Van Lieburg, Fred (ed.), Confessionalism and Pietism: Religious Reform in Early Modern Europe. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte. Abteilung für abendländische Religionsgeschichte. Beiheft 67; Irene Dingel, Hrsgb. (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2006), vi + 324 pp., €39.90, ISBN 3 80533 592 X, (hardcover). Dualisms can have heuristic value. One that has been subtly influential for the study of early modern European religious history places church and state, pillars of establishment, on one side while locating individual dissenters, heedless enthusiasts, and free-wheeling zealots on the other. Established religion—formal, juridical, and essential to social order— stands over and against personal religion—informal, emotive, and socially disruptive. Or, to put it in terms of recent scholarship, confessionalism occupies one pole while pietisms occupy the other. Proponents of the various confessionalization theses have emphasized, in the complex devel- opments of the long seventeenth century, the social significance of polit- ical attempts to establish confessions (Lutheran, Reformed, or Roman Catholic) within particular territories. At the same time, it seems that many movements, which challenge or subvert the confessional programs of secular authorities, bear important connections to pietism (in its var- ious forms). An explicit, focused examination of the relation between confessionalization and pietism, then, seems to make good sense. Indeed, as Fred van Lieburg notes, it would also seem to be long overdue (2). To what extent does ‘confessionalization’ accurately characterize religious- historical developments in early modern Europe, and can it be fruitfully opposed to broader, more popular forms of piety? Is there a dualism, and what would be its explanatory value? These questions lie at the heart of this important collection of essays, which were originally given as papers at a November 2004 Dordrecht conference on confessionalism and pietism (1650-1850). The articles reflect a common concern to test the coherence of confessionalism and pietism as historiographic concepts and to examine their relevance to specific figures, movements, and local histories. It contains sensitive, well- executed historical research on an impressive array of interesting (if occasionally obscure) topics. There is some overlap in subject matter but the essays, for the most part, function as discrete inquiries into sep- arate topics that span various places and time periods, and which extend © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 JEMH 11,5 Also available online – www.brill.nl/jemh JEMH 11,5_2129_1-4 8/21/07 1:12 PM Page 1