This Festschrift celebrates the work of a scholar who has made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of medieval monastic history. Following an introduction, the fifteen chapters are grouped in three sections: monastic and religious orders in Britain; religious and laity; and women in the medieval monastic world.

In a first chapter, on Cistercian histories, James Clark demonstrates how after around 1300 abbots and senior obedientiaries increasingly needed to gather the documentation that would record the houses’ histories and claims over their properties. Fortuitously, this also involved accounts of the houses’ patrons and their successors, accounts that might encourage those successors to preserve such documentation after the Dissolution. In his discussion of the role of the prior in the great late medieval English Benedictine houses, Martin Heale speculates on the ways in which the role developed from that of the symbolic loving mother between the children of the community and the father figure of the abbot. By the later Middle Ages, as abbots inevitably became increasingly remote figures, caught up in worldly and administrative affairs, the prior himself tended to become further removed from his flock, possibly enjoying his own residence, household and personal landed endowment. In considering Trinity College, Dublin, ms 97, Colmán Ó Clabaigh makes a case for this heterogeneous collection of devotional, monastic and secular documents having been assembled for reading in chapter as part of the process of inculcating novices into the way of life and expectations of Augustinian canons. The final chapter of part i is a discussion by David Austin of the Strata Florida project that he has led since 1999. He argues that, as re-founded in 1184 for the Cistercians by Rhys ap Gruffydd, the abbey ‘became a centre for an ideology of identity centred on Welsh language, history and culture’. The aim of the current project is to foster appreciation of the abbey and its wider landscape setting, focusing not simply on the heritage aspects but equally on the spiritual, cultural and artistic significance of the site.

Opening part ii, Edel Bhreathnach outlines the tensions confronted by first-generation Irish bishops who were also members of religious orders. In a society where kinship ties were important in securing preferment, those bishops also had to respond to the expectations of their order, while balancing the wishes of the Irish and English kings and of the Anglo-Norman adventurers. Drawing on the combined evidence of the Dissolution inventory and fragmentary – but high quality – sculptural survivals, Michael Carter demonstrates that later medieval Rievaulx was a place of significant artistic and spiritual creativity, while nevertheless remaining true to Cistercian principles. In her study of the last years of the Augustinian priory of Bridlington, Claire Cross itemises the sorry tale of how a thriving community, that was also home to St John of Bridlington, underwent the brutal process of Dissolution. We must at least be thankful that continued parochial use of the nave meant that part of the magnificent church survived. Marsha Dutton, in attempting to understand Aelred of Rievaulx's animosity to Galwegians, as demonstrated in his account of the Battle of the Standard of 1138, reaches the tentative conclusion that they could be seen as the natural enemies of the leaders of both sides in the conflict, towards each of whom Aelred felt loyalty. Philippa Hoskin considers Matthew Paris's strictures on Bishop Robert Grosseteste as a tyrant to the monastic houses of his Lincoln diocese. She demonstrates convincingly that Grosseteste's overwhelming concern was to support and correct the religious under his authority, especially in their pastoral roles. His concerns embraced both the provision of the best monastic heads and the selection of able clergy for the 60 per cent of parishes in his diocese over which the religious exercised patronage. In the final chapter of part ii Andrew Prescott considers the impact of the rising of 1381 on the religious houses, as exemplified by events at the small Norfolk Benedictine abbey of St Benet Holme. On the basis of the insurgents’ systematic destruction of the documents that established the abbey's ownership and prerogatives, he demonstrates the extent to which the onslaught was motivated by resentment at the abbey's oppressive role as a landowner.

Part iii opens with Kim Curran's examination of the sources, methodologies and pitfalls of research into female religious in the British Isles. While stressing the difficulties stemming from the paucity of material, she finds comfort in the increasingly effective application of prosopography, as seen in the ‘Monastic Matrix’ and ‘Who Were the Nuns’ projects. She points to episcopal registers, records of litigation, charter evidence and the documentation of the Dissolution as sources likely to yield further information. Brian Golding discusses the provision of corrodies in nunneries. Originating as one form of alms provision, they frequently became essentially a cash-based transaction that might later be a financial burden. In a final contribution Veronica O'Mara discusses what can be discovered about the sermons preached to houses of nuns in the course of visitations of two bishops of the diocese of Norwich: James Goldwell (1472–99) and Richard Nykke (1501–35). In the absence of detailed specific evidence, however, O'Mara supplements her conclusions with the findings of a previous study of the diocese of Lincoln in the time of Bishop Alnwick.

All too often Festschriften give the impression that some contributors have had to make forays into the attics of their mind to find a topic that might pass muster as fitting within the declared theme. So it is heartening to encounter a Festschrift in which shared affection for the dedicatee, combined with inter-related research interests, has resulted in a volume demonstrating both rich variety and overall thematic homogeneity. It is warmly recommended to all with an interest in monastic history, who will find much that is thought- provoking in its range of contributions.