This book owes its origins to a course taught to Honours students in the University of St Andrews since 1989. My original intention was to attempt a comparison between the rapid development of Protestantism in Germany and its much more halting progress elsewhere in Europe, but it soon became clear that the sparseness of the literature in English made this difficult to achieve in any full sense. In almost no case was there available an up to date survey dealing explicitly with the period of interest, that is the first thirty years after Luther's protest first ignited the Reformation; sometimes we were faced with an almost complete absence of specialist work in any but the local languages. This volume is intended partly to make good this deficiency; but it is also hoped that by presenting these pieces together in one volume, they may offer some provocative contrasts and comparisons, which may go some way towards answering the question of why the Reformation had so much more impact in some parts of Europe than others.

When I first embarked on this project, kind friends advised me against an edited volume, on the grounds that it was a great deal more trouble than writing a whole book oneself. That this has not been the case is a credit to the contributors, whose generosity of spirit and geniality throughout the production process I have greatly valued. All of those I first approached agreed to take part, and they have borne my editorial interventions with unvarying good temper.