Reading Augustine in the Reformation seeks to outline the dynamic reception of Augustine in the European Reformations, with particular attention to the culture of Renaissance humanism. In order to accomplish this impressive goal, Arnoud Visser takes a book history approach that is self-consciously indebted to D. F. McKenzie's sociology of texts, organizing the work into three sections entitled “production,” “circulation,” and “consumption.” This method allows Visser to cover a tremendous amount of ground; his chronological framework is 1500–1620, his geography is broadly European, and he aims to ground this study in several aspects of material culture.
In the first part of the book, on production, Visser traces the history of the three opera omnia editions of Augustine in the early modern period. The first was published by Johann Amerbach (1505–1506), the second edited by Erasmus (1528–1529), and the third produced by a team of Catholic theologians at Leuven (1576–1577). Special attention to the textual and paratextual presentation of each edition opens up a fascinating and often unexpected story about how these works influenced the reception of Augustine. For instance, Amerbach's edition, despite its use of the new technology, attempted to present a conservative Augustine in keeping with medieval theology. Nonetheless, by virtue of making all of Augustine's works available, especially the anti-Pelagian and anti-Manichean writings, Amerbach opened up the possibility of radically different readings that freed Augustine from the narrow confines associated with the Order that bore his name.
Visser's account of Erasmus’ edition likewise traces the tension between what the producer of an edition thought he was doing and what the eventual results were. Erasmus guided his readers not just by editing Augustine's works, but by including copious and opinionated commentary notes. Because Erasmus did not think highly of Augustine as a writer, he instead foregrounded the church father's moral and pastoral dimension in order to “pursue his own agenda for ethical reform among the clergy” (38). The Catholic censors reacted strongly, but nonetheless, argues Visser, the theological message of this edition was often ignored or misunderstood.
The Leuven opera omnia edition represents the Catholic response, illustrating “how confessional divisions conditioned the development of textual scholarship and interacted with editorial practices” (49). Contrary to what we might expect, however, this increased confessional pressure ultimately had a neutralizing, rather than a polarizing, effect. Although Erasmus's flippant comments were removed, the Leuven text is still surprisingly framed by the marginal notes in the Erasmian edition; the printer Plantin might have also influenced the project toward confessional moderation for economic or political reasons. The overarching argument of the “production” section is that each of these three editions improved access to and quality of Augustine's texts, but each one was also slanted in a way that illustrates the “dynamic interaction between confessionalization and humanist scholarship” (60).
The second part of this book explores two features that attempted to direct readers’ engagement with Augustine's oeuvre: indices/bibliographies and anthologies/epitomes. Using bibliographers such as Gesner, Trithemius, and Possevino, Visser illustrates how early modern search engines enabled readers to find their personal paths to Augustine, though these organizational tools invariably “regulated access in specific, confessionally charged ways” (65). Even more intriguingly, Visser takes up the subject of patristic anthologies (florilegia) that guided readers to a more user-friendly Augustine than the bulky opera omnia folio editions. Despite the humanist directive to return ad fontes, Visser notes the importance of such florilegia as spiritual guides that played a dominant role in disseminating Augustine's thought during the sixteenth century. The thematic organization directed readers toward an Augustine that was mined for proof in topical arguments.
The “consumption” section of Reading Augustine shows examples of reception through individual reader marks and public debate. Beginning with two representative samples—the English private collections and the monastic libraries in Italy—Visser points out that, though Augustine was the most widely disseminated patristic author and his readers seemed to share an urge to organize his material, his textual transmission was untidy. Another case study traces how Thomas Cranmer, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and William Laud managed their reading of Augustine to shape the course of the English Reformation. In a final chapter that evokes Chartier, Darnton, and Habermas, Visser analyzes public debates in Catholic Leuvin and Protestant Leiden. This broader system of communication in religious debates shows, like the individual reading practices, that Augustine's texts were at the mercy of his readers and ultimately served radically different goals.
The central argument of this book is not surprising—that Augustine's influence upon the European Reformations was a complex story guided by confessional concerns which resulted in multifarious ways of reading comes as no surprise. Therefore, the book's primary interest lies not so much in the broader argument as in the particulars of this account. Details about marginalia, indexes to Augustinian works, or the handling of pseudo-Augustinian material in various editions all provide excellent evidence for the broad trends which Visser is discussing. Given the book history angle of the work, however, it would have been helpful to have a closer study of the material aspects of Augustinian production and reception. Despite his own impressive bibliography of primary sources, Visser does not include a single visual illustration that could have helped to illuminate his points, especially those about readers’ engagement with these works.
As Visser outlines in the introduction, he seeks to break ground on three levels: to situate Augustine's reception in the history of reading and the material culture of books and manuscripts, to offer a cross-confessional account of Augustine's appropriation in Reformation Europe, and to contribute to a more advanced understanding of the uses of intellectual authority in the early modern period. While none of these subjects can be comprehensively covered in a book of this size, Visser does indeed break ground in these three areas, opening up fertile territory for further study.
