Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation ed. by Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (review)

BOOK REVIEWS765 taining Christian standards in Gaeldom in the early and central Middle Ages.Jefferies ' findings indicate that they continued valuable to the end. Limited in power of collation, archbishops by inquisitions could "screen" candidates. Concubinage seems to have been at about the general European level, the higher the more remote from the archbishop's glance. Primates in dealing with it hewed, of course, to the Roman line. Religious appear in ancillary role, especially as preachers. Given the Irish monastic tradition and the work of friars (e.g., in Dowdall's friary ofArdee) in providing poor and sick relief, something might have been made of direct pastoral care by the orders. The understanding one had from Gwynn of Cromer as reluctant reformer and of Dowdall (this supported by Bradshaw) as good conservative Catholic is here confirmed. Edwardian Protestantism did not appeal to the laity, whose willingness to build and repair churches had, however, been sapped. Beneficiaries of monastic spoils were reluctant to invest in a Catholic restoration that might not last. Jefferies' study does not extend into the Elizabethan period, but he stresses two important factors which prevented the Reformation from making progress in Armagh: failure by the crown (itself a large impropriator) to finance churches and livings, and the lack of attraction these poor livings held for Protestant missionaries. But the inherent strengths of the pre-Reformation Church have to be counted in estimating why the Reformation failed "to strike deeper roots." This study is closely argued and attractively laid out, if the print is small. Financial and other complexities are admirably clarified. But more editorial rigor was wanted to assist the transition from thesis to book. There is over-much repetition : for instance,we are told six times (twice on one page) thatWilliam Hamlin was vicar of St. Peter's, Drogheda. Punctuation is uncertain, while syntax is too often faulty (e.g., pp. 17, 66). There is no guide to abbreviations; citation of sources is too inconsistent; the bibliography is slipshod, and the index far from complete. Richard FitzRalph is canonized (pp. 146, 162); and "rights" appears for "rites" (p. 166). Such minor irritants apart,Jefferies has taught us much; and this productive scholar's work is ongoing. John J. Silke Portnablagh, Co. Donegal Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation. Edited by Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner. (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1996. Pp. x, 294.) Accepted theories about the growth of tolerance through the Renaissance and Reformation are corrected in this collection of essays by noted Reformation scholars. From Britain through Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to Italy and Spain, these scholars examine the attitudes ofProtestant churches toward other 766BOOK REVIEWS forms of Protestantism and, in several instances, toward Catholicism. The overall impression is not surprising to anyone familiar with the disputes that turned Europe into a bloody battlefield during the late sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century. Ole Peter Grell (p. 5) illustrates the sort of change that occurred in Luther himself: early on, Luther argued that religion was a matter of conscience and individual responsibility;the use offorce was unjust. But almost immediately he called in secular powers to deal with blasphemy and sedition and so began the persecution of the Anabaptists that continued relentlessly through the century. It soon became manifest that churches backed by political power became intolerant and did not hesitate to engage secular power to punish offenders against true religion;minority churches, on the other hand, argued for tolerance. But before one can discuss tolerance, one must know what the word meant in the sixteenth century. It meant "bearing with" someone or something that one finds unpleasant, as in "I found the food barely tolerable, but I shall tolerate it if I must."Today's notion of tolerance as acknowledging the right of all to religious liberty was far from the minds ofsixteenth-century churchfolk. Bob Scribner argues effectively that both early Lutheran and Erasmian notions of tolerance "were all overridden in the course of the early Reformation" (p. 34). Scribner then outlines nine different types of tolerance in the sixteenth century , while Diarmaid MacCulloch's discussion is based on four attitudes of a dominant church toward minority groups: "concord...