Everyone interested in medieval liturgy will more than welcome this book. Indeed, one might call it a provisional apotheosis to the great desire, grown in recent years, to provide a new impetus to this line of research. In its introduction, the editors indicate that its focus is limited to – in their words – "so-called occasional rites", meaning "all those rituals other than the mass and office, such as rites of passage like baptism" (p. 1), but also church dedications, excommunications, etc. Within that specific domain of the history of liturgy, further emphasis lies on the Central Middle Ages, a period that has long been brushed aside as being ‘a less interesting period’. The origin of rituals was often exclusively sought in the Early Church, including the period of the Carolingian Reform, whereas the period after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was heralded as the Golden Age of rituals (p. 8). Consequently, it might have been useful to express those restrictions with regard to theme and period in the title. Apart from the introduction, the book contains ten separate contributions, subdivided into four thematic parts: 1: ‘Researching rites’; 2: ‘Questioning authority and tradition’; 3: ‘Diversity’; and 4: ‘Texts and performances’.

The offers a good survey of recent developments within the field of research, and adds moreover some new insights from the more detailed research presented in this volume. It appears for instance time and again that the most important written sources mentioning the rituals – the so-called liturgical books (e.g. pontificals) – should not at all be seen as faithful descriptions of rituals as they were actually executed. Nor should they be considered a collection of imposed norms. Indeed, they should be characterized as "inspirational rather than normative documents" (p. 22). Apart from the fact that many of those texts have not been transmitted integrally, it is also important to know that only very few of them describe the complete execution of the ritual. It becomes furthermore clear that these ritual books are not the only written sources to provide us with important information on the subject. Among these other sources are: hagiographical works, sermons, music manuscripts (including music treatises), charters and chronicles. And, as some of the contributions to this book clearly demonstrate, also iconographic and architectural sources, or material sources such as artefacts, which were used during rituals, provide useful information. In the aforementioned context, occasional rituals were hardly ever static, but, on the contrary, they almost continuously underwent minor and/or major changes during the period under scrutiny. A rather new development in recent research is what might be called the ‘scholarly re-enactment’, in which one attempts to once more stage the ritual’s execution as faithfully as possible. One might compare it to the reconstruction of a homicide and it serves to clarify, among other things, how long the ritual would have taken, or how the audience viewed and experienced it. Recently, also the input of geographic information systems (GIS) has become a reality, and it has turned out to be a valuable addition.

Another conclusion reached by several of the researchers is that there existed an enormous diversity within the phenomenon of the occasional rituals, and that attempts to harmonize them were hardly ever successful. It would seem that this observation also more or less applies to the Late Middle Ages. An adequate examination of liturgical books is only possible when the researcher has exhaustively studied the origin and the subsequent transmission of the texts. This implies an in-depth and comprehensive codicological approach. In addition, several questions have to be answered for each of the text versions: Who were the authors or copyists? Who commissioned the text? Who was the intended audience? How were the texts read? How was the ritual performed? Taking into account the social context and developments closely connected to the liturgical rituals may be very enlightening when trying to establish the origin, function and meaning of those texts.

It is made abundantly clear that other fields of medieval research might greatly benefit from a better understanding of these rituals. It will come as no surprise to anyone that there are several points of contact between the aforementioned research and the history of medieval music and architecture; it is presumably somewhat less self-evident that also political, social and cultural history, as well as the history of ideas, might profit from it. This is the reason why it is so important that the historiography of liturgy has to, and should be allowed to, follow the course recently embarked upon, and why other researchers of the Middle Ages should not disregard the opportunities offered by this branch of historiography. Here also, interdisciplinary research is the key to success.

Naturally, the reader is provided with a very extensive bibliography of the numerous research efforts that have lately followed an innovative course. The book also frequently warns the reader of the dangers of older research. Indeed, this is why standard reference works and editions such as those by Andrieu and Vogel, which have long been put on a pedestal, should only be used with the utmost circumspection1.

A first remark with regard to this volume is its rather regrettable lack of attention for certain types of sources. Indeed, as far as written sources are concerned, memorial books such as necrologia and obituaries are hardly mentioned. And yet it is precisely in such manuscripts that one often finds much information on the other ceremonies that took place during the liturgical year, apart from those commemorating the deceased. Even though such memorial books are often to be found in late medieval, or even post-medieval transcripts, they frequently contain older data, which might easily hark back to the Central Middle Ages. Iconographic sources also – first and foremost miniatures – are given less attention than their due in this volume.

Another point of criticism might be that the bulk of the attention goes to the liturgical books of large ecclesiastical institutions. Obviously, smaller institutions (e.g. small monasteries or chapters, confraternities, hospitals and simple parish churches) would have left far fewer such sources. Because of this, there is always the risk that the rituals performed for, by or in the large institutions are too easily generalized. Here, we can draw a comparison to the research in the field of art history. For a long time, researchers had only eye for the great masters, but it has now become clear that the importance or the specific characteristics of the most prominent medieval artists can only be understood when placed against the backdrop of the numerous ordinary artisans and their production. In the same vein, we should assume that most medieval men were only confronted with rituals that took place in their immediate vicinity.

Finally, it should also be mentioned that, geographically, the book mainly focuses on regions now situated in the present-day countries of Italy, Germany, France and England, but English literature forms the bulk of the bibliographical references. It is no use denying that recent research has mainly flourished in English, partly as a result of the Anglicization of international medieval studies, but the nagging feeling remains that the research in some of the other national languages of the regions under scrutiny is somewhat lacking in the book, let alone research in such languages as Danish, Polish or Dutch.

Despite these shortcomings – all of which can be explained by the more or less unavoidable choices by the editors and the specific expertise of each of the available authors –, this book provides an important status quaestionis of the recently conducted research. At the same time, it also offers a significant contribution to the renewal of the history of liturgy - specifically pertaining to occasional rituals in the Central Middle Ages – and an incentive to continue on this path of innovation.

Note:
1 Michel Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Âge. Vol. 1-5, Louvain 1931–1961; Cyrille Vogel, Medieval Liturgy. An Introduction to the Sources. Washington, DC 1986.