Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England (TEXTS AND TRANSITIONS) 9782503520711, 2503520715

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A NNE B ULKELEY AND HER B OOK

TEXTS AND TRANSITIONS: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS General Editors Martha W. Driver Derek A. Pearsall Editorial Board Julia Boffey (Queen Mary, University of London) Jennifer Britnell (University of Durham) Ardis Butterfield (University College, London) Philippa Hardman (University of Reading) Dieter Mehl (University of Bonn) Alastair Minnis (Yale University) Oliver Pickering (Brotherton Library, Leeds) John Scattergood (Trinity College, Dublin) John Thompson (Queen’s University, Belfast)

Volume 2

ANNE BULKELEY AND HER BOOK Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England. A Study of London, British Library, MS Harley 494

by

Alexandra Barratt

H

F

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Barratt, Alexandra. Anne Bulkeley and her book : fashioning female piety in early Tudor England. – (Texts and transitions ; v. 2) 1. Bridgettines – Prayers and devotions. 2. British Library Manuscript Harley 494. 3. Devotional literature, English (Middle) 4. Manuscripts, English (Middle) 5. Manuscripts, Latin (Medieval and modern) – England. 6. Women – Religious life – England – History – 16th century. 7. Bulkeley, Anne. I. Title II. Series 242'.0942'09031-dc22 ISBN-13: 9782503520711

© 2009, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2009/0095/61 ISBN: 978-2-503-52071-1 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

For my grandchildren: Danyka, Isaac, Josephine, and Halina

C ONTENTS

List of Abbreviations

viii

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. The Manuscript and its Ownership

5

Chapter 2. Contexts: Nuns, Holy Maids, and the Politics of Religion

43

Chapter 3. Sources: Ghostly Fathers and Approved Women

77

Chapter 4. Sources: Primers and Prayer Books

105

Chapter 5. Dominant Devotional Themes and Modulations

137

Appendix. London, British Library, MS Harley 494: Annotated Transcription

171

Select Bibliography

267

A BBREVIATIONS

EETS OS ES

Early English Text Society Original Series Extra Series

LSG

Mechtild of Hackeborn, Liber specialis gratiae, in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, vol. II: Sanctae Mechtildis, ed. by the Monks of Solesmes (Paris: Oudin, 1877)

ODCC

Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)

OED

Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn (online)

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 (online)

PRO

Public Records Office, London

STC

Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640, 2nd edn, 3 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91)

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1, p. 9. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, flyleaf verso. Ownership inscription of Anne Bulkeley. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Figure 2, p. 10. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, fol. 1r. ‘Domina Anna bulk[e]le[y]’ and elevation prayer, possibly written by Anne Bulkeley the elder. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Figure 3, p. 14. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, fol. 6r. Opening of ‘The gret cause as I do thynke’: first item written by Robert Taylor. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Figure 4, p. 16. London, British Library, MS Harley 554, fol. 10r. Robert Taylor’s hand. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Figure 5, p. 25. Map of places associated with London, British Library, MS Harley 494. Figure 6, p. 26. Family tree of the Poyntz and Bulkeley families. Plate 1, p. 133. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C.941, fol. 139v . Robert Taylor’s signature at the end of The Myroure of oure Ladye. Reproduced by kind permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Plate 2, p. 134. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, fol. 20r. Hand F. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. Plate 3, p. 135. Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25, fol. 31v. The Burnet Psalter: Prayer of Saint Birgit, ‘Benedicta sis tu’. Reproduced by kind permission of the University of Aberdeen.

x

Illustrations

Plate 4, p. 136. London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600, fol. 9r. Opening of ‘In the nyght or in the mornyng’. Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

T

he writer of a book such as this must incur many debts of gratitude. I should like to thank Martha Driver and Derek Pearsall for including this study in the Early Book Society series of monographs. Virginia Bainbridge, Mary Erler, Roger Ellis, Vincent Gillespie, Cathy Grisé, Marlene Hennessy, Ann Hutchison, Catherine Innes Parker, Jan Rhodes, Charity Scott-Stokes, Ulrike Wiethaus, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne have all willingly furnished information, offprints, and copies of unpublished work to which I would not otherwise have had access. I should also like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the manuscript departments of various libraries where I have worked, specifically the British Library, Cambridge University Library, Aberdeen University Library, Edinburgh University Library, the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, the Auckland Public Libraries, the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and the University of Otago Library, Dunedin. Finally the staff of the University of Waikato Library have been extremely efficient in sourcing the often obscure Interloan materials that I required. I should also like to thank the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Waikato, for several research grants towards aspects of my research on Anne Bulkeley, and the University of Waikato for permitting the Study Leaves during which much of this book was written. For technical assistance I should like to thank Max Oulton, of the Department of Geography, Tourism, and Environmental Planning, University of Waikato, who designed Figures 5 and 6. Above all, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my copyeditor, Deborah A. Oosterhouse, whose care and foresight have saved me from numerous mistakes. Those that remain are of course my own responsibility. Quotations from Lambeth Palace MS 3600 are reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library. An earlier version of Chapter 1

xii

Acknowledgments

appeared as ‘Anne Bulkeley and her Book in Early Tudor England’, Journal of the Early Book Society, 10 (2007), 1–29, and of part of Chapter 4 as ‘Singing from the Same Hymnsheet: Two Bridgettine Manuscripts’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. by Linne Mooney and Margaret Connolly (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), pp. 139–60. Finally I would like to thank my husband, R. A. S. Welch, for his sympathetic support for my work, and in particular for feeding the cat during my Anne Bulkeley–enforced absences in the northern hemisphere. I can only hope that Anne Bulkeley was as fortunate in her husband Robert as I in mine.

INTRODUCTION

W

omen’s writing in Middle English, though a seductive topic, turns out to promise more than it delivers. In spite of the careful watch kept over the last twenty years, no identifiable women writers have emerged from the thickets to join the only medieval women who wrote in English and whose names we know: Dame Eleanor Hull and Lady Margaret Beaufort (both translators) and Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich (‘original writers’, possibly). In another part of the forest — the groves of Anglo-Norman — life has been more exciting as writings in ‘the French of England’ by and for women have been encouraged to break cover by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. But for those interested in the English of England, there have been slim pickings. What was briefly called ‘gynecriticism’, the study of writings ‘by’ women (however amply that agency is interpreted), has proved short-lived. But as the cliché has it, when one door closes, another opens. We are now interested in a wider and potentially more productive question: what were the many ways in which women related to literary culture in England in the later Middle Ages? How did they insert themselves, or how were they inserted, into the ‘literate practices’ of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries? The concept of ‘literate practices’ (borrowed from the anthropologists) is generous, and into this roomy trap can fall many otherwise shy and elusive forest creatures. In a recent review, Theresa Coletti wrote: the concept of literate practices crucially requires attention to the diverse conditions that prompted medieval women’s encounters with textual culture and the varied outcomes produced by these encounters; it also usefully embraces a range of textual activities beyond reading and writing, that is, patronage, translation, dictation, memorization and book owning and sharing.1

1

Theresa Colletti, Review of Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), Speculum, 79 (2004), 780–82 (p. 780).

2

Introduction

This is a book about a book: a book that belonged to a woman (possibly two women, mother and daughter); some of which may have been transcribed by other women; containing many translations, some from women’s writings in Latin; some possibly written down from memory; masterminded and supervised (probably) by a man, but with connections to two groups of women religious, the Birgittine nuns of Syon Abbey and the Fontevrault nuns of Amesbury Priory. Its first owner, Anne Bulkeley, almost certainly came from a gentry family of bookowners, the Poyntzes of Iron Acton, who had strong links of blood to the Tudor courts. Anne Bulkeley may have been the patron of her book, or it may have been a gift (an unwanted gift? who knows). She was certainly a reader and, as Mary Erler has succinctly put it, ‘The history of women’s intellectual lives as readers remains to be written.’2 Such a history cannot be written until we have captured and observed many more Anne Bulkeleys. I first met Anne Bulkeley’s book when I was a graduate student. On my first foray into the old Students Room at the British Museum (as it was then), I examined MS Harley 494. I was intrigued by the two inscriptions on the opening pages and wondered who Anne Bulkeley could be. I did not know myself, but with a graduate student’s touching faith I assumed that someone did. My eye was also caught by the reference to ‘a devote person callyd Mary Ostrewyk’ (fol. 61v): another woman, another mystery. But what really interested me at the time, because I was working on rules of life, was the treatise now known to be a version of the anonymous Dyurnall for deuoute soules to ordre them selue therafter.3 (Had I known that it dated to the 1520s or 1530s, I suspect I would have promptly lost interest. Back then, the Middle Ages petered out in the late fifteenth century.) The rest of the manuscript, which was in any case quite hard to read, did not interest me, for in the late 1960s and early 1970s scholars were still focused on the individual text — though my own supervisor, ahead of his time, had edited a complete Latin miscellany for his thesis.4 Some years later I came across two lists in Dugdale’s Monasticon of nuns, formerly of Amesbury Priory, who were pensioned at the Dissolution: both included an Anne Bulkeley. Problem solved, I thought, and I took another look at MS 2 Mary C. Erler, ‘The Books and Lives of Three Tudor Women’, in Privileging Gender in Early Modern England, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 23 (Kirksville, MI: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1993), pp. 4–17 (p. 5). 3

The identification was first made by J. T. Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 44 (1993), 11–25 (p. 18, n. 43). 4

A Glastonbury Miscellany of the Fifteenth Century: A Descriptive Index of Trinity College, Cambridge, MS. O.9.38, ed. by A. G. Rigg (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).

Introduction

3

Harley 494. This time I was more interested in the prayers for the days of the week, as I was looking for analogues to Dame Eleanor Hull’s Prayers and Meditations on the Days of the Week. The prayers in MS Harley 494 were nothing like hers, but the manuscript as a whole began to intrigue. By now, everyone was much more interested in complete manuscripts: as Nichols and Wenzel wrote in 1996, ‘attention to the single manuscript as a historical artefact — materialist philology — has become an exciting and richly rewarding new enterprise in medieval studies’.5 I soon realized there was some connection between MS Harley 494 and the Birgittine Richard Whitford, but this did not sit comfortably with the nun of Amesbury. The final incident that compelled my detailed study of MS Harley 494 as a whole occurred when I was editor of Mystics Quarterly. I was sent for review an Analecta Cartusiana volume: glancing idly through it before sending it off to a reviewer, I found a reference to the writings of Maria van Oisterwijk. Further research revealed that, surprisingly, MS Harley 494 must be as late as the 1530s, but by now I was firmly entangled in the toils of Anne Bulkeley and her book. My book could not have been written thirty years ago (and certainly not by me). There was not then the interest in women’s ‘literate practices’, in women as readers, writers, and transmitters of texts; or in manuscripts as wholes; or in ‘manuscripts in the age of print’ — all aspects of the study of textual culture. And historical preoccupations, too, have shifted: there is a new interest in the Birgittines and in that intriguing period — is it the end of the Middle Ages or the beginning of the Early Modern period? — which used to be called ‘the eve of the Reformation’. There has also been a renewed interest in anthologies and miscellanies, with the latter losing their negative overtones of lack of structure, lack of coherence, even frivolity. They now receive more serious study (some would argue, too serious). Derek Pearsall makes some witty observations on this, but he explicitly excludes ‘[c]ompilations of an exclusively religious nature’ which ‘have their own unifying system’ from his remarks: ‘They are themselves, as a group, capable of being discussed in their own right in terms of variations on their prescript.’6 But ‘miscellany’ is not necessarily a useful term to describe MS Harley 494. Barbara Shailor has voiced an uneasiness with the term that I share:

5

The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 1–2. 6

Derek Pearsall, ‘The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and their Modern Interpreters’, in Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 17–29 (p. 22).

4

Introduction miscellaneous may not be an appropriate term for describing structurally or textually complex codices. Rather, it is possible to suggest that the physical format of a volume, the selection of texts, and the audience for whom the manuscript was intended can all reveal, on closer examination, that ‘miscellaneous’ manuscripts are not as mixed or diverse as they may first appear.7

Is MS Harley 494, then, an anthology (that is, possessing unity of some sort), a compilation (that is, an accumulation of items), a compendium (an abridgement or abstract made from longer works), or what?8 It will emerge, I hope, that Anne Bulkeley’s book is rather like a mob of sheep: not all the animals are the same colour, but they are all sheep with a certain unity of purpose, shepherded along by a controlling intelligence (that of the compiler). From time to time, one makes a break for freedom, with varying degrees of success, but overall the shepherd and his dog get the flock to market more or less intact. On a less tentative, more positive note, the study of ‘materialist philology’ in particular promises much. It postulates the possibility that a given manuscript, having been organized along certain principles, may well present its text(s) according to its own agenda, as worked out by the person who planned and supervised the production of the manuscript. Far from being a transparent or neutral vehicle, the codex can have a typological identity that affects the way we read and understand the texts it presents. The manuscript agency — manuscript kind or identity — can thus offer social or anthropological insights into the way its texts were or could have been read by the patron or public to which it was diffused.9

This book is posited on a belief in such possibilities. But in my view the best, perhaps the only, way to test a theory is to apply it in a practical situation. This is what I have attempted to do. If the attempt is not entirely successful, it is more likely the (modern) authorial agency, rather than the methodology, that has proven wanting.

7

Barbara A. Shailor, ‘A Cataloger’s View’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 153–67 (p. 153). 8

Marleen Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790, Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 18, n. 2, makes a somewhat different distinction between anthology and compilation: ‘An anthology is a collection of integrally copied texts. [. . .] A compilation is a text made out of fragments from other texts.’ 9

The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, p. 2.

Chapter 1

T HE M ANUSCRIPT AND ITS O WNERSHIP

A

prayer book is a very personal possession. Today we can personalize a massproduced printed book with bookplates, bookmarks, prayer cards, bus tickets, boarding passes, or pressed flowers. In the past a manuscript book could be claimed for an individual even more, not just overtly by coats of arms, donor portraits, or representations of one’s patron saint, but also more subtly by its very makeup, choice of texts, and even choice of language. A great deal can be learnt from such books, and the importance of the study of manuscript prayer books for our knowledge of late medieval literate culture, particularly that of women, has recently been drawn to our attention by Mary Erler. So has its relative neglect. She writes: Closely allied to books of hours are the preces privatae, books of prayers collected by an owner for private use and hence individual in their choice of material. Though these books have not been given much attention, they offer a rich conspectus of popular devotion. In addition, study of their hands and their choice of texts might provide additional insights on literacy, since the conjunction of Latin and English prayers is frequent. How, for instance, were these two languages employed in private prayer by owners who would conventionally be considered unlikely to be fully Latinate? [. . .] Prayer books, whether horae or personal compilations, are located at the intersection of the emotive, the aesthetic, the personal and the religious, and thus must always have sustained an uneasy balance amongst these conflicting elements.1

This book seeks to address this failure to study adequately such profoundly personal books, and to pursue some of the lines of inquiry that Erler suggests. It concerns itself with London, British Library, MS Harley 494, a volume which has

1

III:

Mary C. Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 495–525 (pp. 509–10).

6

Chapter 1

many of the features of a preces privatae volume but also has some elements of a devotional compilation as it contains a number of brief prose treatises as well as prayers. It could be conventionally described as a devotional miscellany, but that would understate the extent to which it was probably planned as a whole.2 MS Harley 494 has two further features of interest: it belonged to a woman, Dame (or Lady) Anne Bulkeley, or possibly to two women of the same name, and regardless of the precise identity of its owner(s), it clearly emerges from a Birgittine ‘textual community’ in that it contains a number of Latin and English devotional texts that were particularly associated with Saint Birgit of Sweden and the male and female English Birgittines of Syon Abbey. Although women’s book ownership was becoming much less uncommon in the later Middle Ages, any book that has a well-documented association with a woman — particularly a member of the gentry rather than the aristocracy — is worth careful scrutiny. As Mary Erler, again, has written, evidence of women’s book ownership is scarce. [. . .] Attention to non-aristocratic women readers [. . .] may offer both broader evidence of women’s literacy and more complex ways of viewing this evidence in relation to cultural patterns.3

As for the Birgittines, their role in late medieval English religious culture can hardly be overestimated and is indeed becoming subject to more intensive study.4 The concept of ‘textual community’ was originally developed and popularized by Brian Stock in the context of heretical groups and their activities during the High Middle Ages, at a time when literacy, and direct access to texts, was severely limited. He regarded a textual community as a form of ‘literacy influenced group organization’, marked by ‘a use of texts, both to structure the internal behaviour of the group’s members and to provide solidarity against the outside world’.5 What was essential for such a textual community was at least one individual ‘who, having mastered [the unifying text], then utilized it for reforming a group’s thought and action’. Clearly, the later Middle Ages is a very different environment, characterized 2

See Introduction, pp. 3–4.

3

Erler, ‘Books and Lives of Three Tudor Women’, p. 5.

4

See, for instance, Virginia R . Bainbridge, ‘Women and the Transmission of Religious Culture: Benefactresses of Three Bridgettine Convents c. 1400–1600’, Birgittiana, 3 (1997), 55–76, and Veronica Lawrence, ‘The Role of the Monasteries of Syon and Sheen in the Production, Ownership and Circulation of Mystical Literature in the Late Middle Ages’, in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. X , ed. by James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 130 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1995), pp. 101–15. 5

Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 89, 90.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

7

by varying degrees of literacy far more widely diffused, and Felicity Riddy and others have developed and used the concept of the textual community in the sense of a subculture, united by an interest in particular texts, as an analytic tool in discussing women’s literate practice.6 Riddy has shown how women, both ‘nuns and pious gentlewomen’, constructed such communities by giving each other books and reading them together in small groups or familiae.7 It is in this sense that the term is used here. As an Appendix to this study, the complete text of MS Harley 494 is transcribed and edited, with annotations. The book itself, however, sets out to study and to contextualize the manuscript as a whole by identifying as many as possible of the individual items, considering the varied sources of the collection, their use and significance, and examining the evolution of the manuscript and its ‘shaping spirit’ or rationale, as far as that can be discerned. It will also discuss two manuscripts that are textually related to MS Harley 494: London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600, an early sixteenth-century prayer book written for and possibly by a Birgittine nun, and the Burnet Psalter (Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25), which is probably English and is associated with the cult of Saint Birgit.

The Manuscript, its Contents, and Scribes MS Harley 494 is a modest little book of English and Latin prayers and English devotional treatises, written on paper. It consists of 113 paper leaves numbered from 1 to 110 (the first leaf is unnumbered, and there are two leaves numbered 4 and two numbered 90; the duplicated leaves are marked with a star (*), and 90* is blank). Pages measure 144 mm x 113 mm; written space varies but the ruled space measures 109 mm x 70 mm, with between seventeen and twenty lines to the page.8

The collation is difficult to assess as the volume is very tightly bound (it was rebound in the 1990s). It appears to be as follows: 14 ; 212 ; 36; 44; 5–616 ; 720 (or possibly 7a–b10); 814; 916; 104. This is supported by catchwords, which are found on fols 15v, 21 v, 25 v, 41 v, 57 v, 77 v, and 90*v. From the watermarks it seems that fols 4 or 5 to 106 are all of one paper stock: the watermark ‘is a glove with star/flower on 6 Felicity Riddy, ‘“Women talking about the things of God”: A Late Medieval Sub-culture’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. by Carol M. Meale, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 104–27. 7 8

Riddy, ‘“Women talking about the things of God”’, pp. 107–11.

Carol Wyvill, ‘Five Sixteenth-Century Devotional Texts from Anne Bulkeley’s Book: British Library MS Harley 494’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Otago, 2005), p. viii.

8

Chapter 1

stem protruding from one finger’. There is no exact match in Briquet but the closest examples are from the 1520s and 1530s.9 The final quire is on paper from a different paper stock and may have been added later. The manuscript contains one principal hand and a large number of subsidiary ones. Most of it is plain and lacks decoration; the various scribes and their decorative schemes, such as they appear to be, are discussed further below. On the flyleaf verso an elegant early sixteenth-century hand has written, ‘Domine Anne Bvlkeley / Attinet Liber iste’ (‘this book belongs to Lady, or Dame, Anne Bulkeley’) (Fig. 1), and on the first folio appears ‘domina Anna bulk[e]le[y]’, written in a large and decorative, but rather crude, textura (Fig. 2). The immediate assumption must be that both inscriptions refer to the same woman, but as we shall see, this is not necessarily the case. The flyleaf inscription is an unequivocal claim to ownership, while ‘a name written in a book is not definitive proof of individual ownership’, as Rebecca Krug has rightly pointed out.10 The concept of ‘ownership’ itself can be problematic and sometimes, but not always, has to be distinguished from those of ‘patron’ and ‘donor’, as Kathleen Scott explains: The term ‘original ownership’ may need brief clarification. I take the patron of a book (not its text) to be the person who — as far as one can tell today — first started its production by a scribe or scribes and by decorators, whether or not through an intermediary. If the patron kept the book for him- or herself, then the patron subsequently became the ‘original owner’. [. . .] If the patron had a book prepared with the intention of making a gift of it [. . .] then the patron subsequently became a donor. [. . .] all patrons are not donors, nor are all donors [. . .] patrons of books (though they might be considered as patronizing the church or institution to which they gave books). Nor indeed are all original owners patrons, if they purchased a ready-made book.11

At least one ‘Anne Bulkeley’ was definitely an owner of MS Harley 494 at some time in its existence; whether the same Anne Bulkeley was also the ‘patron’ and whether in due course she became its ‘donor’ (and if so to whom) are fascinating questions that we will attempt to answer. The contents of MS Harley 494 are of considerable interest and inevitably bear on the identity, character, and predilections of the owner and/or compiler(s). It is quite likely the book was compiled, if not at the original Anne Bulkeley’s direct 9

Dr Greg Waite, University of Otago, in a private communication. I am most grateful to Dr Waite for this information about the physical makeup of the manuscript. 10 11

Krug, Reading Families, p. 157.

Kathleen Scott, ‘Caveat Lector: Ownership and Standardization in the Illustration of Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts’, in English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 19–63 (p. 20).

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

Figure 1. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, flyleaf verso. Ownership inscription of Anne Bulkeley. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

9

10

Chapter 1

Figure 2. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, fol. 1r. ‘Domina Anna bulk[e]le[y]’ and elevation prayer, possibly written by Anne Bulkeley the elder. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

11

request, at the very least with her specific spiritual needs and devotional preferences in mind. The constituent texts are extremely diverse and drawn from a surprising number of sources: they probably reflect the varied tastes of the contributors as much as of the recipient. They are described and discussed elsewhere in detail, but for future reference it is convenient to list them here, with very brief descriptions, incipits, and notes on the scribal hands. (The numbering of this list is somewhat arbitrary: some of the individual ‘items’ in fact consist of several discrete parts, sometimes drawn from quite different sources; they may or may not make up a unity.) 1. fol. 1r–v (Hand A)

English elevation prayer, inc. ‘I do salute the moste holy body’. r r 2. fols 2 –4 (Hand B) Five Latin prayers on the Five Joys of the Resurrection, inc. ‘laudo amo adoro’. r r 3. fols 4 –4* (Hand B) Eight Latin prayers for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, inc. ‘Veni sancte spiritus’. r 4. fol. 4* (Hand C) Latin prayer invoking Saint Onuphrius, inc. ‘Omnipotens se[m]piterne deus’. v 5. fol. 4* (Hand D) Latin prayer to the Virgin, inc. ‘o gloriosa domina’. r v 6. fols 6 –19 (Hand E) English treatise on daily living, inc. ‘The gret `cause´ as I do thynke’: version of the anonymous Dyurnall (printed 1532?, 1542?). r 7. fol. 20 (Hand F) Latin Office of the Virgin, inc. ‘Aue ihesu cui mater’. v v 8. fols 20 –21 Eight English prayers, structured around the days of the (Hand G) week (from Sunday to Saturday), inc. ‘O good Jhesu I beseche the’. r r 9. fols 22 –25 English treatise on preparation for Communion, inc. (Hand E) ‘Intierly belouyde in god’. r r 10. fols 26 –30 ‘A short meditacion and informacyon of oure lord Jhesu (Hand E) schewyd to seynt Mawde by reuelacion’, English treatise on morning devotions, inc. ‘In the nyght or in the mournyng’. r r 11. fols 30 –31 ‘And after Complyn after matyns In the mornynge’, (Hand E) English devotional exercise in self-examination, inc. ‘Take good heed how þou hast gouernede the’. r v 12. fols 31 –33 Instructions on intercessory prayer, inc. ‘Because we here (Hand E) haue ordured yow to pray’: from Richard Whitford’s translation of the Golden Pystle (1531, 1537).

12

13. fols 33v –35r (Hand E)

Chapter 1

‘The fourme of prayer after an oþer maner. Vse wheþer ye like best’, inc. ‘O blessid lord’: four English intercessory prayers, three adapted from William Bonde, Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (1531). (i) ‘For your receiving of þe sacrament’, English treatise on 14. fols 35v –61r (Hand E) preparation for Communion, inc. ‘When ye purpose to receiue oure lorde’, largely adapted from Richard Whitford, A dialoge or communicacion bytwene the curate or ghostly father & the parochiane or ghostly chyld. For a due preparacion unto houselynge (1531, 1537); (ii) series of English prayers, inc. ‘O most swet lord God’. v r 15. fols 61 –62 ‘Certane prayers shewyd vnto a devote person callyd Mary (Hand H) Ostrewyk’, English devotional exercise, inc. ‘Fyrst in remembraunce of the Wounde’. r–v 16. fol. 62 (Hand I) English prayers for Gifts of the Holy Spirit, inc. ‘Lorde god ffather allmyghty’. r r 17. fols 63 –75 (i) ‘Meditacions for tyme of the Masse’, English treatise, (Hand E) inc. ‘The preste goynge to masse’: adapted from William Bonde, Pilgrymage (1531); (ii) Extract from the Anthidotarius animae of Nicholas of Saleto, inc. ‘If thow haue desire perfetly to be clensyd’. r v 18. fols 75 –82 (i) ‘a deuoute meditacion and a thankefull orison to owre (Hand E) Lorde for his mannyfold giftes and benefettes’, English prayer, inc. ‘O my lord god Jhesu Christ’; (ii) six English prayers, inc. ‘O most excellent goodnes’. 19. fols 82v –84v English translation of the ‘O intemerata’, inc. ‘O inteme(Hand E) rata. . . . O pure & blessid’. v r 20. fols 84 –85 Set of English prayers to the Virgin, inc. ‘Thies be þe x (Hand E) vertues of oure lady’. v v 21. fols 85 –88 (i) ‘Contemplacion for the ffeste of þe Assumpcion’, enu(Hand E) meration of the Virgin’s two sets of Seven Joys, inc. ‘The first singler joye’; (ii) Prayer, inc. ‘O glorious lady quene & empresse of heuen’. v v 22. fols 88 –89 English translation of chapter from Saint Birgit, Revela(Hand E) tiones, inc. ‘Our lady apperid to seynt Brigitt’.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

23. fols 89v –90r (Hand J) 24. fols 91r–96r (Hand E)

25. fols 96v –98v (Hand E) 26. fols 98v –100v (Hand E) 27. fols 101r–104r (Hand K) 28. fols 105r–106v (Hand L)

29. fol. 106v (Hand M) 30. fol. 107r (Hand N)

31. fol. 107r (Hand O) 32. fols 107v–110r (Hand P)

33. fol. 110v (Hand Q)

13

English devotion, inc. ‘A Thousand tymys aue Maria ye schall sey’. (i) ‘a shorte confessionall for religious persons’, English confessional formula, inc. ‘Confiteor [. . .] I knowlege to almighti god’; (ii) note on confession, inc. ‘And here it is to be noted’. ‘An exclamacion of a penytent synner’, English prayer, inc. ‘A synfull wreche a miserable synner’. Latin prayer, ‘O intemerata’. ‘Here after folowith the vij sorowes of our blessid lady’, set of seven English prayers, inc. ‘O lady Mary temple of the trinite’. (i) ‘Here folo[wi]th þe bedis of pardon in englyshe of saynt gregorrys pytye’, English prayers, inc. ‘O swete blessyd Jhu’, version of the Pardon Beads of Syon; (ii) three pairs of prayers alternately in Latin and English, inc. ‘Aue maria eterni patris sponsa [. . .] O swete blessyd lady’. Latin morning prayer, ‘Gracias ago tibi omnipotens deus’. Two short English prayers: (i) inc. ‘Cast þi selff downe before oure lorde prostrate & say this My synnys o lord’, translation of a liturgical responsory adapted from the apocryphal Prayer of Manasses; (ii) inc. ‘Vyset we pray the o lord’, collect for Compline. Short English note, inc. ‘Sorow for sin’. Set of three Latin prayers followed by English paraphrases, inc. ‘Marci peto de te des mihi dormire quiete [. . .] Domine ihesu christe qui illuminasti [. . .] Moste mercyfull lorde & savyour’. Short English prayer, inc. ‘all hayle moste benigne Jesu’.

An unusually large number of scribes — at least seventeen — have contributed to the body of the manuscript. (This discounts pen-trials, scribbles, and so on.) The principal scribe, Hand E, has written sixteen items, including all the longer devotional texts (Fig. 3); Professor Ian Doyle has identified him as Robert Taylor, Clerk

14

Chapter 1

Figure 3. London, British Library, MS Harley 494, fol. 6r. Opening of ‘The gret cause as I do thynke’: first item written by Robert Taylor. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

15

of the Works at Syon Abbey during the early sixteenth century.12 The Clerk of the Works was in control of Syon’s extensive building operations, which were continuing; Taylor held the position by 1501 and was still there in 1509 or even later.13 He wrote out and signed the only manuscript of the Birgittine Myroure of oure Ladye, now split between Aberdeen, University Library, MS 134 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 941 (Plate 1).14 He also wrote out London, British Library, MS Harley 554, a translation of Savonarola’s book on the life of widows (Fig. 4). In addition, before, between, and after the more substantial items, a number of other hands (at least sixteen) have copied out various short prayers and devotions. None of these hands writes more than a couple of pieces, and none recurs.15 Could it be that the sixteen hands other than Robert Taylor’s belong to various Birgittines of Syon? At least one Birgittine nun, who describes herself as a ‘scribbler’, contributed to London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546, another preces privatae volume.16 The Syon Additions for the Sisters decreed, ‘Silence after some convenience is to be kepte in the lybrary, whyls any suster is there alone in recordynge of her redynge’, and Mary Erler has suggested that this unusual phrase, ‘recordyng of her redynge’, ‘is perhaps identical with the making of florilegia which Johannes Trithemius, among other authorities, urged on monastics’.17 Certainly Syon Abbey regularly purchased 12

A. I. Doyle, in a 1999 letter to Charity Scott-Stokes. See also David N. Bell, What Nuns Read, Cistercian Studies Series, 158 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995), p. 176, citing R . W. Dunning, ‘The Building of Syon Abbey’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, n.s., 25 (1981), 16–26 (p. 21). Christopher de Hamel, however, remarks that Taylor was apparently an outside scribe, as ‘there is no record of him at Syon’ (Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation (London: Roxburghe Club , 1991), p. 98), but Ian Doyle assures me that he was indeed at Syon. 13

Dunning, ‘Building of Syon Abbey’, p. 21.

14

See Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 175–76. On the Aberdeen manuscript, see also Henry Hargreaves, ‘The Mirror of Our Lady: Aberdeen University Library MS. 134’, Aberdeen University Review, 62 (1968), 267–80. At present the only modern edition is The Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by John Henry Blunt, EETS, ES 19 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1873; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1998). 15

Lorna Stevenson, ‘Fifteenth-Century Chastity and Virginity: Texts, Contexts, Audiences’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Liverpool, 1992), argues that Hand G and Hand I are the same, and further that they are identical with the ‘correcting hand’ found in MS Harley 554 and may be that of Anne Bulkeley herself. In my view, however, Hands G and I are quite distinct. 16

Veronica O’Mara, ‘A Middle English Text Written by a Female Scribe’, Notes and Queries, n.s., 235 (1990), 396–98. 17

Mary C. Erler, ‘Syon Abbey’s Care for Books: Its Sacristan’s Account Rolls 1506/7–1535/6’, Scriptorium, 39 (1986), 293–307 (p. 294).

16

Chapter 1

Figure 4. London, British Library, MS Harley 554, fol. 10r. Robert Taylor’s hand. © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

17

paper, from 1518/19 onwards in quite large quantities. In 1528/29 they spent 4s. 6d. on one ream (twenty quires) and ten quires. Thirty quires of paper is 720 sheets, which would make 5760 pages. This suggests ‘the production of a large number of books’.18 In addition, we should not overlook the possibility that some of the hands might be those of Birgittine monks. Taylor’s texts are all written in a pale brown ink with minimal decoration, which consists of the underlining of some words and phrases with the same ink, the occasional boxing on three sides of titles, and the use of a display script in some texts to mark textual divisions. His texts are occasionally corrected (not at all extensively) by a different hand using darker ink. Of the other, minor, hands, Hand B leaves room for two-line initial capitals and provides guide-letters in Item 2 but has abandoned this in Item 3. Hand C (a liturgical text hand) uses black ink. Hand D (also a liturgical text hand) uses a very pale brown ink and writes a small boxed initial ‘o’ as a guide-letter. Hand F (another liturgical text hand) uses some red capitals and more touched in red; at the end of the text is a little face drawn in ink, touched with red, as a line-filler — a solitary note of whimsy (Plate 2). Hand G, writing a set of prayers structured around the days of the week, uses a large display script for the name of each day and for the final Latin phrase, and the initial ‘O’s that begin each prayer are touched with red. Hand H, writing the prayers revealed to Maria van Oisterwijk, uses a very black ink; the opening capital ‘F’ is flourished, and the ascenders of the other capitals in the first line are extended. Hand J uses red ink to write the capital ‘A’s in the devotion of the One Thousand Aves. Hand K writes the incipit of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin and some of the words of the text in red. In other words, the minor hands, although freer with red ink than Taylor, were not following any overall decorative ‘house style’, and in general aesthetic factors were clearly not prioritized in the construction of this manuscript. It is, however, worth noting that the sacred monogram ‘Jhc’ is written in the upper margin of fol. 20r (by Hand F) and of fol. 22r (either by Taylor or by the correcting hand), and ‘Jhs’, all in the same hand, occurs in the upper margins of every page of fols 107v–110r. (This strengthens the possibility that the last quire was added later.) Taylor’s other known manuscripts are slightly less austere. MS Harley 554 has a number of the chapter titles underlined in red, some red capitals, and some capitals touched in red. Occasionally the first word of a chapter is written in red or underlined with red. A separate hand, using much blacker ink, makes a number of corrections and adds marginal notes in Latin (e.g. ‘quinta ratio’) and references to

18

Erler, ‘Syon Abbey’s Care for Books’, p. 301.

18

Chapter 1

the Vulgate. It is assured, professional, and almost certainly male. It may be the same as the correcting hand in MS Harley 494, but the corrections there are so minimal it is hard to say with confidence. MS Rawlinson C. 941 has ‘Jhc Maria’ written in red in the upper margin of fol. 1r (but nowhere else); some Latin phrases, some individual words, and some numbers are underlined or boxed on three sides in red. Chapter titles are underlined in red. Some capitals are touched with red, and the scribe uses a larger display script in places, sometimes written in red. Aberdeen MS 134 is similarly decorated; ‘ihc’ occurs in the upper margin on fol. 80r. Taylor signs both parts of The Myroure of oure Ladye, on fol. 135v of Aberdeen MS 134 (in addition, a capital ‘R’ appears in the bottom margin of fol. 2r) and on fol. 139v of MS Rawlinson C. 941, where he writes, ‘Off charite prayeth for your wreched seruaunt Robert T wryter of this booke’ (Plate 1). The greater use of red ink, underlining, and display scripts would have made the original Myroure a much easier manuscript to navigate than MS Harley 494; the comparative plainness of the latter suggests that Taylor knew that his primary audience for the manuscript, presumably Anne Bulkeley, was an experienced reader who did not need much assistance with her reading.

Dating the Manuscript As there are several possible owners for MS Harley 494, its precise dating becomes very important. We can in fact do this with some confidence. MS Harley 494 contains versions of several texts written by the Birgittine fathers Richard Whitford and William Bonde, the printed versions of which cluster around 1530 (see Chapter 3). Far more important, however, is the presence of Item 15, found on fols 61v–62r. This is a spiritual exercise structured around the Five Wounds of Christ and identified by the scribe as ‘shewyd vnto a devote person callyd Mary Ostrewyk’. Maria van Oisterwijk (also known as Maria van Hout) was probably born c. 1470. She initially lived a devout life at home in Oisterwijk, which is now in the Netherlands but at that time was in Brabant, and later became a beguine. In 1530, while head of her small community, she met Gerhard Kalckbrenner, a Carthusian monk at the charterhouse at Cologne. She began a correspondence with him and came to regard him as her spiritual son. In 1545, with two of her sisters, she moved to Cologne in order to live near Kalckbrenner’s charterhouse, a quite unprecedented arrangement as Carthusians in general went to extreme lengths to avoid contact with living women, however holy. She died on 30 September 1547.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

19

The English text found in MS Harley 494 derives, by some route or other, from a spiritual exercise composed by Maria on the Five Wounds of Christ. In 1531 Kalckbrenner had published some of Maria’s writings and correspondence, including this exercise, written in Ripuarian (the dialect of Cologne and the Rhineland) rather than in Maria’s native Brabant dialect.19 The book, printed by Johann von Kempen, was entitled Der rechte wech zo der evangelischer volkonenheit (The Right Path to Evangelical Perfection), and we find the relevant exercise on sigs M6r–N5r. In his introduction Kalckbrenner gives no details about the author, not even her name, merely attributing the text to ‘a simple and pious person, whose name is known to God’.20 In the following year a Latin translation of part of the exercise was printed in Cologne; there is a copy of this in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, DA VI 19 no. 13. Once again the text, found on sig. A4r–v and introduced by ‘Brother Gerard of Hamon, procurator of the Carthusians in Cologne’ (that is, Kalckbrenner, who was procurator before becoming prior in 1536), is not attributed to Maria by name but to ‘a certain virgin, on close terms with God and most devout’ (‘virgo quaedam [. . .] deo intima ac deuotissima’, sig. A1r). Kalckbrenner goes on to give a considerable amount of detail about her spiritual history but still does not include her name, though some of his readers may have known who she was. In contrast, a manuscript version of another Latin translation of some of Maria’s writings, including the Five Wounds exercise, found in Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 1204, does attribute the text to Maria. It heads the passage ‘Exercitium Mariae Osterwijk revelatum’ (fol. 13v ) but offers no further information on the author, though later in the manuscript the compiler refers to her several times as ‘Mater’. Probably, therefore, MS Harley 494 cannot be earlier than 1531 or, more likely, 1532. We will demonstrate on codicological grounds that it is unlikely that this passage is a late addition, and although the hand in which this particular text is written (Hand H) does not otherwise appear in the manuscript, we will argue later in this chapter (and indeed assume throughout this study) that the manuscript was conceived and written as a whole. However, neither the German printed edition of 1531 nor the Latin printed edition of 1532 identifies the author of the exercise, while MS Harley 494 is in no doubt that the prayers were revealed to ‘a devote person callyd Mary Ostrewyk’. The compiler(s) must either have had access to

19

Kirsten M. Christensen, ‘Maria van Hout and her Carthusian Editor’, Ons geestelijk erf: driemaandelijks, 72 (1998), 105–21 (p. 118). 20

Christensen, ‘Maria van Hout and her Carthusian Editor’, pp. 111, 116.

20

Chapter 1

privileged information or have come into contact with the exemplar or cognates of Darmstadt MS 1204. (They cannot have known the latter manuscript itself as it was compiled no earlier than 1536.21) A final complication is that Christensen states that ‘Maria wrote originally [. . .] for the edification of her own sisters. Then when Kalckbrenner met her, he took these extant devotional writings with him to Cologne for publication’.22 And the vernacular version tells us that it was originally addressed to or composed for a community of religious women.23 It begins: Hie nae volget ein geistlige oeffunge de der vurß persoenen van got geoffenbaert is tzo behoef aller goder menschen [. . .] wie sy selver schrift tzo eynem convent alsoe. (fol. M6 r ) (emphasis mine) [Here now follows a spiritual exercise which to the aforementioned person was revealed by God to assist all good people [. . .] which she herself wrote to a convent as follows.]

The Five Wounds exercise, therefore, clearly existed in manuscript in its original Brabant dialogue before it was printed in Ripuarian or Latin. Christensen discusses the likelihood that Kalckbrenner ‘altered the language slightly’, effectively translating Maria’s writings into Ripuarian for publication purposes, but concludes that otherwise ‘the published version [. . .] likely does not diverge much from Maria’s original’.24 But whether the pre-print original version circulated widely — or at all — is a different matter. It still seems unlikely that the exercises could have been known in England before the early 1530s: it was only then that Maria came to the notice of the Cologne Carthusians, who made a real effort to introduce her writings to a wider world and who had the international connections to disseminate her writings. But it remains a puzzle how this obscure contemporary beguine (who must have been still alive when MS Harley 494 was compiled, although there is no indication that the compiler(s) were aware of this) comes to surface in an English book. 21 See Charity Scott-Stokes, Review of Dom Gérard Kalckbrenner: Mélanges de Spiritualité, texte établi, traduit, et présenté par Dom Augustin Devaux, ed. by James Hogg, Alain Girard, and Daniel Le Blévec, Analecta Cartusiana, 158 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1999), Mystics Quarterly, 26 (2000), 131. 22

Christensen, ‘Maria van Hout and her Carthusian Editor’, p. 109.

23

See further Kirsten M. Christensen, ‘The Gender of Epistemology in Confessional Europe: The Reception of Maria van Hout’s Ways of Knowing’, in Seeing and Knowing in Medieval Europe 1200–1550, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 97–120. I should like to thank Professor Christensen for generously providing me with photocopies of the various texts of the exercises in Latin and Ripuarian. 24

Christensen, ‘Maria van Hout and her Carthusian Editor’, p. 117.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

21

The English manuscript, although well informed about Maria’s name, either conceals or at least occludes her status as a beguine (as indeed did her German editor Kalckbrenner, though possibly for different reasons).25 There were of course no beguines as such in England, and so she is merely described as a ‘devout person’; this would seem to imply that she was not a religious. And as far as we know at present, there was no English translation available of Maria van Oisterwijk’s writings, whether of the vernacular or Latin version. But the explanation for her presence in MS Harley 494 is probably quite simple. Maria was very much under Carthusian sponsorship and patronage, and the charterhouse of Cologne in particular was active in making available in print the writings of male and female mystics both living and dead. (For instance, they printed the editiones principes of both Gertrude of Helfta and Mechtild of Hackeborn, in 1536.) And there were strong links between the continental and the English Carthusians, and also between the Sheen Charterhouse and Syon, just across the Thames. Alternatively, a Birgittine routing is also possible. The Birgittine house of Marienbaum, which had been founded in 1460 by Mary of Burgundy, Duchess of Cleves, was near Cologne. Syon near London and Marienbaum near Cologne were in regions ‘linked by a dense network of ties economic, political and cultural’.26 Many new devotions originated in the Low Countries and travelled to England via the Rhine; this could have been one of them. Having established a terminus a quo of 1531, we can also deduce the latest date by which the manuscript could have been written. On fol. 31r, part of an intercessory prayer derived from Richard Whitford’s Golden Pystle, a reference to the pope has been erased in the following passage: Ffurst after the ordre of charite pray for your selff, I trust ye will not forget. Seconde for your parentz, þat is your fathers & moders spirituall, as the [pope erased], the bysshope, your curatz, person, wykare, or eny prest þat hath hard your confession.

It was precisely on 3 June 1535 that Thomas Cromwell wrote to all the diocesan bishops, instructing them ‘to ensure the removal of the pope from all religious services, by having the name (papa) erased wherever it occurred in any “mass books and other books used in the churches”’.27 We can be sure, therefore, that the original text in the hand of Robert Taylor was written before 1535. We can also

25

Christensen, ‘Maria van Hout and her Carthusian Editor’, p. 111.

26

Bainbridge, ‘Women and the Transmission of Religious Culture’, p. 55.

27

G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 231–32.

22

Chapter 1

deduce that the book continued to be in active use during and after that date. This dating of MS Harley 494 as written between 1532 and 1535, in other words immediately before the unforeseen catastrophe of the dissolution of the monasteries, is highly suggestive. The period was crucial for the future of Catholicism and of the Reformation in England and saw the execution of Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher as well as the rise and fall of the Kentish nun Elizabeth, a visionary who was much encouraged by Syon Abbey. The wider implications of this dating will be pursued in Chapter 2.

Ownership Having established a fairly precise dating for the manuscript, we are in a better position to address the question, to whom do the two inscriptions containing the name ‘Anne Bulkeley’ refer? MS Harley 494 was presumably acquired as part of Robert Harley’s block purchase of the collection of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, who died in 1650: those manuscripts became MSS Harley 1 to Harley 600 approximately.28 There is, however, no ‘certain indication’ that D’Ewes ever owned this particular manuscript.29 Humfrey Wanley, the original cataloguer of the Harley manuscripts, described MS Harley 494 as ‘formerly belonging to the Lady Anne Bulkeley; who (as I suppose) was Abbess of (Syon?) (Berkynge?)’.30 Certainly she was neither, though unfortunately we do not know Wanley’s reasons for what may have been only an educated guess. There are several possible candidates for the original ownership of MS Harley 494, but some can be quickly dismissed. A Katherine Bulkeley was abbess of Godstow Abbey near Oxford at the time of the dissolution in 1539 and, thought Abbot Gasquet, she behaved rather badly: he refers to the ‘miserable surrender of her faith and principles’ that she wrote to Cromwell the year before.31 She was the sister of

28

The Diary of Humfrey Wanley 1715–1726, ed. by C. E. Wright and Ruth C. Wright, 2 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1966), I, p. xviii. 29 See Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1966), p. 329. Watson suggests that D’Ewes’s hand may appear on fol. 98v writing the phrase ‘in æternum’ (in the margin of the ‘O intemerata’). 30

I

A Catalogue of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts in Two Volumes (London, 1759), vol. (unpaginated). 31

F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 6th edn (London: G. Bell, 1902), pp. 305–06.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

23

the first Sir Richard Bulkeley (d. 1547), who was servant of Cardinal Wolsey, friend of Cromwell, and a leading member of the powerful and prolific Bulkeley family of Cheadle, Cheshire, and Beaumaris, Anglesey. However, studies of that family32 (with whom the Bishop of Bangor, Arthur Bulkeley, was connected) throw up no Anne, Agnes, or Alice Bulkeley whose dates fit the dates of MS Harley 494. An Alicia (also known as Anne) Bukley was a nun at Syon Abbey at the end of the fifteenth century. She died on 6 November 1495, and her name is recorded in the Syon Martirloge (London, British Library, MS Additional 22285, fol. 62v ).33 ‘Bukley’ is a possible spelling of ‘Bulkeley’, but Alicia Bukley died too early to be the owner of MS Harley 494. A second Bukley, Joan (‘Joanna Bukley soror’), was also a nun there; she is recorded as early as 1513,34 and according to the Martirloge died on 29 September 1532 (fol. 57v ). The dates are possible, but ‘Joanna’ seems an improbable variant for ‘Anna’. A third Anne Bulkeley (also known as Agnes), the widow of Sir Thomas Grey, was a pious laywoman who died in 1523, making a bequest to the Charterhouse at Sheen.35 Again, she died too early to be the owner of our book. A Mistress Anne Bulkeley gave a late fifteenth-century English translation of the Somme le Roi, which had been made by one of the knights of King Henry V (possibly Sir Robert Shottesbrook) and by him entitled ‘Aventure and Grace’,36 to Thomas Ringwood.37 (It is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Museo 23.) The book had originally belonged to John Stevens, probably a former scholar of Winchester College and a fellow of New College Oxford, who died in 1485. Another hand, dated by the catalogue as ‘about 1500’, records on fol. 161v that the book now (‘modo’) belongs to Thomas Ringwood, ‘Ex dono magistre Anne Bulkeley’. 32 W. Williams, ‘A History of the Bulkeley Family’ (1673/4), transcribed and ed. by Professor E. G. Jones, Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society (1948), 7–99; D. C. Jones, ‘The Bulkeleys of Baron Hill, 1440–1621’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, University of Wales, Bangor, 1958). 33

See also J. T. Rhodes, ‘The Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion, c.1500–c.1620’, in New Science Out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scholar, 1995), pp. 388–417 (p. 414, n. 71). 34

De Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 81.

35

Ian Doyle, in a private communication.

36

See E. Wilson, ‘Sir Robert Shottesbrook (1400–1471): Translator’, Notes and Queries, n.s., 28 (1981), 303–05. 37

A Thomas Ringwood, ‘armiger’, is mentioned in a Hampshire document of c.1450: see The Book of Remembrance of Southampton, vol. I, Henry VI–James I (1440–1620), ed. by H. W. Gidden, Southampton Record Society, 27 (1927), p. 6.

24

Chapter 1

A cadet branch of the Bulkeleys of Cheadle and Beaumaris held lands in and around Fordingbridge, Hampshire, which is very close to the village of Ringwood (see map, Fig. 5). Among them was an Anne Bulkeley, wife of Robert Bulkeley (see Fig. 6). Her husband died in 1514 aged about sixty-five; she herself did not remarry and eventually died on 19 March 1535.38 She is very probably the Anne Bulkeley who gave MS e Museo 23 to Thomas Ringwood: apart from a possible connection with the eponymous village, a Sir John Ringwood, who presumably came from a well-known gentry family, was the escheator of Hampshire who allocated Anne her dower in 1515.39 (Much later, Anne’s son Charles was to refer to a Marie Ringwood in his will of 1550.) Moreover, the book was apparently bound by the Virgin and Child Binder, who worked in Winchester,40 the nearest city to Fordingbridge and the nearest location for any significant booktrade. The Latin title ‘magistra’ bestowed on the donor is presumably a translation of the English term ‘mistress’, used as a title of politeness for a married or unmarried secular woman. Although ‘magistra’ could also mean ‘prioress’ in medieval Latin, it is unlikely that this ‘magistra Anna Bulkeley’ was a nun, as she would have been vowed to personal poverty and therefore in no position to give away handsomely bound illuminated manuscripts. There is another woman of the same name who was a nun at the Fontevrault house of Amesbury at the time of its suppression in 1539. She was awarded a pension of 100 shillings.41 (The compliant prioress received £100, but £5 was not a bad pension for a woman; in the diocese of Lincoln, only 6 per cent of women received pensions in the £5–£6 13s. 4d. range.)42 This Anne Bulkeley appears in two pension lists, in 1540 and in 1554–55, during the reign of Mary Tudor, so she cannot have been an old woman at the time of the dissolution. Unfortunately we know little about Amesbury Priory immediately before the dissolution of the monasteries, apart from the twin facts that it was the second largest women’s religious house (a prioress and thirty-three nuns were eventually pensioned) and the fifth 38

PRO C 142/57/78.

39

PRO C 142/29/146.

40

G. Pollard, ‘The Names of Some English Fifteenth-Century Binders’, The Library, 5th series, 25 (1970), 193–218 (p. 208, n. 4). 41

William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum: a history of the abbies and other monasteries, hospitals, frieries and cathedral and collegiate churches . . . originally published in Latin by Sir William Dugdale, 6 vols in 8 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Browne, 1817–30), II, 340. 42

The State of the Ex-Religious and Former Chantry Priests in the Diocese of Lincoln 1547–1574, ed. by G. A. J. Hodgett (Hereford: Lincoln Record Society, 1959), p. xvii.

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS OWNERSHIP

Figure 5. Map of places associated with London, British Library, MS Harley 494.

25

26

Chapter 1

Figure 6. Family tree of the Poyntz and Bulkeley families.

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27

richest.43 It must also have been fervent, as initially in 1536 it refused to surrender: the prioress had to be replaced by one more cooperative. We do have an interesting manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Additional A. 42, addressed to ‘my dear susterys Mary and Anne wyth all the other devohth dyscyples of the scole of cryste in youre monastery of Amysbury’, concerned with their vocation and profession as nuns. Dated as ‘first half of the 16th century’, it must of course have been written before 1539; on fol. 27v there is a reference to ‘the honorable lady cristyane your prioresse’, presumably Dame Christine Fauntleroy, who is mentioned as prioress in documents dated 1510 and 1519. It has been discussed but never printed in full.44 Its contents and Amesbury Priory in the early sixteenth century will be discussed further in Chapter 2. The most likely identification, therefore, of the ‘Domina Anna Bulkeley’ for whom MS Harley 494 was made is Anne Bulkeley, wife of Robert Bulkeley of Fordingbridge. Robert Bulkeley was the grandson of Sir William Bulkeley of Cheadle (fl. 1455–56) and must have been born around 1450: his father was either William or Charles Bulkeley (the pedigrees differ), and his mother was the daughter of Sir John Popham the elder of Popham, Hampshire, who died in 1418.45 Robert, who described himself as armiger or ‘esquire’ in 1500,46 died in 1514. Robert Bulkeley married Anne, daughter of either John or Robert Poyntz of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire.47 John Poyntz of Iron Acton, who was married to Alice Cocks, died in 1465/66; if Anne were his daughter, her birth would have

43

A History of the County of Wiltshire, ed. by R. A. Pugh and Elizabeth Crittall, vol. III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 242–59 [accessed 24 November 2006]. 44

Yvonne Parrey, ‘“Devoted disciples of Christ”: Early Sixteenth-Century Religious Life in the Nunnery at Amesbury’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 67 (1994), 240–48 (p. 243). 45

See Anne Curry, ‘Sir John Popham (c.1395–1463)’, in ODNB [accessed 23 May 2007]. 46 47

Hampshire Record Office, 1M53/1386.

Arthur Collins, Collins’s Peerage of England: Genealogical, Biographical, and Historical. Greatly Augmented and Continued to the Present Time by Sir Egerton Brydges, K. J., 9 vols (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1812), VIII, 9–10, shows Bulkeley as marrying ‘Ann Poyntz d. of John Poyntz, Acton, Gloucs.’. Sir John Maclean, Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Poyntz (Exeter: William Pollard, 1886), pp. 94–95, also gives the name of Anne’s father as John; no doubt he based this on The Visitation of the County of Gloucestershire taken in the year 1623, ed. by John Maclean and W. C. Heane, Harleian Society, 21 (1885), pp. 133–35. But The Visitation of Hampshire, ed. by W. Harry Rylands, Harleian Society, 64 (1913), which uses the visitations of 1530, 1575, and 1622–34, gives the name of Anne’s father as Robert (p. 4).

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taken place at the very latest by 1466/67 (assuming a posthumous birth), and she would therefore have been over seventy when she died in 1535. This is possible, but unlikely. Robert Poyntz was John’s eldest son, and it seems more likely that he was Anne’s father. He was born in the later 1440s and died in 1520. He married Margaret, natural daughter of Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, and brother of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Woodville; his wife, therefore, was first cousin to Henry VII’s wife, Elizabeth. Robert Poyntz and his wife had ten children in all: Anthony (1480–1532/33),48 John (c. 1485–1544),49 Anne (d. 1535), Francis (d. 1528/29),50 Nicholas, Elizabeth, two more sons, and two more daughters. According to one pedigree, Robert Bulkeley was Anne’s second husband; she had previously been married to Edward Yardley,51 about whom there is no further information. She bore Robert Bulkeley a number of children: his heir Robert, Charles (a future lawyer and Member of Parliament), John, Anne, and Elizabeth, and possibly more. She died, as we have already noted, in 1535. Anne’s eldest son, Robert, was born in 1489 (according to the inquisitio post mortem he was aged twenty-five at the time of his father’s death). Anne was probably between fifteen and twenty when she married,52 so she must have been born around 1470–75; she was presumably one of the elder children of Robert and Margaret Poyntz (possibly the eldest). She was therefore in her sixties when she died, a ripe old age in the early sixteenth century; it is quite possible that hers is the decidedly shaky Hand A that

48

See Luke MacMahon, ‘Poyntz, Sir Anthony (c.1480–1532/3)’, in ODNB [accessed 6 March 2007]. 49

See Alasdair Hawkyard, ‘Poyntz, Sir Robert (b. late 1440s, d. 1520)’, in ODNB [accessed 6 March 2007]. John Poyntz’s second wife, Margaret Saunders of Charlwood, Surrey, must have been related to the Roman Catholic controversialist Nicholas Sanders and his sister Elizabeth, a Birgittine nun; his son Robert (d. in or after 1568) was the Roman Catholic theologian. 50

See Hawkyard, ‘Poyntz, Sir Robert’.

51

The Visitation of the County of Gloucestershire, ed. by Maclean and Heane, gives Anne’s first husband as Edward Yardley and her second as ‘Robert Buckley of Hampsh.’; the pedigree in Maclean, Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Poyntz, gives Anne’s first husband as Edward Yardley and her second as ‘Rob. Berkeley of co. Hants’; the latter is presumably an error for ‘Bulkeley’. 52

‘Non-elite’ Englishwomen at the end of the Middle Ages, like men, married ‘first in their early to mid twenties’, according to Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 17 and note. ‘Elite’ women married earlier. McSheffrey defines ‘elite’ women as members of the aristocracy and daughters of the wealthiest citizens.

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writes the elevation prayer on fol. 1r, and possibly also the name ‘domina Anna Bulkeley’ on the same page. But the hand on the flyleaf is much more confident and it is very likely that that hand belongs to Anne’s daughter Anne. The pedigrees provide no information about this Anne, but she is mentioned in her brother Charles’s will of 1550, when he refers to ‘my syster Anne Bulkley’, to ‘Dame Julyan her fellowe’, and to their servant Joan, who all live in one of his houses.53 This mention demonstrates conclusively that Anne never married; furthermore, as a ‘Julyan Appryce’ is found among the nuns of Fontevrault on the 1540 pension list, with a pension of £4,54 it seems that the two former nuns were living together (and possibly maintaining some version of the religious life) as late as the reign of Edward VI. Anne Bulkeley the younger can therefore be shown to be identical with Anne Bulkeley the nun of Amesbury, and no doubt her mother bequeathed her book to her daughter on or before her own death. Indeed, it is hard to tell from internal evidence whether MS Harley 494 was compiled for a lay or religious woman. The ambiguity is already there in the ownership inscription, ‘Domina Anna Bulkeley’, as, just like its English equivalent ‘dame’, ‘[t]he title of “domina” could refer to a woman who was either a secular or a religious’.55 In addition, some of the texts are ambiguous, if not contradictory, about the status of their reader. This is particularly significant in passages that we have reason to believe have been specially adapted for MS Harley 494. Item 6 is an adaptation of the anonymous printed Dyurnall (discussed in Chapter 3). This is a rule of daily living, adapted here for a woman leading a devout and retired life but clearly in a secular household. Item 9, an unidentified treatise on preparation for Communion, recommends the reception of the sacrament once a week or once a fortnight — on the high side for a layperson. Item 13 includes an ambiguous reference to ‘this present houshold’ (fol. 34r, adapted from ‘congregation’ in the printed version of Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon), which suggests a secular rather than religious environment. On the other hand, in Item 14, a version of Richard Whitford’s Due preparacion,56 the reader is encouraged to make an unequivocal reference to ‘my holy vowe of religione that I haue [. . .] enterprised’ (fol. 41r), 53

PRO PROB 11/33.

54

Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, II, 340. Dame Julyan may have been a member of the Price family of Kings Barton, near Bristol. 55

Carol M. Meale and Julia Boffey, ‘Gentlewomen’s Reading’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, III, 526–40 (p. 528). 56

First identified by Rhodes, ‘Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion’, p. 413, n. 62.

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where the parallel passage in the printed version simply refers in general terms to ‘this state and degree’, and there is another reference in the same text to ‘my degre, religion, and callynge’ (fol. 44v ). Item 24 is ‘a schorte confessionall for religious persons’, and the sins it enumerates include the mis-saying of liturgical services and failure to obey ‘our rewle or statutes’ (fol. 91v). It is noticeable, then, that the reader’s status appears to be secular in the earlier texts, but religious in the later. Does this reflect a change in Anne Bulkeley’s status while the manuscript was being compiled for her, or a change of potential owner? The elder Anne Bulkeley was certainly not a nun at the time of her death: it was because she was seised of lands held from the Crown that she was subject to an inquisitio post mortem. But she could have become a vowess57 at any time after her husband’s death in 1514, possibly taking the vow in her home diocese of Winchester. She might even have been one of the widows who lived in the Syon ‘women’s house’, though no trace of her has so far come to light in the ‘foreign accounts’ of Syon Abbey58 and there is no evidence that she ceased to live in Hampshire on her dower lands. But it is undeniable, on the evidence of her Book alone, that she was part of a Syon ‘textual community’. In other words, even if not directly linked in a formal institutional sense with the community, she must have been under its influence and have had access to texts that were valued at Syon and circulated or promoted under Syon’s patronage. The manuscript contains several texts associated with the Syon brother Richard Whitford, author of many printed works of humanist religious instruction aimed at a general audience, of which, up to now, no manuscript versions have been known to exist; extracts from the Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (STC 3277 and 3278, printed in 1526 and 1531) by William Bonde, another Syon brother, who died in 1530 (BL MS Add. 22285, fol. 47r); a chapter from Saint Birgit of Sweden’s Revelationes, I.8; a version of the so-called Pardon Beads of Syon (here called ‘þe bedis of pardon [. . .] of Saynt Gregorrys pytye’); an English prayer translated from a Latin text 57

For much useful information on vowesses in general, see P. H. Cullum, ‘Vowesses and Female Lay Piety in the Province of York, 1300–1530’, Northern History, 32 (1996), 21–41. He comments that at least in the province of York there was ‘a very marked increase [in widows taking vows] in the latter half of the fifteenth century, peaking in the 1480s, but falling away again in the sixteenth century, suggesting an institution already losing in popularity before the Reformation’ (p. 28). 58

‘Syon cellaress accounts show that the women’s house was used for boarding novices during their “year of proof”, as well as for female visitors’: Caroline Barron and Mary Erler, ‘The Making of Syon Abbey’s Altar Table of Our Lady c.1490–96’, in England and the Continent in the Middle Ages: Studies in Memory of Andrew Martindale, ed. John Mitchell, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 8 (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000), pp. 318–35 (p. 322, n. 20).

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found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 403, of which the scribe was a certain John, ‘cuius habitacio est in Syon’ (fol. 103v ); and several extracts in English and Latin from Liber specialis gratiae (LSG) of Mechtild of Hackeborn. The latter is particularly convincing evidence of a Syon connection, as it is a text that both in Latin and in English translation seems to have enjoyed combined Carthusian and Birgittine patronage in England.59 It also provides evidence that the manuscript was planned as a whole. There are three substantial sets of extracts from LSG in MS Harley 494: Item 2, five Latin prayers on the Joys of the Resurrection, which is entirely in Latin; Item 10, ‘a short meditacion [. . .] schewyd to Seynt Mawde’, largely in English, but including some Latin prayers; and Item 28, three sets of Latin and English prayers which are complementary rather than translations of each other. All these are written in different hands. Texts from Mechtild are therefore found at the very beginning of the book, near the end, and in the middle. Moreover, there is a clear and consistent pattern in the way in which the compiler(s) of MS Harley 494 use Mechtild’s visions: every time, originally narrative and visionary material is mined for prayers and devotional practices that are presumed to enjoy special divine authentication and validation through the association with the saint. The extensive use of a common source, adapted on each occasion in a similar way, suggests that, in spite of the numerous hands involved in its production, Anne Bulkeley’s book was conceived as a unity. It was planned by a particular individual with a particular individual in mind. Anne Bulkeley’s Syon connections were most probably through the early Tudor court. Her father, Sir Robert Poyntz, had been knighted after the battle of Bosworth Field, where he had fought for the future Henry VII. Through his marriage to Margaret Woodville, the family was related by blood, even though illegitimately, to Henry VII’s queen, Elizabeth (Margaret’s first cousin), and their descendants. Perhaps in part for this reason, Sir Robert Poyntz was successively vice-chamberlain and chancellor of Queen Catherine of Aragon’s household. His son, Anne’s brother John, was one of the Queen’s ‘sewers’, an officer in the royal household. Anne’s sister Elizabeth was nurse to the short-lived son of Henry VIII and his queen; in September 1511 she was granted £20 per annum for life in recognition of her services.60 Anne’s eldest brother, Anthony, married as his second wife Joan 59

It is interesting that a Swedish Birgittine monk, Jöns Budde, undertook a translation of Mechtild into Swedish in 1469. He reported that he was miraculously assisted by the saint in a vision. See The Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden into the European Vernaculars, ed. by Bridget Morris and Veronica O’Mara, Medieval Translator, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 16–17. 60

1965).

Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, 2nd edn (1920; repr.

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(or Jane), widow of Sir Richard Guildford;61 she was a court lady and owned a book of hours, which had previously belonged to her mother Katherine Vaux, containing affectionate messages from various Tudor monarchs, including Catherine of Aragon, and from courtiers including John and Francis Poyntz, Anne Bulkeley’s brothers.62 In the next generation, Anne’s second son, Charles, was one of Queen Catherine’s solicitors (though later he also worked for Queen Anne Boleyn). It was probably this impressive network of court connections that provided the entrée into Syon circles for Anne Bulkeley. Queen Catherine visited Syon frequently. Her favourite religious order was that of the Observant Friars, but we are assured that in ‘her years of distress [she] often sought spiritual solace at Syon to which she had easy access from the palace of Richmond’.63 One of her biographers thinks that she and Vives probably sought out Richard Whitford in particular, who was a friend of both Erasmus and William Blount, Lord Mountjoy.64 Blount was Catherine’s chamberlain from 1512 to 1533, while Robert Poyntz was vice-chamberlain and subsequently chancellor until his death in 1520, so they were close colleagues. (The chamberlain was the officer charged with the management of the Queen’s private chambers, while the chancellor was the Queen’s official secretary.65) It is therefore likely that Poyntz and his family were familiar with Whitford, and with the Syon community in general. As Christopher de Hamel puts it, Syon, easily reached along the Thames from the royal palaces of Richmond and Greenwich, acted ‘as spiritual consultant to the royal family’.66 Anne Bulkeley was, perhaps, a ‘private patient’ of the monks, maybe even of Richard Whitford himself. That would explain the surprisingly personal note on fol. 33v at the end of Item 12, ‘And of your charite, forget not hym þat daily praieth for yow, þe wreche of Syon’, which almost certainly refers to

61

See Mary C. Erler, ‘Widows in Retirement: Region, Patronage, Spirituality, Reading at the Gaunts, Bristol’, Religion and Literature, 37 (2005), 51–75 (p. 65). 62

Now London, British Library, MS Additional 17012; see Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 52, 156–58, and Erler, ‘Widows in Retirement’, pp. 68–69. 63

M. B. Tait, ‘The Bridgettine Monastery of Syon (Middlesex) with Special Reference to its Monastic Uses’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1976), p. 214. His ultimate authority for this statement is Vives, Opera Omnia (Valencia, 1783), IV, 40, and cf. VII, 208. 64

John E. Paul, Catherine of Aragon and her Friends (London: Burns & Oates, 1966), pp. 70–71. 65

See OED, s.vv. ‘chamberlain’, n., 1.b., and ‘chancellor’, n., I. 1. †b.

66

De Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 109.

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Whitford. Like the other Birgittine monks, his ‘main duty, apart from attending to the nuns’ sacramental needs, was to extend their spiritual direction to the laity. [. . .] Their intention was to encourage a mixed life of both contemplation and action in the laity’.67 As we have seen, it is likely that the final quire of four leaves (fols 107–10) was a later addition, perhaps made for or even by the new owner, the nun Dame Anne Bulkeley. This quire contains four different hands and there is some similarity between Hand P, the main hand in this quire, which shows humanist influences, and the ownership inscription on the flyleaf verso. The only possibly Birgittine feature of those final pages is the presence of the sacred monogram in the upper margin of the inner pages (see above, p. 17). The nun of Amesbury would have been subject to monastic enclosure and therefore could not have enjoyed her mother’s easy intercourse with Syon. But in the early sixteenth century there were links between the two institutions: of the four Fettyplace sisters so well documented by Mary Erler, one (Elizabeth) was an Amesbury nun, another a Syon nun, while a third lived at Syon from time to time as a vowess.68 Excavating the families of Anne Bulkeley of Fordingbridge and Anne Bulkeley, nun of Amesbury, their court connections, and their connections with books, including MS Harley 494, is most illuminating. As Mary Erler has pertinently observed in the context of the Fettyplace sisters: The books which surface so frequently in these family networks serve several functions. They express personal connections. [. . .] They demonstrate shared intellectual interests. [. . .] They invoke values held in common. [. . .] Especially valuable, however, are the glimpses we are afforded of women’s intellectual and spiritual exchanges, supported by the ownership and reading of books.69

Evolution of the Manuscript Given the large number of scribes contributing to MS Harley 494 and the initial impression that the manuscript is merely a conglomeration of religious texts or a commonplace book — a miscellany in the true sense of the word — an argument

67

Virginia Bainbridge, ‘The Bridgettines and Major Trends in Religious Devotion c. 1400–1600: with reference to Syon Abbey, Mariatroon and Marienbaum’ (unpublished conference paper, 2003). 68

Erler, ‘Books and Lives of Three Tudor Women’.

69

Erler, ‘Books and Lives of Three Tudor Women’, p. 17.

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from design has to be made. It will be argued that Anne Bulkeley’s book is more appropriately to be regarded as an anthology and that this becomes clear if we attempt simultaneously to relate the quires or signatures, the individual texts and their themes, and the scribes. In the discussion that follows, the manuscript is analysed quire by quire in order to allow due weight to all these factors. (It should be noted that, although there are catchwords, the quire numbers and signature letters are editorial conveniences, as none is actually present in the manuscript.) Quire 1 (sig. A) consists of 4 leaves. Although there are no watermarks, it must have been written at the same time as Quire 2 as Item 3 crosses both quires.70 Item 1 was probably added later: it is untidily written, and no frame or guide lines appear on that folio. (If any of the minor hands in MS Harley 494 actually belongs to the original owner, this seems the most likely candidate.) Scribe B writes Items 2 and 3, continuing onto the top of the first leaf of Quire 2 (sig. B). Beneath this, Hand C has written Item 4, possibly considerably later but presumably not after Item 6, the first contribution from Robert Taylor (Hand E), which begins on the third leaf of Quire 2 (sig. B3). On sig. B1v appears Item 5, written in Hand D. The rest of the leaf is blank, then on sig. B2 appear some pen trials in a later hand: presumably this leaf was blank (as its verso still is) when Taylor began his first text, Item 6, on sig. B3: this occupies the rest of Quire 2 (sig. B) and leaves 1–4v of Quire 3 (sig. C). The remainder of sig. C4v is blank. (There is no obvious reason why Item 6, the first substantial text, the first English text, and the first text written by the main hand of the manuscript, does not appear until sig. B3. Was the collection begun as a book of Latin devotions, put aside and then re-imagined as a predominantly vernacular book of treatises and devotions? That seems to be one possible explanation. Against this, Item 2 is consonant with the later use of Mechtild in both English and Latin items.) The next two items, 7 and 8, could well be ‘fillers’, as they occupy the last two leaves of Quire 3 (sig. C). On the opening leaf of Quire 4 (sig. D), Taylor’s Hand E reappears and, again on a leaf headed Jhc, begins its second text, Item 9, which occupies all of Quire 4 except for the blank verso of the last leaf (sig. D4v ). The same hand writes Items 10–13 (presented as a single continuous text) in Quire 5 (sigs E1–10). On the verso of sig. E10, Hand E begins Item 14, which occupies the rest of Quire 5, the whole of Quire 6, and Quire 7, sigs G1–4r. The lower half of sig. G4r is blank; on the verso, Hand H has written Item 15. This continues on to the next leaf followed immediately by Hand I writing Item 16 on sig. G5r–v, of

70

For brief identifications of the individual items, see pp. 11–13 above.

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which the bottom third is torn away. These items contributed by Hands H and I, therefore, cannot be ‘fillers’, as they occupy the middle of a sixteen-leaf quire. On the next leaf Hand E begins Item 17 and then writes Items 18–22, occupying sigs G6–H12v. The lower half of H12v and the upper half of sig. H13 are occupied by Hand J’s writing Item 23. As the rest of the quire, sigs H13r (lower half) and verso and H14, is blank, this item could be another filler. Quire 9 (sig. J) opens with Hand E writing Item 24 on sigs J1–6r; the lower part of the leaf is blank. Beginning on sig. J6v the same hand writes Items 25 and 26, ending on sig. J10v. It should be noted that this is the last contribution from Robert Taylor (Hand E). On sigs J11r–14r Hand K writes Item 27; sig. J14v is blank, and the last two leaves of Quire 9 are occupied by Hand L, writing Item 28. Hand M writes Item 29, added at the bottom on the verso of the last leaf and possibly a ‘filler’. The final Quire 10 (sig. K) is of different paper stock and written in what may be somewhat later hands: Hand N writes Item 30, Hand O (very rough and scrawly) Item 31, and Hand P Item 32 partly in italic, with Jhs at the top of each page. On the final verso Hand Q (a late medieval hand) contributes Item 33. It seems, therefore, that only Items 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 33 might be regarded as ‘fillers’ which could have been added at different times after the manuscript was substantially complete. In addition, the final quire of the existing book is quite likely a later addition as a whole.

