This book comprises eighteen chapters, a preface and conclusion presenting a wide-ranging study of the importance of symbolisation in creating identities in the religious life. Its focus is the British Isles placed firmly in a European context. The papers, arising from a German–British interdisciplinary workshop held in 2008, are divided into two main sections. In ‘Fundamentals’, Gert Melville and Jens Röhrkasten set out the theoretical basis for the rest of essays, emphasising the importance of change and mutability. Röhrkasten's treatment of Franciscan ideas of poverty is particularly instrutive in showing the move from practice to symbolic significance. The second section is a series of case studies subdivided into four parts. In ‘Rituals of internal organisation’ Jörg Sonntag, Annette Kehnel and Mirjam Mencei, and Martin Heale explore the rituals of hospitality in Lanfranc's constitutions, movement and self-representation of monastic superiors. Kehnel and Mencei's essay is particularly interesting for the way in which it draws on folklore studies to study the problem of circular movement within the cloister. Ideas of space and practice are underlined in the second section, ‘Symbolism in the use of space, architecture and art’. Julie Kerr considers the spatial aspects of hospitality in showing the Carthusians to be no less hospitable by their own standards than other orders. In essays on the mendicant orders Margit Mersch and Anne Müller emphasise flexibility and the differences in meaning of the cloister in comparison to the older, more enclosed orders. Peter Dänhardt focuses more on the administrative side of the religious life, particularly the role of abbots in the process of construction and manufacture of objects and buildings. In ‘Symbolism in social interaction’, Emilia Jamroziak, Frances Andrews, Andrew Abram and James Clark examine a number of issues including the need to create cohesion through histories designed for internal reading, anxieties about orthodoxy, practices of remembrance in the context of relations with lay supporters, and the contradictions between scholarship and monasticism. The essays in the final section, ‘Symbolic constructions of the past’, focus on the writing of history. There is a good mix of studies focusing on a particular order, for example Julian Luxford on the Carthusians and Michael Robson on the ministry of the Franciscans in York, and those that draw on a wider-range of European examples, especially Antonio Sennis's paper on the role of monasteries as guardians of memory. Both Janet Burton and Karen Stöber discuss the importance of community, partronage, locality and the wider congregation in papers on the Historia fundationis of Byland and Jervaulx and the writing of history respectively. Martian Staub concludes the collection with a restatement of the importance of the topic that, in part, constitutes an agenda for future research. There is a willingness throughout to consider some of the newer approaches to the study of the religious life, particularly the importance of space and movement. A minor criticism is that little attention is given to communities of women – the focus is very much on monks and friars – but as a whole, this is an extremely useful collection of essays for anyone researching religious communities in medieval Europe.