With characteristic lucidity and restraint, William Courtenay has devoted this compact volume to the communal life of religious observances at the medieval University of Paris in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Growing out of the Conway Lectures at the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, this book vows to fill a conspicuous lacuna in historiography: as the author notes, “the religious side of university life in Paris has received almost no attention” (2) even though it is common knowledge that the students and masters were members of the church. “Religion” in this book means, specifically, collective worship in well-defined ritual forms, such as prayers for the dead or liturgical processions on feast days. Religion as believed, felt, and lived by the individuals is excluded from discussion in a rigorist manner because religion as an emotional force is “impossible to uncover save for a few statements statistically too small in number to reflect general attitudes” (6). Drawing mainly, but not exclusively, from statutory and archival sources, Courtenay's book sheds much light on the institutional and regulatory aspects of nations and colleges as liturgical communities within the medieval University of Paris.

This book organizes its seven chapters topically and in a somewhat miscellaneous fashion. Chapter 1 discusses the rules pertaining to rituals for the dead in Robert Courson's 1215 statutes and then provides a concise survey of the development of burial grounds for university members in the various churches in the city. Chapter 2 provides a short history of theological thinking on the power of the mass for the dead from Augustine to Duns Scotus. One main concern for the scholastic theologians in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries was whether the rich, who were willing to pay, benefit more from suffrages than the poor.

The next two chapters turn to the nations and colleges as the basic organizing units for social interaction and communal worship in the university. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of the financial records in the Proctors’ Book of the English nation, dating back to the early fourteenth century, in which providing candles or lamp oil for the Virgin Mary was listed as a major liturgical expenditure prioritized by the nation. The chapter details how each of the four nations in the arts faculty had their own parish church for regular corporate worship. Courtenay then points out the resemblances and differences between the nation and a lay confraternity in taking care of its dead. Chapter 4 turns to the colleges at Paris, originally charitable foundations supporting poor students but also prayer communities for the souls of their founders and benefactors. A salient example is the Collège de Hubant, also known as the Collège de l'Ave Maria. Its statutes reveal liturgical activities as preponderant in students’ daily routine. The chapter ends with a comparison between medieval colleges and Islamic madrasas.

The next two chapters on women's presence and the Marian cult may contain some of the most original material of the book. Although the subject of women does not directly relate to the book's main theme, it is exciting to hear what a meticulous historian of the university, with all his mastery of sources, has to say about it. The conclusion seems definitive: no evidence can be found about the presence of female students or teachers at the medieval University of Paris. Courtenay enumerates the handful of women whose names appear in the city's tax records: they were teachers or property owners of grammar schools but not of the university; a certain “Marote la Goge” actually associated with the university is shown to be either a tradeswoman or a prostitute. Besides business ties, women had a lurking presence, which Courtenay explores through deductions from a few cases of married masters and through select women's more prominent roles as founders of colleges and patrons of scholars. These findings are not too surprising, but it is reassuring to have them authoritatively proven by a leading scholar of the field. Chapter 6, partly published in a more extensive Speculum article in 2016, studies the iconography of the Virgin or Virgin and Child on the corporate as well as the individual seals from the university. Courtenay takes care to emphasize that though Mary was understood as Sedes sapientiae, that phrase only meant that she was the abode of the Incarnate Christ without conferring teaching authority on her part. But he also makes an ambivalent statement that the university masters “thought it conceivable that a woman could teach” (119), given that the personification of Sophia or Philosophia was represented as a female figure bearing some iconographical resemblances with Mary. The book concludes with a brief chapter commenting on the university's efforts to balance social and economic inequalities among its members.

In conclusion, this book is a concise overview focusing on various aspects of the religious and communal life at the medieval University of Paris. One can always rely on Professor Courtenay's judicious use of sources and circumspect conclusions. The book is the most valuable in its emphatic reminder that a medieval university, unlike its remote descendants today, was fundamentally a religious and charitable institution whose prime concern was to take care of souls rather than produce intellectually pioneering work. It is an understandable, probably wise, decision of the author to have excluded from his discussion of university religiosity evidence of a more literary character, such as sermons or exempla stories, given their enormous quantity and interpretative challenges. But one is intrigued by the possibility of a study that would deal with both statutes and attitudes. This book is an important contribution by a historian of the highest caliber who has researched medieval universities and intellectual life for decades. It is also written in a very accessible style that should commend itself to both students and specialists.