Content and Coherence If we try to make sense of the volume from the point of view of the content of the texts, it becomes clear that there is some degree of overall control, a master plan so to speak. Item 1, as we have seen, was probably not part of the original conception but added later, perhaps by Anne Bulkeley herself. As an elevation prayer in English it is not only interesting evidence that the owner probably took this book with her to Mass, but it also aligns itself with one of the principal preoccupations of the manuscript: Eucharistic devotion (this is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5). The first planned text, Item 2, is a devotion focused on the Five Joys of the Resurrection and associated with a visionary woman. It therefore fits with other visionary women’s texts and devotions found in the manuscript (Items 10, 15, 22, and 28) and also with the many ‘numbered’ devotions (e.g. Items 3, 8, 16, 20, 21, 23, 27). Items 3 and 4 follow, and one wonders if the latter, a prayer invoking the hermit Saint Onuphrius, perhaps had some personal significance for the owner. Anne Bulkeley’s paternal grandfather John died in 1465/66, probably before she

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was born (and of course her maternal grandfather, Anthony Woodville, was executed in 1483); however, she had a great-uncle who did not die until 1487 and who might have filled a grandfatherly role. His name was Humphrey, the English form of Onuphrius or Honuphrius. This opening group ends with Item 5, the first of many Marian devotions in both English and Latin. This string of frankly miscellaneous devotions seems to lack any particular unity, although individual items foreshadow various later preoccupations. Item 6, the first of the prose treatises written in English, will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3. It is followed by two ‘fillers’, Item 7 in Latin and Item 8 in English. The latter focuses on the Name of Jesus, another unifying preoccupation in MS Harley 494 (see Chapter 5). Item 9, offering advice on frequent Communion, has not been identified but is similar in tone to Item 6, being eminently sane and humane. Like Item 6, it purports to be written in response to a request, though it is not clear whether the author is addressing one or more persons. The writer is an advocate of frequent Communion and opposed to excessive scrupulosity; he favours experience over reason and thinks it better, if in doubt, that ‘loue ouercome dred’ rather than the contrary. In spite of a mildly anti-clerical remark in the beginning, he advises trust in one’s confessor. He is opposed to formalism and favours a truly inward religion, so could well be a Catholic ‘evangelical’ reformer of the Erasmian type. His implied audience seems not to be female but rather to consist of privileged laymen with ample leisure and opportunity for solitude. Item 10, the Mechtildian ‘informacyon’, will be discussed in detail in Chapter 3; it is of course one of a series of texts associated with visionary women. Item 11, which follows immediately, marked off only by a centred and indented heading that could well be mistaken for a subheading, is a brief form of self-examination to be conducted in the morning, which covers some of the same ground as the opening of Item 6 and the beginning of Item 10. Although it recommends contemplation of Christ in his godhead, the prayers it suggests in honour of the Five Wounds (a typically Birgittine devotion) are very simple. Both Items 10 and 11 are essentially morning devotions, similar to those often found at the beginning of books of hours and preces privatae. Item 12 is quite distinct from the previous item. Its source is different, though this is by no means obvious as it begins mid-line with nothing more noticeable than a slightly larger capital ‘B’ for ‘Because’. The connection with the end of the previous item seems to be that this text, too, is about prayer. Adapted from a Richard Whitford text, it is discussed in detail in Chapter 3. Item 13, set off by an indented title, presents a set of four intercessory prayers, three of which come from William Bonde (this too is discussed further in Chapter 3).The fourth prayer is very similar

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in style but unidentified and could well have been composed by the compiler of MS Harley 494. Item 14, entitled ‘For your receiving of þe sacrament’, is the longest text in the manuscript and adapted with varying degrees of freedom from parts of Richard Whitford’s Due preparacion as far as the bottom of fol. 57r (see further below, Chapter 3). The ten prayers that follow, however, are not by Whitford, or at least are not found in the printed version of his text. The text gives instructions on preparation for Communion that are somewhat similar to those of Item 9 in stressing the need for recollection and solitude. However, it also proffers a very structured preparatory meditation, first on the goodness of God, then on Christ’s Passion and death, followed by a series of vocal prayers to be recited during the Mass, culminating in the office for the Feast of Corpus Christi. After this we find a brief explanation of spiritual communion, in which the author twice addresses his reader as ‘madam’ (the only occurrences of the word in the whole manuscript).71 This section has no parallel in Whitford’s printed text and is followed by a series of non-Whitfordian prayers. The centred heading ‘To the blissed seyntes’ on fol. 57r is slightly larger than earlier headings, and the prayers that follow have nothing to do with the Mass or reception of Communion but rather are penitential in tone. The first three appear to be a set, addressed to the saints, the apostles, and the angels in turn; each invokes the ‘love’ or ‘charite’ that they have towards one of the Persons of the Trinity, and prays for grace, pity, and mercy respectively for the suppliant, whose sinfulness is stressed. The next prayer is also part of this series: addressed to the Virgin, it invokes the love she has for the Trinity and again prays for ‘mercy and grace’ for the suppliant’s ‘jnnumerable wrechednes & synnes’ (fol. 58v). There then follow four more prayers that focus on the Trinity itself: the first, ‘To the glorious and mercyfull Trynite’, is a long prayer for mercy, invoking the merits of the Virgin, the angels and the saints, and the prayers of the Church. Three short prayers to the separate Persons of the Trinity follow, specifically requesting from each in turn ‘the water of contricion’. There is then a series of very short prayers under the heading ‘To the Trinite’, praying for mercy on ‘all rightouse peple’, on sinners, on those in purgatory, and on ‘the infidels’ (fol. 60r). This ends with a Latin invocation taken from the opening common to various litanies. Generally there is a similarity between the preceding prayers and the tropes and final collects that follow the litany in books of hours 71

Both nuns and laywomen could be addressed in this way. Sir Thomas More, for instance, addressed Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent, as ‘madam’ or ‘good madam’ several times in the letter he wrote her (see Chapter 2).

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such as the Burnet Psalter, which follows the litany with prayers to the Persons of the Trinity, the Virgin, the saints, the angels, and the apostles, among others. The rest of the final page, sig. G3r (with room for four lines) is left blank. On the verso there is an exhortation to hear Mass, with Christ promising as many saints at one’s deathbed as one has heard masses. It comes from LSG. Next is a long prayer to be said at the beginning of Mass and ending with the prayer ‘Jesu Jesu Jesu esto mihi Jesu’. (These may be distinct items, but for convenience they are regarded as continuations of Item 14.) Items 15 and 16 follow, and as we have already seen although they are short they are apparently not ‘fillers’, as they occupy the inner leaves of Quire 7. Item 15 is the English adaptation of Maria van Oisterwijk’s Five Wounds exercise already discussed (see also Chapter 3 below), which fits very well with this manuscript’s preoccupation with the Wounds. Item 16 is a set of prayers to God the Father, in the name of the Son, for the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. It will be recalled that Item 3 is a set of Latin prayers for the Gifts, addressed to the Holy Spirit, but it seems otherwise unconnected with the English text. There is an underlying Trinitarian emphasis in a number of the texts which is worth noting (compare the prayers added at the end of Item 14 and several of the items derived from Mechtild’s LSG). The next item begins in the middle of a quire, reinforcing the argument that the two preceding items are not merely fillers but integral elements in the collections as a whole. Item 17 resumes the dominant theme of the Eucharist and the Blessed Sacrament (compare Items 1, 9, and 14); it is one of the longer items in the manuscript, second only to Item 14, and is again adapted from an early printed text, William Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (discussed further in Chapter 3). It interprets the unfolding of the liturgical action of the Mass exclusively as an allegory of the Passion, and the priest as a figure of Christ; this approach makes it transitional between the earlier Eucharistic texts (Items 1, 9, 14) and the later texts that focus on Christ’s Passion (although this is a theme already announced by Items 10 and 15). After the William Bonde material ends, Item 17 continues without a break on fol. 72v with a consideration of four reasons why Christ gives himself under the form of bread. (This is similar to a section of Gherit van der Goude’s 1532 Interpretacyon and sygnyfycacyon of the Masse, which gives not four, but no fewer than twenty-five ingenious reasons for the use of bread.) This addition ends with ‘Amen’ and there follows another non-Bonde extract, a highly rhetorical passage urging the reader to concentrate on devotion to the Passion. (The reader is here addressed as ‘thou’; in the Bonde material the address is to ‘you’.) This stresses the more mystical side of religious devotion (compare Item 8), referring to a desire to

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be ‘enflawmed in holy meditacion [. . .] replenysshed with spirituall joye and gostly gladnesse and to be raptt & taken vp in excesse of mynde’ (fol. 74r). J. T. Rhodes has identified this as a version of a Latin text found in the Swiss Cistercian Nicholas Salicetus’s devotional anthology Anthidotarius animae (first printed in 1490, frequently reprinted).72 Item 17 ends with both ‘Amen’ and ‘Finis’ and is followed at the bottom of the same page by Item 18, ‘a deuoute meditacion and a thankeful orison to owre Lorde’, which continues the theme of Christ’s Passion. This lengthy prayer thanks Christ for his earthly life, with a pronounced emphasis on the events of his suffering and death. It is followed by a series of shorter prayers, the first two of which contain numerous invocations beginning with ‘O’, reminiscent of the pseudoBirgittine Seven Oes (which is otherwise noticeable by its absence from MS Harley 494) and the prayer ‘O bone Jesu’, attributed to Saint Bernardino of Siena. The third prayer is addressed to the three Persons of the Trinity, and the sixth and last invokes the three Persons and prays for the gifts of might, wisdom, and good will — the attributes of the Trinity. Item 19 is a translation of ‘O intemerata’, one of the most popular of medieval prayers addressed to the Virgin and a regular feature in books of hours. This is not the first Marian devotion to appear in MS Harley 494 — we have already had Items 5, 7, and the non-Whitfordian section of 14 — but Item 19 introduces a concatenation of such devotions. In fact, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, along with devotion to the sacrament of the Mass, is one of the leading themes that gives the manuscript its coherence (this aspect of MS Harley 494 will be discussed further in Chapter 5). Item 20, a salutation to the Virgin based on her Ten Virtues, consists of brief prayers, each of which invokes the Virgin by naming her virtues in turn and introducing a recitation of the Ave Maria. Item 21, a ‘Contemplacion for þe Ffeste of Assumpcion’, continues the Marian theme. This is an unusual text on the Joys of the Virgin, not the usual set but the Seven Joys of the Assumption, followed by a further Seven Joys now possessed by the Virgin in heaven. These are followed by a lengthy prayer, separated by a blank line and also marked in the margin as distinct by an open a, but referring back to her Joys. The beginning and end of this prayer refer to the Trinity. Item 22 follows without any introduction or title; it is a translation of a single chapter from the revelations of Saint Birgit, in which the Virgin instructs the visionary on how she may suitably praise her, by praising God for his various interactions with the Virgin.

72

Rhodes, ‘Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion’, pp. 414–15, n. 88.

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Item 23 follows, ending on sig. H13r. As sigs H13v –14v of this fourteen-leaf quire are blank, we may justifiably conclude that this item is indeed a ‘filler’. Nonetheless, its theme follows seamlessly from Items 19–22 as it records an eccentric and quasi-magical devotion that involves reciting a hundred Aves a day for ten days, followed by the prayer ‘Adonai domine deus’ and the gift of alms to a poor person. This will guarantee (‘ye may nott fayle with-owte dout’, fol. 90r) the granting of one’s wish or prayer. Item 24 is the first of two penitential pieces — ‘a shorte confessionall for religious persons’. Penance up to this point has not been the prominent theme that it so often is in medieval collections of devotions, although Item 11 encouraged self-examination first thing in the morning. Rather, there has been stress on the positive, on the cultivation of the virtues, by taking Christ and the Virgin as models (cf. Items 15 and 20), and the acquisition of the gifts of the Holy Ghost (Items 3, 16). Confessional formulae are common enough but the interest of this one lies in its being specifically tailored for a religious. (The very first sin confessed relates to inadequate saying or singing of the office.) Although the formula is said by the manuscript to derive from the Franciscan saint Bonaventura, the confession specifically addresses ‘beatam Birgittam’ (fol. 94r), the only mention of Saint Birgit of Sweden in the manuscript apart from the translation of the chapter from her revelations. (This is a little surprising if the manuscript was indeed compiled at Syon Abbey, but see the discussion in Chapter 2.) After the enumeration of eight types of sin, there is a brief text citing Saint Bernard ‘& oþer deuout doctours’ on the dangers of boring one’s confessor by being too prolix. This part of Item 24 does not seem to be particularly applicable to religious and offers a kind of general round-up of sins in conclusion. Item 25 is another penitential text, ‘an exclamacion of a penytent sinner’. Item 26 reverts to the manuscript’s Marian preocccupations as it is a Latin text of ‘O intemerata’, though a different version from the one translated in Item 19. It includes a reference to the reception of Communion, which the suppliant laments receiving too often unworthily, hence linking the penitential and Eucharistic themes. Items 27, 28, and 29 complete Quire 9. Item 27 continues the Marian theme: it is a set of prayers invoking the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, each followed by a Pater and an Ave. The final Sorrow concludes with a Pater, Ave, and Credo, so the devotion is in form a type of rosary. After a blank leaf follows Item 28, the ‘bedis of pardon [. . .] of Saint Gregorrys pytye’. This is a variant on a wellknown devotion, often called ‘the Pardon Beads of Syon’, which consists of a set of seven separate prayers, each addressed to ‘swete blessyde Jhesu’ and focused on the Name of Jesus, each with a common repeated prayer, a Pater, an Ave, and a

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Credo, a pattern similar to that of the previous item. It is immediately followed without a break by a set of prayers to the Virgin (briefly invoking Saint Anne). These prayers, in English and Latin, derive from Mechtild’s LSG and show both Marian and Trinitarian preoccupations. Thus in various respects they fit with the themes of MS Harley 494 as a whole and are discussed in detail in Chapters 3 and 5. At the bottom of the last page of this quire is Item 29, a brief Latin prayer which refers to one’s Guardian Angel: again, devotion to the angels seems to have been a Syon cult in the early sixteenth century and will be discussed in Chapter 5. As we have seen, Quire 10, the final quire of four leaves, may be a later addition. On the first leaf is Item 30, which consists of two prayers: a brief act of contrition and the familiar Compline prayer ‘Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord’. These might be seen as constituting a suitable evening devotion, and therefore making an appropriate end to the collection. At the bottom of the first leaf a different hand has scribbled — possibly even later — Item 31, another prayer or note that lists four virtues. A different hand has written Item 32, three pairs of prayers in Latin and English, each pair to be followed by a Pater and Ave. Each English prayer is a free translation of the preceding Latin. The first pair laments lost time and requests spiritual insight. The second addresses Christ as the Good Shepherd, while the third prays for temperance and the avoidance of gluttony. This is followed by a Latin hexameter couplet addressed to one’s Guardian Angel, and then by an expansion or exegesis of the second half of the last line. The Latin prayers are written in italic, or in a hand with humanistic or italic influences, while the English versions are in anglicana, but the same scribe probably wrote both. The final item, 33, is a salutation addressed to Christ which goes on to invoke his Passion, wounds, body, and blood, hence gathering up many of the themes of the collection. Taken as a whole, the manuscript has the shape one would expect of a preces privatae volume. It has morning prayers at the beginning and evening prayers at the end (as do of course the books of hours; see further Chapter 3); it has prayers and devotions associated with the Mass in the first half of the book — attendance at Mass always took place in the morning — and prayers centred on the Virgin and on penance, appropriate to any time of the day, later in the book. J. T. Rhodes has already discussed the overall shape of this collection, and her identification of many of the texts has proved invaluable.73 She concludes that ‘Dame Anna’s collection provided her with plenty of devotional material, although it was not particularly

73

Rhodes, ‘Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion’, pp. 398–400.

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well organized’.74 Hopefully, further investigation of the context and sources of the texts will clarify the principles of organization. Certainly there can be no question here of a random accretion of devotional material: someone — at least one person, possibly more — has gone to considerable lengths to seek out texts from a variety of sources, some quite rare; indeed, many of the items are, as far as we know at present, unique. There is a very distinctive discrimination at work in MS Harley 494, possibly that of Anne Bulkeley, but more likely of the compiler (possibly Richard Whitford). However, it is a discrimination with a strongly Latinate bent: apart from the prose treatises, practically every prayer in Anne Bulkeley’s book for which a source or analogue has been found turns out to be translated from Latin. It therefore seems less likely that any of the texts was actually composed by Anne Bulkeley herself, or by her friends, and more likely that her piety was under the control of a spiritual director.

74

Rhodes, ‘Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion’, p. 400.

Chapter 2

C ONTEXTS: N UNS, H OLY M AIDS, AND THE P OLITICS OF R ELIGION

N

o book is an island, entire of itself. In an ideal world, a religious book such as a devotional anthology or private prayer book would perhaps exist in a state of splendid isolation, concerned only with timeless verities, transcending its social and political environments which are, sub specie eternitatis, essentially ephemeral. But in practice such a degree of withdrawal and disengagement from the world is impossible. Anne Bulkeley’s book comes from within a particular institutional environment which influenced its make-up. It was compiled at a specific time when disturbing events, which were to culminate in the destruction of the religious life in England and of the devotional traditions that it represented, were under way, and in a unique atmosphere generated by contemporary preoccupations. None of this could have been avoided by the owner or her friends, whether they lived at court, in the country, or in a religious house. The circumstances of the book’s birth and production, therefore, are overdetermined by various factors, of many of which we must remain ignorant. All the more reason to investigate and foreground those of which we are aware.

Syon Abbey and Amesbury Priory in the Early Sixteenth Century Two religious houses seem to have been involved with MS Harley 494, one with its production, the other with its ownership. Many, possibly all, of the texts are Birgittine; the main scribe was a layman associated with Syon Abbey, and the subsidiary scribes may well have been Syon nuns, other women associated with the community, or even the monks, while the supervisor of the whole exercise may have been Richard Whitford, a Birgittine monk. On the other hand, one of the

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owners of the manuscript may have been a Fontevrault nun at Amesbury Priory, which is less than thirty miles from Fordingbridge, Anne Bulkeley’s home. What do we know of these two religious houses in the early sixteenth century? The Order of the Most Holy Saviour was founded by Saint Birgit of Sweden and finally received papal approval in 1370, only three years before the foundress’s death.1 Officially the order followed the Rule of Saint Augustine, but Birgit had received in revelation the Regula sancti salvatoris, dictated to her by Christ himself, and in England there were additions to this for both the brethren and the sisters. The order enjoyed a number of unusual features. It was a double order, of nuns and monks. Constitutionally, the abbey was under the rule of the abbess, who was elected by the nuns, in temporal matters while the confessor-general, elected by the whole community, exercised spiritual authority. The Birgittine nuns sang a unique Office of the Virgin, with a series of lessons known as the Sermo Angelicus which had also been revealed to the saint: ‘It differs from the traditional Lady Office in that instead of changing in accordance with the seasons, the texts vary each weekday, relating the life of Our Lady until her Assumption and defining her contribution to the work of our redemption.’2 Their system of training new members was also unique: candidates spent their novitiate year outside the abbey and were not admitted within the enclosure until they had actually taken their vows.3 Finally, Birgittine nuns had a distinctive religious habit, wearing on top of the veil a linen ‘crown’ with five small pieces of red cloth representing the Five Wounds. Although the order was not excessively encouraging towards new recruits,4 there seems to have been no shortage, even in the early sixteenth century, of either monks or nuns. As in humbler English religious houses, the nuns were mainly from gentry families; the only truly aristocratic prioress was Anne Pole (d. 1501), the granddaughter of Cecily of York, niece of Edward IV and aunt of Cardinal Pole.

1 For a useful recent summary of the foundation and spread of the order, see Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. by Morris and O’Mara, pp. 4–9. 2

F. R . Johnston, ‘The English Cult of St Bridget of Sweden’, Analecta Bollandiana, 89 (1985), 75–93 (p. 77). See also The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, ed. by A. Jefferies Collins, Henry Bradshaw Society, 96 (Worcester: Stanbrook Abbey, 1969). 3

See The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. IV : The Syon Additions for the Sisters from the British Library MS. Arundel 146, ed. by James Hogg, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1980), pp. 79–101. 4

See Roger Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon: The Spirituality of the English House of a Medieval Contemplative Order from its Beginnings to the Present Day, Analecta Cartusiana, 68 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1984) pp. 36 and 103–06.

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Johnston comments on ‘the recruitment of the sisters from courtier and London merchant families, typical of the pattern in convents of recruiting from prosperous local families’.5 In the early sixteenth century, the abbesses were Elizabeth Gibbs or Gybbes (d. 1518), Constance Browne (d. 1520), and Agnes Jordan, who after the dissolution continued to preside over a group of religious near Denham, Buckinghamshire, until her death in 1544. (In 1540 the Bishop of Lincoln, John Longland, licensed her ‘to have holy offices and mass celebrated by suitable chaplains within the manor of Southland’.6) Prioresses were Anne Pole, Elianora Scrope (d. 1519), and Margaret Wyndesor/Windsor.7 Syon has attracted scholarly attention for several reasons. First, it exerts, in Yeats’s words, ‘the fascination of what’s difficult’: the Birgittine way of life was extremely demanding, but the monastery maintained a reputation for piety and asceticism at a time when the religious life elsewhere was often in need of reform or, worse, underfunded. Secondly, Syon exercises a certain allure because it was the only English religious house to survive its dissolution and continue life as a community right up to the present day. Technically, Syon was not dissolved and did not surrender; the community simply vacated the premises, taking the keys with them. Thirdly, the order (both men and women) was textually active and therefore appeals to literary scholars, particularly those interested in women’s literary culture. Much work has consequently been done on the community’s reading, both the brothers’ and the sisters’.8 Collectively and individually Syon owned manuscripts and printed books,9 it cared for them and catalogued them, it patronized the translation, copying, and printing of religious texts (particularly using Wynkyn de Worde),10 and some male members of the community, such as Richard Whitford, John Fewterer, and William Bonde, were prolific writers.11 5

Johnston, ‘English Cult of St Bridget of Sweden’, pp. 89–90.

6

Margaret Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The Diocese of Lincoln under John Longland 1521–1547 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 110. 7

I am most grateful to Virginia Bainbridge for providing me with this information which she had compiled. 8

See Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 171–210; and de Hamel, Syon Abbey.

9

Syon Abbey, ed. by Vincent Gillespie, with The Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. by A. I. Doyle, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 9 (London: British Library with the British Academy, 2001). 10

See particularly Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century’. 11

Lawrence, ‘Role of the Monasteries of Syon and Sheen’, summarizes much of this work.

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As far as we know, however, none of the sisters composed texts. Whether or not any were active as scribes is debatable. According to Rebecca Krug, The only evidence of writing by enclosed women that was not corrective (involving the emending and bettering of liturgical texts) or inscriptive (encompassing signatures in books and casual annotation) at the Birgittine house is the possible scribal activity of a Swedish nun.12

However, Veronica O’Mara has argued for the existence of at least one scribe, who contributed to London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546,13 and there are good reasons to believe that a Syon nun copied the Birgittine processional that is now Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 8885, and the last page of Edinburgh, University Library, MS 59, a Syon psalter (see Chapter 4). It is one of the contentions of this book that some of the minor hands that contributed to Anne Bulkeley’s book are those of Syon nuns, though it must be said that they do not all look very professional. The most extensive, and best documented, ‘literate practice’ in which the nuns engaged was private reading. The nuns were expected in engage in such devotional reading and study, and during the fifteenth century, Krug argues, this became more and more important to the Birgittines: What seems to have changed over the course of the fifteenth century is the centrality of the material book — the actual, printed copy and its writing — to the lives of the sisters both before and after they entered the monastery. Increasingly, the nuns’ private reading at Syon Abbey involved an intense experience of identification with books as both material and spiritual objects.14

Partly to cater to the demands that this stimulated, a number of religious texts were translated, copied, and, later, printed specifically by and for the Birgittines of Syon. This was true from the earliest days of the abbey’s existence. The Rule itself was of course translated into English for the benefit of the nuns and lay brothers, as The rewyll of Seynt Sauioure. So was the Rule of Saint Augustine and the Additions for the brothers and the sisters.15 Soon after Syon’s foundation, perhaps between 1400 and 1420 since the two earlier Middle English manuscripts

12

Krug, Reading Families, p. 161, citing de Hamel, Syon Abbey, pp. 56–57.

13

O’Mara, ‘A Middle English Text Written by a Female Scribe’.

14

Krug, Reading Families, p. 157.

15

See James Hogg, ‘Middle English Translations of the Birgittine Rule’, in Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. by Morris and O’Mara, pp. 152–69.

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are dated by the editors as ‘early decades of the first half of the fifteenth century’,16 the Latin version of the Dialogo of Saint Catherine of Siena was translated into English as The Orcherd of Syon.17 It was addressed to the ‘Religyous modir & deuoute sustren clepid & chosen bisily to laboure at the hous of Syon, in the blessid vyneherd of oure holy Saueour’.18 In the early sixteenth century this text was rediscovered at Syon, and in 1519 Wynkyn de Worde printed it for a wider audience of ‘relygyous and deuoute soules’, at the expense of Sir Richard Sutton.19 Sutton had become steward of Syon in 1513 and had taken up residence there. He died in 1524 and his will ‘provided for a priest to be employed there to teach girls intending to enter the nunnery’.20 (It would be interesting to know if this ever actually happened.) Possibly between 1415 and 1450, or so its nineteenth-century editor argued, someone composed The Myroure of oure Ladye for the nuns of Syon.21 Only one manuscript copy survives, dated to the early sixteenth century, now divided between Aberdeen, University Library, MS 134 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 941. (We have already discussed these manuscripts, as the scribe was Robert Taylor.) But it was also printed in 1530 by Richard Fawkes, ‘at the desyre and in-staunce of the worshypfull and deuoute lady Abbesse of the worshypfull Monastery of Syon. And the reuerende fader in god. Generall confessoure of the same’, that is, under the patronage of Agnes Jordan and John Fewterer, and it is this version that is the basis for the only modern edition currently available. The translator explains that he has provided a translation of and commentary on the Birgittine nuns’ unique liturgy because of their ignorance of Latin:

16 The Orcherd of Syon, ed. by Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey, EETS, OS 258 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. v. 17

See C. Annette Grisé, ‘Catherine of Siena in Middle English Manuscripts: Transmission, Translation, and Transformation’, in The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, ed. by Rosalynn Voaden and others, The Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 149–59. 18

Orcherd of Syon, ed. by Hodgson and Liegey, p. 1.

19

See C. Annette Grisé, ‘“In the Blessed Vyneherd of Oure Holy Saueour”: Female Religious Readers and Textual Reception in the Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Orcherd of Syon’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales: Exeter Symposium VI, ed. by Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999), pp. 193–211 (pp. 197–99). 20

On Sutton, see James G. Clark, ‘Sutton, Sir Richard (c.1460–1524)’, in ODNB [accessed 30 November 2006]. 21

See also Grisé, ‘“In the Blessed Vyneherd of Oure Holy Saueour”’, pp. 199–204.

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Chapter 2 But forasmoche as many of you, though ye can synge and rede, yet ye can not se what the meanynge therof ys: therefore [. . .] I haue drawen youre legende and all youre seruyce in to Englyshe. [. . .] And in many places where the nakyd letter is thoughe yt be set in englyshe, ys not easy for some symple soulles to vnderstonde; I expounde yt and declare yt more openly, other before the letter, or after or else fourthewyth togyther.22

Although this passage is often quoted to establish that the Birgittine nuns did not understand Latin, perhaps it is more useful to stress that it also establishes (if it were ever doubted) that they were literate in English. Indeed, the Additions for the Sisters instruct the abbess to audition the abilities of serious candidates for the novitiate: ‘If the abbes thynke her disposed to thys religion, she shal here her habilite in voyce, syngynge and redynge.’23 It is, of course, the ability to sing and to read Latin aloud, and therefore take a full part in the liturgical life of the community, that is to be tested. This is what Saenger calls ‘phonetic literacy’ and defines as: the ability to decode texts syllable by syllable and to pronounce them orally. [. . .] Although the readers often had from extraneous sources a general appreciation of the sense of the text, they were not competent to comprehend its precise grammatical meaning.

He distinguishes this type of literacy from ‘comprehension literacy’, ‘the ability to decode a written text silently, word by word, and to understand it fully in the very act of gazing upon it’.24 Another text possibly made for Syon is the earliest translation into English of De Imitatione Christi of Thomas à Kempis, which dates to the mid-fifteenth century. The translator may have been a monk at the Charterhouse of Sheen, and the translation ‘could have been made for the nuns at Syon (this was at least true of one of its copies [. . .])’;25 in 1502 William Darker of Sheen wrote out what is now Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter T. 6. 18 for Abbess Elizabeth Gibbs, who died in 1518.26 In the early sixteenth century, the Birgittine monk Richard Whitford made several translations for the nuns. His version of the Rule of St Augustine, which

22

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, pp. 2–3.

23

Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. IV : The Syon Additions for the Sisters, ed. by Hogg, p. 80.

24

Paul Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, in The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Roger Chartier (Oxford: Polity, 1989), pp. 141–73 (p. 142). 25

The Imitation of Christ: The First English Translation of the ‘Imitatio Christi’, ed. by B. J. H. Biggs, EETS, OS 309 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. lxxix. 26

Imitation of Christ, ed. by Biggs, p. xxiii.

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includes the exposition of the Rule by Hugh of St Victor, was printed in 1510? (STC 922.2; repr. 1525, STC 922.3 (formerly STC 13925 and 25417) and 1527, STC 922.4 (formerly STC 25419)). It was not made for the sisters alone, however, but ‘indyfferently vn-to bothe the sexes of kyndes | that is to saye, vnto the bretherne and systers of this professyon’ (fol. 1r). In 1526 the indefatigable de Worde published The Martiloge in englysshe after the vse of Salisbury, ‘as it is redde in Syon with addicyons’,27 which had been translated or revised by Whitford presumably for the sisters. Sometime in the early sixteenth century, another Birgittine priest, Thomas Prestins or Prestius (d. 1554), either translated or copied a translation of the Formula Noviciorum for the Syon sisters.28 The Formula was a Latin text attributed to the twelfth-century Franciscan David of Augsburg. This version in Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd. 2. 33 has been adapted in various ways for the nuns. It is addressed specifically to sisters. As a result, it omits the passage on serving at Mass and the advice beginning ‘Desire not to be a prechowre not a confessour . . . ,’ [. . .] it changes the application of teaching upon relations between the sexes to suit women; and it alters the frequency of confession from thrice to once weekly.29

In his dissertation, Stephen E. Hayes argued that Prestins was merely the scribe rather than the translator.30 He also concluded that the translation itself was made by another Syon brother, ‘thinking, with the added references to Saints Bridget and Paula, to give his female audience example of visionary women with whom they would more readily identify’.31 The sisters’ own reading has also been worked over, most notably in several articles by Ann Hutchison dating back to 1989. She originally stressed the centrality of reading to the Birgittine life, drawing heavily on The Myroure of oure Ladye, which ‘stands as an important witness to the value placed on spiritual or 27

The Martiloge in Englysshe after the use of the chirche of Salisbury and as it is redde in Syon with addicyons, ed. by F. Procter and E. S. Dewick, Henry Bradshaw Society, 3 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1893). 28

P. S. Jolliffe, ‘Middle English Translations of De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione’, Mediaeval Studies, 36 (1974), 259–77 (p. 268, n. 50). 29

Jolliffe, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 268.

30

Stephen E. Hayes, ‘David of Augsburg’s Profectus Religiosorum in the Middle English Translation for the Nuns of Syon Abbey: An Edition’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1997), p. v. 31

Hayes, ‘David of Augsburg’s Profectus Religiosorum’, p. xxxiv.

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devotional reading at Syon Abbey, and [. . .] itself furnishes an example of the high degree of intellectual activity fostered in the monastery’.32 A later article investigates more comprehensively what the nuns actually read, though there are no surprises.33 But she also argues that, judging from evidence of book ownership, several of the nuns from the early sixteenth century ( Joanna Sewell, Catherine Palmer, and Clemence Tresham) read Latin.34 Of interest in this connection is Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V. III. 16, fol. 118r–v . The manuscript looks Birgittine: it contains several extracts from Saint Birgit, including on fols 47r–111r an ‘Opusculum vite et passionis Christi eiusque genetricis Marie ex revelacionibus beate birgitte compilatum’; shorter extracts and prayers from her Revelationes; a chapter from Mechtild’s LSG; and a prayer to, and the office of, Birgit’s daughter Saint Catherine of Sweden. All the texts are in Latin, except for a letter written in a hand not found elsewhere in the manuscript, which Professor Ian Doyle considers similar to that of Thomas Betson, the brothers’ librarian at Syon, who died in 1516. Certainly the authoritative and admonitory tone of the letter sounds far more like that of a priest than of a nun. Addressed to ‘Welbiloued Susturs in our lord Ihesu Crist’, the letter seems to be written by or on behalf of one group of religious women to another, to accompany a gift of books: knowe ye that, of such goostly writyngis as oure susturs haue with vs, we sende you part, consaili[n]g and willyng you for encresse of oure mede to lete thies be comoun emong you and yif copy of them to othere of religioun that dwell nygh you. And allso it is well doon ye rede hem oftymes & therwith enprynte hem effectuelly in youre myndys & therafture to your powers gide you in your conuersacion to the plesure of your spouse Ihesu Crist and to the gode ensample of othere. (fol. 119r)

The writer goes on to hark back to a golden age, when nuns came from the highest social classes (‘quenes and princesses’) and ‘women of religioun vsed contynuelly devoute praier and contemplacion, watch and grete abstynence, with other vertues afore rehersid, neuer vnoccupied, as in redyng, studiyng, writyng, suyng, wasshyng, delfyng or herbys settyng or sowyng’ (fol. 119r), and concludes with a stirring exhortation:

32

Ann M. Hutchison, ‘Devotional Reading in the Monastery and the Late Medieval Household’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. by Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 215–27 (p. 223). 33

Ann M. Hutchison, ‘What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from the English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey’, Mediaeval Studies, 57 (1995), 205–22. 34

Hutchison, ‘What the Nuns Read’, p. 214.

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Wherfore, susturs, awake and take gode hede to thies writyngis that be ordeyned to you and oftymes rede hem and kepe hem clene and hole and, when tyme shall requyre, repayre hem as a chefe tresoure for youre sowlys. (fol. 119r)

The content of this letter is characteristically Birgittine, with its stress on the virtues of ‘perfite charite, chastite, mekenesse, wilfull pouertye, with pacience, obedience, silence’, its nostalgia for a more aristocratic class of nuns (Birgit was a Swedish princess), its concern for the physical welfare of the books (‘kepe hem clene and hole’), even its mention of needlework, a chapter on which is added to Thomas Prestin’s copy of the Formula Noviciorum and which was a Syon occupation.35 But the question arises, if the letter emanates from the nuns of Syon, who are the recipents? Presumably, as it is written in English, another group of English nuns, but which? Other questions follow. As Bell points out, if this is the covering letter for the whole manuscript, it is in a strange place (the codex consists of 180 folios). What is more, all the other texts are in Latin, so this hardly looks like the usual idea of a collection of nuns’ reading. Following Professor Doyle, he suggests that it ‘may have been added just for its own intrinsic interest’.36 If, however, the letter and the manuscript are indeed connected, this would place the reading of the Birgittines in an entirely different light. Latin is the subsidiary language in MS Harley 494; nonetheless, about one in five of the texts that it contains are written completely in that language and several use both English and Latin. Not only Anne Bulkeley, the end user of the book, but also some of those involved in its planning, compilation, and copying must have had some knowledge of Latin — though not always a good knowledge, given the corrupt and uncorrected state of the strange Office of the Virgin, ‘Aue Jhesu, cui mater uirgo’ (Item 7). Finally, some appreciation of Birgittine spirituality is necessary to contextualize Anne Bulkeley’s book. Roger Ellis points out that the Birgittine rule particularly stresses humility, chastity, and poverty and takes as models Christ’s patience and poverty and the Virgin’s humility, obedience, simplicity, wisdom, and chastity.37 At the profession ceremony, the candidate was preceded by a red banner with Christ Crucified depicted on one side and the Virgin on the other.38 In the form of profession in Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 11 (A. 11), the bishop explains the meaning, in English and Latin: ‘Loo. beholde the ymage of thy sauyour on the 35

Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. by Morris and O’Mara, p. 6.

36

Hutchison discusses this letter in ‘What the Nuns Read’, p. 222, and Bell in What Nuns Read, p. 174. 37

Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, pp. 26–30.

38

Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, p. 27.

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crosse. and lerne of hym pacience and pouerte. [. . .] Loo, beholde the ymage of the moder of god oure lady. and lerne of hyr chastite and mekenes.’39 Ellis has characterized the core of Birgittine spirituality as ‘a Trinitarian vision which emphasises the incarnate and crucified Christ and the compassion and love of the Virgin Mary’.40 This closely corresponds to features that are indeed evident in the spirituality of MS Harley 494, all of which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5. He also stresses its eclectic nature and the varied sources on which it draws, mentioning ‘Syon’s readiness to engage with non-Brigittine traditions of spirituality, specifically Cistercian, in order to supplement its own’.41 Anne Bulkeley’s book, too, is eclectic in the materials it accesses. Mechtild of Hackeborn, whose LSG is used so extensively and copies of which were owned by Syon, belonged to the abbey of Helfta. The nuns of Helfta, including Gertrude the Great who was largely responsible for the compilation and editing of the work associated with the name of Mechtild, were strongly influenced by the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux. By some the monastery has been claimed as Cistercian at least in spirit, even though technically it was Benedictine. Moreover, Mechtild’s writings were first disseminated by the Carthusians, and there is a Carthusian influence discernible in MS Harley 494, particularly in the spiritual exercises of the beguine Maria van Oisterwijk and in the emphasis on Christ’s wounds and blood. In addition, the ‘shorte confessionall for religious persons’ (Item 24) claims with some justification to have been inspired by the Franciscan Saint Bonaventura, while the Ten Virtues of Our Lady (Item 20) finds a Latin analogue in a clearly Franciscan manuscript (London, British Library, MS Cotton Faustina D IV). These connections are discussed further in Chapter 5. In the early sixteenth century, Syon Abbey was not much more than a hundred years old, having been founded (after some false starts) in 1415. In contrast, Amesbury Priory in Wiltshire had a history stretching back five and a half centuries, having been founded around 979. Originally it was a Benedictine abbey, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Meilor; also known as Melor or Melorius, he was the legendary son of a king of Cornwall, murdered as a child. In 1177 the existing house was dissolved and refounded by Henry II as a priory of the Order of 39

Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 11 (A. 11), fol. 26v; cf. Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon,

p. 56. 40

Roger Ellis, ‘Further Thoughts on the Spirituality of Syon Abbey’, in Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, ed. by W. F. Pollard and R . Boenig (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 219–43 (p. 225). 41

Ellis, ‘Further Thoughts’, p. 229.

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Fontevrault, of which he was an enthusiastic patron; many of the Plantagenets were buried at Fontevrault Abbey in France. The original Benedictine nuns were expelled, and a new group brought over from France, who were joined by some Fontevrault nuns from the priory of Westwood. Like Saint Birgit’s Order of the Most Holy Saviour, Fontevrault was originally a double order for nuns and monks. It had been founded by Robert of Arbrissel around 1100, and both men and women followed the Benedictine Rule, with additions. All houses except Fontevrault Abbey itself were priories and dependent on the mother house, ruled by an abbess; Amesbury was therefore technically the cell of an alien abbey. But for much of the fifteenth century contacts between Amesbury and the mother house had been disrupted by the Hundred Years’ War and by the fact that France and England supported different popes during the Great Schism. From 1457 to 1477 attempts were made in France to reform the order and in 1479 to re-establish control over the English houses, but according to Dom David Knowles, ‘Contacts with Fontevrault seem to have ended c. 1486’.42 Throughout the fifteenth century Amesbury also had the kinds of domestic troubles that often plagued women’s houses, such as long-term secular guests who might supplement the house’s income but bring their own problems: By direction of the Chancellor, Margaret, Lady Hungerford and Botreux, was in residence between 1459 and 1463. While she was there her lodgings, covered with lead, were burnt, and all her chattels to the value of £1,000 or more consumed. The restoration of the buildings cost her £200.43

In the early sixteenth century, possibly after a period when its finances were under stress, Amesbury must have been relatively prosperous. In 1522 the prioress ‘was making an annual payment of £200 towards the cost of the French war, a sum equalling that paid by St. Mary’s, Winchester, and exceeding the contributions of Romsey and Wherwell’.44 The community could afford to be generous in giving alms as well as arms:

42

David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 1971; repr. 1994), p. 105. According to the same scholars, ‘In 1494 Fontevrault was placed under Benedictine rule, but it and its houses continued to rank as a separate order’ (p. 104). 43

‘Houses of Benedictine Nuns: Abbey, Later Priory, of Amesbury’, in History of the County of Wiltshire, III, 242–59 [accessed 24 November 2006]. 44

History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. III, citing L. & P. Hen. VIII, III.2, 1048.

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Chapter 2 In 1535 the yearly alms of the priory to the poor comprised a cask of red and a barrel of white herrings (19s.), a bread dole of 12 bushels of corn and 12 of barley at Quinquagesima (16s.), and 4 quarters of barley on St. Thomas the Martyr’s day (£1 8s.) — all distributed for the souls of Henry II and other founders.45

According to the 1535 Valor Ecclesiasticus, compiled by the royal commissioners, the abbey’s ‘gross revenues were £558 10s. 2d. and the net £482 1s. 10d. Thus [. . .] Amesbury was second in numbers and fifth in wealth among the nunneries of the realm’.46 Amesbury was dissolved on 4 December 1539, after more than token resistance from its abbess, Florence Bonnewe. She ‘refused every attempt to bribe or force her into a surrender. After considerable delay she was deposed [. . .] and was succeeded by Joan Darrell who surrendered the house at the king’s bidding, and accepted the comparatively high pension of £100’.47 In contrast, the deposed abbess does not appear in the pensions list: either she was cut off without a penny as a punishment for her recalcitrance, or she had died. At the time of the surrender ‘there were beside the prioress 33 nuns, with 4 priests and 33 servants’. Provision was made in timely fashion for the expelled nuns: ‘By patent of 4 February 1540 pensions to the total value of £258 6s. 8d. were granted to the prioress [. . .] and to 33 nuns, several of whom bore local names. Twenty-one nuns were still receiving pensions in 1555–6 and one (Cecily Eyre) as late as 1605.’48 Fortuitously, we know something of Amesbury’s spiritual climate as well as its financial health in the early sixteenth century. A brief treatise on the meaning of the monastic vows of stability, obedience, poverty, and chastity is preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Additional A. 42. Although it has not been edited in full (it is damaged in parts and not always legible), it has been subjected to a sympathetic and nuanced analysis by Yvonne Parrey.49 The text belongs to a traditional genre, that of a treatise of spiritual guidance addressed by a male spiritual adviser to religious women at their request. Its author announces that he writes for his ‘deare susterys Mary and Anne, wyth all the other devohth dyscyples of the scole of Cryste in youre monastery of Amysbury’ (fol. 1r), 45

‘Houses of Benedictine Nuns’, in History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. III.

46

‘Houses of Benedictine Nuns’, in History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. III.

47

Lina Eckenstein, Woman Under Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-lore and Convent Life between A .D . 500 and A .D . 1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1896), p. 454, citing Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, II, 456. 48

‘Houses of Benedictine Nuns’, in History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. III.

49

Parrey, ‘“Devoted disciples of Christ”’.

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and his treatise can be conveniently dated by a reference to ‘the honorable lady Cristyane your prioresse’ (fol. 27v); Christine Fauntleroy was prioress between 1507 and 1530.50 We know nothing about the author other than what can be deduced from the text. Like his readers, he is under vows: he speaks inclusively of ‘we all that be relygiouse’ (fol. 5v ). But he claims to be relatively young and inexperienced — ‘y am but a yonge dyscyple in that scole my selfe’ (fol. 1r) — although this may simply be the standard ‘humility topos’. He is not a member of the Order of Fontevrault (the male side of the double order, at least in England, was extinct by the sixteenth century), nor is he a Benedictine: he refers to ‘youre holy father seynt Benedict’ (fol. 17r–v) but to ‘ouyr holy father seynt Augustyne’ (fol. 18r). This reference to Saint Augustine is less informative than one might hope, however, as not only did the Augustinian canons regular (and the Augustinian friars)51 look to him as their founder, but the Dominicans also based their life on his Rule, as did many religious attached to the larger hospitals,52 the regular priests known as Bonhommes, and, not least, the Birgittines. We also know that the author did not have physical access to Mary and Anne: he has decided, he says, ‘where-as I can not cum to doo hit [write this treatise] personally, to doo hyt with my pen, wych may better a-byde with you þen thowhe y had spoken it wyth my mowhthe’ (fol. 2r). We can say even less about Mary and Anne. They were probably not wealthy or powerful, for in late medieval England very few aristocratic or upper gentry women became nuns.53 They might well be among those whom the author imagines saying, in response to Christ’s command to forsake all that they had, ‘Howe may we then be his dysyplis, wych haue noþer landes ne goodes [. . .], nother ony thynge ellis to forsake. for the loue of hym?’ (fol. 6v). Presumably they could read, but they could not necessarily write, or even sign their own names, as the author explains to them how on the occasion of their profession, yn confyrmacion of all thes premysses, vnder the wordes of your professyon, when he haue red hit, with your owne hond he write your name, or yf he can nott, yn stede ther-of he make a crosse + yn syne that hit is your owne dede. (fol. 28r)

The letter to Mary and Anne is valuable evidence for the sober piety and good intentions of at least some of the young nuns in sixteenth-century Amesbury. The 50

Parrey, ‘“Devoted disciples of Christ”’, p. 243.

51

Given the stress the author lays on monastic stability, he is unlikely to have been a friar.

52

See Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine and Society in Later Medieval England (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), p. 207. 53

See Barbara J. Harris, ‘A New Look at the Reformation: Aristocratic Women and Nunneries, 1450–1540’, Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 89–113.

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teaching contained in this brief seven-thousand-word treatise is soundly traditional. It treats of each of the monastic vows in turn, beginning with stability though, unfortunately, most of this section is missing, as is the beginning of the discussion of obedience. (Perrey argues that a complete quire is lacking after fol. 10.54) But it is clear from what remains that all the vows are treated in a sophisticated rather than literal and fundamentalist fashion. For instance, the author discriminates between situations where prompt obedience is a virtue and those where it is not. He also distinguishes between three kinds of poverty: poverty can be involuntary or philosophical, but only voluntary poverty, which is more a state of the mind and of the will than of literal deprivation, is a virtue. He cites Saints Benedict, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory to illustrate the monastic horror of ‘proprietaries’, that is, religious who violate their vow of poverty by reserving goods for themselves as private property. But, perhaps realizing that he has strayed into a contemporary minefield, he has to moderate his stance a little in the face of early sixteenth-century reality. It is possible to have personal possessions without violating the vow of poverty, as long as they are not kept secret from one’s superior, the religious would be willing to give them up if asked to do so, and if they realize that they enjoy the use of these possessions but not the ownership: Nott withstondynge I wyl not sey that all relygyose folkes wych haue thyngis bysydis the knowlegge of þer prelattis be proprietaryes / but they only wych, thowhe þer prelattis requiryd the knowlege of theyre goodys, wold nott shew hit, and they also wych, thowhe þey shewyd hit, wold not be content at the prelattis wyll to leve hit and to haue hit bestowyd to the commune welth of the monastery after the dyscrecion of there prelattis. All thes, as doctours of þe lawe determine, be proprietaries. But þey wych wyl nothyng haue noþer kepe contrary to there prelattis wyll, thowhe þey haue neuyre so mych ryches yn there ward, and yf þey sett nott ouermych delytt yn hitt but knowyth well they have but þe vse of hit and nott the propriete, thes be no proprietaryes / but Cristis pore peple and may haue the rewarde wych Crist haue hevyn to all þat love þis wylful pouerty, refusynge al propriete. (fols 19v–20 v)

Chastity, too, is of two kinds, of the mind and of the body, and ‘the fyrst is lytyl worth, or nothynge, withouht the second’ (fol. 21r). Virginity is not essential to chastity, for ‘a man or woman may be callyd chast thowhe they be no virgyns’ (fol. 20v). The author goes on to point out that several of the apostles had wives and children; Amesbury, of course, was happy to accept widows into its community. Linguistic features of the text support the early sixteenth-century date. For instance, the rare word ‘oblectamentis’ appears on fol. 8r; OED has only one example of ‘oblectament’, dated ‘before 1627’. Another tell-tale phrase is ‘euacuate & 54

See Parrey, ‘“Devoted disciples of Christ”’, p. 244, n. 26.

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make lasse’ (fol. 11r): the earliest sense of ‘evacuate’ in English is the metaphorical sense in which it is used here, and OED’s earliest example is 1526 — by a curious coincidence, used by William Bonde. Another trace of the text’s sixteenth-century origin is the use made, not only of the standard Fathers of the Church, Saint Anselm and ‘þe grett doctor seynt Alberte’ (Albert the Great) (fol. 11r), but of classical stories about Socrates, Diogenes, and Seneca (who is unexpectedly recruited into the discussion about true chastity and virginity). For a wealthy and long-established house, Amesbury has left few surviving manuscripts; just five are listed by Ker, including Bodl., MS Add. A. 42.55 Three others are liturgical: four folios from a breviary, a book of hours, and a psalter. The fifth, now London, British Library, MS Additional 18362, falls within the compass of our study as an inscription on fol. 99v records that on the eve of the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin in 1508 the book was given to the prioress and convent of Amesbury by ‘Ricardus Wygyngton, capellanus [chaplain]’. It is beautifully illuminated with a number of decorative borders and contains Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes and Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum, secular poems but seriously moral and in no way unsuitable for women religious. In fact they are typical of the kind of reading that late medieval upper-class women, secular or religious, would enjoy. A recent scholar has written of the English nuns of the Order of Fontevrault that they had the opportunity to live lives of prayer, and to practise charity in an order which was ruled by a woman, tailored to meet the needs of women, where women were in control of their own destiny to an extent that was rare outside the cloister.56

Much the same could be said of Syon. And there was another point of similarity between Syon and Amesbury, for, just as Amesbury had been refounded by Henry II, Syon had been founded by Henry V; both houses enjoyed continuing royal patronage. But in other ways the institutions differed significantly. Syon was much richer; not only richer than Amesbury, but richer than any other women’s religious house in England. At the time of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, its income was more than three times that of Amesbury: an eye-watering £1731-plus per annum. (No one, however, joined the Birgittines for the money.) It was also larger: twice as many religious were displaced from Syon as from Amesbury, and a significant number

55

Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, ed. by N. R . Ker, 2nd edn (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 3. 56

Berenice M. Kerr, Religious Life for Women c.1100–c.1350: Fontevraud in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 239.

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(twelve priests and five lay brothers) were men, for the double-monastery ideal that had faded out at Amesbury (although there were four priests at the time of the dissolution) was vigorously alive in Syon.

Holy Maids Ironically, the best known nun in England in the early sixteenth century was not an austere and studious Birgittine or a pious, gently reared follower of Robert of Arbrissel, but a Benedictine of humble origins, Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, hanged for treason in 1534. Not surprisingly she has no place in MS Harley 494 but there can be little doubt that the manuscript was compiled in the shadow of the events surrounding this visionary woman. Indeed, some of those involved with the compilation may have known Barton personally. Her career, and the more general early Tudor interest in problematic ‘holy maids’, probably impacted on the choice of materials and, even more so, on their presentation. This will be argued in detail in the next chapter; here we will content ourselves with a general discussion of the phenomenon of visionary women in early Tudor England. Visionary women — in particular, young women — were not uncommon at the time. Although the most notorious, and the most relevant to this study, was Elizabeth Barton, we know of at least three others. Between them they run the gamut from the outright fraudulent, through the enigmatic, to the possibly genuine. In his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Sir Thomas More referred to ‘holy maids’ in general and more specifically to ‘a straunge wenche’ at ‘Lempster’ (Leominster in Herefordshire) in the days of Henry VII. (Tyndale also refers to this case in The Obedience of a Christian Man, first printed in Antwerp in 1528.) She did not utter prophecies or claim revelations but was an early example of a ‘fasting girl’, who was believed to live on nothing but ‘angel’s food’. She was also the subject of a faked Eucharistic miracle of a type popular in the later Middle Ages. More tells the story with his characteristic verve and succinctness: the pryour [of Leominster] brought pryueley a straunge wenche in to the chyrche. [. . .] | And after she was grated with yron grates aboue in the rode lofte | where yt was byleued she lyued withoute any mete or drynke | only by aungels fode. And dyuers tymes she was houseled in syght of the people with an hoste vnconsecrate | & all the people lokyng vpon | there was a deuyce with a small here [hair] yt conueyed the hoste fro the paten of the chalyce | out of ye pryours handes in to her mouth | as though it came alone.57

57

A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Part I: The Text, vol. VI of Complete Works of St. Thomas More, ed. by Thomas M. C. Lawler and others (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 87.

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However, once she was in the custody of the formidable Lady Margaret Beaufort, this ‘Holy mayden Elyzabeth’ was exposed as a fraud.58 The Lady Margaret died in 1509 but More still remembered in the case in 1530. Another contemporary visionary was one Helen of Tottenham. In a lengthy letter to Thomas Cromwell, Sir Thomas More told him how, on the one occasion that he met with Barton, he had discussed Helen’s ‘traunses and revelacions’ with her. He praised Barton for her good influence in this instance: when Barton had met this young woman in 1532, the nun had ‘showed her that they were no revelacions, but pleyne illusions of the devell’. According to More, Barton had stressed the need for ‘discernment of spirits’ in such cases but disclaimed any personal credit.59 A very different case was that of Jane (or Anne: significantly, her baptismal name is uncertain) Wentworth, known as the Maid of Ipswich. She too figures in More’s Dialogue, but as providing an example of a genuine miracle associated with a pilgrimage site. She was born around 1503 into an East Anglian gentry family and in 1515 developed hysterical symptoms that were considered diabolic in origin. She also seemed to have developed clairvoyant gifts. After several months of suffering she experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary and in 1516 made a pilgrimage to her shrine in Ipswich where after some weeks she was spectacularly cured. Thomas More reported that she prophesyed and tolde many thynges done and sayd at the same tyme in other places | which were proued trewe | and many thynges sayd | lyenge in her traunce of such wysdome & lernyng that right connyng men hyghly meruayled to here of so yonge an vnlerned mayden.60

She made a second visit, against her family’s wishes, and manifested a brief relapse before being cured for a second time. She and her family made a third and final visit to the chapel, where the girl herself healed some of her by now deranged relatives. A contemporary version of the events surrounding the Maid was written by Robert, Lord Curzon, and is preserved in London, British Library, MS Harley 651, fols 194–96r. The old catalogue describes this, a little tendentiously, as follows: 58

‘The force of her [Beaufort’s] moral standing was such that her council was prepared to intervene in matters that would have normally been heard before an ecclesiastical court. [. . .] the Holy Maid of Leominster, alleged to be nourished solely upon the eucharist, was exposed as a fraud while being held in Margaret’s custody’: Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, ‘Beaufort, Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby (1443–1509)’, in ODNB [accessed 30 November 2006]. 59

Letter 197 to Thomas Cromwell (March? 1534), in The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. by Elizabeth Frances Rogers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 484–85. 60

Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Part I: Text, ed. by Lawler and others, p. 93.

60

Chapter 2 Part of a long Letter, perhaps written to Cardinal Wolsey, concerning a Meracle off owre Blessid Lady of Grace at Eppeswiche; pretended to have been wrought there, upon the daughter of Syr Roger Wentforde of Essex. 15 April, anno 7 R. Henr. VIII. [. . .] This miracle is alledged by Sir Thomas More, in his English Works, as done in the face of the Sun, before Multitudes of People, and as of undoubted Truth.61

The ‘miracle’, which Cardinal Wolsey (who was born in Ipswich) as well as More accepted as authentic, brought both Queen Catherine of Aragon and King Henry VIII (though at different times) to visit the chapel at Ipswich. Wentworth did not receive revelations as such, although she did experience a vision of the Virgin and briefly manifested clairvoyant abilities. After her cure, according to More: the vyrgyne soo mouyd in her mynde wyth the myracle | that she forthwith for ought her father coulde do | forsoke the worlde and professed relygyon in a very good and godly company at the mynoresse | where she hath lyued well & gracyously euer syns.62

In other words, she entered the Minories, that is, the house of Franciscan nuns at Aldgate in London. There may, however, be some confusion here. There is no record of a Wentworth at the time of the supression of Aldgate Abbey, but in the mid-sixteenth century a Jane Wentworth was still alive in Framlingham, Suffolk, and known as a former nun of Bruisyard in Suffolk, another house of Franciscan nuns, who were commonly known as Minoresses. This Jane Wentworth, who is very likely to be identified with the Maid of Ipswich, died in 1572. So this particular visionary’s story had a happy ending: whether or not her experiences were genuinely supernatural, she found stability in a life-long vocation. There are some obvious parallels here with the much better-known case of Elizabeth Barton. Unlike Jane Wentworth, Elizabeth Barton was presumably of humble origins, as we first meet her as a servant in the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s farm manager. In 1525, like Jane, she fell sick, experiencing seizures, apparent diabolical possession, and trances, but also discoursing on religious subjects, experiencing revelations, and manifesting clairvoyant abilities. ‘All her revelations appear to have been perfectly orthodox and some, which were in verse form, can be identified as traditional charms or Marian prayers.’63 Archbishop Warham set up a commission to investigate her, which included the Benedictine Edward Bocking; it found her to be orthodox. After experiencing a miraculous cure 61

Catalogue of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts, vol. I (unpaginated).

62

Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Part I: Text, ed. by Lawler and others, p. 94.

63

Diane Watt, ‘Barton, Elizabeth (c.1506–1534)’, in ODNB [accessed 25 August 2006].

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at the chapel of Our Lady at Court-of-Street, a nearby village, she became a Benedictine nun in the priory of Saint Sepulchre, Canterbury. (Hence her soubriquet the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’.) At first her revelations and prophecies continued to be orthodox; a copy was sent to Henry VIII, who consulted Thomas More. With characteristic legal caution, he did not rate them highly or consider them supernaturally inspired. Nonetheless, Barton had some influence at first, meeting Wolsey, the King, and the Archbishop of Canterbury several times. Bocking had become her confessor, and fatefully introduced Barton to the writings of both Birgit of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. Her revelations started to take a more political turn from 1528, but by then she was already an object of suspicion in some eyes. William Tyndale, in The Obedience of a Christian Man, which was published in that year, refers to her when writing about miracles (other than those performed in the New Testament). He comments: Wherefore either they are no miracles but they have feigned them [. . .] or else, if there be miracles that confirm doctrine contrary to God’s word, then are they done of the devil (as the maid of Ipswich and of Kent) to prove us whether we will cleave fast to God’s word.64

In particular Barton began to attack the King’s proposed divorce and marriage to Anne Boleyn, and in a vision of 1532 she predicted Henry’s excommunication if he continued in this course of action. Barton had considerable influence with the Carthusians and with the Syon community, and it was in a chapel at Syon Abbey that Thomas More met her for the first and only time in 1533, after which he advised her to stay away from political topics. But as she became more influential and therefore more dangerous to the King, she was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London in late 1533, examined, publicly discredited, indicted of high treason by an act of attainder, and in April 1534 executed together with five of her supporters, including Bocking. All copies of her book of revelations, which she had been encouraged by Bocking to produce, were destroyed. Elizabeth Barton is relevant to the study of Anne Bulkeley’s book for several reasons. First, the period between 1532 and 1535, within which MS Harley 494 must have been under compilation, coincides with the acceleration, and dramatic termination, of Barton’s visionary career. Secondly, the manuscript is closely connected with Syon Abbey, where Elizabeth Barton was a welcome and respected visitor: the confessor of Syon and the lady abbess were among those named in an ‘anonymous government memorandum’ as having listened to her most treasonous 64

The Obedience of a Christian Man by William Tyndale, ed. by David Daniell (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 177.

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political prophecies.65 Another link with Syon was the secular priest Henry Gold, one of Barton’s strongest supporters, who was tutored by the future martyr Richard Reynolds before the latter became a Birgittine.66 Further, Abbess Agnes Jordan was a close friend of Gertrude Courtenay, Marchioness of Exeter, whose husband, Henry Courtenay, was at one stage heir apparent to Henry VIII and favoured by Barton’s prophecies to replace him. (Henry executed him in 1538.) And Gertrude Courtenay herself was the daughter of William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, chamberlain of Queen Catherine of Aragon; Blount was the friend, patron, and protector of Richard Whitford, and the colleague of Anne Bulkeley’s father, Robert Poyntz.67 Poyntz’s wife, Margaret, as we have seen, was the (illegitimate) niece of Edward IV’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville. Their younger daughter the princess Katherine, Margaret Poyntz’s first cousin, had married Sir William Courtenay, and their son was Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter. (She became a vowess after her husband’s death in 1511.) So Gertrude and her husband were related not only to Henry VIII but also to the Poyntzes and Anne Bulkeley. Barton certainly visited Syon on several occasions. Her biographer thinks she visited in January 1530, shortly after her second visit to the King.68 Certainly at sometime in early 1532 Sir Thomas More talked with some Birgittine monks about Barton, who had recently visited the abbess. The monks voiced some reservations about her, and expressed the wish that More had spoken with her and could give them his views.69 So when Barton visited again in June 1533, More was invited to come to Syon to see her; he admitted this later in his March? 1534 letter to Thomas Cromwell, to which we have already referred. He claimed that he had spoken with her in a little chapel, there being no one else present, and gave Cromwell a circumstantial account of this conversation, stressing that it had no political content — ‘we talked no worde of the Kinges Grace or anye greate personage ells’. He also emphasized that he never spoke with her again.70 Barton later stated under 65

Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 78. 66

Alan Neame, The Holy Maid of Kent: The Life of Elizabeth Barton, 1506–1534 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971), p. 163. 67

See Paul, Catherine of Aragon and her Friends, pp. 133–34; J. P. D. Cooper, ‘Courtenay, Gertrude, marchioness of Exeter (d. 1558)’, in ODNB [accessed 25 May 2007]. 68

Neame, Holy Maid of Kent, pp. 203–04.

69

Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. by Rogers, p. 484.

70

Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. by Rogers, p. 485.

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interrogation in November 1533 that during this visit, which lasted some days, the abbess gave Barton, at the request of Gertrude Courtenay, ‘a little book in form of a pair of tables with blank leaves’ and sent her off to stay with Lady Exeter.71 ‘A pair of tables’ meant ‘a small portable tablet for writing upon, esp. for notes or memoranda’,72 so this might well have been encouragement to continue writing down her revelations. The nature of their subsequent conversation is obscure but may have included speculation about how long the King had to live; if so, it was highly treasonous. Her biographer Alan Neame implies that this is why More, having heard rumours of the conversation, wrote to Barton in early July 1533 (addressing her as ‘good Madam’) in oblique terms designed to stress that he had had no desire to hear any political revelations from her: ‘In case it were so that God had [. . .] any things revealed unto you, such things, I said unto your Ladyship, that I was not only not desirous of hear of, but also would not hear of.’73 When at Syon again the next month and asked his opinion of Barton, More’s reply was politic: I liked her very well in her talking. [. . .] I assure you, she were likely to be very bad, if she seemed good, ere I should think her other, till she happed to be proved nought [wicked].74

Barton was clearly not only a visitor to Syon, but someone whose words and revelations caused a stir and were the subject of earnest conversations. In the event, they were also extremely dangerous to her and to her friends. She must have problematized the whole issue of visionary women and their credibility. Is there a connection here with the curious fact that, although MS Harley 494 contains a high percentage of devotions, in both English and Latin, derived from the writings of women visionaries, most notably Mechtild of Hackeborn, these are not always attributed to the women by name? If Barton was controversial in the sixteenth century, she is still so among historians today. Alan Neame wrote the first full-scale biography in 1971. Perhaps in salutary reaction to the uniformly hostile press the Holy Maid of Kent had received since her execution, he constructs her as a martyr, a genuine visionary, and by implication a serious candidate for canonization. Presumably that was the light in which she was seen by the nuns of Syon until they either became genuinely disenchanted by her recantation or deemed it politic to dissemble their continuing veneration. Practically no one today would join Neame in his hagiographical admiration, but Barton 71

Neame, Holy Maid of Kent, p. 205.

72

OED, s.v. ‘table’, n., 2.†b.

73

Neame, Holy Maid of Kent, p. 209.

74

Neame, Holy Maid of Kent, p. 231.

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has not lost her power to fascinate. (Part of her allure surely lies in the challenge posed by a figure about whom all the evidence is provided by her enemies, who had the power to destroy anything that might counteract or modify their own views.) Diane Watt undertook an influential feminist reassessment of her, as one of ‘God’s secretaries’, in 1997 and has contributed a judicious entry to the ODNB. She sees her primarily not as a mystic or visionary but as a prophet or seer. A similar interpretation is adopted by Sharon Jensen, who points out that the sermon preached just before Barton’s execution ‘is filled with references to her “false, forged, and feigned” prophecies, while the act of attainder is itself a vituperative piece of rhetoric aimed at thoroughly discrediting the nun, her “hypocrisy”, and her “false revelations”’.75 Jensen is not interested in whether or not Barton was a ‘true mystic’ but rather wants to see her in the context of political prophecies of the time: Stories detailing the religious ecstasies of young women are not unusual in early modern Europe. [. . .] Far more important for the case of Elizabeth Barton, I think, is some understanding of the long tradition of political prophecy in England.76

This tradition was ‘deliberately obscure, filled with veiled topical allusions, disguised historical figures, and vague prognostications about future triumphs and calamities’.77 In this view, Barton is a prophetess and diviner rather than a visionary. Enigmatic and portentous political prophecies were common during the Middle Ages, but were absent during the reign of Henry VIII until around 1521. At the trial of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, in that year, part of the charge was that the Duke had listened to the political prophecies of Nicholas Hopkins, who received information ‘by revelation’.78 (It is perhaps not without significance that Hopkins was a Carthusian, a monk at the Hinton Charterhouse.79) Barton’s own political prophecies, especially those concerning Anne Boleyn, were causing regular concern from the early 1530s, and Jansen suggests Barton was well aware of the conventions, making use of the ‘form and language of contemporary political prophecy’. She goes on:

75

Sharon L. Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 61. 76

Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour, p. 64.

77

Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour, p. 64.

78

Quoted by Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour, p. 66.

79

C. S. L. Davies, ‘Stafford, Edward, third duke of Buckingham (1478–1521)’, in ODNB [accessed 25 August 2006].

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Elizabeth Barton’s career as a political ‘prophet’ needs also to be placed in the larger context of western Europe, where a number of otherwise quite ordinary women would become involved in secular politics in quite extraordinary ways. Like the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’, they were less concerned with the spiritual life, theological debate, and religious reform than they were with social and political commentary.80

To this one might reply that the nuns of Syon would surely not have been interested in Barton if they had seen her solely in that light. But did they see her as a visionary in the same mould as Mechtild of Hackeborn and Birgit of Sweden, or even the still-living Maria van Oisterwijk? Notably, Mechtild does not engage in political prophecy, or even in much prophecy of other kinds; her revelations have to do with the promotion of particular devotions, especially to the Five Wounds and the Heart of Jesus, and contain descriptions of the court of heaven, the saints, and especially the Virgin. In this way she contrasts with Birgit of Sweden, who does indeed manifest a strong prophetic and political streak. So might the compilers of Anne Bulkeley’s book have deliberately occluded its visionary content because of the controversy surrounding Elizabeth Barton, and more distant memories of the fraudulent Holy Maid of Leominster and the once subversive and disruptive Holy Maid of Ipswich (even if now safely reinvented as a Franciscan nun of unimpeachable respectability)? Although several passages in MS Harley 494 come from Mechtild’s LSG, which is no surprise given the esteem in which she was held in Syon Abbey, there is only one mention by name of ‘Seynt Mawde’. This may be precautionary. However, should we find more instructive the lack of passages from the revelations of Saint Birgit? Unlike London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600, which has a number of Latin extracts from Birgit, all with book and chapter references in the margins, MS Harley 494 has no extracts in Latin and only one in English. This is all the stranger given the undeniably Birgittine connections of so much else in the manuscript. One can only suggest that Birgit, especially Birgit in English, had become fatally contaminated by the Elizabeth Barton affair: Bocking had read extracts from Saint Birgit’s revelations to Barton (presumably in English). Indeed he had virtually force-fed her with them and encouraged her to model her own revelations on those of the Swedish visionary. So shortly before and after the executions of Barton and Bocking in 1534 was perhaps not the best time to be seen reading, or circulating, the revelations of Saint Birgit. Roger Ellis has come to a similar conclusion with respect to the Birgittine monk John Fewterer’s Myrrour or glasse of Christes passion, printed in December 1534. He notes that ‘Fewterer makes no use of distinctively Brigittine material, especially St. Birgit’s 80

Jansen, Dangerous Talk and Strange Behaviour, pp. 70–71.

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many revelations about the Passion’, and attributes this absence to ‘the dangerous times in which writer and reader were living’.81

The Break with Rome and the Events of the 1530s The Elizabeth Barton affair is only one aspect of the late 1520s and early 1530s, a period of rapid theological and political change whose significance historians continue to debate, and during which MS Harley 494 was produced. There is still a temptation to characterize this period as ‘the eve of the English Reformation’, but this would be deterministic and suggest an inevitability about religious change that current historians are reluctant to accord the Henrician break with Rome and subsequent events. It is all too clear that practically no one at the time had an inkling of what was about to happen in the short or long term, least of all the group of pious laypeople or religious who painstakingly put together our manuscript for Anne Bulkeley. It would be foolhardy for a literary scholar to do more than gesture towards the historiographical debate about the English Reformation. Susan Wabuda has recently provided an invaluable summary of this in her book on preaching; she traces the changing historical consensus as articulated, successively, by A. G. Dickens and G. R. Elton, Patrick Collinson, then John Bossy, J. J. Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, and Eamon Duffy.82 For our purposes the question is simply, what was the state of the English Church in the years that both preceded the break with Rome and coincided with the period during which MS Harley 494 must have been planned and put together? And in return, although obviously we should not extrapolate too confidently from any one book, let alone a manuscript prepared for a specific individual, what light can Anne Bulkeley’s book throw on the wider religious environment of the time? First, it is as well to bear in mind that, if the term ‘the eve of the Reformation’ is deterministic, the term ‘reformation’ itself is problematic. Christopher Haigh, who argues that England had ‘an ersatz reformation, an anaemic substitute for the real thing’, and wittily describes how ‘the English ate their Reformation as a recalcitrant child is fed its supper, little by little, in well-timed spoonsful’,83 points out 81

Ellis, ‘Further Thoughts’, pp. 237, 238.

82

Susan Wabuda, Preaching During the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1–4. 83

The English Reformation Revised, ed. by Christopher Haigh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 7, 15.

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that the ‘reformation’ was no single event, but a series of discrete phenomena. He analyzes these as follows: The term ‘Reformation’ embraces a number of distinct changes in religious organisation, practice and belief — a reduction of clerical authority, an abolition of papal supremacy, a suppression of monasteries and chantries, an introduction of a vernacular Bible, a replacement of the mass by Protestant services, and a re-definition of the Church’s theology. These stages in the English Reformation sequence stretched across more than thirty years.84

Of the six changes he enumerates, only the first two or three (momentous though they were) took place while MS Harley 494 was being put together and first used. That, perhaps, is why it could have continued to be used even after the break with Rome (the erasure of the word ‘pope’ is evidence that it was still in use after 1535) and the dissolution of the monasteries, without its current owner having any sense that she was a religious deviant of some sort. Another part of the debate is over the question just how decadent and how unpopular was the Church in England in the early sixteenth century. Robert Whiting summarizes the conflicting views as follows: According to one view, argued by historians such as Christopher Haigh and J. J. Scarisbrick, the Henrician Reformation attacked a traditional religion that still retained the firm support of the English people. [. . .] According to the opposite view, propounded by scholars such as A.G. Dickens, the devotion of the English people to traditional religion was already in substantial decline.85

The former view, that the Church in England was not corrupt and (presumably) that left to its own devices it would have soldiered on, is currently in the ascendant. As Christopher Haigh asserts, ‘Henry VIII did not challenge a moribund Church and a declining religion: he attacked institutions and forms of piety which were growing and vigorous’.86 This, he claims, can be supported by detailed regional studies, such as one of south-west England (not far from Hampshire) which ‘has demonstrated that the veneration of images and the endowment of prayers continued unabated until the mid-1530s’.87 In addition, the revisionist historian can point to ‘a rising level of recruitment to the priesthood, a buoyant market for religious books, and more and more altars and images crammed into the churches’ 84

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, p. 6.

85

Robert Whiting, ‘Local Responses to the Henrician Reformation’, in The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety, ed. by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 203–26 (p. 203). 86

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, p. 4.

87

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, p. 8 and n. 18.

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as proof that ‘Catholic piety was flourishing in the years immediately before the Reformation’.88 Elsewhere Haigh makes the same point by expanding on evidence particularly relevant to this study: ‘The massive sales of A Work for Householders [by Richard Whitford] from 1530, and the popularity of other devotional aids at about the same time, suggests [sic] that Catholic Christianity was secure in early Tudor England.’89 He continues: Catholic Christianity before England’s break with Rome was flourishing; we must not assume that the Reformations prove otherwise. For it was the break with Rome which was to cause the decline of Catholicism, not the decline of Catholicism which led to the break with Rome. [. . .] The popularity of manuals which offered aids to orthodox piety is one indicator of traditionalist strength, though it only tells us about the book-buying minority.90

He could equally well have pointed to the existence of a manuscript such as MS Harley 494. The user(s) or the compilers of that particular devotional book could, or should, have been more aware than many of what was afoot, even if not appreciating its full implications. Again according to Haigh, ‘the main period of the early Reformation, from 1527 to 1553, was one of swirling factional conflict at Court, in which religious policy was both a weapon and a prize’.91 The Bulkeleys and the Poyntzes, as well as members of Syon Abbey, all had close links with the court: Anne Bulkeley was first cousin once removed of Henry VIII (and of Henry Courtenay, Gertrude’s husband); her father, brother, and son were retained by Queen Catherine or members of her household; her sister had been nurse to the son of Henry and Catherine. But how far did they perceive the unfolding events as religious rather than political, and how far as definitive? Even by the end of the 1530s, while the suppression of the monasteries must have been a blow to those with personal connections to Amesbury or Syon, was the dissolution perceived as qualitatively more significant than simply institutional restructuring? Religious houses had been compulsorily closed and disbanded in the past. (Nor was it all bad news: at least one member of Anne Bulkeley’s family, her younger son Charles, did his best to profit from the dissolution of the Dominican convent in Salisbury by trying to buy the premises from Thomas Cromwell.) Certainly, the fact that the Birgittines took with them the keys to their monastery suggests that they expected to return. 88

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, p. 8.

