John Crook's many earlier works have established him as our leading authority on medieval saints’ shrines, and in this new, wide-ranging survey he draws on his own more specialist studies and those of others to offer a definitive exploration of English shrines from the early Saxon period through to their destruction at the Reformation.

Since no English shrines have survived, even in mutilated form, from before the later twelfth century, for the early medieval period Crook's discussion necessarily centres more on the cults of the saints than on the shrines that enclosed their physical remains. Drawing on such sources as vitae and miracle stories, he takes us through the emergence of saints’ cults in the second century ad, the preservation and distribution of their remains, the growth of pilgrim traffic at shrines, the emergence of the first English cult centring on the proto-martyr St Alban, and the later encouragement of cults by churches which saw the possibility of financial benefit therefrom. Relying mainly on archaeological evidence, he is able to offer some discussion of the architectural response to the rise of saints’ cults. He shows how elaborate crypts, such as those surviving at Hexham and Repton, were constructed from the seventh century onwards, using Roman models, and how after the tenth century, with increasing pilgrim numbers, it became the practice to ‘elevate’ remains, that is to translate them to sites above ground. In the case of translations where the body was reputedly intact, a feretrum in the shape of a full-sized decorated coffin was created. Where there were only disarticulated bones, however, these pieces appear to have been placed in a small casket on or near the altar.

It is not always easy to reconstruct the physical appearance of shrines even when we come on to the better documented twelfth century. The use of technical terms in literary sources was often inadequate, and the descriptions which writers give of shrines are usually very vague. The written sources suggest, however, that by the twelfth century there was a liking for reliquaries lined with plates in repoussé work illustrating scenes from the saint's life. In the wake of the growing interest in cults from around 1140, there appears to have developed an appetite for greater splendour, and reliquary chests were now typically raised up on tall pillared superstructures, before or beneath which the faithful would kneel in prayer. Shrines of this form were used for the display of the remains of St Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral and of St Alban at Albans. In the late thirteenth century this form was in turn superseded by the type which was to stay popular for the rest of the Middle Ages, the two-stage design consisting of an arcaded base crowned by a superstructure containing the saint's actual remains. This type is represented for us today by the magnificent shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.

One problem which faces any scholar attempting to tackle the subject of shrines is defining its bounds, as the ranks of the canonized saints shade off into those of saints to be and saints who never quite made it. As John Crook shows here, the result of this imprecision was that alongside shrines properly defined was a category of ‘shrine-tombs’, foramina-type structures of the kind exemplified for us today by St Osmund's tomb monument at Salisbury. These structures typically had recesses in the sides, modelled on those in the ‘Tomb of Christ’ in the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, into which pilgrims would crawl to benefit from the curative powers of the saint. John Crook's discussion is at its best when he is evaluating the architectural setting of the cults of those saints who received official recognition. Where his coverage is perhaps less full is in respect of those shrine-like monuments honouring subjects whose claims to sanctity were encouraged by the churches which guarded their relics. Good examples of such monuments are found in those of Bishops Grosseteste (d 1253) at Lincoln and William de Marchia (d 1302) at Wells. The wider dissemination of shrine-like forms in the tomb architecture of the late Middle Ages and, in particular, the use of such forms on the tombs of candidates for sainthood is a subject which would benefit from further scholarly investigation.

In recent years there has been a welcome revival of interest in saints’ cults, and extant medieval shrines have been reconstructed or embellished at St Albans, Hereford, Christ Church, Oxford, and Dorchester-on-Thames. The publication of this excellent book adds greatly to our understanding of both the shrines themselves and the cults that underpinned them.