This fascinating book explores many aspects of an area of religious devotion about which much has been written, but about which much remains to be discovered. Most of the articles are based on papers given at a conference in 2006 which concluded a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, ‘The Mother of God in Byzantium: relics, icons and texts’. Articles are grouped into four categories: the early cult of the Virgin Mary; epithets and typology for the Theotokos; the Mother of God in the middle Byzantine homiletic tradition; and later developments in the Marian cult. Throughout, discussion is built on firm empirical foundations. Each article is based on detailed analysis of texts and/or of visual evidence. The evidence which supports the authors’ discussions has been made accessible to non-specialists: extracts from the texts are translated into English, while there are thirty-six plates in black-and-white or colour. Despite the wide breadth of evidence, periods and approaches, the editors have been successful in ensuring that the various themes and approaches meld together to form a cohesive volume. A conclusion by Margaret Mullet draws all the articles together in a very useful summary discussing ‘what we now know that we did not know before’ and ‘what we now know that we don't know’. The chronology of the development of Mary's cult is now much clearer than before: ‘interest in Mary as a holy figure in her own right was gathering pace from the late sixth century onward’ (p. 283), while the fourth section of the book takes detailed study forward into the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In addition to its importance to specialists in the specific subjects under discussion, the contributors have important things to say about scholarly analysis of images and of literary sources which will be of interest to a much wider readership. This reviewer was particularly interested in Jane Baun's discussion of the role of the laity in the development of the Marian cult, including the paradox which plagues historical studies: the more manuscripts of texts that survive, the more daunting the task of producing a critical edition, so that those texts which were most familiar to Mary's Byzantine devotees are now the least available to modern scholars (p. 205). This volume shows how good a volume of conference papers can be: studies produced by a diverse selection of scholars, each expert in their own particular area, have been juxtaposed to form a coherent and compelling picture. It would be nigh-impossible for a single author to produce such a multi-faceted and absorbing volume.