For quite some time now the Dominican convent of St Catherine in Nuremberg has been the focus of attention when it comes to exploring the female branch of the Dominican reform movement. Recent research has especially concentrated on the large library (more than 600 manuscripts in the vernacular) which the women assembled in response to the reform of their convent. Barbara Steinke has a different aim: she examines St Catherine's as the object of two conflicting reform movements. She contrasts the monastic reform of 1428 (chapter i) and its practical, theological and spiritual implications (with special emphasis on virginity, celibacy and obedience as corner-stones of Dominican reform spirituality) with the radically different mental framework of the Protestant Reformation and its consequences for the convent (with special emphasis on the Protestant rejection of the ideal of virginity and the promotion of the ideal of marriage; chapter ii). Neither reform was welcomed by the sisters: in 1428 they at first embraced reluctantly the reintroduction of observant life, but the following years made them passionate followers of the stricter lifestyle and devotion. The success of Dominican reform spirituality, eagerly imbibed by successive generations of sisters – this Steinke argues convincingly – made it the more difficult for the later Protestant reformers to close the convent down. From 1525 until 1596 they tried to dissolve the convent and to persuade the sisters of the merits of life outside enclosure. Their efforts were met with persistent opposition, and only a small minority of women accepted the reformers' ideals of marriage and maternity as female destiny. Only when the city council forced the convent into bankruptcy could it be closed down (chapter iii). In her final chapter Steinke compares the Reformation history of St Catherine's with what happened to the Dominican convents of Engelthal and Bamberg. She comes to the conclusion that, in general, what was decisive for the fate of a community and an individual were not the religious convictions of the sisters but the policies of their secular or ecclesiastical regiment and the support individual sisters received from their families (chapter iv). Steinke's book provides a very good insight into the mind-set of reformed Dominican sisters and their institutional framework. She makes abundant use of the manuscripts that were once in the possession of the convent, many of them as yet neither published nor sufficiently examined by scholars. Her chapter on pre-Reformation spirituality, theology and piety at St Catherine's provides a particularly exhaustive reconstruction of Dominican reform theology and spirituality which hitherto had not been undertaken. A little disappointing is her neglect of excerpts of letters written by the Nuremberg prioress in the fifteenth century about the convent's practical transformation into a paragon of Dominican reformed life. These are preserved in the Swiss convent of Wil and would have given Steinke additional insights into the convent's day-to-day interpretation of the reformed life style. This deficit, however, does not detract from Steinke's overall achievement in having provided a sound exploration of the spirituality and mentality of reformed Dominican sisters.