Despite the publication in 1922–3 of Nikolaus Paulus' classic three-volume history of indulgences in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, indulgences have not received the attention that their importance to the devotional life of the Latin Church merits. Robert Swanson is one of a small band of scholars who have sought to remedy this situation, notably through numerous articles and a substantial monograph on indulgences in later medieval England (2007) and through editing the present collection of essays with a wider geographical compass. The volume appears in a series bearing the subtitle ‘handbooks and reference works on the intellectual and religious life of Europe’, but it does not seek or claim to provide comprehensive coverage of the subject. The topics and regions covered will be apparent from a list of the book's contents: Robert W. Shaffern, ‘The medieval theology of indulgences’; Giovanna Casagrande, ‘Confraternities and indulgences in Italy in the later Middle Ages’; Charles M. A. Caspers, ‘Indulgences in the Low Countries, c. 1300–c. 1520’; Eva Doležalová, Jan Hrdina, František Šmahel and Zdenĕk Uhlíř, ‘The reception and criticism of indulgences in the late medieval Czech lands’; John Edwards, ‘España es diferente? Indulgences and the spiritual economy in late medieval Spain’; Alastair Minnis, ‘The construction of Chaucer's pardoner’; Anne Hudson, ‘Dangerous fictions: indulgences in the thought of Wyclif and his followers’; Robert N. Swanson, ‘Praying for pardon: devotional indulgences in late medieval England’; Diana Webb, ‘Pardons and pilgrims’; Norman Housley, ‘Indulgences for crusading, 1417–1517’; Falk Eisermann, ‘The indulgence as a media event: developments in communication through broadsides in the fifteenth century’; and David Bagchi, ‘Luther's Ninety-five theses and the contemporary criticism of indulgences’. Eisermann's essay has already appeared in print (in German); the six illustrations to the original publication are omitted here. The standard of the essays is high, although not all are written in clear, or even correct, English.