Augustine exclaimed that would we had ensured, by living rightly in paradise, that there really was no death. But, as it is, death is a reality; and so troublesome a reality that it cannot be explained by any verbal formula nor got rid of by any rational argument. Even as aided by revelation, the Christian does well to remember the irreducible obscurity of aspects of eschatology, and the history of doctrine and spirituality testifies to the varying interplay of faith and reason. At one stage of the Council of Ferrara‐Florence (1438‐9), Eastern delegates voiced a revealing exasperation when they complained that if they said anything the Latins were never at a loss for a lengthy answer. What the delegates held to was the faith their fathers had taught them, the faith of the seven Councils, and for them that was enough. In its recent document on the afterlife of infants who die unbaptised, the Catholic International Theological Commission recognises that concerning this the Greek Fathers show their characteristic apophatic sensibility.

Professor Vasileios Marinis (Yale University) has now published a short but densely documented and finely argued study of several aspects of death and the afterlife in Byzantium. He deliberately excludes the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment and related events. The subjects covered inevitably brought the Orthodox into debate with Latin Catholics, especially as Marinis's focus is on the evidence between the ninth century and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, whilst not neglecting earlier and some later material. Some readers, perhaps fearing the excessively polemical tone that can mar approaches to Orthodox‐Catholic relations, may wince at reading as early as on p.2 that the Byzantines only formulated a systematic theology ‘under duress’ at the Council of Ferrara‐Florence. But, to anticipate a concluding reflection, Marinis believes that the Byzantines, and contemporary Chalcedonian Orthodox, owe a great, albeit unrecognised, debt to the Latins. At the Council of Ferrara‐Florence, Mark Eugenikos and the rest of the Constantinopolitan delegation were presented, likely to their surprise, with a Latin view of the afterlife that was detailed and comprehensive. The Scholasticism of the Latin system made necessary a Byzantine response of equal detail. This Mark certainly delivered, and in so doing he also generated a theology of the afterlife that is still espoused today (pp.105‐6).

This brilliant, erudite study can be highly recommended. The use of endnotes rather than footnotes slows down the reader who will not want to neglect the wealth of references, information, parts of the argument, and quotations in the original Greek. The study divides into two basic parts, the first on ‘Theologies’ (note the plural) and the second on ‘Liturgies’. The extensive coverage in Part I can be seen from its five subdivisions ‐ the invention of traditions, Jewish and Christian apocrypha; the diversity of the afterlife in late antiquity; continuity, systematisation and encyclopedism in the Middle Byzantine period; visualising the afterlife; and late Byzantium and the encounter with the West. Part II is shorter and subdivides into ‐ the afterlife of the soul in liturgical services; helping and remembering the soul; liturgical commemorations and prayers; and two exceptional services.

Throughout, Marinis is attentive to methodological considerations, and to the value and limitations of the surviving evidence and of the existing scholarship on it. The stage is set by the widely translated Apocalypse of St Paul, seen as containing nearly all the elements that would become standard in later accounts of the afterlife and as presenting events in a sequence that would become canonical. Cyril of Alexandria and pseudo‐Athanasios made important early contributions, followed in the Middle Byzantine period by explicit and particularised accounts of paradise and Hades, outstanding among them being the Life of Basil the Younger, particularly full concerning the soul's fate after death. With ‘Visualising the Afterlife’, the study turns to the images of death and the immediate fate of the soul which started to appear once theology had reached a sufficient firmness. The pages on the late Byzantine encounter with the West can build on a good deal of available literature on the sources and their discussion. Although the presentation here is selective, the Council of Lyons II (1274) should definitely have received more attention.

The liturgies examined in Part II are carefully and perceptively compared and contrasted with the literary texts as to their nature, sources and functions. Put broadly, Marinis's assessment is that the non‐liturgical sources preserve several apocryphal Jewish and Christian traditions, while the imagery of funeral services is based almost exclusively on biblical texts. He adds the observation that although funeral services contain a few exhortations on repentance and the transience of life they focus on the deceased, his or her salvation, and the community's role in effecting this salvation. It is from an endnote that we learn that the comfort of the departed's friends and family is also a concern, although it takes second place to the salvation of the deceased. At times the deceased speaks in the first person encouraging prayers: ‘Let us now hear our dead brother who cries out silently from the bowels of death; “My beloved, faithful brothers, all of you unfailingly with tears make remembrance of me to the Lord”’ (translation modified).

The volume concludes somewhat unexpectedly with what Marinis styles as two ‘exceptional services’ because they stand outside the theological parameters of the funerary and commemorative rites. The first is described as the ‘Service for He Who is at the Point of Death’, which reached its final form in the 14^th century and was fully standardised only with the advent of the printed euchologia. The second is the ‘Service of the Funeral Unction’, found in a relatively small number of manuscripts dating from the 14^th to the 16^th centuries. This Service has been castigated for being the result of misguided pastoral concerns, clerical abuses and Latin influences. This last objection is based on the prayer of absolution, the mention of fire, and the role that the saints are given as intercessors. In a nuanced way, characteristic of the author, Marinis argues otherwise.