The Maurists, a reformed Order of Benedictines established only in France, commanded admiration across Europe, from their foundation in the early seventeenth century until the French Revolution, for their pursuit of learning and scholarship. Gibbon notoriously contrasted the vast output of volumes from their abbey of St-Germain-des-Prés in Paris with the empty idleness of Magdalen College, Oxford. Even sceptical philosophes conceded that this order had merit and utility; and, as the author of this volume shows, some of its monks participated creatively in the academies and in the movements of thought that furthered the Enlightenment. What happened to them under the Revolution is therefore of particular interest. Mary Robinson seeks to answer this question for the sixteen Maurist houses of upper Normandy with their roughly two hundred monks. On the basis of the substantial surviving records she takes issue with most previous general interpretations. She finds that many of the monks still pursued learning and remained devoted to the monastic life, and that few Maurists welcomed their secularisation. But, once excluded from their houses (which not quite all of them were), some of them became laymen, while many accepted the Civil Constitution and became parish clergy loyal to the revolutionary government. Others found employment as teachers or, in one notable case, as the librarian of the dissolved monastery of St-Ouen at Rouen, in which the manuscripts and books of the old monasteries were being assembled. Many of them maintained connections with their houses and with other former Maurists. In most cases they had to suffer persecution during the Terror and in the later periods when anticlericalism was especially virulent. But none of these monks seem to have gone into exile, despite the proximity of the Channel – though some recalcitrants were deported in the later stages of the Revolution. The book shows how complex the position was, that in the localities the dictates of the central government were only partially effective, and that the Maurists retained the sympathy of many lay persons. Robinson's discussion of the historiography would have been strengthened by reference to two highly important books that she appears to have missed, Chevallier on Brienne and the commission des réguliers and McManners on the French Church of the eighteenth century. Naturally the story of one order in one region needs to be compared with accounts of the fate of other orders and of monks elsewhere in France. The Maurists were exceptional not only in their dedication to learning but also in the origins of their order: since their foundation and rule had been approved by the king of France during the time of the Gallican Church, rather than by church authorities, they had fewer scruples than most other orders about obeying the dictates of the state after 1789. But within its limitations this detailed regional study is well-organised, lively and instructive.