Manuscript Culture and Medieval Devotional Traditions: Essays in Honour of Michael G. Sargent (York Manuscript and Early Print Studies, 1) 9781903153963, 9781787448223, 1903153964

Citation preview

York Manuscript and Early Print Studies Volume 1

Manuscript Culture and Medieval Devotional Traditions

t

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 1

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval

Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. Editorial Board (2020)

Professor Peter Biller, Emeritus (Dept of History): General Editor Professor Tim Ayers (Dept of History of Art): Co-Director, Centre for Medieval Studies Dr Henry Bainton: Private scholar Dr J. W. Binns: Honorary Fellow, Centre for Medieval Studies Dr K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Dr Holly James-Maddocks (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr Harry Munt (Dept of History) † Professor W. Mark Ormrod, Emeritus (Dept of History) Dr L. J. Sackville (Dept of History) Professor Elizabeth M. Tyler (Dept of English and Related Literature): Co-Director, Centre for Medieval Studies Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University)

All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, Department of History, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD (E-mail: [email protected]) Details of other York Medieval Press volumes are available from Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 2

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Manuscript Culture and Medieval Devotional Traditions Essays in Honour of Michael G. Sargent

t

Edited by Jennifer N. Brown and Nicole R. Rice

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 3

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

© Contributors 2021 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2021 A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York www.york.ac.uk/medieval-studies ISBN 978 1 903153 96 3 (hardcover) ISBN 978 1 787448 22 3 (ePDF) The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library Cover image: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 18.1.7, fol. 129v. Resurrection from Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Reproduced with kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 4

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

We dedicate this book to Michael G. Sargent: mentor, colleague, friend.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 5

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 6

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

ix xi xiii

Michael Sargent: An Appreciation Jennifer N. Brown and Nicole R. Rice

xv

I Manuscript Transmission and Textual Adaptation 1

Beinecke MS 317 and its New Witness to the Latin Door Verses from London Charterhouse: A Story of Carthusian and Birgittine Literary Exchange Laura Saetveit Miles

3

2

Martyred Masons: The Legend of the Quattuor Coronati in Some Medieval English Contexts E. Gordon Whatley

3

What Do the Numbers Mean? The Case for Corpus Studies A. R. Bennett

4

Cargo in the Arbor: On the Metaphysics of Books and Scholarly Editions 84 Stephen Kelly

25 48

II Translated Texts and Devotional Implications 5

Rendering Readers’ Soulscapes: Variant Translation of Interiority in the Late Medieval English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition Ian Johnson

109

6

Conservative Affectivity and the Middle English Meditationes de Passione Christi Ryan Perry

132

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 7

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

v i i i    C ont ent s

7

Reflecting English Lay Piety in the Mirrors of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Museo 35 David J. Falls

152

III Rhetorical Strategies and Spiritual Transformations 8

‘Trowes þou, fool, þat þis kake of brede is God?’: Spiritual Bread and Bodily Meat in Middle English Women’s Visionary Texts C. Annette Grisé

179

9

Walter Hilton’s Confessions in De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis Marleen Cré

200

10

How Canon Lawyers Read the Bible: Hilton’s Scale II and the Wordes of Poule Fiona Somerset

222

IV Texts and Contours of Religious Life 11

Beauty in Liturgy: The Carmelites and the Resurrection Kevin Alban

12

Otherworldly Visions: Miracles and Prophecy among the English Carthusians, c. 1300–1535 Marlene Villalobos Hennessy

13

The Body of the Nun and the Syon Abbey ‘Additions’ Jennifer N. Brown

14

The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs Mary C. Erler

Bibliography List of Contributors Michael G. Sargent’s Publications Index Tabula Gratulatoria

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 8

243 259 290 310 327 355 359 365 381

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Illustrations Laura Saetveit Miles, ‘Beinecke MS 317 and its New Witness to the Latin Door Verses from London Charterhouse: A Story of Carthusian and Birgittine Literary Exchange’ Fig. 1 Map of the water plan for London charterhouse, c. 1430. English Heritage. Crown copyright. Historic England Archive BB96/09795. 4 Fig. 2 Latin door verses linked to London charterhouse. Fol. 56v, MS 317, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

10

Fig. 3 Opening of The Life of St. Jerome, by Birgittine brother Simon Wynter (d. 1448). Fol. 5r, MS 317, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. 13 A. R. Bennett, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? The Case for Corpus Studies’ Fig. 1 Column graph of quantities of surviving copies of major Middle English texts

57

Fig. 2 Line graph of Middle English manuscript production by quarter century (A)

59

Fig. 3 Line graph of Middle English manuscript production by quarter century (B-data refined)

60

Fig. 4 Column graph of quantities of Scale of Perfection circulation in various forms

63

Fig. 5 Line graph of Scale of Perfection manuscript production by quarter century

65

Fig. 6 Data visualization network Scale of Perfection corpus collocation graph

71

Fig. 7 Data visualization network Scale of Perfection condensed corpus collocation graph

74

Fig. 8 Data visualization network Scale of Perfection multiple occurrence corpus collocation graph

77

Fig. 9 Data visualization network Scale of Perfection multiple occurrence corpus collocation graph, Vernon and Simeon extracted

78

Appendix Figure A. Scale of Perfection manuscript production by date range

83

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 9

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

x    L i st o f I l l u st r at i ons Mary C. Erler, ‘The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs’ Fig. 1 St Birgitta of Sweden, title page of Lyfe of seynt Birgette, accompanying the Kalendre of the Neue Legende of Englande, woodcut, has E. G. initials with E reversed to mirror G. 1516. STC 4602, Hodnett 1349. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 317 Fig. 2 St Birgitta of Sweden, woodcut, Flemish, probable source of Figure 1. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS McGuire 31.54.700. Fig. 3

St Birgitta of Sweden, title page verso of The Myrroure of Oure Lady, woodcut. 4 November 1530. STC 17542, Hodnett 2024, 2029. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

318

320

The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 10

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Acknowledgements All edited collections are a labor of love: intellectual love, love of a subject, or love of a community. This one of course encompasses all of these but is also for love of Michael Sargent. Everyone we approached about contributing responded with an enthusiastic yes, or, if they had nothing they felt would fit the volume, indicated a desire to be part of the project in some other way. We would like to acknowledge all of our contributors for that enthusiastic yes, and for their hard work. They each took the edits, revisions, and ‘just one more thing …’ we requested with good grace and humor. We are especially grateful to Marlene Hennessy for suggesting the cover image. We would like to thank everyone on the publishing side of this volume at Boydell and Brewer. From Caroline Palmer, who also responded with an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ when we suggested the idea of a collection in Michael’s honour, to Peter Biller at York Medieval Press, to the series editors, Holly James-Maddocks and Orietta da Rold, for their exacting eagle eyes. Elizabeth McDonald has graciously fielded many of our questions and helped us to get the manuscript in shape for submission. Many thanks to Judith Oppenheimer for her excellent copyediting. We would like to thank each other for the joyful collaboration and for making co-editing easy. Jen would like to thank her family – Jeff, Nate, and Bee – for their support and love. Nicole thanks her family – Howard, Toby, and Helena – for everything. We hope that this volume begins to express our love and appreciation for our mentor, Michael Sargent.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 11

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 12

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Abbreviations EETS Early English Text Society ES Extra Series OS Original Series SS Supplementary Series LALME Linguistic Atlas of Later Middle English, ed. A. McIntosh, M. Benskin, M. L. Samuels, 4 vols. (Aberdeen, 1985). MED Middle English Dictionary, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/ middle-english-dictionary/dictionary NIMEV A New Index of Middle English Verse, ed. J. Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (London, 2005). OED Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.oed.com PL Patrologia cursus completus series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–1905). STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland: and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475–1640, ed. W. A. Jackson et al., 3 vols. (London, 1976–).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 13

1/29/2021 7:57:56 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 14

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Michael Sargent: An Appreciation JENNIFER N. BROWN and NICOLE R. RICE

t

I

Michael Sargent as textual critic

n their introduction to Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson note that there has historically been a divide, albeit an artificial one, between the literary critic and the textual editor. They suggest, though, that while critics can redirect or circumvent a problem that the text proposes, editors never can – they must confront head on the problems of the text and find a way to resolve or answer those problems in their product. The work of the critic is largely dependent on the work of the editor, but editorial work can be viewed as ‘drudgery’ and somehow less innovative than literary criticism.1 Of course, in medieval studies many people are both editors and critics, but this labour can still be seen as distinct, their work categorically divided. In these traditional senses, Michael Sargent is both editor and critic. However, he has from the start resisted this taxonomy and shown that the work of the editor is critical, the work of the critic, editorial. This combination can be seen throughout Michael’s career, but perhaps most clearly at its start – with his dissertation ‘James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic’, the formative article, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, and in his two major critical editions, Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and, most recently, 1

V. Gillespie and A. Hudson, ‘Introduction’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the 21st Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 1–14.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 15

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

xv i    J e nni f er N. Brow n and Ni co l e R . Rice

Walter Hilton’s second book of The Scale of Perfection. There are many notable articles and contributions among Michael’s works, but to list and discuss them all would constitute an entire volume in itself (all of his published works can be seen at the end of this volume). These works serve as signposts in his evolution as an editor and critic, pointing to the ways in which he has expanded and influenced the field of medieval devotional and editorial studies. Michael’s 1976 essay for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, literally remapped the context for English medieval devotional texts and their transmission. It is one of his most cited essays with good reason, as it lays out the ways in which the Carthusian order deliberately translated and disseminated medieval devotional literature. The essay is a model in how careful bibliographical, archival and editorial work can reveal important connections and patterns. In this essay, he examines manuscript groups and discusses provenance, evidence of authorship, patronage and the Carthusian connections among these. As so much essential vernacular English devotional literature bears the Carthusian imprint in some form – Julian of Norwich’s Revelations, The Book of Margery Kempe, The Chastising of God’s Children, The Pricking of Love, works by Richard Rolle, etc. – his critical parsing of the order’s mandate to write and copy devotional works has become central to many subsequent analyses. It is no wonder that Michael has been asked to expand on this foundational piece, and his forthcoming ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings: A Reconsideration’, in The London Charterhouse, edited by Julian Luxford, will no doubt become a new touchstone. That he wrote his first article while still a graduate student points to the career that has followed: one built on precise observation and the ability to draw important cultural conclusions from the details of the manuscripts. Michael’s dissertation and subsequent first book, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, examines the work of Grenehalgh, an English Carthusian monk whose annotations are found in a myriad of major devotional works of the time including the Scale of Perfection, The Cloud of Unknowing, Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls and several works of Richard Rolle.2 In this first book we can see the seeds of his work on the Scale of Perfection, with his particular interest in and attention to the kinds of annotations that Grenehalgh makes to the Scale. His questions about the Scale in these volumes (e.g., why is the Holy Name passage in only half of the manuscripts?) will recur in his later work on the text. The detail and precision which are the hallmarks of Michael’s work are on display here, and he goes through both the medieval and modern 2

M. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, 2 vols. (Salzburg, 1984).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 16

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Mi c h ae l S argen t: An Ap p reciation    xvii

textual traditions of each of the manuscripts he examines with Grenehalgh’s notations in order to put the notations into a broader context. However, we can also read in this work how much his views on editions and manuscripts have changed. He notes that Grenehalgh’s annotations show how works were transmitted and ‘may be a step closer to establishing for ourselves the original text of such works as The Scale of Perfection’.3 Of course, as we can see with Michael’s eventual edition of the Scale, such a goal is no longer his pursuit. Instead, he moves to seeing the text as more organic, living and defined as much by its readers as by its author. Michael changed the field of medieval devotional studies in many ways with his critical edition of Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Having done a ‘best text’ version of The Mirror in 1992, he re-examined, recollated and then completely rethought the idea of an edition and The Mirror in order to produce his 2005 full critical edition for Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies.4 The result of this rethinking not only changed the understanding of orthodoxy and vernacular theology in medieval England at the time of Love’s writing, but shifted the understanding of the editorial process more generally within medieval studies. It is in this volume that one can truly see how the work of the editor is the work of the critic. Michael points out in his preface to the volume that the edition ‘responds to more recent discussion of Nicholas Love’s use of Wycliffite forms of discourse and of the question whether Love’s Mirror and Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s Lambeth Constitutions of 1409 marked in some sense the end-point of medieval English vernacular theology’, among other issues.5 The edition, in its apparatus, footnotes and extensive introduction, is an intervention into and extension of the critical discussions surrounding medieval devotional studies. It takes an editor to understand one. Nicholas Love himself was an exacting editor and translator, and Michael saw a kindred spirit in his work. He notes how Love deliberately marks in the margin wherever he has expanded from the source text, and part of Michael’s excavation of the text is the understanding of Love’s own editorial process and notations therein. Michael points out which of Love’s changes are made for the simplification of the text, thus intended for a general reader, as well as how some are intentionally annotated in Latin, indicating a more literate reader as audience. He also demonstrates how Love’s changes and emphases take an anti-Wycliffite stance throughout Ibid., p. 359.

3

N. Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, ed. M. Sargent (Exeter, 2005).

4

Ibid., p. vii.

5

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 17

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

xv i i i    J enni f er N. Brow n and Ni co le R . Rice

the text, drawing attention to ‘three primary themes: obedience to the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the related question of Church offerings; auricular confession; and the sacrament of the Eucharist’.6 This careful analysis helps to establish Love as an orthodox counterpart to some of the more ambiguous vernacular texts of the time. Michael’s introduction also examines dialects of translation, patterns of transmission, provenance of extant manuscripts – material history that in turn bears critical fruit. It surprised no one that when Michael inherited the partially edited Book II of The Scale of Perfection after the death of its editor, Stan Hussey, he decided to recollate and reconfigure the manuscript relations and choose a different base text from the one that Hussey had already established. Deep into editing the text, he realized that traditional views of textual recension were incompatible not only with the reality of manuscript dissemination but also with how the text should be presented. In his 2013 essay, ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, Michael proffered a new model of textual relation.7 He wrote that he recognized that ‘the problems involved in the production of the critical edition of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection derive in part from changes in the conception of what a critical edition is and what it is intended to do’.8 Rather than attempting to relate back to any kind of ‘best’ ur-text, he proposes that the rhizomorphic model, borrowed from the field of biology, can demonstrate how manuscript relations may be horizontal as well as vertical. In this way, the manuscripts that he maps out can show relations amongst themselves without privileging one above the other. Such an edition is not yet possible to execute (although Michael’s model does suggest an electronic future), but it led him to choose two different versions of the Scale as the primary presented texts in a facing-page edition. Michael’s 2017 Scale II edition lays out his thoughtful editorial process from its inheritance through its completion, demonstrating the deep and wide view that he had developed during his years of work on the text. He can focus in on small variants in a manuscript and expand his gaze to discuss affinities between groups and texts. The edition itself will no doubt open up considerable scholarship on Hilton in the way that his edition of Nicholas Love allowed for so much work on The Mirror. The facing pages with two markedly different versions of the text consistently remind readers of the problems of authorial intent and the questions we can ask (and answer) about what a medieval audience may have read. 6 7

8

Ibid., p. 57.

M. Sargent, ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, in Probable Truth, pp. 509–27. Ibid., p. 527.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 18

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Mi c h ael S argen t: An Ap p recia tion    xix

Innovation and influence on medieval literary studies

Rare among scholars, especially medievalists, Michael constantly puts his traditional training in editing and philology to innovative new purposes. He never rests on critical assumptions or traditional pieties but always interrogates them. We see editorial innovations in his revised edition of Love’s Mirror and especially the recent Scale II edition. In tandem with this editorial work has been his effort to subject the practice of editing itself to critique, opening it up to new theoretical paradigms. This effort is manifest in his recent essays envisioning a ‘postmodern critical edition’ that rejects the traditional stemmatic model for the aforementioned rhizomatic form that offers ‘a presentation of all differences: the pleroma that is the text’.9 His use of the gnostic term ‘pleroma’ (the fullness of divine excellencies) is telling, for it speaks to his broad vision and impact on medieval literary studies over the past several decades. Ian Doyle coined the term ‘vernacular theology’ in 1953 to describe devotional works in Middle English, but he – like his contemporaries – saw the genre as derivative, subordinate to Latin, or as ‘simple’ translation. Michael, along with other notable scholars such as Bernard McGinn, Nicholas Watson, Anne Hudson and Vincent Gillespie, among others, challenged these notions of simplicity and derivation, demonstrating how ambitious and daring vernacular theology could be in the late Middle Ages.10 Michael’s edition of The Mirror was an essential intervention into this debate, as it established a sanctioned orthodox counterpart to some of the more heterodox vernacular theology at the time and showed how the vernacular could provide auctoritas in its own right. Michael’s combination of editorial and critical work on what Stephen Kelly calls in his essay ‘the before of the book’ has put late medieval devotional texts on the map, making key authors accessible and establishing their importance within late medieval England’s vibrant literary marketplace. Michael’s foundational work on Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle and Nicholas Love introduced these authors to scholars who have gone on to spend their careers analysing these texts. In addition to his critical editions, the essays investigating Hilton’s Scale of Perfection in the London context (1983), interrogating Rolle’s biography (1988) and establishing Love’s position within the array of different Bonaventuran translations (1995) have done as much as any other scholar’s to make these authors available, in tangible and specific ways, to others wishing to W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book II: A Critical Edition based on British Library Harley MSS 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford, 2017 for 2016), p. cxxxvii.

9

A. I. Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy Therein’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1953).

10

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 19

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

x x    J e n ni f e r N. Brow n and Ni co l e R . Rice

study them. Without this foundational work one could not imagine the diversity of studies now in print on these three authors: from Nicholas Watson’s Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority to Andrew Albin’s Richard Rolle and the Melody of Love; from Watson’s essay ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England’ to Michelle Karnes’ Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages; from Jennifer Bryan’s Looking Inward to Shannon Gayk’s Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth Century England.11 But Rolle, Love and Hilton are not the only writers on whom Michael’s work has touched. Anyone working on Poor Caitif, Richard Methley, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Marguerite Porete, A Talking of the Love of God, The Myroure of oure Ladye and others must contend with Michael’s critical, bibliographical, codicological and archival work on the subjects. Michael has helped to shape this field by his presence and by his participation. Michael has long lived with the texts and manuscripts of Rolle, Love and Hilton, and he has continued to develop his (and our) understanding of these authors. Combining his breadth of knowledge with a characteristic willingness to take on new ideas, he makes the most cogent critique to date of Watson’s 1995 thesis about Arundel’s Constitutions causing an atmosphere of fear that contributed to the decline in the quality of English vernacular theological writing.12 Complicating this rather narrowly teleological argument, he brings both evolutionary and queer theory into play to show in detail how Watson’s ‘vision of an anxious, troubled, repressed English spirituality’ might be supplemented with ‘another, queer narrative of polyglossia, of performativity, of negotiation and contestation of power’.13 It is typical of Michael’s generosity as an interlocutor that he does not call for a rejection of Watson’s thesis but proposes that his narrative be constructed ‘beside, within, and around that narrative’. N. Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991); A. Albin, Richard Rolle’s Melody of Love: A Study and Translation with Manuscripts and Musical Contexts (Toronto, 2018); N. Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), 822–64; M. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2011); J. Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2008); S. Gayk, Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth Century England (Cambridge, 2010).

11

Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change’.

12

M. Sargent, ‘Censorship or Cultural Change? Reformation and Renaissance in the Spiritual of Late Medieval England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in the Fifteenth Century, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 55–72 (p. 72).

13

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 20

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Mi c h ael S argen t: An Ap p recia tion    xxi

Michael’s deep learning, openness to new ideas and playful iconoclasm combine in another key facet of his work, stemming from his early studies with Edmund Colledge on medieval holy women. From 1997 on, he has published a major series of studies on the controversial beguine mystic Marguerite Porete, executed in 1311, ostensibly for her views on the free spirit. Michael’s essays have revealed with new clarity the complexity of her work and reception, beginning with his essay arguing that ‘she was condemned for attempting to teach a specifically feminine form of spirituality’.14 Here he combines his deep philological training with feminist theory to theorize her ‘annihilation’ in newly complex terms. Having staked out this ground, Michael has painstakingly studied Marguerite’s previously misunderstood reception throughout Europe, including the transmission of her texts in English and French, as well as Latin and Italian, offering an unprecedentedly thorough and theoretically sophisticated study of this figure that preserves her from the cultural oblivion to which her accusers attempted to consign her.

Michael Sargent as mentor and colleague

As we have noted, Michael’s scholarship on late medieval English devotional literature has been uniquely influential for the fields of Middle English literature, religious studies and manuscript studies. His prolific work on a great range of English and French texts, with scrupulous attention to the physical forms in which these texts circulated, has established the scope and impact of religious writing across the social spectrum in England, enabling a nuanced understanding of the complex literary interactions between the cloister and the world. His work anticipated and has played a central role in the ‘religious turn’ taken in the last thirty years within Middle English studies, contributing vitally to helping literary scholars understand religion as a central historical category and a crucial lens for analysing literary production. Both of the editors of this volume have benefited from Michael’s generosity as a mentor and a colleague. The enthusiasm with which people responded to our request for submissions attests to the fact that we are not alone. His work has changed the field, and he takes real pleasure in watching those seeds grow and change and in seeing his work challenged by colleagues and students. The word that most readily comes to mind when thinking of Michael is ‘generosity’, and that can be a rare trait in academia. Part of the reason why one edits is to see a text bear critical fruit, for a text that you know intimately to become part of M. Sargent, ‘The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete’, Viator 28 (1997), 253–79 (p. 253).

14

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 21

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

x x i i    J e nni f er N. Brow n and Ni co l e R . Rice

other scholars’ vernacular and scholarship. Everyone collected here has been influenced by Michael’s work and touched by his generosity in some way. His edition of Love’s Mirror was in many ways a centerpiece to the Geographies of Orthodoxy project (http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/ discuss/). This project traced all of the extant English manuscripts containing the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi, including its most popular iteration – Nicholas Love’s Mirror. The kind of mapping that the project does and the relationships it envisions among manuscripts speak to the rhizomorphic format that Michael sees as the future of editing. The project also challenges the assumptions about what constitutes the orthodox (often embodied for scholars in Nicholas Love’s book) and the heterodox, challenges that he had made in his introduction to his critical edition of The Mirror. It is no accident that so many of the scholars represented here – Ian Johnson, Stephen Kelly, Ryan Perry and David Falls – were involved in the project. The essays in this volume pay tribute to Michael’s influence, extending and complementing his work on devotional texts and the books in which they travelled. Within the volume, the themes of translation, manuscript transmission and the varieties of devotional practice stand out. Inspired by Michael’s work on Love’s Middle English translation of pseudo-Bonaventuran devotional texts, they explore other Middle English translations within this tradition, considering the implications of translation strategies for shaping readers’ practices. Other essays examine Carthusian and Birgittine texts as they appear in new contexts, probing the continuing influence of these orders on devotional life and theological controversy. Paying tribute to Michael’s wide-ranging influence, authors engage various agents within late medieval religious culture, from Carmelite devotion to London translators. Whether looking at devotional guidance, visionary texts or hagiography, each author works closely with texts in their material contexts, always considering a question central to Michael’s scholarship: how texts gain distinct cultural meanings within particular circumstances of copying, transmission and ownership. Several authors take his insights on the theory and practice of editing into the new realm of digital studies, showing further how his insights prove generative for a new generation of scholarship. We have assembled the essays to coalesce around four main thematic areas: manuscript transmission and textual adaptation; translation and its devotional implications; rhetorical strategies for spiritual transformation; and texts and contours of the religious life. Each section pays homage to or builds on Michael Sargent’s editorial and critical works. While all of the essays look at specific manuscripts and their transmission and readership, those in our first grouping, ‘Manuscript Transmission and Textual Adaptation’, specifically

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 22

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Mi c h ael S ar gen t: An Ap p recia tion    xxiii

take on questions of editorial practice, manuscript mouvance and scribal practice. Engaging closely both with monastic texts and practices, Laura Saetveit Miles’s essay, ‘Beinecke MS 317 and its New Witness to the Latin Door Verses from London Charterhouse: A Story of Carthusian and Birgittine Literary Exchange’, builds on Michael Sargent and Marlene Villalobos Hennessy’s important article on the Carthusian door verses to explore how those verses might have been used outside of their original site in the London charterhouse by exploring a previously unknown fifth witness to this tradition. Gordon Whatley’s ‘Martyred Masons: The Legend of the Quattuor Coronati in Some Medieval English Contexts’ examines several redactions of an early Christian martyr legend which became the basis for the Freemasons in Europe. Whatley traces the legends’ strategic translation into English at several fraught moments in religious history and considers the cultural implications of their ‘relatively chilly reception’ in medieval England. A. R. Bennett’s essay, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? The Case for Corpus Studies’, literally builds on Sargent’s editorial work by analysing the corpus of Scale of Perfection manuscripts through sophisticated digital means, gleaning information about transmission, location and reading practices. Her work examines the question of what ‘accidental survival’ can tell us about a whole corpus when the numbers are small, responding to Michael’s own question ‘what do the numbers mean?’.15 Stephen Kelly similarly builds on Michael’s innovative editorial schematics and their implications within the field of digital humanities in ‘Cargo in the Arbor: On the Metaphysics of Books and Scholarly Editions’. Kelly considers the textual editor as a ‘book metaphysician’ and ponders the possibilities and limitations of Michael’s proposal for a rhizomatic ‘postmodern’ critical edition. Our second section, ‘Translated Texts and Devotional Implications’, focuses on the devotional implications of translation, pointing to Michael’s work on Nicholas Love and his major translation of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Life of Christ. All three essays examine the pseudo-Bonaventuran Life in English culture: Ian Johnson’s ‘Rendering Readers’ Soulscapes: Variant Translation of Interiority in the Late Medieval English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition’, Ryan Perry’s ‘Conservative Affectivity and the Middle English Meditiationes de Passione Christi’ and David Falls’s ‘Reflecting English Lay Piety in the Mirrors of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Museo 35’. Johnson looks carefully at translators’ choices and how these details alter a reader’s sense of interiority, especially in a work like the Life, meant literally to remap the M. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44.

15

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 23

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

x x i v    J enni f er N. Brow n and Ni co l e R . Rice

reader’s ‘soulscape’. He asks what kind of meditation and interiority a reader calls upon when translating a devotional text from the Latin into the vernacular. Ryan Perry looks closely at word choice in translations, looking at one of the stemmatic lines that Sargent suggests in his edition of Nicholas Love’s Mirror and at how one particular passage may reflect a Wycliffite sensibility for its readers and scribes in the choices of its translator. David Falls examines a manuscript containing both the pseudo-Bonaventuran Life of Christ and another ‘Mirror’, The Myrour of Lewde Men and Wymmen. Falls argues that the two texts combine in this particular codex to offer its readers a complete lesson on pious and devout living. The essays of the third section, ‘Rhetorical Strategies and Spiritual Transformations’, interrogate language choices carefully in order to unfold the theological strategies necessary to describe religious experience. In ‘“Trowes þou, fool, þat þis kake of brede is God?”: Spiritual Bread and Bodily Meat in Middle English Women’s Visionary Texts’, Cathy Grisé examines eucharistic piety in translated devotional texts, examining how some late fifteenth-century translations of texts either challenge or conform to orthodox views of eucharistic devotion. Marleen Cré builds on Sargent’s work with Walter Hilton in ‘Walter Hilton’s Confessions in De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis’, examining Hilton’s first-person statements in these works as both didactic and autobiographical. Fiona Somerset, in ‘How Canon Lawyers Read the Bible: Hilton’s Scale II and the Wordes of Poule’, builds upon Sargent’s work on Scale of Perfection Book II by bringing it into dialogue with the lollard Wordes of Poule, comparing how the authors, both canon lawyers, approach the biblical material to effect what Hilton calls a ‘reformation in feeling’. The final section, ‘Texts and Contours of Religious Life’, delves into the complexities of vowed life in late medieval England, with essays illuminating the texts and practices of religious orders that Michael has studied over his entire career. These contributions investigate how texts structure the most public and intimate practices of the Carmelites, Carthusians and Birgittines. Kevin Alban addresses ‘Beauty in Liturgy: The Carmelites and the Resurrection’, looking at key theological strands within the Carmelite spiritual tradition and how they are expressed in devotional forms, including a marked change in 1287 to a white liturgical garment in order to thematize the effect of Christ’s resurrection on the individual soul. Marlene Villalobos Hennessy’s essay, ‘Otherworldly Visions: Miracles and Prophecy among the English Carthusians, c. 1300–1535’, highlights the importance of supernatural events within the order during the pre-Reformation period, showing how a number of different visitations and visions connect to the order’s peculiarly literary

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 24

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Mi c h ael S argen t: An Ap p recia tion    xxv

character. The volume’s final two essays treat texts designed to shape and augment English Birgittine practice. In ‘The Body of the Nun and the Syon Abbey “Additions”’, Jennifer N. Brown shows how the ‘Additions’, legislative supplements to the general Birgittine rule, negotiate the double monastic structure, with its unusual privileging of the abbess, through minute regulation of the individual nun’s body. Finally, Mary C. Erler’s ‘The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs’ argues that the 1516 Kalendre, a set of English saints’ lives printed by Wynkyn de Worde, testifies to a previously unrecognized collaboration betweeen the Birgittine monk Richard Whitford and the abbess Elizabeth Gibbs. Thus, Erler expands our understanding of Syon Abbey as a vibrant hub of devotional literacy in connection with early printing. We offer this diverse collection of essays, which reflect Michael Sargent’s interests and influence throughout, as a tribute to his generative scholarship and his constant generosity.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 25

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 26

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

I

Manuscript Transmission and Textual Adaptation

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 1

1/29/2021 7:57:57 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 2

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

1 Beinecke MS 317 and its New Witness to the Latin Door Verses from London Charterhouse: A Story of Carthusian and Birgittine Literary Exchange LAURA SAETVEIT MILES

I

t

n 2008, Michael Sargent and Marlene Villalobos Hennessy published an essay, ‘The Latin Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, where they identify and discuss the Latin poems that accompanied the alphabetic designations of the twenty-five cells of London charterhouse, founded in 1371 just outside the city proper.1 The monastery’s remarkable surviving water distribution map, dated around 1430, identifies each cell with a letter, A–Z, beginning on the western wall and proceeding around the cloister to the north (Figure 1).2 Sargent and Hennessy’s research reveals that each identifying letter began a verse of two or three lines linked with that cell. The acrostic verses were likely painted on or above the cell doors, as the two stone door cases which survive have no evidence of carved letters.3 As architectural decoration these poems would have been a strong presence in the monks’ everyday lives in the cloister, visible and readable every time they moved around the charterhouse. We know of the verses only because they were copied down in manuscripts, so they also functioned as meditative 1

2

3

M. G. Sargent and M. V. Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 179–97. Also reproduced and discussed in G. Coppack and M. Aston, Christ’s Poor Men: The Carthusians in England (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2002), fig. 20 and p. 118; and in J. M. Luxford, ‘Carthusian Monasticism and the London Charterhouse’, in Revealing the Charterhouse, ed. C. Ross (London, 2016), pp. 41–66, fig. 20 and p. 49. Coppack and Aston, Christ’s Poor Men, p. 77.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 3

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

4    L a u r a S aet vei t Mi l e s

Figure 1. Map of the water plan for London charterhouse, c. 1430. English Heritage. Crown copyright. Historic England Archive BB96/09795.

texts to be contemplated in stationary solitude. Themes covered include the solace of the monastic cell, the nature of solitary prayer, the temptations of the world, the ephemerality of life, the inevitability of death, the promise of heaven and, above all, devotion to God. The acrostic lines carry a manifold significance for our growing understanding of charterhouse culture: they contribute to ‘defining the spirituality of the English Carthusian monks during the late-medieval period’, specifically with their insights into charterhouse visual culture, mnenomic techniques and devotion and monastic subjectivities.4 In sum, the verses and their manuscript and architectural contexts illuminate, 4

Sargent and Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses’, p. 182.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 4

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   5

in Sargent and Hennessy’s words, the ‘Carthusian monastic imaginary: those common beliefs and practices that characterize the vocation and corporate identity of members of the order’.5 While much work remains to follow up the breakthrough literary analysis of the verses themselves as offered in their 2008 article, my essay will turn to more codicological concerns – and a new manuscript discovery. Sargent and Hennessy discuss the four manuscript witnesses of these verses that were known to them. London, British Library, MS Sloane 2515 was written by John Blacman (d. 1485) not long after his unsuccessful novitiate at London charterhouse, which occurred sometime between 1459 and 1463.6 Blacman lists the verses as part of a personal narrative of his own turning away from the world and toward the solitude of the cloister, using the verses to grasp ‘Carthusian monastic culture in a particularly condensed, immediate manner through the verse over his cell door [M], which comes alive in the image of Death’.7 (It is this witness that Sargent and Hennessy edit in an appendix to their article.) Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.53 is a notebook written from the late fifteenth century through the early sixteenth, with items in English and Latin, some of which are shared with known Carthusian manuscripts; there the verses survive with the explicit heading ‘Omnes iste versus scribuntur super diuersa hostia cellarum in Claustro Domus Carthusiensis London’ (‘These verses are all written over the diverse cell doors in the cloister of the London charterhouse’).8 The final two witnesses do not mention the origin of the verses nor seem to have any obvious connection to the Carthusian order or the London house, showing that they achieved some outside circulation. Part 2 of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS 131, copied by John Morton of York around 1440, contains the verses along with Mirror of the Ibid.

5

Ibid., p. 187. On Sloane MS 2515, see the British Library’s online entry, http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?docId=IAMS040–002114882&fn=permalink&vid=IAMS_VU2 (accessed 18 December 2019). Also A. Gray, ‘A Carthusian Carta Visitationis of the Fifteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 40 (1967), 91–101. On Blacman and his books, see R. Lovatt, ‘The Library of John Blacman and Contemporary Carthusian Spirituality’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43.2 (1993), 195–230.

6

Sargent and Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses’, p. 188.

7

Transcription and translation from Sargent and Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses’, p. 181. See entry 1157 in M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols (Cambridge, 1900-4), vol. 3, pp. 169–74.

8

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 5

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

6    L a u r a S aet vei t Mi l e s

Blessed Life of Jesus Christ by Nicholas Love, a Carthusian monk from Mount Grace.9 British Library, MS Additional 43406, also known as the Muchelney Breviary, contains the stanzas somewhat out of order and missing ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘N,’ and ‘Y,’ alongside various liturgical contents.10 This current essay identifies a new, fifth witness to twelve of these Latin verses from the London charterhouse cell doors: fol. 56v of New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317, a late fifteenth-century religious miscellany. Appropriately enough, the credit for the initial identification of these verses goes to Michael Sargent himself. In 2007, just before the abovementioned article came out, Michael was visiting the Beinecke and viewing some of their interesting Middle English manuscripts with a group of Yale medievalist graduate students (myself included). Because of our joint interest in all things Carthusian and Birgittine, I drew his attention to MS 317 as possibly of Syon origin – and he immediately recognized the Latin verses on the final damaged folio. In his characteristically generous fashion, Michael challenged me to write up and publish the finding myself, which I am now honoured to do in his Festschrift. The identification of these verses sheds new light on the provenance and history of this manuscript, as well as on monastic scribal and reading practices in general in late medieval England. Long associated with the Birgittine house of Syon Abbey, MS 317 contains a text written by one of its brothers, but these Carthusian verses force us to reconsider the manuscript’s origins: could the codex have come from, or passed through, a Carthusian monastery, either London or perhaps the one right across the river from Syon, Sheen charterhouse? Could the verses’ presence mean that not only the London charterhouse but also Sheen inscribed the verses above their cell doors? Did a Syon brother simply copy a Carthusian witness, or did he walk their cloister himself ? At the very least, as the following examination will confirm, the reading communities of Syon and the Carthusians, especially Sheen, were close knit; their tangled traditions show mutual devotional and intellectual interests, with neither manuscripts nor men (or women) isolated in solitude. By peeling back the layers of the many hands that created and contributed to

9

See entry 1999 in F. Madan, et. al., eds., A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols in 8 (Oxford, 1895–1953), vol. 2, part 1, pp. 152–3.

10

See the British Library online catalogue entry for a manuscript description, http:// searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?vid=IAMS_ VU2&docId=IAMS040–002056293&fn=permalink (accessed 19 December 2019).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 6

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   7

MS 317, I hope to add to the vitality of monastic reading practices both before and after the Reformation.

Beinecke MS 317 and its Latin door verses

MS 317 is a rather frayed and well-used paper manuscript, measuring 215 cm by 145 cm, with fifty-six folios.11 One scribe writing a condensed secretary hand around the turn of the fifteenth to sixteenth century is responsible for the bulk of the manuscript (with some changes in ink, especially fol. 21v), with some later sixteenth-century annotations in various hands; in the following discussion I will focus on the two most frequent, Annotator 1 and Annotator 2. The seventeen items found before it are a variety of English and Latin religious texts, in a mix of prose and verse. By far the longest text, from folios 5r to 21v, is item 5: The Life of St Jerome by Simon Wynter (d. 1448), supplemented by this scribe with material from the Legenda Aurea (I will return in detail to Wynter’s Life below). Other vernacular prose items include the Lay Folks’ Catechism, two different forms of confession, two different mass commentaries and John the Evangelist’s vision of the Virgin Mary. Two vernacular verse versions of the virtues of the mass are also copied in the manuscript. Latin items include some prayers to St Jerome, following his English life, and an alphabetical subject index to Gregory’s Dialogi. The manuscript concludes with five folios of assorted notes mostly in Latin, squeezed onto the page in very small script by several hands. Discernable are section titles such as Augustinus in confessionibus, etc., as well as an unknown macaronic Ave Marie poem and some proverbs in Middle English and Latin. The previously unnoticed copy of the Latin cell door verses can be found on the final verso in a different hand from the main scribe. Folio 56 has, unfortunately, suffered the most damage, with nearly half the parchment torn off at a diagonal going upwards from the outer edge of the middle of the page upwards, toward the spine. The verso side appears to have been left blank by the original scribe and a later scribe filled it with the Latin door verses. This looser, more sprawling secretary hand is nearly three times the size of the small script on the other side of the folio and written in a darker ink (Figure 2). Despite the damage, four complete stanzas survive See the Beinecke Library’s online catalogue entry for a manuscript description and images of the entire manuscript: https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/ Record/3436983; the detailed contents description can be accessed at https:// pre1600ms.beinecke.library.yale.edu/docs/pre1600.ms317.htm (both accessed 22 November 2020).

11

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 7

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

8    L a u r a S aet vei t Mi l e s

from the bottom of the page and eight partial stanzas above them. The twelve surviving stanzas of MS 317, fol. 56v are transcribed diplomatically below (abbreviations silently expanded), with the missing text in bracketed italics supplied from Blacman’s version in BL, Sloane MS 2515 as edited by Sargent and Hennessy.12 I identify here the letter of each verse, though that is not marked in any way in the manuscript: VERSE

LETTER

[Mors iuuines rapit atque senes nulli miseretur]

M

[Fallitur insipiens vite presentis a]more

F

[Gloria natorum, dileccio dulc]is eorum

G

[Bis duo sunt que mestif]icant me nocte dieque

B

[Ad regnum celi suspi]res mente fideli

A

[space enough for one 2-line stanza, now lost]

[Ergo quisque bonum dum tempus adest o]peretur

[Sed bene scit sapiens quantum sit] plena dolore

[Cuncta relinquentur nec postea] inuenientur

[En moriar sed vbi vel quomod]o nescio quando

[Non exalteris quamuis] multis domineris

?

[Nec iam leteris q]uia forsa13 cras morieris [Est pax in cella] * foris extant iurgia bella

E

[Dona Dei] recolas * vanescant omnia vana

D

[Si pacem queris *] hanc rarius egredieris

[Forcius ut] valeas * mentis perquirere sana 12 13

Appendix, Sargent and Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses’, pp. 193–6. Sloane MS 2515 reads ‘forsan’.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 8

1/29/2021 7:57:58 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   9

[Illis] iungeris * quorum nunc facta sequeris

Elige sanctorum * consorcio non reproborum

J/I

14

O quam ditantur qui celica regna lucrantur

O

Nunc lege nunc ora * nunc cum feruore labora

N

Hiis dabitur vere * dominum sine fine videre

H

Cella dei sedes * in qua si tu bene te des

C

Viuunt iocundi * qui spernunt gaudia mundi

Sic erit hora brevis * & labor ille leuis

Qui carnis misere * cupiunt viciosa cauere

Hinc cum discedes * victor cum laude recedes

Their order, seemingly random, does not correspond to the order of the stanzas found in the other surviving manuscripts. However, when reordered alphabetically, they comprise the first half of the alphabet, save K and L: A-BC-D-E-F-G-H-I/J-M-N-O. This raises the possibility that the lost stanza at the top of the folio was the missing ‘L’ or ‘K’ verse. Perhaps they were recalled from memory, as has been suggested about the stanzas copied in Add. MS 43406, the Muchelney Breviary, though those are in much closer approximate alphabetical order than those in MS 317. In any case, they could not have been copied from the Muchelney Breviary, because that witness lacks ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘N’, and has a different variant of ‘G’ and ‘D’. Its lack of ‘N’ and a variant stanza for ‘D’ also rule out Bodley MS 131 as an exemplar. Neither could Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.53 have been the source because it is missing ‘A’. This leaves Blacman’s autograph copy in Sloane MS 2515 as a possible source; it is dated a few decades earlier than MS 317. The only difference appears to be two spelling variations too minor to rule it out: in Sloane, ‘A’ reads ‘forsan’ while MS 317 reads ‘forsa’; and ‘J’ reads ‘consorcia’ while MS 317 reads ‘consorcio’. But neither is it possible to positively confirm Sloane MS 2515 as the source of MS 317, just by attributing the differences to scribal orthography. The stanzas could have easily been written down from memory, transmitted orally or Sloane MS 2515 reads ‘consorcia’.

14

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 9

1/29/2021 7:57:59 AM

Figure 2. Latin door verses linked to London charterhouse. New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317, fol. 56v.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 10

1/29/2021 7:57:59 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   11

copied from another unknown source, even from the walls themselves. Because the verses existed both as a manuscript artefact and as an architectural artefact, their transmission might have been precipitated not by books circulating but by people circulating – for instance, someone from outside the order visiting a Carthusian cloister where the cells were inscribed. Sloane MS 2515 also offers the closest relation to MS 317 in terms of other contents. It contains a Latin meditatio by St Jerome, folios 33v–35r, which recalls the vernacular Life of St Jerome copied in MS 317; it also contains paraphrases of sermons by Gregory the Great (Paraphrastes de sermone Beati Gregorii), folios 55v–58r, recalling MS 317’s alphabetical index to Gregory’s Dialogi. These commonalities could support a Carthusian connection between Blacman’s selection of texts and those gathered in MS 317, though an interest in Jerome and Gregory is certainly not exclusively Carthusian. As this initial comparison suggests, all of these texts that accompany the door verses in MS 317 have their own story to tell: both Carthusian and Birgittine connections emerge in various, interrelated ways, through the work of the original scribe as well as later annotators. In an attempt to learn more about the circulation of these verses, I will examine the manuscript context of this newly discovered witness. The Latin poetry itself still awaits a more detailed literary and linguistic analysis to build on Sargent and Hennessy’s initial discussion – but in the meantime, hopefully, the following codicological and paleographical exploration of MS 317 sheds some light on the material circumstances in which the verses were copied and read.

Beinecke MS 317: provenance and use

How did these Carthusian door verses end up in the back of MS 317? This is an interesting question because the other contents point to a most likely Birgittine provenance, rather than Carthusian, as I have mentioned. Examining the preceding items in the manuscript and several annotations in different hands reveals a complex codicological history entwining medieval houses London, Sheen and Syon, and reaching past the Reformation. In 1414–15, Henry V founded by royal decree both Syon Abbey, the only English house of St Birgitta of Sweden’s order of St Saviour, and neighbouring Sheen charterhouse. Simon Wynter (d. 1448), one of the earliest brothers of Syon, authored the longest text in MS 317, The Life of St Jerome.15 The composition reflects his For an up-to-date introduction to Syon, see S. Powell, The Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 1–47, and specifically on Wynter and this text, pp. 15–16, 134–7. The text appears to be recorded in the registrum library catalogue of the Syon brothers under SS1.750hj and SS1.755e; Syon Abbey with

15

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 11

1/29/2021 7:57:59 AM

1 2    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

Birgittine allegiances in its use of two of Birgitta’s visions about St Jerome for chapter 19, while much of the rest comes from traditional sources like the Golden Legend and the letters of St Augustine. Above the opening of the copy of the Life in MS 317, on folio 5r, the main scribe has written a heading marked up with a cancellation and an addition by a later reader in a light orange ink, whom I will call Annotator 2 (transcribed as it appears, and see Figure 3).16

The scribe follows the fairly common practice of replacing a monastic author’s name with N. N. in order to anonymize the brother, preserving a communal representation of their order – but in this case Annotator 2 has ‘outed’ this author, crossing out the initials and drawing a line up to the top margin, where he has written ‘Symon Wynter’ (in bold in the transcription). That invaluable intervention is the only way we know that Wynter was responsible for this text, as his authorship is not noted in the other four copies. Annotator 2 has also crossed out the specification that Syon was ‘commonly called Sheen’, presumably aiming to eliminate any potential confusion with Sheen charterhouse. While it may have been true that Syon was referred to as Sheen by some (since both foundations were built near the royal palace at Sheen), this reader is clearly both informed and invested enough to clarify the situation by confirming authorship of The Life of St Jerome to a named brother of Syon Abbey specifically.17 Such knowledge suggests the manuscript was in the hands of a member of one of these houses – without yet ruling out one or the other.

16

17

the Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. V. Gillespie and A. I. Doyle, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London, 2001).

Annotator 1’s hand with darker brown ink can be found on fols. 3r, 19r, 19v, 24r–27v, 32v. Annotator 2’s hand with lighter rust-colored ink can be found on fols. 5r, 29v–30r, 32v.

Another annotator had a similar correction, writing ‘Syon’ in red in the margin where the main text has ‘Schene’, in the Book of Margery Kempe. See The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS OS 212 (London, 1940),

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 12

1/29/2021 7:57:59 AM

Figure 3. Opening of The Life of St Jerome, by Birgittine brother Simon Wynter (d. 1448). New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317, fol. 5r.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 13

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

1 4    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

Annotator 2 also intervened in the original scribe’s agenda at the bottom of folio 5r as well as elsewhere, revealing himself to be a cautious reader, perhaps writing with the caution necessary for reading medieval devotional works in post-Reformation England. In slightly smaller script below the main text, one of the main scribes has written (see Figure 3): This book to hym that lovyth god and the helth of his owen soule is bettyre than eny erthly tresoure. And so wolle he say that redyth or heryth hit. for with out the knowlych of the matere that is wryten in this booke, no man may fle evyll and do wele. the which is don for love or drede. or payne or ioye. vt patebit.

Annotator 2 has lightly struck out this passage and added underneath: ‘Beware of fals englysshe’. This somewhat bewildering comment and the accompanying cancellation resemble those of post-Reformation readers reacting to older texts, though what or how the note is ‘fals’ is a bit unclear. The passage validates the spiritual efficacy of ‘this book’ (referring either to Wynter’s text or to the codex as a whole), confirming that its ‘matere’ is necessary for avoiding evil and living a virtuous life: in itself the message is fairly bland and avoids any worship of the saints, or the pope, or any of the usual more ‘Catholic’ targets of Reformers’ defacement of medieval manuscripts.18 He did not cancel it out with such relish that the words became illegible, either. Perhaps this was a faithful monastic reader protecting his pre-Reformation book in a postReformation climate by making a somewhat perfunctory gesture of bringing it in line with Protestant protocols. But, as Fiona Somerset reminds us, a reader ‘may alter a text not only in order to eliminate content that might get himself or other owners of the text into trouble, but also to remove something offensive to himself, in an attempt to improve on the original, or out of error’.19 Perhaps he disagreed with the note’s sentiment for reasons entirely unrelated to the Reformation; it could be read as the vernacular itself that is ‘fals’ here, and this note expresses the reader’s scepticism of English as an appropriate

18

19

p. 245, n. 3; as noticed by C. M. Waters, Virgins and Scholars: A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria (Turnhout, 2008), p. 5, n. 11.

E. Duffy generally discusses examples of such alterations in Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven, 2006), pp. 150–8.

F. Somerset, ‘Censorship’, in The Production of Books in England 1350–1500, ed. A. Gillespie and D. Wakelin (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 239–58, p. 257.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 14

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   15

language for religious Jerome’s vita – as opposed to the ‘safer’, more orthodox Latin of several of the manuscript’s other items.20 Regardless of the inclination of Annotator 2’s responses, he was knowledgeable about the authorship of the Life of St Jerome, and thus links himself to a complex nexus of manuscript transmission combining Birgittine, Carthusian and lay readers. According to the dedicatory preface on this folio of the Life, Wynter wrote the vernacular vita for lay patron Lady Margaret, duchess of Clarence (d. 1439/40), who had a long and close association with Syon, and Wynter in particular, between 1422 and her death about eighteen years later.21 She received permission to live as a vowess near the abbey and make confession to its priests, probably Wynter. George Keiser, in his important 1985 article on MS 317, details how Margaret’s personal and familial networks illuminate the workings of lay piety and patronage in late medieval England. She was also connected to the Carthusians: her brother Thomas was one of the founders of Mount Grace charterhouse in 1397/98, and royal patron Henry V himself was the brother of her late husband, duke of Clarence, also named Thomas (d. 1421).22 Later on in the preface Simon Wynter encourages Lady Margaret to help disseminate the work: ‘Wherfore I desire that hit sholde lyke youre ladyship first to rede hit and to do copye hit for yourself and syth to lete oþer rede hit and copye hit whoso wyll’ (fol. 5r). Such a dedication offers an excellent example of the ties between Syon and the lay Later in MS 317, the same ink and hand has cancelled out about half of fol. 29v and almost all of fol. 30r, the sections of a prose commentary on the Mass concerning the ‘tokenys & condycionys of a vycyows preste’ and ‘the condycyons of every goode and vertuows prest’. Here Annotator 2 has written in the bottom margin of fol. 29r: ‘Whan god wylle: bettyr shall be.’

20

According to George Keiser, papal registers from 1428–29 ‘define and legitimize a relationship between Margaret and the Bridgettine house at Syon’, giving her ‘special permission to dwell near Syon and be visited at her invitation by the enclosed brethren’; Keiser suggests Wynter could have been her confessor. See ‘Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon Wynter, and Yale University MS 317’, Yale University Library Gazette 60 (1985), 32–46 (pp. 37–9). See also G. R. Keiser, ‘St Jerome and the Brigittines: Visions of the Afterlife in Fifteenth Century England’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 143–52; and G. R. Keiser, ‘Serving the Needs of Readers: Textual Division in Some Late-medieval English Texts’, in New Science out of Old Books, Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 207–26. For more on vowesses associated with Syon like Margaret, see A. da Costa, Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy 1525–1534 (Oxford, 2012), p. 54.

21

Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety’, p. 36.

22

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 15

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

1 6    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

aristocratic reading circles that reached down another two generations to her granddaughter Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509).23 Since they could shed light on the origins of MS 317, it is worth looking at the other four surviving witnesses of The Life of St Jerome and assessing how widely Margaret, duchess of Clarence and/or Wynter actually circulated the text, since all the copies seem to have either Carthusian or Birgittine provenance.24 The earliest, Cambridge, St John’s College MS N. 17, was likely copied soon after the work’s composition, in the second quarter of the fifteenth century.25 Its scribe also appears to have copied a few folios of a manuscript of Carthusian origin, part 2 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 549, folios 77–79, with metrical paraphrases of the Creed, ten commandments, etc.26 Stephen Dodesham, professional scribe from London and later Carthusian at Sheen until his death in 1482, copied the surrounding folios of MS Bodley 549; Keiser makes the suggestion that it was a Carthusian production intended for one of the duchess of Clarence’s relatives or associates at court.27 This means 23

24

25

26

27

See S. Powell’s comprehensive coverage in ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort: Books, Printers, and Syon Abbey’, in The Birgittines, pp. 153–213.

The Life is edited from MS Lambeth 72 with full critical variants and ch. 20 (the lion episode) from MS 317 in R. Hamer and V. Russell, eds., Supplementary Lives in Some Manuscripts of the Gilte Legende, EETS OS 315 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 321– 65, 511–13. It is edited from Cambridge, St John’s College MS N. 17 by Waters, Virgins and Scholars; some parts are excerpted in Waters, intro. and trans., ‘Simon Wynter: The Life of St Jerome’, in Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, ed. A. C. Bartlett and T. H. Bestul (Ithaca NY, 1999), pp. 141–63 (translation) and 232–49 (edition). The St John’s version is also edited in Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, ed. E. G. Whatley, A. B. Thompson and R. K. Upchurch (Kalamazoo, 2004). Lambeth Library MS 432 is edited in C. Horstmann, ‘Prosalegenden’, Anglia 3 (1880), 328–60. A. I. Doyle posits that ‘the small number of manuscripts and the early printed edition suggest that it may have been mostly for religious of his own order, and perhaps of others, that the life was reproduced’; ‘Publication by Members of the Religious Orders’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. J. J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 109–23 (p. 117). For details on this manuscript, see the St John’s College online library catalogue, https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/manuscripts/medieval_ manuscripts/medman/N_16.htm (accessed 18 December 2019), and discussion by Waters, Virgins and Scholars, pp. 5–7. Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety’, pp. 41–2. Manuscript number 2298 in the Summary Catalogue; see https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_1568 (accessed 22 November 2020).

