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This large and handsomely printed book is the third that Waddell has produced since 1999. His edition of early Cistercian narrative and legislative texts appeared in that year, followed in 2000 by materials about lay brothers. Together these books represent one of the most significant contributions made to modern scholarship on his own order. One can marvel at how much he has done, and feel much gratitude for his labours. Now he argues with clarity, resulting from long familiarity with the texts and subsequent scholarship, and minute and painstaking labour with the manuscript sources. Here, unlike in the earlier books, he does not translate the texts but has furnished them with extensive notes in English, and a fine series of indices which enable one to search out materials on many issues.
A fifty-page general introduction precedes part i, the statutes dated c.1136 to 1201. Part ii presents three 'systematic collections': the Capitula (usually found as the last part of the compilation beginning with Exordium Cistercii, followed by a short form of the Charter of Love (Summa Cartae Caritatis); Instituta Generalis Capituli; and a series of statutes which he dates to 1157-79, the only section of this part not edited in 1999. Lastly, part iii presents seven local collections of statutes, most of which have not previously been edited.
It is disappointing that Waddell does not show systematically which statutes were in Canivez's...