Female Agency in Manuscript Cultures, ed. Eike Grossmann. Studies in Manuscript Cultures, 39. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2024, 319 pp., b/w and color ill.

Women’s history at least since the early Middle Ages has been a mixed bag, so to speak. They were mostly repressed, muted, sidelined, and also violated, but there were also many women who rose in status, gained high authority, acquired a high level of education, and became supremely respected representatives of their societies, all depending on individual situations and conditions. Hence the question regarding women’s agency as dealt with by the contributors to this volume, a key term that has been explored already for quite some time by many different scholars, especially those focusing on medieval mysticism. One of the most interesting aspects in pre-modern research has thus been to what extent women emerged as agents in their own lives and contributed to contemporary literature, the arts, even philosophy and theology.