Christianity Translated

After the early sixteenth-century, the politics of language dominated debates on the Christian Church. John Bossy’s account of the Protestant Reformations and their impact concludes on the place of the ‘word’ in wider society. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s idea that modern Europe witnessed a linguistic change from the ‘sixteenth to the seventeenth century’, Bossy argues that we should observe this change on ‘a larger scale of time’ (p. 167). He says that ‘Foucault’s linguistic shift’ owes itself to ‘the multiplication of versions of the Christian faith’ (p. 170).

Overall, between 1400 and 1700, the consequences of the Reformations changed the meanings of words like ‘community’, the ‘State’ and, finally, ‘religion’. Bossy ends with a big point on the massive changes brought to Christianity – ‘a word which until the seventeenth century meant a [single] body of people, and has since then, as most European languages testify, meant an “ism” or body of beliefs’ (p. 171). The Reformations, as one recent author put it, destroyed Christendom [1].

Thus, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Reformers translated Christianity into a variety of separate belief systems. This process brought about religious pluralism in Europe, dividing early modern society by confessional lines.

The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, 1559 by Pieter Bruegel.
© Kunsthistorisches Musuem, Vienna.

John Bossy’s argument is important. Since its publication, scholars have applauded Christianity in the West 1400-1700 for its ground-breaking statements. Bossy, who self-identified his book as a long ‘essay’, argued that the term ‘Reformation’ can be un-helpful in approaching the social and cultural contexts of early modern Christianity. Rather, in order to account for Christianity’s ‘multiplication’, historians need to look at how medieval religion transitioned over the course of a long-view of European history.

The dates which bookend Bossy’s study is a serious choice. They illustrate that both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations were a continual series of processes. Since the early sixteenth-century, Reformers and rank-and-file parishioners alike perpetually contested the meanings of religious change. Bossy’s attitude to the Reformations heightens our understanding by showing how important these religious changes were to ordinary people. Christianity, and its translations, influenced the lives of everyone who lived during three hundred years of constant redefinition.

Bossy concentrates on the social meanings of faith. The first part of the book breaks down the societal functions of medieval religion and tries to understand how ordinary people perceived the Church’s activities from the bottom-up.

For instance, Bossy analyses the role of the Church’s sacraments in the age of reform and observes how the sacraments mediated social contact in everyday life. He looks at how reformers such as Martin Luther whittled down the sacraments to just two entities: baptism and the eucharist. Hence, in their attempt to refocus attention on a more immediate relation with God, reformers disrupted the social lives of their parishioners.

Bossy’s thesis, that the Reformations were a social phenomenon, co-aligns with an earlier historiographical school of thought: the confessionalisation thesis. Formulated by German historians in the 1970s, this thesis argued that Europe’s division into three post-reformation confessions (i.e. Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism) and their adoption into the lives of everyman helps explain all actions and events in early modern Europe. Yet the thesis never made a real impact in the English-speaking world until much later. Although Bossy’s work makes no direct reference to the thesis, Christianity in the West’s importance lies in its importation of these fundamental ideas into a more Western body of thought.

The only real criticism I have of Christianity in the West is that it falls short on any nitty-gritty analysis of documentary material. Bossy makes great points throughout, but forgets to support them with any concrete evidence.

This is apparent from the outset. In chapter one, Bossy talks about the social meaning of baptism as an event for parishioners, who would usually joke and have fun during their Church ceremonies. Bossy claims that there was a ‘genuine air of gaiety about the social practice of baptism at the close of the Middle Ages, a liberty entirely appropriate to the event’ (p. 19). However, he never substantiates his claim with any real source analysis. The book has only seventeen footnotes, and no primary bibliography.

Admittedly, this book’s aim was to place argument over substance – for Bossy, Christianity in the West was an essay, not an in-depth study. The book’s lack of evidence is frustrating, but can be forgiven in light of this definition.

Source:

Christianity in the West 1400-1700. By John Bossy. Pp ix + 189. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. £10.99. ISBN 978-0-19-289162-4.

Note:

[1] Mark Greengrass, Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648 (London, 2014).