This is the third volume of collected essays on high medieval Cluny by Giles Constable, following Cluniac studies (1980) and Cluny from the tenth to the twelfth centuries (2000). There is considerable overlap with these Variorum volumes, as nineteen of the twenty-nine essays included in The abbey of Cluny previously featured in one of these two earlier collections. Nevertheless, this volume brings together usefully Constable's writings on Cluny since 2000 and includes four essays published for the first time: ‘The dates on early Cluniac charters’, ‘Cluny and Rome’, ‘Souvigny and Cluny’ and ‘Cluny in the twelfth century: from Hugh i to Hugh v’. These more recent contributions develop and embellish important themes found in Constable's earlier work. It is argued that Cluny owed much to Carolingian monastic reforms and was not particularly unusual among tenth-century abbeys. The order remained decentralised throughout its early history, and was still a fairly loose association in the twelfth century; and, as a result, generalisations about the role and influence of Cluny in high medieval religion and culture are to be avoided. This latter point is well illustrated in a subtle essay on the relationship between Cluny and the Investiture controversy (first published in 2006), contending that the influence of Cluny on the Gregorian Reform was primarily indirect and Cluniac attitudes far from unified. The relations between Cluny and its dependencies are further illuminated by Constable's meticulously-researched article on the important daughter house of Souvigny. Throughout the collection the abbey is placed firmly in its wider context, and another of the volume's new essays discusses the links between Cluny and Rome, including some intriguing (if not fully-developed) architectural parallels.

All the essays in the volume are marked by Giles Constable's customary lucidity and mastery of the sources and historiography for Cluny's history, and all remain fresh and relevant today. Interspersed among the essays are a number of shorter pieces, of more variable utility. The selection of Constable's perceptive book reviews on major works on Cluniac history provides a valuable wider context for the volume's essays; but it is less clear what some of the briefer notes and forewords add to the collection. The volume would also have benefited from an extended introduction, drawing together some of its main themes and perhaps surveying how the subject has developed over the span of the author's career. It is, moreover, a little incongruous that two of the essays remain in the Italian in which they were originally published ‘because the English originals could not be found’. Nevertheless, this is a welcome publication, which conveniently draws together works published over a fifty-year period and showcases once again Giles Constable's unrivalled contribution to Cluniac studies.