The author is precisely accurate when he states in the introduction that ‘This is a book about Cyril and the city of Jerusalem’ (p. xi). In the monograph's six chapters, Drijvers presents a variety of studies revolving around these dual foci, producing in the end a portrait of Cyril as ‘an ambitious man whose political agenda was dominated by his desire to make Jerusalem the most important city in the Christian world and to turn his own bishop's see into the most authoritative one in Palestine’ (p. 153). Building upon the conclusions of scholars such as Peter W. L. Walker, who documented the role that Cyril played in advancing the standing of the see of Jerusalem within the power structures of the imperial Church, Drijvers sets out to explore the ‘social-historical issues’ in Cyril's career (p. xii). The position at which Drijvers arrives is that ‘Cyril was more of a politician than a theologian. He was predominantly concerned with the status of Jerusalem and his see and theological matters were subservient to this’ (p. 49).

Drijvers dedicates his first three chapters to delineating the conventional facts about fourth-century Jerusalem, Cyril and the early Christian liturgy. It is noteworthy that the author subscribes to Alexis Doval's theory of the Cyrilline authorship of the Mystagogical catecheses, and therefore Drijvers's research represents one of the first studies to incorporate this conclusion into an investigation of Cyril and his contribution. Although previous scholarship affirmed that ‘Cyril was largely responsible for the evolution of the rites and the expansion of the liturgy as they took place in the fourth century’ (p. 73), Drijvers voices the suspicion that Cyril probably introduced relatively few of the dramatic liturgical alterations witnessed during this period. The author reviews Constantine's sacred building projects, paying special attention to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and appraises the sudden proliferation of religious sites attracting pilgrims to Jerusalem. Such rapid development created economic strain and intense political rivalry – in particular between the see of Jerusalem and the see of Caesarea, the metropolitan city of the province of Palestine. The fourth chapter presents the most innovative part of the study. Drijvers attempts to analyse Cyril's Catechetical lectures ‘not from a theological but from a social-historical and a social-religious perspective’ (p. 97). His proposed quest is to discover the contours of the ‘religious landscape of Palestine’ during Cyril's episcopate. The author compellingly argues that Cyril's lectures should not be viewed as an attempt to articulate orthodoxy as an abstraction but rather as contrasted against the multifarious theological fallacies of paganism, Judaism, Marcionism, Manicheanism and, above all, Gnosticism.

Sections of the text would appear to be tangential to the author's main thesis that Cyril acted foremost as a politician to advance his own career and acquire greater influence for the Jerusalem see. The fifth chapter, which deals with the attempted reconstruction of the Jewish temple under Julian the Apostate, illustrates this point. During the course of his tempestuous reign of eighteen months, Julian sought to reverse the Christianisation of the empire that Constantine had inaugurated. His strategy for accomplishing this colossal project was to revive pagan ritual worship and rebuild the temple. The very prospect of the restoration of Jewish sacrificial worship horrified Christians, and to their great relief the endeavour failed due to earthquakes. Drijvers notes that Cyril is completely silent regarding the entire episode, a fact that convinced the nineteenth-century scholar Michael Adler that Julian never actually began the reconstruction. Drijvers then introduces Harvard Syriac 99, a document discovered by Sebastian Brock in the 1970s that purports to be a letter from the pen of Cyril concerning the aborted rebuilding project. Brock declared the letter to be a forgery from the first, but Philip Wainwright later came forward to defend its authenticity. Drijvers examines the arguments on both sides of the debate, but in the end he is unable to assure the reader that the document represents a genuine addition to the Cyrilline corpus, and there is therefore no discussion of whether this historical account is reflected in Cyril's accepted writings.

Jan Drijvers reads Cyril's every action as a political power-play – whether it be the distribution of wealth to the poor, the patronage of pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem, the translation of the bones of James to Mount Zion or the aggrandising of the discovery of the true cross. For Drijvers, the inventio crucis serves as the exemplar principium of Cyril's propensity to use spiritual power for political advantage: ‘In order to advance the status of his city and himself, Cyril exploited the biblical past and the holy sites of Jerusalem. In particular, he used the main cult of Jerusalem, that is, the cult of the Cross – which he himself probably helped to develop – to link himself and his episcopate to power relationships’ (p. 175). Cyril's willingness to undergo exile thrice for his theological convictions is afforded less discussion than would be desirable. Drijvers's study is a stimulating read, admirably researched, and a major new monograph on Cyril and Jerusalem.