89

Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 28. 90

Haigh, English Reformations, pp. 28–29.

91

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, p. 31.

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The other group, apart from those with court connections, who would have been more acutely aware of the changes at this time were of course the clergy. Claire Cross points to the crucial importance of our period in this respect: In 1525 the English clergy, as in centuries past, still thought of themselves as in temporal matters subjects of the English King but in spiritual matters subjects of the overlord of western christendom, the Pope. Within ten years their standing in society had been totally transformed.92

As a devout laywoman, Anne Bulkeley must have been close to the clergy. She was ultimately reliant on them for most if not all of the material in her book, as well as for the sacraments and for spiritual advice and direction. This provides yet another reason to look more closely at the events, both political, theological, and institutional, of the late 1520s and early 1530s.93 The 1520s had been a time of attack on orthodoxy or traditional religion across Europe, led by Luther and Zwingli.94 In particular there had been controversies surrounding such practices as indulgences, pilgrimages, devotion to the saints, and the nature of the Eucharist. It is interesting, and perhaps significant, that MS Harley 494 espouses no particular position on the first three topics. Some of its texts include references to the saints, but there are no equivalents of the numerous suffrages found in books of hours, and few prayers directed at individual saints or requesting their intercession. Saint Anne and Saint Onuphrius are exceptions, and there may be personal reasons for both. There is a strong stress on devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but limiting the veneration of the Virgin was not initally part of the reformers’ programme. It is also suggestive that none of the prayers in MS Harley 494 — unlike those often found in early sixteenth-century books of hours — have indulgences attached to them, although there is one quite neutral reference to the practice. Moreover, none of the prayers except those deriving from LSG claim miraculous provenances; nor except for the devotion of the One Thousand Aves do they promise ‘miraculous’ effects. As for pilgrimages, this seems to have been a non-issue: there are only two references in the manuscript and one of these is metaphorical. 92 Claire Cross, ‘Churchmen and the Royal Supremacy’, in Church and Society in England: Henry VIII to James I, ed. by Felicity Heal and Rosemary O’Day (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 15–34 (p. 15). 93

For most of what follows I am reliant on the succinct summaries of Susan Doran and Christopher Durston, Princes, Pastors and People: The Church and Religion in England, 1500–1700, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2003). 94

Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors and People, pp. 11–12.

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There is, however, a strong stress on the Eucharist in MS Harley 494, and the exact theology (or theologies) here of the texts needs careful examination. The very first item is an elevation prayer, translated from the Latin, the opening sentence of which greets ‘the moste holy body of owre Lord Jhesu Chryste, contayned in thys sacrament’ (fol. 1r). This of course reflects traditional medieval teaching on the nature of the consecrated host. But in the short anonymous treatise about preparation for Communion for those who wish to communicate once a week or once a fortnight (Item 9), there is nothing that commits to a definite view on the nature of the Mass. The author writes of ‘this holy sacrament’ (fol. 22v ) but does not speak of the body and blood of Chist. He expects due reverence and proper preparation for Communion by confession of mortal sins and contrition for venial sins and ‘viciouse inclynacions’ (fol. 23r), but stresses that ‘þis sacrament is þe sacrament of love’ (fol. 23v ) and should lead to an increase in the virtues and especially of love towards God and one’s neighbour. This spiritualized view of the benefits of receiving Communion is a far cry from some superstitious late medieval attitudes, such as the belief that, on any day on which one witnessed the elevation of the consecrated host, one was immune from dying. It is also different in emphasis from Thomas More’s near contemporaneous A Treatice to Receaue the Blessed Body of Our Lorde, composed in 1534 when he was imprisoned in the Tower. More includes, as part of the self-examination required before communicating, ensuring ‘that we be in the right fayth and beliefe concerning that holye blessed sacrament itselfe’.95 The extracts from Whitford’s Due preparacion, however, are more markedly traditional. Expressions such as ‘þat heuenly mistery wher is present the verrey body & soule, þe flesshe and blode, of our savyour Jhesu, verrey God and man’ (fol. 36r) and ‘the mistery of this holy sacrament of thi most blessid body and blode in þe immolacion of sacrifice’ (fol. 40r), and the invocation of Christ as ‘most highe preest’ (fol. 43v ), requesting that he give us his ‘verrey sacrede flesshe for our spirituall fode and [. . .] blessid blode for our spirituall drynke’ (fol. 44r), all indicate that the author espoused the traditional view of the Mass as a sacrifice96 and the doctrine of transubstantiation. (The first recorded use of the word itself in English in its theological

95

Treatise on the Passion, Treatise on the Blessed Body, Instructions and Prayers, ed. by Garry E. Haupt, vol. XIII of Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), p. 195. 96 ‘Although Protestants and Catholics came to differ over [. . .] whether the Lord’s Supper was itself a sacrifice, they did not differ over the centrality of blood sacrifice, understood as such, for redemption’: Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 226.

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sense was in 1533.97) Whitford also uses the phrase ‘blessid sacrament’, which seems to have come into common use in English in the 1530s (most of the early examples in OED are from the writings of Thomas More), writing of ‘this holy sacrament of thi blessid body and blode’ (fol. 40r) and ‘this holy sacrament & sacrifice of þi blissed body’ (fol. 47r); he approves of the Latin prayer ‘Ave verum corpus’ (an affirmation of transubstantiation) to salute the sacrament, and he provides an English prayer, to be said ‘when the sacrament ys commyng toward yow’, that begins ‘O quycke flessh and lyuely blode of Crist Jhesu’ (fol. 52r). But it would be surprising if a Birgittine monk were not entirely orthodox in such matters in the 1530s. The other major Eucharistic text, William Bonde’s ‘Meditacions for tyme of the masse’, is an elaborate allegory in which the ‘preste betokeneth Crist’ (fol. 63r) and ‘the hoost þe bodye of Criste’ (fol. 63v), as well as many other correspondences of greater or less ingenuity. As Eamon Duffy remarks, ‘the correspondences with the Passion are very closely worked out, on the premise that “the processe of the masse representyd the verey processe of the Passyon off Cryst”’.98 Consequently there is a curious tension between a type of Passion meditation and an exposition of the Mass that, ironically, stresses its role as an act of remembrance — a positively Zwinglian attitude — rather than as a re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice. Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out that reformist Catholics, whom he calls ‘evangelicals’, held in the words of one of them that ‘the mass is not declared to be a sacrifice for the living and the dead, but a representation of Christ’s passion’.99 Duffy, too, seems to assume that it is a mark of the ‘evangelicals’ to describe the Mass as ‘a remembrance of the passion of Christ, whose most blessed body and blood are there consecrated’, without mentioning the Mass as sacrifice.100 But Bonde’s references to ‘þat blessid body, flessh and blode’ (fol. 66v ), the ‘holy sacrament’ (fol. 66v ), and ‘blissid sacrament’ (fol. 67r), together with the meticulous statement that the host, ‘all-though it be brede be-for the consecracion, yet after it is to be beleued þe verrey flessh & blode and soule of owr most blessid sauyour, given to vs after the fourme of brede’ (fol. 73v ), are clear evidence of his orthodoxy. 97

See OED, s.v. ‘transubstantiation’, n. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, reminds us that ‘contrary to what we are often told, there was no established definition [. . .] in late medieval theological discourse’ (p. 86). 98

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 119. 99

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 237. 100

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 428.

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Doctrinal, as opposed to political and institutional, change was slow under Henry. In 1536, at the request of the King but only after a great deal of bitter discussion, convocation adopted the Ten Articles as a statement of the Church’s theological position.101 The articles, in particular the first five, were mildly but not markedly Lutheran. They listed three sacraments only as ‘necessary for the salvation of man’: baptism, penance, and the Eucharist. The article on penance in particular was ‘one notable success for the conservatives [. . .]; it was emphatic in traditionalist vein that auricular confession to a priest was “instituted of Christ”’.102 In its discussion of the Eucharist, the Ten Articles avoided using the term ‘transubstantiation’, instead describing the presence of Christ as ‘corporal and substantial’.103 Prayers for the dead were allowed, as were requests for the intercession of the saints, although the previous month the ‘government launched an attack on the cult of saints by issuing a proclamation reducing the number of holy days’.104 MS Harley 494 puts a great deal of stress on the Eucharist, and some on the sacrament of penance (see the discussion in Chapter 5), but could easily have continued to be used in the theological environment cultivated by the Ten Articles. It seems little concerned with death (surprising if the original owner was a woman in her sixties), although it does include one’s dead parents in its model intercessory prayers and it provides a prayer for the souls in purgatory. The Henrician Reformation continued to be theologically conservative.105 The Ten Articles left no one happy; next came The Institution of a Christian Man, the so-called ‘Bishop’s Book’, largely constructed at a synod of both York and Canterbury in February 1537.106 The text was ‘designed (albeit with little rhetorical skill) 101

See the useful discussion by MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, pp. 161–64.

102

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 161.

103

Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors and People, p. 14; ODCC, s.v. ‘Ten Articles’.

104

Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors and People, p. 15.

105

Cranmer continued to provide for the Feast of Corpus Christi in his 1540s scheme for liturgical reform. MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 333, comments: ‘Even if we have seen his eucharistic views at that period carefully distanced from the theory of eucharistic transubstantiation, his liturgical matter here is wholly traditional in character, and contains one tiny text apparently freshly composed which is still robustly affirmative of the real presence: an invitatory sentence for mattins: “Come, let us adore Christ the Saviour and bread of eternal life”. He precedes this with a medieval collect inserted in his own hand, the famous eucharistic prayer often attributed to Thomas Aquinas: ‘“O God, who under a wonderful sacrament has left us a remembrance of your passion.”’ Cranmer converted to a new view c. 1546. 106

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, pp. 185–86.

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to be read as sermons’, and appeared in print in September of that year.107 It restored the position of the remaining four sacraments, while recognizing ‘a difference in dignity and necessity between them and the other three sacraments’.108 It included the Ave Maria among texts that all lay people should know in English, but renumbered the Ten Commandments in a distinctly reformist (though not Lutheran) way.109 However, ‘its status remained unhappily vague’, partly because it had appeared with a less than ringing endorsement from the King, who said he had not actually read the whole volume.110 Henry soon wanted improvements and changes to the text; but it was not until 1543 that its successor, Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man, appeared. In the meantime, partly in response to the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–38), the Six Articles were imposed by the Religion Act in June 1539, the year of the closure of Syon and the dissolution of Amesbury Priory. They upheld transubstantiation (although the word itself was not used) and Communion in one kind for the laity, enforced celibacy for the priesthood and upheld monastic vows, defended private masses, and asserted auricular confession as ‘expedient and necessary to be retained and continued, used and frequented in the Church of God’.111 In other words, they were strongly traditional, so even in the later 1530s people would not have known where they were headed, theologically speaking. And given that the dispersed religious were still regarded by the state as bound by vows of chastity, even the dissolution of the monasteries conveyed some very mixed messages. Was it permanent, or would the dust eventually settle and the monks and nuns be able to return to their houses? It has been optimistically asserted that ‘As examples to the living and as intercessors for the dead, monks, nuns, and friars undoubtedly retained the respect of numerous laypeople on the eve of the Reformation’, especially in the north and west.112 But as every schoolchild knows, the theological aspects of the Henrician Reformation were embedded in, and largely motivated by, a series of political and

107

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 206.

108

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 189, quoting Charles Lloyd, Formularies of Faith Put Forth by Authority during the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1825), p. 128. 109

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 192.

110

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 206.

111

ODCC, s.v. ‘Six Articles’; Doran and Durston, Princes, Pastors and People, pp. 15–16; MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 252 112

Whiting, ‘Local Responses’, p. 205.

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dynastic events which must have impinged to some degree on the consciousness of anyone, even cloistered religious, living through the 1530s. Some have already been mentioned in the previous discussion, but a brief synopsis helps us see how they are all interconnected. In September 1527 Henry VIII sought a dispensation to marry Anne Boleyn, if his marriage to Catherine of Aragon were annulled on the grounds that she had previously been married to his brother. It was at this time that Elizabeth Barton, with her prophecies relating to the King’s proposed divorce, began to attract more than local attention, and by 1528 she was sufficiently well-known to incur Tyndale’s attack in The Obedience of a Christian Man, published in Antwerp. In December 1528, Catherine of Aragon was dismissed from court and in the following June the legatine court opened to hear the case for an annulment but almost immediately, in July 1529, the divorce case was ‘advoked’ to Rome and adjourned. Cardinal Wolsey did not long survive this disaster: in October he was indicted for praemunire and his lands forfeited, and at the end of November he died. Thomas More replaced him as Chancellor. In February 1530 King Henry asked the University of Cambridge for its opinion about the validity of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon; in August he decided that the English were not subject to foreign jurisdiction. In February 1531, convocation declared Henry supreme head of the Church in England, ‘so far as the law of Christ allows’, an amendment introduced by Archbishop Warham. During 1532 ensued the ‘Submission’ crisis, during which the King was granted control over canon law. In August Warham died, leaving the see of Canterbury vacant. By January 1533 Anne Boleyn had secretly married the King and was known to be pregnant. In March Cranmer was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding Warham. In May he annulled Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and on 1 June crowned Anne queen. (Thomas More did not attend the coronation.) In September, the future Queen Elizabeth I was born. Sometime in early 1533 Thomas More had had his interview with Elizabeth Barton at Syon; in the summer the Holy Maid of Kent was taken to Cranmer to be examined; in September she was arrested. In March 1534, Parliament passed the first Succession Act, which required oaths to be taken with respect to Henry’s marriage and succession. It also passed an act of attainder respecting Barton, all copies of Barton’s revelations and prophecies had to be surrendered, and on 20 April, as we have already seen, she was executed. Shortly before Barton’s execution, the clergy were required to disavow the pope and swear to the Succession Act. Thomas More and John Fisher were among the first to be presented with the oaths required under the Act of Succession, on 13 April. Both declined — More because of the preamble rejecting papal jurisdiction, not because he disputed the issue of the succession as

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such — and both were sent to the Tower. Also in April, Rome declared Henry’s original marriage to Catherine lawful. In January 1535, Henry was declared ‘supreme head of the Church of England’ and in February the Treason Act came into effect. (In March the elder Anne Bulkeley died.) In May several Carthusian priors and the Syon brother Richard Reynolds were executed. In June, Cromwell ordered the word ‘pope’ to be erased from all service books. By this date, of course, MS Harley 494 had been compiled, but it is interesting that there was only one reference to the pope to be deleted from the volume. One modern historian maintains that ‘the great majority of people appear to have acquiesced in the removal of Roman authority’.113 But Anne Boleyn had failed to produce a male heir and having been accused, probably unjustly, of adultery, was herself executed in May 1536. Partly in reaction to this whirlwind of change, the Pilgrimage of Grace took place between 1536 and 1538. Nonetheless, the last monasteries closed in April 1540, and even the revisionists concede that by now ‘traditional religion’, of which MS Harley 494 is a supporter (though, it is suggested, in a moderate vein), was in retreat: Local support for the traditional sacraments and rituals was by no means eradicated by the Henrician Reformation, which did not directly target them. It nevertheless seems probable that the overall level of such support was now entering the final stages of an extended and eventually devastating decline.114

The rest, as they say, is history. But to focus on the possible fate of Anne Bulkeley and her book, if MS Harley 494 had indeed passed to the nun of Amesbury in 1535, she had enjoyed it in peace for a mere four years before being turned out of the priory in 1539. She was not, of course, allowed to marry even if she had wished to do so, but she had plenty of siblings with whom she, and her book, could take up residence. There was Robert the landowner, living on the manor of Burgate in the hundred of Fordingbridge and married to Joan Gascoigne until at least 1565; there was Charles the lawyer and M.P. for Salisbury, who had eventually, as he always planned, purchased the Salisbury house of the Greyfriars after their dissolution (and after Cromwell’s execution) and who lived until 1549/50; and there was another brother, John. There could have been further surviving brothers and sisters as Anne Bulkeley had borne at least eight children. Maybe the former nun’s aunt Elizabeth, the nurse of the ill-fated son of Henry and Catherine of Aragon, with

113

Whiting, ‘Local Responses’, p. 205.

114

Whiting, ‘Local Responses’, p. 213.

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her pension of £20 a year, was still alive. Anne had her own pension, so she would not be a burden to her family, and with at least one brother (Charles Bulkeley) equipped with legal skills and court connections, she would be well placed to actually collect it: not all religious were so lucky. Anne Bulkeley the former nun of Fontevrault lived at least until the reign of Queen Mary, long enough to witness the attempts of the Birgittines to re-establish themselves in England in 1557, perhaps long enough to witness their second departure on Queen Mary’s death in 1558. She would also have witnessed far more radical theological changes under Edward VI that would finally have made her little prayer book (if it was hers), with its fervent devotions to the Virgin Mary, its stress on sacramental penance, and its devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, out of step with Anglican piety. Nonetheless, the book apparently stayed in England, with who knows what consequences. The elder Anne Bulkeley’s nephew Robert (yet another Robert), born around 1535, the son of her brother John Poyntz and his wife Elizabeth Browne, grew up to be a Roman Catholic author. He left England after his university education and settled in Louvain. In 1566 he published Testimonies for the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the blessed sacrament of the altar in response to a sermon by the Anglican bishop John Jewel. It was a defence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.115

115

G. Martin Murphy, ‘Poyntz, Robert (b. c. 1535, d. in or after 1568)’, in ODNB [accessed 25 May 2007].

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I

n terms of sheer volume, discursive prose treatises by early sixteenth-century English Birgittine fathers make up the bulk of Anne Bulkeley’s book. But the sober good sense of Richard Whitford and William Bonde is balanced by less restrained devotional texts derived from the writings of continental visionary women: the thirteenth-century German nun Mechtild of Hackeborn, the fourteenth-century Scandinavian laywoman Birgit of Sweden, and the contemporary Brabant mystic Maria van Oisterwijk. Not all such women were ‘approved’,1 but the anonymous Carthusian of Sheen who wrote the Speculum Devotorum cites both Mechtild (‘seyint Mawte’) and Birgit from time to time with approval, explaining that he has ‘browgth inne othyr doctorys in diuerse placys as to the moral vertuys, & also sum reuelacyonys of approuyd wymmen’.2 His fellow Carthusian, Gerhard Kalckbrenner, had implicitly bestowed similar approval on Maria van Oisterwijk by publishing her works.

Richard Whitford, ‘The Wretch of Syon’ At least five prose texts in MS Harley 494, all copied by the principal scribe Robert Taylor, derive from printed books published in and around 1530. They are all associated with Syon monks: three with Richard Whitford and two with William Bonde. Richard Whitford’s career is well documented. He may have come from 1

See Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), p. 44. 2

The Speculum devotorum of an anonymous Carthusian of Sheen, ed. by James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 12–13 (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1973), II, 9–10.

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Whitford in Flintshire and he studied at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Later in the employ of William Blount, fourth Lord Mountjoy, he studied at the University of Paris and became a friend of Erasmus. He probably entered Syon around 1511. He wrote prolifically, both for religious and for the laity; the popularity of his writings, especially of A Werke for housholders, ‘one of the most popular new publications of the decade’, has been stressed by Christopher Haigh. During the period 1530–38, ‘at least thirty-two editions of [works] by Whitford sold out. [. . .] He had been a major publishing phenomenon’.3 He was marked out as a vocal opponent of the religious changes introduced by Henry VIII, but, possibly protected by his patron William Mountjoy, he survived the suppression of Syon in 1539, after which he received a pension of £8 a year. He died on 16 September, probably in 1543.4 Whitford’s association with the first English prose text in MS Harley 494, however, is somewhat tenuous. Item 6 is an adaptation of the Dyurnall, thrice printed by Robert Wyer (STC 6928 (1532?), STC 6928.5 (1532?), and STC 6928a (1542?, possibly 1534)). The treatise is anonymous and has been attributed to Richard Whitford.5 But as Whitford was always highly concerned that his name should be attached to his authentic writings, to guard against having heretical works foisted on him, the very fact of anonymity suggests that it is not his. Indeed, he was against anonymity on principle and admonished his readers to beware of ‘fatherless books’. Whoever he was, the author of the Dyurnall prescribes a rule for the mixed life that focuses on the recitation of vocal prayers. In the opening passage he explains that, at the request of the recipient of the treatise (whom he addresses as ‘ye’ throughout, though in the opening section he uses ‘we’, suggesting a shared community of interest), he has noted down the ‘exercyses’ that he has frequently advised to be used three times a day: ‘in the mornynge when ye ryse, at your meate | and when ye go to reste’ (STC 6928, sig. A2v ). In the printed version, the first section is entitled ‘In the mornynge’ and gives prayers to be said on waking, on dressing and before leaving one’s room, and on the way to church and while returning, after which the reader is to greet Our Lord and his mother on his or her knees and then engage in some necessary and virtuous occupation.

3

Haigh, English Reformations, p. 25.

4

See J. T. Rhodes, ‘Whitford, Richard (d. 1543?)’, in ODNB [accessed 1 October 2004]. 5

See Helen C. White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951; repr., Westport CT: Greenwood, 1979), pp. 154–56, and Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century’, p. 18, n. 43.

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In the second section, ‘Before your meale’, the reader is instructed to prepare himself for the main meal of the day by reading a passage from ‘vita Jhesu secundum bonauenturam’, in other words from Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, his translation of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi. The readings vary according to the day of the week, and only the relevant chapter number is given. If one consults the corresponding chapters in the 1525 printed edition of the Vita Christi, the title under which Love’s translation was printed (STC 3266, but there were at least nine editions between 1484 and 1530), each turns out to be ingeniously related to a meal of some sort: on Monday, the wedding at Cana; on Tuesday, the conversion of Mary Magdalen; on Wednesday, the meeting of Our Lord with the Samaritan woman (the disciples had gone to buy food and returned with it to the well); on Thursday, the feeding of the five thousand; on Friday, the Last Supper; on Saturday, Mary and Martha at Bethany; and on Sunday, the Lord’s Ascension, which took place after the disciples had eaten with him for the last time. After the main meal, the reader is to spend the afternoon in virtuous occupation until supper. The third section is entitled ‘Before nyght’ and outlines exercises to be undertaken at the time of Compline: thanksgiving, penitence, mindfulness of the saints to be celebrated on the following day, prayers for the poor (a concern for the disadvantaged is stressed on several occasions), and commendation of oneself to Our Lord, Our Lady, one’s Guardian Angel (a Syon preoccupation), and all the saints. Modern scholars have taken an increasing interest in late medieval ‘household piety’ and domesticity in England, and this has been stimulated by the study of various pious laywomen of high status. (As early as the early fourteenth century, however, Joan, Lady Cobham, who died in 1344, recited the Hours of the Virgin and attended Mass daily, according to the preacher at her funeral.6 ) The piety of Lady Margaret Beaufort has long been noted, ever since the time of her death, while the piety of Cecily, Duchess of York (1415–95) was the subject (and the title) of a groundbreaking and much referenced article by C. A. J. Armstrong published in 1983.7 Cecily, Duchess of York, mother of Edward IV and Richard III, was born in 1415 and married at an early age to Richard, Duke of York, who was

6

Duffy, Marking the Hours, p. 17, referring to Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England (London: British Library; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 1–2. 7

C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York: A Study in Late Mediaeval Culture’, in England, France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1983), pp. 135–56.

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killed in 1460. She had borne twelve children, half of whom survived infancy. The ODNB entry comments: Because of the survival of her detailed will [. . .] and also of a household ordinance book dating from after 1485, Cecily has been taken as a prime exemplar of later medieval female aristocratic piety. These sources document the dedicated regime of literate and ascetic piety practised by an old lady.

Her ‘domestic religion was formulated by monastic precept’ and was ‘essentially conservative’.8 Cecily rose early, recited matins of the day and matins of the Hours of Our Lady, then heard a low mass in her own room before breakfast. Afterwards she attended the office of the day in her chapel and heard two more low masses. At dinner (the main meal of the day), she listened to devotional reading from, among others, the revelations of Saint Birgit, Saint Catherine of Siena, and Mechtild of Hackeborn. After attending to various suitors, and taking a short nap, she would devote herself to prayer until the bell rang for Vespers. She would recite vespers of the day, and of the Hours of the Virgin, with her chaplain, then go into the chapel to hear vespers sung. At supper she would repeat what she had heard read aloud at dinner. After supper came recreation, but she was in bed by eight. It is Cecily’s reading that has attracted the greatest scholarly attention, but for our purposes the overall pattern of her life is more important. Clearly, it is monastic in inspiration, centred as it was on both the Divine Office and the version of this made available for lay piety by the books of hours. In many ways it was similar to the life led in Rome by Birgit of Sweden, more than a hundred years earlier, who, it should be remembered, never took religious vows even though she founded a religious order. The accuracy or otherwise of this account in Cecily’s household ordinances is not really the point. More important is that anyone in the late fifteenth century should think that a great lady — the greatest in the land (mother of two kings and the widow, in her own view, of the rightful King of England) — should be remembered as one who led such a life. It set up an ideal to which others, less exalted, could aspire. By the early sixteenth century this ideal was available to anyone of gentry status, that is, with the leisure (or lack of pressing secular concerns) to devote to such a semi-cloistered life and the literacy to read the offices. Had it not been so, it would hardly have been worth Robert Wyer’s while, a mere thirty years after Cecily’s death, to print the Dyurnall, presumably for a mass market. 8

Christopher Harper-Bill, ‘Cecily, duchess of York (1415–1495)’, in ODNB [accessed 19 March 2007].

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Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509) was a younger contemporary of Cecily Neville, and of course belonged to the rival dynasty. Like Cecily, she married very young; unlike Cecily, she bore only one child, the future Henry VII, but had a total of four husbands. Her household piety, which John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, described after her death in his month’s-mind sermon printed as A Mornynge Remembraunce,9 was of a similar cast. She rose at five in the morning, began ‘certayn deuocyons | & so after theym with one of her gentylwomen þe matynes of our lady | whiche kepte her to then she came in to her closet | where then with her chapelayne she sayd also matyns of þe daye’. She then heard ‘four or five masses vpon her knees’ and prayed until the main meal, which was taken at ten or eleven.10 At mealtimes, after some secular conversation, her almoner would read ‘a virtuous story’ and later the Lady Margaret would talk to a bishop of ‘godly matters’.11 She owned several books of hours for her personal use and engaged in a range of personal devotions — prayers, reciting the Psalms, the office of the dead, commendations, ‘the crowne of our lady which after the manere of Rome conteyneth sixty and three aues | and at euery aue to make a knelynge’, and meditations, some of which she had herself translated from the French. She went to confession every third day and received Communion ‘ful nye a dosen tymes euery yere’.12 Moving forward into the early sixteenth century, we have some interesting, if indirect, information about the mixed life at the court of Henry VIII from a memoir of Jane Dormer written by Henry Clifford. Jane Dormer was born in 1538 and became maid-in-waiting to the Princess Mary. She married the Duke of Feria in 1558 and returned with him to Spain, where the couple became devoted patrons of English recusants. Her mother had died when she was four, and she was brought up by her grandmother, Jane née Newdigate, whose brother Sebastian was one of the Carthusian monks who died a traitor’s death for refusing the Oath of Supremacy. We are told that from an early age ‘she began to read the Primer, or as we call it, the Office of our Blessed Lady, in Latin; and from that time, daily continued it, having any possibility of health to the end of her life, which was sixty-seven 9

Saint John Fisher, Mornynge remembraunce had at the moneth mynde of the noble prynces Margaret (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1509, STC 10891). 10

Fisher, Mornynge remembraunce, sig. A4v .

11

Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 176. 12

Fisher, Mornynge remembraunce, sig. A5r. The ‘crown of Our Lady’ was probably a rosary type of devotion: possibly nine Aves devoted to each of the Seven Joys or Seven Sorrows of the Virgin.

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years’.13 After Jane entered the service of Princess, later Queen, Mary, she ‘slept in her bedchamber, many times with her; she read together with her our Lady’s Office’, and was one of the ladies that Mary would take with her whenever she stayed at Croyden, the house of Cardinal Pole, to visit ‘the poor neighbours’ in disguise.14 This memoir also contains some useful information about the piety of Queen Catherine of Aragon, though it must be very secondhand, as Jane Dormer was not born until after her death. Given Anne Bulkeley’s connections with Catherine’s household, however, it is interesting to know that the Queen rose at mid-night to be present at the matins of the Religious. At five o’clock she made herself ready with what haste she might, saying that the time was lost which was spent in apparelling herself. Under her royal attire she did wear the habit of St. Francis, having taken the profession of his Third Order. She fasted all Fridays and Saturdays and all the Eves of our Blessed Lady with bread and water. On Sundays she received the Blessed Sacrament, read daily the Office of the Blessed Virgin, she was the most part of the morning in the Church at holy service and after dinner read the life of that day’s Saint to her maids standing by. She was sparing in her supper. She prayed kneeling on her knees without cushions. She was affable in conversation, courteous to all, and of an excellent and pious disposition.15

The Dyurnall essentially offers a cut-down version of these regal and aristocratic pieties, all of which centre on the recitation of the Hours of the Virgin. This kind of piety, like the books of hours themselves, was moving ‘inexorably and decisively down-market’.16 It is noticeable that the Dyurnall does not in fact assume the possession of a book of hours, let alone the opportunity to recite it regularly or anyone (such as a chaplain) with whom to recite it. Nor does it envisage a household that centres around the piety of the recipient of the treatise, who appears to occupy only a subsidiary position in the scheme of things. It is telling that there is no suggestion of pious reading at the main meal of the day as such; presumably the Dyurnall’s reader does not enjoy control over such domestic arrangements. Instead, devotional reading is to be done before the meal: the reading varies from day to day but not from week to week, and would require the ownership of only one book, Nicholas Love’s Mirror. All the prayers, too, that are to be recited are short enough simply to be learnt off by heart, and in fact this is what the author recommends. In summary, one could characterize the piety of the Dyurnall as piety in a household 13 The Life of Jane Dormer Duchess of Feria by Henry Clifford, ed. by Joseph Stevenson (London: Burns and Oates, 1887), p. 59. 14

Life of Jane Dormer, ed. by Stevenson, pp. 63, 64.

15

Life of Jane Dormer, ed. by Stevenson, pp. 73–74.

16

Duffy, Marking the Hours, p. 20.

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rather than ‘household piety’. This is an important distinction. While it remains true that ‘handbooks such as Richard Whitford’s Work for Householders met a growing demand for guidance in an ordered family piety on the model of the More household’,17 we cannot claim that the Dyurnall, in isolation, offers a model for such ‘ordered family piety’, nor does MS Harley 494 as a whole attempt this role. The printed version of the Dyurnall seems addressed to a layman or -woman. For instance, the author tempers his prescription that on rising the reader should recite ‘O beata et benedicta et gloriosa Trinitas’ with the rider, ‘yf ye be alone’ (sig. A3r), which suggests the reader is a layperson. He or she is expected to attend church once a day, presumably to hear Mass although this is not specified, but there is no mention of any obligation to perform the Divine Office. And on leaving the church he, or she, is cautioned against falling into idle speech, not presumably a problem in a well-conducted religious house. Although, when it is time to eat, he is told, ‘take youre place in ordre as besemeth’ (sig. B3v ), large secular households as well as religious communities would have set places at table. Moreover, the instructions about the need to avoid idle conversation at the main meal, especially with the concession, ‘But yf the conueniency of the company so requyreth, to fynde suche communycacyon that may edyfye your selfe and the herers’ (sig. B4v), do not suggest life in a religious community. While at one point the author admonishes the reader to think ‘þat many one in the worlde that be compelled of nede to apply theyr bodely labours, yf they myght haue suche leysure as ye haue to ensue the spyrytuall lyfe: shuld moche more profyte in vertue than ye do’ (sig. B1v), this could indicate a reader in comfortable circumstances leading a devout and retired life, rather than one who was technically a religious. The version in Anne Bulkeley’s book has been adapted for a woman. On fol. 15v the reader is exhorted to take ‘the rowme [place] of a seruaunt and not of a lady’ at mealtimes, where the printed version (STC 6928a) has ‘of a souerayne’ (sig. B3v). Further, the text contains a number of Latin prayers, which more often betray the gender of the suppliant than prayers written in English. One on fols 10v–11r reads: Domine Jhesu Christe qui solus es sapientia, tu scis que michi peccatrici expediunt prout tibi placet, et sicut in oculis tue maiestatis / videtur de me peccatrici, ita fiat cum misericordia. Amen. (emphasis mine)

(The printed version (sig. A4v ) has ‘michi peccatori’ and no equivalent for ‘de me peccatrici’.) It is clear from several features of the text that the version in MS Harley 494 is not the manuscript of an early draft but rather has been copied from one of the 17

English Reformation Revised, ed. by Haigh, pp. 204–05.

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printed texts. In particular, the following passage in the manuscript contains an example of eye skip: applye / your-self to sum profitable occupacion, considerynge in the begynnyng wheþer it be of necessite [or elles voluntary. Yf so be that it be of necessytye] it may not be omitted. (fol. 13r–v)

Sense can only be restored by supplying the phrase in square brackets from the printed text. Further, on fol. 17v ‘he’ has been changed to ‘ye’, as in the printed text, though this does not necessarily show that the manuscript was checked against the printed text as in this case commonsense could have made the change obvious. Apart from its adaptation for a woman, the version of the Dyurnall in MS Harley 494 differs from the printed texts in minor details only, with one group of exceptions: the English translations of the Latin prayers are more literal and less idiomatic. For instance, the very first prayer, ‘O beata et benedicta et gloriosa Trinitas’, is translated, accurately and idiomatically, in the printed version as O blyssed and gloryous trynyte | laude | glory and thankes be to the of all thy creatures | world without any ende. (sig. A3r)

But MS Harley 494 reads: O bewtiefull & most blessid, the gloriouse Trinite, to the beth praise & glory & þe yifte of graces / of all thy creatures by the infenyte world of worldes. Amen. (fols 7v–8r)

This is certainly accurate, but the renderings of gratiarum actio and per infinita secula seculorum are surprisingly literal rather than idiomatic. This pattern seems to be repeated elsewhere, and it is hard to think of any convincing explanation for it, unless the compiler was either excessively conscientious or eager to help the reader with her Latin. If Richard Whitford did not write the Dyurnall, can we speculate at all about its origins? It is curious that the various Latin prayers that it contains strongly suggest links with Syon Abbey. The first, ‘O beata et benedicta et gloriosa Trinitas’, recommended for frequent use throughout the day, is an antiphon of the Holy Trinity. But LSG records that Mechtild received a revelation that she should divide Psalm 50 (the Miserere) into four sections of five verses each and recite this antiphon with each section,18 so it may well have had a special significance in the Syon community as having received divine validation. As mentioned earlier, LSG was known and respected at Syon; the brothers’ library had six complete or abridged copies,19 two of which were printed books: LSG first appeared in print, 18

LSG, Pars 2 cap. 2.

19

See Syon Abbey, ed. by Gillespie, p. 753.

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edited by Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, in 1513. Moreover, The Myroure of oure Ladye cites Mechtild (as ‘saynt Mawde’) on several occasions.20 The Carthusians, too, were interested in Mechtild,21 and in London, British Library, MS Egerton 1821, which is a late medieval English Carthusian manuscript, Mechtild’s spiritual exercise involving Psalm 50 is recorded on fols 12v –14r, as part of the owner’s ‘exercicium [. . .] cotitidianum [sic]’ for Sundays. This account describes how Our Lord taught the exercise to ‘suam dilectam sponsam sanctam Matildam’ and is essentially quoted from LSG. (It is interesting that ‘Sancta Matilda’ is included among the ‘virgines et continentes’ invoked in his Friday litany (fol. 18v): her appearance in a litany is unusual, and another indication of Carthusian interest in Mechtild.) The Dyurnall also prescribes another antiphon recommended in LSG, Pars 4 cap. 25, ‘Emitte, domine, sapienciam’, to be said before meals. A further prayer with possible Syon connections is ‘Gratias tibi ago, domine Jhesu Criste, qui me creasti, redemisti et preordinasti ad hoc quod sum’, which the reader is to recite after dressing and before leaving the chamber. It appears frequently in early sixteenth-century Sarum horae22 and was sometimes attributed to King Henry VI, one of Syon’s benefactors.23 After reciting this prayer he or she is to make an act of contrition, beginning ‘Domine Jhesu Criste, ego cognosco me grauiter peccasse’. This prayer also occurs at the end of Thomas Betson’s Ryght profitable treatyse [. . .] to dyspose men to be vertuously occupyed.24 Betson, who was a Syon brother and the Abbey librarian and book cataloguer, introduces this prayer with the statement, ‘Thyse short prayers folowynge taught our lorde saynt Brigytte’. It also appears in the Birgittine Breviary, again attributed to Saint Birgit. It is worth noting that this prayer and two other Latin prayers, ‘Domine Jesu Christi qui me creasti’ and ‘Domine Jesu Christe qui solus es sapiencia’, found in the section of the Dyurnall headed ‘In the mornynge’, are also found in London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600, fols 19r–20r. This is a Birgittine manuscript. much of which consists of prayers (many considerably more elaborate than these) structured

20

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, pp. 33, 276, 277.

21

One of the two Middle English translations of LSG, found in London, British Library, MS Egerton 2006, was written by the scribe, probably a Carthusian, who wrote out London, British Library, MS Additional 37790: see Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse, p. 50. 22

For instance in Horae ad usum Sarum, STC 15916 (Paris: F. Birckman, 1538), sig. M1r; Prymer of Salysbury vse (Rouen, 1538, STC 16002a), fol 55r. 23

For instance in Horae ad vsum Sarum, STC 15901 (Paris: A. Verard, c. 1503), fol. 167v.

24

STC 1978 (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1500).

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around the same pattern of daily events followed by the Dyurnall: this will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. Another possible Syon connection with the Dyurnall might be detected in the running head, found in both printed editions, of ‘Jhesus. Maria’: devotion to the Holy Names was a Birgittine characteristic. (The use of the Holy Names is also a feature of Carthusian manuscripts — for instance, in MS Egerton 1821 the monogram IHC appears in the upper margin of every single page — but it is unlikely that a Carthusian father would author such a basic introduction to the mixed life.) So it is not impossible that the text printed by Wyer, even if not by Richard Whitford himself, was produced by some other Syon father. Thomas Betson, who died in 1513, is probably too early. A possible author is William Bonde: certainly the tone of the Dyurnall is one of reason and moderation, characteristics of his writings. Although the author urges the reader to strive constantly for improvement, he cautions against excessive introspection and dejection at failure: But in all thynge beware þat ye be not moche anxyouse or pensyve, nor long abyding in eny heuynesse, nor yet gretlye / laboryng for-to wepe, thoughe yee fynde your-self moche necligente and daily fautys litell or nothynge mendynge. Ffor it is nother necessarye ne profitabule but moche let of profyte to suche that fynde in them-self a good will to serve God. (fols 17v–18 r)

This is much in the spirit of William Bonde, who wrote a treatise, The Directory of Conscience (STC 3274.5 (1527), STC 3275 and 3276 (1534?)), that was aimed at those in the early stages of religious life, and was also suitable for devout lay people. It addressed the problem of scrupulosity, over-anxious adherence to regulations through fear of God, common among the religious, and also melancholy, or depression.25

However, both Bonde’s known works were written primarily for religious, and probably for the Syon nuns. Unfortunately, investigating the publisher of the Dyurnall does not offer much in the way of clues to the book’s authorship. Robert Wyer, or Wyre (fl. 1524–56) was an undistinguished printer and bookseller who also printed for other publishers; N. F. Blake concludes that ‘most of Wyer’s output was popular, indifferently printed, and cheap. [. . .] The subjects were wide-ranging and included both religious and secular works’.26 P. B. Tracy is similarly unenthusiastic:

25

Virginia R. Bainbridge, ‘Bonde, William (d. 1530)’, in ODNB [accessed 1 October 2004]. 26

N. F. Blake, ‘Wyer, Robert (fl. 1524–1556)’, in ODNB [accessed 21 October 2004].

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Robert Wyer was a prolific but not a first-rate printer. His importance lies in the fact that he was a printer of popular literature over a long and complex period of English history — from 1527 to 1558, during which printing ‘came of age’ both as moulder and mirror of the people.27

Wyer published Walter Hilton’s Medled lyfe (STC 14041), the Golden Pystle (STC 1914), The folowynge of Cryste (STC 23961), and Gherit van der Goude’s Interpretacyon and sygnyfycacyon of the Masse (STC 11549), all works of impeccable Catholic orthodoxy, although in 1527 he had to appear before Richard Foxford, Vicar-General to the Bishop of London, on a charge of having published, against the Bishop’s express command, an inaccurate translation of the Apostles’ Creed.28 He had no known links with Syon, although The folowynge of Cryste, which is a translation of De Imitatione Christi, has often been attributed (again, probably wrongly) to Whitford. The next text to be considered, however, is derived from an authentic Whitford text and much freer in its use of its source. This is ‘Because we here haue ordured yow to pray’ (Item 12), the instructions on intercessory prayer found on fols 31r–33v of MS Harley 494: Because we here haue ordured yow to pray, so þat praier moche availeth vn-to manny, we shal now schew a conuenient ordure & / cours how ye schulde recommend vn-to the same or oþer prayers in your memorye or remembraunce suche persones be name or person as ye haue apoyntede, or haue ben bounden, to pray for. (fol. 31r–v)

This opening sentence begins in the middle of a line and only a slightly larger capital ‘B’ indicates that this is a new text and not simply a continuation of the Mechtildian ‘informacion’ (Items 10 and 11) that precedes it. But these instructions derive from Richard Whitford’s translation of the pseudo-Bernardine Golden Epistle, which was published with the Due preparacion in 1531 and 1537.29 The material used in MS Harley 494 is not in fact part of the ‘authentic’ Golden Epistle,30 and it has been radically edited and pruned of much of the verbosity found in the 27

P. B. Tracy, ‘Robert Wyer: A Brief Analysis of his Types and a Suggested Chronology for the Output of his Press’, The Library, 6th series, 2 (1980), 293–303 (p. 293). 28 Arthur W. Reed, ‘The Regulation of the Book Trade before the Proclamation of 1538’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 15 (1917–19), 157–84 (pp. 171–72). 29

STC 25412 (London: Robert Redman, 1531?), STC 25413 (Robert Redman, 1537?), STC 25413.5 ( J. Waylande, 1537). Quotations are from STC 25413.5. 30

On the various versions of the Golden Epistle in English, see Edmund Colledge, ‘Fifteenthand Sixteenth-Century English Versions of “The Golden Epistle of St. Bernard”’, Mediaeval Studies, 37 (1975), 122–29. See also Cré, Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse, p. 200.

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printed version, where for instance Whitford suggests that intercession should follow ‘þe ordre of þe vi grammatycall cases’ (sig. L3r), that is, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative (the usual sixteenth-century order). This would of course be a useful mnemonic device only for those drilled in Latin grammar, so it is not surprising that MS Harley 494 eliminates the conceit. It does, however, keep to this order of intercessions, with instructions ‘fyrste to praye for yourselfe’ (sig. L3r) (the nominative), second for ‘your genitours | your progenitours and parentes’ (sig. L3v ) (the genitive), third for one’s benefactors (the dative), fourth for one’s enemies (the accusative), and sixth for the dead (the ablative). The fifth case is not enumerated but is there, being the demand to call on God (the vocative) for those who are not in a state of grace. Although MS Harley 494 removes much of Whitford’s characteristic wordiness it also adds material. To the second set of intercessions (for parents and relatives) it adds the intercessor’s ‘spirituall bretheren and susters: þose ben suche religiouse persones or oþer that by þer chapetre haue made yow partenars with them’ (fol. 31v ). This suggests adaptation for a lay audience, who could become members of the confraternities of religious houses or guilds, although it is true that religious too could be admitted. The manuscript also elaborates ‘your gostly fathers | or spirytuall soueraynes’ (sig. L3v) with ‘the pope [erased], the bysshope, your curatz, person, wykar, or eny prest þat hath hard your confessioun’ (fol. 31v). The reference to one’s parish priest, rather than for instance to a chaplain, again suggests a lay audience, and possibly a lay audience of relatively modest status, that is, without a private chaplain. To benefactors are added ‘your instructours and techars, ouþer of connyng or vertu and gode maner’ (fol. 32r), which again might suggest a lay audience, while the category of evil-doers is expanded to include those who have harmed you ‘in your goodes or possessions temporall’ (fol. 32r), hardly appropriate to a religious vowed to personal poverty. There is no express reference to the fifth group, which suggests that the manuscript version is adapted from the print, not vice versa. The MS Harley 494 version also goes on to add ‘scismatikes’ to infidels and heretics and an instruction to pray ‘for all suche persones as ye haue brought to eny vice, or hyndrede of eny vertue’ (fol. 32v ). Right at the end MS Harley 494 adds, ‘And of your charite, forget not hym þat daily praieth for yow, þe wreche of Syon’ (fol. 33v ), the term by which Whitford regularly refers to himself. We could compare, for instance, the request in the Due preparacion, ‘pray for me your dayly bedeman & pore wretched brother of Syon, Richarde Whytforde’.31 It is possible that Whitford himself was responsible for this 31

STC 25413, sig. G2v .

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abbreviated adaptation. In A dayly exercyse and experyence of dethe he explains that he has had that particular treatise, which he wrote more than thirty years ago, printed because he has recently (‘of late’) been compelled ‘(by the charytable instance and request of dyuers deuout persones) to wryte it agayne and agayn’.32 This revealing comment indicates that Whitford’s writings did circulate in manuscript, often written in his own hand, even though none survive. He could well have made adaptations of his writings for Anne Bulkeley or her family, especially as he was close to William Lord Mountjoy, Queen Catherine of Aragon’s chamberlain from 1512 to 1533. Anne Bulkeley’s father, Sir Robert Poyntz, had been vice-chamberlain and later chancellor in the same household. Although there is an unmistakeable underlying structural identity between the printed and manuscript version of the Golden Pystle, the verbal similarities are intermittent. The manuscript version in Anne Bulkeley’s book could very well have been composed by someone, such as the original author, who knew the printed text intimately but did not have it in front of him, or did not bother to refer to it, and was adapting it from memory, The third text associated with Whitford is ‘For þe receiuing of þe sacrament’ (Item 14), made up of extracts from the Due preparacion (published, as we have already mentioned, with the Golden Pystle). Several times in the printed version Whitford stresses that his treatise can be excerpted; for instance I do not requyre ne moue you to rede and recounte all that here is wryten | at euery tyme (yet were it good so to do if you haue tyme) but that hit maye lyke you to rede hit ones ouer and then to make out suche places as beste done lyke you | and vse them or parte of them as you haue tyme and leyser. (sig. A3r)33

This is indeed what seems to have happened in the manuscript version, which once again handles the material freely. The printed version was aimed at an ungendered lay audience, but the manuscript version at a particular woman, who in a passage unparalleled in the print is directly addressed, as ‘madam’ and ‘good madam’, on fols 55v and 56r and who has some kind of religious status, though its exact nature is unclear. While the original audience is exhorted to forget ‘busynes of the worlde’ (sig. A5v), Anne Bulkeley must 32

A dayly exercyse and experyence of dethe, ed. by James Hogg, in Richard Whytford’s The pype or tonne of the lyfe of perfection, 5 vols, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies, 89 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1979), V , 64. 33

STC 25413.5; cf. also ‘bycause this werke is so diuided in particles, þat (as we sayd) euery person may take what he wyll, accordynge vnto his leyser and deuocion’ (sig. C4v ), and ‘the reders be not bound but at theyr pleasure they maye (as is sayd) take what they wyll’ (sig. D3v).

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withdraw from ‘bodely besynesse and secular thoughtes’ (fol. 35v); where the print prays for the grace ‘to be content with a necessary and meane [modest] liuinge. And to kepe firmely and constantly, by due perseueraunce vnto my laste ende, this state and degree that thou haste put me in’ (sig. F6r), in MS Harley 494 the suppliant requests ‘ferme constaunce & perpetuall perseueraunce in the purposed favour of my holy vowe of religione that I haue, of þi grace, enterprised and promysed’ (fol. 41r), and adds a prayer for ‘good discipline and religious behauiour’ (fol. 41v ). Similarly, where the print prays rather vaguely for ‘suche loue & charyte: as [. . .] shall come or byseme my state and degre’ (sig. G2r), the manuscript asks for ‘suche fervour & charite as [. . .] schuld apperteine vn-to my degre, religion, and callynge of thi grace as may be accepta/bule vn-to thi goodnes’ (fols 44v –45r). Once again, there is no doubt that the manuscript version derives from the print: there is eyeskip in ‘our savyour Jhesu, verrey God and man, his highe diuinite’ (fol. 36r), compared to the print’s ‘sauyoure Jesu very god | and very man in one persone very christ his humanyte, and his diuinite’ (sig. A2v), while ‘O most holy sacrede flessh’ (fol. 55r) is clearly a scribal error for ‘O [. . .] holy sacred feest’ (sig. H6v ), translating ‘O sacrum conuiuium’. But not all the material in this item is drawn from the printed version of Whitford’s text. In particular a set of a dozen prayers at the end, similar to the suffrages found in litanies, have come from elsewhere.

William Bonde Little is known of William Bonde. From Northumberland, he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his BA in 1500–01 and his MA in 1503–04. Originally a fellow of Queens’, he transferred to Pembroke College, where he became a fellow in 1506–07. A contemporary was John Fewterer, later confessor-general at Syon. Bonde himself became a Birgittine some time after 1509–10, probably before completing his studies at Cambridge. He gave twentynine scholarly books to the Syon brothers’ library and died on 18 July 1530.34 He wrote and published two works, The Directory of Conscience (1527), addressed specifically to a Syon nun, and the Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (1526 and 1531). Two texts in MS Harley 494 derive from the latter ultra-orthodox and anti-Lutheran tome.35 They come from Bk III, day 6, ch. 54 (Item 13, three intercessory prayers)

34 35

Bainbridge, ‘Bonde, William’.

William Bonde, Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (London: Richard Pynson, 1526, STC 3277); enlarged edition STC 3278 (Wynkyn de Worde, 1531).

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and Bk III, day 6, ch. 60 (Item 17, ‘Meditacions for tyme of the Masse’). Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon has been described as a ‘summa of late medieval teachings on the religious life’.36 It was composed for religious, in particular the Birgittines, and his target audience included those illiterate in Latin (primarily the nuns, presumably). Bonde tells us that he had originally intended to write the book in Latin, but anone as I had set the penne to the boke | it was put in to my mynde to drawe it in the englysshe tonge | wherby it myght be the more accepte to many | and specyally to suche that vnderstande no latyn | & so to make you parteners in the same. (STC 3278, fol. 1v)

The compiler of MS Harley 494 has been extremely selective in what he or she has chosen to use in Item 13, ‘The fourme of prayer after an-oþer maner’: only a few sentences really come from Bonde, but they are unmistakeable. The text, which consists of four intercessory prayers, is found on fols 33v–35r, which follow and supplement the Whitford material from the Golden Pystle. Each prayer begins, ‘O blessid Lord, haue mercy’, and they pray for the whole Church, the rulers of the Church, the servants of the Church, and the petitioner herself. The first prayer runs: O blessid Lord, haue mercy on thyn hoole chirche, wherso-euer they be dispersed in þe vniuersall world. And those þat ben in grace, preserue and conferme them theryn. And those þat ben in mysery & payn, releve and socour them. And those þat ben in syn & wrechednes, reduce them to þe way of grace and feith, and those þat ben in bodely helth and prosperite, inclyne þer hertes to haue mercy vpon ther euencristen. Amen. (fol. 33v )

This knits together two separate sections from the Pilgrymage, Bk III, day 6, ch. 54, a chapter entitled ‘Meditatyons at the laudes | vnto the ende of matyns’. In the first the Virgin is invoked and God implored ‘to haue mercy on his churche | and on all chrysten people | where so euer they be dispersed in the worlde’, while on the next folio the reader is directed to ask God ‘for them that be out of the fauour of god to helpe to reduce them to grace’ and for them that be in grace | to preserue & encrease them in the same. And for them that be in mysery & payne | to releue & confort them. And for them that be in helth | welth and prosperite | that they may be enclyned to peace | mercy & pite | ouer theyr euen chrysten. (STC 3278, fol. 252r)

The second prayer is shorter: O blissed Lord, haue mercy on all the hedes and rewlars of þe chirch, both spirituall & temporall, & specially of thys / realme of Englande and all the pepule of the same, as thow knowest necessary to the soule helth of euery man and woman. Amen. (fols 33v –34r)

36

Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century’, p. 22.

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This adapts a passage on the previous page of ch. 54: First praye for al þe heedes & rulers of Christes chirche bothe spirituall & temporall. And specially for the rulers of this realme of Englande | with the commons of the same. (STC 3278, fol. 251v)

The third prayer uses material immediately following this passage and provides the only variation of any interest: Harley MS 494 prays for God’s mercy ‘specially on this present houshold’ (fol. 34r), while the printed version has ‘specially for this congregacyon of men and women’ (fol. 251v). This could be significant: ‘houshold’ presumably means here ‘an organized family, including servants or attendants, dwelling in a house’ (OED ‘household’, sense 3.a.), which is the only appropriate sense current at the time; none of OED’s examples use the term in the sense of a religious community. ‘Congregation’, however, has a wide range of reference: it can be as general as ‘a gathering, assemblage, or company’ (OED ‘congregation’, sense 2); ‘a regular meeting or assembly of a society or body’ (sense 3); ‘a collective body of colleagues, a company’ (sense 4); ‘the Church’, as used by the reformers (sense 6); and, more specifically, ‘a community or order bound together by a common rule’ (sense 9). All these senses were current in the 1520s and 1530s and it is probably the last that Bonde is using here, with reference to the Birgittines. So this might be an indication that the originally monastic prayer has been adapted for someone living in a secular environment. Finally, Item 17, ‘Meditacions for tyme of the masse’ (fols 63r–75r) is taken ultimately from chapter 60 of Bk III, day 6 of the Pilgrymage. However there is a complication: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 17 contains as its only item another version of this text, entitled ‘Meditatyons for goostly exercyse. In the tyme of the masse’. J. Wickham Legg edited this as ‘Langforde’s Meditations in the Time of the Mass’:37 he attributed the treatise to ‘Langforde’ as right at the end occurs the colophon ‘B: Langforde: Preiste’. Unfortunately we have no further information about Langford, but he must surely have been the scribe or excerpter rather than the author. The textual relationships between the printed text, MS Harley 494, and MS Wood empt. 17 are far from clear. Generally, MS Harley 494 and the print tend to read together against the Wood manuscript, but this is not invariable. For instance, the following passage, headed ‘After the lauatory when the preste saith þe secretes all in silence’, appears as follows in MS Harley 494:

37

Tracts on the Mass, ed. by J. Wickham Legg, Henry Bradshaw Society, 27 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1904), pp. 19–29.

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Considre with dew thankes & praisinges the tyme a-fore the passion when our savyour did withdraw hym from the company of þe Jewes and dydd give hym to solytarines, all secret in prayer and contemplacion, prayng to his eternall father for þe helth of mannes soule. (fol. 66r)

It is not found in Bonde, but is found almost word-for-word in MS Wood empt. 17, except for the final clause, which reads ‘Praying to hys Eternall father. In greit watche and abstynence for the helth of many sowlle’.38 Whereas the addition of ‘in great watche and abstynence’ looks like an improvement, ‘many’ for ‘mannes’ looks like a scribal error. Another substantial agreement of the two manuscripts against the printed version involves a digression on the reason why there is no pax in requiem masses. In both manuscripts this comes after the section ‘At Ite missa est’ instead of at the end of the section ‘Whan the preest begynneth Per omnia secula seculorum | before Agnus dei’ (STC 3278, fol. 261r). The first sentence is largely the same in both manuscripts although MS Harley 494 is fuller: Here it is to be notede þat in masse of Requiem no pax is given, for / þat masse principally is for þe soules in purgatory, amonge whom ys no discorde. But pax is given whene masse is seyd for them þat be in lyf, which often be at discorde and debate, to reconsile them to pease and concorde as it is nede, for where pease is not, the Holigost can not rest. (fol. 72r–v)

As the passages already quoted suggest, Bonde’s text allegorizes the priest’s actions in saying Mass as a detailed, moment-by-moment re-enactment of the Passion: as MS Harley 494 says at the beginning, ‘the processe of the masse representeth the verrey progresse of the passion of Crist. The preste betokeneth Crist, the awter þe crosse’ (fol. 63r) and so on. It therefore provides for a parallel, ‘separate but not really equal’, participation in the Mass by the non-Latinate and non-clerical. Such prayers and meditations had been available since the fourteenth century. Of them Paul Saenger argues, As a substitute for not being able to understand the oral prayers, the practice of private prayer during the Mass [. . .] developed. [. . .] the advent of silent reading allowed for a structured and sequential synchronization of the silent prayers or contemplations of the laity with the oral prayers of the celebrants of the Mass.39

He goes on to remark: the precise topics and order of meditations as well as the specific prayers for specific parts of the Mass [. . .] were all invariably different. This new genre of text became the source of

38

Tracts on the Mass, ed. by Legg, p. 23.

39

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 153.

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Chapter 3 a revolution in the experience of the Mass in the consciousness of those who attended it. [. . .] the prayers recited silently in the vernacular from written texts could vary with the private desires of the individual. [. . .] Among the laity [. . .] the custom of bringing books of hours, tracts on the Mass and other texts to church spread without any serious attempt by the authorities to impede it.40

Although this approach may seem old-fashioned for the early sixteenth century, at least it encourages attention to the liturgy and allows for some curiosity about liturgical practice. (It therefore contrasts with texts that discourage their audience, particularly if female, from asking such questions as why the priest alone receives communion in both kinds.) The ‘Meditacions for tyme of the masse’ should also be related to the Birgittine interest in securing informed participation from its nuns in the liturgy. (Compare most notably The Myroure of oure Ladye, which devotes ‘the thyrde parte’ to the Mass.) But this is a different sort of participation, as The Myroure translates and expounds the Latin common and propers of the Mass rather than provides private prayers and meditations. Once again, we can demonstrate from its numerous textual errors (the scribe has been particularly careless in copying this text) that the version in MS Harley 494 derives from the printed text and not vice versa. For instance, Harley has ‘The preste betokeneth Crist, [. . .] the vestiment with the whiche our saviour was clothed in scourne’ (fol. 63r), but the print has ‘[. . .] the vestymentes the garmentes in þe whiche our savyour was clothed’ (STC 3278, fol. 259r); ‘the watir the wynne the expresse of watyr & blode’ (fol. 63v) is a corrupt version of ‘the wyne & water | the expresse effusyon or shedynge forthe of the blode & water’ (STC 3278, fol. 259r), omitting the italicized phrase. There are examples of eye-skip, such as ‘think on þe tendre loue that [our Lord] hade to come to þis werlde’ (fol. 63v) for ‘thynke on the tender loue that our sauyour had to mankynde whan he wolde vouchesafe to come to this worlde’ (STC 3278, fol. 259r) (again, omitting the italicized phrase). There are straightforward mistakes: the scribe writes ‘wheryn gret agony’ (fol. 67r) for ‘where in great agony’ (STC 3278, fol. 260r), ‘Anne’ (fol. 67r) for ‘Annas’ (STC 3278, fol. 260r) (as does MS Wood empt. 17) , ‘arayed’ (fol. 67v) for ‘[ar]raigned’ (STC 3278, fol. 260r), ‘werkes’ (fol. 69r) for ‘wordes’ (STC 3278, fol. 260v ). In ‘haue in meditacion the most pure, gracious, & innocent lyf of our sauyour and redemar, þe lyf þat we lost by syn of our forfather Adam’ (fol. 64v ), redemar is a miscopying of remembre. (Was this merely the result of loss of attention, or was the scribe working from a badly written rather than printed version of the text?) In the sentence ‘When þe preste begynneth Gloria in excelsis, remembre the holy doctryn 40

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 155.

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and prechyng glory and joye þat the multitude of angelles made’ (fol. 65r), the italicized phrase has been introduced from some lines further down (‘whan [the priest] redeth the gospell | with his face agaynst the north: remember the holy doctryne’; STC 3278, fol. 259v ), a clear indication that the scribe was copying from an exemplar rather than from dictation or relying on his own memory. The digression about the absence of the pax in requiem masses marks the end of the material that MS Harley 494 has borrowed from the Pilgrymage; the manuscript then proceeds without a break, and even without an indisputable capital letter, ‘and here no[w] [MS not] foure causes why Crist wolde give to vs hym-selfe vndir the forme of brede’ (fol. 72v). This does not appear to come from the Pilgrymage and the nearest analogue is the prologue to Book 3 of Gherit van der Goude’s 1532 treatise, The interpretacyon and sygnyfycacyon of the Masse, which gives not four but no fewer than thirty-five reasons for Christ’s body being presented in this form. Van der Goude’s treatise is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5. It is clear that in the early 1530s, in what was increasingly an age of print, manuscripts still had their uses. For instance, a reader seeking some advice on structuring her intercessory prayers, or a set of meditations to practise during Mass, would certainly not want to carry the whole of Bonde’s massive Pilgrymage with her to church every day or every week. Much better to have the relevant sections copied — a little inaccurately perhaps, but also trimmed of some excess verbal baggage — into a handy little book that would fit in a generous pocket. Furthermore, a single compact volume could in this way bring together a number of texts that would otherwise require the purchase of several separate volumes: one copy for the Dyurnall, another printed book containing the treatise on houseling and the Golden Pystle, and thirdly the Pilgrymage. It probably worked out cheaper, even if a professional or semi-professional scribe had to be employed. In MS Harley 494, therefore, we can see how the manuscript book continued to cater to a niche market, in this case pious but thrifty women with definite ideas about the kinds of texts they wanted to read and use, and with friends, perhaps, willing to assist them — friends who might have included the authors themselves. Although Bonde died in 1530, Christopher Haigh points out that ‘he achieved posthumous popularity with a reprint of The Pilgrimage of Perfection in 1531 and two further editions of The Directory in 1534’. He goes on to suggest part of the secret of the popularity of the writings of both Whitford and Bonde was that ‘The literate laity had long been offered edifying tales of the saints, but they had not hitherto been told in print how to organize their devotional lives’.41 That comment 41

Haigh, English Reformations, p. 26.

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would be true, too, of the Dyurnall, easily the simplest of these texts. In contrast, the visionary women whom we must now consider were never widely popular. Even Birgit of Sweden, by far the best known, achieved greater recognition for the entirely spurious Fifteen Oes attributed to her than for any of her authentic writings.

Mechtild of Hackeborn: ‘Seynt Mawde’ The presence in Anne Bulkeley’s book of both English and Latin extracts from Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae (LSG) is further evidence for a strong Syon connection. Rosalynn Voaden has shown that from the first quarter of the fifteenth century — in other words, shortly after the foundation of Syon Abbey — extracts from LSG in English and Latin were circulating in a number of manuscripts. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a Middle English translation of LSG, The Booke of Gostlye Grace, was also in circulation, of which two manuscripts survive, one possibly written by a Carthusian monk, John Wells.42 Voaden argues that the text enjoyed combined Carthusian and Birgittine patronage in England, and travelled under their auspices. This is borne out by Syon’s ownership, already mentioned, of several copies of LSG, either complete or in extract. In the brothers’ catalogue, the codices with the call-numbers M.47 and M.59, entitled respectively ‘Revelaciones sancte Matildis virginis alias vocatur liber spiritualis gratie’ and ‘Vita seu Reuelaciones sancte Matildis a deo reuelate’, must be complete copies.43 A composite volume, M.22, contained an extract, entitled ‘Reuelacio beate Marie sancte Matilde de 3bus Aue Maria’.44 This was probably a copy of LSG, Pars 1 cap. 47, incidentally used by MS Harley 494 in its version of the triple Ave devotion (second part of Item 28). The text in M.94 identified as ‘Reuelaciones beate matildis’ is probably also an extract, as it is only one of eleven items in all.45 M.C7 and M.121 are both copies of the early printed Liber trium uirorum et trium spiritualium uirginum, edited by Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples (Paris, 1513);46 the two other ‘spiritual virgins’ were Hildegard of Bingen and Elisabeth of Schönau. 42

The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn, ed. by Theresa A. Halligan (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1979). Extracts in Women’s Writing in Middle English, ed. by Alexandra Barratt (London: Longman, 1992), pp. 49–60. 43

Syon Abbey, ed. by Gillespie, pp. 236, 239.

44

Syon Abbey, ed. by Gillespie, p. 226.

45

Syon Abbey, ed. by Gillespie, p. 251.

46

Syon Abbey, ed. by Gillespie, pp. 255 and 258.

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The Carthusians also owned copies of LSG. One, described as the ‘Revelaciones sancte Matildis’, appears on an early sixteenth-century list of books from the London Charterhouse that the prior had permitted John Whetham, monk, to lend to the Hinton Charterhouse: it may have been written by him.47 Whetham also signed Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 19, a complete text of LSG, dating it as 1492, and he made a futher copy (now untraced) in 1513.48 Yet another copy was among the many books given at various times to the Witham Charterhouse c. 1463–74 by John Blacman, clericus redditus of that house (that is, ‘a regular member of the community though free to leave it for good reason’).49 The first hint that this text is a major source for the compilation of MS Harley 494 comes from the title of Item 10, ‘A short meditacion and informacyon of our lorde Jhesu schewyd to Seynt Mawde by reuelacion’. This title heads a substantial section of the manuscript (fols 26r–35r) which appears at first glance to be a single text. The reference to ‘Seynt Mawde’ (the Middle English form of ‘Matilda’ or Mechtild) attracted the attention of Rosalyn Voaden, but she concluded that it was spurious.50 However, these folios in fact contain at least four separate texts, written without a break, and some of the material is indeed taken from LSG, but it is confusingly interspersed with extracts from quite different sources. The opening section of Item 10 is apparently spoken by Christ, as is suggested by the title: In the nyght or in the mournyng: when þou rysest, commende the, both bodye and soule, vn-to me, thankyng me for þi rest and for oþer benefettes þat þou hast receyued of me, hauynge in mynde how for þi loue I suffered my-self to be betrayede in-to the handes of wyckede men and to be bounde of them. I was obedyent to my fader vn-to the deth. (fol. 26r)

This translates a passage from LSG, Pars 3 cap. 29, ‘De septem horis canonicis’, and in context Christ’s words answer a highly provocative question, saturated in the erotic imagery of nuptial mysticism: ‘A bride is accustomed to bear fruit to her spouse: what fruit, o spouse, am I to offer to you?’ In Anne Bulkeley’s book, however, the response becomes innocuous and indeed quite commonplace. The next 47

Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. by Doyle, pp. 622–24.

48

Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. by Doyle, p. 622. It is interesting that many of the marked passages in MS Ff. 1. 19 correspond to passages used in MS Harley 494. 49 50

Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. by Doyle, pp. 631, 646.

Rosalynn Voaden, ‘The Company She Keeps: Mechtild of Hackeborn in Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations’, in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in LateMedieval England, ed. by Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), pp. 51–69 (pp. 59–60).

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section in MS Harley 494 translates LSG, Pars 3 cap.17, ‘Qualiter homo cor dei salutet, et cor suum deo offerat, et sensus suos commendet’ (‘How a person should greet the divine Heart and offer his own heart to God, and commend his senses’) and consists of a morning offering of the heart and of Latin prayers for commendation of the senses. The English version is much abbreviated, especially excising the flowery imagery used to describe the human heart (‘like a most blooming rose’). The brief meditations on the Hours of the Passion that follow seem to be very free renderings of the meditations suggested in Pars 3 cap. 29 (which provided the opening paragraph). On fol. 30r is the final prayer in Latin, introduced in English: Whan thou woldest praise me, lawd or thanke me, or loue me, and if þou thynke that thow maist not or can not after thy desire, than say thus: Jhesu bone, laudo te & quicquid minus est in me, rogo vt te supleas pro me. Jhesu bone, amo te et si quid minus est in me, rogo ut cordis tui amorem Patri offeras pro me. And as ofte as þou praiest thus, I schall offre my-self to my father for the.

This comes from a different section of LSG, Pars 4 cap. 23, ‘Qualiter Christus pro homine quod in ei deest per seipsum supplet’ (‘How Christ supplements on behalf of a person what he lacks in himself’). Clearly, someone has gone to considerable trouble to piece together a succession of devotions from quite far-flung corners of Mechtild’s book of revelations. The next section in MS Harley 494, on fols 30r–31r, is a morning devotion beginning ‘Take good heed how þou hast gouernede the’. To a certain extent this covers the same ground as Item 10, but it is not from Mechtild and remains unidentified, although there is another copy in Lambeth Palace MS 3600 (see Chapter 4). These morning prayers centre on self-examination but morph from considering Christ’s ‘godhede’ into meditating on his Passion and, in particular, offering vocal prayers in honour of his Five Wounds and to the Virgin. It is followed without a break — indeed, without even a new line — by Item 12 on fols 31r–33v . These are the instructions on intercessory prayer, beginning ‘Because we here haue ordured yow to pray’, that derive from Whitford’s version of the Golden Pystle and which we have already discussed. (It includes the erasure of the word ‘pope’ on fol. 31v , and closes on fol. 33v with the reference to ‘hym þat daily praieth for yow, þe wreche of Syon’.51) It is followed on fol. 33v by four more intercessory prayers, with the heading ‘The fourme of prayer after an-oþer maner. Vse wheþer ye like best’, three of which as we have already seen come from Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon. Only at the end of this text is there an obvious break, marked by

51

This was the passage that caused Voaden to dismiss the whole section as non-Mechthildian.

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‘Amen’ in larger script, with the rest of fol. 35r (about three-quarters of the page) left blank. But this by no means exhausts the debt of MS Harley 494, and of Anne Bulkeley, to Mechtild. If we exclude a particularly wobbly elevation prayer written by Hand A on the first page of the manuscript, Item 2, which begins ‘Laudo, amo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone’ (fol. 2r), is the opening item. It consists of five Latin prayers to the Five Joys of Our Lord in his Resurrection, followed by Christ’s promise of special graces before, during, and after death to those who recite them: it comes from LSG, Pars 1 cap. 19. This devotion was well known in the Middle Ages as ‘the so-called Laudes Dominae Mechtildis [. . .] supposed to be la lauda di donna Matelda which is mentioned by Boccaccio’.52 J. T. Rhodes has pointed out that there is also a version of this devotion in a popular late medieval devotional anthology, Anthidotarius animae, compiled by Nikolaus Salicetus.53 Nikolaus, who died c. 1493, was the Cistercian abbot of Klosters Baumgarten; the Anthidotarius was extraordinarily successful, being printed twenty-three times in the fifteenth century and fourteen times in the sixteenth century.54 MS Harley 494 elsewhere translates a Latin devotion from the Anthidotarius (at the end of Item 17, ‘Meditacions for tyme of the masse’) but its version of ‘Laudo, amo, adoro’ is not verbally close to the Anthidotarius version and could not have come from there, although it is very close to the original version in LSG. In the Anthidotarius, however, the prayers are attributed to ‘Sancta Mechtildis’, while it is interesting that MS Harley 494 does not attribute the prayers to anyone, or attempt to make any capital out of their association with ‘Saint Maud’. There is a third borrowing from Mechtild towards the end of MS Harley 494. Item 28, written by Hand L, is entitled ‘þe bedis of pardon [. . .] of Saynt Gregorrys pytye’ and begins, ‘O swete blessyd Jhesu, for thy holy name & thy byttere passion’ (fol. 105r). These prayers are followed without a break by a set of three Latin prayers, based on the triple recitation of the Ave Maria, each of which is followed by a similar but not identical prayer in English. Its significance in the context of Marian devotion is discussed in Chapter 5, but for our present purposes its interest lies in its derivation from Mechtild, from LSG, Pars 1 caps 11 and 47. 52

E. G. Gardner, Dante and the Mystics: A Study of the Mystical Aspect of the ‘Divina commedia’ and its Relations with Some of its Mediaeval Sources (1913; repr. New York: Haskell House, 1968), p. 284. The reference in the Decameron, Seventh Day, First Story, is in fact somewhat dismissive. 53 54

Rhodes, ‘Body of Christ in English Eucharistic Devotion’, p. 414, n. 74.

Reinhard Tenberg, ‘Nikolaus Salicetus’, in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz, vol. VI (Hamm: Verlag Traugott Bautz, 1993), col. 927.

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Each pair of prayers in Latin and English is followed by an Ave. The Latin portions are themselves ‘farced’ Aves, consisting of the two-sentence Angelic Salutation with additional clauses inserted. The first prayer is amplified by a salutation to Saint Anne, the Virgin’s mother: ‘Et benedicta sit sanctissima mater tua Anna, ex qua sine macula tua processit caro virginea. Amen.’ All the Latin prayers make connections between the Virgin and the attributes of the Trinity, and derive from LSG, Pars 1 cap. 11, ‘De Sancta Agnete, et quod sancti omnia bona sua sibi devotis dare possunt in propria’ (‘Concerning Saint Agnes, and that the saints are able to give all their goods to their devotees for their own’). This chapter recounts a vision in which Saint Agnes instructed the visionary to recite an Ave. Divinely inspired, Mechtild responded with the words ‘Ave, ex Patris omnipotentia; Ave, ex Filii sapientia; Ave, ex Spiritus Sancti benignitate, dulcissima Maria, coelum et terram illuminans’, thus associating the Virgin with the Trinitarian attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness. This explains the structure and rationale of the three ‘farced’ Aves.55 The English sections of the prayers, however, are somewhat different. They not only translate the Latin prayers but also request the Virgin’s presence and protection at the hour of death. To make the connection with the Virgin’s role as protectress at the time of death we have to read on to LSG, Pars 1 cap. 47, ‘De tribus Ave Maria dicendis, per quae possis gloriosam virginem Mariam habere praesentem in fine vitae tuae’ (‘Concerning the saying of three Ave Marias, through which you can have the Virgin Mary present at the end of your life’). Here, Mechtild prays the Virgin ‘ut in hora mortis suae sibi adesse dignaretur’ (‘that she may condescend to be present at the hour of her death’). The Virgin proceeds to give extremely detailed instructions as to how the visionary might deserve this. She must recite three Aves every day: the first must invoke God the Father’s omnipotentia and request the Virgin’s presence at the hour of death; the second must invoke God the Son’s sapientia and pray the Virgin to protect the petitioner from ignorance or doctrinal error at the hour of death; finally, she is to invoke the Holy Spirit’s suavitas amoris and pray the Virgin to vanquish the bitterness of death. The Latin phrases are exactly mirrored in the English sections of our devotion here. These English prayers, without the Latin, are also found on fols 52v –53r of London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546, a manuscript that has already attracted a fair

55

This prayer can be found in several early sixteenth-century printed books of hours, for instance, a 1527 horae published in Paris by F. Birckman, Gough Missal 176 (STC 15953?) and a 1538 horae published in Rouen (STC 16002a); see the discussion in Chapter 4.

