This detailed study of the Catholic clergy in Madrid during the pre-civil war era of the Second Republic is based on diocesan and urban parish archives and consists of four substantial chapters which explore historiographically important themes: priests as a socio-cultural group; their social presence and activities; their ways of thinking and political life; and the day-to-day experience of popular anti-clericalism. While not undermined, the monolithic vision of the Spanish clergy of this period as socially and cultural immobile and politically intransigent is effectively problematised in several respects by focusing on the lives of priests as lived amid the socially and politically agitated situation of the 1930s rather than highlighting the position of the Church's leadership. Sacerdotal identity was none the less strongly and naturally shaped by the training received in the seminary and during the noviciate and by the hierarchy's strained relations with a new democratic constitution and government which went beyond the separation of religion and state by suppressing state financial provision to the Church, legislating against public devotions and dissolving the Society of Jesus. Carrying on the trend of many decades, the most intense evangelising went on amongst élite Catholic families, especially the young, whilst pastoral labour in the outlying zones of the city was unappealing because of fears of anti-clerical abuse (physical violence was rare before the outbreak of civil war in July 1936), although a minority of younger priests persisted in missionary work and drew attention to the failings of the Church amongst the working class. Bishop Eijo Garay's indifference towards Acción Católica and instinctive hostility towards liberalism of any kind obstructed dialogue and made the already difficult existence of priests, many of whom struggled materially in the conditions of the 1930s, almost impossible. While most priests seem to have remained politically passive, many were openly favourable to the recovery of a public role for the Church in political life and animated the laity actively to pursue a political line in defence of the Church. They did not, however, participate in the military rebellion on 19 July 1936 which led to the civil war, though they did become one of the most bloodily persecuted victim groups of the conflict, a theme which is beyond the scope of this valuable study.