After his impressive, meticulously researched articles on various Lutheran chiliastae or millenarians of the early seventeenth century, Leigh Penman has finally delivered the long-awaited monograph that juxtaposes them all within a larger framework. As such, this book explores an intriguing paradox of early modern Lutheran culture: the immense appeal of what Penman, with deliberate vagueness, calls “optimistic apocalyptic expectations” (ix) despite the apparent ban on such hopes in Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession. Since scholarship on millenarianism tends to favor overly neat distinctions and categories, this approach may not satisfy every reader. Yet Penman uses it to great effect, compellingly showing both the wide range of these anticipations and the expanding definition of chiliasmus that indiscriminately branded such hopes as heretical. Rather than presenting heresy as monolithic, as the guardians of orthodoxy would have it, Penman succeeds admirably in showing it as something in a state of flux, rapidly expanding and contracting in a classic boom-and-bust sequence.

The first chapter sets the stage by describing the theological, natural, and political contexts, particularly introducing numerous earlier traditions and prophets—some well-known such as Joachim of Fiore, others obscure like Lutheran laymen Paul Linck and Julius Sperber. This account could have been even stronger had Penman reflected the close-knit integration of religion, natural events, and politics by not artificially disentangling them into separate sections. In the second chapter, the author introduces many of the “new prophets” (38), such as Johann Kärcher and Heinrich Gebhard Wesener, whose proclamations contributed to a heightened sense of millenarian expectation. Penman rescues several of these prophets from oblivion and introduces them to an international audience for the first time. The inclusion of Jacob Böhme (48–50) among them may seem surprising at first, yet this contextualization of the theosopher among his less famous contemporaries provides a much-needed corrective to the approach that focuses on the history of his reception among luminaries such as William Blake or G. W. F. Hegel. Future scholarship on Böhme would do well to take up this insight and study the Teutonic philosopher as one new prophet among many others. The chapter concludes with excellent sections that reflect on the media available to new prophets. Significant nonconformist networks formed to circulate scribal publications, and some manuscript collectors such as Carl Widemann and Joachim Morsius amassed hundreds of them (60–62). Printed books and pamphlets obviously existed in even larger numbers, with authors strategically including their prophetic speculations in genres not subject to theological censorship (65–66) and some printer-publishers even specializing in the production of such heterodox works (69–70).

The third chapter introduces two prophets at greater length: Paul Nagel, the astrologer of Torgau, and Wilhelm Eo Neuheuser, whose long career culminated in the grand political vision of a Holy United Empire that appears strikingly modern against the backdrop of twentieth-century developments such as the United Nations or the European Union. Penman's fascinating account of Eo is based almost entirely on previously unstudied primary sources and will hopefully do much to inspire future research on him. Although Eo survived Nagel by two years, much of his activity predated the astrologer's, so it is not entirely clear why Penman has chosen to discuss them in this sequence, just as it would have been possible to swap around Paul Felgenhauer and Philipp Ziegler in the preceding chapter. The fourth chapter shifts the focus to those who opposed all the new prophets peddling hopeful forecasts regarding future improvements. Penman argues that avid hereticators developed the catchall category of chiliasmus subtilis to quash even the faintest hint of hopefulness regarding a brighter future against the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War. The hunt quickly escalated so that even popular devotional works (Philipp Nicolai's 1598 Historia deß Reichs Christi, on 121–125) and irreproachable ministers (e.g., Hermann Rahtmann, on 127–137) were not exempt from—at times retroactive—charges of heresy.

While many new prophets were laypeople, Penman does careful work in showing that even Lutheran ministers, wittingly or not, could be swept up in the millenarian craze. If Rahtmann's record was impeccable and several theological faculties refused to condemn him, the same cannot be said of Nicolaus Hartprecht, a minister who threw in his lot with the antinomian and blasphemous sect of Esaias Stiefel, active in the region around Erfurt. The sixth chapter treats a special case in this regard: Paul Egard, a pastor in northern Germany who undertook “a systematic attempt to wed optimistic apocalyptic expectations with practical Christianity and weave the result into orthodox Lutheran doctrine” (153). In so doing, the virtually unknown Egard effectively pioneered the formula that would later, with Philipp Jacob Spener's “hope of better times” (Hoffnung besserer Zeiten), become defining for Pietism. Yet much like the dreaded “millennium bug” of 2000 or the Mayan apocalypse scheduled for December 21, 2012, the eagerly anticipated years following the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1623 passed without noticeable improvements as the grim Thirty Years’ War worsened. The prophets fell silent, and the inflationary, indiscriminate accusations of their detractors ebbed away by 1630. Nonetheless, Penman shows that, over the long term, optimistic expectations actually remained integral to Lutheran confessional culture. Despite many setbacks, hope ultimately triumphed over the establishment's fear of subversion.

Penman's Hope and Heresy has much to offer for scholars working on early modern Lutheranism, German culture, theological polemics, nonconformist networks, and scribal publication. As he plumbs the alignment of devotional piety and increasingly sublimated millenarianisms, Penman highlights the shifting definitions of heresy and considerably advances our understanding of the prehistory of Pietism. Yet the most groundbreaking contribution of this important book lies in treating heresy as a culturally negotiated phenomenon rather than a theological transgression while simultaneously retaining the term. In contrast to many studies that either use “heresy” in an overly narrow sense, as an attention-grabbing device, or avoid it altogether, this approach is worthy of emulation. Showing exemplary command of even the most elusive manuscript sources, Penman steers our attention away from purely theological concerns, embeds prophecy into the lives of the many laypeople and theologians who gave voice to their expectations, and emphasizes the media of early modern prophecy.