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amount of scholarly attention.56 It is definitely connected with Syon Abbey as on fol. 56r appears a monogram, ‘Sister EW’, probably that of Elizabeth Woodford (d. 1523).57 Like MS Harley 494, it is written in several different hands, and Mary Erler remarks that ‘the book has something of the character of an album amicorum’ as several scribes have contributed. She goes on to comment: In its jointly produced, perhaps accumulative, character, this volume seems closer to a household miscellany like the Findern anthology, with its diverse contributions by various hands, than to more conventional books of private prayer with their individual nature and singular audience.58

Unlike MS Harley 494, some of the pieces are actually signed: we know that the Carthusian William Darker contributed,59 and so did one of Woodford’s fellow nuns, who refers to herself as a ‘scrybeler’ and ‘wreched syster’.60 In addition, the collection in Lambeth Palace MS 546 shows the same sort of German influence as the presence of the Maria van Oisterwijk extract in MS Harley 494 suggests: it contains the Sayings of St Albert (Albert the Great of Cologne) by Ruusbroec, and the story of the stigmatic Magdalena Beutler of Freiburg (1407–58) and the revelation to her of the ‘Golden Litany’.61 Lambeth Palace MS 546 does contain some Latin prayers. But in MS Harley 494, it is particularly the combination of English and Latin texts drawn from LSG that is suggestive: the English prayers do not simply translate the Latin prayers, but rather supplement them with further Mechtildian material. In other words, the devotion is a bilingual unity and must have been assembled as a whole by someone very familiar with LSG in extenso and the emphasis it laid on how recitation of the Ave Maria could ensure the Virgin’s deathbed assistance. And given the female

56

Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, p. 510 and n. 62; see also O. S. Pickering and V. M. O’Mara, The Index of Middle English Prose Handlist XIII: Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library, including those formerly in Sion College Library (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999), pp. 49–51. 57

Sister Elizabeth Woodford was lady treasuress in 1496 and died 5 March 1523. See Barron and Erler, ‘Making of Syon Abbey’s Altar Table’, p. 321 and n. 17. 58

Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, p. 510.

59

M. B. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands 1250–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969; repr. London, 1980), p. 8. 60 61

See O’Mara, ‘A Middle English Text Written by a Female Scribe’.

See William E. A. Axon, ‘A Fifteenth Century Devotion: The “Golden Litany of the Holy Magdalen” (Douce MS. XLII)’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, 2nd series, 27 (1907), 123–37.

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ownership of the book, we may deduce from this that Anne Bulkeley, too, was expected to understand at least some Latin as well as English.

Birgit of Sweden: ‘Our Holy Mother Saynt Birgytte’ In contrast to the writings of Mechtild, which seem to have had a restricted circulation, the revelations of Saint Birgit of Sweden (1303–73) were more widespread and better known in England. This is not surprising as she both enjoyed the cultic rights of a canonized saint (canonized in 1391, the canonization confirmed in 1415) and had founded a successful religious order with an enviable reputation for austerity, learning, and holiness. As we could say today, she enjoyed brand recognition. Roger Ellis has thoroughly researched and discussed the distribution and use of Birgit’s revelations in medieval England, both in Latin and in Middle English translation.62 He has shown how the complete text, by its very nature, having evolved over time by a process of accretion, was subject to breaking down into smaller units: ‘the work’s lack of concern for formal structure meant that a revelation could be removed from its context, usually, without difficulty’.63 The individual revelations might then be compiled thematically or written into manuscripts as space-fillers. They fell into several categories: prophetic, monitory, informative about the earthly lives of Christ and the Virgin, or conveying instruction on the spiritual life. They also provided many miraculously revealed devotions. The only extract from Birgit herself in MS Harley 494 is a revelation of this type, as indeed is true of all the material taken from the writings of visionary women in Anne Bulkeley’s book. In this instance the visionary source of the devotion is left intact, being introduced with the words Our Lady apperid to Seynt Brigitt & seyd: I am the quene of heuen and thou art studious & desirous to know how thou schuld lawd & praise me. Know þou for a suerte that euery lawd & praise of my son is my praise, and he þat dishonowreth hym, dishonoureth me. Þerfor þou schalt lawde & praise me as yt followeth. (fol. 88v )

In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fol. 106r, the English prayers that follow this narrative introduction appear in their Latin form, beginning ‘Benedictus sis tu, deus’, but with no indication that they were miraculously revealed to Saint Birgit. (They 62

Roger Ellis, ‘“Flores ad fabricandam . . . coronam”: An Investigation into the Uses of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, Medium Ævum, 51 (1982), 163–86. 63

Ellis, ‘“Flores ad fabricandam . . . coronam”’, p. 166.

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are also found in the Burnet Psalter, Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25, fol. 29v, where they are introduced simply by the words ‘Oracio sancte birgitte’; this is discussed further in Chapter 4.) It is surprising that a spiritual compendium with so many other Birgittine links should find room for only one extract from the revelations of the saint herself. Possibly they were sufficiently available in other forms (unlike both the Mechtild and Maria van Oisterwijk material). But it may be that this restraint, as already discussed in Chapter 2, betrays a general nervousness about the writings of visionary women: although there are three or four extracts from Mechtild’s LSG in Anne Bulkeley’s book, only one is attributed to her by name.

Maria Van Oisterwijk: ‘Mary Ostrewyk’ In contrast, MS Harley 494 is not at all coy about our last visionary woman, ‘a devote person callyd Mary Ostrewyk’ (fol. 61 v ). The identity of the Brabant beguine Maria van Oisterwijk (c. 1470–1547), also known as Maria van Hout, has already been discussed. As a beguine, she represented a form of the religious life unfamiliar in England, where the beguine movement seems never to have taken hold, although to a certain extent anchoritism provided an analogous way of life, blending the lay and the religious. Some English hospitals, too, may have resembled the Continental beguinages and provided an opportunity for those seeking that style of life. Maria’s spirituality, too, which is extravagantly ‘somatic’, would probably have been unfamiliar in England: Ulrike Wiethaus describes her texts as communicating ‘prescriptive religious behavior rather than prophetic teachings’.64 Maria’s exercise is centred on devotion to the Five Wounds, which was popular in England, although it never acquired its own liturgical feast as it did on the Continent.65 (This aspect of the text is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.) Its ‘somatic’ nature, its intense physicality, however, is unparallelled in Anne Bulkeley’s book, although there is an interesting precedent in a revelation granted another visionary woman, the German Benedictine nun, Gertrude the Great of Helfta. Gertrude was the friend and disciple of Mechtild of Hackeborn, who had been her novice mistress, and is considered largely responsible for the redaction of

64

Ulrike Wiethaus, ‘“For this I ask you, punish me”: Norms of Spiritual Orthopraxis in the Work of Maria van Hout (d. 1547)’, Ons geestelijk erf: driemaandelijks, 68 (1994), 253–70 (p. 258). 65

R . W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 86.

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LSG. Ironically, her own Latin writings, principally the Legatus divinae pietatis (The Herald of God’s Loving-kindness), were never as widespread or popular as LSG. Nonetheless they were published for the first time in 1536 by the Carthusians of Cologne under whose patronage, as we have already seen, Maria had come towards the end of her life. It is therefore quite possible that Kalckbrenner, the prior of the Cologne Charterhouse, had introduced Maria to Gertrude’s work and that there is a direct influence here. In the Legatus, Gertrude writes, Then she said: ‘Ah, teach me, most excellent teacher, one deed at least that we can particularly perform in memory of your Passion.’ The Lord replied: ‘I say this: that praying with outstretched hands you should display the form of my Passion before God the Father, in union with that love with which I stretched out my hands on the cross.’ And that woman said: ‘If anyone wanted to do this, he would have to find nooks and crannies because this is not our practice.’ The Lord replied: ‘This very eagerness to find nooks and crannies would please me and would adorn that work, just as gems bejewel a necklace.’ And the Lord added, ‘If anyone were to introduce this practice, so that while praying in public with outstretched hands he would not fear anyone’s opposition to this, that person shows me as much honor as one who solemnly enthrones him, renders to a king.’66

Gertrude, living in Saxony in the thirteenth century, specifically comments that to adopt such an attitude for prayer is ‘not our practice’; it would still have been unusual in both Brabant and England in the early sixteenth century. Maria van Oisterwijk seems at first glance the ‘odd woman out’ in MS Harley 494. Both Birgit and Mechtild were regarded as saints; even though the latter had never been officially canonized, Middle English texts regularly refer to her as ‘Saint Maud’, and she is invoked in one of the litanies found in the Carthusian manuscript BL Egerton 1821 as ‘Sancta Matilda’ (fol. 18v). Maria van Oisterwijk had no such status and, whether the readers and compilers of MS Harley 494 knew it or not, she was very much alive in the early 1530s. She cannot have been a well-known figure in England, even in the spiritually elite circles of Syon. However, like Mechtild, she had the stamp of male clerical approval, in particular that of the Carthusians: as an ‘approved woman’, therefore, she could function as a role model for Anne Bulkeley or the compilers of MS Harley 494.

66

Latin text in Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, vol. I: Sanctae Gertrudis Magnae Legatus Divinae Pietatis, ed. by Monks of Solesmes (Paris: Oudin, 1875), Li. IV, 16 (my translation).

Chapter 4

S OURCES: P RIMERS AND P RAYER B OOKS

B

ooks are made from other books. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of books of devotion in general, and of MS Harley 494 in particular. Itself a combination of a preces privatae volume and a collection of devotional treatises, it draws heavily on a related genre, that of the book of hours,1 or, as it came to be called more and more in the sixteenth century, the primer.2 The very existence of the primer was a phenomenon with significant implications for our understanding of medieval and early modern culture. It was linked with increasing literacy3 and with the rise of lay piety, and there is a persistent tendency to associate it with domesticity, the family, and women’s literate culture, as it was the book most likely to be owned by a woman, and often passed on death from mother to daughter. In terms of content, books of hours were hybrids, as they ‘have often been grouped in manuscript catalogues with liturgical books, yet many of the texts [. . .] exist elsewhere exclusively in literary compilations’.4 Liturgical in some senses, these 1

For a succinct account of the genre, see Nigel Morgan and Paul Binski, ‘Private Devotion: Humility and Splendour’, in The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. by Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), pp. 163–69 (pp. 164–65). For a useful basic bibliography, see Sarah Rees Jones and Felicity Riddy, ‘The Bolton Hours of York: Female Domestic Piety and the Public Sphere’, in Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 215–60 (p. 218). See also Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 209–98, and Duffy, Marking the Hours, pp. 3–23. 2

See OED, ‘primer’, n.1., 1. (on-line draft revision, June 2007).

3

See, e.g., Alexandra Barratt, ‘The Prymer and its Influence on Fifteenth-Century English Passion Lyrics’, Medium Ævum, 44 (1975), 264–79; Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 142. 4

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 141.

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books were owned and used primarily by lay people rather than clerics, and it was therefore lay devotional needs that they were designed to meet. Originating in the thirteenth century, books of hours were ‘unofficial’ productions and their contents were never standardized or subject to ecclesiastical control. The essential core, however, consisted of the Office, or Hours, of Our Lady, which was invariable and therefore much easier for lay people to recite than the Divine Office recited out of breviaries and psalters by religious, which varied according to the time of year and the occurrence of feast days (temporale and sanctorale). In addition one would expect to find the seven penitential psalms, the fifteen gradual psalms, the litany, the vigils of the dead (Dirige and Placebo), and the commendation of souls, all preceded by a calendar. A variety of other devotions, including suffrages and prayers to various saints, might also be included, depending on the predilections of the purchaser, the patron, or the compiler. It is these ‘accessory texts’ which are of particular interest to our study of the sources of Anne Bulkeley’s book. This flexibility of format allowed considerable leeway for personal devotional preferences. Robert Calkins points out: Not only might saints who were particularly venerated by the person for whom the book was made be included in the Calendar, Litany, and Suffrages, but the patron might have his or her portrait included in the miniatures. [. . .] In addition, the arms of the donor might be included in the miniatures or borders.5

Laurel Amtower sees that very capability as becoming problematic in the early sixteenth century, at a time of religious upheaval and controversy: The problem for the reformers was that, despite their conformity to an expected ordinatio and standard set of devotional texts, Books of Hours — more than other service books — could be personalized. Medieval readers wanted to tailor their devotions according to their own tastes and needs. The choice of readings [. . .] was often directly relevant to the personal experience or role of the patron.6

These are pertinent comments, but both Amtower and Calkins ignore the fact that these possibilities of personalization were not open to those buying printed books of hours, which had become very common by the time Anne Bulkeley’s book was compiled. However, their remarks serve to remind us that in an age of print one way to ensure the personalization of one’s devotions was to resort to the medium of manuscript. This may be a clue to the raison d’être of MS Harley 494, whose 5

Robert G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983), p. 259. 6

Laurel Amtower, Engaging Words: The Culture of Reading in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 50.

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very existence poses the question, why go to the trouble of constructing a manuscript that contains so many texts (both prayers and treatises) that were available in printed form? Perhaps because this was a convenient way of bringing together the personally relevant: the manuscript continued to provide a freedom and flexibility that was to elude print until the digital age. A number of the texts in Anne Bulkeley’s book can also be found in printed and/or manuscript books of hours of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. How does their presence in MS Harley 494 harmonize with the strong Birgittine influences which have already been discussed? Books of hours were for lay use and, in theory, religious had no reason to own them; but a number do survive that belonged to religious houses. The attitude of Syon in particular towards such books was more positive than some other religious orders: as Christopher de Hamel has pointed out, unlike most other monastics the Syon nuns did own, and use, books of hours. Eight books of hours from Syon Abbey are known to survive (as opposed to eleven psalters, which would have been used for private meditation)7 and he comments on the significance of this: Books of Hours, almost by definition, were not for monastic use. St Bridget herself, who was a laywoman [. . .] used to recite the Hours of the Virgin every day, and it was from this practice that she evolved the offices of the Bridgettine nuns. It must have seemed suitable for the sisters at Syon, in private, to own Books of Hours. But the use of them is curious, and one would not expect Benedictines or Carthusians, for example, to have been regular readers of Books of Hours.8

Birgittine spirituality, therefore, had developed out of the kind of structured life led by the saint and her household, a way of life similar to that led by Lady Margaret Beaufort, Margaret Lady Hungerford, and Cecily of York (see Chapter 3). This centred on the books of hours rather than the psalter or a monastic breviary. Indeed, as de Hamel reminds us, Saint Birgit herself never did take religious vows and died a laywoman. Members of the Syon community not only owned books of hours, they also had them customized for their own special requirements. For instance, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 62, described by de Hamel as ‘a routine (but nice) London Book of Hours of about 1390’,9 has numerous fifteenth-century Birgittine substitutions written on quires that have been inserted at various points in the text. Additions, which include the feasts of the nativity, translation, and canonization of Saint 7

De Hamel, Syon Abbey, pp. 74–75.

8

De Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 76.

9

De Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 77.

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Birgit and of her daughter, Saint Catherine of Sweden, have also been made to the calendar. (Unlike the other books of hours associated with Syon, this one seems to have belonged to a male member of the community, as the added prayers use masculine forms.) There is also a 1514 printed Sarum primer, now Cambridge, University Library, Rit. c.351.1, to which a quire has been added containing the ‘vij anniversaries to be kept in this monastery of Syon’, and another Sarum book of hours now in a private collection from which ‘the original Calendar and Litany have been removed and replaced by a Bridgettine Calendar [. . .] and Bridgettine Litany’.10 How did members of the Syon community find time to use these books of private devotion? The liturgical round at Syon must have been extremely timeconsuming: moreover, the nuns’ unique office was accorded an even higher status than was usual in a religious order because it had been dictated to Saint Birgit by an angel, inspired by the Holy Spirit. (The angel had described it as a ‘cote to the quiene of heuen the mother of God’, with the instructions, ‘sowe ye yt togyther as ye may’.11 ) The community’s liturgy did, of course, take precedence over the nuns’ private devotions, and the Myroure is quite firm on that subject: they erre greatly that hastely, and rechelesly say these holy houres, for haste of other besynes, or of other prayers. And so do they that wythdrawe theyr voyce from syngynge, for saynge of other deuocyons, thoughe they say the same thinge and moche more without note [i.e. without singing it]. They are also blamefull that of theyr owne wyll, medel other prayers, or other besynes with these holy houres, as yf any wolde say a lesson or a response by hymselfe, whyle other syng yt or rede yt by note, and then say other prayers. [. . .] For though bothe thys holy seruyce, & suche besynes or deuocyon be good, eche by themselfe; yet whan they ar medelyd togyther they plese not god.12

The ‘Bridgettine emphasis on individuality’ that Krug discerns (see below) certainly did not extend to the office. But as so often such denunciations strongly suggest that aberrant practices did indeed take place. Specifically, the passage suggests that some nuns said, rather than sang, the office so as to have time to pray their own devotions as well, or that they mixed private prayers into the community office while singing or reading it. But as the nuns were not expected to engage in manual labour other than ‘embroidery and (at Vadstena at least) the copying of books’,13 there would still be

10

Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 202–03, p. 205.

11

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, p. 19.

12

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, pp. 22–23.

13

Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. by Morris and O’Mara, p. 6.

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plenty of time for extra-liturgical devotions of the kinds found in books of hours. Extrapolating from de Hamel’s descriptive work, Krug has argued that the ‘use of books of hours at Syon provides the most striking example of the ways in which the nuns’ previous experiences with the written word exerted pressure on literate culture within the monastery’.14 She argues that private devotional reading was one aspect of the ‘Bridgettine emphasis on individuality as part of a collective identity’ and that this ‘was intended to occupy the nun when she was not involved in liturgical performance’.15 Certainly, a number of the devotions found in MS Harley 494 can also be found in early sixteenth-century printed or manuscript books of hours. This suggests that, one way or another, the compilers had access to and were familiar with such books.

Books of Hours and their Devotions The early sixteenth century was the heyday of printed books of hours, which were within the reach of more people than ever before. The books were theologically versatile: they could bolster the devotional practices of the followers of traditional religion, while with suitable adaptation (especially if translated into English) they could appeal to reformers as well. As religious controversy proliferated in the 1520s and 1530s, its twists and turns are reflected in a succession of published books of hours with varying content in varying languages or combination of languages. Charles Butterworth, who pioneered the study of early Tudor primers, was the first to draw attention to the popularity of the printed primers in the sixteenth century: ‘more than 180 editions of them appeared during the crucial years from 1525 to 1560 — some in Latin, some in English together with the Latin, and many in English alone’.16 More specifically, and more recently, MacCulloch has pointed out that during the 1530s, the period during which Anne Bulkeley’s book must have been planned and compiled, ‘a proliferation of printed primers had sought to capture the market in both commercial and spiritual terms, setting forward different interpretations of the Church’s worship’.17

14

Krug, Reading Families, p. 188.

15

Krug, Reading Families, p. 157.

16

Charles C. Butterworth, The English Primers (1529–1545): Their Publication and Connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953; repr. New York: Octagon, 1971), p. 1. 17

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 335.

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All extant primers printed before 1534 were in Latin. The first to have an English title — ‘This prymer of Salysbury vse’ — was published by François Regnault in Paris in 1527 (STC 15955). (English books of hours were commonly published on the Continent, particularly in Rouen, Paris, and Antwerp.) As to the first one published wholly in English, but of which no copy has survived, Butterworth argued that ‘it is reasonable to reckon that [it] must have been printed on the Continent before 1530, probably not long before but in the year 1529’.18 In 1534 William Marshall sponsored the first English primer (STC 15986) of which any copies still survive. A revealing story found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don. c. 42 is attached to this earliest primer in English. The manuscript contains a sympathetic sketch of Anne Boleyn’s career, written by William Latimer the younger, which attempts to construct her as a religious reformer.19 (Latimer (1498/99–1583), who was no relation of Hugh Latimer, was Anne Boleyn’s chaplain and dean of Peterborough, and ‘the only biographer of Anne Boleyn who can be said to have known her in her lifetime’.20) He describes how on one occasion, when she was staying at Richmond, Anne visited the nuns of Syon. The community were at prayer and at first declined to admit the Queen into the enclosure, but eventually she gained admission to the chapel. There, disswading them from their dissimuled holynes and ygnorante praying vpon their Laten prymars, [she] gave theme prayer bookes in Englishe to exercise them selves with all, that they might both understande what they did praye for, and therby be stired to more devocion; which they refusinge for a tyme (as profane) not to be admitted in their professione, at the last received them not withstanding, moste humblye with faythfull promisse to performe her graces desyre.21

This visit probably took place in September or October 1534, and the ‘prayer bookes in Englishe’ that Anne pressed on the reluctant nuns must have been copies of William Marshall’s 1534 primer.22 The Syon nuns as we have seen did use books of hours as individuals; and if there is any truth in this anecdote they must have 18

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), p. 13.

19

‘William Latymer’s Cronickille of Anne Bulleyne’, ed. by Maria Dowling, in Camden Miscellany XXX, Camden Fourth Series, 39 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), pp. 24–65. 20

Andrew Hope, ‘Latymer, William (1498/9–1583), in ODNB [accessed 11 October 2007]. 21 22

‘William Latymer’s Cronickille’, ed. by Dowling, p. 61.

On the strongly reformist nature of Marshall’s primer, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 382–83.

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found Anne’s offer peculiarly galling, given that they had had The Myroure of oure Ladye prepared and printed as recently as 1530, specifically so that they could understand ‘what they did pray for’ when they used the Birgittine office in choir. To return to the trajectory of the primer in English, Thomas Godfray published one in 1535? (STC 15988a), while Redman’s 1535 primer of Sarum use (STC 15986.3), of which only one copy survives, in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, has the Latin text printed down the margin of each page.23 In 1536 John Gough, known as a reformer, published a new English primer (STC 15992). An English-Latin use of Sarum primer (STC 15993), a revision of Redman’s, was also published in Rouen in 1536: ‘It was quite conservative in tone, compared with the Gough Primer’ and ‘promptly superseded Redman’s Primer as the accepted standard for the “use of Sarum”. Though the Marshall Primers also persisted for a while, they were never accepted by the more conservative readers; but the Rouen Primer fitted in with the spirit of the time’.24 It was not until 1545, well after the dissolution of the monasteries, that the first ‘official’ English Prymer was published, that is, ‘the first primer which was given unequivocal official backing in replacing all others’.25 (Archbishop Cranmer was closely involved with the project, which was one of the predecessors of the Book of Common Prayer.) But during the decade that preceded its publication, ‘various editions of the Primer were published in England with official sanction’.26 Primers could cause, as well as reflect, controversy. In the latter part of 1534 an abbot drew the attention of the Convocation of Canterbury to a primer ‘in which there were questionable rubrics at the head of certain prayers’.27 These were possibly promises of inflated indulgences and other spiritual privileges, which were attached to particular devotions and quite common in books of hours. Similarly, in the ‘Admonition to the Reader’ that prefaced his ‘adroitly Lutheran-oriented’28 Goodly prymer (STC 15988) of 1535, a revised edition of the 1534 primer, William Marshall attacked the more superstitious devotions of the books of hours as ‘popish, painted, and pestilent prayers’.29 Indignantly he described them as

23

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), p. 87.

24

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), pp. 131, 139.

25

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 334.

26

ODCC, s.v. ‘Primer or Prymer’.

27

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), p. 70.

28

MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer, p. 328.

29

Edward Burton, Three Primers Put Forth in the Reign of Henry VIII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1834), p. 7.

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Chapter 4 garnished with glorious titles, and with red letters, promising much grace, and many years, days, and lents of pardon, which they could never in deed perform. [. . .] As for example. What vanity is promised in the superscription or title before Obsecro te, Domina Sancta Maria? where it is written, that whosoever saith that prayer daily before the image of our Lady of Pity, shall see the visage of our most blessed Lady, and be warned both of the day, and also of the hour of his death, before he depart out of this world. I pray you, what fondness, or rather madness, is this?30

The Goodly primer contains a list five pages long of ‘false’ prayers, ‘citing more than a dozen, including the Salve Regina and the “Fifteen O’s”’,31 a very popular devotion that was often attributed to Saint Birgit. It is worth noting that none of the prayers in Anne Bulkeley’s book has any indulgences or promises attached, with the exception of the devotion of the One Thousand Aves, which claims that if certain prayers and actions are performed, ‘ye may nott fayle with-owte dout, but þat ye schall haue yowre bone for what maner thyng ye pray or desyre’ (fol. 90r). (The devotion is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.) The only mention of indulgences in MS Harley 494 is Whitford’s reference in Item 14 to his reader’s practice of reciting the ‘Ave verum corpus’ at the Elevation, ‘where-vnto, as it is seid, gret pardoun is graunted’ (fol. 42r). He is prepared to countenance the continuation of this practice, though personally he prefers the repetition of part of the (unindulgenced) ‘Te deum’, as recommended by Thomas Aquinas, and of which he offers a translation. (The remark about the ‘Ave verum corpus’ is peculiar to MS Harley 494 and is not found in the printed Due preparacion; it seems to have been prompted by the compiler’s personal knowledge of the book’s future owner and her devotional practices.) Whitford’s noncommittal attitude is surprising: in late medieval England, Syon Abbey was a big player in the business of pardons and indulgences. It is significant that the only English vernacular sermon on the subject is a text ‘dealing with the pardons offered at Syon abbey’, found in London, British Library, MS Harley 2321, fols 15r–60r, though we are warned that this ‘has more of the character of a publicity tract than a serious theoretical analysis’.32 But Whitford was a good friend of Erasmus, and Erasmus was formed by the Devotio Moderna, whose followers had a somewhat critical attitude towards indulgences, especially those involving a monetary transaction. A recent scholar has speculated as to whether the more

30

Burton, Three Primers, p. 2.

31

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), p. 106.

32

Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by R . N. Swanson (Leiden: Brill, 2006), p. 3.

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spiritually sophisticated would not also have had doubts about indulgences attached to prayers or devotional images: one might wonder if people in religious communities indeed considered the reading of all sorts of prayers to Jesus, Mary and other saints as a genuine deepening of religious life at the level of oratio and contemplatio, or treated them rather as simple ‘exercises’.33

Perhaps Whitford’s reticence here is a reflection of such doubts. Books of hours that catered to all theological tastes, then, were easily accessible at the time MS Harley 494 was compiled. Apart from the printed primers, manuscript primers too continued to be produced. (Indeed, it would be very strange if a devout gentlewoman like Anne Bulkeley did not possess at least one primer herself, and this raises interesting questions of overlap, duplication, and the purpose of her book.) Certainly books of hours (or other books of private devotion) have contributed at least ten items, or parts of items, to MS Harley 494: Item 1, ‘I do salute’. This is a translation of ‘Ave sanctissimum’, an elevation prayer which is found, for instance, in the Burnet Psalter (see further below) and in two Huntington Library manuscripts, HM 1249, a book of devotions (second half of the fifteenth century), and HM 1248, a psalter and prayers, made in Flanders in 1478, probably for export to England. Item 6. One of the prayers in the Dyurnall (already discussed in Chapter 3), ‘Gracias tibi ago, domine Jhesu Christe, qui me creasti’, occurs in numerous books of hours. Item 14(ii). The prayers to the saints, apostles, angels, Our Lady, the Trinity, and the individual Persons of the Trinity, for sinners and for those in purgatory, with the Latin refrain ‘Sancta trinitas vnus / deus miserere nobis’, seem connected with, or modelled on, the litany (as in the Burnet Psalter). The Latin prayer is found, for example, in the printed Sarum horae published by Verard in c. 1503 (STC 15901), fol. 88r. Item 19, translation of one of the two versions of ‘O intemerata’. This prayer is one of the best known of Marian prayers and almost invariably occurs in books of hours. Item 20, the Ten Virtues of Our Lady. An English analogue is written into a fifteenth-century book of hours, as an addition to the original text (see further in Chapter 5).

33

Charles M. A. Caspers, ‘Indulgences in the Low Countries c. 1300–c. 1520’, in Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits, ed. by Swanson, pp. 65–99 (p. 92).

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Item 21, the Seven Joys of the Virgin in heaven. The precise source of this item has not been discovered, but the text shows some parallels with a story attached to the name of Saint Thomas Becket that is found in some books of hours, for instance, Dunedin, Public Library, MS Reed 5, fol. 116r, or the printed Sarum horae of 1523, introducing the hymn ‘Gaude flore virginali’. It is also in the Burnet Psalter. Item 23, the devotion of the One Thousand Aves (in Latin and English). This is also found as a later addition to a fifteenth-century book of hours, now Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 6. 2, which belonged to the Roberts family of Willesden and was actively in use throughout the sixteenth century.34 The Latin prayer ‘Adonay domine deus’ is an ancient antiphon and found, for instance, in the Burnet Psalter and in South Brent, MS Syon 4, a book of hours.35 Item 26, Latin text of the other version of the ‘O intemerata’. Both versions are very common in books of hours. Item 30, ‘Visita, quesumus’, a traditional Compline prayer, common in books of hours. Item 31, ‘Angele qui meus’, a prayer to one’s Guardian Angel, which is often found in books of hours.36 Item 33, ‘All hayle, moste benigne Jesu’, translation of the Latin prayer ‘Ave benigne Jesu’ found in, for example, the York Hours.37 Further items enjoy a degree of kinship with, or are adaptations of, devotions from primers. An interesting, and somewhat complex, example is provided by Item 28, found on fols 105r–106v . It begins with a version of the Pardon Beads of Syon, here described as ‘þe bedis of pardon in Englyshe of Saynt Gregorrys pytye’. This popular late medieval devotion is found both in early printed books of hours, such as STC 15899, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1503 (sig. Pir), and in late medieval devotional and miscellany manuscripts. Usually it opens with the following verse:

34

Duffy, Marking the Hours, pp. 81–96.

35

Facsimile presented by James Hogg, in Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, vol. XII, Analecta Cartusiana, 35:12 (Salzburg: Edwin Mellen, 1991), p. 108. 36

See Margaret Connolly, ‘A Prayer to the Guardian Angel and Wynkyn de Worde’s 1506 Edition of Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God’, Manuscripta, 45/46 (2001/2002), 1–17. 37

Horae Eboracenses, ed. by C. Wordsworth, Surtees Society 132 (Durham and London: Andrews and Bernard Quaritch, 1920), p. 116.

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Jhesu for thy holy name & for thy bytter passyon Save vs from ssynne & shame & from endles damnacyon & bryng vs to thy blysse whiche neuer shal mysse Swete Jhesu. Amen.38

The original point, as carefully explained in the manuscript from which this version is transcribed, was that this verse contains thirty-three words, representing the thirty-three years of Christ’s life on earth. In MS Harley 494, however, this point is lost as the prayer consists of only twenty-eight words altogether. This prayer is repeated five times, alternating with five other prayers. (Syon Abbey sold pilgrims ‘pardon beads, two white, two black and one red, to aid the recitation’ of this prayer.39) The last two include references to purgatory, hell, and heaven and therefore introduce the theme of death. At the end there is an instruction to repeat at each verse a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria, and a Creed. The second part of this item, a devotion woven around three repetitions of the Ave Maria, has already been noted in Chapter 3 and is discussed further in Chapter 5. However, here we should particularly note the extension of the Angelic Salutation in Latin to Saint Anne, the Virgin’s mother, by adding the words, ‘Et benedicta sit sanctissima mater tua Anna, ex qua sine macula tua processit caro virginea. Amen’ (fol. 105v). This particular form of the Ave occurs in several early sixteenth-century printed Sarum books of hours,40 in the following form: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum: tua gratia sit mecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedicta sit [sancta] anna mater tua, ex qua sine macula et peccato processisti Virgo Maria: ex te autem natus est Jesus Christus filius Dei uiui. Amen.

The 1538 Sarum horae published in Rouen (STC 16002a) attaches an indulgence to this prayer that it attributes to Pope Alexander VI:

38

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 18, fol. 21v; there are twenty-one known copies of this popular verse prayer: see John C. Hirsh, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Commentary on “Ihesu for thy holy name”’, Notes and Queries, n.s., 215 (1970), 44–45, and A New Index of Middle English Verse, ed. by Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (London: British Library, 2005), no. 1703. 39

Bainbridge, ‘Bridgettines and Major Trends in Religious Devotion’, citing John D. Miller, Beads and Prayers: The Rosary in History and Devotion (London: Burns & Oates, 2002), pp. 102–03. 40

For instance Gough Missal 176 and the 1538 Sarum horae published in Rouen; see p. 100, note 55.

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Chapter 4 Alexander the vi pope of Rome hathe graunted to all them that saye this prayer de/uoutly in the worshyp of Saynte Anne and of our Lady and her sone Jesus ten thousande yere of pardon for deedly synnes and twenty yere for venyall synnes, totiens quotiens. (fol. 86r–v)

This attribution is probably spurious. Alexander VI (1431–1503, described by the ODCC as a ‘man of immoral life [. . .] an astute politician and generous patron of artists’ (s.v. ‘Alexander VI’)) was elected Pope in 1492 so the dates are plausible, but the outrageously lavish scale of the indulgence makes it suspect. Whatever its origins, Duffy highlights the theologically dubious nature of the wording of this indulgence, which implies that it ‘could actually remit sins. This confusion is rare in the printed horae, but fairly frequent in prayers circulating in manuscript’.41 Indeed, this indulgence is an excellent example of the sort of thing to which the reformers objected in books of hours. In the early sixteenth century, books of hours were vast repositories of private devotions, many hallowed by tradition and with excellent pedigrees. In addition, individual copies, both printed and manuscript, often gave shelter to prayers added by one of a succession of owners. Some of these might be of a type actively discouraged by ecclesiastical authorities, such as the devotion of the One Thousand Aves and the quasi-magical charms that Anne Bulkeley’s book largely eschews. As Eamon Duffy has said, we do not really know how these devotions passed from book to book. But it seems undeniable that various books of hours somehow made their contribution to the rich mix that is MS Harley 494.

The Burnet Psalter Two manuscripts in particular, one a book of hours and one a preces privatae volume, show a degree of overlap of content with MS Harley 494 which deserves closer examination: the Burnet Psalter and London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600. The Burnet Psalter, now Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25,42 is named after its eighteenth-century donor, Bishop Burnet. It is a lavish volume, dated by M. R. James in his catalogue of the Aberdeen manuscripts as early fifteenth century (it contains a table of eclipses for the years 1406–62 on fol. 9r). Its name is not as one might think a misnomer, as it combines a book of hours with a ‘non-liturgical’ psalter, that is, a psalter designed for lay use that simply contains the text of the psalms without organizing them according to the days of the week. It was ‘possibly made in the 41

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 290.

42

Available on-line at .

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Netherlands, and certainly for English aristocratic ownership’.43 The man for whom it was made, who is represented on fol. 84r, was certainly a layman and possibly a lawyer. The manuscript contains on fol. 13r the representation of a heraldic shield, described by M. R. James as ‘barry nebuly of four or and az: on a chief az three stars (of four main points and eight subsidiary rays) or’, that has so far eluded identification. The patron also had a particular devotion to Saint Birgit: prayers attributed or addressed to her are found on fols 29v –32v (Plate 3); a prayer designed for female use on fol. 32r–v addresses her as ‘mater benedicta’; and in an illumination on fol. 28v she is represented wearing a blue fur-lined cloak and dictating to a scribe. Other Birgittine features are the iconography of the illumination on fol. 74r that shows Christ being nailed to the cross, which derives from Birgit’s revelations, and the primacy given to Saint Anne, who heads the list of ‘sancte virgines’ on fol. 244r. Several of the texts that the Burnet Psalter contains are also found in MS Harley 494. We have already noted Item 1, ‘I do salute’: the Latin version of this elevation prayer, ‘Ave sanctissimum’, is found in the Burnet Psalter on fols 77v–78v; Item 14: the additional prayers at the end of this version of Due preparacion are possibly connected with the litany; Item 21, Seven Joys of the Virgin in heaven: the story about Saint Thomas Becket from which these may derive occurs on fols 112v –113r. And Item 23, ‘Adonay domine deus’, the Latin prayer that is part of the Devotion of the One Thousand Aves, is found in the Burnet Psalter (as in some other books of hours) on fol. 152v, in substantially the same form though described as a prayer against sudden death rather than a way of getting any boon one might request. Further similarities include Items 19 and 26: MS Harley 494 contains both versions of the popular Marian prayer ‘O intemerata’, one in Latin and the other in English translation, while the Burnet Psalter also contains both versions, although both are in Latin. In the Burnet Psalter the shorter, and older, version immediately follows the longer version, on fols 87v–89v and fols 89v–90v. This longer version, which Wilmart dated to the early fourteenth century,44 is found, in its Latin form, in MS Harley 494, on fols 98 v–100v. So Harley had an English translation of the shorter version more commonly found in books of hours and the Latin text of the longer, less common, version. This is, incidentally, further evidence that MS Harley 494 was designed to supplement, rather than replace, a manuscript or printed horae — as indeed one would expect of any preces privatae volume. But perhaps the most

43 44

Rees Jones and Riddy, ‘Bolton Hours of York’, p. 219.

André Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin: études d’histoire littéraires (1932; repr. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1971), pp. 493–94.

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interesting shared text is Item 22, a chapter taken from Saint Birgit‘s revelations in which the Virgin prescribes certain prayers to the visionary. The same prayers, described as ‘Oracio revelata beat[e] Birgitte’ but without the narrative framework of the revelation, occur on fol. 29v of the Burnet Psalter (and also in Lambeth Palace MS 3600, as already noted in Chapter 2). One would not wish to suggest that the compiler, or compilers, of MS Harley 494 were familiar with the Burnet Psalter itself. But there do seem to be some shared preoccupations that suggest derivation from a common source or milieu. Unfortunately there is still much work to be done on the Burnet Psalter. For instance, as yet we have no definite information about its patron and/or owner. It is possible that the Psalter belonged to a northern aristocrat, as even before the foundation of Syon devotion to Saint Birgit was strong in the north of England. The presences of Saint John of Beverly and Saint William of York in the litany also suggest a northern provenance. But the Bulkeleys and the Poyntzes had no northern connections — at any rate, no further north than Cheshire — nor did Richard Whitford, so at present the correspondences with the Burnet Psalter remain unexplained.

London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600: A Birgittine Prayer Book Lambeth Palace MS 3600, characterized unhesitatingly by James Hogg as ‘a Brigittine nun’s Prayer Book’,45 belonged to the Bristol Baptist College for many years, and while there was briefly described by N. R. Ker, who listed some of the contents but did not attempt detailed identifications of the various texts.46 In 1991 the manuscript was sold at Sotheby’s to the Lambeth Palace Library for £10,497. Christopher de Hamel wrote a detailed physical description for the sale catalogue47 but, again, not a great deal of attention was paid to the contents. In fact, Lambeth Palace MS 3600 is not only an excellent example of a preces privatae volume, but also clearly related to Anne Bulkeley’s book.

45

James Hogg, ‘An Early Sixteenth Century Book of Devotions from Syon Abbey’, in Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, 2 vols, Analecta Cartusiana, 35:19 (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1993), II, 243–53 (p. 243). 46

N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. II: Abbotsford-Keele (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 198–200. 47

Reprinted in Hogg, ‘Early Sixteenth Century Book of Devotions’, pp. 245–48. The manuscript’s post-medieval history is described by de Hamel, Syon Abbey, pp. 100, 104, 118, 127, and 135, with a photograph on p. 105.

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The manuscript has a very handsome appearance. In its sixteenth-century Flemish panel-stamped leather binding it measures 154 x 107 mm. It consists of 149 leaves in all: 136 parchment leaves, plus two contemporary paper quires at beginning and end consisting of thirteen leaves. The bulk of the manuscript is carefully written in dark brown ink in a single ‘[l]arge broken textura, with serifs and hair-lines depending from them’,48 described by de Hamel as ‘a magnificent calligraphic liturgical hand’.49 Some of the text is written in red ink, and there are numerous capitals in red and blue. The same hand, very probably that of a Birgittine nun, appears in two other Syon manuscripts. It contributed the additions on pp. 222–31 in the Birgittine Processional (formerly Bristol, Baptist College, MS Z. d. 40) that was sold to Cambridge University Library at the same Sotheby’s sale and is now Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 8885. It also wrote the final page (fol. 116r) of Edinburgh, University Library, MS 59, a Syon psalter, most of which dates to the early fifteenth century. A well-preserved set of projecting index tabs provides further evidence that the manuscript was Birgittine: de Hamel regards these as typical of Syon manuscripts. And it must have been written for a woman as the Latin prayers have almost all, where necessary, been linguistically adapted for a female user. Moreover, this woman could read Latin fluently (it is the dominant language of the manuscript) and must have had a good understanding of what she was reading, as the texts have been carefully corrected, even when this spoils the look of an otherwise elegant page. A fuller list of the contents of Lambeth Palace MS 3600 than those provided by Ker or de Hamel has been attempted at the end of this chapter. This demonstrates that the manuscript contains texts, both liturgical and extra-liturgical, that are distinctively Birgittine. The initial item, written in the first paper quire, consists of several Latin prayers addressed to the Virgin with book and chapter references in the margin (‘li 4 ca 18’ and ‘li 4 ca xix’). The title and author of the relevant text, however, are not given — presumably because they were considered so obvious: the extracts come from the Latin text of Saint Birgit’s Revelationes. At the end of the manuscript in the final paper quire, the same hand (which is not the main hand of the manuscript) has written on fols 144v –145r four more passages from the Revelationes, all prayers revealed to the visionary by Christ or the Virgin. Again, book and chapter references are given in the margin, though they are now

48 49

Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, p. 199.

Hogg, ‘Early Sixteenth Century Book of Devotions’, p. 245, quoting Sotheby’s Sale Catalogue, p. 98.

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partially obscured. (The passages are from Rev. IV.125:75–76 (a prayer before sleep), I.6:1, VI.9:12, and VI.10:10–11.) Secondly, on fols 44r–49r appears the series of antiphons known as the Laudes de Beata Maria, sung every day by the Birgittine nuns after Compline — a distinctive feature of their rite. (A projecting tab, for easy access, marks fol. 44.) The antiphons varied according to the day of the week and are here given in order from Sunday to Saturday.50 Between the Latin antiphons, addressed to the Virgin, are prayers in English, addressed to Christ. Naturally the question arises, why would a Birgittine nun want copies of these antiphons in her volume of preces privatae, as they must have appeared in her breviary? In the Henry Bradshaw Society edition of the breviary in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS F. 4. 11 they are indeed found all together (on fols 82v–84r). Its editor comments, however, that in the printed breviaries the individual antiphons are placed at the end of the office for each day, and it is in those positions that they are translated in The Myroure of oure Ladye. So a Birgittine nun would not find superfluous a manuscript that drew them all together into one place, especially if they were then interspersed with English prayers and she wished to pray them as a grouped devotion. Anne Bulkeley’s book is similar in size to Lambeth Palace MS 3600, and this is an important feature of both manuscripts. For books of devotion are more than collections of texts: they are also objects charged with spiritual power. Saenger writes specifically of late medieval books of hours that they are ‘considered to represent a specific variety of relatively small and portable books pertaining to private piety. Indeed, the portable format of books of hours is one of their most remarkable traits’.51 Such books could be taken into church, which enabled the practice of more elaborate vocal prayers, often in the vernacular, during the liturgy, and he argues that this ‘dramatically affected the relationship between the celebrants and the laity in the performance of the public ceremonies of the Church, particularly the Mass’.52 Such prayers were likely to be silent, and this created a new intimacy between the devotee and the book. At the end of the Middle Ages, the ideal of the small book of prayers, always close at hand and inseparable from the reader, replaced that of larger prayer books used in the past.53

50

Cf. Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, ed. by Collins, pp. 113–16.

51

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 141.

52

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 153.

53

Saenger, ‘Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages’, p. 155.

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But in other respects the magnificent Lambeth Palace MS 3600 presents a very different appearance from MS Harley 494, which is unpretentious in comparison. The two manuscripts are, however, similar in date — Lambeth Palace MS 3600 dates to the early sixteenth century, though we cannot date it more precisely — and the Lambeth manuscript is clearly related in some way to MS Harley 494: Anne Bulkeley’s book contains several texts that are English versions of Latin devotions in Lambeth Palace MS 3600, one or two English texts that are also found in English in Lambeth, and a number of Latin texts also found in Lambeth. While Lambeth Palace MS 3600 is predominantly Latin in content, with less than a quarter of the manuscript written in Middle English, the converse is the case with MS Harley 494. But the exact nature of the overlap between the two manuscripts is not simple. Much of the evidence, but not all, suggests that MS Harley 494 relied on Lambeth. For instance, the first item proper in Lambeth (i.e. after its opening paper quire) begins on fol. 9r, ‘In the nyght or in the mornyng’, and is written in red with a blue capital (Plate 4): In the nyght or in the mornyng, when thow rysest, commend the bothe sowle and body unto me, thankyng me for thy kepyng, for thy rest, and for all other benefyttes that thow hast receyued of me, hauyng in mynd how for thy loue I betoke my selff in-to þe handys of wycked men to be bownd and was mad buxsum and obe/dient to my father, vnto the deth.54

This same text appears in MS Harley 494 as the beginning of Item 10, ‘In the nyght or in the mournyng’. In both manuscripts it is fairly clear that Christ is speaking, presumably to a visionary, and indeed in MS Harley 494 this passage is sourced to ‘Seynt Mawde’ (see Chapter 3). But MS Harley 494 cannot have obtained this information from Lambeth Palace MS 3600, which for some reason never attributes any of its texts to a particular source, so it may well not have taken its text directly from Lambeth Palace MS 3600 either, in spite of the similarities. Having come this far together, the manuscripts diverge. MS Harley 494 continues with the Latin prayers for the custody of the senses derived from LSG, Pars 3 cap. 17, with English introductions (see above, Chapter 3, and Appendix, Item 10). In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, however, the English passage on fol. 9r–v introduces a long series of Latin prayers written in black ink, with two in English on fols 20 r–24v , to be said in the morning. They have been assiduously adapted where

54

In quotations from Lambeth Palace MS 3600 modern punctuation, word-division, and capitalization have been provided.

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appropriate for a woman (‘indignam peccatricem’, ‘me indignam famulam tuam’, ‘me ingratissimam atque miserrimam peccatricem’, and so on). The first of these prayers is a prayer of thanksgiving on awakening. Its opening sentence, in the form ‘Gracias ago tibi, omnipotens Deus, pro proteccione diuina, pro custodia angelica, et pro quiete indulta’, also occurs in MS Harley 494 (as Item 29), not attached to ‘In the night or in the morning’ but in a quite different place near the end, and crudely written in one of the subsidiary hands (a particularly inexpert one). A further three Latin prayers on fols 19r–20r of Lambeth Palace MS 3600 — ‘Domine Iesu Christe qui me creasti, redemisti et preordinasti’, ‘Domine Iesu Christe qui solus es sapiencia’, and ‘Domine Iesu Christe, ego cognosco me grauiter peccasse’ — also appear in MS Harley 494, but on fols 9v , 10v , and 10r respectively, as part of its version of the Dyurnall. Two of these prayers seem to have particularly close Birgittine connections: the first, when found in various sixteenth-century horae, is sometimes attributed to King Henry VI, a generous benefactor of Syon, while the third is found at the end of the Birgittine Thomas Betson’s Ryght profitable treatyse, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500. (Betson there claims that the prayer was taught Saint Birgit by Our Lord, together with another, ‘Domine Iesu Christe redemisti nos in sanguine tuo’, which incidentally follows immediately in Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fol. 20r , but does not appear at all in MS Harley 494. The Birgittine breviary in Magdalene College MS F. 4. 11 also describes ‘Domine Iesu Christe ego cognosco me’ as a ‘prayer of saynt birgit’.55) Still part of the same series in Lambeth Palace MS 3600, on fol. 28r–v is a Latin prayer addressed to one’s Guardian Angel, ‘Angele qui meus es custos’. The beginning of this prayer appears almost at the end of MS Harley 494, on fol. 109v (part of Item 32), though not adapted to a woman (it keeps tibi commissum, not commissam as in Lambeth). It is often found in books of hours and possibly derives from a much longer verse prayer by Reginald of Canterbury (fl. c. 1100–c. 1109).56 Another example of the problematic relationship between Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and Anne Bulkeley’s book is the set of seven prayers for love and mystical union found on fols 41r–42v of Lambeth Palace MS 3600, beginning ‘Domine Iesu Christe, fac quod amem te ardenter’. It is curious that fols 102v–105v contain a second, very similar set of Latin prayers, in a more florid and verbose style. (Both versions are transcribed in the Appendix, as analogues of Item 8, prayers for the days of the week.) 55 56

Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, ed. by Collins, p. 150.

Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, ed. by Clemens Blume amd Guido M. Drèves, 55 vols (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1886–1922; repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1961), L : 379–83.

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Examination shows that both sets of Latin prayers contain a series of invocations based on the patterns ‘O . . . Iesu’ or ‘Domine Jesu Christe’; the English version extends these with its string of eight similar invocations. This repetition of the Name of Jesus is reminiscent of such late medieval texts as the frequently set motet ‘O bone Jesu, O piissime Jesu, O dulcissime Jesu’, which is a trope on the last lines of ‘Ave verum corpus’, or of the prayer, ‘O bone Jesu, O dulcis Jesu, O Jesu, fili Marie virginis’, traditionally ascribed to Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) and often found in books of hours. All these texts are of course associated with the late medieval devotion to the Holy Name, very much cultivated at Syon (see further in Chapter 5). The final English prayer, which is not found in either of the Latin versions, reinforces the relationship to that same devotion. Neither the Latin nor English versions of this striking devotion has been found elsewhere. The English text does not correspond exactly to either set of Latin devotions: in some places it is closer to one set than the other (generally it is closer to the less elaborate Version 1), while sometimes it appears to conflate the two. It is possible that both Latin sets of prayers are independent, free translations from a common source; it is even possible that the common source was the English text. It seems more likely, however, that the English and both Latin sets of prayers are all variations on a common source to which they had independent access. Again, this demonstrates the problematic nature of the relationship between Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and MS Harley 494. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fols 58v –60v, we find an English text beginning: ‘[A]lso after complyne Afore matyns and yn the mornyng. Take goode heede’. In MS Harley 494 this text (Item 11) appears on fols 30r–31r, as a continuation of ‘In the nyght or in the mournyng’, presented as still part of the ‘short meditacion and informacyon’ revealed to ‘Seynt Mawde’. On this occasion the Lambeth text is undoubtedly superior to MS Harley 494, which confusingly reads ‘after’ instead of ‘afore’ Matins and also omits some important phrases. Otherwise, the texts mainly read together until they diverge at the instruction, ‘Say then [. . .] in the worshyp of hys fyue woundes’. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600 these words introduce five pairs of alternating Latin and English prayers (the Latin prayers all beginning ‘Dulcissime Jesu’) on fols 60v–66v, while Harley simply prescribes ‘fyve Pater Noster & one Crede’ (fol. 31r). But both go on to conclude similarly, as follows in Lambeth Palace MS 3600: wyth this versecle Adoramus te Christe etc., and this collette: Domine Jesu Christe, fili dei viui, pone passionem etc. Behold then oure Lady as present and gloryfied in the syght of her sonne; make hyr mediatryce and meane for the `and´ all mankynde, with all the blessyd courte of heuyn, salutyng hyr wyth some deuowt prayer after thy deuocyon. (fol. 66r–v)

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In Lambeth Palace MS 3600 on fol. 73v we find a long prayer beginning ‘Laudo, benedico et glorifico’. This comes, once again, from LSG, Pars 3 cap. 17 which, as we have already seen, was used in MS Harley 494, fol. 26r, in its continuation of ‘In the nyght or in the mournyng’. Lambeth Palace MS 3600 renders the ‘Laudo, benedico et glorifico’ prayer, reduced to its final clause, ‘ut omnis cogitatio, locutio et operatio [. . .] secundum beneplacitum voluntatis tue benignissime hodie dirigantur’, as: Also in þe mornynge Offre thy hart to me, prayng that þou neuer do ne speke, think ne desyre that thing whiche myhtt displease me, commyttyng all thy gouernance to me, and say thus. Say this blessing att euery werke that thou shalt begynne: Pater sancte, in vnione amantissimi filij tui, commendo tibi spiritum meum.

In MS Harley 494 its version of this passage then introduces the prayers for the custody of the senses already mentioned and follows all this with a set of brief meditations on the Hours of the Passion. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, too, the five Latin prayers for custody of the senses follow at this point, on fols 73v–76r. Both Harley and Lambeth then conclude with versions of the prayer ‘Jesu bone, laudo te’. This comes from LSG, Pars 4 cap. 23, although the final sentence omits a reference to the Divine Heart that is characteristic of Mechtild. In fact, Lambeth Palace MS 3600 gives two versions of this prayer, neither exactly in the form found in LSG: ‘[I]esu bone laudo te / et quicquid minus est in me, rogo te vt cordis tui amorem patri offeras pro me’ (fol. 76r–v ) and ‘Iesu bone amo te et si quid minus est in me, rogo vt cordis tui amorem patri pro me offeras’ (fol. 77v ). On the latter occasion it immediately follows another prayer, ‘Pater sancte in vnione amoris amantissimi filij tui Iesu’, found in LSG, Pars 3 cap. 31. The Myroure of oure Ladye explains that this prayer was ‘a shorte lesson that our lorde iesu cryste taughte to saynt Maute’ and recommends its recitation at the beginning and end of each canonical Hour.57 In Lambeth Palace MS 3600 on fol. 106r , immediately after the second version of the set of prayers that in MS Harley 494 are distributed among the days of the week, is a series of prayers extracted from Saint Birgit, Revelationes. Again, they are not sourced by text and author, but another hand (the same hand that writes the extracts from the Revelationes in the opening and closing quires) has written in the margin a reference, ‘Bk I cap. 8’, which is correct. This is the same chapter that appears in English translation in MS Harley 494 (Item 22). Harley keeps the

57

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, p. 276.

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narrative part of the vision that introduces a series of five prayers, which in this context have the cachet of having been composed by the Virgin Mary. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, however, only the prayers themselves appear, in Latin and without introduction or explanation. As we have seen, these prayers also appear in the Burnet Psalter. Significantly, in the final prayer MS Harley 494 renders one clause, ‘honorably þou hast ordeynede her in a place a-boue all the ordres of aungelles’ (fol. 89v ), where ‘honorably’ translates honorifice. This adverb is present in the actual text of the Revelationes but omitted by both Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and the Burnet Psalter. This would suggest that the compiler of Anne Bulkeley’s book was not, here at least, reliant on Lambeth Palace MS 3600 (or the Burnet Psalter) but made the translation direct from a text of the Revelationes, or at least consulted the Latin original. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600, following these Birgittine prayers, occurs the Marian prayer ‘O intemerata’ in Latin. It has been adapted fairly consistently for a woman, who refers to herself, for instance, as ‘michi miserrime peccatrici’ (fol. 107r) and ‘ego miserrima peccatrix’ (fol. 109r–v ), though ‘redditurus’ rather than ‘redditura’ still appears on fol. 110v . Item 19 in MS Harley 494 is an English translation of this prayer. Lambeth’s text, however, includes an extra passage not normally found, requesting not just ‘health of body and soul’ but also forgiveness for all the suppliant’s sins; the presence of the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist at the hour of her death; and their protection at her judgement when she renders an account of her sins, so that she may enjoy eternal joy and glory with the righteous. The final text shared by Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and MS Harley 494 appears in Latin in the former and in English in the latter manuscript. It is the collect traditionally recited at Compline, ‘Visita, quesumus’, and in both manuscripts is placed, appropriately, very near the end: on fol. 134r–v of Lambeth, and in MS Harley 494 on fol. 107r (Item 30(ii)). There are, therefore, more than a dozen items that in one form or another are shared by these two manuscripts. Several are in Latin in Lambeth and in English in Harley; some are in Latin in both manuscripts, or in English in both manuscripts, and some are bilingual, using both English and Latin. (There is also some intra-manuscript bilingualism in Lambeth: the five English prayers on fols 61v –66r that alternate with Latin prayers are themselves given in Latin at the end of the same manuscript, on fols 139v –141v .) Such play of linguistic variety raises interesting questions, as Mary Erler hints in her general comment on preces privatae volumes. She notes the frequent ‘conjunction’ of Latin and English prayers and asks, ‘How, for instance, were these two languages employed in private prayer by owners who would conventionally be

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considered unlikely to be fully Latinate?’58 In particular, a consideration of the implications should further problematize any simplistic concept of ‘the female audience’ as monolithic or homogeneous. We have to make finer and more nuanced distinctions, especially in the very late Middle Ages. In particular we must distinguish at least between the two types of women represented by the respective owners of Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and of MS Harley 494. The former, the woman for whom (and maybe by whom) Lambeth Palace MS 3600 was made, was clearly a thoroughly Latinate nun living in a community which set a high value on learning, but who still liked to say some of her prayers in English. Anne Bulkeley was less highly educated (although not wholly without skills in Latin, presumably) but fully literate in the vernacular and in the spiritual life. She was probably born too early to benefit educationally from her family’s links with Catherine of Aragon (see Chapter 1). (The Queen had herself received an excellent humanist education in Spain and retained the Spanish humanist Vives to tutor her daughter, the Princess Mary.) But Anne’s daughter, another Anne, may have been more fortunate than her mother. Finally, MS Harley 494’s close relationship with Lambeth Palace MS 3600 is only one aspect of the pronounced Birgittine influence on Anne Bulkeley’s book. We have already discussed the most likely explanation for this: the court connections of Anne’s natal family, especially with the household of Queen Catherine of Aragon. If Anne Bulkeley was indeed under the personal direction of Richard Whitford, or if her care had been delegated to another Birgittine monk, either could have drawn on an extensive bank or ‘database’ of devotional texts available to the Syon community, made up of printed books, manuscript codices, and, perhaps, unbound quires — the same bank on which Lambeth Palace MS 3600, too, had drawn.

58

Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, pp. 509–10.

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London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600: Summary List of Contents fols 3r–5v: Opening items, in three different hands fols 3r–4r Latin extracts from the Revelationes of Saint Birgit, IV.18, 19 fol. 4v Verse of hymn, ‘[M]iserere miserator’ r–v fol. 5 Prose prayer in English, ‘A devowt prayer to the passyon of oure lorde Jesu. And fyrst beholdyng the fote’ fols 6r–8v: Blank fols 9r–144v: Written in main hand fol. 9r–v English prose, ‘In the nyght or in the mornyng’ (in red with a blue capital), introducing a series of short Latin prayers on fols 9v –20r: fols 9v –10r ‘Gracias ago tibi omnipotens deus pro proteccione diuina’ fol. 10r–v ‘In nomine domini Jesu christi crucifixi surgo’ fols 10v –11r ‘Gracias ago tibi omnipotens deus qui me indignam peccatricem’ fol. 11r ‘Deus omnipotens da michi veram penitentiam’ fol. 11r–v ‘Domine iesu christe fac rectum gressum pedibus meis’ fol. 11v ‘Domine iesu christe da michi spem’ r fol. 12 ‘Domine deus omnipotens principium vere fidei’ fol. 12r–v ‘Domine iesu christe qui propter nimiam caritatem’ fols 12v –13r ‘Domine iesu christe sis anime mee in vmbraculum’ fol. 13r ‘Domine iesu christe da intellectui meo spirituale lumen’ fol. 13r–v ‘Domine iesu christe stabili signum tuum in me’ fols 13v–14r ‘Domine iesu christe confige dileccione tua cor meum’ fols 14r–15v ‘Auxiliatrix sis michi trinitas’ fols 15v –16r ‘Pater omnipotens eterne deus da michi victoriam’ fol. 16r ‘Spiritus sancte deus da michi gratiam’ r–v fol. 16 ‘Libera nos’ fols 16v –17r ‘Omnipotens sempiterne deus qui dedisti nobis famulis’ fol. 17r–v ‘Adoro et benedico te o trinitas sancta’ v r fols 17 –19 ‘Anima mea desiderauit te’ fol. 19r–v ‘Domine iesu christe qui me creasti, redemisti et preordinasti’ fol. 19v ‘Domine iesu christe qui solus es sapiencia’ v r fols 19 –20 ‘Domine iesu christe, ego cognosco me grauiter peccasse’ fol. 20r ‘Domine, redemisti nos in sanguine tuo’ fols 20r–23r ‘O blessyd trynyte father sonne and holy gost’ fols 23r–24v ‘O lord god almyghty all seyng all thyngys knowyng’ fols 24v –28r ‘Sancta maria regina celi et terre’ fol. 28r–v ‘Angele qui meus es custos’

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‘O vos omnes sancti et electi dei’ ‘Dominator domine deus omnipotens qui es trinitas’ ‘Concede michi misericors deus’ Seven prayers for love and mystical union, ‘Domine Jesu christe, fac quod amem te ardenter’ fols 42v –43r ‘O bone iesu sint coram te’ fol. 43r–v ‘O domina mea sancta maria’ v r fols 43 –44 ‘Lord Jhesu cryste thys day I beseche’ fols 44r–49r Laudes de Beata Maria, in Latin and English, ‘Alma redemptoris mater’ r v fols 49 –58 Latin prayers on rising, going into church, and preparing for worship fol. 49r–v ‘Ablue domine manus meas et cor meum’ v r fols 49 –50 ‘Crux triumphalis’ fol. 50r–v ‘Deus qui tres magos orientales’ fols 50v –51v Catena from Psalms 24. 4–5, 142. 8–12, 118. 133, 16. 5, ‘Vias tuas domine demonstra michi’ fols 51v –52r ‘Aqua benedicta sit michi salus’ fol. 52r–v ‘Introibo [. . .] Aufer a nobis’ v fol. 52 ‘Deus qui per vnigeniti tui passionem’ fol. 53r–v ‘Flecto genua mea ad patrem’ fols 53v –54v ‘Ad te domine leuaui’ (Psalm 24. 1–2) fols 54v –55r ‘Discedite a me maligni’ fol. 55r–v ‘Salua nos Christe saluator’ fols 55v –56r ‘Crucem tuam adoramus’ fols 56r–57r ‘O dulcissime iesu christe cor meum tuis vulneribus saucia’ fol. 57r–v ‘Scribe queso misericordissime iesu vulnera tua’ (prayer from Gertrude of Helfta, Legatus, Bk 2 cap. 4.1) fols 57v –58v ‘Domine sancte pater omnipotens eterne deus’ fols 58v –66v English prose text on self-examination, ‘[A]lso after complyne Afore matyns and yn the mornyng. Take goode hede’. Includes on fols 60v –66r five pairs of alternating Latin and English prayers on the Five Wounds: fols 60v –61v ‘Ad dexteram pedem. Dulcissime iesu in hoc vulnere peto’ fol. 61v ‘Good lord I appeer here a fore the as a poore wrechyd begger’ fols 61v –62r ‘Dulcissime iesu christe in hoc vulnere queso ignoscas quicquid sensuum meorum’ r v fols 62 –63 ‘O gud lord I am here afore the as a servant’

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‘Dulcissime iesu christe in hoc vulnere queso ignoscas’ ‘Mercyfull iesu I knele here afore the as a gylty thefe’ ‘Dulcissime iesu christe in hoc vulnere queso ignoscas impaciencie’ r fol. 65 ‘Lo I am here afore the my lord god as on frende’ fol. 65v ‘O dulcissime iesu in hoc vulnere queso ignoscas quicquid voluntate mala’ fol. 66r–v ‘O my lord god I am here a fore the as a chyld’ fols 67r–70v Series of prayers to the Virgin: fol. 67r–v ‘Ave cuius concepcio’ v r fols 67 –68 ‘Deus qui nos concepcionis’ fols 68r–69r ‘Oro te beatissima virgo maria’ fols 69r–70r ‘Oro te o sanctissima virgo maria’ fol. 70r–v ‘Oro te o gloriosissima virgo maria’ fols 70v –72v Prayer to one’s Guardian Angel, ‘Obsecro te angelice spiritus’ fols 72v –73v Prayer for angelic protection, ‘Omnipotens et misericors deus’ fols 73v –76v Prayer for custody of the senses, ‘Laudo, benedico et glorifico’ (LSG, Pars 3 cap. 17) fols 76v–77r Three short prayers for protection from sins of thought, word, and deed, ‘Iesu fili dei omnium cognitor’, ‘Iesu fili dei qui coram iudice’, ‘Iesu fili dei qui ligatus fuisti’ fols 77r–78r Short prayers from LSG: ‘Deus propicius esto’, ‘Pater sancte in vnione’, ‘Iesu bone, amo te’ fol. 78r Prayer to the Virgin, ‘In omni temptacione, tribulacione, necessitate’ fols 78v–80r Pater Noster, Ave, Credo fol. 80r ‘Deus propicius esto’, ‘O agne dei mitissime’ fol. 80v ‘Sancte et indiuidue trinitati’ fols 80v –81v ‘O dulcissime domine iesu christe qui pro me ligari’ fols 81v –82v ‘O uita pauperum deus meus’ fols 82v –84r ‘O domine iesu christe qui admirabili’ fols 84r–85r ‘O domine iesu christe laua me a peccatis’ fols 85r–86r ‘Domine iesu christe infinite misericordie’ fol. 86 r–v ‘O amor qui semper ardes’ (Cf. Augustine, Confessiones 10.29) fol. 87r–v ‘O dulcedo et vita mea’ fol. 87v –88r ‘Domine iesu christe in vnione amore’ fol. 88r–v ‘Amor tui dulcis’ fols 88v –89r ‘O uirtus igniti amoris tui’ fols 89r–90r ‘O benignissime domine iesu christe deus meus’

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fol. 90r–v ‘Saucia domine iesu christe cor meum’ v v fols 90 –93 ‘Domine deus magne et metuende trinitas’ fols 93v –95v ‘O sancte sanctorum domine deus meus’ fols 95v –97v ‘O Jesu iocunditas merencium’ fols 97v –100v ‘O bone iesu o dulcis iesu’ fol. 101r–v ‘O Rex gloriose’ fols 101v–102r ‘Deus qui gloriosum nomen iesu’ fol. 102r–v ‘Sanctifica me’ fols 102v–105v Second set of seven prayers for love and mystical union, ‘O benignissime domine iesu christe’ r r fols 106 –124 Marian devotions: fols 106r–107r Prayers from Saint Birgit, Revelationes, I.8, ‘Benedictus sis tu deus’ r v fols 107 –111 ‘O intemerata’ fols 111v–117r ‘Obsecro te’ fol. 117r Prayer on the Joys of the Virgin: ‘O domina mea dulcis virgo maria’ fols 117v–120r Prayers on the Five Sorrows, ‘O preexcellentissima maria virgo’, ‘O beata maria virgo beatissima’, ‘O sanctissima maria virgo serenissima’, ‘O virgo mundissima’, and ‘O dulcissima maria virgo dilectissima’ fols 120r–121r ‘Saluto te o sancta maria’ fols 121r–122v ‘O benignissima mater iesu’ fols 122v–123v Hymn for Feast of the Visitation, ‘Ueni mater gracie fons misericordie’ r fol. 124 ‘Deus qui mediante beata virgine’ fols 124r–139v Evening prayers: fols 124r–125r Form of confession: ‘Confiteor tibi’ fols 125r–126r ‘O Jesu dulcissime iesu pater dilectissime’ fols 126r–129r Prayer on getting into bed: ‘Gracias ago tibi omnipotens et misericors deus’ r–v fol. 129 ‘Pax domini nostri iesu christi’ fol. 129v–130r ‘Commendo me hac nocte’ fols 130r–v ‘Domine iesu christe apud me si vt me defendas’ v r fols 130 –131 Compline hymn: ‘Te lucis ante terminum’ fols 131r–132r Hymn, ‘Cultor dei memento’ fols 132r–133r Hymn, ‘Christe, qui lux es et dies’ fol. 133r–v Compline prayer, ‘Illumina quesumus’

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fols 133v –134r ‘Deus qui illuminas’ fol. 134r ‘Veritas tua quesumus domine semper’ fol. 134r–v ‘Visita quesumus domine’ fol. 134v ‘Benedicat et custodiat nos’ fols 134v –135r ‘Dirupisti vincula’ fol. 135r–v ‘Saluto te o sancta virgo maria’ fols 135v –137r Devotion based on the Kyrie, ‘Pater de celis’ fols 137r–138v ‘Sancta trinitas vnus deus’ fols 138v–139r ‘Gracias ago tibi dulcissime domine iesu’ fol. 139r ‘Amarissime passioni’ r–v fol. 139 ‘Laudo benedico adoro te’ fols 139v –144v Miscellaneous prayers: fols 139v –141v Five-part prayer (Latin version of English prayers on fols 60v –66r), ‘O domine iesu christe hic sto ante te’ v r fols 141 –143 Hymn, ‘Veni sancte spiritus’, with response and collect, ‘Omnipotens et mitissime deus’ fol. 143r ‘Domine dulcissime `et´si digna non sum’ fols 143v –144r ‘Deus qui tribulatos corde sanas’ fol. 144r–v ‘And this prayer also. O vnda humanitatis Jesu christi’. v r fols 144 –149 : Closing items added by five other hands fols 144v –145r Latin extracts from the Revelationes of Saint Birgit fol. 146r Latin verse antiphons, ‘Pro fidei meritis vocitatur iure beatus’ v v fols 146 –147 Series of nine antiphons, ‘Adesto deus vnus omnipotens pater’ fol. 147v Versicle, response, and prayer, ‘Exultate’ fols 148r–149r Series of ‘oblaciones cordis’ and ‘queremoniae’, ‘Ecce domine cor meum abstractum’

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he term ‘traditional religion’ has in recent years been adopted by many scholars to refer to what was once called pre-Reformation religion or medieval Catholicism. While the new phrase does avoid outdated sectarian bias, it can also obscure an important paradox: ‘traditional religion’ was not always traditional. Eamon Duffy, who has done more than anyone to disseminate the study of ‘traditional religion’, makes this clear in his discussion of the term. In the fifteenth century, he notes, Not every religious custom [. . .], however apparently well-established, was immemorial. [. . .] New feasts emerged as optional pious practices. [. . .] New saints were venerated. [. . .] New devotional fads were enthusiastically explored by a laity eager for religious variety, increasingly literate, and keenly if conventionally devout.1

Any study of MS Harley 494 has to take into account the subtly changing, and subtly changed, nature of early sixteenth-century religion, for while political policy, theological formulations, and religious institutions, as we saw in Chapter 2, could change direction virtually overnight, devotional praxis changed more gradually, and not necessarily in step with other changes. One could hypothesize that private devotion is, of all aspects of institutional religion, the most resistant to change: how many Anglicans today, for instance, still use the words of the Book of Common Prayer in their private prayers? How many Roman Catholics still practise devotions that they first learnt in their distant, pre–Vatican II youth? For it is not necessary for private devotional praxis to be closely bound up with theology. In the later medieval Church there was little if any theological or doctrinal change (as 1

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 3.

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opposed to clarification and codification of existing doctrine), but devotional life was very different from that led in the thirteenth, even the fourteenth, centuries. In this chapter we will explore some of these shifts in emphasis as they manifest themselves in Anne Bulkeley’s book.

The Sacralization of Time and Daily Life We can be confident that MS Harley 494 would not have taken the form that it did if it were not for the impulse, manifest in the late Middle Ages and, indeed, still current in the early modern period, towards the sacralization of everyday life. Professional religious (monks and nuns) had long lived a way of life that took it for granted that, at least in theory, every minute out of the twenty-four hours was, literally, God-given and therefore sacred and subject to strict accountability. It must therefore be allocated either to prayer, reading, and meditation, or to manual labour, or to sleep and the body’s other needs. By the early sixteenth century the laity right across the social spectrum, not just the aristocracy, had adopted this attitude as an ideal. Many by now had acquired the previously clerical skill of reading, a requirement for monastic praxis; as Vincent Gillespie has pointed out, ‘The monastic view of the ladder of contemplation clearly posits a level of individual literacy on the part of the monk’.2 Hence the popularity, and the proliferation, of books of hours, which allowed lay people to imitate the monastic life in a manageable way: ‘an important dimension of late medieval lay piety in general and the Book of Hours in particular [was] the quest for some approximation in secular life to the life of prayer and asceticism lived (ideally) by monks and nuns’.3 That there might be specifically lay forms of piety that were more than pale shadows of the practices of the professionally religious seems to have been beyond anyone’s conception. MS Harley 494 reflects this tendency, though not as consistently or as obviously as the books of hours. The text that is most overtly driven by this impulse is Item 6, ‘The gret cause, as I do thynke’, which we have already considered from one point of view in Chapter 3. In the current context we should perhaps note the title of the printed version: A Dyurnall:for deuoute soules to ordre them selfe therafter. The earliest sense given by OED for ‘diurnal’, n., is ‘A service-book containing the day hours, except matins (this being a night office); †hence, a book for devotional 2

Vincent Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’, in Spätmittelalterliche Geistliche Literatur in der Nationalsprache, Analecta Cartusiana, 106 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1984), II, 1–27 (p. 4). 3

Duffy, Marking the Hours, p. 54.

