C. H. Lawrence - I.B. Tauris), 2013   245 pp., £22.50 paper, ISBN 978-1-78076-467-2

In the early-thirteenth century, the Church was in crisis challenged by a confident new secular culture associated with the expansion of towns, the rise of literature and development of new sciences, the creation of the first universities and an increasingly articulate laity.  Neither the church hierarchy nor the cloistered monks were ill equipped to meet this challenge.  It was the mendicant orders, developed round the charismatic figures of St. Francis of Assisi, who founded the Franciscans and St. Dominic of Osma, founder of the Dominicans, which encouraged preachers to go out into the world to do God's work through their evangelical spirit and personal example of poverty and piety.  This volume, initially published in 1994 but thoroughly revised to take account of the recent surge of interest in the subject, examines the work of friars in the crucial period of their foundation and early development and their impact on the medieval world in politics and education as well as religion within Christendom and beyond.  A well-written and analytical study, The Friars should, according to Lindy Grant, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Reading, ‘be on the shelves of every student and scholar of medieval history'.  I entirely agree.