C. Scott Dixon,Contesting the Reformation

Reviewed by: Susan C. Karant-Nunn, University of Arizona, USA

‘Contesting the Past’, the series in which this book appears, is designed to survey the debates in which historians interpreting the same subject have, and are currently, engaged in. In Scott Dixon’s volume historians of the Reformation will be able to locate themselves in ways in which they had probably not thought to do. For, under pressure of word-count, Dixon has winnowed his chapter topics down to a precious few that present approaches to and debates over key points in the last generation. Nonetheless, references to essential historiographical traditions orient the reader: Leopold von Ranke, Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch and Joseph Lortz are definitely to be found here.

The reader should know that Dixon was a student of the late Bob Scribner. As inclusive and dispassionate as Dixon is, Scribner does emerge out of numerous prose pixels as a source of inspiration and innovation, nudging his followers towards the potentially fruitful applications of social scientific theory that much of his own work embodied. ‘He sought out the voice of the common man in the German archives’ (154). This characteristic in no way detracts from Dixon’s impartial analysis; we already knew of his interpretive inclinations from his previous publications.

Anyone who might have thought that scholarship on the Reformation was in a state of decline is quickly disabused of that notion by the sheer bulk of work that is cited here. Every page is larded with references to recent books and articles. Should we think of Reformations in the plural, or was there one renovating if incoherent movement? Should it include Catholicism? Here Dixon seeks the founders’ self-definition, looking from Johannes Sleidanus to Johann Georg Walch, and then from von Ranke to Bernd Moeller. A chapter on religious life in the late Middle Ages weighs the era’s creativity (e.g. Heiko Oberman) against its alleged decadence (Johan Huizinga). Was the Reformation engaged in continuity or innovation? Here, among others, are juxtaposed J. J. Scarisbrick and Eamon Duffy, and Christopher Haigh. Here the great reformers undergo the current ‘peeling back’ of the heroes’ surface to look beneath. The leaders’ differences from each other stand out, but, the author speculates, in the future they may be criticized ‘for their readiness to go to extremes’ (62).

The issue of conversion – both bringing it about and experiencing it – is complicated. An assertion of the triumph of print is overly simplistic. How did the illiterate throngs gain access to the published word? How did other media such as music enter into the equation? (Images are taken up in a later chapter.) Dixon stresses the multiplicity of voices articulating unique theological positions throughout the age, implicitly refuting Moeller’s assertion of basic conformity with the main points of Luther’s theology (lutherische Engführung). Radical strains themselves were ‘spontaneous and diffuse’ (89). A critique of social-scientific theory appears here, represented by the theologically trained and affiliated Andrea Strübind and Anselm Schubert. Dixon does not directly address the delicate question of whether church historians, frequently ordained clergy, tend towards a more confessionally conformist interpretation than those who are secularly educated, no matter what their allegiances. He comes close when summarizing criticism of Perry Miller for his ‘too rationalistic’ take on New England Puritanism.

Dixon clearly sees the political dimensions of religious choices. He posits a basic model of three stages in any civic shift from Catholic to Protestant: (1) establishing control over preaching, its content and its personnel; (2) eliminating Catholic jurisdiction and establishing new ecclesiastical ordinances; and (3) replacing all other Catholic institutions with evangelical successors (114). Central to the chapter on social dynamics are the convolutions in the discussion of a two-tier view of society (Peter Burke’s populace, elite) as opposed to a multi-layer, reciprocally influential approach. Did the Reformation promote liberty as it practised discipline? It is no surprise that Dixon himself asserts that ‘local religion was a bricolage of the faith preached from the pulpit, the living memory of medieval Catholicism, and the miscellanea of “popular” belief passed down from generation to generation’ (151). He invariably comes down on the side of complexity.

Inevitably in so brief a treatment, regional differences rarely appear. Rural Saxon clergy were in fact less well trained in the sixteenth century than their southwest German counterparts; literacy is presented for specific times and places without attention to vacillations across time and even in those same places. Many specifics inevitably give way to the larger contrasts among confessions. But, in the end, some generalizations apply to every allegiance: belief is more than adherence to a set of doctrines. It is made up of a complex of traditions and practices that bind the individual to a commonality. Indeed, people mainly appropriate teachings in ways—diverse if only we could see them—that are compatible with the continuance of their lives. As for modernity, individualism, an improvement in the position of women, tolerance and resistance, surely themes were expressed during the Reformation era, embedded in their authors’ specific circumstances, that generations later, freed from those circumstances and suited to others, took on a life that the Reformers in their own times could never have condoned.

Overall, this is a slim but valuable successor to A. G. Dickens’s and John M. Tonkin’s The Reformation in Historical Thought (1985). In a brief appendix, ‘Did Luther Post the Ninety-Five Theses?’ Dixon reviews the evidence and concludes that he did not. Nonetheless, we can go on celebrating Reformation Day on 31 October, for on that date Luther wrote to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, raising the question of indulgences and enclosing a copy of his theses (207).