Judaism\u27s influence on Jean Bodin has long been appreciated by students of the French thinker\u27s extraordinary career and multifaceted writing but never full understood. Paul Lawrence Rose examines the matter again, elevating it as a critical linchpin in comprehending Bodin\u27s intellectual universe. For Rose,  Bodin\u27s categories [of thought] and religious vision stemmed …from the Jewish tradition represented by the works of Philo and Maimonides.  To demonstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin\u27s thought in relation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead a methodology based on  (1) the completeness or integrality of Bodin\u27s thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin\u27s ideas and personality.  By the first method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin\u27s remarkable treatise on comparative religion, The Heptaplomeres, by using Bodin\u27s other writings \u27as a control upon the ambiguities of the the Heptaplomeres,  establishing the extent of agreement among the various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin\u27s own views on the subject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct the details of Bodin\u27s supposed three-staged conversion to a prophetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the  interplay of religion, politics, and personality  characterizing both Bodin\u27s thought and behavior

Ruderman, David B

English

Kosmopolis

University of Pennsylvania
ScholarlyCommons
Departmental Papers (History) Department of History
1982
Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great
God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a
Judaiser
David B. Ruderman
University of Pennsylvania, RUDERMAN@SAS.UPENN.EDU
Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papers
Part of the History of Religion Commons, Intellectual History Commons, and the Jewish Studies
Commons
At the time of this publication, Dr. Ruderman was affiliated with University of Maryland, College Park, but he is now a faculty member of the
University of Pennsylvania.
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papers/27
For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.
Recommended Citation
Ruderman, D. B. (1982). Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a
Judaiser. Renaissance Quarterly, 35 (2), 284-287. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2861048
Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The
Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser
Abstract
Judaism's influence on Jean Bodin has long been appreciated by students of the French thinker's extraordinary
career and multifaceted writing but never full understood. Paul Lawrence Rose examines the matter again,
elevating it as a critical linchpin in comprehending Bodin's intellectual universe. For Rose, "Bodin's categories
[of thought] and religious vision stemmed …from the Jewish tradition represented by the works of Philo and
Maimonides." To demonstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin's thought in
relation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead a methodology based on "(1) the completeness or
integrality of Bodin's thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin's ideas and personality." By the
first method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin's remarkable treatise on comparative religion, The Heptaplomeres,
by using Bodin's other writings 'as a control upon the ambiguities of the the Heptaplomeres," establishing the
extent of agreement among the various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin's own views on the
subject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct the details of Bodin's supposed three-staged
conversion to a prophetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the "interplay of religion, politics, and
personality" characterizing both Bodin's thought and behavior.
Disciplines
History | History of Religion | Intellectual History | Jewish Studies
Comments
At the time of this publication, Dr. Ruderman was affiliated with University of Maryland, College Park, but he
is now a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania.
This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papers/27
 284 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
 schrifi(I 524), the Kirchen-Ordnung of I 598, the liturgies printed dur-
 ing the century, doctrinal works of the vari 'ous reformers, and their
 correspondence. His, use of secondary sources is rather curious. De-
 spite the fact that a good deal of work has been done in recent years
 by French, German, and American scholars on the Strasbourg Ref-
 ormation, Bornert makes very little use of their work but has prefer-
 red to go back to older German works published in i86o and i887.
 The result is that despite the adoption of modern forms of sociologi-
