Well, whose expectations? The emperors', of whom the first Christian example, Constantine, had made the bishops judges competent in non-criminal litigation which bypassed the civil courts? Of the aggrieved and the contentious who sought episcopal verdicts with various degrees of eventual satisfaction? Of the bishops themselves who hoped to moderate accurate assessment of responsibility with Christian mercy? These are tricky questions, for what answers could be returned about equivalent expectations of the variety of courts, tribunals, judicial committees and the like currently in operation in the United Kingdom? Moreover, even though Kevin Uhalde draws upon evidence from Latin-speaking Christianity in a wide sweep which transcends the bounds of his title the amount is slender: mostly accounts of cases, canon laws and articulate bishops caught reflecting on their roles. However, though the task the author set himself was impossibly difficult it was worth a try. With seventy-nine pages of notes and bibliography as against 137 of text the reader is amply apprised of the present state of scholarship and also its limitations. The first chapter deals with the legal concept of calumnia, the false accusation that damaged the fabric of social life and which it was hoped, often vainly, that bishops with their imparted spiritual authority and expertise could discern. Whether they were any better at discernment than others and whether they claimed to be is the subject of the next chapter. Chapter iii looks at the problem of oaths as a practical necessity for discernment in a wicked world and so tolerated by Christian judges. The final chapter deals with penance as the Christian's internal application of standards of guilt and recompense in view of the Last Judgement. Interesting and of some importance is the rebuttal of the simplistic assertion by the subject's best known expert, Cyril Vogel, that for this period the idea and the practice of penitence had no significance: maybe not, it seems, in its liturgical manifestation but with sufficient prominence in personal devotion publicly acknowledged. The cases are predictably the most interesting bits of the book and not only because they are usually about sexual misconduct: e.g. Ambrose and Indicia (a proven false accusation in which Ambrose's suffragan, Syagrius of Verona, had made a wrong decision which exposed the lady to wholly unnecessary humiliation) and Augustine's difficulties with a couple of budding clerics who were accusing one another over something undisclosed (Augustine could not discern the truth and packed them off to a sort of trial by ordeal). It is a pity that they are almost all inner-churchly and deal with the offences of the clergy. I take it that nothing much is known about other disputes. The author manages to hold the various issues together with, I judge, moderate success and to furnish a few illuminating insights.