The Boke of Gostely Grace is a Middle English translation of the Liber specialis gratiae by the German visionary Mechthild of Hackeborn (12411298), a Benedictine/Cistercian nun at the convent of Helfta. This new Companion will add momentum to the current interdisciplinary and theoretical debate surrounding Latin texts and their translations into the vernacular, including a number of issues regarding womens literary culture. It complements and supplements the new critical edition of the text, The Boke of Gostely Grace, edited by Naoė Kukita Yoshikawa and Anne Mouron with Mark Atherton, published by Liverpool University Press in 2022.
A comprehensive introduction is followed by three parts. Part 1 examines vernacular translations of the Liber specialis gratiae from the late medieval and early modern periods in German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian and French. Part 2 explores a wide-range of critical issues in The Boke of Gostely Grace, and in particular aspects of the spirituality of Helfta. The volume concludes in Part 3 with aspects of the Last Things at Helfta, more specifically purgatorial piety and the theme of the dying and the dead. The volume as a whole provides a new and nuanced understanding of how the mystical literary output of Helfta circulated and was received in the late medieval literary culture of England and Europe.
Introduction, Naoė 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 Mechthilds
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 Hackeborns 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 Buddes
Swedish translation of St Mechthild of Hackeborns 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 Hackeborns 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 Hackeborns
Architectural Imaginary in its Fifteenth Century Religious Context
Chapter
8. Naoė Kukita Yoshikawa, A trefold corde of že colour of gold
from our lordes herte: Holy Mediatrix and Holy Solidarity in Mechthild of
Hackborns Boke of Gostely Grace
Chapter
9. Anne Mouron, As bornyst sylver že lef on slyde: Trees, Flower,
Gems and Precious Metals in The Boke of Gostely Grace
Chapter
10. Liz Herbert McAvoy, Mechthilds 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
Hackeborns 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
Naoė 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 Regents 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 Naoė 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).
