In his work The Book of the Reformation of the Order of Preachers. The Dominican friar Johannes Meyer (1422/1485) drew on letters treatises and other written records as well as interviews oral accounts and his own personal experience to record the blossoming of the greatest reform movement to sweep through Germany before the Protestant Reformation: the Observant reform. The result is this sprawling eclectic yet curiously intimate account of the men but mostly of the women who devoted their lives to revitalizing the Dominican order in southern Germany. With his reliance on their accounts and archives and respect for their intellectual abilities and spiritual resolve Meyer s treatment of medieval Dominican women provides a model from which today s historians stand to learn. The introduction contextualizes Meyer s celebratory work within a more objective historical background; it is followed by a full translation making this remarkable history available to English speaking readers for the first time."
