This volume comprises thirteen essays, the result of a 2014 workshop held under the auspices of a major five-year research project of the same name. The collection aims to examine Observant reforms and identity construction within both religious orders and the laity who associated with them over the long fifteenth century. It further endeavours to shed light on the impact of efforts at pastoral control under the umbrella of the Franciscans (as made clear, it was a very wide umbrella indeed, and not always fully welcomed by those placed under it) through new developments in preaching, writing and the printing press, and other mission strategies. Finally, the volume asserts that the identity markers of the religious controversies and reform efforts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had their roots in these earlier campaigns, which are too often unaccounted. The diversity of subject matter and geographical spread – from models for female religious communities, to local particularities of identity formation, the harnessing of the printing press, and the significance of nomenclature, while the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, England and the New World are all covered – succeeds in illustrating both the enormous variety in what constituted Observant reform, and its paradoxical ability to act as a foundational universal identity marker for so many disparate groups. Anna Dlabačová’s analysis of the Observance in the Low Countries, in particular, manages incisively to demonstrate this wider phenomenon and its reflection of later developments, while focusing in depth on local circumstances. Connections between Observant groups were strengthened through preaching and the diffusion of texts across religious orders, while the relationship between Conventuals and Observants of the same order grew more tense, at times resulting in violence. The laity, meanwhile, displayed a more ambivalent attitude, and looked simultaneously to different groups to meet different needs. In terms of pastoral strategy, essays by Anne Thayer and Michele Camaioni, for instance, on Thomas Swalwell's use of model sermons and Bernardino Ochino's ‘masked’ preaching, respectively, examine in fascinating detail how delivery and reception changed at the point of impact with an audience. Such an ample diversity of subject matter, both broad-based and highly localised, does, however, somewhat constrain the depth of overall evaluations. Some papers are also distinctly more in the preliminary stages of research than others. There is the sense that the observations noted by Bert Roest as stemming from the essays – the energising effect of Observant reforms, the massive literary output, the positive and negative links to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation – while certainly treated, are also only brushing the surface of a much vaster field – which is admittedly perhaps the point. The collection should be considered alongside the impressive number of other major outputs which have stemmed from the research project (both published and forthcoming), and provides ample fertile ground for future lengthier studies. It thus succeeds in one of its primary goals, highlighting the greater need (and possibility) for a deeper understanding of this period of religious identity formation, both for its own sake and with regard to discussion of later issues of religious reform and challenge.