In 2015 Volker Leppin, Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Jena from 2000, and in Tübingen since 2010, published a collection of twenty-eight of his essays on the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. The volume under review includes a further twenty-four essays dating from 1995 to the present. Thus, just in time for Leppin's fiftieth birthday in December 2016, his most important essays become easily accessible.

The title, Reformatorische Gestaltungen (‘Reformation shapings’), is a stopgap, for the essays in this volume are thematically less homogeneous than in the previous one. Chronologically they begin with two studies of William of Ockham, the first of which dates to the author's postdoctoral period. The focus is, as could be expected, on the Reformation in Germany, but one paper discusses the Reformation anniversary of 1617, and the essay on ‘Protestantism and modernity’, which had previously been printed only in Italian, continues well into modern times. A peculiarity of the present collection is that two essays are included in advance of their ‘original’ publication.

The essays in this collection reflect the scholarly interests and the biographical stages of the author from Hesse via the Saxon-Thuringian region to south-west Germany. Though their topics are quite different, all the essays are held together by the specific theoretical and methodological features of the author. For example, Leppin often chooses a territorial approach, but always manages to establish significant general insights within a particular context. Moreover, he usually situates his subjects in the larger canvas of the history of Reformation research. Thus the interested reader will be able to delve into Leppin's conception of Reformation history by means of a series of single case studies. Some of the main features of his interpretation may be listed briefly. According to Leppin, the Reformation was, regardless of its political, social, economic and cultural dimensions, essentially theologically motivated, and it was from theology that it obtained its society-changing force. After several decades in which a social history approach has been dominant, focusing on (imperial) towns as centres of the Evangelical movement, Leppin rightly reminds us that it was the princes who played the decisive role in enforcing the territorial reformations – princes who, like Philip of Hesse and Ulrich of Württemberg, knew to preserve their independence in ecclesiastical matters against the theologians. The most characteristic feature of Leppin's approach, however, is his conviction that there was a strong continuity between the later Middle Ages and the Reformation. According to him, the Reformation brought nothing entirely new, but only exacerbated some of the multiple co-existing medieval opinions, tendencies and styles of piety and raised them to exclusive validity while Tridentine Catholicism aggravated others in the same way. Special emphasis is given in the present volume to political ethics. Leppin commends Luther's two kingdoms doctrine as a contribution to the enforcement of the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force and proves that even early modern Lutheranism did know a right of political resistance in matters of faith and conscience. The reference of the rebellious peasants to the idea of evangelical freedom, rejected by Luther as a carnal misunderstanding of his teachings, is shown to be a creative continuation of original traits of the reformer's own propaganda.

Just four of the twenty-four essays can be discussed in detail here. In ‘Evangelium der Freiheit und allgemeines Priestertum’ [‘Gospel of freedom and universal priesthood’, 2007] Leppin shows that it was the concept of evangelical freedom and, more precisely, the notion of the universal priesthood of all believers that Luther developed in continuation of an idea of Johannes Tauler that gave the evangelical movement its historical potency. In ‘Die Reformation und das Heilige Römische Reich deutscher Nation’ [‘The Reformation and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’, 2013] he suggests an understanding of Reformation history as the history of a long-term transformation of the imperial constitution dating back in its origins to the late Middle Ages. In his essay ‘Lutherische Apokalyptik zwischen Identitätsvergewisserung und Sozialdisziplinierung’ [‘Lutheran apocalyptic between confirmation of identity and social discipline’, 2008] Leppin shows how apocalyptic developed into a characteristic feature of Lutheranism and an instrument of social discipline in the course of confessionalisation. ‘Protestantismus und Moderne’ [‘Protestantism and modernity’, 2008] demonstrates how the Reformation can be understood as an element in a major transformation process going back to the Middle Ages and extending well into modern times – a transformation process that can be described under the headings of laicisation, individualisation, tolerance and reflexivity of religion.

Overall, this collection presents a set of stimulating and illuminating essays. There are minor flaws. In particular, the essays and especially the references have not been updated, and there are a large number of misprints due to faulty scans.