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<i>Das Bistum Würzburg,</i> 7: <i>Die Würzburger Bischöfe von 1617 bis 1684</i> (review)

2012; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cat.2012.0257

1534-0708

Marc R. Forster,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Reviewed by: Das Bistum Würzburg, 7: Die Würzburger Bischöfe von 1617 bis 1684 Marc R. Forster Das Bistum Würzburg, 7: Die Würzburger Bischöfe von 1617 bis 1684. Edited by Winfried Romberg. [Germania Sacra: Die Kirche des Alten Reiches und ihre Institutionen: Dritte Folge 4: Die Bistümer der Kirchenprovinz Mainz.] (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 2011. Pp. xiv, 599. $210.00. ISBN 978-3-11-025183-8.) This volume, about the bishops of Würzburg in the seventeenth century, is the latest in a venerable series that has been published since the early 1900s. This volume thoroughly addresses the goal of this project, which is to provide scholars of local and regional history with a careful presentation of the sources and basic information about the history of German dioceses. This volume, like all the recent volumes, contains a detailed bibliography of both archival and secondary sources. Würzburg in the early-modern period was one of the largest and most important German prince-bishoprics, and the quantity of material gathered in this volume shows that there is much more research that could be done here. The volume is structured around the episcopacies of the bishops of Würzburg. Each bishop receives a section, whether he served for thirty years or two years, a structure that sometimes seems a bit artificial. Each section follows [End Page 815] a similar pattern, describing the person of the bishop as well as his foreign policy, administrative work, and religious policy and developments. These sections are quite catalog-like, presenting various events, laws, regulations, and the like as they appear in the sources. A short description of the historiography of each episcopate appears at the end of each section. The strength of this volume is in the mass of information assembled from various archives and, to a lesser extent, from secondary sources. The weakness is a structure that is imbedded in the most traditional of German Kirchengeschichte (church history). By structuring the volume around the bishop, it is almost impossible to present long-term trends, whether in foreign policy, state-building, or religious affairs. The editor, Winifried Romberg, attempts to address this issue in an introductory chapter, but this, too, is quite traditional, focusing on institutional developments and explicitly avoiding broad social and economic developments. This weakness is compounded by the fact that the bibliography exclusively references German-language scholarship, ignoring, among other works, important English language scholarship on witchcraft, the social history of religion, and cultural history. In the end, this volume does what it sets out to do. It gathers together the historical sources available to scholars about the Bishopric of Würzburg, lists the secondary works produced in German, and outlines clearly the role of the bishops. It is a useful addition to the vast compilation of the Germania Sacra. Marc R. Forster Connecticut College Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press