Unruhen in der standischen Gesellschaft 1300-1800. by Peter BlickleReview by: Thomas A. Brady, Jr.The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 771-772Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2542385 .

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Book Reviews 771

thus deviates from the traditional Christian view that holds man responsible, through sin, for introducing death into the natural order. This does not mean that Montaigne strives to deny the serious consequences of human sin, especially of cuider. He criticizes the purely human representation of death whether it be pagan or christian because it is the product of imperfect human reason. Such figurations lack the validity of revealed representations and generate unnecessary fear, although they may serve a useful function in a given society. With regard to the fear of death, Montaigne turns away from spiritual sources towards classical sources and his own experience. His approach is essentially secular, and he replaces the conventional three-fold patterning of death in the ars moriendi with a tertiary process that Blum describes as conscience, subconscience, inconscience. He succeeds in renewing the previously tired theme of death in the Essais not merely by re-reading what Montaigne has to say but by placing him in the broad context of the Renaissance figuration of death.

In summary, Blum's conclusions are carefully prepared, well-grounded in theology, philosophy and literary criticism, and it is difficult to find any serious flaws in his work. These two volumes represent an important contribution to the study of death in the French Renaissance.

Paula Sommers .............. University of Missouri, Columbia

Unruhen in der standischen Gesellschaft 1300-1800. Peter Blickle. Enzyklopadie deutscher Geschichte, vol. 1. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988. 141 pp. This overview of social revolts in the German-speaking lands during the five

centuries after 1300 is the first entry in a series of about one hundred volumes on German history planned for "professional historians, students, history teachers, scholars in related disciplines, and interested laymen (v)." Written by Peter Blickle, the noted historian of the agrarian world, peasants revolts', and the history of political and religious communes, it is the most authoritative and most useful general work on the subject. It is also the first attempt ever, as Blickle notes, to treat together the revolts in both town and countryside and in both the later Middle Ages and the early modern era.

The volume divides into three parts. In Part I, Blickle reviews the history of rural and urban revolts in late medieval and early modern Germany. In the center stands the great revolution of 1525, whose modern image Blickle himself has very much helped to shape, but most readers will find more novelty in the sections on the early modern era.

Part II contains the analysis of the revolts. Blickle portrays the continuities and discontinuities between the late medieval revolts, which called on tradition - the "old law" - for legitimation, and the Peasants' War and subsequent revolts. Here he lays emphasis on the point for which he is best known, the system of social and political values that were shared by peasants and burghers. He also describes the characteristic "judicialization (Verrechtlichung)" of social unrest during the 250 years after the Peasants' War.

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772 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXII no. 4 (1991)

The third part, which treats the sources and literature, offers a sovereign, up-to-date overview of the subject's historiography. Together with the bibliography of 311 items, which closes the volume, this part forms the best currently available port of entry to the entire subject.

The volume is dedicated to Gunter Vogler of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Blickle pays tribute to what he has learned through his engagement with the GDR historiography on the reformation and the Peasants' War as a whole and with Vogler in particular. It is a poignant tribute to the power of a historiographical tradition that some prefer to pretend never existed.

Thomas A. Brady, Jr. .......... University of California, Berkeley

The Autobiography of a Seventeenth Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena's Life of Judah. Trans. and ed. Mark R. Cohen. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. xxvi + 308pp. $42.00.

Leon Modena was a humanist scholar who lived by his pen, his tongue, and his wits (135). He was the father of three disappointing sons, husband of a shrewish wife, and a compulsive gambler who constantly courted (and found) financial disaster at the gaming table. He was also one of the leading rabbis of Venice and left a revealing autobiography for his heirs.

Mark Cohen and his co-workers have provided a superb scholarly apparatus that serves at once to elucidate Modena's autobiography and to place it within a broader historical context. Howard E. Adleman's introductory essay, Benjamin C. I. Ravid's short but informative essay on the history of the Venice Ghetto (279-83) and the copious explanatory notes, which they co-authored, provide a good deal of help for the reader. Modena tended to stress the calamities of his life in his autobiography more frequently than his accomplishments and the annotators have tried to right the balance with references from his letters and works.

The introductory essay by Cohen and Rabb on the significance of Modena's autobiography for Jewish history and for early modern history in general, and Natalie Davis' analysis of it as an example of early modern autobiography provide convincing arguments for early modern historians to take more notice of Jewish sources when considering a variety of historical problems. While Modena's Life focuses on his relationships with members of his own family, making it a natural source of studies for marriage and family history, he also touches on alchemy, economic life, the history of printing, and popular culture, including magical practices and popular religion. It also shows that the walls of the Ghetto failed to restrict Venetian Jews and Christians from interacting at a variety of levels, even including joint criminal enterprises (249-50). Modena himself preached before Christian nobles on several occasions (96, 131), tutored many Catholic Christian Hebraists (33), served as the official Hebrew translator of the Venetian state (264) and composed much occasional poetry in Italian as well as Hebrew.

By publishing Modena's Life in this form Cohen and his team have challenged historians to reassess the commonalties of Christian and Jewish life during the early modern period and the distinctiveness of each. This challenge cannot be met by

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