Using a wealth of documentary and archaeological sources for the hospitals of the county of Champagne to the southeast of Paris, Alan Davies offers a valuable regional study of these charitable institutions for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As he says, demographic growth and the increasing importance of the region's expanding urban centers, especially in relation to their trade fairs, meant members of the aristocracy and mercantile elite were concerned to provide aid for the sick poor through the foundation and benefaction of hospitals. Setting his study primarily in a French context, but also drawing on other mainland European work on medieval hospitals and, to a lesser extent, the historiography of medieval hospitals in England, Davies provides further evidence of the complex roles undertaken by these religious houses and their place in the wider community, from offering places of spiritual and physical care to serving as landlords and being producers and consumers in the marketplace. Before presenting his case study, Davies assesses contemporary ideas regarding charity circulating in thirteenth-century France, which often had their origins at the University of Paris. This informative summary provides ideas about the significance placed on the notion of purgatory, how and why alms should be given, and the place of penitential and redemptive giving within a marketplace economy. Seeing sermons as having special relevance to his discussion, Davies looks in some detail at issues of vocabulary used by preachers, returning on numerous occasions throughout the book to the ideas of Jacques de Vitry. Using evidence primarily for the hospitals of the cities of Troyes, Provins, and Bar-sur-Aube within the context of the hospitals of Champagne during the High Middle Ages, in four thematic chapters, Davies covers topics such as patrons and benefactors, including matters of motivation by donors, through his analysis of sermons, wills, and charters. Other subjects investigated include the management of these institutions (drawing on an account book from the hôtel-Dieu Saint-Nicolas in Troyes), the personnel to be found at hospitals, and some indications of the groups and individuals as recipients, who were often designated the "sick poor" (see chapter 6). Interestingly, unlike many of their English counterparts, these hospitals were under the Augustinian Rule, which may have some bearing on the range of surviving archival material on which Davies has been able to draw. Furthermore, it seems the hospital statutes (for example, of the hospital of Provins), are often exceedingly detailed, including how the hospital brothers and sisters were expected to treat those seeking assistance. Sermons, too, demonstrate ideas about the ideal of care as envisaged by senior churchmen. While these sources only suggest what ought to happen, by deploying hospital accounts Davies was able to delve far deeper into the workings of these institutions. Consequently, we learn how certain hospitals sought to raise money through letting out lod...