In recent years, secular clerics in the medieval Latin West and the institutional frameworks in which they operated have received increased scholarly attention. Through the work of scholars such as Andreas Bihrer, Florian Mazel, Steffen Patzold, and Carine van Rhijn, among many others, new perspectives have emerged on how bishops and priests understood their office, administered pastoral care, and organised themselves and their surroundings. The present volume addresses a significant blind spot in this scholarly activity by focusing on clerics who fulfilled the role of the dean (decanus). Positioned between the bishop and his priests, deans were important in diocesan governance yet have received little attention. As the editors Véronique Beaulande-Barraud and Grégory Combalbert explain in the introduction, this neglect results from historically inconsistent terminology and from the considerable variation in deans’ responsibility across time and the regions in which they were active.

Drawing from their extensive work on bishops, diocesan administration and organisation, as well as ecclesiastical discipline, the editors were well placed to identify this gap in current research. The current volume grew out a conference held in Reims during the spring of 2019 organised to remedy this issue. In order to encompass as much source material as possible, the time span it covers is particularly broad and ranges from the ninth to the eighteenth century, with the main focus resting on the Middle Ages. The volume presents case studies from present-day France, with two excursions to Italy (Simona Negruzzo and Emanuele Curzel) and one to England (Martin Ingram). Together, these contributions examine deans as intermediaries between the bishop and the locality, and emphasise the individuals who occupied this clerical governmental role.

The volume’s nine chapters and appendix of transcriptions of fifteenth‑century visitation reports from northern France aim to stimulate further research by foregrounding underused sources. In this respect, the contributions are particularly successful. For instance, Arnaud Baudin’s chapter on the use of wax seals by deans in dioceses north of the Loire, extending into Flanders, offers a compelling example. His detailed table provides the first systematic overview of these seals and seeks to date the practice of using them. Baudin demonstrates convincingly that, in the dioceses of Châlons, Troyes, and Langres, seals were employed only for a short period of time, from the late twelfth to the early thirteenth century, and that deans frequently acted as conflict mediators. He further shows that deans operating at greater distance from the episcopal see relied more heavily on seals to authenticate the documents they produced. The emergence of ecclesiastical courts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, normalised delegated authority and contributed to the decline of deans’ use of seals and their autonomous role.

Another perspective that effectively illustrates the purpose of the volume is written by Grégory Combalbert and covers deans in the archdiocese of Rouen during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Using »dean acts«, which are reports of deans acting as representatives of the diocese in local ecclesiastical courts, he can paint a comprehensive picture of their instrumental role in diocesan administration. Combalbert shows, for instance, that deans inducted clerics who took on new positions, organised biannual calends, mediated disputes between clergy and laity, and were the eyes and ears of the archbishop that supplied him with information to make decisions or administer judgment. Besides representing the bishop, deans functioned as links in a supply chain (maillon logistique) that connected the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the locality and vice-versa. As ecclesiastical and secular courts in Normandy changed during the thirteenth century, mentions of deans in court records declined and largely disappeared around 1250.

Besides these detailed case studies, however, the real merit of the volume is its longue durée perspective. Contributions addressing earlier periods necessarily struggle with the limited visibility of deans in the surviving source material, whereas those concerned with later periods are able to present a much clearer image. Reading, for instance, Charles Mériaux’s analysis of early medieval normative sources from Francia alongside Simona Negruzzo’s study of Bishop Domenico Bollani of Brescia (1559–1579) opens a whole host of possibilities that fill in the gaps that exist in the earlier images we can reconstruct of deans. This juxtaposition encourages the reassessment of earlier material and suggests new avenues for identifying deans’ responsibilities, such as educating and guiding new priests or delegating specific clerical tasks, roles clearly attested in Negruzzo’s contribution.

Overall, the volume edited by Beaulande-Barraud and Combalbert is a valuable introduction to deans that establishes them as crucial actors in the study of diocesan governance. Furthermore, by presenting underexamined source material, it opens new perspectives on deans that have not yet received the attention they deserve from scholars interested in the administrative structures of the historical Church. The conclusion by Stefano Simiz and Catherine Vincent deserves to be briefly mentioned here as well, for its clear synthesis of the contributions significantly improves the coherence of the volume. It also points towards comparative research beyond the French context, the outlines of which are already discernible in the various contributions. In this way, the volume succeeds not only in restoring the dean to scholarly view but also in establishing its role as a fruitful subject for further investigation.