See A. I. Doyle, ‘Stephen Dodesham of Witham and Sheen’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 16

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   17

that St John’s College MS N. 17 was probably copied by a Sheen monk, as Claire Waters concurs, proving that Wynter’s Life of St Jerome achieved some circulation among the Carthusians.28 This raises the possibility that Beinecke MS 317 could also be a Carthusian production, from Sheen, having obtained Wynter’s Life from their Birgittine neighbours across the river. Only St John’s College MS N. 17 and Beinecke MS 317 still retain the dedicatory preface to the duchess of Clarence. The Life’s remaining two manuscript witnesses and the early print copy omit the preface, implying that their various creators were not so concerned with the lay, aristocratic impetus behind the text. London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 432 is dated to the last quarter of the fifteenth century and includes alongside the Life of St Jerome (folios 1–17) various other hagiographic and devotional texts, among them an excerpt from Birgitta’s Liber Celestis. Because of the Birgittine material and Wynter’s Life, scholars have postulated that Lambeth MS 432 is likely of Syon origin.29 Likewise, London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 72, with the Life on folios 188v–202r set alongside Jerome’s vita from the Gilte Legende, is also suspected to be from Syon. Interestingly, these two manuscripts share the same particular version of the life of St Dorothy, further reinforcing their probable provenance from the same place – Syon Abbey.30 The final witness is Wynken de Worde’s printed work The Lyf of Seint Ierom, c. 1499/1500 (or 1493), surviving in one British Library copy, lacking title page, dedication and prologue, and beginning straight away with the table of contents.31 Wynken de Parkes, ed. P. R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 94–115 (pp. 96–7); Waters, Virgins and Scholars, p. 6; Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety’, p. 42.

Waters, Virgins and Scholars, p. 6.

28

M. C. Erler, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 142–3, on both Lambeth manuscripts; on MS 432, see O. S. Pickering and V. M. O’Mara, The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist 13: Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library Including Those Formerly in Sion College Library (Cambridge, 1999), p. 10.

29

See Whatley, ‘Introduction’. On the Lambeth manuscripts, see Powell, The Birgittines, pp. 134–5.

30

STC 14508, https://data.cerl.org/istc/ih00237500 (accessed 22 November 2020); British Library IA 55267 (available on EEBO). For more on Caxton, Wynken and Lady Margaret, see Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety’, p. 44. Lotte Hellinga re-dates the print to 1493 based on her analysis of the details of the impression of the printer’s device located under the short Latin pseudo-Eusebius, Vita et Transitus Sancti Hieronymi, on the final folio after the Lyfe (her fig. 6); ‘Tradition and Renewal: Establishing the Chronology of Wynken de Worde’s Early Work’, in Incunabula and Their Readers: Printing, Selling and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century, ed. K. Jensen (London, 2003), pp. 13–30 (pp. 24–7).

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 17

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

1 8    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

Worde’s strong connections to Syon make it likely that he obtained his exemplar from them, and possible that he printed it for them as well. With one surviving copy and no obvious signs of its provenance or readership it is hard to draw firm conclusions about what transmission Wynken’s print achieved within or beyond Syon. At least one of MS 317’s readers, however, had access to de Worde’s printed Lyf of Seint Ierom, which could support the possibility that this manuscript was in Syon hands at some point. On folio 19v, which contains about two-thirds of chapter 17 and all of chapter 18 of the text, the bottom margin contains an annotation in a bastard secretary hand by a reader whom I call Annotator 1: here lacke .xviii. chapyters wherche be in the prynt boke. And also the lyfe of saynt Jerom that foloweng the table in the end, and it begynneth thus. Pleros que nimium illustris vires non ambigo

This is a rather confusing note, as the manuscript copy lacks neither ‘xviii’ (eighteen) chapters nor the eighteenth chapter; the only ways this version differs from the print version is the addition of a chapter 20, the lion episode and various other brief additions and reworkings throughout.32 The annotation seems to suggest that there is another life of St Jerome in Latin that begins as he quotes the incipit, although its source and its relationship to Wynter’s version are also unclear (no such incipit can be found in the print copy). Regardless of its accuracy, from this instance of marginalia we learn that the manuscript was compared to a print version by someone trying to be attentive in a scholarly way.33 The same studious impulse can be seen in another annotation in MS 317, almost certainly in the same hand, on the recto side of the same folio 19, just under chapter 17 of the English Life, which begins: ‘An heretyke of þe grekys dysputyd opynly on a sonday with a prest …’. The priest cites St Jerome as an authority in the debate, and when the Greek said that Jerome lied, he was miraculously punished because he ‘spake never worde after’. There is no actual Greek language in Wynter’s Life, but nonetheless Annotator 1 seems to have been inspired to make a reference to an external Greek-language resource with this inscription:

32

33

Whatley, ‘Introduction’ describes the changes generally, while Hamer and Russell, eds., Supplementary Lives, lists the variants in their critical edition. Another link between MS 317 and the print: two final Latin prayers to St Jerome on fol. 21v in MS 317 are also at the end of de Worde’s print, p. 29.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 18

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   19

Alphabetum grecum, cum multis aliis, que expeditum quem reddunt ad grammaticam grecam capestendam parisiis apud christianum Wechell sub scuto B. 1530.

The first two lines identify verbatim the complete short title of an early printed octavo, Alphabetum graecum una cum multis alijs quae expeditum: quem reddunt ad Grammaticam Graecam capessedam, correctly attributed as produced in Paris by Christianum Wechell, under the arms of Bâle (the shop and printer’s device sub scuto Basiliensi), in 1530.34 Chrétien Wechell (1495–1554) was a well-known native German editor and printer active in Paris between 1522 and 1553.35 He specialized in Greek, Hebrew and humanist publications; in 1530, for instance, along with this Greek textbook and many other works, he printed writings by Erasmus and Homer’s Iliad.36 Like the annotation on the flip side of the folio, this careful inscription of so much of Wechell’s title confirms Annotator 1 as a scholarly type, with librarian-like tendencies for cross-referencing and cataloguing. Could Wechel’s Greek text have been one of the Continental printed works that populated the extensive library of the Syon brothers? Since the surviving library catalogue or registrum ceased being updated around 1524, some years before Wechel’s 1530 print, it is impossible to tell. It could have been at Syon, since their book collection certainly reflected the growth of print humanist texts imported from the Continent,37 and this Alphabetum graecum survives in other British archives.38 However, as Vincent Gillespie points out, ‘there is very little evidence of an interest in Greek or Hebrew in the holdings listed USTC 146104, https://www.ustc.ac.uk/editions/146104 (accessed 22 November 2020). I would like to thank Julia King for her help researching Wechel.

34

See E. Armstrong, ‘The Origins of Chrétien Wechel Re-Examined’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 23, no. 2 (1961), 341–6.

35

H. Elie, ‘Chrétien Wechel, Imprimeur à Paris’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 29 (1954), 181– 97; list of Wechel’s imprints, pp. 192–4.

36

Gillespie, Syon Abbey, pp. lvi–xiii; also ‘Syon and the New Learning’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. J. G. Clark, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 18 (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 75–95; and ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, in Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing, and Religion, c. 1400–1700, ed. E. A. Jones and A. Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104–28.

37

One copy at the British Library, General Reference Collection 1476.a.32.(2.), provenance unknown; and one at Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lawn f. 367 (1), which does not appear to have a monastic provenance.

38

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 19

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 0    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

in the registrum. The library does not seem to have responded to or reflected the developments in teaching those languages underway in the universities from 1510 onwards’.39 This does not rule out that an individual brother with an intellectual bent was interested in Greek learning towards the end of Syon’s days. Or, for that matter, it is also possible that MS 317 was in the hands of a Carthusian similarly inclined; their order had a long tradition of erudite annotators, as Michael Sargent’s work on monk James Grenehalgh attests.40 A further annotation in the same hand, on folio 3r, brings us once again to the brink of the Reformation and likely over. With matching dark brown ink and the same secretary ‘g’s and other letter forms, Annotator 1 writes: ‘1539 / Master holmes of the gard born at lyrpole in lankashyre / the thursday after saynt George’. The text on the page is a Middle English versified version of the thirty-four virtues of the mass.41 While the relation between the annotator and the person named Holmes born in Liverpool in 1539 is unclear, this is a typical type of manuscript inscription by someone recording a birth in their family in a meaningful religious volume. The year 1539 was also the year in which Syon and the Carthusian monasteries were suppressed, in November, with all of their inhabitants expelled from their houses.42 One scenario presents itself: is this the inscription of a former brother or monk, recently sent home on a pension, now noting events in the life of the private family that he has rejoined? Many Syon brothers continued living apart from their secular relations, in small communities assisting their Birgittine sisters – but not all. What we do learn from this combination of notes is that Annotator 1 was active during the Dissolution period, had access to a small library of volumes or at least a strong recollection of one, and felt a need and a right to make both literary, academic notes as well as a personal one. Moving from the annotations back to the main texts, another Latin item in MS 317 suggests a link to Syon Abbey. A partial alphabetical index to Gregory the Great’s Dialogi has been copied into folios 36r–42r, covering letters A–D. Keiser postulates that the table ‘indicates that the volume was intended for use 39 40

41

42

Gillespie, Syon Abbey, p. lviii.

M. G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 85 (Salzburg, 1984). Higher on the same page, there is another marginal annotation by the same Annotator 1, ‘de sancto Edwardo rege’ next to the line ‘cryst appered to Seynt Edward þe kynge’.

Though Liverpool does not appear to be a known destination for Birgittines after the Dissolution; Peter Cunich discusses the brothers’ post-Reformation history in ‘The Brothers of Syon, 1420–1695’, in Syon Abbey and its Books, pp. 39–81 (pp. 69–73).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 20

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   21

in a setting where that work would be available, possibly Syon itself or another metropolitan monastic institution’.43 Indeed, supporting Keiser’s suggestion, Syon’s registrum lists five relevant copies of Quatuor libri Dialogorum beati Gregorii, none of which is known to have survived.44 While of course Sheen or London could also have owned such a common text, we have no concrete evidence such as a copy of Carthusian provenance or a mention in relevant book lists. Adding in a partial index among otherwise mostly hagiographical and catechetical work perhaps reflects the same Syon inclination for systematization whenever possible and preservation of useful cross-referencing sources. One final codicological clue, however, points quite firmly towards Syon as home to the original creator(s) and owner(s) of MS 317: indexing tabs like those they installed on many of their books. Two fore-edge parchment tabs, folded over and glued to folios 22 and 51, have survived the centuries. Near the middle of the page where the tab on folio 22r has been glued on, a versified ‘Virtues of the Mass’ begins; the tab is placed just below a small elaborate doodle and the word ‘missa’ in a textura script. The verso side of this tab has covered up one of the numbers enumerating the verses, so what resembles the original scribe’s hand has written ‘xviii’ on the tab itself in order to continue the sequence. That the original scribe likely wrote on the tab suggests that it was he who put them in, in order to mark particular texts for reference in his own use of the book. That in turn suggests that he created MS 317 for himself, gathering up texts of interest or of use into a personalized collection – not one commissioned by another monastic or lay reader, or intended for general use by the institution, but for individual consumption. Such a hypothesis would match the variation in inks throughout the codex: it was copied piecemeal over time as new texts came across his desk, and not in one concentrated period with a single or matching ink batches. While this tab on folio 22 seems to survive with the original angled corners on the outer hanging part, the one on folio 51 is trimmed or worn right down to the edge of the page. This second tab is also nearly centred vertically on the outer edge, aligning most closely with the beginning of a new text or section on the verso side of the folio, though it could also be marking the beginning on the recto side of the final section of various Latin texts. At the top of folio 51r ends a short text of a vision from the Virgin Mary to John the Evangelist in which she describes her five sorrows, and then begins an unidentified Latin confessional treatise. Perhaps this confessional treatise and the poem about Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety’, p. 43.

43

Gillespie, Syon Abbey: SS1.744a; SS1.745a; SS1.844b; excerpts, SS1.882t; SS1.1013e, printed in quarto by Paris printer Georg Wolf, 1491; and SS1.1262a.

44

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 21

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 2    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

the Eucharist on folio 22 constituted important texts for whatever priestly work the scribe was involved in. No stains or marks suggest places where other tabs had fallen off, though many of the edges are in bad shape. These two tabs resemble in many ways some of the tabbing systems found in other Syon books, as described by the two scholars who discuss this codicological practice in depth, Christopher de Hamel and Daniel Sawyer. The Birgittine house had a stronger and more developed tradition of marking pages in their books than any other English monastery. Tabs were frequently and systematically used in the house’s books from the last quarter of the fifteenth century on, particularly during the librarianship of Thomas Betson (d. 1516), who put tabs in many manuscripts, including his own library registrum.45 De Hamel identifies at least seventeen other Syon manuscripts with glued-on indexing tabs like these, marking main divisions or the start of new texts in each volume.46 Other books have different tab designs, for instance with thread or knots, or dozens around all three edges; or other systems, like for every new text in a large liturgical book, or for major sections of longer texts. Books like MS 317 with only a small handful of tabs suggest ‘a desire to make it easy to access a specific selection of sections rather than every textual division’.47 While generally tabs testify to a kind of discontinuous reading because the reader is flipping open the book to a particular place instead of reading straight through, one or two tabs indicates a reading practice that is better described as ‘specifically referential or consultative’48 or even ‘selective or devoted rather than simply discontinuous’. Such a ‘devoted’ practice can be seen in a single tab marking the Fifteen Oes attributed to St Birgitta in Syon manuscript Leeds University Library MS Brotherton 15, as Sawyer proposes.49 MS 317’s scribe seems to be demonstrating a parallel type of consultative reading in his specific placement of only two tabs among the many various texts in this religious 45

46

47

48 49

Thomas Betson’s tenure as librarian and his scribal corpus is described by A. I. Doyle, ‘Thomas Betson of Syon Abbey’, The Library 5th series, XI (1956), 115–18 and ‘A Letter Written by Thomas Betson, Brother of Syon Abbey’, in The Medieval Book and A Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal, and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 255–67; and in Gillespie, Syon Abbey, pp. xlvi–li. C. de Hamel, Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation (Otley, 1991), pp. 104–8. D. Sawyer, ‘Navigation by Tab and Thread: Place-markers and Readers’ Movements in Books’, in Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England, ed. M. C. Flannery and C. Griffin (New York, 2016), pp. 99–114, 105. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., p. 105.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 22

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L at i n Do o r Ver se s f rom L on don Char ter house   23

miscellany. Those two works or sections were to be either more frequently or more quickly accessed. While certainly other tabbed manuscripts came from outside Syon, the distinctive mitred corners and their selective placement link these tabs more closely with Syon than with anywhere else.

Birgittine or Carthusian?

The Latin door verses found over the cells around the cloister at London charterhouse became a literary export to a fair variety of readers outside that monastery, as now five copies attest. Several aspects of MS 317 suggest Birgittine origin and/or ownership: the inclusion of Wynter’s Life of Saint Jerome, an annotator who could identify Wynter’s authorship, the alphabetical index to Gregory’s Dialogi and the indexing tabs all draw a strong link to Syon. Yet the two annotators concerned with literary cross-referencing to other texts, and the Latin door verses themselves, are clues that could also suggest Sheen Charterhouse, just across the river from Syon Abbey. Since the clearest Carthusian links for MS 317 are to Sheen, not to London where the door verses are confirmed to have been used according to Blacman’s first-hand testimony, it is worth considering the connections between these two particular charterhouses. London doubled the usual twelve Carthusian monks with its 24 + 2 cloister cells, clearly identified by letter in the surviving water-plan map (see Figure 1), and supporting their association with the alphabetic verses. Archeological excavation matches the map plan (though the one fragment of a stone doorway lintel does not show a carved letter, as mentioned above).50 Sheen was yet more ambitious: it had thirty monks’ cells plus a prior’s cell.51 All that remains of their buildings are scant parch-marks; no excavations have taken place. We have no record of whether the Sheen cell doors were also labelled with letters, with or without verses. The entire alphabetical set would have fit, though with some doors left over, so it seems plausible. This raises the new possibility that MS 317’s witness to the door verses testifies to Sheen’s use of them for their own cells. Yet perhaps it was Sam Pfizenmaier offers the most up-to-date archeological coverage in Charterhouse Square: Black Death Cemetery and Carthusian Monastery, Meat Market and Suburb (London, 2016), ch. 5, ‘The Founding and Bloody End of Charterhouse, 1371–1538’, pp. 52–8. See also B. Barber and C. Thomas, The London Charterhouse, Museum of London Archaeological Service Monograph 10 (London, 2002); and Luxford, ‘Carthusian Monasticism and the London Charterhouse’, pp. 41–66. Sir William St John Hope’s book still provides valuable information and documents: The History of the London Charterhouse from its Foundation until the Suppression of the Monastery (London, 1925).

50

Coppack and Aston, Christ’s Poor Men, p. 45.

51

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 23

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 4    L a u r a S ae t vei t Mi l e s

only that a Sheen monk copied these verses after a visit to London, or from a manuscript or monk linked to London. If MS 317 is a Syon manuscript, however, it further demonstrates the closely overlapping interests and manuscript circulation between the Bridgettines and Carthusians, most obviously evidenced by Sheen scribes William Darker and James Grenehalgh producing material for Syon. Textual transmission between the two houses still needs closer study, a gap to which this essay has aimed to make a contribution. While a Syon brother certainly could have copied the verses from a manuscript source in the comfort of his own cloister, the monks seem to have had enough mobility that one could have visited Sheen or London and copied the inscriptions in person – or from dictation by one of their monks on a visit to Syon. We see textual transmission regularly between the houses; its means are less clear. Regardless, if MS 317 is from Syon, the verses’ presence suggests that someone found their memento mori monastic messages as relevant to their own enclosure as Birgittine brothers as they were to the Carthusian monks across the river. In conclusion, the ambiguities of Beinecke MS 317 emphasize how tightly knit the manuscript webs were linking the Birgittines and the Carthusians, Syon and Sheen and London.52 Like many manuscripts, it resists certainty. And at the same time we see – maybe – proof of Sheen charterhouse’s own use of the alphabetical door verses, and – maybe simultaneously – proof of Syon readers’ desire to integrate the Carthusian devotional imaginary into their own distinctly Birgittine devotional imaginary. It is intriguing, and not at all surprising, to think of MS 317 showing the two houses being so interested in each others’ literary traditions and their often shared focus on solitary prayer, visionary texts and a more scholarly approach to devotion as modelled by Jerome himself. While the cell doorways themselves were fixed in space, their letters and verses could travel, bringing with them outside and between cloisters the idea of ‘the sanctified institutional space of the cell as a devotional object in itself: a location for contemplation of the written word’, as Sargent and Hennessy express it.53 Monastic codices and their texts were far from fixed in location or themselves enclosed, having a life extending over multiple generations of readers, in multiple religious or secular spaces of reading and both pre- and post-Reformation. The door verses in Beinecke MS 317 testify to the fluid complexities of Carthusian and Birgittine literary practices, which still offer us much to untangle. 52

53

In agreement with others such as Vincent Gillespie, ‘The Permeable Cloister? Charterhouse, Contemplation, and Urban Piety in Medieval England: The Case of London,’ in The Urban Church in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Clive Burgess, ed. David Harry and Christian Steer (London, 2019), pp. 238–57. Sargent and Hennessy, ‘The Latin Verses’, p. 183.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 24

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 Martyred Masons: The Legend of the Quattuor Coronati in Some Medieval English Contexts E. GORDON WHATLEY

t

A

mong the more esoteric manifestations of late Victorian medievalism is the journal Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (‘Art of the Four Crowned Ones’), first appearing in 1888 and devoted to the antiquities and philosophy of Freemasonry.1 The subject of the present paper is not Freemasonry but the medieval legend and cult of the ‘Quattuor Coronati’ (henceforth Coronati), who were widely believed to be early Christian stonemasons and sculptors, martyred in Pannonia under Diocletian and named Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronianus, Castorius and Simplicius (henceforth, Claudius et soc.). The topic is, admittedly, rather remote from Michael Sargent’s scholarly field of late medieval English devotional literature, but at least a substantial portion of the paper focuses on some little-known Middle English verses composed only a generation or so after the floruits of Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love.2 Embedded in a longer poetic tract, dated in the second quarter of the fifteenth century,3 the verses summarize the legend of the martyred masons, celebrating in particular their refusal either to fashion or worship a pagan ‘ymage’. If Hilton had lived long enough to encounter these verses, they might have piqued his interest.4 Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Being the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, London (the journal is still a going concern).

1

Listed as ‘Four Crowned Martyrs’ by C. D’Evelyn, ‘Legends of Individual Saints’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, ed. J. B. Severs (Hamden CT, 1967–), II (1970), 587–8 (no. 109).

2

See below, note 5.

3

On Hilton’s writings on image veneration, see W. R. Jones, ‘Lollards and Images: The Defense of Religious Art in Later Medieval England’, Journal of the History

4

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 25

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 6    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

The longer tract in which the Coronati verses occur is preserved in a pocketsized manuscript, British Library, MS Royal 17 A I,5 which students of Freemasonry usually refer to as the ‘Regius’6 manuscript and which comprises the oldest known version of a set of statutes or customs known to modern Freemasons as the ‘Old Charges’. 7 Although the Latin martyrdom narrative (henceforth Passio) of Claudius et soc. is well known in Masonic literature,8 the Middle English verse epitome of their story has attracted little attention, and my treatment of it below is very much a preliminary effort. The essay as a whole is divided into four parts: a brief introduction to and summary of the Passio (probably unfamiliar to most readers of this volume); some background on the longer Middle English poetic tract containing the verses on the Coronati legend; an old-fashioned ‘close reading’ of these verses in their contemporary fifteenth-century context; and an attempt to source them in

5

6

7

of Ideas 34 (1973), 27–50 (pp. 38–9); also J. M. Russell-Smith, ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Religious Images’, Dominican Studies 7 (1954), 180–214.

Fols. 1–32, ed. D. Knoop, G. P. Jones and D. Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss: The Regius Ms. (B.M. Bibl. Reg. 17 A I), the Cooke Ms. (B.M. Add. ms. 23198) (Manchester, 1938), pp. 104–50 (left-hand pages). MS Royal 17 A I is online at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_17_a_i_fs001r. Of the tract’s 794 lines, the Coronati section comprises lines 497–534 (fols. 20v–22v; pp. 134 and 136), henceforth cited by line numbers only. Knoop et al. are among those dating the manuscript c. 1390 (pp. 3 and 21–2), the ‘shaky foundations’ of which have been exposed, with cogent arguments in favor of 1425–50, by A. Prescott, ‘Some Literary Contexts of the Regius and Cooke Manuscripts’, in Freemasonry in Music and Literature: Transactions of the Fifth International Conference 1 and 2 November 2003, The Canonbury Papers 2, ed. T. Stewart (London, 2005), pp. 43–77 (pp. 47–53). I am grateful to Jeffrey Proteau, library director at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, Lexington, Massachusetts, for supplying me with a copy of this article. The British Library catalogues also date MS Royal 17 A I as fifteenth century. From the old title of the Royal collection of manuscripts, presented to the British Museum in the eighteenth century by King George II. The two medieval versions of the ‘Charges’, with numerous later ones, are listed chronologically in W. J. Hughan, The Old Charges of British Freemasons, 2nd edn (London, 1895), p. 5; see also Prescott, ‘The Old Charges Revisited’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 (2005), 25–38 (www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ prescott07.html, most recently accessed 12 January 2019).

E.g., the Passio is partially translated by A. F. A. Woodford, ‘The Quatuor Coronati: The Legend as Given in the Arundel MS.’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 1 (1888), 78–86.

8

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 26

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   27

relation to earlier epitomes, in the larger context of the medieval English reception of the Coronati legend and cult. I should acknowledge at the outset that, despite the abundance of nineteenthand twentieth-century scholarship asserting the historical and topographical value of the Passio of Claudius et soc.,9 I follow Agostino Amore and Walter Berschin in regarding it as a sixth- or seventh-century literary construction.10 In my opinion, which I cannot attempt to justify here, it is a nostalgic reimagining of the lost arts of marble sculpture and the imperial quarries abandoned after the fourth century.

The ‘Passio’ of Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronianus, Castorius and Simplicius Although its modern editor entitles the legend Passio SS. Quattuor Coronatorum,11 neither the text, rubric nor incipit (in the best manuscripts12) uses the name Quattuor Coronati for the Pannonian martyrs named above, who are, of course, problematically five, not four, in number. Moreover, another quartet of unnamed martyrs, identified only as Roman civil servants (cornicularii), sharing the same feast day as the five above, are introduced at the end of the Passio itself, in a sort of coda (possibly by an interpolator). Such contradictions and difficulties challenged the ingenuity of the medieval compilers of martyrologies, missals and legendaries, as illustrated below. Although the Claudius group is commemorated in the important fourth- and fifth-century calendars

For an introduction to the topic, with copious bibliography, see chapter XXIV of M. Lapidge’s valuable new anthology of translations, The Roman Martyrs (Oxford, 2018), pp. 448–67 (pp. 448–56).

9

Amore, ‘Quattro Coronati, santi, martiri’, Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome, 1961–70), X, 1276–86; Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, 4 vols. in 6 (Stuttgart, 1986–2004), I, 66–74.

10

11

‘Passio SS. Quattuor Coronatorum’ ed. H. Delehaye, Acta Sanctorum Novembris, 4 vols. (Brussels, 1887–1925), III (1910), 765; but the Passio is catalogued under ‘Claudius’ and his four companions in Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis (henceforth BHL), ed. Socii Bollandiani, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1890), I, 276, no. 1836 (the older version) and no. 1837 (a lightly revised version).

Paris, BN, MS lat. 10861 and Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS VIII.

12

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 27

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

2 8    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

of saints’ days,13 the collective, ‘generic’14 title Quattuor Coronati (which simply means ‘four martyred men’15) is unrecorded until the later sixth century, when papal registers and an early mass-book indicate the adoption of the title by a Roman parish church (formerly titulus Aemilianae, a house church) on the Caelian Hill.16 The earliest guide book to Roman saints’ shrines17 (dated c. 625–38) claims the Coronati were buried in a suburban catacomb on the Via Labicana but does not name them individually. Other seventh-century sources – a second pilgrims’ guide and the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries18 – finally identify the Quattuor Coronati with the five named in the Passio. Nonetheless, in mid-ninth-century Rome, the stonemasons Claudius et soc. were still being distinguished from the unidentified patrons of the church of the Quattro Coronati on the Caelian Hill. During extensive renovations of the church under its former priest, Pope Leo IV (847–55), the pope’s ninth-century biographer relates that the bodies of the titular ‘Quattuor’ were said to have been diligently searched for and discovered (where is not mentioned) and deposited under the church’s new altar, ‘along with’ (cum) the Passio’s groups of five and four martyrs, plus bodies and heads of many others

13

14 15

16

17 18

The Depositio martyrum (Rome, c. 350) lists Clemens [sic], Sempronianus, Claudus [sic], and Nicostratus on 9 November: see L. Duchesne, Le Liber Pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886–92), I, 12. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum (Aquileia, fifth century) lists Simforianus, Claudus [sic], Nicostratus and Castor on 8 November; see Acta SS. Nov., II, pt. 1, ed. G. B. de Rossi and L. Duchesne (Brussels, 1894), p. 140, cols. 2 and 3. Cf. Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, pp. 636 and 657. Amore, ‘Quattro Coronati’, col. 1286: ‘genericamente chiamati’.

coronatus, ‘crowned one’, from corona, ‘laurel crown or wreath’ (Gk. stephanos), the victor’s prize in an athletic contest (Gk. and Lat. agon), adopted in the New Testament as a symbol of salvation, as in 1 Cor. 9, 25, 2 Tim. 4, 8. See also especially the second-century Shepherd of Hermas, Parable 8.3.6, in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. edn M. W. Holmes (Grand Rapids MI, 1999), p. 457; for the Latin version, Pastor Hermae, see F. X. Funk, ed., Patres apostolici 1, Doctrina apostolorum …, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1901), I, 563. J. Guyon, ‘Les Quatre Couronnés et l’histoire de leur culte des origines au milieu du IXe siècle’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome. Antiquité 87 (1975), 505–61 (pp. 509–10); Roman Martyrs, ed. Lapidge, pp. 455, 668–9. Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae: see next note.

The second guide is De locis sanctis martyrum (also known as Itinerarium Salisburgense). Pertinent excerpts from Notita, De locis and the sacramentaries, with bibliographical citations, are conveniently translated in Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, pp. 661 (no. 6), 663 (no. 8) and 668–72.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 28

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   29

retrieved from the catacombs.19 The biographer’s ‘along with’ confirms that Claudius et soc. were not, originally, the Quattuor Coronati, whose title implies that, as was true for more than one such group of unnamed early Christian martyrs, ‘quorum nomina deus novit’20 (‘as for their names, God knows’). The narrative legend of Claudius et soc.21 takes place during a prolonged visit by Diocletian to some marble quarries somewhere in ‘Pannonia’,22 where the emperor quickly comes to rejoice in the superior workmanship of a team of (initially) four highly skilled masons and sculptors. Secretly Christians, ‘custodientes mandata Dei’ (‘keeping God’s commandments’), their custom is always to begin their work ‘in nomine domini Iesu Christi’ (‘in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ’) and with the sign of the cross.23 The story makes clear that their Christian beliefs and rituals are the secret of their superior craftsmanship, enabling them to succeed brilliantly in fulfilling the emperor’s commissions, whereas the other 622 craftsmen (artifices) and their overseers, five ‘philosophers’,24 who rely on ‘expertise derived from knowledge of Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis I, 115 and 136, note 28; G. B. de Rossi confirms that the patrons’ relics were still being distinguished from those of Claudius et soc. in the eleventh century: ‘I Santi Quattro Coronati e la loro chiesa sul Celio’, Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 3rd Ser., 4 (1879), 45–90 (pp. 81–2).

19

As noted in some early martyrological notices for the unnamed five (or seven) martyred virgins of Sirmium (9 April): H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du Moyen Âge: étude sur la formation du Martyrologe romain (Paris, 1908), p. 111.

20

Acta SS. Nov., III, 765–79; trans. in Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, pp. 456–67.

21

Pannonia comprised portions of what are now several Balkan states; the Danube formed its eastern and northern border.

22

Passio, caps. 1–2 (Acta SS. Nov. III, 765b, 766b), cap. 8 (ibid., 770a). Later in the same chapter (770b–71a) Claudius attributes their work ritual to St Paul’s injunction, ‘Omnia in nomine domini facite’ (‘Do everything in the Lord’s name’), the wording of which is not in the Vulgate but in the ‘Old Latin’ version of I Cor. 10. 31 (Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 460, note 40). See also Col. 3. 23.

23

Philosophus is glossed ‘overseer’, ‘engineer’, ‘designer’, and citing this context only, in A. Blaise, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout, 1954), p. 623 and A. Souter, A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D. (Oxford, 1949), p. 302. For two additional late Latin citations of philosophus, connoting someone learned in a practical art such as surveying or architecture, see Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig, Berlin, etc., 1900–), X (1907), pt. 1, col. 2037, line 62 and col. 2038, lines 8–16. But the use of the word in the present context is especially apt because in early Christian polemic ‘philosophers’ are stereotypically represented as upholders of paganism and enemies of Christian truth, as in, e.g., the third book of The Divine Institutes of Lactantius, Divinarum institutionum liber tertius, De falsa sapientia philosophorum (‘Of the false wisdom of the philosophers’), PL 6, 347–446; see Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. A. Roberts and J.

24

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 29

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

3 0    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

philosophy’,25 are depicted as incompetents. As a result, the philosophers in particular grow increasingly hostile towards the Christian sculptors, whom Diocletian regularly rewards with bonuses, as well as praise for their artistry. The commissions they successfully fulfil include a great statue of the sun god, Sol, in his four-horse chariot (quadriga), carved from a single block of Tasian marble. In its presence, Diocletian ‘rejoices in sacrifices, with their oozings and odors’, before a temple of Sol being newly built on ‘Mount Fertile’ (‘montem pinguem’). After this the emperor has the entire work force decamp to another site, ‘Mount Porphyry’ (‘montem porfyreticum’), also known as ‘The Fiery One’ (‘igneus’), where the four Christians lead an expedition to quarry and carve huge column-shafts and capitals, along with various kinds of vessels, goblets and figurines such as ‘Victories’ and ‘Cupids’, all out of porphyry marble.26 Joining the four at this stage is Simplicius, whose conversion episode, qua narrative, is an artful intermission in the series of sculptural episodes. His iron tools keep breaking as he works on the porphyry, but after they are ‘tempered’ by the chanted blessings of his Christian workmates, Simplicius willingly converts to their faith and is baptized by Bishop ‘Quirillus’ (i.e., Cyril) of Antioch, who has been imprisoned in chains at the quarry site for three years. Meanwhile the philosophers, who have begun suspecting Claudius et soc. of sorcery, learn from them that they are Christians and accuse them, before Diocletian, of sacrilege and disobedience in failing to sculpt the healing god Asclepius, as the emperor has requested. He reluctantly agrees to have his favourite artisans face their accusers in court, not so much for their Christianity as for their rejection of the Asclepius commission.27 At the outset of the court proceedings (patently reminiscent of the trial of Jesus before Pilate28) conducted at intervals over many days, the tribune Lampadius as presiding

25

Donaldson (Edinburgh, 1867–72; rpt. 10 vols., Grand Rapids, MI, 1978–79), VII, 69–101.

‘per peritiam artis phylosofiae’ (Acta SS. Nov., III, 772a), which Lapidge renders ‘according to the engineers’ plans’ (Roman Martyrs, p. 461).

Passio, caps. 2–3, 8–13, ed. Acta SS. Nov., III, 766–7, 770–2.

26

Claudius denounces Asclepius as a ‘most wretched human being’ (hominis miserrimi) and quotes Ps. 134. 18: similes illis fiant qui faciunt ea, et omnes qui confidant in eis (‘Those who make [idols] and have faith in them will become like them’; Acta SS. Nov., III, 774; Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 462 and note 41. On Asclepius as a wretched human, see the scathing short ‘biography’ by Lactantius, Div. Inst. I, De falsa religione deorum, cap. x, ed. PL 6, 160–1; trans. Roberts and Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, VII, 19.

27

28

Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil, p. 71; Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 463, note 43.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 30

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   31

magistrate repeatedly asks Claudius et soc. to refute the philosophers’ charges by merely sacrificing to Sol, but, despite imprisonment and then threats of torture, they refuse, so he finally has them scourged with the fearsome ‘scorpion-whips’. Whereupon Lampadius, suddenly possessed by a demon, tears himself to pieces, and Diocletian angrily orders the five sealed in lead caskets and thrown into a river to drown. News of this causes Bishop Quirillus to fall dead the same day, 8 November.29 Diocletian leaves the quarry site soon afterwards for Sirmium (the imperial capital of Pannonia), but forty-two days later a previously unmentioned Christian sympathizer, appropriately named Nicodemus, retrieves the caskets from the river and takes them home. After eleven months in Sirmium, Diocletian goes to Rome and orders the construction of a temple and statue of Asclepius, to whom members of the military, including the urban prefect’s staff, are ordered to offer sacrifice. Four upper-echelon officials (cornicularii), who refuse to sacrifice, are at once beaten to death with lead whips and their bodies left out in the streets, but St Sebastian and Pope Miltiades bury them in a sandpit catacomb off the Via Labicana.30 Two years later, since the actual names of these four are still unknown, the bishop decrees that they be called Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronianus and Castorius (it is unclear how he knows their names!) and establishes their feast day as 8 November. In a colophon, the hagiographer identifies himself as a census-official’s clerk by the name of ‘Porphyry’.31 It is worth noting here that the four Roman martyrs in the Passio coda, the cornicularii, whom Bishop Miltiades cannot name, would later be identified,

‘sub die VI id(us) nouembris’ (Acta SS. Nov., III, 778), but rendered as 9 November in Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 465.

29

This episode alludes to the fifth-century passio of St Sebastian (BHL 7543), among whose many converts are Roman officials with titles such as primiscrinius and commentariensis, anticipating the anonymous four cornicularii here, but the names of Sebastian’s converts (‘Nicostratus’, ‘Claudius’, ‘Symphorianus’ and ‘Castorius’) anticipate those of the Pannonian sculptors. See Acta S. Sebastiani, caps. x–xi, xix–xx (§§ 31–4, 68, 76), ed. Acta SS. Ianuarii, II, 270, 276; also Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, pp. 11–12, 130–1. On the authorship and date of Sebastian’s passio, see C. Lanéry, ‘Arnobe le Jeune et la Passion de Sébastien (BHL 7543)’, Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 53 (2007), 267–93.

30

The humorous double-entendre (noted by Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil, p. 67) linking this name and the type of marble prominent in the narrative is paralleled by the equally waggish ‘Chrysolite’ (Crisolitus phylosofus), the only ‘philosopher’ actually named in the Passio: see cap. 19, ed. Acta SS. Nov., III, 776a; Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 464).

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 31

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

3 2    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

according to a ninth-century martyrologist, ‘by divine revelation’32 as ‘Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus and Victorinus’, and acknowledged to be the genuine Quattuor Coronati. But ‘custom prevailed’ and Claudius et soc. continued to be honoured, as the pope decreed, with the generic title on the 8 November feast day.33

The Regius ‘Constituciones’

The Middle English verses that summarize the Coronati legend above comprise one section of a longer poem entitled Constituciones artis gemetrie secundum Euclyde34 (henceforth Constituciones),35 ‘The customs of the craft of geometry according to Euclid’. It consists chiefly of a set of statutes or ordinances governing the professional practices of English masons (lines 87–470), to which the poet appends (lines 471–794) various other materials: the early ‘history’ of the stonemasons’ craft; the Coronati verses; instructions on church-going, adapted (often word for word) from John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests;36 and an entire fifteenth-century courtesy poem, Urbanitatis, on how to behave in polite company and at table.37 A somewhat later prose revision of the masons’ Constituciones, the so-called ‘Cooke manuscript’,38 greatly 32

33 34

35

36

37

domino revelante: in Usuardus, Martyrologium (mid-ninth century), ed. J. Dubois, Le Martyrologe d’Usuard, texte et commentaire (Brussels, 1965), p. 338; also PL 124, 669–70. This ‘rationale’ is found, e.g., in the Legenda aurea: see below.

No. 4149 in J. Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005), no. 6641 in the online version, Digital Index of Middle English Verse, DIMEV); both indexes indicate incorrectly that The Lay Folks’ Mass Book is the source of Constituciones. Although its title is plural, Constituciones is treated here as a single work, singular in number.

Constituciones lines 577–692; see Instructions for Parish Priests by John Mirk, ed. E. Peacock, EETS OS 31 (1868), rev. edn, F. Furnivall (London, 1902), of which relevant extracts are printed in Knoop et al., Two Earliest Masonic Mss, pp. 139–45 (right-hand pages). See also NIMEV no. 961 and DIMEV no. 1581. Constituciones, lines 693–794: on facing pages (pp. 147–51). Knoop et al., Two Earliest Masonic Mss, print another manuscript copy of this work; for other manuscripts and editions see NIMEV no. 4153, DIMEV no. 6649. Urbanitatis was known at the court of Edward IV as ‘the booke of urbanitie’: see M. Shaner, ‘Instruction and Delight: Medieval Romances as Children’s Literature’, Poetics Today 13.1, Children’s Literature (Spring 1992), 5–15 (pp. 11–12).

London, BL Additional MS 23198, fols. 4–38, Knoop et al., Two Earliest Masonic Mss, pp. 105–33 (right-hand pages).

38

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 32

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   33

expands and modifies the historical material and some aspects of the statutes, especially with regard to the masons’ annual assembly, but since it cuts out the Coronati verses and the passages on church-going and social etiquette, the Cooke version need not concern us further.39 In a ground-breaking study of Constituciones, Lisa H. Cooper describes it, in the larger context of medieval artisanal literature, as ‘a repository of craft lore, legislation, and instruction … quite unlike what survives from any other medieval craft’.40 Among the ‘lore’ that helps to distinguish Constituciones from the records of other guilds and fraternities is a pseudo-historical tradition according to which the masons’ craft, not unreasonably termed ‘gemetry’ (lines 87 et passim), was originally founded by a ‘grete clerke’, ‘clept Euclyde’ (lines 37, 35),41 and first brought to England in ‘good kynge Adelstonus day’ (line 62), i.e., Æthelstan who ruled Wessex (924–7) and then most of England (927–39). He is credited here with ordering the composition of the stone masons’ ‘statutes’ (lines 485, 487, 495), divided into ‘artyculus’ and ‘poyntys’ (lines 85–6), that form the core of Constituciones (lines 87–470). Before, and in more detail after, this lengthy section of the statutes proper, the poet also records (lines 59–84, 471–96)42 how Æthelstan decreed an annual assembly of English masons, with himself, lords and leading citizens attending, to ‘amende þe defautes’ (lines 473 and 481) of miscreant members, swear obedience to the statutes and receive royal confirmation of them. The poet’s story of Æthelstan’s assembly and statutes, perhaps influenced by an earlier West Midlands poet, Layamon, has only the vaguest historical basis.43 It appears, on the surface, to be a respectful acknowledgement of the Prescott’s analysis of the Cooke manuscript’s revision of Regius (‘Some Literary Contexts’, pp. 53ff. and 68–70, Tables I–II) supersedes that by Knoop et al., Two Earliest Masonic Mss, p. 59.

39

L. H. Cooper, ‘The “Boke of Oure Charges”: Constructing Community in the Masons’ Constitutions’, Journal of the Early Book Society 6 (2003), 1–39 (p. 2); her focus on the Cooke manuscript precludes attention to the Coronati verses in Regius.

40

On medieval masons and geometry, see, e.g., L. R. Shelby, ‘The Geometrical Knowledge of Mediaeval Master Masons’, Speculum 47 (1972), 395–421, especially pp. 395–7 on Euclid in Constituciones; see also J. Rykwert, ‘On the Oral Transmission of Architectural Theory’, AA Files No. 6 (May 1984), 14–27 (pp. 21–5).

41

Sub-titled ‘Alia ordinacio artis gemetrie’ (fol. 19v).

42

Layamon (c. 1200) lauds Æthelstan for initiating many aspects of English law and local government and for founding ‘ᵹilden … mucle and swiδe mære’ (Brut, line 15975), ‘many, very important guilds’; see E. M. Treharne, ‘Romanticizing the Past in the Middle English Athelston’, The Review of English Studies n.s. 50 (1999), 1–21 (p. 6). On Æthelstan’s actual chartering of ‘peace-gilds’, see F. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 354–5.

43

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 33

1/29/2021 7:58:00 AM

3 4    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

masons’ dependence for their customs on English royal authority. Appearances can be deceptive, however, as is made clear in this case by Andrew Prescott’s study of Regius and Cooke in the context of late-medieval English craft guilds and labour laws.44 In his view, Constituciones should be read as a subversive myth-making tract, fabricated on behalf of provincial journeymen masons (as distinct from elite ‘free stone’ masters and sculptors),45 in defiance of a 1425 Act of Parliament that explicitly forbade masons from forming chapters and meeting in annual assemblies. This is because a primary purpose of these assemblies was to coordinate demands for wages higher than their employers (such as mastermasons, lay and ecclesiastical lords) wished to pay.46

‘Ars quatuor coronatorum’

Prescott’s historicist interpretation of the Æthelstan section of Constituciones also enables interpretation of what follows it: a highly compressed version of the Coronati legend, sub-headed Ars quatuor coronatorum (lines 497–534, BL, MS Royal 17 A 1, fols. 20v–22v). On first reading, these verses seem to mark a striking shift in content and focus from what precedes: a shift, that is, from secular lore, seemingly respectful of earthly authority, to a Christian legend defiantly resisting such authority. In the light of Prescott’s argument, however – that the masons’ statutes in Constituciones are in reality subversive of Crown and Parliament – the apparent volte-face of the Coronati verses can be read as actually complementing and continuing, rather than veering away from, the subversive implications of the previous sections of the poem. In invoking the story of four Christian martyrs from a safely distant era, the poet can overtly celebrate the idea of righteous resistance, by a brotherhood of masons, to an aberrant secular authority.47 Prescott, ‘Some Literary Contexts’, pp. 64–5.

44

‘Free stone’ (OED freestone, A.1.a) denotes materials such as chalk and limestone more easily worked into figure-sculpture and decoration, as opposed to those used for load bearing. On English freestone as the origin of freemason (also French franc maçon), see, e.g., J. Gimpel, The Cathedral Builders, trans. T. Waugh (New York, 1983), pp. 68–9.

45

46

47

The 1425 Act targets ‘general chapters and assemblies’ of masons for violating and undermining the 1351 Statute of Labourers, that sought to fix wages after the Black Death: see V. H. Rothschild 2nd, ‘Government Regulation of Trade Unions in Great Britain: I’, Columbia Law Review 38 (1938), 1–48 (p. 10, note 38). On Middle English saints’ lives as vehicles for local communities’ indifference or resistance to national agendas, see C. Sanok, New Legends of England: Forms of Community in Late Medieval Saints’ Lives (Philadelphia, 2018).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 34

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   35

The Coronati verses open as a prayer, the poet slipping into the first person plural (used only rarely thus far in Constituciones), as if speaking with and for his fellow masons rather than about them: Pray we now . to god al-myᵹht . / And to hys swete modur . mary bryᵹht . Þat we mowe kepe . þese artyculus here / And þese poyntes . wel al y-fere . As dede þese holy . martyres . fowre . / Þat yn þys craft . were of gret honoure . (lines 497–502)48

The prayer employs an analogical structure typical of liturgical prayers for a saint’s feast day, whereby a special quality or achievement of the saint is invoked to reinforce the congregation’s plea for the saint’s intercession, or for divine aid in meeting their spiritual needs.49 But the needs in this case are not spiritual in any normal sense, but secular: the familiar liturgical form is co-opted to ask the Almighty and his ‘swete modur’ to enable the masons to fulfil the temporal imperative of ‘keeping’ the statutes of their craft. The subjunctive plural verb ‘we mowe kepe’ (line 499) is nicely ambiguous, connoting that they wish to be both ‘capable of observing’ and also ‘allowed to preserve’ their ‘artyculus’, which king and Parliament officially banned in 1425!50 In another departure from the usual content of such prayers, the ‘holy martyres fowre’ are invoked here neither as intercessors for salvation nor as exemplars of a spiritual quality or virtue, but simply as masons, exemplary for their skill in their craft and for keeping its statutes (lines 501–2), although their Christian piety is amply foregrounded shortly afterwards. Following the prayer, as a transition to the martyrdom narrative proper, the poet continues to celebrate the Coronati as masons: ‘Þey were as gode masonus . as on erþe shul go . / Grauers . and ymage makers . þey were also . / For þey were . werke men . of þe beste’ (lines 503–5). As a result, the unnamed Middle English quotations are not translated in what follows, except where meaning may be obscure or crucial to interpretive analysis.

48

E.g., the ancient Collect for the feast of SS. Fabian and Sebastian (20 January): ‘Deus qui beatos martyres tuos fabianum et sebastianum uirtute constancie in passione roborasti ; ex eorum nobis imitacione tribue pro amore tuo prospera mundi despicere . et nulla eius aduersa formidare’ (God, who strengthened your blessed martyrs Fabian and Sebastian with the virtue of constancy in their suffering, grant us, in emulation of them, to despize, for the sake of your love, the pleasures of the world and to fear none of its adversities), ed. J. W. Legg, The Sarum Missal: Edited from Three Early Manuscripts (Oxford, 1916), p. 241.

49

On the double meanings of both the auxiliary and infinitive verbs here, see OED, may, v.1, II.4 (‘be able to’) and II.5b (‘be permitted to’); and OED, keep, v. I.11 (‘observe, fulfil’) and I.14.a (‘preserve, defend, maintain’).

50

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 35

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

3 6    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

emperor ‘hade . to hem gret luste’ (line 506: ‘was very much drawn to them’) . / He wylned of hem . a ymage to make / Þat mowᵹh51 be worscheped . for hys sake’ (lines 507–8). I take the last clause here to mean that the image or statue commissioned by the emperor ‘was to be worshipped for its own sake’, i.e., in its own right, as an idol, as is made clear in the next couplet: ‘Suche mawmetys . he hade yn hys dawe52 / To turne þe pepule . from crystus lawe’ (lines 509–10). The masons’ rejection of the emperor’s request is conveyed in the next twelve lines (511–22) as part of a lyric celebration of the masons’ constancy in their Christian faith and refusal of the emperor’s idolatry: model masons become models of righteous resistance. For its simple, forceful language and studied, incantatory repetition and variation of key words (such as craft, god, good, cryste, lawe, lay, lore, trwe and mawmetys), the passage is worth quoting in full: But þey were stedefast . yn cristes lay . And to here craft . with-outen nay . Þey loued wel god . and alle hys lore . And weren . yn hys serues . euer-more .

Trwe men þey were . yn þat dawe . 515 And lyued wel . y[n] goddus lawe . Þey þoᵹght no mawmetys . for to make . For no good þat þey . myᵹth take53 . To leuyn on þat mawmetys . for here god . Þey nolde do so . þawᵹ he were wod54 . 520 For þey nolde not . for-sake here trw[e] fay . An[d] by-leue . on hys falsse lay . (lines 511–22) This eulogy is striking in various ways. For one, the saints’ close identification with their craft as masons, and hence with the readership of the Constituciones, continues to be interwoven with their saintly attributes. Alliteration in the first couplet links ‘Christ’ and ‘craft’ as the twin objects of their steadfastness (lines 511–12). A few lines later (lines 518–19), concern with their livelihood as masons is again to the fore, as the poet explains how, in refusing to sculpt 51

52 53

54

mowᵹh is almost certainly a scribal error for mowᵹht, or mowᵹth, ‘had to’ (OED mote, v.1, II.4). ‘He had idols of this sort in his time.’

‘They had no intention of fashioning idols, regardless of how much money they might earn thereby’ (lines 517–18). ‘To believe in that idol just to make money (lit., ‘for their good’), they would not do that, though he (the emperor) might be enraged’ (lines 519–20); god, in order to rhyme here with wood (< OE wōd), must have long ‘o’ and cannot therefore mean ‘God’, as some render it.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 36

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   37

or believe in the emperor’s ‘mawmetys’, they not only incurred his wrath but willingly forfeited potential ‘good’, a word used several times previously in the statutes proper55 in the same sense as here, viz., income, wealth. The central concern of the eulogy, however, as mentioned above, is the focus on the masons’ resistance to image-worship, the emperor’s cult of ‘mawmetys’. In the Passio, as we have seen, Claudius et soc. are secret Christians living under the rule of the notorious pagan Roman emperor, Diocletian, and thus are ostensibly in a very different situation from that of the masons reading Constituciones in fifteenth-century Christian England. But the legend is retold here with a studied vagueness as to place (unidentified) and time, which is merely ‘yn hys dawe … yn þat dawe’ (lines 509, 515). The ‘emperour’ is not named; moreover, the four masons are not explicitly secret Christians, as in the Passio, and neither the emperor nor his subjects are identified as ‘paynims’. The impression thus given, rather, is that of a ruler who wants his Christian people to share his apostasy:56 ‘Suche mawmetys . he had in hys dawe . / To turne þe pepule . from cristus lawe’ (lines 509–10). Admittedly this is an oblique rendering of the anti-Christian persecution initiated under the historical Diocletian and his co-rulers.57 But to English readers in the first few decades of the fifteenth century the Coronati story as thus presented may well have seemed analogous to their own ‘dawe’, when Lollard preachers and their supporters were being arrested and even executed by ecclesiastical and lay authorities for unorthodox beliefs, including the conviction that praying and offering to ‘graued images’ of the Trinity and saints of the Church was against God’s law, and that even sculpting or painting them was a ‘synful and veyn craft.’58

Lines 256, 368–9, 424, 426.

55

A notorious example was Emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’ (361–3).

56

See R. L. Fox, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1986), pp. 585–95.

57

Attributed to Lollard preacher William Thorpe, during interrogation by Archbishop Arundel: see Two Wycliffite Texts: The Sermon of William Taylor 1406, and the Testimony of William Thorpe 1407, ed. A. Hudson, EETS OS 301 (Oxford, 1993), p. 58 (line 1124); see also Jones, ‘Lollards and Images’, pp. 32–3. Arundel reminds Thorpe that it was ‘recordid aᵹens þee of worthi men of Schrouesbirie (‘Shrewsbury’) … þat þou prechedest þere openli þat ymagis owen (‘ought’) not to be worschipid in ony wise’ (p. 56, lines 1056–7); the Regius Constituciones originated in the Shrewsbury area: A. McIntosh et al., A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols. (Aberdeen, 1986), I, 115.

