Conciliation and Confession: The Struggle for Unity in the Age of Reform, 1415-1648 (review)

In the introduction to this fine volume of essays, the editors take care to draw a distinction between its theme of conciliation and the term "toleration," with which conciliation is all too often equated. While toleration denotes a grudging acceptance of the fact of another's existence, conciliation speaks to an effort at active engagement with a person or party with which one has differences. The counterpoint to conciliation is, as the title notes, confession; the process by which various groups defined themselves in terms of discrete, cohesive identities. Each of the volume's eleven essays traces the alternation between these two processes as played out in a particular situation, walking the reader through the complexities of motives and alignments in each case.

The book begins in the fifteenth century with Karlfried Froehlich's essay on the arguments of the conciliarists during the papal schism, based on appeals to the New Testament, and Nicholas Constas's discussion of the attempt to mend the schism between the Greek and Roman churches in the Council of Florence, characterized by the overwhelming advantages of the Western over the Eastern delegation. This choice marks a determination on the part of the editors to avoid isolating the events of the sixteenth century, and likewise to avoid fostering the projection of later confessional divisions back into that time. As scholars often focus on those reformers who were subsequently regarded as founders of distinct religious traditions, they tend to bypass other participants, who attempted to prevent the hardening of divisions.

Desiderius Erasmus and Philip Melanchthon are of this latter group. Both figures are widely known today, yet while Erasmus seems to have suffered no neglect on the part of scholars, Melanchthon remains overshadowed by his more confrontational colleague, Martin Luther. Erika Rummel's contextual reading of Erasmus's De sarcienda ecclesiae concordia is a good demonstration of the difficulties for those attempting to play a mediating role: Erasmus received condemnation from both Catholics and reformers for his trouble, although he also had his admirers. Euan Cameron's reading of Melanchthon suggests that the focus on Melanchthon as a conciliator fails to do justice to the steadfastness of his convictions and to his integrity as a theologian. As a counterpoint to Melanchthon's case, John Calvin has the reputation for being uncompromising, and yet according to Randall Zachman, the Geneva reformer distinguished between the essentials of the faith and those matters that could support diversity of opinion. His ultimate goal was not to persecute those who disagreed with him, but to reach mutual understanding through dialogue. (One might wish at this point that the volume included a contribution on Calvin's Strasbourg mentor, Martin Bucer.) Georg Witzel, who thought highly enough of Erasmus's De concordia to translate it into German, is along with Georg Cassander the subject of Irena Backus's essay, which explores the extent to which their respective approaches to conciliation drew upon the early church as a model. Karin Maag's essay on France during the Wars of Religion traces the intricate points of congruence between religion and politics during a time when efforts at conciliation were carried out under the most trying of circumstances.

A significant strength of this collection lies in its strong representation of Eastern and Central Europe. Graeme Murdock's essay on Royal Hungary and the Transylvanian principality relates how attempts on the part of men like Péter Alvinczi to unify Lutherans and Calvinists were successful only to the extent that both groups felt threatened by Catholicism. In the case of Bohemia, Zden|$$|Ahek V. David reveals how the remainders of the disputes of the fifteenth century shaped the alliances and divisions of the sixteenth. Howard P. Louthan offers a reconsideration of irenicism in eclipse in late sixteenth-century...