"Ritual Memory" brings together two areas of study which have hitherto rarely been studied in comparison: liturgy and the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The book gives an analysis of the liturgical celebration of the apostles in the medieval West and examines the incorporation of the apocrypha in practices of ritual commemoration. It reveals the role that liturgy played in the transmission of the apocryphal Acts and visualises the way these narrative traditions developed and changed through their incorporation into a ritual context. The result is a dynamic picture of the ritual reception of the extra-canonical Acts in the Latin Middle Ages, where the apocryphal legends about the apostolic past were approached as memorable traditions on the origins of Christianity.

Els Rose, took her doctoral degree (2001, Utrecht University) with a thesis on language and liturgy in Merovingian Gaul. She teaches Medieval Latin at the same university, and has published recently on the apocrypha in medieval religious culture.