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LLANDAFF EPISCOPAL ACTA, 1140-1287. Edited by David Crouch. Publications of the South Wales Record Society, No. 5. Cardiff, 1989. Pp. xlv, 114. £ 20.00. The publication of the first edition of twelfth- and thirteenth-century episcopal acts from a Welsh diocese fills a major lacuna and will be welcomed by all who have serious interest in the ecclesiastical history of medieval Wales. While less ambitious in scope than the relevant portions of J. Conway Davies's Episcopal Acts and Cognate Documents, within its own limits Llandaff Episcopal Acts clearly supersedes that work by providing not merely English calendars but also, in almost all cases, complete Latin texts of the acts, a substantial minority of which are here printed for the first time; moreover, 36 of the 107 acts collected by David Crouch were omitted from Conway Davies's calendar of Llandaff documents. An appendix lists references to a further 36 acts, most of which no longer survive. (This includes notices of the acts of Bishop Urban [ 1 107-34], omitted from the volume on the questionable grounds that only two are extant and are already accessible in adequate editions-surely completeness should be an overriding priority in a collection of this kind?) The texts, arranged according to the guidelines recommended by the British Academy's English Episcopal Acta committee, are set out clearly, with references to all manuscript sources and earlier printed editions and, where appropriate, they are followed by notes discussing their dating and identifying places mentioned. Reference is facilitated by indices of personal and place names and of subjects as well as by a map of the diocese. The Introduction provides very useful biographical summaries of the bishops and other clergy of the diocese, as well as tracing its institutional development and analysing the diplomatic of the acts. By comparison with wealthy dioceses in England, the harvest of Llandaff documents is of course meagre-Dr Crouch notes, for example, that a mere 30 acta survive for Bishop Nicholas (1148-83) compared with 219 for his contemporary, Bishop Robert Chesney of Lincoln. Yet it is not insubstantial. It is somewhat larger than the collection so far identified from St. David's and is unlikely to be outnumbered by the acts which have yet to be assembled (in print at least) for Bangor and St. Asaph. Much can be learned from it about diocesan administration. In the twelfth century the appropriation of churches by religious houses and the need to define parochial rights were prominent episcopal concerns. We can see too how the diocese came to adopt the norms of ecclesiastical organisation and practice found in England and elsewhere in western Europe, albeit slowly. It was only under Bishop Henry (1193-1218) that the episcopal familia was replaced by a properly constituted cathedral chapter, several decades after such changes had been completed in England. It is also suggestive that of the clergy associated with the church of Llandaff before the thirteenth century only one bore the title of magister. One suspects that, despite the precocious appearance of archdeacons and of appeals to Rome in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, attempts to create a fully-fledged territorial diocese on English and continental lines were hampered by a combination of factors faced by bishops in the other Welsh dioceses-in particular, the lack of a clear distinction between the secular and