Divine Inspirations: Exploring Religious Themes in Female Visionary Writing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Dear Colleagues,

The visionary experience of women is currently one of the topics eliciting the greatest academic interest. Its considerable informative and methodological potential in the pursuit of comprehensive understandings of the human and its relationship with the divine—understandings that include and acknowledge aspects traditionally relegated to the margins or deemed anecdotal, irrelevant, or incomprehensible—is beyond question. Although research on this topic has been ongoing, there remains a need to enhance scholarly recognition of its specificity, as well as its epistemological foundation.

In order to offer tools for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of female visionary experience, we are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on “Divine Inspirations: Exploring Religious Themes in Female Visionary Writing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance”, through an interdisciplinary framework that interweaves historical, theological, philosophical, and anthropological approaches with insights from feminist criticism.

This Special Issue aims to explore one of the most complex and fruitful avenues for approaching the visionary experience of women—mystical writing. The works they left behind and, more specifically, the themes they addressed in the texts they wrote (or to which their authorship was attributed) constitute a space of knowledge and agency. Furthermore, their relationship with their context can offer new perspectives on their influence and implications. We focus on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as these periods constitute fundamental stages in the development and treatment of many of these themes.

Texts such as letters, autobiographies, revelations, sermons, songs, and treatises offer valuable insight into how mystical vision gave rise, within restrictive ecclesiastical frameworks, to a distinctly female voice—self-authored and authoritative. However, we seek to go further and examine how these women addressed and developed religious themes, both from theological and hagiographic perspectives. Rather than merely reviewing such content, we propose to explore these topics from a comparative and contextual point of view—one that values other contemporary texts engaging with similar themes from different positions and perspectives, while also considering their wider cultural and political implications. Understanding themes such as the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the Eucharist, as well as reflections on or redefinitions of the models of sainthood, was not only theological but also political, and often served as a basis for critiques of power structures. Visionary texts will be approached as dense discursive constructions, deeply embedded in doctrinal debates, power dynamics, and networks of textual transmission. This approach can lead us to important reflections on the original characteristics of female visionary authorship and how it was articulated in relation to official theological discourse, the foundations of authority and gender hierarchies.

Ultimately, this Special Issue seeks to position female visionary writing as a privileged field for accessing the intellectual history of women—a history that, within this religious framework, was marked not only by imposed limitations but also by the generative power of imagination. From the margins, these women engaged in dialogue with the major religious, social, and political tensions of their time.

Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Theological themes—the Trinity, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, etc.—in female visionary writings; exploration of their content, development, and understanding in relation to Christian traditions and theological contexts, as well as their possible political intentions.
• Hagiographic themes—models of sainthood, theological themes related to saints, and gender differences, among others—in relation to theological and hagiographic contexts, traditions, and possible political intentions.
• Political or social themes from a similar point of view.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send these to the Guest Editor (mar.grana@comillas.edu) or to the Religions Editorial Office (religions@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue and full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. María Del Mar Graña Cid
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• female mysticism
• visionary literature
• women’s religious writing
• female authority
• feminist theology
• female prophetic voice
• female thought