Description: "Thousands and Thousands of Lovers examines the spiritual significance of community to the Cistercian nuns of Helfta"--
Brief description: Anna Harrison is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, where she teaches courses in the history of Christian late antiquity and the Middle Ages. She is currently at work on a monograph titled Paradox: Bernard of Clairvaux's On Loving God and Its Influence.
Review Quotes: "This book offers an astonishingly rich reconstruction of the visionary, communal, personal, and literary lives of the nuns of Helfta. It rests on a rich knowledge of their teachings and writings but understands these as born as much from communal experience and insight as the visions or writings of unusually graced individuals. Amidst a larger interpretive literature, much of it not in English, this book follows upon Caroline Walker Bynum's pioneering introduction of these materials to English-speaking readers a generation ago. It is an attractive and compelling general reflection on the lives and writings of these women, yet thoughtfully focused. Readers will find themselves immersed in its narrative flow as well as its host of illuming and learned notes."
John H. Van Engen, Andrew V. Tackes Professor of Medieval History, Emeritus, University of Notre Dame