Spaans Joke, and Jetzte Touber, eds. Enlightened Religion: From Confessional Churches to Polite Piety in the Dutch Republic. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 297. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. xii, 378 + 40 ill. ISBN 978-90-04-29892-7.

comptes rendus 273 mention of Steven Gunn’s Henry VII’s New Men and the Making of Tudor England (2016), which contains much information about royal plate and also about Sir Henry Wyatt, Master of the Jewels (by 1492–1524), whom Schroder discusses at some length in chapter 2. There are a few errors. In one case of misquotation, the phrase “was marvaile to beholde” (from Edward Hall) is given in modernized form as “a marvel to behold” (7), an error which is amplified since the rogue indefinite article also made its way into the book’s title. Such nit-picking, however, should not divert attention from the real contribution which this book makes to early modern studies. Best of all, it is a pleasure to read: entirely lucid, and free from the solecisms that characterize so much modern academic writing. jonathan mcgovern Nanjing University https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i2.37555 Spaans, Joke, and Jetze Touber, eds. Enlightened Religion: From Confessional Churches to Polite Piety in the Dutch Republic. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 297. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Pp. xii, 378 + 40 ill. ISBN 978-90-04-29892-7 (hardcover) €149. Scholarly interest in Enlightenment studies, particularly in the development of ideas and practices from the post-Reformation decades to the early eighteenth century, has increased in recent years. Historians working in different fields, from intellectual to social histories, from the history of philosophy to cultural and literary studies, are now emphasizing the importance of religion and religious actors in the promotion and establishment of Enlightenment values, often in debate with previous, well-established views that regarded the Enlightenment as a pure “Age of Reason,” in which religion had either little significance or even no role to play. This collection of essays, edited by Joke Spaans and Jetze Touber, makes an important contribution to this debate. The editors’ declared aim is to eschew “any claim of a unilinear Enlightenment project evolving towards modernity” and thus, to impartially examine the “changes in religion’s conceptualization” occurring between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth 274 book reviews centuries (2). Reading Spaans and Touber’s Introduction to the volume, it is clear that they do not share the views on religion and Enlightenment promoted, among others, by Jonathan Israel in his seminal works on the “Radical Enlightenment.” In this regard, it is even more valuable that Israel is then one of the contributors to this volume, testifying to Spaans and Touber’s willingness to engage with different approaches to Enlightenment studies, as there was “not one Enlightenment but rather an ‘Enlightenment spectrum’ ” (8). Enlightenment Religion is divided into two main parts, one dealing with “Trends,” namely accounts of intellectual changes occurring between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the other focusing on “Individuals” who contributed to transforming Protestant denominations (indeed, the focus of the volume is on Protestant Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism). The first part consists of five essays by Henri Krop, Jetze Touber, Arthur Weststeijn, Martin Gierl, and Albert Gootjes. The second part consists of seven essays by Frank Daudeij, Jaap Nieuwstraten, Trudelien van ’t Hof, Jonathan Israel, Wiep van Vunge, Joke Spaans, and Fred van Lieburg. The subjects treated in these essays relate to several topics and individuals, from a detailed account of European discussions around alphabetic characters and the art of writing and their contribution to questioning the biblical narrative of creation, to an examination of the biography and publications of the Dutch schoolmaster and theologian Johannes Duijkerius, who engaged in the early Enlightenment debates without exceeding the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy; from an account of a civic religion independent of any particular confession and based on the Dutch longing for liberty, as conceived in the Spiegel van staat (Mirror of the state) by the Dutch engraver Romeyn de Hooghe, to a reassessment of Pierre Bayle and the “Bayle Enigma,” tackling Bayle’s views on toleration and questioning his fideism. Each of these contributions is valuable in its own way; together, they make Enlightened Religion an important volume for all those interested in the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and their mutual relationship. Among the essays there are at least two that, in my opinion, are worthy of being described in more detail. Weststeijn’s “Colonies of Concord: Religious Escapism and Experimentation in Dutch Overseas Expansion” has the merit of including religion in the picture of Dutch colonial studies. Taking a comparative approach between three different projects for religious regimes in the Dutch colonies—led by the Reformed theologian Johannes Hoornbeeck, the freethinker Franciscus van den Enden and the former Mennonite Pieter comptes rendus 275 Plockhoy, and the Labadists, respectively—Weststeijn emphasizes the common feature of these three projects: they all regarded overseas colonies as an opportunity for both worldly and spiritual gains, as they represented new lands where it was possible to channel the religious zeal characterizing the Dutch society (Hoornbeeck), or where non-conformist religious ideals could finally be realized (Van den Enden, Plockhoy, and the Labadists). Weststeijn’s essay has thus the merit of revealing that, despite their undeniable differences, a comparative approach between “Magisterial” reformers, “Radical” reformers, and freethinkers could provide unexpected and interesting outcomes. Gierl’s “Negotiating Ideas: The Communicative Constitution of Pietist Theology within the Lutheran Church” is another essay worth especial mention. Focusing on the Pietist controversies in Germany, Gierl analyzes how Pietist theology developed from the media of theological controversy: attacked by orthodox Lutherans, Pietists were forced to develop and explain their own views, thus forming their own theology. Pietist controversies were, in turn, the main driving force for the development of new Enlightened media, such as handbooks and scholarly journals, and of new genres, such as ecclesiastical history, that contextualized earlier controversies and transformed polemics into a historiography on which each reader could form their own opinion. Gierl’s essay is noteworthy not only for its content but also because its methodological approach and its conclusions could be applied to other Christian denominations: it will be certainly fruitful to examine how theological controversies shaped the ideas of other Christian groups and individuals, and how these, in turn, contributed to promote new means of communication in the early Enlightenment. In their closing remarks to the Introduction, Spaans and Touber make an appeal for a different approach to Enlightenment studies that “acknowledges that the anti-clerical discourse long taken as the Enlightenment project is only one segment of a broader spectrum” (18). They have taken an important step forward to a new understanding of that complex period called the Enlightenment; their volume, as well as other recent contributions to “enlightened religion” and to the “religious Enlightenment,” will no doubt prompt further studies in these fields. francesco quatrini Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v44i2.37556