In 1927 Dom Berlière published a series of articles in the Revue Bénédictine entitled ‘L”exercise du ministere paroissial par les moines dans le haut moyen-age’. These give a careful, analytical survey of the evidence for the performance of pastoral work by monks from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries. In a period so long treatment was necessarily brief: and there is room for amplification of many of the topics he discussed.