Shadows of Doubt

The present volume stands as a warning about the dangers of pithy blurbs. The bold claim—on the front flap—that ‘Post-Reformation Catholicism did not simply usher in modernity, but postmodernity as well’ appears both puzzling and crude when contrasted with the sensitive argument which Stefania Tutino develops in this book. Still, Tutino’s argument is nothing if not ambitious. Inspired by her own extensive reading in the field of postmodernist hermeneutics and philosophy, Tutino seeks to overturn conventional narratives about early modern Catholic intellectual thought. Lurking behind the supposed certainties of early modern Catholic culture, she sees concerns about ‘the relationship of language, the truth of men, and the Truth of theology’ (p. 5) that mirror our present age. Its subject-matter—the tension between narrative and (extra-linguistic) truth—also makes the book a deeply personal meditation on the historian’s craft. The first chapter sees Tutino returning to (for her) familiar ground: the problem of equivocation and mental reservation. Equivocation, Tutino argues, was not only a moral but also a hermeneutical problem. Christians, following Augustine, traditionally defined lying in terms of the intention of the speaker to deceive, not as a question of interpretation by the listener. She shows that this ‘Augustinian padlock’ (p. 13) came under assault in mid-sixteenth-century Spain, when the sin of lying conflicted with the need to preserve the seal of confession. Spanish theologians (Tutino discusses Soto, Navarrus and Bañez, among others) employed the ambiguities of language to reconcile these two conflicting demands placed on confessors. Some even extended the realm of language beyond the spoken word to include words added mentally (i.e., mental reservation). Tutino’s argument that equivocation became a moral problem in response to these deeper anxieties about the truth of language is certainly plausible. Even readers who have their doubts about the value of, say, a ‘Wittgenstein-infused reading of Navarrus’ (p. 23) or who feel (as I do) that some of her conclusions require further elucidation can only admire the clarity with which she makes these complex theological debates accessible

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