This is a difficult book to review. The main theme is very interesting, clothed in a welter of (needless) anthropological jargon and a maddening misuse of English. The argument is that empty sees, both papal and episcopal, were always likely to be centres of violence. Attempts to intimidate electors, seizure of the goods of the dead and other forms of violence were well known. By 1378 there was a ‘custom’ of long-standing by which the populace and/or servants and even clerics raided the house and goods of newly-elected popes, and also of bishops. In 1378 this spread to sacking the cells of the cardinals after the conclave. Canon laws developed to ease the passage from the death of the pope or bishop to the taking possession by the new incumbent. Therefore, when the cardinals in 1378 claimed that the mob had intimidated them with unprecedented violence, they were wrong; they should have known what to expect. The author tries to show that they did indeed know and that steps had been taken against precisely this form of disturbance. She discusses the meaning of such regular looting, using anthropological tools about violence in transitional (liminal) situations, attempting to explain how, when and why it became ‘ritualised.’ She suggests that, as the populace was shut out of the election process, the behaviour was an attempt to redress the balance and make popular wishes felt and even to seize back some of the wealth of the Church which belonged to all. In the course of the book the author discusses the development of episcopal and papal election procedures and ceremonies, then considers empty sees and associated violence as ‘liminal’ phenomena, then tries to show that the type of looting changed over time, before finally considering the events of the Schism. Though I have always believed that the cardinals' claims about excessive intimidation were untrue, I have problems with Rollo-Koster's argument. Violence may still be utterly intimidating even if it is expected and ‘ritualised’. The opponents of the French cardinals agreed that there was violence but did not think it was frightening enough to ‘intimidate a constant man’. This tells one a great deal about the macho culture of the day. Secondly, fathoming what the mob thought it was doing in any of this is very difficult especially when relying upon such heavily biased accounts. Too much here in all sections is conjecture. But the main problem is the author's style. Reading this book is like wading through thick treacle. Heavy use of anthropological language combines with misuse of English. So we have ‘the general state of liminality the papacy was at that time’ (p. 104); ‘Williman conjunctures’ (p. 159); ‘one can question if this specific practice did not also encumber the frequent translation of papal remains’ (p. 141). There are also enough errors in the Latin to make one uneasy. At the end I doubted whether anthropological theory had helped. The theses are therefore interesting, the learning undoubted but the whole is a very problematic book.