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cific problems.Two deal with the complex issue of land. Michael Perceval-

Maxwell offers a historiographical overview of the attempts by historians to

deal with the thorny question of the Restoration land settlement, while KevinMcKenny attempts to bring statistical precision to the problem by atomizing

Irish landholding as portrayed in the Books of Survey and Distribution. One

essay, by Coleman Dennehy, deals with the Restoration parliament of

166166,which tried to give shape to the land settlement.John Cronin delves

into the little-explored relation between history and literature with an exam-

ination of the plays of Roger Boyle, first earl of Orrery, and reads Boyles play

The generall(c. 166264) as a piece of political lobbying using innovative lit-

erary forms. Perspectives on the native Irish are offered in Ted McCormicks

essay on that Restoration polymath, Sir William Petty,and his plans to engineer

Ireland socially, transforming it into a civilized and profitable country.

However, the largest group of essays, some four, confront the problem of reli-

gion in Restoration Ireland. Only one, that by Sandra Hynes on the Quaker

response to the new world, deals with Protestantism. It is regrettable that

there is no attempt to tackle the problem of the established Church, which

was so central to the religious and social agenda of the years after 1660.The

other three (by Eoin Kinsella, Jason McHugh, and Anne Creighton) deal with

Catholics and land, the response of Catholic clergy to the Restoration (using

the example of the radical Nicholas French), and Catholics and politics in the

1660s.Taken together, these three essays provide an important new startingpoint for the examination of the political dilemma of balancing loyalty with

salvation that brought turmoil to many lives in Restoration Ireland.There is

much in this book that is both new and interesting,and it deserves a place on

the bookshelf of anyone interested in the early-modern British Isles.

National University of Ireland, Maynooth RAYMOND GILLESPIE

The Religious Enlightenment:Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London

to Vienna.By David Sorkin.[Jews,Christians,and Muslims from the Ancient

to the Modern World.] (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2008. Pp.xviii, 339. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-691-13502-1.)

On the basis of six influential thinkers of the eighteenth century, the

author shows how, in contrast to a secularist interpretation, the Enlighten-

ment contributed toward a renewal and purgation of religion both in theory

and in practice.The Anglican theologian William Warburton was, above all, an

apologist of religious tolerance in a country that had been torn apart by reli-

gious strife. In following the Enlightenments ideal of toleration, he unques-

tionably promoted the well-being of religion.The Calvinist theologian Jacob

Vernet found strong support in the Enlightenment for the Arminian positionas it was struggling with the strict predestinarian one.At the same time he

tried to reconcile the opposing parties by insisting on the essentially practi

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The two intellectually most impressive figures in this collection are

Siegmund Baumgarten and Moses Mendelssohn. Raised in Pietist theology,

Baumgarten eventually came to teach at the University of Halle, where thedominating Pietists were at odds with the Enlightenment philosophy of Wolff

and Thomasius on one side and orthodox Lutheran theology on the other.

Impressed by Wolffs ideas, Baumgarten concluded that Enlightenment phi-

losophy posed no doctrinal obstacle to Pietist theology, of which the essence

consisted in the union of the soul with God. Building his own theology on

Wolffian principles, he succeeded in reconciling the Pietists with moderate

Enlightenment philosophers and theologians. Mendelssohn, influenced by

Wolff, Baumgarten, and Lessing, attempted an even more perfect union

between religion and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. According to

him, the Mosaic revelation had added no theoretical truth to the natural reli-

gion of the philosophers. But the Judaic law had been a strong force in pre-

serving the moral truths of reason. It thereby occupied a favorable position

for reconciling religions with one other. It also implied that Jews were enti-

tled to the same rights as others.

Joseph Eybels impact was primarily political. A former seminarian in

Austria, he became a teacher of canon law and a close collaborator with the

Empress Maria-Theresa and later with her son Joseph II in their attempts to

reform Catholicism according to the principles of the Enlightenment. He

assisted them in breaking down those prohibitions of the Counter-Reformation that obstructed the Enlightenment concept of public policy. In

his Introduction to Church Law (1777) and in a number of pamphlets he

argued for restoring the original authority of the bishops and replacing the

virtual monarchy of the bishop of Rome. Not surprisingly, his theories were

condemned by the Vatican.

Adrien Lamourette, a French priest who eventually became a seminary

teacher and a bishop, was trained in Jesuit theology, but gradually moved over

to a more Jansenist position. Lamourette strongly supported the French

Revolution as being essential to a purified Christianity: it would lead to a moreequitable distribution of goods and free France from an unchristian despot-

ism of clergy, nobility, and king.Together with Mirabeau, he tried to overcome

the polarization caused by the Revolution. But few Catholics followed him,

particularly after he became a state- appointed bishop of Lyon. In the Terreur

of 1794 he was executed.

