It makes sense that Ulinka Rublack, having just finished editing the Oxford History of the Protestant Reformations, should have taken the time to revise the first edition of Reformation Europe (2005). She herself is a leading expert on early modern European religion, but she had now reaped the latest thinking on her contributors’ special research topics, and was in a position to bring her earlier survey up to the minute. The result is at the forefront of a veritable outpouring of new literature on the Reformation and its times, the consequence of the five hundredth anniversary, in 2017, of Martin Luther's sending out of his Ninety-five Theses against indulgences. I recommend this title above others for use in undergraduate introductions to early modern religious change. Its appeal, however, reaches far beyond the confines of the classroom. This book's signal achievement lies in integrating the customary leading figures in the ecclesiastical upheavals, theological shifts, and political events into their multifaceted cultural context—without which, some of us maintain, the people, the thought, and the politics are not fully comprehensible. In doing this, Rublack's work surpasses otherwise creditable overviews, such as Luise Schorn-Schütte's Die Reformation: Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Wirkung (7th ed., 2017) and Thomas Kaufmann's Erlöste und verdammte: Eine Geschichte der Reformation (2016).

In the limited number of pages allocated to books in this series, Rublack covers not only the basic facts concerning specific individuals and conditions in places such as little Wittenberg and medium-sized Geneva. She also illuminates these further through the inclusion of such subjects as women and gender roles, masculinity and male networks, moral policing, clerical bodies and the clergy's rhetorical comportment, Protestant elicitation of emotional response to its messages, the new faith's appeal to the senses, popular orality, people's subsequent memory of the founders, and the emergence of a Reformed material culture. Margaret of Navarre and Katharina Schütz Zell appear as bona fide Reformers. The spread of the Reformation benefited from the friendships of leading men, of whom Erasmus and Martin Bucer provide prominent examples. Authorities of church and state grew determined to make all those subject to them toe a particular creedal and behavioral line. In striving to comprehend lay receptivity to Reformed demands despite the new disciplinary fervor, Rublack considers the appeal of ritual, art, and music. Even John Calvin's attempted elimination of images from the sanctuaries left a modulated light that itself had symbolic meaning.

Despite the outpouring of printing presses in the sixteenth century, the author reminds us that in thinking about audiences we must include literacy rates. Estimates are sufficiently low that it is likely that more people heard the spoken word: texts read aloud and sermons delivered. Yet no simple generalizations are adequate. The Calvinist or Reformed faiths differed considerably depending on their location—whether Geneva itself or the Netherlands, France, Scotland, or England. Rublack is kinder to Calvin than many writers. One passage, introducing a section titled “A Religion of the Word,” seems to sum up Rublack's underlying contention: “An everyday Protestantism evolved for which the biblical word was central, but which did not equate to a religion principally shaped by cognitive engagements of logocentric or individualized minds. Faith continued to be experienced through the body, the emotions, in relation to others and the material world” (175). In short, Protestant faiths tapped the same feelings, the same indispensable communal identities, and the same rootedness in the world as their Catholic predecessor. Ordinary lay people could have their religion no other way. They were not as radically changed as theologians hoped. In this assertion, Rublack affirms the position of the late Bob Scribner, to whom she pays tribute in the acknowledgments.

The brief bibliographic recommendations that conclude this book bear witness to Rublack's recognition of—and I would add her participation in—the innovative scholarship of the last decade. The suggestions for further reading contained in the first edition are staid by comparison.