The imperial convent of St. Servatius at Quedlinburg (founded in 936) was one of the wealthiest, most prestigious, and most politically powerful religious houses of medieval Germany, subject only to the authority of the emperor and the pope. This is the first English-language volume to provide an introduction to this important female religious community. The twelve essays by a team of international scholars address an array of topics in Quedlinburg's medieval history, with a particular focus on how the Quedlinburg community of learned aristocratic women used architecture and the visual arts to assert the abbey's illustrious history, ongoing political importance, and cultural significance. Contributors are: Clemens Bley, Karen Blough, Shirin Fozi, Tobias Gartner, Eliza Garrison, Evan A. Gatti, G. Ulrich Grossmann, Annie Krieg, Manfred Mehl, Katharina Ulrike Mersch, Christian Popp, Helene Scheck, and Adam R. Stead.

The sermons here published for the first time are attributed to an otherwise unknown friar referred to simply as Frater Petrus. The collection provides evidence of actual preaching in a normal setting from fourteenth-century Germany, between the beginnings of the Franciscan order and the Observant reform movement, not by a major light of the order, but a regular member who may have held status as an intermediate-level teacher, to judge by the care with which the manuscripts were prepared. Theologically competent and gracefully presented in the conventional sermon style of the period, the collection, edited and translated by Daniel Nodes, offers scholars and students a reliable new resource in an area of sermon studies that is still in short supply.