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The Boke of Gostely Grace is a Middle English translation of the Liber specialis gratiae by the German visionary Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241–1298), 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 women’s literary culture. It complements and supplements the new critical edition of the text, The Boke of Gostely Grace, edited by Naoë 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.

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This volume makes readily available for the first time a critical edition of The Doctrine of the Hert, the fifteenth-century English translation of De doctrina cordis, a thirteenth-century Latin devotional treatise addressed to nuns. A religious bestseller, the Doctrina circulated throughout Europe between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and was translated into six different languages. The Doctrina progressively pairs the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit with seven key actions of the heart, leading readers toward contemplative unity with God. Despite its medieval popularity, the Doctrina has largely escaped the attention of scholars until recently. Exeter’s edition offers a full textual commentary, while its introduction not only examines current thinking upon the Doctrina’s authorship and envisaged primary audience, but also takes advantage of recent scholarly breakthroughs in the understanding of late medieval female spirituality. Christiania Whitehead is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at the University of Warwick. Her fields of interest lie in medieval allegory and female spirituality. Denis Renevey is Chair of Medieval English Literature and Language at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has published widely in the field of vernacular theology and female religious writings. Anne Mouron is a fellow in English at Greyfriars, University of Oxford. She writes on late medieval devotional literature. The edition is intended to be used alongside A Companion to the Doctrine of the Hert: The Middle English Translation and its Latin and European Contexts, edited by Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Exeter, 2010). These volumes represent a very significant and welcome contribution to medieval scholarship and will undoubtedly influence much future work on vernacular religious writings.