Fellowship participant, regard the Bible with utmost authority but not as inerrant or infallible, tend to view gender relationships in more egalitarian terms, and have varying allegiances to the goals of feminism. Shaw also includes perspectives from more progressive women who identify themselves as feminists and tend to see the Bible as inspirational and filled with messages about social justice. Some of these women attend moderate Baptist seminaries, but many are former Southern Baptists who now align themselves with Alliance of Baptists, American Baptists, or another denomination, or have left church life all together. Shaw’s study contributes to work on evangelical women and agency. She argues that despite the diverse understandings of their roles as women in church and home life, all of the women interviewed share the Baptist principles of soul competency and the priesthood of believers. Part of the difficulty in collectively analyzing the variety of women in Baptist life is complicated by these Baptist notions of the freedom of the individual to have a personal relationship with God and local church autonomy. Shaw suggests that because of these individualistic and independent principles, even the most conservative Southern Baptist women have a “way of carving out their own agency” (95). In this way the woman who openly asserts that women should not be ordained, deacons, or pastors also has no qualms about confronting her male pastor after Sunday services to “kindly” tell him his interpretation of scripture is wrong or about manipulating her husband to get

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BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

what she wants through making him believe it was his idea. Other women interpret these Baptist principles as a way to evaluate God’s call on their lives or as a way of legitimating their authority to respond to a call—even if God is calling them into male-dominated ministerial positions. Shaw’s strongest contributions to the study of women’s agency in conservative religious environments occur in her chapters on salvation and baptism, which include a fascinating look into the faith of children and conversion experiences, and the chapter on the legacy of missions education in Southern Baptist culture. She interweaves the development of girls and young women’s independence, their broad exposure to world cultures, and the ability to interpret God’s call on their lives with southern notions of propriety, beauty, and pageantry. It is within these two chapters that Shaw’s interpretations of soul competency are the most poignant, highlighting the conflicting identities and practices of what it means to be a Southern Baptist woman. At times Shaw’s notes are scarce and contain errors (for example Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War [Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006] was edited by Carl L. Kell, not the Carl L. Hunt listed on page 278). I also found myself searching for references to seminal works on conservative Protestant women, such as Marie Griffith’s God’s Daughters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). I would be amiss if I did not mention that a book on gendered identities misidentified my gender. As a young, female graduate student, I wrote a master’s thesis on Baptist women’s contradictory identities in which I argued that despite much hope for more inclusion from Baptist women themselves, little structural change had happened to allow for even the smallest of reforms (175). Shaw mistakenly notes that I am a male scholar, and I wonder how this assumption influenced her reading of my argument. Despite these slight errors, overall, Shaw’s combination of humor, selfreflexivity, extensive Baptist history, and attention to the unique aspects of southern culture that construct Southern Baptist women’s identities makes God Speaks to Us, Too a solid read for anyone interested in women and religion. Howell Williams Louisville, Kentucky

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990333

Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. By Dominic Alexander. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. x þ 204 pp. $95.00 cloth. In this concise and well-written study, Dominic Alexander covers ten centuries of Christian hagiography, a daunting task. But he does so effectively by

713

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

what she wants through making him believe it was his idea. Other women interpret these Baptist principles as a way to evaluate God’s call on their lives or as a way of legitimating their authority to respond to a call—even if God is calling them into male-dominated ministerial positions. Shaw’s strongest contributions to the study of women’s agency in conservative religious environments occur in her chapters on salvation and baptism, which include a fascinating look into the faith of children and conversion experiences, and the chapter on the legacy of missions education in Southern Baptist culture. She interweaves the development of girls and young women’s independence, their broad exposure to world cultures, and the ability to interpret God’s call on their lives with southern notions of propriety, beauty, and pageantry. It is within these two chapters that Shaw’s interpretations of soul competency are the most poignant, highlighting the conflicting identities and practices of what it means to be a Southern Baptist woman. At times Shaw’s notes are scarce and contain errors (for example Exiled: Voices of the Southern Baptist Convention Holy War [Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006] was edited by Carl L. Kell, not the Carl L. Hunt listed on page 278). I also found myself searching for references to seminal works on conservative Protestant women, such as Marie Griffith’s God’s Daughters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). I would be amiss if I did not mention that a book on gendered identities misidentified my gender. As a young, female graduate student, I wrote a master’s thesis on Baptist women’s contradictory identities in which I argued that despite much hope for more inclusion from Baptist women themselves, little structural change had happened to allow for even the smallest of reforms (175). Shaw mistakenly notes that I am a male scholar, and I wonder how this assumption influenced her reading of my argument. Despite these slight errors, overall, Shaw’s combination of humor, selfreflexivity, extensive Baptist history, and attention to the unique aspects of southern culture that construct Southern Baptist women’s identities makes God Speaks to Us, Too a solid read for anyone interested in women and religion. Howell Williams Louisville, Kentucky

