This collection of fourteen essays originates from a colloquium of European historians of Christianity meeting at the University of Kent, Canterbury, in 2008. The rather open subject of ‘Religious Leadership’ prompted the original conference, and the papers here offer disparate if still valuable perspectives on this theme, spanning nine hundred years. Half the essays are on Roman Catholic subjects – four pre-Reformation, three since – the remainder exploring Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and nineteenth-century ‘Old Catholics’.

The editors could have ordered this collection in many ways – chronologically, geographically, even by source material – and framed its contributions along different lines. They opted for a loose thematic structure: five essays on ‘Episcopacy’; six on ‘Organization and Charisma’; three on ‘Gender and Laity’. As the middle theme suggests, Max Weber's theories of leadership are influential, though perhaps most among the editors. In their introduction, the essays are related to Weber's typology of leadership as ‘traditional’, ‘rational’ or ‘charismatic’, and the notion of the ‘routinisation of charisma’ in an on-going institution. An interest of the volume is the perennial tension in Christian history between leaders assuming past charisma in their institutional roles and new leadership claimants possessing charisma themselves. Questions follow of how religious authority is perceived, secured or lost. Some may feel that these questions and interests are not actually explored in the body of the volume as much as the introduction implies. The contrasting subjects of the essays ultimately get the better of thematic cohesion. Even so, this is a consistently stimulating collection. Some scholars will appreciate specific chapters offering cogent new studies in their specialist fields. Other historians, valuing the longue durée, will find something thought-provoking in every chapter.

The opening three essays study a common genre of source material: bishops’ visitation records. Jan Kuys writes on the Catholic diocese of Utrecht in the 1570s, when the Spanish authorities employed episcopal visitations as a tool to facilitate Tridentine reforms in a region soon lost to Calvinism. Paula Yates explores the success or otherwise of reform initiatives by two bishops in the Church of Wales: Richard Watson, bishop of Llandaff (1782–1816) and Thomas Watson, bishop of St David's (1803–25). And Bill Jacob offers an especially rich essay on the ‘Visitation charges’ of successive bishops of London throughout the Victorian period, revealing striking episcopal innovation and strategic imagination in a context of enormous population growth and almost boundless social need. Next, the late Nigel Yates offers a study of John Wordsworth (1843–1911), bishop of Salisbury, whose claim to be the ‘father of modern Anglican ecumenism’ rests on pragmatic work with those (non-Roman Rite) Western denominations that retained an historic episcopate – Scandinavian Lutherans and European ‘Old Catholics’. The latter body, formed mostly of groups opposed to the decrees of the First Vatican Council (1869–70), features further in Angela Berlis's essay on Joseph Hubert Reinkens, whose scholarly studies of the fourth-century bishops, Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours, informed his own approach to episcopacy when consecrated an Old Catholic bishop in 1873.

Katherine Sykes opens Part ii (‘Organization and Charisma’) with a reassessment of the Vita of St Gilbert – a source chronicling the life of the twelfth-century founder of the ‘Gilbertine’ religious order. Sykes overturns assumptions that Gilbert was a prototypical ‘charismatic leader’ of the Weber school, followed by more managerially-minded successors. Gilbert's Vita is re-read to confirm the ‘persistence of both personal charisma and functional authority throughout his career’ (p. 95). Next, Jens Röhrkasten examines the dilemmas over authority and obedience among early Franciscans, drawing attention to the complex interplay between ideals of humility and expectations of hierarchical compliance in religious orders. R. N. Swanson then considers the nature of parish-level leadership in late medieval England, particularly how some clergy took responsibility for their own ‘professional development’ in the wake of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Swanson's sources include a fascinating set of priests’ personal manuals – scrapbook-like notes and advice on pastoral skills assembled by priests themselves.

Three medieval studies are followed by three essays on varieties of British Protestant dissent, beginning with David Wykes's essay on Daniel Williams – of Dr Williams's Library fame. Wykes complicates notions of Established Church/Dissent politics post-1689 by highlighting Williams's roles at the court of William and Mary and in the England-Scotland Act of Union. Peter Elliott next adds to recent studies of Edward Irving, the London Scotch Church celebrity preacher of the 1820s, and founding inspiration for the millennialist Catholic Apostolic Church. Elliott is original in framing all Irving's controversial views – on missionaries, Christology and charismatic gifts – as an ‘implicit challenge’ to existing church leadership and hierarchies (p. 147). Clyde Binfield then closes part ii with an energetic study of a year in the life of P. T. Forsyth – the outstanding theologian of Edwardian Britain. Forsyth was chairman of the Congregational Union in 1905, when the denomination reached the apex of its numerical strength and influence. Binfield judiciously explores the paradox of national leadership in a tradition innately ill-disposed to leaders above the independent congregation.

Part iii returns to Roman Catholic concerns in all three contributions. Daniella Müller highlights the eschatological and apocalyptic dimensions to the authority claims of four women recognised as leaders in medieval Europe: Hildegaard of Bingen, Guglielma of Milan, Prous Bonetam and Joan of Arc. The remaining two essays in the collection are about the twentieth-century. Marjet Derks examines the remarkable history of the ‘Women of Nazareth’, leaders of The Grail – a populist movement of Catholic young women in interwar Netherlands. Derks charts how these radical women leaders appropriated religious tasks traditionally reserved for male clergy, including leading their own religious gatherings, public confession and specifying penance. Finally, Marit Monteiro chronicles how the Dutch Dominican Order evolved its view of religious leadership before and after Vatican II, becoming ‘the paradox of a radical and sometimes even anti-institutional Christianity realized within the bosom of the Church’ (p. 232). A startling ‘routinisation’ of Christ's charisma to conclude a worthy work of ecclesiastical history.