Between Court and Cloister: Royal Patronage and Nuns’ Literacy in Medieval East-Central Europe

Abstract

This collection of essays, focused on the literacies of nuns in medieval Europe, brings together specialists working on diverse geographical areas to create a dialogue about the Latin and vernacular texts nuns read, wrote, and exchanged, primarily in northern Europe from the eighth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. To date, there has been some significant research in this field but little in the way of cross-cultural study. Drawing especially on the rich body of scholarship that currently exists about nuns and books in England, Germany, the Low Countries, and Sweden, these essays investigate the meaning of nuns’ literacies in terms of reading and writing, Latin and the vernaculars. Contributors to this volume investigate the topic of literacy primarily from palaeographical and textual evidence and by discussing information about book ownership and book production in convents. In this first concentrated study that examines the literacy of nuns in a comparative fashion the essays pay close attention to the individual textual and cultural complexities of nuns’ literacies in the European Middle Ages.