As a literary language, Middle Dutch emancipated itself only gradually from the other languages of literacy, Latin and French, that were used in the medieval Low Countries. Sketchily in the twelfth century, and more clearly in the thirteenth, the contours of a vernacular literature emerged in urban centres. This vernacular literary production encompassed both secular narratives, based on French romances and chansons de geste, as well as religious genres (saints’ lives, mystical treatises and visions); notably, women were influentially involved in the latter, as protagonists, addressees, and – in the case of mystical writing – authors. It was with Jacob van Maerlant in the latter part of the thirteenth century, however, that literature in Middle Dutch became durably institutionalized in networks of patronage and patterns of transmission and influence.