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 volume 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 of monastic rules and observances as "devising forms of communal life."