Kees Schepers is lecturer at the Ruusbroec Institute of the University of Antwerp. He specializes in late-medieval mysticism and intellectual culture, with a special focus on a sixteenth-century mystical renaissance in the Low Countries. He currently works on the critical edition and English translation of the Arnhem mystical sermons, a unique collection of 162 sermons in MS The Hague, 133 H 13. Recent publications include, as author, ‘A Web of Texts: Sixteenth Century Mystical Culture and the Arnhem Sint-Agnes Convent’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe (Brepols, 2015); 'The Arnhem Mystical Sermons and the Sixteenth-Century Mystical Renaissance in Arnhem and Cologne' (University of Notre Dame Press). His key publications as editor are  Ioannis Rusbrochii De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum, Wilhelmo Iordani interprete (Brepols, 2004); Het Wiesbadense handschrift, Hs. Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, (Verloren 2009); special issue of Ons Geestelijk Erf ‘The Arnhem Mystical Sermons in Context’ (2010).

Research interests

• Sixteenth-century mystical culture in Guelders and the Rhineland
• Sixteenth-century intellectual culture in the monasteries of the Bois de Soignes
• Seventeenth-century religious culture in Malines
• The correspondence of Abelard and Heloise

Supervisor of current PhD -research project

Renske van Nie (Antwerp), ‘Authorship’, composition and textual interconnectedness of three 16th-century mystical texts. Die evangelische peerle, Vanden tempel onser sielen, and the Arnhem mystical sermons. A stylometric approach. Principal investigator: Kees Schepers, co-PI: Walter Daelemans.

Key Publications

• ‘An unknown Ruusbroec letter in Willem Jordaens’s Latin, found in an East-Prussian Manuscript in Cambridge’, in Ons Geestelijk Erf 75 (2001), 32-68
• Ioannis Rusbrochii De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum, Wilhelmo Iordani interprete – Kees Schepers (ed.) (Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 207), Turnhout: Brepols, 2004.
• Bedudinghe op Cantica Canticorum, vertaling en bewerking van Glossa Tripartita super Cantica. Editie en teksthistorische studies (Miscellanea Neerlandica, 34/35), 2 vols., Leuven: Peeters, 2006.
• Het Wiesbadense handschrift. Hs. Wiesbaden, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, 3004 B 10, Kritische editie ingeleid en bezorgd door Hans Kienhorst en Kees Schepers, met bijdragen aan de inleiding van Amand Berteloot en Paul Wackers (Middeleeuwse Verzamelhandschriften uit de Nederlanden 11), Hilversum: Verloren, 2009.
• ‘Gielis vander Hecken and his Perplexing Guide through the Labyrinths of Christian Moral Doctrine. An Introduction,’ in Ons Geestelijk Erf, 84 (2013), 244-289.
• ‘Middelspraecke tusschen de godtsoeckende siele ende den rustwysenden leeraer’; Mystiek in navolging van Benedictus van Canfield, in Ons Geestelijk Erf, 85 (2014), 195-216
• 'The Arnhem Mystical Sermons and the Sixteenth-Century Mystical Renaissance in Arnhem and Cologne', in Mysticism and Reform, 1400–1750, Sara S. Poor and Nigel Smith (eds.), University of Notre Dame Press, 29015, 84-123.