This is a wide-ranging study of confessional higher education in Switzerland and North-Western Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. At its core is an extensive and deep study of the Genevan archives, particularly rarely-used documents from the post-Calvin period.

These archival sources, together with those of institutions from other European centres, form the basis of a detailed and authoritative study of the ideological divisions, institutional structures and communication networks of the leading Reformed centres of higher education.

The study is illuminated by revealing and often touching portraits of the students, professors and administrators who populated the lecture halls and libraries of the institutions. Dr Maag has used this wealth of institutional and personal records to demonstrate the wide variety of strategies employed by Reformed educational establishments in their struggles to survive and prosper in a period of religious, political and social ferment.