Thirteen papers (with a brief introduction) from a conference held at Utrecht in 2004 are reproduced in this volume. The contributors are from Britain and the continent of Europe, seven papers are in English and the rest in German. The orders in question are essentially the Knights of St John and the Teutonic Knights, and the territories discussed are chiefly the German lands, the Netherlands and England. For non-specialists the most striking information may well come in the second paper (in English), where it is shown that Albert of Hohenzollern, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, negotiated with the Polish king for the secularisation of his territories and the establishment of a hereditary Prussian duchy before revealing, unambiguously, his intention of declaring his new state a Lutheran one: the Polish king initially justified his own agreement on the grounds that he might thereby be able to prevent such a religious change. In some of the other (German) papers it is repeatedly demonstrated that Brandenburg was another distinctive case, in respect of the Knights of St John, in that even before the Lutheran Reformation the knights in that territory had established a degree of practical autonomy from the main structure of the order. For the German lands generally (the Habsburg family lands to the south apart) the picture which emerges from many of the papers, whether for the Knights of St John or the Teutonic Knights, is one in which the orders' survival, despite some loss of confiscated or forcibly dissolved houses during the Reformation, was achieved at the cost of allowing effective recognition that some aristocratic members would remain Catholic, others Lutheran and yet others, eventually, Calvinist. While that also meant that in some, but not all, cases Catholic worship could be continued in houses situated in otherwise Protestant principalities or cities of the empire, both orders became almost exclusively bodies of non-clerical aristocrats, with such Catholic services as survived being increasingly supplied by secular or regular priests who were not themselves members of these orders. Where Lutheran pastors were hired, they too were not members. The Scandinavian kingdoms are discussed in another paper (in English). There the houses of the Knights of St John can be seen to have experienced a sequence of events familiar enough from the more general history of Reformation and monastic dissolution in those territories, with more precocious expropriation under the Danish crown and significant delay and ambiguity in the Swedish domains, to the end of the sixteenth century, before the final disappearance of such religious institutions. From all such cases emerges another aspect of sixteenth-century evolution, known for example from Scotland, in which aristocratic commendators for a while monopolised control of a given house and its resources, even if such a stage might ultimately prove transitory. Reasons for interim phases of delay and uncertainty included the reluctance of Protestant powers to appear too openly to subvert the Knights of St John as their whole order relocated of necessity from Rhodes to Malta and underwent their heroic defence of the latter in the great Christian confrontation with Islam, while Teutonic Knights might be expected to contribute to the defence of Christendom's southern land frontier, in Hungary. Such considerations were not absent from the complicated history of the Knights of St John in England, from the reign of Henry viii onwards. When another paper, dealing with just that, is added, a further familiar point is recalled: at different dates in the post-Reformation centuries Protestant powers created their own local version of the Order of St John, separate from the Sovereign Order in Malta. For the Netherlands it is not surprising when Utrecht is revealed, as more generally during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as an area, within those territories, in which religious ambiguity, plurality and even conservatism persisted more than elsewhere, more so for example than in the end at Haarlem. By contrast, in an area along the modern German–Dutch border, a determined stand by a local leader of the Teutonic Knights enabled Catholic activity, and not just membership, to survive by deploying resources located variously at Cologne, Liège and Louvain, although historiographic considerations are advanced suggesting caution over describing this as part of a ‘Counter-Reformation’. A final paper, however, contributes an overview of the distinctly ‘Catholic Reformation’ policies of Grand Master Lascaris (1636–57) of the Knights of Malta. This volume is well produced, with twenty-three colour plates, in addition to black-and-white illustrations and a few maps, which help in particular the discussion of art historical aspects of developments in the Netherlands.