Mechthild of Hackeborn was a German mystic and chantress at the Benedictine/Cistercian convent of Helfta. The Liber specialis gratiae, which contains Mechthild’s revelations, is thought to have been compiled by two nuns at Helfta during the last decade of the thirteenth century. But soon after its composition the text was abridged by an anonymous redactor and this version circulated widely in Europe both in Latin and six vernaculars. Its Middle English translation, The Boke of Gostely Grace, gained popularity from both the religious and the laity in the wake of ecclesiastical reforms in fifteenth-century England, and Mechthild remained a familiar figure of orthodox piety and prayer expertise in late medieval England.