Between Luther's death in 1546 and the end of the seventeenth century the Lutheran Churches of Germany would demonstrate an extraordinary resilience in troubled times. Yet until recently it has undoubtedly been the case that this period of the Church's history has attracted little attention. Only twenty-five years ago one distinguished scholar could describe this era as ‘a virtual wasteland’. This beautifully conceived and executed volume makes clear that such statements no longer hold true. In considering the evolution, institutions, theological underpinnings and distinctive ecclesiology of Lutheran worship, Robert Kolb has assembled a distinguished group of writers, many who here reflect on their own detailed archival research. The Reformation movement was characterised from its earliest days by disagreement over fundamental points of doctrine, and this did not cease when the Reformation Churches took shape. The attempt to subdue the Lutheran Churches after defeat in the Schmalkaldic war caused anguished soul-searching, and opened bitter divisions which echoed through the second half of the century. Irene Dingel provides a brisk and noticeably lucid survey of these successive debates, conducted mostly in print though also through the rivalry of the two universities of Wittenberg and Jena. The universities, surveyed here by Kenneth Appold, were inevitably shaped by the reverberations of these debates, not least because so many of the most able protagonists were university professors. The turbulence of the era also encouraged the local territorial princes to take a strong directing role, with consequences good and bad. University enrolments rose steadily through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fuelled partly by generous scholarship schemes provided by the princes. But a change of confessional allegiance on the prince's death often brought renewed convulsions, as professors moved away, or were sacked. For all this Lutheran universities could be highly innovative in curricular terms, encouraging the revival of formal disputations, and promoting important aspects of the humanist curricular agenda championed by Melanchthon. The study of the biblical languages also expanded enormously in the seventeenth century, assisted by the establishment of chairs of oriental languages. Much of this pedagogic activity was directed towards the creation of an informed preaching ministry. In Lutheran thinking, as Mary Jane Haemig and Robert Kolb remind us, preaching creates the Church. Without the preaching of God's word, an assembly was not a Church. Such an understanding propelled preaching, rather than the sacraments, to the centre of congregational life. Lutheran preaching was pericopal, that is built around the scriptural readings appointed for each Sunday in the church year. The less experienced or less talented could lean on books of postils or model sermons, but in truth the Lutheran pastorate, increasingly dominated by graduates of the universities, rose to the challenge well. Ministers often preached phenomenal quantities of sermons. Johannes Mathesius preached five thousand times in a long career at Joachimsthal, and 1,500 of these sermons survive in print. In the seventeenth century the new genre of funeral sermons was a mainstay of the printing press and a distinctive Lutheran cultural practice.

Of course Lutheran pastors would have achieved little had their teaching been confined to pupil instructions. One of the critical features of the Lutheran tradition was the emphasis placed on catechism, elementary instruction in the Christian faith. In this, as in so much, Luther was the pioneer. His Small catechism, though an enduring influence, was only the first of a cascade of instructional works. Inevitably this added layers of complexity, epitomised by the catechismal sermon which, as Gerhard Bode makes clear, arguably elevated instruction beyond the comprehension of those for whom it was intended. For Luther, pedagogy in the church and home went hand in hand. If this was so of the catechism, it was even more so of the hymnal. A keen and accomplished musician, Luther had early grasped the role of music in welding a community. In the first years, as Christopher Boyd Brown points out, he may also have used biblical songs as a means of circumventing the ban on vernacular Scripture in lands hostile to his movement. In the church hymn-singing became an essential part of the worship service. By 1600 Brown estimates that between two and four million copies of Lutheran hymn collections were in circulation. For all this, it was the ability to cross boundaries beyond print, and beyond confessions, that gave singing its potency.

A key feature that emerges from all of these essays is the interconnectedness of church, home and schoolroom. Moving forward from the confessionalisation paradigm, that implies a rather mechanical model of state-building and indoctrination, these essays demonstrate the subtlety and sensitivity of interactions between pastor and congregation. Against the generally negative assessment of Gerard Strauss's examination of visitation records, Robert Chrisman notes the high level of attendance at the main Sunday service. Ministers were specifically enjoined not to embarrass children in catechism examinations. We would probably now recognise, as Susan Boettcher aptly observes, that visitation records reveal not so much the failure of the Reformation as the frustrations of the visitors. Boettcher's challenging essay ranges widely, questioning, for instance, whether the theological differences so hotly contested between Lutherans and Calvinists had ‘material social outcome except in separating people during the performance of the sacraments’ (p. 313). Yet the people could still be roused when a territorial prince attempted a shift in confessional allegiance. The proper relationship between Church and secular power was a constant preoccupation, inevitably so for a Church that originated in an act of defiance against established authority. Robert von Friedeburg charts the evolution of an extended juristic and philosophical debate that engaged many of the best theological and legal minds in an age characterised by profound reflection on the rights of the subject and the duty of obedience.

This is a fine and well-conceived volume. The only significant mis-step is the decision to add two essays on Scandinavia and Hungary, which read inevitably as something of an afterthought. Their authors, Eric Lund and David Daniel, inevitably have to range widely, and provide a basic narrative treatment rather than the thematic coverage of the rest of the volume. The space occupied could more usefully have been replaced by an essay on the clergy, charting the establishment and evolution of a Lutheran pastorate. Something of this is embedded in Boettcher's long piece, and pastors appear as actors and subjects intermittently in the other essays. Their distinctive role, not least as a model (and increasingly dynastic) household could usefully have been the subject of a specific treatment.