This wide-ranging and stimulating Festschrift reflects the strength and variety of John Van Engen's contribution to medieval studies. It is the published proceedings of a conference organised by Van Engen's former students in 2012 to celebrate his thirty-fifth year at the University of Notre Dame and contains eighteen essays divided among four thematic strands. It is indexed, illustrated with colour plates and greyscale images, and includes a full list of Van Engen's publications.

The first part of the collection is entitled ‘Christianisation’ and comprises four essays prompted by reflection on Van Engen's 1986 article ‘The Christian Middle Ages as an historiographical problem’. Ruth Mazo Karras opens the volume with a discussion of medieval marriage as a primarily social and economic act that ‘existed within a Christian context’ (p. 5). This is followed by Lisa Wolverton's reappraisal of the establishment of Christianity in Bohemia, which calls for a more critical use of sources and highlights the significance of internal, local influences. The final two essays consider historiographical approaches to heresy. R. I. Moore's lively and provocative exploration of the term ‘Cathar’ summarises ideas more fully articulated in his War on heresy in 2012 – but was written prior to published reviews of the latter so does not respond to any subsequent criticism. Christine Caldwell Ames closes this section with a critique of ‘popular religion’ as a frame of analysis, noting that its assumptions about status do not correspond to the social ‘totality’ (p. 106) of medieval inquisitions.

The second part of the volume, ‘Twelfth-Century Culture’, provides a tighter chronological focus, but responds more generally to themes in Van Engen's work. The section begins with three case studies. Maureen C. Miller follows the previous essay in calling for a more nuanced and less antagonistic use of a key term, here ‘reform’. Her analysis of the late eleventh-century frescoes in the church of San Clemente in Rome is supported by reference to the colour plates in the gallery following p. 250. Next, Jonathan R. Lyon examines the use of the term ‘tyranny’ in the works of Otto of Freising, highlighting its application to perceived abuses of power in the German system of church advocacy. The third case study, Rachel Koopmans's essay on ‘testimonial letters’ preserved in the Becket miracle collections, is one of the most significant contributions to the volume. Koopmans draws attention both to the placing of these letters and the comments prefacing them, which hint that such material underlies other narratives in the collections. The argument drawn from these observations is clear and persuasive: testimonial letters were a firmly established, but ephemeral, aspect of late twelfth-century epistolary culture which were routinely used by churchmen, the religious and, increasingly, the laity. The following two essays discuss broader themes in twelfth-century sources. Dyan Elliott explores the general interest in imagined situations and dialogues throughout the period, although her use of ‘counterfactual’ (borrowed here from psychology) may throw historians used to a different interpretation of the term. Finally, Giles Constable provides a succinct but wide-ranging survey on the meaning of the cross in twelfth-century monastic life.

The next section, ‘Jews and Christian Society’, comprises three case studies and is a pragmatic decision on the part of the editors to group like material together – although it does acknowledge a subtheme in Van Engen's work. In an engaging account of an interesting episode, Susan Einbinder uses two poems to examine opposing responses to the fall of the Jewish financier Don Zag de la Maleha (Yitzhac ben Zadoq) in late thirteenth-century Castile. Translations of both sources, a Hebrew lament and a Romance cantiga, are appended to the essay. Next, William Chester Jordan speculates on the anti-Jewish imagery that may have been present on lost leaves of the thirteenth-century ‘Christina Psalter’. His argument is supported by a selection of colour plates in the gallery following p. 250, a number of which seem somewhat superfluous. Finally, David C. Mengel investigates the contrasting impact of urban development on the Jewish communities of Prague and Nuremberg under the emperor Charles iv. Mengel's clear maps allow the reader to situate his argument on the ground and bolster his convincing emphasis on urban planning as a historical agent.

The final part of the collection returns to a more prominent and influential theme in Van Engen's work, ‘Late Medieval Religious Life’. William J. Courtenay's assessment of initiatives to improve the educational level of the clergy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries offers a broader approach in a section dominated by case studies. Walter Simons examines a petition sent by Count Robert of Flanders in support of beguines following their suppression in the early fourteenth century. An edition and translation of this text are appended to the essay. James D. Mixson offers an eloquent reappraisal of Giovanni Dominici's Firefly, which provides a fuller appreciation of both the author's intentions and the text's articulation of contemporary concerns. Next, Marcela K. Perrett examines the use of the Czech language by John Příbam in the struggle against the spread of Wycliffe's ideas in Bohemia, thus seeming to elevate the religious status of the vernacular (in contrast to the situation in England). In the penultimate essay, Daniel Hobbins provides a highly enjoyable discussion of a strange and unnerving text from early fifteenth-century Italy. The text, translated in full within the essay, recounts a possible encounter with the AntiChrist and, although Hobbins's comments on genre look to modern rather than medieval analogues, his analysis of the tensions pervading the text is perceptive. An edition of the text is appended to the essay. Finally, Roy Hammerling closes the collection with a consideration of the spiritual ideal of the beggar in Martin Luther's life and thought.

As always, some contributions are stronger than others – and compared to the rigorous research displayed by many of the essays, pieces by some of the more prominent scholars in the volume appear a little under-powered. Even so, this is an impressive collection in which all of the essays make interesting and insightful points. Despite the diversity of contributions, the repeated references to Van Engen's influence and the carefully conceived four-part structure ensure that the volume retains coherence. The wide geographical coverage, as well as the balance between case studies and broader discussions, is also to be admired. In summary, Christianity and culture in the Middle Ages is a thought-provoking volume with a wide appeal that will encourage debate and further research – and, as such, is a fitting tribute to an important scholar in our field.