In the period a century or so either side of the year ad 1000, most of Europe not already Christian, that is, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, embraced Christianity. In almost every case this took place through the conversion of the rulers, though this rarely came to a country unprepared and the conversion of a nation consequent upon the conversion of the ruler was not automatic. This volume examines the process of Christianisation and the establishment of a Christian monarchy in the countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Bohemia and Moravia, Poland (with an appendix on Polabia and Pomerania, which mostly warns against drawing parallels), Hungary and Rus'. (Iceland, which embraced Christianity in ad 1000, but never gained a monarch, is an exception briefly discussed in the introduction.) There is a more general chapter on the nature of the transition from paganism to Christianity by Robert Bartlett, and a substantial introduction by the editor, Nora Berend, which draws some conclusions, and would be better read last. The chapter has exactly the same structure – sections on the situation before Christianity, contacts, Christianisation, royal power, the effects of Christianisation and a (usually brief) conclusion. The draft chapters were read by the other contributors and there were workshops, with the hope that the volume should constitute a ‘coherent whole’, as the editor puts it. In fact, except in the introduction, there is little comparison of the different countries and their experience. What the reader finds is a detailed case study of each country, each with a vast bibliography. What the detail reveals is that general patterns – except in the most general terms – are unhelpful; in each case it is the details that are significant. Issues that often loom are in briefer, more general accounts – the example of England's long-standing Christian monarchy, sometimes brought by English missionaries, the influence of Byzantium and its even older concept of Christian empire, the phenomenon of royal martyrdom, Otto iii's grandiose notion of a Christian empire with satellite kingdoms to be established around the millennium – are not irrelevant, but their explanatory power is shown to be quite limited. The importance for the spread of Christianity of trade, largely unchronicled, though glimpsed through archaeological evidence, and the establishment of monasteries, seems much more significant. But throughout, the chapters stress how little we know, how difficult the sources are to interpret, even where they exist, and how easy it is to presuppose that Christianisation was the inevitable future. This volume constitutes an invaluable resource for our understanding of a crucial period in the formation of Europe.