58

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 37

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

3 8    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

In this connection, the language of the Coronati verses includes some of the turns of phrase singled out by Anne Hudson as hallmarks of ‘Lollard style’,59 especially the repeated use of ‘law’ (God’s or Christ’s) to denote the Christian religion and scriptures, while avoiding the more conventional ‘Holy Church’. Four times in this passage the poet uses ‘law’ or its alliterating synonyms (‘lore’ and ‘laye’) to denote the masons’ Christianity, as in ‘crystus lawe’, ‘cristes laye’, ‘god and alle hys lore’ and ‘goddus lawe’ (lines 510–16), the last example in a couplet highlighting another of Hudson’s Lollard hallmarks, ‘Trwe men’ (line 515) living in ‘Goddus lawe’, who would not ‘for-sake here trwe fay’ (521).60 It might seem contradictory that the poet initially celebrates the Coronati as ‘Grauers’ and ‘ymage makers’, and then affects Lollard style to narrate their refusal to sculpt an ‘ymage’. But they refuse the job because it fosters idolatry. Masons reading or hearing the poem would know very well that plenty of other statuary requiring a carver’s skill (e.g., tomb sculptures of ecclesiastics and wealthy layfolk, heraldic beasts, symbols of the four evangelists, roof-boss angels playing bag-pipes, etc.) was unlikely to qualify as the ‘mawmetrie’ denounced by the Lollards. Many journeymen masons, however, on whose behalf (as Prescott argues) Constituciones was composed, might well have endorsed the verses in question here as a coded warning to elite master-sculptors to shun commissions, no matter how profitable, involving images of culted saints and persons of the Trinity. After the above passage, the poet relates the martyrdom itself in a mere six lines (lines 523–8): the emperor has the recalcitrant masons arrested, imprisoned (in ‘a dep presonne’, line 524), and tortured, but the more they suffer pain, ‘Þe more yoye . wes to hem of cristus grace’ (line 526), so that the emperor has no other recourse, ‘no noþur won’61 (line 527) but to execute them: ‘To deþe he lette hem þenne gon’ (line 528). Compared to the Latin Passio, the Regius version of the legend is obviously drastically condensed, at least as narrative. At the same time, as we have seen, the poet devotes ample space to extolling the saints as devotees of their craft and of ‘Goddes lawe’, but he offers no examples of their actual craftsmanship. Later in Constituciones he has no qualms about extending the work with 59

60

61

A. Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London and Ronceverte WVa, 1985), pp. 166–7, 171 and 178 note 31. Cf. the opening clause of a Wycliffite tract, Of feyned contemplatif lif: ‘First, whanne trewe men techen bi Goddis lawe wit and reson’, in Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, ed. K. Sisam (1921; rptd. Oxford, 1955), pp. 119–28 (p. 119, line 5). ‘Goddis lawe’ recurs fifteen times in the remainder of this tract, ‘Holy Chirche’ only once, and with heavy sarcasm: pp. 124–5 (lines 175–81). MED wōn(e) n.(3), 1a.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 38

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   39

hundreds of lines drawn from other poems. So a concern for brevitas alone is probably not his overriding motive for omitting those parts of the legend, especially the quarry and sculpting episodes, that one would have expected to be of real interest to an audience of stone masons. Other redactions of the Passio of Claudius et soc., however, both prior to and contemporary with Constituciones, reveal a similar reluctance to present to wider audiences the very aspects of the Passio – the quarrying and sculpting of marble into statues, figurines and vessels – that, as mentioned earlier, have preoccupied modern medievalists.

The poet’s sources and the medieval English reception of the ‘Coronati’ legend

The Constituciones poet concludes his tribute to the martyred masons by advising readers who wish to know more about their ‘lyf ’ to consult ‘þe legent . of scanctorum’ (lines 529–31). Prescott takes this to refer to the widely known Legenda aurea (LgA) of Jacobus de Voragine (henceforth Jacopo), whose collection of abridged Latin saints’ legends (c. 1260) is suggested by Prescott, following Knoop et al., as the poet’s source.62 It is, of course, reasonable to suppose that, having decided to write an epitome of such a lengthy and complex legend, the poet would consult an already-condensed, abridged version, such as he could expect to find in LgA. And, as indicated below, the verses he produced do share some motifs with the pertinent LgA chapter; but he makes no use of its core elements and clearly consulted other sources, although not necessarily the Passio. LgA’s chapter 160, ‘De quatuor coronatis’, stunningly embodies the reluctance of medieval redactors to describe, even in Latin, the works of art that feature prominently in the first half of the Passio.63 Jacopo’s Coronati chapter is among the two or three shortest and most uncomfortable in his entire collection. Whereas the great majority of his chapters on individual saints offer copious amounts of material, verbatim or lightly reworded, from the original passiones or vitae, ch. 160 is not really a legendum at all, but a brief martyrology entry. Like the equivalent entry in the influential ninth-century Martyrologium of Usuard of St-Germain,64 the LgA chapter offers minimal ‘story’ and focuses Prescott, ‘Some Literary Contexts’, p. 53; see also Knoop et al., p. 49: ‘The Regius MS. account of the Quatuor Coronati … is … probably taken direct from the Legenda Aurea.’

62

Legenda aurea, ed. G. P. Maggioni, 2 vols. (Tavarnuzze, 1998), II, 1130; trans. W. G. Ryan, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993), II, 290–1.

63

Dubois, Martyrologe d’Usuard, p. 338; PL 124, 669–70.

64

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 39

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

4 0    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

instead on rather clumsily sorting out the awkward confusion between the two groups of martyrs variously identified as the ‘Quattuor Coronati’. Jacopo explains how, by the decree of Pope Miltiades, the five sculptors (Claudius et soc.) came to be venerated under the title which originally designated four unknown martyrs (later divinely revealed as Severus et soc.). Whereas Usuard deals first with Claudius et soc., before turning to the other four, Jacopo reverses the order, signalling in effect that, for him, Severus et soc. are the titular Quattuor Coronati. After naming them, he tells their story in a single clause – ‘on Diocletian’s orders they were beaten to death with lead scourges’65 – and turns then to Claudius et soc. Here he omits some of Usuard’s narrative details (see below) and substitutes two motifs from the Passio: namely, the five masons’ mastery of their craft (‘omnem sculpture artem haberent’) and their unwillingness to sculpt an idol (‘ydolum quoddam sculpere nollent’). Jacopo couples this second motif with a third, also absent from Usuard, namely, the masons’ refusal ‘to offer the least bit of a sacrifice’ (‘nec sacrificare aliquatenus consentirent’),66 which prompts Diocletian to have them executed immediately. The Middle English poet, as we saw earlier, amply develops the first two of these motifs, possibly following Jacopo’s lead, but in place of the third motif – the refusal to sacrifice – the poet substitutes the masons’ ‘true faith’: ‘For þey nolde not . for-sake here trwe fay / And by-leue on hys falsse lay’ (lines 521–2). Whereupon, as we saw earlier, Diocletian has them imprisoned and tortured (lines 524–6), but to no avail: the greater the pain they suffer, the more they rejoice in ‘Christes grace’, and the emperor has no choice but to put them to death. The poet’s account of what prompts the masons’ execution looks like an artful elaboration of details in Usuard rather than in Jacopo’s LgA. In the Passio itself, and all the other abridged versions I have examined (some of them touched on below), the masons are finally executed in reaction to the bizarre death of the tribune Lampadius after he orders them scourged. In LgA, Usuard and Constituciones, however, this Lampadius episode is omitted entirely, but only in Usuard and the Constituciones does the masons’ stubborn faith during imprisonment and torture directly result in their deaths. As Usuard tells it, Claudius et soc. are ‘first thrust (trusi) into prison, then most grievously scourged with ‘scorpion-whips’ (scorpionibus), but when they 65

66

Qui iubente Diocletiano usque ad mortem ictibus plumbatorum cesi sunt (Legenda aurea, ed. Maggioni, p. 1130; trans. Ryan, The Golden Legend, p. 290).

In the passio, refusing to sculpt Asclepius and sacrifice to Sol gets them imprisoned; their repeated assertion of their faith in Christ and contempt for idolatry prompts Lampadius to have them scourged; finally, his violent death leads directly to their execution.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 40

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   41

cannot be converted (mutari) from their faith in Christ (a fide Christi), they are ordered by Diocletian to be cast headlong into the open sea’.67 The Middle English poet appears, then, to have consulted, as models of brevity, two of the most widely available medieval hagiographic compendia, and selectively synthesized material from both, while ignoring their mutual concern with the problematic identities of the 8 November saints.68 The Constituciones poet also adds several features lacking in Usuard’s martyrology and LgA. For example, the masons’ devotion to God’s ‘law’: this may have been triggered by the Passio’s early epithet for Claudius et soc. – ‘custodientes mandata dei’ (‘keeping God’s commandments’69) – but the poet could just as easily have heard or read it in the first lection at Matins for the Coronati in the Sarum Breviary, which was widely used in late medieval English secular cathedrals and churches.70 Another feature – the emperor’s admiration for the masons’ work (line 506: ‘Þe emperour hade to hem gret luste’) – is prominent in the Passio, but also figures in a lection in the Legenda compiled by Exeter’s Bishop John of Grandisson (mid-fourteenth century). He relates that Claudius et soc., working in Christ’s name with the sign of the cross, produced things impossible for other master masons, ‘for which they gained great favor with the emperor’.71 Other more contemporary motifs in the Middle English ‘primo in carcerem trusi, deinde scorpionibus gravissime sunt caesi, sed cum a fide Christi mutari non possent, iussi sunt a Diocletiano in medio mari praecipites dari’ (Dubois, Martyrologe d’Usuard, p. 338; PL 124, 669–70); the drowning at sea here is adapted from another ninth-century martyrologist, Florus of Lyon, but ultimately derives from the martyrdom of the Roman official Nicostratus and others in the Acta of St Sebastian (above, note 30). See also Dubois, p. 338, note 1 and Quentin, Martyrologes historiques, pp. 275–6.

67

On the circulation of LgA as early as c. 1290 in the West Midlands, see M. Görlach, ‘Middle English Legends, 1220–1530’, in Hagiographies: histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, ed. G. Philippart (Turnhout, 1994-), I: 429–85 (445 ff.). For English use of Usuard by the tenth century, see M. Gretsch, ‘Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 57: A Witness to the Early Stages of the Benedictine Reform in England?’, Anglo-Saxon England 32 (2003), 111–46, (pp. 112, 134–5). The entry for the Coronati in the martyrology by John Grandisson, bishop of Exeter (d. 1367), is verbatim from Usuard: see Ordinale Exon(iense), ed. J. N. Dalton et al., 4 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 37, 38, 63, 79 (London, 1909–1940), II, 446.

68

Acta SS. Nov., III, 765; Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 456.

69

Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. F. Procter and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1882–86), III, cols. 1004–6 (1004).

70

‘Unde magnam apud imperatorem, sunt graciam consecuti’: Ordinale Exon, ed. Dalton, III (Legenda Exon), 405. Grandisson’s Legenda lections for the Coronati

71

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 41

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

4 2    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

poem, such as the ‘Lollard’ touches, the masons’ devotion to their craft and its ‘articulus’ and the ‘good (i.e., the wages, line 518) that they forfeit by refusing to sculpt the idol, seem likely to be the poet’s own additions to his thoughtful synthesis of elements in his Latin sources.72 Although he is thus both creative and selective in adapting the Latin traditions to the specialized context of Constituciones, the Middle English poet nonetheless shares Usuard’s and Jacopo’s reticence, as noted above, regarding certain aspects of the Latin Passio. The same reticence is generally evident, throughout the Middle Ages, in the English reception of the Coronati, a brief sketch of which will conclude this essay. The Roman Christian missionaries sent by Pope Gregory the Great to Anglo-Saxon Kent in 597 attempted to recreate, in their archiepiscopal centre in Canterbury, an ecclesiastical topography resembling the Caelian Hill locale of Gregory’s own monastery of St Andrew in Rome. Not surprisingly therefore, among the churches built in Canterbury during the Roman mission’s early decades, as Bede’s History records,73 was a martyrium or chapel dedicated to the Quattuor Coronati, whose church in Rome was ‘a near neighbor’ of Gregory’s St Andrew’s.74 But Bede shows no interest in the Coronati elsewhere in his works. The feast day is absent from his Martryologium75 and

72

73

74

75

feast day, condensed from the Passio, are not to be confused with his martyrology entry for them, from Usuard (see above, note 68).

The motif of lost wages could be inferred from the passio’s references to gifts given or promised the masons by the emperor, e.g., in caps. 3, 10 and 12: ‘dedit dona magna artificibus’ … ‘dona multiplicavit’ … ‘sublimabo vos et divitiis et donis’; Acta SS. Nov., III, 767, 771, 772; Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, pp. 457, 460, 461). But absent other firm evidence for his using the Passio directly, it seems logical, especially in the context of Constituciones, to credit the poet’s initiative here.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), pp. 158–9.

N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984), p. 34 and ‘Canterbury, Rome, and the Construction of English Identity’, in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald Bullough, ed. J. M. H. Smith (Leiden, 2000), pp. 221–46 (p. 222); also E. Cambridge, ‘The Architecture of the Augustinian Mission’, in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. R. Gameson (Stroud, 1999), pp. 83–106.

See Quentin, Martyrologes historiques, pp. 47–8, listing the authentic Bedan narrative entries, omitting the Coronati; a short non-narrative entry for them is inserted in manuscripts of the much augmented, post-Bedan ‘seconde famille’ (Quentin, p. 55).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 42

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   43

Chronica maiora,76 as also from the eighth-century York Metrical Calendar77 and Calendar of Willibrord,78 and from the hagiographic writings of Bede’s older contemporary, Aldhelm of Malmesbury (c. 640–709), despite his having spent time in both Canterbury and Rome.79 From the ninth century on, however, the Coronati did become better known in Anglo-Saxon England. The earliest and most important extant manuscript copy of the original Passio (BHL 1836) was actually produced at Canterbury in the first quarter of the ninth century.80 From the ninth through the eleventh century, the 8 November feast day is in every surviving English calendar,81 and the Coronati receive a picturesque tribute in the selective metrical calendar by Byrhtferth of Ramsey (c. 992): ‘These holy four, with roseate garlands crowned’.82 Although only one of the twenty-eight Anglo-Saxon calendars explicitly identifies the titular Coronati as Claudius et soc.,83 their names are usually spelled out in the liturgy, in the standard ‘Proper’ Collect for their feast day.84 The anonymous vernacular prose Old English Martyrology, which circulated from the ninth through the eleventh century, likewise identifies the Beda Venerabilis, Opera Didascalia II, ed. C. W. Jones, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123B (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 463–544.

76

A. Wilmart, ‘Un témoin anglo-saxon du calendrier métrique d’York’, Revue Bénédictine 46 (1934), 41–69, at p. 58 (for November feast days).

77

The Calendar of St. Willibrord from Ms. Paris Lat. 10837, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 55 (London, 1918), at plate XI (fol. 39b) and p. 13 (November feast days).

78

On Aldhelm in Canterbury and Rome, see, e.g., M. Lapidge and M. Herren, Aldhelm: The Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 7–10.

79

Paris, BN lat. 10861, fols. 75v–82v (manuscript ‘A1’ in Delehaye’s Acta SS. edition); see M. P. Brown, ‘Paris, BN lat. 10861 and the Scriptorium of Christ Church, Canterbury’, Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986), 119–37.

80

R. Rushworth, Saints in English Kalendars before 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society 117 (London, 2008), Table XI (an unpaginated double fold-out between pp. 58 and 59).

81

Quattuor hi sancti roseis sertis Coronati (translation mine), ed. M. Lapidge, ‘A Tenth-century Metrical Calendar from Ramsey’, Revue Bénédictine 94 (1984), 326–69 (p. 366). See also Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009), p. 175, re. Archbishop Oswald of York’s visit to Ramsey on the feast day of the Coronati.

82

Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. v. 32 (early eleventh century Glastonbury), no. 13 in Table XI in Rushworth, Saints in English Kalendars.

83

E.g. (from early eleventh-century Winchester), ‘gloriosios martyres claudium nicostratum. symphorianum castorium atque simplicium. fortes in sua confessione cognouimus’. The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw

84

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 43

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

4 4    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

saints of 8 November as ‘Quattuor Coronatorum … feowere strancræftigan’ (four stonemasons), and names them individually, along with their convert Simplicius. The martyrologist’s familiarity with the Passio is indicated in narrative details absent from the Latin martyrologies, e.g., that there were 622 other ‘cræftigena’ (skilled workmen) and that the emperor gave the five Christians ‘maran gyfa’ (more gifts) than the others. But the martyrologist is reticent about the masons’ work: he remarks vaguely that ‘they sculpted each stone as the emperor desired’, and attributes their execution simply to the charge of being Christians practising ‘drycræft’ (witchcraft).85 A more circumstantial account could have been expected from the prolific vernacular homilist and hagiographer Ælfric of Eynsham, active in the late tenth century and early eleventh. He seems to have had access to a considerable corpus of Latin passiones, in something like the bulky passionale known today as the ‘Cotton-Corpus Legendary’, which includes a lightly revised version (BHL 1837) of the Passio of Claudius et soc.86 But the martyred masons’ story is not among the scores of legends rendered by Ælfric into his signature Old English prose, and is absent also from the substantial corpus of anonymous Old English hagiographies extant from the late Anglo-Saxon period.87 Nor did anyone supply this lacuna after the Norman Conquest, despite the continued availability of copies of the Latin Passio through the Anglo-Norman period and later,88 and despite the regular observance of the 8 November feast day in secular and monastic churches.89 The composers of Middle English

85

86

87

88

89

Society 11 (London, 1896), p. 223; see also (late eleventh century) The Missal of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. M. Rule (Cambridge, 1896), p. 119.

C. Rauer, The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 212–13 (text and translation) and 305 (notes).

On pre-Conquest copies of the legendary, see P. Jackson and M. Lapidge, ‘The Contents of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. P. E. Szarmach (Albany NY, 1996), pp. 131–46 and T. Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c. 1075–c. 1125 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 154–7 (p. 157, n. 68).

See M. Lapidge, ‘Ælfric’s Sanctorale’, in Szarmach, Holy Men, pp. 115–29; J. E. Cross, ‘English Vernacular Saints’ Lives before 1000 A.D.’ and E. G. Whatley, ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, in Philippart, Hagiographies, II, respectively 413–27 and 429–99. E.g., from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: London, BL, Arundel MS 91 (Canterbury, St Augustine’s), fols. 218v–222v; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 354 (‘West Country’), fols. 31v–36r; Gloucester Cathedral, MS 1 (Leominster, Herefordshire) fols. 57v–60r. E.g., F. Wormald, ed., English Benedictine Kalendars after A.D. 1100, 2 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 77, 81 (London, 1939, 1946).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 44

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   45

saints’ legends, including those contributing to successive recensions of the South English Legendary90 (from the late thirteenth to the fifteenth century), were obviously just as reluctant as their Anglo-Saxon predecessors to offer the story of the martyred masons to lay publics. Apart from the Constituciones, only two other Middle English prose collections give space to the Coronati: the Middle English prose Gilte Legende (c. 1438) and Caxton’s Golden Legend (1485), which each provide merely a close translation of LgA’s chapter 160.91 Readings for the 8 November feast day at Matins, in larger secular and monastic churches, are without exception limited to three lections (from the Passio, however, not from the ‘Commune Sanctorum’), out of a possible nine or twelve, which indicates that the feast was never of high grade. And although there is some variety in the way the liturgists of the different ‘Uses’ select and condense the Passio’s contents, the masons’ works of art, especially Sol in his quadriga, are largely censored out. Only one composer, a monastic, offers any hint of what Claudius et soc. actually produced for Diocletian.92 With a couple of exceptions,93 the liturgists also omit the masons’ refusal to sculpt Asclepius, as if to avoid the implication that their oeuvre might include idols. In the York lections, after being arrested for no apparent reason, they are scourged for refusing to ‘adore’ Sol, then executed right after Lampadius’s death. Even less The South English Legendary, ed. C. D’Evelyn and A. J. Mill, 3 vols., EETS OS 235, 236 and 244 (London, 1956, 1959). A fifteenth-century recension of the South English Legendary in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, expands the roster from D’Evelyn and Mill’s 90 chapters to 135, but without adding the Coronati; see T. R. Liszka, ‘The South English Legendaries’, in Rethinking the South English Legendaries, ed. H. Blurton and J. Wogan-Browne (Manchester, 2011), pp. 23–65 (pp. 39 and 59–62).

90

Gilte Legende, ed. R. Hamer, with V. Russell, 3 vols., EETS OS 327, 328 and 339 (Oxford, 2006–12), II, 826–27 (text), III, 423 (notes). Caxton’s 1483 English version, filtered through the fourteenth-century French version by Jean de Vignay, is likewise identical to LgA cap. 160: see, e.g., the Temple Classics edition, The Golden Legende or Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton, ed. F. S. Ellis, 7 vols. (London, 1900), VI, 139. The Coronati are excluded from the early sixteenth century Kalendre of the newe legende of Englande (London, 1516).

91

‘And fashion for me’, says Diocletian, ‘the image of the god Asclepius, and lions spouting water and an eagle, and stags and the likeness of many peoples’ (et simulachrum dei asclepii michi fabricate et leones infundentes aquam et aquilam et ceruos et gentium multarum similitudinem): The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, 6 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 69–71, 76, 78, 80 (London, 1932–42), IV, Sanctorale ( July to December), fol. 374; cf. the Passio, cap. 13, Acta SS. Nov., III, 773a and Lapidge, Roman Martyrs, p. 461.

92

ymaginem asclepij facere recusarent: John of Grandisson, Legenda Exon, p. 405; see also the Hyde, Winchester, monastic breviary (previous note).

93

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 45

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

4 6    E. G o rdon W h at l e y

specific are the lections from Sarum, where the masons are arrested simply for practising Christianity, and their scourging is punishment for refusing to ‘honor the deities of old.’94 The relatively chilly reception accorded the legend and cult of the Coronati in medieval England was surely due in part to the problematic identification of the Quattuor Coronati as either five masons or four civil servants. But the story itself, as a martyr legend, must also have seemed problematic. To medieval eyes its shortage of miracles, and its oversupply of works of art, must have seemed less edifying, less clearly ‘saintly’, than the episodes considered appropriate for readings in church on the martyrs’ feast day: namely, their conversion of Simplicius (included in the York lections and elsewhere); their eminently martyr-like confessions of their faith; their defiant denunciations of idolatry (prominent in the Sarum lections); the scourging with ‘scorpion whips’; and (finally a miracle, albeit punitive!) the demonic destruction of Lampadius, which is in all the breviary lections. Conversely, one can imagine learned medieval readers being somewhat perplexed, even disturbed, by the cheerful nonchalance with which Christian masons use the sign of the cross and the name of the Lord to ensure their success in sculpting an enormous statue of Sol in his chariot, in the presence of which the pagan emperor ‘exulted in sacrifices with their oozings and odors, and gave great gifts to the artists’95 while Claudius et soc. went back to work producing columns, Cupids and more, for the new temple of Sol. All of which seems at odds with their later refusal to sculpt Asclepius, but there is nothing in the Passio narrative to resolve the contradiction.96 Under these circumstances, it is quite probable that the poet of the Coronati verses, if he had not actually seen the Passio proper, was unaware that his ‘holy martyres fowre’ sculpted for Diocletian anything resembling a ‘simulachrum Solis cum quadriga’ (a statue of the Sun god in his four-horsed car), which in any case would have been quite out of place in the poem. By contrast, one of the Shropshire poet’s more exalted and prolific literary contemporaries, John Lydgate, monk of Bury St Edmunds (1370–c. 1450), had no qualms about incorporating the figure of Sol into his Christian aesthetic, and thereby emulating, in his own way, the legendary masons whose 94

95

96

Breviarium ad usum insignis Ecclesie Eboracensis, ed. S. Lawley, 2 vols., Surtees Society 71, 75 (London, 1880–83), II, 675–6; ‘Ut antiquis numinibus detis honorem’. Breviarium … Sarum, ed. Procter and Wordsworth, III, 1004–5. Et coepit in eodem loco sacrificiis et unguentis et odoribus laetare, et dedit dona magna artificibus, Acta SS. Nov., III, 767; my translation differs from that of Lapidge, who emends the text (Roman Martyrs, p. 457, and note 31).

De Rossi’s attempt to resolve it (‘I Santi Quattro Coronati’, p. 49) is unconvincing.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 46

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Th e L e ge nd of the Q uatt uor Cor onati   47

cheerful sculpting of Sol cum quadriga is suppressed in the Anglo-Latin and Middle English redactions of the Coronati legend. At one point in ‘The Legend of St. Austin at Compton’, Lydgate’s miracle tale about tithing in early Anglo-Saxon England, he indulges in a characteristic piece of ‘aureate’, Christian-humanist rapture, when he imagines Gregory the Great’s historic mission to the English in their heathen ‘dirknesse’ as the dawning of ‘the brihte bemys cleere / Of Cristes lawe’, and goes on to picture Christ himself as ‘Sol justicie’ (the Sun of righteousness) in ‘Phebus goldene char’ drawn by ‘foure steedys’, whose charioteer is ‘blissed Austyn, by goostly elloquence … trewe Auriga of foure gospelleeris’. It seems to me possible that the composer and earliest audience of the Passio of Claudius et soc. understood the legend’s vivid imagery of Sol in similar terms to Lydgate’s, each variously reflecting the early Christian adoption of the imagery of ‘the East’, the dawn and daylight, from the Old and New Testaments and late Roman ‘solar monotheism’, as metaphors of the Godhead. 97

‘The Legend of St Austin at Compton’ (NIMEV no. 1875, DIMEV no. 3085), lines 73–112, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. McCracken, EETS ES 107 (London, 1911), pp. 195–6. Behind Lydgate’s Sol justitiae (line 108), see Mal. 4. 2 and the fifth of the Advent season’s ‘O’ antiphons: O oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et Sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebros et umbra mortis (Liber Responsalis, ed. PL 78, 733; ‘O rising one, splendor of light eternal and Sun of righteousness, come and enlighten those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death’); see also Luc. 1. 78–9, Ioh. 8. 12. On ‘solar monotheism’, see A. D. Lee, ‘Traditional Religions’, in The Cambridge Companions to the Age of Constantine, ed. N. Lenski (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 159–79 (pp. 174–5 and note 77).

97

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 47

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

3 What Do the Numbers Mean? The Case for Corpus Studies A. R. BENNETT

M

t

ichael Sargent’s 2008 essay ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’ in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England subtly shifted the scope of what is possible for the literary historian of medieval manuscripts.1 For a young Ph.D. candidate encountering a constellation of an expansive and temporally exotic literary culture, that essay sparked a revelation about the untapped knowledge that must lie in manuscript corpus data in the aggregate. I echoed Michael’s title, asking myself ‘what do the numbers mean?’ What could they mean if we had more of them? If we had all of them? Rather than focus on case studies and canonical work, what would we uncover if we tried to count – or be accountable to – the numbers of manuscripts, the vicissitudes of multiple copies and the numerous anonymous works existing in single copies? What would late medieval literary culture look like if we were able to bring the contours of its totality into view? Michael’s work suggested an entirely unexplored field of quantitative codicology. If we are to take on such a quantitatively – and therefore computationally assisted – codicology, we must redefine the corpus as a new object of inquiry for literary historians. ‘The corpus’ is not new to manuscript scholars, and in some sense has always haunted literary and historical work that takes on manuscript analysis. What I am suggesting here, however, is that we should move the spectre of the corpus into the foreground and attempt to understand its whole as integral to how we understand the work of writing itself. This view is available to us only through data and the aggregate reading that it enables. Because a corpus that is not flattened in the service of providing an authorial text is a larger, more complex, more multiple and less totalized

1

M. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 48

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   49

phenomenon, it requires an expanded set of tools to become legible. When these tools are brought to bear on the larger phenomenon, we might call what we are doing ‘corpus studies’ to reflect the way in which the methodology holds itself accountable to the work of literature as it is constituted by its whole corpus, not merely an edited text or a particular manuscript. Because the object of study in quantitative analysis is not as self-evident as a standard (singular) scholarly object, the researcher must define the parameters of what is meaningful to their inquiry and what is not. Michael’s choice of the Middle English corpus as his object simultaneously enables and restricts his analysis. His approach allows us to see a bigger picture than we ever have before, but we are restricted by the available data and the pragmatics of collecting and using it. His overview is confined to those works surviving in the largest number of manuscripts. One of the intrinsic limits of beginning to do the work of quantitative analysis, then, is that it is always only a beginning. More work, more data and more aggregation must follow for the picture to approach the scale at which we can approximate any kind of totality, particularly if the quantitative method is to influence how we understand the literary-historical culture that produced it. Michael’s essay was, necessarily, a start. Here I would like to make the case for following one of the many paths that his foray has opened up to the field of manuscript studies. We will first turn to Michael’s quantitative work, its justifications and the implications of its application at a larger or more comprehensive scale. Then, we will turn to a corpus case study of the Scale of Perfection to demonstrate how this type of analysis can reshape substantial portions of our traditional understandings of late medieval English manuscript culture. By turning to a specific set of manuscripts, I hope to highlight how the aggregation of manuscript data accompanied by graphical inscriptions of that data along different axes of analysis gives us a newly developed ability to visualize manuscript culture writ large – on a scale unthinkable without the digital extension of our thinking apparatus.

What can numbers mean, really? In his essay, Michael acknowledges how a corpus-wide analysis of Middle English manuscripts is constrained by conventional methods: The number of ways that we can answer the question of what people were reading in English in the later medieval period is relatively limited: we can use the number of surviving manuscripts to try to gauge which works were available in greater or lesser numbers; we can look for references to or lines

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 49

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

5 0    A . R . Be nne t t

lifted from the works of one author in the writings of other authors, or in writings by the same author, or note verbal echoes, or the use of memorable phrases or lines – attributed or unattributed – from one work in others; or we can search medieval library catalogues and book-lists, as well as bequests, for signs of the ownership – and thus, probably, the readership – of Middle English books.2

Each of these methods presents limitations and flaws as well as unique methodologies. The choice to dive into surviving manuscripts is, essentially, arbitrary and does not indicate the primacy of one approach to the exclusion of the others. Indeed, one might hope that some of us can follow Michael down the first rabbit hole and other scholars, perhaps in other disciplines, might take up the other two threads. Therefore we shall, as he did, focus on ‘how we can use the evidence of numbers of surviving manuscripts as a way to deduce information’ about the larger literary culture.3 Despite debate over how well surviving manuscripts represent the original production and circulation of medieval works, Michael’s argument for their use boils down to blunt pragmatism. We draw conclusions about late medieval literary history from numbers of surviving manuscripts not because they are a perfect representation of literary culture, nor because we have found a historically airtight reason or method to do so, but simply because we must. Surviving manuscripts constitute the bulk of the evidence we have of manuscript production, and one of the three major sources of evidence for circulation, so we pursue them as a source of information because they are what we have to excavate. Michael lays out the mechanism of ‘taking the numbers of surviving manuscripts as a rough indication of the number originally produced, and the number originally produced as a gauge of the demand for copies in that age of bespoke book production’.4 He acknowledges, however, both that this is a logically imperfect assumption and that it will provide insight into only one facet of the Middle English corpus. Further, as he points out, arguments for increased and decreased survival rates based on features of manuscripts go in all directions and almost certainly suggest that no one rule of survival can possibly be applied to the whole corpus or even to categories of manuscripts. An additional flaw in taking surviving numbers as a reliable metric for numbers of manuscripts originally produced, Michael concedes, is the likelihood of inconsistent survival rates for different texts. He observes that there is a Ibid., p. 205.

2

Ibid.

3

Ibid., p. 207.

4

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 50

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   51

disproportionate number of surviving manuscripts from particular religious houses,5 which would certainly affect the selection and preservation of texts. To this he adds that ‘the pattern of survival of the manuscripts of a medieval text is independent of its original pattern of dissemination, to a greater or lesser degree, and for different reasons for different texts’.6 Moreover, any idea of ‘original production’ may be something of an anachronistic misnomer, given that books themselves were so often remade, supplemented and rearranged when rebound, as Kathryn M. Rudy reminds us in her excellent work on late medieval Netherlandish books of hours, Piety in Pieces.7 Rudy’s study is of Dutch books of hours, but Michael’s study of The Scale of Perfection and my own work with Piers Plowman manuscripts highlight the regularity with which even texts that we now consider to have been relatively stable, like the Scale, had the tendency to be supplemented by later scribes or owners.8 Despite this degree of uncertainty, Michael insists that ‘we can still speak – and, I think, with some assurance – in comparative and relative terms, that is, that the numbers of surviving manuscripts do correlate approximately with the number of manuscripts originally copied’.9 And here he has hit upon the power of aggregation: the idiosyncrasies and errors largely come out in the wash. While we can never account for an absolute number of manuscripts of any text that were produced in the Middle Ages, aggregate reading can highlight patterns through its display of relative frequencies. I want to take some time here to explain why I use the term ‘aggregate reading’ rather than one of the existing digital humanities terms and to highlight how aggregating is the necessary epistemological mechanism of any computationally assisted reading method. Critiques of quantitative and digital ‘reading’ techniques often cite a kind of ‘flattening’ of a complex object that critics of digital scholarship find off-putting, if not downright sacrilegious. Indeed, Michael combats predictable resistance to his quantity-based methodology through his refutation of William Marx’s depiction of an ‘uncritical … census of the manuscripts of a medieval text as a measure of its popularity or

5 6 7

8

9

Ibid., p. 208.

Ibid., pp. 208–9.

K. M. Rudy, Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts (Cambridge, 2016). See the Z-text of Piers Plowman (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851) and London, British Library, MS Harley 6579 copy of Scale I. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’, p. 212, emphasis mine.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 51

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

5 2    A . R . Be nne t t

importance for the culture in which it was produced’.10 The pragmatism of his tabular approach, however, need not be collapsed into the ‘uncritical census’ that so worried Marx. The creation of data from a material phenomenon – like a manuscript corpus – is neither ‘uncritical’ nor ‘objective’. Moreover, the narrowing of analysis to one cross-comparable facet – ‘flattening’ – is not always a bad thing. Flattening – or limiting the information one takes into consideration to a single axis of analysis – is a useful technique. We might even consider that the production of a text from manuscripts is a kind of flattening. It is the extraction of one kind of information (linguistic, written, symbolic, textual) from a much larger material phenomenon, whether that be a single manuscript or a collection of manuscripts. What texts have tended to do, however, is to supplant the work of literature in all its glorious complexity. It has become the ‘work of literature’, much to the detriment of our ability to understand works as material things and to acknowledge works of literature as embodied practices that were enacted within a concrete ecosystem and which left their traces in a series of artifacts, or really, art-iculations.11 Surrogacy and supercession are not what a material-digital epistemology affords. When we extract data along a single axis, and then acknowledge the limits of that extraction, we enable both a narrowing of our analytical scope and a widening of our ability to see that information across a larger body of objects. For an example of how this works, let us turn to the Scale of Perfection manuscripts. We could track the physical measurements of folios for all Scale manuscripts, which would give us the ability to meaningfully compare the size of a single manuscript to the average size of most Scale manuscripts. Actually, we would have to track just the height across all manuscripts. The average height of a Scale of Perfection manuscript is 254.4 mm. This datum by itself is not terribly useful, but if we combine it with the average width (176 mm) and then multiply to get the area of a single leaf, we then find out that the average size of a leaf in a Scale of Perfection manuscript is 505 cm2. This information still is not particularly meaningful unless we can put it in conversation with some other information. We can, for instance, compare it to similar information about the Piers Plowman corpus, whose manuscripts 10 11

Ibid., pp. 205–6.

I use ‘art-iculation’ rather than ‘artifact’ because of the ongoing making of the art object in the current scholarly interaction with it. An artifact is finished. It is accomplished. It is made. An art-iculation is a making legible that occurs when matter and meaning converge at a particular point to make a thing legible under certain conditions. I explore this concept more fully in my essay ‘The Ecology of Articulation and Aggregate Reading’, PMLA 131.2 (2016), 356–63.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 52

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   53

average about 255 mm x 170 mm for a leaf size of 433 cm2. In this sense, we can see that Scale manuscripts and Piers manuscripts are quite similar, albeit the latter a bit smaller. Alternatively, we can take the data for a single manuscript and compare it to the average to determine whether or not it is a special case. Sister manuscripts Vernon (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1) and Simeon (London, British Library, MS Additional 22283), for instance, at 540 mm x 390 mm and 590 mm x 390 mm, respectively, are significantly larger than the majority of other manuscripts. If we exclude those two outliers from the Scale and Piers data, we find that the average size of Scale manuscripts have a page area of 388 cm2,12 while the average Piers manuscript has a page area of 427 cm2. This is a substantial difference, and we can back up the comparison that Michael makes when he says that Scale manuscripts are ‘smaller even’ than Piers Plowman manuscripts.13 We could also combine the information about the size of Scale folios with information from another axis, like data pertaining to the average size of the written frame in Scale manuscripts. The average frame measurements give us a framed area of 302 cm2 on each page. Again, even with these basic computations, this information does not become meaningful until we combine it with more data from yet another axis of analysis. If we then take our frame sizes and our leaf sizes together, we can now figure out what percentage of the surface area the frame occupies within a Scale manuscript. If we calculate the percentage of the folio the frame occupies throughout the corpus, we find that the Scale text takes up, on average, 50 per cent of the page, with a range from 37 per cent in the London, Inner Temple Library Petyt MS 524 to 64 per cent in the Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique MS 2544–5 – each of which could be meaningfully examined as case studies that deviate from the norm. With just this small set of comparisons along seven axes14 we can see that ‘flattening’ manuscript data to a single measurement or point of reference and then comparing that measurement across the whole corpus yields meaningful information only if we are then able to combine and compare that information to other commensurate extractions. When we combine each single axis with This number differs somewhat from Michael’s calculation of 285 cm2 for the average page area in Scale manuscripts, exclusive of Vernon and Simeon. Given that he has examined all the manuscripts in person and I am relegated to catalogue data, I would hazard that his number is more correct. I, however, do not have the data to back that number up, so I defer here to my data. Either way, however, Michael’s observation of the relative sizes of the Scale and Piers manuscripts stands.

12

Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’, p. 232.

13

Folio height, folio width, folio area, frame height, frame width, frame area, percent of folio occupied by frame.

14

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 53

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

5 4    A . R . Be nne t t

others we start to see the cumulative effect of these axes of analysis. This is why I dub this method ‘aggregate reading’. We must aggregate data first, but then even the result of that aggregation becomes only one axis of analysis. These axes are meaningful only when they are aggregated as well. Michael’s shift toward not merely a catalogic recitation of numbers of manuscripts, but the aggregation of numbers of numbers and their display in simple graphical visualizations is a major shift in the ‘technology’ of manuscript study. It is underpinned by dozens, if not hundreds, of individual studies of individual manuscripts (by individual experts) that have then been aggregated into a multiplicity of catalogues for repositories and collections. The layers of aggregation in this case yield data ripe for incorporating into a yet larger aggregation. The larger the aggregation of data, the more that individual details fade in order to bring into focus broad patterns within the larger phenomenon of Middle English manuscript transmission. Part of this new technology includes not only data15 but also the techniques we use to present these aggregations so that we might make meaningful interpretations from them. This is where data visualizations enter into our methodological apparatus. We can render our information legible in any number of traditional inscriptions, like textual arguments, tables, charts and graphs. We can similarly devise or use newer forms of spatializing information that are still being engendered and theorized in data science and digital humanities, such as thick mapping, infographics and data visualization networks (also called ‘network graphs’). This methodology ‘aggregates data even as it aggregates apparatuses to produce data’ from which it also ‘accumulates inscriptions’, potentially ad infinitum. There is no final aggregation or data set. Rather, the data can grow and/or be resampled in any number of ways, however it becomes meaningful to readers.16 It is in the superposition of all these inscriptions that we start to see the contours of an infinitely complex material thing made legible through our 15

16

To be clear, ‘data’ in this case is not meant to indicate ‘objective’ fact but to indicate comparable units of information that have been made comparable by the standardization of editorial and expert selection of meaningful information from a set of given objects. Both the creation of data and its analysis are inherently interpretive – and therefore human and humanistic – acts. For more on this quality of data see L. Gitelman and V. Jackson, ‘Introduction’, in Raw Data Is An Oxymoron, ed. L. Gitelman (Cambridge, MA, 2013) and B. Latour, ‘Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest’, in Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 80–112. For more on the interpretive nature of creating data from material phenomena and the queer/feminist materialist theory that underpins it, see Bennett, ‘The Ecology of Articulation and Aggregate Reading’, p. 360. Bennett, ‘The Ecology of Articulation’, p. 363.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 54

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   55

axes of analysis. I am here using terminology developed in science studies to describe the ways in which data are made of material phenomena. In his essay ‘Circulating Reference’, Bruno Latour points out that the reduction of information down to a single axis of analysis necessarily involves an exchange of particularity and nuance (for each individual case) for comparability and generalizability across a whole, but this exchange is neither total nor permanent.17 The thing itself, the object of study, is what it always was. It becomes legible as these axes of analysis are brought into being, but the inscriptions they create are never a substitute for the thing, only a rendering of information about one aspect of the thing. The partiality of any one inscription and its ability to capture the object of study necessitates the aggregation of other inscriptions. Using the vocabulary of waves in physics, Latour calls this ‘superposition’. When enough of these single axes are compiled together we begin to see meaningful patterns within our larger object of study. The particularity and nuance that are exchanged for this big-picture view are, however, only temporarily sacrificed. They can be brought back into view with any individual inscription or shift of focus to a particular object or detail. The details do not disappear; they simply slide in and out of focus as we adjust the scale of our gaze. Aggregate reading allows us to hold all of these inscriptions, scales and details in tension with one another, each informing our understanding of the larger whole; it allows us to enjoy the utility of generalization and broad perspective while maintaining our fidelity and accountability to the individual, material components that constitute the corpus. The use of these new facets of inquiry is not an eschewing of traditional methodologies; it is, instead, better understood as a complement to them.

What do these numbers mean? Or, is a corpus study possible?

In ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’ Michael advances a hypothesis to explain the pattern of copying he sees in the corpus writ large. In order to do so, he turns to a descriptive and quantitative overview of the most-attested Middle English works in an attempt to sketch in the outlines of a comprehensive survey of Middle English literary culture. His use of the most-attested works as a stand-in for the whole Middle English corpus is a pragmatic approximation, though one subject to some limitations, as we will see below. To see the power of his tabular method, we can examine the data from the eight Middle English corpora to which Michael attends. Though he does not My approach to creating data from a complex material phenomenon is heavily influenced by Latour’s field study of how scientists create data from rainforest soil samples in ‘Circulating Reference’, pp. 70–2.

17

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 55

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

5 6    A . R . Be nne t t

provide an overview graph himself, Figure 1 is a column graph that lays out the overall counts of surviving copies of the works he addresses, and an additional ten works for which he provides a total number. In this graph I provide all of Michael’s original quantities in dark gray,18 accompanied by updated information standardized across corpora in light gray,19 exclusive of fragments and excerpts,20 as well as data for additional works that are part of a database project currently underway.21 I do not, however, have a complete data set for each of the works Michael has selected, which would allow me to update all of his totals, so I have instead presented both numbers, where I have them, in this imperfect fashion. Regardless of which set of numbers we look at, one of Michael’s main conclusions stands and is well articulated in this particular graph: very few Middle English works survive in any kind of quantity above double digits. Fewer still survive at the next order of magnitude. We do not need the precise numbers of surviving copies to clearly see that there are three main echelons of survival rates, two of which are represented in Figure 1. The first we might call the ‘high survival’ category, in which more than 100 copies of the text in question survive, represented by Wycliffite Bible, which survives in more than 250 copies, despite its being illicit for most of its copying history,22 the Brut Chronicle in 181 copies and the most-attested verse text, The Prick of Conscience, in upwards of 120 copies.

18

19

20

21

22

I have included the data for Wace’s Anglo-Norman Brut chronicle because Michael includes it in his data for comparison of the Middle English to Anglo-Norman circulation.

In Michael’s essay, for instance, he counts all copies, including translations and fragments for totals. If we are trying to get a sense of a Middle English corpus, then, we might consider adjusting our counts to reflect only those copies in Middle English, with an option to compare Middle English to translated copies. I quibble with the field’s practice of counting fragments as representations of ‘once complete’ texts and with counting ‘extracts’ in the same quantity with which we count complete texts. In the case of the former, we do not know if a fragment came from a once-complete copy. In the latter, excerpting extracts is a distinct and particular form of transmission that deserves to be counted in its own right. I therefore make a standard practice of counting each of these separately.

For this work toward the database I must thank many of my excellent research assistants at the University of Nevada Reno: Kendra Clark on the Ancrene Wisse, Amber Lubera on the Abbey and the Charter of the Holy Ghost, Owen Bryant on The Canterbury Tales, Michael Walecke on The Treatise on the Astrolabe and Boece, Sean Michael Cavanaugh on Troilus and Criseyde and Tanner Lyon on Chaucer’s dream visions, including Parliament of Fowls. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’, p. 214.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 56

1/29/2021 7:58:01 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 57

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Figure 1

Copies of Major Middle English Texts*

Figure 1. Column graph of quantities of surviving copies of major Middle English texts

*data consistent with SargentÕs essay, though more recent research and re-classiÞcation may Þne tune numbers, lack of complete data makes it impossible to update all; therefore, where more accurate and consistently determined numbers are known they are represented in the lighter grey column

Number of surviving MSS

5 8    A . R . Be nne t t

The next order of magnitude, those works surviving in ten to ninety-nine copies, we might call the ‘moderate survival’ category. In this category we find the bulk of what we would consider to be ‘canonical literature’; for example, the three best-known Middle English poets’ works all survive at the ‘high moderate’ end in roughly comparable quantities. There are fifty-five copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,23 fifty-two copies of Langland’s Piers Plowman24 and fifty-two copies of Gower’s Confessio Amantis.25 We can observe along with Michael that as the total count of surviving manuscripts of any given work declines, the number of works that survive at that rate increases.26 Thus we are able to see only a sample of works in the moderate survival category, and we have not even begun to account for those in the low survival category. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Middle English works survive in fewer than ten copies, and, once counted, would, I conjecture, easily make up the numerical majority of all Middle English works. This has important ramifications for adjusting the focus of literary historians of late medieval England: Chaucer, for example, is not the most prevalent author nor is his work or the manuscripts in which it survives representative of the vast majority of the Middle English corpus. This observation alone threatens to subvert the current apportionment of attention in the discipline of Middle English literary studies – moving the gaze away from its Chaucerian myopia and fetish for the Canterbury Tales, which are grossly overrepresented in the scholarly literature. Imagine what new contours might become visible if, collectively, we could really see more. From this overview we can turn to the other type of data on which Michael focuses and incorporate this additional axis of analysis into our understanding of the corpus as a whole. The second, and dominant, focus of his essay is on the production of manuscripts over time. As such, he provides figures that do two things: they allow for a general comparison of the size of readership by 23

24

25

26

A number reflecting complete or once complete manuscripts, not including fragments, excerpts, single tales or small collections of tales.

See my work on Piers Plowman in my dissertation, ‘Mediation, Meditation, and the Manuscripts of Piers Plowman’, New York University, 2015, on my blog at materialpiers.wordpress.com and in my forthcoming NEH–Mellon-funded digital project, Manuscript Orientations: Mediation, Meditation, and the Movements of Piers Plowman. The quantity for Gower’s Confessio has not been fully vetted by my methodology and therefore still reflects the existing literature. The quantities for the Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman reflect personal archival research. Similarly, the quantities for Nicholas Love reflect existing research and are not fully verified by this methodology. When that research is done I will gladly update my information. Like Michael, however, I take the existing numbers as usable for this kind of broad comparison. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’ pp. 212–13.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 58

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   59

Figure 2

Middle English MS Production by Quarter Century (A) 160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0

1350-1375

1375-1400

1400-1425

1425-1450

1450-1475

1475-1500

Prick of Conscience (all versions)

Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ

Langland, Pier s Plowman

Gower, Confessio Amantis

Hilton, Scale of Perfection

1500-1525

1525-1550

TOTALS

Figure 2. Line graph of Middle English Manuscript production by quarter century (A)

comparison of counts of surviving manuscripts, and they create a temporal breakdown of production in order to offer a hypothesis as to why manuscript production seems to follow a particular pattern, his argument being one of ‘market saturation’. Figure 2 compiles all of Michael’s data on production by quarter century into a single line graph in which each data set is visible as a line on the graph. Added to his counts for individual works is a line representing the total counts of manuscripts produced in the six represented texts.27 What this graph very clearly highlights is that there is a massive spike in the production of Middle English manuscripts in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Though there is some individual variation between the works sampled, the overall trend is compelling. Figure 3 rescales our look at these numbers by taking out the total count so that we can see the differences between individual works’ production trajectories. I have removed the Canterbury Tales from this graph as well, because it was such a dramatic outlier. We are left, instead, with four works whose individual production trajectories largely mirror the overall trend of the corpus, This graph should be read as provisional only. There is no data regarding the production over time of the Wycliffite Bible or the Brut, the two most numerous works. Further, the numbers here reflect only Michael’s data, since I have no means of comparing my updated and standardized data to the other works he addresses because I have not completed my own data collection on all six of these works.

27

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 59

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

6 0    A . R . Be nne t t

Figure 3

Middle English MS Production by Quarter Century (B)

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1350-1375

1375-1400

1400-1425

1425-1450

1450-1475

1475-1500

1500-1525

Prick of Conscience (all versions)

Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ

Langland, Pier s Plowman

Gower, Confessio Am antis

1525-1550

Hilton, Scale of Perfection

Figure 3. Line graph of Middle English manuscript production by quarter century (B-data refined)

with some minor variation for which we can account with historical facts like the date of composition.28 Michael argues that the continued use of manuscripts over many generations produces a kind of market saturation without the production of new copies, which may in turn have contributed to the precipitous drop-off in manuscript copying. I would, however, suggest that we may not be able to attribute this phenomenon to such a unified rubric. Some of the factors we might consider are the rising literacy rates and the ways in which they are tied to changing social structures. On the one hand, there is an emerging mercantile class acquiring and reading books as a status activity,29 but also adopting quasi-religious (vocational) practices, like the observance of the Little Office of the Virgin, modelled on the monastic Divine Office, an abbreviated and simplified devotional practice for lay persons.30 The Prick of Conscience is likely composed earlier than the other works, while Nicholas Love’s The Blessed Mirror of Jesus Christ is composed a bit later – facts we can see affecting the graph.

28

See, for instance, C. Harman, ‘From Feudalism to Capitalism’, International Socialism 2.45 (1989), 35–87 and J. Le Goff, Medieval Civilisation, trans. J. Barrow (Oxford, 1988).

29

B. Millet, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, ed. D. Renevey and C. Whitehead (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 21–40. On the other hand, we find a proliferation of uncloistered clerics put to work in burgeoning bureaucratic systems

30

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 60

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   61

The ‘Scale of Perfection’: a corpus case study

To see how one such corpus study excavation opens up new questions I will turn to the corpus of the Scale of Perfection, which is, in many ways, a microcosm of the Middle English corpus as a whole. We will look at variations in the shape of the Scale text, the production of Middle English variations over time and the material and textual context in which the Middle English Scale circulated. To begin, we first must acknowledge the complexity of Scale circulation in its various forms. The Scale of Perfection survives in variations on two books and their composite, excerpted and translated forms. With further intricacies of recensions and other variations31 our focus could become incredibly granular, but for the purposes of this study we will look at only the largest tier of these variations that characterize broad portions of the corpus. We will here track only the forms of the Scale that recur with regularity as integral and purposeful acts of transmission. I will therefore rely on some standard nomenclature to designate manuscripts containing only Book I (hereafter a Scale I MS), composite manuscripts containing both Books I and II a (Scale I/II MS) and manuscripts with only Book II (a Scale II MS). This divides the Scale corpus into three main subcorpora that reflect which form of the work was copied in the manuscript, not merely what portions of the Scale text(s) were circulating. In addition to these manuscripts that contain a complete requiring professional scribes. D. Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge, 2002). This proliferation may have a corollary effect of enabling more professional (documentary) scribes to copy books in a non-professional fashion, for personal devotional use, rather than having book production dominated by bespoke production and the aristocratic–monastic nexus it upheld. Certainly, the grade of script and support, lack of decoration and relatively small size of both Piers Plowman and Scale of Perfection manuscripts, which Michael mentions, suggest that many of these were personal copies made by documentary scribes for personal devotional use. If we add to these complex conditions the rise of speculative book production, we start to see a new economic picture in which demand for books increases just prior to the advent of print. R. H. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, ‘The Commercial Production of Manuscript Books in Late Thirteenth-Century and Early Fourteenth-Century Paris’, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, 1990), pp. 103–15; A. Honkapohja, Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production: A Codicological and Linguistic Study of the Voigts-Sloane Manuscript Group (Turnhout, 2017). Market saturation may be one component of this changing literary landscape. But surely these other aspects must have been influential as well. Rather than attempt to give an oversimplified explanation for this phenomenon, I would here point out that our analysis, understandably, invites further aggregation and investigation in pursuit of this question.

There are Christocentric additions, Holy Name passages and Grenehalgh’s corrections, to start, and then idiosyncrasies of transmission to continue.

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 61

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

6 2    A . R . Be nne t t

or near-complete text of the Scale, a number of manuscripts contain excerpts of the Scale, while one contains a fragment of Book II.32 As I have argued above, these are separate – and interesting – phenomena, so I will treat them as such here. Figure 4 displays the tabulation of which variations circulate in what quantities in both Latin and English. We can clearly see that Middle English circulation dwarfs Latin circulation and Latin circulation does not imitate the same pattern as Middle English circulation. In both languages, however, we see that it is not common for Scale II to circulate independently. Indeed, one of those Latin Scale IIs is not strictly independent, since it was actually added to an already circulating copy of the Middle English Scale I.33 Nonetheless, Scale II is not a very popular form of the work in either language. Also visible in Figure 4 is the fact that excerpts are not common in either language. Because we are examining the Middle English corpus, I will leave the Latin figures out of the remainder of our analysis, but, as we will see when we look at the textual contents of the manuscripts, the line between Latin and Middle English manuscripts is not easy to draw. The high rate of independently circulating copies of Book I of the Scale of Perfection may be linked to its composition and independent circulation prior to the later composition of Book II.34 There are seventeen surviving manuscripts in which the only Scale of Perfection contents are Book I of the Scale and there is no apparent evidence that there was ever any portion of Book II, nor was there meant to be. It is imperative to point out that we cannot explain the presence of Scale I manuscripts with a simple chronological explanation that Scale I manuscripts were all produced prior to the wide dissemination of Scale II.35 Instead, we see that there is evidence of a selection – a purposeful choice – of Scale I in all eighteen manuscripts, which date from the same time span as Scale I/II, in the fifteenth century. The evidence for prior circulation of Scale I is not limited to its existence on its own in surviving manuscripts; Michael points out that we also see the clear pattern of separate circulation of Book II in the composite (Scale I/II) manuscripts. In these manuscripts, patterns of variants for the transmission of Book I do not align with patterns of variants for the transmission of Book II. 32 33 34

35

Ripon Cathedral Fragment.

