Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne

(Cornell University Press) This book reconstructs the lived experiences of the communities of religious women that the Cistercians incorporated into their order between 1220 and 1240. It addresses how the Cistercian order responded to their interpretations of apostolic piety, and how their ideals and practices related to the broader religious and social developments of the 13th century. Lester is an assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder.