‘The reason why no mystics ever saw themselves as “practising mysticism” was that they saw themselves rather more simply as practising Christianity.’ Denys Turner's observation (The Oxford companion to Christian thought, Oxford 2000, 460) underlines the difficulties involved in any study of this notoriously elusive concept. The editors of this excellent volume are fully alive to these difficulties: as Amy Hollywood points out in her introduction, ‘in the very process of describing mysticism as marked by inwardness, transcendence, and ineffability, the very outward and communal practices supposedly antithetical to it are also described – Bible reading, hymn singing, communal exhortations, and engagement with the natural world’ (p. 7 n. 11). Nor need one stop there: Hollywood's own contribution contains some fascinating reflections on the use of psalmody in Benedictine monasticism. But if monastic psalmody is to be included, why not (say) black spirituals and Pentecostal praise, the intensely affective settings of Pietist spiritual texts in the vocal music of J. S. Bach, the hymns of Charles Wesley, or the use of biblical and mystical texts in the music of Olivier Messiaen?

The greatest difficulties, therefore, facing the editors of a book such as this are bound to be about inclusion. Hollywood is only too well aware of that too, and acknowledges that this is essentially a study of western (mainly European) Christian mysticism from Christian origins until the seventeenth century, with the overwhelming focus of attention being given to medieval mysticism. So the book's greatest weakness is its title: the inclusion of ‘western’ within it would have more accurately represented its contents (or most of them: there is an excellent but all-too-short article on ‘Apophatic and cataphatic theology’ by Andrew Louth; and Pseudo-Dionysius and Evagrius of Pontus both receive due attention). Apart from the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, there is almost no reference to Christianity in the southern hemisphere; and, although Thomas Merton receives brief attention, there is no reference to what are surely his most ‘mystical’ works: [New] seeds of contemplation and The asian journal. Anglican mysticism is not mentioned: the late A. M. Allchin's profound exploration of theosis in the Anglican tradition in his Participation in God (1988) would have been a welcome addition to the bibliography.

Yet this is to carp: no book of this size could conceivably have incorporated all that its title suggests. This one contains a series of articles by established scholars: none of them disappoint. Divided into three sections, Part i (‘Contexts’) contains, as well as Amy Hollywood, Douglas Burton-Christie on early monasticism, Walter Simons on the ‘new’ monasticism (the Cistercians and others), and Edward Howells, who does a remarkable job of covering the mendicants, the Renaissance humanists, the Carmelites, Luther, the Anabaptists and even Pierre de Bérulle in twenty pages. Part ii (‘Key terms’) includes E. Ann Matter on lectio divina, Thomas H. Bestul on meditation, Dyan Elliott on rapture, and Bernard McGinn on mystical union. Part iii (‘Contemporary questions’) includes excellent chapters on writing (by Charles M. Stang), the body and its senses (Patricia Dailey), mysticism and visuality (Jeffrey F. Hamburger) and sexuality (Constance M. Furey) – the latter gives welcome attention to some later Protestant mystics. Although there is no historiographical survey (W. R. Inge and Cuthbert Butler do not appear, and William James and Evelyn Underhill are only briefly mentioned), the contributors show a keen awareness of changing attitudes: thus individuals once seen as heterodox (such as Marguerite Porete) or even crazy (such as Jeanne de Guyon) are now given the critical attention that they deserve.

The bibliographies are judicious and up-to-date. Louis Bouyer is included with reference to the second volume of the History of Christian spirituality, which he wrote with Jean Leclercq and François Vandenbroucke in the 1960s. But Bouyer contributed only an appendix to that volume: far more important for this subject are his own Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers (1960) in the same series, and his later The Christian mystery: from pagan myth to Christian mysticism (1989), which are not included. And it is perhaps surprising that Don Cupitt's typically provocative and stimulating Mysticism after modernity (London 1998), Olivier Clément's The roots of Christian mysticism (London 1993), and Louise Nelstrop's Christian mysticism: an introduction to contemporary theoretical approaches (Farnham–Burlington, Vt 2009) are not included, whereas Niklaus Largier's In praise of the whip: a cultural history of arousal is (despite its title, the latter is a work of serious scholarship, but not about mysticism). There are very few errors: ‘regula’ for ‘regulae’ (p. 59), ‘interpretated’ for ‘interpreted’ (p. 72), ‘Bernard the mellifleus’ for ‘Bernard the mellifluus’ (p. 182), ‘12 Nm 6–8’ for ‘Numb.12:6–8’ (p. 190), ‘arraigned’ for ‘arranged’ (p. 190), ‘augeries’ for ‘auguries’ (p. 212), and ‘Peter Bryne’ for ‘Peter Byrne’ (p. 370). Gregory the Great's Moralia were not translated by ‘John Henry Parker Oxford’ (p. 179 n. 4), but published by John Henry Parker at Oxford and by F. and J. Rivington at London: they were translated by the Revd James Bliss ma of Oriel College.