This volume consists of a collection of twenty-one papers read at an international conference held in Clairvaux in 2009. In addition to the contributors from French academic institutions there are two papers from American scholars and one paper each from scholars of Australian, Belgian, Dutch, English, Italian and Spanish universities. As the setting for a conference on the subject of enclosure or enfermement, Clairvaux was uniquely apt since its Cistercian abbey was, for seven centuries, the home of a community of monks who had chosen to live there in claustral seclusion, but in 1808 it was transformed for use as a prison. The theme of enclosure which, for these papers, extends in time from the sixth to the eighteenth century, provides scope for a broad range of approaches and interpretations. Various aspects of enclosure are discussed within the framework of three divergent but complementary viewpoints beginning with the basic concept of confinement and the values attached to it. Secondly, attention is drawn to the practical details of communal living in an enclosed environment and, thirdly, the underlying aims and consequent implementation of enclosure and the effect on those who experienced it in its several forms. There is an introductory essay written by three of the contributors which offers a preliminary clarification necessitated by the recurring use of the terms cloister (‘claustrum’) and prison (‘carcer’) interpreted in different senses, some of them contradictory: as the papers demonstrate, for some individuals the cloister was seen as a prison while for others the reverse was true. The fundamental difference, however, is that the monk has chosen his way of life, but the prisoner has had his forced upon him.

The first section of six papers explores the raisons d’être of enclosure. In the sixth century, for example, Julia Hillner finds that secular and ecclesiastical rulers made use of confinement in monasteries both as a form of penance and as a punishment for infractions of the ecclesiastical and civil codes of law. Megan Cassidy-Welch explores the connection between imprisonment and sanctity as seen through hagiographical writings. The unsuccessful attempt of Boniface viii's decretal Periculoso of 1298 to enforce strict enclosure on all female religious is discussed by Elizabeth Makowski, while Daniel-Odon Hurel draws attention to the concern of the Maurist Mabillon in his Réflexions sur les prisons monastiques of c. 1695, which exposes the problem of devising a penitential regime to restore the monastic culprit's mental and spiritual health without destroying his faith by excessive physical punishment. The practical details of the custodial procedures and the conditions of day-to-day life within the walls of cloister and prison are compared and contrasted in the second group of papers which begins with an account of the role of early medieval Spanish hospices as a potentially harmful link between the cloister and the outside world. The author, Gregoria Cavero Dominguez, goes on to describe the problem inside the walls, that of the difficulty of preventing the monastic community from being infected by the discordant behaviour of some of its members. This is followed by Élisabeth Lusset's paper on the measures developed to discipline unruly monks and canons through legislation introduced by religious orders and in effect by the early thirteenth century since the construction of prisons within monastic enclosures is prescribed in the custumals of around this date. The paper by Romain Telliez presents graphic details of the variations in the conditions under which criminals, both men and women, were imprisoned in municipal jails as well as in the Châtelet in Paris. The Conciergerie, the prison under the control of the parlement of Paris, is the subject of the paper by Camille Dégez, whose research has shown that in the first half of the seventeenth century the living standards of the prisoners there depended on their ability to pay for food and other basic needs. The final group of papers includes three devoted to cloistered women. Anna Benvenuti begins by concentrating her attention on female reclusion in medieval Italy and moves on to investigate the later development in that country of small communities of religious women actively engaged in charitable work among their neighbours. In the early Middle Ages the convent was often regarded as a sanctuary for vulnerable young women from noble families but, as Sylvie Joye makes clear, there was considerable variety in the motives pointing to enclosure and in the ways in which it was lived out. In fact, the opposing tensions, which came to the fore in the wake of the Council of Trent, according to Marie-Élisabeth Henneau, were referred to in colourful images that run the gamut from heaven to hell. The organisers of this conference, together with the editors of the proceedings in this volume, are to be commended for the originality of the theme which suggests new and fruitful lines of research brought to our attention through the scholarly expertise of the participants. The reader is also grateful for the eight pages of coloured plates of the abbey of Clairvaux illustrating its transition from monastery to prison, for the inclusion of two indices, and for abstracts in both English and French of all the papers. Some statements occurring in individual papers may be challenged by other specialists in the same field, but these do not amount to more than minor complaints. The main criticism of a volume such as this lies in its broad compass, with a resulting comprehensiveness that weakens its impact on the reader; but this may be more of a problem for a reviewer than for a reader whose interest is confined to two or three papers.