“Nothing can surpass the monotony of these erudite treaties on the Procession of the Holy Ghost, of these dialogues and contradictory debates, which repeat over and over again the same arguments and appeal continually to the same authorities” (J. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom [University of Chicago Press, 1974], 184).

Let this sentiment, uttered by the early twentieth-century French Byzantinist Louis Bréhier, be the warning label attached to this book! This is most certainly a book for scholars who remain undaunted by the specter of arcane and long-running religious disputes. Alessandra Bucossi and Anna Calia's edited collection, Contra Latinos et Adversus Graecos: The Separation between Rome and Constantinople from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century, is a massive tome. It runs for 586 pages and has a total of thirteen English-language papers, nine Italian ones, and two French contributions. As with many books of this genre, these papers came out of a scholarly conference, also entitled Contra Latinos et Adversus Graecos, which was held in Venice in 2016.

It goes without saying that unless you are reviewing this book for an academic journal, almost no one will ever read this book cover to cover, and, in all honesty, few if any scholars should actually buy this book. This is a book that is meant to sit on the shelves of a research university's library waiting for a scholar to utilize one or two of the articles contained therein. However, that does not mean the individual contributions are not valuable—some are excellent—and should send scholars to their interlibrary loan office to request a copy.

This book is arranged chronologically, and almost every significant moment of conflict between East and West is covered here, although the bulk of the work is focused on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. None of the major watershed moments (e.g., the Photian Schism or the Schism of 1054) get more than an article or two. The event that gets the most attention is the Council of Ferrara-Florence, which is the subject of three articles near the end of the volume. Instead, the overwhelming focus of the volume is on individual letters or treatises, or collections of such treatises, and what these documents say about different aspects of the Greco-Latin relationship.

By my count, all but four articles in this collection can be characterized as the study of a specific text or treatise. However, these four are some of the strongest in the collection, and I will mention each briefly. The book begins with an excellent analytical essay which tries to systematize the ecclesiastical struggle between Rome and Constantinople. A. Edward Siecienski's “Byzantium and the Papacy from the Fifth to Fifteenth Centuries: The Three-Stage Response” divides up the millennium of struggle into first a contextual response running from the fifth to eighth centuries, an era of jurisdictional disputes in the ninth through eleventh centuries (highlighted by the Photian Schism), and finally a period he calls the rejection of the Roman Primacy by Byzantium from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, a move which he argues is accelerated by the crusades. Overall, it is perhaps the most approachable article in the collection, and I would recommend it to a student who could use it to get a handle on the topic. The next is Giulio Maspero's “La processione dello Spirito Santo da Origene a Gregorio Nazianzo: la tensione ermeneutica nella discussione sul Filioque,” which proves to be a useful reference for the rest of the work. The third is Chris Schabel's “Why was the Filioque Formula Changed at the Second Council of Lyon (1274),” which explores whether it was Greek opposition or inter-Latin disputes that resulted in the change, ultimately concluding that the evidence cannot prove whether it was either or (more likely) both that led to the change. Finally, near the end of the volume is Alexander Alexakis's “Patristic Texts and the Council of Ferrara-Florence,” which looks at several works under dispute there and paints a picture of unprepared negotiators and flawed patristic manuscripts as a problem for both sides.

As mentioned before, the remaining texts are all examinations of specific texts or collections. If there is a common theme to these texts, however, it is the very topic which so frustrated Bréhier a century ago—the Procession of the Holy Spirit with the endless debates on the filioque clause. Thus, that topic appears in virtually every article in this collection and is the central subject of at least ten of the articles. If you are a scholar interested in that question, this book is most certainly worth a trip to the library. In contrast, there is only one article focused on papal primacy, Nicola Naccari's “Esportare le riforme. Primato papale ed ecclesiologia nei rapporti con la Chiesa greca tra XI e XII secolo,” and the only other specific theological debate to get a whole chapter is the doctrine of Purgatory in Raffaele Guerra's “Il Giudizio che viene. Antropologia ilemorfica e attesa escatologica nelle refutazioni del Purgatorio di Marco Eugenico al Concilio di Ferrara Firenze.”

With the remainder of this brief review, I want to cast attention on several subjects that get extended coverage across multiple articles. There are a pair of articles, both in Italian, by Pietro Podolak and Anna Zago that focus on the writings of Ugo Eteriano (Lat. Etherianus), a Latin advisor at the court of Manuel Comnenus. Another pair of articles looks at the negotiations between the Franciscans and the exiled Byzantine patriarch at Nicaea in 1230 from contrasting angles. While Michel Stavrou's “Nicéphore Blemmydès en dialogue théologique avec les Latins (1234-1250)” is a strong piece, Jeff Brubaker's “The Diplomacy of Theological Debate: The Friars’ Report of the Disputatio of 1234” is my personal favorite article in the entire collection; it is well written, charming, approachable, and the source of the quote with which I began the review.

Thus, my final recommendation is this: if you are a scholar interested in the filioque debate, have your librarian order a copy of this book. Otherwise, do a quick scan of the table of contents on the publisher's website to see if any article catches your fancy.