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Traditional Orthodoxies and New Approaches: An Editor's Perspective on the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Before I begin to offer my analysis of what the Encyclopedia of the Reformation tells us about Reformation studies, I should first explain my role in its production. I have been one of six senior editors, responsible for what was loosely termed “social history and popular religion.” Four of the other editors have been in charge of specific geographic areas, and David Steinmetz has been in charge of theology, so I have generally thought of my role as the editor for “other.” That meant “my” articles began with “alchemy” and ended with “women,” including in between entries on such topics as capitalism, death, divorce, drama, Jews, miracles, music, polygamy, printing, science, sexuality, and time. I was in charge of fewer entries than most of my coeditors–102 out of 1200–but more words, as I ended up with nearly all the longest articles. That alone, I think, indicates the clear acceptance of one “new approach,” an approach picked up by the marketing department at Oxford, whose banner head describes the Encyclopedia as “the definitive reference on society in early modern Europe.” It was also noted at a very early editors' meeting, where one of the consulting editors commented—not exactly with dismay, but not exactly with triumph either—“do you realize we've given witchcraft more words than Luther?”
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1998
References
1. Since I wrote this paper I have read a number of comments about the ever expanding nature of “early modern,” though these have protested the disappearance of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance rather than the Reformation. Many of these have used very forceful language, such as Nancy Partner's description of the trend as “being engulfed in the rapacious maw of the Early Modern academic machine”Google Scholar(Partner, Nancy F., “Did Mystics Have Sex?” in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, ed. Murray, Jacqueline and Eisenbichler, Konrad [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996], p. 297).Google Scholar See also Marcus, Leah, “Renaissance/Early Modern Studies,” in Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, ed. Greenblatt, Stephen and Gunn, Giles (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), pp. 41–63;Google ScholarPatterson, Lee, “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65 (1990): 87–108;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWallace, David, “Carving Up Time and the World. Medieval-Renaissance Turf Wars; Historiography and Personal History,” working paper no. 11, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee Center for Twentieth-Century Studies, 1990–91. Perhaps Reformation historians should be more worried that religious history is now included in notions of “early modern,” but the Encyclopedia demonstrates that the swallowing can go both ways, that “Reformation” can also have a rapacious maw (though I prefer the term “inclusionary vision”).Google Scholar