A fascinating and detailed account of medieval spirituality from a feminine perspective... The clarity and liveliness of her writing make her scholarly analysis accessible and highly worthwhile [to undergraduates as well as to graduate students] CHOICEFrances Beer's elegantly written study affirms the sanity, autonomy and religious genius of her medieval heroines... [She] provides an ideological context for the choice of the religious life [: unthinking misogyny parroted from classical texts; Germanic and Anglo-Saxon admiration for the `valorous woman' at the head of the warrior band and for the virgin who despises torture; the disconcerting shift of erotic idealisation of a remote lady and the relationship of love poetry to the praise of Christ the Bridegroom].

• Hildegard of Bingen; from warrior to lover; Mechtild of Magdeburg; Richard Rolle and the Yorksire nuns; Julian of Norwich.

A fascinating and detailed account of medieval spirituality from a feminine perspective... The clarity and liveliness of her writing make her scholarly analysis accessible and highly worthwhile [to undergraduates as well as to graduate students] CHOICEFrances Beer's elegantly written study affirms the sanity, autonomy and religious genius of her medieval heroines... [She] provides an ideological context for the choice of the religious life [: unthinking misogyny parroted from classical texts; Germanic and Anglo-Saxon admiration for the `valorous woman' at the head of the warrior band and for the virgin who despises torture; the disconcerting shift of erotic idealisation of a remote lady and the relationship of love poetry to the praise of Christ the Bridegroom].

• Hildegard of Bingen; from warrior to lover; Mechtild of Magdeburg; Richard Rolle and the Yorksire nuns; Julian of Norwich.

A fascinating and detailed account of medieval spirituality from a feminine perspective... The clarity and liveliness of her writing make her scholarly analysis accessible and highly worthwhile [to undergraduates as well as to graduate students] CHOICEFrances Beer's elegantly written study affirms the sanity, autonomy and religious genius of her medieval heroines... [She] provides an ideological context for the choice of the religious life [: unthinking misogyny parroted from classical texts; Germanic and Anglo-Saxon admiration for the `valorous woman' at the head of the warrior band and for the virgin who despises torture; the disconcerting shift of erotic idealisation of a remote lady and the relationship of love poetry to the praise of Christ the Bridegroom].

• Hildegard of Bingen; from warrior to lover; Mechtild of Magdeburg; Richard Rolle and the Yorksire nuns; Julian of Norwich.