This is a fitting time for a new book examining England's relationship with a powerful, pan-European establishment—in this case the papacy in the early fourteenth century. This is not (only) because of the continual presence of Brexit within the media, but because the involvement of the papacy in the diplomatic history of later medieval England has long formed a sideshow to the more regularly studied Anglo-French relations of the period. Pierre Chaplais and George Cuttino certainly made great steps in elucidating the processes and practices by which medieval English diplomacy was carried out, and Karsten Plöger and Patrick Zutshi have offered excellent work on the administrative history of the papal curia at this time. However, a comparative approach that examines how the two interacted at this time has not, until now, been offered.

There are merits to the comparative approach taken by Bombi. The most obvious is that it allows her to question the extent to which English and papal administrators learned from one another at this time, and how far the routine interactions between the two might be credited for the growing scale and sophistication of each respective administration. Answering this question is the central focus of this book. To do so, Bombi arranges her work into two parts. In the first, “Modalities of Medieval Diplomacy,” she examines the practices and procedures by which diplomacy was carried out at this time. The five chapters contained within this part of the book are thus predominantly concerned with the administrative history of the English government and papal curia. This is in keeping with most of work that has been undertaken into medieval diplomacy to date, most notably that of Chaplais. Nevertheless, Bombi is able to develop a number of interesting new theories. The most interesting is her suggestion in chapter 2 that a “shared language of diplomacy” emerged during the early fourteenth century, which allowed English and papal ambassadors to communicate more effectively than had previously been the case (32). This “shared language” was not, according to Bombi, a compromise between two existing styles. Rather it stemmed from the increasing willingness and ability of English ambassadors to present written and oral communications to the papacy in a style that was deemed acceptable to those at the curia (chapter 3). The findings described in chapter 4 regarding the importance of unofficial channels in diplomatic correspondence, and the extent to which the English struggled to make up for a lack of cardinals to act as informal advocates at the papal curia during the first half of the fourteenth century, are similarly important. They reveal how unique the relationship between England and the papacy was at this time, especially compared to that which French and Italian rulers enjoyed.

The administrative focus of part one continues in part two. Here, four case studies provide detail and context to the findings of the first five chapters. The four case studies are well chosen: the first examines the election of Pope Clement V and succession of King Edward II of England (1305–1309); the second, the war of Saint-Sardos and the deposition of Edward II (1323–1327); the third, the outbreak of the Hundred Years War (1332–1338); and the fourth, the period between the battle of Poitiers in 1356 and the completion of the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais in 1360. The only notable omission is a chapter covering the 1340s, when negotiations for an Anglo-French truce took center stage following the English victories at Crécy and Calais, and the Black Death swept across Europe placing new strains on royal and ecclesiastical administrations. It would also have been interesting had the scope of the book moved into the late fourteenth century and the Great Schism that so divided the church after 1378, although this would have perhaps been too considerable a task for one monograph.

The archival research that underpins the chapters of part two is laudable. A number of useful conclusions are also once more offered. Bombi's analysis of the dispute over who should be appointed to the vacant see of York in the early 1340s, with King Edward III and Pope Benedict XII each backing different candidates, clearly shows that Benedict was not the simple “spectator” or “failed papal mediator” of the early Hundred Years War, as which he has often been portrayed (183, 193–94). Rather, he was a vigorous defender of the rights of the church, particularly in relation to episcopal appointments. A similar point is made in chapter 9, where the papacy is portrayed as a well-oiled administrative machine that offered proactive mediation for disputes across Europe.

Even so, there is a slight sense that these case studies are a missed opportunity. While they expertly highlight the importance of administrative reforms at the papal curia and in the English court during the early fourteenth century, greater efforts could have been made to apply these directly to the political history of the period. For instance, there is no discussion in chapter 6, which covers the early years of Edward II's reign, of the trial of the Knights Templar. Yet this was one of the most significant events in the history of the early fourteenth-century papacy and its relationship with secular rulers. Likewise, while chapter 8 opens with the accurate observation that “an overall assessment of papal involvement in the Hundred Years War . . . still remains to be published” (183), because much of this chapter is concerned with the procedure surrounding the production and retention of documents in the papal curia and English chancery, it does not go as far as it could have in beginning to redress this historiographical imbalance.

This aside, as a piece of administrative history Bombi's book is excellent. It is built on substantial and impressive archival research, both in England and at the Vatican, and provides an intricate account of how English and papal bureaucracies grew concurrently but independently at this time. This is to say that, as Bombi argues, while the two administrations did not deliberately seek to move toward a shared practice, because they were exposed to the same external pressures, the administrative reformers in each naturally moved in a similar direction.