This handsome, lavishly-illustrated volume combines important survey work with detailed textual and visual scholarship. It focuses on the cult of the Arma Christi (Arms of Christ), the Instruments of Passion presented collectively and emblematically and, at times, as the Latin term implies, heraldically. A critical edition of the later medieval Middle English devotional poem, ‘O Vernicle’, edited by A. E. Nichols, concludes the volume and four of the accompanying scholarly essays draw extensively on its content, adding a further level of contextual commentary (Newhauser and Russell, ‘Virtual pilgrimage’; Nichols, ‘Footsteps of Christ’; Rust, ‘Ethics of reckoning’; and Astell, ‘Retooling the instruments’). Such an in-depth treatment affirms that this anonymous poem, sometimes dismissed as a ‘banal’ work for the unlearned lay (see Newhauser and Russell, ‘Virtual pilgrimage’, 95), can shed light on a central aspect of later medieval piety and culture. The annotated text and related essays together make a strong case that even within a single, relatively short work, the motif of the Arma Christi can be understood as presenting the reader with prompts for penance and devotion and spiritual transformation as they ‘engage sensually and morally with the pilgrimage to the holiest sites of the Passion … [and] effectively experience the crucifixion without being a gifted mystic’ (Newhauser and Russell, ‘Virtual pilgrimage’, 108). These interpretative opportunities are supported by the subtle interplay of word and image within the surviving manuscripts, and the helpful level of illustration here allows for the presentation of some striking and unfamiliar iconography, such as rosary beads threaded by the blood of Christ (plate 5.1). This richness of meaning and easy transition between categories, such as the devotional and penitential, challenges traditional divisions and disciplinary boundaries. The introduction and thematic essays which forms ‘book ends’ to the detailed analysis of ‘O Vernicle’ remind us of the ubiquity and centrality of a phenomenon which has been in danger of being underestimated because it is considered conventional and formulaic. The scholarly introduction (Cooper and Denny-Brown) and origin study (Edsall) are particularly to be welcomed for drawing together material in order to give a coherent, multidisciplinary account of the current state of research and the different sources from which this central cult developed. Essays on treatment of the instruments of the Passion in Anglo-Saxon poetry (Chaganti) and the art of Bosch (Verderber) and Michelangelo (Wandel) offer case studies of the subtle and varied ways in which this motif was used in culturally significant works. The regional iconographic study of their presence and presentation in Ireland (Ryan) not only offers a survey of the range of contexts in which they were deployed, but also points to the persistence of this theme into the early modern period and its occasional assimilation into Protestant devotional life, a topic treated in the concluding essay (Gayk). Altogether, this is a substantial scholarly work which synthesises material from a range of disciplines, offers a strong contribution to a chronological account of the Arma Christi in the medieval west, particularly the British Isles, and powerfully demonstrates the ways in which medieval devotional culture challenges and transcends the divisive categories and disciplines through which it is often viewed.