The title of this book quotes Nicolau Rossell who described his task as the provincial prior of Aragon in these terms in 1351. This study attempts to account for the often less than ideal behaviour of the friars without falling into a conventional narrative of decline and reform. Michael A. Vargas describes his book as “deliberately a corporate history” (2), and it is this corporate approach, combined with a focus on the lived experience inside Dominican convents, that makes this such an interesting study. The discussion proceeds in nine chapters. After a survey of the early history and historiography of the Dominican order, and of the creation and fourteenth-century history of the province of Aragon (chapters 1–3), the discussion moves on to behavioural anomalies and examples of lack of discipline in Aragonese convents (chapter 4). The main analysis of the material occurs in chapters 5–8 which focus on institutional and structural problems that provide the context for the behaviours discussed in chapter 4: the stratification of the order in different and competing subgroups, office-holding, obedience, and Dominican corporate honor.

Vargas uses a conceptual framework drawn from current organizational theory to full advantage, showing some interesting parallels between developments in the fourteenth-century province of Aragon and the sociology and anthropology of organizations. This includes an interesting discussion of the social stratification of the order and especially the role (and scapegoating) of young friars in the later fourteenth century, which is linked to a refreshing insistence on the ambiguity and messiness of both the available data and the situation of the order. In some cases, this can make the book slightly less satisfying to read, as there are no tidy conclusions, but it makes the analysis true to the situation in the order without imposing any unwarranted readings onto the evidence.

The interplay and tensions between the corporate mission and identity of the order, on the one hand, and the individual friar's experience on the other are at the heart of the study, and Vargas links these tensions to the order's structural deficits, arguing that these include a gradual weakening of the authority of the conventual prior and, perhaps more controversially, a “weak hold” of obedience on the imaginations of medieval Dominicans. The discussion of the effect of office-holding on Dominican administrative structure and the attempts to control the public perception of the order shows a number of broad trends in the development of the province of Aragon, including a deliberate attempt to increase the authority and control of provincial administrators in order to strengthen the order's organisation and its reputation and a pattern of resistance against these centralizing trends by the friars themselves. The discussion of obedience in chapter 7 exemplifies both the strengths and limitations of the focus on a corporate and to some extent structural perspective: the examination of the practical and conceptual problems of the Dominican vow of obedience is compelling, and there is a sensitive portrayal of some of the issues faced by the order's leadership and by individual friars attempting to deal with difficult situations. On the other hand, this approach does not leave much room for a discussion of obedience as a spiritual value in its own right, which would have added more depth to the overall analysis.

However, there are plenty of insights that can be drawn from the corporate approach, and there are many other delights in the book, such as the examination of the link between gossip, obedience, and leadership. The discussion of reform as an analytical problem states the issues clearly and succinctly and would be a good starting-point for anyone dealing with this notoriously difficult and slippery concept. And although Vargas's third chapter is not at the heart of the argument, it shows very clearly what can be done with the information contained about individual friars in the acts of the provincial chapters, using the prosopographical evidence contained in them not just as case-studies for misbehaving friars, but also as a demographic tool to demonstrate that there was no consistent decline in the number of friars and convents in the fourteenth century. The provincial acts are an underused source (and not just in Dominican historiography), and it is good to see them utilized to their full extent. There are, however, some issues with the use of legislation as evidence in the study: when it comes to the analysis of repeated admonitions in the chapter statutes, Vargas often treats them as evidence for deteriorating standards of observance, while at the same time suggesting that their reliability is easily over-interpreted (141, 156). The unreliability of taking the re-issuing of statutes as evidence of non-compliance is by now generally established, and it seems disingenuous to fall back on this approach for part of the argument.

There are some other quibbles: the repeated references to “friar-historians” seem a bit more tendentious than necessary, and there are also a number of typos (for instance, “propogating” [49]; of lesser important [92]; and “comentators” [178n42]) which mar an otherwise clearly written and copy-edited text.

Despite these niggles, Vargas's study is a valuable addition not just to Dominican studies, but also to monastic scholarship more generally, especially in its combined use of under-utilized sources, new theoretical approaches, and his attempt to avoid the traditional narrative of success, decline, and reform for the fourteenth-century Dominicans. The result repays close reading and provides a stimulating account of life in Dominican convents in Aragon that never loses sight of the wider context in which these friars and communities were operating.