The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
200–101 BC
1 work
c. 150–100 BC
Hebrew
Anonymous
A widow rebukes the elders of her town for setting God a deadline, then dresses to be looked at, walks into the Assyrian camp, flatters the general for four days, and cuts off his head with his own sword while he lies drunk.
101–200
3 works
c. 120–180; survives in fragment
Greek
Anonymous
After the Saviour departs, Mary Magdalene comforts the frightened disciples and reports a vision she alone received; Andrew and Peter object that he would not have spoken privately to a woman.
c. 160–170
Greek
Anonymous
Two men are tried and burned at Pergamum. A woman in the crowd named Agathonice sees a vision of glory, throws off her cloak, and lays herself on the stake unasked, while the crowd shouts at her to think of her son.
c. 160–190
Greek
Anonymous
A young woman of Iconium breaks her engagement after hearing Paul preach chastity, survives fire and wild beasts, baptises herself, and goes off to teach.
201–300
3 works
203
Latin
Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis
Vibia Perpetua and an editor · Perpetua d. 203
A young Carthaginian mother's own record of her arrest, her father's pleading, her nursing infant, and four dreams — a ladder guarded by a dragon, a contest in the arena — completed by an eyewitness account of her death.
c. 208
Latin
De Virginibus Velandis
Tertullian · c. 155–c. 220
An argument that unmarried women should be veiled in church like everyone else, opening with the claim that custom must yield to truth because Christ called himself truth and not custom.
c. 249
Latin
De Habitu Virginum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
Advice to consecrated women on wealth, cosmetics, jewellery, and mixed bathing, arguing that a life given to God should look different from a wealthy woman's ordinary life.
301–400
8 works
c. 360–370
Latin
Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi
Faltonia Betitia Proba · c. 322 – c. 370
Creation, fall, and the life of Christ told in six hundred and ninety-four lines assembled entirely out of Virgil — every half-line lifted from the Aeneid, Georgics, or Eclogues and refitted, so that the poem says what Virgil never wrote using only words he did.
c. 350–373
Syriac
Ephrem the Syrian · c. 306–373
Nativity hymns written for choirs of women to sing, turning on the paradox of the one who fills all things becoming small enough to be carried.
377
Latin
De Virginibus
Ambrose of Milan · c. 339 – 397
Three books addressed to his sister Marcellina, praising consecrated virginity and telling the story of Agnes, a girl of twelve who went to her execution as others go to a wedding. Ambrose has to answer parents who were locking daughters up to stop them taking the veil.
c. 380
Greek
Gregory of Nyssa · c. 335–c. 395
A dialogue at his sister Macrina's deathbed, in which she takes the role Socrates played for Plato and argues him through grief to the resurrection and the final restoration of all things.
c. 381
Greek
Gregory of Nyssa · c. 335–c. 395
A brother's account of his elder sister, who refused marriage, turned the family estate into a community, taught her brothers theology, and died in poverty by choice.
c. 381–384
Latin
Itinerarium Egeriae
Egeria
A woman's letters home from a three-year journey to Sinai, Jerusalem, and Edessa, describing what she saw and, at length, exactly how the Jerusalem church kept Holy Week.
370–419
Latin
Jerome · c. 347–420
A hundred and fifty letters of scholarship, spiritual counsel, travel, and ferocious quarrel, including the dream in which he is accused of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian.
c. 300–400
Greek
Anonymous
A short Egyptian order in which the apostles are made to speak in turn about bishops, presbyters, readers, and widows, with a debate over whether women may offer the eucharist.
401–500
3 works
c. 419–420
Greek
Palladius of Galatia · c. 363–c. 430
Portraits of the monks and nuns of Egypt and Palestine by someone who lived among them, including a good deal of frank material about failure, madness, and vanity.
c. 452
Greek
Gerontius
The life of one of the richest women in the Roman world, who liquidated estates across several provinces, freed thousands of slaves, and settled on the Mount of Olives.
c. 476–483
Georgian
Iakob Tsurtaveli
An Armenian princess married to a Georgian prince who converts to Zoroastrianism to please the Persian king. She refuses to follow him, is beaten, dragged by the hair, and imprisoned for six years in a cell where she dies, attended by the priest who wrote this down.
