Literature and the Scottish Reformation. Edited by Crawford Gribben and David George Mullan. (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History.) Pp. xix+268. Farnham–Burlington, Vt: Ashgate, 2009. £55. 978 0 7546 67125 5

Abstract

and Jesus ' the just but merciful Friend ' (p. 94) with whom Scots empathised on a humane level, Mary had a far wider range of roles-as divine mother, as God's chosen vessel, as a divine entity not quite linked but yet not quite separate from the Holy Trinity and, most strikingly, as 'virtual co-redeemer ' (p. 186) with Jesus in interceding with God on behalf of humanity. Interdisciplinarity is a central approach in the text, and the visual element of this is supported by a collection of high quality plates, which is well meshed with accompanying discussion throughout. One of the major successes of the book is the way in which it demonstrates the ordinariness of late medieval piety in Scotland, in both the day-today sense of ritual, liturgy and worship, and in terms of Scotland's location squarely within the realm of late medieval European Catholicism, right up to the seismic juncture of 1560.