Professor Franck Collard’s Le crime du poison au Moyen Âge is the first comprehensive study of this venomous act as it was conceived, executed and prosecuted in the Middle Ages. Many works have examined poison’s role in Ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy, but the thousand year block in between has largely been skipped over. Meticulously researched, drawing on a wealth of fascinating evidence and statistics, this book outlines every aspect of the deed decried by Pope John XII in 1314 as a horrendum scelus, or abominable crime. Collard discusses the different kinds of poisons and remedies, the initial difficulties in identifying the crime, sociological profiles of the victims and perpetrators (for example 40% of those implicated were either princes or monarchs), the legal battles surrounding the cases, and the use of accusations of poisoning as a devastating political weapon. He also uncovers some of the lesser known issues surrounding poison, especially its religious role as a substance that could bring the subject “in the company of saints” and, if he survived, prove the superiority of his chosen God. All in all, Le crime du poison au Moyen Âge is an invaluable study about a shocking act inimical to the values of medieval civilization: “An interior murder, taking place in the foyer, within a community, in a palace, the crime is in fact attributed to those more or less defined by their exteriority.”