Making and Breaking the Rules

Discussion, Implementation, and Consequences of Dominican Legislation

Edited by Cornelia Linde

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Interdisciplinary collection of articles
The contributions cover a wide breadth of topics and are not focused on one geographical region
Original research that re-assesses or even brings to light for the first time essential structures of Dominican life
Draws attention to the important, shaping role of the Dominican Order on the order's 800th anniversary

Making and Breaking the Rules

Discussion, Implementation, and Consequences of Dominican Legislation

Edited by Cornelia Linde

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Description

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.

Making and Breaking the Rules

Discussion, Implementation, and Consequences of Dominican Legislation

Edited by Cornelia Linde

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

1. Introduction, Cornelia Linde
I. Discussion
2. The Fixed and the Fluid: Observations on the Rational Bases of Dominican Constitution and Organization in the Middle Ages, Gert Melville
3. Obeying God, Not Man: Heresy, Inquisitors, and Obedience in the Dominican Order, Christine Caldwell Ames
4. Dominicans and Polyphony: A Reappraisal of a Strained Relationship, Christian Leitmeir
5. The Dominicans and Mission: Looking Again at the Barcelona Disputation of 1263, Harvey Hames
6. Rewriting the Rules: The Secular-Mendicant Controversy in France and its Impact on Dominican Legislation, c.1230-90, Sita Steckel
7. Black and White: Dominican Reform and Heretical Inversion in the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries, Matthew Champion
II. Implementation
8. 'Totum officium bene correctum habeatur in domo': Uniformity in the Dominican Liturgy, Eleanor Giraud
9. 'Nullus scienter litteram aut notam mutet': Dominicans (Dis)Obeying the Regulations for the Copying of Chant Books. An Example from Late Medieval Dalmatia, Hrvoje Beban
10. Architecture and Space in the Dominican Order: On the Impact of Norms and Concepts in Early Normative and Narrative Sources, Sebastian Mickisch
11. Legislation, Architecture, and Liturgy in the Dominican Nunneries in Castile during the Late Middle Ages: A World of diversitas and Peculiarities, Mercedes Perez Vidal
12. The Beginnings of the Study of Foreign Languages in the Dominican Order: Regulation, Implementation, and Impact, Jonathan Rubin
13. Clarifying the Rules: A Normative System for the Observant Dominican Nuns (Portugal, Fifteenth to Sixteenth Centuries), Gilberto Coralejo Moiteiro
III. Consequences
14. Performance Management: Creating Order in Thirteenth-Century Dominican Preaching, Anne Holloway
15. 'Volumus ut carceres fiant . . .': Medieval Dominican Legislation on Detention and Imprisonment, Wolfram Hoyer, OP
16. Disciplinary Deportations: Forced Resettlement as a Means of Control and Correction, Cornelia Linde
17. Fratres regulares et irregulares: Dominican Implementation, Observation, and Violation of Rules in the Province of Dacia, Johnny Jakobsen
18. Dominicans from the Province of Dacia at the Well of Grace: Petitions from Scandinavian Dominicans to the Apostolic Penitentiary, c.1450-1530, Kirsi Salonen

Making and Breaking the Rules

Discussion, Implementation, and Consequences of Dominican Legislation

Edited by Cornelia Linde

Studies of the German Historical Institute, London

Author Information

Cornelia Linde is a Research Fellow in Medieval History at the German Historical Institute London. She holds an MA in Medieval Latin, Classical Latin, and Auxiliary Sciences of History from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau and an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History as well as a Ph.D. in Combined Historical Studies from the Warburg Institute, University of London. Her research interests include the history of the Latin Bible in the Middle Ages, medieval theology, and the history of universities. Among her publications are How to Correct the 'Sacra Scriptura'? Textual Criticism of the Bible between the Twelfth and the Fifteenth Century (2012), and, most recently, 'Arguing with Lollards: Thomas Palmer, OP, and De translatione scripture sacre in linguam barbaricam', Viator, 46/3 (2015).

Contributors:

Hrvoje Beban, University of Zagreb
Christine Caldwell Ames, University of South Carolina
Matthew Champion, Birkbeck
Gilberto Coralejo Moiteiro, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria
Eleanor Giraud, University of Limerick
Harvey Hames, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Anne Holloway, Monash University
Wolfram Hoyer, OP, Dominikanerkonvent Heilig Kreuz, Augsburg
Johnny Jakobsen, University of Copenhagen
Christian Leitmeir, University of Oxford
Cornelia Linde, German Historical Institute London
Gert Melville, Research Centre for the Comparative History of Religious Orders, Dresden
Sebastian Mickisch, Research Centre for the Comparative History of Religious Orders, Dresden
Mercedes Pérez Vidal, University of Padua
Jonathan Rubin, Bar Ilan University
Kirsi Salonen, University of Turku
Sita Steckel, University of Münster