This is an incredibly rich study of catechisms and the teaching of religion in the sixteenth century. The work features a comparative analysis of four important catechisms: the catechisms of the Roman Catholic, Peter Canisius; Luther's Enchiridion and German Catechism; the Genevan Catechism; and the Heidelberg Catechism. These are compared theologically for their teachings on the main features of sixteenth-century catechisms: belief (the Apostles’ Creed); commandments (the Ten Commandments); prayer (the Lord's Prayer); and sacraments. A final chapter on images shows how the visuality of the pages of catechisms helped to shape catechesis.

These analyses, in and of themselves are highly valuable. Since catechisms are compact expressions of Christian belief, the principal catechisms studied here give particular demonstrations of the ways in which major Christian belief systems in the sixteenth century understood basic rubrics of Christian faith. The Roman Catholic expression of Canisius presented the Church's historic faith in catechetical form, enabling a ‘codex’ to be held in the ‘hand’ – and thus print gave a ‘materiality’ to the Church's belief. So with Luther, whose breakthrough theological understandings are found throughout his treatments of these topics. Reformed theology, conveyed through Calvin's insights, is found in the catechism used in Geneva (1549) while another stream of Reformed understandings is transmitted by the Heidelberg Catechism (1563).

But Wandel's work is significant for the larger shift that she shows is going on with the development and importance of catechisms. At the centre of her work is the argument that ‘the codex catechism both set forth and materialized particular conceptualizations of the nature of “knowledge” of Christianity and of the relationship between the knowledge of texts and Christian identity’ (p. 7). In short, as Luther illustrates, his catechism ‘defined and encompassed what it meant to be a Christian’. Or, says Wandel, ‘what it meant to be a Christian – ”Christian identity” changed in the sixteenth century; not simply the definition of “Christian”, but the nature and the form of the knowledge that being Christian entailed, as well as the relationship between “knowledge” and Christianity identity’.

With the coming of the Reformation, traditional understandings of how Christianity is comprehended – and what constitutes a Christian person – shifted. It moved from the Roman Catholic sacramental system, where participation in the Church's sacraments defined Christian identity, to a formal understanding of words on a page or to the catechism codex. Succinctly, this is a shift from a social to a legal context. According to Wandel Christian identity moved from being given in ‘a ritual shortly after birth to something at once individual and collective acquired through formal education, at the center of which was the codex’. So, too, this book is arguing that what constituted ‘knowledge’ for a Christian changed, from something one learned over a lifetime – through acts, images, architecture, song, sound, sight, smell and touch – to something read and spoken. ‘Knowledge’ became more narrowly discursive, rather than experiential’ (p. 7 n. 17). Christian life over generations in medieval Christianity was ‘a praxis, not a body of verbal texts’ (p. 11).

The ‘sounds’ of medieval catechesis oriented those who could not read or write to listen to the words of a priest, bishop or catechist who led congregants through reciting certain words, orally. In the sixteenth century sounds became ‘texts’– words fixed on a page. Since most Europeans did not own a Bible, they heard words that were ‘sung, chanted, spoken aloud or “silently”’. This was true with the major elements: Apostles’ Creed, Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria and biblical narratives (p. 13). Wandel points out that ‘prior to the sixteenth century, no pope and no council decreed what should be taught, or, for that matter, when within a life’ (p. 15). Indeed, ‘no particular text or particular body of texts was required education for a Christian’ (p. 15). Thus, the catechisms of the sixteenth century represented ‘a fundamental transformation in the nature of knowledge of Christianity and its media: from a broadly shared conceptualisation of Christian knowledge as mediated through a multitude of objects, performances, enactments, gestures, colors, sounds, textures, as well as wine and bread, to a definition of “Christianity” as text-centred, in which one acquires knowledge through reading and expresses that knowledge in words’ (p. 15).

Catechisms became important because of their defining functions. They ‘sought to dissolve the cognitive and material distance between codex and person, to teach that the “knowledge” on the page made one Christian, not baptism. Words, printed then spoken, seen then embodied, were, they taught, what made one a “Christian’’’ (pp. 15–16). If, as Wandel says, ‘print materialized the fragmentation of Christendom’ (p. 18), then catechisms – which ‘taught divergent readings of ancient and familiar texts’ – helped to engender ‘the desire for so many Christians, for a site, a material location, where they might look to find that “knowledge” that defined them as Christians’ (p. 19). Print could ‘provide a common material site’, as Erasmus, Luther, Calvin and many other authors recognised.

Catechisms, with their distinctive ‘readings’ and portability, helped to establish Protestant Churches across the face of the globe. Canisius’ catechisms were approved by the Roman Catholic Church, indicating its recognition of ‘the importance of the codex in the formation of Christian identity’ in this period (p. 27).

As one moves through Wandel's chapters, one is struck by the careful formulations of catechical words, seeking to bring precision to theological thought and understanding. These word-formulas point to the larger theological debates which raged through the century as Protestant bodies sought their theological identities over and against each other, and while the Roman Catholic Church codified its own belief-expressions more fully. The catechism of the Council of Trent was intended not for personal use but as a source for catechetical sermons by clergy.

Wandel's splendid book opens many dimensions. It illuminates Christian identity and sixteenth-century shifts, as well as providing detailed comparative theological examinations of major catechisms. By explaining the catechisms in their wider contexts, Wandel illuminates their importance in themselves as well as their functions as texts that convey meaning for Christian believers.