640 - Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution

Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution
By Steven Ozment
New York, Doubleday, 1992. 270 pp. $20.00.

This deeply sympathetic portrayal of the Reformation seeks to correct the ambivalence displayed by so many social historians toward the historical accomplishments of the early Protestant movements. It is the spirit of Karl Holl against the ghost of Ernst Troeltsch. Here too, Luther dominates the reader's attention, and, as in the work of Holl, it is Luther who stands as the impetus of progressive change. In 1911, Holl gleaned a theological ethic from Luther's writings and applauded its assertion of individual responsibility, the value and joy of work, and

642 - Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution

love as an effective agent in society. These, Holl believed, were the foundations of a national culture and the source of the social movements of the nineteenth century. Ozment uncovers a popular movement in pamphlet literature, and he admires the force of a revolution, its answer to religious desires and discontents, its improvement of social conditions (especially for women and children), and its renewal of the clergy. These, Ozment believes, were reforms that conquered spiritual abuses and deftly negotiated the brink of political anarchy. They contributed to the emergence of a national culture in Germany, yet remain instructive to us, who live in a world teeming again with old and new revolts.

It was, above all, a people's reformation. Ozment alleges that the popular reception of Luther's reform, the message of pamphleteers in the 1520s, had greater impact on the laity than the reformation promoted by the champions of the princes' reformation, "the visitors and catechists who became prominent in later decades." This is not to disparage the theologians. Ozment insists that Protestant theologians were motivated by religious interests and concerns; they were not the puppets of secular power, which is to say that we should take their voluminous popular writings at face value and not reduce them to propaganda. The book consistently portrays the convictions displayed in Protestant pamphlets, and they suggest that theology does have something to do with popular spirituality among a laity who like to argue, even with Calvinist preachers and Jesuit priests. His is a worthy point and neglected by many social historians.

Nor does Ozment disparage the princes. Protestant princes, he believes, were diverted from their raw political ambitions to support reform; their diversion reflects the power of Protestant clergy over them. He has overthrown the common distinction between popular movements, like the peasant's revolt and the magisterial reformation. There was no contradition between the quest for religious freedom and a prevailing sense of security in the political status quo, a sensibility even attributed to the revolting peasants of 1524 and 1525. Historians will recognize the author's revisionism; he explicitly attacks luminaries like Gerald Strauss, Peter Blickle, Quentin Skinner, and Ernst Troeltsch. Ozment places Martin Luther in the position of social reformer, a position more frequently ascribed, in recent years, to Huldrich Zwingli, the Swiss, and the southwest Germans, with their more democratic tendencies. Luther has been snatched from the clutches of the absolute state (which, in any event, did not appear in Germany until the nineteenth century) and has been freed of the accusation of misogyny (in strong opposition to the work of Lyndal Roper). Ozment's narrative begins with a popular movement, traverses the reformation of the princes, and concludes with the family.

This book provocatively reassesses the Protestant Reformation's success by tracing its influence to private life rather than to the politics

643 - Protestants: The Birth of a Revolution

of confessionalization. Ozment builds upon his previous work on family history, and he adds a unique assessment of Protestant influence: Protestantism, as the laity knew it, promoted individualism and the family. This will strike some well-informed readers as a startling revival of nineteenth-century (some might say, bourgeois Lutheran) themes and not what many of us expect from the stringent "social discipline" that followed Protestant and Catholic reforms. But whatever the judgment of the experts will be, Ozment has sought an uncommon balance between the bonds connecting theologians, rulers, and a religious public, on the one hand, and the strains of a popular lay culture far less dogmatic than any sixteenth-century confession, on the other.

Some historians will be troubled by the author's persistent campaign against anthropology and sociology. The people of the sixteenth century, we are reminded, used categories more appropriate to their experience than those of modern disciplines. But which people? When highly partisan accounts, like pamphlets and autobiography, are taken at face value, we receive a highly partisan assessment of the Reformation, and of culture, which may appear to be more "unified" and more Protestant than it really was. Catholic reform does not appear as a movement in its own right, but the culture of lay Protestantism allegedly affected the laity of Catholic lands. For some, anthropology and sociology will suggest still effective ways of resolving the contradictions of sixteenth-century religion and perceiving the continuities in a conflicted society.

Ozment's sources may also make the Reformation appear to have been more popular than it was, as when, for example, he traces a progression from "pamphleteer rhetoric" to princely law and catechism, then back to the people again, moving the Reformation "out of the hands of the magistrates and the preachers and into those of ordinary people." Since the authors of these laws and catechisms were theologians who maintained rather deliberate relations with princes and urban magistrates, perhaps they too deserve better consideration, along with their allegiances within city councils and their worries over things like the League of Schmalkalden. The question of ideology, or more important, politics, has not been resolved. It has been ignored.

Yet the general public will find in this book a very readable view of the Reformation as it is revealed in popular literature and in some select biographies of the sixteenth century, a view rife with the emotions of individuals. Beneath its effortless narrative is a significant challenge to reconsider the cultural impact of Protestantism.

Christopher Ocker

San Francisco Theological Seminary
San Anselmo, CA