The Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House, Deventer. The Lives and Spirituality of the Sisters, c. 1390–c. 1460

Until now, the fascinating Middle Dutch “sister books”—texts containing biographical sketches or vitae of Sisters of the Common Life and Augustinian canonesses regular that were written by, about, and for these women—have not been accessible for non-Dutch speakers. With his excellent English translation of one of these sister books, the manuscript from Master Geert’s House in Deventer (referred to as the Gh Sisterbook), G. H. Gerrits has now made the first Dutch sister book available for English-speaking readers.The Gh Sisterbook consists of a collection of sixty-four vitae of women who lived in a semireligious community of Sisters of the Common Life, in the period between ca. 1390 and ca. 1460. The extant text was presumably written and compiled in the second half of the fifteenth century. The Gh Sisterbook was one of five Middle Dutch sister books. Gerrits has noted in the introduction to his translation that another three sister books might have been lost and speculates that there could have been a companion volume, or perhaps a sequel, to the extant Gh Sisterbook (16). Sister books have been underrepresented in research about late medieval religious cultures and women’s writing. While research of the past decades has created a more nuanced view on sister books and corrected ideas about these texts as “naïve” or “hysterical,” much important work remains to be done, and Gerrits’s translation is, therefore, an important step forwards.Gerrits’s translation of the Gh Sisterbook opens with an elaborate introduction to the text and its context. The introduction provides general information about the history of Master Geert’s House, including the sisters’ socioeconomic backgrounds, their daily routines, the different offices within the House, their functions and duties, and aspects of their spiritual life. It then continues with a reflection on the composition and sources of the sister book, examining Middle Dutch sister books as a distinct genre of exemplary and edifying literature. These sister books are shown to differ from traditional biography, as well as from the more “outward facing” fifteenth-century Latin brother books, which focused more on the origin, spread, and success of the modern devotion movement. Although the introduction provides extensive historical context and general information about convent life, it offers limited textual analysis of the translated text itself. A more in-depth exploration of the thematic elements that characterize the vitae in the Gh Sister-book would have been valuable. For instance, Gerrits briefly notes the anecdotal structure of the vitae (68), but does not elaborate on the types of anecdotes or anecdotal evidence that appear in the text. Such insights would have enriched the reader’s understanding of the work.Gerrits differentiates the Gh Sisterbook from hagiographic literature, noting its relative lack of miraculous or supernatural elements, save for a few exceptions (67). However, he also notes that other Dutch sister books contain more miraculous content. This raises the question of whether the relative lack of the miraculous is truly a defining feature of the sister book genre, or if the Gh Sisterbook is an outlier in this respect. When discussing the genre classification of sister books, Gerrits, moreover, departs from the views of Annette Maria Bollmann and Wybren Scheepsma, who have suggested a potential connection between the five Middle Dutch sister books and the nine South German Dominican sister books of the fourteenth century in their work.1 Gerrits does not believe that these texts constitute a single textual family. However, his rationale for rejecting the arguments of Scheepsma and Bollmann is not fully developed in the introduction. A more detailed justification of his position would have strengthened this part of the discussion.Gerrits’s translation of the Gh Sisterbook is based on the 1919 edition by Dirk de Man, published by Martinus Nijhoff. The translation is of high quality and the vitae are fascinating. One example is the account of Sister Gerbrich ter Voerde’s horse-riding accident. The narrative vividly describes the injury—an open wound two feet in length—and the uncertainty surrounding whether she would retain her leg. Her healing is framed in spiritual terms: She would be cured if she responded to her divine calling. This vita, therefore, effectively intertwines a real-world event with a hagiographic motif. Another compelling vita is the one of Sister Grieten van Nyënbeeke. Upon her death, her sister’s desire to keep part of Grieten’s body—her head—with her led her to secretly carry it back to her cell. This moment introduces an unsettling form of intimacy that underscores the emotional and spiritual bonds within this female community.The volume concludes with a useful index of names and places, aiding readers in locating specific references within the text. While helpful, the index could have been expanded further with thematic elements for improved accessibility. In sum, Gerrits’s translation of the Sisterbook of Master Geert’s House is a highly welcome publication. It provides access to a unique form of women’s religious writing and a fascinating late medieval spiritual and literary landscape.