While announcing Jerusalem's capitulation to Saladin in 1187 the historian Rigord of Saint-Denis noted that the year also witnessed the death of Pope Urban iii after a reign of a year and a half, the election of Gregory viii who lasted a month and a half, and the succession of Clement iii, a Roman. These misfortunes were deemed the result of the sins of churchmen and of a world growing old. Clement was rapidly succeeded in 1191 by Celestine iii who likewise reigned briefly (until 1198). Baptised Hyacinth and issuing from the Bobone family in Rome, he had been made cardinal as early as 1143 and for four decades had travelled widely throughout Europe as papal diplomat and legate, so that when he was elected he was eighty-six. The anonymous writer of the Gesta of Innocent iii, the pontiff who succeeded him, judged him to be old, passive, vacillating and ineffectual, an opinion widely followed by modern historians. The volume under review enables thirteen experts of the period to reevaluate this unfavourable image. Since Celestine's documentation is scant by contrast to Innocent's, they have been able to examine closely virtually every stone that paved his path. As a native Roman, he never left the city after his election, remaining active in the politics of the commune and protective of the integrity of the papal estates from the encroachments of the German emperor. He patronised local churches and displayed their treasuries of relics to promote pilgrimages to the Eternal City. In an epoch of mounting antisemitism he maintained the traditional papal policy of guaranteeing the rights of Jews at Rome. Although the Third Crusade against the Muslims of the east was the world event of his day, it did not prevent him from promoting contemporary campaigns against the Muslims in Spain and the heathens in the Baltic which led, in turn, to contacts with the Scandinavian monarchs. He likewise promoted the interests of the Latin Church in the buffer zone of Dalmatia. Although trained as a theologian, his written responses to queries provided precedents in canon law for clarifying the thorny issues of marriage and criminous clerics. Concerning the former he sought to balance the principles of consent and consummation in establishing a legitimate marriage; in the latter he began to attenuate Thomas Becket's extreme interpretation of ‘double jeopardy’. Like most contemporary popes he was busy canonising saints. France is the only kingdom to be singled out for separate treatment in this volume, although Celestine's engagement there was not particularly noteworthy except for his defence of Queen Ingeborg whom King Philip attempted to repudiate. Celestine none the less neglected to apply sanctions to his legal verdict. It is surprising that the editors have failed to include specific chapters on England and the German empire, the latter, in particular, because of the pope's crowning of Henry vi at Rome in 1191 and the threat of the Staufen's Italian policy towards the papal estates. Undoubtedly, they felt that the treatment of these issues in other chapters sufficed. None the less, the authors have been successful in demonstrating how solidly the octogenarian Celestine was able to prepare the way for the youthful, energetic and better documented Innocent iii.