Politics, Gender, and Belief: The Long-Term Impact of the Reformation. Essays in Memory of Robert Kingdon ed. by Amy Nelson Burnett et al. (review)

The ten essays gathered in the present collection had their origins in a series of 2011 conference presentations honoring Robert M. Kingdon, who had passed away the previous year. Authored by senior as well as younger colleagues, friends, and former students, they attest to the strength of Kingdon’s influence and the broad reach of his interests. The contributions are highly impressive in their own right and serve as a fitting tribute to a pre-eminent scholar.

A number of the essays address subjects that were of immediate importance to Kingdon, while others speak more to his concerns for the wider contours of the early modern past. Falling into the former category is an initial clutch of studies assessing the impact of the Reformed movement, a subject that figured prominently in Kingdon’s own work. Thus, Barbara Pitkin offers a comparative reading of John Calvin and François Hotman’s employ of biblical texts as vehicles for understanding the difficulties that sixteenth-century Reformed Christians faced. For its part, Martin Klauber’s essay on the debate between Philippe Duplessis-Mornay and Cardinal Jacques Davy du Perron over the nature of the Eucharist turns more on understandings of patristic writings. And James Tracy casts the net a bit wider in his analysis of the manner whereby Reformed ecclesiastical authorities at Geneva and Zurich sought to evaluate the strength of the Ottoman presence in Eastern Europe as they formulated advice to Reformed co-religionists living there.

A second group of essays focuses on broader questions regarding church-state relations. Kathleen Comerford examines Cosimo dei Medici’s reliance upon the Jesuits in his efforts to strengthen the Florentine state. Together, they sought to inculcate correct religious belief and ward off potential political opposition. Sean Perrone directs attention to the Castilian orbit and the financial support that the Church lent the state in a complicated European-wide network of monetary relationships. Church-state relations within Protestant territories were no less complex than in Catholic areas, as elucidated in chapters by David Mayes and Timothy Fehler. Mayes examines the role of governing authorities in resolving the clash between Lutheran and Reformed communities in Hesse-Kassel and Hanau after the mid-seventeenth century. The quarrel was over which confessional group had the prevailing right to supervise and discipline the faithful. Fehler, on the other hand, points up the extensive peaceful and fluid contacts between Anabaptists and Reformed Christians in East Frisia. Remarkably, some individuals seem to have moved effortlessly back and forth between the two communities.

The final three essays examine gender, family, and marriage—topics that especially interested Kingdon and on which he published extensively. Marjorie E. Plummer provides a fascinating account of the circumstances surrounding former Catholic nuns in the early years of the Lutheran Reformation. What, in particular, were their legal rights regarding the dowries they had originally brought to the convent? Close inspection of women’s testimony in court cases involving marriage permits William Bradford Smith to help us better understand women’s articulation of their honor and their understandings of marriage. Finally, William Naphy investigates accusations of infanticide brought against women in the Genevan criminal courts between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. In the process, we learn a great deal about the anxieties of unmarried pregnant women and society’s view of them.

Altogether, this is a lively and topical set of essays. They are well written and address significant questions much under discussion among scholars of early modern Europe. Their findings will be as stimulating and appealing to specialists in the field as they would have been to Kingdon. The editors—Amy Nelson Burnett, Kathleen Comerford, and Karin Maag—are to be congratulated for...