Not so very long ago the social and cultural history of death represented an esoteric sub-field of Reformation research, tended by a handful of dedicated annalistes, poring over long sequential series of wills, and a few intrepid souls experimenting with anthropological and sociological theory. This varied and valuable collection confirms the extent to which dying and death – and the associated themes of commemoration and memorialisation – have entered the historical mainstream, and now come naturally under the purview of scholars who would not identify as specialist historical ‘thanatologists’. With a few exceptions (including a fine piece by Elizabeth Tingle on the ways in which ghost stories were deployed as a confessional weapon during the French Wars of Religion) the contributors are relatively junior scholars, whose chapters mainly began as papers presented to annual meetings of the European Reformation Research Group, a body with an admirable record of fostering the publication of early career researchers. The topics range broadly, encompassing liturgies for the dying, burial practice and material commemoration, German church orders, French martyrology, English musical theory, Spanish relic stories and the fraternal commemorations of the London Livery Companies. There is no particular unifying argument, and the editors wisely do not seek to impose one, instead using the introduction to supply a judicious and insightful survey of the recent historiography. The principal theme to emerge from the essays themselves is the paradoxical but plausible one that, across Europe, beliefs and practices around death possessed a particularly potent capacity to exacerbate confessional divisions, and, sometimes, to ameliorate them.