This review is transcluded from Talk:Beatrice of Nazareth/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Asilvering (talk · contribs) 11:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Comments[edit]

Hi! Thanks for nominating this article. I'll get to a source check in a bit but I have a couple of questions/comments already:

1. The original language of her work is given variously as "Middle Dutch" and "Middle Flemish" in this article. Which is it? -- asilvering (talk) 11:42, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
2. The image in her infobox obviously has the wrong license (that's not "own work"!) -- asilvering (talk) 11:42, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
3. Re: "broad in coverage", I notice there is nothing in here about her beatification! I'm also left wondering about how famous this "most famous work" is - did anyone read it before the feminist historians of the 1980s? There's nothing about her continued reception or memory here. -- asilvering (talk) 12:02, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   These are all helpful, thank you!

   1. Middle Flemish is a dialect of Middle Dutch! Fair point that it might make sense to standardize on one.

   2. Ah, I totally should have checked that. Will find a good replacement.

   3. Good points both! I will see what I can dig up on them. — Moriwen (talk) 01:05, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   @Moriwen Ok, I'll hold off on going deeper into sources until you let me know you're done digging. Good luck! -- asilvering (talk) 01:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Re 2: I've added that image after the article was nominated and forgot to check the licensing. – Editør (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Re 3: the University of Antwerp had a research project about Beatrijs that might be relevant and you can find a number of modern editions of her work on love in the catalogue of the Royal Library of the Netherlands. – Editør (talk) 02:19, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Ooh, thanks!! — Moriwen (talk) 03:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   And you can also find Dutch primary and secondary literature for this author in the Digital Library for Dutch Literature. – Editør (talk) 09:28, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   At some point, I would like to make some additional comments under a separate heading, but I do not wish it to interfere with the main review. So I wanted to ask you both: do you prefer that I make them right away or that I wait until a later stage? – Editør (talk) 12:43, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   @Editør Go right ahead! You could make a new subhead called "Editør's comments" if you want to separate them? -- asilvering (talk) 17:05, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Okay, I've created a subsection at the bottom. – Editør (talk) 19:42, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Okay, updates:

   1. should be standardized on Middle Dutch

   2. fixed the licensing on the image

   3. I haven't been able to find any information about her beatification. There may simply be none to find; she's from well before the process was standardized in the 18th century. I did expand on her influence and critical treatment of her work (it's in the "Seven Ways of Holy Love" section). — Moriwen (talk) 21:52, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   @Moriwen Great, thanks! I should be able to get back to this tomorrow. -- asilvering (talk) 22:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   You're a marvel! Thanks so much.— Moriwen (talk) 22:22, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   (Comments all look super helpful; gonna get started on those.) — Moriwen (talk) 21:06, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

4. Can you please check the Amy Hollywood chapter for the bit on Arnulf? A ctrl+f doesn't bring anything up. I edited the footnote to point at Hollywood's article specifically because that seemed the most likely place, but I haven't found this mention there (or anywhere else in the book). -- asilvering (talk) 01:00, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
5. Okay, that's the source check done with the exception of two books I'm going to have to dredge up at the library. Back to you! -- asilvering (talk) 01:19, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   FWIW I think all the relevant books are on either libgen or archive.org. (And, again, thank you!!!) — Moriwen (talk) 03:36, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   lol, you know I'm one of those lucky ones with a really good reference library when I trek over to the library without even thinking about libgen as a possibility... -- asilvering (talk) 17:06, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

   Okay, all done! So I'll put this on hold for now, pending responses to the source-checking comments. -- asilvering (talk) 01:09, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source checking[edit]

