Collaboration, Conflict, and Continuity in the Reformation: Essays in Honour of James M. Estes on His Eightieth Birthday ed. by Konrad Eisenbichler (review)

Scholars of the German Reformation know the name James M. Estes. He is perhaps best recognized for his book Christian Magistrate and State Church: The Reforming Career of Johannes Brenz (Toronto, 1982), revised twenty-five years later as Christian Magistrate and Territorial Church: Johannes Brenz and the German Reformation (Toronto, 2007). In this seminal study, Estes brought to light the vitally important contributions of German Reformer Johannes Brenz (1499–1570) in the spread of evangelical reform and its relationship to political power in the Holy Roman Empire. In so doing, Estes helped German Reformation scholarship move its focus beyond Martin Luther to consider how other major leaders influenced the Reformation. In particular, Estes highlighted Brenz’s thinking on magisterial oversight of evangelical churches (which, in Estes’s account, significantly differed from Luther’s). Two published volumes of Brenz’s texts were edited and translated into English for the first time by Estes, and a wealth of his articles speak to the time and care he has taken to study the hitherto neglected German reformer. Perhaps less well known to scholars is Estes’s career-long impact upon the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, which has helped to make it into one of the world’s leading research institutions of the period. Estes has also supplied integral leadership in the University of Toronto’s Collected Works of Erasmus project over the years, including his scholarly annotations of many volumes, with several more to come. In short, it is fitting that a Festschrift be published for Estes, and the contributions to this volume are an appropriate dedication to his notable career.

There is no single topical focus to this edited volume: essays range from personal accounts of working with Estes to an analysis of the famous Luther and Desiderius Erasmus debate over free will and its aftermath. Yet there is an underlying unity to the collection: like Estes’s own work, each chapter demonstrates that careful scholarship, sometimes on a one-time event or on reform in a particular locale, can have major implications on how we see the Reformation in general.

The essays are divided into six sections. The first section provides two brief personal accounts of Estes as a scholar and teacher. The second section, “Friendship and Collaboration,” features studies of Brenz, Philipp Melanchthon, Wolfgang Capito, and Erasmus. The third section, “Reforming the People and the Church,” includes studies of reform in France, the Rhineland, Italy, and Brenz’s Württemberg. A collection of essays on Reformation polemics follows, including a study of the thought of Simon Musaeus, Luther’s student, and one of Erasmus’s contributions to early Eucharistic controversies in the Reformation. The fifth section, “Catholic Opponents of Erasmus and Luther,” examines the reaction of the Augustinians, the Jesuits, and the Paris theologians to church reform. The final section, “The Search for Religious Peace,” features a comparative essay on religious peace agreements of the early-modern period. The contributors form an impressive list of scholars, and their fine chapters do not disappoint. Several essays will certainly be recognized as significant contributions to the field. In all, the volume is a proper Festschrift for a prominent scholar.