 cal analysis, the book seems rather isolated from the mainstream of
 current historical research.
 Finally, althou h Bornert asserts a strong connection between
 general social attitudes and ritual, he limits himself to the ideas and
 beliefs of the Protestant clergy who wrote the new liturgies. The re-
 1 are ignored. sponse of the congregat'on, their beliefs and attitudes,
 The clergy are in their pulpits but there are no people in the churches.
 UNIVERSITY OF Miriam Usher Chrisman
 MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST
 Paul Lawrence Rose. Bodin and the Great God ofNature: The Moral and
 Religious Universe o a judaiser. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renais-
 sance, 179.) Geneva: Librairie Droz, i98O. 23 7 pp. Fr. S. 70.
 Judaism's influence on jean Bodin has long been appreciated by
 students of the French thinker's extraordinary career and multiface-
 ted writings but never fully understood. Paul Lawrence Rose exam-
 ines the matter again, elevating it as a critical linchpin in compre-
 hending Bodin's intellectual universe. For Rose, "Bodin's categories
 [of thought] and religious vision stemmed . . . from thejewish tradi-
 tion represented by the works of Philo and Maimonides. " To dem-
 onstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin's
 thought in relation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead
 a methodology based on "(i) the completeness or integrality of Bo-
 din's thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin's ideas
 and personality. '9 By the first method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin's
 remarkable treatise on com arative religion, The Heptaplomeres, by
 using Bodin's other writings "as a control upon the ambiguities of
 the Heptaplomeres, " establishing the extent of agreement among the
 various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin's own views
This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS 285
 on the subject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct
 the details of Bodin's supposed three-staged conversion to a pro-
 phetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the "interplay of
 religion, politics, and personality" characterizing. Bodin's thought
 and behavior.
 The results of this two-pronged analysis appear to me to be only
 partially successful. No doubt Rose offers a most coherent and com-
 prehensive examination of Bodin's vision ofjudaism as found in his
 writings, including his more neglected educational works. Rose cor-
 rectly defines Bodin's judalzing as an attempt not to reform Chris-
 tianity, like that of Pico or Reuchlin, but to refute its claim as the true
 religion. In this sense, Bodin actually moved closer to Judaism than
 any other sixteenth-century thinker without formally adopting Jew-
 ish faith and practice. Rose9s account of Bodin's gradual conversion,
 while admittedly conj'ectural, is a plausible reconstruction of Bodin's
 spiritualjourney. And Rose's emphasis of Bodin's reading of Philo as
 "his mainjudalsing resource" is clearly helpful in understanding the
 genesis of Bodin's religious vision.
 Yet with all this, Rose's elaborate reconstruction is seriously
 deficient. In the first place, Rose inadequately studies Bodin's other
 Jewish sources. Some seventy-five years ago Guttmann identified an
 impressive array of Jewish legal, homiletic, kabbalistic exegetical,
 and philosophical works which Bodin had consulted. Undoubtedly,
 Philo and Maimonides are two of Bodin's most influential sources,
 but they hardly exhaust the richness and diversity of Bodin's Jewish
 learning. It seems highly arbitrary to me to conclude so decisively
 that the first-century philosopher is "the key to Bodin's religious bi-
 ography" without considering more closely the potential impact of
 medievaljewish thinkers, especially Neoplatonists like Abraham Ibn
 Ezra, on Bodin. And most surprising of all is the lack of any ex-
 tended discussion of Bodin's relationship to the Cabala. The late
 Frances Yates recently argued that thejewish Cabala was indeed "the
 sublime secret" of the Heptaplomeres and called for a more systematic
 investigation of the question. Rose is aware of the distance separating
 Bodin from Christian Cabalists like Pico in the former's reluctance to
 Christianize Jewish mystical teachings or to amalgamate them with
 magic. But this in no way obviates the fact that Bodin was still.in-
 debted to these thinkers, at least as much as the other ancientjewish
 texts he had read. Even a casual reading of Bodin's Heptaplomeres re-
This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 286 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
 veals his awareness not only of the more "intellectual" writings of
 Christian Cabalists like Pico, but also, to a surprising degree, of the
 crude interpretations and forgeries ofiewish mystical and homiletic
 texts written by Spanish and Italian missionaries and converts them-
