Tradition and Authority in the Reformation by Scott H. Hendrix (review)

798book reviews use the same language for men as women (e.g.,"counseling or defending heretical doctrines in privy conventicles or assembUes"). A few stronger women in the movement (AUce Harding, Hawisse Mone, Margery Baxter) are quite possibly not given then due in McSheffrey's emphasis on the private nature of their actions. McSheffrey argues that LoUard literacy rates support assessments of a low level of Uteracy in late medieval England, but what low and high Uteracy means she does not say. In my work, which she cites as arguing for high Uteracy, her figures and mine (an estimated 25% male Uteracy rate) converge nicely. Some of her conclusions—husbands had greater influence on wives than the reverse (p. 92), neighbors were particular targets of proselytizing (p. 75), and her larger conclusion (p. 136) that women could stretch their gender roles only when their social status gave them some precedence over men—require more evidence than the sources presently aUow. The evidence for women is more suggestive than conclusive (partly because, as McSheffrey notes, authorities were less interested in them); what evidence there is represents only a proportion of the actual cases, and the information provided by legal documents is often spare. More evidence from LoUard writings might strengthen her conclusions . Her effort to close with comparative conclusions regarding orthodox devotional practices and their attractiveness to female piety needs further fleshing out. Overall, this is an intriguing but inconclusive study that provides important support to an argument offered by others studying continental heresies, viz., that medieval heresies,upon close examination, do not appear to have provided women with greater leadership roles or outlets for their reUgiosity than did orthodox religious practices. Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran Georgetown University Early Modern European Tradition and Authority in the Reformation. By Scott H. Hendrix. [CoUected Studies Series, CS 535.] (Brookfield,Vermont:Variorum,Ashgate Publishing Co. 1996. Pp. xii, 330. $89.95.) Seventeen previously published articles and chapters are organized around the topics of Scripture and the Fathers, Church, Society, and Luther's Authority; fourteen ofthe seventeen are from the 1980's and early '90's.Most ofthe essays focus on two figures in the German Reformation: Martin Luther and Urbanus Rhegius (1489-1541). "Luther Against the Background of the History of BibUcal Interpretation." Protestant exegetes did not mark a clear new era in bibUcal interpretation. book reviews799 Luther never gave up aUegory. Luther maintained a grammatical and theological approach that must be appUed to (his) "today." The contrast between Luther and the tradition is one of balance. The study of Luther and medieval exegesis has continued the same view of Hendrix (of 1983), namely, that there is not a radical departure with Luther from medieval approaches; this holds true for areas other than exegesis as weU. "The Authority of Scripture at Work: Luther's Exegesis of the Psalms." Seven rules indicate how Luther understood sola scriptum: learn to copy the model (trust in the strength of the Lord), dUigently inspect the text (even every word), apply the tools of interpretation (languages), relate the text to experience (palestra), pray for the inspiration of the Spirit, seek out the central core, acknowledge the inexhaustibility of Scripture. The approach to Scripture is likened to the approach to a work of art,which, while Hendrix caUs this an "imperfect Ulustration," I would caU a distraction. Rhegius was a Protestant preacher in Augsburg (1524-1530) and superintendent in Lüneburg (1530 to his death in 1541). In two articles ("Use of Scripture "; "Use of the Church Fathers") Hendrix tries to distance Rhegius from his nineteenth-century (Lutheran) biographer, Gerhard Uhlhorn, when it comes to what Hendrix caUs Rhegius's "ecclesiasticle" or "apostolic" principle of Scripture interpretation,which goes beyond sola scriptura to include at least the aid of the fathers. Uhlhorn says Rhegius did not practice what he preached; Hendrix says he did. Both Uhlhorn and Hendrix see appeal to Church Fathers as a deviation from sola scriptura. Hardly. Sola scriptura is not bibücism; with Luther it was a short-hand polemical phrase that needs the fuller sentence in context to be understood (Scripture alone and not the pope). Luther went beyond Scripture to articles of faith, the...