Here is the first English translation based on the new critical edition of The Flowing Light of the Godhead, the sole mystical visionary work of Mechthild, a 13th-century (c. 1260-c. 1282/94) German Beguine. This challenging work of deep religious insight reflects Mechthild's inner life, and God's as well, employing a great variety of traditional medieval literary forms and genres in prose and verse.

The Book of Margery Kempe is the story of a boisterous worldly mystic, that will appeal to modern women. Margery, the mother o fourteen, wife of a debt-ridden & lusty husband, & a hoarder of "secret" sin, brings the world of medieval women alive to contemporary readers. Her earthly & emotional autobiography, dictated to a priest near the end of her life & known as the first written in English, reveals a woman whose passions & vanities were turned from self-absorption to the service of her Lord. It records a brand of mysticism marked by pilgrimages, secret penances, near hangings as a heretic, uncontrollable tears inspired by the Holy Spirit, & a love of God so intense that the passion of Jesus reeled before Margery in much the same way as a film does for us today. The Book of Margery Kempe paints a vivid portrait of a unique medieval mystic-a woman more vibrantly & emotionally attached to God than to pious mortifications carried out in isolation.

'Wonderful Blood' studies the saving power attributed to Christ's blood at north German cult sites such as Wilsnack, the theological controversy such sites generated, and the hundreds of devotional paintings, poems, and prayers dedicated to Christ's wounds, scourging and bloody crucifixion.

Crown and Veil offers a broad introduction to the history and visual culture of female monasticism in the Middle Ages, from the earliest communities of Late Antiquity to the Reformation. Scholars from numerous disciplines offer a wide range of perspectives not to be found in any other single book on the subject, placing the art, architecture, literature, liturgy, religious practices, and economic foundations of these communities within a wide historical and cultural context. Long considered marginal to mainstream history, nuns and canonesses in fact had a profound influence on medieval culture. Revered and admired as models of piety, they commanded considerable prestige and exercised a significant degree of political power. Whether acting as producers or patrons of art, nuns were widely celebrated for their imaginative accomplishments. Focusing on the visual culture of female monastic communities in the German Empire, Frankish Gaul, Langobard Italy, and Anglo-Saxon England, this volume underscores the richness of largely unfamiliar material and its role in shaping distinctive forms of religious life.

In this study of the manner in which medieval nuns lived, Penelope Johnson challenges facile stereotypes of nuns living passively under monastic rule, finding instead that collectively they were empowered by their communal privileges and status to think and act without many of the subordinate attitudes of secular women. In the words of one abbess comparing nuns with monks, they were "different as to their sex but equal in their monastic profession." Johnson researched more than two dozen nunneries in northern France from the eleventh century through the thirteenth century, balancing a qualitative reading of medieval monastic documents with a quantitative analysis of a lengthy thirteenth-century visitation record which allows an important comparison of nuns and monks. A fascinating look at the world of medieval spirituality, this work enriches our understanding of women's role in premodern Europe and in church history.

The year 1200 marked a dynamic turning point in the history of Christian mysticism. New forms of religious life provided the impetus for a new mysticism whose influence continues today. This book documents the spirited dialogue between men and women that made possible the richness of mysticism in the 13th and 14th centuries.