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BOOK REVIEWS101 that may have influenced him. He juxtaposes people and their arguments, not attempting to provide simple answers to complicated questions, and reiterates and outlines the main debates often. Butler leaves die reader with suggestions about several possible locations of Becket's bones. Teachers in research mediods courses could use the book as a model of careful and endiusiastic scholarship. Although graduate students interested in historical research might profit more from it, the general reader wUl find the book, as the author Eamon Duffy says, "a gripping story and a good read." M. Diane Krantz University of California, Davis The Phoenix and the Flame: Catalonia and the Counter Reformation. By Henry Kamen. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1993. Pp. xvi, 527. $45.00.) Can one say that the Counter-Reformation succeeded if forty years after the CouncU of Trent it was stUl possible to find cathedral canons trying to murder their own reforming bishop? Is die faUure of the Council of Trent made evident by the remark made by a Spaniard to a Jesuit superior: "I reaUy don't know why the fathers of die company go to Japan and the Philippines to look for lost souls, when we have here so many in die same condition who do not know whether or not they believe in God"? A decade ago Gerald Strauss generated a significant controversy when he proposed in Luther's House ofLearning (Baltimore, 1978) that die German Reformation had failed in many ways. Henry Kamen has now made a similar claim about Catholic attempts at reform widi this impressive study of the Counter-Reformation in Catalonia. Whether or not mis book causes a comparable debate remains to be seen. On page after page, Kamen detaüs the myriad ways in which the objectives of reforming clergy were frustrated in Catalonia. As there is no denying the fact diat die CouncU of Trent brought about significant changes in Catalonia, argues Kamen, there is also no denying die fact that "generations were to pass before die aspirations of Trent could be implemented, if indeed they were ever put into practice" (p. 431). The greatest change, according to Kamen, took place in die realm of worship, in the standardization of the liturgy and in the vivification of die sacraments of penance and marriage. Almost everything else that has been traditionaUy touted as a success—the reform of die clergy, die improvement oflay morals, the intensification of piety—turns out to be an Ulusion. Stereotype after stereotype is demolished: even die dreaded Spanish Inquisition turns out to be a paper tiger. Only the Jesuits seem to weadier Kamen's acid test, standing out as die one undeniable success story of die Catholic Reformation. The weight of the evidence marshaled by Kamen is staggering. Nonedieless, 102BOOK REVIEWS as was die case widi Strauss in Germany, die nature of the sources used wUl undoubtedly raise questions about the validity of the author's conclusions. In one important way, Kamen's perspective is simUar to that of the Tridentine reformers diemselves. It is assumed throughout the study that the process of reform took place from die top down, as some sort of spiritual Reaganomics. Drawing upon archival and printed sources that reflect die reforming clergy's frustrations may provideTüs with a clearer view from one vantage point—and a most important one at that—but perhaps not from other vantage points. The search for indices of change and proofs of cause and effect is itself a narrowing of vision, as William Christian so aptly put it in his Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain (Princeton, 1981, p. 4): budding a picture ofrural Catholicism from inquisition files—or, in this case, from visitation reports and reforming treatises—"would be like trying to get a sense ofeveryday American political life from FBI files." Though some may take issue with the larger conclusions reached in this book, few, if any, wUl be able to contradict Kamen's evidence. By focusing on the small rural town of Mediona, Kamen is able to analyze virtuaUy aU attempts at reform, not just in this tiny community, but in Catalonia, in Spain, and in Cadiolic Europe as a whole...

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