This book argues that Frankish elites of the seventh century patronised abbeys founded by or associated with the Irish monk Columbanus (d. 615) primarily for political and economic ends. The first two chapters examine the activity of the Merovingian royal family (chapter i) and families of regional Frankish aristocrats (ch. ii) in founding, funding and controlling the leadership of Columbanian monastic communities. The middle two chapters interrogate the political perspectives of seventh-century hagiography (ch. iii) and the familial stratagems that may have been at work in the will of Abbess Burgundofara (chapter iv). The final two chapters of the book ask whether Columbanian monks differed in their appearance and practices from other monks (chapter v) and the degree to which aristocratic patronage of Columbanian abbeys contributed to the formation of elite identity in the Merovingian period (ch. vi). The book is successful in placing the development of Columbanian monasticism squarely within its Frankish context, but it has much more to say about ‘power’ than it does about ‘religion’. Treatment of monasticism as an exemplary way of Christian living is largely absent; abbeys are considered primarily as political assets; and ‘religious conviction’ is dismissed as a category of analysis (p. 17). As a result, there is very little said about the spiritual tensions that the Columbanians had to negotiate in Gaul, including the rise of the cult of Benedict and the spread of the Rule that carries his name; there is no consideration of the other-worldly needs of the Merovingian elites; and there is no discussion of the fate of these communities with the arrival of missionaries from Anglo-Saxon England and the ascendancy of the Carolingians. The steep decline of Columbanian influence in the eighth century certainly merits further consideration; it is not without reason that Charlemagne had to ask if there had ever been Frankish monks who did not follow the Rule of Benedict (p. 294). By ignoring the religious aspects of early medieval monasticism, this book succeeds in telling only a small part of a much richer story.