The documents edited and translated here are less far-reaching than the title implies. D'Avray has selected only documents and cases of papal involvement in royal marriage dissolutions. Thus, marriages dissolved through local action are passed over. Nor are the chapters anything approaching full dossiers for the nineteen cases. Most contain only one or two brief documents. The introduction and historiographical overview are often longer than the documents themselves. Only the case of Charles iv and Blanche from the 1320s fills a substantial number of pages. What is one to make of only twelve pages on the dissolution of Henry viii's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, in which the sole source is an eighteenth-century transcript of Roman curial proceedings? D'Avray argues in a brief introduction that popes' decisions were not arbitrary but were legitimised by strict adherence to principles. He also rightly emphasises change over time. The first instance of papal involvement was in the 860s but it was relatively rare until Innocent iii's papacy, after which it became normative. There were no cases between 1322 and 1491, after which there were only five more to 1600. One does wonder why the cases are so overwhelmingly French. The author is quite correct that the phenomenon of a foreign religious leader exercising power over royal marriages is so distinctive that it deserves close study. This volume is essentially primary source appendices for a forthcoming monograph. Scholars can look forward to reading D'Avray's fuller analysis when that volume appears.