The British Library’s always informative Medieval manuscript blog has a post about items associated with Medieval and Renaissance women which have been digitised and made available.
The items include texts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations in both its short and long forms. The Sloane MSS copies of the long text are our source for this version of the work and survive thanks to the efforts of English recusant nuns in seventeenth century France. That is a testimony not just to their piety but to the survival of interest in Mother Julian’s visionary and meditative spirituality long after the disruption of the sixteenth century.
Other English items are the thirteenth century Ancrene Wisse or Riwle which was translated from Middle English to Norman French and was a popular spiritual text. It occurs in a Cottonian MS in a compendium of devotional works once owned by Eleanor Cobham, the notorious wife of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. That is in itself an interesting insight into her life. What one can construct from that is open to debate but it certainly stimulates thought.
The Felbrigge Psalter, with its rare embroidered cover, is a witness to Franciscan female spirituality in early fourteenth century East Anglia.
In addition there are fascinating manuscripts from convents in the Netherlands and Germany.
The illustrated post can be seen at From Julian of Norwich to Eleanor Cobham: more magnificent manuscripts online
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