Duke George of Albertine Saxony usually appears in accounts of the German Reformation as Martin Luther's sharp-tongued, sharp-penned critic. George's attempts to silence both preachers and printers who supported the Wittenberg call for reform illustrate the most militant measures undertaken by political authorities committed to the old faith in the early sixteenth century. George was indeed this indefatigable opponent of Luther's teaching and reform of ecclesiastical practice, but also much more. Like his cousin Elector Frederick the Wise of the Ernstine branch of the Wettin family, George was only continuing the interest in the reform of the church that had informed the rule of their ancestors since the mid-fifteenth century. As in England, France, and the Iberian Peninsula, the interest of rulers in ecclesiastical affairs—churchmen called it interference—did not begin with Luther's 1520 appeal to the German nobility for aid in reform, nor had it ended at Canossa. The Concordat of Worms concluded by Emperor Henry IV's son, Henry V, in 1122, claimed a place in church governance for German rulers, which George exercised with vigor—not only regarding Saxon political interests but also his own pious commitment to the betterment of ecclesiastical life, both among the regular and secular clergy and the laypeople.

Volkmar's detailed presentation of George's religious policies arises out of extensive, meticulous examination of archival records that reveal a personality that took religion seriously, both as an instrument of good governance and out of concern for his own soul and the souls of his people, for whom he felt responsibility. Even before Luther began striving for reform, George had sought to control church activities in his domains, for both political and pious reasons. His own education as a student of theology blossomed into a fervent interest in reforming the church that expressed itself in using papal grants and his own secular powers to deal with bishops and their cathedral chapters, the ecclesiastical court system, monastics, the lower clergy, and the lay practice of piety. He imposed strict standards of behavior and the exercise of pastoral responsibilities upon clergy at all levels within his control. He fostered upright living according to divine and ecclesiastical laws among the laity with both the encouragement of good preaching and the punishment of derelictions. He pursued his opposition to abuses among the faithful and to Luther's Reformation by the most effective use of print media among adherents of the Roman Church in German-speaking lands.

Volkmar demonstrates that George's own antipathy toward Luther arose not only out of his convictions of the correctness of medieval Scholastic doctrine but also out of his hatred for Jan Hus and the Utraquist Hussites, who sided against his paternal grandfather, Friedrich II, in a Saxon civil war in the 1430s, and who subsequently had been led by George's maternal grandfather, Bohemian King George of Podiebrad, who died excommunicated. Little glitches in translation provide only momentary bumps in reading. This meticulous review of the many factors in George's significant pioneering of Catholic reform through enforcement of clerical standards opens up new vistas in our understanding of “Catholic reform instead of Luther's Reformation,” although I would nuance Volkmar's closing observation: “From today's perspective, however, Reformation and Catholic reform were two parts of a single religious awakening. Taking separate paths toward the common goal of a renewed Christianity, they shaped modern European society by side” (626). Luther's Reformation introduced profound changes in perceptions of what it means to be Christian: a shift from a ritualistic understanding of the human being's approach to God through sacred activities to a definition that regarded God as the initiator and sustainer of his relationship with sinners, and the Word of God in oral, written, and sacramental forms as the medium of creating human righteousness in trust toward God. Nonetheless, Volkmar has contributed vital information and stimulating insights for further study of sixteenth-century German ecclesiastical developments.