The second volume of the new Cambridge History of Christianity covers the period ‘From Constantine to c. 600’, sometimes considered the ‘golden age’ of patristics. The scholarship of the last two generation has expanded and transformed our knowledge and understanding of this era like that of few others and has introduced a multitude of new perspectives. Cutting across disciplines and traditional subjects, the interest in ‘late antiquity’, and in the character of Christianity and religion of the time generally, has created a wholly new field of research in which historians, theologians, philosophers, archaeologists, art historians, classicists and others are now engaged in a polyphonous and ever-changing discourse. All of this makes a comprehensive and authoritative history of late antique Christianity that takes stock of the ongoing revision of traditional narratives highly welcome.

The effort to take into account new perspectives is evident in the main outline of the volume. In the first part, ‘Regional developments’ are traced (pp. 9–148). Reference to Christianity, here, is regularly made in the plural: Christianities, reflecting what has become almost the ‘new orthodoxy’ of insight into regional diversity and the plurality of Christian groups and social formations that competed with one another or shared in affiliation and communality of greater or lesser intensity. Such emphasis on plurality and lack of uniformity can be traced throughout the volume at almost every step. And yet, some later efforts (in part iv) present something like a unified ‘patristic’ vision of certain topics across regions and times in curious tension to such insights. In the first part, significantly, the horizon for Christianity's varied regional manifestations goes beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire – the latter covered by two chapters on ‘Western’ (Löhr) and ‘Greek Christianities’ (Norris) – both to the north (Schäferdiek, ‘Germanic and Celtic Christianities’) and the south-east, however fragmentary the evidence for the latter may be (Bundy, ‘Early Asian and African Christianities’). These efforts reflect the overall ethos of the series in trying to rebalance traditional Eurocentric accounts.

The regional distinctiveness of certain developments re-emerges in part ii, ‘Christianity contested’ (pp. 151–313). Christian engagements with ‘paganism’ (anything but a monolithic entity itself) are set out with attention to their distinct geographical framework and local specifics: Egypt (Frankfurter), Asia Minor (Trombley), Italy (M. R. Salzmann), North Africa (Leone), respectively. A separate, overarching chapter on the ‘intellectual debate between Christians and pagans’ (A. Brown) sketches the main areas of conflict, giving voice to critics like Plotinus and Porphyry, and outlines nascent Christian doctrine inasmuch as it responds to the needs for a coherent ontological articulation. Also discussed under this rubric are Christianity's complex relations to Judaism (Stroumsa) and Manicheism (S. N. Lieu), both in their different ways attractive and challenging because of much apparent similarity, some communality (Stroumsa can speak of a ‘religious koiné’) and the presentation of at times acute alternatives. The ‘invention of “heresy” and “schism”’ (Lyman) gives a first appearance here to the internal conflicts that arose from diverse intellectual, disciplinary and practical traditions and orientations. Other essays have much detail to offer on specific developments; Lyman's account emphasises the strategies and mechanisms of identity formation and negotiation of difference in ancient heresiology.

Part iii, ‘Christian culture and society’ (pp. 317–428), looks first at the ‘transformation of classical literature’, sketching the appropriation of genres, hybrid formations and changes in audiences (Neil). It further portrays the emergence of ‘bishops’ as leading figures in Church and society (van Dam), of institutions such as ‘synods and councils’ (M. Edwards), the nascence of ‘church law’ (Pennington) and rounds these off with an attempt to assess the relation of ‘Church, society and political power’ (Drake). ‘Culture’ here is evidently taken in the widest possible sense and the distinction from elements considered ‘practice’ in a later section is certainly not absolute.

Part iv, ‘Christian beliefs and practices’ (pp. 431–725) is the longest in the book, with twelve essays. Here the recent transformations of scholarly perspectives become particularly apparent. We find presentations of the main doctrinal debates about the Trinity (Anatolios, tellingly describing the issues as a ‘discourse’) and Christology (Uthemann; a strikingly lucid disentangling of the complexities of the topic), in which the more traditional attention to technical language and philosophical concepts is most evidently still a major concern. Side by side with these, the by now familiar topics of the sociological, cultural and literary ‘turns’ of the last generation all make an appearance: ‘Saint and holy men’ (Rapp), ‘sexuality, marriage and family’ (Hunter), ‘interpretation of Scripture’ (Blowers), ‘asceticism and monasticism’ (Rubenson for the east; Dunn for the west). Somewhat in between, Casiday's approach to ‘sin and salvation’ uses baptism as the gateway into the field of soteriology, sidestepping to an extent the more conventional topics of fourth- and fifth-century conflicts. Further specific attention to ‘lay devotion’ (Frank), to ‘pastoral care and discipline’ (Greer), to the ‘liturgy’ (Spinks) and to ‘art and architecture’ (Brenk), which in older accounts were often used only sporadically and to illustrate other concerns, also mark out the new directions of recent scholarship.

The twenty-nine essays in total paint a rich canvas of late antique Christianity in its many facets and illustrate the equally lively and varied engagement of current scholarship with this fascinating period. All the contributions are of a very high standard, generally reliably informative and usually very readable too. Each essay is followed by a select bibliography. Several maps and a helpful index complete the volume. The contributors, editors and the press must be congratulated for a volume to which the scholarly community will come back for many years as a standard reference tool.