Dorota Masłej's monograph offers an impressive and methodologically sophisticated study of the so-called Kazania Augustiańskie ("The Augustinian sermons") - a late medieval manuscript that preserves a collection of sermons in Latin together with their Old Polish adaptation. The volume engages with a broad range of questions, as the analysed document lies at the intersection of several fields: historical linguistics, textual transmission, manuscript studies, the analysis of multilingual texts, and medieval sermon studies. The work, now available in English translation, makes the results previously published in Polish accessible to a wider audience.

The core of the book is an in-depth examination of a fifteenth-century manuscript fragment containing the socalled "Augustinian Sermons", a bilingual text copied in the second half of the fifteenth century. Masłej's study constitutes a comprehensive analysis of this monument that consistently adopts a multilingual perspective and applies modern tools of textual and linguistic investigation. The monograph is structured into seven chapters, preceded by an Introduction that presents the aims of the study and argues convincingly for a multidimensional approach to medieval manuscripts and to processes of vernacularisation.

The opening chapter situates the manuscript within its broader historical and cultural context. Masłej discusses the functioning of Latin in medieval societies, the relationship between written Latin texts and accompanying vernacular glosses, and the specific conditions of medieval preaching: the interplay between Latin sermon texts and their oral delivery in the vernacular. Chapter 2 narrows the focus to the local context of medieval Poland, tracing the production of vernacular and bilingual texts and thereby clarifying the environment in which the "Augustinian sermons" were produced and used.

Chapter 3 turns to a detailed codicological and textual description of the manuscript fragment itself, now preserved as MS Kraków, Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Przyb. 110/56 in the Jagiellonian Library. Formerly part of the library of the Augustinian Hermits in Kazimierz near Kraków, the fragment comprises 24 folios containing texts in Latin and Old Polish. Masłej distinguishes three functional zones on the page: the primary Latin text, a layer of Latin glosses, and, in the margins, the Old Polish "Augustinian Sermons". The chapter offers a meticulous description of these three textual strata, laying the groundwork for the subsequent analytical chapters.

The fourth chapter introduces the theoretical framework for the study of medieval multilingualism that informs the analysis. Here, Masłej discusses current approaches to multilingual manuscript culture and clarifies how her material contributes to wider debates on code-switching, translation practices, and the dynamics between Latin and the vernaculars in late medieval Europe.

In Chapter 5, Masłej addresses the relationship between the Old Polish "Augustinian Sermons" and the main Latin text. She demonstrates that the Old Polish component should be understood not as a straightforward translation but as an adaptation developed in constant interaction with the Latin base text. The vernacular narrative, as she argues, "was created in permanent interrelation with the main text on the manuscript page, composed in Latin, and this interrelation went much further than a simple translation." This nuanced analysis provides the reader with a rare vantage point on medieval practices of vernacularisation and on the ways in which vernacular preaching texts could emerge from, and remain anchored in, a Latin textual matrix.

The sixth chapter considers the "Augustinian Sermons" as "a kind of text" in their own right, discussing their generic status within medieval sermon literature. Masłej adopts the analytical matrix proposed by Sabine Volk-Birke, who formulated six categories for describing sermons situated "between orality and literacy". By applying this model, Masłej is able to characterise the specific position of the "Augustinian sermons" within the spectrum of medieval homiletic production and to show how their bilingual and marginal status shapes their form and function.

Chapter 7 is devoted to the problem of authorship. Although the author of the "Augustinian sermons" remains anonymous, Masłej uses linguistic and textual evidence to reconstruct aspects of his background and scribal or pastoral practice. The brief concluding section of the book synthesises the main findings and reflects on their implications for the study of medieval vernacularisation processes and for the understanding of multilingual sermon collections more generally.

A particularly valuable feature of the monograph is its extensive and uptodate bibliography, which attests to the genuinely interdisciplinary nature of the work. Masłej engages with scholarship on manuscript culture, multilingualism, medieval homiletics, and historical linguistics, and successfully integrates these perspectives into a coherent analytical framework. The result is a study that significantly advances our knowledge of late medieval Polish sermon literature and provides an important case study for broader discussions of Latin-vernacular interaction in medieval Europe.

Masłej's book is a solid and highly informative contribution to medieval studies, offering a particularly illuminating analysis of this intriguing monument of bilingual preaching literature. Beyond its importance for the study of Old Polish and Polish textual history, it sheds valuable light on the unique linguistic environment of medieval Europe, where Latin and vernaculars coexisted in dynamic interplay. Scholars of historical linguistics, sermon studies, and multilingual manuscript culture will find here a model of rigorous, interdisciplinary scholarship.

Beata Spieralska-Kasprzyk