Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition. By Éamonn ÓCarragáin. London and Toronto. The British Library and the University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. xxxii, 427; 16 color plates, 60 black-and-white figures. $80.

As scholars of the period know well and as his two dozen articles and studies cited in the extensive bibliography of this book attest, Éamonn Ó Carragáin has established himself as the most engaged and informative authority on the thematic motifs of the Anglo-Saxon stone crosses at Ruthwell and bewcastle. Now he has crowned his lifelong pursuit with this admirable work on those monuments as well as on the Brussels Cross and the finest English poem on the Cross, The Dream of the Rood, as well as on later texts (Sarum, book of Common Prayer, John Donne on the Annunciation and Passion). Ó Carragáin's deep and wide command of Anglo-Saxon literature, iconography, liturgy, Christology, and early medieval Rome make him a consummate interpreter and authority on ritual and the rood.

Christopher A. Jones
Ohio State University