Renaissance and Reformation, 1997


Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 77

recouverte d'une casaque tout aussi sophistiquée évoquant le prestige du prince, à
la fois "homme et bête" d'après Machiavel, et auquel les décorations emblématiques,
imprégnées de réminiscences antiques confèrent une dimension mythique. Cette in-

fluence de l'Antiquité, confirmée par quelques illustrations, est également mise en

évidence par Martine Vasselin, ainsi que le rôle intermédiaire joué par la Renaissance

italienne: gravures d'ouvrages historiques, portraits, décors des résidences royales et

des entrées princières s'efforcent d'harmoniser les exigences de ressemblance avec le

modèle contemporain et la distanciation résultant du recours à l'antique, qui atteint son
degré superlatif dans le trophée, substitut de l'image du guerrier.

Jean Jacquart et Gabriel-André Pérouse, l'un historien, l'autre littéraire, ont
apporté chacun leurs conclusions respectives à cette évocation très variée de

l'homme de guerre, soldat, capitaine ou prince. Voyage dans le temps, du treizième
au dix-septième siècle, voyage dans l'espace aussi: la matière était ample et peu

d'aspects du problème ont été laissés dans l'ombre. Ni l'idéalisme humaniste, ni
l'embellissement artistique ou l'affabulation littéraire n'ont masqué l'omniprésence
de la guerre étrangère ou civile et de son cortège de violences, accrues en ce siècle

de la Renaissance par le choc des idéologies et les perfectionnements techniques.

ETIENNE VAUCHERET, Université de Pau

Werner O. Packull. Hutterite Beginnings. Communitarian Experiments During

the Reformation. BaUimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Pp. xi, 440.

Hutterite Beginnings is much more than just a chronicle of the early years of the
Hutterites. Instead, Packull sets out to narrate the early history of the Hutterites, and

of Moravian Anabaptism more generally, with close attention to its political, social

and religious milieu. Part I of the book examines the conditions in Moravia which

made it the "promised land" for a number of Anabaptist groups in the late 1520s
and early 1530s. It also investigates Anabaptist traditions, both within Moravia and

without, which set the stage for the emergence of Hutterite communitarianism. On
the one hand, this leads to a reassessment of the roots and nature of the Biblicism

of the Swiss Brethren and of the significance of Swiss congregational organizations

for the development of other Anabaptist traditions. On the other hand, it involves a
reconstruction of the histories of non-Hutterite early Anabaptist movements in

Moravia: the Austerlitz Brethren, the Phillipites and the Gabrielites. Much of this
narrative, especially on the Phillipites and Gabrielites, has been pieced together

from Packull 's own research, and our knowledge of the history of early Moravian
Anabaptism is significantly enriched by the publication of this book. Finally, in this

section of the book Packull also revisits Pilgram Marpeck's literary conflict with



78 / Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme

Spiritualists among the early Anabaptists (likely Christian Entfelder and Hans
Biinderiin) in Strasbourg during 1530 and 1531. He suggests that both the scope
and the significance of this conflict are broadened when it is viewed within the
context of developments in Moravian Anabaptism, with which all ofthe participants

were associated.

In Part II of the book, Packull traces the origins and initial development of the

Hutterite movement and sets the stage for its emergence as the dominant Anabaptist
tradition in Moravia. He chronicles the activities of Jacob Hutter and many of his
followers in the Tyrol. Packull's attention to the details of the attempted suppression

of Austrian Anabaptism, and to the Anabaptist responses to persecution, provides a

valuable social history of Austrian Anabaptism complementing the work of Gary

Waite on northern Anabaptism. The narrative then follows the proto-Hutterites on
the treks to Moravia and their interaction — initially marked by fellowship, but all
too soon by conflict — with other Anabaptist groups there. A study of the persecu-
tion of Moravian Anabaptists beginning in 1535, carefully attuned to the shifting

Habsburg political fortunes, provides the context for an assessment of the fate of

the various Anabaptist groups: the resilience of the Hutterites and the demise of the

Austerlitz Brethren, the Phillipites and the Gabrielites in independent entities.