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exercises; a book of devotion (obs.)’.4 Clearly, it is the latter meaning that is relevant to the title of the early print, though there might also be a play on the sense of the adjective, for the book provides not simply the layperson’s ‘day hours’, but also his or her ‘daily’ prayers, and the writer of the treatise seems particularly conscious of the ‘daily’ nature of his project, and his advice for the daily round. He begins by lamenting the general failure to make progress ‘in the wey of perfeccion’, that ‘we do not [. . .] folowe by perseueraunt exercyse in our dayly conversacion þe good instruccion and counseilles þat be daily gyven vs of oure lord God’. His use of the word ‘daily’ twice in this sentence is surely deliberate. This advice comes to us, ‘note only by secret inspiracions’, by which he may mean private revelations of the type experienced by ‘Saint Maud’ and Saint Birgit of Sweden, or direct personal experience of the Holy Spirit, ‘but also [by] outward techynges & examples þat oft tymes we here redde & see’ (fol. 6r). In his analysis there are two solutions to this problem: the first ‘a good wyll, the whiche with the helpe of grace, daily desirynge by contynuall prayer to amende, schall at the last opteyn that it perseuerantly desirethe’ (fol. 6v ); the second a written account of devotional ‘best practice’, which he proposes to provide. In fact, his text prescribes a relatively unexacting daily devotional round. It seems to assume that the devout reader has no demanding secular duties — indeed she is invited to thank God ‘for suche leyser þat ye may so attende, without worldly let, your / soules helth’ (fol. 12r–v) — but neither does it impose any particularly onerous (as distinct from timeconsuming) religious obligations. The emphasis is very much on the ‘daily’, repetitive, fulfilling of largely vocal prayer, ‘thre exercyses’ to be used ‘at thre tymes of þe day, specyally, that is to say, in þe morenynge when ye ryse, at your meet, and when ye go to reste at nyght’ (fols 6v –7r). Though uninspiring, at least to the modern reader, this version of the Dyurnall is the ‘keynote address’ of Anne Bulkeley’s book. It is the first item of any substance, the first written in English (if we exclude the little prayer probably added later on the opening leaf), and the first written by Robert Taylor, the principal scribe. In addition, there is a homology between this text and MS Harley 494 as a whole. For at a high level Anne Bulkeley’s book is also constructed around the passage of time from morning to night, as marked in books of hours. A parallel phenomenon is the appearance, in a number of books of hours printed for the English market from 1529 to 1556 by François Regnault, of a similar text, The maner to 4

The use of the word in the title is cited by OED for this second obsolete sense, but is misdated as 1550; its appearance in Wyer’s print of 1532? (STC 6928) is actually the earliest recorded in English.

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lyue well deuoutly and salutaryly euery day for all persones of mean estate, which appears at the beginning of the book, following the calendar. Although only onethird the length of the Dyurnall, it too ‘offers a daily spiritual regimen for lay persons concerned both with the fulfilment of worldly obligations and with spiritual advancement’ and aims ‘to give spiritual meaning to the activities of daily life’.5 Morning is the starting-point for the ‘meditacion and informacyon [. . .] schewyd to Seynt Mawde’ (Item 10); these are spiritual exercises to be said on rising — ‘in the nyght or in the mournyng’. (The superficially puzzling alternatives may be to allow for the fact that some religious would rise in the middle of the night to say Matins. Actually, the Latin source, even though produced by Benedictine nuns, refers only to the morning.) The same text offers short meditations for use before each of the hours, the subjects of which parallel the Hours of the Cross, which were commonly found in books of hours. The next item (which we know to be distinct, although not presented as such in the manuscript) urges self-examination, repentance, and confession on awakening in the morning. So early in the manuscript there is a pair of texts that relates to the beginning of the day. (One would have expected Item 29, clearly a morning prayer, to be here too, but in fact it is placed, perhaps as an afterthought, towards the end of the book on fol. 106v.) The shaping force of the end of the day is less obvious, but the texts later in the manuscript that cluster around confession — the ‘shorte confessionall’ (Item 24), the ‘exclamacion of a penytent sinner’ (Item 25), and the scraps of penitential prayer (Items 30 and 31 on fol. 107r) — seem linked to the more comprehensive selfexamination appropriate to reflection in the evening. And the traditional Compline collect, ‘Vyset, we pray the’ (part of Item 30), and possibly the pairs of bilingual prayers for spiritual illumination (Item 32) are also associated with the evening. The first of these pairs, in particular the Latin version, prays for light in darkness, the darkness both of night, of sin, and of death. This section culminates in a short prayer for angelic protection, ‘Angele qui meus es’, and in another written in the spirit of the Compline hymn ‘Te lucis ante terminum’, appropriate before sleep: I pray the too watche wythe me and appoynte suche a keper before the mowthe of my bodye & sowle that nothynge enter ther-yn or procede & cume therfroo, throgh my weeke & necglygente attendance, þat may defyle or steyne the spirituall weddynge garment of my sowle. (fol. 110r)

MS Harley 494 therefore sanctifies the day with a variety of appropriate devotions. Less emphatically, it also sacralizes the weekly round. The introduction of a days5

Mary C. Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyue Well and the Coming of English in François Regnault’s Primers of the 1520s and 1530s’, The Library, 6th series, 6 (1984), 229–343 (pp. 229, 231).

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of-the-week structure into the prayers for love and union (Item 8) is telling in this regard, as is the assumption that the reader would receive the Blessed Sacrament once a week or fortnightly: Item 9 on preparation for Communion, is composed for ‘a person [. . .] that customably vseth to be commoned ones in the seuentnyht or onys in the fourtennyht’ (fol. 22r).

The Sacraments It was Peter Lombard (c. 1100–60) who first enumerated the ‘traditional’ seven sacraments that the Western Church came to regard as having been instituted by Christ: baptism, confirmation, communion, penance, unction, orders, and matrimony. This was formally affirmed at the Council of Florence in 1439.6 Of the seven, baptism, ordination, and confirmation could be received once and once only; extreme unction and matrimony could be received more than once, but in the nature of things this would be infrequent. Communion and penance, on the other hand, could be received far more often, on a weekly or even daily basis. It is not surprising, therefore, that MS Harley 494 pays a good deal of attention to Communion and the Mass, some to penance, and none at all to the other sacraments. MS Harley 494 has only two substantial texts concerned with penance: ‘a shorte confessionall’, followed by an ‘exclamacion of a penytent synner [. . .] knowlegynge hym-selff what he is’. Both texts, which occupy fols 91r–98v , are written out by Robert Taylor. This lack of emphasis on the penitential is in itself significant. Penance could bulk large in spiritual anthologies, and oceans of ink were expended throughout the Middle Ages in writing works of spiritual instruction in Latin and the European vernaculars that anatomized sin. But an excessive preoccupation with the minutiae of confession could all too easily lead to the problem of scrupulosity. The Birgittine William Bonde, as we mentioned in Chapter 3, published the Directory of Conscience in 1527 specifically for religious who suffered from this problem, and possibly the reticence of Anne Bulkeley’s book on the subject of confession reflects a similar desire to deflect potential problems. The manuscript describes the first text as a ‘shorte confessionall [. . .] aftir Bonauenture’. This does not imply that Bonaventura is a direct source but rather an inspiration or point of departure; indeed, the text does seem to draw on the Bonaventuran Regula novitiorum, cap. 3, ‘De confessione’. Also, it is specifically ‘for religious persons’, and in the final Latin invocation the penitent calls upon 6

ODCC, s.v. ‘Sacrament’.

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‘beatam Birgittam’ to pray for her, so presumably it was originally written for a Birgittine, and a Birgittine nun, given that she confesses to ‘rebellions of my flessh caused by sightes of men or other wanntones’ (fol. 93v). As we can be confident that neither of our Anne Bulkeleys was a Birgittine, we can conclude from this that not all contributors to MS Harley 494 adapted their own favourite prayers to the circumstances of the future reader, or owner, of the anthology. In addition, the text is described as a confession ‘of euery days synnes’. This may mean sins to be confessed daily, although the Birgittine Rule certainly did not envisage such frequent confession. It required confession to the confessor-general or one of his delegated twelve priests ‘at the leest thryes in the year’, which seems very modest, though it adds, ‘the consciens of alle are to be purged often in the here by confession’.7 The phrase might also mean ‘ordinary, run-of-the-mill sins’, that is, those that could be absolved by one’s regular confessor, as opposed to serious sins that were ‘reserved’ to religious superiors, penitentiaries, or bishops. In Middle English the confessional formula is a familiar genre. It is so widespread that Jolliffe gives it a class of its own in his Check-list.8 But examples are more varied than the casual observer might think. The Confiteor, or prayer of confession recited at the beginning of Mass and at Compline, was used to frame the opening and the close, but otherwise confessions were ‘free-form’. Self-examination, and self-denunciation, could be based on various analyses, of which the Seven Deadly Sins are the best known. The example in Anne Bulkeley’s book is divided into eight parts and slanted towards sins peculiar to a religious: before anything else the penitent confesses failures in carrying out her primary obligation, to recite the Divine Office. These failings range from the technical, such as accidentally repeating parts of it (‘iteracions’), to the more substantial, such as saying it ‘without hillarite or quycknes’ (fol. 91r–v). The second section covers various sorts of disobedience: against God’s commandments, against the ‘rewle or statutes’, and against religious superiors (including ‘my maistres’, an ambiguous term which in this context might mean ‘novice-mistress’ or ‘teacher’). Third comes ill-spent time; fourth, ‘vnkyndnes’ or ingratitude towards God and the heavenly court; and fifth, ‘necligence’ in carrying out spiritual obligations. Pride, which usually heads any list of sins, only comes in at sixth place, bracketed with anger and other sins of thought. 7

The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure and A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the which Men Mowe Clyme to Heven, ed. by James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 183 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2003), p. 73. 8

See P. S. Jolliffe, A Check-list of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), Class C. Forms of Confession, pp. 67–74.

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Seventh come sins of the mouth, and eighth sins of deed. The formula therefore quite cleverly manages both to include the Seven Deadly Sins, while reconciling them with another popular categorization of sin into those of thought, word, and deed, and to foreground the needs of ‘religious persons’. Another confessional formula written for, maybe by, a religious woman with Augustinian connections (she asks mercy from ‘Seint Augustyn’), found in Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional, 3042, fols 79r–80v ,9 is more comprehensive but also more general. The penitent begins by confessing ‘all thise that I have doun, in thogte, worde and dede’ (fol. 79r); moves on to the Seven Deadly Sins, the misspending of the five wits, failure to fulfil the seven works of mercy, and lack of reverence towards the seven sacraments; and then to specifically religious obligations, such as her failure ‘to kepe syght, sylence, ne myn enclynes so deuoutly [. . .] as I shulde’ (fol. 80r). She also admits to hypocrisy, ‘feynyng holinesse full often in speche and in countenaunce’, but really ‘beyng full of fals inward vnnumbered wykked thoghtes, wordes and dedes’ (fol. 80r). Another formula, from the Bolton Hours, which was possibly composed by a lay person and certainly for a lay audience, is even more complicated (though not profound), organizing sins according to the Seven Deadly Sins and violations of the ten commandments, the seven sacraments, virtues and works of mercy, and the articles of the faith.10 The confessional formula in MS Harley 494 is followed by a short piece on how to make one’s confession, citing ‘Seynt Barnarde & oþer deuout doctours’ (fol. 94r). It stresses the need to be brief (ironically a virtue not exemplified by the preceding text, which occupies fols 91v–94r). Prolixity will not only bore the confessor, it also inconveniences others waiting to make their own confessions. (This does not necessarily imply a monastic setting: in the late medieval parish Eamon Duffy imagines ‘queues of waiting fellow-parishioners looming close behind’ the tardy penitent.11) The tract also elucidates the distinction between mortal sins, all of which must be confessed ‘with diew circumstaunces and aggrauacions’ (fol. 94v ), and venial, which may be omitted. (But if the penitent is in doubt as to whether a sin is mortal or venial, he should err on the side of caution and confess it.) 9 See Alexandra Barratt, ‘Books for Nuns: Cambridge University Library MS Additional 3042’, Notes and Queries, n. s., 242 (1997), 310–19. 10

See Alexandra Barratt, ‘“Envoluped in Synne”: The Bolton Hours and its Confessional Formula’, in Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg, ed. by Richard Firth Green and Linne R . Mooney (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 3–14. 11

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 60 and n. 19.

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Examples of venial sins are listed at length, ‘after þe counseill of Bonauenture’, sins of omission as well as sins of commission ‘whiche can not be expressed’ (fol. 95r); the penitent is told that ‘it is sufficient to confesse them in generall in thende of our confession’ (fol. 95v ). There is an English analogue to this short piece in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A III, with the Latin title ‘Alia nota de confessione’. The two texts show all the signs of being entirely independent translations of a common Latin source, which is unidentified, though the Cotton text cites Jean Gerson, ‘Li. 32 Bonum est brevem facere confessionem’, and Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones in Cant. 16. The latter text does include a discourse on oral confession and the need to confess with humility, sincerity, and trust (SC 16: 8–12), but it does not seem to be in any detailed sense the source of the ‘nota’ in MS Cotton Nero A III. The manuscript is possibly Carthusian and may be associated with the Hinton Charterhouse in Somerset.12 This instruction in English might therefore have been provided for the lay brothers there. MS Harley 494 follows up this confessional formula with ‘An exclamacion of a penytent synner’. This is a typical example of late medieval unrestrained selfabasement, written in a copious, highly rhetorical, style. The sinner laments her instability or, as we would say today, her short attention span: ‘I can not haue my sowle fixed in þe by the space of fyve Aues sayng’ (fol. 96 v). Her heart ‘is as the see, flowyng and ebbyng in stormes and perilles’ (fol. 97r). The lamentation does follow a penitential structure, working its way through the Seven Deadly Sins and ending with sloth, ‘that euery thing þat I do, in a maner it is don with an nawsy [nausea] without deuocion’ (fol. 97r). It leads up to a dramatic and fervent climax (fol. 98r–v ) that alludes to the story in Acts 3. 2, where the apostles Peter and John heal a beggar who was lame from birth. And that is really all that MS Harley 494 contains on the subject of penance, apart from an extract on fol. 107r, on the first page of the last gathering that may be a later addition: this is an English translation of a verse from the Apocryphal Prayer of Manasses, beginning ‘My synnys, O lord, are in number a-boue the sandes of þe sea’. It is illuminating to contrast our manuscript with another spiritual compilation made for a woman, London, British Library, MS Harley 4012. This book is somewhat earlier than MS Harley 494 and contains prayers and religious treatises in Middle English only. It belonged to Dame Anne Wingfield, born Anne Harling c. 1426. Anne married three times but had no children. In her study of the manuscript, Anne M. Dutton argues that it was made for Anne Wingfield in the 1460s and that 12

Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. by Ker, does not list it.

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it was part of her construction of herself as a pious and therefore respectable woman. She points out that we do not know if Anne chose the contents or had them chosen for her (and the same of course is true of Anne Bulkeley’s book), but that the ‘most striking aspect of Anne’s programme of devotional reading [. . .] is the penitential nature of much of its contents’, ‘the interest in sin, penance, and purgatory’.13 This she tentatively attributes to Anne’s widowed status and consequent concern for her first husband’s state after death. An interest in sin and penance does seem to go with an interest in purgatory, for Anne Bulkeley’s book does not show much interest in purgatory either: it does include some prayers for the dead and for those in purgatory, but simply among other intecessory devotions.14 Was this simply a difference in temperament? Or is Anne Bulkeley’s book light on sin and repentance because whoever supervised its compilation thought, in the spirit of William Bonde, that she was already more concerned with those subjects than she should be? The sacrament of penance in itself, as distinct from the associated practice of indulgences, was not particularly controversial in England in the 1520s and 1530s. A few heretics had denied the need for oral confession to a priest (the belief that ‘private confession [. . .] cannot be justified’ had been attributed to John Wyclif by the Council of Constance in 1415),15 but the Ten Articles of 1536, after Henry’s break with Rome, still listed penance as one of three sacraments instituted by Christ. The situation was somewhat different with Communion. There was no dispute that this was a sacrament, but there was considerable discussion about the nature of the Mass. During the 1520s and 1530s, this was a divisive issue across Europe, with Luther, who believed in the Real Presence, slugging it out with Zwingli and Oecolampadius who were ‘sacramentarians’, that is, they denied the Real Presence and believed that the consecrated bread and wine were Christ’s body and blood in a metaphorical sense alone.16 How far did these theological controversies percolate down to the level of the literate laity? Thomas More wrote two treatises in English on the subject, A

13

Anne M. Dutton, ‘Piety, Politics and Persona: MS Harley 4012 and Anne Harling’, in Prestige, Authority and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. by Felicity Riddy (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 133–46 (pp. 137, 138). 14

In contrast, Duffy comments on the preoccupation with death found among the ‘small group of English prayers regularly included in the printed Horae’ (Stripping of the Altars, p. 266). 15

Dyan Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 9. 16

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490–1700 (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 248–53.

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Treatice vpon the Passion and A Treatice to Receaue the Blessed Body of Our Lorde.17 It is traditionally believed that these were written in the Tower in 1534. They were presumably aimed at a lay reading public insofar as More had an audience in mind (his direct address is to ‘good christen reders’ 18). The interests of most laypeople seem to have been more practical, centring on a desire to ‘hear’ Mass devoutly and intelligently and to prepare to receive Communion worthily. (Even the sacramentarians never suggested that the sacrament should be treated with less than the deepest respect.) Thomas More, like so many writers, particularly stresses the dangers of unworthy reception of Communion, but in his view, worthy reception presupposes orthodox belief about the nature of the sacrament. In 1532 there appeared a printed book on the Mass that we have already noted, the Interpretacyon by ‘Frere Gararde’, ‘frere mynoure of the ordre of the Obseruauntes’, which proved a great success, a veritable best-seller. (It was published by Robert Wyer, who had also coincidentally published the Dyurnall.) The book was a translation of Dat Boexken van der Missen by Gherit van der Goude, published in Antwerp in 1507. Given the date, one might expect the compilers of MS Harley 494 to have used it, but they seem not to have done so. Perhaps this is not so surprising. The book is a fund of misinformation: it claims, for instance, that the Mass is so called in ‘Laten | Hebreu | Greke | in Englysshe | Frenche | and in all other languages’ (sig. B1 r), and that Christians pray towards the east to differentiate themselves from ‘Jewes | Sarazyns | or Turkes | or other Infydelles’ (sig. B2r). Much of its teaching is rudimentary: the chapter on ‘how the man shall behaue hym selfe in the masse tyme’ includes the instruction that ‘those that wyll deuoutly here masse | they shall leue theyr hawkes & theyr dogges at the churche dore | or elles at home in theyr howses’ (sig. D2r). It does nothing to discourage superstitions such as the belief that seeing the Elevation of the host19 or receiving the priest’s blessing after Mass would protect from death. A low point is reached when it lists, among the duties of the server, that he should not try to read the prayers of the Mass but rather ‘kepe dogges from the auter’ (sig. H2v ). All this is far from the more rarified air breathed, presumably, by Anne Bulkeley. MS Harley 494 is notable for the amount of attention it pays to Communion. Its two longest treatises and one of the shorter ones deal with the topic: these include

17

Treatise on the Passion, ed. by Haupt.

18

Treatise on the Passion, ed. by Haupt, p. 194.

19

On the importance of seeing the consecrated host at the Elevation, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 95–102.

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two quite distinct discussions of preparation for Communion, giving the reader some genuine freedom. (This is a feature of the manuscript, for instance the provision of several different forms of intercession: Anne Bulkeley, in the later twentieth-century cliché, had choices.) But as the extracts from Richard Whitford’s Due preparacion (Item 14) and the ‘Meditacions for tyme of the Masse’ from William Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (Item 17) have already been discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, and the anonymous ‘Intierly belouyde in God’ (Item 9) in Chapter 2, attention will be paid here to other aspects of Eucharistic devotion in the book. Our earlier interrogation of the orthodoxy of the Due preparacion was probably superfluous, given its author’s track record. But Whitford, though a militant defender of ‘traditional religion’, was in many ways a forward-looking spiritual adviser who represented the ‘evangelical’, reformist, tendency among Catholics. He was not to know, in the early 1530s, that he would end up so thoroughly marginalized. The first concern of his treatise is the correct internal disposition of his readers. He is also alert to the circumstances and needs of the laity and practical in his approach: when he suggests that his reader should hear a complete mass in preparation for Communion, he adds, ‘if ye may conueniently’. What is really important is that the reader should cultivate a state of recollection: ‘in the tyme þer-of or befor gadre your-self vn-to yowr-selff, holy as ye may, from all maner of cares, bodely besynesse, and secular thoughtes’ (fol. 35v). The prospective communicant should then engage in meditation on the whole history of salvation, leading into more specific and extended meditation on Christ’s Passion. After this she should engage in vocal prayers, and Whitford provides a set of such prayers to be recited at different stages of the Mass. Of course the early sixteenthcentury worshipper did not participate directly in the service in the modern sense, but Whitford does not by any means encourage a complete ‘privatization’ of devotion (see the discussion of this issue by Eamon Duffy20). He says firmly: In the tyme of the gospell ye schulde not praye ne with eny beadys, bokes, or eny-thinge ellys to be occupiede, but reuerently stondynge and, nothere knelyng, sittynge, ne lenynge, ye schall well herken the same gospell and give good heede with diligence þer-vnto althoughe ye do not vnderstonde it, and euer at thes wordes, Jhesu and Maria, inclyne & mak obeisaunce. (fol. 41v)

As so often, such injunctions give a fair idea of the way that some people behaved in church at the time. ‘Frere Gararde’ paints a more lurid and exaggerated picture, attacking those who:

20

Duffy, Marking the Hours, pp. 54–64 and 97–100.

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But his advice about how to behave at the reading of the Gospel is similar to Whitford’s, though less spiritualized; if followed, it would result in the same outward behaviour, but the inner motivations would be different. Every man should ‘stande vpryght redy with his body to defende the holy catholyke fayth’, and he should kneel, bow, or incline his head at the Name of Jesus, ‘for so ofte as the person doth it | he doth meryte thre score dayes of pardon | gyuen by two popes’ (sig. D2 v). Whitford moves on to prayers to be said at the time of consecration, specifically mentioning the indulgenced ‘Ave verum corpus’21 (see further Chapter 4). These prayers give way to ones that prepare for the reception of Communion, prayers entitled ‘When the sacrament ys commyng toward yow or a litle befor’ (fol. 52r) and ‘After your Confiteor or in the presence & sight of þe sacrament’ (fol. 53r), and prayers of thanksgiving after Communion. Whitford ends with the hymn ‘O sacrum convivium’ in Latin and in English translation. At this point MS Harley 494 introduces a passage on the concept of spiritual communion that is not in the printed version of the Due preparacion. It is followed by a ‘prayer conuenient for þe same’ (that is to say, an act of spiritual communion) that does come from Whitford (fol. 56v). (In the printed version, though not in MS Harley 494, a marginal note describes this prayer as ‘Oratio doctoris Nydar’, referring to the fourteenth-century German Dominican Johannes Nidar.) Given the personal links between Anne Bulkeley’s natal family, the Poyntzes, and William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, it is quite possible that the intervening explanation of spiritual communion was written by Whitford himself, especially for Anne Bulkeley. It could, for instance, be an extract from a letter, for it has a personal tone, addressing the reader as ‘madam’ (fol. 55v) and ‘good madam’ (fol. 56r). After a series of unidentified prayers, not from the Due preparacion, that resemble the litany, we come to yet another (unattributed) extract from LSG, Pars 3 cap. 19: ‘as many masses as a man hereth, so many seyntes I shall send to comfort his soule ayenst his enemyes in his last end & bryng hym to blis’ (fol. 60v ). It seems incongruous here. So far, the emphasis has been on the spiritual profits of receiving Communion or making an act of spiritual communion; the Mechtild material seems like a throw-back to an earlier set of attitudes where there is a precise benefit 21

An Italian book of hours, for instance, promised ‘three years’ indulgence to those who recited it devoutly at the elevation’: see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 157.

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promised in return for certain actions, and here not the reception of Communion but merely attendance at Mass. A dilute version of this promise appears in the Interpretacyon: if anyone dies on the same day that he heard Mass, God will grant him a ‘synguler grace’: ‘god hym self or his aungelles at the last houre of his deth: shall helpe & conforte hym as the man hath serued god at the masse’ (sig. K1v ). Miri Rubin has argued that both spiritual communion and prayers recited at the time of the Elevation of the host functioned as substitutes for the reception of Communion itself.22 So it is appropriate to consider, finally, the very first item in MS Harley 494, an elevation prayer in English. Because, as Duffy says, ‘the more or less audible recitation of elevation prayers at the sacring was a gesture expected of everyone’,23 such prayers are common. Many were available in the late Middle Ages, contributing to the profusion of carols, riddles and poems for the elevation which reappear in amulets, scribbled onto fly-leaves, and which were no doubt also used by those who had Latin and French prayers at their disposal; sometimes the only vernacular prayer in a Book of Hours is the eucharistic one.24

The prayer in MS Harley 494 is a translation of a Latin prayer (at least, of part of a Latin prayer25), rather than one of the many original elevation prayers composed in English. This is worth stressing, as all the English devotions in MS Harley 494 which have been identified, with the exception of the Pardon Beads of Syon, turn out to be English translations of originally Latin texts. This suggests a stringent if covert enforcement of orthodoxy by the compiler(s). Rubin comments that the vernacular prayers tend to include an invocation, an appeal to Christ’s life, an appeal for one’s own health, and ‘a final petition for future bliss’.26 Anne Bulkeley’s prayer conforms to the opening and closing phases of this structure: it begins with an unimpeachably orthodox greeting, ‘I do salute the moste holy body’, and ends with the hope of heaven, ‘that I may be with the in joye & consolacion’ (fol. 1r–v). The body of the prayer, however, directly relates to the Eucharist; it asserts belief in the Real Presence and prays for the benefits to be derived from Communion. In fact, it is both an elevation prayer and a prayer for a person about to receive Communion (or possibly make an act of spiritual 22

Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 150.

23

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 103.

24

Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 158. For such a lone English prayer, see Alexandra Barratt, ‘A Middle English Lyric in an Old French Manuscript’, Medium Ævum, 52 (1983), 226–28. 25

On Latin elevation prayers, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 119–20.

26

Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 159–60.

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communion): the suppliant prays to Christ that ‘thow wylt thys daye come to conforte my pore sole gracyously, the whyche desyreth & coueyteth to reseue the’. The prayer thus anticipates not only the emphasis that MS Harley 494 and its compiler placed on the Eucharist in itself, but also its stress on the benefits of frequent reception of Communion. The final item in the manuscript at first looks as if it might be another elevation prayer. It opens ‘All hayle, moste benigne Jesu’ and is clearly a salutation. Indeed, it is modelled on the Angelic Salutation or Ave Maria, as we can see if we eliminate some of the phrases: ‘hayle, [. . .] ful of [. . .] grace, blessed be [. . .], & blessed be [. . .] haue mercy on me, wrecched synner’ (fol. 110v). And yet again it proves to be translated from a Latin prayer, ‘Ave, benigne Jesu’, found in early sixteenth-century books of hours. We also happen to know that the Latin prayer was sometimes recited at Syon in private devotions before the Ave Maria itself. Concerning the recitation of the Ave Maria, the author of The Myroure of oure Ladye writes to discourage this: Some saye at the begynnyng of this salutacyon. Aue benigne Iesu. and some saye after. Maria. mater dei. wyth other addycyons at the ende also. And suche thynges may be sayde when folke saye theyr Aues of theyr owne deuocyon. But in the seruyce of the chyrche. I trowe yt be moste sewer. and moste medefull to obey to the comon vse of saynge, as the chyrche hathe set, without all suche addicions.27

But what exactly is the object of the suppliant’s salutation, especially as the prayer moves into a different mode: ‘blessed be thy passion, dethe & woundes, & blessed be thy woundes & blessed be thy bloude off thy bodye’ (fol. 110v)? Possibly the Blessed Sacrament, but this could also be a prayer to be recited before a crucifix or an ‘image of pity’. (In books of hours the Latin prayer is situated at the end of the Psalms of the Passion.) There is no such image in MS Harley 494 of course, but woodcuts of the image of pity or ‘Man of Sorrows’ circulated in the early sixteenth century28 and could have been used in conjunction with Anne Bulkeley’s book.

Passion Devotions That we can imagine this prayer being used in these different contexts indicates the close connections between Eucharistic devotion on the one hand and devotion to

27 28

Myroure of oure Ladye, ed. by Blunt, p. 79; see also his note on p. 346.

On indulgences associated with the ‘image of pity’ or Man of Sorrows, see Flora Lewis, ‘Rewarding Devotion: Indulgences and the Promotion of Images’, Studies in Church History, 28 (1992), 179–95.

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the Passion,29 specifically to the Five Wounds and to the Holy Blood, on the other. By the sixteenth century both of these Passion devotions had a long history,30 reaching back to the thirteenth century and beyond. For instance, in LSG Mechtild of Hackeborn thanks God for his most holy wounds, ‘praying that he should infix in her soul as many wounds as he had suffered on his body’.31 Gertrude of Helfta, Mechtild’s disciple and editor, records in the Legatus divinae pietatis a prayer that was already current in the second half of the thirteenth century. It beseeches Christ, ‘write your wounds in my heart with your precious blood’.32 (Somewhat inexplicably, this prayer turns up in London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600, fol. 57r–v; it was also incorporated into the twelfth of the Fifteen Oes often attributed to Saint Birgit.33) Pfaff has explained how the Five Wounds did not become a new liturgical feast in England as on the continent, but was ‘a votive observance with the potential of becoming a feast’.34 The Wounds were honoured by a votive Mass, ‘Humiliavit’, which was to be celebrated five times; the office started to appear in English service books from the early fifteenth century, and regularly in printed Sarum missals from the later fifteenth century. They are invoked in a London will of 1488, made by the physician and surgeon William Hobbys, who in his last sentence declares that his heart is comforted ‘per spem quam habeo vulneribus Christi’.35 By the early sixteenth century, the Wounds and the Holy Blood were no longer ‘niche’ devotions, confined to professional religious like the nuns of Helfta, but, at least in the case of the Five Wounds, about to become a political badge worn by those who took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The popularity of devotion to the Wounds has been well documented by Duffy,36 but a few more specifically sixteenth-century examples may be relevant to our study of MS Harley 494. A little treatise, A gloryous medytacyon of Ihesus crystes passyon, was printed by Richard Fawkes in 1523 (STC 14550). Beneath a woodcut of the Five Wounds this contains the widely 29

On the varieties of Passion devotion, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 238–56.

30

See Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 84.

31

LSG, Pars 1 cap. 16 (my translation).

32

Legatus divinae pietatis, II.4.1, in Gertrude d’Helfta: Oeuvres Spirituelles, vol. II, ed. by Pierre Doyère, Sources Chrétiennes, 139 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968). 33

On the Fifteen Oes, see Claes Gejrot, ‘The Fifteen Oes: Latin and Vernacular Versions. With an Edition of the Latin Text’, in Translation of the Works of St Birgitta of Sweden, ed. by Morris and O’Mara, pp. 213–38. 34

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 86.

35

McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture, p. 187 and p. 259, n.

36

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 238–48.

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disseminated story of the woman recluse who wished to know the number of Christ’s wounds and was told by Christ that if she recited fifteen Paters and fifteen Aves every day for a year she would honour all the wounds. It also calculates the number of drops of blood shed by Christ (548,500): Fyue C thousand for to tell And xlviii thousand [as] well. Fyue C also grete and smalle Here is the number of theym alle.

Prayers to the Wounds were still being printed into the 1530s: The mystik sweet rosary of the faythful soule (STC 21318), printed in 1533, opens with a set of such prayers, ‘The saluting of the wounds of the right fote [. . .] Vnto the wounds of the left fote’, and so on. In 1536, in a Good Friday sermon preached before Henry VIII at Greenwich (STC16795), John Longland, Bishop of Lincoln and the King’s confessor, ends his lengthy, and extremely traditional, sermon with the demand, Knele down euery man and woman in þe place ye stande in: and vndre this deuoute maner of contemplacion say eueryche of you v pater noster, v Aues, and oon credo, in honour of these woundes, in honoure of this deathe, in honoure of this bloode. (sig. L6r)

This, be it noted, is after Henry’s break with Rome and his assumption of the headship of the Church in England. Among the English Carthusians and Birgittines there can be no doubt of the popularity of devotion to the Wounds and the Holy Blood. Indeed, its pervasive presence in LSG may be one of the reasons for Mechtild’s currency within these two religious orders, both of which had strong continental linkages. The Birgittine nun’s veil famously had a linen ‘crown’ with five red spots representing the Wounds, while Birgittine monks wore a representation of the Wounds on their left shoulder. London, British Library, MS Egerton 1821, which is probably Carthusian as it contains a woodcut of a Carthusian monk, has most of its contents written in red ink, in memory of Christ’s Passion (the link is made explicit in one text in the manuscript). Some of the opening pages are completely covered in red and carefully spattered with stylized tears and drops of blood. Another woodcut, of Christ rising from the tomb, represents his body as covered with numerous wounds. Another Carthusian manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049, also has many illustrations that stress the Wounds and the Holy Blood.37

37

See Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, ‘Passion Devotion, Penitential Reading, and the Manuscript Page: “The Hours of the Cross” in London, British Library Additional 37049’, Mediaeval Studies, 66 (2004), 213–52.

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The so-called ‘Revelation of the One Hundred Paternosters’, found in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 379, is another devotion to the blood of Christ with Carthusian connections. It opens ‘Worsship not only of oon or two / dropes but more in the worsship of / euery drope of alle [Christ’s] blessed blode / must nedes be of excellent vartu’,38 and goes on to meditate on the seven occasions on which Christ shed his blood on earth. Each meditation is to be accompanied by the recitation of one hundred Pater Nosters. At the end it relates how a London Carthusian sent a copy of the Revelation to a Mountgrace Carthusian in Yorkshire, together with a ‘lytell prayer’ to be used with the Pater Nosters. The text attributes this prayer, which begins ‘Domine Ihesu Christe filii dei viui suscipe hanc orationem’ and refers to all the wounds suffered by Christ, to ‘the holy virgyn saint Mawde’, that is, Mechtild of Hackeborn. However, this prayer is not from LSG but is in fact the last of the Fifteen Oes attributed to Birgit of Sweden. A version of this devotion was printed by Wynkyn de Worde as ‘a Contemplacyon or medytacyon of the shedynge of the blood of our lorde Jhesu cryste at seuen tymes’ (STC 14546.3). It contains the meditations without the instructions on the reciting of the Pater Nosters, but adds meditations on the Compassion of the Virgin and a lengthy prayer to the nine orders of angels, an interesting collocation as we shall see. The Pomander of Prayer, printed in 1531 (STC 25421.5), is a combined Birgittine-Carthusian production, originally written by a Carthusian but edited by an anonymous Birgittine, possibly Richard Whitford.39 It contains a story about a ‘holy contemplatife father’ who saw in a vision a Carthusian monk taken up into heaven by ‘a grete company of glorious angels and saintes’. This was a reward for the manyfolde vertuous dedes that he vsed in the tyme of his lyfe past: but in speciall he had one greate accidentall rewarde | bycause that he vsed in the tyme of sayng his seruyce for euery verse that he sayd | to remembre one of the blessed woundes of our sauyoure Jesu Christe most plenteously bledyng as hangyng on the crosse. (sig. E6v)

The text goes on to recommend devotion to the Five Wounds as a weapon against distraction in prayer and ‘vain and unprofitable thoughts’.40 In this devotional climate, it is not surprising that the items in Anne Bulkeley’s book contain six references to Christ’s wounds. Three of these occur in ‘the vij 38

Francis Wormald, ‘The Revelation of the Hundred Paternosters: A Fifteenth-Century Meditation’, Laudate, 15 (1936), 165–82 (p. 172). 39

See Robert A. Horsfield, ‘The Pomander of Prayer: Aspects of Late Medieval English Carthusian Spirituality and its Lay Audience’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. by Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989), pp. 205–13. 40

Horsfield, ‘Pomander of Prayer’, p. 212.

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sorwes of our blessid Lady’ (Item 27) and two in the Whitford treatise Due preparacion (Item 14). This neatly demonstrates how devotion to the Wounds can overlap not only with devotion to the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the altar, but also to the Compassion of the Virgin. But only one item in MS Harley 494 is devoted exclusively to the Five Wounds, and it is perhaps significant that it comes from continental Europe. This is the exercise composed by Maria van Oisterwijk (Item 15), which has already been briefly considered in the context of devotions derived from the writing of women visionaries. We will consider it in greater detail here. This devotion, like several in the manuscript, enjoys a special guarantee of divine origin, having been revealed (‘shewyd’) to a holy woman. It is also a rare example of ‘somatic’ devotion or ‘performative’ prayer,41 as it is to be accompanied by particular bodily movements and gestures: the prayers are all ‘to be sayde standyng, the armys spred abrode’ (fol. 61v). In this respect it is unlike the other prayers in Anne Bulkeley’s book, except perhaps the devotion of the Thousand Aves (Item 23), during which the suppliant must hold alms in her hand and then kiss it before giving it away. In the earlier, more expansive, Ripuarian (German) version (followed by the Latin manuscript version in Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 1204, fols 13v –14r) the exercise is divided into three sections. The first consists of five Paters and Aves repeated while standing before the crucifix with arms outstretched. The first Pater is recited in honour of the wound in the right hand and of Christ’s perfect obedience. The suppliant is to pray for forgiveness for the sin of disobedience and for the grace of obedience to her superiors and of selfdenial, even unto death. The second Pater is recited to the wound in the left hand while asking forgiveness for pride and requesting true humility. The third Pater is recited to the wound of the right foot, while requesting forgiveness for impatience and asking for the grace of patience. The fourth Pater is addressed to the wound of the left foot, while asking pardon for all bitterness and harshness towards her neighbour and requesting the grace of pity, compassion, and brotherly love. The fifth is addressed to the wound in the heart, while asking pardon for all sloth, indolence, and ungratefulness and for the grace of most fervent charity. The printed Latin version, which is probably the source for MS Harley 494, is simpler and shorter. It keeps the opening instruction to pray with outstretched 41

On ‘performative’ prayers, see Charity Scott-Stokes, Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England: Selected Texts Translated from Latin, Anglo-Norman, French and Middle English with Introduction and Interpretive Essay (Cambridge: Brewer, 2006), p. 157.

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arms (‘expansis brachijs coram crucifixo’) and faithfully reproduces the association between each wound and its virtue but omits repentance for the contrasting vice. For this there is no obvious explanation other than a wish to simplify and compress the exercise. The English, in its turn, follows the Latin printed text closely. It does, however, move the instruction to say all these prayers with outstretched arms from the beginning of the exercise to the end of this first section. Another difference between the Ripuarian and the Latin manuscript versions, on the one hand, and the printed Latin followed by the English, on the other, is the slightly different way in which the latter describe the virtues. Obedience becomes ‘promptam obedientiam’ and ‘prompte Obedyence’; true humility becomes ‘profundissimam humilitatem’ and ‘þe profonde mekenes’; perfect patience becomes ‘pacificam patientiam’ and ‘peaseble pacyence’; piety, mercy, and fraternal love become ‘misericordiam in proximum’ and ‘to be mercyfull and petyfull’; most ardent charity becomes ‘perfectissimam charitatem’ or ‘perfete charyte’. The verbal correspondences between the Latin and the English here are useful evidence of indebtedness. The second part of the original exercise is to be said standing with clasped hands (‘stans implicatis manibus’). It again consists of five Paters and five Aves, addressed to the Son in honour of the Five Sorrows suffered by the Virgin at the time of the Crucifixion. The first sorrow was when she saw her Son raised up, nailed to the cross and hanging there in inconceivable pain; the second, when she saw his face distorted and covered by the colour of death; the third, when she saw him on the verge of death revived (‘refocillari’) by gall and vinegar; the fourth, when she heard his sinews burst and he cried out that he had been forsaken; the fifth when she realized that, his heart having burst (‘corde rupto’), he had died. The suppliant is then to pray to Our Lord for pardon and for the grace to imitate his aforesaid virtues, and to the Virgin that she may condescend to bring this to pass. The printed Latin is, again, slightly different. The first sorrow was when the Virgin saw her Son nailed to the cross and the cross set up; the second, when she saw his body pierced on all sides (‘vndique confossum’) and melted (‘tabefactum’) by the colour of death; the third, when he cried out ‘I thirst’; the fourth, when his veins and sinews burst and he hung there completely abandoned; the fifth, when he expired. The English version, however, deviates quite markedly from both versions. None of its sorrows corresponds exactly to either of the Latin versions. The first sorrow in the English does not correspond to anything in the Latin. The second and third sorrows correspond approximately to the Latin first sorrow. The fourth sorrow corresponds to the third sorrow and the fifth sorrow in part to the Latin fifth sorrow.

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The third part of the exercise is to be performed prostrate or kneeling (‘super genua vel prostratus’ in the manuscript, ‘flexis genibus’ in the 1532 print). In the Latin manuscript version it consists of five Paters and five Aves, and the recitation of the hymn ‘Veni creator spiritus’ or the antiphon ‘Veni sancte spiritus’, praying the Holy Spirit, the Goodness of God, to have mercy on the suppliant, all that is hers, and the Church, by granting pardon, the aforementioned virtues, and all necessary graces. May he enlighten and recall sinners and wanderers, console the afflicted, preserve the righteous, and liberate the dead. In the 1532 printed text, only ‘Veni sancte spiritus’ is mentioned, and the suppliant is to pray the Holy Spirit, for his goodness, to purify, enlighten, and inflame us all with the fire of his love and to work in our hearts. The English keeps the instruction to kneel for this part of the exercise, and nominates only ‘Veni sancte spiritus’. However, it adds the first word of a responsory, ‘Emitte (sc. Spiritum tuum, et creabuntur. Et renovabis faciem terra)’, and the first three words of a widely used liturgical prayer, ‘Deus qui corda (sc. fidelium sancti spiritus illustracione docuisti: da nobis in eodem spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolacione gaudere)’. ‘Emitte Spiritum tuum’ is from the Historia (i.e. Old Testament reading) Sapientiae, in the month of August; it also appears in LSG, Pars 4 cap. 25, as part of a spiritual exercise recommended to Mechtild by Christ which shows some points of contact with Maria’s: if someone is troubled, let her prostrate herself at his feet, and recite this responsory to his hands, and then approach his Heart three times. The same verse appears in the Dyurnall, to be recited before the readings prescribed before mealtimes. The Latin manuscript version strongly differentiates the original tripartite structure of the exercise both by linguistic markers (‘Primo’, ‘Deinde’, ‘Postremo’) and by the careful description of the three different stances the suppliant is to adopt. This underlying Trinitarian design is even clearer in the Ripuarian version (probably closer to the original than the Latin), which associates the three parts of the exercise with the three Persons of the Trinity: it addresses the first section to God the Father (‘zo dem hemelschen vader’, fol. M7r), the second to the Son (‘Tzo dem son gotz’, fol. M8r) and the third to the Holy Spirit (‘Tzo dem hilgen geist’, fol. M8v). It also makes clear not only that the third section is addressed to the Holy Spirit but also that all the petitions in the first part of the exercise are addressed to God the Father (‘bidden den hemelschen vader’, fol. M7v) and all the petitions in the second part to Christ (‘unsen lieven heren bidden’, fol. M8v). In the English version there is only one set of five Paters and five Aves; in the source there are three, addressed to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The English keeps the set addressed to the Son, which includes the enumeration of the

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Five Sorrows of the Virgin at the Crucifixion, less well-established than the more common Seven Sorrows (for which compare Item 27). Maria’s exercise is at heart a Passion devotion. It ingeniously interrelates the Five Wounds, the Five Sorrows of the Virgin in the Crucifixion, and the acquisition of the five virtues of obedience, humility, patience, mercy, and charity. The prioritizing of obedience, even over charity and humility, is particularly striking. Ulrike Wiethaus regards this stress on obedience as characteristic of Maria’s spirituality (‘suffering as spiritual self-giving became inextricably linked with obedience to male authority’42). But it is also in keeping with the ethos of Anne Bulkeley’s book. The form of confession ‘for religious persons’ (Item 24) puts the sin of disobedience to the Rule or statutes in second place out of eight, obedience is included in the list of the Ten Virtues of the Virgin in Item 20, and the final prayer (Item 33) requests ‘a body chaste, humble, obedient, & stable’ (fol. 110v).

The Name of Jesus Devotion to the Name of Jesus is often linked with devotion to the Wounds in scholarly discussion. Again, the devotion has a long history and can be found in the writing of the Helfta nuns, in such passages as LSG, Pars 1 cap. 16 (which instructively links the two devotions in its title, ‘De nomine Domini et de ejus vulneribus sacris’) and Legatus I.16.4, where Christ commends to Gertrude the Great Mechtild’s practice of murmuring his name before praying. England seems to have long been a locus for the cult. It was probably an English monk who composed the famous hymn ‘Dulcis Jesu memoria’, strongly influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux; in the first half of the fourteenth century Richard Rolle promoted the cult; and from the middle of the fourteenth century there existed in England a votive mass to the Holy Name (that is, a ‘mass dedicated to its celebration but not fixed in the calendar’43). Known as the ‘Jesus mass’, it was peculiar to England. In 1411 Robert Hallum, Bishop of Salisbury, was said to have granted an indulgence of forty days’ pardon, the maximum that could be authorized by a bishop, ‘to all who celebrated or caused to be celebrated the mass of the Name of Jesus’.44

42

Wiethaus, ‘“For this I ask you, punish me”’, p. 254.

43

Catherine A. Carsley, ‘Devotion to the Holy Name: Late Medieval Piety in England’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 53 (1992), 156–72 (p. 162). 44

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 62–63. See also Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 115–16.

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(In the early sixteenth century this indulgence was attributed to Pope Boniface VI.45) As Pfaff says, There can be no doubt of the popularity of the cult, and in particular of the Jesus mass, in England. There were Jesus altars with all the equipment pertaining to them, Jesus guilds which attracted numerous members, and in some cases elaborate ceremonies raising the celebration of the Jesus mass far above the level of an ordinary votive. At Durham there was until the Reformation a ‘Jesus altar where Jh’us mess was song every fridaie thorowe out ye whole yere’.46

Its wide reach in the later Middle Ages is evidenced by the dedication to the Name of Jesus of guilds and lights (to be burnt in churches before statues and altars), admittedly in smallish numbers.47 Indulgences were also promised to those who inclined the head at the Name of Jesus, as we saw earlier in the discussion of the Interpretacyon by ‘Frere Gararde’, while the Syon Additions for the Brethren enjoin that ‘to this names ihesus and maria, they schal inclyne profoundly as ofte as þey here them rehersyd’.48 But it was not until 1489 that the feast of the Name of Jesus was officially declared in the province of York.49 Six months later Canterbury followed, and the feast, which was celebrated on 7 August, spread widely at the end of the fifteenth century. Lady Margaret Beaufort, who owned ‘hearts of precious metal and collars of gold on which IHS was inscribed’,50 was particularly active in sponsoring the feast. Her chapel was a centre for the devotion, using the office and mass of the Holy Name and having them printed, and in 1494 the Pope recognized her as patron, or promoter, of the feast in England.51 The office and mass for the new feast (‘A solis ortu’) were probably composed by Henry Hornby, who was Lady Margaret Beaufort’s secretary, dean of chapel, and later chancellor.52 45

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 65.

46

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 77–78.

47

Virginia R. Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Social and Religious Change in Cambridgeshire c.1350–1558, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 10 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), p. 77. 48

The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. III: The Syon Additions for the Brethren and the Boke of Sygnes, ed. by James Hogg, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1980), p. 54. 49

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 74.

50

Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, p. 183.

51

Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, pp. 169, 168.

52

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 82–83.

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Nor was this a devotion confined to the followers of ‘traditional religion’. Bainbridge suggests that the cult was one aspect of late medieval piety that had ‘prepared the majority of the population for acceptance of the Reformation’ as it ‘exemplified the process of change from religious images to abstract concept, which was immeasurably intensified by the print explosion of the written word’.53 Recently Susan Wabuda has also argued that it showed a great capacity to be adapted by Protestants later in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Certainly, we know that in 1536, after Henry had become Supreme Head of the Church, John Gough, who was known as a reformer, published a new English primer (STC 15992) that contained ‘the matyns in the honor of the blessed name of Iesu’: ‘In their Latin form they had been known as an adjunct to the Book of Hours as early as 1503 (see S.T.C. 15899).’54 But the feast itself was abrogated in early 1537, though some parishes refused to comply.55 In MS Harley 494, the most obvious influence of the devotion is to be seen in the presence of the Sacred Monogram in the top margin of some of the pages. Although this practice has been associated with the Birgittines (and also, it should be said, with the Carthusians), Wabuda points out that not only ‘pious English gentlemen and men-of-business’ but also some of the reformers, such as John Erley, a follower of Latimer, and the redoubtable John Foxe, headed their letters with the Holy Name.56 In MS Harley 494 the monogram appears on fol. 20 r, which contains a Latin Office of the Virgin (Item 7), written by Hand F; on fol. 22r, at the opening of the treatise on preparation for Communion (Item 9), written by Hand E, that of the principal scribe Robert Taylor; and on fols 107v–110r above Item 32, written by Hand P. (These are the inner pages of the final quire which was possibly added a little later.) In addition, the Holy Name appears as a pen-trial on fol. 5r (twice), fol. 90v, and fol. 107v. Of the individual items in the manuscript, the one that most directly derives from the cult of the Name of Jesus is the first part of Item 28, this manuscript’s version of the so-called Pardon Beads of Syon (see Chapter 4). Other items are clearly influenced by the cult. Right at the end of the prayers added to the extract from Whitford’s Due preparacion is a fervent prayer that invokes the Holy Name over and over again: ‘Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, mercy. Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, graunt me þi mercy. Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, as I trust in þi mercye haue mercy on me and of all 53

Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside, p. 78.

54

Butterworth, English Primers (1529–1545), p. 125.

55

Wabuda, Preaching During the English Reformation, p. 172.

56

Wabuda, Preaching During the English Reformation, pp. 155, 169.

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synfull. Jhesu Jhesu Jhesu, esto michi Jhesus. Amen’ (fol. 61r). This prayer, of course, plays on the etymological meaning of the name ‘Jesus’, which is ‘saviour’. The same point is made in the chapter from LSG already mentioned: the visionary asks Christ what is the ‘name that is above every name’ given him by the Father, and he replies, ‘Nomen illud est Salvator omnium saeculorum. Ego enim sum Salvator’ (LSG, Pars 1 cap. 16). In ‘The fourme of prayer after an-oþer maner’ (Item 13), one of the four intercessory prayers taken from William Bonde’s Pilgrymage of perfeccyon draws attention to the devotion as an identifying feature of the suppliant and her ‘household’: ‘O blissed Lord, haue mercy on all the seruauntes whiche in þis nyght or day hath or schall honour thy holy name, and specially on this present houshold’ (fol. 34r). Finally, the prayers for the days of the week (Item 8) foreground devotion to the Holy Name. All the prayers (except for Saturday’s) are brief, but a goodly proportion consists of varied invocations of the Name of Jesus: ‘O good Jhesu [. . .] O swete love Jhesu [. . .] O moost lovely Jhesu [. . .] O my love Jhesu [. . .] O my der love Jhesu [. . .] O my Jhesu [. . .] O my moost swete and gloriouse Jhesu’. If there were any doubt, the final prayer makes the association of the whole exercise with the cult of the Holy Name quite explicit: ‘O moost swete Jhesu, I mekely adore & honour thi moost gloriouse name and commytte me hooly vnto the, booth boody & sowle’ (fol. 21v).

Devotion to the Virgin Devotion to the Virgin,57 in late medieval traditional religion in general and specifically in Anne Bulkeley’s book, should not be seen as separate from, let alone in competition with, the Christocentric devotions already discussed.58 Devotion to the Passion and to the Name of Jesus were both aspects of the post-twelfth-century emphasis on the human nature of Christ that is sometimes known as ‘affective devotion’. Devotion to the Virgin, however extravagant and recherché its manifestations may sometimes be, should also be seen in that context and often, specifically, in the context of the Passion. A popular manifestation of the link between Marian and Passion devotion is represented by a little pamphlet, the Sawter of Our Lady, now defective, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499 (STC 14077 c.148). Promising

57 58

On devotion to the Virgin, see Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 256–65.

See Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 60–96.

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indulgences of forty days granted by various English bishops, it urges the faithful to recite Our Lady’s Psalter (that is, one hundred and fifty Ave Marias) in honour of the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin and, simultaneously, in honour of the Fifteen Passions of Christ. In MS Harley 494 itself, the Maria van Oisterwijk exercise (Item 15) morphs from a focus on the Five Wounds into meditation on the Virgin’s Five Sorrows.59 The two most compelling Marian images in the Middle Ages are those of the Virgin and Child and, more and more as time goes on, of the sorrowing Mother at the foot of the Cross. As Pfaff comments, ‘The Compassion of the Virgin at the Crucifixion, and indeed her sorrows in general, as reflected in the “Sorrowful Mysteries” of the Rosary, provided one of the most popular subjects of late medieval devotion’.60 Like the Five Wounds, the Compassion of the Virgin came close to achieving the status of a liturgical feast: from 1497 a supplementary votive Mass of the Compassion started to appear in printed Sarum missals.61 Ten out of thirty-three items in Anne Bulkeley’s book — a high proportion — are devotions to the Virgin; two are in Latin, seven in English, and one is bilingual. Several dwell, in one way or another, on her suffering. Thomas Bestul has argued that the ‘enlarged role of the Virgin in the Passion narratives seems, in fact, to be a product of the male imagination. [. . .] when women wrote about the Passion of Christ the Virgin Mary was rarely at the centre of the narrative’,62 and quotes with approval other scholars who contend that women were not particularly attracted to devotion to the Virgin. But Anne Bulkeley’s book could hardly be recruited to support this line of thought. The principal Marian section (Items 19–23 inclusive) is particularly well shaped, and it is hard to believe that this is accidental. The first two Marian items in the manuscript, both in Latin and each written by a different hand, are tucked in before and after the version of the Dyurnall, the first text written by Robert Taylor. One is a prayer to the Virgin similar to one found in books of hours where it is part of the Hours of the Virgin; the second is an Office of the Virgin, possibly of the Annunciation. Both focus on the mystery of the Virgin Birth. The latter text, the office beginning ‘Ave, Jesu’, is unusual in its degree of textual corruption, which suggests that the scribe’s grasp of Latin did not match the fervour of her devotion. It is clear enough, however, that it makes repeated use of the Ave 59

Duffy regards devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin as ‘the most distinctive manifestation of Marian piety’ in late medieval England and Europe (Stripping of the Altars, pp. 258–59). 60

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 99–100.

61

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 97.

62

Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 119.

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Maria, as do many of the other Marian items in Anne Bulkeley’s book: altogether, the phrase ‘Ave (Maria)’ occurs on more than twenty occasions throughout the manuscript. The Ave Maria was, of course, part of the basic devotional tool-kit that medieval Christians possessed, along with the Pater and Credo, though it should be remembered that at this time the Ave consisted only of the Angelic Salutation; the prayer ‘Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death’ was not added until the late sixteenth century. It is instructive that LSG, whose influence on MS Harley 494 seems so pervasive, also promotes the Ave heavily, for instance, in Pars 1 caps 42, 43 (which recommends the recitation of five Aves before Communion), and 47, the exercise of the triple Ave. This Mechtildian exercise makes up part of the text in MS Harley 494 that uses the Angelic Salutation most inventively. The second part of Item 28, the so-called Pardon Beads of Syon, it consists of three pairs of prayers in Latin and English, each pair followed by an Ave. The Latin portions of the prayers are themselves ‘farced’ or elaborated Aves, as they consist of the Angelic Salutation with inserted clauses. The English portions translated from LSG add new elements, specifically related to the hour of death, not found in the Latin. They make in turn three requests of the Virgin: ‘be present & defend me from þe powre of my gostly enymy in þe houre of my deth’, ‘be present & kepe me in the ryght fayth of Holy Churche in the houre of my deth’, and ‘be present, & geet me love & grace, & kepe me in my ryght naturall wyttes, and temper the passiones of my deth’ (fol. 106r–v ). (These English prayers, without the Latin, are also found in the Birgittine prayer book London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546, fol. 52v.) The ‘x vertues of our Lady’ (Item 20) also makes use of the Ave. This exercise invokes the Virgin with one of her ten virtuous attributes and then greets her with the words ‘I salute the with the same salutacion whiche the aungell Gabriel grate þe, sayng Aue Maria’ (fol. 84v ). There seems to be no tradition of a set of Ten Virtues invariably attributed to the Virgin. On various occasions LSG catalogues the Virgin’s virtues, but there are no lists of ten. LSG, Pars 1 cap. 2, lists nine virtues, describing the Virgin as most pure, most humble, most devout and desiring, most fervent in love, most caring, most patient, most faithful, most zealous, and most sedulous in contemplation. Pars 1 cap. 36 enumerates seven (holiness, prudence, chastity, humility, charity, zeal, and patience). But the number five and its multiples are prominent in many late medieval Marian devotions: Five Joys; five or fifteen Sorrows; five, fifteen, or 150 recitations of the Ave, and so on. In Anne Bulkeley’s book we have ten virtues, ten prayers, and ten recitations of the Ave Maria. There are a couple of analogues for the exercise here, one in English and one in Latin. The Latin text is in a Franciscan manuscript (London, British Library, MS Cotton Faustina D IV); the English analogue is found in Eleanor Worcester’s

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Hours (London, British Library, MS Harley 1251, fol. 182r–v), another book with Syon connections. Charity Scott-Stokes has explained, Additions to the calendar of Eleanor Worcester’s Hours include commemorations of St Bridget of Sweden (7 October) and the dedication of the church of Syon Abbey (20 October), which suggest that an owner of this manuscript — either Eleanor Worcester or a previous owner — had ties with the Bridgettine community.63

Another item which centres on the Ave Maria is the curious Devotion of the One Thousand Aves (Item 23), which prescribes a method of reciting a thousand Aves over ten days in order to obtain a particular benefit. Duffy quite reasonably describes this as ‘a prayer-charm’,64 and it is unparalleled in Anne Bulkeley’s book. The exercise consists of three elements. First, the suppliant recites one hundred Aves every day for ten days, making a total of one thousand. While doing this she must hold a sum of money in her hand. Finally, every day after the one hundred Aves have been recited, she is also to recite a Latin prayer, ‘Adonay domine deus magne et mirabilis’, before giving away the alms to a poor person. This devotion has some points of contact with the One Hundred Pater Nosters, already discussed, which called for the recitation of a hundred Paters every day for a week. It is found in two other Middle English manuscripts, though the versions are not particularly close to the version in MS Harley 494. No source has been found for it, but there is a remote possibility that it is French: there was a persistent French folk belief that anyone who recited one thousand Aves on Christmas Eve would receive whatever boon he desired. Two of the Marian items have already been discussed in Chapter 4: an English translation of the Latin prayer ‘O intemerata’ (Item 19), which introduces a run of four Marian devotions, and the Latin text of the lesser known, more prolix version of the prayer (Item 26), which is perhaps as much an example of penitential as of Marian devotion. Both were texts without which no late medieval books of hours was complete. The Marian items that remain to be discussed centre on the Virgin’s Assumption, her Joys, and her Sorrows, all apparently standard manifestations of Marian devotion but in each case given an unusual slant in Anne Bulkeley’s book. Following the Ten Virtues of the Virgin is a ‘Contemplacion for the Ffeste of þe Assumpcion’.65 This consists of three parts: a descriptive listing of the Seven Joys 63

Scott-Stokes, Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England, p. 155.

64

Eamon Duffy discusses the version of this devotion in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 6. 2: Marking the Hours, pp. 92–93, 95. 65

As Peters , Patterns of Piety, p. 62, reminds us, ‘Of all the Marian feasts, the Assumption was considered the most important’.

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of the Assumption and of a further seven joys experienced by the Virgin in heaven; and a prayer, ‘O glorious lady, quene & empresse of heuen and erthe’ (fol. 87v ). Clearly this is a departure from the more usual Seven Joys of the Virgin: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Finding in the Temple, the Resurrection, and the Assumption. The Seven Joys found in MS Harley 494 could be derived from the account of Mary’s dormition, assumption, and coronation given in the Legenda Aurea, cap. 119,66 where Jacobus of Voragine ‘follows the famous homily of Reichenau on the Assumption, a composition long taken as anonymous, which is now known to be the work of John, bishop of Arezzo, who lived in the second half of the ninth century’.67 (This homily is known as De Assumptione.68) LSG refers to the Joys of the Assumption in Pars 1 cap. 20, and lists five Joys in Pars 1 cap. 26, but they are not close to the seven enumerated here. The fifth and sixth Joys (the Virgin’s presentation to God the Father, her coronation and enthronement) accord, of course, with the standard medieval iconography of the Coronation of the Virgin. The ‘other seuen joys þat now [the Virgin] hath in heuen’ may be related to a story quite often found in books of hours, attached to the name of Thomas Becket and associated with the hymn ‘Gaude flore virginali’. According to the story, the Virgin appeared to Thomas and reproached him for honouring her historical Joys rather than the seven joys she presently enjoys in heaven. The joys described, however, do not coincide precisely with those outlined in MS Harley 494. Immediately following the final prayer is the extract from the revelations of Saint Birgit, already noted in Chapter 2. The opening words of the Virgin to the Swedish visionary neatly encapsulate the way in which devotion to the Virgin is allied with devotion to Christ: ‘euery lawd & praise of my son is my praise, and he þat dishonowreth hym, dishonoureth me’ (fol. 88v). The narrative account of the vision introduces a series of five prayers which praise the Virgin by thanking God for the joys he has bestowed on the Virgin. But these are not the usual Five Joys. Rather, they are the descent of Christ into the Virgin’s womb; Christ’s taking of flesh without harm to her virginity; his birth, again with no harm to her virginity; consolations and visits by Christ after the Ascension; and her bodily assumption.

66

On Jacobus de Voragine’s attitude to the Assumption, see Peters, Patterns of Piety, pp. 63–64. 67

Michael O’Carroll, C.S.Sp., Theotokos: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary, rev. edn (Dublin: Dominican Publications, 1983), pp. 193–94. 68

O’Carroll, Theotokos, p. 127.

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The translation of the ‘O intemerata’, the Ten Virtues of Our Lady, Contemplation of the Assumption, the prayers taken from Saint Birgit, and the devotion of the Thousand Aves (Items 19–23) make up a solid block of Marian texts. The remaining Marian items are separated from them by the two penitential texts, Items 24 and 25, which mark a change of mood reinforced by Item 26, the Latin text of the ‘more prolix’ version of the ‘O intemerata’, which is also penitential in tone although addressed to the Virgin. This more sombre mood carries over into the final Marian text, on the Seven Sorrows. More than sixty years ago the theologian Conrad Berti traced devotion to the Seven Sorrows back to the fourteenth century and a revelation received by a Dominican friar in 1324.69 Those Sorrows were the prophecy of Symeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of Jesus at twelve years old, the betrayal and arrest of Christ, the crucifixion, the deposition, and the Virgin’s life after the Ascension. Pfaff agrees that ‘it is now clear that the enumeration of Mary’s sorrows in a devotional context dates from as far back as the early fourteenth century’.70 However, in the late fifteenth century the foundation of the Confraternity of the Seven Sorrows under the patronage of Philip the Fair of Burgundy in 1492 and its approval by Pope Alexander VI in 1495 gave the devotion an additional impetus. This set of Sorrows was slightly different: the fourth sorrow was now Christ’s carrying of the cross and the seventh sorrow Christ’s burial or entombment. The Sorrows are closely linked to the Virgin’s Compassion, or suffering together with her son. (Bestul has commented on ‘the care [. . .] frequently taken to describe the subjective emotional state of the Virgin, especially in her suffering and sorrow’ in medieval Passion narratives, in which he suggests there is an element of voyeurism.71) In the late Middle Ages this devotion to Mary’s suffering was becoming formalized: Pfaff notes that a ‘feast of the Compassion [of the Virgin] was permitted to the Carthusians in 1477 [. . .], [and] made obligatory in 1486’, but he thought this had no influence in England.72 However, more recently Bainbridge has argued that the devotion was gaining a hold: she remarks that ‘the image of Our Lady of Pity had begun to appear in churches. [. . .] and the seven sorrows of the Virgin’ in requests for votive masses,73 while Lambeth Palace MS 546 (a

69

See Conradus M. Berti, ‘De cultu septem dolorum S. Mariae’, Marianum, 2 (1940), 81–86.

70

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 101.

71

Bestul, Texts of the Passion, pp. 120, 123.

72

Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, p. 101, n. 3.

73

Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside, p. 77.

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manuscript partly copied by William Darker and with strong Birgittine associations) contains a text on fols 7v –20v entitled ‘The xv Sorowes of our lady’. The sorrows in MS Harley 494 are more or less the standard seven that had evolved by the early sixteenth century: the prophecy of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of Jesus and the finding in the temple, the arrest and trial of Jesus, the crucifixion, the deposition, the entombment. The fourth sorrow here is slightly different, more usually Christ’s carrying of the cross, or the buffeting, or his betrayal and arrest. The ‘prayers shewyd to Mary Ostrewyk’ (Item 15) had earlier enumerated Five Sorrows of the Virgin, but all were confined to the events of Christ’s Passion. In contrast, the set of seven is more wide-ranging. Three come from Christ’s infancy and childhood and only four from the events of the Passion. Each sorrow is linked to a series of petitions for contrition, confession, salvation, assistance at the hour of death, reception of the viaticum, and for Christ to receive the soul at the moment of death. This preoccupation with death points forward to the second part of Item 28, the devotion of the triple Aves. As we saw in Chapter 3, these prayers focus on the Virgin as deathbed helper and thus anticipate the later sixteenth-century petition added to the Angelic Salutation, ‘pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death’. The first part of the item, the Pardon Beads of Syon, although primarily a devotion to the Holy Name, includes the repetition of seven Aves. Moreover, the very use of prayer beads is associated with Marian devotion, though not as exclusively as in later times: the pardon beads of Syon was only one of several types of prayer beads used in early sixteenth-century England.

Angels and Saints Cults of the angels and of the saints have also left their traces in Anne Bulkeley’s book. Prayers to one’s Guardian Angel74 were composed from the ninth century onwards ‘and their numbers reached their peak in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’.75 The ‘largely unstudied’ cult of the Guardian Angel, was ‘an integral part of fifteenth-century English devotion’.76 It found favour with women and in 74

On prayers to Guardian Angels, see Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots, pp. 537–58.

75

Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England: An Hours of the Guardian Angel presented to Queen Elizabeth Woodville’, in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. by Jane H. M. Taylor and Lesley Smith (London: British Library, 1996), pp. 230–65 (p. 232). 76

233.

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, pp. 232 and

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particular with Birgittine nuns. Saint Birgit herself referred frequently to angels and to her personal angel; she is often represented visually as writing at the dictation of an angel.77 Angels are prominent in Mechtild of Hackeborn’s LSG (for instance in Pars 1 caps 26, 30, 40, and 45), and Birgittine nuns’ books of hours and of private devotion ‘display a marked preference for the guardian angel and St Michael and all angels, often in texts that were added especially for their use’.78 There was also a fraternity and a hospital dedicated to Our Lady and All Angels near Syon Abbey, founded in the mid-fifteenth century by Henry VI’s physician, John Somerset, on land that belonged to Syon.79 Many of those involved with the institution in the later fifteenth century had connections with Elizabeth Woodville (great aunt of Anne Bulkeley). The Queen owned a copy of the Hours of the Guardian Angel, a rare text otherwise found only in the Burnet Psalter which, as we saw in Chapter 4, was compiled under Birgittine influence. The term ‘guardian angel’ does not appear as such in MS Harley 494; indeed, OED’s earliest example of the phrase is dated 1610. The usual expression at the time was ‘good angel’, a term which occurs twice in the manuscript version of the Dyurnall which, as we have seen, shows a number of Birgittine, and specifically Whitfordian, characteristics, though we cannot go so far as to attribute it unequivocally to the Birgittine monk. Here the reader is exhorted, while she walks home from church, ‘haue mynd of your good angell and to other seyntes to whom ye haue speciall devocion’ (fol. 11v ), and in her evening devotions, ‘commende your self vnto our Lord and to our Ladye, to your good angell and all seyntes’ (fol. 19r). Towards the end of Anne Bulkeley’s book is a Latin prayer (Item 29) which would have found a more appropriate home with the morning devotions at the beginning of the book. In it the suppliant gives thanks to God ‘pro proteccione diuina, pro custodia angelica, et pro quiete indulta’ (fol. 106v ), thus referring obliquely to her Guardian Angel. (Typically, prayers to one’s Guardian Angel included ‘supplication for its protection in all circumstances and at all times’.80) Another Latin prayer, in the form of a hexameter couplet that begins ‘Angele qui meus es custos’ and is a small part of Item 33, is really only part of a much longer poem by Reginald of Canterbury addressed to one’s Guardian Angel (see further, Appendix). The couplet alone, as here, is used as an antiphon at Lauds in the late

77

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, p. 259, n. 37.

78

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, p. 234.

79

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, pp. 242–43.

80

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, p. 232.

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fifteenth-century Hours of the Guardian Angel discussed by Sutton and VisserFuchs,81 while a six-line version found in a number of manuscripts has been printed and discussed by Margaret Connolly.82 We have already pointed out in Chapter 2 the surprising lack of devotions to individual saints, with the striking exception of the puzzling prayer invoking Saint Onuphrius and the prayer to Saint Anne found in the triple Ave devotion (the second part of Item 28). Devotion to Saint Anne as the mother of the Virgin Mary and the grandmother of Jesus had grown exponentially in the later Middle Ages and has attracted a great deal of recent scholarly attention. It is noteworthy that the Birgittines in particular seem to have shared this enthusiasm, as evidenced, for instance, by the versicle and response in a late medieval Syon processional.83 In several litanies in the same manuscript, Saint Anne is regularly invoked first in the list of ‘virgines et continentes’, even before Saint Birgit herself.84 Lambeth Palace MS 546, another manuscript with strong Birgittine connections, also places Saint Anne first on fol. 57r in a litany invoking ‘holy virgyns, widews and continent lyuers’. But why is Saint Anne invoked in the triple Ave devotion? As a whole (that is, including the material from Mechtild of Hackeborn, LSG), it is preoccupied with ‘the hour of our death’, and it is worth noting that Saint Anne was venerated as a comforter in death. An elaborate late fifteenth-century altarpiece, now in the Historisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, contains a panel representing ‘Saint Bridget’s Vision of Saint Anne’. Ashley and Sheingorn describe it as follows: Seated in her study and intent on her reading, Bridget offers a model of devotion to the pious woman viewing the altarpiece. Her devotion is rewarded with the vision of Anne with the Virgin and Child that appears in the upper right. The vision implies that Anne will watch over Bridget even at her death, to which the scene directly below the vision refers.85

They later comment that Saint Anne was thought to protect from the plague: ‘Cures were sought at her shrine, and she was often the patron of a good death’.86

81

Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cult of Angels in Late Fifteenth-Century England’, p. 249.

82

Connolly, ‘Prayer to the Guardian Angel’.

83

Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 8885, pp. 35–37: ‘R . Anna mater matris christi. [. . .] Ecce ascendisti supra cuncta sydera. V. Tu in hora mortis tristi nos ab hoste libera.’ 84

See, for instance, CUL, MS Add. 8885, pp. 120, 122, 125 and 128.

85

Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. by Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 43. 86

Interpreting Cultural Symbols, ed. by Ashley and Sheingorn, p. 50.

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Saint Anne, however, was also presumably the patron saint of the owner (or owners) of MS Harley 494, whose baptismal name was Anne. The saint was in addition the patron of grandmothers, and Anne, wife of Robert and mother of their many children, would have had a number of grandchildren by the time this anthology was compiled in the early 1530s. Anne Bulkeley would therefore have had at least two personal reasons to include a special invocation of the mother of the Virgin. It is surely appropriate to end with this reminder of the unique personal relevance of MS Harley 494. It is nothing if not a personal book and no doubt it possessed for its original owner many other personal resonances lost to us today. Anne Bulkeley’s strong sense of family would have been reinforced by her anthology, in which she proudly wrote her name. This might well have led to a determination to bequeath that book to a nun who was not only her own daughter but also shared her Christian name and her style of piety and who, in her turn, claimed it as her own.

Appendix

L ONDON , B RITISH L IBRARY, MS H ARLEY 494: A NNOTATED T RANSCRIPTION

Editorial Procedures

I

n the transcriptions from manuscript of Middle English and Latin texts, paragraphing, capitalization, word-division, and punctuation have been modernized. Abbreviations have been silently expanded and given their appropriate conventional values. Transcriptions from printed texts (including early printed books) are presented as far as practicable as in the printed versions, except for abbreviations, which are expanded. Textual emendations have been kept to a minimum. Otiose letters or words are marked with angled brackets (< >). Letters and words that have been emended or supplied by the editor are enclosed in square brackets ([ ]). The original form is recorded in the footnotes; if there is no note, it can be assumed that the letter or word is an editorial addition. Words or letters added above the line or in the margin of the manuscript are marked with `´. In texts containing both English and Latin, any Latin has been italicized; however, texts written entirely in Latin remain in roman type. Given the late date of MS Harley 494, a glossary was not considered necessary. However, glossarial notes have been appended to some texts where the vocabulary seemed particularly obscure or specialized.

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Item 1 Text [fol. 1r]Domina Anna Bulk[e]le[y] I do salute the moste holy body of owre Lord Jhesu Chryste, contayned in thys sacrament. I do confesse & knowle[ge] the with my lyppes and wyth my hart. I desyre & coueyte the, Jhesu, that thow wylt thys daye come to conforte my pore sole gracyously, the whyche desyreth & coueyteth to reseue the, holy oblacyon and fountayne of all grace, [fol. 1v ] to the end that I may be with the in joye & consolacion of thy presens, in body and in sowle. O benygne lorde. Source Translation of the opening of a Latin elevation prayer, ‘Ave sanctissimum corpus’, on which see Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots, p. 379. This prayer is frequently found in late medieval books of hours, for instance the Burnet Psalter, fols 77v –78r, from which it is transcribed below. Ave sanctissimum corpus dominicum in hoc sacramento contentum; te confiteor labiis, te toto corde diligo; visceribus concupisco; dignare queso hodie in/firmam animam meam te, salutarem victimam et fontem graciarum, recipere, cupientem tam clementer et graciose invisere ut medelam in corpore et in anima tua ex presencia gaudeam invenisse.

