The Winnowing of White Witchcraft. Edward Poeton. Ed. Simon F. Davies. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 512; MRTS Texts for Teaching 10. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018. xxxvi + 90 pp. $45.
Its long section on Grotius’s defense of Cassander treats the piece as evidence that Grotius was no impartial scholar but on the verge of converting to Roman Catholicism, failing to mention that Cassander had been on the Index since 1617, and only noting twenty pages later that when Roman Catholic officials encountered Grotius’s defense they instantly realized he was not likely to convert (211, 234–35). With respect to baffling judgments, the most conspicuous would have to be the book’s commitment to fundamental values of Enlightenment historiography, even as it disputes the factual accuracy of its narrative. Thus, whereas the book refers to “secular” scholarship as objective, disinterested, and scientific, it repeatedly brands theologically informed erudition as “tendentious,” a term that must occur at least a dozen times. The label is never explained, but the book seems to assume that theologically committed scholars inevitably massage their results to confirm their prior convictions; yet Hardy’s own account of Casaubon’s spiritual trajectory suggests that a scholar’s theological commitments might be quite radically reshaped by his studies.