In her discerning study of the Rievaulx cartulary and its records of the abbey's history during its first century and a half, Emilia Jamroziak has produced a mirror of the world of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries that has value not only for monastic, but also for social, historians. “The structure of his book,” as she writes, “reflects the main areas of contact between the abbey and the outside world” and allows scholars to “address broader issues of the interactions between medieval monasteries and laypeople” (5).

In the first chapter, Dr. Jamroziak meticulously analyzes the structure and content of the late twelfth-century Rievaulx cartulary. In itself a valuable essay on the nature of medieval monastic cartularies in general, the chapter includes an extremely helpful tabulation of the cartulary's structure that highlights its “implicit division into sections devoted to various groups of benefactors” (23). Chapters 2 and 3 then examine the monks' interactions with “good neighbors” and “bad neighbors,” that is, benefactors of the abbey among the aristocratic and knightly families of the area who either valued the spiritual benefits of association or entered into land negotiations with the expanding abbey; and then neighbors with whom the monks found themselves in conflict, often the heirs and families of former “good neighbors.” Illustrative details on both areas of conflict and methods of conflict resolution again have a broad applicability.

After considering Rievaulx's relationships with secular area landowners, the author then looks, in chapters 4 and 5, at its ecclesiastical ties and tribulations. In the monastic revival of the early twelfth century in the north of England, monasteries—whether of the same or of different orders—consciously competed for land and donations. Yet they also relied on one another for dispute mediation and built networks of mutual support that are largely discernible through surviving letters. Jamroziak examines, in turn, Rievaulx's relationship with its close monastic neighbors, with houses founded by their own founder Walter Espec, with other Cistercians, with Augustinians, and finally with Gilbertines. She asserts that their relations with the larger ecclesiastical world, the subject of chapter 5, were characterized by friendships, a common zeal for reform, and support, but slowly and surely also by growing episcopal frustration with the expanding influence and acquisitions of the exempt White Monks. After looking closely at relations with the archdiocese of York and diocese of Durham, the author ends by considering extant records of personal and professional issues between the monks and diocesan clergy.

A final chapter on “Friendship and Commemoration” studies Rievaulx's patterns of commemorative prayer, burial within the precincts, and gift exchanges. From necrological evidence, the author argues that, in an age when individualized commemorations were replacing earlier cumulative prayers for benefactors and friends both living and dead, “the cistercian ideology of simplicity and emphasis on the collective rather than on the individual” (205) allowed the monks of Rievaulx to lessen the burden of commemorative prayer by remembering deceased patrons and friends as a group, by minimizing confraternities, and by limiting (or perhaps not receiving) requests for burial.

Rievaulx Abbey and its Social Context, 1132–1300 is a valuable contribution to the growing body of information on the circumstances that allowed the phenomenal expansion of the Cistercian Order in the second half of the twelfth century and on the experiences of the monks and their lay and ecclesiastical benefactors and antagonists as the White Monks became settled fixtures on the medieval landscape.