Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268) belongs to the first generation of women who wrote in Middle Dutch. She lived most of her life as a Cistercian nun in the Dutch-speaking area of the Duchy of Brabant (now a region in Belgium and the Netherlands). Besides having produced an extensive account of her life, because of which she is the first female vernacular author in the Middle Ages to write in the autobiographical genre, Beatrice also wrote several spiritual and mystical texts, both for herself and in the context of spiritual instruction. Although all but one of the original writings are now lost, to some degree her texts have still been preserved in Latin in the form of a medieval vita, the Vita Beatricis. This legacy complicates efforts to discern the exact number of Beatrice’s writings, their content, and their purpose.