A Companion to The Boke of Gostely Grace

Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa is Professor in Medieval English Literature and Culture, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shizuoka University. Her publications include (ed.)Medicine, Religion and Gender in Late Medieval Culture (D. S. Brewer, 2015) and (ed. with Anne Mouron, with the assistance of Mark Atherton) The Boke of Gostely Grace: The Middle English Translation, A Critical Edition from Oxford, MS Bodley 220 (LUP 2022). Anne Mouron is a senior member of Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford. Her publications include (ed. with Christiania Whitehead and Denis Renevey) The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (University of Exeter Press, 2010); The Manere of Good Lyvyng: A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard's Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem (Brepols, 2014); (ed. with Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, with the assistance of Mark Atherton) The Boke of Gostely Grace: The Middle English Translation, A Critical Edition from Oxford, MS Bodley 220 (LUP, 2022).

Introduction, Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa and Anne Mouron

PART 1: The Text: Latin Manuscripts and European Vernacular Translations

Chapter 1. Linus Ubl Liber or Libri: The Latin transmission of Mechthild’s text’

Chapter 2. Edmund Wareham Wanitzek, ‘This Has Been Written from the Book of Spiritual Grace’: Extracting, Compiling, and Printing the Liber in German’

Chapter 3. Marleen Cré, Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae in Middle Dutch: Het boek der bijzondere genade

Chapter 4. Elin Andersson, Ingela Hedström and Mikko Kauko “... because of the great love I feel for this book and its sacred knowledge”: Jöns Budde’s Swedish translation of St Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae

Chapter 5. Ugo Vignuzzi and Patrizia Bertini Malgarini, (Trans. by Alessandra Petrina), Mechthild in Germany, Melchiade in Umbria: The Gubbio Vernacularisation and the St Clare Religious Observance

Chapter 6. Anne Mouron, “Here, Madame, is a heavenly present”: The Seventeenth-Century Translation into French of Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae

PART 2: The Boke of Gostely Grace: Spirituality and the Religious Imaginary of the Helfta Community

Chapter 7. Christiania Whitehead, Church and House: Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Architectural Imaginary in its Fifteenth Century Religious Context

Chapter 8. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘“A trefold corde of þe colour of gold from our lordes herte”: Holy Mediatrix and Holy Solidarity in Mechthild of Hackborn’s Boke of Gostely Grace’

Chapter 9. Anne Mouron, “As bornyst sylver þe lef on slydeȝ”: Trees, Flower, Gems and Precious Metals in The Boke of Gostely Grace

Chapter 10. Liz Herbert McAvoy, Mechthild’s Flourishing Gardens: Gender, Sexuality and ‘Vegetal Being’ in the Boke of Gostely Grace

Chapter 11. Marleen Cré, Snapshots of a Role Model: Excerpts of Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae in Late Medieval Manuscripts in England

PART 3: Death and Purgatorial Piety of the Helfta Community

Chapter 12. Alexandra Barratt, Death and the Maidens: Gertrude the Great and the Passing of Mechthild

Chapter 13. Barbara Newman, Saving Souls at Helfta

Bibliography

Index