Taming a Brood of Vipers: Conflict and Change in Fourteenth-Century Dominican Convents

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.

Winner of the 2013 La coronica 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.