In his own day Robert of Arbrissel, hermit, popular preacher and founder of the order of Fontevraud, was a controversial figure who knew both how to ignite debate and how to attract loyalty. Today he continues to have his disciples, led within the scholarly community by Jacques Dalarun. Dalarun first began work on Arbrissel in the 1980s, spurred on by the discovery in the Bibliothèque National of the manuscript of a Middle French (expanded) version of one of the two extant Latin Lives of Robert. The book that followed was translated into German, Italian and Portuguese – and finally, in 2006, into English by Bruce Venarde under the title Robert of Arbrissel: sex, sin and salvation in the Middle Ages, Venarde having himself already translated a number of documents relating to Arbrissel (Robert of Arbrissel: a medieval religious life, 2003). This current volume is the result of collaboration between six scholars, Dalarun and Venarde included. It does not claim to present new material, but rather to assemble a rich and comprehensive dossier of carefully-edited texts, offered not only in their original language (Latin and Middle French) but also in both French and English translations, an overt act of homage to the importance of Fontevraud, the burial place of Henry ii and his queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, within the Plantagenet kingdom. As the title of the collection indicates, the reader is provided not only with the two Lives of Robert but also with an impressive collection of further texts, arranged under three headings: ‘Legends’, ‘Writings’, ‘Testimonies’. The final section goes some way to explain how the radical reformer and seemingly licentious firebrand could so quickly become a respectable establishment figure, his image ‘shaped and polished (and) shorn of … roughness’ (p. 609). All who work on medieval monastic reform will be deeply indebted to this collection, but despite the wealth of evidence presented here, it is likely that Robert himself will always remain something of a paradox. The image, from the second Life, of the small boy who when it was raining wanted dry weather, but who when it was dry longed for rain, lingers long in the mind.