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990333

Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages. By Dominic Alexander. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell, 2008. x þ 204 pp. $95.00 cloth. In this concise and well-written study, Dominic Alexander covers ten centuries of Christian hagiography, a daunting task. But he does so effectively by

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focusing on one particular theme, the relationship between various saints and animals as reflected in the lives of the saints. While this might seem to be a rather narrow area, it is an amazingly rich and widespread topic in the genre. The author clearly states the primary purpose of the study in the introductory chapter: “to determine the purposes of stories and the various influences upon the formation and development of the Christian genre of the saint and animal story” (19). He analyzes hagiographies, places them in their historical context, relates these stories to popular culture as well as patterns in the earlier Christian tradition, and then determines what purposes the animal stories serve. The main themes also include the complicated connection between saints and wilderness (an Edenic tension), the relatively unique situation of Irish saints, repeated stories of hermits and hunters, connections to biblical patterns, and sanctuary offered to animals. Alexander begins his survey with the fourth- and fifth-century desert ascetics and suggests that these stories, along with several important biblical accounts of animals, provide the foundation for the rest of the tradition. The story of Elijah and the ravens (I Kings 17:6), for example, has the most far-reaching influence. This particular subject of animals serving as agents of God by bringing food to the saint in the wilderness appears in hagiographies from the fourth century throughout the period covered by the author. Irish saints receive fish from otters; early hermits are fed by ravens; the “Elijah topos” stories are foundational. Another topos Alexander identifies is “the hermit and the hunter.” He dedicates an entire chapter to this idea and weaves it throughout his narrative. The story of Saint Giles, a late seventh-century saint, and the doe is the most widely known. Giles is both fed by the doe, thus a refiguring of Elijah and the raven, and then takes an arrow for her when she is being hunted by a king. From Ireland to Italy, this pattern repeats itself with animals ranging from large boars to delicate rabbits being saved by saints. A quite different theme emerges in “sainted princesses and goose resurrections.” Many of these accounts are related to western and northern European folklore, including stories of the Norse god Thor. These stories appear initially in the tenth century, becoming quite prominent in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Alexander suggests that this reflects a period when the Church was “truly beginning to spread throughout the countryside . . . with the widespread imposition of Church time on labour, disrupting rhythms of peasant agriculture that dated back a thousand years or more” (111). Geese stories, and other resurrection-of-animal accounts, bridge cultures as the saints’ lives integrate with and replace peasant folklore. The final organizational approach Alexander includes is geographic and identifies the Irish pattern as somewhat unique. This topos includes a theme of the saint’s command over animals in many instances. It is important to

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

715

recognize this aspect of the stories with animals. The author makes it clear that a hierarchy is in place and that the saint’s power over animals is a significant theme. Alexander takes into account the “social and political as well as the monastic and spiritual contexts” in his analysis. This is particularly evident in his concluding chapter when he examines the complex and popular vitae of Francis of Assisi. Since this saint is recognized by many to be the ultimate patron saint of animals, it makes sense for Alexander to conclude his work with such a pivotal figure. It is clear that the social and economic worlds have changed when viewing Francis’s lives. In earlier stories, for example, saints would save animals from a royal hunter; at other points they would bid animals give themselves to the populace for food. They were often immersed in agricultural societies and in nature. By the thirteenth century in central Italy, the commercially developed urban life of a figure such as Francis removes some of the ambiguity from nature. In a telling account, Francis “rescues fish from fishermen and lambs from peasants” in a quite different manner from earlier saints. This “Edenic portrayal” of the humananimal is not necessarily new in Christian hagiographies; saints such as Paul the hermit removed themselves from the temptations of human culture by seclusion in the wilderness among the wild animals. Still, Francis’s “natural mysticism” is something new that could not have arisen prior to the particular time and place of his life and the various tellings of it. While the study is strong on most levels, there are a couple of disappointments. First, gender analysis is not as strong as it could be in the chapters that include female saints and princesses. Are their relationships to animals mediated in different ways since they are female saints? If the hagiographies are recorded by males, how does this influence the telling of the stories and how does it place the animals in the context of female saints? Alexander does touch on gender when he addresses the stories of Saint Brigit, but a deeper analysis would be helpful. Second, the last chapter ends rather abruptly, and the reader would benefit from some more analysis of the shifting sands of the thirteenth century as exemplified by the Francis hagiographies. The author presents these transformations of culture, ergo of the lives of saints, briefly, but it could be elaborated further. With those two minor critiques aside, this is a well-done study of the role of hagiographies in the Middle Ages. The author takes into account the social and political contexts, the shifting impact of folklore in different geographic and cultural areas, and the influence of stories from the Christian tradition. He obviously is deeply familiar with an amazing breadth of hagiographic literature from the period. The sheer volume of saints’ lives that he presents is worth the read. Finally, it should be mentioned that the topic of animals is an increasingly important consideration in the analysis of religious histories,

