This collection of fifteen essays originated as papers delivered at a colloquium held at Gregynog Hall, the conference centre of the University of Wales, in April 2005. The title of the volume is broadly drawn and the various papers amply reflect this inclusivity in both theme and handling, and also indeed in quality. Some focus narrowly on individual houses. Andrew Abram effectively exploits its cartulary to provide a persuasive, if conventional enough, picture of the relationship between the small Augustinian priory of Wombridge and its benefactors. Fr Ó Clabaigh chronicles the Observant Franciscans of Adare, drawing attention to a remarkable near-contemporary account of the collective foundation of the house which describes precisely how particular individuals were responsible for the bell-tower, the refectory, one side of the cloister and even particular chalices. Glynn Coppack shows in detail how the buildings of Mountgrace Charterhouse, particularly its church, developed in response to increasing external pressures on the house. His description of these pressures might well have taken account of the various revealing injunctions in the Chartae of the General Chapter, which have now been available in print for many years, and also of the multitudinous York wills, beyond those printed more than a century ago, which are now readily accessible at the Borthwick Institute. Sheila Sweetinburgh describes the rivalries and adjustments faced by the Austin friars at Canterbury, when they moved within the city walls in the 1320s, and found themselves newcomers in an already thickly populated ecclesiastical environment and yet survived successfully to become more popular with local testators than the great monasteries of the town. Their flexibility and sensitivity to local conditions are retailed well enough but are sufficiently familiar and earthbound to gain little from being placed in the context of such bogus profundities as ‘negotiating space’ or even ‘spatial dynamics’. It was simply a matter of new arrivals fitting in. Finally in this context Professor Cross examines the post-Dissolution careers of the Cistercian monks of Roche Abbey in the West Riding and the surprisingly paradoxical but earthily realistic reactions of the local laity to this event. Many of the Roche monks were local men by origin; not surprisingly they tended to remain in the area and many obtained a range of minor benefices, often as chantry priests. What is more worthy of remark is that some seventeen years after the Dissolution a number of the monks seem still to have been prepared to revive their former abbey, while there is tentative evidence that another member of the community, perhaps writing after 1538, may have compiled a fond account of the pre-Reformation glories of Hatfield church, Roche's most valuable appropriation. Nostalgia for the old order was by no means restricted to the author of the ‘Rites of Durham’.

In contrast to these specific studies other items in the collection are more generalised in character. A study of the prioresses of Scottish nunneries reveals little of remark apart from the fact that a number of them were suspected of spying for both the English and Scottish sides during the wars of the sixteenth century. Karen Stöber anatomises the relationship, conventional enough, of ‘mutual dependence’ between the Welsh monasteries and their patrons and neighbours. Yet a number of the greater English patrons seem to have kept their Welsh houses at arm's length as it were, preferring to be buried, where alternatives existed, in their English houses, leaving the Welsh abbots to be consoled by the flattery of their bards. Nicholas Orme provides a finely balanced account of the monasteries of Cornwall, learnedly rescuing them from the condescension of previous scholars while avoiding grandiose claims on their behalf. Two other studies might be described as more normative in character, focusing to a degree on legislative provisions which naturally applied, at least in theory, to a whole order. Julie Kerr describes how Cistercian precepts concerning hospitality were, or were not, imposed in practice. More revealing is Jens Röhrkasten's account of the way in which early Franciscan legislation defined relations between the order and the lay world. His survey is largely concerned with formal and generalised precepts but is of particular value because it helps to elucidate the enigmatic, indeed obscure, source material. Then there are three more essays of a more wide-ranging nature. James Clark assembles all of the evidence for monastic encouragement of education after the mid-thirteenth century, particularly in the support of schools and universities, to rebut traditional views of monasteries as barriers to the advancement of learning in the later Middle Ages. The evidence is undoubtedly impressively extensive but the question remains as to whether it amounts to a picture of a self-sustaining monastic educational culture. Monastic educational provision was certainly available but its inspiration would now seem to have come from an increasing dependence on secular models and particularly from a form of parasitism on university culture. Professor Hicks argues in an exceptionally expansive and stimulating essay that changes in the nature of religious benefactions in the later Middle Ages, particularly the decline in monastic foundations, must be placed within the context of economic change and particularly changes in land values and rents, increased wages and building costs, and legislative and financial restrictions imposed by mortmain legislation. Not all of his arguments will command assent, particularly those concerning the links between rents and land values, and he may also devalue the importance of changing religious sentiment, but the hares that he starts are certainly worth the coursing. Finally Martin Heale examines the appointment of monastic superiors during the reigns of Henry vii and Henry viii, showing how the nomination of external abbots, who were often graduates, to major Benedictine houses became much more frequent after about 1490. Such nominations reflected increasing royal intervention in monastic affairs, symbolised by the appointment during the 1530s as abbots of many who had defended the king's divorce at Cambridge and presaging the events of the second half of the decade. Heale is quick to suggest that the nomination of so many graduates was beneficial to monastic life, perhaps passing over too readily the problem of whether the learning of the schools and the prolonged absence from the cloister that its acquisition entailed were in fact appropriate to the heirs of St Benedict.

The title of this volume, Monasteries and society, is protean and its contents reflect this fact. Some seem to stray outside even these wide limitations. Three essays are concerned with the mendicants, and one extends its range to Pomerania. Yet the editors make a clear claim on behalf of the whole collection. It is said to demonstrate that ‘monastic history continues to go from strength to strength’. Does the book in fact exemplify a vigorous, free-standing, self-moved historical culture? The answer is not altogether reassuring. The various categories of discussion adopted seem derivative, off-shoots of historical concerns whose origins lie elsewhere. Hence the obligatory ‘British’ dimension, with essays on Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Hence the ‘gender’ section on nunneries. Similarly the topic of ‘space’ is appropriated from anthropological debate. Yet the splendid scene from the Luttrell Psalter reproduced on the dust-jacket of the volume which shows monks feasting with Sir Geoffrey at his table, and which is pregnant with multiple implications for the theme of the book, receives no attention whatever in the text. In fact the title of Monasteries and society tends to impose a false dichotomy on many of the contributors. In discussing relations between members of the religious orders and those outside the cloister a misleading sense of separateness comes to be implied. The impression almost comes to be given that monks grew on trees before dropping, fully ripened, into the arms of their communities. It should scarcely need to be said that all monks had previously not been monks; religious houses could not have come into being without the actions of external patrons; they were subsequently sustained by the benefactions of those outside themselves. In their day-to-day lives the world outside impacted upon them in countless ways, whether in the form of the body of a queen for burial or the chisel of a mason in their new building. Yet this impression of a seamless web, of ambiguities, of multiple shades of meaning, here disappears under simple categorisations. What is more, the central, overwhelming relationship between members of religious orders and the laity was the monks' obligation to pray for them, usually in the form of their patrons or benefactors, alive or dead, through intercessions, masses offered for their good estate, requiems, trentals and so forth. Virtually every foundation charter, and every record of benefaction, makes it clear that the gift is reciprocal. ‘Pro salute anime nostre et animarum antecessorum et heredum nostrorum’ or similar sentiments echo in thousands of patronal charters and deeds of gift. Yet of the full meaning of this fundamental relationship we hear virtually nothing. The preface tells us that the new monastic history is to be ‘an increasingly socio-cultural-economic one’. Of course such concerns have their place, but not if the consequence is the history of religious houses with the religion left out.