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Listen Daughter

The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages

  • Book
  • © 2001

Overview

Editors:
  1. Constant J. Mews
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Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Constant J. Mews
    Pages 1-14

  3. Virginity, Theology, and Pedagogy in the Speculum Virginum

    • Constant J. Mews
    Pages 15-40

  4. The Speculum Virginum: The Testimony of the Manuscripts

    • Jutta Seyfarth
    Pages 41-57

  5. Female Religious Life and the Cura Monialium in Hirsau Monasticism, 1080 to 1150

    • Julie Hotchin
    Pages 59-83

  6. From Ecclesiology to Mariology: Patristic Traces and Innovation in the Speculum Virginum

    • Kim E. Power
    Pages 85-110

  7. The Speculum Virginum and the Audio-Visual Poetics of Women’s Religious Instruction

    • Morgan Powell
    Pages 111-135

  8. “Listen, Daughters of Light”: The Epithalamium and Musical Innovation in Twelfth-Century Germany

    • Catherine Jeffreys
    Pages 137-157

  9. The Cloister and the Garden: Gendered Images of Religious Life from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

    • Janice M. Pinder
    Pages 159-179

  10. The Speculum Virginum and Traditions of Medieval Dialogue

    • Sabina Flanagan
    Pages 181-200

  11. The Literature of Spiritual Formation for Women in France and England, 1080 to 1180

    • Elisabeth Bos
    Pages 201-220

  12. Herrad of Hohenbourg: A Synthesis of Learning in The Garden of Delights

    • Fiona Griffiths
    Pages 221-243

  13. The Second Blossoming of a Text: The Spieghel der Maechden and the Modern Devotion

    • Urban Küsters
    Pages 245-261

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 263-306
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Keywords

About this book

The words 'Listen daughter' (Audi filia, from Psalm 44 in the Latin Vulgate) were frequently used in exhortations to religious women in the twelfth century. This was a period of dramatic growth in the involvement of women in various forms of religious life. While Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) has become widely known in recent years as one of the most eloquent and original voices of the period, she is often seen as a figure in isolation from her context. She lived at a time of much questioning of traditional models of religious life, by women as well as by men. This volume introduces readers to a range of strategies provoked by the growth in women's participation in religious life in one form or another, as well as to male responses to this development. In particular, it looks at the 'Mirror for Virgins' (Speculum Virginum), an illustrated dialogue between a nun and her spiritual mentor written by a monk not long before Hildegard started to record her visions. While this treatise engages in dialogue with a fictional virgin, other writings present women (not just Hildegard) as teaching both women and men. An appendix will provide the first English translation of significant excerpts from the Speculum, as well as from other little known texts about religious women from the age of Hildegard. The underlying concern of this volume is to examine new ways in which religious life for women was conceived by men as well as interpreted in practice by women within a society firmly patriarchal in character.

Reviews

'Constant Mews has contributed to, and drawn together, an excellent collection of articles which advances understanding of the Speculum virginum and of the learning, development and position of religious women in the Middle Ages.' - Rosemary Dunn, Parergon

About the authors

CONSTANT J. MEWS teaches in the Department of History at Monash University in Australia, where he is also Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology.

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