. . . reputedly declared that if the king of England asked for an ass to be made bishop, he would grant the request” (185). Exaggerations aside: “Royal and papal interests were largely compatible” to a degree that royal and chapter interests had not been. A final chapter compares the developments in England with those of France, Scotland, and Italy. “The English story of the rise of electoral freedom and the transition to papal provision is also a pan-European narrative” (225). Yet the distinctive features of England are also noted. Episcopal Appointments in England is an exemplary work of church history written with a mastery of a wide range of primary sources (from canon law to chronicles) in highly engaging and accessible style. It reminded me of the early work of Robert Brentano. I did wonder, though, whether the thirteenth-century debate in theology faculties about episcopal versus papal jurisdiction over mendicant privileges might have been a contributing factor to the fourteenth century claim to provision. The author ends (233) with a powerful comparison between medieval England and modern China where the government- controlled “Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association” has sought (like English kings in the twelfth century) to appoint bishops without papal approval, as it sees the involvement of Rome as, necessarily, a political threat. Perhaps this excellent book should be translated into Chinese. Patrick Nold The University at Albany—SUNY doi:10.1017/S0009640719000180 Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean: Propaganda, Liturgy and Diplomacy, 1305–1352. By Constantinos Georgiou. London: Routledge, 2018. Xii + 294 pp. $144.90 hardback; $54.95 e-book. One of the hard parts of being a historian is both the blessing and curse of hindsight. Knowing what has happened allows us to write longue durée studies, show causation, and explain effects—but that same knowledge at times hinders our study of motivations, of failures, and of attempts that never make it off the ground. Constantinos Georgiou’ s Preaching the Crusades to the Eastern Mediterranean works to rectify this trend, focusing on the work done by the first four Avignon popes to organize another crusade to the Levant and, specifically, the preaching campaigns they organized. We know that in the aftermath of the fall of Acre in 1291, no further Jerusalem- focused crusades made it to the Levantine coast; the Avignon popes of the BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 1205 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640719000180 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. The University of St Andrews, on 19 Mar 2019 at 10:58:47, subject to the Cambridge Core