Thomas Smith of Rugby School and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society brings together an impressively diverse range of essays exploring the theory and practice of ecclesiastical power in medieval Europe and the Near East. The editor frames the various ways such authority might be understood in his introduction, after which twenty-two enjoyable essays provide the intellectual foundations of or specific case studies exploring these concepts. Of the five sections, the first three concern the pope (“Concepts of Papal Authority,” “Representatives of Papal Authority,” and “The Papacy and the East”), with most essays exploring the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century. The last two parts (“Cultures of Ecclesiastical Authority and Power” and “Ecclesiastical Communities and Collective Authority and Power”) range in topics as intimate as clothing during Mass or as expansive as contests between miter and crown in England. Particularly noteworthy is the inclusion of essays focused on geographies outside western Europe. While Italy, France, Germany, and England certainly appear often throughout this volume, Sicily, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, the Levant, and Ireland all receive attention. The Kingdom of Sicily in particular stands out as a locus of questions regarding papal power and its relation to secular authorities due to, for one reason, Innocent III's special status as regent of the island during Frederick II's minority. All but a couple of the pieces are tightly contained to no more than a dozen pages, with bibliography, making this volume a great source of easily digestible and widely applicable ecclesiastical history for both in-class assignments and individual scholarship.