1. God and the goddesses. St. Francis and Lady Poverty
The soul and Lady Love
The servant and Eternal Wisdom
Will and Lady Holy Church
Christine and the female Trinity
Vision, imagination, and belief
Why goddesses?
2. Natura (I) : Nature and Nature's God. The birth of nature : Bernard Silvestris's Cosmographia
Nature's fall and lament : De planctu Naturae
Nature as redeemed and redeemer : Anticlaudianus
A Hildegardian coda : Nature or Nature's God?
3. Natura (II) : Goddess of the normative. "Ganymede and Helen" and Nature's grammar
In Nature's forge : from Alan of Lille to Jean de Meun
Nature at the court of King Richard : Chaucer's Parlement of fowles
Nature and culture : Christine's revisionist myths
Testing the norms : Nature, Nurture, Silence
The realm of the natural
4. Love divine, all loves excelling. Caritas and Amor : the twelfth century
Love's violence : the thirteenth century
The beguine as knight of Love : Hadewijch's Stanzaic poems
Dante, Beatrice, and l'amor che move il sole


5. Sapientia : the goddess incarnate. Liturgical Wisdom : poised between Christ and Mary
Devotional Wisdom : Henry Suso and his legacy
Contemplative Wisdom : Julian of Norwich
Esoteric Wisdom : the alchemical Virgin
6. Maria : Holy Trinity as Holy Family. The Trinity as a family
Divinizing the Virgin : the Marian Trinity in art
Enacting the Virgin : the lability of female roles
Domesticating the Virgin : the invention of the Holy Family
7. Goddesses and the one God. Imaginative theology
The gender of God and the limits of intolerance
Medieval Christianity as an inclusive monotheism.