The Role of Anticlericalism in the Reformation

THE ROLE OF ANTICLERICALISM IN THE REFORMATION Review Article Nelson H. Minnich* Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Edited by Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman. Second, revised edition. [Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, Volume Ii.] (Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1994. Pp. xii, 706. $197.25.) The forty articles contained in this volume were originally presented as papers at an International Colloquium on "Late Medieval and Early Modern Anticlericalism " organized by Heiko A. Oberman and held at the University of Arizona at Tucson, September 20-22, 1990, under the formal direction of Peter A. Dykema,who helped to edit this collection, to supply it with a"thematic" and a supplemental bibliography (pp. 671-680 and 705-706), and to translate into English Hans-Christoph Rublack's contribution. The first edition was published in 1993. That the papers were subsequently revised is evident in the crossreferences : e.g.,William Monter agreeing with Silvana Seidel Menchi, Ronnie PoChia Hsia raising questions about Rublack's methodology, and Thomas Brady faulting Hans-Jürgen Goertz's thesis. The contributors are among the leading scholars in the field, coming mostly from Germany and America, the host institution in Tucson providing four. A quarter of the volume is in German, the rest in English, and of the English-language articles four are translations from German and Italian. Only one author, John Van Engen, has contributed two independent studies. Although Goertz is the author of but one article in this collection, his name reappears as various scholars take issue with his positions. While all the articles are focused on anticlericalism, some provide sweeping surveys and historiographical reviews; others concentrate on a particular figure or region or incident. Two enrich their presentations by including transcriptions of archival materials as appendices.Although most of the articles are original pieces, they are frequently closely related to earlier work done by the "The author is grateful to Professor Elisabeth G. Gleason for having offered valuable suggestions for improving an earlier draft of this review. 452 BY NELSON H. MINNICH453 authors, so that they provide something of an overview of the various methodologies and themes pursued by contemporary scholars. The volume treats the period 1300-1700 and is concerned primarily with Germany and the Protestant Reformation, although some consideration is also given to the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, England, Bohemia, Spain, and France and to the Catholic clergy apart from their being the targets of evangelical criticism. The Tucson conference papers provide a good glimpse at the state of contemporary scholarship on the issue of how anticlericalism contributed to the Reformation. Pioneering and controversial work on this topic was done in the previous decade by Goertz, who argued that the primary animator of what became the Protestant Reformation was anticlericalism. Luther's contribution to the movement was to supply theological formulations and justifications,such as his teachings on faith, grace, and the Bible that eliminated the need for mediators and his expansive reinterpretation of the traditional doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Leading historians have joined in exploring the topic of anticlericalism from a variety of perspectives and many of these scholars have presented their most recent findings at the Tucson conference in an effort to clarify what role anticlericalism played in the major transformation of Western European society during the Reformation era. The obvious problem that confronts any scholar working on this theme is how to define the fragile, central operative term "anticlericalism." Does any criticism of the clergy constitute anticlericalism? What other factors must go into the definition? Has the term evolved over time so that criticism of the clergy in the medieval period primarily urged the conformity of clerics to an apostolic, sacerdotal, celibate ideal, while among early Protestant Reformers central elements of that ideal and its flawed practitioners were attacked and a new model proposed, and in the nineteenth century emphasis was on eliminating from the public sphere the influence of clerics and of religion itself? Although the conference papers give evidence of a diversity of working conceptions, the participants in the end hammered out a consensus definition in the following formulation, as reported by Heiko A. Oberman in his introductory essay: Anticlericalism is...