Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern World ed. by Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-LeBeau (review)

Charles H. Parker and Gretchen Starr-LeBeau have designed a sophisticated, nuanced examination of disciplinary institutions over time from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century and across space from Europe to Asia. The book contains twenty-five succinct essays arranged in eleven sections and three parts. The first eight sections address the topics: local contexts and regional variations, tribunals and jurisdictions, judges and shepherds, records, programs of moral and religious reform, victims as actors, negotiating penance, and gender. The last three concern extra-European areas and the decline of disciplinary institutions. Emphasis in each essay falls on the state of the art on each topic and area and suggestions for future research. Articulating a new overarching paradigm to replace the reigning hypothesis of the late twentieth century, confessionalization, is not this volume's purpose. Indeed, the term and the names of its proponents, Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, are hardly mentioned.

Historians tend to be splitters, each cultivating a limited area of expertise. The editors of Judging Faith, Punishing Sin asked those contributing essays to the first eight sections to function instead as lumpers—to attend to consistories or inquisitions across the western European map. The honor role of scholars who followed instructions includes (in order of appearance) Raymond Mentzer, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, Kimberly Lynn, Sara Beam, Edward Behrend-Martínez, Christian Grosse, Kim Siebenhüner, Timothy Fehler, Lu Ann Homza, Karen Spierling, Jeffrey Watt, and Allyson M. Poska. unfortunately, seven other contributors proved unwilling or unable to do so: they demonstrate no interest in or imperfect knowledge of tribunals other than the ones they work on. The most glaring example is an essay that pays attention exclusively to the consistory in the scottish town of Perth. In an ideal world, the editors would have compelled non-complying authors to try again, and if they failed to do so, replaced them. This did not happen. A less consequential shortcoming concerns geography. The four maps are too small and lacking in detail to be useful. Map 2 shows only a handful of the more than forty inquisition tribunals in italy; it does not include two Roman inquisition outposts, Avignon and Malta. sets of footnotes to each chapter vary in number and thoroughness, a problem partially remedied in the bibliographies at the end of the volume.

Otherwise, this book has much to offer. rather than a miscellaneous collection of articles, not all of them directly pertinent to a broad topic, it provides, at its best, a focused examination of the various facets of judging faith and punishing sin in the early modern world. copious cross-references enable readers to see the forest for the trees. Two sections are particularly impressive. In "Victims as Actors," Timothy Fehler (pp. 180–94) illustrates recent historians' emphasis on the agency of those summoned before consistories and the degree to which "preexisting quarrels, settling scores, and business (or romantic) rivalries" motivated accusations. He cites vivid examples both from records of the morals court on which his research has concentrated, Emden, and from those of Geneva and Wesel. Paying attention to all three inquisitions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian), Lu Ann Homza (pp. 193–204) describes a similar historiographical shift away from the victimization paradigm and toward emphasis on the accused's input into their trials, which included access to defense attorneys. "Gender on Trial: Attitudes toward Femininity and Masculinity" features Jeffrey Watt on consistories (pp. 229–39) and Alison Poska on inquisitions (pp. 240–49). Watt stresses the differences between morals courts not only in the overall proportions of men and women summoned but also in those charged with each type of offense. Poska emphasizes the degree to which inquisitions, conceived and staffed entirely by men, imposed elite male priorities on women and lower-class men. Both historians lay out thoughtful...