Marjo Kaartinen has in this book provided a portrait of the world of late-15th- and early-16th-century monks, friars, and nuns. Their monastic vows - obedience, poverty, chastity, and stability - still made a difference to them and to the laypeople around them, even when they failed to live up to them. Much of Kaartinen's story is told through the words of the religious themselves, from self-defence to self-criticism. This book helps us to understand why some forms of Catholic sensibility lasted so long and why Protestant reformers drew from the very ideals they wanted to undermine.