Stephen Shoemaker holds a deserved reputation as a leading scholar on the subject of ancient Mariological traditions. This most recent book will only increase a reader's appreciation for his extensive research, perceptive analysis of his data, and assessment of earlier historians’ works on the topic. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book should appeal to a broad readership and will be useful for classroom teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Shoemaker describes his project as filling a gap in analysis of Marian devotion in ancient Christianity. He appreciatively recognizes the many fine studies that consider the role of the Virgin Mary in the development of Christian dogma that led up to and followed the Council of Ephesus's assertion that she rightly held the title “Theotokos” (God-bearer), but states there is “still no adequate treatment of Marian piety's emergence within the history of early Christianity” (1–2). By this Shoemaker means to distinguish Mary's place in patristic theology from earlier and more broadly popular Marian devotion and to demonstrate that devotion to the Virgin did not suddenly emerge in the early fifth century. In this way, he hopes to counter a position among older historians of Christianity that he labels “Marian minimalism.” This position is familiar to those of us who were admonished by our teachers to regard the debates over her title Theotokos as almost entirely derivative from the Christological debates of the early fifth century (a position Shoemaker dubs a “Christological annex” [104]). In contradiction to this, Shoemaker effectively shows that what has been too often regarded as a “dramatic explosion” of Mariology after 431 is better understood as a natural development in an already burgeoning cult of the Virgin. His book thus examines the extant (and rarely acknowledged) evidence for such devotion dating from the mid-second century to the time of that Council (431 a.d.), and focuses on texts and practices that historians sometimes unfortunately regarded as popular or even marginal.

To this end, Shoemaker's first chapter considers the figure of Mary in the New Testament and in surviving documents from the second century, including the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, works of Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, the Odes of Solomon, and the signally important Protevangelium of James. The second chapter evaluates the scanty evidence in literature of the third century: a Greek papyrus fragment with an early prayer to the Virgin, the figure of Mary in gnostic documents, and apocryphal literature. In his third and fourth chapters, Shoemaker returns to a subject on which he is a recognized expert: the early Dormition and Assumption traditions that contain some more or less recently rediscovered and unique legends regarding the end of the Virgin's earthly life. Although most of the surviving texts—in Ethiopic, Syrian, and Georgian, as well as in Greek, Latin, and Coptic—cannot be dated earlier than the fifth century, Shoemaker is confident that earlier versions must have preceded them. The fourth chapter also examines the so-called Kollyridian heresy, denounced by Epiphanius of Salamis in the fourth century, and serving as further evidence for an early cult of the Virgin that included bread or cake offerings. The fifth chapter returns to the more well-known patristic literature: fourth and early fifth century Marian poetry and hymns (especially that of Ephrem) identifying Mary as a model for virgins and married ascetics, theological debate over the Virgin's divine maternity, accounts of Marian apparitions, and records of Marian feasts and shrines. The final, sixth chapter takes the subject up to and through the events surrounding the actions of Bishop Nestorius, Empress Pulcheria, and the Council of Ephesus that declared Mary to be the Theotokos, and thus draws Shoemaker's analysis of early Mariology to a close.

A particular strength of Shoemaker's work is how he accounts for the lack of attention to early Marian devotion. He partly blames this gap in the scholarly record as resulting from the traditional focus on patristic texts and comparatively less attention to other kinds of textual and even material artifacts (he mentions but does not extensively consider iconography in his data). However, he also identifies a more controversial issue—the antipathy of earlier generations of anti-Catholic Protestant historians, who were inclined to characterize the emergence of Marian devotion as a “vulgar” religious practice (13, 131–132) that achieved its most elaborate form in medieval cult of the Virgin. Shoemaker usefully contrasts this with Roman Catholic tendencies to overstate early evidence for Marian devotion and recognizes that this “sectarian divide” (6–7) is now growing narrower, especially given the work of scholars like Beverly Roberts Gaventa. He additionally criticizes scholarly attempts to coordinate ancient goddess traditions with Christian devotion to Mary and while not dismissing the possible parallels, does not see them as a significant source.

It is difficult to find a fault with this book. If this reviewer has any quibble, it is only with Shoemaker's occasional tendency to lodge a lengthy rebuttal to another author's work that might have been better confined to a footnote. The rare instances in which this happens, for example, his extensive analysis of an essay by Ally Kateusz on women's liturgical leadership in the Six Books Apocryphon (157–160), can seem somewhat disproportional in an otherwise splendid and highly recommended survey.