The Lives of female mystics are unique sources for our understanding of the spirituality and devotional practices of medieval religious women. So the rediscovery and translation of a relatively unknown work, The Life of Christina of Hane, is an exciting opportunity to enlarge our understanding of female mystical spirituality and its reception in the thirteenth century. Christina (1269–92?) was a nun in the Premonstratensian convent of Hane, in the Rhineland Palatinate. The text of the Life survives in a single manuscript copied around 1500 in the Mosel-Franconian dialect (now Strasbourg, Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, MS 324). This translation is based on the edition of the Life published by Racha Kirakosian (Die Vita der Christine von Hane. Untersuchung und Edition [Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017]). Her erudition and deep knowledge of the work shines through in this translation and commentary, while her engaging and sympathetic prose brings the energy of Christina's spiritual striving alive for a new audience.Christina's Life sheds new light on the spirituality of women in the Premonstratensian order. Histories of the order have tended to overlook the continued presence of women after the twelfth century, and the rediscovery of this text together with the research of scholars such as Yvonne Seale and Shelley Wolbrink contributes to the writing of new, more inclusive histories of the order. The Premonstatensians have not been closely associated with mystical spirituality, making Christina's Life an important witness for how mystical ideas and practices circulating in German regions were interpreted in this community.The introduction deftly outlines the scant details we can infer about Christina's biography from her Life, situates her distinct spirituality and mystical beliefs within the broader context of thirteenth-century mystical practice, and judiciously assesses the complicated textual tradition of the Life and its transmission. Kirakosian's style is that rare combination of erudition and accessibility. The tropes and themes of medieval mystical texts are crisply outlined for readers unfamiliar with the subject together with the interpretative challenges they present.Penitential suffering is presented in the Life as central to Christina's spiritual purpose. Like other female mystics such as Christina the Astonishing, Christina's physical suffering was enacted as a form of imitatio Christi through which her “mortified body becomes a stage of her sanctity” (xviii). Her pain is conceived as a form of “ransom” paid on behalf of the souls her prayers release from purgatory; her earthly body, purged of sin, bears the suffering for them. The intensity of her physical suffering is matched only by the intensity of her entreaties to her bridegroom Christ to deliver souls from purgatory. The most extreme and disturbing of Christina's penitential acts was her genital self-mutilation. Kirakosian addresses this disquieting self-harm with sensitivity, analyzing it in the context of medieval ideas about sexuality and the body and showing how it was considered integral to Christina's program of self-mortification to purify her heart from the “dust of sin” (4).According to the Life, after her soul was cleansed Christina was ready to embark on mystical union with Christ. This process unfolds through a dialogue of visions and auditions shifting between Christina, her soul, and Christ in a complex interplay of voices. The intimate relationship between the soul and her bridegroom Christ draws on the imagery of the bride as the beloved drawn from the Song of Songs, sharing many features with texts by other female mystics such Gertrude of Helfta. A striking element is that Christina's relationship to Christ is presented as a “perfect union” of intertwined identities (chapters 67 and 71), a concept that was potentially heretical as it implied that Christina was equal with Christ (xxi).The dialogue also presents Christina as like—even equated—to Mary. Identified as the bride of Christ through nuptial imagery, Christina receives a vision in which she is crowned by Christ and raised to sit at his side whereupon she is addressed as “blessed queen” of heaven (chapters 81 and 85). Moreover, the physical pain that Christina “suffer[s] for the world” likens her to Mary as coredemptrix (xxviii) and stresses the “human-divine similarity” between the two (xxx).The voice in the final section (chapters 97–100) shifts again as the narrator presents a spiritually mature Christina speaking as a divine mouthpiece. This discursive part is influenced by ideas drawn from the work of Meister Eckhardt, such as “inflowing,” emanation and detachment, and the fourteenth-century debate about Mary's maculate status, in which the text adopts the Dominican position that Mary was not free of original sin. These later additions suggest that this part of the work may have been associated with Dominicans or someone influenced by their ideas.Untangling the possible author or authors of the Life is complex. The author of the hagiographical part of the Life may have been a canon from the Premonstratensian community at Rothenkirchen, which supervised the convent of Hane. But the complexity of the work's structure and the likelihood of later reworkings of the text imply that more than one person was involved. Kirakosian rejects the gendered model of authorship commonly associated with the Lives of holy women (male confessor collaborating with the female mystic) in favor of “more collective scenarios” of textual production over time (xix). She identifies multiple, shifting voices operating in different parts of the text as evidence of a “dynamic manuscript culture” and a process of ongoing cocreation (xxxiii).The possible dynamics of the text's production raises wider questions about the cultural and spiritual authority of medieval women mystics. The continued intellectual and material engagement with Christina's Life as a medium through which to articulate theological ideas speaks to the esteem in which the figure of Christina was held, and that a woman could be considered a suitable mouthpiece through which to present theological commentary. The Life, therefore, is another intriguing example of how mystical concepts and ideas found in the works of Meister Eckhardt were transmitted in texts associated with devout women, as we see also in the mystical treatise Schwester Katrei.Kirakosian states that her aim is to make the Life “more easily available to non-specialist readers” (xl–xli), which she accomplishes admirably. Her translation is lucid and engaging, rendering the poetic and rhetorical nuance of the original into fluid and elegant prose. Distinct features of the Mosel-Franconian language and how they have been treated in the translated text are helpfully explained in the introduction. Difficult passages and those that illustrate features of the text's rhetorical style are discussed in the notes, indicating how choices to translate certain problematic passages were made (such as the repeated use of the third-person pronoun she, which blurred the identities of Christina and her soul; see chapter 82, 118n2).Translating medieval texts is an intellectual and creative labor that tends not to receive the recognition it deserves within the academy. We are indebted to Kirakosian for her generosity and commitment in making this text available to a wide readership. The Life of Christina of Hane is a most welcome addition to our sources about medieval women mystics and for understanding the attitudes to and reception of mystical spirituality. It is ideal for undergraduate teaching and will be enthusiastically received by scholars interested in medieval religious women, gender and religion, and the history of the body.