sehepunkte 24 (2024), Nr. 10

Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler / Jacques Verger (Hgg.): Europa und Christentum / Europe et le Christianisme

Five years ago, Michaela Sohn-Kronthaler and Jacques Verger brought out a Festschrift honoring the German medieval historian Andreas Sohn on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Now the same two people honor him on his sixty-fifth birthday. (Given modern life expectancies, one wonders how many more Sohn Festschriften we have to look forward to.)

The volume at hand reflects Sohn's adherence to the Roman Catholic Church. Non-scholarly prefaces are offered by a Cardinal, an Archbishop, and a Benedictine Archabbot, all wishing the honoree "la bénédiction de Dieu"/"Gottes reichen Segen". The first essay maintains that "the concept of human dignity has its origin in the Roman liturgy" (29). We are also told that "faith was the mortar that held together the different building blocks of the house of Europe" and that "rationalism and nationalism" resulted in "prisons and concentration camps" (41).

The book wastes considerable space because the reader is not trusted to have knowledge of both French and German. Every preface appears twice, once as an "avant-propos" and then as a "Geleitwort"; every article receives a "résumé" and a "Zusammenfassung". Lavish expenditure of pages also occurs with the listing of all the reviews Andreas Sohn has published - to the number of one hundred and eleven.

The selection of contributions is scattershot. Although the honoree is a medievalist, a succession of articles treats the sixteenth, the thirteenth, the late eighteenth, the mid-twentieth, the later twentieth, and the fourteenth centuries. 

Sufficient editorial oversight is lacking. One article deals with a vernacular report from the turn of the thirteenth century concerning the incorporation of the Livonian "Brothers of the Sword" (Schwertbrüder) into the order of Teutonic Knights. This text was previously edited from a manuscript in Vienna on three occasions, but the author of this contribution found another copy in Berlin. Quite properly he decided to publish it, but sadly without collating the Viennese version.

The good news is that two of the essays in this volume are outstanding. Jacques Verger draws on his deep knowledge of the history of medieval universities by presenting and analyzing the bulls and charters of French universities founded between 1220 to 1483. Pontifical authorization served for foundations up to and inclusive of 1330, princely authorization predominated from 1340 until 1432, and afterwards princely authorization took over entirely. On these grounds, Verger observes that the founding of universities was an aspect of a trend to the local in the later Middle Ages.

Four commonplaces appear in the preambles of the documents (325-329). The first was that the increase of knowledge dissipates the clouds of ignorance that beset sinful humanity; the second that knowledge is useful for a virtuous life. Third came the personal responsibility of the author of the act for proper action, and finally praise of the attractions of the chosen place such as good air, hospitable inhabitants, and moderate prices.

Easily the most entertaining piece is that by Olivier Marin entitled "La mémoire de Jean Hus à travers les odonymes français". What is an "odonyme"? I had to look this word up and found that it designates the name of a street, avenue, or road. Unsurprisingly, many streets are named for the Czech reformer Hus in the Czech Republic and some streets also in other Slavic countries and Protestant parts of Germany. Nor is it surprising that Mediterranean Catholic lands have no such streets. France lies in between, for five French streets bear the name "Jean Hus."

But wait. One of these streets was named for a different Jean Hus, a Frenchman who delivered himself as a hostage to the German occupiers of France in 1940 (332). That leaves four, a minuscule number considering that France possesses one and a half million streets.

Still, what did Hus represent for those in France who named streets for him?

In one case, Marin proposes that the councilors responsible held Hus to be a spokesman for moderate Christianity, free of dogmatism, but concedes that this is just a supposition (335). He does have evidence regarding another example. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the councilors of a working-class town in France wanted to advertise their leftism by naming streets after icons such as the Fourth of August, the Rights of Man, and Émile Zola. Hus belonged in these ranks because they held, as their deliberations reveal, that he was "one of the most glorious martyrs of free thought," that " his teaching prepared all the movements of spirit that issued into the French Revolution.". According to them, "without having found the formula, [Hus] stood for Liberty, Equality, Fraternity [...] This poor democratic curé and first apostle of liberty [...] had so much grandeur that we would not know how to honor him too much" (335-337).

In another case, Hus's listing in a book published in 1904 entitled "The Martyrs of Free Thought: A Little Dictionary of Clerical Intolerance" gave issue to the naming of a street for him (338-339). As Marin nicely puts it, one can see here "a turn in tonality from socialism to anticatholic - if not anti-religious - militancy."