London, British Library, MS Harley 330.

Book I was likely composed before 1386, whereas Book II appears to have been composed between 1386 and Hilton’s death in 1396. See Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean?’, pp. 229–30. Ibid., p. 230.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 62

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

Figure 4

Frequency of Scale Circulation in Various Forms

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   63

25

22

20 18 15

13 10

5 4 0

4 2

Scale I

Scale I Excerpts

Scale I/II

Scale I/II Excerpts

Scale II

1

2

2

1

Scale II Latin Scale Latin Scale Latin Scale Latin Scale Excerpts I I/II II (II) Excerpts

Figure 4. Column graph of quantities of Scale of Perfection circulation in various forms

This would seem to suggest that when a composite text was in order, a copy of Book I and a copy of Book II were procured separately.36 This means that the choice to copy just Scale I or just Scale II or a composite text of Scale I/II was not driven simply by the chance availability of what the exemplars contained but by active selection on the part of either compilator or patron and the subsequent procurement of the desired variation(s) of the Scale of Perfection. Despite the apparently separate circulation of exemplars, the composite form of the Scale, with both Book I and Book II, appears to have been somewhat more popular, since it survives in more copies. There are twenty-two surviving manuscripts containing both books in Middle English,37 though two of these manuscripts originally contained only Scale I, with Scale II added in by a later hand.38 Scale II, on the other hand, was significantly less common; it exists independently in only two copies. Ibid., pp. 230–1.

36

Ibid., p. 230; see also Sargent, ‘Introduction’, in W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book II: A Critical Edition based on British Library Harley MSS 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford, 2017 for 2016), p. xxviii.

37

Once in Latin in London, British Library, MS Harley 330 and once in Middle English in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 285.

38

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 63

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

6 4    A . R . Be nne t t

In Figure 5 we see the temporal distribution of copies of each form of the Scale. We must be somewhat cautious in our conclusions from this data, since some dates are not more specific than simply ‘fifteenth-century’ for Scale I and the extracts.39 Because half of the Scale I manuscripts are so imprecisely dated, the question of how those nine manuscripts would affect the curve of distribution is purely speculative. I would suggest, however, that it is reasonable to surmise that distribution was comparable to the other manuscripts of both Scale I and Scale I/II. Further, I want to point out, as was the case in the previous distribution over time graph, that sometimes placing manuscripts in specific quarters of a century cannot be done without some editorial speculation. We have in this case exchanged a little bit of precision so that we can see a pattern. However, I have, for the sake of fidelity to the indeterminacy of manuscript dating, provided a graph that exchanges some of our pattern-making ability for more accuracy in date ranges. That graph is Appendix Figure A, and it charts the date ranges of the manuscripts against each other. From the aggregation of these patterns it is possible to construct a narrative of the life-cycle of Scale copying. This is not a series of distinct successions but, rather, a set of phases characterized by a particular type of Scale production. In most instances, that form of copying coincided with other simultaneous forms. If phase one is Hilton’s composition phase, we know that Scale I was composed earlier and circulated independently of Book II, but neither the Scale I nor the composite form survive much from the fourteenth century. Also in this phase would be Fishlake’s translation into Latin, some time between Hilton’s composition of Book II and the end of the fourteenth century. Nonetheless, while Scale I was composed earlier, the two forms of the Scale do seem to take off in dissemination history at roughly the same time. In phase two, production of both forms spikes markedly in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, mirroring the trend in the rest of the Middle English corpus. In the third phase, we have a rise in the excerpting of Scale texts and its circulation in pieces. In this sense we might think of the choice to include only Book II as a kind of excerpting, since it does not appear to have been deemed a complete form of the text by much of the corpus. The extracts peak, like Scale II, at mid-century, but they continue to be produced for a few more quarters before dropping off altogether. I would speculate that this later and more gradual peak suggests that, after the initial spike in production, the Scale texts had become fairly well known, which led to 39

I expect a substantial portion of this lack of precision to be remedied when Michael’s edition of Book I of the Scale of Perfection comes out with manuscript descriptions.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 64

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

W h at5 Do Figure

the Num bers Mea n ?   65

Scale of Perfection MS Production by Quarter Century

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

undateable 15th century

1375-1400

1400-1425

1425-1450 Scale I/II

1450-1475

1475-1500

Scale I

1500-1525

1525-1550

Scale II

1550-1575

1575-1600

1600-1625

Extracts

Figure 5. Line graph of Scale of Perfection manuscript production by quarter century

both the desire and ability to excerpt specific pieces of them for inclusion in compilations for quite some time in a final phase.

The corpus is the context

In an effort to make some sense of this information, I would like to turn to a final axis of analysis that is unique to my implementation of a corpus studies methodology. It is designed to give us more context for the conclusions we draw from the patterns we find in our data aggregations and inscriptions. As we shift our view away from the text, and even away from the author and its ‘original composition’, looking more toward the corpus as a whole, we are also confronted with the fact that, in many cases, the work we are hoping to elucidate through our corpus study often does not travel alone. The applicability of this fact varies from work to work.40 In most cases, however, a plurality of manuscripts in the corpus will travel with some other items, and these other items lend some context to the work. In the case of a work being produced with other works at the time of the manuscript’s first compilation, we can use this information to get a sense of the textual context in which our work is circulating. We can know what else these readers were reading and what else these compilators or patrons saw fit to collect together. In a majority of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are not collocated with any other work in two-thirds of the manuscripts containing the Tales. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and its related work The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, on the other hand, never circulate alone.

40

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 65

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

6 6    A . R . Be nne t t

cases, I would argue, these compilations are curated collections of works that, together, serve a function for the intended user of the manuscript. Further, as a group, we find that the same principle behind ‘whole book’ studies of compilation manuscripts – that is, the treatment of seemingly disparate contents as constituting an integral whole – can be scaled up from the level of a single case study to a corpus-wide study.41 There are, of course, limits to this axis of analysis, since the manuscripts most often do not survive in their original medieval bindings, and we therefore cannot confirm that many copies of the Scale which are now alone never circulated with collocated items. Nevertheless, as with the rest of our inscriptions, we will have to trust that the data will yield meaningful patterns, even if it is not a perfect data set due to the effects of the passage of time and the manuscripts’ afterlives in the postmedieval era. In order to evaluate all of the works with which the Scale of Perfection circulates in the manuscript corpus I have applied the technique of network graphing using the statistical analysis software R to generate data visualization networks (DVNs).42 These complex graphs visualize patterns of interconnection through the size and structure of elements within a network system. A network graph, or DVN, displays two important pieces of information: it tells us, first, the relative frequency of any two events, and second, the degree of interconnectivity of these events. In these graphs, each node represents an event, in this case, the appearance of a particular work within the Scale corpus. Thus, the more often a work appears, the larger the node that represents it. The edges – lines connecting nodes – on these graphs indicate that the two works represented by the nodes on either end are also connected in material manuscript form. That is, they are collocated in a manuscript at least once. The more often two works co-occur, the larger the edge connecting them grows as well. We therefore have a visual index of the relative frequency of various works within the corpus and the regularity with which they travel together.43

41

42

43

See, for example, S. Nichols and S. Wenzel, The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor, 1996).

Though network graphs were a well-developed part of social network and systems analysis, data scientist Aaron Schumacher and I pioneered their application to manuscript corpora in this fashion, collaborating in 2012–13 on this work. See Schumacher’s blog detailing the methodology in R, ‘Visualize co-occurrence graph from document occurrence input using R package “igraph”’, https://planspace. org/2013/01/30/visualize-co_occurrence/. Spatial arrangement is not meaningful in these graphs. Instead, nodes have been arranged for optimum legibility.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 66

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   67

The first, and most comprehensive, DVN (Figure 6) graphs all the works that circulate alongside the Middle English Scale in any complete form.44 In this graph we can see that the two largest nodes, Scale I and Scale I/II, dominate the landscape. We can also see many other Hilton works, represented by white nodes and labelled with alphanumeric markers starting with 1. Specification of which work the labels represent is provided in a key.45 On the left, the smaller Scale I node represents the slightly less attested form of the work (in eighteen copies), while the larger node on the right represents Scale I/II (in twenty-two copies). Scale II (appearing in two copies) is in the upper right hand corner and largely unconnected to the remainder of the corpus. We can see that, aside from the two individual works in one Scale II manuscript, it also circulates with other works of Hilton, and that is all. The Scale I and Scale I/II subcorpora, on the other hand, clearly share a number of works that are collocated with both these forms of the Scale: the four other Hilton works, Contemplations of the Drede and Love of God, attributed in several manuscripts to Richard Rolle, the Prick of Love, the Mirror of St Edmund and various notes on indulgences.46 In addition to the works in common between the subcorpora of Scale I and Scale I/II, we see some clear patterns in clustering. The most important, and perhaps the most obvious, pattern is that Scale I is connected to a great many more nodes than Scale I/II. The composite Scale (I/II) circulates with just twenty-one other works in nine identifiable clusters of works. In most cases a cluster of nodes that are all interconnected with each other and not highly connected to other nodes represent an individual manuscript with an idiosyncratic collection of texts.47 As we account for the connections to Scale I/II, we find generally that manuscripts contain small clusters of other works, most of which are attested only in that particular manuscript. We can see nine This excludes extract manuscripts.

44

In order to prevent the very large compilation manuscripts, Vernon and Simeon, from dominating the graph, I have simplified their data to include only those works appearing either in both manuscripts or in another Scale manuscript, or which are well known and thus relevant to drawing conclusions about contexts.

45

Here is an example of an editorial choice not to list each indulgence separately, but rather to count how many of this type of text occur within the corpus.

46

The cluster to the far right of this graph with 2i (Rolle’s Oleum Effusum) and nodes 23–25 – Arma Christi (DIMEV 4083), Rule of the Life of Our Lady (IPMEP 22) and a Latin Vision of St John of the Sorrows of the Virgin – represents London, British Library, MS Additional 11748, which contains these four works and the composite Scale. The single node below this cluster shows us a manuscript that contains only Scale I/II and Walter Hilton’s ‘Angels’ Song’, New Haven, Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya MS 3 (olim. Luttrell Wynn).

47

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 67

1/29/2021 7:58:02 AM

Key for Figures 6–9

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 68

1/29/2021 7:58:04 AM

Key for Figures 6–9 (continued)

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 69

1/29/2021 7:58:06 AM

Key for Figures 6–9 (concluded)

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 70

1/29/2021 7:58:13 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 71

1/29/2021 7:58:13 AM

2f

80

2g

83

2h

64-77

Latin Scale II

78

79

82

81

49-63

2d

Scale I

4a i & ii

2a 2b

40-48

2p

2c

8

39

4b

3a

38

19

1c 1d

32-37

7

100-1071b 9 2k 2m 2n 10 11 17 13 12 18 15 20 19 14 16

5

1a

6

99

31

30

Scale I & II

1e

21

29

Scale II

Figure 6. Data visualization network Scale of Perfection corpus collocation graph

2e

84-87

88-98

Figure 6

Scale Corpus Collocation Graph—Variations Represented Individually

28

27

22

24

26

25

2i

1f

23

7 2    A . R . Be nne t t

clusters. We also know that nine manuscripts circulate with only Scale I/II.48 The remaining four manuscripts are not visible as individuals because they repeat patterns of collocations found in the identifiable clusters. If we compare the Scale I/II network we just examined to the Scale I network of connections we see that Scale I is connected to a greater number of idiosyncratic clusters. We can see thirteen distinct clusters around Scale I, which represents a substantial portion (81 per cent) within a corpus of eighteen. Several manuscripts repeat patterns of collocation, which we can see in the interconnectivity of specific nodes that connect to many clusters as well as in the growth of nodes and edges in some clusters. What we can clearly see here is that Scale I is more likely to be included in a compilation manuscript, and when compiled, it is likely to be collocated with more works. Further, a majority of these works are unique to the individual manuscript, but a handful of core texts and authors are connected to multiple clusters, indicating a pattern of collocation that extends across multiple manuscripts. Scale I/II, on the other hand, is compiled less often (60 per cent of the time) and with far fewer works. Aside from this different pattern of compilation in the two major forms of the Scale, we may also want to try to characterize the whole corpus through the types of works it contains. In this graph we see every work (or, in the case of the notes on indulgences, type of work) in a separate node. This includes seeing each different iteration of the Prick of Conscience, as well as each work from an author, individuated. The majority of works in the corpus, however, occur only once in these idiosyncratic collections and, before we move past them to look at the patterns that repeat, it is worth asking whether we can characterize the set of single-occurrence works in any succinct way. In our key, works represented by nodes 21 through 107 are listed individually. Twenty-one and twenty-two represent the single Scale II manuscript circulating with other items. Works twenty-three through thirty-one and ninety-nine represent the works compiled just once with Scale I/II. As a whole, the corpus contains three languages and skews heavily toward religious writings. Nodes 32 through 107 represent works occurring only once and only in the Scale I corpus. By and large, these works reflect almost exclusively religious writings. However, much like the secondary interest of the larger Middle English corpus, where Brut chronicles are second only to the Wycliffite Bible, there Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 592; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. iv. 30; London, British Library, MS Harley 2387; London, British Library, MS Harley 6573; San Marino, California, Huntington Library, MS HM 266; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 602; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 15. 18; London, Westminster School, MS 4; New York, Columbia University Library, Plimpton MS 257.

48

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 72

1/29/2021 7:58:13 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   73

is evidence of this secondary interest in English legendary history within the context of salvation history and the Scale corpus, but we see this confluence largely in only two manuscripts.49 The majority of works, instead, fall under some rubric of religious writing or another. This means that the Scale corpus, perhaps not unexpectedly, does not reflect this secondary interest in the same proportion that the larger Middle English corpus does. Furthermore, a glance at the titles of the works compiled with the Scale reveals a prominent focus on devotional items and works of religious instruction in both Latin and English. This linguistic mix should hardly be surprising, given what we know about the movement of works of vernacular theology in late medieval England. Vincent Gillespie summarizes this polysemous literary culture as follows: Ambitious vernacular texts, like Hilton’s Scale of Perfection or the Cloud of Unknowing, were translated into Latin. Ambitious Latin texts, like Rolle’s Incendium Amoris, were translated into English for lay readers. High-grade Latin exegetical and academic materials are quarried and redeployed in vernacular contexts. Originally monastic works like the Speculum Ecclesiae of Edmund of Abingdon enjoyed sprightly textual careers and widespread insular circulation in Latin, French, and English versions.50

The Scale corpus therefore reflects what we might expect from a ‘vernacular theology’ corpus, only part of which is, in fact, written in the vernacular. One pattern we do notice right away is that two authors in particular seem to occur quite often. The Scale in all three forms circulates with other works from Walter Hilton. In addition, both Scale I and Scale I/II circulate with works from that other popular contemplative writer, Richard Rolle. While an understanding of Hilton’s stance on the affective piety of writers like Rolle might make this juxtaposition seem unusual, we nevertheless find that readers of these two authors frequently found them compiled together. Indeed, there are more of Rolle’s works (and attributed works) in the corpus than all of Hilton’s other works combined, as we can see if we condense all the different works from these authors down into single nodes, which I have done in Figure 7.

Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS F. 172 has a whole collection of religious and ecclesiastical works alongside the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, a historical note on Alexander and Statutes of Black Rogier while Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 6686 contains Lydgate’s ‘Verses on the Kings of England’ (DIMEV 5731).

49

V. Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English: Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature, ed. P. Strohm (Oxford, 2007), pp. 401–20.

50

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 73

1/29/2021 7:58:13 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 74

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

64-77

Latin Scale II

78

79

80

49-63

Scale I

83

40-48

84-87

Rolle 2a-p

4

5

8

39

38

11 17 18 12 20 19 13 15 7 14 3 16 100-107

10

9

32-37

99

6

Other Hilton 1a-f

Scale II

Scale I & II

21

22

Figure 7. Data visualization network Scale of Perfection condensed corpus collocation graph

82

81

88-98

Figure 7

Scale Corpus Collocation Graph—Variations and Attributed Authors Condensed

27

30 31

29

25

24

28

23

26

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   75

Right away we notice that Rolle is almost as dominant in this graph as Scale I/II, appearing here more often than Scale I and other Hilton works. The high frequency of Rolle works, however, is almost exclusively because of their presence in the Scale I corpus. Scale I/II is collocated only with the Rolle-attributed Contemplations of the Drede and Love of God, which is represented by the one thin tendril that stretches between the Scale I/II and Rolle nodes. Furthermore, Rolle largely accumulates in relatively few compilation manuscripts.51 Thus, of the eighteen Book I manuscripts, five of them are large compilations where the number of Rolle works equals or outnumbers Hilton (and any other single author) in the contents of the compilations. The other Hilton works, however, are a bit more evenly distributed, but they tend to be with Scale I/II. This pattern means that the Scale I manuscripts are more likely to be large devotional collections, in which the Scale text is but one of many, while the Scale I/II manuscripts are more likely to be Hilton-focused books that prominently feature the longer, composite text. In addition to condensing authors down to a single node, I have also condensed all the variations of disparate works into single nodes. In particular, the two forms of the Charter of Christ and the three forms of the Prick of Conscience have been represented in appropriately scaled, condensed nodes. In exchange for sacrificing the precision of exactly what part of the Prick of Conscience, however, we are now able to see the centrality of the Prick of Conscience to four collections that, aside from Vernon and Simeon, share little else in common.52 Similarly, node five represents at least four different versions of the Mirror of St Edmund, at least three of which appear in both Vernon and Simeon, and a fourth version appears in San Marino, Huntington Library HM 112. In the case of the Mirror of St Edmund, it is important to note that, despite the apparent frequency of these works, the node representing their appearance within the corpus represents seven different occurrences of the Mirror, but in only three manuscripts.53 Nonetheless, this recurrence of Hilton, Rolle, the Charters of Christ, the Prick of Conscience and the Mirror of St Edmund, which bills itself Especially Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. v. 40, Worcester, Cathedral Chapter Library, MS F. 172 and London, British Library, MS Harley 1022 as well as Vernon and Simeon.

51

The one exception there would be that both manuscripts containing the fourteen-line excerpt also contain De Divinis Mandatis in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. v. 55 and Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. v. 40.

52

A. I. Doyle, ‘Codicology, Palaeography and Provenance’, in The Making of the Vernon Manuscript: The Production and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS Eng. poet. a. 1., ed. W. Scase (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 3–26; see also A Facsimile Edition of

53

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 75

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

7 6    A . R . Be nne t t

as a contemplative aid, would suggest that the corpus is not merely religious in nature, but rather heavily inflected toward contemplative piety and practice. The contemplative character of the Scale corpus becomes all the more apparent when we limit our analysis to patterns of collocation that occur more than once. That is, only works that are in the corpus often enough that they cannot be explained by any idiosyncratic whim on the part of the compilator or patron. Both Figures 8 and 9 consolidate this collocation data in order to examine only those works that occur more than once in the larger corpus and the patterns of their co-occurrence. In Figure 8 some of the same patterns we observed earlier remain visible: Scale I/II is less compiled with fewer works, while Scale I is compiled with more items, but now we clearly see that the cluster of multiply occurring works is quite interconnected. Scale I/II, in contrast, is connected only to works that are also connected to Scale I. The Scale I cluster, on the other hand, shows a high degree of frequent collocation patterns across multiple Scale I manuscripts. One unusual case (or two, as the cases may be) may be skewing this graph, however, since the co-production of the Vernon and Simeon manuscripts does not exactly reflect the impulses of two different patrons or compilators. If we ask ourselves what this graph looks like if we remove the works that are ‘multiply occurring’ only because they appear in these sister manuscripts, we get Figure 9. This ultra-simplified network graph, which drops the works that occur only in Vernon and Simeon, really crystallizes the core patterns that underpin the network of works within the corpus. First, nothing is as common as either form of the Scale and, indeed, the Rolle that seemed so prominent in Figure 7 has almost entirely disappeared. This is because so many of the Rollean works occurred only once, or exactly twice – in the Vernon and Simeon. Only the Form of Living and Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God occur multiply outside of the Vernon and Simeon. This means these two sister manuscripts are responsible for six individual occurrences of Rolle and thus make Rolle look much more prevalent in the wider corpus than is perhaps accurate, particularly because the four Rollean works they each contain are dwarfed by the enormous collections of other works in those two compendious tomes. Rolle, therefore, is not at the heart of the corpus, though his Form of Living is nonetheless quite common. Other Hilton works, on the other hand, are unsurprisingly quite frequently collocated with the Scale. In particular, Hilton’s answer to the Form of Living, the Epistle of Mixed Life, is very commonly collocated with a number of other the Vernon Manuscript: A Literary Hoard from Medieval England (Bodleian Digital Texts), ed. W. Scase (Oxford, 2011).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 76

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 77

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

Eight Chapters on Perfection

Bonum Est

Qui Habitat

Scale I & II

Notes on Indulgences

Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God

De Divinis Mandatis Tractatus

Figure 8. Data Visualization Network Scale of Perfection multiple occurrence corpus collocation graph

Scale II

Mixed Life

Scale I

Charter of Christ The Prick of Love

Prick of Conscience

Form of Living

Ego Dormio

Christ’s Appeal from the Cross

Mirror of St. Edmund

The Commandment

9-20

Figure 8

Scale Corpus Collocation Graph—Variations Condensed, Multiple Occurrence Only

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 78

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

Qui Habitat

Eight Chapters on Perfection

Bonum Est

Scale I

The Prick of Love

Charter of Christ

Prick of Conscience

Scale I & II

Notes on Indulgences

Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God

Figure 9. Data visualization network Scale of Perfection multiple occurrence corpus collocation graph, Vernon and Simeon extracted

Scale II

Mixed Life

Mirror of St. Edmund

Form of Living

De Divinis Mandatis Tractatus

Multiple Occurrence Only, Not Inclusive of V-S Pairs

Scale Corpus Collocation Graph—Variations Condensed,

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   79

works in the Scale I corpus, many of which are other Hilton works. His Eight Chapters on Perfection, however, are less collocated than some others, which frequently appear with additional contemplative works as well; the Eight Chapters, instead, do not appear multiply with any non-Hilton works at all. A special case to consider regarding other Hilton works comes from the Prick of Love, a translation of James of Milan’s Stimulus Amoris attributed to Walter Hilton. This too occurs three times in the corpus and in a regular pattern of collocation with other Hilton works as well as other works common to the Vernon and Simeon. While I have not here classed it as a Hilton work, we might consider that it is available for our inclusion in the corpus only because of Hilton’s translation. With that in mind it becomes clear that the Scale corpus is heavily invested in Hilton and the contemplative style and tools that he created himself. The final few nodes remaining to examine are those that fall neither to Rolle nor to Hilton, but they nevertheless occur together more than once. The Mirror of St Edmund, as we have already addressed, the Prick of Conscience and the Charter of Christ. These fit together generically as meditations upon doctrine that aid in contemplation. Thus, the multiply occurring works in the corpus reflect the same pattern noted above in the total corpus, namely that the whole corpus skews not only religious but contemplative. Further, the patterns in the Scale I/II corpus are consistent with the Scale I corpus, but the Scale I corpus is nevertheless substantially more robust in terms of the overall quantity of works as well as the frequency of collocation and patterns within that collocation network. There are many conclusions to be drawn from this analysis, and we are here able to contemplate a only small few of them. Particularly notable is the heavy prevalence of Rollean works, but the limiting of that presence to just Scale I manuscripts, which also contain a plethora of other religious writings. These types overwhelmingly overlap with monastic productions, like Vernon and Simeon, and those connected to London and nearby charterhouses.54 These collections tend to be larger and of a different calibre than the much more limited manuscripts containing the composite Scale, which are the manuscripts that Michael describes as ‘smaller and plainer even than those of Piers Plowman’, a notable comparison given that most Piers manuscripts are remarkably unremarkable. In both the Piers Plowman and Scale of Perfection corpora, the Vernon (and Simeon) manuscript(s) is(/are) the exception(s), as are the large Carthusian collections.55 Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’, Medium Ævum 52.5 (1983), 189–216.

54

The second-largest manuscript containing Piers Plowman is the above-mentioned Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. i. 17, a large Carthusian collection with a B-text of Piers.

55

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 79

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

8 0    A . R . Be nne t t

Likewise, in both corpora, the longer version of the same text is accompanied by fewer works and appears in simpler, smaller manuscripts that are more along the lines of the ‘common profit volume’ of London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 472, which contains a complete Scale text alongside other Hilton works. Its folios are modestly sized (203 mm x 145 mm, 294 cm2), making it characteristic of the small, plain, personal manuscripts discussed above. This is in distinct contrast from the much larger pages of the monastic manuscripts, like a standard Carthusian book, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ee. iv. 3056 (490 cm2), and the much more imposing Vernon and Simeon manuscripts (now trimmed to 2130 cm2). When we combine what we learn about the high degree of compilation of Scale I with our overall characterization of the corpus as contemplative and devotional, we may speculate as to a reason for the continued copying of Book I alone, which is simply that Scale I compiled better. For a manuscript that was going to contain a compilation of religious and devotional material, one book of the Scale may have been deemed sufficient, given the many other works that would be contained therein. Alternatively, we could view this correlation in another way: perhaps Book I of the Scale invites elaboration and additional support for enacting the religious instruction contained therein. Some compilators may provide that necessary supplement through Book II and some may provide it through the compilation of additional works. Either way, there is clearly a correlation between compilation and the circulation of Book I without Book II. Scale I is a heavily compiled work, particularly with Richard Rolle over other Hilton works. What is more, it is more often than not copied in these compilation manuscripts by and/or for monastic readers.57 Scale I/II manuscripts tend to be Hilton books in which the Scale text is frequently compiled with only other Hilton works, or contains only the Scale text. If we return to the life-cycle of the Scale of Perfection that we examined above, we find that we can augment our view of the phases in relation to the other works in the corpus. These two separate phenomena for Scale I and Scale I/II coexist within the same moment of early and fervent production in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. In the final phase, on the other hand, the excerpt manuscripts are almost a condensed version of the Scale I corpus. We do not need a data visualization to remark that the contents of the excerpted manuscripts are largely similar in character to the overall Scale corpus, though 56 57

Sargent, ‘The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’.

While there are still a number of monastic Scale I/II manuscripts, they are not the same substantial portion as they are in the Scale I corpus.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 80

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

W h at Do the Num bers Mea n ?   81

one manuscript does also contain excerpts of Julian of Norwich.58 What we find, however, is that the weight of the Scale in most of these manuscripts shifts from being the dominant work to being subordinated entirely to the contemplative compilational principle.59 When we bring this contextual information back into conversation we start to see that we can draw a few conclusions about the function of the books of the Scale corpus. They contain largely devotional and contemplative works, and they circulate in two major patterns. On the one hand, there are some robust devotional compilations with Scale I and more modest Hilton-oriented compilations of Scale I/II. If we tie this back into our memory of the differing sizes and decorative programmes of these books we might begin to see two classes of Scale manuscripts that are both nevertheless functioning in similar ways, but perhaps for different audiences. These manuscripts are not so much books to be read as they are contemplative tools—props for the performance of a religious vocation, rather than works of theological instruction. While these two functions are not mutually exclusive, the pragmatic nature of most of these books suggests that they are objects to be used—like a rosary or book of hours—for a devotional function. They are not simply vessels for texts whose only function is to be read. They are, instead, to be handled, touched, opened, sometimes read, but sometimes contemplated in themselves. These devotional objects are much more than just books containing texts. What strikes me as ironic, however, is that the larger Middle English literary culture is much more characterized by these devotional compilation manuscripts than it is by the canonical names and the metropolitan book culture that dominate our current historical narrative of the late Middle Ages in England. What do the numbers mean? In short, the numbers help us to see what we have missed for the text. If we continue to aggregate the numbers and find a way to be accountable to the corpora, which include a vast quantity of low-survival works, we may find that our understanding of the whole literary culture must shift to accommodate the prevalence of these ‘niche’ manuscripts and the relative infrequency of the manuscripts that have thus far been treated as exemplary of the larger culture. We will not find out whether or not this is true, however, unless we pursue the numbers to their ends. Therefore, this study, like Michael’s, is merely a beginning—working toward that end. London, Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4.

58

I would point out, however, that proportionally this inversion is still reflected in Vernon and Simeon, though they contain the whole of Scale I; their collection of works is so vast that the Scale is very much subordinated to the overall programme of the volumes.

59

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 81

1/29/2021 7:58:14 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 82

1/29/2021 7:58:15 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 83

1/29/2021 7:58:16 AM

Appendix Figure A. Scale of Perfection manuscript production by date range

4 Cargo in the Arbor: On the Metaphysics of Books and Scholarly Editions STEPHEN KELLY

t A proposition which emanates from myself – whether cited variously as my eulogy or as blame – I claim it as my own together with all those that crowd in here – affirms, in short, that everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book. (Stéphane Mallarmé1)

O

Commentary on a text which does not exist

f course it would be in the Campo de’ Fiori that I should find at last a copy of a text I had long sought. The sellers of chemically produced truffle oils, dubious balsamic vinegars and other fake delicacies were packing up while the last of the old nonnas boxed unsold vegetables into the precarious moto-vans in which they’d brought them from their dusty farms or allotments outside the city. Rome’s street sweepers are bested only by their Neapolitan confrères in indifference to the actual business of cleaning, so the trash of the morning market fluttered around the legs of stalls in the process of being disassembled, as the sweepers stood gossiping listlessly or chewing on slices of pizza bianca from the Forno in the corner of the square. Tourists wandered off, doubting their overpriced purchases, or discovered the square for the first time, staring in knowledge or ignorance at the forbidding statue of Giordano Bruno, who dreamed of an object of radiant textuality – a certain circular Book, whose circumference is everywhere and centre, nowhere – and who perhaps, at last, had sighted it, as he was burned to death here by the Roman Inquisition on

1

S. Mallarmé, The Book, Spiritual Instrument (New York, 2016), p. 14.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 84

1/29/2021 7:58:16 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   85

Ash Wednesday 1600. With a bar through his tongue, his vision of a universe turned upside down was at last substantiated.2 In one corner of the piazza, appropriately, there is a bookshop called Fahrenheit 451. Like most of Rome’s booksellers, the proprietor gives the impression that his customers are an inconvenience, and doubtless they are, here in Campo de’ Fiori, where tourists occasionally wander accidentally into the shop and leave, bemused, because all the books are, inevitably, in Italian. But bookshops are sacred, regardless of language, and so I found myself browsing the tables in the pleasingly gloomy front room, before scanning the shelves in a narrow corridor leading into further, gloomier rooms at the rear of the shop. And then I found it. My spoken Italian is poor, marked by spurts of eloquence which occasionally convince natives that their language is my natural habitat too, until they ask me something I don’t understand, and then it’s the usual, ‘Me dispiace … non parlo Italiano’. Hence the bookseller’s confusion about the volume I held in my hands. ‘Me dispiace …’ I began, and he snorted indignantly, assuming I was buying the book as an ornament, but as I watched he wrapped carefully, reverentially even, this copy of Giorgio Manganelli’s Nuovo commento that I had long sought and would read with dictionary and other cribs at hand, as I had done Dante, Machiavelli, Calvino, Ortese, Tabucchi or Giorgio Agamben. Published in 1969 by Einaudi, the edition I held was a reissue, number 272 in Adelphi’s list of Italian classics, published in 1993. With due deference to Borges, Nuovo commento poses as, in Agamben’s description, ‘a series of notes about an inexistent text – or, rather, of notes about notes without a text, which are at times extremely lengthy notes to a punctuation mark (such as a semicolon), and which, occupying an entire page, become – one does not really know how – actual tales. Manganelli’s hypothesis is not only that of the inexistence of the text but – also and in equal measure – that of the, so to speak, theological autonomy of the commentary.’3 While Agamben bemoans the inattention of the 1993 edition to the importance Manganelli accorded to the original cover design (featuring an explosion of typographic marks framed by the blank margins of a page), the reissue at least includes a letter written to Manganelli by Italo Calvino, in which the famous author records his experience of reading the novel:

I. D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (Chicago, 2008), p. 278.

2 3

G. Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen: The Before and After of the Book’, in The Fire and the Tale, trans. L. Chiesa (Stanford, 2017), pp. 95–6.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 85

1/29/2021 7:58:16 AM

8 6    S t e ph e n Kel l y

One starts by saying: I’ve already understood everything; this is a commentary on a text that does not exist; too bad the game is clear from the beginning; I wonder how he will be able to continue this for so many pages without any narration. … Then, when we no longer expect it, we receive the golden gift of actual narrations; at a certain point, through a process of accumulation, we pass a certain threshold and reach a sudden revelation: of course, the text is God and the universe, how could I not have realized it any earlier? Then one reads it again with the key that the text is the universe as language, the discourse of a God that does not refer to any signified but to the sum of signifiers, and everything makes perfect sense.4

Agamben pushes Calvino’s reading further: ‘one cannot simply say that the text is missing: rather, it is in a certain sense – like God – everywhere and nowhere; it includes its own commentary or makes itself be included by it, so as to become imperceptible, like an interlinear gloss that cancels or devours the lines of the sacred text on which it comments’.5 For Agamben, Manganelli’s text – and another, Pier Paulo Pasolini’s Petrolio (‘the coincidence between completed and unfinished work here is absolute: the author writes a book in the guise of a critical edition of an uncompleted book’6) – captures what he argues all texts unsuccessfully repress: the ‘before of the book’: I will use this formula – ‘the before of the book’ – to refer to all that precedes the finished book and work, to that limbo, that pre- or sub-world of fantasies, sketches, notes, copybooks, drafts, blotters to which our culture is not able to give a legitimate status nor an adequate graphic design – probably because our idea of creation and work is encumbered with the theological paradigm of the divine creation of the world, that incomparable fiat, which, according to the theologians, is not a facere de materia but a creare ex nihilo, a creation that is not only not preceded by any matter but is instantaneously accomplished, without hesitation or second thoughts, through a gratuitous and immediate act of the will.7

Agamben seeks to put into question ‘the way in which we usually think not only the act of creation but the finished work and the book in which it takes shape’.8 In other words, he is exploring the metaphysics of the book; or perhaps 4 5 6 7 8

Quoted in ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 84. Ibid., p. 86.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 86

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   87

better, he is the latest philosopher to elaborate a book-metaphysics. In this, he continues the thinking of generations of medieval theologians and poets for whom the most appropriate model of the universe was a codex written by the finger of God, among them Augustine, Pierre Bersuire, Hugh of St Victor, Dante and countless others. The topos survived the Middle Ages, of course, and is expressed by later artists and writers, theorists and critics, the most important of whom was Mallarmé.9 But chief among the book-metaphysicians is the textual scholar. As such, this essay assesses the ground-breaking contribution of Michael Sargent to the metaphysics of the book I have begun to sketch, particularly in his production of a ‘rhizomorphic’ edition of Book II of Walter Hilton’s The Scale of Perfection. The essay stages an encounter between Sargent’s editorial theory and Agamben’s reflections on the relationship between the page and the screen, with the goal of celebrating Sargent’s recognition of the limitations of traditional textual scholarship, while gently problematizing his suggestion that digital media promise more successful modes of textual representation than the page. While the dual-text form of Book II of The Scale is powerfully suggestive of future directions for editorial practice, it will be suggested that the material page retains a metaphysical and aesthetic fecundity – our imaginative dependence on organic metaphors is unavoidable, as will be discussed below – that might be exploited to further radicalise our thinking about the future of the scholarly edition. It is no accident that in his assessment of the ‘before of the book’ Agamben should turn from questions of divine creativity to the creation of critical editions. For the scholarly edition is the pre-eminent expression of the book-metaphysics I have begun to imagine here. As Jerome McGann wrote nearly thirty years ago, ‘A critical edition is a kind of text which does not seek to reproduce a particular past text, but rather to reconstitute for the reader, in a single text, the entire history of the work as it has emerged into the present.’10 This is text as world; universe as book. In partial answer to the problem of representing the ‘before of the book,’ Agamben discusses the then ‘Book metaphysics’ is a preoccupation of a long line of Western writers, including Cervantes, Stearne, Borges, Curtius, Nabokov, Julio Cortazar, B. S. Johnson, Calvino, William Burroughs, Jan Tschichold, the Oulipo, Ivan Illich, Edmond Jabés, Derrida, Gabriel Josipovici, Jean-Luc Nancy, not to mention any number of creators of postmodernist ‘biblio-fiction’, for whom the book stands as the most appropriate metaphor for the nature of human experience – such as Arturo PerezReverte, Umberto Eco, Thomas Wharton, Mark Danielewski, Carlos Ruiz Zafon and even the contemporary poet of bacteriological inscription, Christian Bök.

9

J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Charlottesville, 1992), p. 93.

10

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 87

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

8 8    S t e ph e n Kel l y

ground-breaking, in Italian scholarship at least, 1927 edition of Leopardi’s Canti edited by Francesco Moroncini: This is one of the first times that, instead of limiting himself to providing the critical text of each poem, a philologist has reproduced – thanks to a series of typographical devices – not only the manuscript of each canto in its materiality and in all of its particulars, with the corrections, variants, notes, and comments of the author, but also the early versions and, where it exists, the initial prose version.11

This version produces for the reader an initial disorientation ‘because the perfect compositions he was used to reading in one shot now lose their familiar consistency; they expand and extend page after page, allowing him in this way to retrace the temporal process that led to their drafting’. But such a process of textual presentation cuts to the central tension at the heart of the editorial enterprise: When prolonged in time and space, the poem seems to have lost its identity and place: where are Le ricordanze, Canto notturno, and L’infinito? Brought back to the process of their genesis, they are no longer readable as a unitary whole, just as we could not recognize a portrait in which a painter expected to represent together the different ages of the same face.12

Moroncini’s representation of the textual history of Leopardi’s poetry amounts to a kind of disenchantment, drawing back the curtain to reveal the work of writing – the before of the book – that appreciative criticism would rather keep hidden. In turn, Moroncini disorientates not only the integrity of individual poems, but the understanding of the formal genesis of the poetry itself, given the inclusion of prose materials in which so many of them appear to have been seeded: What are these enigmatic pages in prose, which seem an awkward and badly written paraphrase of the Canti yet contain, in all likelihood, the magmatic and burning kernel, almost the living embryo, of poetry? How should we read them? With an eye on the finished text so as to try and understand in which way a perfect organism developed out of such an insignificant fragment – or as such, as if they miraculously contracted in a few lines the springing sprout and the dictation of poetry?13 11 12 13

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, p. 86. Ibid.

Ibid., p. 87.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 88

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   89

Note the arboreal metaphors, which have had, as Michael Sargent has shown, a determining influence on textual scholarship (if not much of the intellectual history of Western culture, as will be discussed below). Agamben asks the question myriad undergraduate or graduate students have asked when confronted with the seemingly impenetrable critical edition: ‘Do we need here to evoke the absent work, arbitrarily projecting the sketches and the notes into an imaginary future, or rather, as seems fairer, appreciate them as such?’14 The appreciation Agamben describes, of course, belongs to the Age of the Author, where we accord to the special intelligence of the artist-creator the final destiny of the work. But the tension between draft and ‘final’ version is, of course, further complicated in the context of manuscript transmission, where arbitrary scholarly judgements about the intelligence or otherwise of copyists leads to the dismissal of transmission as meaningful or interesting historically. The notorious case, in medieval studies, is obviously the Athlone B- text Piers Plowman, where Kane and Donaldson claimed to deliver the purity of Langland’s metre and vision from his prosaic scribes.15 But in echo of McGann, Agamben reminds us that the rejection of traditional concern with recension or best-texts in contemporary textual criticism – his examples are scholarly editions of Hölderlin and Kafka, the latter still in progress – ‘entails a decisive transformation in the way in which we conceive the identity of the work’.16 And it is here where the scholarly edition admits its metaphysical ambition: None of the various versions is the ‘text’ because the latter presents itself as a potentially infinite temporal process – both toward the past, of which it includes every outline, draft, and fragment, and toward the future – whose interruption at a certain point in its history, for biographical reasons or the author’s decision, is purely contingent.17

Ibid.

14

The three-volume edition of Piers Plowman produced by Athlone Press, beginning with George Kane’s edition of the poem’s A-text in 1960 and George Russell’s C-text in 1998, is one of the most important interventions in English-language editorial theory of the twentieth century. The B-text edition (1975), edited by G. Kane and E. T. A. Donaldson, contains the project’s most daring assertion of its editors’ claims to be able to recuperate the authorial voice. See Patterson, ‘The Logic of Textual Criticism and the Way of Genius’, passim.

15

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, pp. 88–9

16

Ibid., p. 89.

17

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 89

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

9 0    S t e ph e n Kel l y

In the vineyard of the text: on postmodern textual criticism The critical edition needs to be destabilized. (Michael G. Sargent18)

The ‘before of the book’ is the field where Michael Sargent has tilled and toiled, working patiently, exhaustively, encyclopaedically, as the textual scholar must, on the all ‘sketches, notes, copybooks, drafts, blotters’, not only of canonized texts but also, in the case of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, of the field’s previous scholarly tenants, Alan Bliss and S. S. Hussey. In addition to Sargent’s crucial critical work on late medieval devotional literature and culture, on book history and, of course, his landmark editions of major Middle English texts, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and Book II of Hilton’s Scale, he has written one of the most important reflections on the epistemologies of the book-metaphysics I have been outlining. ‘Organic and Cybernetic Metaphors for Manuscript Relations: Stemma–Cladogram– Rhizome–Cloud’ appears in the first of two volumes of essays generated by the Geographies of Orthodoxy project at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of St Andrews. In the essay, which acts as a manifesto for his work on Scale II, Sargent attempts nothing short of a reconceptualization of the terms of editorial representation. He identifies these terms with the simultaneous emergence ‘in philology, biology, and textual criticism’ of arboreal metaphors of ‘organic generation and growth’ which, pace Foucault, underpinned the new episteme of Modernity; and he surveys their application in Romance philology, in Darwinian phylogenetic theory and in the work of Zumpt, Schlyter and Lachmann, the earliest advocates of a recognizably modern ‘recensionist’ practice of textual scholarship.19 While acknowledging the heuristic value of models of stemmatic descent, Sargent assesses their epistemological problems with reference to ‘critical editions of “large-corpus” Middle English texts … produced from the end of the nineteenth century through the middle decades of the twentieth [that] attempted at least to base themselves in recension; but it is equally interesting to note how few texts proved amenable to edition by the Lachmannian method’.20 The circular logic of stemmatic recension identified by George Kane – which Sargent paraphrases as follows: ‘the editor must first decide which readings are erroneous (i.e. non-authorial) in order to construct 18

19 20

M. G. Sargent, ‘Organic and Cybernetic Metaphors for Manuscript Relations: Stemma–Cladogram–Rhizome–Cloud’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. I. Johnson and A. Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), p. 237. Ibid., pp. 199–208. Ibid., p. 214.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 90

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   91

a stemma, the purpose of which is to identify non-authorial (ie. erroneous) readings’ – and the inherent binarism of Joseph Bédier’s editorial theory are both deemed inadequate to the task of properly historicizing texts. The latter is demonstrated in Sargent’s reflections on his own initial work of Love’s Mirror: ‘in my analysis of the textual affiliations of the manuscripts of Love’s Mirror, I had stepped squarely into Bédier’s conundrum: I grouped all manuscripts as either α or not-α’.21 The Bédier-influenced work of the 1992 Garland edition of Love’s Mirror gave way to a daunting reassessment of the surviving manuscripts of the text and the production of the University of Exeter Press ‘full critical edition’ in 2005. But even here, Sargent felt unsatisfied with what he now described as manuscript ‘affiliation’. This led him to what he characterizes as ‘postmodern textual criticism’.22 Acknowledging the inadequacy of traditional editorial theory, with reference to the complex codicological situations of Ancrene Wisse, Love’s Mirror or either book of Hilton’s Scale and critiques of textual scholarship by Hans Aarsleff, Edward Said and Allen J. Frantzen,23 Sargent argues that textual scholars need to recognize much more fully the political work their tilling and toiling entails: What needs to be said at this point, I think is that – in Althusserian terms – a good deal of the textual criticism of medieval English literature is intellectual labour performed in ignorance of its relation to hegemonic ideology; and that – again in Althusserian terms – such work is perforce (even without conscious intent) performed in the service of ideology. Considered in these terms, the Athlone edition’s idealized Piers Plowman, a greater poem than what exists in even the sum of its manuscripts, is no less part of an originist/paternalist mythology of the creation of great literature than a Lachmannian critical edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales would have been – even the latter had been possible. This is not to say that there is no further use for critical editions, but that the position of the critical edition needs to be destabilized.24

Reflecting on the multiple paths taken by manuscripts of both Love’s Mirror and Hilton’s Scale in what he terms ‘the political economy of spirituality’ in Ibid., p. 231. On Bédier and Kane’s critiques of stemmatic recension, see D. C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1994), pp. 324–8.

21

Ibid., p. 234.

22

On critiques of the ideology of textual scholarship such as that of Edward Said, see M. R. Warren, ‘The Politics of Textual Criticism’, in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. N. Fraistat and J. Flanders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 119–34.

23

Ibid., p. 237.

24

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 91

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

9 2    S t e ph e n Kel l y

late medieval England alerts Sargent to the essentially fragmentary nature of all textuality. It is here, perhaps, where Sargent’s thinking begins to align with that of Agamben. ‘If each work is essentially a fragment’, says Agamben, ‘it will be legitimate to speak not only of a “before” but also of an “after” of the book, which is equally problematic and even less studied.’25 The multiple temporalities of the book, Agamben argues, require us to assess the insufficiency of the categories through which our culture has accustomed us to think the ontological status of the book and the work. Starting at least with Aristotle, we think the work (which the Greeks called ergon) by relating two concepts: potentiality and actuality, virtual and real (in Greek, dynamis and energeia, being-at-work). The current idea, accepted as obvious, is that the possible and the virtual – the ‘before’ of the work – precede the actual and the real, the ergon, the completed work, in which what was only possible finds its realization through an act of the will.26

While Agamben does not acknowledge the idea here, he is providing a radical theorization of what Zumthor famously referred to as mouvance: A work in which creative potentiality were totally extinguished would not be a work but the ashes and sepulcher of the work. If we really want to comprehend that curious object that is a book, we need to complicate the relation between potentiality and actuality, possible and real, matter and form, and try to imagine a possible that takes place only in the real and a real that does not stop becoming possible.27

This is surely one of the implicit rationales for Sargent’s conceptualization of a ‘rhizomorphic’ edition, which coalesced for Sargent in reading work by David Greetham, Michael Stolz and, of course, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus: Although they are speaking of their own single printed book, the product of two minds (with whatever singularity might be attributed to these two minds), the metaphor of ‘root – radicle – rhizome’ struck me as particularly useful … In a sense a stemma is a single root, descending from a textual point of origin, with definable ramifications. A cladogram is like a radicle in that (like a root) it descends from a single point, but with numerous, perplexing branchings and nodes that can be mapped, but not rationalized 25 26 27

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, p. 89. Ibid., p. 93.

Ibid., p. 94. Zumthor’s celebrated theory of ‘mouvance’ appears in his Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris, 1972).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 92

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   93

into a hierarchy. A rhizome, however – like a mushroom ring or a circular stand of larch tress, has multiple ‘points of origin’ at the surface … branching and interconnecting in ways whose ‘direction’ cannot be determined.28

As Sargent has stated elsewhere, the rhizome has allowed him to imagine ‘a non-genetic, non-evolutionary, non-authoritative, non-positivist, post-modern way of approaching the multiplicity that is the natural state of text’ (my emphasis).29 This is book-metaphysics, par excellence. Where Zumthor’s ‘mouvance’ has been understood as supposedly inherent to manuscript textuality, Sargent posits multiplicity as the ontological condition of textuality itself. In this he recalls Patrick Connor’s argument, in 1992, that ‘the essence of a collective human textuality is – and has always been – its potential to be a hypertext’. Connor back-projects a particular understanding of hypertext – its ability to link texts together in a continuum of reference – to incorporate ‘implicitly or explicitly … the notion of an intertext, a concept in which all texts are part of a single macro-text, and each is related to one another by means of its participation in the intertext’.30 Like Connor, Sargent has absorbed the suggestions of poststructuralist theories of language, and his dissatisfaction with the protocols of textual criticism are rooted precisely in the inadequacy of the traditional edition to represent such multiplicity. But that inadequacy is not wholly the fault of recensionist theories of textual transmission. The arrival of ‘modern’ textual scholarship is coterminous with the development of the printing press; and the printing press, according to Ivan Illich’s extraordinary and often eccentric study of Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon entitled In the Vineyard of the Text, completes a series of epistemological transitions to the idea of the page which were initiated by scholasticism. For Illich, the commentary tradition sees its greatest efflorescence in the twelfth century, when the book takes on a symbolism which it retained until our own time. It becomes a symbol for an unprecedented kind of object, visible but intangible, which I shall call the bookish text … The page became a bookish text, this latter shaped the scholastic mind, and the text–mind relationship was as necessary a foundation for print culture as alphabetic recording had been Sargent, ‘Organic and Cybernetic Metaphors’, p. 247.

28

M. G. Sargent, ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 529–30.

29

P. W. Connor, ‘Hypertext in the Last Days of the Book’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 74.3 (1992), 7–24 (p. 8, p. 12) .

30

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 93

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

9 4    S t e ph e n Kel l y

for the culture of literature and philosophy of ancient Greece … It was a scribal revolution that created the object which, three hundred years later, was fit for print … With the invention and diffusion of printing, this era of the book … was given a set of additional characteristics, making the bookish text as root metaphor a powerful determinant of a new worldview.31

No radical break here – with the emergence of new technologies such as printing – from the pre-modern, but the consolidation of a conception of textuality elaborated in the twelfth century that comes to fruition in the age of print. As Adrian Johns has argued, the development of printing – he disavows Elizabeth Eisenstein’s concept of ‘print culture’ – was accompanied by a purificatory impulse that sought to excise the multiplicities of the printed page in favour of ontological fixity: What we often regard as essential elements and necessary concomitants of print are in fact rather more contingent than generally acknowledged. Veracity in particular is … extrinsic to the press itself, and has had to be grafted onto it. The same may be said of other cognate attributes associated with printing … The very identity of print itself has had to be made. It came to be as we now experience it only by virtue of hard work, exercised over generations and across nations. That labor has long been overlooked, and is not now evident. But its very obscurity is revealing. It was dedicated to effacing its own traces, and necessarily so: only if such efforts disappeared could printing gain the air of intrinsic reliability on which its cultural and commercial success could be built.32

Even as it admits, through its various apparatus, the partiality of its representations, the traditional critical edition still posits a text rescued from history, enshrined in pristine and immortal regimes of graphical representation which have their roots in what Jan Tschichold and others have referred to as the ‘secret canons’ that coalesced during the incunable phase of print history.33 In elaborating a ‘rhizomorphic edition’ which keeps faith with the visual protocols of the page as conceptualized by printing, but which presents 31

32

33

I. Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago, 1993), pp. 115, 116. A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 2–3.

J. Tschichold, The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (London, 1991). Tschichold’s austere pronouncements on the perfection of the page, and his own revision of the Van der Graaf Canon to incorporate the Golden Ratio, are further examples of the book-metaphysics this essay has been assessing.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 94

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   95

facing-page editions of two manuscript traditions of Scale II, Sargent does nothing less than demolish the epistemological assumptions which accompany the visual edifice of the critical edition. In doing so, he successfully expresses the metaphysical ambitions of postmodern textual scholarship. Sargent’s work on the manuscripts of Scale II indicates ‘several discrete lines of transmission’ of the text34 – something of an understatement when one considers that ‘there are some 22,000 points of variation in 56,000 words of the text’.35 That he chose British Library MS Harley 6573 (sigla, H7) and British Library MS Harley 6579 (H) is not relevant here; indeed, few are qualified to contest Sargent’s selection. Rather, I am interested in the experience of reading Sargent’s edition of Scale II. Let us take Chapter 21 and following of the text, which initiates Hilton’s famous reflections on the pilgrimage of faith and the luminous darkness of contemplation. That experience is brilliantly disorientating. At first glance, the text enacts the standard representational strategies of any critical edition, with variance recorded, per manuscript, in footnote apparatus; foliation reported in the gutters; and editorial interventions represented in square brackets. But the hermeneutic shock of juxtaposing two manuscript traditions of the text in the form of the book was demonstrated in a seminar exercise with final-year undergraduate students on a module I teach called Digital Textualities and the History of the Book. Students were broken into a series of groups and given a photocopied page either from the prologue of Piers Plowman in the Athlone Press B-text or the beginning of Chapter 21 of The Scale of Perfection in Sargent’s edition (some had encountered excerpts of the text in earlier modules, derived from Thomas Bestul’s TEAMS edition).36 The students were asked to reverse-engineer the editions in order to reproduce the text in a given set of manuscript witnesses (students had already been given a list and explanation of manuscript sigla). The object of the exercise is to introduce students to what this essay has been describing as the metaphysical aspirations of the critical edition. Students working on Piers Plowman quickly transcribed the text of the manuscripts they had been tasked with reproducing by working back from variance. And while students working on Sargent’s edition of the Scale could do likewise, they more readily recognized how Sargent’s juxtaposition of two manuscript traditions interrupted their traditional interpretative schemes and reading conventions – and Sargent, ‘Introduction’, in W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection Book II: An Edition Based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford, 2017 for 2016), lxxxvii.

34

Ibid., xciv.

35

W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. T. H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, 2000).

