More than a decade ago, Spohnholz noticed that a minor episode in Reformed (Calvinist) Church history—a meeting of dozens of Calvinist ministers and leaders in 1568—was surprisingly difficult to document. The lack of evidence for the “Synod,” “Convent,” or assembly at Wesel near the Dutch border finally prompted a full-scale investigation. He begins with a meeting on November 3, 1568, that produced a set of 122 articles proposing to regulate the governing structures, rituals, and doctrines of the Reformed Church. The final version, which ran to twenty-two pages in Latin, had sixty-three signatures—fifty-one autographs and twelve proxy signatures.
Traditionally, this document has been regarded as evidence of the first major move to establish a unified Reformed Church in the Low Countries, the founding of a “presbyterial constitution” within a unified state church. Close study of the shifting context of military and ecclesiastical events reveals that the document of 1568 must...