Peter, the central figure of this impressive and learned study, was a prince of the royal family of Georgia (Iberia) who spent most of his youth as a hostage (not, of course, in the modern sense) at the imperial court of Theodosius ii in Constantinople, but subsequently, based in a monastery near Gaza, he became one of the main figures of opposition in Palestine to the Council of Chalcedon. After two initial chapters on the sources (abundant and in many languages), and on the life and career of Peter (he died in 491), the rest of the book considers his role from three different perspectives, each set against the wider backdrop of his times: his authority as an ascetic and how asceticism served as a locus of authority; his life as a pilgrim and ‘stranger’, and the tensions for this that resulted from the fact that Jerusalem and the Holy Places were under the control of adherents of the Council of Chalcedon; and the significance of the cross in anti-Chalcedonian ideology. Sensitive to the complex theological issues of the time, Horn has produced a very worthwhile and illuminating study of the anti-Chalcedonian strand of Palestinian monasticism, although it still remains obscure how and why pro-Chalcedonian monasticism was able to emerge as the dominant force with apparently so little opposition towards the end of the fifth century. It so happens that, after many years of neglect among scholars, the rich and turbulent monastic history of Palestine in general, and of the Gaza area in particular, in the fifth and sixth centuries has been the subject of a number of important recent studies, by Bitton-Ashkelony, Flusin, Hevelone-Harper, Hombergen, Kofsky, Perrone, Steppa and others. Horn's book, however, is the first to study in detail the part played by Peter the Iberian in this context. It is exceptionally well documented throughout and it is likely that it will long serve as the most reliable and authoritative account of his life and milieu. An appendix provides a helpful chronology of people and events; there is an extensive bibliography (nearly 70 pp.) and a detailed general index. It might also be noted that the author, together with Robert Phenix, has re-edited, and translated into English for the first time, the long and detailed Syriac Life of Peter; this is due to be published shortly.