A marvel of this book is that by means of studying ritual change in Wittenberg during the pre-reform and earliest Reformation years, it illuminates far more of the city than simply its liturgy. The symbolism of religious acts and settings reveals, under Krentz's thorough scrutiny, the complex, ever manoeuvering relations among pope, bishops (Brandenburg, Merseburg), princes (Electors Frederick the Wise and his successor John the Constant), urban magistrates, university faculty, clergy of various functions (prominently Martin Luther, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Georg Spalatin and Justus Jonas) and the laity. All of the power-wielders were concerned not to arouse the ire of the common person at a time when unrest was not at all confined to the burning of the bull Exsurge Domine or the iconoclasm that Karlstadt had encouraged. Krentz has hunted down documentation tirelessly and pieced it together, to present, in sum, an unprecedently revealing portrait of urban responses to the Reformation. And yet, her speculum remains ritual and decoration in the collegiate church of the All Saints' Chapter (the ‘Castle Church’) and St Mary's parish church (the ‘City Church’).

Taking inspiration from Berndt Hamm's concept of ‘normative centreing’, an impulse toward common values among vastly splintered expressions of spirituality and citizenship, the city sought integration through shared liturgy. Reformation changes may be seen as a process of simultaneously demarcating and unifying elements within the urban corpus. Krentz's resort to anthropological ways of looking enhances rather than burdens her analysis:

Luther's Invokavitpredigten of 1521, with their sparing of weak consciences from the hasty abandonment of traditional observance, permitted a period of grace. Up until 1523 the relic collection of Frederick the Wise and access of pilgrims to it was a key way in which the owner drew attention to his new residence and university. The relics were displayed in the Castle Church. As Luther's fame increased, Wittenberg rose to the status of informal capital of reformed salvation; a new attraction fixed the city in imperial geography. That attraction was generally to be heard in the City Church. From 1523 the All Saints' Chapter was disarmed, and its control of ecclesiastical posts was transferred to the city council. Luther finessed the nomination of Johannes Bugenhagen as pastor, and communion in both kinds became requisite. This is a model German dissertation: imaginatively conceived, endlessly informative and pleasingly written.