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as it is in the broader and growing field of cultural studies of animals. In short, this is a valuable resource for historians of the Middle Ages or for the history of Christianity. Laura Hobgood-Oster Southwestern University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990345

Religion in American Politics: A Short History. By Frank Lambert. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. x þ 295 pp. $24.95 cloth. Historians, legal scholars, and the general public—not to mention befuddled foreigners—have long been fascinated with the relationship between religion and politics in American society. And why not? The notion of forming a government that would function without the support of an established religion, or vice versa, was utterly unprecedented in Western society. The First Amendment, which mandated that the government stay out of the religion business, has proved remarkably resilient, and this despite various assaults that continue to the present. As Frank Lambert points out in Religion in American Politics, however, none of this means that religion has not influenced policy in the course of American history. Lambert argues that religious individuals and coalitions have sought by political means to circumvent the Constitution by agitating for “a national religious establishment, or, more specifically, a Christian civil religion” (5). He also notes that “religion in American politics is contested” and that “any religious group’s attempt to represent the nation’s religious heritage or claim to be its moral conscience is sure to be met with opposition from other religious groups as well as from nonreligious parties” (6). Lambert, a fine historian who has worked extensively in the colonial period, spends surprisingly little time with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before moving on to the formation of the new nation. The Great Awakening, he points out, introduced sectarianism to American society, but a bit more attention to the religious pluralism in the Middle Colonies, especially New York and Pennsylvania, might have provided a better background for understanding the genesis of the First Amendment. The author refers to James Madison’s confidence that a plethora of religious sects “would be an effective guarantor of religious freedom” (31) and notes that Thomas Jefferson, a deist, received support from Baptists in the bitterly contested election of 1800 because of Jefferson’s support for the separation of church and state.

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as it is in the broader and growing field of cultural studies of animals. In short, this is a valuable resource for historians of the Middle Ages or for the history of Christianity. Laura Hobgood-Oster Southwestern University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990345

Religion in American Politics: A Short History. By Frank Lambert. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. x þ 295 pp. $24.95 cloth. Historians, legal scholars, and the general public—not to mention befuddled foreigners—have long been fascinated with the relationship between religion and politics in American society. And why not? The notion of forming a government that would function without the support of an established religion, or vice versa, was utterly unprecedented in Western society. The First Amendment, which mandated that the government stay out of the religion business, has proved remarkably resilient, and this despite various assaults that continue to the present. As Frank Lambert points out in Religion in American Politics, however, none of this means that religion has not influenced policy in the course of American history. Lambert argues that religious individuals and coalitions have sought by political means to circumvent the Constitution by agitating for “a national religious establishment, or, more specifically, a Christian civil religion” (5). He also notes that “religion in American politics is contested” and that “any religious group’s attempt to represent the nation’s religious heritage or claim to be its moral conscience is sure to be met with opposition from other religious groups as well as from nonreligious parties” (6). Lambert, a fine historian who has worked extensively in the colonial period, spends surprisingly little time with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before moving on to the formation of the new nation. The Great Awakening, he points out, introduced sectarianism to American society, but a bit more attention to the religious pluralism in the Middle Colonies, especially New York and Pennsylvania, might have provided a better background for understanding the genesis of the First Amendment. The author refers to James Madison’s confidence that a plethora of religious sects “would be an effective guarantor of religious freedom” (31) and notes that Thomas Jefferson, a deist, received support from Baptists in the bitterly contested election of 1800 because of Jefferson’s support for the separation of church and state.

