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The Imaginative World of the Reformation
In this small gem of Reformation research, Peter Matheson offers a rich view of the Reformation as it appeared in pamphlets and sermons, woodcuts and paintings, poetry and song, correspondence and the contours of daily life.The popular media he explores evince the Reformation's novel use of images and metaphors, its deep effects on personal and family life and spirituality, heightened civic engagement, great utopian dreams and experiments, as well as its nightmarish excesses.
166 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 30, 2019
I finished this book a couple years ago but it's been in my "currently reading" list since then. No longer! I read it in preparation for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, and I figured I'd post a review today in preparation for Reformation Day tomorrow.
Matheson argues:
This is not a disparaging word against the solas, it's just that justification by faith alone belonged with abundant life not only clarified doctrines, let alone liberation from self-serving religious authorities. The Reformation gave Protestants freedom to read God's Word, freedom to share communion, freedom from traditionalism and from dualism. It was a freedom to imagine (not outside reality but new concepts of reality) that daily work and survival meant something to God and was a good given by God.
Should you read this? You should put it in your queue if you've already read a lot of Luther and Calvin first, and if you're interested to see how preaching was (only a) part of how nations were turned upside down.
Matheson argues:
"The Reformation...was more a song or a symphony than a system, more lyric than lecture, more a leap of the imagination than one of those social restructurings we are so heartily sick of today. It certainly produced systems, lectures and structures as well, but they were secondary." (loc. 215)
This is not a disparaging word against the solas, it's just that justification by faith alone belonged with abundant life not only clarified doctrines, let alone liberation from self-serving religious authorities. The Reformation gave Protestants freedom to read God's Word, freedom to share communion, freedom from traditionalism and from dualism. It was a freedom to imagine (not outside reality but new concepts of reality) that daily work and survival meant something to God and was a good given by God.
"the Reformation can be seen as an infinitely varied, but coherent and extended, metaphor for the bountifulness of God's grace." (loc. 99)
Should you read this? You should put it in your queue if you've already read a lot of Luther and Calvin first, and if you're interested to see how preaching was (only a) part of how nations were turned upside down.
June 23, 2018
I wrote a review of this book (see below) for a graduate seminar on Calvin with David Whitford (Spring 2014).
The Reformation was not so much a "departure from . . . enchantment" as it was "a different way of imagining" (3).
"We are quite rightly impressed by the iconoclastic dimensions of the Reformation . . . . But such iconoclasm may be eclipsed by what we can call the iconopoiac energies of the Reformation . . ." (6).
"When your metaphors change, your world changes with them" (7).
More good quotes here.
Random notes:
56–58: magistrates
94: More's crude anti-Reformers polemic
119: tradition
120: impressionistic
Review:
In The Imaginative World of the Reformation, a short book with a ratio of one illustration per six pages, Peter Matheson sets aside traditional narratives—such as doctrinal issues or social pressures—that have explained the major shifts that occurred in sixteenth-century Europe, and he digs to the root of the issue: a shifting (but not a withering) imagination. In the first chapter he argues that the German “Reformations” were not homogeneous (1-2). Matheson contends that in iconoclasm, which Luther and Calvin formally condemned (14), the desired affect is often not to remove all images, but to clear a space for reevaluation. Just as stirring the societal cauldron may paradoxically bring forth hidden aromas, so also apocalyptic language can be received positively, as screams of pain may indicate a woman’s giving birth. Anticlericalism also stirred the pot, but again, all of these disturbances served to revitalize the imagination.
Matheson continues his emphasis on a revitalized imagination by asking in the title of his next chapter whether the Reformation really was a stripping of the altars, or merely a new song. Matheson bolsters his “new song” argument by showing that the Reformation was just as much about printing and singing as it was about preaching. One could even say that it “was more a song or a symphony than a system, more lyric than lecture” (26). Part of the shifting imagination resulted in new possibilities for freedom, from both religious and social tyranny. Popular imagery included Reformers as nightingales, heralding the dawn; clear streams to be preferred over the muddy lagoon of corrupt tradition; and sturdy walls, either to be stormed or to be utilized for protection.
Powerful images contributed to notion of utopias, and this popular idea revealed that those longing for reformation had a keen ability to imagine a better world. This new ordo rerum employed a robust covenantal motif that included lay people as well as intellectual leaders, and women and the poor were able to imagine that their stations in life were not as static as they had been. In this utopian mindset, people envisioned a sacred commonwealth in which rulers operated based on the good of their people. In rural settings, community played a big role in people’s imaginations, and the mission of the peasants to gain freedom was represented sympathetically in the art of Dürer, Cranach, and others. Matheson maintains that while iconoclasm “was part of a levelling campaign [to remove] privilege and hierarchy,” the imaginative art of the revolutionaries shows the paradoxical “iconopoesis” of their reform (74-75).
