This interesting and very enterprising volume presents considerable difficulties to the reviewer: it is interdisciplinary and transcends conventional scholarly boundaries of geography and chronology. Listing its twelve papers would consume much of the word-limit for this review. The introduction makes the case for studying bishops and the heads of greater monasteries together, but the contents are divided between six papers on bishops and five on abbots. Only Anne Hudson, (‘Lollard views on prelates’), treats the regulars and seculars together, though Elizabeth New's argument that their seal designs greatly influenced bishops’ tombs could perhaps have been applied also to monastic memorials had more abbatial memorials survived. The contents are remarkably diverse, ranging from a miniature (Wendy Scase on John Carpenter's Carnary library in Worcester), through a closely focused examination of Cistercian artistic patrons in York province after 1400, and especially after 1500 (Michael Carter), to a wide-ranging discussion of one aspect of Crown-Church relations over two centuries as Gwilym Dodd considers the clerical – overwhelmingly episcopal – chancellors from Edward iii to Henry vi, while Benjamin Thompson romps through the whole history of alien priories. Some titles are somewhat misleading; Emilia Jamroziak has actually little to say about the central European Cistercian abbots’ interactions with the world compared with her accounts of their internal activities, while James Clark's ‘An abbot and his books’ is actually about abbots and their books. He makes a powerful case for the writing culture which surrounded many superiors. The material possessions and legacies of prelates loom large in this volume: books – both manuscript and printed, other writings, precious objects of all kinds, seals, tombs, church furnishings and buildings. Monastic histories are discussed, notably by Matin Heale in ‘Monastic attitudes to abbatial magnificence’, but entirely absent from this volume are considerations of bishops’ registers, the basic sources for most episcopal careers. In asking why English bishops were so slow to embrace the new technology of printing as potentially applicable to diocesan administration, Felicity Heal's answer is that episcopal chancery clerks exerted a powerful conservative force defending their vested interests. Since most bishops’ registers of the later fifteenth century are particularly slight and feeble, investigation of episcopal subordinates in the later fifteenth century is perhaps overdue. Very few registers survive from Wales, so it is heartening that both Elizabeth New, and Christopher Woolgar, whose subject is bishops’ material possessions, present evidence from Welsh sees.

Two overriding themes emerge from this collection of papers. One is that prelates were very high-maintenance; clothed in luxurious vestments, they were surrounded by high-value furnishings, jewels and plate, and were increasingly well-housed. If they were not all as personally wealthy as some of their testamentary records might suggest, argues Woolgar, they were surrounded by the borrowed magnificence commensurate with their position. One reason why royal experiments with lay chancellors were discontinued was that kings were unwilling to reward laymen to the level of income which bishops enjoyed. Many abbots lived lavishly, surrounded by retinues whose size increased during the fifteenth century. Building was the prelates’ passion. Bishops might spread their efforts between their cathedral, episcopal manor-houses and, though they are not mentioned here, their educational and ecclesiastical projects. Monastic prelates built almost entirely at their abbeys, promoting construction works with a zeal later shown by headmasters of public schools. Generations of monks at larger houses must have passed their entire life in religion on a building site. Funding for monastic projects might come not only from abbatial resources but, as Carter shows, by raiding conventual incomes, but abbots were keen to take sole credit by leaving their personal marks upon buildings. Extravagance might lead a house into debt but it was not necessarily of itself unpopular. Martin Heale shows that expenditure on monks’ living quarters and on abbey churches – to solicit lay support – won monks’ approval, if not made to the detriment of a house's economy, and when abbots lived lavishly their brethren might bask in reflected glory. Moderation was everything, and this Aristotelian concept had overtaken earlier ideals of austerity and otherworldliness. Similarly bishops’ wills, however businesslike, are conspicuous for their lack of legacies to the poor.

Yet a second theme is that prelates were not as powerful as they appeared. Those of the highest rank, cardinals, were very few in late medieval England, but at the court of Francis i there were twenty-five, whose promotion was a matter of importance, to their families especially. Yet once advanced they were key figures neither in royal government nor at the Curia, but were valued by the French king as members of diplomatic delegations and to add pomp and dignity to solemn occasions. Cédric Michon's contribution suggests that cardinals were essentially more decorative than useful. In England bishops’ helplessness was vividly demonstrated by the crown's treatment of alien priories; it seized their property during times of Anglo-French warfare from 1295, and commandeered their patronage rights. Parliament joined in the harassment of these houses, though neither the dates 1378 or 1414 were as pivotal as Thompson supposes. Bishops, led by Wykeham of Winchester, circled these beleaguered houses, snapping them up to endow new foundations, and thus taking advantage of a situation brought about by their own helplessness. The archives of New College, Oxford, are very illuminating on this process. Meanwhile, Lollard writers, whose starting point was that prelates are not mentioned in the Vulgate, were assembling criticisms of the church leaders of their day, contrasting them with the ideals of the Early Church, and preparing the mental ground for revolutionary change.

There is much food for thought in this handsome volume, and the learned footnotes constitute a valuable resource in themselves.