This book, a translation from the Dutch, originated as a 1981 Amsterdam doctoral thesis and, despite revision over a considerable lapse of time, still retains evidence of this. It is encyclopaedic in nature; replete with multifarious examples elaborated in a plethora of footnotes. It is divided into two major parts: the first entitled ‘The sources of income for cathedral-building in the Middle Ages’; the second, ‘The financing of cathedral-building in the Middle Ages’. This second part is mainly confined to a case study of the building works at Utrecht Cathedral, although it concludes at chapter iv with brief surveys of the financing of cathedral structures ranging widely over Europe from St Peter's, Rome, and Milan in Italy, to Exeter in England, Osnabrück in Germany, Sens, Troyes and Bourges in France, and Toledo and Segovia in Spain, as well as over a period from 1300 to the sixteenth and even the early seventeenth centuries in the case of St Peter's. The text is followed by graphs indicating the rise and fall of income and expenditure for the fabric at Utrecht between 1395 and 1580, and others concerned with similar financial details for the cathedrals discussed in the concluding chapter. One can only admire such a widespread geographical and chronological sweep. Furthermore the book is profusely illustrated with relevant pictures, both in colour and black-and-white, as well as with maps, plans and copies of manuscripts.

The immensity of cathedral structures in the economic and social context of the Middle Ages certainly raises many questions about the provision of resources for their initial construction, and for the continuing management of their fabric. The contributions made by bishops, cathedral chapters, the papacy, by rulers of every degree, civic administrations and the public at large are minutely investigated. Some of these can be classed as regular, particularly those of the cathedral chapters, others such as targeted collections or specific indulgences, as exceptional. The various sources of income, for example that from the exhibition of relics, indulgences, bequests, confraternities and the appropriation of benefices, as well as their relative effectiveness, is examined by taking examples from an extremely wide field. Naturally enough, as the introduction acknowledges, this does not make for easy reading.

The specific study of Utrecht Cathedral, while necessarily somewhat repetitive, serves to draw together the elements discussed separately in the first section into a coherent picture, as do the lesser studies which follow. At the same time individual cathedrals illustrate the varying methods and emphases which can be discovered. Altogether the book is an impressive work of scholarship, dependent upon a wide-ranging study both of archival material and printed sources. It probes areas which to the present writer's knowledge have never before been so widely or thoroughly examined. Much of the discussion also serves to illustrate the corresponding economic problems encountered in maintaining the fabric of collegiate and parish churches. One element which is perhaps not adequately examined is the difference which was experienced in the raising of funds by monastic and secular cathedral chapters.

With the English text there are numerous problems. Latin quotations, even the shortest ones, are translated. One would expect the reader of such a prodigious work of medieval scholarship to be acquainted with basic Latin. Even so some of these translations are questionable: for example. ‘de bonis nostris’ is laboriously rendered ‘from [the income from] our estate’ (p. 118). ‘In an episcopal or capitular mensae’ (p. 141) is an elementary error, while at p. 100 (left hand margin) ‘Eice’ should read ‘Ecce’, and at p. 228 (fourth line from base) ‘karene’ is not a recognisable medieval Latin word, and ‘somma’ should surely read ‘summa’ or be followed by sic. Incongruously quotations in other languages, whether Dutch, French or Spanish, are left in the original.

Technical phrases are somewhat confused. Priests did not ‘read the mass’ (for example pp. 215, 218, 221, 223), they celebrated it, and clearly, as instanced on p. 223, ‘read’ is used as a translation of the verb ‘celebrare’. ‘Commutation’ (p. 89) is a technical term for exchanging benefices. When it is a case of an incorporation of a benefice (pp. 140–1) into another body (‘ad usus proprios’), for instance to a cathedral, it is termed ‘appropriation’. The ‘parish synod’ of p. 259 seems to be a decanal chapter. At p. 102 the text should run on at lines 20/21 ‘bold letters’. ‘Worship’ of relics (p. 162), rather than veneration, would be idolatrous. There are numerous phrases which require correction: ‘due them’ should read ‘due to them’ (for example pp. 149–50, 234). ‘Church province’ would read better as ‘ecclesiastical province’, ‘chapter dean’ as ‘dean of a (cathedral?) chapter’. ‘Its suffices’ is an error for ‘it suffices’. The ‘deputize’ of p. 67 should be ‘depute’, and ‘afoul of canon law’ (p. 384) ‘foul of canon law’. Although task can be a verb, ‘given the task of’ is to be preferred to ‘tasked with’ (pp. 221, 306), while ‘diverted away from’ merely requires ‘diverted from’; ‘provisions on a confraternity’ (p. 223) does not seem to make sense. ‘Drontheim’ (p. 154) is an alternative for the more usual Trondheim (Norway).

Despite these imperfections, and there are others, the book will be very welcome to scholars for the author's masterful survey of an under-researched subject.