Packull's research provides crucial background for the more intensely studied

Hutterite Golden Age stretching from the 1560s through to the early seventeenth
century. His emphasis on the significance of persecution and the refugee experience

in moulding Hutterite self-understanding highlights the seriousness of earlier

neglect of this chapter of Hutterite history. At the same time, Hutterite Beginnings

reflects the growing awareness among historians of the importance of the Moravian
experience for the history of Anabaptism as a whole. After persecution decimated

Anabaptist ranks in Switzerland and southern Germany in 1528 and 1529, the vital

centres of the movement shifted to Moravia and northwestern Germany and the

Netherlands. Yet, of the three Anabaptist traditions which survived the sixteenth

century — the Hutterites, the Swiss Brethren and the Mennonites —, the Hutterites
have usually been shunted to the periphery of Anabaptist studies; in earlier historical

writing Moravia has functioned as little more than a distant promised land attracting

the faithful away from the centres of the movement, and the Hutterites have

appeared as a communitarian aberration of the mainstream Swiss Brethren/Men-

nonite tradition. Packull's book goes a long way towards redressing this imbalance.

His conclusions on the role of the Moravian Anabaptists in copying and dissemi-

nating Anabaptist literature, and his demand that Marpeck's debate with the

spiritualizing Anabaptists be evaluated within the context of developments in

Moravian Anabaptism, suggest the importance of assigning Moravia its rightful

place in the history of Anabaptism. Furthermore, working through the implications

of James Stayer's research into Anabaptist community of goods, Packull indicates

that Hutterite communitarianism was not a deviation from mainline Anabaptism,



Book Reviews / Comptes rendus / 79

but rather the logical conclusion of early Anabaptist thought about the nature of

property and possessions.

Hutterite Beginnings also has significance for the understanding of Anabap-

tism which extends beyond reassigning the Hutterites and other Moravian Anabap-

tists to their rightful place in the history of the movement. As a melting pot of Swiss

and South German Anabaptist traditions, Moravia provides the opportunity to test

some basic assumptions in Anabaptist studies. Packull's analysis of the interaction

of these traditions involves a revision on the polygenesis model of early Anabaptism

to which he contributed significantly. This is not to suggest that polygenesis has

been abandoned, but rather that it has become more nuanced to accomodate new

research. Equally important are the implications of Packull's re-evaluation ofthe debate

between Marpeck and the spiritualizing Anabaptists and its aftershocks down to the

1540s which further erode the sharp boundaries drawn between "Spiritualists" and

"Sectarians" in the Radical Reformation.

Hutterite Beginnings, like its subject matter, has significance far beyond the

boundaries of the Hutterian Briiderhofe or the borders of Moravia. It will provide

stimulating and profitable reading for scholars of Anabaptism and the Reformation

more generally.

GEOFFREY DIPPLE, University of Toronto

"Christophe Colomb et la découverte de l'Amérique. Réalités, imaginaire et

réinterprétations," actes de la rencontre de la Société des Italianistes de l'Ensei-

gnement Supérieur et de la Société des Hispanistes Français, Études hispano-

italiennes, 5 (1994).

Ces actes abordent cinq aspects de la "découverte" de l'Amérique par Colomb: les

influences et le milieu, l'idéologie et l'écriture, la géographie et l'imaginaire, le

discours historiographique, enfin l'iconographie.

Deux "communications introductives" amorcent la réflexion. Dans la pre-

mière, Ricardi Garcia Cârcel rappelle, fort à propos dans un ouvrage publié à

l'occasion du cinquième centenaire de la "découverte," les manipulations de la

mémoire historique lors des précédentes commémorations. Dans la seconde, Ga-

briella Airaldi, qui n'a malheureusement pas tenu compte de cette mise en garde,

rappelle "le parcours exemplaire" de Colomb et présente un portrait quelque peu

hagiographique de l'homme.

Mais dans son analyse de "l'influence de Toscanelli et de son milieu sur

Christophe Colomb," Franck La Brasca redonne au colloque sa dimension critique

en proposant un ambitieux programme de recherches qui permettrait de mieux

cerner "le rôle de l'humanisme philologique, philosophique et scientifique dont