Some scholarly shibboleths become so entrenched that they evolve into fact. One of these, as shrewdly advanced by Svensson, is the persistent belief in a Reformation breach with scholasticism and, by association, Aristotelianism. Manfred Svensson’s admirable monograph takes full aim at this belief, and his ammunition is ample and effective: a survey of fifty-five commentaries on Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean ethics assembled by Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed alike, between 1529 and 1670. His research reveals a vibrant and enduring Aristotelian engagement with practical philosophy that more than justifies his identification of a ‘Protestant Aristotelianism’.

Svensson’s study begins with a review of a host of misconceptions concerning Protestantism’s relationship with the Stagirite. These, he points out, often stem from the stances taken against Aristotle by high-profile Protestants, Martin Luther and Peter Ramus. In both cases, however, the evidence suggests that these interventions by Luther and Ramus have distorted the field, and, instead, that ‘their positions need to be integrated into the overwhelming presence of Aristotle among their followers’ (p. 45). Against a broader backdrop, Luther’s anti-Aristotelianism can be viewed as a minority position; there was also, Svensson observes, a pronounced anti-Ramist reaction within Protestantism. Svensson also addresses other forms of imbalance in historical treatments of this topic. As he argues, any space that is permitted in secondary literature for a Protestant assimilation of Aristotelianism is too quickly dominated by a focus on Melanchthon and his post-Luther rehabilitation of Aristotle in the university curriculum. While he concedes that Melanchthon’s efforts helped to stimulate and sustain a lively Protestant interest in Aristotle, Svensson also diagnoses a Melanchthonian exceptionality. The name of Melanchthon carries clout within the Protestant tradition, but his own Aristotelian commentary (on Politics, 1–3) did not necessarily provide a model to follow.

A great strength of this book is the long view that it offers. Chapter i usefully contextualises the Aristotelian commentaries under review within a continuum, highlighting a medieval indebtedness in many of them. The twelfth-century Greek Aristotelian commentator Eustratius of Nicaea emerges as an especially durable authority. Svensson also broaches frontally the complex development of Aristotelian ethics, which itself belonged to a broader trajectory that included Plato and Socrates and culminated in Aristotle. Early modern influences are similarly discussed, particularly Machiavelli, whose decoupling of the political from the moral might be assumed to have impacted the Aristotelian commentary tradition in that direction. But Svensson’s findings (mainly, in this regard, in chapter v) reveal the opposite: Protestant Aristotelianism treated politics as an extension of ethics, and actively promoted the union of wisdom and virtue in civic governance. Svensson is, at the same time, also careful to point out that commentaries on the Politics were never as common as those on the Ethics.

The book is well-structured. Chapter ii sets the scene by furnishing some useful biographical details for the authors of these commentaries, who hailed from across Northern Europe, and their networks. He presents a large cast of commentators, from the more familiar like Peter Martyr Vermigli, Joachim Camerarius and John Case, to the more obscure. Individual chapters thoughtfully investigate the commentaries from a fertile range of angles. These include the compatibility of Aristotle with Christianity (chapter iii); the ideas of the good, virtue and natural law (chapter iv); the relationship between ethics and politics (chapter v); and the tension between practical and theoretical philosophy (chapter vi). A recurring observation is the rich diversity of approaches on display in the various commentaries: Svensson makes a cogent case for the eclecticism of ‘Protestant Aristotelianism’ as well as for the fundamental place of Aristotle in Protestant moral and political thought. Svensson is also keen to stress the pervasiveness of early modern Aristotelianism in the Protestant movement, commenting that Aristotle is such a normative presence in intellectual culture that it is in fact ‘the occasional departure from Aristotle rather than his adoption that requires an explanation’ (p. 87). Svensson even suggestively adduces the notion of what might be termed a ‘silent Aristotle’ (or, to quote Svensson, a philosophia perennis), namely a broad reception of Peripatetic concepts even without explicit reference to Aristotle.

Svensson’s conclusions are compelling, and it is hard not to be persuaded by a scholar who has combed through such vast array of primary material. Yet his insistence on the universality of Aristotle and his presentation of Aristotelianism as an entire system of thought for every shade of Protestant and Catholics alike (Svensson is clear that Aristotle transcended confessional boundaries) raise further questions that are perhaps not explored in as much detail as the reader might expect. A key question, given the focus on ‘Protestant Aristotelianism’, is in what sense these commentaries are distinctively Protestant, as opposed to simply and generically ‘Aristotelian’. Indeed, Svensson anticipates this riposte in the introduction, writing, ‘The reader might well ask in what sense is it meaningful to describe these commentaries as constituting a Protestant tradition’ (p. 14). In fact, over the course of the book, Svensson does indeed offer some evidence of a peculiarly Protestant programme. He shows, for example, that Aristotelian moral philosophy could still be integrated into a largely Augustinian anthropology and pessimism about mankind’s degeneracy. He also reports on the tendency in the prologues of many of these commentaries to deploy a Protestant division between law and Gospel. Beyond this, however, confessional theology per se is accorded no real role in the analysis of these commentaries. But this was an age of profound religious schism, a time when Christian religion was recalibrated, and to some extent reinvented, and scholars of the Reformation might be legitimately curious about the extent to which the literature and ideas of the ancient world were operating within Protestant soteriology, and possibly even supplying the foundations for the new faith. An additional chapter devoted to the interaction between Protestant theology and Aristotle might have lent greater heft to Svensson’s ambitious survey.

But any protests in this regard spring from the very welcome provocation that Svensson has offered in this monograph. He unveils a massive Latin-based source pool, including many little-known texts, and in so doing he inevitably opens up additional avenues for investigation. Quibbles apart, the author deserves full credit for his services to scholarship: the fruits of his pioneering research and the inventory of sources he introduces will beneficially pave the way for further studies of early modern Aristotelianism.