The later medieval world has for long been a Cinderella of Irish studies, overshadowed by the earlier period which was a greater source of national pride. But the later Middle Ages are now coming into their own with hugely useful volumes such as Art and devotion in late medieval Ireland, which encompasses a wide variety of interrelated literary and visual topics, hitherto neglected or ignored, in the context of popular or institutional religion in the country. The stage is imaginatively set in the book's introduction by Colum Hourihane, who provides an insightful summary of the individual contributions, and leads us to consider the devotional effect of written works and the impact of visual representations on the emotional appreciation of Christ's suffering and other themes. While only a paltry percentage of the original arts and crafts have come down to us, one of the great advantages of this volume is how trawling deeply through written records has enriched our knowledge of what has managed to survive the iconoclasm of Reformation zealots. Another benefit of the book is the way in which scattered fragments have been brought together for the first time to fill a void in our information, as done by Josephine Moran for painted and stained glass, and for wall paintings by Karena Morton, who also brings to our notice the totally unexpected religious character of paintings that have recently come to light on the walls of an Irish tower-house at Ardamullivan, Co. Galway. The furnishings which adorned churches are examined further in a fascinating exposé by Rachel Moss, who shows how subjects illustrated in stained glass can carry over into stone sculpture on the sides of the windows, and also discusses the various functions of stone images. Both parish and monastic churches in later medieval Ireland would have been decorated with statues not only of Christ, but also of the Virgin as well as saints both local and international, and here Clodagh Tait has done us a great service in assembling much useful information, visual and literary, on the cult of the Virgin, while Colmán Ó Clabaigh does the same in a stimulating article on the cult of St Francis – ‘the other Christ’ in the words of his provocative title. Raymond Gillespie shows the area of south Ulster to have been particularly active in creating new reliquaries, as opposed to refurbishing old ones, as instanced by the shrine of St Caillín of Fenagh in County Leitrim, which he links with local hagiography and family politics. Religious politics also played a role in the very anglicised city of Waterford, as shown by Eamonn McEneaney, who illustrates the wonderful Flemish liturgical vestments preserved in the museum which he directs there. Devotion and piety were, however, also practised at a personal level, as seen from Salvador Ryan's discussion of the contents of a north-western lady's book of piety of 1513, and through Bernadette Cunningham's revelatory publication of the religious representations of the Burke manuscript of c. 1570 in Trinity College – the first time that all four have been illustrated together in colour. Also printed in colour are some pages of a late fifteenth-century English book of hours, Catherine Yvard's topic, which might seem out of place here, but its inclusion may be pardoned because it is owned by the Benedictine abbey of Glenstal, where the papers in this book were first presented at the monastery's second history conference in 2004. The volume is handsomely produced and illustrated, and the individual authors are well served by the publishers, Four Courts Press, in the quality of the colour plates. The bibliography is comprehensive, the footnotes extensive, the texts extraordinarily well researched and indexed, and the contents an absolute eye-opener in illuminating the comparatively unexplored world of late medieval Irish devotional art and literature. To finish with Colum Hourihan's justifiable dictum: ‘These essays will stand as one of the pillar stones of the future’.