In medieval Latin the word passio has a wide variety of meanings. In its broadest sense it corresponds to the Aristotelian category of pathein: it covers everything that happens to one, as opposed to what one does. In this use, the movement of one billiard ball by another is a form of passio. When applied to humans, the word has a more specific use to refer to the passiones animae, the passions of the soul such as joy, love, hope and fear. More specifically, passio may refer to human suffering, and most specifically to the Passion of Christ. The subject matter of this monograph therefore presents a linguistic minefield, which the author navigates with only partial success. To translate passio regularly as ‘suffering’ often gives a text a lugubrious aspect which it did not necessarily bear in the original. None the less the topic provides a framework for the discussion of a number of issues that were of great interest during the golden age of Parisian scholasticism. How was it possible for the Son of God incarnate to suffer pain? What were the punishments handed out to Adam and Eve at the fall? What is the redemptive value of pain for the individual sinner? What kinds of pain can a disembodied soul suffer? What is the nature of the punishment inflicted on the souls of infants who die unbaptised? After the resurrection, how can the bodies of the damned be tormented by fire without being consumed? Donald Mowbray presents an impressive array of texts on these topics, drawn from the writings not only of famous masters like Albert, Aquinas, Bonaventure and pseudo-Alexander, but also from a number of lesser known masters such as Matthew of Acquasparta and Ranulph of Homblières. He writes non-judgementally, not offering to tell us whether the teachings of these masters are true or false, nor even whether they could be put forward with a straight face by a preacher in a twenty-first-century pulpit. He tells us that the book is the result of an investigation going back fifteen years, but most of the research appears to have been carried out early on in the period. In the very copious bibliography of secondary sources I could find only half a dozen references to works published in the present century. None the less, the winds of fashion do blow from time to time – as when in a chapter entitled ‘Gendering pain’ the author seems to suggest that the difference between the bodies of males and females was a scholastic fiction rather than a fact of nature.