1. I'm not seeing 29 July as her death date in the source linked in the infobox. Since we don't know much about her beatification either, probably best to remove this rather than to assume her feast day and her death day are the same. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
2. The 1926 edition has a different title, Seven Manieren van Minnen, which ought to be mentioned. Just a sentence like "It first appeared in critical edition in 1926 under the title foo" would be fine. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
3. Definitely worth noting as Van Put (p 144) does that the Seven Ways is the only one of her texts that has survived in the vernacular. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
4. Van Put, p 147: I hope to confirm the widely accepted view that Beatrice intended to produce an original statement about mystical love, building on a number of ideas from existing Latin treatises on love, however, not as a kind of hidden autobiographical kerygma but, rather, with the purpose of offering instruction. I don't see this pedagogical impulse mentioned anywhere. Since it's "widely accepted" and also the focus of one of the most recent articles, this article should mention something about it, even if briefly. imo the easiest way is something like adding "Scholars view the text as an original work on mysticism ..." before talking about her influences, and taking the pedagogical intent on to the end of that paragraph. But please do whatever you think works best. tbh this seems like a really obvious point to make to me, to the point that I just assumed this was the case without having read the text, but if someone's gone and written an entire journal article about it, I suppose we ought to state the point explicitly. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
5. I also think it's worth mentioning the bit (most clearly stated in the last two pages of Van Put's article) about how we don't know for whom or when the work was written. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
6. Skimming the medical article I'm seeing a lot of reference to how her contemporaries found her self-mutilation extreme and that the accounts of it in her vita describe practices that were not just not condoned by the Church but in some cases actively discouraged. This bears some mentioning in "Spirituality", which does use the word "intense" but (imo) doesn't quite get this culturally-contextualized level of "intense" across. The authors are clear to say "Beatrice's biographer says she did" rather than "Beatrice did", so Wikipedia should be similarly clear. -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
7. Ok, the line about bipolar disorder really worried me, but skimming through this article has reassured me. There are a lot of basically crank "diagnoses" of historical figures out there, but this one closely involved a historian who is also both her editor and a Cistercian. Can I ask you to expand a bit more on this point, as they do? As in, can you go into a bit more depth on how her illness and mood formed such a key part of her spiritual experience? In particular her desire for an ecstatic experience, which went unanswered for so long, then finally occurred (pp 752-753), leading to a state they imply is mania - I don't think the article quite gets this across with just "intermittent periods of depression and torpor", and "brought relief by various spiritual experiences". -- asilvering (talk) 18:19, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
8. Two parts from the Pedersen encyclopedia article I think are worth working in somewhere (but of course this is up to you): There is a considerable difference between the hagiographer's version, where bodily elements are recurrently stressed, and Beatrice's own treatise, where the spiritual desire to be united with God is the focus. Whereas the vita is an exemplum depicting Beatrice as an exemplary, holy woman, Beatrice's own treatise is a systematic rendition of the lived faith of a contemplative woman. and Perhaps because of her gender, both her theology and her understanding of humanity are formulated in the dialectic between God and humanity, not between man and woman. -- asilvering (talk) 00:29, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
9. I think a bit of context on le Bougre would be helpful (even just half a sentence like "a particularly notorious inquisitor headquartered in her diocese), especially since we don't have an en-wiki article for him. Here's Newman (pg 28-29) if you want to use this: Beatrice's monastery of Nazareth lay in the diocese of Cambrai, where the notorious inquisitor Robert le Bougre had established his headquarters, and during her lifetime [pg 29] he put a beguine to death "on account of her true love" as Hadewijch of Brabant wrote in her List of the Perfect. -- asilvering (talk) 01:08, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Editør[edit]

• I have a question about the scope of the article Beatrice of Nazareth. Currently, Seven Ways of Holy Love redirects to this article. Is this article therefore covering all aspects of the text Seven Ways of Holy Love or just summarizing the topic until a separate article is written? – Editør (talk) 19:40, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I was looking into the different versions of the principal sources. The year 1926 for the rediscovery of Seven Ways of Holy Love is not entirely correct. In 1891, J. H. Kern published his dissertation about the phonology of the Middle Dutch of the Limburg Sermons (source). In 1895, Kern published a book about the De Limburgsche sermoenen with the Middle Dutch texts (source). In 1923, Léonce Reypens discussed the "hidden pearl" called Seven manieren van heileger minnen in an article (source). In 1925, Reypens and Jozef van Mierlo determined that Beatrijs van Nazareth was the author in an article (source). In 1926, Reypens and Van Mierlo published a book about the Seven manieren van minne with the Middle Dutch text (source). – Editør (talk) 20:36, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• I think the comparison with Hadewijch could be expanded. – Editør (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• The titles of her "Lost works" are in Latin, but I believe she wrote the texts in Middle Dutch, so I think this should be explained. – Editør (talk) 17:20, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  @Editør iirc it's not explained in the sources either. I'd simply assumed she wrote those ones in Latin. -- asilvering (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  I assume that these titles are in Latin because they are taken from the Vita Beatricis. But either way, I think the language of the texts should be made clear and properly sourced, so readers don't need to assume. – Editør (talk) 10:01, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Status query[edit]

asilvering, Moriwen, Editør, where does this nomination stand? It's been over a month since there were any posts to this review page, October 28 since Moriwen edited the article, and November 4 since asilvering did so. Can we get this nomination moving again, or should it be closed? Thank you. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:13, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's up to User:Moriwen to say. – Editør (talk) 09:47, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Let's close it for now -- I very much appreciate all the comments, and I'm hopeful about taking a second run at it at some future point.— Moriwen (talk) 17:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Moriwen just to be completely sure about this before I hit the button - that means you'd rather put it down as a fail now and re-nominate at some later date? The alternative is that I could formally put this review on hold, which gives you some more time but not a lot. -- asilvering (talk) 02:21, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that works for me -- holiday season is crazy and I just don't see myself tackling this very soon.— Moriwen (talk) 22:18, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]