Martyrs are Good to Think With

Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. By Brad S. Gregory. [Harvard Historical Studies, 134.] (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1999. Pp. xvi, 528. $49.95.)

"This is my desire: may the love that unites you to me be such that you may be able to act like those Christian women of the first ages who, with eager desire and joy, led their own sons to martyrdom; she indeed thought herself happy who was worthy to have a martyr son." So wrote the young Cesare Baronio, future father of Roman Catholic ecclesiastical history, in a letter to his mother of December 3, 1563, in which he asked her to pray to God for him so that he might become another martyr like Stephen or Lawrence. "What to the modern mind seems unthinkable is for the modern historian a challenge" (p. 74). Gregory is as uncompromising as his protagonists in raising himself to this considerable challenge and it is a measure of the profundity of his critical empathy, matched by his immensely learned understanding, that he largely succeeds. For make no mistake, this is a magnificent book, whose methodological daring, cross-confessional range, first-rate texture of erudition, and clarity of exposition make it essential reading for anyone who works on early modern religious culture.

Like all truly original and important books, this one has a deeply felt informing principle, with which one might have a measure of disagreement (see below), but which undeniably imparts to the whole a level of sustained intellectual engagement with and a thorough understanding of its subject matter that is consistently and richly rewarding. This may perhaps best be expressed in terms of the author's intention "not only to make a historical contribution to our understanding of early modern Christianity, but also a methodological contribution to how historians approach it" (p. 2). Central to this endeavor is Gregory's refusal to have anything to do with attempts to explain martyrs' actions in anything other than religious terms. As he puts it with characteristic pith and force: "Not to take such people [martyrs] on their own terms fails utterly to comprehend them, the character of their actions and the basis of their lives" (p. 8) and later: "If we do not 'get' martyrdom, it is because we do not 'get' the martyrs' religiosity" (p. 101).

It is not to denigrate in any way Gregory's considerable achievement to say that the originality of his book lies perhaps not so much in its parts--centered on his detailed and invariably illuminating accounts of the martyrological traditions of the Protestant, Anabaptist, and Roman Catholic confessions (although that pertaining to the second has surely not received such a perceptive and engaging treatment in English), but rather in its whole--a cross-confessional comparative approach underpinned by the intellectual energy and commitment to consider the "voluminous rancor of sixteenth-century controversialists [as] . . . evidence to be understood" (p. 12), rather than as undigestible prejudice to be dismissively explained away. (In this respect, his command of scripture and sensitivity to biblical quotation is particularly impressive and appropriate.) Gregory also reveals himself to be a fine sometime student of the late Heiko Oberman, not only in his commitment to understand before presuming to interpret, but also through his provision of an excellent chapter on the late medieval context. "Just as the Reformation did not emerge ex nihilo with Luther, the sixteenth-century Renaissance of Christian martyrdom did not come from nowhere" (p. 31). This enables us to understand the apparent paradox of the thorough integration of martyr saints in the spiritual life in a period when actual martyrdoms were conspicuous by their almost complete absence. Here Gregory makes deft use of an excellent choice of illustrations to underline the degree to which martyrs were thoroughly integrated into the cult of saints during this period--for example, of the fourteen "Holy Helpers" only St. Giles was not a martyr. He also shows...