To date, there has not been a detailed study of how priests in England in the later Middle Ages provided for the pastoral care for their parishioners, either male or female, that illustrates how priests responded to specific needs of their parishioners and whether or not these needs were being met adequately. What Barr provides is a more in-depth picture of the role of the parish priest in caring for the needs of female parishioners in late medieval England. This study intends to be comprehensive, as Barr explores pastoral literature such as sermons, exempla, and handbooks, with special attention drawn to the works of John Mirk.

The work is introduced by an overview where Barr raises significant questions about the role of the priest and the challenges met while trying to meet the needs of women. The use of sermons and literature in this piece points toward how priests viewed women, challenges of pastoral care, and how the literature included or excluded women. Chapter 1 provides us with a look at the critical role vernacular sermons, compendiums, and pastoral care handbooks played in the educating and training of clerics. Priests on the whole learned from experience “in the field”; formal training was not needed, as texts were in the vernacular, not Latin (26–27). Vernacular literature was the most accessible, and John Mirk, an Augustinian prior from Lilleshall Abbey, was one of the influential of writers of pastoral care literature in this period.

Chapter 2 highlights pastoral literature and the gendered language used in sermons—in particular, pastoral care handbooks. Barr argues that clerical writers recognized their responsibilities to teach, preach, and care for women and provides examples from John Mirk's Festial and his use of gender-inclusive language. The examples provided show that pastoral literature includes women when discussing sacraments and encouraging parishioners to attend church—places where the priests may have felt that women had more influence. The pastoral perceptions of women are emphasized in chapter 3, where Barr addresses such issues as whether or not the attitude of clerical writers toward women in their texts saw women realistically, for example, as single women or widows, or as they were imagined. By drawing on the evidence, Barr concludes that women were regarded positively and realistically. Priests recognized the life cycles and stages of women and their special needs, but there was a “limited ability of clerics to perceive women outside of their dependence on men and their portrayal as sexually dangerous” (62).

Chapter 4 shows how priests exercised special caution in caring for women, as women were often “prone to conceal sins, circumvent clerical authority and doubt sacerdotal power” (119). However, even if priests were cautioned about women, they recognized that they had a responsibility for their female parishioners and changed their sermons to reflect this. The concluding chapter draws all the themes of the work together, showing that priests were committed to providing for the needs of women, on the one hand, but they approached women cautiously (122); this is followed by two appendices: a unified list of Festial manuscripts and the exempla that appear in the full text of Mirk's Festial sermons.

Barr's understanding of the pastoral literature and sermons of later medieval England must be commended. This piece is weighty in providing examples from John Mirk, in particular, and endeavors to give the reader a sense of how priests dealt with women through sermons and practice. What is missing from this study is a sense of whether or not the demands of women were really being met and if the inclusive language had an impact on them. For example, do we see more women participating in church activities because of the language used in sermons? We know of Marjory Kemp, but were there other women who wrote about their experiences with priests and the church? This reader wanted to know if there were more women like Margery Kemp where difficulties arose in dealing with their needs. Another area not raised in this piece was whether or not the parish priest was meeting the needs of other unique women—those of nuns. There is no mention of how these women and their needs may or may not have been met, as they were excluded from this piece altogether. These two points, however, are very minor. This study just touches the surface of the subject and reinforces the need for further study on the roles of priests in the Middle Ages.