Jahn and Schindler have published an interdisciplinary volume that focuses on Mary, Mother of God, in the exciting time when different Christian denominations formed and revolutionary new media developed in Europe. Eighteen contributions, mostly in German, are dedicated to the topic. They go back to a conference that took place from 26 to 28 May 2017 in Gotha, Germany. The editors wanted to look at the function of Mary in the various processes of differentiation through which the denominations separated themselves from one another. In terms of time, the contributions span the late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The volume fully meets its interdisciplinary goals.

The first contributions offer insights into the position of Mary within the different denominations in the early modern period, a position that is not always clearly identifiable. Based on the Judeo-Christian tradition (Beyerle), Martin Luther still saw Mary as an important exemplum fidei (Steiger). A study of calendars from the sixteenth century shows that Marian feasts still existed among Protestants (Gruhl). More critical tones were struck in Tübingen by the Lutheran pastor Johannes Caesar, who attacked Catholic Marian piety in his polemical book Mariolatria (1613), in which he also dissociated himself from Reformed Protestantism's complete rejection of Mary (Illg). Ben-Tov provides an exciting perspective by looking at Mary in the scholarly European translations of the Qur'an, in which Islamic Mariology finds itself fragmented in the mirror of the Western Enlightenment. Orthodox Christian Marian devotion seemed similarly alien to many Latin European scholars, since information was provided only by travelers or migrants from Eastern Europe (Saracino).

Further contributions are devoted to antagonisms in dealing with Mary. As wife and mother of the Holy Family, she was stylized across denominations as the ideal of the obedient housewife (Friedrich). That Catholic theology was not uniform is shown by a controversy in the seventeenth century about the legitimate veneration of Mary, challenging the narrative of the internal uniformity of individual denominations (Tricoire). A further example of such a differentiation is the Marian inscriptions found in the women's convent in Herford, which had become Protestant. For the Herford nuns, their coat of arms adorned by the Virgin Mary was a sign of the continuity of their history despite changing from Catholic to Protestant (Schaller).

An equally differentiated picture must be drawn of Mary in the Protestant musical tradition. Martin Luther kept parts of the Marian song traditions, such as the Magnificat (Wiesenfeldt), and Mary did not disappear from the Protestant cantatas of the eighteenth century either (Jahn). The volume convincingly shows the connection between Marian devotion and its nondenominational reception in literature. After the Council of Trent, an increased devotion to Mary in spiritual practice occurred in Catholic mysticism (Büchner); she, for example, is a motif in Queen Margaret of Navarre's plays, which reflect the theological ideas of the author and the ideals of female spirituality (Millet). Mary is also a motif in Petrarch's canzone “Vergine bella” (Föcking). The famous Roman poetess Vittoria Colonna, trying to achieve a balance between Protestants and Catholics, also dealt with Luke the Evangelist's portrayal of the Mother of God in her sonnets (Fliege). Although the Jesuit Order was initially Christocentric, Mary plays a central role in the Latin poems of the Jesuits Johannes Bisselius (Wiegand) and Jakob Balde (Kühlmann). Schindler's analysis of Bernardo Zamagna's Elegiarum Monobiblos (1768) reveals a modern adaptation of classical pictures of Mary, and could be described as a new facet of dealing with Mary in the Enlightenment.

A comprehensive index fills out the volume. Perhaps the Catholic perspective could have been considered more in some places to complete the picture. Mary as a country's patron saint, for example as Patrona Bavariae, emerged in the early modern period—a theme that would have offered a broader research spectrum, including state formation and nation building. Marian sanctuaries, as researched by modern cultural studies and ethnology, could also have been mentioned. Nevertheless, the volume contains a truly great variety of contributions that together work well in questioning historiographic narratives, opening new perspectives on a classical theme, and stimulating reflection as well as further research.