The twenty-five papers collected in this volume are a praiseworthy homage to the work of Martin Klöckener from the University of Fribourg/Freiburg, offered to him by his colleagues, students and friends on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Klöckener needs no introduction to those who study the Christian liturgy of the West. For more than four decades he has published extensively on matters liturgical (the bibliography of his publications appended to this volume lists 565 items), bringing to light new sources and demonstrating exemplary Quellenkritik of liturgical material from late antiquity, the Middle Ages and the modern era. The lion's share of Klöckener's academic work was dedicated to the study of liturgical books and manuscripts, hence the editors of the volume chose to focus on the dynamic of liturgy as reflected in liturgical books. In a short review like this, one cannot do justice to the various analyses and ideas presented in all the papers, and all that is left is to list the papers themselves, and say a few words on the methodological and conceptual approach they represent within the framework of liturgical studies.

The volume is divided into three thematic sections. The first section, dedicated to the content and materiality of liturgical books, contains nine papers that vary significantly from one another in their scope and length. The first two papers focus on liturgical manuscripts from St Gallen, examining the liturgy of death in Cod. Sang. 394 (Ernst Tremp), and the liturgy of Easter in a plethora of liturgical manuscripts from the ninth through the thirteenth century (Harald Buchinger). These are followed by papers on the Cistercian lectures for the Sundays after Pentecost (Claire Maître), the ordo and liturgy for the consecration of bishops (Reingard Meßner), the handwritten annotations in printed liturgical books as an indication of their use (Jürgen Bärsch), forgotten liturgical books and the liturgy for ‘lay people’ in the orbit of the Maria Laach liturgical movement (Stefan K. Langenbahn), the Reformed liturgy reflected in modern liturgical books (Bruno Bürki), materiality and use of liturgical books among Protestants (David Plüss) and some thoughts on liturgical books in the digital age (Peter Spichtig).

The second section of the volume, ‘Books for the Celebration of the Mystery, between Norms, Mentalities and Dialogue among Cultures’, groups nine papers that deal with Augustine's take on the space and performers of liturgical rites (Albert Gerhards), the interpretation of liturgy and its books in the ‘long’ nineteenth century (Benedikt Kranemann), the lost tradition of the matrimonial mass-book (Arnaud Join-Lambert), the role of the believer as reflected in private prayer books from the nineteenth and twentieth century (Ansgar Franz), the Roman missal of 1965 (Patrick Prétot), the evolution of a new prayer book (Gunda Brüske), the adaptation of liturgical books in the vernacular (Davide Pesenti), the rite as a liturgical book (Winfried Haunerland) and the value of liturgical books in the digital age (François-Xavier Amherdt).

The third and final section of the book, which is by far the most interesting one, approaches the reform of liturgical books as a means to deepen and strengthen the belief of the believers. It contains seven papers that survey the changes in the rite of matrimony from 1614 to 1969 (Hélène Bricout), the modern reform of the deacons’ ordination rite (Martin Troupeau), the changing forms and meanings of breaking the bread during mass (Anne-Marie Petitjean), the significance of the Gospels as books in the liturgical rites (Josip Gregur), the temporal dimension in the liturgy of the Hours (Alexander Zerfass), the modern notion of the liturgy as a coherent whole (Brigit Jeggle-Merz) and, finally, the role of the cantor according to new liturgical books (Franz Karl Prassl).

Most of the papers in this volume belong to the conservative, old school of liturgical studies. Following the guidelines and methods put forward by the seventeenth-century founders of the field, mainly Jean Mabillon and the Maurists of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, this type of liturgical studies concentrates on texts, classifies them, looks for their origins, illustrates their development and edits them. In that respect, the book under review here is a monument to the work of Martin Klöckener, who may be regarded as the Mabillon of our generation. And yet, important and fundamental as this school of liturgical studies is, it has some flaws. Too often, liturgists who belong to that school tend to ignore the context in which the liturgy evolved, as if liturgical texts and practices were produced in a political, social and cultural vacuum. Luckily things have moved forward and the study of liturgy has witnessed a dramatic shift in recent decades. Taking their cue from the discipline of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, scholars like Éric Palazzo, Cecilia Gaposchkin, Daniel Galdza or Henry Parkes, to name only a few of the most prominent ones, have realised how profoundly important and fruitful is the study of liturgy in context. This type of research not only provides a new dimension to the evolution of liturgical texts, it also deploys liturgy in an attempt to get a better understanding of the society and culture for which it was composed and in which it was performed. The time, then, is ripe to broaden the horizons of liturgical studies and emancipate them from the stupefying bounds of philology. This, however, must not be taken to imply that I argue for the supremacy of one approach over the other. Both approaches are valid, and both are seminal for the future of liturgical studies. It is just a pity that the second, more modern approach to liturgical studies is, by and large, absent from the impressive collection of papers under review here.