Calvin's Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609 . By Scott M. Manetsch. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. xi + 428 pp. $74.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Calvin's Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536-1609 . By Scott M. Manetsch . Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2013. xi + 428 pp. $74.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesWhat was the life of a reformed pastor like in sixteenth-century Geneva? This deceptively simple question is, as Scott Manetsch demonstrates, a crucial element in understanding the trajectory of the Genevan Reformation. While the ideas of John Calvin and his colleagues have received immense scholarly scrutiny over the centuries, the contours of their lives as pastors have not. Manetsch address this lacuna with a thoroughly researched, lucid account of the lives and work of the reformed Genevan pastors from 1536 to 1609, with the particular goal of comparing the work of the pastorate during Calvin's lifetime with its experiences after Calvin's death in 1564. His book is based on extensive work with the records of the Genevan Consistory and Company of Pastors, as well as the personal correspondence, published writings, personal devotionals, catechisms, and sermons of the reformed Genevan clergy. Using this wealth of sources, Manetsch reconstructs the daily lives of Geneva's pastors during the first seven decades of the Reformation, thus forwarding ongoing efforts to examine how the ideals of Reformation were put into practice.This book is, in a way, a group biography of the Reformed pastorate in Geneva. One of Manetsch's main goals is to elucidate the ideas and assumptions that shaped the "ministers' identity and self-awareness," (2) in order to better understand their interactions with the Genevan laity and city authorities. He begins this exploration with an eloquent recounting of the Genevan Reformation, followed by an analysis of the Venerable Company of Pastors, including profiles of individual ministers, an overview of their recruitment and training, and discussion of the structure and functioning of the company. Particularly crucial to Manetsch's undertaking is chapter 3, "The Pastoral Vocation," which explicates the reformers' understanding of the pastoral office and examines how that concept undergirded their preaching, process of ordination, and struggles with city magistrates. He then constructs a detailed picture of the pastors' domestic lives, providing a vital link between theology and practice. The following chapter explores pastoral duties, illustrating Manetsch's assertion that "pastoral ministry in sixteenth-century Geneva was inseparable from the rigorous study and regular proclamation of the Christian Scripture" (124).Having laid out the broader patterns of the pastors' activities, chapter 6 focuses on the practice of preaching, including the pastors' theological principles, preaching styles, and the reception of their teachings. Here Manetsch examines the ways that preaching did and did not change after Calvin's death, ultimately asserting that "the pulpit stood at the epicenter of controversy and change in reformed Geneva" (146). Chapter 7, "The Ministry of Moral Oversight," provides an impressive compilation of statistics on the consistory's activities both before and after Calvin's death--a goldmine of information for future studies of the Genevan Reformation and consistories more generally. Manetsch's primary goal here is to demonstrate, rightly, that the work of the consistory was a core element in the Genevan ministers' work of pastoral care. …