Description: Alison Beach's book on female scribes in twelfth-century Bavaria is based on the belief that the scriptorium was vital to the intellectual revival of the Middle Ages and that women played a role in this renaissance. Beach's focus on manuscript production at three rather different religious houses, and the religious, intellectual, social and economic factors which influenced that production, enables her to draw wide-ranging conclusions of interest to palaeographers as well as others interested in religious and gender history.
Review Quotes: "This excellent study of female scribes in twelfth-century Bavaria demonstrates how careful paleographical and codicological analysis can provide important new insights into medieval women's religious lives...This creative approach to manuscript studies makes important contributions to the scholarship on female monasticism, to the study of monastic reform in German-speaking lands and to our understanding of monastic participation in the intellectual revival of the twelfth century."
- H-Net