This volume of essays by Michel Parisse represents the most recent publication in the series Les Médiévistes français, which has proven extraordinarily useful. A collection of essays from the years 1982 to 2004, it conveys a good picture of their author's broad research interests. It particularly focuses on socio-historical questions, pre-eminently on those concerning the relationship of the nobility and the Church or families, estates, social groups and their relations with religious communities. The empire is the geographical centre of the fifteen individual studies, although the author does not limit his attention to this area. His interest is not restricted to the region but extends to structures that guide the epistemological approach – structures and institutional formations that, however, become apparent in a particularly impressive way in the empire. Parisse shows the same openness in choosing his subject: As he states in his brief preface, he has not limited his research to monks but, explicitly, to the religious, since the religious life of the Middle Ages had been far more diverse than is suggested by the restricting concept of monks or monasticism. Thus, the texts deal with female religious life in Alsace in the sixth century and also with canonesses of the twelfth century, with Benedictine monasticism in its different manifestations from the eighth to the twelfth centuries as well as with the Knight Order of Calatrava, the offshoot of Benedictine reform. The study covers regular canons and the secular clergy in equal proportions. Regarding all these multifaceted manifestations of the medieval vita religiosa, the author primarily looks upon the phenomena of foundation and reform of religious communities that he perceives and describes as cumulative peaks in the mutual interaction of the Church and the world. All the articles in this collection underline Parisse's view that monasteries as spaces are not separated and detached from the world but rather closely intertwined with it. Throughout the collection the author's choice of locations includes places which combine centrality as spiritual centres as well as being focal points of secular rule. The volume is made accessible by an, unfortunately incomplete, index of names and places.