Taming a Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9789004203150)

Winner of the 2013 La corónica International Book Award, given annually by the Modern Language Association Division on Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures for the best monograph published on Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.

Gamblers, cheats, womanizers and thieves, and cranky reformers who wanted their old Order back, flesh-and-blood men with complicated desires and knotty dispositions. Opening a rich trove of sources - the annual chapter acts of the Dominican Order's Province of Aragon - Michael Vargas uncovers the costly successes and institutional weaknesses that contributed to the distressing realities of Dominican conventual life in the troubled fourteenth century. Taming a Brood of Vipers finds Dominican friars engaged in activities very much at odds with our sense of the way it should have been, but removing the moral overlay makes the conflict and apparent indiscipline in Dominican religious communities more intelligible and more appreciably human.

Author: Michael A. Vargas
ISBN-10: 900420315X
ISBN-13: 9789004203150
Publisher: Brill
Language: English
Published: 03/10/2011
Pages: 356
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2011 pg. 18