There may be no better testimony to the influence of Herbert Grundmann on the history of medieval religion than to welcome a translation of some of his most important essays into English fifty years after his death. As the excellent introduction to this volume explains, Grundmann's impact has only broadened in the decades since his death.

The volume collects six essays previously unavailable in English. The translations are clear and accessible. Five of the six were originally published after his seminal Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1935), giving the English reader access to the later development of Grundmann's scholarship. Especially welcome are “Women and Literature in the Middle Ages: A Contribution on the Origins of Vernacular Writing” (1935), “Litteratus-Illiteratus” (1958), and “Oportete et Haereses Esse: The Problem of Heresy in the Mirror of Medieval Biblical Exegesis” (1963). Each of these three initiated fields of research pursued to this day. Including both his very early “The Profile Typus of the Heretic in Medieval Perception” (1927) and his later “Heresy Interrogations in the Late Middle Ages as a Source-Critical Problem” (1965) highlights the maturation of a scholar who never stopped drawing new insights from his sources.

The volume also includes an “Obituary Essay” (1970) by Arno Borst and an exhaustive bibliography of Grundmann's publications. The obituary is a fascinating artifact of German academic culture and politics at the time. Those interested in Grundmann's biography, however, are better served by Robert Lerner's introduction to the English translation of Religiöse Bewegungen (Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Steven Rowan [University of Notre Dame Press, 1995]). Rather than the obituary, one or two of Grundmann's seminal essays on Joachim of Fiore would have better rounded out this valuable anthology.