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Common Knowledge 9.3 (2003) 543


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Jeffrey Freedman, The Poisoned Chalice(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 236 pp.

This rewarding book begins with an incident in September 1776 when someone supposedly poisoned the communion wine in Zurich's Protestant cathedral. It is a microhistorian's dream, allowing Freedman to explore the legal, political, and literary repercussions of the case. He is strong on the physical setting and writes well about dishonorable professions (suspicion initially fell on a grave digger) though rather too sketchily on the promising subject of purity and pollution. Best of all is the discussion of how the incident was taken up and framed by public opinion in German-speaking Europe. Freedman's limpid account of the exchange between Lavater and Nicolai raises major questions about the Enlightenment and the problem of evil. Yes, the book also tells a good story, as author, blurb writers, and publisher all insist; but I wish that Freedman had not worried (after just six pages) that his introduction might have "gone on too long and frightened off some potential readers with all its highfalutin talk about the limits of reason and the hermeneutic circle." Coraggio!

 


David Blackbourn

David Blackbourn is Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University. His books include The Long Nineteenth Century, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth- Century Germany, Populists and Patricians, and Class, Religion, and Local Politics in Wilhelmine Germany. He is completing a book titled The Conquest of Nature, on the transformation of the German landscape since the eighteenth century.

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