Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland by Raisa Maria Toivo (review)

The early modern Finn could be a devout Lutheran, yet sacrifice a lamb at a saint's holy day, and ensure a good harvest by drinking a toast to the deity called Ukko. The recent book by Dr. Raisa Maria Toivo, Academy Research Fellow at the University of Tampere, discusses these different aspects of early modern religiosity in Finland side by side. This kind of inspiring approach where official theology and lived religion are not seen as completely separate but rather as forming a dynamic whole, has recently gained popularity in studies discussing past practices and beliefs. Toivo's book is a valuable contribution to this discussion. Moreover, the fact that she observes early modern practices as meaningful in their historical context instead of simply relics from previous eras is one of the main merits of the study.

The book is divided into five chapters. Between the introduction and conclusion one finds the three main themes of the study: lived Lutheranism and the development of superstition, Catholic influence and magic in Finland, and Eastern Orthodox influence and its demonization in Finland. Already the table of contents of the book shows clearly that Toivo's approach is comprehensive as it attempts to encompass all aspects of early modern religion in Finland including competing faiths, theology, religious teaching, and everyday religious experience. Toivo is a historian, so the source material of the study consists of various written records such as accounts of episcopal visitations, manuals, confession books, model sermon collections, and circular letters. The voice of the lay people is heard through church and secular court records. As Toivo well recognizes, reliance on written records poses a challenge, since laypeople seldom recorded their religious experience in written form. Here the study could have benefited from the recent, slowly growing corpus of archaeological studies discussing material remains of historical religious practices in Finland. These are not yet well known outside their discipline, so the omission is understandable. Nevertheless, some quantitative information on the source material could have been helpful when assessing the representativeness of the sources.

The first main theme, lived Lutheranism and the development of superstition, presents the policies of the church in early modern Finland and then moves on to discuss the consequences of those policies on everyday lived religion. In early modern times Finland was part of the Swedish kingdom where Lutheranism was officially adopted in 1527 at the Diet of Västerås. Toivo presents the shifts in church policies in the context of Sweden's changing foreign policy and internal situation. She explains how the Lutheran church defined itself not only in contrast to Catholicism but also Calvinism. Meanwhile, the attention of authorities also turned towards lay practices that could be interpreted as unorthodox. Here Toivo notes the use of prayers in the vernacular in healing and other rituals, and the tradition of Lutheran pilgrimage and offering-churches. Laypeople understood these practices as acts of devotion, but they were problematic, even blasphemous, in eyes of authorities. Still, the fact that many of these practices survived in spite of the campaign to educate the populace was, according to Toivo, because the Lutheran confessionalization defined itself more strongly against antiritualistic Calvinism than Catholicism.

The second theme observes Catholic influence after the Reformation. This chapter is quite interesting since it discusses the little-known CounterReformation and its influence in Finland. Some aspects that have been previously discussed as survival of medieval Catholic traditions are here shown to be products of the Counter-Reformation efforts. The very locally (in Lower Satakunta) appearing rosary cult is a likely example of this. While saint's day celebrations occurring throughout the period are less likely to be connected to the Counter-Reformation, Toivo places also these practices in the context of the Lutheran period and everyday life. Here she states the important observation that laypeople were not content with a...