The interaction between mystically inspired beguines and nuns on the one hand and the friars as their confessors, on the other, that is, the male authorities in the late Middle Ages, certainly requires careful assessment because many different factors come into play here. In her monograph,
Claire Taylor Jones pursues a host of different aspects pertaining to this complex issue in order to gain a grasp of those female writers particularly in the female Dominican monasteries in the Southwest of Germany and their male colleagues, or spiritual confessors, especially Heinrich Seuse
and Johannes Tauler. She draws heavily from the Nuremberg Dominican convent of St. Katherine’s library (15th century), but this actually depends on the various chapters included here. It becomes very clear, however, that the notion of women’s lack of Latin needs to be
reviewed carefully considering that that library contained ca. 726 manuscripts, of which 161 were in Latin.
