By 1700 indulgences were widely available in Catholic Europe, and constituted a popular devotional practice to which Catholics of all social levels resorted. Their ubiquity, just under two centuries after they had been called into question by Martin Luther, is commonly recognised by historians, but, as Elizabeth Tingle contends in Indulgences after Luther, their survival is rarely subjected to sustained analysis. Her ‘curiosity’ about the fate of indulgences over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have provided the initial impetus for the research for her latest book, but it has led to an informative examination of a whole set of religious practices with which indulgences were associated to a greater or lesser extent, and contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on ecclesiology and hierarchical authority, as well as the supposed shifts towards interiority in religious devotion and parochial religious observance. Geographically, Tingle confines her study to France, although she does at times incorporate comparative observations from other regions. For France, however, she draws the bulk of her evidence from nineteen dioceses – nine in the north and ten in the south. From this she extrapolates that changes in the supply, use and understanding of indulgences reflected the broad shifts in religious debate during the sixteenth century and the surging influence of Catholic reform during the seventeenth. With France divided into more than a hundred dioceses through this period, nineteen dioceses amount to a relatively small sample, so it might be argued that her conclusions should be rather tentative. Yet they are plausible and generally well-argued. Tingle's in-depth study of these dioceses also enables her usefully to depict regional trends. For instance, the supply and reception of indulgences appear to have fallen into crisis at regional level during the final decades of the seventeenth century, when the régale dispute, the 1682 Gallican crisis and the resurrection of the Jansenist quarrel made recourse to Rome for indulgences more difficult. This meant that the direction of the Church devolved more onto local bishops, and temporarily impeded the papacy's ability to enhance its authority through the provision and control of plenary indulgences. Overall, however, the increasingly standardised format and administration of plenary pardons formed a part of wider reforms of liturgy, the cult of saints and festivals that the papacy promoted, and the indulgences granted during, for instance, the growing number of Jubilees contributed to the growth of Roman spiritual authority.

Unfortunately, Tingle is unable to offer firm figures for the number of pardons granted during this period, but she does supply a detailed exposition of the growing diversity in sites and acts of devotion outside the parish church. Indulgence acquisition became highly ritualised and site-centred as time wore on, because it became attached firmly to religious orders, confraternities, pilgrimages and to an innovation of the era, the privileged altar. She demonstrates that indulgences functioned to unify the faithful across the Church, but not necessarily in terms of vertical authority or parochial observance, both considered to be characteristic features of the Tridentine Church. Rather, this was because they functioned to encourage both individual and interior piety and exterior and collective devotion, instead of enforcing a clear dichotomy between the two.