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Reviews 185 recipes and the way in which they were served and eaten. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the editors' concentration on the relationship between the 'sciences' of cookery and medicine with medieval humoural theories. With each recipe not only do the editors present the original (untranslated) text, but also various sources detailing the potential health or harm giving qualities of the main ingredients. Similarly, a great deal of attention is given to the preparation of meals for fast days, which, if not of great import to the modern diner, still make fascinating reading in terms of the versatility demanded of the medieval chef. While the editors concur with those of Pleyn Delit in recommending the use of modern kitchen implements, they differ in suggesting that presenting a banquet situation as 'authentic' as the food you prepare is not outside the m o d e m chefs capabilities. Early French Cookery is a very full and scholarly book as well as being a lot of fun. M y only problems with the book were that occasionally the kind of illustrations supplied in Pleyn Delit might have been useful—I could by no means imagine how m y Alouyaux (p. 89) might end up looking like birds. For the interested reader who picks up the book as a whole, it can become rather repetitive, as the introductions to new sections tend to stress the same points, about humours for example, but this doubtless provides the reader taking a casual dip with the fullest information at each possible point. What comes best through both books is the tireless enthusiasm of the editors both for the middle ages, and for bringing the middle ages to the wider community, for which I think they are all to be commended. Pleyn Delit and Early French Cookery are both worthwhile additions to a m o d e m kitchen. Early French Cookery would also make an excellent addition to a medieval historian's library. Jennifer Smith Department of History University of Western Australia Hillerbrand, Hans J., Editor in Chief, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, Oxford and N e w York, Oxford University Press, 4 vols., 1996; pp. 2,004; R.R.P. £295.00, AUS$690.00. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation is somewhat of an event in Reformation studies: it is thefirstattempt to survey thefieldin recent history. There have been many previous reference works dealing with Reformation theology, Church history, and the state of religion 'on the eve' of the 186 Reviews Reformation, principally in German, but they all had a rather narrow theological slant. This reference work is in a class of its own. As its chief editor, Hans Hillerbrand, makes clear in the Preface: Th[e] issue has bearing on how The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation was conceptualised. The question posed was 'What do we mean when w e speak of the Reformation?' This reference work was not conceived as an encyclopedia of the sixteenth century nor as an encyclopedia of a Protestant Reformation narrowly defined. As used in the title, 'Reformation' is a convenient label to denote nothing more, but also nothing less, than the rich diversity of all religious life in sixteenth-century Europe. . . . The working assumption for The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation was that the Reformation consisted of the broad phenomenon of religion and all its societal ramifications in the sixteenth century. The encyclopedia does not, therefore, confine itself to what is commonly called the 'Protestant Reformation.' It should be clear that the cohesiveness of the encyclopedia depends not so m u c h on a traditional understanding of the Reformation as on the fact that the very importance of the Reformation as traditionally defined also increases the significance of a wealth of other phenomena in the sixteenth century whose ties to the Reformation may be indistinct and obscure, (pp. x-xi) This is, in my opinion, both the book's major strength and somewhat of a weakness: it mirrors accurately the current state of research in Reformation studies, including many aspects of the Reformation right 'on the cutting edge of knowledge', but it does not go beyond it. It does...

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