The Catholic Historical Review

454 BOOK REVIEWS War in so far as they pitted the advocates of "state rights" (die Sonderbund') against the more progressive advocates of a stronger federal union. The eventual result of the latter's quick victory was a series of constitutional revisions which rendered Switzerland a stronger, more stable country. Another historical analogy comes to mind, namely, the Kulturkampf, the state-church conflict which raged in Prussia in the 1870's. This, too, was a constitutional struggle which started with sectarian overtones. The issues which triggered the conflict in Switzerland were religious: the secularization of monasteries in a Protestant canton; an invitation to the radical Protestant biblical exegete, David Strauss, to teach in Zurich; and, in response, an invitation to the Jesuits to find a new home in Lucerne, which was the heart of the Sonderbund. Remak notes that in those days the Jesuits did not conjure up visions of civil rights, hospitals, and universities and then adds (in something of a non sequitur ) that "Father Hesburg and Notre Dame's Fighting Irish were a century and a continent away." Remak views the program ofthe Protestant cantons as the march ofprogress and the key to future Swiss happiness and national unity. But this is not the point of his book. The Swiss demonstrated that the great issues of the midnineteenth century could be worked out in a spirit of moderation, mutual respect, and generosity. General William Henry Dufour conducted military strategy in such a fashion that actual fighting was almost irrelevant. The upshot was that the Swiss civil war generated a mere one hundred or so fatalities and about five hundred other casualties. Remak apologizes for a small amount of looting by noting that the Swiss "were and are a nation in which farm folk easily outnumber investment bankers." Remak combines erudition with a light touch. His book contains many illustrations, cartoons, and maps. A Very Civil War was obviously a labor of love. Anyone interested in Switzerland will find it a pleasure to read. David Kieft University ofMinnesota, Minneapolis Anatomy of a Controversy: The Debate over "Essays and Reviews, " 18601864 . By Josef L. Altholz. (Brookfield, Vermont: Scolar Press, Ashgate Publishing Co. 1994. Pp. ix, 198. 85995.) Josef Altholz again illustrates his virtuosity as a historian of Victorian religious life with a study ofthe Essays andReviews controversy. This monograph represents a return to a subject on which Altholz had projected a major study in the seventies, but decided not to publish after the appearance of Ieuan Ellis' book on the Essayists, Seven Against Christ. It appears now as a more focused study: an anatomy of a controversy, as the title has it; that is, a study of controversy as controversy. As such, it has inherent interest. Religious BOOK REVIEWS 455 controversy was, as Altholz aptly says, "the great spectator sport of Victorian England." And Altholz puts his unrivaled knowledge of die ephemeral literature of Victorian religious controversy to work in tracing the emergence, the development, and the denouement of this controversy in the periodicals of the day and in the pamphlet war it generated. Altholz announces that in his study he will largely eschew the substantive issues of the controversy. While they were important in their day, Altholz is certainly correct in judging that they are now passé. Indeed, in our own day it would take the greater effort of historical imagination to understand the position of the orthodox than it would that of the Essayists. Among the latter were the popularizers in England ofthe very mildest forms ofbiblical criticism imported from Germany. The orthodox, for their part, clung to the evidential apologetic of Bishop Butler and William Paley in its most debased and attenuated form. Their hero was Henry Longueville Mansel, who in his 1858 Bampton Lectures was thought to have vindicated the evidential school, but at the price of abandoning any effort to demonstrate the reasonableness of the content of the revelation certified by miracles and prophecy. Even though the controversy enlisted some of the great names ofVictorian churchmanship and stirred thousands ofthe clergy at least so far as to subscribe their names to a petition, it was, in the judgment of Altholz, largely futile. Few minds were...