36

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 95

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

9 6    S t e ph e n Kel l y

how his text acts as an assault on the very premise of an editorial project such as the Athlone Piers Plowman. Students, then, quickly grasped ‘the nature of the modern critical edition’; as Sargent states, ‘it is a chimera, a uniform, authorized text, a construction of the collusion of the editor and printer. The more perfect it is, the more it counterfeits the manuscript evidence upon which it is based. In Deleuzean terms, it exists as a form of generalization, and obfuscates the traces of the difference between repetitions that constitutes the actual manuscript history of the text.’37 Compare with his postmodern edition: A postmodern critical edition is not the representation of an idealized text that has been abstracted from the surviving manuscripts by either a genetic or an aesthetic process of generalization, but the record of the difference of the surviving manuscripts, recorded as variance. The critical apparatus of such an edition is not simply a list of the readings that can be safely ignored once the critical text has been constructed from them, but an integral part of the text itself. The critical text is the text; the critical apparatus is also the text. The postmodern editor puts into play a text that is different from all other forms of the text, but which has been constructed on the basis of differences of all of them each from each. It is not a generalization abstracted from differences but the presentation of all differences: the pleroma that is the text (my emphasis).

‘In the Western imagination’, says literary historian Christy Wampole in her Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor, ‘transcendence is predicated on rootedness.’ But even as Sargent strives (albeit ironically) for Gnostic totality, there is, in his demotion of the arboreal in favour of the rhizome, a continuing allegiance to the earthly, the organic, from which the postmodern textual scholarship he outlines seemed to redeem us (it is good, as we will see below, that it does not). Wampole demonstrates ‘how the paganistic idea of human embeddedness in nature gets refashioned time and again, lyricized through literature and legitimated through politics, philosophy and science … The root metaphor, which some have argued is an archetypal image, shows its full range of volatility as it moves from biologic, positivist stylings, through nationalist, racializing discourses, to its current rhizomatic, poststructuralist treatment.’38 While she does not discuss textual scholarship, Wampole traces a similar history of organic metaphors to that of Sargent but argues, contra Foucault, that the root is less a trope of the discursive regime of Modernity than a 37 38

Scale, ed. Sargent, p. cxxxvi.

Wampole, Rootedness, pp. 4, 5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 96

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   97

‘supermetaphor’ that ‘subsumes’ the three other ‘absolute’ metaphors of Western culture (foundation, an architectural metaphor; source, an aquatic metaphor; and seed, ‘a compressed kernel of futurity’).39 But when she arrives at the conceptualization of the rhizome in Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, Wampole is troubled by the simultaneous poetic richness but philosophical poverty of the idea: There were moments when I believed I understood the rhizome. I thought it might be a metaphor for describing those phenomena that refuse hierarchy, linearity, and institutionality. I imagined it as an improvisational form that communicates the idealized unmanageability of transmitted culture. It seemed to be a living alternative, something that shared certain features with roots or rootlets, such as the fact that these are all botanical forms that grow underground and are alive and mutable … The appeal of the rhizome concept has continued in many disciplines because, in its preference for imagistic poetics over rhetorical argument, it has the feel of a true expressive alternative. However, replacing the old botanical metaphor with a new one does not radicalize thought in the way Deleuze and Guattari imagined. In their theorization of the rhizome, they sought to unsettle philosophy from its ground, using gestures similar to those of Derrida. But the root-to-rhizome shift is overly touted as a salvific move toward freedom from the past. In the end, the rhizome is not radically different from the root.40

Wampole rejects the promises of ‘rhizomatic epistemology’ because its posthumanism is too closely allied, in her view, with the animism informing recent, maverick, examples of ethnographic and anthropological theory, all of which propagate the rhizome as the explanatory paradigm of our time.41 But what they in fact betray is precisely how wedded we remain to our biological condition even as we try to envisage our social worlds. As Wampole puts it, The human is necessarily a networked being, and this makes it easy to project onto the root’s bifurcations an image of systemic connectedness, a logistical Ibid., pp. 16–17.

39

Wampole, Rootedness, pp. 218, 222–3.

40

See M. Hall’s Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany (New York, 2011), E. Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley, 2013) and M. Marder, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (New York, 2013), which all draw on Deleuze and Guattari, as do the neo-structuralist ontologies of work by Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (both of whom read Levi-Strauss through A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus); see P. Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago, 2013) and V. de Castro, Cannibal Metaphysics (Minneapolis, 2015).

41

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 97

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

9 8    S t e ph e n Kel l y

wonderwork that incorporates every aspect of existence … into a single living image. But the root’s form is less reticular than vascular; it is less a grid than a flowchart. It doesn’t criss-cross like a net but instead provides paths of flux for water, minerals, and sap, each of which has a terminus.42

Networks and rhizomes are not the same, as Wampole implies, and it is perhaps for this reason that, as I shall argue below, the metaphysics of the textual and digital realms are fundamentally at odds with one another – which has important implications for Sargent’s vision for ‘a rhizomorphic edition … achievable through electronic media’.43

Cargo in the arbor The reader is not just encouraged, but required (so far as an editor may require of a reader) to follow the text in its apparatus. It is not ballast: it is the cargo. (Michael G. Sargent44)

Giorgio Agamben’s interest in Manganelli’s Nuovo commento derives from the way the experimental novel restates the medieval commentary tradition’s recognition that the codex is more than simply writing support for texts; rather, that there is, in the idea of the book, a uniquely telling articulation of Western metaphysics. His disappointment with Adelphi’s decision not to reproduce Manganelli’s deliberately designed original cover derives from the publisher’s failure to recognize the key philosophical theme of Manganelli’s work: the epistemological and ontological status of the page itself. As Bonnie Mak remarks, ‘the page has played a central role in preserving the intellectual and artistic traditions of the West for over two millennia. In its long service to the graphic communication of thought, the page has crucially influenced how ideas matter’45 – both why they are significant and how they are embodied. While as Johanna Drucker has commented, ‘the dynamic properties usually attributed to new media are already active and present within older forms’ such as the codex page,46 for Agamben the critical issue is that ‘the page acquires in the Christian West a symbolic meaning that promotes it to the rank of an actual

42 43 44 45 46

Wampole, Rootedness, p. 61.

Scale, ed. Sargent, p. cxxxvii. Ibid., cxli.

B. Mak, How the Page Matters (Toronto, 2011), p. 9.

J. Drucker, Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge (Cambridge MA, 2014), p. 162.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 98

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Ca rgo in the A r bor   99

imago mundi and imago vitae’.47 The codex displaces the scroll, in the Christian imagination, as the New Testament displaces the Torah. And yet rabbinical exegetes offer an instructive riposte to those technologists – and the scholars of the digital humanities susceptible to their rhetorics of revolution and disruption – who declare that the codex, too, is about to be consigned to history. As philosopher of new media John Durham Peters comments, ‘according to a 1999 rabbinical ruling, the command to save all text containing the divine name does not apply to the pixels of computer screens, since they are not “anything more than a sequence of ones and zeroes”’.48 Can there be a more pointed articulation of the metaphysics of the book than this? But as Agamben argues, it is not ‘passage from the material to the virtual’ that matters in the emergence of digital textualities; rather, it is that ‘digital devices are not immaterial but founded on the obliteration of their own materiality’.49 In keeping with the philological sensibilities that have underwritten his entire philosophical project, Agamben reminds us that ideas of the book derive steadfastly from the natural world: ‘The Italian word libro [book] derives from a Latin term that originally means “wood, bark.” In Greek the term for “matter” is hyle, which itself means “wood, forest” – or, as the Latins translate it: silva or materia, which is the term used for wood as a construction material, as different from lignum, that is, firewood.’ The capacity of the natural world to be transformed through human intervention articulates the metaphysical notion that ‘matter is the very place of possibility and virtuality: it is even pure possibility, the “shapelessness” that can receive and contain all forms and of which form is somehow the trace. In other words, following the image given by Aristotle … matter is the blank page, the writing tablet on which everything can be written.’50 The page matters, then, because it reminds us that matter is potentiality. ‘What happens to this blank page, this pure matter, in the computer? In a certain sense the computer is nothing other than a blank page, which has been fixed on that object we call, using a term on which it is worth reflecting, “screen”.’51 Agamben reminds us that the etymol Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, p. 103.

47

J. D. Peters, The Marvellous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago, 2015), p. 317.

48

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, pp. 104, 107. Agamben reminds us of David Scott Kastan’s characterization of the view that texts can transcend their material circumstances as ‘Platonic’; see his Shakespeare and the Book (Cambridge, 2000), p. 117.

49

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, p. 105.

50

Ibid.

51

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 99

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 0 0    S te ph e n Kel l y

ogy of screen derives from the ancient German verb skirmjan, ‘“to protect, to shelter, to defend”’, and that by the time the work enters Italian as ‘“schermo”’ it has acquired an additional optical connotation of hiding from sight.52 The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the term’s etymology is even more convoluted and linguistically promiscuous, but shared across the word’s history is the idea of protection; that something is being withheld or withdrawn from view.53 ‘How’, asks Agamben, ‘could a word that means “obstacle, shelter” acquire the meaning of “surface on which images appear”?’54 Following the suggestions of Illich, Agamben argues that in the domains of digital representation the text itself comes to be abstracted from the vineyards of reading (‘the page, which etymologically derives from a term that designated the vine shoot’; ‘legere, to read, orginally meant “to gather”’55), with the result that digital textuality ‘has been completely emancipated from the page as support and is limited to transiting like a ghost on the screen’.56 As he argues, When we use a computer, an iPad, or Kindle, we keep our eyes fixed for hours on a screen that we never see as such … the screen ‘screens’ itself, hides the page as support – that is, matter – in the page as writing, which has itself become immaterial or, rather, spectral – if by specter we mean something that has lost its body but also somehow preserves the form of its body. Those who use these devices are readers and writers who, without realizing it, had 52

Ibid., pp. 105–6.

53

According to the Oxford English Dictionary: Probably an unattested variant (without prothetic e-) of Anglo-Norman escrein, escrin, Anglo-Norman and Old French, Middle French escren (Old French, Middle French escran, French écran) fire screen (13th cent.), protective shield (mid 13th cent. or earlier), dividing screen, partition (1538), Middle Dutch scherm, schirm protection, protective device, with metathesis of e and r. Middle Dutch scherm, schirm (Old Dutch skirm; Dutch scherm ) is cognate with Middle Low German scherm, Old High German scirm (Middle High German schirm, German Schirm), further etymology uncertain, perhaps the same Indo-European base as Sanskrit carman, Avestan čarəman hide, leather, Old Church Slavonic črěvo belly, womb, Old Prussian kērmens body, ultimately the Indo-European base of shear v. If this is correct, the Germanic word may have referred originally to a hide-covered shield.

54 55 56

(https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/173439#eid24076102)

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, p. 106. Ibid., pp. 106, 107. Ibid., p. 107.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 100

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Cargo in the A r bor   101

to forgo the – both distressing and productive – experience of the blank page, of that writing tablet on which nothing is yet written, which Aristotle compared with the pure potentiality of thought.57

‘To think,’ says Agamben, finally, ‘– but also to read – means to recall matter’ (my emphasis).58 For Agamben, the achievement of Manganelli’s Nuovo commento, and its important predecessors such as Stephane Mallarmé’s Un coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard (1897, published 1914), in which the traditional mise en page of lyric poetry is exploded by emulating the splash templates used in formatting newspaper advertising,59 is that they return us to the materiality of thought, and the centrality of the page to its articulation. Hence, there is in digital textuality a fundamental disjuncture that its hosting device itself attempts to screen. In thinking Michael Sargent’s vision for a rhizomorphic textual criticism through the work of Giorgio Agamben, I find myself surprised by my own conclusion that the aspiration to fulfil the promise of a postmodern editorial method electronically – an aspiration I shared with Sargent and myriad other medievalists who were and are excited by the possibilities of digital representation – would be fundamentally to betray the metaphysics of the book, to banish ourselves from the vineyards of thought to which the book gives exquisite material form. This is perhaps why Paul Eggert, in reflections on the critical edition in the age of electronic reproduction that recall those of Sargent, imagines the digital edition not as a series of interlinked pages but ‘as a “work-site”, with all the Ibid., pp. 107–8. Agamben’s view is substantiated in repeated comments by Apple’s chief of design, Jony Ive, who has suggested that the goal of Apple’s aesthetic is for devices to all but disappear, facilitating a pure and uninterrupted experience. His eulogy on the curved bezels of the displays powering the 2018 iPad Pro is particularly telling:

57

If you look at the iPad Pro, though, you can see how the radius, the curve in the corner of the display, is concentric with and sympathetic to the actual enclosure. You feel it’s authentic, and you have the sense that it’s not an assembly of a whole bag of different components: it’s a single, clear product.

Square corners would remind us of the materiality his design is trying to deny. ‘Jony Ive interview: Apple design guru on how he created the new iPad – and the philosophy behind it’, The Independent, Friday 2 November 2018, https://www. independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/jony-ive-interview-apple-ipad-new-macbook-air-mac-tim-cook-event-a8614421.html.

Agamben, ‘From the Book to the Screen’, pp. 107–8.

58

Discussed in J. Drucker, The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909–1923 (Chicago, 1994), pp. 51–9, passim.

59

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 101

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 0 2    S te ph e n Kel l y

materials either immediately available for text-construction or consultation, or able to be connected to … Such an electronic edition (perhaps better termed a “critical archive”) would be designed to be unfinished.’60 But it is striking that, in his Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation, Dennis Tenen comments with reference to the idea of the archive that, Digital text offers no such permanence. What is meant by ‘fixed,’ ‘durable,’ and ‘repeatable’ changes with the device. Such properties come to us under the guise of surface representation. Nothing is guaranteed in the passage of digital text from one pair of hands to another. Formatting expands its purview beyond typographical convention. It includes the capability to substitute words, summarize automatically, generate discourse by algorithmic means, or erase wholesale. What does it mean, then, to read and interpret texts that change depending on their contexts? How can literary analysis – close reading, philology, hermeneutics persist without the fixity of print?61

In a crucial equivocation which speaks to the inseparability of textual criticism from the form of the codex, Sargent comments, ‘even an electronic edition, no matter how equipollent the linking of the text of the various manuscripts and versions, will open up to a default text’.62 This is a conceptual aporia that captures the contradictions in the relation of the material page to its electronic representations. But there are pragmatic caveats too: as Bella Millett has explored, the sustainability of large-scale digital editorial projects is dependent, typically, upon the open minds and wallets of university administrators who are willing to fund and host such work.63 And there are problems with the occulted materiality of digital artefacts themselves; as Johanna Drucker has commented, A book once finished sits on the shelf, opens without electricity or upgrades to its operating system or to the environment in which it is stored. Five 60

61

62 63

P. Eggert, ‘Apparatus, Text, Interface: How to Read a Printed Critical Edition’, in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. N. Fraistat and J. Flanders (Cambridge, 2013), p. 116. D. Tennen, Plain Text: the Poetics of Computation (Stanford, 2017), p. 25. We might contest Tennen’s assumption about the stability of archives or the fixity of print, but his assertions about the nature of digital textuality hold. Scale, ed. Sargent, p. cxxxvii.

B. Millett, ‘Whatever Happened to Electronic Editing?’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 47–53.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 102

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Cargo in the A r bor   103

hundred years from now? The complexly layered and interdependent material conditions that support digital storage, access, and use have an unprecedented rate of obsolescence, and half a millennium is unlikely to extend the shelf life of files that aren’t backward compatible across two or three versions of software upgrades. As for permanent – the fact is that every use of a file degrades and changes it, that ‘bit rot’ sets in as soon as a file is made, and that no two copies of any file are ever precisely the same as another.64

Which returns us, then, to the book. It is intriguing that, after more than a century of typographical and graphic reinvention within the form of the book among writers – from Mallarmé to B. S. Johnson, Jacques Derrida (think Glas) and Mark Danielewski, but also artists such as Tom Phillips, poets such as Anne Carson, whose Nox (2010) is one of the most extraordinary ‘books’ of the twenty-first century, or publishers such as Visual Editions – that there has been little innovation in the visual presentation of scholarly critical editions. These texts explode the canons of page construction formulated by incunable printers (which were in dialogue both with classical and medieval mis en page) and sacralized by designers such as Jan Tscischold, allowing text to meander, spiral, overlap and contravene the protocols of column and margin, header and footer. There is no little irony in the fact that when Mark Danielewski produced his experimental meta-novel House of Leaves (2000) – for what else is a book but a house of leaves, as Hugh of St Victor would have known? – he had to do so initially in pencil, because his publisher was reluctant to invest the resources to typeset the text as he wished; he had to learn how to set it himself in the desktop publishing software of the time.65 While Michael Sargent has consistently resisted the epistemological and ideological impositions of contemporary collation software, wedded as they are to assumptions of recensionist criticism, it is to be regretted that medievalist textual scholars have allowed themselves to be bound by the purificatory protocols of the printed page, when the medieval page is so fecund with graphical modes now fetishised for their beauty rather than their hermeneutical facility.66 I do not envisage a printed critical edition of the future that replicates the appearance of the medieval codex literally; rather, as John Dagenais reminds us, the J. Drucker, ‘Pixel Dust: Illusions of Innovation in Scholarly Publishing’, LA Review of Books, January 2014, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/pixel-dust-illusions-innovation-scholarly-publishing/.

64

L. McCaffery and S. Gregory, ‘Haunted House: An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski’, Critique 44.2 (2003), 99–135 (discussed at pp. 117–18).

65

Sargent, ‘Organic and Cybernetic Metaphors’, p. 252.

66

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 103

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 0 4    S te ph e n Kel l y

medieval page is marked by its especial ‘potential for movement, [its] essential incompleteness … There are a variety of negotiations going on within the manuscript page, systems of dialogue: blank space and text, text and gloss, scribe and reader, reader and later reader, centre and edge, inside and outside.’67 Let us imagine a modern critical edition which not only availed of the technological capabilities of digital typesetting, but which was in dialogue both with its medieval forebears and those experiments in textual representation that characterize modernism and postmodernism’s engagements with the idea of the book. ‘Books will not disappear,’ says N. Katherine Hayles, ‘but neither will they escape the effects of the digital technologies that interpenetrate them. More than a mode of material production (although it is that), digitality has become the textual condition of twenty-first-century literature.’68 Perhaps. But as sales of e-books and their supporting devices decline, and publishers renew their commitments to the book as technology, it is interesting to observe how essential the codex and its pages remain to our fundamental modes of thought.69 Yes; as Sargent says, ‘the position of the critical edition needs to be destabilized’, but the postmodern textual criticism he envisages need not ascend to the cloud quite yet – there remains plenty of cargo in the arbor. If experimental literary works such as B. S. Johnson’s ‘book in a box’ The 67

68

69

J. Dagenais, ‘Decolonizing the Medieval Page’, in The Future of the Page, ed. P. Stoicheff and A. Taylor (Toronto, 2004), p. 37–70 (p. 54).

N. Katherine Hayles, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (Notre Dame, 2008), p. 186.

While e-book sales are anticipated to have risen during the Covid-19 pandemic, their declining sales have been reported for several years: ‘How High Street Book Retailers Continue to Dominate Ebooks’, Retail Gazette, 18 February 2020, https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2020/02/why-readers-prefer-physical-books-over-digital/; ‘The 2010s Were Supposed to Bring the Ebook Revolution. It Never Quite Came’, Vox, 23 December 2019, https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/12/23/20991659/ebook-amazon-kindle-ereader-department-of-justice-publishing-lawsuit-appleipad; ‘Physical Books Still Outsell E-books – and Here’s Why’, CNBC.com, 19 September 2019 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outselle-books-and-heres-why.html; ‘New Chapter? UK Print Book Sales Fall while Audiobooks Surge 43%’, The Guardian, 26 June 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/ books/2019/jun/26/new-chapter-uk-print-book-sales-fall-while-audiobookssurge-43; ‘Are E-Books Finally Over? The Publishing Industry Unexpectedly Tilts Back to Print’, Observer.com, 11 August 2018, https://observer.com/2018/11/ ebook- sales-decline-independent-bookstores/; ‘Ebook Sales Continue to Fall as Younger Generations Drive Appetite for Print’, The Guardian, 14 March 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/14/ebook-sales-continue-to-fallnielsen-survey-uk-book-sales (accessed 24 June 2020).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 104

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Cargo in the A r bor   105

Unfortunates (1969) failed as much because of its production costs as its interpretative unrepeatability, and Danielewski’s House of Leaves could only initially be published as intended, with strategic use of spot colour throughout, as a limited edition, ‘digitality’, as Hayles refers to it, and other technological advances in printing now make experimental editions more affordable to produce. What would a postmodern critical edition look like that threw off the orthodoxies of the academic presses and defied the recidivist ideological state of the majority of textual scholarship; that revisited the vitality and potentiality of matter that the medieval codex embodied; that allowed ‘the before of the book’ to explode across the page? If anyone can answer this question, it is Michael Sargent.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 105

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 106

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

II

Translated Texts and Devotional Implications

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 107

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 108

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

5 Rendering Readers’ Soulscapes: Variant Translation of Interiority in the Late Medieval English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition IAN JOHNSON

A

t

s Sarah McNamer reminds us, meditative devotional works are not primarily ‘aesthetic artefacts. They had serious, practical work to do: to teach their readers, through iterative affective performance, how to feel.’1 In such texts, shareable narrative experience, through reading or hearing, becomes an intensely personal refraction of such experience recreated in inward verisimilitude; for, as Jennifer Bryan points out: ‘“Inward” here is more concrete and lifelike … Inward beholding creates personal and intimate knowledge, knowledge that pertains to the reader’s soul alone.’2 These are both valid comments from scholars who understand well how such texts work in the imaginations – in the souls – of late medieval readers. The approaches of such scholars, which are truly valuable, tend more often than not to have the reader and the reading experience rather than the processes of literary translation in mind. There is nothing wrong with this. This essay, however, pays attention to a special kind of reader – the reader of the Latin tradition who performs his reading in textual form by translating it. These text-making readers teach reading and feeling in their own different ways, which become all the more interesting and revealing when we encounter them treating the same material. And, outside the Bible, what material in late medieval English religious literary mainstream culture is more important than the meditative tradition

S. McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 2. I would also like to thank J. Brown and N. Rice warmly for their constructive comments and editorial support.

1

J. Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 38.

2

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 109

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 1 0    I a n J oh nson

of the Meditationes vitae Christi? This study accordingly addresses the issue of how, in this vitally important area of late medieval English devotional literary culture, each choice of translation – down to the smallest preposition, change of wording or shift of voice – affects the configuration of narrative experience and reader interiorities, especially in devotional works setting out to engage the imaginations of their readers and to teach them not only how and what to imagine but also how to dispose themselves with regard to variable topographies of interiority. Whatever a translator’s motivations, the tiniest details of such treatment entail experiential and ideological variation significant to the ongoing formation of the piety and habitus of readers and hearers. Translations of the same source present particularly useful opportunities for scrutinizing productive variancy in linguistic quantities and in features that may sometimes seem small but which may also have considerable semantic, ideological, theological and affective reach and import. No one on the planet, to be sure, has engaged more with variancy or with more variants in Middle English texts than Michael Sargent, especially in the late medieval English Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition. I will therefore discuss expositions of the passage on Christ’s ascent of the cross in three rather different but not entirely dissimilar versions of the Meditationes vitae Christi: the prose translation found in Michigan State University MS 1, also known as the Lyrical Meditations; the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, once thought to be by Robert Mannyng of Brunne; and Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.3 In the passage to be discussed, the Lyrical Meditations introduces, through translational details, its own type of greater urgency to the Latin source and its own increase in cognitive tension and counterpointing among emotions. In the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, there is something similar, albeit remeasured differently in the pulse of vernacular 3

For editions of these works, see S. M. Day, ‘A Critical Edition of The Privity of the Passion and The Lyrical Meditations’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1991); Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, ed. J. Meadows Cowper, EETS OS 60 (London, 1875), and N. Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005). For information and studies on the Middle English tradition of the Meditationes vitae Christi, see I. Johnson and A. F. Westphall, eds., The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition (Turnhout, 2013); I. Johnson, The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation, and Vernacular Theology (Turnhout, 2013); Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. S. Kelly and R. Perry (Turnhout, 2014), and the website of the AHRC-funded research project on the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition, Geographies of Orthodoxy: http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 110

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   111

couplets with no little concision, oral performability, theological decorum, dramatic aplomb and narrative pace. The poet-translator shows inventive dexterity in deploying the verse line to regulate, divide, sequence, adjust and repace the prose original. He also shows resourcefulness in the manipulation of line, rhyme and syntax in facilitating the clear but subtle management of the language and logistics of profound and monumentally important theological transactions, which he enables to be reimagined sufficiently and accurately. Here, deceptive simplicity of narration meets with sophisticated control and theological correctness, especially in the representation of the relationship between the divinity and humanity. In the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, somewhat differently, Nicholas Love, also showing control and correctness, reconfigures imaginative experience with an exquisite subtlety more than equal to the sophistication of the Latin, as, for example, in his renuancing of Christ’s meekness in the original with minute but theologically significant detail. Here, as we shall see, Love retunes, elaborates, glosses and deepens his source in small but telling linguistic quantities, which, in their coherence and consistency, have a fine-grained mutuality with each other. We start with the Lyrical Meditations, extant in a single manuscript of the mid- to late fifteenth century, Michigan State University MS 1. It narrates from the Last Supper to Christ’s appearance to the disciples following his Resurrection. From the Resurrection onwards, it relies considerably on the Privity of the Passion, another Middle English prose version of the Meditationes vitae Christi, although it still also turns at times to the Latin original.4 The text is probably of the mid- to late fifteenth century and is conceivably of northern or north-east Midland provenance.5 Virtually nothing is known about the intended or actual readership of this work, or its transmission. In her unpublished edition of the work, Stephanie Day makes a sensible speculation that, given the translator’s preservation of Franciscan passages and his increasing of Marian material, this work may have been intended for nuns.6 As for the most notable characteristics of this translation of the Meditationes, Day notes its propensity to move the reader towards compassion and subsequently beyond compassion to ‘subsequent spiritual stages of self-loathing, penitence, See A. F. Westphall, ‘The Passion in English: Meditations on the Life of Christ in Michigan State University MS 1’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 199–214, pp. 210–13 for discussion of the relationship of this text to the Privity of the Passion.

4

See A. F. Westphall’s ‘Textual Profile’ of this work on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/?section=corpus&id=8.

5

Day, ‘The Privity of the Passion and The Lyrical Meditations’, pp. 99–100.

6

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 111

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 1 2    I a n J oh nson

acceptance of forgiveness and gratitude to the suffering saviour’.7 In his textual profile for the Geographies of Orthodoxy website, Allan F. Westphall points out the main ways in which the translator alters the original with important expansions: ‘(1) apostrophes and spontaneous prayers, which take the form of either extended Marian laments, or first-person penitential responses to the meditations on Christ’s suffering; (2) prolonged, detailed descriptions in the Scourging and Crucifixion sequences of the blood of Christ and the horrors of rupturing and tearing apart Christ’s skin; (3) meditations on the magnitude of Mary’s suffering and grief and reflection on Mary’s special love for Christ.’8 Such context is to be borne in mind for the purposes of analysing the passage under consideration, though such analysis may uncover features that are of critical interest in their own right aside from such context. In its own distinctive way, the Lyrical Meditations provides, in the passage to be discussed, greater detail and explicitness than the source in unpacking and rearticulating the complete and intentional actions of Christ, thereby emphasizing for its vernacular audience the character of the action of Christ’s divine will in the context of his humanity. This more explicit representation of the intentional actions of Christ has a corollary not only in its more explicit dramatic gestural symbolism but also in its representation of action effected through the repeated replacement of abstract verbs in the Latin with more spatial and physical vernacular verbs of strategic dimensionality and force. For all its cross-currents of emotion, however, the Lyrical Meditations, in the passage to be discussed at least, provides an impression of intentional continuity and providential control in Christ’s actions more particularly than does the original at this stage of the text. Below are the Latin original, a modern English translation of this and the passage as translated in the Lyrical Meditations: O in quanta amaritudine est nunc anima sua! Nam credo quod ei verbum facere non potuit: si amplius facere posset, utique voluisset; sed amplius non potuit eum iuvare. Eripitur enim Filius suus de manibus eius furibunde ad pedem crucis. Hic modum crucifixionis diligenter attende. Ponuntur due scale, una retrorsum, alia ad sinistrum brachium, super quas malefici ascendunt cum clavis et martellis. Ponitur eciam alia scala ex parte anteriori, attingens usque ad locum ubi debebant pedes figi. Conspice nunc bene singula: compellitur 7 8

Ibid., p. 72.

See A. F. Westphall’s ‘Textual Profile’ of this work on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/?section=corpus&id=8.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 112

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   113

Dominus Iesus crucem ascendere per hanc scalam parvam; ipse autem sine rebellione et contradiccione facit humiliter quidquid volunt. Cum igitur in superiori parte illius parve scale pervenit ad crucem, renes vertit, et illa regalia aperit brachia, et extendens manus pulcherimas, in excelsis eas porrigit suis crucifixoribus. Aspicit in celum, Patri dicens: ‘Ecce hic sum, Pater mi! Usque ad crucem me humiliari voluisti pro amore et salute generis humani: placet, accepto, et pro eis me tibi offero quos michi fratres esse voluisti. Accepta igitur et tu, Pater, et deinceps placibilis esto mei amore et omnem maculam veterem absterge et elonga ab eis: pro eis me tibi offero, Pater.’9 (O in how great a bitterness is her soul now! I do not believe she could speak a word to him: if she could do more, she would do it; but she was unable to help him. Instead, her son is furiously ripped from her hands and is led to the foot of the cross. Now pay careful attention to the process of crucifixion. The executioners put two ladders in place, one behind and the other by the left arm; on these they climb up with their nails and hammers. Another short ladder is put in front, reaching up to the place where the feet are to be attached. Now take a careful look at each and every move. They force the Lord Jesus to climb the cross by the short ladder. Without protest, without resistance, he humbly does whatever they wish. Then when he reached the cross on the uppermost step of that short ladder, he twisted his body around; he opened up those royal arms and stretched out his most beautiful hands, extending them high for his crucifiers. He looks to heaven to his Father, saying, ‘Here I am, Father! Even to the cross you wished me to be humiliated for the salvation and love of humankind. It is right. I accept it, and I offer myself to you for those whom you have willed to be my brothers. Then you too, Father, for love of me, accept it and be appeased at long last: wipe away all the old stain, and keep it far from them. I offer myself to you for them.’)10 A, gloryus Maden and Modur, in how passyng a sorow ys þi swete Sone sett! I trow þou mygth no more hafe donne, for yf þou mygth, I wote wele þou wolde, but þou mygth no more helpe hym. Þan þies cursyde hundes withowt pety and rwth pulled hym boldly owt of hyre armys and drew hym to be crose. Here I am using an edition of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Passion whose Latin wording in this passage seems closer than other modern editions to the source used by the Middle English translators: Meditaciones de passione Christi olim sancto Bonaventurae attributae, ed. Sister M. J. Stallings (Washington DC, 1965), p. 112.

9

John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and ed. F. X. Taney, Sr., A. Miller and C. M. Stallings-Taney (Asheville NC, 2000), pp. 252–3.

10

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 113

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 1 4    I a n J oh nson

Beholde besyly þis maner doyng on þe crose: how þay sett two ledders to þe crose, one behynde, anoþer before, on for þe rygth arme, anoþer for þe left arme; and how þay hye þerselfe vp with nayles and with hamers. Þer is sett also a lytyll ledder before þe crose, rechyng to be place þat ys fete schuld be fest to. And þan Owre Lorde wase constrenyde for to goo vp on þe ledder; but he withowtyn any withstandyng dyd full mekly þat þay byd hym do. And when he come to þe ouer party of þe ledder, he turnyd hys bak to þe crose and frede abrode þe kynges armys, and rechede þam to hys turmytours. And he cast vp hys eyn to þe Fadur of Heuyn and sayde, ‘Lo, my Fadur, I ame here makede so law þat I for manes lufe and hele am hanged on þe crose. Yt ys, Fadur, plesyng to me. I accep yt gladly, and for þam I offer me to þe, þe whylk þou wolde wax brether to me, wherfor, my dereworthy Fadur, accept þou þis sacrifice, and luf þam euermore hereaftur, and euer be mercyfull to þam, and þer ald syn wesch away fro þam. For þam I offer me to þe, Fadur.’11

This passage begins with a shift of vocal delivery, heightened in formalized emotional intensity by alliteration, from the third person of the Latin to the second person. Mary is now directly addressed, but Christ’s suffering rather than hers is now the focus. (It should be pointed out that, in the Latin, ‘anima sua’ could refer to the soul of Christ just as much as that of Mary, though the flow of the Latin prose makes it more likely that Mary is the referent here.) Mary’s bitterness (‘amaritudine’) is now Christ’s ‘sorow’. This should perhaps be no surprise, given that Jesus is the Man of Sorrows. Moreover, ‘sorow’ in Middle English can refer to mental and physical pain, trouble, distress or grief, as well as to sorrow as we would understand it now. In the Latin, bitterness is qualified in terms of how much (‘quanta’), whereas in the translation excess and surplus qualify ‘sorow’: ‘how passyng a sorow’. The pressure of such ongoingly excessive pain is juxtaposed uncomfortably against the fixed and immobilized impotence of Christ ‘sett’ in his ‘sorow’ (a foretaste of the Crucifixion itself, when Christ will be ‘sett’ on the cross, just as two inanimate ladders are ‘sett’ against the Rood). Christ’s sweetness (signalled by another addition to the Latin – ‘swete’ – alliteratively counterpointed against his ‘sorow’ and ‘sett’), is not just a moral and emotional quality typifying the son of Mary, it is also an experience savoured by those engaging with him in devout imagining. Changing the original to an intimate address to the Virgin personally affirms her total commitment to her son at the same time as advertising her total powerlessness to protect him. This change flags up her plight all the more ironically by insisting, unlike the Latin source, on referring to her as ‘gloryus Maden and 11

Day, ‘The Privity of the Passion and The Lyrical Meditations’, pp. 218–20.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 114

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   115

Modur’. The glory of Mary’s virginity and motherhood is in no way sullied by her impotence, for although she may indeed be impotent because of what the enemies can and will do to her son, there is a more important reason why she has no power – because she has no remit to change the salvific plan of Providence ordaining the death of her son. The added description of the executioners (not in the original) as ‘þies cursyde hundes withowt pety and rwth’ and as ‘boldly’ pulling Jesus out of her arms highlights how they transgress in pitilessly abusing God with a blasphemous audacity temporarily and tactically indulged by the salvific narrative. The tendency of the translator to redramatize details of gesture and action for a devotional purpose may be seen in the emotionally intelligent replacement of Mary’s hands (‘manibus’) with her ‘armys’. Arms are capable of a deeper maternal holding and embrace than hands. The pulling of her son from the depths of such an embrace entails correspondingly greater violence and dramatic upset. The devotional purpose of highlighting such intimacy and violence in the preference for arms rather than hands is conceivably to prompt, more than does the original, the immediate and habitual bonds of affection that the reader, mimetically re-experiencing the episode from the perspective of the Virgin, should be feeling towards Christ. This one telling detail, invoking as it does the tactile image of embracing arms protectively holding a loved one, in this case offspring, conjures, defines and valorises this intimate relationship in an inwardly repeatable way. This small but significant change may also affect the perspective of readers when they are called on to imagine what Christ does with his own arms on the cross a little later in this passage. The pause for address and comment in the first sentence of this passage jars, in the second sentence, from contemplating Christ trapped and ‘sett’ in his ‘sorow’ to seeing him snatched suddenly into a swift but complete arc of action to which he is subjected in being ‘pulled’ from his mother’s arms and drawn to the cross. It is as if the readers and hearers are interrupted in meditating on Christ’s sorrow by the very action that occasions it, and they have to readjust their reactions and understanding accordingly. Such foregrounding of action against a preceding comment may serve to sharpen the readers’ self-awareness of the conditions of their own interior landscape, or rather ‘soulscape’ – a term befitting the inward locus, space and topography where contingent narrative events occur within each soul’s imaginary mise en scène. At this stage, the uncontrollable excessive suffering asserted in the apostrophe has an analogue in the inability of Mary and the reader to prevent or mitigate the pitiless subsequent narrative. Such impotence and excess conduce towards the heightened atmosphere of anxious concern and urgency introduced into the vernacular text by

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 115

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

1 1 6    I a n J oh nson

the executioners not merely climbing the ladders with nails and hammers but positively hurrying up them (‘how þay hye þerselfe vp’). Against this human haste and powerlessness is set all the more powerfully (as readers and hearers would soon appreciate) the contrasting divine drama and message of Christ’s providential control of events when he willingly stretches out his arms for crucifixion and declares his pleasure in his self-sacrifice. The Latin instruction to pay diligent attention to the manner of crucifixion becomes the significantly different ‘Beholde besyly þis maner doyng on þe crose’. The adverb ‘besyly’ goes beyond diligence into the semantic and cognitive territory of anxious concern and urgency. Indeed, ‘þis maner doyng on þe crose’, unlike ‘diligenter’, opens up for consideration Christ’s doings and all other doings on the cross and not merely the ‘modum crucifixionis’, the mechanics of his crucifixion by others; for what Christ does on the cross constitutes the most significant action, materia and sentence of this passage. As in the Latin, the scrutiny activated in the instruction to meditate decorously through the word ‘how’ enwraps the whole narrative, requiring the meditant to examine and thereby to confect instrumentally all the causes, effects and manners of what happens or is made to happen in the individual imagination. In other words, a somewhat logistical awareness of ‘how’ events proceed is expected of the reader. Some of what is imagined will be determined by unchangeable narrative, but some of it will be determined hermeneutically by the efforts and through the disposition of the individual imagination. Moreover, to observe ‘how’ is not just to observe narrative mechanics; ‘how’ also entails affective possibility and performance – the appreciation and remaking of the emotions governing behaviour and attitudes within the narrative. All such causes, effects and manners of occurrence and affect within the topography of the imagination go to make up a distinctive and contingent soulscape – variable each time this work (and it is work) is translated or remade through meditative reading or hearing. Duteous sensitization to imaginable causality is intensified and enforced through further additional deployment, not in the Latin, of the word ‘how’. ‘How’ is added to instructions concerning the imagining of the setting up of the ladders, ‘how þay sett two ledders’, and added again to the indecent eagerness, not in the original, of the ‘cursyde hundes’ hurrying up the ladders with hammers and nails: ‘how þay hye þerselfe vp’. In adding urgency not only to the conduct of those using his text (‘Beholde besyly’) but also to the executioners hurrying up the cross, the translator draws the atmosphere of the narrative and the conditions for imagining closer together in a cognitive bond of urgency linking reader to action, and building inventively on the anxious concern and urgency we noted being added to the Latin earlier in this extract.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 116

1/29/2021 7:58:17 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   117

The Lyrical Meditations would seem, in this passage, to place, however lightly, a greater emphasis than the Latin source on the agency and the actions of Christ, and in particular to make them more explicit through the manner in which those terms of action, verbs, are translated. This is evident, for example, when ‘ipse autem sine rebellione et contradiccione facit humiliter quidquid volunt’, in which we are told that Christ does what the crucifiers wish, becomes ‘he withowtyn any withstandyng dyd full mekly þat þay byd hym do’, in which Christ does what they bid him to do, with the focus switching in the vernacular not just to the performance of the tormentors’ will but to his meek manner of doing their bidding, a subtly different articulation of action drawing audience attention to what he does more than to his conformity with the will of his executioners. When Christ opens his arms in the Middle English work, the divine power of his agency is suggestively stressed more than it is in the source. In the original, Christ opens, reveals and makes accessible his royal arms, extending his beautiful hands and offering them high for his crucifiers: ‘et illa regalia aperit brachia, et extendens manus pulcherimas, in excelsis eas porrigit suis crucifixoribus’. In the Middle English, however, ‘and frede abrode þe kynges armys, and rechede þam to hys turmytours’, Christ, we are told, loosed and set free (‘frede’), in a gesture of royal free will, not his (which would be more normal English) but ‘þe kynges armys’. Here, through the separateness indicated by the definite article, Christ’s human body draws attention to his divine nature in a timely reminder of how the mechanics of the incarnation work. Consistent with this gestural self-exposition of the sacred humanity is the omission of any reference to Christ’s beautiful hands (‘manus pulcherimas’). This is all the more significant, given the exquisite care taken, a little earlier, in the chapter on the mistreatment of Christ in the house of Pontius Pilate, to present a lingering description of the Son of God’s carnal beauty, a description amplifying and intensifying the portrayal in the original.12 In deciding on this omission, the translator may have thought that drawing attention to Christ’s beautiful hands would at this point have been an aesthetic digression detracting from the theological message of the divine kingly power manifested in the royal arms. (There is also a measure of consistency here with the portrayal of Jesus being pulled not from Mary’s hands, as in the Latin, but from her arms.) Further subtle emphasis is enacted along similar lines in ‘eas porrigit See Day, ‘The Privity of the Passion and The Lyrical Meditations’, p. 196. For discussion of this, see I. Johnson, ‘The Middle English Meditationes vitae Christi: Textual Details, Corpus, and Repertoire’, in Every(Wo)Man’s Books of Salvation: The Most Popular Medieval Religious Texts in Europe, their Circulation and Reception, ed. G. Veysseyre, F. Bourgne and R. Gay-Canton (Turnhout, in preparation).

12

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 117

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 1 8    I a n J oh nson

suis crucifixoribus’ becoming ‘rechede þam to hys turmytours’. Here, ‘porrigit’ (whose senses encompass stretching out, offering and presenting) is translated as the purely physical ‘rechede’. With Christ reaching ‘to’ rather than ‘towards’ his tormentors, the translator may be implying that these royal arms imposingly reach as far as their intended recipients. Subtly delineating the source, this rendering permits an imagining of Christ not only initiating but also completing this purposive action. The English, unlike the Latin, suggests greater continuity of action and agency in the transition from Christ reaching to his tormentors to his casting up his eyes to the Father of Heaven. Whereas the Latin puts his looking up to heaven in a new and separate sentence, the English, deploying a conjunction joining this and the previous sentence, expresses the next action of Christ in similar syntax and with a similar articulation of action. Just as Christ reached his arms to his tormentors, directing a part of himself at a specified recipient, so, in the following sentence, he casts up his eyes to another specified recipient: ‘cast vp hys eyn to þe Fadur of Heuyn’. In unpacking the Latin verb ‘aspicit’ in such physical terms, the Middle English translator portrays Christ as extramissively reaching his gaze to a specified object, in this case ‘þe Fadur of Heuyn’ (not named at this point in the original, which mentions only heaven – ‘celum’). In the Middle English there is more explicit logistical and theological precision in the transactional behaviour of Christ, in which he looks not to a place, heaven, but to the one to whom he speaks, God the Father. In the Latin, Christ describes himself as humiliated in fulfilment of the divine will (a loving will intent on the salvation of humankind), ‘Ecce hic sum, Pater mi! Usque ad crucem me humiliari voluisti pro amore et salute generis humani.’ The Middle English, however, has a different perspective: neither the divine will nor humiliation nor the virtue of humility is specified; instead, the making low of Christ is presented as a condition – that for the love of humankind and for their salvation he is hanged on the cross: ‘Lo, my Fadur, I ame here makede so law þat I for manes lufe and hele am hanged on þe crose.’ It is significant that, in this further instance of a relatively abstract Latin verb once more being rendered by a non-abstract English verb of greater spatial and physical dimensionality and force, ‘humiliari’ becomes not the obvious ‘humiliated’ but is unpacked as ‘makede so law’ (producing a nudge of contrast with the altitude of the Father to whom he casts up his eyes, while at the same time subtly and humbly avoiding an unbecoming claim to humility). In keeping with Christ’s being ‘sett’ in ‘sorow’ earlier, here, through the deployment of another past participle added to the source denoting his passible passivity in accordance with the providential plan, he

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 118

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   119

does not declare himself to be hanging on the cross, but is, rather more unusually, ‘hanged’ passively on it – in other words ‘sett’. In another physicalizing replacement of a Latin verb, those whom God wishes to be Christ’s brothers, ‘quos michi fratres esse voluisti’, are, in the Middle English, not described as brothers wished for Christ by God (which would follow on naturally enough from ‘fratres esse’), but, as ‘þe whylk þou wolde wax brether to me’, a translation-choice imbued, albeit metaphorically, with the changeful physicality of growing, becoming and increasing. Of course, the translator’s selection of the verb ‘wax’ may be something to do with its rhetorical suitability for the alliterative construction in which it features, but the cognitive effect of growth and positive change still makes a different impression in this formulation of Christ’s relationship to humanity. The translator of the Lyrical Meditations expands and adjusts the closing sentence of this passage in a strategically interesting manner. The petition asking for God’s acceptance, ‘Accepta igitur et tu, Pater’, gains, in the vernacular, the idea of sacrifice: ‘wherfor, my dereworthy Fadur, accept þou þis sacrifice’. It is as if ‘þis sacrifice’ were a gloss or further translation for the implied object of the Latin – ‘me’. Christ’s subsequent plea to his Father, to be henceforth placated for love of his son, ‘et deinceps placibilis esto mei amore’, becomes the rather different ‘luf euermore hereaftur, and euer be mercyfull to þam’. Beseeching the Almighty for appeasement is absent from the Middle English and is replaced with an entreaty that God be ever merciful to humankind, which is not the same thing as requesting appeasement. Perhaps the translator thought that the (providentially ordained) prospect of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice in the previous construction would have already negated the need to plead for further placation, but not the need to ask for ongoing mercy and love for sinful humanity. The petitionary focus is accordingly now on God loving and being merciful to Christ’s ‘brether’, humankind: ‘þam’ – a pronoun which, in being repeated even more than ‘eis’ is in the Latin, accentuates a rhythm of compassionate attention towards humanity in the midst of a scene otherwise demanding compassion for the very person beseeching such mercy for humanity. Our next text is very different. The Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion survives in eight manuscripts dating from around 1400 to around 1450. It is in couplets and was probably written towards the end of the fourteenth century or at the beginning of the fifteenth century.13 The prologue of the work reveals that it was intended for a lay ‘congregacyun’, a For useful information and comment on this work, see A. Westphall’s ‘Textual Profile’ on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: https://geographies-of-orthodoxy. qub.ac.uk/discuss/category/textual-issues/.

13

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 119

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 2 0    I a n J oh nson

community of listeners with, presumably, a variety of intellectual and spiritual abilities and experience.14 In his instructions to readers and hearers (lines 7–14), the translator allies a rudimentary discipline of meditating intently, contritely and compassionately on the passion to the habitual penitential opening of the heart to God’s grace.15 The manuscripts of this work reveal ambition and variety in its reception and transmission, including two codices in which this verse work is written out as prose, making it look more like a typical devotional work of the fifteenth century.16 Given the vivacious and theologically sensitive treatment that we shall see is given to the source by its poet-translator, it is all the more credible that the Meditations on the Supper should meet with the fascinating range of adaptations that it enjoyed in the 1400s. We now therefore turn to consideration of how the translator treated the original. In this work, rather differently from the Lyrical Meditations, touches from the chanson de geste exhibiting Christ the royal hero combine with instructions to the audience to regulate the narrative with ‘ruly teren’ – thereby setting in the audience a decorous default attitude of penitence and lachrymose compassion. This work also combines a brisk, popularizing and accessible narrative with considerable emotional intelligence and theological discretion, as will become evident from the following passage: She wulde do more, but she ne myȝt, For fersly here swete sone ys from her plyȝt. To þe cros fote þey drowe hym hyyng. Se now þe maner of crucyfyyng. Twey laddres ben sette þe cros behynde, Twey enmyes on hem smartly gun glymbe, With hamers and nayles sharply whet: 14

15

16

Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, ed. J. Meadows Cowper, lines 1–4, henceforth cited by line numbers in the main body of this chapter.

