review - jack r. censer

7/25/2019 Review - Jack R. Censer

1/3

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

ReviewAuthor(s): Jack R. CenserReview by: Jack R. CenserSource: The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 5 (Dec., 1989), pp. 1396-1397Published by: on behalf of theOxford University Press American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1906437Accessed: 11-06-2015 19:22 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 200.5.224.104 on Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:22:04 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ouphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ahahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1906437http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1906437http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ahahttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ouphttp://www.jstor.org/


2/3

1396 Reviews of Books

level. Work remains to be done on the 1640s and

1650s, in particular. Work by others that ties the

history of prices to government income and ex-

pense has not been followed up. Above all, some-

one needs to consider the findings of all historians

of the French government's taxation policies in

the light of recent work by early modern French

historians.

J. MICHAEL HAYDEN

University f

Saskatchewan

PAULJ. MORMAN.

NIel Aubertde Verse:A

Study

n the

Conceptof

Toleration.

Texts

and Studies

in

Reli-

gion, number 32.)

Lewiston, N.Y.:

Edwin

Mellen.

1987.

Pp. 282.

$49.95.

One valuable approach in intellectual historyis the

study

of minor

thinkers

in an

attempt

to

under-

stand better the climate

of

opinion

of an

age.

This

is what

Paul J. Morman has done

in

his

biography

of Noel

Aubert

de

Verse

(1645-1714),

a French

controversialist involved

in the

important

issues

of

the 1680s. Aubert seemed to have

his hands

in

the

great

matters of public

debate, taking

on

Spinoza,

the Cartesians,

Bossuet, Jurieu,

and Louis XIV.

There

is some

consistency

in

Aubert's beliefs,

but

one would not

know this

from

his professions

of faith. Born a Catholic in Le Mans, in 1662 he

converted to

Calvinism, apparently out of convic-

tion.

Defrocked as a

minister,

primarily owing

to a

too liberal theology,

Aubert returned to the Ro-

man church in

1670.

A

pension might have made

the

transition

attractive, though Aubert did be-

lieve by this time that

the Gallican church

was best

able to

reunite

Christendom. Scandal seemed to

dog

Aubert,

and

in

1679 he fled to the

United

Provinces. The revocation of the Edict of

Nantes

dashed his

hopes

that the French

church would

unify Christianity, so he

became Protestant once

more. Alas, he had little luck finding a secure

position in either

the United Provinces

or

in

Germany;

in 1690 he returned to

France,

recon-

verted

again, and soon obtained a

pension. This

religious odyssey

raises questions

about

the

nature

of

seventeenth-century conversions, but

it

does

not

appear to

have

done much

damage

to

Aubert's

psyche.

Morman

points

out that

Aubert believed

almost

any

Christian denomination could lead one

to salvation.

Unlike

the

overwhelming majority

of

his

coreligionists,

Catholic and

Calvinist,

Aubert

did

not

consider membership in

any particular

sect to be crucial. Rather, he reduced the essence

of

Christianity

to

charity

and

brotherly love,

find-

ing

them in

the

Apostles' Creed,

the Ten Com-

mandments,

and the

Lord's Prayer. On this foun-

dation,

Aubert constructed

a

theory

of toleration

that

found

new admirers

in

his

era.

Aubert

never doubted the truth of

Christianity;

this irenicist believed that the unfettered use of

reason and the dismissal of unessential dogmas

would

bring

Christians

together.

In

fact,

it was

Christianity

that concerned him more than toler-

ation, for he did not grant toleration to atheists.

He

allowed the individual the right

to

follow

a

free

and

erring conscience,

but

only

so far.

Reason was

to buttress faith, even varying ones, but not to go

against

all

faiths.

Aubert distinguished between

civil

toleration,

the government's obligation to tolerate different

religions as long as they

did

not threaten the state,

and

ecclesiastical tolerance,

the need for

Chris-

tians to tolerate

all

who

accepted

the fundamentals

of

Christianity,

even if

they disagreed

on

periph-

eral religious beliefs. Aubert had a problem with

civil

toleration, because

the

state

had to decide

when a

religion

became

dangerous.

The

example

of the revocation illustrated the

weakness

of a

theory

of toleration that relied on a

sovereign's

right

to determine

whether

a

religion posed

a

threat. But

Morman

is

careful to

present

Aubert's

limitations

and

significance;

he avoids the

pitfall

of

some

biographers

who

claim

too much for their

subjects. Thus,

Morman

explains

that Aubert an-

ticipated

but

did

not influence the

philosophes

with his

critical

reasoning, anticlericalism,

and

theory of toleration. Aubert was representative of

a

group

of

prolific controversialists

in a

premier

age

of

controversy,

one

mired in

conflict

among

different faiths

and

between

faith and

reason. He

was

far

beneath

Bayle, Jurieu, Arnauld, Bossuet,

and Nicole but

worthy

of a

full-length study.

Morman's monograph will interest specialists in

the

decade

of

the 1680s.

RICHARD M. GOLDEN

Clemson

University

ROGER CHARTIER.

TheCulturalUsesofPrint in Early

Modern

France. Translated

by

LYDIA

G.

COCHRANE.

Princeton:

Princeton

University Press. 1987.

Pp.

xi, 354.

$35.00.

For

some time

specialists

in

the history of

Old

Regime France have

delighted

in

the

many

mono-

graphs

and

articles

flowing

from the

very prolific

Roger Chartier. This

author has published

widely

on

education,

the

history

of the

book,

the

history

of

political

ideas,

cultural

history, and

other topics.

