In this brief but impressive work, Matthew Wranovix opens up a potentially fertile area of study: the reading habits and interests of local clergy in the later Middle Ages, immediately prior to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Building upon recent scholarship that has presented a more nuanced view of religious and spiritual life in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Wranovix describes a local clergy that is both more complex and more professional than the depictions in many earlier studies. The author focuses on clergy in the diocese of Eichstätt, Germany, and in particular on the collecting activities of Ulrich Pfeffel (fl. 1455–ca. 1495), whose story Wranovix related earlier in Speculum (2012). The resulting analysis demonstrates how parish clergy fit into contemporary society, and in the process this book challenges long-standing views concerning the functional adequacy of local priests.

Wranovix also contributes to book history by studying printed and manuscript materials from parish libraries or from private libraries belonging to parish clergy—both areas that have received insufficient attention thus far. Parish visitation records from 1480 make Eichstätt especially useful for a review of priestly reading practices. The author contextualizes this analysis by reviewing expanding opportunities for priests to further their education at newly established universities. In the first two chapters he outlines the complicated world of parish ministry in the fifteenth century, both from the perspective of priests facing multiple pastoral and liturgical responsibilities and from that of administrative challenges created by lay donations for masses and other religious services. Priests were not only expected to provide leadership in the liturgy, they also needed to provide pastoral care—especially in the administration of confession and penance. Moreover, they were expected to be teachers and preachers—roles that were challenged by the mendicant orders. In light of these developments, local clergy needed to keep current with the educational and professional expectations placed on them by their superiors—especially through the use of books.

Local clergy had two main points of regular access to books in the fifteenth century—parish libraries and building their own private collections. With the introduction of printing and the added production of paper, prices of both books and the materials needed to copy manuscripts became less expensive. The books most likely to be found in either collection were liturgical books necessary for leading services and copies of statutes issued by the local synod. Wranovix points to studies that have shown that parish priests often supplemented such collections with their own collections of other works, which passed from one owner to another.

Turning to the collecting practices of one particular priest, Wranovix follows the professional life of Ulrich Pfeffel, who built his personal collection over a lifetime. Focusing on different types of texts at different times, Pfeffel collected materials to support his work as a priest—whether in his pastoral capacity or for preaching. Beyond this, he also developed other interests and personal devotional practices that brought him into contact with the ideas of the Modern Devotion, as well as devotion to the Virgin Mary. Wranovix closes with an introduction to a number of specific works found in the private collections of priests: works on the Immaculate Conception or the priesthood are not surprising, but there were also other topics, such as medicine.

Wranovix has produced a thought-provoking and well-documented argument, with ramifications that go beyond the narrow history of priestly life in the diocese of Eichstätt. While this is certainly a valuable study of many aspects of German life in the late medieval and early modern period, it is also bedeviled by an occasional lack of care, especially in typographical errors—the most frequent being “statue” for “statute” (on pages 71, 72, 73, 90n36, and 91n38). These minor annoyances aside, Priests and Their Books in Late Medieval Eichstätt offers a glimpse into an extremely important sector of Christian society at a time of rapid change and challenges. It provides a useful direction to the study of spiritual and intellectual life in the critical period of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.