For more detailed discussion of the manner in which the translator frames his intended readership and listenership, see Johnson, ‘The Middle English Meditationes vitae Christi: Textual Details, Corpus, and Repertoire’. See also R. Perry, ‘“Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke”: The Cultural Locations of Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition’, Speculum 86 (2011), 419–54, esp. pp. 426–8, 440–1. For discussion of the manuscript history and the ‘cultural locations’ that this work found in the 1400s, see Perry, ‘“Thynk on God”’, pp. 433–48. See also Perry’s manuscript profiles on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/?section=corpus&id=2.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 120

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   121

A shorte ladder before was fet. Þere as þe fete shorte weren, Beholde þys syȝte with ruly teren, Cryst Ihesu hys body vpp stey, By þat short ladder, þat cros an hy; Withoute ȝenseyyng he gan vp wende, And whan he com to þe laddres ende, Toward þe cros hys bak he layde, And hys real armes oute he dysplayde; Hys fayre handys oute he streyȝte, And to þe crucyfyers oute he reyȝte; And to hys fadyr he kast hys yen, And seyd, ‘here am y, fadyr myn: Vnto þys cros þou mekest me, Me for mankynde y offre to þe; My breþren and sustryn þou hast made hem; For my loue, fadyr, beþ mercyable to hem; Alle olde synnes þou hem forȝyue, And graunte hem blys with vs for to lyue: Derwurþe fadyr, saue alle mankynne, Lo here y am offred for here synne.’ (lines 625–52)

This translation is notable for its concision and pace. The exclamation concerning the bitterness of Mary’s suffering is omitted, but the affirmation that she would have done more to help her son, had she been able, is retained. As in the Lyrical Meditations, Mary’s son is accorded the added adjective ‘swete’ and two English verbs translate ‘eripitur’ (‘is snatched/ripped away from’): namely ‘plyȝt’ (‘plucked/snatched away’) and ‘drowe’ (‘drew’); so once more the action is divided into two stages, the snatching away and the drawing to the foot of the cross: She wulde do more, but she ne myȝt, For fersly here swete sone ys from her plyȝt. To þe cros fote þey drowe hym hyyng. (lines 625–7)

In another double translation another single Latin word, the adjective qualifying ‘eripitur’, ‘furibunde’ (‘furiously’), is met with by two English renderings, ‘fersly’ and ‘hyyng’. These complicate the emotional and moral tone of the action, increasing the readers’ and hearers’ pity, fear and outrage on Christ’s behalf. In the MED, the first sense of ‘fersly’, specified even before those entailing violence, cruelty, ferocity and severity, identifies audacity and arrogance: ‘1. Boldly, courageously; proudly, arrogantly’. This not only chimes with the

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 121

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 2 2    I a n J oh nson

added ‘boldly’ in the description of the executioners in the Lyrical Meditations; it also echoes the poet’s earlier condemnation, so much more intense than in the original, of the boldness of Christ’s tormentors in the house of Pilate (lines 525–30).17 The second rendering of ‘furibunde’, ‘hyyng’ (‘hurrying’), represents a different kind of violence – the speed of physical compulsion with which, after being snatched away from his mother, Christ is taken to the cross. Those malefactors setting up the ladders (‘malefici’) are now branded ‘enmyes’, in line with the earlier exploitation in this work of the chanson de geste idiom in the depiction, in the scene in the house of Pontius Pilate, of Christ as a heroic king battling enemies in mortal combat. When it comes to describing action in the ascent of the cross, the poet-translator again introduces telling new vernacular words among the unfolding events: Twey laddres ben sette þe cros behynde, Twey enmyes on hem smartly gun glymbe, With hamers and nayles sharply whet. (lines 629–31)

Neither ‘smartly’ nor ‘sharply whet’ reflects corresponding words in the Latin: ‘smartly’ is particularly apt because it combines speed, skill, promptness, vigour and severity with sharpness, thereby connecting suggestively with the sharpness of the nails ‘sharply whet’ for their terrible purpose. The audience is subsequently instructed to behold the scene ‘with ruly teren’. This phrase, adjusting the Latin adverb ‘diligenter’, prescribes for the audience a filter of tears through which to view the narrative. The adjective ‘ruly’ has useful senses of sorrowfulness, penitence, pity and fearfulness as well as that of well-conducted regularity. On this occasion, the prerequisite of a properly penitential and compassionate disposition replaces mere observational diligence. To behold ‘þys syȝte with ruly teren’ is therefore to enact more self-consciously a higher diligence – a decorous discipline of affective piety. In a departure from the Latin narrative, ‘compellitur Dominus Iesus crucem ascendere’, the Lord is, in the vernacular work, not compelled to ascend the cross. On the contrary, now named ‘Cryst’ rather than ‘Lord’ (in a foretaste perhaps of his Resurrection and Ascension), he takes his own body upwards without prompting: ‘Cryst Ihesu hys body vpp stey’. Here, the divinity bears the humanity:

17

For discussion of how the Lyrical Meditations and the Meditations on the Supper treat the Latin in this passage, see Johnson, ‘The Middle English Meditationes vitae Christi’ (in preparation).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 122

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   123

Cryst Ihesu hys body vpp stey, By þat short ladder, þat cros an hy; Withoute ȝenseyyng he gan vp wende. (lines 635–7)

Likewise, in another formulation seemingly vouching for the same agency in the ascent of the cross, we are told, through the use of the instigatory modal ‘gan’, that Christ ‘gan vp wende’. In as much as ‘vp wende’ has connotations of dying as well as of ascending, this is a particularly apt adaptation of ‘compellitur … ascendere’, especially when one considers that, at the moment of death, Christ, commending himself to his Father, initiates the sending on of his spirit in actively yielding up the ghost. It is therefore paradoxically fitting that a ‘short ladder’ is the way to ‘þat cros an hy’ – the cross exalted on high. The only remnant that survives of the source’s compulsion of Christ is the reference to his not gainsaying; for he ascends ‘Withoute ȝenseyyng’. This detail, however, is included after it has already been made clear that Christ freely activated his ascent of the Rood. In the Middle English we are not told anyway whom he may or would have been gainsaying – ‘enmyes’? His Father? Providence? Or even his own interior voice? Christ ascends the cross, shows his arms and hands and reaches them out to his executioners: Toward þe cros hys bak he layde, And hys real armes oute he dysplayde; Hys fayre handys oute he streyȝte, And to þe crucyfyers oute he reyȝte. (lines 639–42)

Here Christ exhibits his royal arms as if they were heraldic arms being displayed or unfurled. His hands are ‘fayre’ – just as he is depicted as fair in the house of Pilate. The triple repetition of ‘out’ emblazons a gradatio of extension: first of arms displayed, then of hands stretched out, and finally of himself reaching out to the crucifiers. In the Latin Christ offers ‘eas’, the pronoun referring to his arms. In the Middle English no direct object, pronominal or otherwise, is identified, for in reaching out his arms he offers himself. As in the Lyrical Meditations, the English, unlike the Latin, handles the transition from Christ reaching out to his tormentors to his casting up his eyes to Heaven with greater continuity than does the Latin. For whereas the Latin puts his looking up to heaven in a new and separate sentence, the English deploys a conjunction and expresses the next action of Christ in syntax and accompanying physical logistics resembling the line before: ‘And to þe crucyfyers oute he reyȝte; / And to hys fadyr he kast hys yen’. To be sure, ‘kast hys yen’ is a form of visual reaching. Then, in his interpretation of Christ’s words to his Father, ‘Ecce hic sum, Pater mi! Usque ad crucem me humiliari voluisti pro

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 123

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 2 4    I a n J oh nson

amore et salute generis humani: placet, accepto, et pro eis me tibi offero quos michi fratres esse voluisti’, the translator shows an emotionally alert artfulness in organizing syntax and making use of the beginnings and endings of lines to articulate the workings of a theological transaction: ‘here am y, fadyr myn: Vnto þys cros þou mekest me, Me for mankynde y offre to þe; My breþren and sustryn þou hast made hem’. (lines 644–7)

A theological emphasis delicately different from the Latin original owes itself to intelligent deployment of verse format and sentence structures – and especially personal pronouns. In the collocation ‘fadyr myn’, the placing of the possessive ‘myn’ in a rhyming position stresses the intimacy and familial propinquity of Christ and God the Father. In the next couplet, ‘me’ and ‘þe’ are appropriately counterpointed against each other in rhyme, a device propitious for signalling difference, affiliation and reciprocity. In the first line of this couplet, God is agent and Christ is humiliated object, whereas in the second line Christ is both offering subject and offered object; so it is fitting that the object ‘Me’ should defamiliarizingly, and with no little emotional force, take what would otherwise be the normal position of the grammatical subject and ontological agent at the beginning of the next grammatical sentence. The immediacy with which this repeated ‘Me’, commencing the new line, follows the ‘me’ closing the previous line, is not only decided rhetorical artifice, it also very much foregrounds Christ transactionally as object in both these separate constructions. In the first line, a sentence of humiliation, Christ could hardly have less agency. In the second, though Christ could hardly submit to greater objecthood than having his self offered, he could, paradoxically, hardly exercise greater, more moving and more significant agency than he does by congruently offering himself to the addressee simultaneously meeking him. Moreover, whereas Christ in the Latin offers himself to God for those whom the Father has willed to be the Lord’s brothers, Christ, in the Middle English, announces, rather more dramatically and providentially, that God has done more; for he has, declares Jesus, already made humankind Christ’s brothers and sisters: ‘“My breþren and sustryn þou hast made hem”’. The ‘My’ beginning the fourth line connects suggestively with the previous possessive of familial intimacy foregrounded in a final rhyming position three lines earlier in a commensurate self-advertisement of obedience to God the Father, ‘fadyr myn’. The expansion of Christ’s salvific family to ‘sustryn’ only intensifies the difference and universal sweep of this effect, inclusively referencing the broader vernacular mixed gender ‘congregacyun’ (line 4) to whom this work is addressed.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 124

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   125

Given that the translator of the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion normally condenses and abbreviates rather than expands his source, his amplification of the closing of Christ’s address and confirmation of self-offering to God the Father is worthy of comment. In the original, he asks his Father not only to be appeased, but to wipe away all the old stains and sins of humankind and to keep these far from them: ‘Accepta igitur et tu, Pater, et deinceps placibilis esto mei amore et omnem maculam veterem absterge et elonga ab eis: pro eis me tibi offero, Pater.’ As in the Lyrical Meditations, the bid for appeasement is replaced by an entreaty for mercy for humanity. This, however, is then extended into two new pleas to grant humanity heavenly bliss and to save them all, neither of which is in the Latin. This expansion of the original is sealed with a further adjustment to the source in the final line, in which Christ offers himself specifically not so much for humanity (signalled in the Latin by the pronoun ‘eis’), but for humanity’s sins: ‘For my loue, fadyr, beþ mercyable to hem; Alle olde synnes þou hem forȝyue, And graunte hem blys with vs for to lyue: Derwurþe fadyr, saue alle mankynne, Lo here y am offred for here synne.’ (lines 648–52)

At this highly dramatic moment of crucifixion, in which Christ effects and expounds not only the narrative but also its central salvific transaction, the Middle English translator elaborates for his vernacular ‘congregacyun’ (line 4) the full theological cadence of the salvific process, following through on Christ’s self-sacrificial trajectory with petitionary and transactional exhaustiveness. This exhaustiveness perhaps explains the non-translation of the Latin imperative ‘elonga’, now redundant because the vernacular trajectory of beseeching has already gone beyond what the Latin imperative would otherwise demand. The added emphasis here on Christ as propitiation for human sin, articulated as it is in a manner not unlike a penitential prayer that any fallen human might formulate, helps to valorize the penitential emphasis generally characterizing this translation’s treatment of the source. In as much as a penitential and providential emphasis is uppermost here, it may be said that there is a certain circumscription of other potential imaginative or emotional options at this point: for example, Christ’s human pain is momentarily left out of the discourse. On the other hand, it has been made more than clear in the surrounding narrative that Christ’s pain is palpable and requires intense compassion. The poet-translator of the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion has a fellow-Pseudo-Bonaventuran translator more than capable, in his own way, of exhaustive theologically conscientious attention to

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 125

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 2 6    I a n J oh nson

his source – Nicholas Love. His rendering needs no introduction. Love wrote for and reached a massive and wide-ranging set of audiences, from relatively ‘simple’ layfolk to those on the brink of advancing to higher contemplation. Each of them is afforded the same clarity of treatment of the source and the same teaching and theological exposition, though some may of course be able to make more use of the text than others. Aa lorde in what sorowe is hir soule nowe? Soþely I trowe þat she miht not speke one worde to him for sorowe. Bot she miht do no more to him nor help him. For if she miht without doute she wolde. Þanne was hir sone anone taken oute of hir handes in wode manere, & ladde to þe fote of þe crosse. Now take hede diligently to þe maner of crucifying. Þere bene sette vp tweyn laddres, one behynde & a noþere before at þe lift arme of þe crosse, vpon þe whech þoo wikked ministres gone vp with nailes & hameres. Also a noþer short laddre is sette before þe crosse þat lasteþ vp to þe place where hees feete sholde be nailede. Now take gude hede to alle þat foloweþ. Oure lorde þanne was compellede & beden fort go vp one þat laddre to þe crosse, & he mekely doþe alle þat þei bedene him. And when he came vp to þe ouerest ende of þat short laddre‫ ؛‬he turnede his bakke to þe crosse, & streyht out one brede þoo kynges armes, & hese fairest handes ȝafe vp to hem þat crucifiede him. And þan liftyng vp hees louely eyene to heuen seide to þe fadere in þees maner wordes. Loo here I am my dere fadere as þou woldest þat I sholde lowe my self vnto þe crosse, for þe sauacion of mankynde, & þat is pleisyng & acceptable to me, & for hem I offre my self‫ ؛‬þe which þou woldest sholde be my breþerne. Wherefore also þou fadere take gladely þis sacrifice for hem of me, & now heþen forwarde be plesede & wele willede to hem for my loue, & alle olde offense & trespasse forȝiue & wipe awey, & put aferre alle vnclannes of sinne fro hem. For soþely I offre here now my self for hem & hir hele.18

Nicholas Love’s translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi is well known for being exquisitely careful and, in general, conservative with the literal sense and syntax of the original. There is considerable subtlety in the adjustments he makes to the imaginable topography of the mise en scène and to the theologically freighted discourse and experiences of which it consists. This is certainly the case from the very beginning of the passage, in his treatment of ‘O in quanta amaritudine est nunc anima sua!’, which becomes ‘Aa lorde in what sorowe is hir soule nowe?’ Aside from the fact that bitterness (‘amaritudine’) is 18

Love, Mirror, ed. Sargent, pp. 174–5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 126

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   127

replaced with sorrow, as in the Lyrical Meditations, it should be noted, if we are to believe the evidence of the manuscripts and the decisions of modern editors, that a Latin exclamation is replaced with an English question, signalled by the punctuation at the end of the sentence. Nicholas Love was evidently meticulous and consistent with his punctuation, so his insistence here on a question has the effect of authoritatively making what follows into something of a response to a question to a greater extent than is the case in the Latin. So, ‘Nam credo quod ei verbum facere non potuit’ is replaced with a fuller and more emphatic answer to the previous sentence, heralded assertively by an added ‘Sothely’: ‘Soþely I trowe þat she miht not speke one worde to him for sorowe.’ Here, sorrow is, in an addition to the Latin, judged to be the cause of her inability to speak. Love chooses here to stress the utmostness of the Virgin’s silence by translating ‘verbum facere non potuit’ not as ‘she miht not speke a worde to him’ but as ‘she miht not speke one worde to him’. He then makes an interesting reversal of the order of constructions in the next sentence: ‘si amplius facere posset, utique voluisset; sed amplius non potuit eum iuvare’ (‘if she could do more, she certainly would; but she was unable to help him more’) is switched round to become ‘Bot she miht do no more to him nor help him. For if she miht without doute she wolde.’ Narrative is now followed by explanation, thereby following the typical medieval commentators’ rhythm of text then gloss. Conceivably, Love added ‘do no more to him’ to point out that Mary was not in a position to do anything whatsoever for her son – not even anything that did not constitute helping him out of his plight. Here, as elsewhere, Love exercises considerable subtlety in his translating. There is also subtlety in the micromanagement of the reactions of his audience, be they the uneducated and simple souls he mentions in his proheme (p. 10) or the more capable readers of the universal audience (‘boþe men & women & euery Age & euery dignite of this worlde’; p. 10) conceived of for this national set text of mainstream devotion. Some of these more advanced users, possibly knowing the Latin original, may appreciate and dwell meditatively with especial finesse on such subtle changes, ruminating from them whatever devotional nourishment they may extract. To return to the suffering Virgin, Mary’s intensified impotence is made all the more palpable by the immediate snatching away of her son in a mad manner – ‘in wode manere’ – before she can say or do anything more. Those ‘malefici’ who take her son out of her hands and lead him to the foot of the cross are named in English as ‘þoo wikked ministres’. They are thus not so significant as wrongdoers in their own right but as wicked instruments rendering official service for more culpable instigators of wrong, presumably the likes of Herod, Pontius Pilate and the populace who would have Jesus crucified.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 127

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 2 8    I a n J oh nson

Whereas the Jesus of the Latin original humbly does what his executioners bid without physical resistance or words of protest (‘sine rebellione et contradiccione facit humiliter quidquid volunt’), Love’s Jesus ‘mekely doþe alle þat þei bedene him’: ‘sine rebellione et contradiccione’ is not translated. It is perhaps interesting at this point to recall that, when in his proheme Love cuts out a number of virtues attributed to Christ in the original, one of those preserved is meekness, a virtue accommodating other virtues – and certainly accommodating an attitude and disposition ‘sine rebellione et contradiccione’.19 The particular character of meekness exhibited here by Christ is highlighted further in the translation of ‘quidquid volunt’ as ‘alle þat þei bedene him’: the wicked ministers’ volition becomes now, for Christ, explicit bidding – a discourse of commanding. This meekness is continued in the way that Christ presents his hands to his crucifiers, when the Latin ‘porrigit’ (‘stretched out/offered/presented’) becomes ‘ȝafe vp’. Giving up, surrendering, yielding, gift-giving, as well as giving in an upward direction may all be connoted here in this humble action contrasting with, and qualifying, the magnificence and authority of ‘þoo kynges armes’. A few lines later, it would seem that the same stress on Christ’s meekness influences the translation, when he speaks of abasement unto the cross (in Latin the humiliation of ‘Usque ad crucem me humiliari’) in terms of lowering himself onto it: ‘I sholde lowe my self vnto þe crosse’. By using a spatio-physical verb etymologically unconnected with ‘humiliation’, ‘humbling’, ‘meekness’, ‘meeking’ and the like, Love’s Christ, like the Christ of the Lyrical Meditations, discreetly avoids at this point even the slightest implicit claim to the virtue of meekness. Such meticulousness in the change made to the source through nudges and velleities of effect and affect produced in the reader/hearer is typical of Love. Nicholas Love’s more discriminating readers knowing the Latin would be able to pick up on this subtlety. Those not picking up on it would not lose out on what is essential to the central message of meekness. Love changes another significant detail when ‘Aspicit in celum, Patri dicens’ is requalified as ‘And þan liftyng vp hees louely eyene to heuen seide to þe fadere in þees maner wordes’. The main verb of the Latin, ‘aspicit’, becomes in English idiomatically participial, ‘And þan liftyng vp hees louely eyene’, and what is a participle in the Latin, ‘dicens’, is converted into a main verb, ‘seide’. This retunes finely the relationship between Christ’s looking and his saying. In the original, he looks to heaven while speaking, whereas in the vernacular he speaks while he lifts his eyes up. The justification for this subtle change, conceivably, is that the most important and significant act in this sentence is 19

Ibid., p. 12.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 128

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   129

what Christ says to God rather than the fact of his looking at heaven. Perhaps, for Love, what Christ says therefore merited a main verb. This choice, significantly enough, is supported by the marginal gloss at this point, ‘Nota verba filij ad patrem’.20 With continuing dexterity, Love re-elaborates details of the theological transaction of Christ’s self-sacrifice to God the Father when ‘Accepta igitur et tu, Pater’ becomes ‘Wherefore also þou fadere take gladely þis sacrifice for hem of me.’ First, the notion of sacrifice is added for clarification; second, the sacrifice is identified as ‘me’; and third, the beneficiaries are identified as ‘hem’, humanity. The interpolated gladness with which God the Father is intended to receive this sacrifice constitutes a corollary not only for how ‘pleisyng’ the Son of God finds the salvation of mankind, but also for how ‘plesede’ the Father is exhorted to be towards a saveable humanity. By investing, more greatly than the original does, different parts of the transaction with the same pleasingness, Love rhetorically tightens and develops both the logical comprehensiveness of the transaction and its affective stability and coherence. Further theological and cognitive sensitivity in Love’s translating is witnessed in his minute attention to ‘deinceps’. In Englishing ‘deinceps placibilis esto mei amore’ as ‘& now heþen forwarde be plesede & wele willede to hem’, his adverbial choice of ‘now heþen forwarde’ encompasses and specifies instantaneous presentness and immediacy of succession into a future without limit. Here Love unpacks a single Latin adverb accurately and with philosophical precision. The same present urgency and immediate effectiveness with which this self-sacrifice takes effect is exhibited in the simple but theologically tactful interpolation of ‘now’ into the final sentence of this passage, when ‘pro eis me tibi offero, Pater’ is elaborated into ‘For soþely I offre here now my self for hem & hir hele’. As in the second sentence of this passage, ‘soþely’ adds affirmative intensity, while ‘For’ adds connectivity to the preceding petition to the Father to forgive sin. The closing expansion of ‘eis’ to ‘for hem & hir hele’ clarifies two slightly different things: first, that the process of salvation is for the sake of humankind, and second, that the sacrifice he would make for humankind is to save them. This deceptively simple collocation therefore expresses two slightly different perspectives with a discrimination greater than that found in the source at this point. Finally, in the last sentence of this passage, with similar theological tact, he renders ‘omnem maculam veterem absterge et elonga ab eis ‘as ‘alle olde offense & trespasse forȝiue & wipe awey, & put aferre alle vnclannes of sinne fro hem’: adding forgiveness to wiping away is significant here, for it adds Ibid., p. 175.

20

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 129

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 3 0    I a n J oh nson

doctrinal clarification. Love also takes several vernacular bites at ‘maculam’ (‘stain/sin’), first with the moralizing doublet ‘offense & trespasse’, and then by producing a collocation, ‘vnclannes of sinne’, satisfying not only this word’s literal meaning (‘stain’) but its common theological sense as well – sin. In providing this broader range of senses Love pellucidly expounds the deeper theological import and consequences of his source. To conclude, this essay is about diversity among translators of the same materials. In their various complexities of response, one finds uniqueness of utterance amid a repertoire of possibilities. Each translator has his own strategy and tactics. The maker of the Meditations on the Supper combines popular verse idiom with considerable theological discretion. The translator of the Lyrical Meditations prompts his readers to yoke together the contrariety of, on the one hand, uncontrollable suffering and inexorably painful narrative with, on the other, acknowledgement of Christ’s willing providential self-sacrifice. And though both these translations emphasize the how of narrative and affect in their treatment of the Latin source, and handle similarly the transition from Christ reaching out to his tormentors to his casting up his eyes to Heaven with greater continuity than does the Latin, it is not easy to see what further conclusions one might draw from these two similarities, other than to say that here both translators exercise a freedom to represent the logistics of events in a manner that suits their own devotional aims. Nicholas Love, somewhat differently, exhibits remarkable theological acuity in delineating, through minute translational details, conceptual phenomena as different from each other (despite their necessary companionship with each other) as Christ’s redemptive meekness and the temporal nowness and futurity of his self-sacrifice. The rich qualities of difference among these translations and among the soulscapes that they evoke may also be characterized in a comparative example. If we recall how each translator represents in the vernacular Christ’s petition to his Father for the sake of humankind, we find, in the Lyrical Meditations, a declaration of explicit self-sacrifice and a plea for mercy. In the Meditations on the Supper, at the same point, we encounter somewhat paraliturgical and penitentially framed pleas for mercy and for the salvation of all humanity, with both genders specified (this does not happen in the source). In Love’s Mirror, there is no plea for mercy as such but a prayer, much closer to the wording of the Latin than the two other Middle English works go, for God to forgive and wipe away sin, on which there is a rich glossatory lexical focus. None of these distinctive versions is in disagreement with either of the others. The Lyrical Meditations would seem to be the most charged and urgently intimate

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 130

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

Re nder in g Readers’ S oulsc a p es   131

of the three and begets an emotionally and cognitively complex soulscape. The Meditations on the Supper, diverging more from the original and adding more of its own new words than the other two, is the most penitential, and interpellates a vivid interiority of compassionate confessional self-discipline, whereas Love’s Mirror is the most revealing of the details of the source and the most philosophically particular, prompting meticulous and decorous theological observancy in the reader’s or hearer’s imaginative mise en scène. In this one small comparative example, a tiny part of a strong mainstream tradition, we find richly productive significant variation. Each of the three translations under discussion in this essay represents the Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition powerfully, regardless of the success or lack thereof that any of them may have had with readerships. Not only Love’s cognitive and linguistic tact but also his intense watchfulness befits the imaginative power and eloquence of the meditative tradition of the Meditationes vitae Christi, as do the theologically sharp narrative and prosodic acuity of the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, and the affective, theological and narrative logistical discretion of the Lyrical Meditations. Each remakes the experiential topography of the life of Christ, with regard not only to the source but also to the imagining soulscape of each reader or hearer encountering it. In doing so, each translation bears witness to the extraordinary repertoire of the tradition and to the devotional possibilities (the spiritual langue and paroles) open to each soul variously encountering it.21

I would gratefully like to acknowledge the support of the AHRC for the project Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350– 1550 (2007–2011), which assisted research for this chapter.

21

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 131

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

6 Conservative Affectivity and the Middle English Meditationes De Passione Christi1 RYAN PERRY

t

ʒevyn thyn hert to meditacyon

T

Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition in generali

he pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition, those works in Latin and the vernacular derived from the Meditationes Vitae Christi (hereafter MVC), and its redaction that excerpts the Passion section from the Last Supper until the Harrowing of Hell, the Meditationes de Passione Christi (hereafter MPC), have provided scholarship with templates for the tone and shape of late medieval affective literature and the devotional praxes which such texts sponsored. A sense of the devotional utility of affective literature has been derived from close scholarly attention to the ecclesiastically sanctioned Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, an English versioning of the MVC created by the Carthusian prior of Mount Grace, Nicholas Love, and, to a lesser extent, against the variety of Middle English texts derived from the MPC (to be briefly introduced below). These works are, to varying degrees and with subtle shifts in emphasis, concerned to control their audiences’ devotional experience.2 Both 1

2

This essay is an acknowledgement of the support and encouragement provided to me by Michael Sargent, whose engagement with the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK-funded Geographies of Orthodoxy project (from which the initial research underwriting this essay came), and whose enthusiastic interaction with the research team as individuals, serve as an exemplum of scholarly friendship and generosity. The essay is also dedicated to the memory of Mary Stallings-Taney, who died aged 90 on 22 March 2018; her pioneering editorial and analytical work on the Meditationes Vitae Christi has paved the way for much subsequent research on this textual tradition, including the following essay.

Nicholas Love’s somewhat frustrated attempts to control the reading experience and frame his text’s devotional functionality are discussed by the author in ‘“Some sprytuall matter of gostly edyfycacion”: Readers and Readings of Nicholas Love’s

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 132

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   133

extending and fine-tuning the cues found in their Latin sources, the English translations of pseudo-Bonaventure are studded with directives as to how the texts should be used, and also, in respect of the emotive scenes they depict, inscribed with descriptions of how the readers and hearers should feel as they experience the text, and particularly as they activate its meditations in their inner eyes – how the literature should inform religious practices that oblige their audiences to emote in spiritually fruitful ways. The extraordinary success of these and similar kinds of texts in English contexts suggests that the devotional method of meditating on the Life and, especially, the Passion of Christ was widespread, and soon after its arrival in England reached beyond an initial audience of cenobitic readers of the Latin text, and even outside of the contexts of pious aristocratic audiences (who no doubt formed a significant kernel of Nicholas Love’s readership), into the pious repertoires of socially middling and mixed-lay congregational audiences.3 In addition to the weight of manuscript evidence, and through the proliferation of English translations of pseudo-Bonaventure presumably produced to fulfil a concomitant demand, this affective turn in English devotional life is attested within the book of Margery Kempe, someone who we know was exposed to pseudo-Bonaventure. In chapter 88 of Book One she describes her own evolution from someone whose Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. I. Johnson and A. Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 51–81.

The particular strength of the pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition in England is suggested by Columban Fischer’s seminal research into the spread of the Latin MVC and associated versions across Europe, in ‘Die “Meditationes vitae Christi”, ihre handschriftliche Ueberlieferung und die Verfasserfrage’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 25 (1932), 3–35, 175–209, 305–48 and 449–83, where he connected 113 manuscripts to English contexts from 217 manuscripts in toto. Perhaps the earliest evidence for pseudo-Bonaventure in England is supplied by a MPC manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College, Cambridge MS B. 14. 7, a book also containing the meditations of St Anselm, the pseudo-Augustinian soliloquies, along with James of Milan’s meditative treatise, Stimulus Amoris; it was dated by M. R. James and Neil Ker to the early years of the fourteenth century on palaeographic grounds, although this dating has been challenged by Sarah McNamer, who argues that a date in the mid-fourteenth century or later is more likely. See M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: a Descriptive Catalogue (Cambridge, 1900), vol. 1, pp. 409–11; N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (London, 1964), p. 113; S. McNamer, ‘Further Evidence for the Dating of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Franciscan Studies 50 (1990), 235–61 (pp. 243–8); the issue of the social status of readers of pseudo-Bonaventure is further discussed by the author in ‘“Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke”: The Cultural Locations of Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition’, Speculum 86.2 (2011), 419–52.

3

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 133

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 3 4    R yan Pe r r y

religious regimen was dominated by saying liturgical prayers, to someone who, in Christ’s words to her, should ‘ʒevyn thyn hert to meditacyon’.4 Jesus, in his directive to Kempe gives his clear imprimatur to a mode of personal religious practice rooted in the internal visualization of scriptural and apocryphal scenes, especially those centred on the Life and Passion. The argument I will present below emerges from consideration of a specific passage from pseudo-Bonaventure, that is, the moment when Christ washes his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, in order to explore the implications of one English translation, the text generally known as the Middle English Meditationes de Passione Christi (hereafter MEMPC). When contrasted with both the Latin originals and other English adaptations thereof, the MEMPC reveals some distinctive features. The text, it will be argued, represents a ‘conservative’ translation of the Latin text, with a stripping of extra-biblical features and the addition of passages and details from the gospels, possibly utilizing the English ‘Wycliffite’ Bible.5 The following discussion will reveal that the MEMPC represents an adaptive response to a devotional method that generally allows for liberal reimaginings of the events of Christ’s life in the service of inciting devout feelings. Instead, the MEMPC constructs a more closely policed form of affective devotion bounded by its translator’s acute sense of the truth of biblical history. Emotion remains important, as it must do in a text that focuses on the scenes of Christ’s torture and death, but the licence for the devotee to imagine pious para-biblical fictions in the service of ‘affectioun’ – that is, inciting devout feelings through emotion – is often suppressed. Such conservatism must not be understood as being peculiar to Lollardy (the spectrum of orthodox Christian belief and practices in England being wide), but it may be that this translation of the MPC did reach into at least one Lollard reading community. Certainly, one manuscript’s version of the text, the copy in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS 789, and a number of the texts that can be found within that book, demonstrate significant features that correspond with scholarly accounts of Lollard belief. This case study will evidence that the trend in popular religion to meditate on the Passion of The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS OS 212 (Oxford, 1940), p. 218.

4

My discussion of the MEMPC is rooted in the work undertaken on the Geographies of Orthodoxy project and particularly on the collaborative study A. F. Westphall and I completed on the text and manuscript contexts of this translation (perched together over several days in front of a microfilm reader in my office in Queen’s University, Belfast); Westphall’s textual profiles of the pseudo-Bonaventuran translations along with my own manuscript analyses provide one of the main foundations for this essay: see http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/.

5

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 134

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   135

Christ, a spiritual practice that might be associated with ‘left wing orthodoxy’, to borrow Kathryn Kerby-Fulton’s politico-religious phrase, was one that also penetrated communities that scholarship has often characterized as being rigidly conservative and specifically intolerant of any creative adaptation or glossing of scripture.6

Imagining reasonably the things that Jesus did Scholarship has previously noted a brand of conservatism in respect of the limits of meditatio and the primacy of the biblical text within Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Michelle Karnes has argued how the devotional method of meditatio, a conjuring of biblical scenes in the eye of the soul that in the hands of other authors allowed for a spiritually direct contact with the divine, is diminished in the hands of Love, who instead reduces the potency of meditation to something that is merely spiritually and morally edifying.7 As Karnes also notes, Love displays nervousness when paralleling meditations found in the MVC that lack biblical precedent. In asking its audience to imagine the meal provided to Christ by angels after his forty-day fast, the author of the MVC empowers its meditating reader to imagine the scene freely: ‘Scripture does not tell us about that. We can, however, order up this triumphant luncheon as we please.’8 Love offers a parallel freedom to conjure the scene, but only under a cautious licence:

See K. Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, 2006), pp. 250, 260–1, 264, 289, 392, 401; the concept of ‘left wing orthodoxy’ was initially coined by Norman Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532, Pontifical Institute Studies and Texts 66 (Toronto, 1984), p. 166. A rejoinder to the idea that Wycliffite and Lollard/lollard biblical engagement was fundamentally opposed to scriptural ‘glossing’ and providing only the Bible’s ‘unmediated words’ is argued in the chapter on ‘Lollard Parabiblia’ in F. Somerset, Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings After Wyclif (Ithaca NY, 2014), pp. 166–202 (p. 202).

6

See the argument in M. Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ: Interiority, Imagination and Meditations on the Life of Christ’, Speculum 82 (2007), 380–408, especially pp. 394–402; for the idea of Love’s text as offering penitentially efficacious pious exercises see R. Perry, ‘Some sprytuall matter of gostly edyfycacion’, pp. 90–1.

7

See Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations’, p. 398; translation of the MVC comes from John of Caulibus: Meditations on the Life of Christ, ed. F. X. Taney, Sr., A. Miller, O.S.E. and C. M. Stallings-Taney (Asheville NC, 2000), p. 247.

8

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 135

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 3 6    R yan Pe r r y

Here of spekeþ not holi writ, wherfore we mowe here ymagine by reson & ordeyne þis worþi fest as us likeþ, not by errour affermyng bot devoutly ymaginyng & supposing, & þat aftur þe commune kynde of þe manhode.9

Although Love suggests his audience might construct the meditation as ‘us likeþ’, any potential for imaginative self-determination is constrained by the warning against possible ‘errour’, and for the need to employ ‘reson’ to tie the meditation onto what is known about the nature of Christ’s manhood (through the gospels and approved patristic commentaries), and that thus might be reasonably supposed to be consistent with the reality of this event. As Kantik Ghosh has argued, ‘Love virtually introduces into the Meditationes the concept of “resonable ymagynacioun”’.10 Love’s prologue, in a supposedly reactionary defence of Holy Church’s hermeneutic authority that has been understood as a response to a Lollard sola scriptura insistence on the special significance of the Bible over all other Christian writings, stated that ‘alle þo þinges þat Jesus dide, bene not written in þe Gospelle’.11 Nevertheless, he appears to have been uncomfortable with the idea of allowing his audience to imagine scenes too far removed from what could be affirmed in scripture and approved authorities and thus accorded with a firm sense of actual happenings in the life of Christ – ‘þinges þat Jesus dide’. Christ’s Life and Passion are not only a focus for devotional practice, but a matter of historical fact, with scriptural events understood as being materially traceable and mapped out in holy spaces still visited by Christian pilgrims.12 Ghosh has rightly asserted that the gospel story in Love is highly mediated through a self-conscious notion of ecclesiastical authority: ‘Love’s translation seeks to locate authority in a discourse outside the text, in the interpretations dictated by the Church … [t]he aim is the creation of a “fructuose” – to use one of Love’s favourite words – meditative text.’13 However, as Ghosh and Karnes 9

Text here reproduced from N. Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), p. 72, lines 36–9.

10

11 12

13

K. Ghosh, ‘Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and Wycliffite Notions of Authority’, Prestige, Authority and Power in Late-Medieval Manuscripts, ed. F. Riddy (York, 2000), pp. 17–34 (p. 26). The author is referencing John 20. 30, The Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 10, lines 40–1.

As I have elsewhere discussed, some annotated copies of the Mirror are interested in marking measurable, factual and verifiable information related to the gospel stories, such as the annotator of Manchester, Chetham Library MS 6690, who records the distances in miles between sites in the Holy Lands. See Perry, ‘Some spyrtuall matter’, p. 92.

Ghosh, ‘Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, p. 22.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 136

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   137

both note, Love strips his version of the MVC of some of its more tendentious apocrypha and omits a number of the original text’s meditations that lack scriptural parallel (such as in respect of the biblically obscure period following the holy family’s escape from the slaughter of the innocents until Christ’s young adulthood).14 Furthermore, the production features of Love’s text suggest an acceptance of scriptural primacy. The Mirror includes a schema of marginal notae that ‘are so relatively stable, [that they] must be treated as a part of the text itself, for all textual-critical purposes’.15 Among the purposes served by these notae is the recording of scriptural citations and references (generally when particular gospel accounts are being signalled within the text).16 In the great majority of manuscript copies of the Mirror, Love’s translations of actual scriptural words are also delineated against the main body of text, generally through the use of rubricated text, underlining in red ink or through adopting a more formal script for the biblically derived text.17 Despite Love’s antithetical stance to the Lollards in matters of doctrine and in respect of the need for ecclesiastical mediation of the divine word, readers of his Mirror were, nevertheless, unequivocally visually reminded of the special status of scripture.

Textual and material contexts for the MEMPC

As mentioned above, the MEMPC is one of a number of English translations of the MPC, an abbreviated text that generally delimits the matter of the MVC to the chapters from the Last Supper, through the Passion, to the Harrowing of Hell.18 The Latin MPC was itself a peculiarly English version of pseudo-Bonaventure, with seventeen from eighteen copies of the redaction found in English contexts and the one Italian exception probably copied Ibid., p. 27; Karnes, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations’, p. 400.

14

The Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, p. 102.

15

For example see The Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 112, line 17.

16

See Ghosh, ‘Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, pp. 28–31.

17

Not all of the English translations begin with the Last Supper, with the Pepys version beginning with the ‘general’ opening of the Passion section, titled ‘Meditacio Passionis Iesu Christi in Generali’ in the Latin original; the text of the Privity of the Passion extends the normal scope of the MPC, as it includes a tranche of material from the MVC covering the period from Christ’s resurrection to the Ascension, something an editor of the text believed was the result of a later addition and possibly by a different translator; see S. M. Day, ‘A Critical Edition of the Privity of the Passion and the Lyrical Meditations’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of York, 1991), pp. 56–62.

18

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 137

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 3 8    R yan Pe r r y

from an English exemplar.19 In fact, what we call the MPC may well represent a number of distinct redactions of the longer MVC, a phenomenon Michael Sargent describes as ‘a common impulse [to abbreviate the MVC] occurring more than once independently’.20 These MPC texts, divided by Stallings-Taney into four distinct ‘families’, would in turn spawn a number of Middle English translations and adaptations including the Liber Aureus de Passione (four copies), the Privity of the Passion (four copies), the verse translation, Meditation on the Supper of Our Lord and the Hours of the Passion (eight copies). A further two, uniquely surviving translations in Cambridge, Magdalene College, (Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys MS 2125) Pepys MS 2125 and Michigan State University Library MS 1, while each mirroring the abbreviated scope of the MPC, may similarly have been translated from or influenced by the more emotionally expressive MVC.21 It should be noted at this point that at least some of the English MPC redactions of the longer vita betray a kind of conservative impulse in their own right– while the meditative apparatus of the MVC is retained, the emotive language is somewhat reined in, and the text is trimmed to accent the gospel story over the devotional method. As Allan F. Westphall records (referring to the version of the MPC edited by Stallings-Taney):22 Although the Meditationes de Passione diverges very little from the Passion treatment of the MVC and retains the same structural divisions, the general tendency is that literary features and verbal ornament found in the MVC tend to give way to an economy of expression that leaves out what is not strictly necessary to the core narrative of Christ’s Passion. On the whole, the 19

20

21

22

Apparently, all but one of the eighteen extant copies of the Latin MPC are of English provenance; the single exception is the copy in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS A. 7. 226 (fols. 8r–77v). Stallings-Taney (neé Stallings) asserted that this error-ridden text may have been the result of an Italian copyist finding difficulty in interpreting the ‘script and abbreviations’ in an English exemplar; see Meditaciones de Passione Christi Olim Sancto Bonaventurae Attributae (Washington DC, 1965), p. 40.

M. G. Sargent, ‘A Geographical Postscript’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe, ed. S. Kelly and R. Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 607–33 (p. 621). See M. Taguchi and Y. Iyeiri, Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ, Middle English Texts series 56 (Heidelberg, 2019), p. lx; I am much indebted to the editors for sharing a typescript of their edition with me prior to publication as I prepared this essay.

For discussion of the MPC families see Stallings-Taney, Meditaciones, p. 36ff; Stallings-Taney edits a version closely related to, but not derived from the h family (Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS 293, fols. 1r–17r).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 138

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   139

Meditationes de Passione appears rather less interested in offering extended imaginative and affective expansion of the key events of Christ’s suffering, and it often either shortens or, in some cases, entirely omits the frequent meditative directives to the reader that characterize the Latin MVC, and most vernacular adaptations hereof.23

The manuscript contexts for the MEMPC reveal a text that must have predated the completion of Love’s text, a dating evidenced by its inclusion in the original archetype of the beta version of the Mirror – the earliest surviving version of Love’s text and quite possibly the same textual redaction that the Carthusian prior sent to Archbishop Arundel for approval around 1410.24 The reasons for the penetration of this earliest stemmatic line of the Mirror by the MEMPC are not entirely clear. Sargent’s analysis of the contexts in which the MEMPC occurs with the Mirror led him to hypothesize that Love may have employed the text to advance ‘his work more quickly to completion’, then replaced the borrowed material at some later point.25 Sargent’s findings imply that the version originally advocated by Archbishop Arundel included these sections taken from the MEMPC.26 The MEMPC interpolation in beta copies of Love’s text could alternatively evidence an early act of reader response that became embedded in the textual history of the Mirror. One of Love’s very earliest readers may have had access to the version of the Passion in the MEMPC and wished to include it as an alternative to the climactic meditations for the Friday provided in the Mirror. There is sound codicological evidence in support for such a view. A number A. F. Westphall, ‘The Passion in English: Meditations on the Life of Christ in Michigan State University Library MS 1’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 199–214 (p. 205).

23

The following discussion is closely modelled on research that appears by the author in ‘“Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke’”, pp. 429–30; the extent of the penetration of the Mirror by the MEMPC was described by Jason Reakes (expanding on work by Elizabeth Salter), who identified ten manuscripts containing copies of the work; see J. Reakes, ‘The Middle English Prose Translation of the Meditaciones de Passione Christi and Its Links with Manuscripts of Love’s Mirror’, Notes and Queries 27 (1980), 199–202.

24

The Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, pp. 146–7; see also Sargent, ‘A Geographical Postscript’, pp. 613–15.

25

Manuscripts in the beta grouping generally lack Arundel’s memorandum or, where it is present, include it at the end of the text, following the ‘Treatise on the Sacrament’, rather than at the head of the text as is normally the case in the alpha grouping. See The Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction pp. 36–7 and 147–50 for discussion of the implications of the memorandum within the manuscript traditions of the Mirror.

26

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 139

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 4 0    R yan Pe r r y

of manuscripts in the beta tradition of the Mirror have a rubric (or a marginal note) at the beginning of the interpolated material from the MEMPC, ‘De die veneris per totum quaternum’.27 The note suggests that in an early manuscript – in fact, a copy that appears to have spawned the entire beta tradition, ‘the copy-text from which these manuscripts descended, if not … the hype-archetype itself ’ – the MEMPC material was originally enclosed in a separate gathering.28 The alternative MEMPC version of the Passion apparently was thus added to an already complete copy of the Mirror. Other than the MEMPC’s interpenetration of Love’s text, the text appears in varied contexts, and clearly it was adopted by a range of reading communities. The text was included in religious anthologies (except for a single manuscript witness where the text is accompanied only by a short prayer), sometimes complete and sometimes with the text excerpted. The MEMPC is found in devotional codices that were variously in the possession of enclosed, clerical and lay owners.29 The dialects and evidence for provenance of the books demonstrate that the text had a broad geographic spread, from the far north of England to the Norwich area, and with a significant material footprint in London.30 The earliest surviving copy of the text is probably Princeton Taylor MS 11, which Ralph Hanna and David Lawton dated to the late

27

28 29

In some manuscripts in the beta tradition the rubric/note recording the interpolated quire occurs despite there being no sign of the MEMPC text. Such manuscripts descended from copies with the interpolated material, but later readers or scribes apparently realized that the material was separate from Love’s narrative and excised it. An example is British Library, Additional MS 30031, copied from Oxford, Brasenose College, MS 9. The MEMPC is included in the Brasenose copy but was omitted by the producers of Additional 30031. See The Mirror, ed. Sargent Introduction, pp. 116–31, for Sargent’s discussion of the manuscripts in the beta grouping. The Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, p. 127.

The one exceptional manuscript context for the MEMPC is Edinburgh University Library MS 91, where the text is the lone item save for a short English prayer on living a virtuous life; see C. R. Borland, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Mediæval Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh, 1916), pp. 147–8.

The dialect of Speculum Vitae from Princeton has been profiled in LALME, vol. I, p. 154; vol. III, pp. 651–2, LP 598, grid 366 492 (in the extreme North West of the West Riding, ‘near Sedburgh, Westmorland’ [Hanna and Lawton, p. xv]); the MEMPC is not profiled in LALME (although it is confirmed as being North West Yorkshire); however, I found the orthography to be closely matched with that in the text of the Speculum Vitae.

30

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 140

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   141

fourteenth century.31 The Princeton manuscript, also containing the Speculum Vitae and Siege of Jerusalem, is of note in that it is a decidedly northern, Augustinian production, perhaps produced in Bolton priory in north-west Yorkshire. The MEMPC had been understood as a southern translation since Elizabeth Salter (who didn’t know of this manuscript) tagged it as a ‘terse Southern version’ of pseudo-Bonaventure.32 The Princeton book might suggest the validity of an alternative account, with the text perhaps even originating, like a number of other fourteenth-century English translations, in northern Augustinian contexts.33 Nevertheless, the MEMPC did largely achieve its circulation in the south of England, and appears to have been transmitted most often in the environs of London. In terms of the complete copies of the text, all of which appear to postdate the Princeton manuscript, it is perhaps telling that at least one other occurs in an Augustinian context. The copy of the text in Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 669*/646 (where the text is followed by Richard Rolle’s Form of Living, an English translation of his Emendatio Vitae among other shorter works) was penned and owned by John Cok, the Austin canon of St Bartholomew’s at Smithfield, and famously the bibliophilic friend of John Shirley.34 Another probable London book is Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 23, a catechetic and devotional anthology that is among a clutch of six extant books demonstrably made using at least one shared exemplar, from which the compilations have been individually adapted according to differing needs and inclinations (including, in two of the manuscripts, a tolerance for Lollard-leaning texts).35 These books, described by Margaret Connolly in her essay ‘Books for the “helpe of euery persoone þat þenkip to be saued”: Six See R. Hanna, ‘Contextualizing The Siege of Jerusalem’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992), 109–22, and The Siege of Jerusalem, ed. R. Hanna and D. Lawton, EETS OS 320 (Oxford, 2003).

31

E. Salter, Nicholas Love’s Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ, Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg, 1974), p. 103.

32

For discussion of Augustinian houses as engine rooms for pastoral and historiographical translation see R. Hanna, ‘Augustinian Canons and Middle English Literature’, in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, V. Gillespie and R. Hanna (London, 2000), pp. 27–42.

33

For descriptions of this, and all other manuscripts of the MEMPC see the manuscript descriptions in the scholarly resources of the Geographies of Orthodoxy project, http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/.

34

For discussion of these related volumes see M. Connolly, ‘Books for the “helpe of euery persoone þat þenkip to be saued”: Six Devotional Anthologies from Fifteenth-Century London’, The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003), 170–81.

35

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 141

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 4 2    R yan Pe r r y

Devotional Anthologies from Fifteenth-Century London’, reflect the same kind of mixed milieu as the MEMPC, with probable ownership contexts among the London laity, the priesthood and, in one case, a female religious.36 In two other manuscripts that appear to have been produced in the London area, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 174 and Windsor, St George’s Chapel Library, MS E. I. I., the MEMPC occurs as part of a composite text: it has been chosen to complement and extend the Middle English translation of Thomas Hales’ Lyf of Oure Lady (in these, the only extant copies of that text) and takes up the action with the three Marys at the foot of the cross until the usual end of the MEMPC with the Harrowing of Hell.37 Laud Misc. 174 contains a number of pastoral texts that have previously been tagged as Wycliffite, including the A Schort Reule of Lif, and includes excerpts from the interpolated version of Rolle’s Psalter, although the contents as a whole do not indicate that it is an avowedly Wycliffite collection.38 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in three other volumes the MEMPC can be found either with Wycliffite texts or with texts that have been understood as having Lollard associations. Trinity College, Cambridge MS B.14.38 contains set five from the Wycliffite sermon cycle along with Thomas Wimbledon’s sermon, a text that appears to have been admired in Wycliffite circles (although it seems likely that the MEMPC was added to the book perhaps fifty or more years after these texts were penned in the book).39 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 23 is a devotional collection containing a variety of pastoral texts, including some that contain unique passages that demonstrate a zeal for criticizing clergy and the friars. A sermon contained in the book, ‘Citizens of Saints’, is held by some including Fiona Somerset to be articulating Lollard positions, although Stephen Kelly and I have previously argued that, although written with a clear

36 37

38

39

Ibid., p. 179.

S. Horrall, the text’s editor, argued that Hales’ Latin original should be considered as a text in the style of the MVC: ‘Thomas is in fact writing almost exactly the same kind of work as the slightly later and enormously influential Meditationes Vitae Christi’; S. Horrall, ed., The Lyf of Oure Lady: The Middle English Translation of Thomas of Hales Vita Sancte Marie, ed. from MS St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle (Heidelberg, 1985), p. 296.

For further discussion see M. Raschko, ‘Common Ground for Contrasting Ideologies: The Texts and Contexts of A Schort Reule of Lif’, Viator 40.1 (2009), 387– 410.

See A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), p. 424 and Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion, pp. 42, 67 and 79.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 142

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   143

awareness of Lollard discourse, the text should not be mapped onto a binary between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.40 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 789 is a Christologically themed pastoral manual with a handful of texts that reveal the compiler probably had plundered a Lollard source for some of his items.41 A number of the commentaries in the book on basic pastoralia are inflected with Lollard polemic, and a subsequent reactionary reader or owner of the book even took care to scrape positions that were deemed offensive from its leaves. A virulent defence of English biblical translation and a hectoring critique of friaries and monasteries with control of secular churches have both been excised from the manuscript, and at least one further quire of material appears to have been removed from the codex, perhaps due to a similar sensitivity.42 The book also contains an abridged English translation of Deuteronomy 28, a chapter which frames the importance of the Decalogue, with the biblical translation following an apparently Wycliffite commentary on the Ten Commandments (from See S. Kelly and R. Perry, ‘“Citizens of Saints”: Creating Christian Community in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 23’, in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers and Transformation, ed. N. R. Rice (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 215–37; ‘Devotional Cosmopolitanism in Fifteenth-Century England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh, Medieval Church Studies, 21 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 363–80 and Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, pp. 231–5.

40

Bodley 789 is further discussed by the author in ‘An Introduction to Devotional Anthologies: One Volume “Collections” and Their Contexts’; in ‘A Bunch of Books: Book Collections in the Medieval Low Countries’, special edition of Queeste: Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries (2013) issue 2, 119–33 (pp. 127–30).

41

There are forty-seven blank lines between item 6, a Latin devotion on the Holy Name, and 7, a commentary on the Pater Noster printed in T. Arnold, ed., Select Works of John Wyclif, 3 vols. (1871), III, 93–7. John Hirsh has argued that this gap represents a boundary between booklets and that the nine blank lines at the top of fol. 97r (an unnecessary additional space given that fol. 96v is entirely blank) may indicate that an item was originally planned to be included at this point in the codex; see ‘Prayer and Meditation in Late Mediaeval England: MS Bodley 789’, Medium Aevum 48 (1979), 55–66 (p. 56). In fact, the nine blank lines above item 7 contain text that has been scraped out, and it is almost certain that a quire has been removed containing the opening section of the excised text. The cancelled text is mostly undecipherable, but the concluding line before the rubricated explicit (which is unreadable) appears to read, ‘biddeþ his children [___] after here worchis’. This was almost certainly a defence of gospel translation that forms the prologue to a Pater Noster commentary printed in Arnold, pp. 98–110 (pp. 98–9). Its removal, and the removal of whatever preceded it (the Pater Noster prologue could only have occupied the final leaf in the quire, or quires that once came between fols 96 and 97), must represent an act of censorship.

42

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 143

1/29/2021 7:58:18 AM

1 4 4    R yan Pe r r y

which the critique of monastic possession of secular churches was removed).43 Nevertheless, the book retains texts that include Wycliffite perspectives even as it contains materials that are at odds with Wycliffite ideologies. I will return to this book as I conclude.

Washing Peter’s feet: scriptural affectivity in the MEMPC

The MEMPC represents a particular kind of Englishing of the Latin MPC in that, far from accentuating the emotional cues found in the Latin text, the translator of the MEMPC was moved to aggressively prune the MPC’s already somewhat trimmed apparatus of affective prompts. In contrast, some of the other English translations of the MPC either expand upon or artfully alter the tenor of the Latin text in various ways, and especially as a means to heighten emotive response, to ramp up the affectivity of their text. They often manifest what Allan F. Westphall called a ‘fictional growth’ in representing the events of the Passion.44 This is particularly true of the Privity and the Michigan text, which both add colourful realistic detail as they attempt to better facilitate visualization and identification. An exception to the MEMPC’s tendency to abbreviate the text, therefore, bears some scrutiny, and what it reveals is suggestive about its translator’s aim to produce meditations that parallel what can be known about the Passion from scripture. Where expansions take place in the MEMPC, they tend to provide direct speech from Christ and to draw directly on the gospels. There are several examples of such biblical expansion replacing affective exhortation during the meditations on the Last Supper. For the sake of comparison I will first give a sample from the unique and deeply emotive translation in Michigan State MS 1 and set it against the MEMPC.45 This is the scene where Christ begins to wash the feet of the disciples, something that Peter initially refuses to submit to: Bot Petur defendyde hys waschyng, for hym thogth þat he whase vnsemly to hym, þat whase & es almgthy god & also in hys mankynde of worthi kyngis lynage, þat he schulde wesch a fyscher feet. Bot when he harde Crystes thretyng he suffered wisely Cryst to do hys wyll. Behold & see feruenly þe thynges þat Cryst dyde here. He weschyde þem euerylkone by þem selfe. 43

44

45

The commentary on the Ten Commandments is printed in T. Arnold ed., Select Works of John Wyclif, III, 82–92. See the textual profile to Privity of the Passion in the Geographies of Orthodoxy project resources http://www.qub.ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/. For further discussion of this text see the essay in this volume by Ian Johnson.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 144

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   145

Hafe in þi mynde how þat hys maiesty God and Kyng of all þe warlde wolde meke himself so law. How he þat ys mayster of all mygthys moste, lawes himself meykly to wesch a fyschers feet. Hou he stoupyde with hys buxome bake knelyng on hys knees whyles all the dyscypullis sayte, weschynge þer fouwle feet with þe handys þat neuer dyde synne; with þe towel also wypyng & with hys swete mouth also kyssyng all þer feet abowte.46

The Michigan text inserts additional lively verbs and emotive adjectives to stimulate affectivity to a greater degree than the Latin base text – Christ ‘stoupyde with hys buxome bake’; the fishermen’s feet are ‘fouwle’; the mouth of Jesus in affective contrast is ‘swete’. The text, nonetheless, largely parallels the original in terms of the scope of the treatment of this scene and is similar both to Nicholas Love’s translation and to the version that appears in the single copy of the Privity of the Passion that contains this section. We may note the ambiguity in respect of how Christ threatened Peter into submitting to have his feet washed, something that is similarly not expanded upon or explained in the Latin source text. The passage is mainly concerned to turn its audience’s thoughts to identify with the utter and extreme meekness of Christ in washing the feet of fishermen while reiterating that he is both God and King. It is within this incongruous juxtaposition that emotive response should be generated. The translator of the MEMPC produces a markedly different reading in terms of its tone, expanding on the text’s scriptural provenance and incorporating learned comment, while refraining from the kind of affective linguistic ornamentation applied in the Michigan translation: Petre merueylede and forsook his waischinge and seiþ: Þou schalt neuer waische my feet wiþouten ende. And Christ saiþ to hym: ʒif I schal not waische þe, þou schalt haue no part wiþ me. And þanne he side: Lord waische not onely þe feet, but þe hondes and þe hed. And Christ seiþ: Hit suffisiþ to waische þe feet, for whos feet ben wel waische he is al clene. Readings from both the Michigan MS, the MEMPC and the Latin version come from J. P. Jenks, ‘A Critical Edition of Meditations on the Passion: Michigan State University MS 1’, (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, 1956), p. 17; the Latin reads:

46

Recusat Petrus, et totus stupefactus rem suo judicio sic indecentem declinat. Sed audita Christi comminatione, sapienter consilium mutavit in melius. Considera nunc bene singulos actus, et cum admiratione conspice quae geruntur. Inclinat se summa majestas, et humilitatis magister usque ad piscatoris pedes stat incurvatus, et genibus flexis, coram ipsis sedentibus. Lavat propriis manibus, abstergit, deosculaturque omnium eorum pedes (Meditations on the Passion, ed. Jenks, pp. 17–18).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 145

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 4 6    R yan Pe r r y

Þat is to mene, ho so haþ clene affectioun in his soule, þat is understonde bi þe feet, he is al clene. Bihold now wel all þese dedis and wiþ wondrynge biholde þinges þat ben don; the hiʒe Godis maieste and maister of mekenesse bowiþ himself to þe feet of fischers and he fel doun on his knees before hem sittinge. He waischiþ wiþ his holi hondis and wipeþ þe feet of hem all.47

The translator alters this section by dropping much of the affective exhortation and instead introduces direct speech between Christ and Peter which has been closely translated from John 13. 8–10. The biblical text implanted in the MEMPC has enough parallels with both the EV and LV Wycliffite Bible translations that suggest the scripture was here excerpted from one of the mixed versions of the Middle English Bible, though it is difficult to be certain.48 Another possibility is that the lines were taken, or adapted from, a Middle English Glossed Gospels – a possibility suggested by the line of interpretation which the translator provides in respect of this difficult passage of scripture. Numerous patristic commentators had tackled questions as to why Peter desired Christ to wash his head along with his feet and, in respect of Jesus’s enigmatic response that it would suffice to wash only the feet. Aquinas, for instance, divided the ‘inner person’ (the soul) into three: the head at the top, the feet at the bottom, and the hands in the middle. … There is the head, which is the higher reason … [t]he hands are the lower reason, which is concerned with the works of the active life. Finally, the feet are the sensuality.49

Aquinas argues that the disciples are clean in the head through their union to God through ‘faith and charity’ and clean in the hands through their good 47

48

49

Meditations on the Passion, ed. Jenks, p. 18; the text paralleled in the Wycliffite Bible is rendered in bold; italics also added by the author for stress.

