Part i of this substantial collection starts with Felicity McGowan's discussion of the iconographic debt of the early fifth-century ‘Maskell’ Crucifixion ivory to classical traditions; the potential significance of the circumstance that this precocious depiction of the subject appears in the context of a narrative cycle (as is also true of the broadly coeval version on the doors of Santa Sabina, Rome) is not explored. Louis van Tongeren then highlights the role of supposed relics from the true cross in the diffusion of the cult of the cross (ch. ii); Jennifer O'Reilly meditates on five Insular illuminations of the crucifix in the light of patristic and other commentary that the artists in question may or may not have known (ch. iii); while Carol Neuman de Vegvar boldly sees the wounds of Christ in the simple pattern on the back of the Blythburgh writing tablet and interprets it accordingly (ch. iv). More compellingly, César Garcia de Castro Valdés explains the preference in Asturia for crosses as opposed to crucifixes in relation to the region's need for images of victory and protection in the context of military struggles with the emirate of Cordoba (ch. v). Next, Richard Hawtree explores the poetry of Eriugena for its insights into Irish attitudes towards the representation of the Crucifixion, developing the suggestion of Hilary Richardson that certain of his passages may actually reflect Irish High Crosses (ch. vi). After Beatrice Kitzinger's wide-ranging discussion of the Passion diptych (Crucifixion plus Deposition) that prefaces a gospel-book of c. 900 now in Angers and of related Carolingian imagery (ch. vii), Celia Chazelle brings the first section to a close by stressing the potential variety of sacramental practices in Carolingian Europe and the central role of the Crucifixion in the attempts of the clerical hierarchy to reduce them to order (ch. viii).

Part ii begins with Elizabeth Boyle's discussion of a poetic treatise on the eucharist by Echtgus Úa Cúanáin of Roscrea (?fl. eleventh to twelfth centuries), signalling parallels with themes in St Bernard's Life of Malachy and highlighting its importance as a local reflex to contemporary European sacramental debate (ch. ix). Then Juliet Mullins discusses the homilies from the fifteenth-century Leabhar Breac, noting their relevance for perceptions of the Passion and for depictions of it (ch. x). Three discussions of continental material follow: Michele Bacci summarises debate on whether the Volto Santo at Lucca was the origin of, or a reflex to, the iconographic type in question, favouring the latter hypothesis (ch. xi); Jordi Camps i Sòria surveys the wooden majestats distinctive to Romanesque Catalonia, considering their possible relationships to the Lucca Volto Santo and to church reform in the region c. 1100 (ch. xii); and Katharina Christa Schüppel sketches eighty years of research on the painted crosses of Italy, signalling possible future avenues of enquiry (ch. xiii). The next two chapters return to Ireland, with Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh's account of the evolution of the depiction of the crucifixion on High Crosses that re-valorises the late (i.e. Romanesque) examples, relating them to broader artistic traditions, specifically German metalwork, while admitting that ‘evidence that such models were known in Ireland is tantalisingly slight’; and Griffin Murray's assured reassessment of Irish crucifixion plaques, complete with an authoritative catalogue of them. Finally, John Munns discusses the Mercy-Seat Trinity (or, as he invariably prefers, Gnadenstuhl) that appears in the Last Judgement mural at Houghton-on-the-Hill in Norfolk, favouring a dating around 1100, suggesting an unprovable connection through Herbert Losinga to the Abbey of Fécamp, and drawing comparisons with Anselmian thought (ch. xvi); while Elizabeth C. Parker offers a ‘liturgical reading’ of Antelami's 1178 Deposition relief at Parma, an exercise rendered problematic by uncertainty over the original location of the sculpture and the lack of sources for Parma's liturgy prior to the fifteenth century (ch. xvii).

The strengths of the book are its handsome production (the illustrations, black-and-white and colour alike, are of excellent quality), certain individual articles (notably those by Garcia de Castro Valdés, Kitzinger, Ni Ghrádaigh and Murray), and the ambition to put Irish material in the context of western Europe as a whole. Weaknesses include glaring lacunae in the coverage (there is nothing on such obviously important areas as Ottonian Germany, late Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia), the unhelpful ordering of some of the chapters (the arbitrariness of the division into the two parts, curiously entitled ‘God hanging from a Cross' and ‘Contemplate the Wounds of the Crucified’, is underlined by chapter iv, whose subtitle is ‘Envisioning the wounds of Christ’ yet which is placed in the first part rather than the second), and the random treatment of manuscripts in the index – only a handful are filed under a full and correct shelf-mark (for example Lambeth Palace, London, 1370), while most appear under an unpredictable element of the shelfmark (British Library, London, Cotton Galba A.xviii, for example, is filed under ‘Cotton’) or under a common name (‘Lorsch Sacramentary’), or not at all. Symptomatic of the lack of attention here is the fact that Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Laud lat. 26 appears twice – first thus and then immediately afterwards as ‘Oxford, Laud lat. 26’. Some of the contributions do ‘offer a reassessment of early medieval depictions of the crucifixion in both image and text’ (one aim stated in the introduction [at p. 2]), but others are surveys or summaries rather than reassessments, while a few provide little more than restatements of self-evident truths about this central theme of Christianity. The reader who stays the course will indeed ‘re-examine the veneration of Christ's salvific sacrifice across regional, chronological, methodological and disciplinary divides’ (the other aim articulated on p. 2); however, given the unequal quality of the contributions and the lack of synergies between most of them, one wonders how many except reviewers will do so.