The closeness of these sources to actual practice means they allow us a unique insight into convent life, its spiritual horizons and the material conditions which framed it, into its daily routine and into its relations with the outside world [...] This richly illustrated book has one particular merit: exceptional works such as the Ebstorf World Map, the tapestries from the convents of Heiningen and Wienhausen or the frescoes from the nuns’ choir in Wienhausen are interpreted in conjunction with the iconographic programmes of the manuscripts, material objects and written sources presented in the volume. This creates a comprehensive picture of a way of life which combines spiritual and theoretical learning with an abundance of practical knowledge [...] Thus the authors succeed in opening one new perspective after another onto the most important dimensions of spiritual life in late-medieval convents. Based on the sources which have come down to us, this account demonstrates the significance of religious women in medieval Europe and makes clear the complexity of their lives and their interaction with the social structures outside the convents. More than that: the authors also shake up another stubborn cliché. The picture of the comprehensive “crisis” experienced by the late Middle Ages, a crisis characterized by religious “decline”, is rightly countered in this history of “unheard and unherdable women” by a picture of new departures and renewal long before the start of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. This new approach allows us to conceive history beyond the classical period boundaries.
Christina Lutter
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2023.
Henrike Lähnemann is the first woman to be appointed to a chair in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, where she teaches German literature of the Middle Ages and works on textual and visual evidence from the women’s convents of northern Germany.
Eva Schlotheuber is professor of Medieval History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where she researches and teaches on the education and lifeworld of religious women. She was the first woman to chair the Association of Historians of Germany from 2016 to 2021.
Anne Simon is Associate Fellow at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of London and retired Senior Lecturer in Mediaeval German at the University of Bristol. Her publications include The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late-Medieval Nuremberg: Saint and the City (Farnham 2012); Pepper for Prayer: The Correspondence of the Birgittine Nun Katerina Lemmel, ed. by Volker Schier, Corine Schleif & Anne Simon (Stockholm 2019); ‘Da ward Carolus lachen. Kaiser Karl IV., die Nürnberger Geschichtsschreibung und der Hauptmarkt Nürnbergs’, in Geschichte erzählen. Strategien der Narrativierung von Vergangenheit im Mittelalter. XXV Anglo-German Colloquium Manchester 2017, ed. by Sarah Bowden, Manfred Eikelmann, Stephen Mossman & Michael Stolz (Tübingen 2020); and ‘Aue Maria und Rosenkranz als Gebetunterweisung im spӓtmittelalterlichen Nürnberg’, in Lehren, Lernen und Bilden in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. XXIII. Anglo-German Colloquium (Nottingham 2013), ed. by Henrike Lähnemann, Nicola McLelland & Nine Miedema (Tübingen 2017).