Including M. C. E. Chambers in the nineteenth century and Henriette Peters and Margaret Mary Littlehales in the last decades, many authors have produced biographies of Mary Ward. The late Immolata Wetter's work, however, fills a significant gap in the detail of the life of the founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary – the years of her investigation and monitoring by the inquisition. The bulk of documents on this period of Ward's life were not available to scholars until the opening of the archives of the inquisition in 1998. After a brief introduction detailing Mary Ward's early years and influences, Wetter continues where Fr Joseph Grisar's narrative, Maria Wards Institut, ends, in 1630 after the suppression of Ward's Institute and immediately prior to her imprisonment. She details the investigations and surveillance of Ward and her companions until Ward's return to England in 1637. In this short text, Wetter's intent was to narrate the events of Ward's life by summarising the documents of the inquisition. Within this scope, Wetter accomplished what she intended and understandably raises more questions than she answers. Wetter imputes Ward's trouble with the inquisition to two factors: her ignorance of the Roman Curia's politics and protocols that led her to misinterpret events relating to the suppression of the Institute, and the rash, undiplomatic words and actions of one of Ward's closest companions that made it seem that Ward and others intended to resist the suppression and, hence, papal authority. Wetter generally depicts the inquisition's treatment of Ward and her followers during hearings and examinations as methodical, even-handed and unexceptional. In addition to the narrative framework, the text includes translations of transcripts of inquisitors' findings, testimony from Ward and her companions, and some of Ward's correspondence with Pope Urban viii that may be useful to the many scholars currently pursuing revisionist works on English Catholicism. This material will perhaps inspire future scholars to place Ward more fully into the history of Catholicism and gender in the Reformation era. More specifically, the information on Ward's Institute would be useful to scholars studying the enforcement of enclosure of women religious following the Council of Trent and the institutional history of new orders and their place within canon law. Wetter portrays Ward as a pioneer in envisioning the valuable contributions women religious could make outside the cloister. Although many women's orders already existed, Wetter describes Ward as unique in her goal for an international, self-governing, mobile body of women in service to the Church. Wetter, former general superior of the IBVM, insists that Ward was never declared a heretic nor threatened with a heresy trial ‘despite what has been carelessly said in some earlier books’ (pp. 65–6). Ward was, however, questioned by the inquisition and watched for many years. Wetter argues that this stigma tarnished Ward's reputation for centuries, affecting the level of acceptance achieved by the ‘new’ Institute that was formed from the remnants of the Ward's original and which was not allowed to recognise Ward as its founder until her rehabilitation in 1909. Wetter's works seems intended to eliminate this stigma once and for all.