"Separate but Equal is at once eminently erudite and commendably readable. James France's authoritative volume will be of immense value not only for students of the Cistercian Order but for anyone interested in medieval religious culture."Mette Birkedal Bruun, University of Copenhagen "With this book, we finally have a comprehensive history of the medieval Cistercian lay brothers. James France skillfully employs a wide range of sources to illuminate the lay brothers' social origins, their economic functions, and their religious ideals, and he carefully assesses both the lay brothers' contributions to the Order and their eventual decline. He convincingly argues that the medieval Cistercians never resolved the tensions created when they formed the lay brotherhood as an institution separate from the monks but never equal to them. France explores the ramifications of these tensions with great sensitivity, and he argues that it was this fundamental inequality between monks and lay brothers that ultimately led to the lay brothers' demise."Martha Newman, University of Texas at Austin, Author of The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform, 1098-1180 "An important and comprehensive contribution to our understanding of this group that has all too often taken something of a back seat in modern scholarship. In his thorough assessment France illuminates the contributions of the conversi to the Cistercian story, looking at lay brothers in medieval and modern scholarship."Karen Stoeber, The Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies