Cylchgronau Cymru

between north and south, also find a parallel in differences today between diocesan regulations. It is interesting to note, however, that there was no tradition of 'relations between churches and the laity expressed in contractual terms' nor of theocratic legislation. The former, today, is the principal legal basis of relations in the Church in Wales. Huw Pryce's book is important and innovative: its thesis, the sensitive handling of preceding scholarship, the textual approach, its treatment of the wider canonical setting, and its clear presenta- tion of materials and arguments make it essential reading. NORMAN DOE Cardiff Law School Aubrey Gwynn, SJ., (edit. Gerard O'Brien), The Irish Church in the 11th and 12th Centuries (Four Courts Press, Dublin, 1992) xiv + 383 pp., pbk., £ 45; ISBN 1 85182 095 7 In this erudite and masterly survey of the ecclesiastical, and indeed political, history of Ireland in the early Middle Ages, the late Fr. Gwynn endeavours to trace the efforts made to reform the Irish Church along western and Roman lines. He makes the important point that 'it is always necessary to go behind the printed texts to the surviving manuscript sources', and this he does with telling effect. Throughout the volume, he challenges accepted positions and theories of previous writers and scholars, but at the same time freely admits his own shortcomings. Being in large measure a revised version of earlier essays, edited partly after his death, there is inevitably a certain duplication of material. Fr. Gwynn is particularly concerned to correct the impression that the influence of archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm of Canterbury was the major force in Irish church reform. Their work was limited largely to consecrating four or five bishops for the Anglo-Norse 'Foreigners' of Dublin, one bishop of Waterford, and issuing the