Thinking of Their Sisters: Authority and Authorship in Late Medieval Women’s Religious Communities

Fifteenth-century nuns Alijt Bake and Magdalena Beutler were both condemned for false mystical teachings but were also influential teachers whose books were widely recopied into the seventeenth century. Though both women’s careers are typically considered as evidence for an antifeminist ecclesiastical crackdown on female visionaries, the popularity of their written books suggests that there were competing hermeneutics for interpreting women’s visions. Through comparisons with other convent authors this essay argues that women religious and lay readers authorized women teachers for the utility of their books while men engaged in the discernment of spirits sometimes overlooked female comportment to promote the objectives of their own religious orders.