Marina Benedetti possesses enviable credibility as a historian of the Waldensian movement during the Middle Ages. She has studied inquisitorial trials in her doctoral dissertation ‘Valdesi di fine Quattrocento nelle fonti della repressione’ (1998/99) and has recently published a contribution on Inquisitori lombardi del Duecento (2008). This work, however, is not an investigation of the medieval Waldensians. Rather, it is a collection of essays, using Waldensian manuscripts as a living prism through which, if viewed in the right light, intriguing connections to the confessional warfare in seventeenth-century Europe can be established. Following in the footsteps of such noted Waldensian historians as Enea Balmas, Giorgio Vola and Albert De Lange, who have pioneered the field, the author documents the usage of Waldensian manuscripts in the context of Anglo-French culture. Two chapters deal respectively with the pre-eminent scholar and Anglican archbishop of Ireland James Ussher (1580–1655), and the English diplomat Samuel Moreland (1625–95), who in 1655 was sent by Oliver Cromwell on a mission to Turin to protest against the persecution of the Waldensians by the duke of Savoy. Another chapter examines the presence of Waldensian manuscripts in the libraries of the famous French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) and the French historian Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553–1617). The final chapter is devoted to the Huguenot pastor and propagandist Pierre Allix (1641–1717). Benedetti's concluding remarks lend strong support to the author's contention that reflection upon the persecutions of the Waldensians and particularly the treatment of their manuscripts were powerful agents in constructing a Protestant identity in seventeenth-century confessional apologetic discourse. This study will be helpful to any scholar interested in exploring the perception or representation of the Waldensians in the age of confessionalisation.