Douglas H. Shantz. Between Sardis and Philadelphia: The Life and World of Pietist Court Preacher Conrad Bröske.. Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2008. 317 pp. $148.00, cloth, ISBN 978-90-04-16968-5.
Reviewed by Kelly J. Whitmer
Published on H-German (January, 2010)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Between Sardis and Philadelphia is a micro‐ early evangelicalism.[1] Marburg church histori‐ historical study of a radical German preacher, an Hans Schneider's scholarship on pietist radi‐ Conrad Bröske (1660-1713), who spent much of cals is also an important starting point for Shantz his life in the court of Count Johann Philipp II in (p. xvii), who acknowledges that Schneider intro‐ Ofenbach/Mayn. Bröske was an outspoken advo‐ duced him to Bröske as a potential research sub‐ cate of Philadelphianism, a London-based move‐ ject in the frst place. At the same time, the study ment oriented around a female visionary named calls into question several of the foundational as‐ Jane Leade, whose afliates were convinced that sumptions that continue to dominate pietism dramatic changes would begin to occur in the studies in Germany. For example, Shantz ques‐ world in the year 1700. Followers used Leade's vi‐ tions the utility of continuing to impose neat lines sions, in conjunction with the writings of the Ger‐ of demarcation between radical and more ortho‐ man mystic Jakob Böhme and the biblical book of dox pietist groups. He pointedly asks, "Can one Revelation, to help them articulate a vision for the precisely identify or defne what makes a Pietist dawning of a millennial age: that is, the transition radical?" (p. xix). He sees Bröske as an outstand‐ from the so-called Church of Sardis to the Church ing example of an individual who, like many of of Philadelphia. This new church, so Philadelphi‐ his contemporaries, stood in between paradigms, an millennialists believed, would be marked by its schools, and programs. He was both a "radical" emphasis on renewal, reconciliation, universal and a "moderate" at the same time, a feature brotherhood, and love. Shantz argues was characteristic of many early Douglas H. Shantz frames his study as a con‐ evangelicals by the turn of the eighteenth century. tribution to studies of early modern "popular cul‐ The book is organized in a linear fashion that ture," German pietism, and church history in dia‐ allows Shantz to tell Bröske's story: from his expe‐ logue with W. R. Ward's recent global history of riences a student at the Reformed University in H-Net Reviews
Marburg (chapter 1) and his travels through Shantz's eforts to untangle and to elucidate Geneva, several Dutch cities, London, and Oxford the rich fabric of Bröske's life so as to ofer the (chapter 2), to his appointment as a court preach‐ reader access to his world prove to be exception‐ er in Ofenbach. Chapters 3 and 4 showcase ally fruitful and rewarding. They are so fruitful, Bröske's primary role as court preacher, including in fact, that at several moments in the book, strik‐ his duties as superintendent of schools and over‐ ing features of Bröske's person emerge that are seer of both the printing and distributing of books not given enough attention. One such example ap‐ in his prince's territory. pears in the author's discussion of Bröske's en‐ Chapters 5 through 7 consider Bröske's mil‐ gagement with the philosophy of René Descartes. lennialism using his own treatises on conversion While a student in Marburg, Bröske became and eschatology, his apocalyptic commentaries, deeply engaged with Cartesian philosophy. With and the eight dialogues between a politician and a the arrival of professors Reinhold Pauli and theologian that he produced between 1698 and Samuel Andrae in Marburg's theology faculty in 1700. The frst of these chapters uses records of the 1670s, Shantz explains, a "new openness" to Turkish baptisms occurring in the Ysenburg Court the new philosophy of Descartes emerged (p. 16). to refect on the status of conversion for Philadel‐ Bröske participated in two "Disputationes Physi‐ phians. Although the frst Protestants, including cas" in 1681 in which he ofered "appreciative ref‐ Martin Luther, saw Turks as enemies and beyond erences" to the philosopher and cited directly the reach of salvation, Philadelphians included from Descartes's second Meditation (1639) (p. 16). them as potential converts. This change in orien‐ While traveling in Holland, Bröske encountered tation, Shantz suggests, must be understood in several of the most prominent theology professors conjunction with the changing relationship be‐ there, including Peter van Mastricht--who, like his tween the Ottomans and the Habsburgs at pre‐ mentor Gisbertus Voetius, was an outspoken critic cisely this moment. It is not clear, though, how the of Descartes--and Christoph Wittich, a "Calvinist images of "others" detailed here ft into a global Copernican" who defended Descartes (p. 39). history of (persistently violent) European encoun‐ Shantz concludes that Bröske had chosen to ac‐ ters with non-Europeans--let alone a global histo‐ cept Cartesianism while a student and that there ry of evangelicalism. is no evidence to suggest he changed his mind (p. The last portion of the book refects on the 41). Yet, as Shantz expertly shows, Bröske was an culture of theological disputation in this period irenicist, which means he believed in the cause of through the lens of Bröske's disputes with promi‐ reconciliation more generally. Why would he nent reformed preachers in Elberfeld and with have extended his irenicism only to theological the legendary theologian, physician, and al‐ ruptures and disputes? Might his preoccupation chemist Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734). with Philadelphianism have made him more in‐ Shantz's account of the Dippel/Bröske confict is clined to seek out ways of uniting both critics and especially insightful, as it manages to illustrate defenders of Descartes? the frivolity of much of their very public feud Shantz describes German pietists as inclined while also taking seriously the substantive issues towards millennialism, alchemy, mysticism, and at stake for these men: namely, their very difer‐ what he calls "anti-Aristotelianism" (p. 258)--all at ent ways of defning sectarianism, regeneration, the same time. But to arrive at this kind of conclu‐ and the status of the sacraments for evangelical sion is to contradict a long-standing set of assump‐ Protestants more generally (p. 207). tions about the relationship between pietism and science more generally. For Robert Merton (not to
2 H-Net Reviews mention Max Weber), pietists were ascetic Protes‐ tants, not mystics, whose utilitarianism (in con‐ junction with many other factors) served as a powerful motive force for the articulation of "sci‐ ence" and scientifc practice.[2] For generations of scholars of the early Enlightenment who have re‐ fected on the expulsion of Christian Wolf from the university town of Halle in 1723 at the hands of pietist theologians, pietists were Aristotelians-- opposed to Cartesianism and especially Wolf's ra‐ tionalism. Bröske's life story suggests we need not only to move beyond false distinctions between radical and moderate expressions of pietism, but also between asceticism and mysticism, Cartesian‐ ism and Aristotelianism, or science and religion. Notes [1]. Hans Schneider, "Der radikale Pietismus im 17.Jahrhundert," in Der Pietismus vom siebzehnten bis zum frühen achtzehnten Jahrhun‐ dert, ed. Martin Brecht (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); W. R. Ward, Early Evangelical‐ ism: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York. Harper & Row, 1978). [2]. See Steven Shapin, "Understanding the Merton Thesis" Isis 79 (1988): 594-605; Robert Merton, "Puritanism, Pietism and Science," Socio‐ logical Review 28 (1936): 1-30.
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Citation: Kelly J. Whitmer. Review of Shantz, Douglas H. Between Sardis and Philadelphia: The Life and World of Pietist Court Preacher Conrad Bröske.. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2010.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25273
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