Yet, in the

United States,

Chartier's work

has

received far less attention than it deserves. Many

of

his essays have been

almost impossible to find

on

this side

of

the

Atlantic.

And

almost none

of

his

work has been accessible

to those who do not read

French.

Consequently,

this translation of

eight

articles will

introduce the considerable

abilities of

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/3

Modern

Europe

1397

Roger Chartier to many. Furthermore, because he

has researched in several different schools of his-

tory whose techniques are not yet well known

here, this selection will make available to North

Americans a variety of new approaches.

The material presented in this volume, though

not representative of all aspects of Chartier's

work, does provide a fair selection of his research

on the

history

of

ideas. Among the articles

are

three

that

trace concepts

over a

long period. The

subjects include transformations of festivals, of the

art of

dying,

and

of the term

civilite.

These articles

reveal Chartier's interest in an intellectual history

that concentrates on widely held beliefs instead of

the perceptions of intellectuals. His selection

of

topics is innovative, borrowed in part from a new

wave of research. And, in examining these social

views from the eighteenth century, Chartier re-

mains very sensitive throughout the

volume to

the

way that different groups and individuals held

various understandings of similar situations. Such

a

perspective enriches Chartier's analysis.

Four of the articles

in

this book explore the

reading habits of the French in the early modern

era.

Chartier examines publishing strategies,

con-

tents of popular works, and the possibilities for the

circulation

and

consumption of books

in

cities.

Although these articles do not cohere exactly,

some very useful generalizations do emerge.

Chartier shares the

view of

many

scholars

that a

wide spectrum of the population

was

acquainted

with

those

works that historians

originally

believed

were designed only

for

the poor. Yet,

if

social

cleavages seem

to diminish

in

this

work, gaps

between

city

and

country

seem

to

yawn

ever wider.

The

growing

distribution

of books

apparently

increased the urban reader's advantage.

One other article concerns

the

grievances

com-

piled by the

French in 1789 as

part

of the

electoral

process for the Estates General. This piece very

carefully

and

cautiously

mines these documents

for

the state of

public opinion

on the eve

of the

revolution. Throughout the volume

but

especially

in

this work, Chartier skillfully

weaves

original

research

with

an

extraordinary mastery

of the

scholarship

of

others. This

technique

leads

to

fascinating conclusions, particularly regarding

the

rapid

radicalization of

opinion

in the

closing

months of the

Old

Regime.

This article also

em-

phasizes

the

relationship

between elites

and

peas-

ants and thus is somewhat linked to his other

articles

that

address

social divisions. The connec-

tions between

any

of

the

pieces, however,

are on

the whole rather limited.

Indeed,

the

strength

of

the volume is

not found in

any

overall substantive

conclusions but

in

the

discovery

and

presentation

of Roger

Chartier's talent

to an American audi-

ence.

JACK

R. CENSER

George

Mason

University

L. W.

B. BROCKLISS.

FrenchHigher Education

n the

Seventeenth

nd

EighteenthCenturies:

A

Cultural

His-

tory. New York: Clarendon

Press of Oxford

Uni-

versity Press.

1987.

Pp. xiii,

544. $92.00.

In a

work

of masterful synthesis

and breadth,

L. W.

B. Brockliss examines

teaching and student

life in

early modern

French collegesand

universi-

ties,

a subject with intellectual,

class, and political

implications.

Brockliss is attentive

to nuance in

analyzing

the content of courses

that developed

over

a

period

of two

hundred

years;

he treats all of

France,

provincial

and Parisian. As

a result, this

study

is a

complex

and subtle

history

of ideas.

Brockliss

argues

that, although

educational

in-

stitutions

were coopted

in

seventeenth-century

France by the political

and religious power

struc-

tures,

universities unintentionally prepared

stu-

dents for the Enlightenment

by exposing them

to

intellectual

controversy. He

both confirms and

challenges

standard opinions

about

the

early mod-

ern

educational establishment. Professors

did

in-

deed teach received knowledge rather than de-

velop

new ideas

in the classroom. In general,

the

courses

in

theology, law,

and moral philosophy

tried

to

conform

to the interests

of church and

state

by

inculcating

students

with traditional and

absolutist

precepts.

Interestingly,

law students

tended more

than others

to

be

truant

and

rowdy,

and Brockliss

hypothesizes

that

such low

morale

reflected

their conviction

that the law course was

largely

pointless (p. 281).

But

many professors

did take account

of

new

ideas,

sometimes

defend-

ing them,

more often including

them in eclectic

theories or arguing against them. Cartesianism

was incorporated

systematically

into

the two-year

course

in

philosophy

that the

colleges

offered

after

1670. Such exposure

was

important,

but a still

more decisive

influence came

from the

teaching

of

the sciences.

Beginning

in the 1670s

professors

in

physics,

mathematics,

and medicine reflected

recent devel-

opments

in

their

teaching.

Additionally, physics,

which all

university

students

studied,

introduced

the

principles

of

reason,

utility,

and

empiricism

and encouraged an appreciation for innovation

and

argument.

In Brockliss's view,

French

higher

education

was

crucial

to the

acceptance

and then

rejection

of absolutist

political

theory,

to the dis-

semination

of methods

and controversies of

the

scientific

revolution,

and

ultimately

to the

open-

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

review - jack r. censer

Documents