This is a detailed and scholarly account of religious belief and conflict in the strategically important province of Inner Austria between 1580 and 1630. Regina Portner shows how Protestantization in the first half of the sixteenth century was linked to communication with the Protestants of the rest of the Empire, and to the failure of ecclesiastical reform in the church province of Salzburg, of which Styria formed part. The Protestant success of 1578, however, proved deceptive because it lacked constitutional substance, and was defended by an inherently weak union of the Inner Austrian estates. Dr Portner analyses the aims, achievements, and shortcomings of the Habsburgs' confessional crusade in Styria, showing how although the progress of Protestantization was reversed, the Counter-Reformation left an ambivalent legacy to the modern Austrian state.