The phenomenon of religious orders and communities, together with their complex development and anchoring of guidelines, rules and forms of coexistence, has characterised Christianity from the very beginning. The founding personalities, if they are well-known or even prominent, are often credited with charismatic charisma and a courageous drive for action. For the most part, they are the central protagonists who determine our knowledge of the beginnings of religious community life throughout the epochs of church history.
The focus of this book, however, is on the second (and third) generations of religious orders and religious communities. For more often than assumed, the beginnings of religious community life lie in the dark or are only constructed (sometimes considerably) later in the sense of a narrative of the beginnings. Of great interest are the transitions from fluidity and experimentation to duration and stability of a community; from charisma, to be defined more precisely in each individual case, to institution; from an experimental character to a legally stable order. Such transitions were - and are - almost always characterised by crises, conflicts and narratives that read and pass on the origins of the community in the light of the current tensions or undergo adaptation processes whose actors are often unjustly in the background. The authors of this book devote themselves to this phase of crisis and the "ferment" of religious community life, which has been little studied to date.
Editors: inside:
Prof DDr Marco G. Rainini, born 1967, Dipartimento di Scienze Religiose, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italia
Prof. Dr Andrea Riedl, born 1984, Chair of Medieval and Modern Church History, Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Regensburg, Germany

Further information on the book can be found here (external link, opens in a new window). If you are interested, the book can be purchased from the chair at the author's price and will be available as an open access publication from July 2026.