Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe (review)

This collection of nine essays purports to offer a discussion of "superstition," both as a historiographical concept and as a matter of religious debate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While one might presume such a loaded term to be a historiographical dead horse, Parish and Naphy warn against its lingering power. Unfortunately, their introduction confuses as much as it clarifies; they fail to supply solid conceptual background such as one might gain from Dieter Harmening's Superstitio. Moreover, the essays gathered here have no common theme beyond a concern with Reformation issues; they do not meaningfully explore the scope and significance of this general concept among early modern thinkers and polemicists. Basic questions regarding links between Reformation attacks on "superstition" and emerging Enlightenment attitudes remain unraised. Hence despite scattered points of value, the volume as a whole is disappointing.

Bridget Heal's essay on the Virgin Mary in Protestant Nuremberg shows that beneath apparent continuity, a genuine reform of Marian devotion occurred. Characterizing such shifts in understanding as "word games," the editors come close to misrepresenting Heal's perspective. Jason Nye discusses efforts by Catholic reformers of Rottweil to build a sense of Catholic identity by highlighting differences between traditional sacramental and devotional practices and those of Protestants. Maria Craciun argues that the ill-fated Jesuit mission to Transylvania was "militantly restorationist" rather than genuinely reformist. Both Nye and Craciun find Catholic reformers who preferred to denounce Protestantism as heresy rather than as superstition, a conscious perversion of truth rather than ignorant idolatry, but the editors muddy this distinction by maintaining that "heresy" was for Catholics "'superstition'... in the broadest sense." Eric Nelson argues that the "Jesuit legend," the dark image of a conspiratorial order threatening all Christendom, was created by both Catholics and Protestants. For Protestants, however, the threat had apocalyptic implications, while for Catholic critics it was mainly political and social. Are we meant to conclude that Protestant versions were more "superstitious?"

Where "superstition" is a synonym for "myth," Protestant prophecy offers easy targets. Ute Lotz-Heumann finds increasingly explicit references to Archbishop James Ussher's presumed special prophetic gifts in the generation following his death (1656), and finds that such imagery "could be used to heighten Protestant national identity in times of crisis" (p. 129). Dale W. Johnson's essay on John Knox is predicated on the misleading assertion that "almost without exception" the Protestant reformers believed that prophetic dreams and similar secondary revelations had ceased with the age of the apostles. Johnson's ahistorical approach leads him to stress the "inconsistency" between the doctrine of sola scriptura and Knox's claims to prophetic insight. Nowhere is there any hint of possible connections between Protestant prophetic mentalities and the evolution of European self-criticism.

Luc Racaut challenges the argument of Denis Crouzet that in sixteenth-century France, "Protestants rejected astrology whereas Catholics embraced it" (p. 154). No doubt Crouzet's picture is oversimplified; yet Racaut's denial of significant confessional differences regarding astrology is untenable. He points out that each side accused the other of reviving ancient superstitions, but fails to analyze adequately the bases of these perceptions. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart wishes to show that Protestant demonologists were no more enlightened than their Catholic counterparts: the variances lay "in the details and emphases, not in the principal thesis" (p. 182). But the key questions are precisely about matters of emphasis. Finally, Peter Marshall's discussion of ghosts in Protestant England acknowledges the Reformation's attempt to eradicate such beliefs, but argues that in daily experience and pastoral practice ghosts posed serious problems; neither learned nor popular culture was ready to abandon the traditional imagery altogether.

The volume is partly successful as a contribution to the rapidly-expanding historiography showing that early modern reformers met with countless frustrations in their campaigns against all they considered unscriptural and superstitious. But these essays do not help sort out the various meanings of the term...