Commentary A late fifteenth-/early sixteenth-century hand wrote this prayer into a Birgittine psalter, now Oakley Park, MS Earl of Plymouth (de Hamel, Syon Abbey, no. 74), that was made for Margaret Windsor, who was listed as prioress of Syon in 1518 and 1539 (see Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 193–94). Written, rather ineptly, by Hand A on the space remaining of the first recto folio, more than a third of which is taken up with the elaborate but poorly planned inscription, ‘Domina Anna Bulkeley’. The edge of the page has subsequently been torn, affecting ‘Bulkeley’ and ‘knowlege’. The page is not lineated, and probably this prayer was an afterthought and not part of the original concept of the book. Its presence on the opening page suggests that the owner took her book with her when she heard Mass: on elevation prayers in English, see R. H. Robbins, ‘Levation Prayers in Middle English Verse’, Modern Philology, 40 (1942), 131–46, and Barratt, ‘A Middle English Lyric in an Old French Manuscript’.

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Item 2 Text [fol. 2r] Laudo, amo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone, in illo ineffabili gaudio quod habuisti, quando tua beatissima humanitas in resurreccione glorificacionem suscepit a Patre diuine clarificacionis, et in se omnibus electis glorificacionem eternam in sua diuinitate tribuit. Per illud ineffabile gaudium rogo te, o amantissime Dei et hominum mediator, vt eandem quam michi tunc dedisti claritatem, tua gracia conserues illesam, in die iudicij cum gaudio assumendam. Amo, laudo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone, in illo ineffabili gaudio quod habuisti, quando caritas inestimabilis que te in mundum de sinu Patris deposuit, et subiacere fecit omnibus penis et miserijs, in resurreccione tua omnia membra tua repleuit honore et gaudio incomparabili, sicut in cruce [fol. 2v] repleuerat dolore intoll[e]rabili.1 Per illud ineffabile gaudium rogo te, o amantissime Dei et hominum mediator, vt dones mihi lumen intellectu[s]2 et cognicionem anime, vt sciam quid acceptum sit coram te omni tempore. Amo, laudo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone, in illo ineffabili gaudio quod habuit tua sanctissima anima, quando se in precium & pignus redemptionis cum copiosa multitudine omnium beatarum animarum ex inferni claustris, cum [in]estimabile3 gaudio [te] prossequencium Deo Patri presentasti. Per illud ineffabile gaudium rogo te, o amantissime Dei & hominum mediator, vt in hora mortis mee sis anime mee pignus sufficiens et premium persoluens [fol. 3r] omne debitum meum; et placa michi Deum Patrem judicem equissimum; et perduc me cum gaudio ante conspectum suum. Amo, laudo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone, in illo ineffabili gaudio, quod habuisti quando a Deo Patre data est tibi plena potestas remunerandi, ditandi, et honorandi, secundum liberalitatis tue magnificenciam, omnes commilitones et amicos tuos, quos tam glorioso triumpho de tirannica potestate liberasti. Per illud ineffabile gaudium rogo te, o amantissime Dei et hominum mediator, fac me participem omnium laborum et operum tuorum, et tue gloriose mortis ac beatissime passionis. Amo, laudo, adoro, magnifico, glorifico, gracias ago et benedico te, Jhesu bone, in illo ineffabili gaudio quod habuisti, quando Deus Pater donauit tibi omnes amicos tuos in eternam hereditatem [fol. 3v ] possidendos, et impleta est illa benignissima 1

intollorabili intellectum 3 estimabile 2

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peticio tua et voluntas qua dixisti: Volo vt vbi ego sum, illuc sit et minister meus, vt omne gaudium et omne bonum, quod tu ipse es, ipsorum esset sine fine. Pro illo ineffabili gaudio rogo te, o amantissime Dei et hominum mediator, vt dones michi illud beatissimum omnium electorum tuorum consorcium, vt te habeam vna cum eis, omne gaudium et omne bonum mecum hic et in [e]ternum.4 Amen. Si quis horum gaudiorum me meminit, pro primo dabo ei, si desiderauerit, ante mortem eius gustum mee diuinitatis. Secundo, dabo ei intellectum cognicionis. Tertio, animam eius in extremis suis Patri meo presentabo. Quarto, fructum et participacionem passionum et omnium laborum meorum ei [fol. 4r] tribuam. Quinto, jocundam sanctorum ei societatem dabo. Translation I praise, love, adore, magnify, glorify, give thanks, and bless thee, good Jesu, in that unspeakable joy which thou didst have when thy most blessed human nature received glorification at the Resurrection from the divine brightness of the Father and in its divine nature imparted eternal glorification to all the elect in itself. By that unspeakable joy I ask thee, O most loving mediator of God and men, that thou shouldest keep unharmed the same brightness which thou then gavest me, to be taken up with joy on the day of judgement. I love, praise, adore, magnify, glorify, give thanks, and bless thee, good Jesu, in that unspeakable joy which thou didst have when the incalculable love which sent thee down into the world from the bosom of the Father and made thee subject to all pains and miseries filled all thy limbs in thy resurrection with honour and incomparable joy, just as on the cross it had filled thee with unbearable sorrow. By that unspeakable joy I ask thee, O most loving mediator of God and men, that thou shouldest give me light of understanding and knowledge of the soul that I may know what is acceptable in thy sight at all times. I love, praise, adore, magnify, glorify, give thanks, and bless thee, good Jesu, in that unspeakable joy which thy most holy soul did have when thou didst present it to God the Father as the price and pledge of redemption together with a great multitude of all the blessed souls accompanying [thee] from the confines of hell with inestimable joy. By that unspeakable joy I ask thee, O most loving mediator of God and men, that at the hour of my death thou mayst be for me a sufficient pledge and price, paying all my debts. And appease for me God the Father, most even-handed judge, and lead me with joy before his face.

4

internum

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I love, praise, adore, magnify, glorify, give thanks, and bless thee, good Jesu, in that unspeakable joy which thou didst have when there was given to thee full power of rewarding, enriching, and honouring according to the magnificence of thy generosity thy comrades in arms and thy friends whom thou hast liberated with so glorious a triumph from the tyrant’s power: By that unspeakable joy I ask thee, O most loving mediator of God and men, make me a partaker of all thy works and deeds and of thy glorious death and most blessed passion. I love, praise, adore, magnify, glorify, give thanks, and bless thee, good Jesu, in that unspeakable joy which thou didst have when God the Father bestowed on thee all thy friends to be possessed as an eternal inheritance, and that most kindly petition and desire of thine was fulfilled in which thou saidest: I will that where I am, there also should my servant be, that every joy and every good thing which thou thyself art, may be theirs for ever. O most loving mediator of God and men, may thou give me that most blessed fellowship with all thine elect that I may possess thee together with them as every joy and every good thing here and for ever. Amen. If anyone reminds me of these joys, for the first I shall give her, if she has desired it, taste of my divinity before her death. For the second I shall give her knowledge of understanding. For the third I shall present her soul on her deathbed to my Father. For the fourth I shall render her the reward for and share in all my sufferings and labours. For the fifth I shall grant her the joyful company of the saints. Source LSG, Pars 1 cap. 19. Commentary Five prayers celebrating the Five Joys of the Resurrection and recording Christ’s promise made to those who remember them. These prayers were well known in the Middle Ages (see Chapter 2). A version of the prayer is also found in the Anthidotarius by the German Cistercian Nikolaus Salicetus, which was first published in 1489 and reprinted twenty-three times in the fifteenth century and fourteen times in the sixteenth century. In the copy of LSG written out by the Carthusian John Whetham in 1492 (Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 19), there are two hands drawn in the margin by the words ‘Si quis horum gaudiorum me meminit’ (fol. 32r). Written by Hand B. The Latin is somewhat careless, with at least eight errors.

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Item 3 Text [fol. 4r] Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me timorem quam caritas foras mittit; infunde michi timorem permanentem in seculum seculi. Amen. Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me pietatem qua condescenditur peccato; infunde michi pietatem qua miseretur iustus anime sue, placens Deo. Amen. Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me scientiam que inflat; infunde michi scientiam que caritatem edificat. Amen. Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me fortitudinem qua currit aduersus deum erecto collo; infunde michi fortitudinem qua resistitur diabolo. Amen. [fol. 4v ] Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me consilium quo carnalis appetitus proficitur; infunde michi consilium quod factum penitentia non sequitur. Amen. Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me intellectum qui sudario inuolutus terra obruitur; infunde michi intellectum quo celestis patrie dulcedo hauritur. Amen. Veni, San`c´te Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, aufer a me sapientiam terrenam a[ni]malem1 diabolicam; infunde michi sapientiam pudicam, pacificam, modestam, suadibilem, bonis consencientem, plenam misericordia et fructibus bonis. Amen. Veni, Sancte Spiritus, amor Patris et Filij, infunde michi timorem, pietatem, scientiam, fortitudinem, consilium, intellectum, et sapientiam, [fol. 4*r] vt per eosdem gradus, etsi non eodem ordine, ad celos conscendam rede[m]ptus, per quos ad terras descendit rede[m]ptor. Amen. Translation Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the fear which charity casts out; pour into me the fear that endures for ever. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the pity by which one stoops to sin; pour into me the pity by which the righteous who pleases God has mercy on his own soul. Amen.

1

amalem

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Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the knowledge that puffs up; pour into me the knowledge that edifies. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the fortitude that runs against God with its neck raised up; pour into me the fortitude by which the devil is resisted. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the counsel by which carnal appetite is advanced; pour into me the counsel which, when performed, repentance does not follow. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me the understanding which, wrapped in a napkin, is buried in earth; pour into me the understanding by which one drinks in the sweetness of heaven. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, take from me wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and devilish; pour into me the wisdom that is chaste, peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruit. Amen. Come, Holy Spirit, love of the Father and the Son, pour into me fear, pity, knowledge, fortitude, counsel, understanding, and wisdom, that I, having been redeemed, may climb to heaven by those same steps, even if not in the same order, by which the redeemer came down to earth. Amen. Source Unidentified, but heavily dependent on scriptural quotations: timorem quam caritas foras mittit: cf. I John 2. 18 timorem permanentem in seculum seculi: cf. Psalm 18. 10 scientiam que inflat [. . .] scientiam que caritatem edificat: cf. I Corinthians 8. 1 currit aduersus deum erecto collo: cf. Job 15. 26 qui sudario inuolutus terra obruitur: cf. Luke 19. 20 and Mark 25. 18 (the Parable of the Talents) sapientiam terrenam a[ni]malem diabolicam: cf. James 3. 15 sapientiam pudicam, pacificam, modestam, suadibilem, bonis consencientem, plenam misericordia et fructibus bonis: cf. James 3. 17 Commentary Also written by Hand B, these are eight prayers for the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit as enumerated in Isaiah 11. 2. Here they are listed in the order fear, pity, knowledge, fortitude, counsel, understanding, and wisdom, but the reverse order, used in Item 16, is more common.

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A prayer for the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit was said over the Syon abbess by the bishop at her consecration (Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 11, fol. 55v). The Latin prayer has not been adapted for a woman (rede[m]ptus, not redempta) and as in the previous item there are a number of minor mistakes in the copying of the Latin.

Item 4 Text [fol. 4*r] Omnipotens se[m]piterne Deus, qui beatissimum Honufrium confessorem tuum in deserti solitudine angelico pane alere voluisti; exaudi preces famuli `tui´ & presta ut quod deuote expeto, eius michi intercessione donetur. Per. Translation Almighty and everlasting God, who didst will that the most blessed Honufrius, thy confessor, should live in the solitude of the desert on angels’ bread, hear the prayers of thy servant and grant that that which I request with devotion may be granted me by his intercession. Through. Source Unidentified. Commentary A prayer invoking Saint Onuphrius or Honuphrius (d. c. 400), an Egyptian who lived as a hermit in the desert for seventy years. His cult was popular in the Middle Ages (there is a church dedicated to him in Rome on the Janiculum, near the Vatican), and his feast was celebrated on 12 June. He is often depicted dressed only in his own hair or with a loincloth woven from leaves. The English translation of the Syon Martiloge mentions him twice, with primary emphasis on his vocation as hermit, first under 9 June: The feest also of saynt Onofre an heremyte | that in egypte serued god in desert sixty yeres thritty wherof he lyued by fruyte | herbes & rotes | & the other thritty by the fedyng of aungels without ony other erthly fode | & euery Sondaye he was communed receyuyng þe sacrament of chrystes body by þe mynistery of þe same aungels | by whome at his deth he was buried & his soule conueyed vnto blysse. (Martiloge in Englysshe, ed. by Procter and Dewick, p. 91)

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He is mentioned again more briefly under the ‘Addicyons’ for 11 June: ‘The feest also of saynt Onophry an heremite of hygh perfeccyon’ (Martiloge in Englysshe, ed. by Procter and Dewick, pp. 92–93). Onuphrius is also invoked, together with the English hermit Saint Godric, in the litanies found in London, British Library, MS Egerton 1821, fols 12r and 39r. Anne, wife of Robert Bulkeley, had a great-uncle, Humphrey Poyntz (c. 1434–87: see Chapter 1), and also probably a brother with the same name, which might account for her devotion to this saint. Written by Hand C, a confident bookhand using very black ink. The hand is either the same as that found in London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600 and the additions to Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 8885 or it is modelled on that hand.

Item 5 Text [fol. 4*v ] O gloriosa domina, que filium Dei portasti, virgo Deum concepisti et peperisti et uirginali lacte virginaliter eum lactasti: O domina, sicut hoc verum est et hoc bene et firmiter credo, habeas in custodia tua animam meam et corpus meum; in omnibus peticionibus et oracionibus meis, dulcissima domina, michi succure et in omnibus illis quibus suplicare debeo. Amen. Translation O glorious Lady, who didst carry the son of God, and as a virgin didst conceive God and give birth to Him and virginally feed Him with thy virgin milk: O Lady, just as this is true, and I believe it well and firmly, may thou keep my soul and my body in thy care; in all my petitions and prayers, sweetest Lady, come to my aid and in all those things for which I ought to pray. Amen. Source Unidentified. Commentary This is the first text in MS Harley 494 addressed to the Virgin Mary and is a prayer for her assistance. A similar prayer, often used as an antiphon and common in

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books of hours (e.g. the Burnet Psalter (Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25), fol. 255v ) reads: O gloriosa Dei genitrix virgo semper Maria, que dominum omnium meruisti portare et regem angelorum sola virgo lactare, nostris precibus pia memorare et pro nobis semper Christum deprecare ut tui fulti patrociniis ad celestia regna mereamur pervenire.

The wording is also reminiscent of the opening of the liturgical hymn ‘O gloriosa domina’, which is the second half of ‘Quem terra, pontus, aethera’, composed by Venantius Fortunatus (second half of the sixth century). This is used for Lauds in the Common of the Virgin and in the Hours of the Virgin, and was sung on Saturday at Matins in the Birgittine Breviary. Written in textura, in rather pale ink, by Hand D.

Item 6 Text [fol. 6 r ] The gret `cause´, as I do thynke, wherfor we profyt lytell in the wey of perfeccion ys that we do not with all our study & diligence folowe by perseueraunt exercyse in our dayly conversacion þe good instruccion and counseilles þat be daily gyven vs of oure lord God, whiche, for the gracious desire that he hath of oure saluacione, ceassith not to admonysshe and teche vs howe we schuld ensewe and opteyn our soules helth and his perpetuall favour, note only by secret inspiracions, but also [by] outward techynges & examples þat oft tymes we here redde & see. And this defaute in vs ryseth partly of oure necligences, þat we gyve no grete force of oure owen proffite, and partlye [fol. 6 v] of oure frayle and deceyvable memory, that son [forgettyth]1 what is tawght vs but by oftyne rehersynge it be deply written and graven in owre stony hartes. Ageyns the firste the oonly remedye is a good wyll, the whiche with the helpe of grace, daily desirynge by contynuall prayer to amende, schall at the last opteyn that it perseuerantly desirethe. Ayens the seconde defawt the remedy ys, often tymes to rede or here those thynges þe whiche wolde alwey be2 had on mynde. Wherfor I haue, accordynge to your devout desyre and request, brevely in this lytell paper notyde thre exercyses þe which I haue many tymes counseylede [fol. 7r] yow to vse at thre tymes of þe day, specyally, that is to say, in þe morenynge when ye ryse, at your meet, and when ye go to reste at nyght. 1 2

forgettynge + glade crossed through

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In the mornynge, so son as ye be full wakynge, mark well what thynges commeth fyrste to your mynde and, if ye haue ben wakyng at eny tyme in the nyght past, what remembraunce ye haue had of God. And if ye fynde þat eny oþer thyng hath occupiede your hart than the rewle of perfeccion requyreth, the which ys that oure hart be at all tymes onyde and knytt vn-to God, oither by actuall loue & contemplacion of his goodnes with dew thankes-givynge for his benefetes, or els [fol. 7v ] by contynuall prayer and confession of our owen evilles, then anoon with gret heuynes complayne of your-self, knowlegynge þat this jmperfeccion is founde in yow for want of diligent gostly exercyse in the tyme past and, with a feruent desire to amende from thens-forthe, begynne anone with humble protestacion both of spirit, and of body if ye be alone, to praise the gloriouse Trynite, seynge this: O beata & benedicta & gloriosa Trinitas, tibi laus & gloria et graciarum accio ab omni creatura tua per infenita secula seculorum. Amen. The Ynglishe herof is: O bewtiefull & most blessid, the gloriouse Trinite, to the beth praise & glory & þe yifte of graces [fol. 8r] of all thy creatures by the infenyte world of worldes. Amen. And when ye say this, spek it not only with your tounge but of all your hool hart, most effectuously desirynge þat þe prayse, glory, and thank of all goodnesse þat is or schall be wroghte by yow or eny oþer creature be returnede allonly to hym, the which is the begynnynge, the myddes, & the ende of all thinge þat ys worthy eny prayse, and accustome to reherse this many tymes on þe day, as ofte as ye fele eny gostly or corporall delectacion of God or of eny of his creatures, that is to say, when-so-euer ye be touchede [fol. 8v ] with ynwarde deuocyon of goode thought, when ye considre þe gracys of seyntes, when ye be delyted with the bewtie of eny creature, when your mete or drynk do contente your appetite, and so of all other thing that plesithe yow. Allweye synge in yowr hart and manny tymes speke with yowr mowth: O beata & benedicta &c. O bewtefull & most blesside. But specially se þat yow in noo wise omytt this when ye be movede to veyne glorye. And I thynk þe contynuall exercise of your hartes in this our lesson shall moche promote and encrese þe grace and loue of God in yow. But nowe retournynge to the mornynge [fol. 9r] exercise, when ye do on your clothes se þat your mynde be occupiede in þe prayse of God, thankyng hym þat he hath so plenteuosly provided for yowe all necessaryes,3 manny other moche better than yow beynge in nede, and pray hyme to move your hart and the hartes of other to releve his pore pepule. And this ye schall diligently remembre boothe at your fedynge and when ye go to your rest at nyght. 3

+ when

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And when that ye be clothede, before þat ye departe forthe of your chambre, sey thies short prayers folowyng, knelynge a-fore some ymage of our lord Jhesu, first thankyng hym for your creacion [fol. 9v] and redempcion: Gracias tibi ago, domine Jhesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti et preordinasti ad hoc quod sum, tu scis quid de me facere vis. Fac de me secundum voluntatem tuam cum misericordia. Amen. I gyve the thankynges, our lord Jhesu Crist, the which hath create and4 redemede & preordinate `me´ to that I am,5 thou knowest what þou wilt do with me. Therfor do or make of me after thy will with mercy. Amen. And when ye say this, knowlege in hart þat ye ar wel content with the state and callynge þat ye be yn, desirynge intierly with all your harte to be obedient to the ordynaunce of God, what-so-euer pleasith hyme to make of yow. [fol. 10r] The seconde prayer. Confesse þat all your lyf6 past hath be full of syn and moche vnkyndnesse toward our lorde God, promysinge vnfeynedly that yee will without eny forther delaye, with the helpe of his grace, this same day begyn a new lyf humbly, askynge mercy and remyssioun, sayng thus: Domine Jhesu Christe, ego cognosco me grauiter pecasse & libenter volo me emendare per graciam tuam. Miserere mei propter amaram passionem tuam. Amen. O thou lord Jhesu Crist, I knolege me grevouslye to haue synnede and gladly I wold me amende by thi grace. Therfor haue mercy on me for thy bittyre passion. Amen. [fol. 10v ] And when ye say this,7 haue befor your eyes sum of your gret offences that most maye move yow to shame of your-selff and to contricion. Thrid, vttirly dispreising of your-self, thinkynge þat ye ar not in eny wise sufficient to ordre your own lyf, and to gide your-self in þe wey of vertu, committ yow fully to þe prouydens of God and sey this prayer folowynge: Domine Jhesu Christe qui solus es sapientia, tu scis que michi peccatrici expediunt prout tibi placet, et sicut in oculis tue maiestatis [fol. 11r] videtur de me peccatrici, ita fiat cum misericordia. Amen. O thou lorde Jhesu Crist in whom only restith þe gostly wisdom, thou knowes[t] thoo thinges that be expedient to me a synner, lyke as it plesith the,

4

+ re=demeth and crossed through + tu scis crossed through 6 + las crossed through 7 + knowleche in hart þat ye ar well content with the state & callynge þat ye be yn desirynge intierly with all your hert to be obedient to the ordynaunce of god what so euer plesithe hym to make of yow + marked for omission with crosses and crossed through 5

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and as be-for the eyes of thy maieste it is seen of me, a synner, so let it be with thy mercy. Amen. And when ye say this, offre your-self perpetually to be obedient to all gostly counseilles and mevynges of the Holy Gost, to þe power of your freylte, vnto the hour of deth, sayng in þe remembrance þerof: In manus tuas etc., havyng a full purpose to be willyng to dye when-so-euer it schall plese our Lorde to call. And after that ye haue this [fol. 11v] done, ye schall give thankes to þe Trinite, as ye haue be[n] tawght, for thre speciall excellences [given]8 to our blissed Lady, sayng thries: Aue Maria &c., gretlye desirynge to do sum thing be-for ye dye þat may be plesyng to her. And than haue mynd of your good angell and to other seyntes to whom ye haue speciall devocion, namely thos which schall be honourede in the chirche þat same day, and of this ye may occupye your mynde in the wey toward the chirche, preparynge your hart to prayer by the remembrance of sum part of your lyf. And when ye cum to the chirche, se þat ye do no thinge alonly of custome, Sicut eq[u]us & mulus quibus non est intellectus, [fol. 12r] lyk vnto the horsse & the mule in whome is noon vnderstondynge. But in all thinges considre the presence of our lord God, hauynge hym contynually befor the eye of your sowle, and so be-haue yow in all thynges þat your service may be plesynge to hyme, the whiche requireth of vs not only our corporall exercyse but muche more he requireth þe exercise of our hartes. And befor ye departe forth from the churche, forget not to thanke our lord God with all your hart þat he hath given yow grace þat day to be present at his holy service, and for suche leyser þat ye may so attende, without worldly let, your [fol. 12v ] soules helth, thynkynge þat many oone in the worlde þat be compelled of nede to applye þer bodely labour, if thei mihte haue suche leiseur as ye haue to ensue the spirituell lyf, schuld moche more profyte in vertu þen ye do and be, perauenture, not withstandynge all þer besynes, muche more fervent in the loue of God. And than call to mynde how manye persons be let from the presence of the church to provide for your nedes, mete, drynk & clothe, and hertly commende them all atte lest in generall to our Lord and his seyntes. In departyng from the churche, be-war yow fall not anoon to ydile9 speche: but in the wey considre by ordre how ye haue be occupiede at churche, and [fol. 13r] what deuocion our Lord hath geven yow, and what good purpose yee haue be movede vn-to, and gyve thankes to God and his seyntes with a full desire to folow them. And lyke-wise considre wheryn ye haue be fawty and necligent and be sory

8 9

giving evill crossed through

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therfor with full purpose to be more ware from thens-forth. And thus ye schall do after euery wark befor ye dyuerte to eny oþer occupacione. And when ye be come hoom to your chambre, se þat ye demene yowr-self ther lyk as at þe church, at all tymes considerynge the presence of God and his angelles. Ffirst at your entrynge, on your knees salute our saviour & his mother, and applye [fol. 13v ] your-self to sum profitable occupacion, considerynge in the begynnyng wheþer it be of necessite [or elles voluntary. Yf so be that it be of necessytye]10 it may not be omitted, and if it be of voluntarye, than considre wheþer þer be eny oþer thing of more necessite & profite that may be don at the same tyme or not, and say to your-self, woldest þou be thus occupied if þow schuldest dye this day, and constreyne your-self with the fere of deth to spend yowr tyme at euery houre to þe moost proffyte of your soule, offeryng your hert with your werkes, both at begynnyng & endynge, vn-to our Lord. And before ye depart from your chambre, commytte your custody and gouernaunce vn-to our Lord and your good aungell. Before your mele prepare your harte diligently to come þerto with com[fol. 14r]punccion, which is the most excellent remedy ayenst all sensuall appetites, and though ther be manye meanes to induce compunccyon, notwithstandynge it schall be expedyent þat ye be determynede euery day to sum in specyall, wherfor I schall assigne to yow, lyke as ye desired, for euery day in the weke oon refeccion of our Lord Jhesu, þat yee may be accustomed to fede with hym. These vij ye schall haue in Vita Jhesu secundum Bonauenturam, in the lyf of Jhesu after Bonauentur, in þe chapiters here intitulede: 1. On Monday the xvij chapetre 2. On Tuesday the xxij chapter [fol. 14v] 3. On Wednesday the xxiij chapter 4. On Thursday the xxv chapter 5. On Friday the xxxix chapter 6. On Saturday the xxxiij chapter 7. On Sonday the lxij chapter. Thes chapiters ye schall vse to rede, oþer in part or hoole, as may be sufficient to stere your hartes to compunccion. And but if ye [wyll] fynd shortly the fruyte of your redyng [se]11 þat ye begyn with a gret desire to take profite þerof and ask of our Lord help, sayng: Emitte, domine, sapi[enci]am tuam de sede magnitudinis tue vt mecum sit & mecum laboret & sciam nunc quid acceptum sit coram te & omni tempore. 10 11

supplied from STC 6928 so

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Send doun, good lord, thy wisdome from the seet of þi [fol. 15r] gretnesse that it may be with me & labour with me & than schall I know now what schall be acceptabule be-fore the and in euery tyme. Amen. And then begyn to rede euery thing reuerently, depely markyng euery word that ye rede, often tymes asking grace to profyt. And when ye schal mak an ende, considre your doyng, as I haue seid before, & gif God thankes for his help, & confesse yowr owen necligence and than gif thankes to our Lorde and also to the seynt þat writ those thinges for the profyt of your soule, and say in the honur of hyme one Aue Maria &c. & so commendyng your self `to our Lord´,12 come to your mete [fol. 15v ] with hevynes of hart þat ye be compellide for the nede of your body, þe which ys your contynuall enemye, to leue the seruice of your most belouyde spouse. After this, when ye haue seid grace, intierly desiryng our Lord to blisse yow and all your compeny and his creatures þat ye schal fede of, take your place in ordre as yt besemyth, thynkyng your-selff to vse the rowme of a seruaunt and not of a lady, if þat ye will folowe his example þat seid: Ego in medio vestrum sum sicut qui ministrat. I am in the myddes13 emonges yow lyk as he þat dothe ministre to his companye, beynge glad þat all oþer haue that thing þat contentithe them and think þat ye alone be [fol. 16r] vnworthy the brede þat ye do ete & observe at your mele thes v thynges. First þat ye fede not gredely without consideracion, but befor euery tyme þat ye schall tak your mete, lyft vp your hart vn-to God, thankyng hyme þat he hath made þat creature for your vse, and then considre wheþer it be conuenient for the helth of yowr body, and then tak of it moderatlye, leving the best for oþer þat ben more worthy þan yow be. Þe secunde is þat your abstinence be as secret as ye can, standynge rather in the forberyng of those metys þat ye fele your-selfe moche inclyned to desire þan in eny singularite [notable].14 Þe thrid, þat ye refuse no thyng þat is [fol. 16v] offrede yow but with gret devocion receyue yt as sent of God, yevinge thankes to hyme þerfore, and when ye haue taken part of yt, gyve þe residue as ye thynke best, specially for the norysshynge of charite. The fourth, þat in all the tyme ye study to kepe in your hart the remembraunce of God at euery mossell þat ye receyue, gyvynge thankes in hart to hym, and euery thynge þat ye leve, offre it to hym and your hart with-alle. Þe vth, þat ye do not forget to pray for the pore pepule, lyk as ye did in the mornynge. And when yow haue fedd sufficiently, so þat ye leve alwey with a hungry stomake, beware than of ydile [fol. 17r] wordys 12

+ and of crossed through 14 not able 13

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but if the conuenience of the company so requireth, fynd such communicacion þat may edefye yowr-selff and þe herers. When ye haue seyd grace, as shortly as ye maye conveniently, without eny occasyon, depart to your chambre & recompte with your-self how ye haue done as is befor rehersed. Than be moche ware of ydulnes and apply your-self to some profitable exercise. & if eny thynge wold occupy your mynde that befor ye haue herde or seen, anon returne vn-to our Lord Jhesu and tell to hym all the matter, what-so-euer it be. Yf ye be dyscontent, make your compleynt vn-to hym. If ye haue don amysse, confesse yow forthwithe to hyme. [fol. 17v ] If `ye´15 be in eny dout or perplexite, aske counseyll of hym. If ye be siek or dissesed, let hyme be your phisicyoun. And generally at all tymes haue hym sittyng in the myddes of your hart as your juge, your preste, your maister & leche. And when the aftir-none ys passed in vertuous occupacion, ordre yowr-self to the seruice of God befor your supper and in the tyme þerof, lyke as is befor rehersed, so þat yow endeuer your-self alweys to [do] better the aftyr-none than ye dide the fore-none, and the secund day better than ye did the fyrst daye, and so forth to your lyves ende. But in all thynge beware þat ye be not moche anxyouse or pensyve, nor long abyding in eny heuynesse, nor yet gretlye [fol. 18r] laboryng for-to wepe, thoughe yee fynde your-self moche necligente and daily fautys litell or no-thynge mendynge. Ffor it is nother necessarye ne profitabule but moche let of profyte to suche that fynde in them-self a good will to serve God. But rather anone as ye haue aspyed your defaut and confessede it to our Lord, thank hym of his gret pacience þat he hath with yowe, and by suche meanes reducyth you to þe knowleche of your-selff and therby vn-to meknesse. And synge alwey in your hart O beata &c., for it is meche better in all thynges to considre the goodnesse of God & to prayse hym therfor than to considre our owen evilles & to mourne for [fol. 18v ] them. An example meche notable of this we haue in Vitis patrum of ij brethren. Before Nyght At complyn tyme, call to mynde in ordre16 the benefettes of our Lorde schewyde vn-to yowe þat day and thanke hym for them, and contrary wyse your negligences and all your dedes, wordes, and thoughtes, makyng confessioun of them to our Lord. And suche thynges that be notabule, wherof ye schuld be most asshamede to schew, impreynt them yn mynde with purposse to confesse them to your gostly father, askyng grace that ye may so do. Considre also what seyntes in specyall ye 15 16

ye added above he + to crossed out

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haue seruede that day and what ye haue done to þer honour, [fol. 19r] comptyng that day in maner loste þat ye do not opteyne sum frendshipp of the citezens of heuen wher ye schall euermore dwell. And than remembre what seyntes be the next daye, with a desire to honowr them. Aftir all this, when ye haue also prayede for the pore pepule lyke as ye did in the mornyng, commende your self vn-to our Lord and to our Ladye, to your good angell and all seyntes, with the same prayers and in the same ordre as is bifor writtene. And at the tyme þat ye do of your clothys and til that slep close your senses, kep your hart diligently occupiede in remembryng þe goodnesse of our Lord towarde yow, & specially his gracyouse providence [fol. 19v ] and long pacience þat he hath with yow from day to day. And than conceive a gret desire and a feruent purpose to begynne the next day tymely to amende yowr lyf. And if ye contynue this ordre & cesse not, but perseuerantly enforce your-self to kepe it til your lyvis ende, I trust in Goddes mercy by the prayers of his holy moder and all seyntes yee schal encrese in good lyf and in loue and favoure of our Lord Jhesu, to whom be all prayse, honour, & glory without ende. Amen. Translation O blest and blessed and glorious Trinity, to thee be praise and glory and thanksgiving from all thy creatures, for ever and ever. Amen. .... I thank you, lord Jesu Christ, who didst create me, redeem me, and predestine me to that that I am; thou knowest what thou wouldst do with me. Do with me according to thy will with mercy. Amen. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I acknowledge that I have sinned grievously and gladly I desire to amend through thy grace. Have mercy on me for the sake of thy bitter passion. Amen. .... Lord Jesu Christ who alone art wisdom, thou knowest what things are expedient for me, a sinner, as is pleasing to you; and just as it is seen of me, a sinner, in the eyes of thy majesty, so let it be with thy mercy. Amen. .... Send forth, lord, thy wisdom from the seat of thy greatness that it may be with me and may labour with me and that I may know what is acceptable in thy sight now and always. Source An adaptation of the anonymous Dyurnall. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of its relationship to the printed text.

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Commentary O beata & benedicta: This is an antiphon of the Holy Trinity; see also LSG, Pars 2 cap. 2, and MS Egerton 1821, fols 12v –14r: the latter Carthusian manuscript includes ‘Sancta Matilda’ among the ‘virgines et continentes’ invoked in the Friday litany on fol. 18v . Cf. also LSG, Pars 1 cap. 13, in which Mechtild is instructed to sing this antiphon (in a slightly different form) 350 times. Gracias tibi ago, domine Jhesu Christe, qui me creasti, redemisti et preordinasti: Appears in early sixteenth-century books of hours (e.g. the Sarum horae printed by Verard, c. 1503 (STC 15901) and 1506 (STC 15904); Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 73). There is a persistent belief that it was composed by Henry VI. Domine Jhesu Christe, ego cognosco me grauiter pecasse: Occurs in the Birgittine Thomas Betson’s Ryght profitable treatyse, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500 (STC 1978). Betson claims it as one of several ‘taught our lorde saynt Brigytte’ and enjoins his reader, ‘Saye ye them ofte in the daye’. Domine Jhesu Christe qui solus es sapientia, tu scis: Found in early sixteenthcentury books of hours, e.g. STC 15901. Emitte, domine, sapi[enci]am tuam de sede magnitudinis tue: Another antiphon, recommended to Mechtild by Christ in LSG, Pars 4 cap. 25. This is the first text written by Hand E (Robert Taylor).

Item 7 Text [fol. 20r] Jhesu Aue Jhesu, cui mater uirgo sit et filia. Aue Maria. Intra cuius te includens stricta iacens ylia. Aue Maria. Ibi tubas ibi pascis inter morum lilia. Aue Maria. Beata talis cui prestans domicilia. Aue Maria. Donec nobis te festiua prodant natalicia. Aue Maria. Ueni Jhesu pura puer plenus sapiencia. Aue Maria. Munda sint et grata nostra diuersoria. Aue Maria. Tu sis nobis cibus, potus, uestis, honor, gloria. Aue Maria etc. Y[mpnus]: Ueni redemptor gencium. Maria mater gracie. Gloria tibi domine. V[ersus]: Rorate celi desuper. Et nubes pluant iustum, aperiatur terra et germinat saluatorem. Oratio. Deus qui de beate Marie [Virginis utero Verbum tuum, angelo nuntiante, carnem suscipere voluisti: praesta supplicibus tuis; ut, qui vere eam genetricem Dei credimus, eius apud te intercessionibus adiuvemur. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.]

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Translation [The opening lines are too corrupt to translate other than tentatively] Hail, Jesu, whose mother [is] both virgin and daughter. Hail, Mary, within whose womb. . . . Hail, Mary, where thou . . . thou feedest among the mulberries [and] lilies. Hail, Mary, blessed is such a one who is responsible for thy dwelling places (Hail, Mary), until thy birth festivals bring thee forth. Hail, Mary. Come, Jesu, child filled with pure wisdom. Hail Mary. May our lodgings be pure and acceptable. Hail, Mary. May thou be our food, drink, clothing, honour, and glory. Hail Mary etc. Hymn: Come, thou redeemer of the earth. Mary, mother of grace. Glory be to thee, O lord. Verse: Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above. And let the clouds rain down righteousness. Let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour. Prayer: God who [didst will that thy Word should take flesh] from blessed Mary [the Virgin’s womb, at the message of an angel; grant to thy suppliant people that we who believe her truly the Mother of God may be assisted in thy sight by her intercession. Through Christ our Lord.] Source Unidentified. Commentary A short Office of the Virgin Mary, possibly of the Annunciation. The Latin of the opening hymn is extremely corrupt and cannot be reconstructed or translated with any confidence. The rest of the office is constructed from more familiar liturgical elements. ‘Veni redemptor gentium’ is the opening line of a hymn attributed to Ambrose of Milan. ‘Maria, mater gratiae’ is the first line of the second stanza and ‘Gloria tibi, domine’ the first line of third stanza of the hymn ‘Memento, salutis auctor’, from the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the lesser hours of Terce, Sext, and None, and for Compline. The verse ‘Rorate celi desuper’ (Isaiah 45. 8) is frequently used in the liturgy during Advent and also at the feast of the Annunciation. The final prayer is the collect for the feast of the Annunciation and appears frequently in the Birgittine Breviary, to be recited at Lauds on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; at Compline on Saturday; at the first and second Evensongs of the Annunciation and at Terce, Sext, and Compline; and also at Mass from Advent until Christmas. Written by Hand F.

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Item 8 Text [fol. 20v] Sonday O good Jhesu, I beseche the, make me to love the fervently and perseuerantly. Monday O swete love Jhesu, make me to fele and knowe with how grete love thow haste and dooyst love me. Tuesday O moost lovely Jhesu, I wolde love the but I cannot withowt the. Wednysday O my love Jhesu, make me to dye in thi love and for thi love. [fol. 21r] Thursday O my der love Jhesu, giffe me allwey toward the a reverent, meke, and thankefull1 love & contynuall perseveryng and grace to praise & blesse the euerlastyngly. Ffriday O my Jhesu, for my sake crucified, open the vnto me and make me hoole faste vnto the with the nayles of thi moost tendir love. Saterday O my moost swete and gloriouse Jhesu, when shall I be fullfyllid & made dronke in thi love? When shall I love the? When shall I be ioyned soo vnto the that I may neuer be sepirate from the? [fol. 21v ] How longe shall I be soo farre of from thi face & presence? To be withowt the is to me exile and contynuall sorow & in maner eternall dethe. O moost swete Jhesu, I mekely adore & honour thi moost gloriouse name and commytte me hooly vnto the, booth boody & sowle. In manus tuas etc. Sources/Analogues 1. Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fols 41r–42v : Domine Jesu Christe, fac quod amem te ardenter et perseueranter. Domine Iesu Christe, fac me sentire quam [fol. 41v ] immenso amore amasti me. Domine Jesu Criste, vellem te amare, quod sine te non possum. O amor meus, fac me mori amore tui. Da michi, domine deus meus, amorem reuerentem, humilitatum, timoratum, obedientem, obsequiosum, regraciantem, et habentem continuum sensum tuorum beneficiorum et graciarum [fol. 42r] michi et alijs impensarum.

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Amor meus; crucifige te in me et tui amoris clauis et stimulis me tecum totum crucifige. O amor profundissime et gloriosissime, quando te tota in-ebriabor? Quando visibiliter te videbo, quando osculabor, et familiarissime te amplexabor? Quando sic tibi [fol. 42v ] coniungar vt in nullis offendam et a te separari non possim? Quamdiu a facie tua elongabor? Esse sine te est michi exilium, dolor continuus, et mors quasi eterna. Qui viuus et regnat dominus per omnia secula seculorum. Amen.

2. Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fols 102v–105v: O benignissime [fol. 103r] domine Iesu Christe, da michi ut tota diligam te feruentissime. O fidelissime domine Iesu Christe, da michi vt senciam quam immensa charitate nos dilexisti et diligis. O dulcissime domine Iesu Christe, quam libenter te amarem et quia vt hoc velim, tu dedisti. Da ergo vt diligam te ex toto corde meo quia sine te ni[fol. 103v]chil possum. [. . .] O amor cordis mei, da michi vt moriar tui amore. O amabilissime Iesu, da michi amorem erga te fidelissi[fol. 104r]mum, strenuissimum, castissimum atque purissimum, qui incessanter te senciat, te laudet, tibi gracias agat, tibi obediat, tui honorem ardentissime siciat et totum se tibi impendat. O Iesu pro me crucifixe, transforma queso me in te et fac vt clauis amoris inauertibiliter sim crucifixa in te. Ffac vt pla[fol. 104v ]ceam tibi tota semper et perfectissime. O Iesu amabilissime. O amator fidelissime. O amator deliciosissime, vtinam tota tui amore merear inebriari. O quando videbo te facie ad faciem? O vtinam tu[o] amore in te absorberi merear: vtinam incendio amoris tui uite conflari, tibi vniri et in te consumi [fol. 105r ] merear [. . .] [fol. 105v ] Tu michi omnia es; in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum ac totam me ipsam.

Commentary A set of prayers for love and mystical union structured around the days of the week. Both Latin sets use the invocation ‘O Iesu’ or ‘Domine Jesu Christe’, but in the English a series of eight invocations (‘O good Jhesu . . . O swete love Jhesu . . . O moost lovely Jhesu . . . O my love Jhesu . . . O my der love Jhesu . . . O my Jhesu . . . O my moost swete and gloriouse Jhesu . . . O moost swete Jhesu’) is considerably more extended than in the Latin (three invocations in Version 1, five in Version 2). This lengthy series of invocations is reminiscent of such late medieval texts as the frequently set motet ‘O bone Jesu, O piissime Jesu, O dulcissime Jesu’, which is a trope on the last lines of ‘Ave verum corpus’ and exists in a number of versions, or of the prayer, ‘O bone Jesu, O dulcis Jesu, O Jesu, fili Marie virginis’, traditionally ascribed to Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) and often found in books of hours. All these texts are of course associated with the late medieval devotion to the Holy Name, very much cultivated at Syon (cf. Item 28, and see the discussion in Chapter 5). The final prayer in the English series (not found in either of the Latin versions) reinforces its relationship to that same devotion.

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The English is not an exact translation of either set of Latin devotions. Sometimes it is closer to one set than the other (generally it is closer to the less elaborate Version 1), while at other times it appears to conflate the two. For instance, the prayer for Sunday has ‘fervently and perseuerantly’, while Version 1 has ‘ardenter et perseueranter’ and Version 2 ‘feruentissime’. But there are also several places in which the English differs significantly from both: in the prayer for Wednesday, ‘make me to dye in thi love and for thi love’, the final phrase is not in either Latin version. Possibly both Latin sets of prayers are independent translations of the English text, treated somewhat freely. It seems more likely, however, that the English and the two Latin sets of prayers are all derived from a common source. The English version has introduced the structural use of the days of the week. Prayers making use of such a structure are very common: see for instance Dame Eleanor Hull’s ‘Prayers and Meditations’ (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 1. 6) and the prayers to the Eucharist in Nijmegen, Universiteitsbibliotheek Katholicke Universiteit, MS 194, printed by Connolly, ‘Prayer to the Guardian Angel’, pp. 16–17. It should be noted that Version 2 has been adapted for a female reader, and in Lambeth Palace MS 3600 it immediately precedes the Latin version of the devotions found in Item 22, from the Revelationes of Saint Birgit. Written by Hand G.

Item 9 Text [fol. 22r] Jhc [in upper margin] Intierly belouyde in God, you desirede I wolde enforme yow what wer conuenient ordre for a person to kep that customably vseth to be commoned ones in the seuentnyht or onys in the fourtennyht, presupposed be-for all oþer thinges purite of conscience by trew contricion and repentaunce, and hool confession of all synnes. This schal be the first lesson: deply to think and with gret diligence to considre that noo thyng is more perellouse and, ayen, nothing is more fruytfull than ofte tymes to be commoned. No thing ys more perellouse to them þat disposeth not them-self þerto with diew circumstaunce & ordure, as we do daily se and fele by experience that suche persones be more colde in þe loue of God and mor veyn, light, & viciouse than oþer peple, as it is in þis houre euydent and alweye hath ben in þe churche to moch open [fol. 22 v ] to se amongest prestes, both religiouse &

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seculer. And no mervaile of this for, by ofte presumpcione to the most holy sacrament without devocion and diew ordre, the ofter that they so do, the more they be depryved of grace, and obdurate in hart, & become as hard as stonys, and vnsensibule to all gostly suetnesse, and vtterly incorrigible. Contrarywise no thynge is more profitable to them þat deuly dyspose them-selff therto. Ffor we know by experyence þat euery man the which with devocyon and loue vsith to receyue this holy sacrament from day to day doth grove and increse deuocion in feith, hope, & charite, meknes, pacience, and all oþer uertues, & fele them-self illumined with more grace to the knowlech of God & of them-self, and more removyd from the loue of þis world and also of them-self. Reasons mouht be schewid of thies too thinges but experience is proof sufficient, to [fol. 23r] whom all contrary reasons must nedys gyue place. It is therfor meche necessary to wey and deply considre thies two thinges, and not to think it sufficient to be confessid only of all mortall synnes but also to haue gret heuynes of all venyall synnes, and also of all your viciouse inclynacions & pronyte to syn, daily renewyng your purpose to amende, having no confidence of eny outward werk but giving all your study to the ynward vertuous exercyse, þe which stondith in þe purefieng & makyng clen the conscience by feith, not only from synnes but also from all werldly and carnall desires &, in `þe´ charite of God and of your neighbour, in redynes & pronyte of will to þe seruice of God and all charitabule dedys, in meknes & pacience wilfully beryng for the loue of Criste [fol. 23v ] all maner wronges & tribulacions. After that, by depe consideracion of the perill & fruyt of þis sacrament and þerby steryd your-self to a gret fere of your own vnclennesse, with a gret desire to be made clen, think yow can in no wise atteyn þervnto but by þe vertue of þis sacrament, verely trustyng þat lik as by feithe in þe sacrament of pennaunce ye ar made clene from all mortall synnes, so by the vertue of þis sacrament all your hede synnes, both mortall & venyall, ar clerly remytt and your viciouse inclynacions & synfull pronite mynysshed, your hartes purifyede from worldly and flesshly affeccions, feith, hope and charite with all oþer vertues necessary strengthed & increassed. And for so meche as þis sacrament is þe sacrament of love, it is conuenyent þat that person þe which schall be fedd with it be actually stered to gret deuocion of loue after [fol. 24r] the possibilite of our freilte, þe whiche thing can not [be] opteyned if he be intretide and moche besyed in worldly causes. For it requireth pese and actuall rest of mynde, the which can not be had nor kept but of suche persons as gif themself moch to sylence, solitarynes, redyng, prayer, meditacyon, and contemplacion. And þerfor it is expedient to þat person þat will ofte tymes be commonede diligently to eschew the conuersacion of vnprofitable and noysom company and to enforce

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them-self, as moch as they may with þe charite of þer neighbour obserued, to stand solitary in prayer and vertuous study, chefly þe day of þer comonynge and the day be-fore, neuerthelesse at all oþer tymes avoidyng all dissolucion and jdle speche, desiryng & laboryng at all tymes to kepe Our Lord in ther hart, ofte havinge re[fol. 24v ]course to prayer in þe begynnyng, in the myddes and in the ende of all þer necessary werkes, giving alweys an hyde to þe pese of the mynde, as well when they be forthe as when they be at hoom, not so moch trustyng to þer owen discrecion in þis thing as desiryng in all þer causes to be directyd of Our Lord. It is also moche expedient deply to considre in them-self if þat by ofte comonynge they fele increse of deuocion and of desire to lyve better, and also of charite toward God and þer neighbour, specially toward þer enemye þat oþer doith or spekith evill ayen them; and wheþer they fele þat þer drede & reuerence to þe sacrament doth also increse euery day more þan oþer, thinkyng them-self vnworthy to vse it, having intierly gret confusioun of the moche vnkyndnesse; and notwithstandyng þat, the gret trusty [fol. 25r] confidence þat they haue in þe mercy of Our Lord and the gret desire þat þei haue to þe sacrament doth drawe them to þe receiving of it. For if they perceive þat by moche familiarite & custommable takyng of þe sacrament doth mynyssh in them deuocion and reuerence, better it is to go the seldomer therto. If so be þat they be in dout & can not discerne in þer owen hartes wheþer þer deuocion or dred be more than it semeth, better tha[t]1 loue ouercome dred than contrary, specialy if þer gostly fader do þerto consent, whose counseil in such a case ys conuenient to be askyd, if he be a spyrituall man & of gostly experience. Deo gracias Glossarial notes be commoned: receive communion grove: grow hyde: heed mynysshed: diminished pronyte: tendency Source Unidentified. For the final paragraph, however, compare this passage from Gherit van der Goude, The interpretacyon and sygnyfycacyon of the Masse (London: Robert Wyer, 1532, STC 11549: see Chapter 5), sig. q4r–v: 1

than

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[. . .] the man shall proue and serche his conscyence in these thre poyntes. [. . .] Thyrdly | yf the man do fynde in hym selfe that charyte & the loue of god is augmented by the holy sacrament | and that the fere of god is not dymynysshed. In these poyntes the man shall examyne hym selfe. And yf he fynde that by oft tymes goynge to the holy sacrament | the loue of god is not feruent and quycke in hym; and the fere of god is dymynysshed | than by humylyte he shall refrayne and shall not go so ofte. For the lyfe of one man is the deth of another | but yf he fynde that the loue of god is more feruent and quycke in hym by reason of the same / and that the fere of god doth encrease rather than dymynysshe | he shall ofte tymes go to the holy sacrament after the counceyll of a good confessoure and ghostly father.

Commentary See the discussions in Chapters 2 and 5. Presumably not written specially for MS Harley 494, as it is not addressed to a woman, although clearly aimed at devout laypeople active in the world, who would have to make time to be quiet and thoughtful. The author’s attitude towards the priesthood is ambivalent. His anti-clerical remarks about priests ‘both religiouse & seculer’ are interesting. He also advises a noticeably conditional deference to the opinion of one’s ‘gostly fader’, ‘whose counseil in such a case ys conuenient to be askyd, if he be a spyrituall man & of gostly experience’. This does not sound like an endorsement of the priesthood as a whole. The author puts experience above reason and denigrates exterior works; his text breathes an air of moderation and reasonableness. It is mildly reformist, if only because of what it does not say. Written by Hand E (Robert Taylor).

Item 10 Text [fol. 26r]

A short meditacion and informacyon of our lord Jhesu, schewyd to Seynt Mawde by reuelacion ‘In the nyght or in the mournyng: when þou rysest, commende the, both bodye and soule, vn-to me, thankyng me for þi rest and for oþer benefettes þat þou hast receyued of me, hauynge in mynde how for þi loue I suffered my-self to be betrayede in-to the handes of wyckede men and to be bounde of them. I was obedyent to my fader vn-to the deth. Also in þe mornynge Offre thy hart to me, prayng that þou neuer do ne speke, think ne desyre that thing whiche myhtt displease me, commyttyng all thy gouernance to me and say thus. Say

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this blessing att euery werke that thou shalt begynne: Pater sancte, in vnione amantissimi filij tui, commendo tibi spiritum meum. For kepyng of þi siyht say thus [fol. 26v ] Domine Jhesu Christe, tue diuine sapientie commendo visum meum interiorem & exteriorem vt lumen cognicionis mei dones, quo voluntatem tuam et omnia beneplacita tibi agnoscere valeam. For þi heryng say thus + Domine Jhesu Christe, auditum meum tue misericordie commendo, vt intellectum michi tribuas ad omnia que isto die proferre debeo vt tibi sapiant. For thi mowth & speche + Domine Jhesu Christe, oro te vt os meum in tua laude & graciarum accione aperias ac a vaniloquio mendacio & ab omni peccato custodias. For thy handes + Domine Jhesu Christe, manus meas tue pietati commendo vt opera mea tuis operibus apponas vt in hijs omnia opera mea perficias et ab omni prauo opere me retrahas. [fol. 27r] Vpon thy hart say thus + Domine Jhesu Christe, cor meum tuo amori commendo vt illud cordi tuo cum delectacione intrahas et tuo amore succendas vt numquam terrenum gaudium vel delectacionem amplius sentire valeat. Amen. Before Matyns Behold than as þou wer present when I was betrayde of my discipule, how myn enemyes fell doun at on word of my mowth, how after I suffered my-selff wilfully to be bounden of them as a theff and drawen forth with many despites to þat place wher-as I was accusede with many fals wytnesses and of my chosen discipules feerfully forsaken. Be-fore Pryme Behold with reuerence as if thow wer present when I stode as a [fol. 27v] 1 meke lambe, bounden befor that vnworthi juge Pilate, falsly accusede, bete and buffetted, with spittynges despised, and also be-for Caiphas, where Petir thries forsoke me and denyede me. At þe reuerence of this meknes be thou redy to suffre paciently jniuryes & rebukes for my loue. Be-for thy Terce Behold as if þou wer present when I was at þe commaundement of Pilate bounden to a pillare, so scharply scourged, my skynn so rent that all my body rann of blode, sent to Kyng Herode & sithe ayen to Pilate, clothed in whit as a fole, after in purpos scornefully called kyng of them, crownede with sharpe thornes at the cryeng of þe Jewes, iuged to þe deth of the crosse. 1

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[fol. 28r] Be-for þi Sext Behold with compassioun how I was drawen forthe piteously with a hevye crosse on my backe, þat I fayntede & fell doun for febulnesse. Haue þou pite on me and take this crosse and helpe me, with Symonde, to bere it, hauynge pacience in all tribulacions and temptacions, in aduersite and seknesse, gostly and bodely. Se also hou I was nayled thervnto, bothe foot and hande, so paynfully tugged, shaked, and swoungen þat my synewes all to braste, my joyntes departede in soundre. & all þis plesed me for þe loue of þe. By-for þi howre of Noon Behold me hyngyng on the crosse with most gret payn, abidyng my dethe, and thynk how I, full of cha[fol. 28v]rite, prayde for them þat crucifyede me, and how tenderly I commyttede my mother to John, and John to my moder, how mercifully I receyuede the oon thef to grace, promysynge to hym Paradise for his confession and to the oþer, rygh[t]fully, payne for his blasphemye; how I cryede piteously, “My God, my God, whi hast þou forsaken me?” and how I cried Scicio for thruste of mannes soule, and bodely I thrusted sore; for bitter peynes and shedyng of blode and naturall moyster I wexid all sterke and drye. Also I criede, “Now ys an ende”, þat is, “Fader, I haue perfetly fulfyllede thi biddyng and þi obedience”. And so with langour & peyn my sighte faylede, my hede fell doun [fol. 29r] vpon my breste, thankynge my fader of his callynge, with gret a hyghe voyce in-to the handes commendyng my spirite. Behold also how the clausur of loue, the cloyster of clennes, myn hart, was persyde with a spere, out of þe whiche sprong blode and watur in redempcione of man. In all thies haue mynde of my moder and se how for sorowe sche swonethe and is oft in poynt of dethe. Now, dere soule, entre into my woundes, close thyn hart withyn myn, for it is opeyn ayenst þi gostly enemyes. Be-for Euensonge Behold how, by the licence of Pilate, Joseph & Nichodeme came with instrumentis to take my body doun of þe crosse, and when they came w`h´ere my [fol. 29v ] moder was with Mawdleyn and other, & how noon mighte speke to other for pyte and compassioun, how also they worshipped me and the crosse and how they toke me doun. Behold how pyteously my moder receyued me in here armes, with bitter teres kyssing my woundes. Abyde with her and haue compassyon on me with herty loue so þat þou do morne me. Be-for Complyn Beholde how I was leyde withyn my moders lappe with sorow & swonynge. Sche serchede my woundes, my body blody with Mawdleyn sche lappide with clothes þat be-for was bawmed with aloes and myrre; my body was closede and put in grave,

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my spiryte with þe godhede delyuerede man from hell, ouercommynge the deville and destroyng [fol. 30r] deth I rose the thride day. Whan thou woldest praise me, lawd or thanke me, or loue me, and if þou thynke that thow maist not or can not after thy desire, than say thus: Jhesu bone, laudo te & quicquid minus est in me, rogo vt te supleas pro me. Jhesu bone, amo te et si quid minus est in me, rogo ut cordis tui amorem Patri offeras pro me. And as ofte as þou praiest thus, I schall offre my-self to my father for the.’ Translation Holy Father, in union with thy most loving Son I commend my spirit to thee. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I commend my sight, both inward and outward, to thy divine wisdom, that thou grant me light of knowledge by which I may recognize thy will and all that is pleasing to thee. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I commend my hearing to thy mercy, that thou grant me understanding with respect to all the things which I should utter this day that they may have for thee a good savour. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I pray thee that thou open my mouth in thy praise and thanksgiving and keep it from foolish lies and from every sin. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I commend my hands to thy loving-kindness, that thou unite my deeds to thy deeds so that in them thou mayest perfect all my deeds and draw me back from every evil deed. .... Lord Jesu Christ, I commend my heart to thy love, that thou draw it to thy heart with delight and set it on fire with thy love so that it may never more be able to experience earthly joy or pleasure. Amen. .... Good Jesu, I praise thee and wherever I fall short I ask that thou make it good on my behalf. Good Jesu, I love thee and wherever I fall short I ask that thou offer thy heart’s love to the Father on my behalf. Source LSG, Pars 3 cap. 17, of which there is an independent English version in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.74, fols 77v–80r, and part of cap. 29. For the opening, cf. also Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fol. 9r–v:

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In the nyght or in the mornyng when thow rysest, commend the bothe sowle and body unto me. thankyng me for thy kepyng for thy rest and for all other benefyttes that thow hast receyued of me, hauyng in mynd how for thy loue I betoke my-selff in to þe handys of wycked men to be bownd and was mad buxsum and obe/dient to my father, vnto the deth, saying thus: Gracias ago tibi omnipotens deus pro proteccione diuina.

The final prayer is also found in Lambeth Palace MS 3600 and derives from LSG, Pars 4 cap. 23. Again, there is an English version in Trinity MS O.1.74, fol. 77r–v.

Item 11 Text [fol. 30r]

And after Complyn [afore]1 matyns In the mornynge Take good heed how þou hast gouernede the and spendede thy tyme day & nyghte, what þou hast doon þat thow schuldest not haue don and what thow hast lefte þat þou shuldest haue [fol. 30v ] do. Of all thy trespas and mysgouernaunce axe God mercye with full wyll of amendemente, thankynge hym þat he sufferede the to falle no wars, and of all synnes that he hath kepte þe frome open thy hart to hym, as he wer present ther befor the, and knowleg thy defautes, offeryng thyn entente and thy desire to hym. Haue þin eye vpon the person of Crist, beholdynge hym as God and man. And fastyn þi spirituall sight more vpon his godhede, consideryng howe by his maieste and his almyhtty power all thyng ys brought forth & hath beyng, as of a faderly begynnynge; with his endlesse wisdome all thyng ys gouernede; by his infenyte goodnes all thing ys kept after his godly ordynaunce. Beholde also how by hys wysdome in the crosse he hath destroyed [fol. 31r] all the power of the devill & given to vs power by the vertue of hys passyon in the same crosse, if we woll abule vs þerto, for-to ouercome all owre gostly enemyes. Say than as present in his sight, in the worship of hys fyve woundes, fyve Pater Noster & one Crede with this versicle: Adoramus te Christe etc., and this collecte: Domine Jhesu Christe, fili dei vivi, pone passionem etc. Behold than our Lady as prisent and glorifiede in þe sight of her son; make her mediatrice and meane for the and all mankynde with all the blissed court of heuen. Salute her with som prayer after your mynde.

1

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Source Unidentified, but also found in Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fols 58v–60v and 66r–v. [A]lso after complyne. Afore matens and in the mornyng. Take good hede how thow haste gouernyd thy self, and spend tyme day and nyght, what thow hast doon that though shuldyst nott [fol. 59r ] haue done, and what thow hast lefte that thow shuldest haue done. Of all thy trespas and mysgouernaunce aske God marcy wyth full wyll of amendment, thankyng hym that he sufferyde the to fall no warsse, and also of all þe synnes that he hath kepte the from. Open thy harte to hym as he ware present there be-fore the, [fol. 59v] knolegyng thy defawttis, and offer thyne yntent and desyre all holly to hym, neuer after to thynke, speke, or doo that shuld dysplese hym. Haue euer thyn yei vpon the person of Criste, beholdyng hym as God and man, and fasten thy spyrituall syght more vpon hys godhed than vpon hys manhed, consyderyng [fol. 60r ] how by hys mageste and allmyghty power all thyng ys browghtt for the and hath being, as of a fatherly begynnyng. By hys endles wysdom all thyngys are gouerned, by hys ynfynytte gudnes all thyngys `bene´ kepte and after hys godly ordynaunce. Behold also how by hys wisdom yn the crosse he hath [fol. 60v ] distroyed deth and all þe power of the devyll, and geuyn vs power by the verteus of hys passion yn the same crosse, yf we wyll abyll oure selfe thertoo, for-to ouercome all our gostly enemyes. Say then, as present yn hys syghtt, yn the worshyp of hys fyue woundus ad dexterum pedem, Dulcissime Iesu. . . . [fol. 66r] . . . wyth this versecle et capitulum, Adoramus [fol. 66v] te Christe etc. and thys collett, Domine Iesu Christe fili dei uiui pone pass[ionem] etc. Behold then oure Lady as present and gloryfied in the syght of hy[r] sone, make hyr mediatryce and meane for the `and´ all mankynde with all the blessyd courte of heuyn, salutyng hyr wyth some devowt prayer after thy deuocyon.

The versicle and collect prescribed at the end are part of the conclusion for each of the Hours of the Cross. Commentary Written by Hand E. These directions for a morning self-examination are not obviously differentiated from the previous item.

Item 12 Text [fol. 31r] Because we here haue ordured yow to pray, so þat praier moche availeth vn-to manny, we shal now schew a conuenient ordure & [fol. 31v ] cours how ye schulde recommend vn-to the same or oþer prayers in your memorye or remembraunce suche persones be name or person as ye haue apoyntede, or haue ben bounden, to pray for.

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Ffirst, after the ordre of charite, pray for your-selff I trust ye will not forget. Seconde, for your parentz, þat is your fathers & moders spirituall, as the [pope],1 the bysshope, your curatz, person, wykar, or eny prest þat hath hard your confessioun, your godfathers, your godmothers, or spirituall brethren and susters: þose ben suche religiouse persones or oþer that by þer chapetre haue made yow partenars with them. In þe same place also pray for your carnall parentz, your [fol. 32r] own father and moþer, graundfaþer & graund-mother, your owen brethern and susterne, kynne and alyaunce, for all thos ben braunches of one tre. Thrid, for all your benefactours and good-doers, specially your instructours and techars, ouþer of connyng or vertu and gode maner. Ffourth, for your enemyes, all suche as haue hurt or harmede or hyndred yow by trouble and vexacion, in your goodes or possessions temporall, in þe state and helth of your body, in your name and fame, and most specially in soule; and for them þat by þe instigacion of þe enemye haue eny malice, gruge, displesur, or stomak ayen yow: þat almyhtty God forheue them all and send them charite. [fol. 32v] [Fifth,] for all them þat be not in þe state of grace, as infidels, heretikes, scismatikes, and dedly synners, þat almighty God call them to righte ffeith, reformacion, & dew repentaunce. And specially pray with herty compu[n]ccion for all suche persones as ye haue brought to eny vice, or hyndrede of eny vertue, by evill example, occasyon, or counsell, in werk, worde, or countenaunce [or] prouocacion, besechyng Our Lord by your prayers to sende them grace of amendement. The vjth place and last ys to pray for all them þat ben passed þis present lyf and in þe peynes of purgatory, and þer begyn ayen the same ordure as may serue for þat state. For þus ye can not pray for your-self; ye must then begynne þer with your parentz, [fol. 33r] kynne, and alyaunce þat ben dede, and then for your benefactours. Thrid, for them þat wer your enemyes and þerfor doth suffren eny payn, þat God by your charite wold releese them ther-from. [Fourth,] for all suche persones as þer haue payn for eny occasyon they toke of yow, or as ye gaue vn-to theme, as is seid, by eny example, counsell, or behauour, in werk, word, countenance, or prouocacion, þat is, as ye wer a causer of þer payn, ye may by your prayer be a meane to almyghty God for þer relesse and ease. Fifth, for all those þat haue grettest payn in purgatory & lest helpe vpon erthe by the suffrages of prayer. Sixth and last, for all the soules [fol. 33v ] in generall þat þer suffre payn or be þer prisoners. And of your charite, forget not hym þat daily praieth for yow, þe wreche of Syon.

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Source Freely adapted from Richard Whitford’s translation of the pseudo-Bernardine Golden Epistle, which was published with Due preparacion in 1531? (STC 25412) and 1537 (STC 25413 and STC 25413.5). See the discussion in Chapter 3. Commentary Written by Hand E (Robert Taylor]. This text begins in the middle of a line and the only indication that it is separate from the preceding item is that the first word, ‘Because’, is written in a slightly larger display script. This item contained the only occurrence of the word ‘pope’ in MS Harley 494: it has been thoroughly erased in accordance with Thomas Cromwell’s decree.

Item 13 Text [fol. 33v ] The fourme of prayer after an-oþer maner. Vse wheþer ye like best. O blessid Lord, haue mercy on thyn hoole chirche, wherso-euer they be dispersed in þe vniuersall world. And those þat ben in1 grace, preserue and conferme them theryn. And those þat ben in mysery & payn, releve and socour them. And those þat ben in syn & wrechednes, reduce them to þe way of grace and feith, and those þat ben in bodely helth and prosperite, inclyne þer hertes to haue mercy vpon ther euencristen. Amen. O blissed Lord, haue mercy on all the hedes and rewlars of þe chirch, both spirituall & temporall, & specially of thys [fol. 34r] realme of Englande and all the pepule of the same, as thow knowest necessary to the soule helth of euery man and woman. Amen. O blissed Lord, haue mercy on all the seruauntes whiche in þis nyght or day hath or schall honour thy holy name, and specially on this present houshold, and on all Cristen peple þat laboreth oiþer by see or lande in eny labour to the honour of thy holy name or proffet of þer soules, and specially on theme þat laboreth in seknes of body, temptacyon of soule, pilgremage, thraldom of ynfidels, captiuite of prison, derth, pennury, merchandyse, eny distresse or angwisshe of soule or body: þat after thi blessid plesure and will on þis pore remembraunce they may haue [fol. 34v ] thy consolacion & comfort. Amen.

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O blissed Lord Jhesu, haue mercy on me and accept this pore remembraunce for me, wreche, as thy blissed will ys, and for all thos for whom thowe knowest me, wreche, specially bounde to pray, both quyck and dede, and on this behalf for my fader & moþer and all my benefactours and frendes, and for all þat I haue hurted or offendede in word or dede, or þat hath offended or displeside me, or bere eny malice or gruge ayenst me, and for the soules þat abideth þi mercy in the peynes of purgatory, and specially for them þat hath no help nor socour but only þi grace and þe generall suffrages and oþer gostly de[fol. 35r]dys: all peynes, werkes of obedience, and oþer meritorious operacyons may be to þer releve, comfort & socour and delyueraunce, accordyng to þi blesside will & plesure. Amen. Source The first three prayers are freely adapted (possibly by Richard Whitford; Bonde himself died in 1530, before the compilation of MS Harley 494) from William Bonde, Pilgrymage of perfeccyon, Bk III, day 6, ch. 54, 2nd edn printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1531 (STC 3278). See the discussion in Chapter 3.

Item 14 Text [fol. 35v] For your receiving of þe sacrament When ye purpose to receive Our Lorde, meditacion schall be profitable and moche necessary for yow to move or stir yow vn-to deuocion, without the whiche þat holy sacrament schuld neuer be receyved. Ffyrst then ordure your-self, if ye may conueniently, to here a hole masse & in the tyme þer-of or befor gadre your-self vnto yowr-selff, holy as ye may, from all maner of cares, bodely besynesse, and secular thoughtes, and in all þat ye can labour for deuocion, although compellid & constreyned by-fore, & dilygence thervnto; for no person can telle yow with how moche reuerence, how depe deuocion, how lowly & meke hart, pure & clene soule, how ferme and stedfast faith, hye and suer hope, how ardent & feruent charite, ye [fol. 36r] schuld aproche to þat heuenly mistery wher is present the verrey body & soule, þe flesshe and blode, of our savyour Jhesu, verrey God and man, his highe diuinite, the blissed Trinite, Fader, Son, and Holy Gost, with gret multitude of angelles invisibule & holy seyntes innumerabule, doyng ther all þer lowly obesaunce with all dew honour.

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Ye may thus begyn your meditacion. Ffyrst remembre the mervellous, kynde, & liberall goodnes of our Lord God jn creacion of our nature, which he ordeynede to hym-self without his nede but for our syngler proffyt, puttyng the same as lord and soueregne of all creatures in paradise of plesure, whiche when he had lost by syn that myght neuer be it-self be able to recouer the same ayen ne to returne thervnto, wherfor it pleside þe most myhtty, piteuous, & mercifull Fader, almyhtty God, of his most hyghe prouydence, [fol. 36v] wysdome, and liberall bovntie, by the passion and dethe of his only begoten sonne owre Lord and savyour Jhesu, mercifully to þe helpe and socoure of this ffreyle, jmpotent, & febule nature, so that wher we wreches for by-cause of our infirmite myhtt not be abule to aproche by our-self to hys invisibule and highe maieste, we schulde haue a mediatour and meane persone þat schuld be verrey God & man and therbye atteyn that power and prerogatyve to aproche by hym-selff for vs to þe presence of that most excellent divyne maieste, and ther pray & pleet for vs as owr aduocate and proctour, by whose mediacion we vnworthy wreches schuld also haue strenght & power to clymbe with hym and aproche to þe same honorabule presence; for by the merytes of the bytter passione & precious deth [fol. 37r] of our seyd mediatour the wey and gate of heuen is open to vs, and by the spirituall foode of lyf is spirituall strenght mynistred to vs, wherby we may com to that selff maieste. Ffor lyk as the braunches of a tre haue þer norysshynge and fode of lyf of the stocke, so in lyke maner haue all Cristen pepule in ther soules the spirituall fode of lyf in the sacramentes of our savyour þat take holly the effectes of his seid passion and deth; among which sacramentes þis blesside sacrament of the awter is moost syngler nutriment and fedar and the most chefe comfort and refresshing of owr soules, wherby we haue forgivenesse of synnes, augmentacion of grace, spirituall strenght to resiste all maner temptacions, and all owr good werkes, of them-self vile & litell worthe, by [fol. 37v ] the vertu of this sacrament ben made acceptabule to our lord God; wherfor jt is necessarye and conuenyent þat alwey this holy sacrament be receyued, not onlye with most clene conscience but also with gret deuocion. Syth than this blessid sacrament was ordeynede by our savyour Jhesu in þe remembraunce of his passione, no meditacion may be more conuenient or more fruytfulley may dispose yow in diew compunccione of hart to receve it then þe meditacion of his most bitter passion and deth, & þat, I saye, if it be a sauery meditacion. This may ye knowe when yowr meditacion1 ys savoury & felynge; when-so-euer ye be clene in conscience & vtterly for the tyme mortifyed from all

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bodely thinges; and then of purpose and will don call to your remembrance [fol. 38r] and revolue in your hart the same passion or eny part of yt. If therwith ye of only feruour of loue be resoluyde and fall without violence to teres, or at the leste to a yernynge of stomake, then may ye be suer or largly coniectour þat your meditacion ys felynge, swet, or savoury. Then, I say, persue and folowe þat meditacion fferuently and labour theryn hertely while the tyme lastethe. Iwiss, if ye will put it in daily exercise, ye may in a verrey short space so fully in your soule the hoole course of the passion atte lest2 somwhat to loke theron schall be-come yow and be profitable at euery tyme of yowr communyoun before ye receyve our Lord; and then fall to your vocall prayers [fol. 38v ] which, well sawsede with that meditacion, be ye suer will savour the better vn-to the palate of your soule. Here haue I sett forth dyuers prayers after my pour wytt, moche acordynge to þis purposse. Tak them in good worth and vse them, or some of them, as your mynde & spirite is mouyde of our lord God, who euer directe yowe. Amen. At the begynnyng of your masse My good lord God and sauyour Jhesu Criste, I confesse and intierly knowlege vn-to thy benigne mercy that in all my lyffe heþerto mispent I haue right grevouslye, by many miserable abhominacions and synnes innumerabule, offendede thy gracyous goodnesse, as well in werk & worde as thought; which synnes if I shulde wholy recounte schuld for þe [fol. 39r] multitude be vn-to me vnpossible. Wherfor with most humble and sorowfulle hert and at þe lest with good will of3 perfyt contric[i]one, vtterly forsakynge them all for euer, I offre them hollye, all and sume, gret and smalle, vn-to thy worthy passioun & preciouse deth; by the merites wherof, and no-thyng of my deserving, I hertely axe, instauntly requere, and most lowly I beseche þi gracious goodnes of mercy & forgevenes of them all, and þat frome hensforth I may haue thy grace in trew feith, stedefast hope, and perfite charite to ordre my-self wholly and all myn actes vn-to thyn honour & plesure. Amen. After þe kyrie & fyrst collecte My good lorde and swet sauyour Jhesu, I beseche the, avoide and take awey [fol. 39v] frome me all myn iniquites and kendle in me, of thi mercyfull pite, the flaumynge fyre of thi feruent loue. Be not displeasyde with me, good swet Jhesu, ne reteyn, good lord, or kepe in remembrance the multitude of my defautes, for I do not presume to pray here befor thi face and presence be eny confidence and trust of eny goodnes, rightwesnes or deseruyng of my-selff but only in hope of þi many myseracions and mercifull bountie. 2 3

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Take from me, good lord, this stony hert and hard stomak and give a new4 flesshly hert and an ernynge stomake full of compunccion. A kynd herte, lord, give me and a louynge stomake that may dredefully loue the and louyngly drede the only, also may delite in the, willfully folowe the, and at the [fol. 40r] last fully to possede þe, euerlastyngly duell with the, and at full plesure haue & vse the. Amen. Aftyr the Pistle My louyng lorde and swet sauyour Jhesu, I beseche the, for all the angwissh and wo of thy most holly hert that thow, lorde, in all thy passion did susteyn and suffere, ffyrst for þe plenteousnes, effusion, and shedynge of þi most holy sacrede blode and for the vertu of thy most innocent deth. And also I beseche the, lord, for the mistery of this holy sacrament of thi most blessid body and blode, in þe immolacion of sacrifice, wherof I, most vile synnar, am present and therunto, most vnworthye wreche, do accede and aproche. And further, good lorde, I beseche þe for thyn own self, haue pite & [fol. 40v] mercy vpon me that am the most miserabule wreche and most synfull caityve vpon erthe. Purefy therfor and clense my harte, good lord, from all vnlawfull affeccyons and from all vayne and all vnfruitfull cogitacions, so that this tyme & all other tymes I maye duely and worthely do pleasinge seruice vnto the alone. Graunt me, lorde, verrey trewe & perfite contricione for my synnes, and full foryevenes of them all. Graunt me also, I beseche the, lorde, the grace of holy and intier compunccion of hert, clere and clene conscience, the founteyne of fruitefull teres, pure deuocion of mynde, contynuall memorye & remembrance of þi passione and of thy most holy love, good lorde, perpetually for euer. Amen. O most benigne and mercifull louer of mankynde, my swet lorde Jhesu, I [fol. 41r] humblye beseche thi grace, for the dolour and paynfull smertt of þi woundes, þat of thyn habundaunt goodnes þu give me thy grace, lord, vtterly to hate and abhorre and horrebly to contempne and dispice all synne and worldly thynges and all bodely pleasures, all glosyng, lyenge, flateryng, dissymulacion, secular fauour and affeccione, and to haue ferme constaunce & perpetuall perseueraunce in the purposed favour of my holy vowe of religione that I haue, of þi grace, enterprised and promysed; and that kepynge the same pure and whole without spott or defovlynge, I may encrease daily and proffyt þer-yn and to haue contynually feruent desire of my countrey celestyall and heuenly hoome. Graunt, gentle Jhesu, [fol. 41v ] in all aduersite sure constance, in all troubule trew pacience, in all my maners good discipline and religious behauiour, and euermore and euery-where in euerye tyme and place verrey vnfeyned humylite of hert and mynde. Amen.

