Volume 12, Number 7 · April 10, 1969
Deforming the Reformation
By Natalie Zemon Davis
Religion and Regime
by Guy E. Swanson
Michigan, 295 pp., $7.50
The sociologist Guy Swanson claims here to have explained the appearance of Protestantism, and why it took hold in some countries and not in others. An ambitious enterprise, which unfortunately does not make good on its claims. I say unfortunately, but there are some historians who will relish his failure; they would rather leave the Reformation a mystery than see it explained by a poacher from sociology. In their view, the historian deals with change and particular events, the sociologist with static phenomena and general patterns; and there is a barbed wire fence between the two fields. When the historian wants to find a 'pattern' in the facts which he has painstakingly collected, he will consult his 'reason' or 'his understanding of the humanly possible' (I quote here G. R. Elton, who has written recently both on the Reformation and on the practice of history[1] ). Somehow this understanding is unable to benefit from what sociologists or anthropologists have found about human behavior. Better that the historian trust his own safe knowledge of what is humanly possible.
Review, 4264 words
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