Hebraism in Sixteenth-Century England: Robert and Thomas Wakefield. Ed. by James P. Carley and Charles Burnett <i>Hebraism in Sixteenth-Century England: Robert and Thomas Wakefield</i> . Ed. by CARLEYJAMES P. and BURNETTCHARLES (Studies and Texts, 231; Judaism in the Medieval and Modern World, 3.) Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediæval Studies. 2023. xvi + 490 pp. £80. ISBN 978 0 88844 231 4 (hardback); 978 1 77110429 6 (e- book).

LIKE MANY EDITED VOLUMES, this one has its origins in a conference: a one-day symposium on Robert and Thomas Wakefield’s Hebrew learning held at the Pontifical Institute of Mediæval Studies in Toronto in 2018. Unlike most edited volumes, however, this one rises above the sum of its (very high quality) parts to function effectively as a monograph in miniature on the Wakefield brothers and attitudes to Hebrew learning in early-sixteenth-century England. The essays in this volume intersect and build on each other such that publishing any one as a stand- alone article would have done a disservice not only to the volume, but also to the individual piece itself. In an age where edited collections are increasingly difficult to justify, this volume is the ideal illustration of the high level of quality and internal coherence such collaborative endeavours ought to meet. After an editorial introduction, the volume begins with a stage-setting chapter in which James Carley magisterially corrects many longstanding errors in the Wakefields’ biographies. Jessica Crown follows with an astute reading of Robert Wakefield’s best-known works, his inaugural orations on the value of Hebrew studies. The next two chapters by Joanna Weinberg and Charles Burnett work in tandem with Judith Olszowy-Schlanger’s later essay. Burnett provides a decisive modification of previous assessments of Robert Wakefield’s Arabic competence as part of a larger account of how he learned the language. Olszowy-Schlanger presents a characteristically virtuosic reconstruction of when and where Robert learned his Hebrew, revealing the extent to which his proficiency relied on access to medieval Hebrew manuscripts. Weinberg’s piece, despite coming earlier in the volume, works nicely alongside Olszowy-Schlanger’s to give a fascinating account of how Robert actually read the Hebrew texts that came his way. Historians of the English Reformation will benefit especially from this chapter for the new insights it offers into Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’, presenting an analysis (and, in the supporting appendix, English translation) of a Hebrew responsum written in 1530 by Jacob Raphael Faiano in response to the King’s problem, offering his opinion on the con- tinued legitimacy of the Levirate marriage (an opinion which would of course not have offered much hope for Henry). In a piece with similar importance to our knowledge of the Henrician era, Richard Rex paints an unflattering but amusing portrait of Robert as a cringing, arrogant sycophant whose work was useful to his King, but whose main preoccupation was self-aggrandisement.

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