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The gospell of the masse In the tyme of the gospell ye schulde not praye ne with eny beadys, bokes, or enythinge ellys to be occupiede, but reuerently stondynge and, nothere5 knelyng, sittynge, ne lenynge, ye schall well herken the same gospell and give good heede with diligence þer-vnto althoughe ye do not vnderstonde it, and euer at thes wordes, Jhesu and Maria, inclyne & mak obeisaunce. In the tyme of the leuacion Yee haue a praier in tyme of þe eleua[fol. 42r]cyon, Aue verum corpus &c., wherevnto, as it is seid, gret pardoun is graunted, and therfor I will not move yow þerefrome, how be it holy Seynt Thomas praisethe muche, as wer conuenient for þat tyme, this prayer folowyng: Tu rex glorie Christe etc. and so forthe, vn-to the ende of that ympne, your comen Te deum laudamus. The English and vnderstondynge wherof I haue here sett forth þat ye may theryne haue more deuocion. For ye may, if ye will, say it after your other prayer. Tu rex glorie Christe, the Englissh & meanynge [is] as though ye sayd vn-to Criste ther befor yo[w]6 present, I confesse and verrely knowlege by trew byleffe & certeyn feithe þat þu, good lorde, [fol. 42v ] present in the sacrament, art the essencyall son of God, Crist Jhesu, the king of glorye. Thou, lord, art the euerlastyng son of þe Fader of heuen, almyghty God. Tu ad liberandum. Thow art the good lord þat, desposing of thi gret mercy, determynynge to take our nature and so to delyuer mankynde from the bondage of syn, thou dydest not abhorre the wombe of the virgyn. Tu deuicto. Thow art the good lord that, by the vaynquysshinge and ouercommynge of the dart of deth, hast openede, vn-to all them þat stedfastly beleve in the, the realme and kyngdome of heuen. Tu ad dexteram. Thow, good lord, sittest now, verrey God and man in the glory of God thi fader, vpon his right hande. And we beleve verely that þu art the lorde þat [fol. 43r] shalt come to juge and deme the worlde. Te ergo quesumus. Therfor, we beseche the, help and socour thy seruauntes, whom thow hast redemyde and bought with thi preciouse bloode. Eterna fac. And cause them, good lorde, to be rewardede with the same sort of thi holy seyntes in euerlastyng glory. Saluum fac. Good lord, make all thi pepule saffe and give thy daily blissynge vn-to thyn enheretaunce. Et rege eos. Rewl and governe them, good lord, and extolle and enhaunce and promote them for euer more. Per singulos dies. Euery day by day, good lord, we blesse and honour the, and euery yere and tyme from age to age for euer we lawde and praise thy name. Dignare domine. [fol. 43v ] Vouchsaf, good lord, to preserue and kepe vs this day and euery day 5 6

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without synne. Miserere nostri, domine. Haue mercy vpon vs, good lord. Ffiat misericordia. Let thy mercy, good lord, be perfetly schewide vpon vs lykwise as we haue alwey owre singler hope and trust in the; we holly hope and fully trust, good lorde, in the alone. Lett vs neuer, then, swet Jhesu, eternally be confoundede and deceyuede. This is the end of Te deum. Ffrom the eleuacion vn-to the ende of the masse O most benigne lord God and gentill sauyour, most highe preest and verrey bysshop, Jhesu Crist, þat woldest vouchsafe to offre thyn own self in sacrifice to the father of heuen, [fol. 44r] as most pure, most holy, and most immaculate host vpon the awter of þe crosse for vs, so wreched synners; and also of thy most liberall bountie woldest give vn-to vs thi verrey sacrede flesshe for our spirituall fode and thy blessid blode for our spirituall drynke: I beseche the, lorde, for the paynfull smertynge of thy dolorous woundes, and for the plenteuous effusion and shedyng of thy precious blode, and for the vertue of thy most shamfull and most innocent deth, and specially for þat most excellent, most mervellous and vnspekabule charite þu hadd vn-to vs, wherby þu woldest vouchesafe to wasshe vs, so vnworthy wreches, in the bath of the same blode: I beseche the, loke vpon me with the eye of þi mercye and [fol. 44v] pitie and forgive me all my trespaces, don by other commissyoun or omyssione. And sithe onlye of thi liberall goodnes, without eny merites and deseruynge of me, þu woldest vouchsafe, amonges thy oþer gret benefettes, to call me nowe vn-to þat grace of good will worthely to receive þi blissed body; for I can not deny but þat I haue good will so to do and that, I knowe well, commethe of þi grace: teche me then, good lorde, so to ordre my selfe therunto with suche reuerence and honour, suche drede & deuocion, suche fervour & charite, as schulde become that highe misterye and as schuld apperteine vn-to my degre, religion, and callynge of thi grace, as may be accepta[fol. 45r]bule vn-to thi goodnes; and þat I neuer eny-thing dowt theryn or err, but that alweye I may so beleue therof and vnderstande, so perceyve and fermely holde, so speke and thinke therof with diew reuerence, as may be vn-to the honour of the same, vn-to thi plesure, lord, and vn-to the saluacion of my soule. Let, good lorde, thy Holy Spirit entre in-to my hert, that he ther, without noyse or sowne of wordes, may secretly speke vn-to me and instructe, teche, and tell me the verrey treuthe of that highe misterye. For I knowe well it is verrey profounde & highe and, except þi grace, ferr a-boue myn vnderstandynge or perceivinge. Wherfor, good lord God and swete [fol. 45v] savyour Jhesu, I, holly without eny forther discusse or argument, lowly submytt my-selfe in firme feithe vn-to thy mercy & moste humbly beseche the same, þat I may nowe and euer aproche therunto with pure herte and clene conscience, and also þat it may plese the, lord, for þe swetnes of thy most holy hert, to clens and delyuer my febule and feynt hert

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from all veyn and all vnclene, all noyous, synfull, and vnlawfull cogitacions, and to fixe it, lord, in the þat so by þi grace it may be made the worthy habitacle and duellynge place of thy worthy maiestie, now specially at þis tyme and also at all tymes, world without end. Amen. O most suer louer of all mankynde, swet lord and saviour, I beseche the for þe holy vertu of þi [fol. 46r] bittir passioun, exile and put a-wey from me the spirit of elacion, of detraccion, and of suspicion, & pride, þe spirit of envye, of malice, and impacience, and of all oþer pestilences of the soule. And replenysshe my soule, good lord, and fulfyll yt with the vertues of meknes and charite, pacience and liberalite, diligence & dew temperaunce, chastite, and all pure, symple, and vnfeyned jnnocence. Mortefy, lord, in me all libedenous commocions and filthy sterynges, all carnall desires & inordynat affeccions, and cause me, lord, to growe, increse and proffite with constante perseuerance in all suche vertues as most don plese þi grace, so þat in this tyme & euermore [fol. 46v] I may with pure body and clene soule receive worthely this holy sacrament of thi blessid body and blode. Ffor I know well and verely well I knowe and so here in thy presence and befor thi face I confesse and knowlege þat I am moche vnworthy to accede and aproche to þis holy sacred mistery because of my many gret abhominabule iniquites & synnes and of myn innumerable necligences. But þen ageyn I knowe as well and also I beleue & knovleg þat þu, lord, art omnipotent & almyghty and maist do what þu wilt. And therfor thou maist, good lord, if it plese the þat maydest all the worlde of nought, make me worþi to receve the. Ffor thou a-lone, [fol. 47r ] good lorde, maist iustefye a synner and of the vile & synfull wreche make a clen, bright and clen person. Therfor, good lord, I beseche the for thyn almyghty power, graunt to me, thy wreched and most vnworthy seruaunt, verey inward and trew contricyon of all my synnes, feruent compunction, and pure deuocion in thi loue, so þat I may receive this holy sacrament & sacrifice of þi blissed body with dew drede & reuerence, with pure conscience and clennes of hart, wasshen with þe gracious fownteyn of swet spirituall teres, with godly gladnes & heuenly joy, with meknes of mynde & fervour of charite And þat I may, goode lord, if it please the, be lift vp in spirite to fele and perceive some [fol. 47v] spercle of the swetnes of thi blessid presence and of the deuocione of thy holy angelles and seyntes that ben present a-bout the. Amen. O most gentile lord and most mercyfull savyour Jhesu, I beseche the for thi holy sacred mistery of thi blessid body and blode, wherby we vnworthi wreches ben daily fedd and nurysshede in thi chirche, daily also wasshede, clensid, and sanctifyede, and made partenars of thi most singler and highe diuinite: graunt me, lorde, thi holy vertues, wherwith apparelled I may with pure and clere conscience approche vn-to thi bourde, so that this celestyall sacrament may be vn-to me helth of soule & lif euerlastyng. Amen.

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Goode gentyle Jhesu, I besech the, [fol. 48r] sith thou art both verrey phisicion & medicyn, cure and hele myn hert from all maner of langour and spirituall dissease, so þat I fele and delite in noo swetnesse nor plesure, but only in the, so þat I noither inquire, sek, nor desire eny loue or louer but only the, good lord, so þat I admitte and be content with noon oþer consolacion ne comforte but only the. For þu, good lord, art the most swet and sauoury brede of lif, bred of all vnderstondynge and knowlege, hauyng in thi-self all maner of delectament and plesure, all swetnesse of odour and smell, sauour and tast. Thou are the brede, lord, þat within thyn owen self of þi mere charite doist euer daily & contynually refressh and fede vs, and yet notwithstondyng thou [fol. 48v ] no-thing in thi-selff doest waist, mynysh, ne faynt. Cause my hart, good lord, þerfore to fede vpon the and spiritually ete the and with þat mete only to be content, so þat my soule þerby may contynue life and also be saciate and fufillede with the plesaunt tast of thy holy delicate deynte. O most holy sacred brede, most faire, most goodly brede, moste softe, most swet, most savoury brede, most white, most clene, most pure paynmayn, most holsome, most norysshinge brede. O brede of all bredes, the verrey quyck brede of lyf þat didest discende to comme downe from heuen, and nowe for euermore contynually givest lyf vn-to this worlde. Cum, swet brede, cum and entre into my hert and ther make clen `my´ ynward parties from all maner inquinamentes and [fol. 49r] filthe of mynde and spirit. Entre in-to my soule and hele all my seknes. Be þu, lord, þi-self the medicyne and leche & the contynuall helthe, both of my soule and body. Put a-wey from me all the furiouse assailes, all the subtile sleyghtes, and all the privey disseytful wiles of all my spirituall enemyes, &7 occupye me, lorde, only thy-selffe that no-thing ellis haue powere ouer me. Sanctifie and sacre me, lord, nowe and for euer vn-to þi-self that, defended and preseruede by thy blissed sacramentes, I may procede and boldely go forthe perseuerantly the right path and streight wey of þi commaundementes, and daily proffite & meryte theryn so þat in þe ende of this transitory lyf I may joyfully [fol. 49v ] cvme vn-to the realme & lif euerlastynge. Amen. Lord God, father of heven, fountayn and sprynge of all bountie & goodnes, that moued of þi gret myhty mercy and faderly pitie woldest vouchsafe þat thi son, our saviour, schuld descende and cum down from thy bosom for our sake in-to this wreched world and ther-to take flessh and blode of the Virgyn Marye and for owr trespase, without his offence, giltles to susteyn, suffre, and bere most grevous peynes, most bitter passion, & most cruell deth & shamefull: I beseche the, graunt me grace 7

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þat I may dewlye worshep8 the, glorefy þe, & with all the intent of my whole hert and mynd lawde & praise þe. And þat þu, lord, neuer leue me [ne] for[fol. 50r]sake me, thi pore wreched seruaunt, but þat of thi gret and depe mercy thou take me, lord, vn-to the same and clerly forgeve all my synnes, so þat I may be abule euer to serue the only, my lord and euerlastyng God, in clen hart & chast body. Amen. Myn owen lord God and savyour Jhesu Crist, verey essencyall son of almyghty God, þat of þi myhtty mercy by the will of thyn eterne father and by the werkyng of the Holigost hast by thi passion and deth quycknede and redemede the worlde: I lowly beseche the, in þe honour of9 thy holy name, sacrede body and blode, þat I here, vnworthy wrech, do now presume to receive for the welthe of my sowle, that þu, good lorde, will vouchsafe [fol. 50v] to perdon my boldnesse and to delyuer me quyte from all myn iniquites, and all maner evilles wherby I haue eny tyme herto-for or in eny tym herafter schall offende and displese thi gracious goodnes. And make me euer, gracious lord, obedient to þi will and commaundementes. And suffer me, lord, neuer perpetually to be from the departede, swet saviour Jhesu, þat with God the Fader and God the Holy Gost lyuest and regneste, þe same essencyall God thi self. O good lord and swet sauyour Jhesu, although I, vnworthi wreche, do now here approche and accede vn-to this blesside sacrament of þi most precious body and blode; yet I beseche [fol. 51r] thy mercifull goodnes, lett it neuer be, lord, vn-to my condempnacion & jugement, but by thi pitie it may proffite and availe vn-to the eternall saluacyon of both my soule and body. O most benigne and gentil lovynge lord, how vile, how wrechede, and how vnworthy am I to receiue so worthi a prince, so noble a kyng, so roiall an emperour, and so excellent a maieste, in-to so pore a cosshe, not worthy to be callede an house because it is all ruinouse and in decaye, vnclenly and out of ordre. Suerly moche and verrey moche vnworthy I am herunto. Notwithstandynge I beseche þe, good lorde, þat haist create and made all the worlde of nought, and [fol. 51v ] also by infenyte peyn hast repaired, purged, adorned, and garnysshede our mortalite: repaire, good lord, my house, or raþer thyn owen house. And jf þu will, lord, now frayme & fasshon it for thi-self after thi plesure, clense it, apparell it, garnyssh and apoynt jt in euery place as best becummeth and best may content thy goodnes. For þu, good lord, that knowest all, knowest right well þat I do not enterprise ne presume to receyve the by eny merytes or worthynes of my-self but only, lorde, by the worthynesse and meritees of thi passione and dethe and of thyne other actes of my redempcion. For the which actes in my most humble and lowly wise with all

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[fol. 52r] my hert I thank the, good lord, and so beseche the, of thi large and liberall bountie, vouchsafe to receive my herty good will and desire, whiche [is] to receive the worthely and aftir thy will and plesure, vn-to the whiche I holly yelde and recommend my-self, body and soule, now & foreuermore. Amen. When the sacrament ys commyng toward yow or a litle befor O quycke flessh and lyuely blode of Crist Jhesu, the reviver & quykener of my deth. O verrey matier of my beatitude and blissidnes. O louser and vnbynder and relesar of all my payne and punysshment. O suere medycyne of all seknes and salue of all sores. O saciat and full contentacion [fol. 52v] of all my desire. O my lord God & swet sauyour, I beseche thi grace I may nowe receive the in this sacrament so þat thou, lord, woll transforme and chang me in-to the and þat I may so lyve in the, rest & repause in the only,10 loue the oonly, desire the only, think on the oonly, and so, lord, thow11 be the booke of my study and redyng, the table of my meale and mete, the bedd of my slepe and rest, the arke & cheste of all my tresure and riches. In þe, lord, let be my faith and beleef, in þe my full hope and trust, in the my ful affeccion and charite. In the, lord, the perfett tranquilite and rest of my soule and mynd, and fynally in the, good lorde, the full transformacion & exchange of my hert. So then, lord, possesse thou me and duell in me þat [fol. 53r] the moo tymes and oftener here by thi grace I receive the, the more fully I may in blys euerlastingly be joyfull & glad in the. Amen. After your Confiteor or in the presence & sight of þe sacrament Hayll, all hayle, my swet lorde Jhesu, verrey God and verrey man, and worshipped and blesside euer most þu be, most holy sacrede flesshe & blode of Crist, vn-to me a-boue all thynges most highe suetnes, most delicat delectabule and most syngler comfort. Be, good lorde, vn-to me, I besech the, both guyd and wey fode and lyf, vn-to the remedy of euerlastyng joy and blys. Amen. After your communion, þat is to say after ye haue receyued Our Lord Most humbly and hertely I thank [fol. 53v ] the, good lord, most holy father, eterne & euerlastyng God, that of thy dep mercy, by thy bountie and grace, woldest vouchesafe thus to refresshe and fede me with the brede of lyf, the most holy sacred body and blode of thy swet son, our lord and saviour Jhesu Crist. And I beseche thyn infenyte pitie that this most highe and holy sacrament of our saluacione, which I, most miserabule wreche and vnworthy synner, haue now receyued, come `not´ at þe day of dome in jugement & dampnacion ageyn me for myn evill meretes and deservinges, but vn-to þe proffite and comfort of my body and þe helthe and saluacion of my soule in lyf euerlastynge. Amen. 10 11

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I beseche the, most swet lorde & [fol. 54r] savyour Jhesu, for the vertu & honour of thy most holy sacred body & blesside blode þat I, though vnworthy, haue now receyued: graunt me, lord, þe ynward swetnesse of thi charite and the whole and vnfeyned loue of all my neigbours and even-cristen, spirituall strenght ageyn all freylte and all temptacionz, trew knowlege of the, lord, and all thi lawes, and grace and good will to folow and to perfourme the same. Graunt me, lord, purite of hert, clennes of conscience, good & vertuous behauour in all my maners & condicions, and from all occasyons [of] sklaunders or offence of eny person, dewe and ordinat conuersacion in all my lyving, and passage of þis pilgremage, so þat be thy grace I may satisfye & [fol. 54v ] do my dewte vn-to euery person acordynge, and contynually grow and encrese in þi most holy loue and graciouse favour, swet lord, my blissed sauyour. Qui vivis & regnas cum deo patre in vnitate spiritus sancti deus per omnia secula seculorum. Amen. This prayer folowing is in the seruice of Corpus Christi, wherwithe it semyd vn-to me moche conuenient to mak end of þis mater O sacrum conuiuium, in quo Christus sumitur, recolitur memoria passionis eius, mens impletur gratia, future glorie nobis pignus datur. Alleluya. V. Panem de celo prestitisti eis. R. Omne delectamentum in se habentem. Oremus. Deus qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili passionis tue memoriam reliquisti, tribue quesumus ita nos corporis & sangui[fol. 55r]nis tui sacra misteria venerari vt redempcionis tue fructum in nobis iugiter senciamus. Qui viuis & regnas cum deo patre in vnitate spiritus sancti, deus per omnia secula seculorum. Amen. The same prayer in Englisshe O most holy sacrede flessh, wheryn our lord and sauyour Crist is receyued, the memory & remembrance of his passion is renewed, our hert and mynde replete with grace, and vn-to [vs] ys given the plege and ernyst token of euerlastyng glory and blisse to cum. Amen. The versicle Good lord, þu arte he that from heuen hast given this brede vn-to þi peple. The reawnswer And this brede hath in it self all delectament & pleasur. Oremus, þat is to say, pray we or lat vs praye. [fol. 55v] The collect or oryson Good lord, þat hast left vn-to vs vnder this mervellouse sacrament the memory and remembrance of thi passion, graunt vs, we beseche the, so to honour and worshipp the holy sacrede misteryes of thi body & blode that we therby may contynually perceve, fele, and vnderstande in vs þe fruyte, proffite, and effecte of thy redempcion.

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Qui viuis &c., that is to say, thow lord, þat lyuest & regnest with God the Fader in þe vnite of the12 Holygost, the selffe same God with them, world without end. Amen. In your cotidian & daily masses when ye receyue not þe sacrament Ye shall vnderstand, madam, þat euery preest in sayng masse dothe [fol. 56r] represent the person of Crist & offereth that holy sacrifice and oblacion, the sacrament of the awtier, not only for hym-selff but also for all trew and feithfull Cristen peple. And þerfor euery deuout louer of Crist in clen lyf couetyng, wysshing, and desiryng, with feruour of hert and mynde, to receve worthely with the preest þat holy sacrament schall without dout receve spiritually with hym the effecte þerof. Wherfor, good madam, it schalbe moch profitable and meritorious for yow in euery masse tym, and specially toward the Agnus, so to prepare, ordre, and raise vp your mynde, your hert, yowr efforte and desyre vn-to our lord God as though than in dede ye schule be communed & receive with þe preest þe same sacrament. [fol. 56v ]A prayer conuenient for þe same O most swet lord God and saviour Jhesu Crist, wold [to]13 God I wer worthy and so well and fervently in my soule disposed that now & euery day, yea, & many tymes and often yn euery day I might to þi plesure receyve this holy sacrament of thy blissed body. But, lord, þu knowest what I am, þu knowest, lord, the litell affeccion of my hart, thow knowest the lack of deuocion in me, ye, and all my hole desire, lord, is open be-for thi face. Yet, good lord, notwithstondynge I beseche thy liberall goodnes, graunt me grace now & euery day to receyue spiritually in-to my soule the vertu therof, and so to be partener [fol. 57r] of it, þat my harte may fele and perceyue the swetnes of thi glorious presence; and þat it may brenne swetly in flawmyng fyre of thy loue, and þat euermore it maye contynually byde in the, good lorde, and neuer to departe from the. For thow, lord, alone art my loue and lykynge and desire, my fode, my lyff, my lorde and souereigne, my verrey and only God, swet savyour Jhesu, that lyuest & regnest with God the Father in vnite of the Holy Gost, beyng thi-self the same essencyall God, worlde with-out end. Amen. To the blissed seyntes O blissed seyntes, I desire yow for þat [fol. 57v ] `swet´ loue14 that yow haue vn-to the Holy Gost for his manyfold graces that he hath given vn-to yowe, by the whiche yow ascended vn-to the perfet joye þe whiche yow haue now in hym, to pray vn-to hym for his grace to be given vn-to me, most miserable and wreched synner. Amen. 12

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To the glorious apostles O glorious apostles, I pray yow for the feruent loue that yow haue in our Lord Jhesu Crist, for your blissede electyon and the perfect joye þat ye haue nowe in his blissed presence, desire hyme to haue pite & compassion of me, his moste synfull & wreched seruaunt, and defende me with the shelde of his most grevouse & paynful passy[fol. 58r]on. Amen. To þe holy angelles O holy angelles, for the feruent charite that yow haue vn-to the blissed father of heuen, for your blissed creacion and gracious preseruacion, to pray vn-to hym for his mercy to be given vn-to me, his most synfull seruaunt. Amen. To our blessid Lady O most pitefull moder of Crist and purchesar of mercy and grace, haue pite on me, most wrechid synnar, and for the perseueraunt amyable loue that thou hast in the blesside and mercifull Trinite for thi manyfold graces, benefettes, and joyes receuyde of hym, and specially for þat inestimmable joye that thow had when þu wer assumpte & brouhte in-to heuen to vesite his moste [fol. 58v] glorious maieste and to haue the perfruicione of his euerlastyng glory, help me with thi prayere to opteyne of hyme mercy and grace for myn jnnumerabule wrechednes & synnes. Amen To the gloriouse and mercyfull Trynite O most glorious & mercyfull Trinite, Father, Son, and Holy Gost, iij persons and one God, vn-to the, most mercyfull maker, pitefull redemar, and gracious inspiratour, I commytte my pore body and soule, grevously wounded and infecte with þe most poyson and grevous darte of synne. Mea Culpa. Wherfor, mercifull lorde, I cum vnto the, beynge most conynge & pytefull phisycion, trustynge to opteyne þi [fol. 59r] gret mercy and grace by the meretes15 and prayers of our blissed Ladye, thi holy aungelles and seyntes, and by the suffrages of owre holy moder þe Chirche, and that by the merytes of the grevouse and paynfull passion of thi most pitefull redemar I may be deffendede from the daungers and perilles of my most cruell and ferefull enemyes, þat I may perpetually lawd thy holy maiestie, to the whiche be euerlastynge glorye, honour, and thankes, given of all creaturez. Amen. To the Father O mercifull maker, for þe grett miracle that thow showide in thy seruaunt Moises by cawsyng [fol. 59v ] hyme to rayse out water of þe harde and drye stone, haue mercy on me, most wrechide synner, and raise owt of my harde and drye hert the water of contricion. Amen.

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To the Sonne O most pytefull redemare, for þi gret pitie and wounderfull charite shewid vn-to synners by shedyng thi blessid blode and water out of thy moste tendrest hert, raise out of my synfull hard hert the water of contric[i]on. Amen. To the Holy Gost O gracious inspirator, for þi gret grace shewid in the apostle Petre and in the gret synner Mawdeleyn, inspire my hert with the beames of þi grace and raise out therof the water of contricion. Amen. [fol. 60r] To the Trinite O blessid Trinite, Fader, Son and Holy Gost, haue mercy on all rightouse peple and defend them with þi gret power. Amen. Ffor synners 16 Haue pite on all synners and reviue theme with thy grace. Amen. Ffor them in purgatory Haue compassion of them in purgatory and helpe with thy mercy. Amen. Haue mercy on the infidels and withdrawe the vaile of þer infidelite. Amen. Sancta trinitas vnus deus miserere nobis [fol. 60v] Also here deuoutly thy masse þat is a soueregne remedy ayenst synn, and as many masses as a man hereth, so many seyntes I shall send to comfort his soule ayenst his enemyes in his last end & bryng hym to blis. Amen In the begynnyng of masse say thus O most mercyfull lord, I besech the hertly of þi grace and mercy & of forgivenesse of my synnes, and þat þu wilte make me partenar of the effectes & graces of þi most blissed body & blode, the whiche ys mynistred here in thys blessid masse; and also þat thowe wilt make me partenar of all the masses that schall be seid þis day and of the suffrages of holy chirche and of all good dedes þe whiche be don of deuout cristen [fol. 61r] pepule. Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, mercy. Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, graunt me þi mercy. Jhesu, Jhesu, Jhesu, as I trust in þi mercye haue mercy on me and of all synfull. Jhesu Jhesu Jhesu, esto michi Jhesus. Amen. Glossarial notes contentacion: satisfaction cosshe: hut, hovel inquinamentes: filths (not in OED; presumably < Lat. inquinamentum)

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myseracions: acts of mercy or compassion payn-mayn: white bread of the finest quality reawnswer: reply (OED’s only example dated 1599) wey fode: food for a journey Translation O sacred feast in which Christ is received, his passion recalled, the mind filled with grace, a pledge of future glory bestowed. Alleluia. V. Thou hast given them bread from heaven. R. Containing in itself all sweetness. Let us pray. God, who under a wonderful sacrament hast left us a memorial of thy passion, grant we pray that we may so venerate the sacred mysteries of thy body and blood that we may ever feel within us the fruit of thy redemption. Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen. .... Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. Source Most of this item is freely adapted from Richard Whitford, Due preparacion (1531 and 1537). See the discussion in Chapter 3. The passage ‘Ye shall vnderstand . . . þe same sacrament’, an explanation of the concept of spiritual communion, is not in the printed version of Whitford’s treatise, but the following ‘prayer conuenient for þe same’ is found there, annotated in the margin as ‘Oratio doctoris Nydar pro communione spirituali’. The German Dominican Johannes Nider (1380–1438) was a prolific late medieval theological writer: his best known work is the multi-volume Formicarius (‘The Antheap’). It is not immediately obvious in which of his many treatises he would have been writing about spiritual communion. The series of prayers that begins with one entitled ‘To the blissed seyntes’ is also not in the printed version of Whitford. The Latin prayer at the end of the series, ‘Sancta trinitas vnus deus miserere nobis’, is common in litanies, for example, in the Burnet Psalter. The brief instruction that follows, ‘Also here deuoutly thy masse’, is taken from LSG, Pars 3 cap. 19 (see Chapter 3). ‘Jesu Jesu Jesu esto mihi Jesu’ is a prayer often found in books of hours, for example, Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS 13 (F. 4. 13), fol. 27v, and Sarum Hours, STC 15901, fol. 10. These were the martyred Ralph Sherwin’s last words when he was executed at Tyburn in 1581.

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Item 15 Text [fol. 61v ] Certane prayers shewyd vnto a devote person callyd Mary Ostrewyk Fyrst, in remembrance of the wounde in þe ryght hande of our sauyour Chryst Jhesu: oon Pater Noster and oon Aue Maria, that God graunt vs to haue prompte obedyence. The wounde in þe left hande: þe second Pater Noster, for þe profounde mekenes. To the ryght fote: þe threde Pater Noster, for peaseble pacyence. To the left fote: the fourth Pater Noster, to be mercyfull and petyfull. To the wounde yn the syde: the vth [Pater Noster], for parfete charyte. All to be sayde standyng, the armys spred abrode. Thys done, to contynue and immedyately say v Pater Noster with so many Auys in remembrance of v pryncypall sorowys of our Lady. The furst, when she sawe þe tender body of hyr sonne beten with skowrgez & other. [fol. 62r] The second, when he was extendyd a-pon the crosse. The iij, when he was nayled & shede hys precyouse blode a-pon þe crosse. The iiij, when he was fede with aser & gall. The vth, when þe syde was opynede with þe spere. And then, knelynge, say Veni sancte spiritus. Emitte. Deus qui corda. Translation Come Holy Ghost. Send forth[, lord, thy wisdom: cf. Item 6]. Lord who [hast taught] the hearts [of thy faithful people by the illumination of the Holy Spirit: grant us in the same Spirit to love what is right and always to rejoice in his consolation.] Source Exercise of the Five Wounds by Maria van Oisterwijk. Latin version from Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, DA VI 19 no. 13 (Cologne, 1532): [sig. A2v ] [. . .] quinquies Pater noster & Aue Maria quotidie ad honorem v vulnerum Iesu spontanea deuotione legat: & hanc gratiam, quisquis potuerit, alijs denunciet atque communicet, recepturus a deo mercedem. Postremo vt hec euidentius palam fiant, non abs r[ation]e videbitur, si dicte virginis ad nos epistolam, in suo vernaculo datam, hic vero in latinam linguam translatam, subijciamus. Ita enim scribit: HVMILITATEM profundissimam in Christo Iesu. [. . .] [sig. A4r] Fili amantissime, te omnesque creaturas, quae tibi propter deum & me obediunt, offero in cor amantissimum Iesu christi: ex quo omnes emanant gratiae. Queso autem vt pro me orent cuncti: quo digna ac potens fiam multa pati. Vale. QVI prescripta perfectius assequi voluerit, cum pretactis quinque dominicis orationibus expansis brachijs

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coram crucifixo cotidie legendis stans offerat deo patri omnem amorem & meritum filij sui, pro venia & gratia, quas hoc nobile ex[sig. A4v]ercitio predicte virgini diuinitus reuelato, citius obtinebit. Atque cum prima oratione dominica ad vulnus dextre manus. postulet sibi largiri promptam obedientiam deo & hominibus prestandam, Ad vulnus sinistrae manus, profundissimam hu[m]ilitatem. Ad vulnus dextri pedis, pacificam patientiam. Ad vulnus sinistri pedis, misericordiam in proximum. Ad vulnus dulcissimi cordis, perfectissimam charitatem. Deinde implicatis manibus stans legat quinque Pater noster & totidem Aue Maria ad filium dei, pro honore quinque dolorum matris sue quos patiebatur sub cruce. Primum quidem, cum eum aspiceret clauis confixum & erectum. Secundum cum nobile corpus eius videret vndique confossum & mortifero colore tabefactum. Tercium. cum pre angustia clamaret: Sitio. Quartum. cum neruis & venis ruptis. penderet vndique derelictus. Quintum. cum durissima morte expiraret. Oretque filium & matrem, vt pre inestimabilem vtriusque dolorem & amorem liberent nos a peccatis & vitijs, perfectaque sibi charitate coniungant. Postremo dicendo flexis genibus Veni sancte spiritus etc, obsecret spiritum sanctum pro nimiam bonitatem suam, vt nos & omnes errantes purget, illuminet, & ardentissimo sui amoris igne succendat, operetque in cordi[b]us nostris sicut olim in apostolis & alijs amicis suis, iuxta suum supremum beneplacitum. Coloniae. Anno xxxij.

Commentary Written by Hand H, bold, idiosyncratic, and elongated. This English version was clearly made from the Latin translation of Maria van Oisterwijk’s exercise printed in 1532, which differs noticeably from both the Ripuarian version printed in 1530 and the other Latin version in Darmstadt MS 1204. (The latter has now been edited in Dom Gérard Kalckbrenner: Mélanges de Spiritualité, texte établi, traduit et présenté par Dom Augustin Devaux, ed. by James Hogg, Alain Girard, and Daniel Le Blévec, Analecta Cartusiana, 158 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1999).) See Chapter 1 for discussion of the relevance of this item to the dating of MS Harley 494 and Chapters 2 and 5 for a discussion of the exercise and its author.

Item 16 Text [fol. 62r] 1. Lorde God Ffather allmyghty, I beseche the in the name off thy sonne, our lorde Jhesu Christe, that the spirite of sapience may descende into me, through whom I may haue wisedom and vnderstondyng. 2. Lorde God, I beseche the that the spirite [rest of page torn away] [fol. 62v ] 4. Lorde God, I beseche the that the spirite off strenght may descende into me, wyche gyveth power & strenght to breke & sette at nought alle transitory thynges.

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5. Lorde God, I beseche the that the spirite of science may descende into me, through whom I may haue knolage off all the Scripture necessary to saluacion. 6. Lorde God, I beseche the that the spirite off pitie may descende into me, wythe neyghbourly & parfite charite to continue. 7. Lorde God, I beseche the that the spirite off godly feare may descende into me, wyche dooth inspire & gyve holsom drede & feare when & wher he wyll. Source Unidentified. Commentary Written by Hand I. A set of prayers for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in the biblical order which is the reverse of the order in Item 3. As noted under Item 3, a prayer for the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit was said over the Syon abbess by the bishop at her consecration.

Item 17 Text [fol. 63r] Meditacions for tyme of the Masse The preste goynge to masse signifieth the sauyour of the werlde, our Lorde Jhesus Criste, whiche came from heuen vn-to the vale of miserye `to´ þis wreched worlde for to suffre passyon for mannes redempcione; & therfor the processe of the masse representeth the verrey progresse of the passion of Crist. The preste betokeneth Crist, the awter þe crosse, the vestiment [the garmentes] with the whiche our saviour was clothed in scourne. The righte corner of the awter wher he begynneth masse signifieth the state and lyf of innocencye whiche man lost by synne. The left corner signifiethe þis miserable lyf in the whiche we be nowe, the chalice the sepulcre, the [fol. 63v] patent the stone þat couereth the sepulcre, the corporace the sudarye or syndon wheryn his blesside bodye was ynvoluede or wrappede, the hoost þe bodye of Criste, the watir [and] the wynne the expresse [effusion] of watyr & blode that ranne frome his blesside syde. When the prest begynneth to ordure hym to masse, think on þe tendre loue that he hade to come to þis werlde for our redempcion & becam manne, wher he was immortall & impassible.

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When he casteth the amysse ouer his hede, remembre the clothe with the which our savyour was blyndvelide in scorne when he was buffettede & betyn for vs. When the preste putteth on þe albe, haue in meditacion þe white garment in the which Herode the kynge clo[fol. 64r]thed our savyour in scorne and sent hym ayen to Pylate lyke a foole. When he taketh þe gyrdell, remembre the roope with the which þei halede and drewe hym to his passion. When þe fanoune ys put on the lefte hande, remembre the corde with the whiche they bonde his handes when they ladd hym from juge to juge lyk as he had ben a theef. When he casteth þe stoole a-bout his nekk & crosseth it vpon his breste, remembre the ropes wherwith the tormentours drew and streyned his blessed body on þe crosse, so sore þat all his joyntes wer dissolued and loosede, iche from his place, and his senewes and veynes craked & braste. When the prest casteth on his chesabule, remembre þe purpule [fol. 64v] mantell wherwith they clothed our sauyour in scorne and crowned hym with scharp thornes and gave hym a reede for a sceptour and bete hym & mockede hym sayng, ‘Hayle, king of Jewes,’ spittyng most vnreuerently in his most blesside vesage or face. When he stondeth rauestede be-fore the awter, and a-for Confiteor, say with hyme and haue in your remembrance þat it pleside our sauyour to suffre all þes tormentes & blasphemes & many moo for the saluacion of our soules. When the prest goeth to þe right corner of þe awter & beginneth masse, haue in meditacion the most pure, gracious, & innocent lyf of our sauyour and redemar, þe lyf þat we lost by syn of our forfather Adam, and remembre howe in þe incarnacion of þe son of [fol. 65r] God began þe tyme of mercy ayen, and so say with þe prest Kyrieleison. When þe preste begynneth Gloria in excelsis, remembre the glory and joye þat the multitude of angelles made, [singyng]1 with2 gret myrth and melody for the natiuite of our lord Jhesu. When the prest saith the collectes with þat that foloweth, haue in your remembraunce the contynuall prayers that our sauyour offerde for vs to his father daily & hourely. When þe prest saith the gospell with his face ayenst þe north, remembre þe holy doctryn and prechinge of owr Lord and savyour: not onely to the Jewes but for all mankynde he spared not to put his blessid face ayenst the north, þat is to saye [fol. 1 2

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65v] he spared not to put his holy doctrine ayenst the gostly enemye whiche ys signyfiede by the northe; and with a diligent ere here the gospell and with all your hart confesse the same & say with the prest Credo in deum. When the prest takith þe chalice and holdeth it vpe, haue in meditacyon how our savyour most wilfully offerede hym-self to his eternall father to be oblacion & sacrifice for mannes redempcion, and offre your-self to hys grace by contrite hert, rendrynge in-to `þe´3 handes of your lord by deuout meditacion and thankes þat he wolde make yow a resonable creature & give yow both your body & soule with all oþer giftes. After the lauatory when the preste saith þe secretes all in silence r [fol. 66 ] Considre with dew thankes & praisinges the tyme a-fore the passion when our savyour did withdraw hym from the company of þe Jewes and dydd give hym to solytarines, all secret in prayer and contemplacion, prayng to his eternall father for þe helth of mannes soule. When þe prest beginneth Per omnia secula seculorum be-for þe preface, haue in your meditacion how þe Jewes with gret trivmphe and joy resceyuede our sauyour ridyng vpon an asse, befor whome they strewid þer clothes and green bowes in þe wey, sayng and syngynge with þer children Osanna filio Dauid. Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini. Glory & joy be to þe son of David and blessed be he þat commeth in þe name of God; and say with þe prest Sanctus, [fol. 66v ] sanctus, sanctus, dominus deus Sabaoth, benedictus qui venit in nomine domini. Osanna in excelsis, worshippyng his blesside commynge and presence after þe consecracion. Ffrom the begynnyng of þe canon vnto the laste memento be don Haue in your meditacion þe processe of our Lordes mavndy, in the which he fedde his disciples with his precious body and blode, consecrate vndir the fourme of brede & wynne. So euery man & woman þat is in the state of grace, both qwyke and dede, may receyve þat blessid body, flessh and blode, spiritually by grace or indulgence, jf ye with pure hert & contrite soule honour þat blessid body and blode, lyft vp by the preste after þe consecracion; which holy sacrament not only reneweth the soule by grace but also it is releve and remission4 `of´ peyne [fol. 67r] to þe soules in purgatory. In tokene wherof þe prest maketh twies his memento, one be-for the sacrynge, in the whiche he praieth for them þat ben in lyf, and þat other for them þat be dede, þat bothe may haue helpe of þat blissed sacrament & be partenars of the same.

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Ffrome þe sacrynge in all þe secret prayers & gestures of þe prest vn-to Per omnia secula seculorum be-for the Pater Noster Call to your remembrance by meditacion the hole processe of Cristes passione frome the mawndy vn-to the poynt of his deth. Ffirst how he prayde in the gardeyn wher yn5 gret agony he swet blody dropes; then think on his betrayng, takyng, byndyng, ledyng be-for Anne & Caiphas where he suffered buffettes & betynges [fol. 67v ] on the blessid face. After that, how he was lade to Pilate and Herode, wher he was scornede & clothed in a white garment as thof he had ben a6 naturall foole, scourged, clothed in purpule, sett crowned, sceptured with a reede, in derision salutede in scorne & called king of Jewes, his most gloriouse face defiled with spewyng & spittynge, beten and buffetted on þe hede, after brought forth & aray[n]ed be-for Pilate, the Jewes cryeng Crucifige, þat is, hang hym vpon þe crosse, and so by fals sentence condempned & jugede to deth, beryng his crosse, & crucyfyede on the same; than after his tormentes in his gret thrust, having no drynk but wynne mixt with gall, he all mother-naked spredyng him-self on þe crosse for vs most paciently and [fol. 68r] of the tormentours intreatyd most cruelly, which haled and drew his blessid fete and handes and with most bustowes nayles smytyng them throwgh fast naylede to the tre; and so, reryng vp the crosse, they sett it bitwen two theves, his handes & his feet rentynge and terynge for þe paise of his blessid body, they neuer ceassing but in scorne wryting his title & settyng yt a-boue his hede, blasphemyng and mockyng hym ayen outragiously sayng, ‘If þu be the son of God as thou saist, now com doun of þe crosse and we will beleue in the.’ Remembre well these paynes and give thankes to our Lord for them with all your hart. When þe prest begynneth Per omnia secula seculorum & so forth with Pater Noster Remembre þe vij gracious wordes [fol. 68v ] of gret mistery that our saviour spake in the poynt of his deth, in the whiche with most feruent charite he prayde for them þat crucyfiede hym, sayng, ‘Fader, forgive them for they woot not what they do.’ He promysed to þe theef the glory of paradise, sayng, ‘This day thou schalt be with me in paradise.’ He committed his moder to his discipule, saynge, ‘Woman, se here thi son,’ þat is to say, tak John for þi son in þe stede of me, and to John he seid, ‘Take hir as thy moder.’ After he cryed with a lowde voice, saynge, ‘Fader, why hast þou forsaken me?’ and after he seide, ‘I thrust’ and also, ‘Now all ys don and fulfillede.’ Then he sayde, ‘Father, I commytt my soule in-to þi handes’ and so cryed with a lowd voyce and gave vp the gooste [fol. 69r] and dyed. Then give hym 5 6

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thankes for his passion and deth and for þat gret miracle, for it is a thyng a-boue nature, a man in the poynt of deth to spek or crye with a lowde voyce. Remembre also by þe example of the seid werkes þat ye forgive all rancour, malice, & occasyons þat haue ben schewed to yow of eny person, and þat for þe loue of hym þat is befor yow present, owre savyour Crist Jhesu, remembre here also the scharpe stonges and panges þat our Lord sufferede for our synnes in þe gret distresse of deth, and give thankes with all your hart þerfor. When þe prest taketh the patent and toucheth þe hoost and kysseth it & saith Da pacem [fol. 69v ] Remembre þe pease betwen God & man which our saviour did meryte for vs in his gloriouse deth, reconsilynge vs to his eternall father, and þat is signifyed by the kysse of þe prest. And here note the prest kisseth thre tymes, first the patent of þe chalice, as it is seid signifyeng þe pease bitwen Gode and man; second the chalice, betokenyng þe pese in mannes soule; thrid the pease, signifieng þe pease bitwen man and man. And lyk as in the deth of our sauyour thies thre peases wer given to man, so by þe meryte of þe seid deth, in euery oblacion of þe masse, euery person that disposeth hym-self therto may haue the seid thre graces of pese. Þerfor remytt & forgive all displesures and dispose your-self at euery masse [fol. 70r] at þis tyme in a charitable, contrite, and clene hart to receive your Lorde spiritually by his grace. When þe prest begynneth Per omnia secula seculorum befor Agnus dei Haue in your meditacion perfit remembraunce with an hoole mynde, considerynge þat most perfite loue of our swet Lord and redemar, which wold vouchesafe to take our nature vpone his maieste and to suffre deth in hit for to wynne our loue; whiche precious deth is signifyed at þis tyme of þe masse in the oblacion of his blessid flesshe and blode, mynystrede to vs vndir þe figure, savour, & tast of brede & wyen, most conuenyent foode for man. Then neuer forget that most tendre lo[fol. 70v ][v]ynge pellycane whiche wold not onlye suffre deth to saue vs his brides, but ouer that he hath ordeynede his blessid flessh and blode to be our sustenaunce & daily foode, mynistrede & consecrate in the masse in that most gloriouse and gracious sacrament of þe awter, signifyeng the blessid oblacion & sacrifice of the most preciouse deth & passion of our mercyfull redemar Jhesus Crist. This se ye forget not but thanke hym with all your hart & thank hym with your movth and with all your power & spirytes, saynge, Sit tibi Christe gloria, fulgens hoc sacro nomine, honor tuus sit latria, Jhesu benigne domine. Amen. In this tyme also remembre the buryall of our savyour and the blesside discensyon of his soule vn-to [fol. 71 r] lymbo for the delyueraunce of the holy fathers. For lyk as ye se þe hoost devidede in thre partes, one put in-to the chalice and the oþer too reserued a-boue in the prestes handes, so for a treuthe it signyfieth þat all creatures

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hath comfort and joy of this blessid sacrament, both angelles & seyntes in heuen, and soules in purgatory, which the too partes of þe hoost reserued a-boue in þe prestes handes betokeneth; and the part put in the chalice signifieth the pese & help of all levyng soules. Pray þerfor for your-selff and for all in lyf & dede, þat ye and they may take þe lyf and fruyte of þat blessid oblacion. Ffrom the latter lauatory vnto Ite missa est [fol. 71 v] Haue in your remembrance, after ye be thus replenysshed with grace and pease, the tyme and state of the trivmphaunt and glorious resurreccion. Ffor all the collectes and orysones after þe postcomune be of joyfulnes, rendryng thankes to our Lord for þat most heuenly feste, and at þat tyme of þe masse betokeneth the joye and gladnes of the apostles after they hard of þe resurreccion of þer lorde and owres; & so let vs give thankes with the blessid apostles for þat gracious gyft of his most gloriouse resurreccion. The fifth tyme that þe prest turneth & saieth Dominus vobiscum signifieth the fyue apparicions þat our Lord appered to þe apostles, saynge Pax vobis, ‘Pease be amonges [fol. 72r] yow’, which our Lord graunt vs ever. Amen. At Ite missa est When the prest stondeth in the myddes of þe awter & so blessith þe pepule, haue in your meditacion how our saviour, stondyng in þe myddes of his disciples atte mount of Olyuet, blessid them and son after ascendid to heuen, wher he is resident or sittyng euer more on the right hande of his eternall father. This ascension sowndeth to þe wordes spoken of this blessid sacrament: Ite missa est. It is to say, ‘Go & depart, for our Lord is sent and offered vp to his father in his holy oblacyon sacrified.’ Here it is to be notede þat in masse of Requiem no pax is given, for [fol. 72v] þat masse principally is for þe soules in purgatory, amonge whom ys no discorde. But pax is given whene masse is seyd for them þat be in lyf, which often be at discorde and debate, to reconsile them to pease and concorde as it is nede, for where pease is not, the Holigost can not rest. And here no[w]7 foure causes why Crist wolde give to vs hym-selfe vndir the forme of brede. Þe ffirst is for þat brede is of the most clen fedynge and the best nurysshynge þat man may haue. The second is for be-cause it is þe most principall fode of man and most comon and suche fode þat man neuer abhorreth it. The thrid for it signifieth the passion of Crist, þe which is daily [fol. 73r] remembrede in þe vse of þis sacrament; for the thresshing of þe whet of þe which this brede is made, the gryndynge, the bakyng, and suche oþer betokeneth the scourgyng of our

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savyour & bakyng of his blessid body in his passion, wher it was bakede with þe fire of loue of God in þe oven of his crosse þat we myht ete þerof. And þe wynne mengled in þe chalice signifieth þe blode shade out of his body as þe wynne is pressid out of þe grape. Ffourte, this brede signifieth moche conueniently the misticall body of Crist, which body is the congregacion of all feithful pepule, of þe which body Crist is the hede and we the body, as þe brede is made of many greynes [fol. 73v ] or cornes. This brede, all-though it be brede be-for the consecracion, yet after it is to be beleued þe verrey flessh & blode and soule of owr most blessid sauyour, given to vs after the fourme of brede for we haue not in vs to ete þe rawe flessh of a man. Also what schuld our feith auaile & profyt vs if we receyued hym in his own symylitude & liknes? Suerly, no-thynge, for than we schuld be constreyned to beleve in hym and so lese þe meryt of our feith, wherby we may se þat he hath ordeyned all for þe best, blessid be his holy name. Amen. If thow haue desir perfetly to be clensyd from vice and synne & nobuly to be made riche in vertues; if þu delyte profoundly to be lightnede [fol. 74r] in holy scripture and gloriously to conquer the gostly enemy; if þou couet plentevously to be comforted in trouble & aduersite and deuoutly and holely held in erth to lyve; if thou haue a will to be compuncte in the bedd of þi conscience and swetly to wepe in prayer; if þu wold feruently be enflawmed in holy meditacion and desire to perseuer in good werkes; if þu loue to be replenysshed with spirituall joye and gostly gladnesse and to be raptt & taken vp in excesse of mynde; if thyn affeccion be to know and vse the secrettes of God & to dy well & graciously in thyn extremes or last dayes and to lyve & regne well with God in heuen: perpetually excercise thi-self in þe lyf & passion [fol. 74v ] of our lord Jhesu Crist the son of God almyghty, whome the fader of heuen sent in-to this werlde to give vs all example of lyvinge and to brynge them that folowe hym to the kyngdome of heuen. Then loue hym and folow his steppes, clyp hym fast to þe, and suffre hym in noo wise to departe from the. Remembre as þu art levinge of his labour and peyne that he toke in prechynge, his werynes in traualyng & journeyng a-bout the countrey to wynn sowles, his temptacions yn fastyng, his wache in prayenge, his salt teres & wepyng for mannes miserye. Think also on the dolorouse peynes þat he sufferede, how he was rebukede [fol. 75 r] and reviled, how he was all be-spett for despite in his gloriouse vesage & face, how he was buffetted and beten, scorned & scourged, crowned & crucified & shamfully slayn. Apply thy will to þis & to remembre this; think it is gret wisdome; let þis be alwey in þi mowth & hert; let þis be þi most connynge, `to´8 know Crist

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and how for þi loue he wold suffre to be crucifyed, and thank hym a thousand tymes for his gret kyndnesse. Amen. Finis Glossarial notes amysse: oblong piece of white linen folded around the priest’s shoulders blyndvelide: blindfold brides: chicks bustowes: rough, violent chesabule: chasuble, a sleeveless mantle covering the body and shoulders compuncte: affected with compunction corporace: corporal, linen cloth on which the consecrated elements are placed discensyon: descent excesse of mynde: ecstasy extremes: last moments of life fanoune: embroidered band attached to the priest’s left wrist lauatory: ritual washing of the celebrant’s hands mavndy: Last Supper, institution of Holy Communion naturall foole: a person deficient in intelligence from birth paise: weight patent: plate or shallow dish on which the host is placed, or which is used to cover the chalice postcomune: post-Communion rauestede: arrayed resident: abiding secretes: prayers said after the offertory and before the preface syndon: winding-sheet stonges: wounds, sharp pains stoole: stole sudarye: napkin wrapped around Christ’s head thrust: thirst Translation Holy, holy, holy, lord God of Sabaoth, blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. .... Glory be to thee, O Christ, bright with this holy name, may our service be thy honour, Jesu kindly lord. Amen.

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Source Mainly adapted from William Bonde, Pilgrymage of perfeccyon, Bk 3 cap. 60, day 6 (1531 edn). Also found as a separate text in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 17. See Chapter 3 for discussion of the textual relationships between the three versions. And here now: no new paragraph in the manuscript. For this discussion, cf. (somewhat distantly) Gherit van der Goude, Interpretacyon (1532), Bk 3, Prologue, where thirty-five reasons are listed. The first reason here corresponds to van der Goude’s first; the second to his second, third, and fourth; the third to his thirteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first. The argument that the body of Christ is ‘given to vs after the fourme of brede for we haue not in vs to ete þe rawe flessh of a man’ goes back at least as far as Roger Bacon (see Bynum, Wonderful Blood, p. 88). If thow haue desir: marked off by an open ‘a’ in the margin. This section is freely translated from Salicetus, Anthidotarius, reproduced below from the Bodleian copy of the 1493 edition (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. V. Q. VI. 4). [fol. 92r] Si desideras perfecte mundari a vitijs. si nobiliter ditari in virtutibus. Si altissime illustrari in scripturis. Si gloriose triumphari de inimicis. Si deuote conuersari in terris. Si frequenter compungi in cubilibus. Si dulciter flere in orationibus. Si feruenter accendi in meditationibus. Si perseuerare in bonis actibus. Si repleri spiritalibus gaudijs. Si rapi in excessu mentis. Si diuinis frui secretis. Si feliciter mori in extremis. [S]i perhenniter regnare in celis. Exerce te in vita & passione domini nostri iesu xpi fili dei. quem pater misit in mundum vt omnibus preberet perfectionis exemplum. & sequaces suos ad eternum perduceret regnum. Ama igitur xpm. sequere iesum. Amplectere crucifixum. [fol. 92v] Memor sis quamdiu fueris laborum et dolorum quos pertulit in predicando. fatigationum in discurrendo. tentationum in ieiunande. vigiliarum in orando. lacrimarum in compatiendo. Recordare etiam dolorum eius inimicorum sputorum. colaphorum. subsannationum. exprobationum clauorum. horumque similium. Hec meditari dic sapientiam. In his iusticie tibi perfectionem constitue plenitudinem scientie. diuicias salutis. copias meritorum. hec te erigunt in aduersis. in prosperis reprimunt. et inter leta tristiaque vite presentis via regia incedenti tutum prebent vtro hicque ducatum. hinc inde mala imminentia propulsando: propterea hec tibi in ore frequenter in corde super hec tua sublimior philosophia scire iesum & hunc crucifixum.

Commentary Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E). See discussion of the content in Chapter 5.

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Item 18 Text [fol. 75r]

Herafter foloweth a deuoute meditacion and a thankefull orison to owre Lorde for his mannyfold giftes and benefettes O my lord1 god Jhesu Christ, the son of the eternall God, maker & redemar [fol. 75v ] of mankynde: we give thankes to the, although they be vnworthy, yet thankes they be, beseching the to make them devout and acceptable to the. For thou for vs wreches descendede frome heuen and toke manhode of the blissed virgyne Marye, and of her also woldest vouchsave to be borne and wrapped in cloutes, layd in a maunger for lake of a cradule, ffed with mylke of a womans brest, circumcysed, shewid to þe thre kinges and worshipped of them, presented in-to the temple, banysshed in-to Egipte and returned ayene into þi countrey, subdewed to þi parentes, of John2 baptizede, with the fourty dayes fastynge sore wrakede, thries of the enemy tempted, [fol. 76r] with gret journeys weryed, withe watche, hungre & thrust made lene, jn prechynge vtterly ouerlayde and ouerlaboured, ffor compassion wepynge, of the Jewes reiecte and reprouede and of the same many tymes jniuried & wronged; and when þi passion drew nere thou woldest becomme heuy and sorowfull as a verrey man & also to be ferefull and lothe to dye after thi humanite, but in thy godhede alwey prompte & redy therto, on thi knees knelyng and prayng, thries fallyng prostrate vpon thi face, and in that blessid agonye thow shadd from thy blessid body dropes of blode in stede of swett, and after that wer thow betrayde of Judas thi discipule & [fol. 76v] of hym kissed disceitfully, and of þe wykked Jewes taken with violence, bounden with bondes as thou had be a thefe, left all a-lone, thi discipules fleyng & ronnynge from the, then ledd to Annas the bisshop and ther stryken of his seruaunt, sent from hym to Caiphas bounden and ther in dyuers weys scornede, sett in þe counsell of the Jewis and accused [by] fals recorde, condempned to þe most shamefull deth, thi face defiled with vnclene spittyng, filed and choked with rebukes, weryed with wronnges, buffetted with fystes and striken with handes and blasphemyde in many wayes, brought bounde to Pilat, sharply accused to deth, sent from Pilate to Herode and ther also [fol. 77r] moche blamed, of Herode & his pepule despised, clothed in a white garment lyke to a foole and so sent ayen to Pilate, then vnclothed and, all nakyde bi Pilatis commaundement,

1 2

+ J crossed through + baptiste crossed through

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bounden to a pillour, and scharply scourged vn-to þe tyme the3 blode flowide, and of hyme also urged to deth, given to the knyghtes to be crucifiede, of whom yet ayen wer þu vnaraied and clothed in a purple mantel, then crowned with a crown of thornes and a reede given in-to thi handes in stede of a scepture, saluted in derision with crokyng & knelyng and in scorne called þe king of Jewes, betyn ageyne the thrid tyme with blowes and [fol. 77 v] ones ayen thy face all be-spitte, þi hede smyten with thyn own sceptur, then thy purple robe cast of and laden with the tre of the `crosse´, ledd to þe place of thy passione and ther given to drynke wynne mixte with myrre & gall, and yet ayen the thrid tyme thye clothes drawen of, and then sprede and streyned vpon the crosse and fastenede therto with nayles, both handes and feet, and so crucifyede betwen theves, deputed as one of them that journeyde that waye, & of them also that stode therby, as thow henge on the Crosse, thou wer blasphemede cruelly, cryeng to thi fader, ‘My God, my God, whi hast thowe forsaken me?’ in all [fol. 78r] thies tormentes; and at the last, thrustynge, they gave the to drynke bitter asell and so, enclyned thi hede, thou gave vp thi holy spirite and diede, then thi syde persed with a spere by a knyght, water and blode came forthe from thens; the nyght drawynge nere thou wer taken downe from the crosse and buryed in a new monument or grave by Joseph Abaramathi,4 yet rysing ayen the thrid day thou appered to þi frendes; the fourty day aftir thou ascended in-to heuen, sittynge on the right hande of thi fader; thou sent þe holy gost as thow promysed to þi disciples; atte last thou shall come at the generall jugement and þer deme good and evell after our merytes [fol. 78v ] and deseruynges. O my lord Jhesu Christ, for thies most holy paynes that þou sufferede, and for thy most preciouse deth, and for thi most preciouse blode that thou sched for vs, and for all other forseid thinges, and also for thyn endles mercy, and for the prayers and merytes of the most blissed virgyne Mary and all thi holy seyntes, delyuer me, wrechide synnere, and all my frendes, faders & moþers, susters and broders, frendes & foes, and all þat I am bounde to pray fore, with other that be temptede or desolate, bounde in prison or in seknes, with all Cristen pepule, from all tribulacion, angwissh, and perilles from the trappes and snares of þe [fol. 79r] enemye and frome all evill of body and soule, delyuer and save vs, goode Lorde, and defende vs alwey. Dispose and ordre all our thoughtes and dedes so þat they may be acceptable and plesaunt to the; replenysshe or fulfyll vs with thy grace, with holy pease, and all maner of vertues; & graunte þat we may perceuer and contynue in them to our deth. Give vs a gracious endynge of our lyf and delyuer vs after our deth and them 3 4

+ I crossed through Ab[r deleted]aramathi

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also be-for named, both quyck and dede, with all cristen soules, from all peynes, and bryng vs mercifully to the euerlastynge glory of þi kyngdome wher thou lyuest & regnest with the Fader and Holy Gost, oon God with-outen ende. Amen. [fol. 79v ] O most excellent goodnes, withdraw not thi mercy. O myghty maker, dispyse not thy werk. O most prudent redemar, suffre not to perisshe the price of thy redempcion. O most buxom hoost and gest, purefye, saue, dresse & kepe thy house & duellynge-place, þe which [thou] dedicatest & sanctifyed in þe sacrament of bapteme. O most blissed Jhesu, O most charitable Jhesu, O most swete `Jhesu´, O most excellente Jhesu, O most glorious Jhesu, O most jnnocent Jhesu, O most buxome Jhesu, O most mercyfull Jhesu, O most benigne Jhesu, O most dere Jhesu, miserere mei. When schall I loue the? When schall I be sorye for my synne? When schall I for-sake my synn? When schall I turne vn-to the by þi grace? When schall [fol. 80r] I remembre thi benefettes, thi meknes, þi pouerte, thi paynfull and most bittir passione, thi pacience, thy obedience, þi loue and thi charite? When schall I sanctefy, worship, magnefy, and loue hertely þe and thi seyntes and thy ffestes, þat is for-to say thyn incarnacion, resurreccion, ascensyoun etcetera, with dew reuerence & deuocion? If þu be `my´ most dredfull master, wher is my drede? Criste Jhesu, if þou be my most lovyng fader, wher ys my loue? If þu be my lord and my redemar, wher is my seruice? If þu be my gest and duell in my sowle by thi grace and mercy, wher is chastite and clennes accordyng to suche a gest? If þu be þe lif of seyntes, þe fairnes and beawtie of angelles, wher is my thankynge? O good Lord, I confesse þat [fol. 80v ] thies vertues, with all oþer þat belongethe to the retenynge and kepyng of thy most high maiestye, verrey moche lacketh & faileth in me. Wherfor, good Lord, I submytt me only to thy gret mercy, besechyng the to make me to loue þe `in´terly.5 O blesside Jhesu, I wolde fayne loue the but without thi helpe I can not. O blesside Jhesu, let me depely considire the depnes of þi loue towardes me, and hartely to thank the for thy benefettes, and give me grace to haue good wyll to serue the and to suffere all aduersite for the with a contynuall remembraunce of þi passion. Swet Jhesu, possesse my harte, and hold yt, and kepe it onely to the. Amen. O most glorious God, Fader, Son ande Holigost, lord of all myght & power, [fol. 81r] I beseche thi highnes, graunt me spiritualle fortitude and strenght to vanqwisshe and ouercome all suche temptacions of freylte and disposicions of infirmite & febulenes as doith daily assaile and trouble me, and þat I may haue ferme constance in my soule, such grauite & sadd religiouse behayuour in my

5

corrected from vtterly

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maners with perseueraunce, as may be to thy plesure, þe welth of my soule, and the edificacion of my companye and even-Cristen. Amen. Blessid lord God and savyour of þe werlde, I beseche the, lord of all connynge and wisdome, give `me´ euer trew knowleche of the by right fourmede faith, knolege6 also of myn owen selffe & of my wrechede abhomynabilite & [fol. 81v] myn abhominabule wrechidnesse, and to haue here suche contricion for my synnes that they be neuer fynally imputede vn-to me nore layde vn-to my charge. Gyve me also, good lorde, dew & sufficiente knolege of thy will and pleasure, of thi lawes & commaundementes, and of thy ordynaunces of thy holy chirch; and to vnderstande, knowlege, and confesse in all the verrey trewth yn meknes of spiryte, without erroure & synfull ignoraunce, vn-to the laude & prayse of thy name. Amen. My lovynge lord God, giver of all grace, bountie, and goodnes, I beseche the give me thi grace and good wyll neuer to covett eny thyng or desire contrary to þi plesure, but in all thinges I may be conformable [fol. 82r] vn-to þi wyll, so þat y haue no wylle but only thynne; and so I may loue þe a-lone for thy selff, and all oþer thynges in dew ordure for the and in the, that by thy charite I may obteyne þi mercy & grace vn-to þe lyf euerlastynge. Good lord, almyghty & euerlastyng lorde, I beseche the, as thow art thre distincte persones in oone nature & substaunce dyvine, thow will vouchesafe to knyt & joyne in me, þi pore seruaunt, all thies vertues vn-to thy persones appropred, that is to say, myght or power, contrary vn-to my fraylte & febulnes; wisdome and conynge, contrary to myn errour and ignoraunce; and grace or good wyll, contrary vn-to frowardnes and obstynacye; that by them I may haue [fol. 82v] here the verrey symilitude, and after the meryte and effecte ther of7 thyne eterne fruycione in blysse euermore abidynge. Qui viuis & regnas etc. Deo gracias. Glossarial notes appropred: assigned cloutes: rags perceuer: persevere thrustynge: thirsting vnaraied: disrobed

6 7

+ and crossed through therof

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Source The first and longest prayer is a translation of a Latin prayer found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 403, fols 122r–123r, transcribed below. The shorter prayers have not been identified, although for O blesside Jhesu I wolde fayne loue the but without thi helpe I can not, cf. Item 8, ‘O moost lovely Jhesu, I wolde love the but I cannot withowt the’. Graciarum acciones pro hijs que fecit dominus Jesus in misterio sue sancte incarnacionis cum obsecracione & oracione [in red] Domine Iesu Christe, fili dei viui, creator et redemptor atque resuscitator generis humani, gracias tibi refero, licet indignas, set vtinam deuotas, humiles et tibi gratas, quia pro nobis miseris, ymmo miserimmis, peccatoribus de celo descendisti et ex beatissima virgine Maria carnem assumpsisti, et de ipse quoque nasci voluisti, pauperibusque pannis fuisti involutus, in presepio inter animalia positus, virginis vberibus lactatus, ab angelo pastoribus reuelatus `et ab ipsis in presepio inuentus´, tribus magis per stellam manifestatus et postea ab eis adoratus, carne circumscisus et in templo presentatus, ac deinde in Egiptum fugiens, set postea ad patriam reuertens, atque in Ierusalem a parentibus amissus, sed ab eis in templo inventus inter doctores interrogans & disputans, parentibus subditus, a Iohanne baptisatus, ieiuniis quadraginta dierum et noctium attenuatus, tribus vicibus in deserto a demone temptatus et tociens ibi victor fuisti gloriosus, atque tunc ab angelis administratus, itineribus multis fatigatus, vigiliis, fame & siti maceratus, in predicando lassatus, compaciendo lacrimatus, pauperes cibans, infirmos, cecos, claudos et leprosos ac debiles sanans, mortuos suscitans & tamen a Iudeis reprobatus, et sepius ab eis vexatus, iniuriatus et blasphematus, a vexatis demonia eiciens, amicus peccatorum vocatus et quod in Belzebub demonia fuisti eiciens et seductor plebis nominatus et post multas iniurias atque violencias, instante tua passione contristari voluisti et mestus esse usque ad mortem, & verus homo pauere et tedere cepisti. Positus autem genibus in faciem procidens, ter patrem pro calice transferendo orasti, sed illud patris arbitrio commendasti, et factus in agonia guttas sanguinis in terram decurrentis sudasti. A Iuda tunc venditus, traditus fuisti et ab ipso fraudulenter osculatus, ab impijs Iudeis cum impetu comprehensus, vinculis quasi latro ligatus et discipulis pre metu fugientibus, solus fuisti derelictus. Ad Annam vero pontificem adductus, examinatus & spretus, ibidem a ministro eius alapa percussus, deinde ab Anna vinctus, ad Caypham pontificem fuisti missus & ibidem multipliciter interrogatus, accusatus, vexatus, blasphematus & iniurijs [fol. 122v ] affectus & afflictus. In consilio Iudeorum statutus et per falsos testes accusatus et morte turpissima condempnatus, sputis in facie contaminatus, obprobrijs lassescitus, contumelijs affectus, colaphis cesus, palmis iterum percussus, plurimis modis blasphematus, conviciatus, vinctus, tractus et Pilato traditus, et ad mortem instanter accusatus atque postulatus, Herodi a Pilato missus ac ibi criminatus ab Herode, et eius exercitu spretus, alba veste indutus, ad Pilatum remissus. Tunc nudus ad columpnam, iussu Pilati, ligatus & acriter flagellatus et wlneratus, cruore vndique currente, ab eodem morti crucis adiudicatus, ad crucifigendum militibus traditus, a quibus iterum exutus, veste purpurea indutus, corona spinea coronatus, arundine pro sceptro insignitus, a genuflectationibus yronice salutatus & irrisorie rex Iudeorum nominatus, tercio alapis cesus & iterum facie consputus, arundine in capite percussus, veste

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Appendix purpurea exutus, ligno crucis oneratus et pre lassitudine sub eius pondere cadens, ad passionis locum ductus & tractus, ibi mirrato vino potatus, vestibus proprijs iam tercio exutus, in cruce demum extensus, clauis manus et pedes confixus et sic inter latrones crucifixus, & cum sclerat[i]s1 deputatus, a pretereuntibus quoque & ab astantibus pendens in cruce infideliter blasphematus et derisus, atque in cruce clamans: Deus meus, deus meus, vt quid me dereliquisti? et tandem siciens aceto felle mixto potatus, et inclinato capite ad vltimum mortuus, spiritum tuum in manus patris commendans, et a milite lancea latere perforatus, vnde continuo exiuit sanguis & aqua. Ac sero de cruce depositus, in monumento a Ioseph & Nichodemo sepultus ac tercia die resurgens tuis discipulis apparuisti, quadragesimo die celos ascendisti, sedensque ad dexteram patris promissum paraclitum discipulis misisti, demum ad iudicium venturus, singulis prout gesserunt in corpore bonum vel malum redditurus promisisti. Tu bone pijssime domine Iesu Christe, omnipotens deus, per has sanctissimas penas tuas, et per mortem tuam preciossimam atque nobilissimum sanguinem pro nobis effusum, atque per omnia alia misteria hic de te predicta & insinuata, [fol. 123r] deprecor et obsecro te, atque per tuam ineffabilem pietatem & misericordiam exoro, ac per sanctissimas preces et merita beatissime semper virginis matris tue Marie & omnium sanctorum tuorum, me indignissimum & ingratissimum atque vilissimum peccatorum, et omnes parentes meos, fratres et sorores corporales & spirituales, amicos & inimicos meos, pauperes ac omnes necessitatem habentes atque temptatos qualicumque temptacione, laborantes et desolatos, vinctos et infirmos et omnes pro quibus orare teneor, et ordo caritatis expostulat, atque omnem populum christianum, a tribulacionibus, necessitatibus, periculis et angustijs eripe, et a laqueis & a peccatorum vinculis atque ab omni malo corporis & anime libera, defende & salua, et nos omnes ab hijs semper protege, omnesque cogitaciones et accion[e]s2 nostras vt tibi sint acceptabiles, semper dispone & dirige, et tua gracia ac sancta pace atque omni virtute nos reple, et in hijs usque ad mortem perseuerare tribue, bonumque finem nostri vita nobis concede, et nos omnes port mortem ac iam mortuos et omnes fideles defunctos ab omnibus penis libera ac redima et ad celestis regni gloriam sempiternam nos omnes fac misericorditer peruenire. Qui cum deo patre et spiritui sancto viu[i]s3 et regnas deus, per omnia secula seculorum. Amen 1

scleratus; 2 accionas; 3 vivus

Commentary MS Rawlinson D. 403 is a collection of Latin prayers and treatises, written ‘per Johannem, cuius habitacio est in Syon’, either for himself or for another male Birgittine (the prayers are all cast in the masculine form). A much shorter version of this prayer, ‘Deus qui pro redemptione mundi voluisti’, also found in MS Rawlinson D. 403, fol. 121 v , is widely diffused in books of hours etc. (e.g. the Burnet Psalter, fol. 37v ). The long version, however, is uncommon.

