Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo Nischan (review)

Bodo Nischan was a fixture on the campus of Eastern Carolina University, where he taught history for his entire career. He loved the school and his students loved him. He was also a constant figure at scholarly meetings like the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. He was a consummate scholar, whose crowning achievement was the 1994 publication of Prince, People, and Confessions: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg. He was a mentor to many and a friend to all who knew him. In April 2001, he was diagnosed with a fast-progressing cancer of the brain. On 21 October 2001, he succumbed to the disease. He was sixty-two. East Carolina honored Bodo's work there through a lecture series and by posthumously awarding him a distinguished professorship. The Society for Reformation Research honored their longtime (people cannot seem to remember who hadthe job before him!) secretary through the creation of the Bodo Nischan Awardfor Scholarship, Civility, and Service. Bodo would have been honored by the appointment at ECU and humbled by the award designation; but, I think he would have been most happy with the publication of this volume in his memory.

Bodo embraced the confessionalization thesis early in its development for two fundamental reasons. He believed that confessionalization allowed him to take seriously the impact and import of religion and theology on early modern life without falling into the trap of confessional historiography. Thus, it is fitting that the volume begins with perhaps the best and most thorough introduction to the genesis and development of the idea of confessionalization in English. Along the way, Tom Brady helpfully allows the reader to contextualize Nischan's contribution to the field. Brady is followed by Heinz Schilling, one of the fathers of confessionalization, and Harm Klueting. Both essays further explore the historiography of the confessional era. Klueting's article is perhaps the most interesting inclusion in the volume. Klueting argues that the idea of a "Second Reformation," is deeply flawed and ahistorical. It is, perhaps, unusual for a Festschrift to contain an essay that challenges one of the central tenets of the honoree, but Bodo would have welcomed the challenge because he enjoyed scholarly engagement. He would, I believe, have had some critical thoughts of his own. Nischan's work demonstrates that whether or not people in the sixteenth century used the phrase "Second Reformation," the idea does reflect the motivations and implications of the introduction of Calvinism in previously Lutheran principalities.

The second section of the book looks at confessionalization in the German principalities. Markus Wriedt, Robert Kolb, Luther Peterson, Susan Karant-Nunn, Robin Barnes, Terence McIntosh, Thomas Robisheaux, Bruce Gordon, and Marc Forster examine all aspects of life in early modern Germany. Kolb's article is an intimate look at how the pressures of confessional unity played out in the lives of two theologians (Joachim Mörlin and Martin Chemnitz) whose work was always one-half pastoral and one-half political. Peterson highlights the long neglected Johann Pfeffinger and his role in the life of Albertine Saxony. What becomes apparent in this essay is the fact that those who overlook Pfeffinger do so at the danger of missing an important link the development of confessionalization as state-building.

The third section is perhaps the most exciting. One of the major criticisms of the confessionalization thesis has been its lack of utility beyond the Germany. Here Raymond Mentzer, Mack Holt, and Peter Iver Kaufmann look at the confessionalization impulse in France and England, while Lance Lazar examines the role of Jesuits in Catholic lands. What one notices in this section is that confessionalization as defined by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard must be bent to accommodate the social, political, and cultural differences between Germany and other European nations. Sometimes the thesis bends easily; other times it borders on...