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The Catholic Historical Review 92.4 (2006) 659-660

Reviewed by
Steven G. Reinhardt
University of Texas at Arlington
Ritual in Early Modern Europe. By Edward Muir. Second edition. [New Approaches to European History, 33.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 320. $70.00 clothbound; $24.99 paperback.)

In 1997 Edward Muir published the first edition of Ritual in Early Modern Europe, an influential and much-lauded volume in Cambridge's distinguished series of textbooks, New Approaches in European History, designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. The author has updated the current text in the light of recent work, especially research relating to women, and deflects postmodern criticism that doubts whether much can be learned by modern historians unable to witness past rituals directly and forced to rely on the fallible memories and mediated texts left by contemporaries. Moreover, the new edition examines how Europeans' understanding of their own rituals was affected by their growing awareness of the ritualized behavior of other peoples. Muir blends the work of dozens of scholars laboring in the fields of Renaissance and Reformation studies with his own research into civic rituals, vendetta, and factions in Italy to argue that Europe between 1400 and 1700 experienced a revolution in ritual theory and practice. He offers at the end of each chapter suggestions for further reading, distinguishing between works suitable for novices and those better suited to specialists. For the former, the suggestions are an ideal initiation into ritual studies; for the latter, they are a valuable compendium of scholarship in the field.

Although his work is informed by recent anthropological theory and ritual studies, Muir nonetheless avoids the charge of "presentism" by dedicating himself to recapturing the past. He asserts that his goal is not only to understand the past but also "to respect the dead, to honor how different they were from us rather than celebrate their ability to anticipate us or our ability to surpass them" (p. 11). Therefore, he succeeds in transporting us back to a world in which rituals were experienced by participants who believed that rites actually accomplished and not just represented something. Therein lies the strength of his work, for Muir (who informs the reader that he was raised a Mormon) convincingly explains why Catholicism relied so heavily on rituals. He argues that medieval Christianity should not be seen primarily as a set of beliefs but as a set of ritualized practices that pertained to supernatural forces and beings. In other words, religion was an essential part of a wider cultural response to an intimidating and mysterious world that it hoped to explain, order, and manipulate. Through the use of repetitive rituals that served either as a mirror or model for society, Catholicism not only made sense of a nonsensical world but also provided emotional solace for the otherwise forlorn faithful.

Muir begins by succinctly introducing the anthropological debates concerning ritual theory. He argues that his main concern is not to arrive at the "true definition" of ritual but instead to determine how the concept can be used as a heuristic device. Muir presents his materials in three major sections: [End Page 659] The first two examine the pre-Reformation, Catholic world in which ritual theory was dominated by the doctrine of presence, i.e., the assumption that rites made something "present." The first of these two sections explores how this doctrine influenced concepts of time, resulting in "ritual moments" or rites of passage (e.g., those of baptism, transition to a new social status, marriage, and death) and the rites associated with calendrical or liturgical time in annual, monthly, daily, and hourly cycles. The second section deals with rituals pertaining to the putatively rational upper half and passionate lower half of the human body. The third section examines the genesis of the Reformation debate about what rituals actually do. According to the theory of representation advanced by Renaissance humanists and Protestant Reformers, rituals did not create presences or enact states of being but were only an aspect of language...

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