James T. Palmer goes over familiar ground in a new way. He does not offer a narrative history of the Anglo-Saxon missions to the continent; one must still turn to other studies for the basic details. What Palmer does do, effectively and with considerable learning, is study the hagiography that constitutes the fundamental source for the missions. This is not in itself new. Scholars have used the vitae of Willibrord, Boniface and all the others for a long time to build up their basic pictures of what happened. Palmer's focus is on the vitae themselves, seeing each one as the ‘product of an interpretative act’ (p. 289). Insofar as the vitae lagged behind, sometimes by several decades, the events that they chose to include, the texts function for the historian not only as detailed and more or less reliable accounts of what happened but also as representations of what later people and communities needed to have happened or believed to have happened. Palmer has interesting things to say about authorial intent and community constraint in the creation of saints’ Lives. His book can be read profitably alongside Ian Wood's The missionary life (Harlow 2001).

In a series of thematic chapters Palmer sets the text in various frames so as to contextualise both the missionaries themselves and the people who later wrote about them. For instance, although both Bede and Boniface mentioned converting kindred peoples as a key motivation for the missions, Palmer finds that this impetus was gradually eclipsed by something like the ‘universalis gentium confessio’ limned by Wolfgang Fritze in a 1969 article. The rhetoric of peregrination was more of a topos in hagiography than an actual motivation for the missions. And the Irish, supposedly the great ‘pilgrims for Christ’, were much less influential than is customarily maintained. Whereas the texts often draw tight connections between the missionaries and the Carolingians, the Anglo-Saxons often had close relations with other powerful families such as the Hugobert-Irmina clan, the Hedenen and the Agilolfings. Although the vitae lay varying degrees of stress on mission to pagans, the actual pagans are pretty hard to find and, over time, the missionaries turn out to have been reformers of wayward or poorly formed Christians. This argument is not new with Palmer but he provides a few original insights. A chapter on monasticism shows the diversity of monastic practices in the missionaries' world and then offers a very interesting discussion of how, in the period after Benedict of Aniane and his reforms, the earlier period was reinterpreted as either more Benedictine than it actually was or else sorely in need of Benedictinising. A chapter on connections to Rome shows how various hagiographical traditions took an interest in papal authority. The Frankish world had connections to Rome before the Anglo-Saxons appeared and Rome remained a site of pilgrimage even after it became a locus of ecclesiastical authority. In some places, connections to Rome were simply fabricated. In Bavaria, local traditions asserted, authentically enough, ties to Rome as one strategy in a plan to deny or diminish Bonifatian influences. I could cite other examples but I think that these put Palmer's aims and arguments on display. The book is studded with sparkling observations and new interpretations of familiar texts.

One chapter seems to me to work less well. Palmer attempts to use Hygeburg's Vita Willibaldi as evidence that the much wider world somehow was also a background to the missions. He says that Hygeburg's strange text ‘reveals a complex interaction of ideals relating to sanctity, sacred spaces, devotional practices, and literary forms’ (p. 278). I am not persuaded. What is more, I do not quite get the connection between Hygeburg and Adomnan and his supposed informer.

This is a fine book, one that will give many readers much to think about. It is marred by a good number of misprints and by a few slips. Albert Hauck was Protestant, not Catholic. Willibald might have experienced threats from Arabs but not from Arabic. ‘Ante corpus et confessionem sancti Petri’ does not mean ‘the Chapel of the Confession of St Peter’ (p. 245).