By the 1560s Reformed Churches had emerged across Europe from Belarus to the Pyrenees and from the Carpathians to the Scottish Highlands. The question as to how far the French humanist exile, John Calvin, and his theological insights were at the heart of this dramatic change in patterns of belief, worship and culture across sixteenth-century Europe has long been a matter of productive debate. The central concern of this impressive collection of thirty-nine articles is not primarily the character of early modern Reformed Churches in all their complexity and diversity. Rather, the focus here is to provide a fresh account of Calvin's thought and to analyse Calvin's legacy in the history of ideas up to the present. Barbara Pitkin's chapter provides a very valuable account of Calvin's vision of reform in sixteenth-century context. Pitkin argues that although Calvin did not publish work directly about church history, ‘historical consciousness shaped his reforming work in important ways’ (p. 107). Pitkin analyses a 1543 text, Supplex exhortatio, in which Calvin defended the work of reformers against charges of theological innovation. Calvin outlined that far from being innovators, reformers were simply advancing the true worship of God and remedying false ideas and practices that had developed in the Roman Church. This is what Calvin thought ‘Calvinism’ was; although the term Calvinism was at first primarily used by Lutheran and Catholic opponents precisely to suggest that Calvin and his supporters were guilty of introducing a new and therefore heretical religion.

Calvin's primary focus was always on promoting reform in his homeland, but he had also spent some years at Strasbourg and made two return visits to the German lands. Christopher Ocker provides very clear analysis on the development of Calvinism in the significant and complex context of the Empire, explaining Lutheran enmity against their Reformed rivals and the vital role played by territorial princes in supporting Reformed Churches. Randall C. Zachman's chapter provides further expert guidance on German-speaking Reformed culture through his study of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Born in 1768 at Wrocław in Silesia, the son of a Reformed army chaplain, Schleiermacher was influenced by the Pietist community at Herrnhut in Upper Lusatia that had adopted a Moravian identity. In assessing Schleiermacher's contribution to the Reformed tradition in the modern era, Zachman argues that Schleiermacher reformulated Reformed doctrine aiming to show how certainty of faith in Christ was not threatened by the storms of criticism unleashed by the Enlightenment or by scientific views of the world. Calvin's thought continued to be adapted and to feature prominently in the minds of later theologians including Karl Barth. Ryan Glomsrud quotes Barth in correspondence in 1922 on the enduring power of Calvin's writing. Barth wrote that he ‘could gladly and profitably set myself down and spend all the rest of my life just with Calvin’ (p. 533).

Jane Dawson's excellent article on John Knox and John Calvin analyses direct Genevan influence over the development of a Reformed Church in the Scottish monarchy. Knox was inspired by what he understood Calvin had achieved in transforming religion and society in the Genevan republic. As Dawson memorably puts it, Calvin's view of his dealings with Knox was ‘as if he was tutoring an enthusiastic, and slightly wayward, pupil’ (p. 158). Dawson observes that Knoxian efforts to stick rigidly to Calvin's views and Genevan precedent promoted a Scottish sense of belonging to a European community of faith while at the same time emphasising points of difference with fellow Calvinists in England. Steven J. Reid's chapter further explores the emerging internal character of the Reformed Church in Scotland as a process of unfolding negotiation between ministers and congregations that produced the culture of Calvinism that came to dominate in Scotland.

Many articles in this collection focus on the development of Calvinism in Anglophone contexts. Robert Harkins addresses how Calvin and Calvinism were mobilised within domestic religious and political controversies in Elizabethan England. There are chapters on Calvin and Shakespeare by Claire McEachern, on Cromwellian Calvinism by Hunter Powell, on John Milton by R. Bradley Holden and on John Owen and Richard Baxter by Tim Cooper. Cooper writes that Calvinism became associated in England with a particular variant of Reformed salvation theology, arguing that Calvinism in England ‘changed and adapted in the hands of those who tried to hold onto it’ (p. 329). Bruce Gordon considers nineteenth-century Scottish spiritual autobiographies as writers tried to recraft a vigorous Calvinism to counter a decline in the Reformed Church's influence. Some elements in the Anglophone Calvinist tradition (including a stress on individual conversion experiences as discussed by Jonathan Yeager) were rather unusual elsewhere in Europe but of wider significance given the significance of Anglophone Calvinism in colonial contexts. Among chapters on extra-European Calvinism, Kenneth P. Minkema considers the view of angels from Calvin to Jonathan Edwards. Calvin had warned against speculation about angels who were, he understood, messengers and servants of God. Edwards proved more willing to explore in detail the character and meaning of angelic nature and history. Steven M. Harris writes about ‘an eighteenth-century Black Calvinist perspective’ in America. He argues that ‘black Calvinists in the Revolutionary Period possessed … a more comprehensive, consistent spirit of liberty than many of their Anglo counterparts’ (p. 409). A final group of articles extends this focus on extra-European Calvinism and reviews the modern development of Reformed Churches in Ghana, Korea, China and Brazil. While contemporary Presbyterian Churches in Brazil are products of North American mission efforts, Mark Valeri reminds readers that the first Calvinists in Brazil were Francophone. Jean de Léry's 1578 account of his missionary voyage to Brazil was in many ways surprisingly sympathetic to local people. However, as Valeri observes, de Léry's intentions can best be understood as using Brazilians as a foil to highlight the iniquities of French Catholics. Calvinists continued to bring their European concerns and obsessions with them when they travelled to distant shores.