The prominent role of monasteries in the early medieval period is comprehensively explored in this illuminating study of the relations between monasteries and the nobility in Lotharingia throughout the ninth and tenth centuries. It focuses on the evidence from three of the region's greatest abbeys - Gorze, St Maximin, and St Evre - which played a central role in the monastic reform movement. This swept through the region in the 930s and is commonly named after Gorze.

Set within the context of the whole social structure and exercise of regional power in the early middle ages, the author demonstrates the vitality and importance of monasteries, focusing on their land transaction as well as their religious roles. He challenges accepted notions of monastic lordship and demonstrates the complexity of the two-way relationships between monasteries and their patrons, relationships which ensured the former a central place in the early medieval landscape.