Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and the Three Maries Debate: On Mary Magdalen; On Christ's Three Days in the Tomb; On the One Mary in Place of Three, a Discussion; On the Threefold and Single Magdalen, a Second Discussion (review)

Sheila Porrer has handled a complex subject with judicious care and clarity. The book was conceived twenty-five years ago as a doctoral thesis at the University of London under the direction of D. P. Walker, and it has doubtless been enhanced with two decades of further reflection and research. The introduction analyzes many difficult Latin texts dealing with biblical exegesis, patristic and scholastic interpretations of the New Testament, and the polemic that pitted early-modern humanist scholars against traditionalist scholastic theologians. It thus prepares the reader for the Latin texts and English translations of the four books published in 1517-19 by the evangelical humanist Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (c. 1455-1536)—books that caused controversy throughout Europe during a watershed period in the intellectual and religious movements known as the Renaissance and Reformation in France.

The four treatises by Lefèvre deal with three principal topics: first, the centuries-old identification of St. Mary Magdalen with two other women in the New Testament named Mary; second, the length of time that Christ lay in the tomb before his resurrection; and, third, the pious legend holding that St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, married three times and had children named Mary by each of her three husbands. Behind these seemingly innocuous issues lay a momentous question: What should be done when scholars who had neither formal theological training nor a recognized license to teach theology dared to challenge centuries-old interpretations of Sacred Scripture and to circulate their ideas among an untrained lay public? Scholastic theologians and other traditionalists, on the one hand, feared that questioning even a few beliefs held for centuries opened the door to questioning any or all beliefs, posing a danger to the faith and devotion of pious people and to the rites and traditions of the Church. Lefèvre and other humanists, on the other, believed that the real danger to faith and devotion lay in allowing ill-founded legends to corrupt authentic faith and piety and prevented the reform of belief and practice that was sorely needed in the Church.

Porrer lays out in detail both the sources that Lefèvre called into question and the ones that he used to support his interpretations. She points out (as Desiderius Erasmus had already done) that Lefèvre's overarching priority of promoting piety sometimes interfered with his arriving at a true interpretation of the Scriptures. She shows how, in the last of the four books, Lefèvre was forced to tone down some of his original conclusions and to pull back from his overbearing claims to the spiritual high ground.

Lefèvre's critics, especially the Paris Faculty of Theology and its members such as Noël Beda and Pierre Cousturier (Sutor) are given a more balanced appraisal than they usually receive at the hands of historians. Some of Lefèvre's supporters, like Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, used Lefèvre's works to promote reforms more radical than he ever dreamed of—confirming, in a way, the fears of the traditionalists.

The book's solid, annotated introduction (153 pp. in length) could have profited from a judicious paring of some instances of repetition. In addition, it is puzzling why the author consistently substitutes the arcane term gospel-list for the universally employed word evangelist. These are small drawbacks, however, and do not diminish the overall importance of this book. By giving us the Latin texts and English translations of these...