ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many friends and colleagues have offered advice and encouragement during the course of my work on this project, helping to shape the book and immeasurably to improve it. It is a pleasure to acknowledge here their kindness, patience, and above all their deep erudition. My heartfelt thanks are due first to Barbara Newman, whose careful reading of the manuscript and judicious comments at a critical juncture gave me renewed energy and a clear sense of the project as a whole. I am deeply grateful to Elisabeth van Houts for her wisdom, mentorship, and friendship. Liesbeth read and commented on an early draft manuscript of this project, offering invaluable advice with characteristic warmth and kindness. Julie Hotchin, Stacy Klein, and Bruce Venarde read chapters at various points, and ultimately also the manuscript in its entirety. Each has engaged deeply and generously not just with this book, but with my research over many years. I am grateful for their extensive knowledge, which they freely share, and for their attentive and critical reading. Tom Noble encouraged this project and its author in many ways, offering a model of scholarly generosity and kindheartedness that is without equal. Among my friends, I particularly wish to thank Helen Jacupke, who has shared her learning and elegance of mind with me, as she has with generations of her students.

While writing this book, I had the good fortune to co-edit a collection of essays with Julie Hotchin on women and men in the religious life in German-speaking lands. I owe a debt of gratitude to the contributors to that project, whose expertise on questions relating to the practice of pastoral care vastly enriched my understanding of nuns’ priests. I thank John Coakley, Jennifer Kolpakoff Deane, Elsanne Gilomen-Schenkel, Sigrid Hirbodian, Sabine Klapp, Susan Marti, Anthony Ray, Sara Poor, Wybren Scheepsma, Eva Schlotheuber, and Shelley Amiste Wolbrink. Other colleagues have engaged with the project in its various parts, suggesting improvements and refinements. Conrad Leyser offered valuable comments on an early version of Chapter 4, helping me to clarify and focus my argument. As editors of the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender, Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras pushed me to sharpen my conclusions on women and reform. Constant Mews has not only written extensively on topics relevant to nuns’ priests, prompting my interest, but has also advised and encouraged me in my own research. Constance Berman taught me to see women and men together in monastic reform movements, and to question received narratives. Maureen Miller helped immeasurably in my thinking on women’s liturgical textiles, a topic that was initially inspired by her expert study. Gary Macy has advised me, more than once, on questions related to women’s liturgical practice. Dyan Elliott has inspired me in countless ways; I gratefully acknowledge my many intellectual debts to her scholarship. Lauren Mancia read several chapters, offering thoughtful advice as well as good friendship. Finally, anonymous reviewers over the years have carefully and thoughtfully considered my draft articles and other projects; it is a pleasure to acknowledge their influence here, and to thank them. They can see, I hope, how valuable their suggestions have been to me.

Several foundations and institutes have supported me during the course of my research; I particularly thank the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. With their support, I was fortunate to spend 2007–2008 as a visiting fellow at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz. My host, Franz J. Felten, was gracious in welcoming me and unfailingly generous in sharing with me his deep knowledge of female religious life and monasticism. It goes without saying that my research benefited significantly from his counsel. My time in Mainz was made all the more wonderful through the kind friendship of Christine Kleinjung. Invitations to speak at Trier, Eichstätt, and Gandersheim, and at a meeting of the Arbeitskreis geistliche Frauen im europäischen Mittelalter in Dhaun gave me the opportunity to present and refine my work on German sources. I am grateful to Alison Beach for including me in the AGFEM “circle,” and to Hedwig Röckelein for welcoming me at Gandersheim and sharing her publications with me in the years since. The opportunity to present portions of this work in other seminars and workshops has enriched the project as a whole. I am grateful to readers and audiences at Cambridge, Columbia, Cornell, Ghent, London, Madrid, Notre Dame, Paris, Princeton, Smith College, Stanford University, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Puget Sound, and Yale.

I began writing this book at New York University, and I thank my colleagues there for their rich friendship and support: Karl Appuhn, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Linda Gordon, Martha Hodes, Maria Montoya, Molly Nolan, Kathryn A. Smith, Jane Tylus, Joanna Waley-Cohen, and Barbara Weinstein. Catharine Stimpson deserves my special thanks for her energetic and unfailing enthusiasm for all forms of learning, and her promotion of intellectual enquiry and exchange. In my new academic home at Stanford University, I have been warmly welcomed by a vibrant community of historians and medievalists. I especially thank Paula Findlen, Estelle Freedman, Marisa Galvez, Allyson Hobbs, Jack Rakove, Aron Rodrigue, Kathryn Starkey, Elaine Treharne, Kären Wigan, Caroline Winterer, and Steve Zipperstein. For their guidance at the University of Pennsylvania Press, I am grateful to Ruth Mazo Karras and Jerry Singerman, whose patience with me, and with this project, has been heroic.

My family has provided the deepest, most sustained, and most constant support. My grandparents, Gerald and Kitty Anna Griffiths, have been faithful friends to me, and to all their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, encouraging us always and never faltering in their confidence in our projects. I deeply regret that my much beloved grandmother did not live to see this book in print. My parents, Ian and Christine Griffiths, have supported me in ways that I—now also a parent—am only beginning to understand. They allowed me the freedom of intellectual exploration as I grew up, giving me every opportunity to study and to follow my interests, and sharing enthusiastically in my discoveries. During the years that I have worked on this and other projects, they have patiently and generously encouraged me, welcoming me “home” during working visits to Toronto and caring lovingly for my own children. My sister and brother, Jennifer and Jonathan, are treasured friends—faithful, kind, and wise.

This is a book about men who supported women, and so it seems right to save my deepest thanks for Ronald, who has encouraged me from the moment we first met and who has remained steadfast in his faith in me and in this project. I have learned from him what it is to try my best. Our children—Rupert, Felix, and Augusta—are a constant source of joy, astonishment, and love. I am delighted to dedicate this book to them.