Customer Reviews

Dominican Penitent Women (Classics of Western Spirituality)

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Though this book basically concerns Mediaeval Christian, and particularly Catholic, spirituality, it provides a valuable insight into the mind of Mediaeval women and their way of life. The book deals specifically with religious groups of women that were not formally monastic or bound with any formal ecclesiastical rules. However, their grouping was brought about by their social needs, namely, to have their honour and prestige protected. This was a way of finding their own niche in a society that did not have particular respect to single women or widows. In a sense, then, the book is more than just a spiritual volume. It sheds light on the social conditions of women in the middle ages. The book has three main parts: the first produces a 15th century text of rules; the second, provides five original documents from the 13th, 14th and 16th centuries that deal with women of a particularly spiritual hue; and the third reproduces two original documents, one from the 15th, and the other from the 16th, centuries, of two spiritual women. I found the middle part to be the most interesting, for in it one can not only find a spiritual nourishment but provides interesting insights into the lives and minds of mediaeval women who struggled to be acknowledged and respected within a complex (and, to us, strange) social context. Not much has been published on the subject of this book, and certainly not the original documents that deal with it. So it makes a welcome addition to our knowledge.