The transmission of theological knowledge: The case of illiterate mystical women

The visionary experiences of two fourteenth-century illiterate women, Constance de Rabastens and Marie Robine, demonstrate that they possessed an undeniable amount of theological and political knowledge. Their example, along with that of other medieval female mystics, raises the more general question of the ways in which the laity, particularly women, could gain access to books, and thus reveals a complex form of literacy founded on reading communities and practices that must take into account oral channels of communication through liturgy, preaching or iconography.