By Rosalynn Voaden

Students have lengthy been conscious of the influence of the lives and works of Continental holy ladies on English spirituality; girl mystics corresponding to Margery Kempe have been encouraged via their predecessors in a foreign country, whose visionary stories and non secular reflections have been recorded and generally learn. even though, little or no scholarly paintings has been performed at the influence of Continental holy girls at the religious and devotional practices of late-medieval England. The essays during this quantity examine the impact of Hildegard of Bingen, Marguerite Porete, Mechtild of Hackeborn, Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena by way of concentrating on issues together with manuscript dissemination, incorporation in religious publications, and the interpretation, illumination, edition and alteration in their works for an English viewers. total, they give new proof of ways within which Continental sensibility and non secular mirrored image have been altered and tailored for an identifiably English devotional perform and spirituality.Dr ROSALYNN VOADEN teaches within the division of English at Arizona country collage. The individuals are: DENISE DESPRES, JANETTE DILLON, ROGER ELLIS, JOAN FRIEDMAN, IAN JOHNSON, KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, ROSALYNN VOADEN, NICHOLAS WATSON, DIANE WATT.

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Perhaps the most evident and obvious thread, one which unites all the essays, is that of acculturation. These works were not simply adopted, they were adapted to suit the needs of the native tradition. Another thread which links several essays is the issue - or sometimes non-issue - of gender and authority. A third thread is the examination of the response of a native tradition, in which the religious solitary was perceived as the acme of holiness, to Continental writings extolling the virtues of communal life and shared ecstasy.

The reasons for this are complex, but the most straightforward one is codicological, and has entirely to do with the pragmatics of transmission. Unlike, for instance, the popular Liber viarum dei of Elizabeth of Schönau, all of Hildegard's major works are voluminous. Only Gebeno of Eberbach, in the days when her general reputation was still high, had the foresight to do an abridged compilation of extracts which would prove more user-friendly in the libraries and scriptoria of medieval monastaries.

I hope that this collection of essays will help to remedy the loss. One of the potential problems of a volume such as this, which assembles essays on a number of historical figures by a variety of scholars all with differing methodologies, interests and approaches, is that of cohesion. As editor, I was delighted that a number of common threads emerged, and that it is possible to make some generalizations about the ways in which the works of Continental women visionaries contributed to English piety and devotional praxis.

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