This volume is the result of several years of conversation among a number of medievalists who study history from various perspectives, including manuscripts, art, music, architecture, drama, ritual and related fields. The conversations were designed to share information and perspectives to help break down the fences that sometimes divide scholars in different areas from one another. The resulting essays were shared among the group, and a common understanding of the issues dealt with appears in most of the contributions. There is an underlying tone of welcome to newcomers and non-specialists that makes the book helpful in a number of ways.

The eleven contributors are located at universities in England (four) and the United States (five) as well as Denmark and France. An underlying theme is that liturgy is performance and that understanding it requires exploring the relationship between text and action.

The editors have organised the book into an introduction and four parts. The introduction by the two editors specifies that the focus of the book will be ‘occasional rites’, by which they mean liturgical rituals that take place from time to time, but not daily or even weekly, such as the celebration of mass or the office. A main emphasis is to guide newcomers to the field and give them resources and examples that can be followed. For old hands in medieval liturgy, the book intends to provide new perspectives and directions that are spreading in the field. The editors also remind the reader that current scholarship is affected by previous scholarship: practitioners of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tended to be clergy and influenced by their own religious heritage (Catholic or Protestant – there are no issues in Jewish liturgical scholarship raised).

Part i is focused on ‘Researching rites’, and includes three essays. Helen Gittos offers some cautions about previous narratives and emphasises diversity rather than uniformity. She asks what rites are evidence of and then offers a possible process for studying liturgical rituals from the medieval period, suggesting the value of a comparative approach, keeping track of time and place as well as the context of the specific manuscript. She explores problems and possibilities and ends with a reminder that liturgy is always performance. Frederick Paxton returns to his earlier work on rituals for the dying and the dead and presents a case study of his own research of Cluniac rituals that is a generous walk for a new (or seasoned) student of medieval liturgy through the history of the research, particular manuscripts and a possible interpretation of the material. William Flynn comes from the perspective of medieval chant. He points out the differences between ecclesial approaches to this history and those of musicologists. He points to key interpreters (for example, Margot Fassler, Susan Rankin) and to the ever-expanding number of databases that can help the researcher in understanding the current status of chant study.

Part ii concerns evaluating authority and tradition. Henry Parkes raises critical perspectives on the work of Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze's edition of the ‘Roman-German Pontifical of the x century’. He provides helpful background information about the massive research project of Michel Andrieu, whose five volumes of the Ordines Romani and four volumes of the Roman Pontificals led him to hypothesise an intermediary source that he dubbed the Roman German Pontifical. His untimely death led Vogel and Elze to attempt to complete the project. Parkes finds the final product more problematic than helpful. Unlike Paxton, he offers little positive advice on using the work, only raises cautions. Matthew Cheung Salisbury also raises cautions about too-easy slipping into the language of the ‘uses’ of Sarum and York, and makes some helpful points on navigating the editions and scholarship. He reminds the reader that historical study of liturgy is always about current understandings of history (pp. 110–11).

Part iii explores diversity in liturgical texts. Sarah Hamilton brings her expertise to the question of excommunication rites. She gives a good account of the state of the question, but cautions the reader that there is no ‘original rite’ that the others are based on, rather that the manuscripts are a continuous set of variations on a theme. The several case studies help to illumine her argument. Florence Chave-Mahir offers a fascinating exploration of rites of exorcisms, exploring both liturgical and hagiographical texts. The recognition that Lives of saints can provide hints about celebration is a mode of research that is being pursued more and more frequently. Mette Birkedal Bruun and Louis Hamilton continue to research other sources for liturgical practice and understanding in their study of rites for dedicating churches. They first explore rites and then compare them with sermons given at the celebration of dedications. This is helpful, since much of the dedication ritual occurred without the presence of the lay faithful – how then do the sermons interpret the event?

Part iv offers two studies that try to study the relationship between text and performance. Carolyn Marino Malone gives a close reading to rituals in the light of the space in which the ritual were celebrated, trying to connect liturgical descriptions/prescriptions with the architectural reality (as can best be reconstructed from earlier documents and current spaces). Her two case studies, with floor plans and historical views of the churches, are good explorations of combining text and space. Carol Symes concludes the volume with a provocative and helpful consideration of text and practice. She connects medieval liturgy and its practice with current experiences of liturgical text and practice, but has some presuppositions that this reviewer wonders about. She presupposes that modern liturgical books are ‘points of origin’ for liturgical practice (p. 241), yet most modern people come to liturgy first as experience and only later (for example, in a seminary) in a liturgical book. The book is always read in the light of years of experience of liturgical practice, and I suspect that liturgical books today are no more definitive than those in previous ages.

This collection of essays comes twenty years after a volume of essays edited by Lizette Larson-Miller, mentioned by several contributors (Medieval liturgy: a book of essays, New York–London 1997). A comparison of the contents of the two volumes reveals the shift in medieval liturgical studies from concern about liturgical texts to liturgical performance. It also reveals a shift in the practitioners of the art of medieval liturgical history, and a shift from theological perspectives to musical, architectural, performative and other perspectives. Contributors to the earlier collection included a number of medieval liturgical historians who were also celebrants (priests) of contemporary liturgy. Those who practise liturgy today can tend to see history from a more genetic perspective (i.e., how did today's liturgy take shape over time?) even when striving to read earlier liturgies within their own context.

The collection under review gives the reader access to current conversation about medieval liturgy, but would have benefitted from more attention to theological concerns. The well-designed volume includes a bibliography of all the works cited, both written and electronic, and a thorough index. This thoughtful and at times provocative treatment of the medieval liturgy provides a genuine contribution to its historiography.