BOOK REVIEWS 253 audience that had little access to the wide array of templates from which they came” (199). Despite its many strengths, the book could have been even stronger with a slightly different editorial approach (though it can be assumed some of these decisions were the publisher’s). Endnotes would have been more helpful at the end of the book, rather than at the end of each chapter. In order to keep the book accessible for a wider audience, some terms could have been clarified for non-specialists when they first appear, such as the references to the Maimonidean controversy or the taifa kingdoms. Similarly, it might be difficult for non-specialists to recognize secondary sources written in Hebrew, because they appear in the footnotes and bibliography in translated English titles without mention that they are written in Hebrew. Overall, The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition provides a welcome foray into the world of Arabic, Hebrew, and Judeo-Arabic intellectual culture through the lens of a striking primary source. The book should be consulted not only in the field of medieval Iberian studies but also by scholars of medieval translation and multiculturalism. The translation of the will in the appendix is especially appreciated and I look forward to assigning it in upcoming courses on medieval Jewish culture. Caroline Gruenbaum Yale University Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church Richard Firth Green University of Philadelphia Press, 2016. xii + 304 pp. $59.95 cloth. $27.50 paperback. Richard Firth Green’s Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church offers a historicist discussion of medieval fairy beliefs in conversation with contemporary church teachings and literary treatments. The crux of Green’s revisionist study is his argument that belief in fairies was a rather widespread medieval phenomenon, in light of attempts by the church to discredit such beliefs, which he described as “tensions between clerical and the popular views of fairies” (62). Green includes a broad range of late medieval sources, focused on English, French and Italian texts, and his interdisciplinary approach brings together literary, historical and theological sources to argue that fairy lore is syncretized, Christianized and demonized, Religion & Literature 254 which he contends inversely affects medieval interpretations of demons and purgatory. Green also attempts to combat the Celtic bias that tends to “locate the source of all medieval fairy belief in Wales” (5), and he notes that “Fairies are to be found from Iceland to Sicily and from the Pyrenees to the Ruhr” (5), stressing how belief in fairies was ubiquitous in medieval Europe. Chapter one discusses popular belief in fairies during the Middle Ages, especially the late medieval period, and makes the argument for genuine belief in elves, sylvans, satyrs, hobs, goblins, changelings and other fairy creatures. Chapter two examines the various attempts by the medieval church to police vernacular belief in fairies, through both suppression and syncretism of fairy lore in order to Christianize this folk practice. Chapter three explores the particular syncretism between incubi and fairies, demonstrating the extensive borrowing and overlap between these once distinct categories. Chapter four investigates the relative rareness of changelings in medieval literature, considers the paradox of “Christ the changeling” and its relation to medieval anxiety around parentage and succession, and observes that changon “changeling” is barely attested until the later period and early modern era. Finally, chapter five charts the syncretism between purgatory and fairyland, arguing that these two spaces are linked as timeless realms of the undead and that the former may be a Christianized adaptation of the latter. Green finds focusing on specific terms, which might correspond to categories of fairies, less than helpful, as he considers all fairy creatures as part of a shared tradition. Green offers a much-discussed definition of fairies as “numinous, social, humanoid creatures who were widely believed to live at the fringes of the human lifeworld and interact intermittently with human beings” (4). Nevertheless, there is relatively comprehensive treatment of specifically incubi demons, and their syncretism with fairies, in addition to the concept of a changon “changeling” that Green notes is conspicuously absent from late medieval sources whence the modern concept developed. Despite Green’s initial...