God beyond words: Christian theology and the spiritual experiences of people with profound intellectual disabilities

debates and pastoral concerns might have been even more powerful without the interference of Luther’s interests. Wegener’s analysis of the layout and paratextual elements of the three Wittenberg editions is an excellent example of material text history. It is only a pity that this final section is not prefaced by a similarly close analysis of the eight surviving manuscripts, which are mentioned in the introduction but not examined. Nevertheless, one of Wegener’s greatest strengths is that she objectively describes the shifts in vernacular mysticism after Eckhart without denigrating the later works as derivative, unsophisticated or corrupted. She renders a clear account of Augustine’s place in fourteenth-century German mysticism and she provides a careful, original and provocative analysis of a long-standing classic of this genre.