Female Authorship in the Augustinian Convent of Jericho and the Translation of Conrad of Saxony’s Speculum beatae Mariae virginis in Sermons by Maria van Pee and Janne Colijns

In the fifteenth century the Augustinian canonesses of the Brussels convent of Jericho had a large, creative share in the preservation of the sermons that they heard their confessors preach in the convent’s church. Previous research has studied their methods of working as well as their motivation in taking up their pens. Less attention has been paid thus far, however, to the integration of written sources into those sermons. This article, therefore, focuses on two sermons by Sisters Maria van Pee and Janne Colijns that are based on the tenth lectio from the Speculum beatae Mariae virginis by the thirteenth-century Franciscan author Conrad of Saxony. By comparing the ways both canonesses dealt with this text (presumably in Latin), this article aims to shed more light on the sisters’ literacies and to arrive at a more nuanced view of their authorship.