The volume focuses on rules and observances in medieval monasteries and provides a survey of how the efficacy of religious communities could be ensured. It offers a rich variety of perspectives, ranging from the role of paraenetic literature and education, the problem of maintaining obedience and the implementation of reform to the importance of architectural features and the relative merits of the eremitical and the coenobite form of the vita religiosa. While the emphasis is on the history of the Franciscan order between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, articles on other monastic communities provide a comparative approach. The volume gives a closer insight into European research projects and casts light on manifold aspects on monastic rules and observances as "devising forms of communal life."

Mirko Breitenstein is researcher at the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Julia Burkhardt is researcher at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Stefan Burkhardt is researcher at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jens Röhrkasten is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Birmingham.