Women as scribes
Subtitle: book production and monastic reform in twelfth-century Bavaria
By: Alison I. Beach.
Series: Cambridge studies in palaeography and codicology ;; 10
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, U.K; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
Subjects: Wessobrunn (Monastery) -- History -- To 1500.; Stift Admont -- History -- To 1500.; Schäftlarn (Monastery : Schäftlarn, Germany) -- History -- To 1500.; Scriptoria -- Germany -- Bavaria -- History -- To 1500.; Scribes -- Germany -- Bavaria -- History -- To 1500.; Women in Christianity -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500.; Books -- Germany -- History -- 400-1400.; Manuscripts, Medieval -- Germany -- Bavaria -- History.; Monasticism and religious orders -- Germany -- Bavaria -- History -- To 1500.; Civilization, Medieval -- 12th century.
Description: "Professor Beach's book on female scribes in twelfth-century Bavaria - the first full-length study of the role of women copyists in the Middle Ages - is underpinned by the notion that the scriptorium was central to the intellectual revival of the Middle Ages and that women played a role in this renaissance. The author examines the exceptional quantity of evidence of female scribal activity in three different religious communities, pointing out the various ways in which the women worked - alone, with other women, and even alongside men - to produce books for monastic libraries, and discussing why their work should have been made visible, whereas that of other female scribes remains invisible. Beach's focus on manuscript production, and the religious, intellectual, social, and economic factors which shaped that production, enables her to draw wide-ranging conclusions of interest not only to palaeographers but also to those interested in reading, literacy, and religious and gender history."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-191) and index.
Originally presented as author's thesis (doctoral)--Columbia University