Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority

Dissident Women, Beguines, and the Quest for Spiritual Authority focuses on the responses of a group of twenty-first-century women to the lives and writings of thirteenth-century beguine mystics, and reveals how the struggle to discover their own inner spiritual authority connects two groups of women across centuries.

For contemporary women who are disenchanted with the institutional church and who seek spiritual direction, models deeply rooted within the tradition may not be the most helpf...