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Item 19 Text [fol. 82v ] A deuoute prayer to our Lady and to Seynt John the Euaungelist tawght by our Lady to Seynt Edmond þe bisshope O intemerata & in eternum benedicta etc. O pure & blessid for euer, singuler & incomparable, virgyn Mary, the moder of `God´, the soueraunt plesaunte tempule of God, the closet of the Holy Gost, the gate of þe kyngdom of heuen, whome vnder almighty God all the worlde lyueth by. Mother of mercy, bowe doun thyn eres of pyte vnto myn vnworthy prayers and be to me, most wreched synnere, most gracious helper in all thynges. [fol. 83r] O blessid Seynt John Euaungelist, the trew louer of owr Lorde Jhesu Christ and gret in favoure with hyme, of whome thou wer chosen, beyng a clene virgyn, and amonge othere specially belouede and in heuenly mysteryes singulerly endewede & made his apostle and, more-over, his euaungelist of highe degre and excellencye: to the also I make my inuocacion with Seynt Marye, þe moder of oure blissed sauyour, þat yt wold plese þe to putte þi helpe with her goodnes toward me. O two celestiall diamontes, Mary & John, O `ij´ fayr lightes schynynge wondres bright before the holy Trinyte, with your clere beames put a-wey þe dark clowdes of my grevouse synnes. [fol. 83v] Ffor ye be those two in whome þe sone of God, for the vertue and meryte of your most pure virginite, confirmed his loue by a speciall prerogative when he hynge vpon the crosse, saynge to þe oon of yow in this wyse: Mulier, ecce filius tuus; and than to þe other he sayd: Ecce mater tua. Therfore in this most swet and holy loue wherwith ye wer knyt to-giders, as mother & son, by owr Lordes own mowth, to yow two I, most wryched synner, commytt this day my body & soule, prayng yow to vouchsafe to be my suer kepars, both withinforth and without-forthe, euery houre and euery parte therof, and also to be graciouse and lovynge intercessours for me to almyghty God. For I fastly [fol. 84r] beleue and vndoutyngly knowelege þat youre will ys Goddis will, and what ye will not, God will not, be the reson wherof what som-ever peticion yow aske of hym ye obteyn it furthwith all. Therfor I beseche yow for þat so mightefull power of your dignite, aske `for´1 me þat I may haue helth of body and soule. Entrete, I beseche yow, entrete with your holy intercessours that the Holigost full of goodnes, which largely spredeth his gyftes and grace, may vouchsafe to come vesite my hert & dwel þerin, þat he may purefye me from all fylthe of synn, and enlight & goodly apparell me with holy vertues, and make me perfetly and 1

of expuncted

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contynually to loue my lord God, the Fader, the [fol. 84v] Son, and hym a-boue all thing, and also to loue euery man and woman contynualy in vertues wise, and after þe vyage of this present lyf þat he may bryng me to joye whiche is ordeyned for hys trew seruauntis, as he is owr aduocate and comforter, all full of benignite. Amen. Glossarial notes enlight: enlighten, illumine wondres: wondrously Source A translation of the well-known twelfth-century Latin prayer, ‘O intemerata’; together with another prayer to the Virgin, ‘Obsecro te’, it is almost invariably found in books of hours. Wilmart edited the Latin text in Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots, pp. 488–90. There is a convenient modern translation in Roger S. Wieck, Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York: Braziller in association with the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1988), p. 164. MS Harley 494 retails the tradition that the poem was revealed to Saint Edmund of Abingdon (c. 1180–1240), who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1233; but as Wilmart demonstrates the prayer is older than Saint Edmund. Commentary Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E). This is the first of a succession of Marian devotions.

Item 20 Text [fol. 84v ] Thies be þe x vertues of our Lady Meknes. Chastite. Obedience. Pacyence. Pyte. Prudence. Charite. Kyndnes. Compassion. Pouertie. O lady most prudent, most wyse & discrete, I salute the with the same salutacion whiche the aungell Gabriel grate þe, sayng Aue Maria [&] c. O lady most chaste, most pure, most clene, alwey abidyng in virginite, I salute the with the same & c. O lady most humble and meke, [fol. 85r] most mylde and lowlye, I salute the & c. O lady most charitable and gracious, I salute the with the same salutac[i]on[&] c.

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O lady most kynde, most benigne & lovyng, I salute the with þe same & c. O lady most obedient and pliable to þe will of God, I salute þe with & c. O lady most p[o]re1 in spirite, I salute the with the same &c. O lady most patient and sufferyng in aduersite, I salute þe with the & c. O lady most full of compassion and pitie, I salute the with þe same salutacion whiche the Angell & c. O lady most dolorouse & woofull, I salute the with the same & c. Glossarial note grate: greeted Source/Analogue Unidentified, but a Latin analogue is found in London, British Library, MS Cotton Faustina D IV, fol. 73v. This is a Franciscan manuscript containing three sixteenth-century woodcuts: for a detailed list of contents, see Anne Mouron, ‘“Althow yt goo by abc / Iet in it good reson ys / Rede and order and yow shall see”: The Absey of Seynt Bonaventure’, Mystics Quarterly, 31 (2005), 23–45 (pp. 25–27). This text promises clearly spurious indulgences of one thousand days to those who carry a copy of ten prayers in honour of the Ten Virtues of the Virgin, and of 10,000 days for reciting ten Aves. Iesus Maria [in upper margin] Portantes orac[iunc]ula decem in honore decem principalium virtutum virginis Marie habent omni die mille dies indulgentie, tamen oportet dicere vnum Aue Maria pro papa. Legentes decem Ave Maria super est promerentur decem millia annorum et poterunt legere bis in die semel pro viuis & semel pro mortuis. Et si sepius legerunt tociens quociens habent decem millia dierum sed semper oportet promittere vnum Pater Noster pro papa et felici statu sancte ecclesie. Purissima Prudentissima Humilima Verissima Gratisima Obedientissima Pauperrima Pacientissima Piissima Dolorosissima Deo gracias & Marie

1

pure

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With the emendation of ‘pure in spirite’ to ‘pore in spirite’ (as here), there is a high degree of correspondence between the two lists of virtues. Both include meekness/humility, chastity/purity, obedience, patience, pity/piety, prudence, kindness (=gratissima), and poverty. The Latin also has ‘most true’ and ‘most sorrowful’; the English lists ‘charity’ and ‘compassion’. There is also an English analogue in London, British Library, MS Harley 1251, fol. 182r–v , where the Virgin is hailed as wise, chaste, trusty, lovely, obedient, patient, pure, meek, and sorrowful. About six of these attributes correspond to the virtues in Anne Bulkeley’s book. The devotion is extravagantly indulgenced: 10,000 years for each recitation, plus forty days for each day in which the virtues are carried around attached to one’s girdle (MS Harley 1251 is in fact tiny and could easily have been attached to one’s belt). The manuscript is known as Eleanor Worcester’s Hours, although she was not the original owner, and Scott-Stokes argues from additions to the Calendar that it is associated with Syon Abbey (Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England, p. 155). In a private communication, she writes, MS Harley 1251 [. . .] probably dates from the mid-fifteenth century. It has various references to John Duke of Bedford (d. 1435), and his obit is in the calendar. Entries for 13 and 20 October in celebration of Brigittine feast days were added to the calendar after its completion. These references and entries are evidence of associations with Syon Abbey. Short texts added at the end of the manuscript show that in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century it belonged to a Lady Eleanor Worcester, and may perhaps be in her own hand. Eleanor Worcester may have been the third [second] wife of Charles Somerset, earl of Worcester, 1460–1526, illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset. This Eleanor was born Eleanor Sutton, daughter of Edward, fifth lord Dudley. She survived her husband. Bookplate verse on fol. 184 v (Brown Robbins [Index of Middle English Verse] 302): And I yt los and yow yt fynd I pray yow hartely to be so kynd That yow wel take a letil payne To se my boke brothe home ayayne E. Worcester.

Commentary The Latin version and the version in Eleanor Worcester’s Hours are more closely related to each other than either is to the version in MS Harley 494. Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E), the second of a succession of Marian devotions.

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Item 21 Text [fol. 85v ] Contemplacion for the Ffeste of þe Assumpcion of owr blessid Ladye The first singler joye þat sche had was when the angell Gabriell broughte here tithynges when sche shuld departe this lyf and come to her swet son, accordyng to her longe & contynuall desire. The secund when, accordyng to her peticion, sche hadde sodeynly by miracle all the twelve aposteles to-giddre, redy as her children to be at her departynge. The thrid when owr saviour Criste, her son, with multitude of aungels and seyntes came to comforte her a litle befor here deth and to strenght her þerto, chasynge a-wey þe fendes & deuylles. The fourth when, at þe departynge [fol. 86r] of her sowle, her son owr savyour in a more glorious & mervellous maner, with a multitude of euery ordre of aungels and euery degre of seyntes, receyuede her soule and conveyde and caryed it emonge ther queer of mooste mervellous melody. The fyfth when, in þe conspecte & beholdynge of all heuen, he presentyde her vn-to þe presence of þe Fader, Son & Holy Gost befor the throne of the Trynite to receyve her thank & reward. The sixth when by the Trinyte, oon God, sche was intronyhate in þe chiar of glory and þer crowned quen of heven, emprice of hell, & lady of alle the worlde. The seuenth when aftirward here [fol. 86v ] blesside body was reysed & here swet soule joynede þerto, then glorifiede vn-to her complet resurreccion & full perfeccyone of joye euerlastynge. Other seuen joyes þat now sche hath in heuen Ffirst that in place, rovme, & ordre she is a-boue all angels & seyntes, and that sche hath for her humilyte, wher-by sche reputede her-selfe most lowe & vnworthy of eny oþer vpon erth. The secunde: sche hath ther more joye than all they haue, and þat hath sche for her pacience, wherby sche sufferde mor peyn & sorow þen did euer creature except her son. The thrid: sche hath all them obedyent in euery thing at her will and commaundement, and þat sche hath wherby sche mynystrede and dyd [fol. 87r ] seruice vn-to all nedy persones. The fourth þat sche hath the lorde of angels, oure saviour Jhesu, obedient vn-to her with all dew reuerence & honoure, and þat sche hath for her liberalite and wilfull pouerte as the richesse of alle sufficience.

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The fyfth that the hoole Trinyte, all-myghty God, is inclynable to graunt redely without denaye all here peticions and desires, and þat sche hathe for þe wilfull redynesse & besy diligence þat sche had euer to serue almyghty God. The sixth þat sche hath all þese joyes and honowres, as well in her body as sowle, in most excellent maner next our saveour her son, and þat sche hath for syngler purite and [fol. 87v] the synglar abstynence þat sche hadde, bothe in body and sowle. The seuenth is the suerte & certentye of thes joyes & dignytes contynuallye and euerlastyngly to endure, without eny suspicione or dowt of mynyshynge or mutacione, and this sche hath for þe constancye of charite and in motherhode, befor and aftyr, pure vergyne. All theese in your contemplacion ye may inlarge and in euer-yche of them make a supplicacion. O glorious lady, quene & empresse of heuen and erthe, preordinate afor the begynnyng of the worlde by the wisdome & ordynaunce of the holy Trinite to be þe moder of God, the lady most worthy a-boue all creatures: thies forseide [fol. 88r] joyes be appropriate with the which, dere lady, I as the most synfull creature, vnworthy to open my mowth for þe multitude of my synnes, in thies excellent joyes honour the, loue the, & praise the, the well, the comfort, the moþer of mercy, to help me, socour me, and defend me from myn enemyes, that they neuer ouercome me but, by thyn assistaunce, help, and pitie, I may ouercome them. Gracious lady, my freilte is gret, redy at ones to fall, febule to resiste, and so all befiled & inwrapped with stynkyng synn, fferyng what schall `be´ myn ende, my thoughtes be so inportunate vpon me to bryng me to vanite & synn. I come to þe, lady, þerfor for help and socour, which refusest no synner, in the puttynge all my truste, a-boue all creatures, to ordre and rewl me [fol. 88 v] to make of me what-so-euer schall plese the, desiryng that thies forseid joyes neuer be out of my remembraunce, by whos recordacion here more plentiously I may1 fermely loue the & praise the in tyme to come, that I may se þe more clerly in þi joye, raignyng with the Fader, Son, and Holy Gost, thre persones and on God. Cui laus sit & honor per omnia secula seculorum. Amen. Glossarial note conspecte: sight intronyhate: enthroned mynyshynge: diminishing ther queer: their choir

1

+ and crossed through

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Source Unidentified; the Seven Joys of the Assumption, however, could be derived from the account of the Assumption of the Virgin given in the Legenda Aurea, taken according to its compiler from ‘a small apocryphal book attributed to John the Evangelist’: see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. by William Grainger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), II, 77–82. The ‘other seuen joyes þat now sche hath in heuen’ can be related to a story quite often found in books of hours (e.g. the Burnet Psalter, fols 111v –112v ) attached to the name of Thomas Becket and associated with the hymn ‘Gaude flore virginali’. The version transcribed below is found in Dunedin, Public Library, MS Reed 5 (The Fitzherbert Hours), fol. 116r–v . Legitur quod dum beatus Thomas martir Cantuariensis archiepiscopus septem gaudia temporalia cum nimia cordis exultacione et deuocione qualibet die diceret ad honorem uirginis gloriose, beata uirgo Maria sibi apparuit ei, que dixit: Cur de gaudijs que pretereunt tantum gaudes et letaris et me honoras? Et de presentibus gaudijs / que in celis habeo que durant perpetuo non gaudes nec letaris nec me honoras? Gaude ergo et exulta mecum de septem gaudijs subsequentibus. Primo, quia gloria mea excellit iocunditatem omnium sanctorum sine comparacione. Secundo, quia sicut sol illuminat diem et mundum, sic claritas mea illuminat totam celestem curiam. Tercio, quia tota milicia celi obedit michi & me ueneratur sicut reginam. Quarto, quia filio meo michi et tote trinitati est una uoluntas in uolendo et semper exaudit preces meas. Quinto, quia dominus ad beneplacitum meum remunerat omnes seruientes meos hic et in futuro. Sexto, quia proxima sedeo sancte trinitati et uestita sum corpore glorificato. Septimo, quia [certa sum et secura quod hec vii gaudia semper durabunt et numquam finientur.]

Commentary Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E). It is interesting that MS Harley 494’s version of the seven ‘other joys’ yields ten virtues of the Virgin: humility, patience, service, liberality, poverty, readiness, diligence, abstinence, constancy, virginity. These do not, however, coincide with the virtues enumerated in the previous item.

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Item 22 Text [fol. 88v] Our Lady apperid to Seynt Brigitt & seyd: I am the quene of heuen and thou art studious & desirous to know how thou schuld lawd & praise me. Know þou for a suerte that euery lawd & praise of my son is my praise, and he þat dishonowreth hym, dishonoureth me. Þerfor þou schalt lawde & praise me as yt followeth. [fol. 89r] Praised and blessid be thou, God, creatour and maker of all thinges, which has vouchedsaf to descende in-to þe wombe of the virgyn Marye. Blessid be þou, God, which hast willed to be with the virgyn Mary without eny grevaunce to her, and þou haste vouched-saf to mak of her thyne immaculate flessch & body, without eny synn. Blessid be þou, God, which hast cum to this vergyn with moche joye, to her soule and to all her membres, and þou hast departed from her body with joye of all her membres at thyn natiuite without eny synn. Blessid be thou, God, which hast gladded the virgyn Marye þi moder with ofte & manny consolacions after thyn ascensyon, and be thyn own person [fol. 89v] thou hast visited her & conforted her. Blessid be þou, God, which hast assumpte and taken vn-to heuen the soule & also the body of the vergyn Marye þi moder, and honorably þou hast ordeynede her in a place a-boue all the ordres of aungelles, next vn-to thy godhede. Good Lord, haue mercy on me for her prayers. Amen. Source Translation of Saint Birgit’s Revelationes, I.8. The prayers themselves, beginning ‘Benedictus sis tu’, are also found in late medieval books of hours, for example, the Burnet Psalter, fol. 29v , and in Lambeth Palace MS 3600 (see discussion in Chapter 4). Commentary Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E).

Item 23 Text [fol. 89v ] A thousand tymys Aue ye schall sey and schall be seyde yn ten dayes, that ys, euery day a hundryd, and they schall be seyde knelyng or stondyng, goyng

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or rydyng, and ye schall holde a sertayne almys in yowre hond whyle that ye make yowre prayer, and afterwarde sey ye thys oreson wyt gode deuocyon. Oracio. Adonay domine deus magne et mirabilis, qui dedisti salutem in manus gloriose vir[fol. 90r]ginis & matris tue, per vterum et per merita ipsius & per illud sanctissimum corpus quod de illa sumpsis[t]i,1 exaudi preces meas et imple desiderium meum in bonum et libera me de omni tribulacione et angustia et ab insidijs omnium michi nocere cupiencium et a labiis [iniqujs]2 & a lingua dolosa. Amen. And when ye haye seyde thys oryson, kysse yowre almys, and after yeue hyt to a poure man or woman in the worschyp off that blesful yoy that Sent Gabriel grete oure Lady, and for what maner thyng ye do thys ten dayes to-gedyr, ye may nott fayle with-owte dout, but þat ye schall haue yowre bone for what maner thyng ye pray or desyre. Glossarial note bone: boon, favour Translation Prayer Adonai, lord God great and wonderful, who didst give salvation into the hands of the glorious Virgin thy mother, through her womb and merits and through that most holy body which thou didst take from her, hear my prayers and fulfill my desire for the good and liberate me from all tribulation and distress and from the assaults of all those who wish to harm me and from wicked lips and from the deceitful tongue. Amen. Source Also found in Ushaw, St Cuthbert’s College, MS 10, fol. 11r, and in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 6. 2, fols 108v–109r, transcribed below. Ye shall say a m l tymes Aue Maria & ye shall sey theym in x dayes that is euery day a hunderth and ye shall sey them standyng goyng knelyng or syttyng and ye shall haue a certen almes in your hand while ye make your prayers & after say this orison or prayer that folowith.

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Appendix Adonay domine deus magne et mirabilis qui dedisti salutem humane generis in manus gloriosissime virginis & matris tue Marie per vterum & merita ipsius & per illud sacratissimum corpus quod de illa sumpsisti exaudi preces meas & imple desiderium meum in bonum ad laudem et gloriam nominis tui & libera me de omni tribulacione impugnacione et ab omnibus insidijs jnimicorum meorum michi nocere cupiencium & a labijs jniquis & linguis dolosis & conuerte tribulacionem meam modo in gaudium & leticiam. Amen. And when ye haue seid this orison, kysse youre almes & after geve it to / a pore man or woman in honoure of that blyssed joy that seynt Gabriel gret our lady, and for what thyng ye do thus x dayes togeder without dought ye shall sure haue that thyng ye pray for laufully with Goddis grace.

A similar but not identical version of ‘Adonay domine deus’ is found in South Brent, MS Syon 4, p. 108 (facsimile in Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, vol. XII), and in the Burnet Psalter, fols 52v –53r (where it is prophylactic against sudden death). Hogg says the Syon manuscript was not originally Birgittine as the forms have not been adapted for women, but it could have belonged to one of the monks. The original litanies included Saint Birgit, though the Birgittine feasts were added later. Commentary Written by Hand J, who makes three mistakes in a short Latin prayer.

Item 24 Text [fol. 91r]

Here foloweth a shorte confessionall for religious persons of euery days synnes aftir Bonauenture Confiteor deo, beate Marie, omnibus sanctis & vobis. I knowleg to almighti God, to our blessid Lady Seynt Marye, to all the holy seyntes of heuen, & to yow, my gostly father, in Goddis stede, þat I haue offended my lord God greuosly sen I was last confesside. Specially in my seruice sayng, in levynge yt vnsayde or eny part þerof, in sayng yt out of tyme, as to tymely or to late, to hastely, with iteracions, without dew attentacions or heyd gevinge to þe wordes or to the ende wherfor I haue seid yt or to whome I haue seid yt, and þat I haue not preparede my harte in þe begynnynge [fol. 91v] to deuocione but haue seid it slaklye, necligently, without deuocione, without reuerence, without hillarite or quycknes, without drede, without grauite, with-out meknes, and [with] moche pride & vayn glory: I crye God mercy. Secundarely, of inobedience, that I haue not obeyed the commaundementes of God, our rewle or statutes, mye prelate, my gostly father and my maistres, nor folowynge the inspiracions and mocions of the Holigost or þe counseill of good

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persones: I cry God mercy. Ffirst as towching þe commaundementes, I haue not louede God with all my hart, with all my mynde, and my neighbour as my-self: I cry God mercy. As touchyng our rewle, I haue not kept the vowe [fol. 92r] of wylfull pouertie, noiþer obeyede to my prelates and rewlers so mekly and gladly, so simplie, so contynualley, so discretly and so schortly, as I schulde haue don: I cry God mercy. Thridly, of evill-spent tyme: I haue myspent the tyme, as yn ydulnes, in ouermoch slepinge, yn vnprofitable occupacion, or in doyng of the lesse good when I might haue don the more good, in spendyng the tyme apte to prayer in doyng thinges of litell valour, or in moche tym doyeng but litell god: I cry God mercy. Ffourthe, of vnkyndnes toward God, our blessid Lady, holy angelles, and all seyntes, & that I haue not thanked God for þe benefettes [fol. 92v] of creacion, redempcion, and gubernacion & callinges by inspiracion, for the custody and ministeri of angelles, holy mocions, holy doctrines, examples of seyntes, and for the holy sacramentes of the Chirche, place, tyme, feloschipe, and all oþer occasyons of well doynge and preseruacyons from evilles of the worlde, of the body, of the soule, and evilles eternall: I cry God mercy. Ffyfte, of necligence, þat I haue ben slake and sluggisshe, as yn omyssyon of holy desires and holy meditacions and prayers, mentall or vocall, ceremonyes, inclynacyons and all oþer dueties, and not praynge for my benefactours and frendes, and in forgetyng of my synnes [fol. 93r] and oþer circumstances dew to þe same, and that not had in þe remembryng of my synnes suche contricione or so gret displeasure as I ought to haue had, nother so fast purpos to amende me in the same, in omyssion or forgettyng of my pennaunce enyoined me in confession or in þe chapetre, in necligence in commyng `to´ dyvine seruice or to eny oþer regular obseruaunce. Wherfor I cry God mercye. Sext, I haue synned in my hart, by pryde, presumpcion, vayn glory, ambicion, that is desire of honour, despisyng other by light jugementes, suspicions, ire, hastynes, impacience, soleines, hate, malice, evill thoughtes of vnclennes of my countrey, of my frendes, of [fol. 93v ] worldly maters & hertly affeccyon: I cry God mercy. Seuenth, I haue synned in my mouthe, in brekyng of silence, in ydell wordes, detraccions or bakbytynges, gruggyn[ge]s, bostynges, dissymulacions, in contendyng or stryves, in lawghinges or scornynges: I cry God mercy. Eighth, I haue synned in dede, as in ouermoche slepyng, in pollucions and rebellions of my flessh caused by sightes of men or other wanntones, or in glad heryng of vnclene tailes, in excesse of metes and drynkes, in takynge ouermoche, to gredely, to costely, to hastely, to desirously, desirynge better or more delicat metys or drynkes, givinge [fol. 94r] evill example, and troublyng my company also in

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vnreuerence to God, to the Chirche, to þe awter, to the sacramentes of þe Chirche, to mye hedis & superiours. Ffor these, with all other as God knoweth me gyltie, I submyt me to his mercy, desiryng of hym mercy and forgivenes and grace of amendement, and of you, my gostly fader, pennaunce and absolucion I aske for Goddes sake. Ideo precor sanctam Mariam, beatam Birgittam, omnes sanctos dei & vos orare pro me. And here it is to be noted þat after Seynt Barnarde & oþer deuout doctours, when eny person vseth to be confessed often tymes, he owght to make a short confession and not [fol. 94v] to tell a longe processe as many doth, wherby they mak ther gostly fader tedious and werye, and also let oþere that lyke-wise wolde be confessede; but let hym schew playnly & openly the synnes that he hath don from the tyme of his last confessioun, and first his mortall synnes that he hath don, if he can remembre onye, declaryng them yn speciall how & after what maner he did theme, for the confession of mortalle synne is required of necessite wher tyme and place is conuenient, yf we will be savide, in so moche þat we be bounde to declare it in specyall, with diew circumstaunces and aggrauacions, as ferforth as we can remembre. Then let hym confesse [fol. 95r] his venyalls, and specially them in þe whiche he fallithe most often. And then all other in generall whiche can not be expressed, after þe counseill of Bonauenture, as ydule thoughtes, ydell wordes, negligence or sloughtfulnes in prayer or meditacion, losse of tyme, distraccion of the herte in saynge oure seruice or oþer prayer of deutie, vnkyndnes in not thankynge God for his benefettes, ouermoche cheresyng of the body or to moche karynge for temperall thinges, lyhtt troublous toward our neighbour, light jugement of the harte of our neyghbour, light despising of our neyhbour as concerning his person or lyf or his maners, not beyng content with all þat God hath made, and not exer[fol. 95v]cysing our-self in the graces that God hathe given vs, with suche othere whiche mannes freylte is not able to avoyde and ther can not be declarede in novmbre, but raþer it is expedient to confesse them to God in our prayer and knowlege our infirmite or weknes, and in owre confessyons it is sufficient to confesse them in generall in thende of our confession as Seynt Barnarde techith, saynge in this wise: Ffor thes þat I haue now confessede and all other, I yelde me giltye to God and ask hym mercy. And all-though man be not bounde of necessite to confesse eny venyall synne for þat it excludeth not from [fol. 96r] the kyngdom of heuen nother remouethe charite, yet neuer-the-lesse of perfeccyoun and counseill it is conuenyent and good to confesse venyalles, for ther-by moche grace encreasith and moche profyte; but suche venyalles of which [we] be in dout and fere lesse they be mortall, we ought to be confesside, and that in specyall in eny wise.

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Glossarial notes confessionall: form of confession gubernacion: guidance inclynacyons: bowings iteracions: repetitions maistres: woman in a position of authority regular obseruaunce: ceremony of ritual prescribed by the rule tymely: early Source For the confessional formula itself, cf. Bonaventura, Regula novitiorum, cap. 3, De confessione (Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae . . . Opera omnia, 10 vols in 11 (Quaracchi, 1882–1902), VIII, 479–80): 1. [. . .] antequam vadas ad confessionem, omnia peccata, quae post praecedentem confessionem fecisti vel corde, vel ore, vel opere, aut omittendo bona, aut committendo contraria, cum profundo cordis contritione ad mentem revoca diligenter, ne ea in confessione praetermittas. [. . .] 2. Cum volueris prolixius confiteri, dicas de offensionibus Regulae, maxime de obedientia, paupertate et castitate, et exprimas, si in aliquo istorum specialiter offendisti. — Item de multa negligentia et irreverentia circa Horas, quia eos somnolenter et | indevote dicis et cum vagatione cordis et imperfecte, dimittendo quandoque versus et syllabas. — Item, de multa ingratitudine, quam habes circa spiritualia et temporalia dona et beneficia Dei. Nam spiritualia non cognoscis, maxime beneficium redemptionis et Religionis, quae cum gratiarum actione frequenter ruminare deberes, et etiam de beneficiis corporalibus es ingratus, quia pro eleemosynis acceptis non reddis Deo debitas gratias, sicut deberes, et parum pro benefactoribus oras. — Item, de modica caritate, quam habes circa Deum et proximum, quia Deum non diligis, sicut debes, toto corde, nec obedis consiliis et praeceptis eius, sicut debes, sed quod periculosius est, voluntati eius resistis frequenter; nec etiam diligis proximum, sicut debes, quia nec congaudes ei in prosperitate sua nec in adversitate compateris, sicut debes. — Item, de perditione temporis, quia stas otiosus in die dicendo et audiendo verba vana et otiosa et nociva et ad risum provocantia. — Item de inhonestis et noxiis cogitationibus et morosis, quibus non resistis viriliter, sicut posses. Sed forte quod peius est, negligis principia motuum carnalium, qui insurgunt. — Item, de falso et temerario iudicio aliorum. — Item, quia tu es promptus ad laetitia et tristitia. — Item, quia tu es promptus ad malum et remissus ad bonum. — Item, de multa superbia, vana gloria, invidia, iactantia, avaritia, accidia, gula et luxuria. — Item, de modico dolore, quem habes de peccatis tuis, et non doles de offensis, sicut debes; et de aliis dicas, de quibus conscientia te reprehendit; et dum haec omnia dicis, descende ad specialia, quae fecisti, et semper, accepta poenitentia, osculare terram.

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The advice after the confessional formula finds an analogue in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A III, fol. 137r–v: Alia nota de confessione After the saynge of sanct Bernarde and other holy doctors, when any man vsyth to confesse dayly or ofte tymes, he schulde nott make a longe confession bott schort of syche as hys conscience is most grewyd with. And first of dydly synnys & thoo that he is in dowt, whether they be dedly or weniall, & secundly of suche wenyall syns in generall þat can nott well be expressyd specyally, as thes be ydyll wordes, vane thoghtis, necligente dulnes in redynge or praynge, losse of tyme, distraccyon of hart or wauerynge mynd in saynge his seruice or other prayers, vnthankfullnes / of the gudnes of God, more besy for þe body then nede ware, lyght turbacyons agayns hys neghtbure, lyght juchyng of other men, lyght suspicyon, to be nott content with all that God dothe and nott to vse þe graces and gyftis þat God hathe gyffyn hym, with other suche that can not be flede and well forborne of a febyll and a wake sawle. When it suffers suche agayns it wyll, thay are bott lyght veniall. Neuerlesse thay wolde be confessyd in generall.

Commentary The text in MS Cotton Nero A III cites ‘Gerson Li. 32’; see, possibly, Jean Gerson, ‘De remediis contra pusillanimitatem’ (Jean Gerson: Œvres complètes, ed. by P. Glorieux (Paris: Desclée, 1973), X, 374–86), on scrupulosity, for a discussion of some of the issues raised here, such as the amount of detail required of the penitent, and the concluding paragraph to his ‘Modus brevis confitendi’ (IX, 86) on the need for brevity: Per istum brevem modum confitendi et generalem, potest homo habere aliquam introductionem ad sciendum confiteri; et debet considerare si sit aliquod speciale in sua conscientia; et non oportet semper dicere totum per modum cujusdem consuetudinis, sed diligenter debet unusquisque respicere illud in quo saepius deficit vel delinquit, et secundum illud se accusare humiliter et breviter, sine magna narratione verborum sine causa.

Gerson was, of course, French, but Yelena Mazour-Matusevich comments that, after his death in 1429, his works ‘were copied in Germany, Austria, England and the Netherlands’ and that the ‘first “complete” edition’ of his works was printed in Cologne in 1483. His thought ‘left Paris and Lyon and was absorbed within what is now the Netherlands, Flemish Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Germany’ (‘Gerson’s Legacy’, in A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. by Brian Patrick McGuire, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 357–99 (p. 360)). Again the marginal attribution, even if incorrect, suggests a Netherlandish/ German influence on Anne Bulkeley’s book (cf. the Maria van Oisterwijk text). Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E). For the content, see the discussion in Chapter 5.

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Item 25 Text [fol. 96v ]

An exclamacion of a penytent synner to almighty God for socour & help, knowlegynge hym-selff what he is. A synfull wreche, a miserable synner, to the þat art full of mercy, pitie, and compassioun in my most sorowfull maner I cry for help and mercy, accusyng myself of my manyfold vnkyndnes schewid to the, most louyng & most kynde. I am ashamed to spek to þi grace, myn vnstabulnes is so gret. Myn imperfeccion daily thow seest in me, in so moche þat I can not haue my sowle fixed in þe by the space of fyve Aues sayng, suche is my fraylte, now myude to ambicion, to pride, elacyon, dedignacion, presumpcion, to wrath; my malice in judgyng suspecions & many tymes for a litell cause mouede to [fol. 97r] impacience, glad to iustefy myn owen causes and oft tymes takyng the wors part in suche matiers as I haue hard spoken, and some tymes in causes not equall but a part parcyall, oder for affeccion or for som other synystrall causes. A, blesside Lord, my hert is as the see, flowyng and ebbyng in stormes and perilles, movide with manny vnclene thoughtes rysing of þe flessh, giving litell resistence to suche insurreccions but delited me in them and by deliberacion feere of privey consent. And after all thies and many suche lyke, I fall to slovght, to tediousnes, that euery thing þat I do, in a maner it is don with an nawsy without deuocion. Agitacions commeth innumerable, that when one hath done, commethe [fol. 97v ] an-other, sufferyng me to haue `no´ reste in the, my lord God. Ffurthermore, blissede Jhesu, mervellously I am infecte with vayn glory þat no good dede þat I may do but it is mixte, outher with appetite to be pleside therof, or with som other spice of vayn glory, presumpcion of my `selfe´,1 that all my cogitacions, wordes and dedes be as a clowt full of black spottes, þat when I loke on them, ynwardly I am all confounded & cast in suche fere þat I fere what schalle come of me in tyme to com, save only thy goodnes and mercy lifteth me vp. And yet beyond all thies rehersyde, most vnkynde in refusynge þi godly inspiracions, whiche hath moued me a thousand tymes to godly wayes & godly dedes. I haue refused þem [fol. 98r] and folowed myn owen plesures and þe instigacions of my gostly enemys. I haue not had remembraunce of thy many-fold kyndnes, thyn infenyte mercy, and specially that thow hast preseruede me, both in soule and in body, whiche hast neuer punysshed me after my demerites but most lovingly hast dissembled my wrechednes.

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Alas, lord, what more might þou haue done by thi ordynat power then þou hast done for me, suche a wreche? A, mercyfull lord, wounde me so mewable, send in-to my soule the spere þat persede þi preciouse hert, which spere may euer remayn in my hert and neuer be taken out of my hert, and so alle the days of my lyf live as woundede mewable as a recompense and satisfaccion for all thies vnkyndnesses afor rehersede, [fol. 98v] and late me lye as a beggar at the Porte called Speciosa, that of all them that entreth in-to the Chirche Tryvmphaunt I may begge ther almes, wherby also I may be releuyde from all thies forseide infirmites. O mercyfull Jhesu, haue mercy on me; thowe knowest myn infirmite better then my-selff. Et illumina oculos meos ne vnquam obdormiam in morte nequando dicat inimicus meus preualui aduersus eum. Glossarial notes Chirche Tryvmphaunt: see OED s.v. ‘triumphant’, a. (n.), earliest example 1526 clowt: cloth, rag dedignacion: scorn equall: fair, impartial instigacions: incitements mewable: movingly myude: moved nawsy: sickness synystrall: unsound slovght: sloth Source Unidentified. Porte called Speciosa: cf. ‘Et quidam vir, qui erat claudus ex utero matris suae, baiulabatur: quem ponebant quotidie ad portam templi, quae dicitur Speciosa, ut peteret eleemosynam ab introeuntibus in templum’, Acts 3. 2. In the Middle Ages, the Porta Speciosa was one of the main entrances to the church and a favourite resort (then as now) for beggars. Et illumina oculos meos: Psalm 12. 4 (one of the verses included in the Psalter of St Jerome and the first of the Eight Verses of St Bernard). Commentary Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E).

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Item 26 Text [fol. 98v ] O intemerata et in eternum benedicta, singularis atque incomparabilis vergo dei genetrix Maria, sacratissimum dei templum, spiritus sancti sacrarium, ianua regni celorum, per quam post deum totus viuit orbis terrarum. De te enim filius dei verus et omnipotens deus suam sanctissimam [fol. 99r] fecit matrem, assumens de te illam sacratissimam carnem per quam mundus, qui perditus erat, salvatus est. Cuius preciosissimo sanguine mundus ipse redemptus est & ipsius peccata remissa sunt, fformans eum in preciosissimo vtero tuo de purissimo sanguine tuo, vniens eum eterne & incommutab[i]li diuinitati sue a quo bona cuncta procedunt, per quem omnia facta, quem adoro. Quam sacratissimam carnem suam cum preciosissimo sanguine suo [ipse dat] cotidie fidelibus suis sub forma panis & vini in cibum viaticum & refeccionem animarum salutarem [et] vitalem. Quam [qui] digne manducauit, habebit vitam eternam; qui autem indigne manducaverit, iudicium sibi manducat & bibit1 sicut pluries feci. Mea culpa, mea grauissima culpa. Qui autem non manducauerit, non habebit vi[fol. 99v]tam eternam. Et propterea, merito dicimus qui[a]2 per te post deum totus viuit orbis terrarum. Per hanc fidem deprecor te, dei genitrix, vergo semper Maria, inclina aures tue pietatis indignis supplicacionibus meis, & esto mihi miserimo peccatori propicia in omnibus auxiliatrix, rogans pro me aput fontem misericordie & pietatis creatorem & redemptorem dominum nostrum Jhesum Christum filium tuum, verum et omnipotentem deum, a quo bona cuncta procedunt, per quem omnia facta sunt, qui non vult mortem peccatoris, sed ut magis conuertatur & viuat, cui proprium est miserere semper & parcere; suscipe deprecationem nostram vt ipse, per ineffabilem misericordiam suam, precibus & meritis tuis absoluat me ab omnibus peccatis meis quibus ei displicui, tribuens michi veram humilitatem, veram mansuetudinem & obediendi gratiam, spei, fidei & caritatis [fol. 100r] augmentum cum perseuerancia, custodiens me a residuo peccati et a temptacionibus demonum mundi & carnis. Ita vt non amplius seruiam demonibus quibus serviui in multitudinibus scelerum, videlicet in superbia, vana gloria, cupiditate, auaricia, ira, luxuria, accidia, gula, & necligencijs infenitis, & alijs multis peccatis quibus contra deum peccaui & alios peccare feci: mea culpa, mea grauissima culpa. In hijs peccatis perdidi [regnum]3 celorum & societatem electorum,

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quociens offendi pijssimum filium tuum, tociens letificavi demones pessimos & merui eterna suplicia: tociens mea culpa, mea grauissima culpa. Ideo deprecor te, dei genitrix, vergo perpetua Maria, vt impetres michi indulgenciam & remissionem istorum et [fol. 100v] aliorum, quecumque feci, ab ipso filio tuo a quo bona cuncta procedunt, qui eciam illumina[t]4 omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum: fac vt ipse illuminet mentem meam lumine gracie sue, inflammet eciam igne suauissimi et sanctissimi amoris sui, et faciat me ipsum, cum patre & spiritu sancto, super omnia diligere & timere & eidem firmiter adherere, sua mandata custodire, peccata vitare, suam sanctam passionem & suam pacienciam imitari, bonisque operibus habundare, prospera mundi despicere, & nulla eius aduersa formidare, & talem penitenciam in hac vita pro cunctis sceleribus & peccatis meis agere, que ei precibus & meritis [tuis] beneplacens sit & grata, ita ut parcat me, in alia vita concedens misericorditer michi cum electis suis vitam & requiem sempiternam. Amen. Translation O chaste and eternally blessed unique and incomparable virgin mother of God, most sacred temple of God, shrine of the Holy Spirit, gate of the kingdom of heaven, through whom after God the whole world lives: for of thee the true Son of God and God Almighty made his most holy mother, taking of thee that most sacred flesh through which the world, which was lost, was saved, by whose most precious blood the world itself was redeemed and its sins remitted, forming it in thy most precious womb of thy most pure blood, uniting it to his eternal and unchanging divine nature, from whom all good things proceed, through whom all things are made, whom I adore. He gives this most sacred flesh of his together with his most precious blood every day to the faithful under the form of bread and wine, as food for the journey and saving and life-giving refreshment of souls. He who has eaten it worthily shall have eternal life; but he who has eaten it unworthily, eats and drinks judgement to himself, as I have done many times by my fault, my own most grievous fault. But he who has not eaten, shall not have eternal life. And therefore, we rightly say that through thee after God the whole world lives. Through this faith I implore thee, Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, incline the ears of thy pity to my unworthy supplications, and be a propitious helper in all things to me, most miserable sinner, asking for me at the fount of mercy and pity, the creator and redeemer our lord Jesus Christ thy son, true and almighty God, from whom all good things proceed, through whom all things were made, who desires not the

4

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death of a sinner but rather that he should be converted and should live, whose property is always to have mercy and to spare. Hear our prayer so that he himself, through his unspeakable mercy, may absolve me by thy prayers and merits from all my sins with which I have displeased him, granting me true humility, true gentleness and the grace of obedience, increase of faith, hope, and charity with perseverance, guarding me from the residue of sin and from the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that I may no longer serve the demons whom I served in the multitudes of my wickedness, that is pride, vain glory, cupidity, covetousness, anger, lust, sloth, gluttony, and unnumbered negligences, and many other sins with which I have sinned against God and have caused others to sin: by my fault, my most grievous fault. In these sins I have lost the kingdom of heaven and the company of the elect; as often as I have offended thy most gentle Son, so often have I made happy the most wicked demons and have merited eternal punishment by my fault, my most grievous fault. And so I implore thee, Mother of God, Mary ever virgin, that thou shouldst beg for me forgiveness and remission of those and other sins, whatever I have committed, from thy son from whom all good things proceed, who also lightens every man who comes into this world. Grant that he himself may lighten my mind with the light of his grace, and also inflame it with the fire of his most sweet and holy love, and make me love, fear, and firmly cling to him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, above all things, keep his commandments, avoid sin, imitate his holy passion and his patience, abound in good works, despise the prosperity of the world and not fear its adversities, and do such penance in this life for all my crimes and sins as may be pleasing and acceptable, by thy prayers and merits, to him, so that he may spare me, mercifully granting me in the next life with his elect life and rest eternal. Source This is the later, ‘more prolix’, version of the ‘O intemerata’ (Item 19 was an English translation of the earlier prayer). Wilmart dates this prayer to the early fourteenth century, and prints a text from London, British Library, MS Royal 7. A. VI, fol. 97v (Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots, pp. 493–95). Commentary Wilmart considers that this prayer was adapted to prepare the suppliant to receive Communion; certainly it has a penitential emphasis which makes it appropriate at this point in Anne Bulkeley’s book. He notes that it is often attributed to Pope

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John XXII (1318–34) and accompanied by the promise of three hundred days of indulgence. Characteristically, there is no promise of indulgence here. Written by Robert Taylor (Hand E); this is the last item that he writes.

Item 27 Text [fol. 101r]

Here-after folowith the vij sorowes of our blessid Lady. The fyrst O lady Mary, temple of the Trinite & moder of God, I beseke the for that great dolor and heuenes with the wich thy hart was wounded, when thou hard the holy Symeon prophecy of þe deth of thy son and of the woo thou sholdest haue to se hym so cruelly intretyd, thou wold vouchsafe to purchase to me of my lord & spouse, thy sone, knolege of my syn, howe grevously & dyuersly I haue offended his goodnes. And dew contricyon for the same, I beseke the. Pater Noster. Aue Maria. The seconde doloure [fol. 101v ] O lady Mary, I beseke the for the greate dolour & heuenes that thu had in thy harte, what tyme þu fled frome the face of the cruell Kyng Herode in-to the lande of Egypte, þer lyvyng the space of vij yerys in gret pennury & pouerte amonge idollatours, that þu wylt purchase for me of my lord God and spouse, thi sone, parfyt contricion for my synnes, and to fle synne as from þe face of a serpent. And so to live in þis lyfe of dissolacion & wildernesse þat I may cum to his presens & thyn in hevyns glory, I beseche the. Pater Noster. Aue Maria. The thyrde dolour r [fol. 102 ] O lady Mary, I beseche þe for þe greate dolour & heuenes þat thou had in þi hert, what tyme þu had lost thy dere beloued son the space of iij days, sekyng hym with Joseph in gret lamentacion & heuenes, but at the last þu fonde hym among þe sage doctours, disputyng with þem in the lawe, to þi gret comfort & gladnes: purchase for me of my lorde & spouse, þi son, pure confession & bytter contricion for my synnes, þat in clennes of lyvyng I may so seke hym in þis present lyf by good werkes doyng þat I may fynd hym, and not among þe doctours of þe old law but in heuy[n] among þe xxiiij seniours, & with hym to reygne in glory euerlastyng throug[h] þi holy intercession & prayers, `lady´, I beseke the. Pater Noster & Aue Maria. [fol. 102v] The fourth dolour O lady Mary, I beseche þe for thi gret dolour & heuenes þat thu had in þi hart, what tyme þu herde [thi] son to be taken of þe Jewis & cruelly entretid,

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scorgid be-fore þe, cro[w]nyd with thornes, & condempnyd to the deth of þe crosse; purchase of my lord & spouse, þi son, suche gracys and vertues to be restoryd ayen to me as I haue lost by reson of my syn, and so to folow hym with þe crosse of penaunce that I may be partenar of the paynes & passion that he suffered for me. Pater Noster & Aue Maria. The fyfte dolour [fol. 103r] O lady Mary, I beseche þe for þe gret dolour & heuenes þat thou had in þi hart, what tyme þu sawe þi son fast nayled to þe crosse, most rewfully torne & rent, his woundes fressh b[l]edyng, & namely when he with a horse voice commmended þe to his disciple John, and when he with a gr[e]wouse1 crye gaue vp his spirite & died in þi sight; purchase of þi son þat he will in the houre of my deth geve me, both body & soule, into thi kepyng from the face of þe enemy, for by the he redemyd me. At that houre fayle me not, lady, I beseche the. Pater Noster & Aue Maria. The syxt dolour v [fol. 103 ] O lady Mary, I beseche þe for þe gret dolour & heuenes þat thou had in þi hart, what tyme thi son was deposed or taken downe from þe crosse and, as we maye well beleve, he was geven the in-to þi lappe, wher thou with many terys wypid his face & clensed his woundes in gret lamentacion & mornyng: purchase for me of my lord & spouse, thi son, þat I may reseyue his body in þe sacrament of þe auter, specyally in the houre of my deth, to my saluac[i]on, through thi prayers, lady, I beseche the. Pater Noster. Aue Maria. The seventh dolour r [fol. 104 ] O lady Mary, I beseche the for the gret dolour & heuenes þat þu had in þi hart, what tyme þi son Jhesu was buryed & hidden from þi bodely sight & þu wer constreyned (by þe nyght drawyng fast on) to forsake his sepulture & to returne to Jerusalem al comfortles. Purchase me grace of þi son, my lorde & spouse, þat I may haue hym so fixed and buried in my memory þat I neuer forgett his manyfold benefyttes toward me, & in þe houre of my deth he will vouchesafe to visite me & take my sowle with hym into his glory throwgh þi holy intercessyon, lady, I beseche the. Pater Noster. Aue Maria & Credo. Glossarial notes grewouse: grievous seniours: elders sepulture: tomb 1

growouse

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Source Unidentified. Commentary This devotion enumerates the Seven Sorrows that were by now traditional; see further the discussion in Chapter 5. Scott-Stokes, Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England, p. 102, notes, ‘Sorrows in chronological sequence are matched in complex penitential structures with compassion, contrition, and appeals for cleansing of senses, wits, and body’. She compares London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546, fols 7v –20v . Written by Hand K.

Item 28 Text [fol. 105r]

Here folo[wi]th þe bedis of pardon in Englyshe of Saynt Gregorrys pytye O swete blessyd Jhesu, for thy holy name & thy byttere passion, save vs from synne & shame & endlese damnacion & bryng vs to þi blysse. Amen. Thys forsayde verse ys sayde on euery bede. O swete blessyd Jhesu, gyve vs thy love & thy grace to seke thy wyll & kepe thy commandmentes. O swete blessyd Jhesu, for þi holy name. O swete blessyd Jhesu, geve vs grace and myght for thy love to drede, hate, & flee synne. O swete blessyd Jhesu, for þi holy name. O swete blessyde Jhesu, for þi preciouse bloode & þi bytter passion, be owre redempcion & owre saluacion. O swete blessyd Jhesu, for þi holy name. [fol. 105v] O swete blessyde Jhesu, haue marcye vppon all synnfull people, & vppon all the soules in þe paynes of purgatory, and saue vs from þe paynes of hell. O swete blessyd Jhesu, for þi holy name. O swete blessyd Jhesu, whan shall I haue the, with thy sayntes euerlastyng ioye, withowt ende in heven to see thy blessyd face? Say at euery verse a Pater Noster & Aue Maria, all with on Credo. Aue Maria, eternj Patris sponsa, ex omnipotencia Patris post Deum potentissima, in celo & in terra virgo mater Jhesu veri Dei & hominis amantissima, gratia plena,

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Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus & benedictus fructus ventris tui. Amen. Et benedicta sit sanctissima mater tua Anna, ex qua sine macula tua processit caro virginea. Amen. [fol. 106r] Ex omnipotencia Patris O swete blessyd Lady, as thou art moste myghty next God in heven & in erth, I besech the1 so be present & defend me from þe powre of my gostly enymy in þe houre of my deth. Aue Maria, gratia plena. Aue Maria, eternj Patris sponsa, ex sapiencia filij prudentissima, virgo mater Jhesu veri Dei & hominis amantissima, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus &c. Ex sapiencia Filij O glorious Lady, as thou art most witty next God in heven & in erth, I beseche the so be present & kepe me in the ryght fayth of Holy Churche in the houre of my deth. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Aue Maria, eterni Patris sponsa, ex benignitate [fol. 106v] spiritus sancti gratissima & benignissima, virgo mater Jhesu veri Dei & hominis amantissima, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus & benedictus fructus. Ex benignitate Spiritus Sancti O glorious lady, as thou art most lovyng in hart next God in heven & in erth, I beseche the so be present, & geet me love & grace, & kepe me in my ryght naturall wyttes, and temper the passiones of my deth. Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Translation Hail Mary, spouse of the eternal Father, by the omnipotence of the Father most potent after God in heaven and on earth, virgin mother of Jesu, true God and most loving mother of man, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Amen. And blessed be thy most holy mother Anne, from whom came forth thy virgin flesh without spot. Amen. .... Hail Mary, spouse of the eternal Father, by the wisdom of the Son most prudent, virgin mother of Jesu, true God and most loving mother of man, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women etc. .... Hail Mary, spouse of the eternal Father, by the kindness of the Holy Spirit most gracious and kind, virgin mother of Jesu, true God and most loving mother of man,

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full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit [of thy womb]. Source For the opening prayer, the so-called Pardon Beads of Syon, see Hirsh, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Commentary on “Ihesu for thy holy name”’, and New Index of Middle English Verse, ed. by Boffey and Edwards, no. 1703. The following from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 19, fols 31v–33r, is the more usual version: Item this is requested in London in Paulus chirche on þe sowth syd thys lesson folowyng, it to be vsyd vpon þe fyve bedes [fol. 32r] of dyuerse colors. Jhesu for thy holy name & for thy bytter passion, Save vs from ssynne & shame & from endles damnacyon & bryng vs to thy blysse whiche neuer shal mysse, Swete Jhesu. Amen. In this prayer be contened xxxiij wordes representyng [fol. 32v ] to vs the xxxiij yers off the age of our lord Ihesu christ the pardon wherof in to þe `me´moryall of his wondys grete & smale is vml ccc lxxv yeris. And here it is to be notyd þat þe first white bede betokenyth þe holy name of Ihesu, & þe rede bed þe passyon of Ihesu; þe first blake bed, þe synne of man; þe secunde blake bede, þe peynes of [fol. 33r] hell; & þe last white bede signyfyeth euerlestyng ioye & blisse. The woundes þat our Lord suffyrd for vs be v ml cccc xxv, & so many yerys of pardon be graunted to all them þat sey deuoutly this forseyd prayer. Amen. The droppys þat our Lord swett in þe gardeyn when he mad his prayers were xlvii m.

Cf. also from a Sarum horae of 1503? printed by Wynkyn de Worde (STC 15899), sig. Pir: JHesu for thy holy name | and for thy bytter passyon. Saue vs fro synne and shame | and endles dampnacyon. And bryng vs to thy blysse that neuer shal have ende swete Jhesu Amen. And graunte vs of thy grace that to the honour and worshyp of thy holy name | to the laude & preysyng of thy blessyd moder and virgyne | our lady saynte marye. & to the prouffyte of our moder holy chirche we may do our duete & homage eche with other and for other swete Jhesu. Amen.

For the Latin prayers, see LSG, Pars 1 caps 11 and 47 (exercise of the Triple Aves), of which there is another, independent, English version in Trinity MS O.1.74, fols 74v–77v. The addition to the first Latin prayer, the Salutation to Saint Anne, is found elsewhere in, for example, STC 15953, STC 16002a, and CUL, MS Ii. 6. 2, fol. 102r. It also appears in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS 13, where this prayer is found with an indulgence on fols 38v –39r:

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Alexander / the vj pope [crossed out] of Rome hath graunted to all them þat saith this prayer deuoutly in the worship of saynt Anne & ower Ladi & her son Ihesus x ml yeris of pardon for dedli sinnes & xv yeris for veniall sins, tociens quociens. Oracio. Aue Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum, tua gratia sit mecum: benedicta tu in mulieribus & benedicta sit sancta Anna mater tua: ex qua sine macula et peccato processisti virgo Maria; ex te autem natus est Ihesus Christus filius dei uiui. Amen.

Magdalene College MS 13 is a preces privatae volume that contains the name ‘Elysabeth Crychley off Syon 13 Jan anno 1521’ (she was listed as a lay sister at the time of the suppression). However, this does not mean that it belonged to her, but rather to Jasper Fyllol when he was living with the London Dominicans in the early sixteenth century. It is he who stakes his claim unequivocally on fol. 1v. The Magdalene manuscript is a highly traditional book of devotions; nonetheless, Fyllol entered the service of Thomas Cromwell, who planted him in the London Charterhouse to work on the monks in the matter of the King’s supremacy, with mixed success. In 1529 he became Member of Parliament for Dorchester in 1529 (see R. Rex, ‘Jasper Fyllol and the Enormities of the Clergy’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 4 (2000), 1043–62). Curiously, there were Fyllols associated with the Bulkeley family in Hampshire in the late 1480s: Robert Bulkeley (presumably Anne’s husband), Maurice Fillol of Charford, and Nicholas Filloll of Fordingbridge provided sureties for each other, in relation to offences that they had committed in 1486 and 1487 (A Calendar of New Forest Documents: The Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries, ed. by D. J. Stagg, Hampshire Record Society Series 5 (1983), Items 163–67). Jasper Fyllol himself, however, seems to have come from nearby Devonshire. The English prayers accompanying the Latin are also found in Lambeth Palace MS 546, fols 52v–53r: O swete blessyd lady, as thow art most myhty next God in heuyn & yn erthe, I besech the to be present & defend me from the power of my gostly enymy yn the oure of my deth. Amen. [A]ue Maria. O moste gloryous lady, as thow art most wytty next God yn heven & yn erth, I besech the to be present & kepe me yn the ryght fayth of holy church yn the houre of my deth. Aue. O most gloryous lady, as thow are most lover of hart next God in heuyn & yn erth, I beseche the to be present; gete loue & grace, kepe me yn my ryght natural wytis & tempre the / passyouns of my deth. Aue Maria.

In this manuscript the initial ‘O’ of each prayer contains the sacred monogram ‘ihs’. Commentary Written by Hand L. See the discussion in Chapters 4 and 5.

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Item 29 Text [fol. 106v] Gracias ago tibi, omnipotens Deus, pro proteccione diuina, pro custodia angelica, et pro quiete indulta. Translation We give thee thanks, almighty God, for divine protection, for angelic keeping, and for permitted rest. Source Cf. Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fol. 9v: Gracias ago tibi omnipotens deus pro proteccione diuina, pro custodia angelica, et pro quiete indulta, et pro alijs innumeris beneficijs nullis meis meritis sed sola tua bonitate et dignacione tue misericordie `michi´ collatis.

Cf. also a passage from a treatise on the religious life attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (PL 184, col. 1177C): Quando surgendum est ad vigilias, praeparandus est animus ad devotionem; ita ut ferventer exsilias de lecto, et torpore discusso gratias divinae misericordiae agas pro quiete indulta, pro custodia et protectione angelica.

Commentary Written by Hand M, a wobbly and errant liturgical hand. This may have originally been the last item in the book and the prayer may well be unfinished: there is no final mark of punctuation. In Lambeth Palace MS 3600 it is clearer, from the text’s position near the beginning of the book, that this is a morning prayer to be said on waking.

Item 30 Text [fol. 107r] Cast þi-selff downe before oure Lorde prostrate & say this: My synnys, O lord, are in number a-boue the sandes of þe sea. I haue spoted myselffe with the fylthe off euery vyce and my offences are so multiplyed þat I desyre not nor dare not to behold the heauens because I haue prouoked þe to wrathe & haue don euyll in thi sight.

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Vyset, we pray the, O lord, this place where-yn we now are & dryue a-way all wyles off our enemy a-far of: let þi blissed angeles dwell here with us & kepe us in peace & thi holy blessing be uppon us for euer more, throughe our Lord Jhesus Christe. Amen. Source The first prayer derives from the apocryphal prayer of Manasses: Peccavi super numerum arenae maris et multiplicata sunt peccata mea et non sum dignus videre altitudinem caeli prae multitudine iniquitatis meae quoniam irritavi iram tuam et malum coram te feci.

‘“Non sum dignus videre altitudinem celi pre multitudine iniquitatis meae, quoniam irritavi iram tuam, et malum coram te feci.” These words are from the ancient historia entitled Deus omnium which, in the Dominican rite, was used for the responsories of Matins from the Second Sunday after the Octave of Trinity until August 1st (Breviarium S. Ordinis Praedicatorum, II, ed. Suarez. Rome: Marietti, 1947, 348). The phrases are derived, substantially, from the apocryphal Prayer of Manasses’ (Dominican Documents, ). The second prayer is a translation of the traditional Compline collect, ‘Visita, quaesumus’. Commentary Written by Hand N. This is the first item in the final quire, which may have been added later than the rest of MS Harley 494.

Item 31 Text [fol. 107r] Sorow for sin; þe fere of God; a holy hatred of þi-self, & a desire to be contemned & dyspised for Godsake. Source Unidentified. Commentary A list of four virtues. Written by Hand O, large and untidy.

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Item 32 Text [fol. 107v ]

Jhs Marci, peto de te, des mihi dormire quiete. `[O]ratio.´ Domine Ihesu Christe, qui illuminasti oculos ceci nati, illumina queso oculos cordis mei ne in tenebris offendam vel vnquam in morte obdormiam. Deus vitæ meæ, quam vanæ consumpta sunt, quam infructuosæ; lapsa sunt tempora mea quae dedisti mihi vt facerem voluntatem tuam in eis, et non feci. Quot anni, quot menses, quot dies, quot hore perierunt apud me in quibus sine fructu vixi coram te. Ffiat, amande pater, hoc residuum temporis mei fructuosum et sanctificatum in gratia tua, vt in diebus æternitatis inveniam locum et computabile sit ante te. Amen. Pater noster. Ave Maria.1 [fol. 108r] Jhs Moste mercyfull lorde & savyour Jhesu Chryst, wyche dydest geve syght vnto the chylde þat was borne blynde even from hys mothers wombe, I pray the geve me þe lyght of my harte & vnderstandynge þat I offende the not throgh blynde ignorance; and seynge thow arte the Gode of lyffe, defende me allways frome the slepe & deth of synne. I doo knowleche my tyme to be spente2 muche yn vanytes, & yt slydythe a-waye dayly wyth-owte frute or spirituall commodytes, the wyche þou haste appoyntyde to me wyth harte & dede for too occupye yn thy precept and commaundementes; howe be yt yn me thow duste fynde þe contrarye. I cannot trulye cownte and calle to perffytte remembraunce the yeres, monethes, dayes, & howers wyche I haue vnfrutfully spente yn thy syght and apperaunce. Wherfore, most woorthy Father, graunte me of thy grace a contynuall assystance, that I may bestowe the resydewe of my tyme to the yncreese of sume spirituall proffete & holynesse, þat yt beynge vnto thy wyll cowntable, I maye possesse a place yn the day or lyght that neuer knoweth nyght or darknesse. Amen. Pater noster. Ave Mar[ia].3 [fol. 108v] Jhs `[O]ratio.´ Domine Jesu Christe, pastor bone qui pro ovibus tuis posuisti animam tuam in precium, carnem tuam in cibum, et sanguinem tuum in potum, qui factus es 1

followed by pen trials in a completely different hand: y Jhu JJJSmSjSmy mynd of þe moste holy ghost 2 + þat deleted 3 page trimmed

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nobis hostia in ecclesiam militantem et triumphantem, vt per te salvandi introeamus ad te: cognosce me inter oves tuas: et misericorditer nos respice in viam salutis dirigendo, vt cognoscamus te et tibi conformemur, te imitando. Non audiamus vocem alienorum, scilicet mundi, carnis, et diaboli, sed tantum tuam, obediendo tuis preceptis et consilijs vt vitam habeamus gratiæ et habundantiam possideamus gloriae, vt apud te pascua inveniamus refectionis æternæ. Amen. Pater noster. Ave Maria. Lorde and savyor Christ Jhesu, whome yt hathe plesyde to suffer dethe for the saffgarde & saluatyon of thy people, sparynge not the pryce and thresure of thy hartte bloode to brynge home a-gayne thy wanderynge & dyspersyde sheepe vnto the folde off euerlastynge glorye; but also for a more sure knowlege of thy love thow haste [fol. 109r] commaundyde thyn owne fleshe to be eatune & bloode to be dronkune, beynge here presente wyth vs yn warefare as a most specyall & necessarye sacryfyce to comforte vs & brynge vs to the conqueste & victorye yn the tryumphante churche of heven, frome whence all feare & sorrowe ys exylyde for euer, so that by the (sweete Jhesu) we muste nedes be savyde and cume home vnto the. Ffor yt ys thy name & offyce appoyntyde for to save. Therefore I praye þe to knowe & chose me as one of thy flocke, and wyth thy yey of mercy consyder & beholde me, allwaye guydynge me yn the waye of helthe & saluatyon that wee maye knowe & followe thy steppes perseverantlye. Suffer vs not to ynclyne our spirituall eares of reasune & vnderstandynge vnto alyens & strayngers, as to the dyvyll, þe woordle, & the flesh, wych bythe enemyes & allways a-gaynste the welthe of our sowles. But geve vs grace allways to harkene & bowe our yeres vnto thy voyce, wych arte þe very true & trusty shepherde. Lett vs followe thy commandmentes & counselles þat wee may procede yn the lyffe of grace yn thys wordle, & hereaffter for euer possesse þe lyffe of glorye, where shalbe noþer hunger nor thyrste, but allways shalbe satyatte wyth fruytyon of the deite. Amen. Pater noster. Ave Mari[a]. [fol. 109v] Jhs `Oracio.´ Domine Jhesu Christe, da mihi sic mandata dei sine transgressione servare vt ea omnibus et singulis preferam, et ab eis quacumque occasione non recedam. Da mihi etiam in omni quod in os corporis intrat gulositati resistere, ac interiori cordis munditiæ præcipuæ intendere, et os corporis ac cordis diligenter custodire. Et quia non sufficit custodia humana nisi adsit divina, ideo te, Domine, suppliciter peto, pone tu custodiam ipsi vtrique ori meo ne aliquando illud intret vel inde procedat quod me spiritualiter in anima maculare valeat. Amen. Pater Noster. Angele qui meus es custos, pietate superna Me tibi commissum salva, defende, guberna.

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Salva: a malis inclinacionibus Defende: a cunctis impugnacionibus Guberna: in bonis operacionibus. [fol. 110r] Jhs My lorde Jhesu Chryst, graunte me þe strength of grace wyth such dyllygence to obeye and followe þe commaundementes of God that nothynge maye sytte nere my harte & wylle then they, and too flee all yvyll occasyons þat may drawe me frome the love of Gode and hys wyll. Also, moost mercyfull Jhesu, graunte me the vertue off temperaunce yn my bodelye feedynge that nothynge may enter yn-to my mowthe wyche duth savor of the synne of glottonye, butt wyth all yndevore geve me grace to [p]retende4 & foresee þe clennesse of my hartte, wych duthe gretlye noorysche and feede þe sowle, and soo to ordere my mowthe & taste, bothe bodelye & gostelye, vnder the rule and obedyence of thy grace and reasone. But for as muche as I doo knowe þat manes yndevore & dyllygence of yt-selffe ys too weeke wythe-owt þe helpe of Gode, therefore, goode Lorde, I pray the too watche wythe me and appoynte suche a keper before the mowthe of my bodye & sowle that nothynge enter ther-yn or procede & cume therfroo, throgh my weeke & necglygente attendance, þat may defyle or steyne the spirituall weddynge garment of my sowle. Amen. Pater Noster. Ave Maria. Translation Mark, I ask of thee, grant that I may sleep quietly. Prayer. Lord Jesu Christ, who didst illumine the eyes of the blind, illumine I beseech thee the eyes of my heart that I may not offend in darkness or slumber in death for ever. God of my life, how vainly, how fruitlessly have the times been passed that thou gavest me to do thy will, and I did not do it. How many years, how many months, how many days, how many hours have perished with me in which I have lived in thy presence without fruit. Lovable Father, may the remainder of my time become fruitful and sanctified in thy grace, that it may be accountable before thee and I may find a place in the days of eternity. Amen. Our Father. Hail Mary. .... Prayer. Lord Jesu Christ, the good shepherd who didst lay down thy life as a ransom for thy sheep, thy flesh as food and thy blood as drink, who was made a victim for us in the Church militant and triumphant, so that being saved through thee we may enter into thee: know me among thy sheep and mercifully look upon us while 4

hole in paper

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guiding us into the way of salvation, that we may know thee and may be conformed to thee by imitating thee. May we not hear the voice of strangers, that is, the world, the flesh, and the devil, but only thine, by obeying thy commands and counsels, that we may have life of grace and possess abundance of glory, so that we may find with thee pastures of eternal refreshment. Amen. Our Father. Hail Mary. .... Prayer. Lord Jesu Christ, grant me so to keep God’s commandments without transgression that I may put them before each and every thing, and may not swerve from them on any occasion whatsoever. Grant me also in everything that enters the mouth of the body to resist gluttony, and to be intent in particular on the purity of the heart within, and carefully to protect the mouth of my body and heart. And because human protection is not enough unless the divine is present, I therefore humbly beseech thee, Lord, place thy protection at each of my mouths lest at any time something might enter, or come forth, that would have the power to defile me spiritually in my soul. Amen. Our Father. Angel who art my guardian, save, defend and guide me; I have been entrusted to thee by supernal mercy. Save: from evil inclinations Defend: from all attacks Guide: in good deeds. Source Unidentified, except for the Latin verse at the end of the third Latin prayer. This hexameter couplet is part of a much longer verse prayer attributed to Reginald of Canterbury (Analecta Hymnica, ed. by Blume and Drèves, L, 379–83). This short, two-line, version is found in books of hours, e.g. Sarum horae, STC 15901, fol. 9, CUL, MS Ii. 6. 2, fol. 103r, and Magdalene College MS 13, fol. 29r. A six-line version is also common; see, for instance, Lambeth Palace MS 3600, fols 28r–32r; Nijmegen MS 194, fol. 82v (printed by Connolly, ‘Prayer to the Guardian Angel’, p. 15), and Sarum horae, STC 15901, fol. 100v . Commentary ‘Jhs’ appears in the top margins of fols 107v–110r, that is, on all except the first and last pages of this quire. All written by the same hand, Hand P, which uses different scripts for the Latin and English texts. The Latin script apparently used a ligatured æ to represent both ae and e, hence, in the first prayer, vanæ for vane and infructuosæ for infructuose. The English translations considerably expand the Latin texts.

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‘Marci’ should be the vocative of ‘Marcius’ rather than ‘Marcus’. Neither saint, however, has any particular association with sleep (except for the folk rhyme, ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John / Bless the bed that I lie on’).

Item 33 Text [fol. 110v ] All hayle, moste benigne Jesu, ful of mercy & grace, blessed be thy passion, dethe & woundes, & blessed be thy woundes & blessed be thy bloude off thy bodye. Lorde, haue mercy on me, wrecched synner. Moste swete lorde, gyue onto me a cleane and a contryte hert, quiete & pacient, a body chaste, humble, obedient, & stable, and alway redy to thy seruyce, whyche lyuest and regnest God, worlde without ende. Source Ave benign[e] Jesu gratia plenus, misericordia tecum. Benedicta passio, mors et vulnera tua; et benedictus sanguis vulnerum tuorum. Domine, miserere michi peccatori. Dulcissime Domine, da michi cor mundum, contritum, quietum, patiens et humile: castum corpus, obediens et stabile, semper in tuis obsequijs mancipatum. (Horae Eboracenses, ed. by Wordsworth, p. 116) Commentary Written by Hand Q. This is a translation of a Latin prayer found in some books of hours, e.g. Horae Eboracenses (printed in 1536, reproduced above), where it is placed at the end of the ‘Psalmi de Passione Domini’, and also Huntington Library, MS HM 1344 (early sixteenth-century Sarum horae made in Flanders). The prayer itself is, of course, an adaptation of the Ave Maria to salute Christ. See discussion in Chapter 5.

S ELECT B IBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources Manuscripts Aberdeen, University Library, MS 25 (Burnet Psalter) Aberdeen, University Library, MS 134 Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS 13 (F. 4. 13) Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 11 (A. 11) Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.1.74 Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 8885 (olim Bristol, Baptist College, MS Z. d. 40) Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 19 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii. 6. 2 Darmstadt, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS 1204 Dunedin, Public Library, MS Reed 5 Edinburgh, University Library, MS 59 London, British Library, MS Cotton Faustina D IV London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A III London, British Library, MS Egerton 1821 London, British Library, MS Harley 494 London, British Library, MS Harley 554 London, British Library, MS Harley 1251 London, British Library, MS Harley 4012 London, Lambeth Palace, MS 546 London, Lambeth Palace, MS 3600 Nijmegen, Universiteits Bibliotheek Katholicke Universiteit, MS 194 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Additional A. 42 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 941 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 403 South Brent, MS Syon 4

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Early Printed Books Betson, Thomas, Ryght profitable treatyse [. . .] to dyspose men to be vertuously occupyed (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1500, STC 1978) Bonde, William, The Directory of Conscience (London: Laurence Andrewe, 1527, STC 3274.5; London: Michael Fawkes, 1534?, STC 3275 and 3276) Bonde, William, Pilgrymage of perfeccyon (London: Richard Pynson, 1526, STC 3277; London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1531, STC 3278) Dyurnall: for deuoute soules to ordre them selfe therafter (London: R. Wyer, 1532?, STC 6928; 1532?, STC 6928.5; 1534?, STC 6928a) Fisher, John, Saint, Mornynge remembraunce had at the moneth mynde of the noble prynces Margaret (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1509, STC 10891) The folowynge of Cryste (London: Robert Wyer, 1531?, STC 23961) A gloryous medytacyon of Ihesus crystes passion (London: Richard Fawkes, 1523, STC 14550) Golden Pystle (London: Robert Wyer, 1531, STC 1914) Goodly prymer in Englyshe (London: John Biddle, 1535, STC 15988) Goude, Gherit van der, The interpretacyon and sygnyfycacyon of the Masse (London: Robert Wyer, 1532, STC 11549) Hilton, Walter, Medled lyfe (London: Robert Wyer, 1530?, STC 14041) [Horae ad usum Sarum] (Paris: A. Verard, c. 1503, STC 15901; 1506, STC 15904) [Horae ad usum Sarum] (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1503?, STC 15899) [Horae ad usum Sarum] (Paris: F. Birckman, 1527, ?STC 15953, ?=Oxford, Bodleian Library, Gough Missal 176) [Horae ad usum Sarum] (Paris: F. Birckman, 1538, STC 15916) Longland, John, Sermond spoken before the kynge his maiestie at Grenwiche, vpon good fryday (London, 1536, STC 16795) The mystik sweet rosary of the faythful soule (Antwerp: Martyne Emprowers, 1533, STC 21318) The Pomander of Prayer (London: Robert Redman, 1531, STC 25421.5) Primer in Englysshe (London: Thomas Godfray, 1535?, STC 15988a) Prymer of Salysbery vse (London: John Gough, 1536, STC 15992) Prymer of Salysbery vse, bothe in Englyshe & in Latyn (London: Robert Redman, 1535, STC 15986.3) Prymer of Salysbury vse (Paris: François Regnault, 1527, STC 15955) Prymer of Salysbury vse (Rouen, 1538, STC 16002a) Rule of saynt Augustyne, bothe in latin and englysshe, with two exposicyons (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1510?, STC 922.2; 1525, STC 922.3 (formerly STC 13925 and 25417); 1527, STC 922.4 (formerly STC 25419)) Sawter of Our Lady (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1499, STC14077c.148) Vita Christi (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1525, STC 3266) Whitford, Richard, A dialoge or communicacion bytwene the curate or ghostly father & the parochiane or ghostly chyld. For a due preparacion unto houselynge (London: Robert Redman, 1531?, STC 25412; Robert Redman, 1537?, STC 25413; J. Waylande, 1537, STC 25413.5)

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Published Primary Sources Barratt, Alexandra, ed., Women’s Writing in Middle English (London: Longman, 1992) Blunt, John Henry, ed., The Myroure of oure Ladye, EETS, ES 19 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1873; repr. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1998) Collins, A. Jefferies, ed., The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, Henry Bradshaw Society, 96 (Worcester: Stanbrook Abbey, 1969) Dowling, Maria, ed., ‘William Latymer’s Cronickille of Anne Bulleyne’, in Camden Miscellany XXX, Camden Fourth Series, 39 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), pp. 24–65 Halligan, Theresa A., ed., The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1979) Haupt, Garry E., ed., Treatise on the Passion, Treatise on the Blessed Body, Instructions and Prayers, vol. XIII of Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) Hodgson, Phyllis, and Gabriel M. Liegey, eds, The Orcherd of Syon, EETS, OS 258 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966) Hogg, James, ed., A dayly exercyse and experyence of dethe, in Richard Whytford’s The pype or tonne of the lyfe of perfection, 5 vols, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies, 89 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1979), vol. V ———, ed., The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. III: The Syon Additions for the Brethren and the Boke of Sygnes, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1980) ———, ed., The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, vol. IV : The Syon Additions for the Sisters from the British Library MS. Arundel 146, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1980) ———, ed., The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure and A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the which Men Mowe Clyme to Heven, Analecta Cartusiana, 183 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2003) Hogg, James, Alain Girard, and Daniel Le Blévec, eds, Dom Gérard Kalckbrenner: Mélanges de Spiritualité, texte établi, traduit, et présenté par Dom Augustin Devaux, Analecta Cartusiana, 158 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1999) Lawler, Thomas M. C., and others, eds, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, Part I: The Text, vol. VI of Complete Works of St. Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) Legg, J. Wickham, ed., Tracts on the Mass, Henry Bradshaw Society, 27 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1904) Monks of Solesmes, ed., Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae, vol. I: Sanctae Gertrudis Magnae Legatus Divinae Pietatis (Paris: Oudin, 1875) Procter, F., and E. S. Dewick, eds., The Martiloge in Englysshe after the use of the chirche of Salisbury and as it is redde in Syon with addicyons, Henry Bradshaw Society, 3 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1893) Rogers, Elizabeth Frances, ed., The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947)

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