This welcome volume by Martin Christ focuses on more than a century of religious coexistence in six small towns of a region in the Habsburg Kingdom of Bohemia whose population was characterized by religious diversity. It shows Reformation in a non-large urban context and contributes nicely to the ongoing scholarship on toleration, showing how, in a territory ruled by Catholic kings, there could nevertheless be a significant degree of leniency toward other groups at the local level. More than this, Christ suggests, following Bob Scribner and others, the best term to apply to the phenomenon of mixing of religious elements is “syncretism.” What he sees and illustrates in the eight chapters following his introduction is that there was no pure Lutheranism or Catholicism, no clear confessionalization. Rather, there were instances of sharing that incorporated elements from the religious practice of the “other” into one's own doctrine and practice. Christ develops his argument by focusing on biographies of individuals who effectively illustrate various religious strands.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the region, showing different patterns of reform and the implications of a lack of a dominant political center in the region. This is illustrated in part by tracing the careers and contributions of Lorenz Heidenreich (1460–1557), the first Lutheran preacher in Zittau, and of Oswald Pergener (1490–1546), the town scribe, who was a Zwinglian. Absent a territorial prince or a powerful town council, Reformation elements were introduced without general friction. Even though Catholics in Zittau were opposed to the Lutherans, there was, as Christ puts it, an interplay and syncretic dynamic in this pluriconfessional environment. The focus in Chapter 2 is upon Johannes Hass of Görlitz (c. 1476–1544), the town scribe, keeper of the council annals, and eventual mayor. He was a traditional Catholic who struggled to understand his town's history, which was rapidly becoming Lutheran. In his mind, these developments were demonic and challenged his understanding of divine intervention. Despite this, there were minor elements of Lutheranism that he incorporated into his own religiosity. For example, the tone of his annals changed from the first two volumes written for a readership still Catholic, to that of the third and final volume that needed to reach an increasingly Lutheran audience.

In Chapter 3, the career of the last Catholic mayor of Kamenz, Andreas Günther (1502–70), reveals that Catholicism continued to be influential even after the town had become largely Lutheran. At the same time, Lutheran members of the city council supported him because he improved Kamenz's status with the king of Bohemia. For example, he achieved the reinstatement of municipal judicial rights after the king had revoked them. A Lutheran mayor, Bartholomäus Scultetus of Görlitz (1540–1614), is the focus of Chapter 4. Educated at Wittenberg and Leipzig, Scultetus was an established scholar and astronomer. Despite his religious outlook and the fact that he played an important role in the Lusatian League of small towns that achieved a high degree of autonomy, similar to that of imperial free cities, he worked closely with Catholic elements in the city. For instance, he helped introduce the Gregorian calendar in Lusatia, even though it was commonly regarded as an obvious Catholic innovation. The tensions surrounding religious change are explored by Christ in Chapter 5 through the biography of Johann Leisentrit (1527–86), the dean of the collegiate church in Bautzen and eventual apostolic administrator in Upper Lusatia. In the bi-confessional city of Bautzen and the increasingly Lutheran region of Upper Lusatia, Leisentrit walked a fine line between his Catholicism and official responsibilities and the nature of his city and region. He is one of Christ's better examples of syncretism. He reintroduced medieval Catholic elements in the liturgy for the dead but tolerated communion in both kinds; he performed baptism in the vernacular and successfully adjudicated marriage issues for Lutherans; he allowed non-Catholic hymns by Luther and others in the hymnbook he used in his collegiate church, but he included woodcuts of Catholic saints in his publications when suspected of being sympathetic to the Augsburg Confession. Christ suggests that Leisentrit's irenic approach may have been intended eventually to bring Lutherans back to the Catholic fold, but it is clear that, as he puts it, “confessional boundaries remained porous, even toward the end of the sixteenth century” (152).

The three remaining biographical chapters are devoted to three Lutheran preachers and pastors: Sigismund Suevus (1526–96) in Lauben; Martin Moller (1547–1606) in Görlitz; and Friedrich Fischer (1558–1623) in Bautzen. The first denounced a mayor's reconversion to Catholicism but continued to share his church with nuns of the Order of Mary Magdalen. Christ sees his use of this sharing as reinterpreting Catholic space in Reformation terms and using spiritual pilgrimage as allegories of Lutheranism. Moller represents the limits of toleration and syncretism, since although he was accused by some Lutherans of crypto-Calvinism, he retained the support of city councilors and school leaders. But other non-Catholics (Anabaptists, followers of Jakob Böhme, and Schwenckfelders) were not tolerated. Fischer's church was one he shared with Catholics, but that relationship was sticky and closely defined: he was to deal with Catholics in a respectful and orderly manner even though he was expected to preach in harmony with Luther and Melanchthon's texts and the Augsburg Confession. In practice, he often adapted his theology and liturgy to the actual situations he faced. It was also crucial that although he supported Lutheran teachings and practices, he had to do so in a way that would ensure the king of Bohemia would not intervene.

In his conclusion, Christ steps back to view the larger scene in Upper Lusatia, discussing ways developments there can both support and problematize larger, traditional Reformation narratives. For him, the received narrative that Reformation in this region was strictly and narrowly Lutheran needs to be looked at afresh. His book does just that, showing the complexity of the ways Reformation was negotiated. This book is based in impressive archival and often obscure secondary materials and raises stimulating issues for future Reformation scholarship.