Staufen and Plantagenets. Ed. Alheydis Plassmann and Dominik Büschken. Bonn: V & R Unipress, Bonn University Press, 2018, 13 figures, 303 pp.

This collection deals generally with the twelfth-century Hohenstaufen domains, which were called an “empire” by contemporaries, and the Plantagenet territories, which were not. The focus, although it is not adhered to rigidly, is the period of Henry II (1154–1189) in the Plantagenet areas of England and Western France and of Frederick I Barbarossa (1152–1190) in the Holy Roman Empire. It contains an introduction and nine substantive articles, two in German and the rest in English. Each paper appends its own list of sources and bibliography and an abstract in English. There is a substantial literature on most topics discussed, to which the authors add their own interpretations.