In the Archives nationales of France and the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris there are two manuscript versions of the minutes of an extraordinary general meeting of French clergy held in 1788. Thanks to Gérald Bray's careful work, historians now have a readily accessible published edition with scholarly apparatus to enable them to understand the political, financial and intellectual issues at the centre of clerical debate on this occasion.

Bray's introduction details the preceding efforts of a handful of researchers in the twentieth century to interpret the debates through the prisms of clerical life and ecclesiastical hierarchy, the reign of Louis xvi and fiscal crisis. This historiographical overview is complemented by explanations of the function of such meetings, the identities of participants, responses by the king to issues raised and the pertinence of interventions on matters ranging from the condition of hospitals to the juridical status of religious minorities in late eighteenth-century France. Bray's edition will be a welcome resource for specialists and deserves a place in academic library collections, especially those dedicated to theology and the history of Christianity.