No gods except me: orthodoxy and religious practice in Europe, 1200-1600 (review)

164 Reviews hazardous. There is nothing here of the forced reading that has maned some of the work of the so-called new historicists. T w o principal themes unite the book. The first, which culminates in the penultimate chapter on John Selden, is an analysis of the way in which an initiaUy sharp distinction between the antiquarian-scholar and the historian-writer broke down. Selden, especially in The Historie of Tithes (1618), fused the two genres into a sort of philological history, thus bringing us a step closer to the m o d e m image of the historian as both researcher in original documents and writer; although, Woolf is properly guarded on the question of the modernity of seventeenth century historical writing throughout his chapter on Selden. If this theme owes something to Arnaldo Momigliano's views on the contribution of antiquarianism to modern historical method, the second may owe a little to Pocock's views on the conditions that produce genuinely historical thought. Woolf argues that before the Civil War, English historical writers eschewed controversy, had no concept of the role of interpretation in history, and worked within a nanow ideological consensus (esp. pp. 29-44). The only exception to this lay in the areas of ecclesiastical antiquarianism and history, where there were real disputes, particularly over the historical pedigree of the ecclesia Anglicana. The Civil War ended this situation, as subsequent generations used historical writing to analyse its causes and, above all, to determine who should be blamed for its outbreak. The result was the development of at least two sharply divergent readings of the English past which persisted from the 1650s and 1660s until the present century. This second theme should be of wide interest to Stuart historians for it has implications for the political history of the period; although, Woolf does not always draw them out. Indeed, this second theme is generally less well-developed than thefirst.Valuable particularly are his portrait of the pre-Civil-War consensus and his assertion that it was only retigion that had the power to disturb this consensus until the 1640s. There is much here worth pondering and thisfinebook should be read by all with an interest in the period. Glenn Burgess Department of History University of Canterbury Zika, Charles, ed., No gods except me: orthodoxy and religious practice in Europe, 1200-1600 (Melbourne University History monographs series, No. 14), University of Melbourne History Department, 1991; paper; pp. vi, 198; 3 illustrations; R.R.P. AUS$14.00 + $3.00 postage and handling. This is an excellent and provocative collection of essays. As noted by Zika in his introduction, the theme of the essays 'is the interaction between religious practices and authority in late medieval and early m o d e m Europe'. Unlike other collections of essays whose 'theme' seems an editorial afterthought, the authors Reviews 1 6 5 sustain the theme throughout the volume. Thematic unity aside, each essay can be appreciated on its o w n for the author's insights and contribution to historical knowledge. Bemadette Paton's essay attempts to uncover the reasons why the sermons against witchcraft by San Bernardino in his home town of Siena in 1425 and 1427 failed to provoke much of a response from the Sienese. Paton argues that the theologians and mendicant preachers in Siena were more concerned with clerical than with lay heresy and that they also did not consider the practice of witchcraft to be a heresy and in consequence promoted penitential rather than punitive remedies for witches. I hesitate to comment on Rob Foot's essay on the poverty of Francis of Assisi because of m y dislike for his use of discourse theory to explain why the church persecuted those who insisted on obedience to the Franciscan Rule. In the process Foot develops a case of discursive dianhoea, using the term 'discourse' or derivatives of it, 'discursive' and 'non-discursive', forty seven times. This is a pity, because those readers prepared to persevere wdl find that Foot's use of discourse theory only obfuscates his insights. Sarah Ferber's interesting contribution on 'The demonic possession of Marte Brossier, France 1598-1600', shows how...