Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

Lady Gertrude Rickeldey of Ortenberg (d. 1335) was a noble widow who lived a spiritual, but secular life in her own household, first in Offenburg and later in Strasbourg, the economic and cultural heart of southern Germany. Her life story was written by a lay woman from Gertrude's entourage and was based on numerous stories told by Gertrude's lifelong companion, Heilke of Staufenberg (d. after 1335). The biographer gives us a view of the aristocratic household, reports the many conversations that the women held with fellow believers and learned mendicants, and shows how they led a life of devotion in their own home, but at the same time, operated as full citizens of the city, taking part in both the civic and religious politics of Strasbourg. The details of her account reveal that the women did not take vows or renounce their possessions. They did not abandon their own decision-making power. Instead, they were mistresses of their own lives and developed into ethicae of stature. Following historical investigations into Gertrude's and Heilke's life (Part I) is an edition and translation of the fourteenth-century text on which these studies are based (Part II).

A Study and Translation of a Fourteenth-Century Spiritual Biography of Gertrude Rickeldey of Ortenberg and Heilke of Staufenberg

The Dedicated Spiritual Life of Upper Rhine Noble Women

Jocelyn Wogan-Browne

"In recent years, secular life and lifestyles in late antiquity and the Middle Ages have been illuminated through renewed attention to the economic and social history of households, while scholarship on women has produced studies of the lives and the devotional reading of laywomen and women religious. This volume is a collection that unites study of the household church's roles in women's history to the impact of women's householding on the history of the church."--BOOK JACKET.

Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Bundel studies over het leven en de verering van een twaalfde-eeuwse, Limburgse heilige.

Gerlach van Houthem en zijn verering

De kluizenaar in de eik

A poetic approach to revising and re-creating Caribbean mythology on an epic scale, this book-length autobiographical poem in five parts addresses the large themes of the Caribbean experience: history, migration, myth, and domestic love. The different movements vary in style and tone—from blank verse, to terza rima, to heroic couplets—but are unified by the voice of the single narrator, which changes over time. Prefaced by a passage from the Ramayana, the poem begins on the plains of Caroni, where the narrator traces his beginnings, and moves to an overnight bus journey through Europe, a sojourn in Toronto, and an account of a broken marriage, addressed to the narrator’s daughter. The series of poems ends with “The Last Avatar,” a miniepic which recasts the Caribbean as a Hindu eschatological myth and places its heroes as the holy trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu in Caribbean terms.

The Lives of Yvette, Anchoress of Huy; Juliana of Cornillon, Author of the Corpus Christi Feast; and Margaret the Lame, Anchoress of Magdeburg

Living Saints of the Thirteenth Century

In cities and towns across northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a new type of religious woman took up authoritative positions in society, all the while living as public recluses in cells attached to the sides of churches. In Lives of the Anchoresses, Anneke Mulder-Bakker offers a new history of these women who chose to forsake the world but did not avoid it. Unlike nuns, anchoresses maintained their ties to society and belonged to no formal religious order. From their solitary anchorholds in very public places, they acted as teachers and counselors and, in some cases, theological innovators for parishioners who would speak to them from the street, through small openings in the walls of their cells. Available at all hours, the anchoresses were ready to care for the community's faithful whenever needed. Through careful biographical studies of five emblematic anchoresses, Mulder-Bakker reveals the details of these influential religious women. The life of the unnamed anchoress who was mother to Guibert of Nogent shows the anchoress's role as a spiritual guide in an oral culture. A study of Yvette of Huy shows the myriad possibilities open to one woman who eventually chose the life of an anchoress. The accounts of Juliana of Cornillon and Eve of St. Martin raise questions about the participation of religious women in theological discussions and their contributions to church liturgy. And the biographical study of Margaret the Lame of Magdeburg explores the anchoress's role as day-to-day religious instructor to the ordinary faithful.

The Rise of the Urban Recluse in Medieval Europe

Lives of the Anchoresses

The studies within this volume apply insights gained from gender studies to re-consider the way knowledge and learning was transmitted in medieval Europe 1200-1550. Traditional scholarship has largely concentrated on the clerical and academic context of conventional learning. It tended to focus on the contents and methods of formal education, as well as on a small group of educational institutions from which women were excluded. In this volume, authors consider how learning was transmitted outside the schools, in particular within women's communities. They raise a range of questions: how was knowledge transmitted in an oral context, what varieties of knowledge were available to communities of women? What kinds of learning are characteristic of such communities? What techniques did women develop to preserve and transmit their knowledge and how was it valorized both within their communities, and by 'authoritative' outsiders? Under what circumstances could women themselves gain authority in passing on knowledge to a wider audience?

Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

Books

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