This collection of essays focuses on rules and observances in medieval monasteries and provides a survey of how the efficacy of religious communities could be ensured. The book offers a rich variety of perspectives, including the role of exhortatory literature and education, the problem of maintaining obedience, the implementation of reform, the importance of architectural features, the relative merits of the eremitical (religious recluse), and the monastic form of the vita religiosa. While the emphasis is on the history of the Franciscan order between the 13th and 15th 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 of monastic rules and observances as "devising forms of communal life."