Revising her Ph.D. dissertation at Monash University in Australia, Hewlett investigates the experience of individual rural communities within the hinterland of Florence during the Renaissance, three communities serving as case studies. She considers their internal structures, their local history, their interactions with neighboring communities, and how all this impacted the relationships they developed with the city of Florence. She looks first at the various administrative controls put in place by the Florentine government, and how local rural councils and individuals negotiated these structures. Then she turns to diocesan and parish structures, the tensions that existed between government and ecclesiastic structures, and how these tensions impacted the spirituality of rural communities. The new series will look at the relationship between religion, society, culture, and identity in Europe from the early medieval period to the end of the ancien régime, emphasizing continuity and transformation within urban religious life and institutions. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)