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717

By the early nineteenth century, various religious groups organized to influence policy. When Congress passed a law in 1810 requiring the delivery of mail on Sundays, Federalist clergy pounced on what they regarded as a desecration of the Sabbath and launched a campaign that finally ended such deliveries by mid-century. The arrival of Roman Catholics in large numbers presented new challenges not only to Protestant hegemony but to the political process itself. Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth prompted the emergence of a counter ideology, the Social Gospel, in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. Lambert plows familiar terrain with the Scopes trial and the fundamentalistmodernist controversy early in the twentieth century (although he unaccountably links C. I. Scofield with the holiness movement). When he turns to religious liberalism, Lambert mentions changing attitudes toward missions in the late 1940s but fails to note the landmark 1932 study ReThinking Missions that prompted the shift. His treatment of the civil rights struggle is informed and thorough, and the final two chapters address the Religious Right and the Religious Left, respectively. Whether or not the “Religious Left” is mature or cohesive enough to warrant its own chapter might invite further discussion, and Lambert stumbles when he rehearses the discredited “abortion myth,” the fiction that the Religious Right coalesced as a political movement in response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Religion in American Politics is a useful survey, not least because Lambert seeks to probe beyond some of the shopworn examples of religious and political entanglements, albeit with mixed results. He mentions the Ghost Dance of the late nineteenth century, for example, but he curiously fails to examine the Taos Blue Lake debacle, when the United States Forest Service commandeered 48,000 acres of Native lands, including Pueblo sacred sites, for inclusion into Kit Carson National Forest in 1906, a grievance that was not redressed until 1970. Lambert also undermines his credibility with occasional lapses in attention to detail. He traces the history of the Moral Majority to the “early 1970s” (190), although it was not established until 1979; in successive sentences, he misses by a year both the crucial Green v. Connally decision and the revocation of Bob Jones University’s tax exemption (the real catalyst for the Religious Right). He writes that Time magazine (not Newsweek) declared 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” and he identifies Riverside Church in New York City as “nondenominational” (American Baptist and United Church of Christ). Other attributions may not be so much wrong as they are open for debate: the use of the term “liberal Democrat” to describe both John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, and the lumping of Ronald Sider into the Religious Left. These are cavils, of course, but they have the unfortunate effect of compromising the integrity of what is otherwise a very impressive book. In

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the concluding sentence of Religion in American Politics, Lambert writes: “Two hundred and twenty years after the new republic’s birth, critics of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left think the [founders] were right to keep religion out of national politics” (250). Few thoughtful readers will contest that statement. Randall Balmer Barnard College, Columbia University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990357

“I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”: A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. By David W. Music and Paul A. Richardson. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2008. xvi þ 638 pp. $45.00 cloth. David Music is professor of church music and director of graduate studies in the school of music at Baylor University. Paul Richardson is professor of music in the school of the performing arts at Samford University. Both are members of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and have a long and distinguished record of hymnological research and writing. They have teamed up in this book to trace hymnody among Baptists in North America from its British roots in the early seventeenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Organized as a narrative in ten chapters, it moves from the British roots through the beginnings of Baptist music or its absence in America, early hymnals, early regional nineteenthcentury collections, mid-nineteenth-century sectional and denominational collections, the Civil War, Sunday School and Gospel songs, late nineteenthcentury hymnals, “denominational” ones in the twentieth century, and the splintering at the end of the twentieth century viewed through grids like “reformers” and “revolutionaries.” In the process, Baptist leaders and groups are considered and their various views and conflicts described. The treatment is encyclopedic, with 502 pages of text followed by 83 pages of bibliographical material and a 47-page index. For those who want a list of Baptist hymnals, the first bibliography alphabetizes them (503 – 548). It includes the page numbers on which the books are discussed in the text itself so that one can find them quickly without going through the general index. The general bibliography gives a page of unpublished materials. The general index covers hymns, tunes, people, and collections. Each chapter includes general overviews as well as detailed descriptions of hymnals and attendant people, churches, and circumstances. Footnotes are

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the concluding sentence of Religion in American Politics, Lambert writes: “Two hundred and twenty years after the new republic’s birth, critics of both the Religious Right and the Religious Left think the [founders] were right to keep religion out of national politics” (250). Few thoughtful readers will contest that statement. Randall Balmer Barnard College, Columbia University

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990357

“I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”: A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. By David W. Music and Paul A. Richardson. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2008. xvi þ 638 pp. $45.00 cloth. David Music is professor of church music and director of graduate studies in the school of music at Baylor University. Paul Richardson is professor of music in the school of the performing arts at Samford University. Both are members of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and have a long and distinguished record of hymnological research and writing. They have teamed up in this book to trace hymnody among Baptists in North America from its British roots in the early seventeenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Organized as a narrative in ten chapters, it moves from the British roots through the beginnings of Baptist music or its absence in America, early hymnals, early regional nineteenthcentury collections, mid-nineteenth-century sectional and denominational collections, the Civil War, Sunday School and Gospel songs, late nineteenthcentury hymnals, “denominational” ones in the twentieth century, and the splintering at the end of the twentieth century viewed through grids like “reformers” and “revolutionaries.” In the process, Baptist leaders and groups are considered and their various views and conflicts described. The treatment is encyclopedic, with 502 pages of text followed by 83 pages of bibliographical material and a 47-page index. For those who want a list of Baptist hymnals, the first bibliography alphabetizes them (503 – 548). It includes the page numbers on which the books are discussed in the text itself so that one can find them quickly without going through the general index. The general bibliography gives a page of unpublished materials. The general index covers hymns, tunes, people, and collections. Each chapter includes general overviews as well as detailed descriptions of hymnals and attendant people, churches, and circumstances. Footnotes are

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

719

ample and sometimes fill half a page. A brief page-long summary “conclusion” is given at the end of every chapter. The book lends itself to use in at least three ways. Readers can work through it meticulously from cover to cover, or scan the general descriptions and the conclusions, or work from the index or table of contents to find a hymnal, person, or some specific detail for which they may be looking. Articles, companions, hymn and hymn tune studies, the journal of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada called The Hymn, John Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology (1907), Louis Benson’s The English Hymn (1915), dissertations, indices, and numerous similar studies and listings get at the topic that Music and Richardson are treating here, but they are either more general or more restricted. Works that come close to this one are Henry S. Burrage’s Baptist Writers and Their Hymns (Portland, Maine: Brown Thurston & Company, 1888) and Singing Baptists: Studies in Baptist Hymnody in America (Nashville, Tenn.: Church Street Press, 1994), which the authors published with Harry Eskew and which serves as an appetizer to this main course. This study stands alone in treating Baptist hymnody in North America from its beginnings to the present in this kind of detail and scope. The book is well-researched and reliable, as one might expect from these writers. Readers can trace sources through the text and its footnotes to find the researchers’ trails and where they might lead for further study and research. The book is also well-written and clear, though this is not an easy book to read from cover to cover. As for hymnological studies generally, the detail is too dense and multifaceted to be assimilated easily. The authors have done their best, however, to make it accessible. One does not have to be a hymnological expert to decipher its meaning. Only time, patience, and the ability to read are required. One might expect a study of this kind to stop before, or have least perspective on, our current time and place, but the last chapter, “New Currents in Baptist Congregational Song,” is one of the most illuminating. After sorting out sociological, technological, and theological factors, it differentiates between reformers and revolutionaries and discusses collections and people as usual but then isolates themes like peace and civil rights, language revision, popular styles, “Contemporary Christian Music,” the “praise and worship” movement, and genres like global hymnody. Five patterns of diverging worship forms are also discussed: liturgical, traditional, seeker, contemporary, and blended. The Baptists’ embrace of these in their own ways—like charismatic influences without speaking in tongues—suggests the struggles that virtually all traditions have faced along with an ecumenical consciousness that has both pulled together and driven apart. The irony of our present circumstances is further suggested by the list of hymns written

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by Baptists since 1975 (484 – 485), while in the previous chapter the authors had just acknowledged that The Hymnbook for Christian Worship (St. Louis: Bethany, 1970) “would be the last hymnal published by the American Baptist Churches” (460). The earlier chapters are similar to the one just described in that they also get at the issues and give the detail that attends them—or, perhaps more accurately, let the details emerge to see how they form the historical narrative. The topic of the book is Baptist hymnody in North America, but such a topic invariably brings with it not only Baptist and hymnic themes, but more general historical, theological, and musical ones as well. Though written clearly and in a narrative fashion, it is nonetheless closer to encyclopedic grist than to story’s scintillation. Anyone who is interested in the issues this study raises, however, will find it a valuable mine of information. Paul Westermeyer Luther Seminary

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990369

Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History. By Charles E. Curran. Moral Traditions. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008. xiv þ 354 pp. $59.95 cloth; $26.95 paper. This volume takes readers on a comprehensive tour of developments in Catholic moral theology over the past two centuries. Its focus is primarily on the clerical and scholarly writings about this issue, rather than lay experiences or trends. The first six chapters are devoted to discrete time periods (for example, the nineteenth century, pre-Vatican II, and post-Vatican II); the remaining chapters are organized around issues such as sex, marriage, and bioethics. In each of the chapters, Curran weaves discussions of individual figures (for example, John Henry Newman and John A. Ryan) with discussion of movements (for example, revisionists, feminists, and new natural lawyers). The sheer mass of material covered in this book suggests that Curran had to make difficult choices about what to include and what to leave out, about how to organize the material, and ultimately about which nuggets of wisdom to glean from the past and apply to our present-day situation. Does he succeed on all these fronts? Well, he certainly does not exclude much! The book is to be commended for the thorough way in which it covers, or at least mentions, almost every significant writer in Catholic moral theology during this period.

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by Baptists since 1975 (484 – 485), while in the previous chapter the authors had just acknowledged that The Hymnbook for Christian Worship (St. Louis: Bethany, 1970) “would be the last hymnal published by the American Baptist Churches” (460). The earlier chapters are similar to the one just described in that they also get at the issues and give the detail that attends them—or, perhaps more accurately, let the details emerge to see how they form the historical narrative. The topic of the book is Baptist hymnody in North America, but such a topic invariably brings with it not only Baptist and hymnic themes, but more general historical, theological, and musical ones as well. Though written clearly and in a narrative fashion, it is nonetheless closer to encyclopedic grist than to story’s scintillation. Anyone who is interested in the issues this study raises, however, will find it a valuable mine of information. Paul Westermeyer Luther Seminary

