In 1985 Jacques Dalarun at once established himself as a major authority on the life and career of Robert d'Arbrissel, as well as presenting a significant, and largely convincing, reassessment of the sources, in his L'Impossible Sainteté: la vie retrouvée de Robert d'Arbrissel (v. 1045–1116), fondateur de Fontevraud. This was followed a year later by Robert d'Arbrissel, fondateur de Fontevraud, a more general study of Robert and his world. It is this that has now been elegantly translated by Bruce Venarde, himself a leading scholar on Robert and the monastic life, especially of women, in twelfth-century France: in 2004 he produced his most valuable translation of major texts relating to Robert, to which this work is a worthy companion. Dalarun provides a short preface reflecting on, and slightly modifying, the conclusions of his earlier work, while Venarde's introduction is devoted to the historiography of Fontevraud and its founder. Venarde also provides a bibliography and annotations that are primarily for the benefit of undergraduates, for whom this book offers a valuable and accessible introduction to the strange and many-sided career of Robert and his contexts. But Dalarun is full of insights for all scholars. His Robert is a man born on the margins, political, cultural and also spiritual, as the old order of married clergy, and secular interference, was challenged by a new model of clerical autonomy and independence. He died on the margins, as his body was contested between local lords, religious communities, prelates and, ultimately, between the brothers and nuns of his own community. Yet, as Dalarun makes clear, it is too simplistic to view Robert as a misfit, romantic or otherwise. His relationship with far more ‘mainstream’ clerics and critics such as Marbode of Rennes or Geoffrey of Vendôme was much more nuanced than is commonly argued. Unsettling Robert may have been but he still enjoyed the support of Pope Urban ii. In one respect only something is lacking. Though there is passing mention of other monastic reformers who established communities primarily for women there is little comparison here of the response of such founders as Stephen of Obazine or Gilbert of Sempringham; some contextualisation of Fontevraud within this wider framework of monastic provision for women would have been helpful. Robert's Fontevraud was indeed ‘strange’ and, even if not ‘mad’ (p. 160), it was a world turned upside down, where traditional norms of spiritual authority and hierarchy were transformed into a structure unparalleled in twelfth-century Europe, and one which has continued to resonate to the present day. For Dalarun the key to this world is humility: humilitas was of course a common topos in twelfth-century reforming discourse, but Robert nuanced this to an extraordinary degree, in his life, his death and his foundation. As both Dalarun and Venarde emphasise, there were for contemporaries, and are for modern commentators, many Roberts, many stories, no one truth. The particular image seen through Dalarun's lens is a compelling one.