BOOK REVIEWS 559

(with lavish title pages) and the Book of Common Prayer, as well as repeated
editions of works such as Desiderius Erasmuss Paraphrases (151723), John
Jewels Apologia (1562), and Alexander Nowells Catechism (1549). There
were not many printers in England with the confidence and resources to take
on substantial projects, but there were some, such as Thomas Vautrollier, a
Huguenot refugee who built up a considerable reputation in London as an
accomplished printer, and published a number of editions of Lutheran and
Calvinist works in English or Latin, including John Calvins massive Institutes
(1536). Moreover, the shortcomings of Days output, even in some editions of
prestige projects such as the Acts and Monumentsthe poor quality of the
paper and sometimes illegible type, the sloppy cross-referencing, the repeated
use of the same illustrations within the covers of one bookare explained
away as due to circumstances beyond his control or the assistants he used,
such as his son, Robert.This monograph offers a most useful and informative
account of a pivotal figure in the Tudor book trade, but Days reputation might
be served as well by acknowledging the blemishes on his record, and his
achievement be put in sharper perspective by comparing it with that of other
leading printers both in England and abroad.

University of Edinburgh IAN GREEN

The Chancery of God: Protestant Print, Polemic, and Propaganda against

the Empire, Magdeburg, 15461551. By Nathan Rein. [St.Andrews Studies
in Reformation History.] (Burlington,VT:Ashgate Publishing. 2008. Pp. xvi,
257. $114.95. ISBN 978-0-754-65686-9.)

The resistance of the city of Madgeburg to imperial forces during the

Schmalkaldic War has always presented something of a puzzle to historians of
religion. Dubbing itself The Lord Gods Chancery, the city produced hun-
dreds of pamphlets, outlining the reasons and justification for their resistance.
The most famous of these tracts, the Magdeburg Confession, has long been of
interest to students of political theory. But here lies the problem: the
Confession has generally been seen as a starting point for the development of
modernhence seculartheories of resistance. Nathan Reins insightful
analysis of the Magdeburg pamphlets provides an alternative reading of the
texts, one that places them squarely within their proper social, political, and
religious context.

The book is based on an analysis of 228 of the 360 pamphlets known to

have been produced in Magdeburg between 1546 and 1551.The author sets
out to explain the circumstance that led the city to continue to fight a prop-
aganda war well after the apparent imperial military victory. In the process,
he seeks to interpret [Magdeburgs] resistance in terms of a Protestant world-
view and sense of identity (p. xiv).The first chapter surveys the pamphlets,
considering their utility as sources. Here the author provides a careful and rea-
sonable assessment of the challenges and opportunities involved in the study
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of polemical literature.The second chapter considers the revolutionary char-

acter of the Protestant Reformation, stressing the essential contradictions
between the political theology of the Habsburg emperors and nascent
Lutheranism. Key here is the contrast between German Liberty, understood
in terms of communal self-government, and the universalizing imperial
notions of the Habsburg.

This contradiction becomes even clearer in the chapter that follows, deal-
ing with the Augsburg Interim of 1548, Charless flawed attempt to find a
middle path between Confessional parties. A fatal weakness of the interim
was the separation of the means of salvation from liturgical practicewhile
the former was presented as a modification of Lutheran solafideism, the
Catholic liturgy was preserved not on account of the efficacy of the sacra-
ments but almost entirely on historical grounds. The larger political implica-
tions were equally suspect: the Interim structures religion in a way that is
particularly amenable to absolute governments (p. 104). Whereas the impe-
rial creed revolves around hierarchy and order the view of politics espoused
in Magdeburg centers on faith and scripture, placing liturgy at the service of
the believing individualand minimizing the power of institutions to mediate
holiness (p. 120). The fourth chapter focuses on the pamphlets produced
during the siege of the city between 1548 and 1551, focusing primarily on the
Magdeburg Confession.The final chapter summarizes the overall Magdeburg
view of the Christian community, examining specific ways in which the pam-
phleteers vision of civic and religious polity lay behind the ideas presented
in the texts.

One theme that runs through the book is the highly topical character of
the pamphlets. Most modern treatments of the subject stress the influence of
the Magdeburg pamphlets, emphasizing the universal character of their argu-
ments. But as Rein points out, the authors did not aim to articulate a univer-
sal theory of resistance. Quite the oppositemuch of their argument stressed
the singularity of the struggle among the German people, the emperor, and
the papacy. The Protestant worldview presented in the texts is firmly rooted
in the traditional social structures of the autonomous urban commune.This is
not to suggest that religious points of view were determined by social and
economic realities, but rather that sixteenth-century people did not conceive
of a separation between the two: any threat to their way of life was likewise
a threat to their religious identity.While the Protestant worldview was nec-
essarily confessional in nature, the author demonstrates how far removed the
Magdeburgers conception of the social, religious, and political order was
from that which informed the process of Confessionalization in Germany
after 1550.

This book has many strengthsfew books exist that are so sensitive to the
interconnections between social and religious life or to the interplay among
imperial, territorial, and local politics within the empire.The texts are placed
within their proper context without being contextualized. Dialogue, rather
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than determinism, defines the authors treatment of this wide-ranging corpus.

The author is also to be praised for his methodological sensitivity and sensi-
bility. Overall, this is a must-read for students of German religious and politi-
cal history in the mid-sixteenth century.The scope of the treatment goes well
beyond the geographical or temporal limits described in the title: indeed,
careful consideration of Reins thesis may well force scholars to rethink some
of the standard approaches to the history of Confessionalization and of the
origins of modern theories of political resistance.

Oglethorpe University WILLIAM BRADFORD SMITH

Humanism and the Reform of Sacred Music in Early Modern England:

John Merbecke the Orator and The Booke of Common Praier Noted
(1550). By Hyun-Ah Kim. [St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History.]
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2008. Pp. xviii, 246. $114.95. ISBN
978-0-754-66268-6.)

An exact contemporary of Thomas Tallis, John Merbecke was born in

c.1505 and was last noted as living in 1584. He spent all his professional life
as a member of the illustrious choir of the collegiate church of St. George in
Windsor Castle. For the Latin rite he became a solidly workmanlike composer
of the extended and elaborate vocal polyphony of the 1520s and 1530s, leav-
ing one substantial Mass and two long votive antiphons. An early admirer of
Protestant objectives of reform, he also made a unique contribution to the
vernacular Edwardian liturgy. The compilers of the 1549 Book of Common
Prayer had no wish gratuitously to alienate its parish hearers by denying a
role to those parish clerks and, in some churches, volunteer laity who formed
an elementary choir to help the priest to sing the plainsong of the services;
consequently, its rubrics allowed for continuation of the rendering of numer-
ous appropriate passages by the Clerks. Merbecke thereupon took it upon
himself to provide music for the resulting sung service. For much of the
Office he was content to make a selection from the variety of plainsong
chants available for each corresponding component in the traditional
Salisbury Use, but for the Communion services he suppressed tradition and
composed melodies of his own. For each text not delivered in a plain mono-
tone he created a simple rhythmicized monody and for both styles engaged
an orthochronic notation based on the plainsong symbols that alone were
familiar to such amateur enthusiasts (rather than the mensural notation famil-
iar to professionals).A volume of eighty-four octavo leaves, it was printed by
Grafton and published as The Booke of Common Praier Noted (BCPN, 1550).

For Merbecke as composer the author makes bold assertions. It is claimed

that analysis of his melodies discloses that they were so crafted as to incorpo-
rate optimum features both of oratorical delivery in terms of accentuation and
melodic contour, and of inherent meaning in terms of deployment of the
periods most advanced modal theory. It is thus her contention that