This fine collection of studies, the welcome result of a conference held in Göttingen on 16–17 February 2007, is part of a wider project undertaken by the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, which, following in the footsteps of Paul Fridolin Kehr, studies papal documents and contacts during the early and central Middle Ages (until 1198). The project is currently concerned with the papacy's relations with Europe's eastern and western peripheries and this volume deals mainly with the western half of the Iberian Peninsula during the twelfth century: Maria João Branco provides a lucid and highly convincing analysis of the construction and purpose of the Bragan cartulary the Liber fidei and the cartularies from which it was compiled; Santiago Domínguez Sánchez catalogues twenty papal documents from the cathedral archive of Astorga; Ingo Fleisch rightly emphasises the huge importance of the developing Roman canon law and describes how the ecclesiastical situation of the Peninsula and the particular contentions between Toledo, Braga and Compostela, amongst others, aided its enthusiastic reception; Klaus Herbers urges caution and commonsense when handling the papal letters included as propaganda in the Historia Compostellana and the Liber Sancti Jacobi; Fernando López Alsina demonstrates the heavy reliance of Compostela on papal letters in its successful attempts to acquire metropolitan status in the first decades of the twelfth century; José Luis Martín Martín examines the build-up of the relationship between the papacy and the dioceses of Ávila, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca and Segovia and discusses its effectiveness; and María Josefa Sanz Fuentes argues that in the richly illustrated Liber testamentorum ecclesie ovetensis the early twelfth-century Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo deliberately altered the name of the recipient of two authentic papal letters of John viii (872–82) from Alfonso iii of Asturias (866–910) to Alfonso ii (791–842) (who was considered to have brought the Holy Ark to Oviedo) in order to enhance the prestige of the diocese. Moving away from the west of the Peninsula, one study, by Ludwig Vones, looks at the development of the written word in Catalonia, the impact of Carolingian and post-Carolingian traditions, and the influence of the papacy, with special attention being paid to the careers of Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Pope Sylvester ii (999–1003), and his contemporary Oliba of Vic; Harald Müller looks at the location of papal letters within French cartularies and suggests that examining changes in the positioning of the papal documentation within the cartularies is helpful in examining the changing attitudes of local churches towards Rome; Uta-Renate Blumenthal looks at the fragments which survive of letters from the lost papal registers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the extent to which the registers can be reconstructed on their basis. Here, as elsewhere in this excellent book, we are asked to appreciate the complex and varied reasons for the survival of papal letters, decretals and privileges and the importance of deepening our understanding of the twelfth-century construction and interpretation of reality when attempting an evaluation of the sources.