The Dominican Order's exponential growth in the first decades of its existence brought with it the challenges of providing a stable organizational framework for the order and its members, and maintaining unity and cohesion, from local to provincial and order-wide levels. This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring the theory and practice of introducing order in all areas of Dominican life by means of rules and guidelines. With the rich transmission of acts of Dominican general and provincial chapters providing a fruitful starting point, the essays branch out to take account of a wide range of materials, including literary sources, codicological and musicological evidence, and architectural remains. Among the overarching questions asked are: by what means were rules and guidelines disseminated and implemented in the Dominican Order; what impact did they have and what were their intended, but also unintended, consequences; and what were the effects and outcomes of not following the rules laid down by the Order. The volume asks whether the historical evidence in normative sources such as the Acts of the General Chapters, widely used as a point of reference in modern scholarship, might represent an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the Order, one which was far removed from the reality on the ground.

This volume presents an interdisciplinary collection of essays that examine attempts to introduce internal unity as well as stable structures to Dominican life in medieval Europe. The contributions draw on both normative and non-normative sources to cover a wide range of topics, including liturgy, architecture, and punishments.

This volume thus offers a fresh and balanced view of Dominican law and practice, especially due to its thematic, geographical and chronological breadth. It will stimulate further comparative research on subjects and regions that remain underexplored in institutional and religious history, e.g. Dominican communities in the Iberian and other provinces somewhat outside of the scholarly mainstream.