As part of a five-year research project on oral communication in Medieval monastic communities, an international conference was held in Ghent, The Netherlands, during May of 2008, and all 17 papers presented there are published here. They cover the politics of non-written communication; traces of orality in liturgy, customs, and material culture; traces of orality in the transmission of memory; and educating and voicing the monastic mind. Among the topics are communicating at the Abbey of St. Gall, the oral transmission of liturgical practice in the 11th-century customaries of Cluny, what Charles the Simple told the canons of Compiègne, conversation amongst monks and nuns 1000-1200, and Bernard of Clairvaux and the communicative implications of gesture. Only manuscripts are indexed. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)