Modern history has been largely silent about Nicolaus Mameranus and the Latin texts that he composed. But here we have a mid-Tudor author, easily as prolific as Erasmus, capturing in writing events on the Continent and in England, and reflecting, and possibly shaping, the cultural contours of the age. There is an opportunity here, and Matthew Tibble has seen it and seized it, and produced a most illuminating volume, the scope of which extends far beyond the case study of a single writer.

Mameranus (1500–67), a native of Luxembourg (then under Habsburg rule), was a staunch Catholic and imperial poet laureate. His professional duties took him across mainland Europe, but also, in 1557, to England, as part of Philip ii of Spain's entourage. His prodigious output, which is entirely in Latin, contains both prose and verse, and ranges from encomiastic chronicles to scriptural paraphrase, and from historical commentaries to occasional verse, the content of which was remarkably contemporaneous; as Tibble himself comments, it would be possible to sketch a biography of the English queen from Mameranus’ compositions. While one of the appendices to this volume helpfully provides full bibliographical details of Mameranus’ output, Tibble's book focuses on a small portion of his oeuvre, namely pieces that relate to Mameranus’ relationship with Marian England and the brief time he spent in the country. One of the book's primary aims is to buttress a larger historiographical reconstruction of Mary i's reign and her union with Philip, by shining a light on perceptions of England and its programme of Catholic restoration from the outside. Tibble's objective is ambitious, but so very welcome, and in many ways his book, which is divided into broad thematic chapters, provides a very useful model for the assessment and contextualisation of other neo-Latin writers more generally.

In chapters ii, iii, iv and vii, Tibble examines Mameranus’ reactions to various major episodes of Mary's reign, ones that he compellingly argues must be understood from a ‘real time’ perspective, free of the retrospective agendas and distortions of the Elizabethan Protestant pen. Mameranus’ works of this period were inspired by several key events: Philip's journey to and arrival on English shores in 1554, the royal wedding of the same year, the ceremonial displays of 1557 that were wholly bound up with the public projection of Anglo-Habsburg power and finally Mary's death and funeral in 1558. The helicopter views offered in each of these chapters are rich and well-supported, and Tibble builds a strong case for the need to revaluate the Marian Reformation as one of hope and religious rejuvenation, and the dynastic alliance as one in which Mary enjoyed powerful agency.

However, the literary and historical provocations this book offers have yet wider pertinence. Tibble's interrogation of Mameranus’ role as official poet of the Empire, for example, is extremely valuable. The phenomenon of Latin poetry in the early modern period, of which there exists a bewildering abundance, is a far from straightforward one to fathom, especially in our own age in which poetry has been relegated to a rather niche and recherché activity. Tibble, relying on Mameranus’ own self-reflexive approach, productively explores the tension in sixteenth-century poetics between divine calling and the need for patronage. This raises some interesting questions about the extent to which panegyric poetry could reinforce and even affect the early modern age concept of godly power, and Tibble convincingly avers that poets like Mameranus, far from merely reflecting and affirming the status quo, played a role in initiating religious and political conversation. A further facet of neo-Latin verse that Tibble broaches (especially in chapter v) was its capacity for counsel. While the discussion might have benefited from a little more analysis of Mameranus’ actual impact, Tibble's conclusion that an Erasmian princely humanism was still at work at this time makes much sense. Indeed, the identification of a very particular form of petitionary counsel that sought direct intervention in the conduct of the monarch chimes with the efforts of other poets of the period.

One of the most fruitful parts of the book is the close comparison (in chapter iii) of the epithalamia of the Catholic Mameranus and the Protestant-inclined Dutchman, Hadrianus Junius, each of which was composed to celebrate the royal marriage. Tibble carefully probes these poetic productions, which may so easily be classified under a single generic heading, in order to highlight the very different stances that motivated and underpinned them. Although Tibble does not express it in quite these terms, his approach prompts questions about the extent to which confessionalisation imposed a sort of literary schism on the classically inherited forms of the humanist movement.

The book is laudably international in orientation, and a particularly fascinating strand of this is the focus on Cologne, and the accompanying examination of its influence as a vital centre in the Counter-Reformation. Mameranus had a deep attachment to Cologne, and Tibble's promotion of the England-Cologne axis and survey of the transmission of religious ideology from one community to another should be taken seriously. Just as the importance of the city of Strasbourg for English Protestantism has not as yet been investigated by historians to the degree that it deserves, the same is true of the flow of ideas from this significant heartland of European Catholicism. That Latin was the language in which a dynamic exchange with Cologne was forged is also very suggestive indeed.

The main chapters of this volume are robustly supported by several appendices, which set out the Latin text and translation of all the works under discussion. The renderings produced by Tibble and Gary Vos are accurate and lucid. The introductions to each also convey well the vagaries of production and publication of works of this period. The appendices are in fact invaluable for any reader new to Mameranus, and the only drawback to the thematic arrangement of the book is the lack of navigational guidance at the outset; a time-line and a brisk summary of the main works and events under scrutiny would have been helpful. This observation, however, in no way detracts from a resounding endorsement of a wonderful addition to our understanding of Tudor England within the larger settings of Habsburg Europe and the religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth century.