This substantial study approaches the Lutheran “funeral biography” in early modern Germany as a genre within the rhetorical tradition of biographical writing. Beyond an account of a person's life and death, the church historian may find considerable interest in the details of social, especially church, life that emerge. These include communication techniques and preaching resources, but notably also include attitudes toward class and the roles of clergy, nobility, and burghers in the varied situations of the three cities that the author has chosen as case studies—Magdeburg, Brunswick, and Dresden. Of no less interest are attitudes toward life and death and the shape of the funeral liturgy as these were emerging out of the early Reformation.

What was the funeral biography? Twenty-first-century observers might be tempted to answer that it was a curious phenomenon, but it was hardly a curiosity in the period from the first generation of reformers to the early pietists, that is, from the early sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth. In addition, the funeral biography was indebted to the much older tradition of the funeral oration, a tradition that dated back to antiquity and was revived in the Renaissance. Preachers were aware of this tradition and often reminded their listeners of it, especially when the practice was controversial. While continuing a long-standing tradition, the dates and locales of the specifically Lutheran practice tell us something about its more immediate origins and purpose. Although this book is not a study in historical theology, it makes clear that the funeral biography arose from a theological conviction, the result of Lutheran doctrine. As a corollary to his proclamation of justification by faith and his opposition to the sacrifice of the Mass, Martin Luther denied the notion that souls in purgatory could be assisted by prayers and indulgences. Thus the previous purpose of a funeral Mass, to aid souls along their way to heaven, no longer existed. Some German Lutherans wanted to abolish funeral ceremonies altogether. But Luther insisted that, in addition to a sermon, a biography of the departed could give a positive example to the living. The sermon would lay the exegetical foundation, and its conclusion—the expectation of a glorious resurrection of the body—would provide a segue to the biography that was to show how the deceased had personified lessons from the biblical text. Other Christian denominations, both Catholic and Protestant, lacked this tight connection between sermon and biography.

Luther's own practice set the pattern among Lutherans, beginning with the death of Frederick the Wise in 1525. Luther preached a sermon on the resurrection of the dead with little reference to the deceased, and Philipp Melanchthon followed with an oration on the life and virtues of the Elector. One can reduce the outline of a typical biography to three essential points, adapted from the rhetorical model of the oration: birth/baptism, marriage/career, and final illness/death. Given the controversies with the Anabaptists, it is not surprising that an early baptism merited special stress, as well as the virtues (and sometime weaknesses) of the deceased, while a good death served as a momento mori that could encourage the congregation to contemplate its own mortality and the necessity of faith. But the biographies contained more than exempla. They offered comfort and hope in the light of the final goal, heavenly peace. Moreover, while a major emphasis was edification and emulation was encouraged, the biography was also didactic, affirming central Reformation doctrines. As a Weimar ordinance of 1664 declared, “It is justified that in the funeral sermon the deceased is credited with faith and love and their manifestations to set an example, if it can be done truthfully” (62). Complete accuracy in every detail was not required. If this regulation illustrates the central purpose of the biography, it also raises a caution that such a resource must be used with restraint. Some among the vast number of these sketches were eventually polished and printed, usually at the family's expense. This became a lucrative endeavor for early printers who might also collect selected sermons and biographies into devotional booklets. Over the course of the two centuries in which the funeral biography was in its prime, the practice broadened to include high-ranking citizens as well as nobility and academicians. At the same time, perhaps inevitably, the biographies increasingly tended to become autobiographical statements of one's achievements rather than professions of faith.

By the end of the seventeenth century, following the Thirty Years' War, demand began to shift toward the “silent funeral,” one that was “without pomp” and particularly without the funeral biography. Concurrently, the sermon in the printed booklets gave way to a straightforward summary of a career. In the end, however, the funeral biography died out mostly because it became too costly for changing tastes. Modern revisionist skepticism about the possibility of biography or even the notion of “a life” does not deter the author from pressing on with a thoroughly researched and clearly organized book that exemplifies social history in the best sense of the term. An impressive array of footnotes confirms her exercise of the traditional canons of historical research, as does Moore's reading of as many as four thousand sermons which, she reminds us, is still nowhere near what remains to be studied. She clearly demonstrates that the funeral biographies reflect their times: an oratorical tradition overlaid by Reformation principles and “confessionalization,” and above all by a theology of death and a world yet to come. Nevertheless, the challenge to preachers is much the same as it is today, balancing veracity with eulogy, and distinguishing emulation from self-promotion, leading one to contemplate an abiding irony of human religion.