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chapter (6) to the most famous patron of female Cistercians in France, Blanche of Castile. Blanche founded two nunneries, namely Maubuisson (1236) and Lys (1248), both of which went on to be very successful. The remaining two chapters then take a closer economic look at Saint-Antoine-des-Champs, one of the “most successful houses of Cistercian nuns in the ecclesiastical province of Sens” (150) and nunneries in Champagne. The nuns of Saint-Antoine were well educated and, as in the other cases, their community was wealthy enough to sustain 120 nuns (188), an impressive number for the time. Part 3 consists of only one short chapter of twelve pages and three appendices. The former compares the economics of Cistercian nunneries with those of Fontevraud and the Paraclete. “Overall, the comparison . . . suggests little differences” as “Cistercian nuns managed their properties inways thatwere not so different from those of earlier communities of nuns” (231). Berman’s knowledgeable discussion of nunneries as economic entities with strong ties to the world is without a doubt the great strength of the study. Establishing these institutions as independent and their nuns as versed and expert managers stands in sharp contrast to the marginalizing and misogynistic image portrayed by twelfthand thirteenth-century Cistercian narratives. However, some of Berman’s more general observations are less novel than the author seems to suggest. Female patrons of high and even late medieval nunneries were commonplace in Europe, within and without the Cistercian order, and many of these women acted independently frommale control. Nor is the notion of nuns and abbesses as able managers of a diverse portfolio of assets per se new. Rather, this idea has been a staple in European scholarship on medieval monasticism, which has a tradition of emphasizing administrative sources over narratives; see, for example, the works of Franz J. Felten and Gabriela Signori, alongwith the encyclopedicHelvetia sacra as a whole. These and other works would have provided great material for comparisons on a European scale. And while there certainly remain remnants of the aforementioned misogynistic conceptions in contemporary Cistercian studies, the field has become much more balanced in recent decades. The works of Alexis Grélois on French Cistercian nunneries testify to this. However, Berman pays them little notice (Grélois is cited only once, p. 22). Such omissions seem to serve the purpose of making some of the study’s observations appear more innovative than they really are. This seems an unnecessary twist, as themonographwould not have lost any of its unquestionable value andmerit if recent scholarship had been referenced more holistically.