This monumental, exceptionally well-documented work differs from earlier studies on church reform in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries in that the author focuses on a single region, the Loire valley, and on the tangible changes which occurred during the papacies of Urban ii (1088–99) and his immediate successors – rather than on the reformating impulses of pope Gregory vii (1073–85). In limiting the regional scope of his study Foulon follows the lead of his mentor Pierre Toubert, who described the economic, social, religious and public structures in Latium in his voluminous Les Structures du Latium médieval: le Latium méridional et la Sabine du IXe siècle à la fin du XIIe siècle. Foulon was not the first to concentrate his attention on the Loire valley in this period, but he was the first to deal with the entire region in detail rather than with a single bishopric or county.

Foulon is particularly attentive to detail and adverse to undifferentiated statements. Rather than attributing all reform efforts to those few prominent actors known to us, he attempts to show that the formulation and realisation of reform in this region was due in large part to those individuals who incarnated locally, in an original and particular way, the desire for such reform. In order to approach such persons, whose individual biographies may not be traceable in surviving documents, he makes repeated use of prosopographical methods.

Urban ii, according to Foulon, considered the Loire Valley ripe for the extension of papal authority and the realisation of his own vision of the Church as ‘catholica, casta et libera’. Under the expression ‘catholica’ Urban understood the unity of the Church and papal primacy, under ‘casta’ a clear separation of laity and clergy (not merely sexual abstinence) and under ‘libera’ freedom from outside intervention. He found the Loire valley particularly promising because the post-Carolingian policy – according to which reform was to be enforced by anointed secular rulers and bishops working closely together – was no longer functioning, and there existed in the late eleventh century no one dominant and unifying political structure which could resist the changes that he intended to make. A further factor was that almost all attempts at reform that been made since 1060 had been stopped by the resistance of the feudal nobility – to which most bishops belonged. Finally, the region contained a host of well-educated clerics convinced of the necessity of reform. The presence of all these factors helps to explain why Urban devoted a quarter of the time he spent on his winding voyage through France in 1095/6 to a tour of the Loire valley.

Foulon uses his introduction to describe the individual character of each of the regions through which the convoy passed on this documented voyage. Urban had planned the itinerary carefully and he avoided regions where he had no influence and made longer stops where he intended to make or reactivate contacts. The most important of these contacts were those with Ivo of Chartres, Geoffroy of Vendôme and Hildebert of Mans. Each of these men has been treated separately elsewhere. Foulon returns repeatedly to them in his book, but the emphasis in the introduction is on the importance of their communication networks. Foulon provides (p. 313) a table of their correspondence and (pp. 612–32) tables of the letters of Ivo of Chartres distinguishing those which were sent to Rome and secular clergy from those sent to regular clergy or laymen.

It is not possible to do justice here to the richness and diversity of the material in the main text. This review will be limited to a presentation of the structure of the work. The main text is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Les Pays de la Loire: le milieu régional et les hommes’, analyses the situation in the Loire valley before 1096. Foulon describes the prevalence in France in the first half of the eleventh century of the Cyprianic belief in an episcopal collegiality with the same apostolic potestas as the bishop of Rome. He distinguishes this from the situation in the second half of the century when papal interventions and appeals to Rome began to increase. Foulon describes the attempts of bishops to reorganise the lives of the secular clergy and the canons in cathedral chapters and the lives in the monasteries. He provides (p. 70) a table in which the observances of reformed monasteries are listed and in which their founders are identified as secular rulers or bishops. Another table (p. 81) provides (in the context of monastic empires) a map showing the distribution of the priories of the abbey of Marmoutier. Foulon then presents a prosopography of the most prominent reformers, paying special attention to their lineage (which often enough had an influence on their attitude toward certain aspects of reform), and he describes the cultural renaissance in monasteries and cathedral schools.

The second part, ‘La Réforme pontificale dans l'espace ligérien: des faits’, deals with the normalisation of the Roman presence during the papacies of Urban and his immediate successors. Foulon mentions the increase in papal exemptions and the empowerment of papal legates with the concrete application of conciliar decrees. He notes the use by the pope of tacit compromise and moderation rather than open conflict with secular rulers. The subjects dealt with in this part of the book are often dealt with elsewhere, only here they are dealt with in more detail.

The third part, ‘Ecclésiologie et sensibilités réformatrices: des idées’, is truly unusual in works of this kind. Foulon helps the secular reader to see that the conflicts between the papacy and bishops and those between the papacy and secular rulers were not primarily struggles for political power. Nor were simony and nepotism thought to be merely cases of corruption in the modern sense. At the root of the reform movement was a deeply felt belief than every form of secularisation meant a rupture in the tie between Christ and the Church. The hands that touched the sacrament of the altar could not be part of the gesture of submission in the feudal context. Foulon points to a new attitude toward royalty. The role of the king is now to serve the Church. Foulon also points to changes in the attitude toward the afterlife and the intervention of the saints, and he uses the writings of Ivo of Chartres, Geoffroy of Vendôme and Hildebert of Mans as evidence. The book ends with a useful list of the sources used and an index of persons and places.