According to a long historiographical tradition, Italian migrants played a fundamental part in the development of European culture and did so out of all proportion to their numbers. These essays are broadly in agreement, but with a different slant in that they focus on Italians and their texts in Central Europe, a relatively neglected area. The editors suggest a tripartite division for these ‘fruits of migration’: travel and the diffusion of texts; lives of individual migrants; and the transfer of ideas. The first section begins with Marco Cavarzere's lucid study of ‘an uninterrupted chain of book exchanges between Frankfurt and Venice’. Booksellers in Venice had contacts in the empire and produced lists of books coming from the Frankfurt fair. Around 1600 they had to be very cautious, but censorship became less rigorous after the 1650s. The concluding section on elites goes to the paradoxical heart of matter: if privileged readers wanted forbidden books in Venice they could get them from Germany – whilst continuing to support censorship in Italy. Margherita Palumbo's ‘books on the run’ are those of the philosopher Francesco Patrizi, ‘destroyer of the perfect image’ of Aristotle. The reception into (mostly) Aristotelian Germany of Patrizi's ideas was often via clandestine, ‘subterranean’, non-academic routes and occasionally through plagiarism. Helped by her elegant use of English, Palumbo demonstrates expertly the ambivalence of German reactions. Alessandra Quaranta's migrant medics ‘religionis causa’ were usually a generous trio, good at gifts (shades of Natalie Zemon Davis) and at sharing the products of their pharmacies; also brave, especially the medical humanist Girolamo Donzellino. One conclusion of this neat chapter deserves further study: Quaranta finds that none of her chosen exiles shows the ‘indisputable link’ between newly adopted religious views and scientific observation which was evident in the case of Miguel Servetus. Why did this great leap in religion not inspire new medicine?

The second, biographical, section of the book begins with Kenneth Austin's profound chapter on Immanuel Tremellius, Hebraist, one-time Jew, later ‘Catholic’, then ‘Protestant’, perhaps above all, international scholar, who taught in Heidelberg from 1562 until 1577. Austin's concluding pages pose searching questions that should be asked of all these migrants – did migration make them less ‘Italian’, more ‘international’, more likely to give up hope of rapprochement, especially after Trent? Did their own ‘ongoing struggle’ make them see northern reformers as stay-at-homes who had not needed to summon courage for exile? Perhaps a niggling envy marked the quarrels of many Italian refugees with their Protestant hosts. Like Bernardino Ochino … Michele Camaioni probes a rarely investigated time in Ochino's long exile: his relations with city of Augsburg, 1545–7. He spoke little of the language but his writings were translated and ‘used’ as propaganda for the local Protestant cause (the same would happen in Edwardian England). His Augsburg texts reveal the combustible mix of his (‘charming’?) spirituality, with radical anti-papalism and criticism of his hosts: ‘you are divided in so many sects’. Early signs of a cuckoo in sectarian nests? Lucia Felici shows how Olympia Fulvia Morata was first trained at the heterodox Ferrarese court and guided by Celio Secondo Curione. Felici is good at revealing shades of grey. Once in exile and happily married to a German doctor, Morata recognised that Germany was a chaotic mix, Catholic and Protestant, of ‘idolatry and the Word of God’. Aware of the debate about Nicodemism, she shared ‘a sense of precariousness’ but knew that ‘the crown is not given except to those who complete’. Dirk Jacob Jansen's subject is the Mantuan nobleman Jacopo Strada, who became architect and antiquary at Emperor Maximilian ii’s court. Art and architecture are often neglected in discussions of Italian migration, so this well-illustrated piece is welcome. Yet the net is cast too wide, making the essay unwieldy. In an excellent conclusion, Jansen probes the knotty question of Strada's own confessional position. Inquisitors condemned him in absentia but ‘I have never changed my religion’, he wrote. Games of ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ were often a fruit of migration.

In the book's third section, about the transfer of ideas, Giovanni Ferroni summarises two prejudices affecting reception of the poet Marcantonio Flaminio's work. First, the ‘Erasmian’ one: all Italian humanists were irrevocably steeped in paganism. Second the ‘Calvinist’ one, which saw all reformers who had stayed in Italy as Nicodemites. None the less, German evangelical humanists praised the Italian's Latin poetry and piety and that aided the survival of his work. Ferroni comments on the poet's ‘lack of interest in dogmatic discussions’. That was certainly Flaminio's favourite self-presentation, but Ferroni acknowledges that he has not taken into account the anonymous (and dogmatic?) Il beneficio di Cristo, partly written by Flaminio. Maria Elena Severini's chapter records the diffusion of Francesco Guicciardini's Ricordi in German universities, in ‘translations of translations’, and through the work of Celio Secondo Curione and Arnold Clapmar. In a fine, more analytic, conclusion, Severini shows how reception of Guicciardini's ideas in German lands relied on long-term developments like the growth of politics as an independent discipline, acceptance of the ‘counsellor-courtier’ and of the need for secrecy in public affairs. Lucia Bianchin reveals the steady exchange of jurisdictional theory as German jurists looked south to Italian cities and Italian migrants observed imperial free cities and their traditions. Italian ‘political prudence’ regarding ‘preservation’ rather than ‘enlargement’ of a state was often welcome amidst Central European political tensions. Scipione Gentili (brother of Alberico) emerges as an important figure in this transfer. He finished his studies in Tubingen, Wittenberg and Leiden and his work, as jurist, philologist and poet, was often cited in German literary culture. In his essay on the transfer of Machiavelli's ideas, Cornel Zwierlein distinguishes carefully between ‘the real’ Machiavelli's writings and distorted accounts of his views. Zwierlein suggests two main routes of reception: from the West (via vernacular translations and pamphlets associated with the Dutch and French religious wars); from the South (via Italian migrants and Latin texts made known in Central European universities and courts). Often admired as the brilliant political analyst, Machiavelli fast became a cipher for duplicitous, amoral (mostly Catholic) political thinking. Neil Tarrant's clear and concise concluding essay examines the ‘liberal’ historiographical tradition, continued by Delio Cantimori and Luigi Firpo, which saw migrants outside Italy as important forerunners of Enlightenment. Yet Tarrant's modifications are important: ‘Firpo, however, did not argue that Northern Europe offered (Giordano) Bruno or (Francesco) Pucci, or indeed anyone else, complete freedom of expression.’ Tarrant highlights the need to shake off present-centred interpretations, rejecting ideas that Italian migrants were liberals or tolerationists before their time.

The editors of this volume, Cornel Zwierlein and Vincenzio Lavenia, have identified a gap in research: despite the fervour and longevity of ‘Cantimorian’ interpretations, Central Europe has not been sufficiently studied. Yet in this collection cross-referencing between contributors needed much more sustained attention. My main concluding comment does not apply to all chapters, but many. ‘Too long’ was my frequent reaction: wordy, unfocused introductions and panoramas, meandering sentences, footnotes and uninterrupted quotations almost covering whole pages. All these were unnecessarily long, and so were several chapters, in some cases 40 pages (not counting illustrations). Encouraging use of an editorial red pen would have highlighted the flair of many of these essays. None the less a spirit of collaboration across many universities was apparent throughout: these editors have gathered a group of mostly young scholars, and supported them generously, as witnessed by tributes from individual contributors.