On the 21 June 1002 Pope Leo ix was born, a descendant of the dukes of Eguisheim. In 2002 an international conference was convened in Strasbourg and Eguisheim with the purpose of honouring this personality and providing the scholarly world with an assessment of the state of research on the life and work of a pope who was so significant for the church history of the eleventh century. To this effect thirty different papers were read relating to six different areas of discussion. After a survey of the state of the western Church around 1050 (Thomas Zotz, pp. 19–31), five studies take as their subject Bruno's youth and his activities as bishop of Toul (pp. 33–160). Accompanying discussions of Bruno's origins and birthplace are surveys of his episcopal activities and documents relating to him (Joachim Dahlhaus, pp. 33–60, and Bruno Saint-Sorny, pp. 131–60) to which particular attention should be paid because knowledge of these matters is strikingly rudimentary. The contributions to the next section (‘Les Sources de l’histoire du pontificat', pp. 161–232) are principally dedicated to the Toul Vita of Leo ix (Monique Goullet, pp. 187–203) and to the additional, notably hagiographic, life of the pope (Conradin von Planta, pp. 217–32), both of which are supplemented by two specialist studies on documents (Karl-Augustin Frech, pp. 161–86) and on the letter of Leo ix to Michael Keroullarios (JL 4302; Annie Noblesse-Rocher, pp. 205–16). The third chapter concerns the relationships of Leo ix with different regions and groups of Christianity. In this section there are discussions of France (Michael Bur, pp. 233–57), of Byzantium (Jean-Claudet Chenet, pp. 259–72), of the empire and of the imperial Church (Jean-Louis Kupper, pp. 273–84), of the Italian episcopate (Pierre Racine, pp. 285–97), of the Normans in southern Italy (Huguette Traviani-Carozzi, pp. 299–329); and of Leo's links with Burgundy (Bernard de Vrégille, pp. 331–41). Under the title, ‘La Politique de Léon ix’ (pp. 343–469) are studies by Patrique Corbet on the attitude of Leo ix to the laws relating to marriage with relatives (pp. 343–53), by Dominique Iogna-Prat on the strikingly numerous dedications of churches carried out by the pope (pp. 355–83), by Charles Munier who investigates the significance of ecclesiastical law for Leo ix (pp. 355–83), by Jörg Oberste on Leo's relations to reformed monasticism (pp. 405–33), by Michael Parisse on the staff and the decisive propagator of ideas of reform (pp. 435–56), and by Wilhelm Ziezulewicz, who seeks to substantiate the idea that the stimulus for reform originated in Chartres and Lorraine (pp. 457–69). In the next section historical matters relating to the regions of Alsace and Lorraine are discussed (pp. 471–587) including the division of power in both regions (Michael Margue, pp. 471–94), and church architecture in Alsace (Jean-Philippe Meyer, pp. 495–529). Jean-Claude Rebetez sketches the history of the bishopric of Basle in the first half of the eleventh century (pp. 531–42), Jean-Michel Rudrauf busies himself with the emergence of castles in the tenth and eleventh century in Alsace (pp. 543–66) and Christian Wilsdorf suggests a date for the Landfrieden of Alsace in the middle of the eleventh century rather than the normally accepted date of 1094 (pp. 567–87). The last chapter of the volume brings together essays on the assessment of Leo ix in medieval historiography (Mireille Chazan, pp. 589–621), on his cultic veneration and memorialisation in necrologies and martyrologies (Benoit Jordan, pp. 623–31; Franz Neiske, pp. 633–45) as well as a piece on the reasons for his veneration in Saint-Dié (Damien Parmentier, pp. 647–53). After a conclusion written by Benoit-Michel Tock and Jean Werckmeister (pp. 655–85), this informative and successful volume ends with detailed person and place indices as well as a list of quoted manuscripts (pp. 661–87).