Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death by Richard Marius (review)

324BOOK REVIEWS the Palazzo dei Conservatori and the Episcopal Palace at Ostia to the development of the iconography of sixteenth-century Rome. She is strong on the relationship between painters such as Salviati and the Farnese family, giving clarity and context to a complex yet pivotal moment in papal patronage. A welcome emphasis is placed on the importance of prints to the dissemination of ideas, as both tools of stylistic influence and in the religio-political arena. She describes the fervor of anti-CathoUc sentiment that Cranach's Pope as Antichrist pamphlet could have whipped up in the German troops as they invaded Rome in 1527. Conversely, toward the end of the book, we see the Jesuits exploiting the medium of the print to depict the martyrs of their own society. Hall also takes pains to refer wherever possible to the art writing of the period, from Vasari through to Gilio, Paleotti, and Borghini. For this reader there is a fundamental flaw to this work, another legacy of the Freedbergian era and that is the application of ahistorical style labels to some (if not aU) of the art of this period. In "a note on style labels" Hall herself writes what might be described as a disclaimer/justification for this usage and assures the reader she has reduced the "labels used to a minimum" —but one can still count six. What is puzzling is that she provides pages of perfectly clear and engaging narrative with nary a mention of the word maniera, but then seems compeUed to stick it (and its various permutations) onto the art of CounterReformation Rome. The oratory of the confraternity of San Giovanni DecoUato falls particular victim to this trend—its artists embrace/reject maniera and counter-maniera at a bewildering pace. Evidence of an alternative approach— and proof that it is possible to write a lucid account of the art of CounterReformation Rome without recourse to such appeUations is in fact to be found in at least one chapter (Steven F. Ostrow's) of a forthcoming volume, Rome: Artistic Centers ofthe Renaissance, under HaU's editorship. This persistence in pigeon-holing through the style label is a pity because it reaUy does detract from what is otherwise a very useful account of the painting of this period. Caroline P Murphy University ofCalifornia, Riverside Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death. By Richard Marius. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp. xvii, 542. $35.00.) In a book that takes Luther's life and thought down to the time of the Bondage ofthe Will (1525), the late Professor Marius makes three claims. First, citing the works of Alberto Tenenti and others, he contends that the fear of death was widespread in Luther's era not because European men and women BOOK REVIEWS325 dreaded appearing before God in judgment, but because they dreaded that, contrary to the teachings of religion, death might really mean annihUation, extinction of consciousness. Second, Luther's dogmatic assertions can best be understood as an "anodyne" (p. 28) for a dread of death-as-annihilation that was, Luther-scholars to the contrary, his deepest and darkest fear. Third, the Reformation that sprang from Luther's dogma was a "catastrophe" in the history of western civUization: "for more than a century after Luther's death, Europe was strewn with corpses of people who would have lived normal Uves if Luther had never Uved at aU" (pp. xn, 485). The book's chief claim to originality is the idea that Luther deeply feared death-as-annihUation, but Marius offers little in the way of textual evidence. He does have in his favor the emphasis of Luther's own explanation of how he decided to become a monk when passing through a storm near Erfürt in 1505: "Suddenly surrounded by terror and the agony of death, I felt constrained to make my vow" (p. 44). But other arguments presented here are less convincing. In Luther's comment on the discussion of Christ's victory over death and sin in chapter 6 of the Epistle to the Romans, in the 1515 Lectures on Romans, Marius finds it significant that Luther does not...