This interdisciplinary literary study takes as its subject the educationally resourceful instructional texts for women living in convents in the Late Middle Ages. This study pioneers the methodological constitution and establishment of a new text type for this sacred literature, the Speculum sororum. Compared with rules, statutes and vitae, the Speculum sororum displays a variety of literary forms and provides informative insights into the everyday life, mindscape and particular piety of the sisters from this age. The texts are edited in their entirety or in extracts with a commentary and are analysed and located within literary history and the history of piety.

Ekkehard Borries, Göttingen.