Unlike most religious orders, the Carthusians have never required reform. The clamour to return to the letter and the spirit of the founder's vision is well documented by the historians of the religious life. Built on the rejection of material possessions, the monastic life required the renunciation of material possessions. The possession and use of money for private benefit were firmly proscribed by the monastic world. Coins and any other valuables were perceived as the betrayal of monastic profession; the proprietor put himself decidedly beyond the pale. This vice had to be removed from the community and its practitioners were to be denied burial within the cloister; their fate is narrated in the literature of the exempla. While the Observant movement is generally associated with the regeneration of the Franciscan family from the later fourteenth century, its influence was extensive and it embraced the entire mendicant movement and the monastic cosmos. This new monograph goes some way towards filling that vacuum and it addresses movements of renewal from the fifteenth century, with particular reference to Germany and the world of monasticism. It has a lengthy introduction which is followed by five chapters dealing with the prohibition of possessions and the private use of coins, external pressure for communities to renew themselves in the fifteenth century, internal pressures for the reinvigoration of religious communities, the principle and the practice regarding access to money and an examination of the strategy pursued by the agents of the Observant movement. An appendix, an inventory of works on property, follows the brief conclusion. After the Black Death, the flow of alms was insufficient to maintain some religious communities which sought to justify the acceptance of pittances and endowments, even though these introduced divisions into the life of the community; some religious were described as the poorest members of the monastery. At the beginning of the fifteenth century advocates of reform thundered against material divisions among the friars and monks. The last chapter explores the policies adopted by the reformers in their desire to renew the life of the community. Such strategies saw the removal of some abbots indifferent to the reform movement; these men were replaced by more zealous monks and given a pension. This volume is a welcome addition to our knowledge of the springs of reform in fifteenth century. There are some minor typographical errors, such as statue for statute (p. 20); ‘Giles Constable done the same’ (p. 21); ‘began [to] craft’ (p. 102); ‘were entitled to used discretion’ (p. 167); ‘an remarkably popular work’ (p. 177). Richard FitzRalph, archbishop of Armagh (1346–60), would no doubt be perplexed by the author's decision to list him as ofm in the index (p. 256).