The Transformation of Confessional Cultures in a Central European City: Olomouc, 1400 –1750. Antonín Kalous, ed. Viella Historical Research 2. Rome: Viella, 2015. 206 pp. €35.

This book features the work of eight scholars whose endeavors shed light on how and why the important Moravian city of Olomouc emerges in the later Middle Ages as a city pulsating with religious conflict and sometime cooperation amid confessional division. Jaroslav Miller provides an introduction to Olomouc (a useful aid for the neophyte anglophone reader) and Graeme Murdock writes a valuable afterword bringing together a number of the important strands evident throughout the volume. In between we have significant elaborations on the major theme from Jan Stejskal, Antonín Kalous, Ondřej Jakubec, Tomáš Parma, Radmila Prchal Pavlíčková, and Martin Elbel. Inasmuch as most (if not all) of these scholars will be unknown in the anglophone world it is a pity the book contains no information about their work or institutional affiliation. Nevertheless, the book is a united effort aimed at elaborating how confessional allegiances and cultures evolved in a limited time and space and how those developments reflected the postmedieval world across a dynamic and sometimes contradictory landscape.