doi:10.1017/S0009640709990369

Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History. By Charles E. Curran. Moral Traditions. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008. xiv þ 354 pp. $59.95 cloth; $26.95 paper. This volume takes readers on a comprehensive tour of developments in Catholic moral theology over the past two centuries. Its focus is primarily on the clerical and scholarly writings about this issue, rather than lay experiences or trends. The first six chapters are devoted to discrete time periods (for example, the nineteenth century, pre-Vatican II, and post-Vatican II); the remaining chapters are organized around issues such as sex, marriage, and bioethics. In each of the chapters, Curran weaves discussions of individual figures (for example, John Henry Newman and John A. Ryan) with discussion of movements (for example, revisionists, feminists, and new natural lawyers). The sheer mass of material covered in this book suggests that Curran had to make difficult choices about what to include and what to leave out, about how to organize the material, and ultimately about which nuggets of wisdom to glean from the past and apply to our present-day situation. Does he succeed on all these fronts? Well, he certainly does not exclude much! The book is to be commended for the thorough way in which it covers, or at least mentions, almost every significant writer in Catholic moral theology during this period.

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As far as organization, he follows the expected chronological arc: monolithic pre-Vatican II era grounded in the confession-obsessed, natural law driven, neo-scholastic manuals of moral theology; the paradigm shift of the Second Vatican Council in the early to mid-1960s; and then a dizzying array of voices, methodologies and perspectives since then. It is in this last part of his survey that he takes on a more thematic approach. While the mainly chronological approach feels right, it may also feel tired to those who have read extensively in Catholic moral theology. Finally, what about the nuggets of wisdom? It is here that many readers want and expect the most from Curran, especially about the future trajectory of the Church. But it is here that I think most readers will wish for more. His short concluding chapter basically resorts to the position that there really is no way to predict the future of Catholic moral theology. Perhaps it is unfair to expect so much from Curran, but one feels that in choosing to take on this task, he takes on the responsibilities of the historian, even (and perhaps especially) because it is complicated by his experience as a “participant observer” (Curran’s term). Curran has already written a great deal on the history of Catholic moral theology. He admits in the preface that this current volume depends on his earlier works. Several years ago, he also published a long-awaited autobiography that chronicles his epic battle with the Vatican. Thus, in some sense, we already know a good deal about what Curran has to say about two of the central foci of this book: the history of Catholic moral theology, and Curran’s role in that history. The way Curran chooses to narrate that role, however, is the most controversial aspect of this volume. Any history of Catholic moral theology in the United States would undoubtedly devote a significant segment to Charles Curran and his legendary battle with the Vatican that culminated in the 1986 judgment by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that he was ineligible to teach Catholic theology. The “Curran Affair,” as it has come to be known, is central for understanding the development and trajectory of Catholic moral theology in the twentieth century, especially in the North American context. Curran represents one of the important post-Vatican II American Catholic voices—a voice that resonates with many progressive Catholics who want to believe that Vatican II’s call for engagement with the modern world should lead the Church in a direction different than what has emerged from the Vatican under the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What, then, should we expect when Curran, himself a central subject of the history, is the historian? Curran is aware of this potentially awkward situation when he informs readers in the preface to his book, “I write this history as a participant observer and do not claim to be neutral” (xii). One consequence of this is that Curran decides to be explicit that he plays two roles in the book—one as participant and one as observer. He does this mainly by

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alternating between referring to himself in the first person when speaking as the observer/historian and in the third person when describing himself as a participant. While being fully sympathetic with Curran’s dilemma here and appreciating his desire to be honest about his intentions, I found this double voice a bit distracting. Curran’s decision to adopt this technique does, however, raise interesting questions about the appropriate posture of the historian. This volume is a compendium of almost all that has been written about Catholic moral theology in this period. The 39-page bibliography at the end attests to the thoroughness of Curran’s treatment. In that sense, this book is a valuable resource for those wanting to know where to look for more about moral theology. Fans of Curran, of which there are many, will welcome this latest offering for its ambitious sweep and comprehensive treatment of the subject, but I also think many of his loyal readers will wish for more. As it stands, this book would serve well in introductory undergraduate and graduate courses on Catholic moral theology and the history of American Catholicism. Aline H. Kalbian Florida State University

