This is a major study of the interaction of monastic culture and the warrior aristocracy during 1000–1200, with references to biblical, patristic, and early medieval sources. Katherine Allen Smith uses a wide variety of material—hagiographical Lives, liturgy, Bible, exegesis, treatises, sermons, letters, chronicles, and passions—to illustrate the symbiotic nature of monastic and secular attitudes toward warfare. She argues that the paradigm “those who pray” and “those who fight” is simplistic, since it conceals the lively interplay between the idealized forms and actual practice of both types of armed conflict. While she concentrates on vitae from France, other regions are considered.

The book is structured chronologically. Chapter 1 examines how monks utilized martial themes in scripture, exegesis, and the Divine Office. The idea of the monk as the soldier of Christ after 300 CE was quickly integrated into the very definition of the monastic life. Chapter 2 extends the cultural exchange between the orders of knights and monks to the actual functions of both groups after 950. The monastery itself became a refuge for spiritual warfare. The distinction between men of war and men of peace became less clear. Chapter 3 shows how changes in Europe—new religious and military orders, crusades, new forms of piety, entrance of adult nobles into the cloister, and clerical reforms—transformed the traditional understanding of the monk as a miles Christi. Smith emphasizes the influence of the loricati (warriors in chain mail). Chapters 4 and 5 focus on how monks perceived the converts from the knightly classes, and vice versa. Smith draws from the knightly vitae to explain how the lives and symbols of the secular fighters served to shape monastic life, and how the monks defined themselves in military terms. There is an extensive bibliography but no illustrations. The book is clearly organized, cogently argued, well written, and extensively documented. It is carefully edited, but the use of the comma at the end of a series is not consistent. The “emperor” Henry IV reigned from 1073, not 1050 (45).

Although Smith continues the work of M. Bull, S. Hamilton, E.-D. Hehl, C. Holdsworth, M. Miller, and W. Purkis, her work is no mere summary of these authors. More than these writers she emphasizes the influence of the language and images of those who fight, including all their military paraphernalia (hauberk, helmet, sword, shield, lance, saddle, horse, and bridle), on the development of monastic self-definition after 1000. She avoids such commonplaces as the attempt of monastic writers to “monasticize” the armed pilgrims on crusade. Particularly fascinating is her analysis of how monks attributed spiritual meanings to instruments of war. Monks allegorized the vocabulary of combat, often taken from early medieval desert writings. Jesus and the abbot became prototype soldiers. Very perceptive is her interpretation of the knight who switched callings and retired to the cloister. Paradoxically the making of the knight-conversion was transposed into both a praise of the superiority of the vita monastica, and a tribute to the way of life of the secular soldier. The most provocative chapter, “Warriors as Spiritual Exemplars,” is the treatment how monastic authors used warrior-saints as models for monks. She is acutely sensitive to the specific characteristics of the various kinds of sources she has consulted.

This book is an original contribution, particularly in her work on the twelfth-century vitae. Smith's brilliant volume is easily the best synthesis of knightly monastic culture in any language. She makes valuable suggestions on how both vocations evolved in partial reaction to each other. It is refreshing to see a scholar take the sources at face value, while incorporating the many layers of meaning in them. She is remarkably objective in her handling of texts, which modern historians too often approach condescendingly. Personally I would give more attention to the impact of the crusades and the Carolingian vitae as formative factors in monastic self-identity. My own studies, which the author chose to ignore, attempt to place monastic views on war and peace in a larger historical setting. For Smith, the emergence of a “combat culture” is at the center of twelfth-century Europe. The church on earth was not “militant” for nothing. Indeed, Smith convincingly contends that its counterpart, the church “triumphant” (that is, in battle), was also a mirror of its terrestrial half.

This book is a highly recommended masterpiece, a model of how historians should investigate the cross-cultural contacts between two elites, seemingly opposites, in the High Middle Ages.