The EV of the Wycliffite Bible reads, ‘Petre seith to him, Thou schalt not waische to me the feet with outen ende. Jhesu answeride to him, If I schal not waische thee, thou schalt not have part with me. Symount Petre seith to him, Lord not oonly my feet, but and the hondis and the heed. Jhesu seide to him, He that is waischun, hath no nede no but that he waische the feet, but he is clene al’; the LV reads, ‘Petre seith to hym, Thou schalt neuere waische my feet. Jhesu answeride to him, If Y schal not waische thee, thou schalt not have part with me. Symount Petre seith to hym, Lord, not oneli my feet, but bothe the hoondis and the heed. He that is waischun, hath no nede but that he waische the feet, but he is al clene’ ( John 13. 8–10); J. Forshall and F. Madden, The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1850), IV, p. 275.

St Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Chapters 13–21, trans. F. Larcher and J. A. Weisheipl (Washington DC, 2010), p. 14.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 146

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   147

works, but the necessity to wash their feet was because the disciples ‘still retained some affection for earthly things in their sensuality’.50 The feet in these verses from John’s gospel thus represent for Aquinas the ‘lower affections’. The interpretation in the MEMPC is different, with the feet becoming a metaphor for the soul, ‘ho so haþ clene affectioun in his soule, þat is understonde bi þe feet, he is al clene’. The Middle English term ‘affectioun’, from the Latin affectio, was understood as one of two parts to the soul – the one holding emotion, and contrasted with the intellectual part of the soul.51 Christ’s cleaning of his disciple’s feet, according to the interpretation in the MEMPC, represents the soul’s capacity, if cleansed, to contain a pure love for Christ. It is thus a stunningly apt reading within a text that asks its audience to conjure Christ in the ‘iʒen of the soule’. This gloss chimes closely with one of the variety of competing interpretations offered against John chapter 13 in the copy of the Glossed Gospels in Trinity College Cambridge MS B. 1. 38. Origen’s figurative reading of the feet is rendered in Middle English as ‘feet þat is affeciouns of soule . schulen be waischun of Ihesu’.52 Indeed, another equivalent tropological understanding of the feet is to be found in glosses of the Psalms in copies of the Wycliffite Bible. Psalm 25. 12 in Oxford, Bodleian MS Fairfax MS 2, for instance, ‘Mi foot stood in riʒtful nesse .’ Lord I shal blesse þee in churchis’, provides a gloss after ‘foot’, underlined in red, reading, ‘þat is affeccion’.53 The translator’s treatment of this passage illustrates exactly Westphall’s idea of an ‘economy of expression’. The translator has added three verses of biblical text within this passage, has deftly explained something of the meaning of this challenging scriptural quotation and yet still is briefer than the corresponding section in the Michigan version. Even when this translator expands, he abbreviates. The MEMPC also introduces a phrase not found at this point in either the Latin original or any of the other English versions of the text. In his appeal to his audience to visualize the scene, a key aspect of meditative literature, he asks that they ‘biholde þinges þat ben don’. He is asking his Aquinas, Commentary, p. 14.

50

See ‘affecciǒun’, definition 1, Middle English Dictionary, ed. R. E. Lewis, et al. (Ann Arbor, 1952–2001); online edition in Middle English Compendium, ed. F. McSparran, et al. (Ann Arbor, 2000–2018), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middleenglish-dictionary/ (accessed 20 January 2019).

51

Cambridge, Trinity College MS B. 1. 38, fol. 141v; abbreviations are here silently expanded (emphasis mine).

52

Oxford, Bodleian MS Fairfax MS 2, fol. 169rb; for the most recent catalogue description see E. Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool, 2016), pp. 135–47.

53

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 147

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 4 8    R yan Pe r r y

audience to visualize events that have happened. This is a phrase that occurs on several other occasions in the MEMPC and it appears to underline that correspondence with veridical biblical history was important to this translator, in a manner that it clearly was not for some of the other English translators of pseudo-Bonaventure, who creatively added detail to their texts. The MEMPC translator elsewhere uses this expression when the process of meditatio is being explained, and he goes beyond his source text to make a clear link between the events to be conjured in the eye of the soul and Christ’s actual doings. Near the opening of the text, before the Last Supper begins, we are told that the soper was ful precious and also þe þinges þat Crist Ihesu dide at þis tyme weren ful amyable to which þinges to biholde[:] ʒyue þiself as þou haddist be þere present and behold worþili & wakyngli þinges þat ben don[.]54

In saying that the actual doings of Christ were ‘amyable’, that is, propitious or favourable, this translator indicates the benefits of converting events from Christ’s life, ‘þinges þat ben don’, into meditative tableaux, ‘þinges to biholde’.55 It is generally the case that meditations in the pseudo-Bonaventuran mould are less about the facts of scriptural history than they are about leading the meditator into having devout feelings. The double Crucifixion that characterizes the pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition is exemplary in this regard. In the Latin MPC/MVC the meditator gets to choose between imagining an upright Crucifixion where Christ climbs a ladder and places himself against the cross, or a Crucifixion where he is seized and nailed upon a horizontal cross that is then raised and dropped into a mortice. As the translator of the unique pseudo-Bonaventuran translation in Pepys MS 2125 tells his readers after outlining the first version of the Crucifixion, they should think on the second version of Christ’s Crucifixion, ‘if this be more stiryng than that other’.56 Whichever is more effective in terms of the reader’s ability to emotively conjure the event in the mind’s eye will serve. The translator of the MEMPC produces one of three English translations of pseudo-Bonaventure (along with the Privity of the Passion and the Meditations on the Supper) that does not offer the reader a choice. Perhaps the translator was uncomfortable about the implications of offering alternative imaginings of Christ’s Crucifixion within a text purporting to represent ‘þinges þat ben don’. Two versions of the Crucifixion in terms 54 55

56

Meditations on the Passion, ed. Jenks, p. 2.

See ‘āmiāble’, definition 1 (b), Middle English Dictionary, http://quod.lib.umich. edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/ (accessed 21 December 2019).

Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125, fol. 33v; Taguchi and Iyeiri, Pepysian Meditations. p. 14, lines 29–30.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 148

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   149

of veridical history cannot equally have ‘ben don’, creating a logical conundrum for a translator interested in getting as close to representing the facts of scriptural circumstance as possible. In fact, the MEMPC also cuts one other example of this form of ‘dowbul meditacyon’, as found in the Latin originals and in the Michigan manuscript, where the Last Supper might alternatively be imagined with the disciples and Christ sitting on the ground, eating off a board laid upon the floor, or taking this meal standing ‘uprygth with stafes in þer handys’.57

Conclusion: Christ’s ‘goostly’ presence in Bodley 789

I am now going to return to the copy of the MEMPC in Bodley 789, that devotional collection that included some texts that expressed Wycliffite positions and which was assembled, in all likelihood, by a doctrinally tolerant compiler who had access to at least one source book containing Lollard materials. The pseudo-Bonaventuran text in this book might itself retain a hint of Lollard textual editing and thus reveal clear evidence of an interest in meditational devotional practices among at least one such community. The text in the Bodley copy is generally very similar to those found in the other complete versions of the MEMPC. However, there is one moment of expansion in the text of which the original translator would surely have approved – a piece of direct speech from Christ has been extended. Christ’s address to the women who wept for him is limited in other copies of the MEMPC (and the Latin original as edited by Stallings-Taney) to a version of the line, ‘Douʒtris of Ierusalem, wepe ʒe not on me, but on ʒourself wepeþ & on ʒoure children’, though the Latin MPC usually signals this is part of a larger speech by Christ by adding ‘etcetera sicut in Evangelio plenius continetur’ (‘as is fully contained in the Gospel’). The text in Bodley 789 completes this citation with a close translation from Luke chapter 23: For daies schulen come in whiche þei schulen seie: Blessid be bareyn wymen and the wombis þat han not born children, and the tetis þat han not ʒiuen souke! Þanne þei schulen bigynne to saie to mounteyns: Fal ʒe doun on us! And to smale hillis: Keuere ʒe us!58

While interesting, and suggestive of a scribe/compiler with access to an English Bible translation (the translation closely parallels the text as found in the

Meditations on the Passion, ed. Jenks, p. 7.

57

Ibid., p. 100.

58

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 149

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 5 0    R yan Pe r r y

Wycliffite Bible LV), such an expansion is not particularly telling.59 Another, more significant textual augmentation, occurs back in the Last Supper section, with the addition of a single word in respect of that litmus test topic, the eucharist. As the text unpacks the idea of the eucharist the other versions of the MEMPC read (with only slight variation) as follows: ‘Ffor him forsoþe þat we receyue in þe glorious sacrament . þat same it is þat wondirfully toke flesch & blood of þe mayde marie[.]’ The adaptor of the text in Bodley 789 adds a single word that has the potential to dramatically alter the meaning of the passage: ‘For him forsothe þat we receyuen in the glorious sacrament goostly is þilke same that wonderfully took fleisch and blood in the mayde Marye[.]’60 The new sentence is unlikely to have raised the hackles of even someone on the lookout for heresy (and indeed, it has escaped the notice of the censor who scraped other problematic passages from this book). After all, partaking of the eucharist was universally to be understood as a spiritual, a ‘goostly’ act, and the fact that Nicholas Love calls the eucharist ‘gostly foode’ demonstrates that the use of the word was not necessarily polemical.61 And yet, the deliberate addition of ‘goostly’ in Bodley 789 undeniably opens up a hermeneutic space in which a Lollard reading becomes possible. This passage is framed to emphasize the fleshliness of Christ incarnate and thus reinforce the idea of Christ’s material presence in the Eucharistic host. The addition of the word ‘goostly’ has the potential to completely subvert such a reading – to suggest Christ is spiritually, and by implication not physically – present in the host. It can only be inferred that the unnecessary interpolation of this word in this key passage was a matter of theological dogma. Although the evidence is subtle, and without meticulous comparative work might easily be missed, the insertion of the word ‘goostly’ suggests that the MEMPC was used by Lollard worshippers. Indeed, it makes it likely that a subtly altered version of the MEMPC was in the source book of Lollard materials that was plundered by the compiler of Bodley 789 in producing this anthology of mainly Christological texts. As Mary Raschko’s study of the Schort Reule indicates, it is becoming more and more obvious that Lollard texts, and perhaps even doctrinal polemic that originated in Lollard circles, 59

60 61

This moment is also expanded in two other Middle English translations of the MEMPC: the Pepys MS 2125 translation (Taguchi and Iyeiri, Pepysian Meditations, p. 12, lines 460–3) and The Middle English Liber Aureus and Gospel of Nichodemus, ed. W. Marx (Heidelberg, 2013), p. 22, where there is a minor expansion; it is possible that these ‘expansions’ are instead evidence for a stemmatic line in the MVC tradition where a fuller version of the scriptural moment was supplied. Meditations on the Passion, ed. Jenks, p. 24. The Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 149, line 8.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 150

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

T h e Mi dd l e Eng l i sh Medi ta tiones d e Passione Chr isti   151

percolated beyond a hard core of self-identifying Wycliffite adherents and influenced a broader base of religious communities.62 It is among such readerships that the MEMPC found at least a part of its audience. The example of the MEMPC in Bodley 789 may also allow us to consider that texts and the devotional practices they sponsored flowed in the other direction. The growing trend in popular religion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to meditate on the Passion of Christ may have been a devotional practice that was taken up even by self-identifying Lollards. If they did so, it makes sense that the MEMPC, a literalist, conservative and biblically sensitive rendition of pseudo-Bonaventure would have appealed to them. As discussed above, the MEMPC is not the only translation of pseudo-Bonaventure that is reworked with a conservative sensitivity to biblical primacy, and somewhat ironically, if the text did end up as part of the devotional repertoire of some Lollards, it shares this concern with Nicholas Love, the translator whose work was deliberately constructed to challenge aspects of Wycliffite belief. The text’s concern to police unbounded reimaginings of scripture to serve the purposes of affective devotion is something that connects the MEMPC with Love’s project. In this text, and to a lesser extent in Love’s Mirror, are echoes of Wyclif ’s ‘extraordinary reluctance to admit that spiritual truths can be communicated by means of “fictions”’.63 Through analysing these distinct translations of pseudo-Bonaventure we witness not just devotional and doctrinal contrasts, but the parallels and lines of connection that demonstrate the problematic nature of drawing simple binaries in relation to the complex interpenetrating devotional praxes of late medieval England. If, as the case of Bodley 789 suggests, some Lollards did engage in meditational religious practices, it acts as a rejoinder to those like Eamon Duffy who have characterized them as utterly rejecting the ‘polysemic resourcefulness of late medieval religion’.64 Although this is only one small example, it reveals, as we should expect, that Lollard religion borrowed from the devotional practices that were being adopted by the pious laity more broadly.

Raschko, ‘Common Ground for Contrasting Ideologies’.

62

K. Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge, 2002), p. 35.

63

E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580, 2nd edn (New Haven, 2005), p. xxviii; see also F. Somerset’s response to this characterization of Lollardy, Feeling Like Saints, pp. 230–8.

64

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 151

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

7 Reflecting English Lay Piety in the Mirrors of Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms e Museo 35 DAVID J. FALLS

I

t

n the introduction to his landmark 2005 critical edition of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, Michael Sargent noted that ‘we simply have not yet done enough exploration of fifteenth-century vernacular theological literature’.1 Indeed, while the study of religious writing in English became a popular area of study in the late twentieth century, the vast majority of scholarship on such works focused largely on its position in relation to the intellectual and theological debate between fifteenth-century ecclesiastical authorities and Oxford theologian John Wycliff and his followers. This conflict has provided the contextual background for the study of the composition and circulation of much of the theological literature produced in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. However, as is now becoming increasingly apparent, even if this conflict was as influential on the composition of religious writing during this period as scholars often posit, the circulation and copying of such texts by individual fifteenth-century readers suggest that the textual cultures of the era were in fact much more complex and flexible. While a macro analysis of trends in English religious writing at the turn of the fifteenth century often focuses on the inherent tensions between such cultural landmarks as the 1401 Oxford Translation Debate and Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s infamous 1409 ‘Constitutions’, famously explored in Nicholas Watson’s hugely influential 1995 Speculum article, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England’2 – as well as their great textual The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), Introduction, p. 79.

1

2

N. Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), 822–64.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 152

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   153

champions, the Wycliffite Bible and Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ – a micro analysis of the circulation of individual texts copied in the period seems to suggest a pattern of praxis which Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry have dubbed ‘devotional cosmopolitanism’: a practice in which supposedly ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ texts sit side by side with one another in theological and devotional miscellanies.3 The methodological framework which shed light on such patterns in Kelly and Perry’s work, and which informed much of the findings of this author’s previous writing on Nicholas Love’s Mirror,4 was developed as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Geographies of Orthodoxy research project hosted by Queen’s University Belfast and the University of St Andrews, which sought to build on works such as Sargent’s critical edition of Love’s Mirror. The Geographies project attempted to explore manuscript copies of English texts derived from the highly popular and influential pseudo-Bonaventuran Latin text The Meditationes Vitae Christi, not as markers of large-scale movements in textual cultures but, rather, both as sites of literary consumption for translators, copyists, compilers and readers, and as nexuses of textual transmission, in order to reveal the social, cultural, political and economic connections between milieus of textual composition and reception which allowed the texts to circulate and evolve. This methodological approach, a kind of ‘cultural mapping’, was intended to provide an analysis of a particular strand of late medieval devotional writing outside of the overarching debate over biblical translation and the appropriateness, or not, of religious writing in English. Instead, it attempted to focus on a more nuanced picture of the devotio-literary culture of late medieval England, challenging broad and general assumptions with more specific individual examples. While I leave a judgement on the success or failure of this project to others, the methodology has, it is hoped, suggested a way in which we can now go about responding to Sargent’s call for further exploration of English vernacular theology. As such, when I was honoured with an approach to contribute to this collection for a true gentleman and scholar, it seemed appropriate to apply this methodology to an English vernacular text which has received little scholarly attention, The Myrour of Lewde Men and Wymmen.5 S. Kelly and R. Perry, ‘Devotional Cosmopolitanism in Fifteenth-Century England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, Medieval Church Studies 21, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 363–80.

3

D. J. Falls, Nicholas Love’s Mirror and Late Medieval Devotio-Literary Culture: Theological Politics and Devotional Practice in Fifteenth-Century England (Abingdon, 2016).

4

https://geographies-of-orthodoxy.qub.ac.uk/

5

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 153

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 5 4    D av i d J. Fal l s

This essay therefore attempts to map the Myrour’s place in the devotioliterary culture of late medieval England from its origins to its eventual inclusion in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Museo 35, where it sits alongside a much more noted text which I know to be very close to the heart of myself and our honorand: Nicholas Love’s own Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Through an examination of its debts to both Continental and English works, its composer’s distinctive interventions and its – albeit limited – circulation, this essay will argue that, like Love’s more ‘popular’ text, the Myrour illustrates a devotio-literary culture in which both producers and consumers saw religious texts less as markers in an all-encompassing theological debate and more as practical tools with which to structure and regulate piety in an age in which an increasingly engaged and literate readership sought their own paths to salvation; an age which John van Engen has described as being defined by ‘options’, ‘multiple, competing, contested, coexistent, negotiated, overlapping, local, [and] personally appropriated’;6 an age in which religious writing in the vernacular spread as never before; and an age in which the religiously intense were able to pursue more individual, selective and personal forms of religious praxis.

Origins of the ‘Myrour’

As Nicole Rice has noted, ‘in later fourteenth-century England, the persistent question of how to live the “best life” preoccupied many pious Christians, and new answers proliferated for enterprising laypeople’; the literate especially ‘might read the catechism or monastic meditations translated from Latin into English’.7 This proliferation of material is often traced to the decrees of the English bishops in the wake of the Lateran Council of 1215. In England, Archbishop Peckham, in his Constitutions of 1281, commanded that each parish priest, four times a year, explain to the people in the vernacular the articles of the faith, the Ten Commandments, the two precepts of the gospel, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, the seven cardinal virtues and the seven sacraments. This programme of education finds its most obvious textual expression in the pastoral project of John Thoresby, archbishop of York, and the writing of John de Gaytrynge, a Benedictine monk of St Mary’s abbey, who around 1357 produced The Lay Folks’ Catechism. It may also be to this Yorkshire milieu that we might assign the genesis of the Myrour of Lewde Men J. Van Engen, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History 77.2 (2008), 257–84 (p. 284).

6

N. R. Rice, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (Cambridge, 2008), p. ix.

7

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 154

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   155

and Wymmen, itself a didactic and catechetical double exposition of the Pater Noster including all the basic material required to be taught in the vernacular. The Myrour is not itself an original work but is derived, much like Love’s Mirror, from a popular Continental work – Dominican Lorens d’Orléans thirteenth-century Somme le Roi. A more direct source for the Myrour is, however, the Speculum Vitae, an English poem of the third quarter of the fourteenth century.8 While no dating or authorship for the Myrour can be given with any certainty, its connection with the Speculum does allow us to begin to construct a more detailed cultural map of the literary and textual milieu in which it was produced. Given the Myrour’s reliance on the Speculum, some assumptions can be made concerning the general dating of the Myrour. The composition of the Speculum Vitae has traditionally been dated to between 1349 and 1384. Venetia Nelson has suggested a terminus post quem of 1349 for the Speculum based on the inclusion of material from Rolle’s ‘Form of Living’, and a terminus ante quem of 1384, the date given in three manuscripts as that of its Cambridge examination for heresy.9 However, in his 2008 edition of the Speculum Vitae Ralph Hanna followed Hope Emily Allen in questioning the terminus ante quem of 1384. Indeed, Allen had noted as early as 1917 that no positive certainty could be attached to the text’s supposed examination. She did, however, note an important similarity in the three manuscripts, namely that they were all fifteenth-century productions, and suggested that ‘by that time the suspicion with which vernacular religious works were regarded on account of Lollardy was so great that a note like the present one was practically useful as a safe-conduct, and therefore likely to be fabricated’.10 This possible post-production programme of authorization is reminiscent of the pattern of transmission of the Latin ‘Memorandum’ which often accompanies the text of Love’s Mirror. As Sargent has noted, ‘the most important fact of the textual history of the “Memorandum” is its absence in the earliest manuscripts’. Scholars such as Hope Emily Allen (1917) and Edna Stover (1950) have long commented on the relationship between the Myrour and the Speculum, and in her 1981 edition of the Myrour, Venetia Nelson carefully examined the linguistic relationships between the Speculum and the Myrour – as well as two other fourteenth-century English translations of the Somme, the Ayenbite of Inwyt and the Book of Vices and Virtues – to positively conclude a direct relationship between the text of the Speculum and the Myrour. See A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A Prose Version of the Speculum Vitae, ed. From B. L. MS Harley 45, ed. V. Nelson (Heidelberg, 1981), H. E. Allen, ‘The Speculum Vitae: Addendum’, PMLA 32 (1917), 133–62 and E. V. Stover, ‘A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A Note on a Recently Acquired Manuscript’, The Library Chronicle 16 (1950), 81–6.

8

Myrour, ed. Nelson, pp. 24–5.

9

Allen, ‘Speculum Vitae: Addendum’, p. 148.

10

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 155

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 5 6    D av i d J. Fal l s

While the note records that Love’s text was submitted to Archbishop Arundel around 1410, the ‘majority of manuscripts with the “Memorandum” were in fact produced during the archbishopric of Arundel’s successor, Henry Chichele (1414–43)’.11 If, like the ‘Memorandum’ attached to the Mirror, the note recording the examination of the Speculum was a later addition, then there is no reason to accept a cut-off for the composition of the Speculum in 1384, leaving a dating of the Myrour c. 1375 based on the dating of the earliest extant manuscript – British Library MS Additional 33995.12 If the dating of the Speculum and therefore the Myrour is unclear, we fare little better when it comes to uncovering the authorship of either work. Tradition has ascribed the Speculum to two fourteenth-century figures. First, Richard Rolle, the attribution to whom, suggests Hanna, is ‘an example of a widespread propensity to link any northern devotional work with the hermit’.13 This attribution was dismissed as early as 1910 by Allen.14 The second author to whom the work is ascribed was Northamptonshire poet and ecclesiastical administrator William of Nassington. This attribution is based on a version of the poem’s conclusion taken from only two of the more than forty extant manuscripts – British Library, MS Royal 17 C.viii and Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 18. Hanna, however, has suggested that the attribution to Nassington may be as erroneous as that to Rolle.15 The Speculum-author’s own reason for wishing to remain anonymous remains unclear, although, as a purely didactic and general work of education with no clear and direct patron or audience, it is perhaps more prosaic than mysterious. Although we know little about the specific circumstances of the production of either the Speculum or the Myrour in terms of date or authorship, we can be reasonably sure about the geographical milieu in which the Speculum originated. As Hanna has commented, ‘if William of Nassington is not the author, one then needs to identify some provenance from which the poem might have 11

12

13 14

15

Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, pp. 147–8. Not even the copy of the Mirror found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, e Museo 35, owned by Thomas Beaufort, patron of Love’s own Mount Grace charterhouse and close associate, if not always ally, of Archbishop Arundel features the ‘Memorandum’, while in manuscripts descended from the early β version of the Mirror, if the note occurs at all, it occurs at the end of the text. Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition, ed. Ralph Hanna, EETS OS 331 & 332 (Oxford, 2008), p. lxiii. Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, p. lx.

H. E. Allen, ‘The Authorship of the Prick of Conscience’, in Studies in English and Comparative Literature (Boston, 1910). Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, pp. lx–lxiii.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 156

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   157

emerged. The basis for any such procedure, in the absence of a compelling ascription, can only be linguistic.’16 Hanna’s linguistic analysis has established a definitive Yorkshire location for the composition of the Speculum, and, on the balance of the linguistic evidence, the most likely location would seem to be the area around Ripon. In examining the additions made by the Speculum-author to his French source text, Hanna has also suggested that its composition was heavily influenced by a ‘range of circumambient Yorkshire literature’.17 As well as the instruction on the organization of confession drawn from Rolle’s ‘Form of Living’, Hanna notes that the Speculum-author relies heavily on the Latin sepentary tract ‘tabula de vtilitate oracionis dominice’, which has a distinct Yorkshire provenance, while images imported from Cursor Mundi and discussions, usually predicated on patristic citations, roughly correspond to comparable efforts in The Prick of Conscience.18 We might therefore agree with Hannah that the composition and circulation of the Speculum represents an important nexus of ‘generally ignored regional literary culture’.19 Ibid., p. lxiii.

16

Ibid., p. lxxii.

17

Ibid.

18

Ibid., p. xiii. In addition to linguistic and textual links to a specifically Yorkshire textual culture, the manuscript corpus of the Speculum also suggests a significant Yorkshire influence in the circulation of the text. Of the forty-five manuscripts of the Speculum noted by Hanna as containing complete, substantial or identifiable fragments of the text, around half can be positively identified through LALME as containing either ‘Northern’ or specifically Yorkshire features. Hanna also identifies six manuscripts which can be linked to the West Riding of Yorkshire: British Library, MS Stowe 951; Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 160/81; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.13; Liverpool, University Library, MS F.4.9; London, Sion College, MS Arch. L.40.2/E.25 (excerpts); Marlborough, St Mary’s, Vicars Library (fragment). Of these manuscripts, Stowe 951 and F.4.9 are two of the five early Yorkshire manuscripts used as a base for Hanna’s edition. Of these, Stowe 951 stands out for its inclusion of translations of Gower’s French ballads. R. F. Yaeger has suggested that the author of these translations was Robert Quixley, prior of Nostell abbey, also in the West Riding. R. F. Yeager, ‘John Gower’s French and his Readers’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100-c.1500, ed. J. Wogan-Browne et al. (York, 2009), pp. 135–46. A further five manuscripts have connections with the North Riding of Yorkshire. In addition to Cambridge, University Library, MSS Gg.i.7, Gg.i.14 and Additional 2823, this group also contains British Library, MS Additional 33995 – another of the base manuscripts for Hanna’s edition, which contains the previously mentioned Yorkshire copy of Prick of Conscience, as well as William of Nassington’s ‘The Band of Love’, the only other copy being found in Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91, copied by Robert Thornton of East Newton, North Riding, Yorkshire. The final manuscript

19

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 157

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 5 8    D av i d J. Fal l s

Given its northern provenance, and its various forms of legitimation and authorization, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Speculum would come into the hands of a writer interested in the pastoral care of the laity, perhaps even a member of the Mount Grace community whose vocation of ‘preaching by hand’, as well as their political, cultural and economic relationships with the owners of e Museo 35, would provide the connections which allowed the Myrour to be copied into its pages. However, as will be addressed further below, there is simply not enough textual or manuscript evidence to suggest the Mount Grace house as the site of composition of the Myrour. Nevertheless, it is possible to suggest that both Love and the Myrour-author shared a common goal in composing and disseminating their works. Indeed, any study of the Myrour of Lewde Men and Wymmen must inevitably consider why – if the Speculum was so ‘widely circulated, […] had been acclaimed by authorities as impeccably orthodox in those heterodox times, and possessed an authority that was to result in its use by other writers’20 – the Myrour itself was produced at all. Even if we dispute the importance of the declared orthodoxy of the Speculum, we are still left with the interesting question of why the Myrour-author found it necessary to produce their own version of the text. Nelson has suggested that this originating impulse lies somewhere in the tension between the artistic nature of verse and the didactic nature of pastoral writings. In Trevisa’s Dialogue between a Lord and a Clerk, the Lord notes that ‘prose is more clere than rhyme, more easy and more pleyn to know and understonde’.21 However, as Edna Stover has noted in her study of the Myrour, ‘reduction of a poem to prose is an unusual technique in Middle English literature, for whereas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was the fashion for French writers to write “desrime”, and whereas in the fifteenth century in England there was a growing tendency to write original works in prose with North Riding links is British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E.vii. This manuscript stands out as a particularly ‘northern’ book containing not only the Speculum but also the Northern Homily Cycle with intercalated Northern Passion, and a verse paraphrase of Rolle’s ‘Form of Living’. Three other notable manuscripts link the Speculum to this Yorkshire literary milieu through their attribution of the work to Rolle. Tokyo, Prof. Toshiyuki Takamiya, MS 15 and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ll.i.8 feature not only the Rolle attribution but also his ‘Meditations on the Passion’. Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.i.36 contains the record of the text’s 1384 Cambridge examination for heresy.

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 39.

20

The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280– 1520, ed. J. Wogan-Browne et al. (Exeter, 1999), p. 134.

21

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 158

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   159

rather than in verse, very few other instances can be cited in Middle English literature of verse so directly converted into prose’.22 Nelson has suggested that the Myrour-author’s motive for the reworking of the verse source was a didactic one, providing a clarity better expressed in prose than verse. The ‘milieu in which such rewriting could be done’, suggests Nelson, ‘was a select audience of well-intentioned readers who did not need to be thundered at from the pulpit or enticed in the minstrel’s verse formulae, but had the intelligence to appreciate the more subtle syntax and greater logical coherence of the prose, and the leisure to meditate on the contents’.23 As such, we can locate the Myrour ‘within the body of English prose works concerned primarily with the instruction of an attentive, English speaking audience’.24 Indeed, while it does seem most likely that the Myrour-author was, as Nelson suggests, a cleric ‘and perhaps, from his persistent carefulness about explaining things clearly, and his pervading pastoral concern, a secular priest rather than a religious’,25 she does note that the style and method of the translation ‘closely parallel the work of the translators from Latin who are exemplified by Nicholas Love’.26 There are a number of parallels which suggest, if not that the Myrour was produced within the same milieu that produced Love’s Mirror, that Love and the Myrour-author shared enough common concerns and connections to explain how the English prose versions of Europe’s most influential devotional and pastoral works – the Meditationes Vitae Christi and the Somme le Roi – came to sit side by side in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Museo 35.

Adapting the Speculum

In composing their own texts, both Nicholas Love and the Myrour-author make significant adaptations to their sources – adaptations which can clearly be linked to a seemingly common drive to produce practical and functional texts. Indeed, in the introduction to her edition of the Myrour, Nelson labels the Myrour-author as ‘the redactor’, noting that, in adapting the Speculum, ‘the loose, the meaningless and the repetitive are constantly removed to leave what is substantial’, a strategy intended to ‘let nothing hinder the didactic purpose of the work’.27 However, she also notes that this redactor ‘also occasionally Stover, ‘A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen’, p. 85.

22

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 35.

23

Ibid., p. 41.

24

Ibid., p. 25.

25

Ibid., p. 40.

26

Ibid., pp. 30–1.

27

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 159

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 6 0    D av i d J. Fal l s

brought in material from outside’ the Speculum Vitae.28 As such, we might rather assign to the composer of the Myrour a role which was also assigned to Nicholas Love, namely that of ‘compilator’.29 As Ian Johnson has noted, ‘the ubiquitous, utilitarian and flexible medieval literary genre of compilatio was essentially concerned with the accessible presentation of authoritative materials according to the needs of the user of the book. Though he must not corrupt his materials the compiler nevertheless exercised the right to choose, exclude, re-order, expand, condense, repeat, highlight, juxtapose and contradistinguish materia as he saw fit.’30 Johnson also comments that such a process would often be influenced by the intended reception context of the work, as the compiler would have in mind ‘whether his audience were learned or “simple”, lay or enclosed, male or female, readers or hearers [… and] deliberately expound the significance and the teaching of the text according to the priorities of their culture’.31 This creative and targeted aspect of compilatio, in which a text is transformed from its source for a new audience is in fact reflected in the wholly original introductions to both ‘mirrors’ of e Museo 35. Indeed, while in the opening section of the Speculum its author spends much of his time attempting to separate himself from his poetic competitors, suggesting that he ‘wil make ne vayne carpynge / Of dedes of armes ne of amours, / Als dose mynstraylles and iestours’,32 in their own original openings both Love and the Myrour-author take steps to stress the practical value of their works, invoking both biblical and patristic sources in support of their projects. The text of Love’s Mirror opens with a Latin quotation from Romans 15. 4 followed by a brief exposition:

28 29

30

31 32

Ibid., p. 32.

In the vast majority of manuscripts Love’s text is accompanied by a Latin note which explains the inclusion of a number of marginal N and B notes. This ‘Attende’ note describes the text marked with a B as material derived from the original pseudo-Bonaventuran source, the Meditationes vitae Christi, while the N notes mark ‘verba sunt translatoris siue compilatoris in Anglicis preter illa que inserunter in libro scripto secundum communem opinionem a venerabili doctore Bonauenture in Latino de meditacione vite Jesu Christi’ (The words are added by the translator or compiler beyond those in the Latin book of the Meditation of the Life of Christ, written, according to common opinion, by the venerable doctor Bonaventure). I. R. Johnson, ‘Middle English Life of Christ’, in The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Ellis (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 69–85 (p. 76). Ibid., p. 79.

Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, p. 6, lines 36–8.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 160

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   161

Quecumque scripta sunt ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt vt per pacienciam & consolacionem scriptarum spem habeamus, as Romanos xvo capitulo. Þese ben þe wordes of þe gret doctour & holy apostle Powle consideryng þat the gostly leuyng of all trewe crysten creatures in þis worlde stant specialy in hope of þe blysse & the lyfe þat is to come in another worlde. And for also mich as tweyne þinges pryncipaly noryschen & strenkþen þis hope in man þat is pacience in herte & ensaumple of vertues & gude liuyng of holy men written in bokes.’ And souereynly þe words & dedis writen of oure lorde Jesu criste verrei god and man for þe tyme of his bodily liuyng here in erthe.’ þerfore to strenkeþ vs and confort in þis hope spekeþ þe Apostle þe wordes aforseid to þis entent seying þat all thynges þat bene written generaly in holi chirche ande specialy of oure lorde Jesu cryste þei bene wryten to oure lore that by pacience & conforte of holi scriptures we haue hope that is to say of the Life & Blysse that is to come in anothere worlde. 33

With its focus on the pedagogical nature of religious texts, and their role in strengthening and comforting the reader, as well as the promotion of virtues such as patience, Love’s ‘proheme’ presents a clear focus on the practical value of his work to his readers. Following his biblical exposition, he then turns to material from St Augustine’s De agone Christiano to further support the practicality of his own textual project: Here to acordyng spekeþ Seynt Austyn þus, Goddes son toke man & in hym he soffred that longeþ to man & was made medicine of man.’ & this medicine is so mykell þat it may nouȝt be bouȝt. For þer is no pryde bot [þat] it may be heled þruȝe þe mekenes of goddis sone. Þer is no Couetyse bot þat it maye be heled thorgh is pouerte.’ [No] Wrath bot [þat] it may be heled throwe his pacience. [No] Malice bot þat it may be heled þrowȝe his charitee. Ande more ouer þer is no synne or wikkednesse, bot that [he] schal want it & kept fro [it] þe whiche byholdeþ inwardly & loueþ & foloweþ þe words & the dedis of that man in whome goddess sone ȝaff himself to vs in to ensaumple of gode leuyng.34

By including Augustine’s exposition of Christ as ‘medicine’, Love appropriates a similar value to his own work, a text which itself records the ‘words & dedis Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 9, lines 4–21.

33

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 9, line 21–p. 10, line 1. For a more detailed examination of the relationship between Love’s text and his use of St Augustine, see I. R. Johnson, ‘What Nicholas Love Did in His Proheme with St Augustine and Why’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. I. R. Johnson and A. F. Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 375–91.

34

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 161

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 6 2    D av i d J. Fal l s

writen of oure lorde Jesu criste verrei god and man for þe tyme of his bodily liuyng here in erthe’, one of the two things which strengthen man’s hope for ‘þe blysse & the lyfe þat is to come in another worlde’. Love has here, in a brief appropriation and exposition of biblical and patristic sources, constructed a complete and authoritative rationale for both his own composition and his readers’ consumption and use of the text. An almost identical authorizing formula can be seen in the similarly, wholly original opening of the Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen. In this work, after declaring that all mankind is ‘in exile and wilderness out of his kyndely contre, or as is a pilgrym or a wayfaring man in a strang londe’,35 the Myrour-author includes his own biblical verse, Hebrews 13. 14, accompanied by a more allegorical exposition of his patristic source: Holy Writ seith thus: Non habemus hic manentem ciuitatem, sed futuram inquirimus, ‘We haue here no dwelling or abidynge’, that is to vnderstonde no place þat we may abyde ynne, ‘but we sechith anothir þat is forto come.’ And þat is but oon of two citees, of the which þat oon cite may be cleped þe cite of Ierusalem, þat is to say the citee of pees, and þat other þe cite of Babiloyne, þat is to seie confusion. And by this citee of Ierusalem, þat citee of pees, may be vnderstonde the endless blis of heuen, where þat is endeles pes, ioye and reste withoute lettynge. And by þis cite of Babiloyn, þat is confusion, may be vnderstode þe endeles peyne of helle, where all manere confusion, schame and schenship, sorowe & woo, schal be withouten ende.36

Following this biblical exposition, the Myrour’s opening again mirrors Love’s ‘proheme’ in appropriating Augustine, this time De diligendo Deo, to further authorize both the text and its utility: sithen þat all a mannes lyvinge in þis world nys but as a goyng or a moving oþer a wey to one of þese two citees, þat is to seie to endeles blis or to endeles peyne, the holy doctor seynt Augustyne in his meditaciouns techeþ vs & seith þus: with awakerhed, takynge busy mynde, souereigne afforcinge and continuel besynes, vs byhoueth lerne & enquere by what manere and by what wey we mowe shone þe peyne of helle and purchase þe blisse of heuen; for that peyne, he seith may not be shoned ne þat ioye ipurchased but the weye be known.37

35 36 37

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 71, lines 1–3. Ibid., p. 71, lines 5–17.

Ibid., p. 71, lines 18–25.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 162

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   163

Mirroring Love’s focus on the functionality of his text, the Myrour-author similarly foregrounds the function of his text, to make ‘the weye be known’. However, while these two ‘mirrors’ may share a similar rationalizing formula based on a foregrounding of their functionality, there is a clear difference in both their functions and the methods required in their pursuit. While the Mirror foregrounds the ‘ensaumple’ of Christ and the medicinal value of his earthly virtues – meekness, poverty, patience and charity – which may ‘hele’ the reader, or even help them be ‘kept fro’ sin if appropriately cultivated, the Myrour-author has no such model but, rather, focuses of the nature of the reader who ‘sechith’ another world, and who must engage with the Church’s doctrinal teaching with a ‘busy mynde, souereigne afforcinge and continuel besynes’. Indeed, while the authors of both texts had in mind the same goal, providing practical texts to be ‘used’ by their readers, the foci of each text are very different. The Mirror is a devotional meditative text focused around ‘devoute ymaginacions’ of Christ’s life which readers of the Mirror are frequently told to ‘beholdeþ inwardly’, while the Myrour is a didactic catechetical text focused on explaining a range of ecclesiastical doctrines to those with a ‘busy mynde’. While both require an internal engagement with the text, the Myrour seems to require a more active engagement, although possibly on a more basic intellectual level; we might even see these two mirrors as presenting two different stages of a progressive path to the ‘best life’, with the Myrour helping the reader to ‘knowe what is vertu and what is synne’,38 and the Mirror to ‘noryschen & strenkþen’ them against such sin. Perhaps a reader should first actively ‘lerne & enquere’ the way to ‘shone þe peyne of helle and purchase þe blisse of heuen’ through their ‘souereigne afforcinge and continuel besynes’, and then seek to ‘hele’ themselves through ‘bisy meditacion [on] þe blessed life of Jesu [which] stableþ þe saule & þe herte aȝeynus vanitees & deceyuable likynges of þe worlde’.39 These differing functions, and perhaps the differing drives behind them, can perhaps best be seen in the final feature shared by both the opening of the Myrour and Love’s ‘proheme’ – a feature which also perhaps encapsulates the creative nature of the process of compilatio – the renaming of the text. As the Myrour-author states: For [a] man may not knowe in whiche of these two weyes he goþ ynne, ne whiderward he is but he knowe what is vertu and what is synne, therefore þis writyng is made for lewed and menliche lettred men and wymmen in suche tonge as þei can best vnderstonde, and may be cleped a myrour to Ibid., p. 71, lines 32.

38

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 12, lines 3–5.

39

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 163

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 6 4    D av i d J. Fal l s

lewde men and wymmen in whiche they may see God þorgh stedfast byleue and hemself þorgh mekenes, and what is vertu and what is synne.40

The Myrour, suggests its author, functions as a salvific tool in which its readers, ‘lewde men and wymmen’, can ‘see God þorgh stedfast byleue and hemself þorgh mekenes, and what is vertu and what is synne’. However, while the Myrour author seems to be attempting to suggest that his text serves a range of functions, somewhat counterintuitively it seems that by having such a wide-ranging function – and thus potential audience – it actually fails to gain a sustained circulation among any wide circle of readers. Indeed, what separates the renaming of the Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen from the formula presented in Love’s text, and may speak to their vastly differing levels of circulation, is the suggestion that Love’s project was not personally motivated but, rather, the fulfilment of a direct request. Like the Myrour-author, Love links the purpose of his text to what he sees as a natural response to Augustine’s guidance initially pursued by other authorities, but aimed at a similar audience of ‘lewde men and women’: Wherfore nowe boþe men & women & euery Age & euery dignite of this worlde is stirid to hope of euery lastyng lyfe. Ande for þis hope & entent with holi writte also bene wryten diuerse bokes & trettes of devoute men not onelich to clerkes in latyne, but also in Englyshe to lewde men and women & hem þat bene of symple vndirstondyng. Among þe whiche beþ wryten deuovte meditacions of cristes lyfe more pleyne in certeyne partyes þan is seide in the gospel of þe foure euaungelistes. And as it is seide þe deuoute man & worthy clerke Bonauenture wrot hem to A religiouse woman in latyne þe whiche scripture and wrytyng for þe fructuouse matere þerof steryng specialy to þe loue of Jesu.41

However, Love then records that ‘at þe instance & prayer of some deuoute soules to edification of suche men or women is þis drawynge oute of þe foreside boke of cristes lyfe wryten in englysche’,42 before concluding his original opening with his own renaming: And so for als miche as in þis boke bene contynede diuerse ymaginacions of cristes life, þe which life fro þe bygynnyng in to þe endyng euer blessed & withoute synne, passing alle þe lifes of alle oþer seyntes, as for a singulere prerogatife, may worþily be cleped þe blessed life of Jesu crist, þe which also 40 41 42

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 71, lines 31–7.

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 10, lines 2–12. Ibid., p. 10, lines 17–19.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 164

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   165

because it may not be fully descriuede as þe lifes of oþer seyntes, bot in a maner of liknes as þe ymage of mans face is shewed in þe mirrroure.’ þerfore as for a pertynent name to þis boke, it may skillfully be cleped, þe Mirrour of þe blessed life of Jesu criste.43

While for the Myrour-author the text functioned as a mirror for its readers, Love holds back from presenting Christ as a mirror for his audience, a perhaps unsurprising strategy for an enclosed Carthusian whose concern was providing devotional guidance for those connected to his house, but outside its cells.44 Love’s Mirror was in fact not meant for a general audience of ‘lewde men and women’ but, rather, for a particular class of reader – most probably those aristocratic patrons of his own house such as the owners of e Museo 35, who were exactly the kind of readers in whose possession can be found the vast majority of devotional works of the period, who would have the resources and the time to pass from the first stage of the ‘best life’, knowing what is virtue and what is sin, to inwardly imagining the nourishing and strengthening devout meditations on Christ’s virtuous and salvific earthly life provided by texts such as Love’ Mirror. In contrast, the Myrour does seem to have had a more general audience and broader pastoral purpose in mind, allowing access to appropriate Christian doctrines to all ‘menliche lettred men and wymmen’, who seem not to have taken up the opportunity in any large numbers. These two wholly original openings of the two mirrors of e Museo 35 foreground one common impulse, namely the production of works of vernacular religious writing which provide practical manuals of appropriate religious practice rooted not only in biblical but also in patristic teachings. These were not books simply to be read but, rather, books which had a more practical function for their owners. Their goal was the education and instruction of their English readers in how to achieve the ‘best life’, not only in theory but in practice. Indeed, the introductory formula rationalizing the production of both texts suggests that the envisioned reading contexts were constituted of an engaged and active audience. What separates them, and probably explains their divergent levels of circulation, is the ability, and perhaps desire, of the authors to engage directly with their readers. While Love’s Mirror puts the practical performance of devout meditations on the life of Christ at the centre of his work, providing both a practical and flexible programme of reading, Ibid., p. 11, lines 9–18.

43

Love often goes to great lengths to distinguish between the enclosed and lay life, most notably in his double exposition of the active and contemplative lives, and his recommendation of Hilton’s work on the ‘medelet life’ in the thirty-third chapter of the Mirror.

44

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 165

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 6 6    D av i d J. Fal l s

and making frequent authorial interventions to guide his reader throughout the text, probably through a direct awareness of the spiritual requirements, needs or desires of his immediate audience, the Myrour-author shows no such personal connection with his readers, probably due to the more wide-ranging and general pastoral focus of his project of providing basic instruction to a wide audience. Similarly, while Love often makes significant interventions and additions in the text to address both practical and contemporary issues, the vast majority of textual interventions in the Myrour are to compress and simplify through the removal of repetitive and extraneous material better suited to verse. This can notably be seen in the Myrour’s compression of the analogy of the Church nourishing mankind through the milk of her breasts: For als a womman thurgh kynde knawen Norishes a childe þat es hir awen With þe mylk þat comes out Of hir pappes þat sho beres about, Right so Halykirk, our modir dere, Norisches vs on þe same manere And vs sustaynes and fedes alswa With þe mylk of hir pappes twa Þat gifs many stremes of mylk; In Haly Writte men may fynde swilk. Of þe ta pappe springes stremes ten And of þe tothir twelf to kenne. Þat mylk, whaso vnderstandes it, Es called bi skille Haly Writte; Þe twa pappes er þat I talde Þe New Testament and þe Alde. Þe ten stremes þat out sprentes Er called þe Ten Commandementes; Bi twelf stremes þat er springande Of þe tothir pappe I vnderstande Twelf Articles of þe Trouth right Þat we suld kepe bathe day and night. Þus sustaynes vs Halykirke And teches vs gode werkes to wirke, Thurgh Haly Writte þat es so swete Þat mas vs with gode vertus mete. It es gadered, for it is trewe, Bathe of þe Alde Law and of þe Newe.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 166

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   167

Þe twa lawes togider er gode; Of þam comes al our saul-fode, For of þe Alde Lawe, als es knawen, Er þe Ten Commaundementes drawen, And of þe Newe Lawe bi it ane Er Twelf Articles of þe Trouth tane.45 For as a woman fediþ hire child with þe mylk of hire two tetis, riȝt so oure moder Holy Chirche norissheþ and fedeth vs with þe mylk of hir two tetis, þat beþ the olde lawe & þe newe, of which tetis springeþ many stremes of mylk, þat is Holy Writte by whiche we ben fed. For out of one tete, þat is the old lawe, spryngeþ ten stremes of melk, þat beþ the ten comaundementis; and out of þat oþer tete, þat is þe newe lawe, springeþ twelue stremes of melk, þat beþ the twelue articles of þe faith or byleue.46

In this section, the Myrour-author removes much which is repeated and necessitated by the poetic form, clarifying the key image before proceeding directly to an exposition of the Ten Commandments. That is not to say that the Myrour is devoid of interventions which expand the text. Most notably, such an intervention can be seen in its reworking of its source text’s treatment of confession. In the Speculum, a fairly cursory introduction is given to the practice of confession: it es nane þat mercy wil haue þat he ne may haue it if he if craue, þat es if he wil follow þarto And shryue hym wele and penaunce do And make amendes of alle his ille And turne hym after Goddis wille.47

However, the Myrour-author specifically adapts this passage in order to explicitly describe the tripartite nature of confession: But þere is no man þat ne schal haue mercy ȝif he wole aske it as him oughte to do, þat is, holliche repent him of his synne wiþ ful wil neuere to synne more; and fulfille þe sacrament of penance – þat is, sorwe in herte for his synne, schrifte of mouth & fulfillynge of penaunce þat þerfore schal be enioyned – and after þat [turne] him to þe wille of God.48 Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, pp. 34–5, lines 925–58.

45

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 78, lines 31–8.

46

Speculum Vitae, ed. Hanna, p. 147, lines 4363–8.

47

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 113, lines 6–11.

48

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 167

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

1 6 8    D av i d J. Fal l s

This reworking matches Love’s own comments on the nature of confession in his chapter on the conversion of Mary Magdalene: here haue we ensaumple of trewe repentance & penance þat is nedeful to forȝiuenes of synne.’ shewed in þis woman Maudleyn, as we haue herde, þe whiche penance as alle holy chirch techeþ, stant in sorowe of herte in shrift of mouþe & in satisfaccion of dede.49

This description is an original addition to the translated Meditationes material, and is included as a response to some men that ‘þenken aftur þe fals opinyon of lollardes þat shrift of mouþe is not nedeful’.50 As such, we might also see the Myrour-author’s explicit description of the tripartite nature of confession as an adaptation directly related to contemporary pastoral and doctrinal issues. This is, however, one of the few additions in which the text of the Myrour expands, rather than contracts, its source text. It may well be this lack of direct engagement, in terms both of the dialogue between authors and audiences and of the discussion of contemporary theological issues, which explains the lack of circulation of the Myrour in contrast to both Love’s Mirror and the Speculum Vitae. Yet, while the Myrour can be said to have had a limited circulation, its existence in four extant manuscripts does allow us to explore further connections in the cultural map of devotio-literary culture in fifteenth-century England.

Circulation of the Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen

Surviving in fifty-nine complete manuscript versions, Nicholas Love’s Mirror seems to have been one of the most popular religious texts of the fifteenth century, while the thirty-five complete manuscripts of the Speculum Vitae noted by Hanna suggest that it also was a text which found a significant level of popularity among those interested in English religious writing. In contrast, the circulation of the Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen is relatively modest, although it still outnumbers its fellow adaptations of the Somme, the Ayenbite of Inwyt and the Book of Vices and Virtues. In comparing the manuscript circulation of the Speculum and the Myrour, Nelson has suggested that the number of manuscripts of the Speculum points to a ‘popularity that accords with its popular metrical form and the avowed intention of its author to write for ordinary people who knew neither French nor Latin’, 51 while the manuscript 49 50 51

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 90, lines 34–8.

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 90, lines 39–40. Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 9.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 168

1/29/2021 7:58:19 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   169

ownership ‘points mainly to pious laypeople in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’.52 While Love’s text spread further and wider, almost certainly due to the networks of transmission facilitated by its Carthusian origins, a substantial portion of its ownership appears to fall into a similar demographic. Although achieving a much more limited circulation, the Myrour does share one thing with the Mirror and the Speculum: its ownership by a similar group of pious lay owners.53 Such owners with interest in vernacular religious writing have been a rich area of study, allowing scholars to develop links between members of what Mary C. Erler has labelled ‘devout societies’.54 By examining both the connections between and practices of such ‘devout societies’ we can, hopefully, develop a more nuanced understanding of the devotio-literary cultural map of the period. As such, the most logical place to start an examination of the circulation of the Myrour is the one manuscript for which we can most securely identify an owner, namely Oxford, Bodleian Library MS e Museo 35. In his chapter on the ‘sermon on the Mount’, Nicolas Love notably does not include an exposition of the Pater Noster, stating: for als miche as þis matere is spoken of in many oþer tretees & bokes boþe in latyne & in english.’ & þis praiere sufficiantly expowenet.’ Þerefore we passen ouer more shortly at þis tyme hereof.55

While there are any number of texts to which the readers of e Museo 35 could have turned for such an exposition, it is interesting that it was the Myrour which found its way into their book, particularly as it was a manuscript owned by Thomas Beaufort, the so-called ‘second founder’ and chief supporter of the Mount Grace charterhouse. Indeed, it is extremely tempting to draw a direct connection between the sources of the manuscripts’ two mirrors. The lack of a named author and the similarities in the formula in the original openings of Ibid., p. 25.

52

Another factor which may have limited the circulation of the Myrour may not only have been its rather limited engagement with its readers, but also the popularity of the Speculum. Indeed, a similar pattern can be seen in the circulation of the Speculum Devotorum. Composed within Carthusian house of Sheen, probably not long after Love’s Mirror, the Speculum Devotorum was, like Love’s text, an English Life of Christ loosely adapted from the Meditationes. The Speculum, like the Myrour, had a very limited circulation, surviving in only two manuscripts. As such we might see the popularity of the Mirror and the Speculum as limiting the ability of subsequent texts to find an audience of their own.

53

M. C. Erler, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), p. 71.

54

Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 84, lines 16–19.

