Acknowledgments
In writing this book I have incurred countless debts. To single out institutions
or individuals for special thanks might be invidious, but it is necessary. Above
all, I thank the University of Oregon at Eugene, whose grant of a sabbatical
year in 1997 – 98 allowed me to do most of the research. A summer research
grant in 2003 from the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences
allowed a trip to Italy to prepare the illustrations. During my research, the
Dominican communities of Bologna, Florence, Milan, Oakland, and San
Francisco offered the most gracious of hospitality. My colleagues at the Reli-
gious Studies Department of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, have
supported the work in countless ways, not the least by never grumbling about
my summers spent off grounds writing and doing research. The friars of my
province have been the best of brothers and the most critical of readers. I
thank Fr. Stanley Fabian Parmesano, Bro. Augustine Hilander, and espe-
cially Mr. Keith Monley, for their careful editing. Katherine Ludwig Jansen,
Duane Osheim, Daniel Bornstein, Frances Andrews, and James Gordley
read and commented extensively on all or most of the text, as did both
Richard Sundt, who photographed most of the illustrations in the ‘‘terrar-
ium’’ of a hot Italian summer, and Barbara Pike Gordley, who originally
suggested the project. I would also like to thank Diana Webb of King’s Col-
lege, London, who graciously consented to my appropriation of this book’s
title from a very fine article of hers. Finally, this book owes its very existence
to Mr. Peter Potter and the Pennsylvania State University Press, who gra-
ciously agreed to consider a very long manuscript on what is hardly a best-
seller topic, a kind of risk taking that is sadly becoming less and less common
among academic presses.