This weighty volume – twenty-five essays plus an introduction and conclusion – stems from a conference held at McGill University in August 2007 entitled ‘The new hermeneutics of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562): exegesis and theology’. While the size and subject matter might intimidate some readers at first glance, the collection is quite engaging and, for the most part, readable. It will be of interest not only to biblical scholars and professors of theology, but also to historians, philosophers, philologists and those interested in the history of higher education. The primary theme of the volume is Vermigli's biblicism, and this emphasis fills a lacuna in Vermigli scholarship. As Emidio Campi writes, ‘Although the Florentine Reformer considered himself to be primarily an interpreter of the Bible, and although his commentaries outnumber in length and quantity his systematic and polemical writings, far more is known about Martyr as a systematic or polemical theologian than as an interpreter of the Bible’ (p. 209). Thus, part iii of the Companion, ‘Biblical commentaries’, contains six essays on Vermigli's approach to six different books of the Bible. Essays in other sections – such as David Wright's on Vermigli's use of the patristics, Charlotte Methuen's on his teaching at Oxford, and Max Engammare's on his Hebraism – also leave the impression that Scripture was the primary influence on Vermigli's thought. It was not the only influence, however. Another theme that runs throughout the book is Vermigli's eclecticism. We are reminded by Luca Baschera of Vermigli's deep knowledge of Aristotle and his adherence to the scholastic method. Scott Amos points out that Vermigli's lectures were more scholastic in structure than Martin Bucer's, but in the same essay he describes the humanist origins of the loci method. In the end, while unquestionably Reformed in his theology, Vermigli was a highly eclectic biblical scholar who absorbed and employed many different of sources and modes of thought and who does not fit easily into any particular school of biblical interpretation. In the conclusion to this volume, Joseph McLelland attempts to apply a ‘new label beyond the tired clichés of the past’: Vermigli as ‘stromatic’ (meaning eclectic or patchwork) theologian (pp. 497–8). Comparing him to the third-century scholar Clement of Alexandria, who first used the word ‘stromatic’ in a theological context, McLelland argues that ‘both scholars avoid forming an intellectual System, and strive for a more dynamic theology’. This volume certainly reveals for readers the dynamism of Peter Martyr Vermigli's thought and makes a convincing argument that a better understanding of the hermeneutics of this Italian-born Protestant reformer will lead to a better understanding of the Renaissance and the Reformation and the relationship between the two.