Wunderbare Erscheinungen, Frauen und katholische Frömmigkeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert ed. by Irmtraud Götz v. Olenhusen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS485 themselves, the benefits of church reform were also uncertain. WhUe nonresidence and pluralism were gradually reduced, they could StUl face significant financial difficulties. Increasing residence by incumbents limited opportunities for curates. The general trend was for Anglicanism to become more of a denomination and less of a national church, better organized but more limited in its popular appeal.The change, however, was a relative one, and traditional loyalties only slackened slowly. The argument is a stimulating one especiaUy insofar as it serves to question the importance of church party identifications in grass-roots Anglicanism, and to Uluminate the tensions between lay and clerical religiosity. An authoritative coverage of the ground suggested by the title would, however, have required more extensive engagement with material relating to other parts of the country , and above all, to urban and industrial areas. Readers of this journal wiU also be struck by the lack of any discussion of the relationship of the Church of England to CathoUcism. Nevertheless,within its limitations, this is an important and suggestive book. John Wolffe The Open University, United Kingdom Wunderbare Erscheinungen. Frauen und katholische Frömmigkeit im 19. und 20.Jahrhundert. Edited by Irmtraud Götz v. Olenhusen. (Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1995. Pp. 252.) The seven essays in this book deal with various forms of female religiosity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and with the reactions of church and state officials to the women involved. David Blackbourn's essay introduces German readers to "Marpingen," his weU-known 1993 study of Marian apparitions during the Bismarck era. Many readers will be surprised that so many pious German women experienced visions and stigmatisms, something we have grown accustomed to associating with Mediterranean Catholicism. But, as Blackbourn points out, there is another side to the "modern,""organized," church of Germany—the everyday, religious mentality of its people. The essays of Wunderbare Erscheinungen unearth new discoveries and pose some interesting questions. It becomes apparent that during the nineteenth century visionaries and stigmatics found ready acceptance within the Church. They were visited by major personalities of the day: Josef Görres, Clemens Brentano, Cardinal von Reisach, to mention a few. But by the twentieth century they could expect the opposite.Third-Reich bishops like Michael Buchberger (Regensburg) andWilhelm Berning (Osnabrück) discouraged public interest in persons likeThérèse Neumann. Likewise, visionaries and stigmatics found that civU authorities' attitudes toward them varied from time to time and place to place: cold in Protestant Prus- 486BOOK REVIEWS sia and equaUy cool in Catholic but liberal Freiburg. It was better to be a Bavarian visionary or, in the Hitler era, to be a stigmatic in a parish whose pastor was not berating the Nazis. A number of the essays pose the question of the feminization of religion. Did Germany experience the same process as France during the nineteenth century ? The authors would probably not agree on an answer except that some feminization did take place.The fact that over ninety percent of the stigmatics were women suggests this. Essayist Rudolf Schlögl offered additional convincing evidence of feminization in his essay, which reminded this reader of the work of Maurice Agulhon decades ago on Mediterranean religious culture. Did feminization take the form predominantly of a cult of Mary? This seems unlikely, although a few essayists developed this line ofthought.The prevalence of the stigmata itself signals us that many pious women did not concentrate on Mary Norbert Busch's essay on the Heart ofJesus cult, which developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, furnishes further evidence. The Church's reaction to the Heart of Jesus cult—and therefore to the feminization of religion—is fascinatingly developed by Busch in "Die Feminisierung der Frömmigkeit." Depictions of the Savior in this cult point to a coquettish, "kissable" Jesus who would attract women emotionally, even eroticaUy (page 209). So strong was this movement that German clergy themselves underwent an adrogynous transformation during the second half of the nineteenth century : shaven face and soutane. Only when the church saw the danger in women's privatization of religion, did it react by taking charge of the Heart of Jesus cult. Readers of Wunderbare Erscheinungen...