"Thirty-two documents from the formative years of the Reformed churches of France, many previously unpublished, are brought together in this meticulous edition. The volume includes all surviving acts of the provincial synods from this period, the requests and memoranda circulated among the churches or drafted for presentation to the crown by the deputies of the provincial synods, the earliest known consistory register of a French Reformed church, the earliest known liturgical and administrative regulations of individual churches, and the decisions of the Protestant-controlled 1562 Estates of Dauphiné, rightly called the best indication of the system of church-state relations that the Protestants would have established throughout France had they been successful in effecting a Reformation of the entire kingdom. Fascinating, little known, and mutually illuminating, these documents shed striking new light on the situation, operation and political action of the early French Reformed churches. The documents are richly annotated and preceded by a 100-page introduction that is an important scholarly contribution in its own right. This is an essential resource for all interested in French Protestantism, the origins of the Wars of Religion, or the early history of the presbytero-synodal system subsequently adopted by many Reformed churches"--