Like many of the volumes in Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition series, this collection is at once incredibly valuable to scholars and incredibly difficult to review. There is no overarching theme that binds the essays together, although the authors do all seem to share two broad assumptions: that the Swiss Reformation had its own distinct character and that it is important to make more of the German- and French-language scholarship about it available to English (and thus international) audiences. It is important to note that the creators of the volume define Switzerland primarily as the cities and territories that belonged to the Swiss Confederation. There are two chapters on the Reformation in the so-called Allied Territories like the Grisons, Lausanne, and Geneva, but discussions of John Calvin and his adopted city are kept to a minimum and occur mostly in the context of how the Reformation in Geneva related to and affected cities and territories within the Confederation.

The volume is divided into three parts. Part 1 contains an introduction by the editors and a chapter on “The Swiss Confederation before the Reformation.” Part 2, “The Reformation,” is organized geographically, containing eight chapters on the Reformation in different cities and territories, including the three most well known—Zurich, Bern, and Basel—but also some of the lesser-known places like Schaffhausen and the Grisons. This section concludes with an essay on Swiss Anabaptism, a topic that transcends the geographical structure but that clearly had to be fit in somewhere. Part 3, “Outcomes,” is organized thematically, with six chapters by senior scholars in the field on topics such as theology, education, gender, and culture. Each of the chapters in all of the sections can be read on its own by someone looking for details on a specific subject or as part of the larger evaluation of the Swiss Reformation as a whole.

This volume is mainly valuable as a work of synthesis. First, the essays synthesize and present in English much of the recent research on the Swiss Reformation that has been written in French and German. The introductory chapter on the late medieval Swiss Confederation by Regula Schmid is extremely useful in this regard. Schmid’s history makes clear how singular and complex the Confederation was in terms of political organization and how the political, military, economic, and religious developments of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries affected the Reformation. From Schmid, and from Sundar Henny, who wrote a chapter on the “Failed Reformations” in places like Zug and Lucerne, we learn that mercenary service played a much bigger role in the economies of the inner, Alpine cantons, which is a major reason why they rejected Protestantism. (They could not support Zwingli because of his pacifism and opposition to mercenary service, and they had to remain on more friendly terms with Italy and France.) Second, the volume also offers elegant syntheses of certain topics by senior scholars in the field who make some new and challenging arguments. For example, Emidio Campi argues that the three elements that distinguished Swiss Reformed theology from the Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions were “the synodal form of government, a new understanding of the sacraments, and the unity of the covenant of grace that stretches from the Old and New Testaments” (487). In a chapter on “Polity and Worship in the Swiss Reformed Churches,” Bruce Gordon asserts that in terms of church governance and liturgy, there was significant continuity with the Catholic past in Swiss Reformed churches and that local variation in practice was widespread. Similarly, in a survey of educational institutions across Switzerland, Karin Maag explains that while both Catholics and Protestants dedicated significant funds to schools, the Jesuit colleges “were not on a par with the academies in Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva, as they did not offer university-level theological training.” Finally, it is worth pointing out that in addition to the sophistication and scholarly value of the essays, this collection contains numerous maps and images, many in color, which is a rare treat for academic readers.