BOOKS RECEIVED Albergio, Giuseppe, Tranzione Epocale: Studi sul Concilio Vaticano II. Mulino, Bologna: Societa´ Editrice il Mulino, 2009. Allen, Pauline, Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy: The Synodical Letter and Other Documents. Oxford Early Christian Texts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Appelbaum, Patricia, Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture between World War I and the Vietnam Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Bays, Daniel H., and Ellen Widmer, eds., China’s Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009. Beckwith, Carl L., Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate. Oxford Early Christian Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Bennet, N. H., ed., The Register of Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, 1420 –1431, Volume II. The Canterbury and York Society 99. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2009. Bernardini, Paolo, Un Solo Battesimo Una Sola Chiesa: Il Concilio Di Cartagine Del Settembre 256. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2009. Binkley, Timothy S. G., ed., A Higher Moral and Spiritual Stand: Selected Writings of Milton Wright. Latham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2009. Birnbaum, David, God and Evil. Summa Metaphysica 1. 6th ed. Sunnyside, N.Y.: J Levine/Millennium, 2008. Birnbaum, David, God and Good. Summa Metaphysica 2. Sunnyside, N.Y.: J Levine/ Millennium, 2008. Blackwell, Richard J., Behind the Scenes at Galileo’s Trial: Including the First English Translation of Melchior Inchofer’s Tractatus Syllepticus. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Blum, Edward J., and Jason R. Young, eds., The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2009. Brackney, William H., Historical Dictionary of the Baptists. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements 94. Lanham Md.: Scarecrow, 2009. Brazier, Paul H., Revelation and Reason: Prolegomena to Systematic Theology. New York: T&T Clark, 2008.

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Browning, Don S., and Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, eds., Children and Childhood in American Religions. Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Cain, Andrew, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Carp, Benjamin L., Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Chen, Carolyn, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Clayton, Tony, Europe and the Making of England, 1660–1760. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Coffey, John, and Paul C. H. Lim, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Cambridge Companions to Religion. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Conley, John J., Adoration and Annihilation: The Covenant Philosophy of Port-Royal. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicles of the Czechs. Trans. Lisa Wolverton. Medieval Texts in Translation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Cummings, Kathleen Sprows, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Dahood, Roger, and Peter E. Medine, eds., Studies in Medieval Renaissance History. Third Series 6. Brooklyn, N.Y.: AMS, 2009. Darch, John H., Missionary Imperialists?: Missionaries, Government and the Growth of the British Empire in the Tropics, 1860–1885. Studies in Christian History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2009. DeVun, Leah, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupecissa in the Late Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Dunn, James D. G., Beginning from Jerusalem. Christianity in the Making 2. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009. Earlsferry, Lord Rodger, The Courts, the Church and the Constitution: Aspects of the Disruption of 1843. Jean Clark Memorial Lectures. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.

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Edgerton, Samuel Y., The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009. Engel, Katherine Carte´, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Espı´n, Orlando O., ed., Building Bridges, Doing Justice: Constructing a Latino/a Ecumenical Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009. Faller, Robert A., Church Woodwork in the British Isles, 1100–1535: An Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2009. Fedewa, Marilyn H., Marı´a of A´greda: Mystical Lady in Blue. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Ferguson, Everett, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009. Ferngren, Gary B., Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Foster, Richard J., and Gayle D. Beebe, Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009. Gallagher, Robert L., and Paul Hertig, eds., Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2009. Garrett, James Leo, Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2009. Grafton, David D., Piety, Politics, and Power: Lutherans Encountering Islam in the Middle East. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009. Gribben, Crawford, Writing the Rapture: Prophecy Fiction in Evangelical America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Grieve, Patricia, The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Conflict. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Handy, Lowell K., Psalm 29 through Time and Tradition. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2009. Hanson, Michele Zelinsky, Religious Identity in an Early Reformation Community: Augsburg, 1517 –1555. Studies in Central European Histories. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

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Heath, Gordon L., A War with a Silver Lining: Canadian Protestant Churches and the South African War, 1899–1902. McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, series 2, 50. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009. Heclo, Hugh, Christianity and Human Democracy. The Alexis de Tocqueville Lectures on Human Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Heddendorf, Russell, From Faith to Fun: The Secularization of Humour. Cambridge, U.K.: Lutterworth, 2009. Heschel, Susannah, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. Holman, Susan R., God Knows There’s Need: Christian Responses to Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Horn, Gerd-Rainer, Western European Liberation Theology: The First Wave, 1924–1959. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Jackson, Gregory S., The Word and its Witness: The Spiritualization of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Johnston, Derek, A Brief History of Theology: From the New Testament to Feminist Theology. New York: Continuum, 2008. Jordan, William Chester, A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009. Jugel, James L., The Ladder of Jacob: Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. Kessler, Martin, and Martin Wallraff, eds., Biblische Theologie und historisches Denken: Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien aus Anlass der 50. Wiederkehr der Basler Promotion von Rudolf Smend. Studien Zur Geschchte der Wissenschaften in Basel 5. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe AG, 2009. Kolb, Robert, Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith. Christian Theology in Context. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Kraus, Thomas J., Michael J. Kruger, and Tobias Nicklas, eds., Gospel Fragments. Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Le Goff, Jacques, Saint Louis. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Lindgren, Erika Lauren, Sensual Encounters: Monastic Women and Spirituality in Medieval Germany. New York: University of Columbia Press, 2009.