Of course, “if you set your face towards Utopia you can expect to be mauled in the process” (77). The chapter on “Nightmare” is Matheson’s most artistic chapter in the sense that he builds a nightmare crescendo, from sexual depravity and the plague, to heresy and blasphemy, and finally to social anarchy. “Perhaps . . . too much imagination” led to a “repressive, condemnatory tone set by Rome” (80-81), and the result, from one perspective, was that imagination died: “It appeared that everything was to be resolved by bans, bulls, and force. Coercion was dignified with a pious mask” (81). But another perspective is that events labeled “nightmares” are not always the end of the story. Indeed, “Many of the demands it made were quietly conceded in its aftermath” (99). Popular lyrics after the Peasants’ War express a recognition that unrestrained imagination caused too much chaos. Matheson concludes the chapter with a pastoral admonition to avoid injustice by not “adopting uncritically the terminology of the oppressor” (100). The war was about real concerns, and labeling it a “nightmare” does not do justice to the imaginative efforts of suffering people.
In the final two chapters, Matheson considers individual and spiritual outlooks related to imagination. He explores the life of Argula von Grumbach, and he looks at her daily struggles and attempts to connect them with the imagination of the Reformation. Although the link is tenuous, perhaps the best point of connection is his observation that the monastery and cathedral were often replaced with work and home as the new “laboratories for godliness” (101). Since many efforts to sway the princes had failed, the Reformation imagination turned to local and personal concerns (108). On the spiritual side, which is not completely distinct from individual concerns, spiritual interiority gathered importance as mediatory roles of Mary and the saints diminished. Luther’s devotional literature and hymns connected more with the hearts and imaginations of the lay people, much more so than attempts to catechize families. Furthermore, people now imagined the Godhead as more approachable; God the Father was not an avenger, but a guiding patriarch, and Jesus was a friend.
At brief points, Matheson’s thesis struggles to show its relevance, and the mere mention of imagination at the end of some sections appears forced. Also, as hard as he works to correct clichéd ideas, he seems to cast confessions in a consistently negative light, as if they were intentionally monologic and devoid of imagination (83). But in general, Matheson’s project is reminiscent of Leland Ryken’s helpful book Worldly Saints, which attempts to rescue the Puritans from stereotypes and point to their imaginative creativity. Similarly, Matheson resists seeing the Reformers as purblind iconoclasts. The enchanted world was certainly critiqued, but not destroyed, and Matheson’s spotlight on the many imaginative aspects of the Reformers’ world reveals the iconopoetic nature of the reformations.
The Reformation was not so much a "departure from . . . enchantment" as it was "a different way of imagining" (3).
"We are quite rightly impressed by the iconoclastic dimensions of the Reformation . . . . But such iconoclasm may be eclipsed by what we can call the iconopoiac energies of the Reformation . . ." (6).
"When your metaphors change, your world changes with them" (7).
More good quotes here.
Random notes:
56–58: magistrates
94: More's crude anti-Reformers polemic
119: tradition
120: impressionistic
Review:
In The Imaginative World of the Reformation, a short book with a ratio of one illustration per six pages, Peter Matheson sets aside traditional narratives—such as doctrinal issues or social pressures—that have explained the major shifts that occurred in sixteenth-century Europe, and he digs to the root of the issue: a shifting (but not a withering) imagination. In the first chapter he argues that the German “Reformations” were not homogeneous (1-2). Matheson contends that in iconoclasm, which Luther and Calvin formally condemned (14), the desired affect is often not to remove all images, but to clear a space for reevaluation. Just as stirring the societal cauldron may paradoxically bring forth hidden aromas, so also apocalyptic language can be received positively, as screams of pain may indicate a woman’s giving birth. Anticlericalism also stirred the pot, but again, all of these disturbances served to revitalize the imagination.
Matheson continues his emphasis on a revitalized imagination by asking in the title of his next chapter whether the Reformation really was a stripping of the altars, or merely a new song. Matheson bolsters his “new song” argument by showing that the Reformation was just as much about printing and singing as it was about preaching. One could even say that it “was more a song or a symphony than a system, more lyric than lecture” (26). Part of the shifting imagination resulted in new possibilities for freedom, from both religious and social tyranny. Popular imagery included Reformers as nightingales, heralding the dawn; clear streams to be preferred over the muddy lagoon of corrupt tradition; and sturdy walls, either to be stormed or to be utilized for protection.
