In this, the latest volume in the historiographical series Contesting the Past, Scott Dixon offers a nuanced assessment of Reformation scholarship. Faced by an overwhelming literature and a limited word count, Dixon takes a thematic approach, choosing to ‘highlight a selection of exemplary books and arguments in order to demonstrate how historians have wrestled with the issues as the heart of the discipline’ (pp. 5–6). The result is a useful and wide-ranging survey which brings into fruitful conversation with each other the work of scholars writing in English, German, French and Dutch.

Taking as his starting point Sebastian Münster's entry for Wittenberg in the Cosmographia (1544), Dixon observes in a first, introductory chapter the historiographical shift from grand narratives focusing (particularly in German scholarship) on the role and significance of Martin Luther and which understood the Reformation to mark the beginning of the modern age, to a more geographically and thematically fragmented set of narratives in which ‘there is as much regress as progress, as much medieval as modern’ (p. 4). Turning to the question of ‘Defining the Reformation’ (ch. ii), he explores the use and development of the term ‘Reformation’ from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the recent move to refer to ‘reformations’ rather than ‘the Reformation’, or to see ‘Reformation’ as encompassing both Protestant and Catholic developments in the sixteenth century. In this study, Dixon ‘preserves the traditional association between the Reformation and the rise of Protestant Christianity’ (p. 13); he does not discuss the terminology of Counter-Reformation and Catholic Reform, nor consider the historiography of early modern Catholicism. Given the brevity of the book (Dixon comments on the ‘restrictive’ word count) this is an understandable decision, although it would have been useful to have been given some indication of the similarities and differences identified by scholars working in these areas. In this chapter, Dixon notes too the complexities of dating the Reformation, arising from the specific history in different geographical areas, but allied also with the question of whether clear lines can be drawn between epochs; the impact of political and national experience on the historiography of the Reformation and its underlying questions; and the confessional – indeed providential – nature of many earlier presentations of the Reformation, the influence of which persists – although sometimes unacknowledged – even in more recent, theory-directed interpretations.

Historiographical surveys of five central areas of Reformation studies follow. A chapter on ‘Religious life’ considers the varying assessments of late medieval Catholicism (in decline, or flourishing, or a mixture of both?), of the role of specific Reformers, of the influence of humanism, and of whether justification by faith can be considered the Reformation's common denominator. The next chapter, ‘The anatomy of reform’, discusses the media by which the message of evangelicalism was disseminated, focusing on the importance of printing, before turning to the identity, education and social standing of those who accepted and further propagated that message and noting the plurality of voices heard in the early Reformation, the fluidity of the movement. Finally, Dixon points to the constraints on historians’ attempts to understand the reasons that led people to embrace these new (and in many cases forbidden) ideas. ‘Reformation politics’ presents studies and analyses of the different settings – and indeed the variety of rural and urban settings – into which the Reformation was introduced, of the establishment of the first Protestant states, and of questions of revolt, resistance and toleration. Moving on to ‘Social dynamics’, Dixon explores scholarship on gender and the role of women, and on reformation piety and popular culture, acknowledging the difficulties of tracing the influence of women and of accessing private beliefs and practices. Music emerges here as an important, but as yet under-researched area. A final chapter discusses ‘Confessional cultures’, considering the theological education and awareness of pastors and their people (and highlighting the dangers of trying to assess the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the Reformation), theories of confessionalisation and confessionalism, and the role of the Reformation in the making of modernity, including the shaping of the natural sciences. The book closes with an appendix – ‘Did Luther post the Ninety-Five Theses?’ – and suggestions for further reading.

This is an impressive sweep for such a slim volume, and it is inevitable that there are gaps. The most significant, acknowledged by Dixon, is his decision not to explore the intellectual history of the Reformation in any detail, although he gives helpful suggestions for reading in this area and, as will already be apparent, does address some of its important aspects. Indeed, following Frijhof, he acknowledges the need to tie together ‘the three main strands of religious experience – the intellectual, the institutional, and the cultural’ (p. 155). His consideration of the implications of the Reformation for women neglects its (mostly negative) impact on access to education for girls. His discussion of the radical reformation omits the literature on Anabaptist rule in Münster, which sheds interesting light both on Anabaptist interactions with the magistracy and on the attitudes of other Protestants towards Anabaptists. Given the space accorded by Dixon to discussions of confessionalisation, a surprising lack of attention is paid to confessional difference in, for instance, the use of images (exemplified by the Reformed numbering of the Ten Commandments). There are some odd discontinuities: a very nuanced consideration of discussions of the significance of Luther's doctrine of justification by faith as a factor in the German Reformation, which concludes that even in the German heartlands justification was not always the key theological motif (p. 62), sits uneasily against the simple affirmation (citing Marshall) that in England the ‘crucial element was the content of the message, namely Luther's doctrine of justification’ (p. 84).

However, these are minor points which should not be allowed to detract from the excellence of Scott Dixon's overview of Reformation historiography. Dixon has produced an invaluable introduction to the historiography of the Reformation. I have no doubt that it will find a well-deserved place on the reading lists of many an undergraduate introduction to the Reformation. I will certainly be including it in mine.