This collection contains an introduction and twelve articles in English and French focusing on Cistercians and regular canons from twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, with seven articles focusing on Cistercians, three on regular canons, and two on both. The geographic area covered by the articles includes Britain, Scandinavia, and northern France, especially Normandy and Brittany. The collection as a whole and some of the individual articles are multidisciplinary and the topics are various.

Bernard Ardura makes the argument that both Cistercians and Premonstratensians had an imagery of reconstructing Jerusalem, but that the Cistercians sought to emulate the heavenly Jerusalem while the Premonstratensians focused their aims on the earthly one. Ralf Lützelschwab explores Aelred’s handful of sermons to synods and argues that his harsh criticism of secular clerics for their vices shows he was not always as indulgent and lenient a figure as he is depicted. This may well be true, but based on my own reading of synodal sermons, I suspect genre expectations may also be in play, for harsh criticism of the kind of clerics who would make up the majority of the audience is surprisingly common, including in sermons written by members of the secular clergy. After all, one of the duties of synodal preachers was clearly to correct their listeners.

Emilia Jamroziak, in an article on the veneration of saints at English Cistercian houses, suggests that as part of the myth of the Cistercian golden age, scholars not only stressed artistic simplicity but also downplayed the cult of saints among the Cistercians. The English evidence for cults at Cistercian houses is weak, but Jamroziak shows how the central records of the Cistercian order contain valuable information to compensate for this, particularly with requests for permission to venerate saints and individual houses. Her analysis shows that cults were very much part of Cistercian worship from an early period and reveals that Cistercian houses often venerated saints with local, regional, or national connections, thus developing deeper ties with the societies in which they lived.

Janet Burton provides an overview of the early history of the Cistercians in Wales, and, in the process, revises the early history of specific houses. She also sheds light on the relations of these houses with Anglo-Norman and indigenous Welsh aristocrats and rulers. Kersti Markus provides a similar overview for Cistercians in Scandinavia. Among other things, she further undermines the idea that Cistercians generally settled in the wilderness, isolated from society. She also discusses the impact of Cistercian architecture on parish churches and describes the economic contributions of the new order. Christophe Mauduit’s article explores why the Cistercians initially lagged the Premonstratensians in founding houses in Normandy, arguing that the preferences of specific bishops were involved. He also contributes to the refutation of the old idea of a crisis of cenobitism in the twelfth century.

Claude Lucette Evans, one of the editors of the volume, studies the ability of the Premonstratensian house of Beauport in Brittany to successfully make appointments to the churches belonging to it in Brittany and in England. She finds that appointments were more likely to be contested in Brittany, often by bishops. She suggests that bishops may have had more success challenging appointments in Brittany because of ties with the local aristocracy and conflict with abbots who were often from Normandy. Drawing on a document of Innocent III she also suggests that in the two trilingual societies (using Latin, French, and either Breton or English) there may have been prejudice against Breton- and English-speaking clerics.

Jean-Baptiste Vincent outlines an ambitious program to study a whole range of factors in the implantation of the Cistercians in Normandy. The program would involve every type of source available, including documents, surviving buildings or remains, sites of monasteries, and the local terrain, to determine how and why houses were laid out where and how they were. Julie Colaye-Rabiant, also using various types of sources, studies the building history of the many priories of Saint-Victor in the Paris region, describing what remains of them and covering the period from their founding through an efflorescence of building in the thirteenth century, problems of neglect and destruction during the crisis years of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and recovery in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yves Gallet discusses three surviving Cistercian churches in Brittany, noting the conservatism of the architecture in their eastern ends but also arguing that the churches adapted up-to-date practices in other respects. On this basis, he argues that choice, not poverty or isolation, led to the more conservative aspects of their architecture.

One of the ongoing debates in the study of church architecture in Britain is whether the Cistercians were, as some scholars have argued, key pioneers in the introduction of Gothic to the island, particularly in northern England and Scotland. Malcolm Thurlby’s contribution is a systematic comparison of many Cistercian and other churches from the period when Gothic arrived. Overall, he downplays the role of Cistercians as pioneers but does suggest that in some regions, particularly the west, their churches did play a role. Harriet Sonne de Torrens returns to Beauport Abbey in Brittany, in this case to study two Flemish panels in a composite triptych put together in the nineteenth century. She makes a strong case that these Flemish panels came from the workshop associated with the noted painter, Hans Memling.

Even by the standards of collected essays, this is a disparate collection, and it is hard to pinpoint a precise audience that would be interested in the volume as a whole, beyond those readers broadly concerned with medieval monastic life. But there are some very good articles in the collection, and I hope my brief overview of their subjects will provide a guide for scholars interested in what they have to offer. Overall, the collection makes an important contribution to the study of Cistercians and regular canons in the Middle Ages.