Social historians focusing on early modern Reformed communities have benefited immensely from the long-term project of publishing the minutes of the Genevan Consistory from 1542 to John Calvin's death in 1564. Begun in 1996 and led for many years by the late Robert M. Kingdon, this project has been spearheaded most recently by Isabella and Jeffrey Watt. These volumes offer vital insights into many different aspects of consistorial discipline in sixteenth-century Geneva, but they do require patient study, given the challenges of working with often fragmentary minutes in early modern French.

Now, however, Jeffrey Watt has published a monograph that provides expert analysis of the consistory's operations and its impact in Geneva, bringing together the fruits of the Genevan Consistory project over the past two decades. Thanks to funding from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the book is freely available in digital form. Taking a thematic approach, Watt provides both a wide range of concrete examples taken from the consistory minutes and an interpretive framework that set the consistory's approach in the context of key threads of early modern studies, including social disciplining, gender studies, and power dynamics. Over the course of seven chapters, Watt focuses on local opposition to the consistory, its push for religious uniformity, its emphasis on faith and moral formation of the young, its role in matters of sex and marriage, its response to cases of suspected magic, its aim to curtail idleness, and its role in reconciling Genevans who were at odds with each other. In laying out Genevan opposition to the consistory up to 1555 and the waning of resistance after Calvin's opponents were forced out in that year, Watt provides convincing explanations for the consistory's ramped-up activity and its increasingly stringent approach in the last ten years of Calvin's life.

Throughout the book, Watt makes regular comparisons between the work of the consistory in Geneva and parallel institutions elsewhere in Europe at the time, including the marriage courts in the Swiss Reformed cities, the Scottish kirk sessions, and the Roman Catholic inquisitions. Watt's point that “witchcraft and heresy notwithstanding, the Genevan Consistory was actually a much more intrusive institution than the Inquisition and had the ability to effect greater change on the laity and contemporary society in general” is noteworthy (221). His conclusion is based on the consistory's weekly meeting schedule, the number of Genevans summoned to appear before it, and the wide range of cases it handled. Unlike Robert Kingdon and Scott Manetsch (Calvin's Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609 [Oxford University Press, 2013]), Watt's perspective is less positive, highlighting the consistory's strict disciplinary measures. He also notes time and time again Calvin's harsh response to any critiques and his use of the consistory's sanctions to pursue and chastise those who opposed him personally.

In assessing the consistory's impact on the Genevan population, Watt notes that the system relied on at least a certain amount of buy-in from the community. Indeed, some of the cases that surfaced in the consistory minutes only emerged because a community member complained of a neighbor's behavior. This process was particularly prevalent in cases of men and women who were not married to each other but spent too much time together according to their neighbors. The consistory records also show that some of the disciplinary practices fostered by the religious and civil authorities had percolated through the community, as was the case, for instance, when Genevan inhabitants reprimanded their neighbors for public swearing or blasphemy. However, though Watt points to the 1536 public vote in Geneva to adopt the Reformation, adding that “the fact remains that Genevans collectively chose the Reformed faith” (68), it is important to remember that this decision only reflected the views of some Genevans, since non-citizens and women were not eligible to vote.

In various chapters, but particularly in the one on sex and marriage, Watt discusses the impact of the consistory on women. Susannah Lipscomb's recent study The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, & Marriage in Reformation Languedoc (Oxford University Press, 2019) made the case that women in southern France deliberately made use of their local consistory to advance their own cause, especially when it came to enforcing promises to marry. Watt's assessment of the Genevan evidence is more cautious. While he noted that the consistory was equally ready to chastise men and women when it came to illicit sexuality, he underscored that the Genevan consistory's patriarchal mindset left women vulnerable, especially in instances of domestic abuse or sexual assault. Furthermore, the consistory's insistence on reconciliation in cases of conflict could pressure women to make peace with someone who had used force against them.

Among the aspects of the consistory's work that have not received as much attention in other studies, Watt sheds light on the consistory's general unwillingness to pursue people accused of magical practices, because it remained largely skeptical that the accused genuinely possessed such powers. He also highlights the consistory's commitment to train up young people (especially young men) to become diligent and productive members of the community by targeting the idle and the spendthrift.

Watt's monograph offers early modern historians an accessible and thorough study of the Genevan consistory's work. Alongside the ongoing project to publish the last few volumes of the consistory registers up to 1564, this book lays the ground for further research on social discipline, both in Geneva and comparatively across other early modern disciplinary bodies.