Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's FrancienVie d'Isabelle de France(ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's ProvençalVida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina(begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-ProvençalVia seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu(between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.
