Under a slightly misleading title Patrick Healy presents what is essentially an intellectual biography of Abbot Hugh of Flavigny (+c. 1114?), describing Hugh's reflections and arguments as expressed in his important Chronicon. Although it is formally a world chronicle, Healy considers it to be one of the libelli de lite with a focus on Pope Gregory vii and on the Investiture Controversy as it was played out in Lotharingia and Burgundy. A new critical edition of the chronicle, preserved as an autograph, is urgently needed as the author is aware (p. 99), but very little of his book deals specifically with the work itself. In the introduction Healy presents the history of the Gregorian reform based on Hugh's narrative ‘pieced together from facts gleaned from the many letters of Gregory vii that he inserted in his Chronicon’ (p. 6), i.e. giving a one-sided and therefore irritating picture, the occasional caveat notwithstanding. The informative second chapter (pp. 22–62) details the history of the abbey of St Vanne, Verdun, from its beginning to 1085, the date when a group of the abbey's monks, including Hugh, were driven into exile by the pro-imperial Bishop Theodoric of Verdun. Chapter iii (pp. 63–88) gathers available biographical data on Hugh, who was closely associated with Hugh of Die/Lyons as well as with Abbot Jarento of St Bénigne, Dijon. Hugh of Flavigny's time as royalist abbot of St Vanne (1111–14) remains unexplained (p. 84). Healy speculates that Hugh might have lived at St Vanne until the 1140s and may therefore have been involved in forgeries created there at that time (p. 88). Chapters iv and v (pp. 89–137) finally deal with the manuscript of the chronicle and its sources, chapter vi discusses kingship and tyranny as seen by Hugh (pp. 90–174), chapter vii discusses lay investiture and simony again from Hugh's perspective (pp. 175–200), with an interesting few pages (pp. 201–14) on the humility required by reformers for accession to ecclesiastical offices following as chapter viii. Chapter ix illustrates the polemical nature of Hugh's writing (pp. 215–28), but unfortunately only with regard to Hugh's efforts to advance the cause of the abbey of St Vanne. The uninitiated reader is on his own when Hugh's other tendentious interpretations have to be evaluated. The source analysis suffers from some misconceptions, apart from very frequent recourse to hypothesis. The author claims, for instance, that the polemical literature on the Investiture Controversy might owe the reference to c. 22 of the Eighth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople IV, 869–70) to Hugh of Die (pp. 189, 186f.). Hypothesis can be enlightening, but it is misleading when Healy, following Hugh of Flavigny, erroneously equates the facts underlying the investitures of Anselm of Lucca and of Hugh of Die (pp. 175ff.). Hugh of Die was consecrated by Gregory vii without prior investiture by the count of Die simply because the count refused to grant it. Questions also arise when Healy assumes that Erich Caspar was mistaken in his tentative reconstruction of a lost pro-papal common source for certain letter collections because Caspar excluded the ancestor of Codex Udalrici from his construct ‘p’. This claim, however, remains unproven (pp. 114f.). Even today little is known regarding the sources of the Codex Udalrici except that it was compiled at Bamberg in 1125 (hence the Bamberg material), probably for the training of notaries, and only preserved in a revision dating from 1134. This very readable and informative book would have gained in clarity and impact if references to secondary literature were less scanty. It is surprising that there is no reference to Constance Brittain Bouchard's edition of the cartulary of Flavigny (1991) and that the extremely helpful publications of Lotte Kéry (Canonical collections of the early Middle Ages, 1999) and Linda Fowler-Magerl (Clavis canonum: selected canon law collections before 1140, 2005) were not used, given the extended discussion of the Diversorum patrum sententie which, according to Healy, ‘may have been compiled in response to Gregory vii's request’ (p. 132), a hypothesis that is no longer accepted.