This is both a bold and a subtle book. Bold, because it challenges us to consider Scotland's sixteenth-century religious history in new ways, with new mentalities. And subtle, because it is based on an intricate and perceptive reconstruction of a genre of religious writing which is present, but not always obvious, in texts both familiar and less familiar to historians of the topic. At the heart of the book lies the way in which sixteenth-century Scottish Christians tried to understand and interpret worship, and it is therefore a study which speaks directly to issues at the heart of Reformation studies. Holmes defines his subject as ‘liturgical interpretation’, a genre which used methods analogous to scriptural exegesis to probe the deeper meanings behind the outward words and forms of the liturgy. The most significant author in this genre was William Durandus (1230–96), and the striking presence (and annotation) of his works and other works of liturgical interpretation in sixteenth-century Scotland points towards the rationale for the study. The book, however, draws on a wide-ranging body of textual and physical evidence on interpretation of the liturgy, and demonstrates that until the late 1580s Protestant and Catholic Scots shared sources and methodologies for interpreting worship, even if they differed in their opinions.

The first chapter is particularly important, because it defines liturgical interpretation. Since there is no agreed modern definition or classification of this very neglected medieval genre, Holmes offers his own more or less from first principles. He presents it as the attempt to discern and decode the meaning behind the verbal and physical signs which comprised the liturgy, not in the sense of description or explanation of the rites themselves, but interpretation of what they signified in deeper and spiritual terms – allegorical, anagogical and so on. It offered ongoing reflection and development, rather than summation or a fixed outcome, and was therefore a genre with ‘great vitality and capacity for organic improvement’ (p. 23). And as a genre which ‘emphasised symbol as much as substance or word’ (p. 50), it would later be challenged by both Tridentine and Protestant reform (and marginalised by rationalist modern theological scholars), although as Holmes goes on to demonstrate it remained resonant in Protestant and Catholic Scotland on either side of 1560.

The next three chapters examine liturgical interpretation in Scotland prior to 1560, respectively through its presence in books, marginalia and clerical networks; how it was taught; and how it was present visually in ecclesiastical architecture and furnishings. The analysis of books, lists of books, annotations, social and intellectual connections, and non-textual evidence is painstaking (and reinforced by thorough integration with scholarship on the rest of Europe). Although showing due caution about the limitations of the evidence, Holmes finds a particular association between liturgical interpretation and clerical networks in the north-east of Scotland, and that it was a key element in ongoing processes of Catholic reform up to 1560. It was prominent in the schooling of parish clergy, and was given physical form in church buildings, sacrament houses and carvings. These chapters provide further reinforcements for the revisionist assault on the idea of a stagnant pre-Reformation Church, and show us how Scottish clerics engaged with the liturgy, from the number-symbolism of the Old Testament Temple, to what to do if the communion wine freezes on Orkney. The final two chapters point to the ongoing significance of liturgical interpretation in both Protestant and Catholic writing on either side of 1560. It was used by both sides in the controversies of the 1560s and 1570s, and by Protestant writers seeking to develop Reformed interpretations of their two sacraments. The genre did not fall by the wayside in 1560; instead it seems to recede by the late 1580s (for Catholics as well as Protestants), perhaps partly because of a declining memory of the pre-1560 years of Catholic reform, and the increasing influence of Tridentine approaches. As the conclusion's fourth subheading ‘Things remain to be done’ acknowledges, the cause of the decline remains to be fully explained. What is convincingly demonstrated, however, is that liturgical interpretation was a significant and under-appreciated aspect of sixteenth-century Scottish Christianity – as stated in the first of the conclusion's four bold subheadings (‘Liturgical interpretation is important’).

Few readers will raise significant doubts about these first and fourth subheadings. The second and third are the provocative ones: ‘1560 is less important than we think’ and ‘The way we speak about the Scottish Reformation is wrong’. These are partly informed and justified by the six preceding chapters, but are also arguably wider reflections on the field more than straightforward conclusions on the book's findings. The questioning of 1560 as a watershed moment is very fair, and particularly resonant given the book's findings on the chronology of liturgical interpretation. It seems unclear how far the idea of an ‘absolute break’ (p. 208) still needs to be demolished, but perhaps this is being too optimistic. The third subheading refers to the problems with treating ‘the Scottish Reformation’ as synonymous with Protestantism, as confessional biases have led us to continue doing. Holmes argues that the term needs to include Catholic reform, above which Protestant reform should not be privileged, and suggests using ‘Scottish Protestant Reformation’ (p. 211) when referring to 1559–60 and all that. Whether this will catch on remains to be seen but it is a timely rejoinder, and one which this reviewer will endeavour to keep in mind in future. Such bold statements will provoke further debate, and this is a good thing (as well as no doubt the author's intention). But we should not be distracted by them from what may be the most significant element of Holmes's approach to the topic: that we should study sixteenth-century Scots as Christians, without accepting preconceived assumptions about what Catholics thought and what Protestants thought (or how Catholics thought and how Protestants thought). The value of this approach is emphasised by the richness of the findings presented here on one significant aspect of their Christianity: how the liturgy should be interpreted.