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Reviews 217 Gordon, Bruce, ed., Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Vol. I: The Medieval Inheritance (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xi, 194; R.R.P. £40.00, $US68.95. Gordon, Bruce ed., Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Vol. II: The Later Reformation (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xi, 202; R.R.P. £40.00, $US68.95. The essays collected in these two volumes consider the formation of Protestant identities in early modern Europe. In order to achieve this end the various contributors share a remarkably consistent methodology: the articles examine Protestant theology and the constructions of history which stemmed from these beliefs. They focus on the sorts of history written by reforming theologians in the sixteenth century and the kinds of authorities they called on to create these visions of the past. In short, the essays discuss the Protestant urge to historicise which led Calvin to write that [it] is not enough to have our eyes open and to note well and mark what G o d does during our lives, but w e must profit from ancient histories. In fact this is w h y our Lord has wanted us to have some notable judgements left in writing, so that the memory of them would remain for ever. A n d w e should not only profit from what is contained in Holy Scripture, but when w e hear what is spoken by the histories written by the pagans, w e should also have the prudence to apply to ourselves what God has done. (p. 20) The essays have been arranged in two volumes, one concerned with the ties between sixteenth-century religious reformers and medieval theology and the other with the nature of Protestant identities once the movement had become estabtished. The books are clearly intended to be read together—they share a c o m m o n index, and approach the same nexus of Protestant identity and history in a comprehensive fashion; the unity of theme is explained by the common origin of the articles in a 1994 conference. Thefirstvolume, The Medieval Inheritance, dissects the processes 218 Reviews whereby the nascent Protestant movements estabtished the authority of their church. The focus is on the development of a Protestant historiography, a process which was important because their recreations of the past were used to justify their present and order the future. This theme is perhaps most clearly outlined in Markus Wriedt's 'Luther's Concept of History and the Formation of an Evangelical Identity', an essay which explores Luther's contention that history was the 'mother of truth'. This piece examines the reforming notion of h u m a n events as the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte). This sixteenth-century approach to history and to the creation of an independent Protestant identity is discussed in most of the essays in the first volume. Bruce Gordon considers the Protestant uses of Savonarola in the sixteenth century; Julian Lock studies the refiguring of English kings as part of a Protestant tradition; Hans Ulrich Bachtold examines Heinrich Bullinger's reworking of Swiss history to support a Protestant theology. The c o m m o n theme is the use of history to give authority to a distinctively Protestant identity. O n the other hand, Peter Marshall's 'The Debate over "Unwritten Verities" in Early Reformation England' highlights some of the contradictions inherent in this w a y of viewing sixteenth-century writings. Marshall closely examines English pronouncements on the authority of traditions which were not based on the scriptures but which were upheld by the Catholic church. While Protestants were engaged in developing the history of their reforming movements, they nonetheless argued that religious traditions could only be grounded in biblical authority. Within such a framework history could hold, at best, only a secondary authority. This caveat could, perhaps, be more strongly argued in the other essays which m a y give a partially skewed account of the ways sixteenth-century Protestants valued history. The essays in the second book, The Later Reformation, continue to concentrate on h o w...

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