The confessionalisation paradigm has decisively shaped German scholarship on the Reformation period since Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard published their seminal works in the late 1970s. It claims to explain the role of religion in Europe's passage from medieval to modern, and whatever its problems it has undoubtedly, as Schilling points out in his contribution to this volume, stimulated a great deal of productive research. Bodo Nischan's own work was a prime example. Nischan examined the role of ritual and ceremony in creating confessional consciousness amongst Brandenburg's Lutheran subjects. Focusing less on the political and sociological aspects of the thesis, he puts religion centre stage, as befits a Reformation historian. It is a tribute to the importance of his work, and to his generosity as a scholar, that so many diverse offerings could be gathered together in his memory.

The main body of the text opens with a brilliant panoptic by Thomas Brady of the confessionalisation debate, surveying its origins and development from its inception to the time of Nischan's own contributions. It is worth getting hold of the volume for this essay alone: this is a truly welcome addition to and updating of the main English-language survey to date, R. Po-Chia Hsia's Social discipline in the Reformation (London 1989). Brady's essay is followed by an interesting series of comments by Schilling himself on the emergence of the confessionalisation paradigm and its significance today, and by a reflection by Harm Klueting on the concept of a ‘Second Reformation’ that is of obvious relevance to any consideration of Nischan's own work on Brandenburg.

The main focus of the volume is, not surprisingly, on the Holy Roman Empire. The empire provides, as John Headley points out in his introduction, ‘a unique soil for our understanding of Confessionalization’ (p. xxv), and it is fitting that the most substantial section of a collection of essays dedicated to Nischan's memory should concern developments in the German lands. There are a number of interesting essays here: Markus Wriedt on Luther's ecclesiology; Robert Kolb and Luther Peterson on various aspects of the post-1546 conflict over Luther's legacy; Robin Barnes on Lutheran attitudes towards astrology; Terrence McIntosh on Protestant attempts to prevent prenuptial coitus; Bruce Gordon on the mission of the Scotsman John Drury to the Swiss reformed Churches on behalf of Oliver Cromwell. Susan Karant-Nunn offers a thought-provoking essay on Protestant attempts to eradicate affective piety, though the questions that it raises, for example about Lutheranism and art, the emergence of Pietism and how a Church that promoted ‘controlled piety’ could produce Bach's great Passions – cannot be explored entirely satisfactorily in an article of this length. While all the essays are interesting in their own right, some – in particular perhaps Thomas Robisheaux's essay on witchcraft confessions – bear little relation to the theme of the volume and might have attracted a wider audience elsewhere. Marc Forster's piece on Catholic confessionalisation and the Reichskirche after 1650s is, on the other hand, right on topic, and, like Brady's introductory essay, provides an invaluable overview of recent scholarship.

The third part of the volume examines ‘confessionalisation beyond the Germanies’. There are two useful pieces on France: Raymond Mentzer uses consistory records to discuss the fashioning of Protestant religious culture in multi-confessional communities (though this piece presents obvious possibilities for drawing comparisons with German cities that neither the author nor the editors take up); Mack Holt offers a more general discussion of confessionalisation in France and uses Dijon – where Protestantism was entirely suppressed – as a case study. A series of reflections on the lay reception of the Reformation in England by Peter Iver Kaufman follows, and the section concludes with a consideration of Jesuit devotional literature and its role in the construction of devotional identity by Lance Lazar. Although once again the individual essays are of considerable interest, the volume fails to live up to expectations here. It claims to examine ‘Confessionalization in Europe’, and a number of essays (those of Brady and Holt for example) do indeed ask whether the model has anything to offer non-German specialists, but as the introduction itself acknowledges, the volume does not even begin to cover the whole of Europe: there is no discussion, for example, of Spain, the Netherlands or eastern Europe.

The final section is labelled ‘Toward the dismantling of confessionalization’, though it might perhaps have been better presented as a contribution towards the debate over the rise of toleration. Constantin Fasolt offers a fascinating discussion of Hermann Conring, a professor of medicine at Helmstedt who, in 1648, posed as an Austrian theologian to publish ‘A Catholic recommendation to conclude perpetual peace with Protestants’. Fasolt emphasises that Helmstedt was able to conceive of a situation in which religious diversity did not threaten political unity, the theme also of the final essay in the volume by John Headley. Headley's discussion of enforced religious coexistence in the empire after 1555 is thought-provoking, though lacks the clarity and intellectual depth of many of the other contributions.

In all, the volume contains a number of very interesting essays and has a commendable breadth and chronological span. It is, of course, a very welcome tribute to Nischan. However, the dust jacket's claim that it brings together ‘a closely-focused set of essays’ is an exaggeration. Perhaps, in fact, the very diversity of the research produced by these scholars when asked to write about confessionalisation suggests that it is time for Reformation history to move on.