Virgins and Scholars

A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria. Edited by Claire M. Waters. Edition of the Middle English texts and facing translations, with apparatus, bibliography and introduction. The lives presented in this volume cover a wide range of hagiographic modes, from hagiographic romance to affective, devotional appreciation to doctrinal treatise in narrative form. From the life of Jerome, composed by a monk for his aristocratic spiritual daughter, to the life of Katherine, reputedly translated for Henry V, to those of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, which set their subjects in a recognizably Birgittine context, they show the interaction of men and women, lay and monastic, in the production of devotional literature. The diversity of their approaches and sources, moreover, shows the links between English dynastic politics and continental religious literature and spiritual traditions. As examples of translation practices, of monastic politics, and of religious instruction, these lives provide a window onto the devotional culture and literary worlds of fifteenth-century Europe. XII,491 Seiten mit zwei Farbtafeln, gebunden (Medieval Women: Texts & Contents; Vol. 10/Brepols 2008)