Women’s Literacies and Devotional Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Women’s Literacies and Devotional Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Studies in Honour of Veronica O’Mara explores the diverse and often collaborative ways women shaped religious culture through reading, writing, commissioning, and circulating texts. Building on the foundational Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe　volumes, this collection widens the lens to include both vowed religious and lay women working within and across institutions and local communities. Drawing on meticulous archival research, the essays foreground women’s agency in the reception, production, and circulation of sermons, visionary writings, saints’ lives, and spiritual treatises, highlighting their roles as scribes, patrons, readers, and intellectual contributors.

Spanning the medieval and early modern periods, the volume considers women associated with Augustinian, Benedictine, Birgittine, and Carmelite traditions alongside laywomen from diverse social backgrounds. Organised into four thematic sections — Production and Reception; Patronage and Dissemination; Edification and Learning; Devotion and Practice — the collection showcases women’s multifaceted literacies and their active engagement within textual culture. This volume considers female scriptoria and libraries, religious imaginary available to both lay and religious women, and the forms of their devotional practices at the micro and macro levels. Together, the essays underscore the richness of the surviving record and affirm the continuing importance of archival research, while pointing to the vast, still untapped potential for research into women and their role in Europe’s premodern history.

Introduction

Publications by Veronica O’Mara

Production and Reception

A Reconsideration of Female Scribal Activity: Locating the Home of the Carolingian ab-Scriptorium
HELENE SCHECK

Scribal Notes and Owners’ Marks: On Colophons in Birgittine Manuscripts
INGELA HEDSTRÖM

Catherine Wouters and the Collecting of Vernacular Sermons in Sint-Elisabeth op de Berg Sion in Brussels
PATRICIA STOOP

On the Sidelines? The Medieval Carmelites’ Female Branch and its Books: status quaestionis
RALF LÜTZELSCHWAB

Patronage and Dissemination

‘Li poeples est en doloros martire’: Reading Social Justice in Women’s Devotional Books in England
JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE

Gift of the Duchess: Margaret Holland, Simon Wynter, and Syon Abbey’s Sanctilogium salvatoris as a Source for Preaching
VIRGINIA BLANTON

Sermons and Preaching in the Household Accounts of Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509)
SUSAN POWELL

Edification and Learning

Opponent and Protector: Mary and the Jews in East Norse Legends and Miracle Tales
JONATHAN ADAMS

Allegories from Nature and Wildlife in Birgitta of Sweden’s Revelations
ROGER ANDERSSON

Communal Preaching: A Consideration of Monastic Pastoral Care in Italian Nunneries
CAROLYN MUESSIG

Gendering the Soul: Representations from Manuscript to Print
MARTHA W. DRIVER

Devotion and Practice

Scripted Allegoresis and Inventive Reading of the Middle Dutch Jhesus collacien
THOM MERTENS

Word and Gesture: Performing the Nuns’ Liturgy at Syon Abbey
ANN M. HUTCHISON

Linking the Medieval and the Early Modern: The Influence of Mystical Authors in the English Convents in Exile
CAROLINE BOWDEN

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Bibliography

Index of Manuscripts and Archival Documents

Index of People

Index of Texts

Index of Religious Institutions