This collection of essays explores the experience of religious reform in "national context." In discussing similarities and differences among the reform movements in a dozen European countries, the book considers countries in which the Reformation was strikingly successful and those where it failed to make an impact. The individual essays emphasize the local preconditions and limitations that the Reformation encountered as it spread from Germany into most of the countries of western and central Europe. Together they present a picture of the many-sided nature of the Reformation as it grew up in each "national context."