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Louthan, Howard, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation. New Studies in European History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Luijendijk, Anna Marie, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Harvard Theological Studies 60. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. MacLehose, William F., “A Tender Age”: Cultural Anxieties over the Child in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Martins, Peter W., ed., In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Means, Laurel, ed., Beyond Words: The Remarkable Story of Paul and Nathalie Means. Singapore: Genesis, 2009. Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Law and Love, Volume IV. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. Miller, Patricia Cox, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Miller, Stephen P., Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Mitchell, Beverly Eileen, Plantations and Death Camps: Religion, Ideology and Human Dignity. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2009. Mobley, Kendal P., Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Global Mission of Domestic Feminism. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009. Molineaux, Natalie Bright, Medici et Medicamenta: The Medicine of Penance in Late Antiquity. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2009. Montgomery, Helen Barrett, The Bible and Missions. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009. Moore, John C., Pope Innocent III (1160/61 –1216): To Root Up and to Plant. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Murray, James, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: Clerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534– 1590. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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Myers-Shirk, Susan E., Helping the Good Shepherd: Pastoral Counselors in a Psychotherapeutic Culture, 1925–1975. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Noble, Thomas F. X., Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Noll, Mark A., God and Race in American Politics: A Short History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008. O’Connell, Marvin R., Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840– 1962. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Paxton, Frederick S., trans., Anchoress & Abbess in Ninth-Century Saxon: The Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim. Medieval Texts in Translation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Pestina, Carla Gardina, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Printy, Michael, Enlightenment and the Creation of German Catholicism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Richardson, Joe M., and Maxine D. Jones, Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009. Robert, Dana L., Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion. Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Rorem, Paul, Hugh of Saint Victor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Rosenthal, Bernard, ed., Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Rubin, Miri, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. Ruys, Juanita Feros, ed., What Nature Does not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Disputatio 15. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. Saint Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1– 40. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2009. Saint Leander, A Book on the Teaching of Nuns and a Homily in Praise of the Church. Ed. and trans. John R. C. Martyn. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2009.

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Salonen, Kirsi, and Ludwig Schmugge, A Sip from the “Well of Grace”: Medieval Texts from the Catholic Penitentiary. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 7. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Schultenover, David G., ed., The Reception of Pragmatism in France & the Rise of Roman Catholic Modernism, 1890–1914. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Sizgorich, Thomas, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Smith, John T., “A Victorian Class Conflict?”: Schoolteaching and the Parson, Priest, and Minister, 1837–1902. Brighton, U.K.: Sussex Academic, 2009. Smith, Leonard S., Religion and the Rise of History: Martin Luther and the Cultural Revolution in Germany 1760–1810. Eugene, Ore.: Cascade, 2009. Smith, Mark, ed., British Evangelical Identities Past and Present, Vol. 1: Aspects of the History and Sociology of Evangelicalism in Britain and Ireland. Studies in Evangelical History and Thought. Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2008. Smith, William Bradford, Reformation and the German Territorial State: Upper Franconia, 1300–1630. Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2008. Stephenson, Barry, Veneration and Revolt: Hermann Hesse and Swabian Pietism. Editions SR 33. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009. Strousma, Guy G., The End of Sacrifice: Religious Transformations in Late Antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Thiery, Daniel E., Polluting the Sacred: Violence, Faith, and the “Civilizing” of Parishioners in Late Medieval England. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology. Trans. Richard J. Regan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Tolan, John, Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Van Eijnatten, Joris, Preaching, Sermon and Cultural Change in the Long Eighteenth Century. A New History of the Sermon 4. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Van Engen, John, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

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von Greiffenberg, Catharina Regina, Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ. Trans. Lynne Tatlock. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Ward, Haruko Nawata, Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549– 1650. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009. Watt, Jeffrey R., The Scourge of Demons: Possession, Lust, and Witchcraft in a Seventeenth-Century Italian Convent. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2009. Wengert, Timothy J., ed., The Pastoral Luther: Essays on Martin Luther’s Practical Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009. Wilkinson, Michael, ed., Canadian Pentecostalism: Transition and Transformation. McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, series 2, 49. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2009. Wuthnow, Robert, Boundless Faith: The Global Outreach of American Churches. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

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CONTENTS ARTICLES 489 Billy Graham’s America Grant Wacker

512 Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona Constant J. Mews

549 “I Am Wholly Your Own”: Liturgical Piety and Community among the Nuns of Helfta Anna Harrison

584 Luigi Lippomano, His Vicars, and the Reform of Verona from the Pulpit Emily Michelson

606 “Family Values” and the Formation of a Christian Right Agenda Seth Dowland

632 BOOK REVIEW ESSAYS 669 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 723 BOOKS RECEIVED

Cover icon of Saint Gertrude courtesy of MonasteryIcons.com.

Cambridge Journals Online For further information about this journal please go to the journal website at: journals.cambridge.org/chh