An Abbot of Vezelay. By Rose Graham. (S.P.C. K. 3s.
6d. net.) —Miss Graham, well known for her studies in monastic history, has written a charming little book on the once famous monastery of Vezelay and its greatest Abbot, Pons do Montboissier, who ruled it from 1138 to 1161. 'Vezelay, a remote village half-way between Auxerre and Dijon, was a famous town in tho twelfth century. There Louis VII. took the Cross before his Crusade of 1147 ; there Becket in 1166 solemnly denounced the Constitutions of Clarendon and excommunicated Henry II.'s counsellors ; there in 1190. Coeur do Lion met Philip Augustus to prepare for their joint Crusade. The superb church, which is illustrated in the book, remains to testify to the bygone greatness of the abbey. But Miss Graham's scholarly account of Abbot Pons shows that amid the local feuds and disorders an Abbot's life was not a bed of roses.
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