Shaping Stability

This volume examines the efforts of medieval religious communities and orders to bring stability to the dynamic complexity of organized religious life. By focusing on legislative structures and normative documents (rules, customaries, constitutions), the authors address not only such matters as the meaning of these texts and the motivations behind them, but also the evolving conditions of their production and use, the internal politics of institutional change, and the reality of precept not practice. These papers thus present spiritual principles and social practices in their historical and functional contexts, confront normative programs with formative processes, and explain distinctive modes and models of life within the broader landscape of medieval organized religion.