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  • The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages
  • John W. Coakley
The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages. By Andrea Janelle Dickens. [International Library of Historical Studies, Vol. 60.] (New York: I. B. Tauris. 2009. Pp. viii, 248. $32.50 paperback. ISBN 978-1-845-11641-5.)

This volume consists of individual essays on twelve medieval women: Richeldis of Avranches (fl. 1061), St. Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), Christina of St. Trond (d. 1224), Hadewijch of Brabant (fl. c. 1240), Mechtild of Magdeburg (d. c. 1291), St. Mechtilde of Hackeborn (d. c. 1299), Blessed Angela of Foligno (d. c. 1309), Marguerite Porete (d. 1310), Julian of Norwich (d. 1413), St. Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), Margery Kempe (d. 1439), and St. Teresa of Ávila (d. 1582). All but two of the women were writers, and their own texts are our best sources; in the case of the two exceptions—namely, Richeldis, who was founder of the Marian shrine at Walsingham, and the beguine-like lay penitent Christine—the only sources are hagiographical. Each of Dickens's essays serves as an introduction to the woman in question, focused primarily on her spirituality and/or theology in the context of her circumstances and based on relevant literature in English, including both sources and scholarship. She writes that the book is "geared" for courses on "'medieval women' in the literary or religious studies classroom"(p. 8),and the essays read a bit like course lectures. The essay [End Page 776] on Hildegard, for example, sketches her biography, places her thought in the context of twelfth-century intellectual currents, discusses the mode and content of her visions and the sapiential theme in her writings, and addresses the nature of her claim to authoritative speech: a competent survey.

Dickens's essays may be read with profit, especially by her intended audience of students new to the subject of medieval women. But there are two aspects of the volume overall that restrict its usefulness. One is the limited attention to scholarship. The introductory chapter does survey five scholarly approaches to "female mystics" (in terms of, respectively, the notion of a gender-specific literature, relationships to popular religion, analyses of power, interactions with clerics, and supposed distinctions of genre), but this survey is too brief and unspecific to be of much use as a guide to the field of study, as one might expect in a work intended as an introduction. Throughout the body of the volume, although Dickens makes use of various scholars' work and gives proper acknowledgment, she makes little attempt to orient the reader to the shape or current status of scholarly discussions on the individual figures. There also are notable omissions in the bibliography, even assuming the restriction to works in English—for example, Paul Mommaers's translated monograph on Hadewijch, the essays of Karen Scott on Catherine, and Denise Baker's study of Julian's theology.

The other limiting aspect of the volume is the author's apparent reluctance to convey a clear thesis or compelling sense of project to give it coherence. There is, for example, no attempt to define or otherwise explain the problematic word mystic in the title. On the contrary, Dickens points out precisely what the figures she discusses do not have in common as a warning against assuming comparability too easily because of the dangers of "essentialism"—that is, treating any behavior or personal quality of the figures she studies as distinctively female (pp. 8, 193-94). But to avoid essentialism is one thing; to hesitate to cast one's work in terms of a distinctive approach to the subject matter or a set of organizing insights is another.

Dickens clearly has the knowledge and expertise to produce a more focused monograph on some aspect of the material covered here. It is hoped she chooses to do so.

John W. Coakley
New Brunswick Theological Seminary, NJ
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