This is a revised English version of a book, originally published in Hungarian, concerning the trial of Augustinian friars from a convent in western Hungary, who were accused of immoral conduct. It constitutes a very welcome addition to the growing literature that spans the late medieval and the early modern period, investigating continuities, and also provides a wonderful combination of microhistorical research with a macrohistorical questioning of the evidence.

In a sense a Hungarian parallel to Peter Linehan's The ladies of Zamora, this book is based on a previously unknown archival source, the records of a trial that the author came across in the Vatican Library in 1998. This source itself is now available to all, as the author also edited the text in a separate publication (The register of a convent controversy [1517–1518]: Pope Leo X, Cardinal Bakócz, the Augustinians, and the observant Franciscans in contest, Budapest–Rome 2006).

The trial investigated whether the Augustinians were rightfully expelled by Cardinal Tamás Bakócz from their friary of Körmend. Bakócz is famed in Hungarian history as a contender for the papal throne, and as the papal legate in charge of an anti-Ottoman crusade who accidentally triggered what is known as the Hungarian Peasant Revolt in 1514. He claimed that in response to local complaints about the scandalous behaviour of the friars, he wanted to reform the convent. He therefore removed the Augustinians, and installed Observant Franciscans in their stead. The Augustinians, however, appealed to the papacy, claiming that they were victims of an unjust rivalry, and were removed at the insistence of the Franciscans. Tamás Bakócz's favourite nephew and heir, Péter Erdődy, was the landlord of Körmend who took it upon himself to defend the installation of the Franciscans.

The papal investigation of the case resulted in the deposition of forty-nine local witnesses, who gave detailed testimonies. The framework for the trial was constructed by a dialogue between the literate elite (judges and notary) and the ordinary laity. The articles were formulated by the representatives of the Franciscans, listing the Augustinians’ transgressions; the case rested on the notoriety of the Augustinian friars’ behaviour. Erdélyi concludes that the judge interfered very little, which on the one hand allowed the witnesses to speak freely, but on the other hand limited the questioning that might have resulted in more information. The notary recorded the testimonies faithfully, as exemplified by the way in which he gave precise details concerning the variety of ways in which witnesses measured time, which correspond to scholarly knowledge of popular practices in the period.

The author analyses the narratives of the witnesses, the different omissions and ways of telling the same story, and also looks at references to personal knowledge and to fama publica. She investigates the story-telling strategies and self-fashioning, mechanisms now well-known from memory studies. She demonstrates that the relationship between the local lay community and the friars had been more ambivalent, oscillating between conflict and solidarity, whereas in the courtroom the depositions painted a picture of a more unanimous rejection of the friars. Many witnesses relate not just their disapproval of the friars’ lifestyle, but also how they had been in the habit of going to the convent to eat, drink and be merry with the Augustinians.

Close reading of the depositions also allows new insights into the lived reality of religion, notably through the reconstruction of the details of lay practices concerning confession and communion, which constituted an integrated experience. Lay reinterpretations of ecclesiastical messages and rituals were also used in community construction. Thus the ritual of Easter communion was used to publicise communal relations of peace or enmity. People who had hostile relations with some of their neighbours went to confession, but refrained from taking the eucharist. This practice was underpinned by popular notions that taking the eucharist unworthily would result in immediate sickness or death.

The local lay community is very much at the centre of this study, and Erdélyi emphasises lay agency in monastic reform. Their religious demands and disappointment in the Augustinians’ liturgical and moral failures were not simply an excuse to remove the friars, but at the heart of the case. Such disappointment, and the lay seeking of more meaningful involvement in religious practices, fostered anti-clerical criticism, and ultimately the Reformation. The author highlights the continuities between late medieval reform and sixteenth-century reformation: lay expectations concerning the clergy did not change.

The trial records show that the local lay population contrasted the moral behaviour of the beneficed clergy with the immoral womanising of the Augustinians, who had various affairs with single women, widows, and even married women. What the laity objected to, however, was not a lack of celibacy, but a lack of stability: the moral counter-example was clerics living in stable relationships with their concubines.

The lay lord was also part of the dynamics that came to determine religious reform. In the short term, lay discontent with the Augustinians prompted his involvement in the removal of the friars. In the longer term, however, his aims diverged from that of the lay community. For the latter, the convent was important both in terms of religious and civic identity. For the lord, however, Körmend itself was not an important centre, and he did not invest financially in restoring the convent buildings, which eventually led to its abandonment.

In the final chapter, the author broadens the scope of the book and offers evidence from mid sixteenth-century visitation records in order to argue that the Protestant Reformation caused no paradigm shift in lay religious activity. The interplay of the landlord's involvement and communal politics determined the running of parish churches. Thus, in the final analysis, Erdélyi provides a model that goes much beyond a simple case study of how religious communities function.