Monographs on Carolingian theology and religious culture are rare and precious things. An earlier generation of Carolingian historiography simply treated religious questions and debates as ancillary to political and dynastic considerations. An era still largely ignored by theologians, there is a continued, unquestioned sense, even among medievalists, that the Carolingians were primitive, blunt instruments and as such, theologically infantile. It remains a brave historian who can work with early medieval liturgical material. At the same time, however, there has been renewed interest recently in the implementation of the Carolingian reform, and particularly in the shadowy figure of Benedict of Aniane. A younger generation of scholars shaped by the work of Peter Brown is reexamining the role and function played by monasteries in Carolingian society.

The recent volume by Renie Choy on intercessory prayer in the Carolingian world both reflects these trends and, in some ways, deliberately sets itself against them. In Choy's view, what makes the Carolingian reform distinctive is the “intersection between the interiority of prayer and the functional world of social relationships” (20), and she sets out to chronicle how Benedict of Aniane, Alcuin, Hildemar, and others shaped patterns of prayer in monastic communities in particular ways that aimed to “renovate” the soul of the monk. In so doing, she puts flesh on the bones of Carolingian monastic culture and religious practice, treating along the way Carolingian Christology, eucharistic theology and intercessory masses, the chanting of the psalter, links of amicitia between monastic communities, prayers for peace on behalf of the ruler, libri memoriali and libri precum, as well as an assessment of Benedict's Concordia Regularum. It is a welcome addition to the scholarship for the variety of sources that Choy draws together and in particular for her expertise with the liturgical material, which is deftly handled.

Choy aims to return a theological dimension to how intercessory prayer has been treated in recent scholarship, which, she argues, has been reductively transactional in its approach, treating prayer like an early medieval cowrie shell circulating between rulers, aristocrats, and monasteries. The “monastic ideal,” she outlines, already contained within it prescriptions for the individual monk's battle against sin, for a monastic identity and kinship network shared between monasteries across the empire, and for the requirement to pray for peace, for the ruler, and for society. She is repeatedly critical of any approach emphasizing prayer's social function or utility (18–19, 134, 161–163, 190) and at times her caricature of this approach felt like a straw man or a deliberate effort to remove political considerations from her portrayal of a timeless “monastic ideal.”

Choy's focus on this “monastic ideal” rather than how it worked out in practice permits her to not have to delve deeply into individual case studies of monastic communities; however, insofar as she is dealing with an ideal, she is often dealing with patristic authors like Tertullian and not the Carolingians themselves. Choy's “monastic ideal” is always presented as a singular, monolithic whole, in contrast to the “Carolingian reforms” of her title, and this strikes me as a weakness in her argument. As Stephen Vanderputten and others have argued, the Benedictine reform was a process and a conversation, sometimes even a conflict, not a foregone conclusion. Which monastic ideal was this? What relationship did Benedict of Aniane have to other Carolingian monastic leaders and how did his framing of the tradition reflect or depart from theirs? How deeply were the ideals of the desert fathers likely to penetrate the walls of your average Eigenkloster? Some discussion, perhaps paralleling Choy's discussions of liturgical practice, of how this ideal was commonly implemented and how it was likely to be resisted within individual monasteries would have been very welcome. For example, she touches very briefly on a subject of interest to Stuart Airlie, David Ganz, Jinty Nelson and others—that aristocratic laywomen and laymen were taking on themselves certain expectations of behavior and practices of prayer imported from monastic life—but she does not discuss where these expectations were coming from or how the pressure to conform to these standards was applied (174). Chapter 5, “Intercession for Rulers,” moves swiftly through a discussion of Merovingian Klosterpolitik via Tertullian to the monastic imperative to pray for peace. There is nothing wrong here, and yet, surely there is more to the complex negotiations between Carolingian rulers and monasteries—not to mention the role of lay abbots—than the generalized prayer for peace. Choy touches very briefly on the fascinating ninth-century document made at Aachen, the Notitia de servitio monasteriorum, which subdivides the services provided by monasteries into the three categories of military service, annual gifts, and prayers: here, prayers are explicitly understood as one kind of service rendered to the kingdom by monasteries, and a valuable one at that (147–148). Moreover, it is, inescapably, a political act and, as such, an act with some social utility. That need not rob it of its theological significance, however.

Choy's Intercessory Prayer remains a very welcome addition to the scholarship. What I feel are weaknesses in the overall shape of the book in part reflect the state of the larger historiography with regard to the Carolingian reform: we are a long way yet from understanding its full theological complexity, the richness of Caroligian monastic culture, and the intimate relationship between Carolingian theology and Carolingian politics.