Powerful images contributed to notion of utopias, and this popular idea revealed that those longing for reformation had a keen ability to imagine a better world. This new ordo rerum employed a robust covenantal motif that included lay people as well as intellectual leaders, and women and the poor were able to imagine that their stations in life were not as static as they had been. In this utopian mindset, people envisioned a sacred commonwealth in which rulers operated based on the good of their people. In rural settings, community played a big role in people’s imaginations, and the mission of the peasants to gain freedom was represented sympathetically in the art of Dürer, Cranach, and others. Matheson maintains that while iconoclasm “was part of a levelling campaign [to remove] privilege and hierarchy,” the imaginative art of the revolutionaries shows the paradoxical “iconopoesis” of their reform (74-75).
Of course, “if you set your face towards Utopia you can expect to be mauled in the process” (77). The chapter on “Nightmare” is Matheson’s most artistic chapter in the sense that he builds a nightmare crescendo, from sexual depravity and the plague, to heresy and blasphemy, and finally to social anarchy. “Perhaps . . . too much imagination” led to a “repressive, condemnatory tone set by Rome” (80-81), and the result, from one perspective, was that imagination died: “It appeared that everything was to be resolved by bans, bulls, and force. Coercion was dignified with a pious mask” (81). But another perspective is that events labeled “nightmares” are not always the end of the story. Indeed, “Many of the demands it made were quietly conceded in its aftermath” (99). Popular lyrics after the Peasants’ War express a recognition that unrestrained imagination caused too much chaos. Matheson concludes the chapter with a pastoral admonition to avoid injustice by not “adopting uncritically the terminology of the oppressor” (100). The war was about real concerns, and labeling it a “nightmare” does not do justice to the imaginative efforts of suffering people.
In the final two chapters, Matheson considers individual and spiritual outlooks related to imagination. He explores the life of Argula von Grumbach, and he looks at her daily struggles and attempts to connect them with the imagination of the Reformation. Although the link is tenuous, perhaps the best point of connection is his observation that the monastery and cathedral were often replaced with work and home as the new “laboratories for godliness” (101). Since many efforts to sway the princes had failed, the Reformation imagination turned to local and personal concerns (108). On the spiritual side, which is not completely distinct from individual concerns, spiritual interiority gathered importance as mediatory roles of Mary and the saints diminished. Luther’s devotional literature and hymns connected more with the hearts and imaginations of the lay people, much more so than attempts to catechize families. Furthermore, people now imagined the Godhead as more approachable; God the Father was not an avenger, but a guiding patriarch, and Jesus was a friend.
At brief points, Matheson’s thesis struggles to show its relevance, and the mere mention of imagination at the end of some sections appears forced. Also, as hard as he works to correct clichéd ideas, he seems to cast confessions in a consistently negative light, as if they were intentionally monologic and devoid of imagination (83). But in general, Matheson’s project is reminiscent of Leland Ryken’s helpful book Worldly Saints, which attempts to rescue the Puritans from stereotypes and point to their imaginative creativity. Similarly, Matheson resists seeing the Reformers as purblind iconoclasts. The enchanted world was certainly critiqued, but not destroyed, and Matheson’s spotlight on the many imaginative aspects of the Reformers’ world reveals the iconopoetic nature of the reformations.
June 8, 2022
Summary: Sweeping through Europe, the Reformation caught the imagination of whole peoples. Traditionally it has been understood as a change in social and political structures and in doctrine. Peter Matheson argues that the underlying shift was in the very perception of reality, that the Reformation replaced the 'enchanted world' of the medieval church with a different imaginative world. It was this profound shift which accounts for the radicality and extent of the Reformation. A fascinating work of original research and analysis - by one of the world's leading Reformation historians. Comprehensively illustrated.
August 22, 2016
A delightful read that incorporates some of the most recent Reformation research with new perspectives from a historian from "down under" who teaches in New Zealand. The book contains rich insights into the world of the Reformation, especially through visual images, in order to grasp communal dimensions at times overlooked in traditional Reformation historiography.
September 4, 2011
I decided to read this right before I started the Reformation in my 11th grade Omnibus class and found it had some good insights. He gives more credit to the Reformers than many do for their imagination which comes out in their preaching and writing.
January 26, 2009
Really good.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews