Description

This volume presents the Lives of three women of the thirteenth century, all writtenby contemporaries. In the late Middle Ages, almost every town in Northern Europe had its own anchoress, who would keep in touch with the citizens through a window looking onto the churchyard or through a door and window looking into the church (as shown in the cover illustration). Such women, along with the beguines, Cistercian nuns and monks, reform-minded clergy, and devout laywomen, formed what Barbara Newman has termed 'close-knit networks of spiritual friendship that easily crossed the boundaries of gender, religious status, and even language'. This volume presents the lives of two recluses, Yvette of Huy, whose life was recorded by her spiritual friend, the Premonstratensian Hugh of Floreffe, and Margaret the Lame of Magdeburg, whose lessons were recorded by her confessor, the Dominican John of Magdeburg (introduced and translated by Jo Ann McNamara, and Gertrud Jaron Lewis and Tilman Lewis respectively). The anchoress Eve of Saint-Martin was an author herself. Her memoir in French on her friend Juliana's and her own labour for the new Feast of Corpus Christi forms the basis of the Latin Life of Juliana of Cornillon (introduced and translated by Barbara Newman).