Mechthild of Hackeborn and Margery Kempe: An Intertextual Conversation

This article examines the many resonances between the writing of the German, late thirteenth-century visionary nun, Mechthild of Hackeborn (d. 1298) and the late medieval English visionary writer, Margery Kempe (d. after 1438). It contends that Margery Kempe had read Mechthild's work (or had it read to her) and modelled much of her own spiritiually, and its articulation in her book, upon that of Mechthild

'Family, Feud and Fertility at Manorbier Castle Pembs. 1200-1400'

This article explores the links between a significantly understudied early fourteenth-century manuscript miscellany housed in Trinity College Library in Cambridge (Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.5 [1109]), the family of Gerald of Wales (d. 1223) and the medieval castle of Manorbier in Pembrokeshire. It argues both that this manuscript was produced by and for members of the de Barri family, and that the compilation, described as a 'mathematical miscellany' in James' catalogue, in fact contains a rich selection of medical and other texts that provides new insights into the troubled history of the castle and its owners during this period

Strange Fruits: Grafting, Foreigners, and the Garden Imaginary in Northern France and Germany, 1250–1350

This article explores the medieval uses of the horticultural practice of grafting, inserting a shoot of one plant into the rootstock of another in order to benefit from the latter's established strength and growth. It provided a rich metaphor for use in religious sermons and didactic literature from antiquity to the medieval period. Yet grafting was acknowledged to be 'contrary to nature', and a tension was thus set up between metaphor and practice that remained present and unresolved in medieval texts. This article explores one moment of that tension, reading the mystical works of Mechtild of Hackeborn (d.1298) and Gertrude of Helfta (d. 1302) in a northern European context where grafting was undergoing a transformation from a practice simply used for beneficial purposes - production of better fruit – to one that created pleasure and amusement for a growing aristocratic elite for whom controlling nature on their landed estates was simply another manifestation of their power, as exemplified by the pleasure park at Hesdin in Picardy