Sorkins study presents a valuable contribution to the ongoing reassess-

ment of the Enlightenment.There unquestionably was a strong religious ele-

ment in it, and in some cases the Enlightenment proved to be a stimulus for

a religious awakening, or at least for a tolerant religious attitude.The beauti-fully written essays display an uncommon fairness to each faith and are sup-

ported by an admirable historical erudition Yet I am not altogether clear

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some cases, the new ideology strengthened? Or, that religion supported the

Enlightenment agenda on such essential goals as tolerance and intellectual

liberation? In the case of Mendelssohn the answer would probably be both.In the case of Eybel only the second is evident.The Austrian politician seems

to have used religion as the only effective means to advance a political-

cultural goal.What was the religious merit of politically implementing social-

cultural structures favored by the enlightened but condemned by the Church

and overwhelmingly rejected by the people.(In the Austrian Netherlands they

caused a revolution).

Baumgarten mainly continued the traditional work of a theologian;

namely, to reconcile conflicting tendencies in the theology of his time. He

used all available sources, including those of the Enlightenment. But the dis-cussion on the status of a natural religion had started well before the eigh-

teenth century. The case of Lamourette is particularly precarious. To favor

the Jansenist party over that of the Jesuits was neither a progressively reli-

gious act nor an enlightened one. Jansenism, as it became combined with

Gallicanism in eighteenth-century France, was far from the intellectual force

it had been in the days of Port-Royal. Nor was it religiously judicious to per-

sist in ones support of the Revolution, when both Catholic clergy and laity

strongly opposed it.

So the question remains:What does one really prove by presenting six menso deeply different in intentions and methods? That religion was touched by

the Enlightenment and in some instances very positively is true enough. But

the author wants more than that. He refers to the religious Enlightenmentas

a search for a middle way between extremes (p. 11) and claims that it was

distinguished by its commitment to toleration(p.14). I agree with the author

that the Enlightenment had religious sources among others and that many

continued to be inspired by them. So I was extremely surprised to find my

study The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern

Culture (New Haven, 2004) dismissed in the first footnote, as a reworking

of Peter Gays quintessentially secular interpretation of the Enlightenment(p. 1). In my search for the philosophical principles underlying what was in

the first place a philosophical movement, I reached a conclusion that explic-

itly contradicts the secularist reading. Indeed, some reviewers of the book

thought to discover a pro-religious bias in it.

Nor is the religious interpretation entirely new. Jules Michelet defended

it in his famous Histoire de la Rvolution Franaise (1846). So did La

Mennais and the entire wing of the Catholic party in nineteenth-century

France. But to showwhy this was and whetherit profited religion, or was

merely part of a hidden reaction against religion, requires digging to thephilosophical roots of what was to a major extent a philosophical event.

The author committed to a more fact oriented conception of history has

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therefore, neglect the philosophical context within which the issues devel-oped? It is praiseworthy to stay only with the facts, but in intellectual his-

tory the principal facts are ideas.

Yale University LOUIS DUPR

Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe. Edited by Ole Peter Grelland Andrew Cunningham. [The History of Medicine in Context.](Burlington,VT:Ashgate Publishing Co. 2007. Pp. x, 267. $99.95. ISBN 978-0-754-65638-8.)

The thirteen essays in this volume challenge and complicate the old per-ception of the Enlightenment as an antireligious movement and the evenolder convention that linked the medical profession with unbelief.The leadessay, by Jonathan Israel, the prominent historian of the radical Enlighten-mentwhich he distinguishes from a dominant moderate Enlightenmentargues that a group of physicians influenced by Spinozas materialism did,indeed,contribute to a medical revolution in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries,rooted in science and philosophy (p.28). The rest of thecontributions,however,point in other directions.Peter Elmer shows how reli-giously nonconformist physicians who left England for the Netherlands after

the Restoration of 1660 failed to internalize the message of philosophical rad-icalism, in large part, he suggests, because of their religious conservatism.Spinozism was inconsistent with their belief in the real existence of spirits,demons, and witches. A close analysis by Laurence Brockliss of the booksowned by five eighteenth-century French physicians reveals only one (aHuguenot) with a taste for the more provocative works of the philosophes.Not that the others were necessarily anti-Enlightenment; Brockliss points tothe role of a humanist Catholic Enlightenment, devoted to progress in this

world as well as to Christianity.

Several contributions underscore the importance of religious belief forphysicians and philosophers and the ways in which it interacted with theirviews on questions about medicine and the human body and mind. RinaKnoeff compares the anatomical atlases of Govard Bidloo and BernardSiegfried Albinus, seeing Mennonite tendencies in the formers harsh depic-tion of cadavers and the influence of a Dutch Enlightenment blend ofCalvinism and humanism in the latters more positive images of the humanbody. Claudia Stein recounts the seemingly paradoxical story of an encounterbetween the enlightened Bavarian court physician Johann Anton von Wolterand the celebrated exorcist Johann Joseph Ganer.Von Wolter sought help for

his own daughter, who was suffering from convulsions.He emerged from thesession with Ganer convinced that the priest had worked a miraculous cure.Medical science could not explain it and the results effectively refuted mate

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