Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531-1558.

Marshall, Peter

Carrie Euler. Couriers of the Gospel: England and Zurich, 1531-1558.

Zurcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschischte 25. Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich, 2006. x + 350 pp. index. append. tbls. map. bibl. [euro]34. ISBN: 978-3-290-17393-7.

This detailed and thorough monograph makes a valuable contribution to the field of English Reformation studies. Euler's theme is the network of ties, both intellectual and personal, linking the kingdom of England to the Swiss Reformed city of Zurich in the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I. The key figure is Zwingli's successor as leader of the church in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, who in 1553 was able to declare before the city council that "the crown of England has entirely the teaching and faith that we also have" (96). Arguably, Euler exaggerates the extent to which "modern scholars have all but lost sight of England's connections to Zurich" in this period (10). The Zurich relationship is much to the fore, for example, in Diarmaid MacCulloch's influential work on the Edwardian church, a church that MacCulloch suggests is better described as "Bullingerian" than as Zwinglian or Calvinist. Nonetheless, Euler fills out the picture with great proficiency.

After an initial survey of the development of the Zurich Reformed tradition, the book's second chapter surveys an extensive correspondence: letters passing between England and Zurich, between Zurichers and English Protestant exiles, and among Continental reformers commenting on English affairs (an imposing total of 950 letters, usefully catalogued in an appendix). The next chapter provides a close reading of English translations of twenty-one works by five Zurich authors, texts again helpfully catalogued in the appendices. There follows a succession of thematic studies: on how Zurich attitudes towards what Euler calls (in a slightly awkward phrase) "material piety" helped shape the iconoclastic policies of the Henrician and Edwardian regimes; on the role of Zurich anti-Anabaptist writings in helping to define English Protestant orthodoxy; and on the significance of translations of Bullinger's Der Christlich Eestand (Christian State of Matrimony) in disseminating in England evangelical ideas, especially covenant theology.

In the course of this there are many insights, and some surprises. Ironically, Bullinger's marriage text was popular in England because of its similarity to pre-Reformation domestic conduct books. In fact, Euler argues that most translations of Zurich works were concerned with practical piety rather than anti-Catholic polemic. It is refreshing to be told of the "moderation and pragmatism" of the Zurich tradition (24), and Euler makes an intriguing case for Zwingli's and Bullinger's writings as a possible source for the adiaphorist tradition in English Protestant theology. Occasionally, one feels the case is being pushed too hard. Euler is right to reiterate Margaret Aston's emphasis on the profound significance of Henry VIII's church adopting as official policy in 1537 the renumbering of the Decalogue first widely promulgated by the Zurich reformer Leo Jud. This made the prohibition of graven images a separate second commandment and provided a charter for iconoclasts. But Euler is not able to demonstrate a direct Zurich connection in the introduction of the new numbering into the Bishops' Book, and she is too quick to dismiss Richard Rex's insightful reading of Henry as a would-be Old Testament monarch. A kind of Erasmian fundamentalism, rather than any conscious debt to Reformed theology, lay behind that king's attitudes toward shrines and imagery

In her conclusion, Euler sees the flow of influence as distinctly one-way: "the Zurich church would not have developed differently without its ties to England" (267). Is this really so? One wonders how far this finding is predetermined by the research questions the book sets itself. The fact that the story wraps up with the accession of Elizabeth I is perhaps also regrettable. As Euler herself recognizes, Bullinger was a force to be reckoned with up to his death in 1575, and his influence survived thereafter. The famous Calvinist consensus of the Elizabethan church was neither immediate nor total. We might usefully have been told that as late as 1586, Archbishop Whitgift was ordering all non-preaching clergy in the province of Canterbury to study weekly one of the sermons from Bullinger's Decades. Yet such caveats aside, Carrie Euler has supplied us with an indispensable guide to Anglo-Zurich relations in the mid-Tudor years, and an important corrective to the parochialism within which the study of the English Reformation often threatens to confine itself.

PETER MARSHALL

University of Warwick