Medieval canon law is the theme running through these essays offered to James Brundage. The bibliography of his writings at the end of the volume shows how extraordinarily prolific he has been. Arguably, the greatest of his contributions so far was his most recent book, on The medieval origins of the legal profession (2008), which appeared fifty-five years after his first publication. Festschriften are inevitably heterogeneous. Though this book is divided into parts, it is really a collection of good individual papers, mostly bearing on canon law. The trouble with Festschriften (which do not currently get into electronic resources such as JSTOR) is that important contributions in them can easily be lost to scholarship. Perhaps the most useful contribution that a review can make is to attempt a drastic précis of the individual papers.

Olivia Robinson shows how much money an English bishop spent on legal expenses at the papal Curia (including on sweeteners); how they borrowed from Italian merchants; and that ecclesiastical courts settled resultant debt cases, often by compromise. Thomas Izbicki argues that the canonist Juan de Torquemada (1388–1468) took a more sceptical view of witchcraft fears than many of his contemporaries. James Powell suggests that Frederick ii's legislation in Sicily was influenced by what Innocent iii had done in the secular legal sphere in both Sicily and the Papal State. In a wide-ranging essay, and with his customary incisive clarity, Brian Tierney argues against a dichotomy between a medieval conception of society as corporate by nature, and a later one (associated with Locke) of society as the result of a compact between individuals. There are fascinating paragraphs on medieval contract theory. This is a brilliant piece written straight from the sources. Charles Reid, Jr, traces the history of a right to self-defence, including justified war. Causa 23 of Gratian's Decretum turns out to be an important starting point for discussion of all this.

Kenneth Pennington's paper on the feudal oath of fidelity and homage contributes indirectly to the debate over whether one should use the word ‘feudalism’ in a medieval context, but that is not its main aim. He shows how a forgery can be used to illuminate the concept of fidelity at the time of its making, and brings out the importance of an eleventh-century letter of Fulbert of Chartres which found its way into both Gratian's Decretum and the Libri feudorum. Indicative of Pennington's scholarship is the fact that he cites and translates the oath of fidelity drafted by Fulbert and taken over by Gratian not from the printed edition but from the St Gall manuscript of the first recension. His exceptional quality is also evident in his discussion of the text's wording. Inclusion in the Decretum started a tradition of canon law commentary. This leads Pennington on to papal condemnations of homage for spiritual things. Here he sets an earlier study straight, and argues convincingly for the importance of the canon law tradition in this area.

James Muldoon puts Grotius' arguments that the sea is free and belongs to no one against the background of earlier writings about the issue and sets out the contrasting view - viz. that states could exercise territorial rights over parts of the sea – articulated by Selden, whose concern was with England's jurisdiction over the seas around Britain and Ireland. The dichotomy between ‘scholasticism’ and ‘humanism’ in legal scholarship is undermined by Edward Peter's paper: for him ‘the result of the movement begun by the humanist critics and taken over by others was the disenfranchisement of Roman law as law throughout Europe and its preservation either as the textual centre of legal theoretical science or a textual treasure-trove of philological and other antiquarian pursuits and interests’.

Patrick Zutshi's intellectually elegant paper is a model of ‘applied diplomatics’. He takes a fresh view of the evolution of Cambridge into a proper studium generale. In the light of papal Diplomatic, he calls into question A B. Cobban's view that Pope John xxii merely confirmed Cambridge's university status. An interesting point made along the way is that studium generale status was linked with the possibility of students receiving benefice income while studying. Richard Helmholz summarises the content of a tract in ms Bodley Rawl. B. which ‘opens a window on some of the realities of litigation in the spiritual forum’. The treatise deals with the modern-sounding question of whether there were too many lawyers. Specifically, its author argues against a project to reduce the number of lawyers in the Court of Canterbury. Another Bodleian manuscript (ms Laud. Misc. 527) is analysed by Peter Landau. It contains a decretal collection compiled at Fountains Abbey. Many decretals are on marriage, perhaps because of an abbot who was in demand as a papal judge delegate. Elizabeth Makowski examines cases before the Court of Chancery involving nuns. Marjorie Chibnall, editor of Ordericus Vitalis, finds a lot of canon law interest in his History, notably on the submission of abbots to their bishops, and on the matrimonial causes célèbre involving Bertrade of Montfort, Fulk of Anjou and King Philip i of France. Michael Gervers and Nicole Hamonic try to correlate the Diplomatic of private charters with events in King John's reign. Charles Donahue argues against a recent theory that the canon lawyer Bazianus and the civil lawyer Bassianus were the same person. In doing so he casts some new light on late twelfth-century views on marriage.

Richard Kay's paper is one of the more memorable contributions. After a vivid evocation of the extraordinary vision of the ninth-century Reichenau monk Wetti, Kay develops a theory about a Carolingian monastic reaction against involvement with the court and its corrupting influence. He also explains Wetti's obsessively repeated condemnation of sodomy (anal intercourse, hetero- as well as homosexual) as a reaction against his own earlier scholarly teaching that biblical sodomy was not a specifically sexual sin. Kay also draws attention to a papal attempt to foreground the sanctity of marriage (Eugenius ii, 826). Glenn Olsen shows that in ‘northern Spain and south and south western France a fascination with sex not found in pre-Romanesque architecture seems to have appeared almost overnight with the Romanesque’. En route, he says interesting things about attitudes in the period to homosexuality. The legislation of the Templars is the focus of Jonathan Riley-Smith's paper. There is a rule and a supplement. He thinks that their role was more symbolic than practical. Robert Somerville investigates the relationship of Pope Urban ii and the legate Adhemar during the First Crusade and in its genesis. Apparently the crusaders hoped that Urban would take over in person after the legate died.