Since the 1980s there has been a trend (largely amongst British historians) of writing regional studies that seek to make broader historical statements about early medieval Europe. Marios Costambeys's intelligent and lucid account of the abbey of Farfa and monastic patronage is the latest addition to this historiographical tradition. Although Costambeys's focus is on one monastic institution (Farfa) and the region in which it was located (the Sabina), his scope is ambitious as he addresses much broader issues: the dynamics of monastic patronage; the importance of local elites in regional power structures; the impact of Lombard and Carolingian rule; and the extent of papal influence in central Italy during the eighth and ninth centuries. Founded around the beginning of the eighth century in the Sabine hills north of Rome, Farfa provides a good example of the ways in which monastic institutions interacted with secular authorities in the early Middle Ages. Farfa was founded within the Lombard dukedom of Spoleto but on the fringes of Roman-controlled territory. Like Bobbio, Montecassino and other Italian monasteries, Farfa was situated in a frontier zone. Costambeys discusses the geo-political importance of the location of such monasteries, seeing them not necessarily as bulwarks established by kings and dukes in order to control marginal territories, but as places of interaction between different polities. The patronage of monasteries such as Farfa helped rulers to transcend faction and kin in these localities while harnessing fiscal land. Although the dukes of Spoleto were active patrons of Farfa, the monastery was successful in maintaining its independence. It suited all patrons that it remained an autonomous corporate body as the abbey ‘came to be a repository and defender of bundles of local interests, interests that rarely attached to one individual, but were collective, especially when defined in contrast to other groups’ (p. 164). Costambeys downplays the effective power of the dukes of Spoleto and stresses the limits of ducal authority in maintaining control over fiscal land (pp. 90–9). It was only through co-operation with the local elites that the dukes and their officials could wield public power at a local level. Costambeys even suggests that patronising Farfa was one of the ways in which the duke generated approval for his rule among this elite (p. 166). He goes into considerable detail about the intricacies of land ownership and management in the Sabina and the connections between Farfa and local families (chapters v–vi). He highlights the extent and importance of the abbey's monastic recruitment within the Sabina and shows how oblates remained representative of family interests within the monastery (pp. 133–41). In discussing the Frankish origins of most of Farfa's abbots, Costambeys dispels the notion that these men infiltrated the Sabina with Frankish ideas and attitudes or that they acted as religious vanguards of Frankish conquest (pp. 149, 156–8). He also argues that Farfa played a significant role in the Carolingian consolidation of power in central Italy following Charlemagne's conquest of 774. The grants of immunity issued by Charlemagne for Farfa enabled the monastery and the Sabine elites to safeguard their lands from the territorial ambitions of the Roman aristocracy while binding them and the Carolingians more closely together. Moreover, this leads Costambeys to question the robustness of the relationship between the Carolingians and the papacy and the extent to which the papacy sought to create a territorial state in central Italy during this period. He challenges the notion of a papal state at this time, arguing that the Roman aristocracy was the driving force behind Roman territorial ambitions. Central to this argument is the importance of Charlemagne's grants of immunity to Farfa, which appears to contradict papal evidence for Charlemagne's concession of large territories in this region to the papacy (see, for example, pp. 322–30, 351). While some of Costambeys's arguments will provoke debate, this is an important and careful work of scholarship. Costambeys writes in a clear and engaging style while his arguments are based on sound methodological groundwork. His ability to study both the ‘microcosmic’ politics of Farfa and the Sabina and the wider social and political contexts ensures the success of this book.