Elizabeth of Thuringia (d. 1231), the Hungarian princess who was wife and then widow of Ludwig iv of Thuringia, was one of the most well-known female saints of the later Middle Ages. Canonised in 1235 soon after her death, she is the only contemporary woman to be included in Jacobus de Voragine's influential Golden legend, and her cult became widespread, especially in the German lands. This volume contains sixteen contributions, originally given at a symposium in Marburg, the place of Elizabeth's burial, to mark the 800th anniversary of her birth. They are of variable quality, some quite slight, some hyper-empirical (one consisting chiefly of a list of manuscripts), one or two rather general, but most giving serious consideration to various aspects of her cult (rather than her life). We see how the Dominican hagiographer Dietrich of Apolda, writing in the 1290s, revised her Life to present a much fuller picture of Elizabeth and Ludwig as a holy couple, as well as incorporating entertaining stories about the song contest on the Wartburg and the magician Klingsor predicting the saint's birth; we are taken through the rich and complex tradition of liturgical commemoration, with an Office possibly composed within the Teutonic Order, which owned the church at Marburg and adopted Elizabeth as a patron saint; and we explore the fifteenth-century tapestries from north German nunneries that depict her life and legend. There are good studies of the vernacular hagiography, which was widely spread and, perhaps surprisingly, earlier in French than in German, and discussions of the visit to Marburg of the relic-collecting emperor Charles iv, and the last fling of Elizabeth's medieval hagiography amongst the German humanists. The title of the book promises discussion of ‘the new piety in Europe’ but the novelty is assumed rather than demonstrated. It appears to consist in the fact Elizabeth was female, lay and dedicated to the care of poor and lepers, but there was a long tradition of high-born women washing the feet of the poor and lepers. As a soror in seculo, Elizabeth hovered between the life of the pious lay woman and the female religious, bound by vows, and it is fitting that she was popular amongst beguines. But cloistered communities also took her up. Around 1480 the Poor Clares of Freiburg provided both scribes and illustrators for her Life. The footnotes to this volume contain an extremely rich and up-to-date bibliography. As several passing comments from the contributors indicate, they had the awkward task of seeing their work through the press at exactly the same time as was being prepared for publication the catalogue and studies associated with a major exhibition about Elizabeth (D. Blume and M. Werner [eds], Elisabeth von Thüringen: eine europäische Heilige, Petersberg 2007). Obviously both will need to be consulted for the latest scholarship on the saint and her cult.