The Reformation produced quite a number of deeply spiritual and learned thinkers and writers, and not all of them were university trained. One of the noteworthy features of this turbulent and creative age was the role played by individuals of humble birth and non-academic professions who nonetheless exerted a wide and lasting influence on the development of religious thought and, beyond that, non-religious areas of life and culture that were influenced by religious ideas.

One of the more remarkable individuals in this respect was the shoemaker Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) of Görlitz in present-day Saxony. Though his formal education was only at the elementary level, his profession was a humble one, and his works were banned in his lifetime, he nevertheless proved to have a wide influence and a devoted following of readers who preserved the writing that made him one of the most important German thinkers in his time and afterward. As an intellectual figure, he is difficult to categorize—Lutheran, mystic, theosophist (rather than theologian)—but he was important for pietism and, as a pietist a Lutheran opponent of scholasticism (which led to his condemnation by a Lutheran pastor and the suppression of his work), important for mysticism, for the development of deism, and later for romanticism and idealism, and even for modern science fiction (in a chapter on Philip K. Dick).

His many facets are on display in the volume here reviewed, Jacob Böhme in Three Worlds: The Reception in Central-Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and Britain, edited by Lucinda Martin and Cecilia Muratori, with Claudia Brink. The title resonates with a key concept of Böhme: the three-fold division of the cosmos into a world of darkness, a world of light, and the natural world (where dark and light are in conflict), which the editors adapted and applied to three conferences devoted to the reception of Böhme’s work in the regions denoted in the subtitle, namely Central/Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and Britain. It was thus in these conferences and the motivation behind them that we find the genesis of this volume of essays, which presents the work of the leading scholars in the field, including both established scholars and those rising to prominence.

The chapters are in English or German, and each is prefaced by an abstract (note that for the German-language chapters, this is in English). They are, collectively, devoted to the many ways in which Böhme’s thought was received in the seventeenth century and beyond. Among the individuals whom he is shown, in this volume, to have influenced were: Abraham von Franckenberg, Angleus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), Quirinius Kuhlmann, Adam Mickiewicz, and Vladimir Solovyov (all in Central or Eastern Europe); Friedrich Breckling, Johann Georg Gichtels, Jan Luykens, Johannes Rothé, and Johann Wilhelm Überfeld (all associated with the Netherlands); and Henry More, John Pordage, and Robert Fludd (in England). The geographic range of Böhme’s influence was indeed remarkable in what is categorized as Central and Eastern Europe—Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, but also Sweden, Finland, Latvia, and Estonia. This is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that his works circulated only in manuscript in these regions, which is an indication that while the age of print was firmly established by his time, hand-produced texts were still important for the transmission, circulation, and reception of ideas. Nevertheless, his work did finally appear in print in the freer and tolerant atmosphere of the Netherlands where Böhme’s books were first published, which extended his influence yet further. It is also worth noting that the spread of his work to England was enhanced by the fact that it was also translated into English, which enabled an even wider readership than otherwise would have been the case.

It is hard to summarize so rich and erudite a collection of essays (twenty-two in all, plus an appendix that reproduces in facsimile the last of Abraham von Franckenberg’s biographies of Böhme, previously unknown), each revealing a facet of Böhme and how his thought was received, but the book seems aimed principally at a more specialist audience that already possesses a knowledge of Böhme. Perhaps, in this respect, even a brief general introduction would have been helpful in setting the broader context of Böhme and his work for those who may be less familiar with him. Similarly, this reader would have appreciated more focused introductions to each of the three “worlds” (Central-Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, Britain) that also highlight the contributions found in each of the essays, as well as notes on the contributors and a subject index to complement the name and place indices that are included. Nevertheless, the book is handsomely bound and produced, with beautiful illustrations of printed and manuscript material (of which some of the latter are but newly discovered). It will surely promote further work on—and a deepening appreciation for—Jacob Böhme.