501–600
4 works
c. 512–534
Latin
Regula Virginum
Caesarius of Arles · c. 470–542
A rule for a community of women written for his sister's monastery, requiring strict enclosure, insisting every nun learn to read, and forbidding the acceptance of dowries.
c. 520
Latin
Anonymous
The life of the consecrated woman who is said to have kept Paris from panic when Attila approached, and organised grain convoys during a siege.
c. 566–569
Syriac
John of Ephesus · c. 507–c. 588
Fifty-eight portraits of Syrian ascetics the author knew, many of them women, and many living in hiding during the persecution of anti-Chalcedonians.
c. 587
Latin
Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609
A Thuringian princess taken as war booty by the Frankish king who had killed her family, married to him, and eventually escaped to found a monastery at Poitiers. Fortunatus, her friend, describes the fasting, the iron chains, and the burns she inflicted on herself.
601–700
4 works
c. 630; attribution debated
Greek
Attributed to Sophronius of Jerusalem · c. 560 – 638
A monk crossing the Jordan finds a naked, sun-blackened woman who levitates at prayer and knows scripture she has never read. She tells him she spent seventeen years in Alexandria taking men for pleasure rather than money, was turned back by an invisible force at the church door in Jerusalem, and has been in the desert forty-seven years.
c. 650–680
Latin
Cogitosus · 7th century
The life of the abbess of Kildare, full of miracles of provision — butter multiplied, beer for churches — and a description of her double monastery of men and women.
c. 685–695
Latin
De Virginitate
Aldhelm · c. 639–709
A double work in prose and verse for the nuns of Barking, praising virginity through a gallery of biblical and patristic examples, in an extravagantly ornate Latin.
697
Latin
Cáin Adomnáin
Adomnán of Iona · c. 624–704
A law promulgated at a synod of Irish and Pictish kings and clergy, imposing heavy penalties for killing or wounding women, children, and clerics in war.
701–800
2 works
c. 716–754
Latin
Boniface · c. 675–754
The correspondence of an English missionary among the Germans — requests for books and warm clothing, appeals to Rome, complaints about wandering bishops, and letters to and from abbesses at home.
c. 778–780
Latin
Hodoeporicon
Hugeburc of Heidenheim · 8th century
An account of a seven-year pilgrimage from England to Jerusalem and back, taken down from the traveller's own dictation, including his arrest as a spy and a smuggled jar of balsam.
801–900
3 works
c. 836
Latin
Rudolf of Fulda · d. 865
The English abbess whom Boniface summoned to Germany, learned in scripture and canon law, consulted by bishops, and buried beside him at his own request.
841–843
Latin
Liber Manualis
Dhuoda · c. 803–c. 843
A noblewoman writes to a son held as a hostage at court, on God, on loyalty, on choosing counsellors, and on praying for a family she may not see again.
c. 830–860
Greek
901–1000
5 works
c. 955–965
Latin
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim · c. 935–c. 1002
Eight narrative poems in leonine hexameters on saints and on the Virgin, including a version of the Theophilus legend in which a man sells his soul and is rescued by Mary.
c. 960–970
Latin
Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim · c. 935–c. 1002
Six comedies written in imitation of Terence but with chaste heroines instead of seduced ones, including a courtesan converted by a hermit and virgins martyred under Diocletian.
c. 965–975
Old English
Æthelwold of Winchester · c. 904–984
Benedict's rule in English, made so that nuns and monks without Latin could hear their own rule and understand what they had promised.
c. 974
Latin
Vita Mathildis Reginae Antiquior
Anonymous
Written for her grandson within a decade of her death: the widow of Henry the Fowler, her almsgiving, her monastic foundations, her quarrel with her sons over what she was giving away, and her deathbed distribution of everything left.
c. 1000
Latin
Epitaphium Adelheidae
Odilo of Cluny · c. 962 – 1049
The abbot of Cluny on an empress he had known: imprisoned by one king, married to another, twice regent, a founder of monasteries, and in old age travelling between courts trying to keep her son and grandson from war.
1001–1100
1 work
c. 1080–1083
Latin
Liber Confortatorius
Goscelin of Saint-Bertin · c. 1035–c. 1107
A long letter of consolation from a monk to a young woman who has enclosed herself as an anchoress, mixing spiritual counsel with unmistakable personal grief at the separation.
1101–1200
14 works
c. 1132–1135
Latin
Heloise · c. 1100–1164
An abbess writes to the man she loved: that she would rather be his mistress than an empress, that she obeys him and not God, and then asks him for a rule for her nuns.
c. 1148
Greek
Anna Komnene · 1083–1153
A daughter's history of her father's reign, including the arrival of the First Crusade described as an unwelcome flood of armed and unpredictable Latins.
1141–1151
Latin
Hildegard of Bingen · 1098–1179
Twenty-six visions of creation, redemption, and the church, each described and then explained by a voice from heaven, and illustrated under her direction.
1–40 of 108 matching · 1780 in the Library