 selves like Peter Galatinus, Paul of Heredia, Paul Ricchi, Paul of
 Burgos, Emmanuel Tremellious, and others. Surely such familiarity
 calls for a more careful scrutiny of Bodin's Jewish and Christian
 sources onjudaism.
 One might also mention in this regard another potential source of
 Blodin's familiarity with Judaism. In his extended critique of Chris-
 tianity in the Heptaplomeres, Bodin reveals beyond doubt his wide er-
 udition in Jewish anti-Christian exegesis and polemical writing. By
 the sixteenth century, Jewish olemics against Christianity had be- p
 come highly sophisticated in their refutation of Christian exegesis of
 the Old Testament and Christian religious doctrines. A careful read-
 ing of Bodin's critique within the context of this literature might dis-
 close additional sources of Bodin's Jewish knowledge.
 Beyond a more thorough search for Bodin'sjewish sources, there
 is a further need to explore the contemporary social and religious
 context of Bodin'sjudalzing. In this regard, Rose's work is not help-
 ful. First is the most obvious question of Bodin'sjewish and Hebrew
 teachers. Whether or not he was fluent in Hebrew, Bodin clearly pre-
 ferred to examine Biblical passages in their original language. French
 Hebraists such as Cinquarbres, Mercier, or Paradis were apparently
 in a position to instruct Bodin in Hebrew andjewish subjects. Would
 a comparison of their writings with those of Bodin prove useful?
 Even more decisive is the potential influence of certain Ma'rrano cir-
 cles on Bodin's thought. The question is an old one and has usually
 been limited to the sole issue of his mother's alleged Marrano ances-
 try. Regardless of whether Bodin was Jewish or not, there is clearly
 enough evidence to suggest an unmistakable similarity of views on
 Judaism and natural religion between Bodin and a number of Mar-
 rano thinkers in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pines9
 recent study of Bodin and Spinoza strongly suggests the fruitfulness
 of such an investigation. Even more intriguing are the clues Bodin
 himself divulges: his oft-mentioned remarks on the Spanish expul-
 sion and Jewish suffering at the end of the Heptaplomeres and. espe-
 cially his less noticed account of the Marrano massacre at Lisbon in
 i5o6 (recently studied by Y. Yerushalmi). How might the French
This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 REVIEWS 287
 Bodin have learned of such a relatively obscure event without per-
 sonal contact with Marrano exiles from the Iberian peninsula?
 All this might suggest that, despite Rose's useful discussion, many
 lingering questions about Bodin's Jewish connection are still to be
 answered by future researchers.
 THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND David B. Ruderman
 William A. Christian, Jr. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain.
 Princeton: Princeton University Press, i 98 i. 283 PP. Illus. W.5o.
 Spanish Catholicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has
 attracted considerable scholarly attention over the years. The work
 of theologians, humanists, mystics, and saints has been one focus of
 that attention. Another has been the investigation and suppression of
 heterodoxy by the Spanish Inquisition and the crown. William
 Christian is after a more elusive subject-the religious beliefs and
 practices of ordinary Spanish Christians.
 His main source is the response to two questions on local religion
 in the famous inquiry of Philip 11 known as the Relaciones topogrficas
 and answered by over five hundred towns in central Spain in
 1575-8o. In addition he has used a variety of national and local ar-
 chives, excluding, however, the records of the Inquisition, which he
 does not consider a good source for ordinary religious practices. De-
 spite the book's title, it is quite localized in the five central provinces
 in New Castile covered by the Relaciones topogrficas, all of which
 have been published. Given the nature of the sources, communal
 rather than individual religion is the focus of the study.
 Much of the book analyzes the changing modes of communal de-
 votion. Within population centers, vows to a particular saint were
 frequent responses to disasters such as pestilence and agricultural dis-
 tress. Great care was taken to honor the appropriate saint, for it was
 believed that the saint's anger had been responsible for the commu-
 nity's affliction. Other vows of devotion arose to honor the patron of
 a lay pious association or a religious order. In return for regular devo-
 tion, the saint was expected to protect the devotees, and only the ef-
 fective patrons could expect continued devotion from the commu-
 nity.
 Chapels and shrines in the countryside, often founded on the spot
 where a miracle had occurred, honored saints 'Viewed as powerful in-
This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms


Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, \u3cem\u3eBodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser\u3c/em\u3e

ScholarlyCommons@Penn

University of PennsylvaniaScholarlyCommonsDepartmental Papers (History) Department of History1982Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the GreatGod of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of aJudaiserDavid B. RudermanUniversity of Pennsylvania, RUDERMAN@SAS.UPENN.EDUFollow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papersPart of the History of Religion Commons, Intellectual History Commons, and the Jewish StudiesCommonsAt the time of this publication, Dr. Ruderman was affiliated with University of Maryland, College Park, but he is now a faculty member of theUniversity of Pennsylvania.This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papers/27For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu.Recommended CitationRuderman, D. B. (1982). Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of aJudaiser. Renaissance Quarterly, 35 (2), 284-287. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2861048Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, Bodin and the Great God of Nature: TheMoral and Religious Universe of a JudaiserAbstractJudaism's influence on Jean Bodin has long been appreciated by students of the French thinker's extraordinarycareer and multifaceted writing but never full understood. Paul Lawrence Rose examines the matter again,elevating it as a critical linchpin in comprehending Bodin's intellectual universe. For Rose, "Bodin's categories[of thought] and religious vision stemmed …from the Jewish tradition represented by the works of Philo andMaimonides." To demonstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin's thought inrelation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead a methodology based on "(1) the completeness orintegrality of Bodin's thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin's ideas and personality." By thefirst method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin's remarkable treatise on comparative religion, The Heptaplomeres,by using Bodin's other writings 'as a control upon the ambiguities of the the Heptaplomeres," establishing theextent of agreement among the various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin's own views on thesubject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct the details of Bodin's supposed three-stagedconversion to a prophetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the "interplay of religion, politics, andpersonality" characterizing both Bodin's thought and behavior.DisciplinesHistory | History of Religion | Intellectual History | Jewish StudiesCommentsAt the time of this publication, Dr. Ruderman was affiliated with University of Maryland, College Park, but heis now a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania.This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/history_papers/27 284 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY schrifi(I 524), the Kirchen-Ordnung of I 598, the liturgies printed dur- ing the century, doctrinal works of the vari 'ous reformers, and their correspondence. His, use of secondary sources is rather curious. De- spite the fact that a good deal of work has been done in recent years by French, German, and American scholars on the Strasbourg Ref- ormation, Bornert makes very little use of their work but has prefer- red to go back to older German works published in i86o and i887. The result is that despite the adoption of modern forms of sociologi- cal analysis, the book seems rather isolated from the mainstream of current historical research. Finally, althou h Bornert asserts a strong connection between general social attitudes and ritual, he limits himself to the ideas and beliefs of the Protestant clergy who wrote the new liturgies. The re- 1 are ignored. sponse of the congregat'on, their beliefs and attitudes, The clergy are in their pulpits but there are no people in the churches. UNIVERSITY OF Miriam Usher Chrisman MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Paul Lawrence Rose. Bodin and the Great God ofNature: The Moral and Religious Universe o a judaiser. (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renais- sance, 179.) Geneva: Librairie Droz, i98O. 23 7 pp. Fr. S. 70. Judaism's influence on jean Bodin has long been appreciated by students of the French thinker's extraordinary career and multiface- ted writings but never fully understood. Paul Lawrence Rose exam- ines the matter again, elevating it as a critical linchpin in compre- hending Bodin's intellectual universe. For Rose, "Bodin's categories [of thought] and religious vision stemmed . . . from thejewish tradi- tion represented by the works of Philo and Maimonides. " To dem- onstrate his thesis, Rose chooses to deemphasize the study of Bodin's thought in relation to that of his contemporaries and proposes instead a methodology based on "(i) the completeness or integrality of Bo- din's thought and writings and (2) the integration of Bodin's ideas and personality. '9 By the first method, Rose hopes to decode Bodin's remarkable treatise on com arative religion, The Heptaplomeres, by using Bodin's other writings "as a control upon the ambiguities of the Heptaplomeres, " establishing the extent of agreement among the various speakers of the treatise, and subsequently Bodin's own viewsThis content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms REVIEWS 285 on the subject. By the second method, Rose attempts to reconstruct the details of Bodin's supposed three-staged conversion to a pro- phetic religion in order to illuminate more clearly the "interplay of religion, politics, and personality" characterizing. Bodin's thought and behavior. The results of this two-pronged analysis appear to me to be only partially successful. No doubt Rose offers a most coherent and com- prehensive examination of Bodin's vision ofjudaism as found in his writings, including his more neglected educational works. Rose cor- rectly defines Bodin's judalzing as an attempt not to reform Chris- tianity, like that of Pico or Reuchlin, but to refute its claim as the true religion. In this sense, Bodin actually moved closer to Judaism than any other sixteenth-century thinker without formally adopting Jew- ish faith and practice. Rose9s account of Bodin's gradual conversion, while admittedly conj'ectural, is a plausible reconstruction of Bodin's spiritualjourney. And Rose's emphasis of Bodin's reading of Philo as "his mainjudalsing resource" is clearly helpful in understanding the genesis of Bodin's religious vision. Yet with all this, Rose's elaborate reconstruction is seriously deficient. In the first place, Rose inadequately studies Bodin's other Jewish sources. Some