Nuns' Literacies In Medieval Europe: The Kansas City Dialogue ed. by Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop (review)

The volume has its origin in the conference "Nuns' Literacies in Medieval Europe" held at the University of Missouri−Kansas City in June 2012. It is the second volume in a series of three publications on nuns' literacies, the first being Nuns' Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue(2013). According to the three editors, "[t]his multi-year project aims to investigate the topic of literacy from palaeographical and textual evidence, as well as by discussing records of book ownership in convents, and other more external evidence, both literary and historical" (pp. xxvii-xx-viii). More specifically, the "focus is on the extent to which female religious from particular countries and in varying languages read, interpreted, copied, wrote, translated, edited, and acted as patrons of, or intermediaries in, intellectual and literary practice" (p. xxix). In contrast to the first volume, which concentrated on England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, this volume broadens the geographical horizon to include articles on also southern (Italy and Spain) and northern (Ireland and Iceland) countries. Moreover, the editors "pressed for contributions that would illustrate the nuns' active engagement with formal education, and other textual forms−beyond the liturgical that was the main focus of the earlier volume−such as legal charters in Anglo-Saxon England or politically engaged letters in medieval Germany" (p. xxxiii). Finally, this volume includes also articles on visual literacy, which was not examined in the first volume. As pointed out by the editors, "overarching themes or theoretical straitjackets were not imposed on participants in either volume, apart from the need for a steady concentration on the topic of nuns' literacies" (p. xxxiii).

Framed by a lengthy introduction, a bibliography, an index of manuscripts, archival documents, and incunabula, an index of convents, and an index of people, the book consists of seventeen articles by an international group of scholars. These articles are divided into five sections. The first section, entitled "Educating the Sisters," consists of four articles. Virginia Blanton and Helene Scheck's "Leoba and the Iconography of Learning in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Women Religious, 660-780" examines Rudolf's vitaof Saint Leoba and how this work, despite its biases and reliance on conventional hagiography, can be mined for information about the learning of Anglo-Saxon nuns. Ulrike Wiethaus's "Collaborative Literacy and the Spiritual Education of Nuns at Helfta" is an investigation of the collection of monastic women's writings at the Cistercian house Beatae Mariae Virginis. More specifically, she demonstrates how the nuns collaborated in order to produce texts and concludes her essay with reflections on the contemplative pedagogy used by the authors of these texts. Patricia Stoop's fascinating essay on "From Reading to Writing: The Multiple Levels of Literacy of the Sister Scribes in the Brussels Convent of Jericho" provides a survey of the literacy of the Jericho sisters with a focus on their education, the production of manuscripts, and the writing of books for people and institutions outside the walls of the convent. Andrea Knox's captivating article on "Her Book-Lined Cell: Irish Nuns and the Development of Texts, Translation, and Literacy in Late Medieval Spain" explores the schools established and run by Irish nuns in Spain. It traces the development of these schools, their curricula, the books produced by the nuns, and their role in the translation of texts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Finally, Knox examines the nuns' role in the retention of texts banned during the Spanish Inquisition, which, she argues "situated Irish female religious at the heart of the subversion of orthodoxy and censorship" (p. 68).

The second section, entitled "Nuns Making their Letters," is comprised of three very interesting articles. In her "Literacy in Neapolitan Women's Convents: An Example of Female...