What did it mean to live in Geneva in the early modern period? Not what beliefs did one have to parrot, but what was the character of life? In 2004, Max Engammare took on the question of Genevan mentality about time in his L'ordre du temps: l'invention de la ponctualité au XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz). Now Cambridge University Press has brought out an excellent translation by Karin Maag (2009). As Engammare makes clear in the preface to the English translation, this translation also contains new material, so stands somewhere in the gray area between a simple translation and a revised edition. But the book itself does not fall in a gray area, this is a significant study that rewards the careful reader with meticulous and discerning history, and significant insight.

In a particularly apposite fashion, Engammare wastes no time in coming to the point of his study: “in sixteenth-century Geneva ‘the ordering of time’ had become central” (1). Engammare links this to a spirituality that was more conscious of time than of physical space, though he is careful to qualify that he is not arguing that early modern Protestants cared about time to the exclusion of space, or the opposite for early modern Catholics. But the author finds that Genevans both attacked idleness and promoted its opposite virtue—punctuality.

After the introduction, the first chapter sets out Calvin's management of time. Engammare points out the remarkable character of the frequent references to time in Calvin's daily work. From excuses in his letters that he has no time to write further because the time for his lecture approaches, to descriptions of his entire day, Calvin seemed acutely aware of the passage of time. The author links this to Calvin's overly full schedule. This time-sensitivity even showed up in Calvin's sermons, where he might use the term “minute” so frequently as three or four times per sermon. Calvin was so short of time that he became obsessively aware of it, and turned ever more toward the effort to account for every moment of his time to God—to strive to be perfectly punctual for God.

Engammare's second chapter considers church time and its context in the civic setting. The interplay of ecclesiastical and civic time is crucial for understanding Geneva and its effect in the early modern period on Reformed sensibilities. The Genevan government established the weekly schedule for the observance of good order and good worship, and worship in Geneva was about the establishment of a Reformed identity (44). Engammare traces how Geneva moved toward ever-increasing strictness about time, even instituting fines for missing sermons and lateness. This chapter contains the interesting issue of the church and civil authorities in their battle over the power over the people. While that has been well documented in terms of the practice of excommunication, the timing of sermons was also at issue. Seemingly, the mid-sixteenth century was an era of hour-long sermons. By the end of the sixteenth century, the authorities were making efforts to curtail the excessive length of sermons. But their victory in this area seems to have been a case of wining the battle by losing the war. While the authorities were successful in shortening Genevan sermons, they imbibed the wine of Genevan timeliness so deeply and unconsciously that while other cities in Europe were developing schedules around trade concerns, Genevan authorities were still tied to their Protestant values (77).

The work's third chapter compares the concern for punctuality and the saving of time among the Genevan Reformed and other humanists. Engammare notes that classical allusions are used as rationale for this concern about time, especially Pliny the Elder, who was quoted or alluded to by Erasmus and Bullinger. Other classical authors provided grist for the mill of time, such as Seneca, Cicero, and the Pythagoreans. Engammare then illustrates how various scholars attempted to escape the loss of time through detailed scheduling of their days, providing detailed vignettes of the daily routines of Ficino, Bullinger, Jacques Esprinchard, Jean Ribit, Henri de Mesmes, and Isaac Casaubon. While the contempt for idleness was widespread among scholars of various confessions, Engammare finds that only in Geneva did this distaste for indolence grow into a training in punctuality, a nurturing of the contradictory virtue (114).

The fourth chapter turns to a consideration of Huguenot calendars. Engammare explains the mechanics of the calendars, what they included, such as replacing saints' days with memorialization of Protestant heroes and adding memorial and instructive days in history—Paul's conversion or the death of Caligula, both examples to emulate and avoid were included. The author surveys other early modern calendars, Catholic Gregorian calendars, shepherd's calendars, and those calendars attached to books of psalms. Engammare concludes that these Huguenot calendars were another effort to determine time's character before God.

Casting further afield, the book's next chapter compares the conceptions of time in the works of two members of La Pléiade, Pierre Ronsard (1524–1585) and Pontus de Tyard (1522–1605) with that of a Calvinist pastor Pierre Viret (1511–1571). The difference is as stark as one expects—Viret believed that time was God's possession, a gift of a stage on which humans would strive to live ever purer lives. Ronsard and Tyard saw time as a “cosmic force,” but one that humans made use of for their benefit.

The sixth chapter considers literary texts, especially those of Guéroult, Montaigne, and Rabelais. While Engammare finds Guéroult's work to bring little to the table, Montaigne and Rabelais offer significant opportunities to trace the theme of the book: that “specific scheduling was more strongly featured in sixteenth-century Calvinist circles than in Roman Catholic or even Lutheran ones” (238). The brief conclusion that follows sets forth the judgment of the significance of time in Reformed circles and ties it to the influence of Calvin and the pattern of sixteenth-century Geneva.

This is an extraordinary book, making serious and substantial claims. Space has not permitted holding forth all the rhetorical jewels that abound within the pages. The resources upon which Engammare draws, and the excellent translation that Maag achieves, make this a wonderful scholarly achievement. Having said that, this is not a book for everyone. Passages of French and Latin are left untranslated, and the average student will hardly recognize Tyard and Ronsard, or realize what La Pléiade was. But for the early modern scholar, this work presents solid research, and a host of significant claims with which to argue, engage, and even delight.