While high-ranking churchmen certainly haven't been neglected by scholars, they are now being perceived in a different light due to recent historiographic trends. Indeed, with the increased prominence of cultural and religious history, other dimensions of the lives, deeds, and beliefs of church officials have been brought to the fore. A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal, edited by Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte, bears witness and actively contributes to this historiographic shift. The names of the eight different parts into which the chapters are divided, including “Property and Wealth,” “Cardinals and Literature,” and “Cardinals and the Visual Arts,” reflect the existence of fresh and innovative perspectives through which cardinals are studied. These eight parts contain an impressive number of chapters (thirty-five) in which the different roles of early modern cardinals and the various contexts in which they moved and operated are teased out. In addition to being churchmen, cardinals were book collectors, patrons of arts, members of larger (family) networks, and so forth. They administered their households, managed their properties, governed their jurisdictions, presided over committees, and participated in meetings of congregations. They, too, contributed and shaped (religious) material culture, through the commission of portraits and funeral monuments, and by acquiring and showing off their wardrobe. These and the other topics that are addressed in this volume are studied in relation to concepts that are currently in vogue among scholars, including identity, memory, and networks.

A number of chapters address the educational, familial, national, and social backgrounds of cardinals; biographies remain invaluable for understanding cardinals as individuals and as a group. The more traditional roles of cardinals are discussed in this volume as well. Several chapters deal with cardinals in the context of the institutions of the church, including the College of Cardinals and various congregations. They also explore instances where cardinals acted in a particular function or held specific offices, such as papal legate, nuncio, or cardinal nephew. The complex institutional contexts in which cardinals operated remain key to understanding these figures. Hence, as the editors rightly remark in the introduction, the challenge is to combine the older but important institutional perspective with more recent approaches and methods in order to paint a fuller and more complete picture of early modern cardinals.

The individual chapters are written in an accessible manner and are suitable for the target audience of these companions—namely, both students and scholars. In a couple of cases the available source material has been described and explained (e.g., chapters 9 and 18), which is particularly useful for those aspiring to pursue the study of primary-source material themselves. However, since the source material is situated within a wider thematic framework, these chapters are interesting for more seasoned scholars as well. Some chapters are more descriptive and at times can be a bit enumerative, whereas others contain more original research and aim to construct an argument. However, apart from such differences, the chapters, while diverse in terms of their topics, methodologies, and perspectives, are consistent in quality and style. While the volume has a large bibliography and an index of historical persons, an index of topics would have been helpful in navigating a book of this size.

In general, the volume as a whole does a very good job of providing a historiographic overview, presenting the most up-to-date knowledge, and identifying remaining gaps in our understanding, thereby offering avenues for further research. The editors concede that, due to the lack of available experts, not all topics relevant to early modern cardinals could be covered. Although this is a shame, striving to create an exhaustive overview on virtually any subject tends to be more a dream than reality. The present volume is a worthwhile contribution to the existing scholarship on early modern cardinals and an ideal starting point for those who want to familiarize themselves with, or broaden their understanding of, this topic.