For decades, historians have treated the increasing power of bishops as one of the defining features of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The international contributors to this impressive volume nuance this triumphal picture of episcopal power by examining a number of cases in which bishops were murdered, deposed, defied, undermined, or otherwise threatened.

Methodologically, this volume prioritizes highly detailed textual analyses: even the introduction begins with rich textual case studies before briefly moving onto historiography. The following studies are divided into three thematic sections: threats from other clergy or from pressures created by ecclesiastical structures themselves; threats from secular leaders; and extreme cases in which bishops were killed or exiled. However, each author demonstrates thoroughly that secular, ecclesiastical, and other local pressures often overlapped and indeed that a confluence of factors was necessary for bishops’ lives or authority to be truly endangered.

The editors’ stated goal is a systematic comparison of different regions (12). This volume succeeds in covering much of western Europe, although different articles have rather different scopes (from case studies of individual texts to Cubitt's masterful analysis of 400 years of evidence). The Iberian Peninsula and Gaul/Francia are the focus of the largest number of articles, with articles on Italian, Bavarian, and English-speaking bishops offering comparison and contrasts. Contributors also acknowledge transregional forces influencing bishops (see Winckler's, Vallejo Girvés's, and Cristini's articles, among others). Even so, so many relevant parallels appear across articles – about bishops’ relationships with Arian rulers or with monasteries or with popes – that it is a pity that the authors do not have the chance to engage more with each other's work directly. For example, several articles note bishops navigating threats through their relationship to saints’ cults, whereas others question whether bishops were more protected than other elites. One hopes that Panzram's suggestion of a second volume (11) comes to fruition, given the importance of this volume.