Reform before Luther?

By Sir CHARLES PETRIE
The Spirit of the CounterReformation by H. Outram Evennett (Cambridge University Press 35s.)
THE LECTURES that form the chapters of this book were delivered by the late Outram Evennett as Birkbeck Lecturer in ecclesiastical history at Cambridge in May, 1951, and it is well that they should be rescued from oblivion, for they treat what for want of a better word is termed the CounterReformation from a novel angle.
Briefly, the author's thesis is that the Church had begun to put its house in order before the Lutheran revolt, and that it drew its main, power from the Latin countries. The conclusion which the average reader is likely to draw is that the movement had little effect on the Teutonic world, particularly on England, and in a postscript Mr. Jahn Bossy sums this argument up when he says that "by the death of Urban VIII in 1644, the moment would seem to have passe.d when Catholicism could have established itself at any depth in the heart of the rising civirisation of northern Europe."
This would explain the failure of the Marian reaction in England but the argument
that the Counter-Reformation owed its inspiration to Spain is a dangerous one unless it is realised that the Spanish Church at the beginning of the sixteenth century was a very different affair from what it became by the end of it. Philip H was very far from being the secular arm of the CounterReformation as has so often been assumed in Anglo-Saxon and Protestant countries,
For the non-theologian Mr. Evennett is probably at his most interesting when, describing the way in which the Papal court functioned during the period under review. It has only too often been studied in isolation, and we are here shown how striking was the resemblance which it bore to the great contemporary monarchies of France and Spain.
It functioned on the whole very efficiently, and the author even has a good word for those much-maligned figures the cardinal nephews, who "were often men of surprising ability."
It would be idle to pretend that this book is easy reading, but those who are prepared to follow the narrative to the end will certainly be rewarded, for Mr. Evennett's whole approach to the Counter-Reformation is not only 'highly original but also extremely well argued.