seventy-five years ago Guttmann identified an impressive array of Jewish legal, homiletic, kabbalistic exegetical, and philosophical works which Bodin had consulted. Undoubtedly, Philo and Maimonides are two of Bodin's most influential sources, but they hardly exhaust the richness and diversity of Bodin's Jewish learning. It seems highly arbitrary to me to conclude so decisively that the first-century philosopher is "the key to Bodin's religious bi- ography" without considering more closely the potential impact of medievaljewish thinkers, especially Neoplatonists like Abraham Ibn Ezra, on Bodin. And most surprising of all is the lack of any ex- tended discussion of Bodin's relationship to the Cabala. The late Frances Yates recently argued that thejewish Cabala was indeed "the sublime secret" of the Heptaplomeres and called for a more systematic investigation of the question. Rose is aware of the distance separating Bodin from Christian Cabalists like Pico in the former's reluctance to Christianize Jewish mystical teachings or to amalgamate them with magic. But this in no way obviates the fact that Bodin was still.in- debted to these thinkers, at least as much as the other ancientjewish texts he had read. Even a casual reading of Bodin's Heptaplomeres re-This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 286 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY veals his awareness not only of the more "intellectual" writings of Christian Cabalists like Pico, but also, to a surprising degree, of the crude interpretations and forgeries ofiewish mystical and homiletic texts written by Spanish and Italian missionaries and converts them- selves like Peter Galatinus, Paul of Heredia, Paul Ricchi, Paul of Burgos, Emmanuel Tremellious, and others. Surely such familiarity calls for a more careful scrutiny of Bodin's Jewish and Christian sources onjudaism. One might also mention in this regard another potential source of Blodin's familiarity with Judaism. In his extended critique of Chris- tianity in the Heptaplomeres, Bodin reveals beyond doubt his wide er- udition in Jewish anti-Christian exegesis and polemical writing. By the sixteenth century, Jewish olemics against Christianity had be- p come highly sophisticated in their refutation of Christian exegesis of the Old Testament and Christian religious doctrines. A careful read- ing of Bodin's critique within the context of this literature might dis- close additional sources of Bodin's Jewish knowledge. Beyond a more thorough search for Bodin'sjewish sources, there is a further need to explore the contemporary social and religious context of Bodin'sjudalzing. In this regard, Rose's work is not help- ful. First is the most obvious question of Bodin'sjewish and Hebrew teachers. Whether or not he was fluent in Hebrew, Bodin clearly pre- ferred to examine Biblical passages in their original language. French Hebraists such as Cinquarbres, Mercier, or Paradis were apparently in a position to instruct Bodin in Hebrew andjewish subjects. Would a comparison of their writings with those of Bodin prove useful? Even more decisive is the potential influence of certain Ma'rrano cir- cles on Bodin's thought. The question is an old one and has usually been limited to the sole issue of his mother's alleged Marrano ances- try. Regardless of whether Bodin was Jewish or not, there is clearly enough evidence to suggest an unmistakable similarity of views on Judaism and natural religion between Bodin and a number of Mar- rano thinkers in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pines9 recent study of Bodin and Spinoza strongly suggests the fruitfulness of such an investigation. Even more intriguing are the clues Bodin himself divulges: his oft-mentioned remarks on the Spanish expul- sion and Jewish suffering at the end of the Heptaplomeres and. espe- cially his less noticed account of the Marrano massacre at Lisbon in i5o6 (recently studied by Y. Yerushalmi). How might the FrenchThis content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms REVIEWS 287 Bodin have learned of such a relatively obscure event without per- sonal contact with Marrano exiles from the Iberian peninsula? All this might suggest that, despite Rose's useful discussion, many lingering questions about Bodin's Jewish connection are still to be answered by future researchers. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND David B. Ruderman William A. Christian, Jr. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, i 98 i. 283 PP. Illus. W.5o. Spanish Catholicism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has attracted considerable scholarly attention over the years. The work of theologians, humanists, mystics, and saints has been one focus of that attention. Another has been the investigation and suppression of heterodoxy by the Spanish Inquisition and the crown. William Christian is after a more elusive subject-the religious beliefs and practices of ordinary Spanish Christians. His main source is the response to two questions on local religion in the famous inquiry of Philip 11 known as the Relaciones topogrficas and answered by over five hundred towns in central Spain in 1575-8o. In addition he has used a variety of national and local ar- chives, excluding, however, the records of the Inquisition, which he does not consider a good source for ordinary religious practices. De- spite the book's title, it is quite localized in the five central provinces in New Castile covered by the Relaciones topogrficas, all of which have been published. Given the nature of the sources, communal rather than individual religion is the focus of the study. Much of the book analyzes the changing modes of communal de- votion. Within population centers, vows to a particular saint were frequent responses to disasters such as pestilence and agricultural dis- tress. Great care was taken to honor the appropriate saint, for it was believed that the saint's anger had been responsible for the commu- nity's affliction. Other vows of devotion arose to honor the patron of a lay pious association or a religious order. In return for regular devo- tion, the saint was expected to protect the devotees, and only the ef- fective patrons could expect continued devotion from the commu- nity. Chapels and shrines in the countryside, often founded on the spot where a miracle had occurred, honored saints 'Viewed as powerful in-This content downloaded from 165.123.108.74 on Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:42:05 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

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Review of Paul Lawrence Rose, \u3cem\u3eBodin and the Great God of Nature: The Moral and Religious Universe of a Judaiser\u3c/em\u3e

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