For anyone interested in the differences between medieval and modern Christianity this collection of essays would make an excellent starting-point. The first chapter, by Leah Marcus, ‘The Christ Child as sacrifice’, focuses on the exegesis that followed the adoption in 1311 of the Feast of Corpus Christi but makes it clear how much more ancient than any ideas stimulated by this feast was the association of the body of the infant Jesus with the crucified Christ. From its earliest days both crib and cross, in equal part, had nourished the Christian community. Thus a Christmas homily of Gregory the Great depicted the new-born Christ feeding the animals (in other words the faithful) ‘with the grain of his flesh’ (p. 7). Many centuries later, as Miri Rubin's epilogue to this book recalls, images of Passion and Nativity had become entangled in ways which the modern reader is likely to find disturbing – Adelhaid of Frauenberg, for example ‘through a Passion of her own’ reportedly wanted her skin removed so that it could be used as a nappy for the Christ Child (p. 296). But despite this conceit and a number of other medieval devotions (for example the veneration of Christ's milk tooth, examined by William MacLehose in chapter viii) which may initially strike modern readers as too literal-minded for comfort, overall the essays in The Christ Child present scenes of sophistication and sensitivity, coupled with an awareness of the dangers of subjective fantasies over community devotions, a subject closely examined in Richard Kieckhefer's contribution in chapter vii on the Christ Child in German sister books. The abiding impression of this collection – and every essay repays reading and re-reading – is of the extraordinary richness and poetry of medieval devotions and its remarkable freedom from sentimental fripperies.