Against a strain in Polish historiography that has treated the fanatical Commonwealth of the seventeenth century as a departure from European norms, Kriegseisen aims to present inter-denominational relations in Poland-Lithuania within a European context. He does so by accepting a distinction proposed by Michael Oakeshott between those states that evolved in the direction of royal absolutism and confessionalism, and other states characterized by a lack of strong central authority. Here, the latter category is represented by composite polities in which regional parliaments faced off against a general assembly representing the body politic as a whole: the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic, and the Commonwealth of Poland–Polish-Lithuania. In some respects—notably, in regards to the confrontation between a majority-Protestant nobility and a Catholic monarchy—the lands of the Habsburg monarchy might have made for a better comparison. For Kriegseisen, comparison with polities to the west better serves the purpose of showing how Poland-Lithuania fits into a pan-European context.

Kriegseisen is interested not in relations between local and general assemblies but, rather, in the status of religious dissenters and concurrent theological and legal debates. Slightly more than half the book deals with sixteenth-century conceptions of orthodoxy, dissent, and state authority or religious events in the empire and the Dutch Republic. The last section, on “The Reformation in Poland-Lithuania,” is the fullest account available in English. Under Sigismund I the Old (r. 1506–1548), Protestantism made little progress, save among the German-speaking burghers of Royal Prussia and on some nobles' estates in Małapolska, the district around Krakow, the capital. Sigismund II Augustus (r. 1548–1572), the last Jagiellonian, had leading Protestants among his courtiers, and Reformed doctrines made rapid headway among the lesser nobility and thus in the lower house of the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm (composed of representatives of the regional Sejmiks). In the 1550s, the Sejm banned the enforcement by lay officials of ecclesiastical sentences and proclaimed freedom for all confessions. In 1569, the Sjem concluded the Union of Lublin, joining Poland and Lithuania in a commonwealth. The 1573 Warsaw Confederation reaffirmed the liberty of all confessions and prohibited all forms of persecution—despite unanimous opposition from Catholic bishops in the Senate. Nowhere else in Europe, save in Transylvania, were the rights of dissenters so firmly anchored in the constitution. Meanwhile, Protestant communities maintained mutual relations by convening joint synods, a process that culminated in the 1570 Consensus of Sandomierz. Though they did not have a common creed or liturgy, the Reformed, the Lutherans, and the Czech Brethren (Hussites) recognized one another as orthodox churches and agreed not to proselytize (the Minor Reformed Church [Socinian] was not included). Henry of Valois reigned only a year (1573/1574), and Stephen Báthory (r. 1576–1587) was preoccupied by war with Muscovy. Under Sigismund III Vasa (r. 1587–1632), the legal position of Protestants was gradually eroded, even if full-scale Catholic confessionalization did not begin until 1658, when the Sejm voted to expel the Czech Brethren from the commonwealth.

For the rise and subsequent decline of Protestantism, Kriegseisen offers a few suggestions. Many of the lesser nobles who rallied to the Reformed banner were linked to the “executionist” movement, whose goal was to recover royal domains alienated to lay or ecclesiastical magnates. Reformed churches followed the lead of Zurich rather than Geneva, at least in regard to church-state relations. The king had a jus reformationis, and since he failed to exercise it, lesser magistrates—the magnates and nobles—claimed the right to reform the church on their estates. Yet this practice made it easier for the king to suppress Protestant churches in royal cities. The policy of concord among Protestants, aimed at refuting a common Catholic critique of the Reformation, also had a disadvantage in that it prevented the churches from pursuing a strategy of “confessionalization, which is only possible in the spirit of individual churches” (452).

Three flaws somewhat limit the book's value. First, the work is rich in citations but has no bibliography to allow others to follow the author's lead. Second, it is more a collection of essays than a monograph. The early sections are worth reading; the author is conversant with the literature and makes interesting points along the way. But the end result is a juxtaposition rather than a comparison; the final section of the book, on Poland-Lithuania, makes little reference to material that has come before. Third, although it has been translated into English, the book retains its character as a work written for a Polish audience. Citations from Latin are translated into English, but citations from Polish are not. The author indicates several times that the executionist movement was closely linked to the growth of Protestant sympathies among the aristocracy, but he nowhere explains what the executionist movement was; a Polish reader familiar with the sixteenth century would not require an explanation, but an English reader does. Conversely, an English reader familiar with Reformation history might need as much background on Germany and the Dutch Republic. As members of the historians' tribe, we have all struggled with the question of writing with a particular audience in mind, but it really does matter.