This collection of essays, the third in an integrated series of three and focused on the literacies of nuns in medieval Europe, brings together specialists working on diverse geographical areas to create a dialogue about the Latin and vernacular texts nuns read, wrote, and exchanged from the eighth to the mid-sixteenth centuries.
The present volume is the third in a series of three integrated publications, the first produced in 2013 as Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue and the second in 2015 as Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue. Whereas the first volume focused primarily on Northern Europe, the second expanded the range to include material in minority languages such as Old Norse and Old Irish and focused particularly on education and other textual forms, such as the epistolary and the legal.
The third volume expands the geographical range by including a larger selection of female religious, for instance, tertiaries, and further languages (for example, Danish and Hungarian), as well as engaging more explicitly on issues of adaptation of manuscript and early printed texts for a female readership. Like the previous volumes, this collection of essays, focused on various aspects of nuns’ literacies from the late seventh to the mid-sixteenth century, brings together the work of specialists to create a dialogue about the Latin and vernacular texts that were read, written, and exchanged by medieval nuns. Contributors to this volume investigate the topic of literacy primarily from palaeographical and textual evidence and by discussing information about book ownership and production in convents.
Introduction
Rules and Learning
Leoba’s Legacy: The Carolingian Transformation of an Iconography of Literacy — HELENE SCHECK AND VIRGINIA BLANTON
‘Faciat eas litteras edoceri’: Literate Practices in the Clarissan formae vitae — JULIE ANN SMITH
Religious Order and Textual Identity: The Case of Franciscan Tertiary Women — ALISON MORE
‘To yowr gostly comforte and proffite’: Devotional Reading for the Nuns of Syon Abbey — ANN M. HUTCHISON
Sitting between Two Sisters: Reading Holy Writ in a Community of Tertiaries in Sint-Agnes, Amersfoort — SABRINA CORBELLINI
A Carthusian Nun’s Reportationes of Henricus Cool’s Sermons in the Low Countries — PATRICIA STOOP AND LISANNE VROOMEN
Literacy and Visualization
What Did Catalan Nuns Read? Women’s Literacy in the Female Monasteries of Catalonia, Majorca, and Valencia — BLANCA GARÍ
Christina Hansdotter Brask: Reading and Pictorial Preferences in a Birgittine Prayer Book — EVA LINDQVIST SANDGREN
Devotional Books from the Birgittine Abbey of Maribo — ANNE METTE HANSEN
Scribal Engagement and the Late Medieval English Nun: The Quest Concludes? — VERONICA O’MARA
Memorializing Living Saints in the Milanese Convent of Santa Marta in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century — BRIAN RICHARDSON
Translating and Rewriting
The Legacy of St Margit: A Case-Study of a Dominican Monastery in Hungary — VIKTÓRIA HEDVIG DEÁK OP
Anonymous Then, Invisible Now: The Readers of ‘Sermon a dames religioses’ — CATE GUNN
Translation and Reform: Le Livre de larbre de la croix Jhesucrist and the Nuns of Montmartre — CATHERINE INNES -PARKER
Image, Text, and Mind: Franciscan Tertiaries Rewriting Stephan Fridolin’s Schatzbehalter in the Pütrichkloster in Munich — ALMUT BREITENBACH AND STEFAN MATTER
Exchange and Networks
The Transmission of Books among Canonesses of the Collegiate Church of Sainte-Waudru in Mons: The Example of Marie de Hoves’s Books — ANNE JENNY-CLARK
The Countess, the Abbess, and their Books: Manuscript Circulation in a Fifteenth-Century German Family — SARA S. POOR
The Transmission of Images between Flemish and English Birgittine Houses — MAR Y C. ERLER
Exchange and Alliance: The Sharing and Gifting of Books in Women’s Houses in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence — MELISSA MORETON
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts, Archival Documents, and Incunabula
Index of Texts
Index of Convents
Index of People
“This collection will also be an important resource for further research. Detailed indices listing the individual women, manuscripts and texts mentioned in all three volumes of ‘dialogues’ facilitate access to this wealth of material. Students, researchers new to the field, and others seeking inspiration will find much of interest. The editors deserve warm praise for making the fruits of this research accessible to scholars in a manner that facilitates continuing conversations about medieval nuns’ literacies.” (Julie Hotchin, in History of Women Religions of Britain and Ireland, April 2019)