55

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 169

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 7 0    D av i d J. Fal l s

both texts easily allow speculation about the possible Carthusian composition of the Myrour, perhaps even within Love’s own house. We can certainly know that the Speculum was circulating in the geographical area of the Mount Grace charterhouse, and that the house did take an interest in collecting vernacular religious texts – it is, for example, the only location known to have possessed a copy of Margery Kempe’s Book. Similarly, we might note that one of the Lincolnshire manuscripts of the Speculum, Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.i.36, is one of the two manuscripts which, like Love’s Mirror, contains a Latin note attesting to the text’s orthodoxy. Before becoming prior of the Mount Grace house, Nicholas Love spent time in the Benedictine priory of Frieston in Lincolnshire, where Ripon Cathedral MS 6, a manuscript of the Latin Meditationes was completed c. 1400. This manuscript, possibly an exemplar used by Love in his composition of the Mirror, was then transferred, likely with Love, to Mount Grace. While the narrative of the composition of the Myrour at Mount Grace as part of the Carthusian vocation of ‘preaching by hand’ is tempting, there would be an ample desire on behalf of the Cistercian brothers of Fountains, those of the Augustinian house at York mentioned in Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 2823 which contains a substantial fragment of the Speculum or any of the hundreds of local priests in producing texts to educate the laity. Indeed, the very fact that the Myrour lacks any alignment with a particular order – a strategy which most monastic authors find almost impossible to resist – suggests that the author was probably not monastic. There may, however, be evidence to suggest that the Mount Grace charterhouse may have acted as a nexus of transmission for the particular copy of the Myrour in e Museo 35. Nelson has noted that ‘there are a few northern spellings’ in one of the hands of this copy, indicating some ‘northern influence’, but not necessarily linked with a ‘derivation from a northern copy of the Speculum’.56 This ‘northern layer’, suggests Nelson, ‘is not accounted for except as scribal idiosyncrasy, since there are few traces of consistent anterior northern forms of the text in other MSS’.57 As such, we might see the two mirrors of e Museo 35 as a physical embodiment of the both Love and the Myrour-author’s intention of producing practical guide books for those devout readers interested in pursuing the ‘best life’ – devout readers, in this case, who had both the interest and connections to bring together the English adaptations of the two of the most influential European religious texts of the period. This was, however, not the only method by which the Myrour seems to have attained its admittedly limited circulation. In the London, British 56 57

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 49. Ibid., p. 51.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 170

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   171

Library, Harley 45 and Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania E.3 copies of the Myrour we can find further evidence of common patterns of ownership and transmission of the devotio-literary culture of the period, namely the role played by ‘devout societies’ of female readers closely associate with female institutions who shared a common interest in pious living. An early fifteenth-century production, Harley 45 contains some intriguing notes which suggest exactly the kind of ‘devout society’ explored by Erler. Nelson notes that this manuscript contains the repeated notes ‘Amysbere Schaftysbere’, presumably referring to the Benedictine monasteries of Amesbury and Shaftsbury. These two feature quite high on the list of female houses to which we can positively connect a number of surviving manuscripts, with around seven identifiable manuscripts each, trailing only the great library of Syon and those of Barking and Dartford. While there is no evidence that this volume was at any time owned by either house, we do have a name to which we can ascribe ownership, as the volume also contains the note ‘Iste liber constat domine margarete Brente’. Nelson notes that a Margaret Brent of Salisbury appears in the Wills in Prerogative Court of Canterbury c. 1474. While there is no record of Brent being a resident of either house, her Salisbury location does provide close geographical connections with both houses. We also know that in the case of Shaftesbury there was some concern in the early fifteenth century over the amount of time spent outside of the convent by the Shaftesbury sisters. Erler records a mandate to the ‘abbess and convent of Shaftesbury forbidding the nuns to leave their house except for good cause, approved by the superior, and in the company of senior nuns of proved character’. This mandate from Robert Hallum, bishop of Salisbury, written c. 1411/12, notes that ‘it has been reported that several nuns have often been wandering outside the house in various places longer than is seemly and for frivolous reason’.58 As such, we might suggest that the textual as well as the physical boundaries of Shaftesbury were permeable enough to allow the transmission of texts. A similar circulation among female readers with close connections to religious institutions is attested by the notes in some of the earliest Mirror manuscripts. Notes in Tokyo, Takamiya MS 8, the copy owned by Joan Holland, wife of Mount Grace’s initial founder, record how the book passed from Joan to Alyse Belacyse, and then to her servant Elizabeth. Notes in the Foyle manuscript record that this manuscript of the Mirror was owned first by Sibyl de Felton, abbess of Barking, taken from Barking by Margaret Scrope at the Dissolution, and then passed to Agnes Goldwell, a gentlewoman in the house of Scrope’s sister Elizabeth Peche. This passage from Mount Grace to female Erler, Women, Reading and Piety, p. 7.

58

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 171

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 7 2    D av i d J. Fal l s

institutions and associated lay readers may suggest a ‘devout society’ similar to that suggested by further notes in Harley 45. In addition to the links between Brent and the abbeys, the manuscript also attests to a more personally connected ‘devout society’ through the notes, ‘dame Margytt Brent pertinent & moys que suis appellee guillaum Frye & plusieres autres companions’, and ‘Jesus est Amor meus qui vocor Willelmus’. This cluster of notes, comments Nelson, ‘suggests a laywoman who may have been part of a pious lay reading group’,59 probably exactly the kind of group which allowed much of the transmission of religious texts in the period. While there are no clues to the methods of transmission of the Myrour to Fry, Brent, Shaftesbury or Amesbury, it seems possible that the connections between this manuscript and Pennsylvania E.3 may suggest a model which requires a less direct relationship for textual transmission. Nelson notes that Pennsylvania E.3 is written in the same hand as Harley 45, which ‘looks like a commercial production’.60 If Harley 45 appears to be a commercial production then we might say the same for Pennsylvania E.3. While the limited circulation of the Myrour would suggest that obtaining a stationer’s copy would not have been as solid a long-term investment as it appears to have been in the case of Love’s Mirror,61 the Myrour’s nature as a multi-functional and basic-level guide to essential doctrine with an envisaged wide audience may have made it an appealing text for the commercial book trade. While the fact that the Myrour never seems to have circulated that widely suggests that such a possible strategy was in fact a failure, the copying of both Harley 45 and Pennsylvania E.3 in the same hand at least suggests that there may have been a group of readers who could both access the text and afford to have it copied, whether from a shared commercial source or through their own ‘devout society’. It is not only the text of this manuscript which may suggest a commercial production. The illustrations of Pennsylvania E.3 seem to imply that at least one reader may have added a further level of investment in order to promote their own personal piety. As Stover notes:

59 60 61

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 43. Ibid.

Sargent has noted that the closely related Mirror manuscripts, Tokyo, Waseda University Library MS NE3691, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 648 and National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ Library MS 18.1.7, ‘were produced and illuminated, by an otherwise well-attested group of scribes and limners, apparently at the same London atelier’. See Mirror, ed. Sargent, Introduction, pp. 137–9.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 172

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   173

It contains, at appropriate places in the margin, eleven well-executed drawings – thumbnail sketches one might call them – sometimes whimsical, always charming, and always fitting admirably with the didactic purpose of the text. They are drawn to catch the eye, and, like the marginal notations, help to outline the text. A four-cornered castle epitomizes the four cardinal virtues; a tiny loaf of bread calls to mind the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer – ‘Give us this day our daily bread’; seven eyes are drawn opposite the seven ‘cleer sightes’ by which the virtue of equity may be attained; a moneybag is symbolic of the sin of avarice; a finely drawn veiled head of a woman illustrates a discussion of widowhood.62

Perhaps the most interesting of these is the veiled woman. This illustration features beside a passage promoting the fourth estate of chastity that is widowhood: In þat estate schulde man and woman þat beþ þerynne kepe hem clene & chaste, for þat estate is hyhe and holy if hit be clene & chaste kepte. Wherfore s[e]ynt Poule counsailleþ he þat beþ in þat estate þat þei kepe hem in clennesse & chastite.63

As Erler has noted, ‘medieval women’s choices of state in life ranged along a spectrum whose extreme poles were represented by the wife and the nun’; however, in the fifteenth century there were a ‘variety of groups occupying a middle way between lay and religious states’, one of which were vowesses – ‘laywomen who had taken vows of chastity and who were most often, though not always, widows’.64 This personal and selective form of pious praxis demonstrates precisely the kind of religious choices being taken in late medieval England and demonstrates the symbiotic nature of the textual and performative religious cultures which both spawned and circulated the ‘mirrors’ of e Museo 35. Indeed, a final note in Pennsylvania E.3 even suggests that there was a somewhat competitive aspect to the pious practices among ‘devout societies’. Alongside the passage of exposition on the Panem nostrum – ‘for we may not fulfille Goddes wille in þis lyf but we haue sustenaunce of body’65 – is found the note ‘nota contra Alis Lyn’. ‘Alice Lynne was the mother of Margaret, second wife of John Shirley. In 1421 after her husband’s death she took a vow of perpetual chastity before the Archbishop of Canterbury’, and Nelson Stover, ‘A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen, p. 83. The illustrations can be viewed online at: http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/medren/9924864283503681.

62

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 188, lines 16–19.

63

Erler, Women, Reading and Piety, p. 9.

64

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 95, lines 20–1.

65

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 173

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 7 4    D av i d J. Fal l s

has speculated that this note ‘suggests that Alice Lynne was overdoing her fasting and that a reader or owner of the volume was scoring a point off her’.66 How the annotator of the text came to be aware of Alice’s practices, or why they felt moved to annotate this copy of the Myrour in regard to this practice remains unclear; however, it does suggest an interactive network of devout readers interested not only in the transmission and reading of vernacular religious texts but also in their practical use as functional guides to appropriate pious praxis. This network of female houses, lay readers both male and female and professional scribes not only mirrors some of the patterns of transmission that we know to have been present in the corpus of Love’s Mirror but also suggests a rich and interactive system for the transmission of vernacular religious texts in the fifteenth century in which texts were copied, circulated and, perhaps most importantly, used in order to develop a reader’s own personal and individual religious practices. This system suggests that the devotio-literary textual cultures of the early fifteenth century were more complex and nuanced than was once thought, and certainly deserving of a much fuller exploration than we have currently achieved.

Mapping late medieval devotio-literary culture

While actual religious praxis of the period is mostly unrecoverable, notes such as the one regarding Alice Lynne in Pennsylvania E.3 suggest that piety was as much external and performative as internal and devotional. As such, it is hoped that through the cultural mapping of the manuscripts of late fifteenth-century texts we might be able to more fully develop a picture of the actual devotio-literary culture of the period. As Nelson notes, apart from the people who owned the four extant manuscripts of the Myrour, there may have been few who read or even knew of it.67 Indeed, in itself the Myrour is a text which adds little to the canon of vernacular religious writing of the period. It is conservative in the sense that it neither expands on its source text nor fully involves itself in the wider debates of the period. With the exception of its original opening, it rarely deviates from a simplification of the perhaps overly complex verse of its original, but the very fact that it exists in more extant manuscripts than its companions the Ayenbite of Inwyt and the Book of Vices and Virtues does suggest, not necessarily that it was judged superior to those works, but that it was more easily found channels of transmission which allowed it to circulate perhaps more widely. While texts such as the Myrour 66 67

Ibid., p. 44.

Myrour, ed. Nelson, p. 39.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 174

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

R e f l ectin g En glish L ay P iet y   175

are often overlooked as adding little to our understanding of the wider cultural movements of the period, its actual composition and transmission may allow us to develop a more accurate and nuanced map of the textual cultures of the period, one that this essay has only begun to explore. Exploration does not always lead to ground-breaking discovery, but that need not always be the purpose, as T. S. Eliot notes: We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 175

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 176

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

III

Rhetorical Strategies and Spiritual Transformations

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 177

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 178

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

8

‘Trowes þou, fool, þat þis kake of brede is God?’: Spiritual Bread and Bodily Meat in Middle English Women’s Visionary Texts C. ANNETTE GRISÉ

t

A

Introduction: ‘sacramentale commemoracion’ in female mystical writings

select group of female visionary writings were brought to the late medieval vernacular audience in fifteenth-century England, disseminated from monastic sources but not confined to those communities. In addition to the revelations of Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Mechthild of Hackeborn translated and adapted in a number of Middle English manuscripts, some lives of holy women were also translated into Middle English in the period. These vitae include the accounts of the béguines Elisabeth Spalbeck, Marie of Oignies and Christina Mirabilis and a long missive describing the life of their non-béguine sister Catherine of Siena, in Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 114; and the lives of Catherine of Siena and Elizabeth of Hungary in Cambridge, C.U.L., MS Hh. I. 11.1 While these texts offer orthodox teachings on a variety of devotional practices and spiritual beliefs, 1

Modern editions used for this essay include: The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, ed. W. P. Cumming, EETS OS 178 (London, 1929); The Liber Celestis of St. Bridget of Sweden, ed. R. Ellis, EETS OS 291 (Oxford, 1987); The Orchard of Syon, ed. P. Hodgson and G. M. Liegey, EETS OS 258 (London, 1966); The Booke of Gostlye Grace, ed. T. A. Halligan (Toronto, 1979); Three Women of Liège: a Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies, ed. J. N. Brown (Turnhout, 2008); ‘Prosalegenden: Die Legenden Des Ms. Douce 114’, ed. C. Horstmann, Anglia 8 (1885), 102–96; the anonymous Middle English life of Catherine of Siena found in Cambridge University Library, MS Hh. 1. 11 and in an early printed text that has not yet been edited: Raymond of Capua, ‘Here Begynneth the Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis the Blessid Virgin’ (Westminster, 1500), STC: STC 24766.3. In light of constraints

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 179

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 8 0    C . Annet t e G r i sé

the original scribes and confessors all highlighted the act of communion as integral to the spirituality of these women. After the Berengarian heresy, eucharistic doctrine in thirteenth-century medieval Europe solidified due to the Fourth Lateran Council’s decrees about transubstantiation and Aquinas’s influential eucharistic arguments in the Summa Theologica. Gerhard Lutz argues that the strengthening of eucharistic doctrine resulted in a greater concern by laypeople and religious in the eucharist and the Corpus Christi cult, starting in Germany and the Low Countries and then spreading outwards in the fourteenth century: he notes that the mid-fourteenth century ‘marks a turning point in late medieval eucharistic veneration when the movement apparently gained a socially broader momentum’.2 During this period in continental Europe accounts of béguines and the revelations of certain female visionaries paid special attention to communion and fasting practices, visionary experiences that take place during communion and visual metaphors that represent transubstantiation. These women and their practices made the invisible visible and described in literal, visual terms the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. By the time these texts were being translated into English John Wycliffe’s challenge to the doctrine of substantiation had changed the landscape in England of scholastic debates about the real presence of Christ in the host. ‘The Treatise on the Sacrament’ that concludes Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ explains the orthodox terms of engagement for fifteenth-century English eucharistic arguments. This meditation and commentary, itself based on a Continental mystical source,3 outlines Church teachings on the Real

2

of time and space, this essay does not consider the many extracts from these mystics also translated into Middle English in the period.

G. Lutz, ‘Late Medieval Sacred Spaces and the Eucharist’, in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, ed. G. Macy, I. C. Levy and K. Van Ausdall (Leiden, 2012), pp. 471–97 (p. 475). In addition, ‘The use of a Host wafer as a substitute for Christ – or, to be more precise, as his body and blood – is part of a fundamental change in devotional practices originating in the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century. In 1215 transubstantiation became a dogma, and in 1209 or 1210 Juliana of Liège, according to her vita, had a vision in which Christ complained that there was no feast in honor of his body and his blood’ (p. 472). This volume provides useful socio-historic context for the continental European tradition. See also J. Garrison, ‘Mediated Piety: Eucharistic Theology and Lay Devotion in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne’, Speculum 85 (2010), 894–922.

See Z. Péri-Nagy’s discussion of Love’s use of Suso as a source for this treatise: ‘it would also represent a rare case of having recourse to mystical writings deriving from the Continent to refute Wycliffite ideas. Using mystical writings as supportive authoritative texts by Love surely also meant perceiving and conforming

3

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 180

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   181

Presence that support the anti-Wycliffite stance of the main text. Wycliffe had argued against the literal interpretation of the real presence of Christ in the eucharist (that is, ‘essentialiter, substantialiter, corporaliter, vel identice’) and for the sacrament as a spiritual representation of Christ (in that case, ‘virtualis, spiritualis, et sacramentalis’).4 Love’s treatise is careful to include both properties of the eucharist: it is ‘gostly mete & sacramentale commemoracion’, that is, both spiritual and bodily, and ‘soþely in his owne propre substance verrey god & man’. Christ’s dual nature, found in the Incarnation and the Last Supper, is described as ‘þe gostly presence of his godhede’ and ‘þe bodily presence of his manhede’, which ‘he ȝiueþ to vs in þis forseide mete of his flesh & blode, in mynde of hees merueiles generaly as it is seide, bot moste specialy in mynde of þat blessede passion, þat he suffrede for vs’.5 Orthodox reform texts and programmes in late medieval England (such as Love’s text illustrates) countered heterodox positions by asserting the dual nature of Christ in communion, emphasizing that the priest’s incantation of the ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ during the elevation of the host transformed the accident of the bread into the substance of Christ’s body. Scholars have argued that in the fifteenth-century English context texts like Love’s Mirror helped to support Arundel’s Constitutions and the wider attempts to counteract heretical views in vernacular texts and practices.6 Fur-

4

5

6

himself to the affinities of his public, which favoured private devotion.’ Z. PériNagy, ‘Vox, Imago, Littera: Nicholas Love’s “Mirrour Of The Blessed Life Of Jesu Criste” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University, 2014), p. 54.

J. P. Hornbeck III, What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010), p. 74. Hornbeck identifies two key Wycliffite approaches as figuration and remanence. Impanation was also a key concern in fourteenth-century European debates, deriving from the 1409 discussions (some Berengarians also followed this belief ). He notes that eucharistic theology was a touchstone for this heterodoxy: ‘unlike ideas about salvation, the doctrine of the eucharist makes more than passing appearances in dissenting texts. Indeed, the sacrament figures in the majority of extant Wycliffite writings, which condemn transubstantiation as unequivocally as Wyclif had done. Though they uniformly rejected the eucharistic theology of the institutional church, Wycliffite authors did not articulate a consistent set of teachings on the sacrament. Some texts maintain that the substances of bread and wine remain after the words of consecration and that the host is simultaneously bread and Christ’s body. Others eschew the notion of Christ’s presence altogether, formulating figurative theologies of the sacrament’ (p. 10).

N. Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), pp. 223–4. Sargent has argued, ‘Nicholas Love, in translating the Meditationes vitae Christi for a vernacular audience for whom this text and its spirituality were not yet available (while defending the sacramental Church against Wycliffite attacks), would

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 181

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 8 2    C . Annet t e G r i sé

thermore, popular interest in the eucharist increased, just as it had on the Continent in the previous century. As Jennifer Garrison argues for England, In contrast to later medieval Scholasticism, which often defined eucharistic reception as a mediated experience of Christ’s presence, the laity’s response to the Mass seems to have increasingly centered on direct contact and identification with Christ’s sacrificial, suffering body. Despite the various physical and conceptual boundaries between the lay believer and Christ, late-medieval vernacular devotional texts and historical records of lay devotional practices both suggest that the laity’s desire for direct contact with Christ’s body in the host became increasingly fervent in the later Middle Ages.7

It is within this context of heightened awareness of eucharistic theology and growing lay communion practices that the Middle English translators and compilers started producing accounts of holy women from continental Europe. Although this was not the only focus of these texts, there are references to bread, wine, lambs, sacraments and spiritual food everywhere in them. The Middle English versions of the Continental holy women’s texts describe communion and fasting practices, visionary experiences that take place during communion and visual metaphors that represent transubstantiation and the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist. Thus, the Middle English translators and compilers contributed to contemporary eucharistic discussions in late medieval England when they produced and disseminated these works. Because the visionary texts included descriptions of ascetic and visionary experiences in which Continental holy women saw and discussed the eucharist, the Middle English versions took these shared interests and incorporated these scenes as a means to support orthodox beliefs and current lay devotional trends about communion in ways that were suitable for the English audience. This essay is divided into three parts. The first section begins by describing the vocabulary used in these texts, which emphasizes the sacramental nature of communion. These accounts also highlight the conflation of the body and soul enacted by transubstantiation. The women’s experiences elide the corporeal and spiritual: for example, when the texts discuss the holy women not taking physical food and only receiving communion, which feeds them spiritually. The second section examines visions that occur during the elevation

7

have seen himself as an agent of ecclesiastical reform, rather than of repression’ (Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 48). See also James’s treatment of the Seven Points as fifteenth-century eucharistic theology: S. James, ‘Rereading Henry Suso and Eucharistic Theology in Fifteenth-Century England’, The Review of English Studies n.s. 63 (2012), 732–42.

Garrison, ‘Mediated Piety’, p. 905.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 182

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   183

of the host to argue that seeing and hearing the sacrament become catalysts not only for eucharistic visions but also for discussions of eucharistic theology. The third section extends the previous one by concentrating on some of the images used in eucharistic visions. These visions combine familiar and everyday objects with scholastic arguments to affirm the Real Presence, offering orthodox teachings in an accessible form that is simple but memorable. Therefore, not only does the sight of the eucharist cause visions, but also it presents opportunities to explain orthodox doctrine on the Real Presence and the meaning of transubstantiation. The process of interpretation begun in the original texts is extended in the translation process into Middle English, providing orthodox teachings that contribute to current theological debates in late medieval England.

‘Þat blessyd sacrament off þe aulter:’ sacramental affirmation

Discussions of the eucharist abound in the Middle English materials translated from Continental spiritual writings by and about holy women.8 The texts refer regularly to the sacramental function of the eucharist. Although there is the occasional use of terms such as ‘angel’s food’ and ‘manna’, the writings by and about Continental holy women rarely refer to the eucharist in its material form. Bread is mentioned when describing the accidents (the physical and visible object), while Christ’s body or the sacrament is used to depict the substance and invisible form; the latter is the emphasis in many of the discussions. The most common phrasing is ‘þe sacramente of þe auter’, found in Douce 114 and The Orcherd of Syon. Additional adjectives can be included as intensifiers, such as ‘that blessyd sacrament off ye aulter’ and the ‘holye ande worthye sacrament’.9 These descriptions are very similar to the discussion in the ‘Treatise on the Sacrament’ in Love’s Mirror, for our texts perceive the sacrament as an event and ‘sacramentale commemoracion’. They affirm both the literal and symbolic connotations of transubstantation, reinforcing the arguments ‘contra 8

9

The exception to the rule is the ‘Life of Elizabeth of Hungary’, printed with the Life of Catherine of Siena by Wynkyn de Worde and also extant in MS Hh. I. 11. As Alexandra Barratt explains, ‘in one way at least, the Revelations do not resemble other female visionary writings: the lack of any eucharistic devotion is both pronounced and remarkable. Indeed the liturgy and the divine office are never even mentioned.’ A. Barratt, ‘The Virgin and the Visionary in the Revelation of St. Elizabeth’, Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 125–36 (p. 134).

See, for example, ‘holye ande worthye sacrament’ (Gostely Grace, ed. Halligan, p. 575); ‘that blessyd sacrament off ye aulter’ and ‘the holy sacrament of the aulter’ (Raymond, Lyf, ch. 5); ‘þe sacramente of þe auter’ (Prosalegenda, ed. Horstmann, pp. 125 and 142); and ‘þe sacrament of þe auter’ (Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 279).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 183

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 8 4    C . Annet t e G r i sé

lollardos’ made in Love’s Mirror in his discussion of the Last Supper.10 In this way the holy women become powerful exemplars of the effects of taking the eucharist. Although most laypeople received communion infrequently, many holy women bargained for more regular communion as a sign of their special relationship with God. The event of receiving the sacrament of the altar is key to understanding the Middle English lives of the béguines. The lives of Elisabeth Spalbeck, Marie of Oignies, Christina Mirabilis and the visionary Catherine of Siena found in MS. Bodl. Douce 114 discuss communion and the eucharist often in conjunction with accounts of their ascetic food practices. Even though it is Christ’s passion that is central to Elisabeth Spalbeck’s devotion, she combines her performance of Christ’s death with the liturgical event of the elevation of the host. We are told that during the mass Elisabeth waits for the moment of the elevation of the eucharist to turn her body into the cross: Soothly, anone as she seeth the eleuacyon of the sacramente – in the selfe momente of the sighte thereof – sche berith ouer with a merueilous mouynge alle hir body ouerthwarte the bedde, strecchynge forthe hir armes on booth sydes hir and makith a crosse of hirselfe. And so sche abidith alle starke as a stok in a swogh, and rauischynge soo that the armes, heed and nekke, with a party of the shuldres, er withouten hire bedde.11

Elisabeth stays in this ecstatic state until the mass has ended and the priest puts away his chasuble. In this case it is the sight of the eucharist that has a powerful effect on this woman, causing her to move her body in unusual ways and to deny her external reality. The ecstatic union caused by the adoration of the host leads the mystic into another space and time. This place is beyond the body and moves the holy woman past physical concerns and into the spiritual realm. By comparison, Marie of Oignies describes her body in this

10

11

‘þat þe sacrament of þe autere dewly made by vertue of cristes wordes is verrey goddus body in forme of brede, & his verrey blode in forme of wyne, & þouh þat forme of brede & wyne seme as to alle þe bodily wittes of man brede & wyne in his kynde as it was before.’ neuerles it is not so in soþenesse, bot onely goddus flesh & blode in substance, so þat þe accidentes of brede & wyne wondurfully & myraclesly aȝeynus mannus reson, & þe comune ordre of kynde bene þere in þat holi sacrament without hir kyndely subiecte, & verrey cristies body þat suffrede deþ vpon þe crosse is þere in þat sacrament bodily vnder þe forme & liknes of brede, & his verrey blode vndur likenes of wyne substantially & holely, without any feynyng or deceit, & not onely in figure as þe fals heritike seiþ’ (Mirror, ed. Sargent, p. 152). Three Women, ed. Brown, pp. 43–4.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 184

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   185

state as a vessel of clay or a cloth covering her spirit that is only important in that it preserves the spirit while she is on earth.12 As these women move into the spiritual realm through their eucharistic devotion, so they claim that the eucharistic bread – usually termed the sacrament, not bread – feeds them physically as well as spiritually. By receiving Christ’s body in communion they sustain their bodies and their souls. It is the eucharistic transformation of the bread into Christ’s body that leads to this mystical nourishment, a form of sustenance that combines the body with the spirit. For these women it is especially in the ways in which the invisible body of Christ, incorporated into the visible host, nourishes the holy women’s spirits in a fashion that is paralleled to bodily food. Marie of Oignies’ fasting practices garner an entire chapter in her life. This thorough explanation describes the kinds of holy fasting and abstinence from food that she and others experienced at the time. Along with descriptions of where and when Marie would fast (including physical effects of this abstinence) we find a description not only of Marie surviving on small amounts of food but also of how she was spiritually sustained during these times: for as longe as the soule, abundaunt so copiously, was so ful of sprituel fedynge, it wolde not suffir hir receyue any refeccyone of body mete. Also otherewhile, she, restynge esely with oure Lorde fyue and thretty dayes in a swete and blyssed silens, vsid no bodily mete, and sumdayes she myght brynge forthe no worde but this allone: ‘I wole the body of oure lorde Jhesu Cryste,’ and whanne she hadde receyued the sacramente, she dwellid with oure lorde euiery daye in silens.13

Marie’s Life draws on the contrast between ‘sprituel fedynge’ and eating ‘bodily mete’, arguing that if Marie has the figurative nourishment for the soul then she can do without physical food – just as she seeks silence and can withstand sensory deprivation. The excesses of the soul’s feelings replace her need for satisfying the body. The taking of communion makes a literal event out of the figurative union with Christ, in which ‘she dwellid with oure lorde’ rather than interacting with the mortal world and its concerns. Like the béguines, Catherine of Siena performed ascetic practices including substituting the eucharistic bread for physical nourishment. In her conversations with her confessor Raymond of Capua she explains that the sight of the sacrament and even seeing a priest who had celebrated communion

Ibid., p. 100, and see below.

12

Ibid., p. 100.

13

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 185

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 8 6    C . Annet t e G r i sé

serves to nourish her physically and spiritually.14 Raymond also addresses the mystical element of her spiritual feeding, one of the unique aspects of Catherine’s asceticism: It was knowen to all that knew this holy mayde whyle she lyued in erthe / what excellent loue she hadde in reuerence and deuocyon aboute the worshypfull sacrament of the aultre. Oure lorde hys flesshe and hys blood so that for the often receyuyng therof / hit was a comyn seyeng among the people that Katheryne the holy mayde was houselyd euery day and lyued ther by allone wythout ony bodely mete. And all be it that they sayd not alwaye trouthe / yet I suppose they tolde it mekely gyuynge honour to god that euer apperyth meruaylous to hys chosen.15

Similar to the descriptions found elsewhere in Douce 114, this passage highlights Catherine’s substitution of the eucharist for bodily meat. It is interesting that this replacement is presented here as hearsay. Raymond is reporting what the people say about Catherine: that is, what they see as unusual and worthy of notice. This miraculous story of spiritual sustenance thus supports Catherine’s cult status and shows that lay beliefs in the power of the eucharist supported her claims for mystical union with Christ. The testimony of Catherine’s neighbours reminds us that she lived life as a tertiary rather than as an enclosed religious. This status is similar to that of the béguines who lived in urban communities. Their fasting and communion practices seem to follow the contemporary lay beliefs that would have been understood in their communities. In contrast, Mechthild of Hackeborn’s conventual context influences the content of her visions. Many of them arise out of moments from the mass which are specifically referenced in the text. Steeped as she was in the liturgy, her visions come out of a wide range of events, not just the sacrament of the altar. Yet the eucharist is a significant moment for her as well and some of her visions are precipitated by the sacrament of communion in the mass. Mechthild’s visions outline the feudal relationships between God the Lord, the Virgin Mary as the Lady and the nuns as vassals. She focuses on the richness of the visual field and the imagery of tables, king, chalices vessels and brides. Gems and other luxury items surround Jesus and his mother as they enjoy ‘that ymperialle feeste of þyne worschepefulle bodye 14

15

For more information see, for example, C. W. Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia, 2007) and M. McCord Adams, ‘Eucharistic Eating and Drinking’, in Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham (Oxford, 2010). Raymond, Lyf, ch. 5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 186

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   187

and blode’.16 The sight of the host – representing Christ’s body – brings to her spiritual delights that are also described in physical sensations: fruits, sweet and savoury tastes and smells. Mechtild describes these spiritual-physical feelings in great detail, outlining the pleasure and delight achieved through communion. Although the Low German context of bridal mysticism was not particularly in fashion in fifteenth-century England, the emphasis on Christ’s body and on the eucharist certainly would have been appealing to a late medieval English audience. The translators and compilers thus could have used the Continental materials to their own ends while still producing an agreeable narrative. One compelling food and eating image used by both Catherine of Siena and Mechthild of Hackeborn is the symbol of the banquet table to represent the altar and the eucharist.17 For Mechthild the banquet table serves up the sacrifice, while for Catherine the table fuses with the sacrifice: she literally feeds on Christ as a banquet table. The spiritual nourishment she receives in her communion with Christ becomes a literal feast on his body and blood. In one of her conversations with God he explains to her his eucharistic function and the dual nature of Christ in communion: I am to hem boþe place and mete table. Þis swete and delectable word, myn owne soþfast sone, is to hem mete, for in þat glorious Ihesu þei taaste mete which is heelþe of soulis. Þe which meet is grauntid of me to ȝou, boþe flesch and blood, al hool, verry God & very man, þe which in sooth ȝe resceyue in þe sacrament of þe auter, grauntid to ȝou and ȝeuen by myn eendelees goodnes as longe as ȝee ben pilgrymes and weygoers in þe world.18

In this example we see that her exceptional practices were not meant to be emulated by ordinary Christians. Instead they served as examples or symbols for the ways in which the ingesting of the physical bread in communion was meant to be a receiving of a spiritual nourishment that had spiritual rewards or effects on the soul. Catherine’s sacramental language ties the themes of sacrifice, suffering and feeding together to argue for the redemptive power of communion. Gostely Grace, ed. Halligan, p. 457.

16

The Orcherd prefers the word ‘table’ whereas The Book of the Ghostly Grace uses ‘borde’ instead. While the MED lists only the Orcherd and the Tree and XII Fruits of the Holy Ghost for references to this spiritual connotation of ‘table’, there are several references to Wycliffite texts that use ‘borde’ in, for example, discussions of the Last Supper. See ‘table’, 2.c., https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED44346/track?counter=1&search_id=1229674 (accessed 30 April, 2019) and ‘bord’ 3.f., https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/ MED5533/track?counter=2&search_id=1229674 (accessed 30 April, 2019).

17

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 172.

18

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 187

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 8 8    C . Annet t e G r i sé

As shown in this section, the texts in question established the sacramental nature of the eucharist through the use of language, regularly referring to the ‘sacrament’ and using the fuller description ‘the blessed sacrament of the altar’. Employing similar wording to other contemporary texts, they developed a vocabulary of spiritual nourishment that symbolized the non-visible effects of taking the eucharist. Many of the manuscripts under discussion here come out of Bridgettine, Carthusian and Augustinian houses.19 These orders had a reputation in England for learning and literacy, and especially for collecting and distributing contemplative texts. Monastic houses thus played a key role in the production and circulation of vernacular translations of female visionaries. When the texts that were originally written in the Continental milieu of growing lay devotion to the Corpus Christi and of greater ecclesiastical interest in promoting orthodox eucharistic beliefs make their way to England in the fifteenth century, they find a similar context where Lollard ideas of and popular interest in the eucharist were again growing. Sarah James asserts in her study of the Middle English translation of Henry Suso, The Seven Points of True Wisdom, ‘In such a context [as the fifteenth-century devotional tradition] there is every justification for reading contemporary textual references to Eucharistic theology with the closest possible attention.’20 The careful attention to eucharistic language and the spiritual rewards of devotion to Corpus Christi seem therefore to participate in contemporary English discussions about eucharistic theology for the vernacular audience. Lay interest and ecclesiastical control appear to dovetail in the creation and dissemination of these texts in Middle English, just as they had in the original Continental versions.

‘It is nott brede bot my blessede body’: seeing and hearing the sacrament

As well as focusing on food and eating practices, these texts highlight the elevation of the host as a key moment for revelation.21 In these visions, it is what the holy women – Catherine of Siena, Bridget of Sweden and Mechthild of Hackeborn – see and what they hear during the mass that affirms eucharistic 19

20 21

See the introductions to the modern editions for more precise details of individual text circulation. James, ‘Rereading Henry Suso’, p. 735.

For example, Bridget of Sweden’s Liber Celestis notes in the chapter heading ‘Capitulum 61: How þe fend aperyd to þe spouse at þe lauacion of Cristes body, makynge resons þat it was noȝt Goddes body þat was lyft’ and in the body ‘The fende apperid to þe spowse at þe leuacion of þe mese’ (Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis), p. 305.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 188

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   189

theology. Although the bread looks the same, the texts argue that these female visionaries can perceive the difference caused by transubstantiaton. Mechthild of Hackeborn attests to the power of transubstantiation when the elevation of the host causes her to have a vision of God at a table with the virgins and his mother.22 At this table God gives gifts to the virgins (Mechthild’s sisters) representing the release of a thousand souls due to their prayers. Catherine of Siena also sees the transformation of bread and wine into body and blood as a sacred moment where the literal and symbolic fields overlap. In the Life of Catherine of Siena she sees the host change into Jesus as an infant and a young child. Immediately following, she sees the priest ingest a fiery hot oven when he takes communion.23 The role of priestly mediation and the criticism of clerical corruption are important elements in the sacrament of communion. As Catherine demonstrates, the priest represents authority and is the catalyst for both transubstantiation and the sacramental visions.24 The elevation of the host also brings out the themes of sacrifice and redemption in the use of the symbols of lambs and banquet tables. Mechthild and Bridget have visions of a lamb during the elevation of the host, drawing on familiar typological connotations for the eucharist. In the Revelations of Saint Birgitta there is a long communion vision recorded, where Bridget sees an apocalyptic collapsing of biblical time and books. This setting leads into a eucharistic scene where the host is transformed into a trinitarian symbol of a man’s face, a lamb and a burning flame moving in and out of the other two aspects: And when I festened my syght besyly in by-holdynge the face, I se the lombe in the face. And when I behold the lombe, I see the same face in the lombe. & the virgyn sate crowned by the lombe, and all angelles serued hem, which wer of so grete multitude as pe motes in the sonne. And a mervelouse shynyng proceded fro the lombe.25

Again, the eucharistic symbol keeps shifting, a visual reference to the combination of accident and substance in communion. As the Virgin and the Lamb preside over the heavenly throngs, the Lamb explains his judgements, his Fatherhood and Motherhood to humanity and why those who receive Gostely Grace, ed. Halligan, pp. 278–9.

22

Raymond, Lyf, ch. 6.

23

R. Ellis notes that the role of priests is also a theme in Middle Engish Bridgettine compilations: see R. Ellis, ‘“Flores Ad Fabricandam … Coronam”: An Investigation into the Use of the Revelations of St Bridget in Fifteenth-Century England’, Medium Aevum 51 (1982), 163–86.

24

Revelations, ed. W. P. Cumming, p. 95. Following this section, the vision explores the motherhood and fatherhood of Christ.

25

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 189

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 9 0    C . Annet t e G r i sé

visions know only what God wants them to know. It is an all-encompassing vision that places the eucharistic symbol at its centre. Mechthild’s vision is also larger than life. She sees a Lamb at an elaborate feast put on by God, where the table is his love, the tablecloth his pity and two virgins, Charity and Mercy, are servers: Abowne the borde sche sawe a lombe whitter þan anye snowe, whiche lombe towchedde the vessels of þe borde ande anone þat were fyllede with dyuers meetes ande drynkis. This lombe was Cryste whiche es þe oonelye meete ande verreye refeccione of a mannys sawle.26

The pure white lamb would have been a familiar image to the readers. Christ’s role as sacrifice and nourishment is highlighted by the use of the table and the lamb as symbols. In contrast, when Catherine’s visions include Christ as lamb, it is used slightly differently to represent Christ’s sacrifice on the cross rather than the eucharist, which is symbolized by the banquet table itself. For example, when God explains the path of the good soul, he draws on the symbolism of the lamb to describe the ways this sacrifice permits salvation: For whanne sich a soule departeth fro þe body, sche passeþ out goostly drunken in þe blood of myn oonli sooþfast sone, þat vndefoulid lamb, and so baþid in his blood and arayed with þe coote of charite of neiȝboreheed, entreþ in me, þat am þe pesable see. And þanne for euere sich a soule is departid fro inperfeccioun; þat is, fro vnfulfillingnesse, and come to perfeccioun fulfillid wiþ al good, þe which good sche vseth eendeleesly.27

The soul both drinks and bathes in the lamb’s blood before she enters God’s peaceable sea, the end goal for the liquid imagery in the text. In this example the familiar lamb symbol also highlights the transformative power of Christ’s sacrifice, which is connected in The Orcherd of Syon to the symbol of Christ as a meat table in communion. The cross is the altar upon which Christ sacrifices himself and Christ’s body is the banquet upon which the participants in the mass feast, either physically or figuratively. In these examples the holy women can see the invisible when they behold transubstantiation during mass. They view two layers: they can see both physically and spiritually, just as they are nourished physically and spiritually by the eucharist. Not only is the sight of the eucharist the catalyst for some of our holy women’s eucharistic visions, but also hearing the priest’s recitation of ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ during the elevation of the host can cause responses 26 27

Gostely Grace, ed. Halligan, pp. 458–9.

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 100.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 190

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   191

from them. Some of the revelations included in the Middle English Liber Celestis emphasize the words recited by the priest during the sacrament of the eucharist. Whereas the sight of the host uses the eyes as a medium for connection and consumption – sight being a key sense for visionaries – in the case of the ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ it is the ears that are the medium for the physical experience. This form of transformation focuses the holy woman on the power of sacred words. Bridget’s discussions of the ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ take place in scenes where she is tormented by devils. One demon attacks during the elevation of the host, with the opening salvo: ‘Trowes þou, fool, þat þis kake of brede is God?’ A good angel appears to chastise the devil, replying: ‘For in þe bygynyng brede is put on þe awter and þan it is bot brede. Bot eftir þis worde be saide, “Hoc est corpus meum”, of a preste, eftir þe maner þat holi kirke has ordaynde, it is the verray body of Criste, þe whilke body resayues and tretis as wele be euell as be gude, bot noȝt to be same effect.’28 In contrast, the shorter Revelations of Saint Birgitta has a Marian-centric focus and does not include the chapters where the demons challenge Bridget’s eucharistic beliefs. Roger Ellis has outlined the ways in which fifteenth-century Middle English compilers extracted and shaped Bridget’s revelations to suit their themes and purposes.29 This conscious effort to produce a Bridgettine version for late medieval England suggests that the inclusion of the heterodox demons in the more comprehensive translation of the Liber Celestis may indicate that the translator was aware of addressing contemporary eucharistic concerns in this version. Although it is not the focus of the version, the eucharist is given some attention in the Revelations of Saint Birgitta, the other Middle English version of Bridget’s revelations to be edited by modern scholars. However, it occurs as a short reference in a longer allegory of the soul as three houses. The first house contains three aspects: the bread of good will, the drink of Godly premeditation and the soul of devout wisdom. God takes a moment to clarify that the bread of the will is not the same as the bread of communion: Bot thu may aske what meneth thys brede. whether y mene the brede that is in the auter. For-soth bat is brede to-for tho wordes ; ‘Hoc est enim corpus meum’. Bot tho wordes seyde of the preste, ‘It is nott brede bot my blessede body that I toke of the virgyn and was crucifiede on the crosse’, thys brede mene nott I here; bot the brede pat vs muste gader into one howse is a good and a clene wyll.30 Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis, pp. 305–6.

28

Ellis identifies some examples where the compilers are, at least implicitly, countering lollard beliefs: see Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis, pp. 172–3.

29

Revelations, ed. Cumming, p. 14.

30

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 191

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 9 2    C . Annet t e G r i sé

In this instance it is the ritual words that make the distinction here, as spoken by the priest, not the sight of the elevated host. In contrast, The Orcherd of Syon focuses primarily on the corruption of priests – also a popular topic for Bridget’s revelations in England – rather than on the words spoken by the priest.31 It is the priest in his full role rather than one aspect of his function that is important. She does, however, confirm the place of the priest in the sacrament when Raymond is describing her fasting and eucharist practices: ‘not only the sight of ye blessyd sacrament but also the presens of that preste the whiche she knewe welle hadde that day sayd masse & I touched that blessyd sacrament comforted her in suche wyse that she hadde none mynde of bodely mete’.32 The clerical function in transubstantiation is central to the liturgy. By highlighting the moment of transformation caused by the priest reciting ritual words, these women make the invisible visible. The words spoken by the priest cause the ears to hear something that represents the divine transformation of the bread to Christ’s body. It can be seen with spiritual sight but not seen physically – just as the béguines and Catherine of Siena could experience spiritual nourishment from the eucharist that allowed them to eschew bodily food. In this section of the essay we have seen that the texts under consideration describe the process of transubstantiation and explain how this process occurs. This liturgical event also is the catalyst for a number of eucharistic visions described in the texts. Taking their cues from the original versions, the Middle English translations often maintain the eucharistic content as it is applicable to the fifteenth-century English milieu. This process of translation – of language, context and concepts – provides orthodox teachings that contribute to current theological debates in late medieval England.

‘Summe resceyuen Cristis flesch and his blood vertuously, and summe sacramentaly’: the Real Presence and visual metaphors

We have seen that the Middle English writings by Continental holy women include discussions of receiving communion, viewing the elevation of the host during mass and perceiving the process of transubstantiation through their visionary experiences. All of these discussions involve issues of perception and show the connections between the physical and spiritual aspects of communion. This section follows up on those connections and analyses representations 31

32

See, for example, ‘For riȝt as my mynystris wolen haue clene chalices for to put yn þat blessid sacrament, so I requyre in hem þe puryte of herte and clennesse of soule in hem.’ (Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis, p. 252). Raymond, Lyf, ch. 5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 192

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   193

of the accidents and substance of the eucharist, affirming the Real Presence of Christ in the host. It is primarily Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena who parse the arguments about accidents and substance in the communion bread and wine.33 They occur as part of discussions of eucharistic visions and they often use metaphors as part of their arguments. We shall look first at the ways in which they consider the differences between visible and invisible parts of the eucharist, before moving on to their use of metaphors to describe the Real Presence. Catherine’s visions use two or three binaries to describe the accidents and substance of the host: they can be perceived or received ‘sacramentaly or vertuously’, ‘vertuously and goostly’ and ‘actuely’ and ‘mentaly’.34 These categories are important because the visions described in The Orcherd rely heavily on detailing the distinctions and parallels between the external and internal self – the ‘bodely’ and ‘goostely’ – and the correspondences between the physical senses and their spiritual equivalents. For example, there is a lengthy discussion in the text about the differences between the visible and invisible aspects of the eucharist. Catherine discusses the whiteness of the bread – the visible part of the eucharist – but explains that both substance and accidents inhere in all pieces of the host:35 I seyde also to þee þat þat body may not be ȝoue wiþoute blood, ne blood and body wiþoute þe soule of myn oonly sooþfast sone, Ihesu, ne soule and body wiþoute godheed of me, eendelees God, for þere may noone of alle þese be departid fro oþire. For dyuyne nature oonys knyt to mankynde may neuere be departid fro it, neiþir by deeþ ne by noon oþir þing. And so ȝe resceyuen al þe [essencial] beyng of God in þat swete sacrament vndir þe whiȝtnesse of breed. And riȝt as þe sonne may not be departid, riȝt so al God & al man in þis whiȝtnesse of þe blessid sacrament may not be Compare to the use of these terms in Love’s ‘Treatise on the Sacrament’: ‘The vocabulary of this first, doctrinal part is the highly scholarly terminology of Eucharistic debates and had been incorporated from Latin into the vernacular precisely because of Wycliffite vernacular texts. Words such as “substaunce”, “consecracioun”, “accidente”, “subiecte” and “sacramentale commemoraciuon” are used in the exposition of the main sacramental teaching refuting one basic critique of Wycliffism, namely the continuous presence of Christ on Earth after the Ascension. Love here openly presents the heretical views which are to be refuted’ (Péri-Nagy, ‘Vox, Imago, Littera’, pp. 48–9).

33

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, pp. 147, 146 and 245.

34

See Lahey for Aquinas’s discussion of the properties of the eucharist, including the quality of its whiteness: S. E. Lahey, ‘Late Medieval Eucharistic Theology’, in Companion, ed. Macy, Levy and Van Ausdall, pp. 499–540 (p. 524).

35

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 193

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 9 4    C . Annet t e G r i sé

departid, þouȝ þe hoost were diuydid into a þousynde parties. In euery party I am al God and al man.36

In this discussion the union of the parts of the body and blood are likened to the soul and body’s indivisibility. From there we move on to the union of the divine nature and humanity in Christ’s incarnation, which leads us to the whiteness of the eucharistic bread. In this description even the division of the host will not separate the divine from the human and the accident from the substance. The discussions in the Liber Celestis encourage the reader to look below the surface and understand the spiritual experience of the eucharist. God responds to Bridget’s questions about the Real Presence by stating clearly: ‘I ame verraili þat brede. In þat brede is trewli sene thre þinges, figure, sauoure and roundnes. I ame verraili þat brede, for whi, I haue, as þat hase, thre: þat is, figure, sauoure and roundenes.’37 The trinitarian configuration of the figure, savour and roundness is developed in this passage to explain the relationship between the host and angel’s manna, which are described as two separate loaves. The three figures draw on Durandus’ thirteenth-century argument of the eucharist’s appearance.38 After this figure we have the conclusion: ‘For þese thre, sauour, figure and rondenes, I ame þat brede þat in þe awter is sene as brede, felte as brede, bot it is turned into mi bodi, þat was festind on þe crosse.’ The ‘Hoc est corpus meum’ is included in the final lines, driving home the point that the transformation of the host changes not only the invisible part but also our perception of the visible part of the eucharist. The Middle English versions of Bridget of Sweden’s and Catherine of Siena’s visions describing the Real Presence maintain the form of dialogues found in the originals.39 This Socratic format reveals in a simpler, vernacular vocabulary the theological arguments underpinning the eucharist as both body and bread. The holy women’s texts under discussion use a variety of metaphors to describe the connotations of transubstantiation and the connection with Christ’s body. These images often use everyday objects or familiar biblical symbols to explain the theological conundrums of the actual/virtual status of the eucharist. Some key symbols are the mirror, candles and light, sealing wax, key, table, wheel and also biblical motifs such as Moses’s staff and the sacrificial 36 37 38

39

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, pp. 98–9. Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis, p. 83.

A. Kumler, ‘The Multiplication of the Species: Eucharistic Morphology in the Middle Ages’, Review of English Studies 59/60 (2011), 179–91 (p. 186).

In some cases, an angel supplies information to Bridget when demons are tormenting her. Since it is the demons who are challenging orthodox beliefs about the eucharist it is appropriate for one of God’s messengers to provide the refutation.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 194

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   195

and apocalyptic lamb. These images reinforce the sacrament of the altar as a transformative process: though this occurs for the holy woman in her spiritual sight, it can be experienced by the reader, who may deepen their understanding of this sacred ritual by reading the text. The mirror and candle images are used to describe the Real Presence in all pieces of the host, while the sealing wax and Moses’s staff illustrate the malleable properties of the accident of the bread. By using images that refer to common practices or everyday items (or in the case of the biblical example it refers to a common parable) these scenes explain provide accessible explanations to a vernacular audience. Mechtild of Hackeborn uses the image of the mirror when God describes what happens during communion. Referencing the Augustinian concept of ‘seeing through a glass darkly’, Mechtild of Hackeborn’s text explains that the soul’s face is the image of the Trinity, which acts as a mirror reflecting back the soul’s purity (or lack thereof ) as a depiction of their representation of the Trinity.40 This moment of eucharistic union is combined with an examination of conscience to represent a tearing away of the veil between the mortal and divine spheres. Just as the closeness or perfection of an individual’s piety allows for a better reflection of the Godhead, so the communion host brings the physical and spiritual together for the Christian. Catherine of Siena’s revelations also use the mirror motif in a series of two analogies explaining how God can be in all hosts. Catherine’s visions also use the idea of the leaded mirror, where we can see in all parts the whole ‘ymage of a man:’ Riȝt as a myrrour þat is dyuydid, in euery diuy-sioun is seen þe ymage of a man, and ȝit þe ymage is not diuydid, riȝt so þis hoost [is] diuydid; & ȝit is not diuydid al God and al man, but it is in euery party of it hool and al, ne it is not þerfore lesnyd in itsilf.41

This example uses a similar motif to that which Wyclif had employed to argue against the Real Presence, but here the image of the mirror encourages the vernacular reader to seek an orthodox interpretation of Christ in communion.42 This example is followed by another to drive home the point. The candle Gostely Grace, ed. Halligan, p. 456.

40

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 243.

41

Péri-Nagy notes this image was used in late medieval England: ‘In his De Eucharistia these considerations of visual matters led Wyclif to the conclusion that the eucharist remained bread even after the consecration. Under the bread the body of Christ was hidden, invisible to the eye. The visible host, after consecration, is only bread. He uses the idea of the mirror to explain that Christ is present in the bread as just an image is present in the mirror, the subject of the Eucharistic accidents

42

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 195

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 9 6    C . Annet t e G r i sé

motif argues that a single candle can make many flames or light many lights and still be whole: For riȝt as þe liȝt of a candil, to þe which, þoȝ al þe world come for to fette part of his liȝt, þe liȝt is neuere þe lesse, and ȝit ech þat fetteþ þerof ha[þ] alle liȝt, naþelees ȝit it is so þat oftetymes summe eiþir þei take lesse of þat liȝt or moore, aftir þe mater þat [þ]e resceyue[r] bereþ wiþ hym. And þat þou mowe þe beter vndirstonde me, I schal schewe þee by þis ensaumple.43

The candle provides an everyday, concrete image that may be designed to help vernacular readers follow the theological arguments that were being debated in fifteenth-century England. The image of sealing wax offers a similar function but moves away from transubstantiation to consider the way in which communion can affect the soul: Riȝt as a seel putt upon hoot waxe, aftir tyme it is lift up and taken awey, þe preente o[r] þe ymage b-leueþ [sic], in þe same wyse þe vertu of þis sacrament b-leueþ in þe soule, for to ȝou b-leueþ þe hete of dyuyne charite, þe mekenes of þe holy goost, and þe liȝt of wisdom of myn oonli sooþfast sone, Ihesu, by illumynynge of þe iȝe of intellecte in þe same wisdom, for to knowe and se in hym þe doctryn of my diuyn charite.44

This trinitarian image describes the process by which perception changes and the soul is imprinted through receiving communion. Thus, discussions of visionary experiences lead into everyday examples that illuminate theological arguments about the eucharist, in order to bring the reader to a deeper understanding of communion and a closer relationship to God. The reader does not emulate the holy women’s extremes but uses them as examples to support their learning about the eucharist and the Real Presence. In one of Bridget’s visions we find a concrete image from biblical typology that had been used previously against the heterodox views of the eucharist in

43 44

being the bread. He writes thus: “Just as the optical writers say a body is multiplied intentionally, and is truly present wherever its species acts, and has the power of acting there, so God can make his body to be sacramentally present at every point of the host, and act there spiritually.” The other example of the use of the mirror image is that of an unknown Dominican friar. In the 1380s he also used the analogy of the mirror in his anti-Wycliffite tract Pharetra sacramenti, saying that the body of Christ could be present in a small host just as the whole image of a man was in a small mirror.’ (Péri-Nagy, ‘Vox, Imago, Littera’, p. 53)

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 243. Ibid., p. 251.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 196

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   197

the Berengarian controversy.45 This example uses Moses’s staff turning into a serpent as an argument for how the eucharist changes substance even if the accident remains visibly the same. Christ argues with the demon: ‘When Moyses ȝerde was turned into þe neddir, wethir was þat a verray neddir wythin and wythoute, or elles bot be likenes of a neddir? Also þe twelue skeppis of relefe, whepir were þai brede or likenes of brede?’46 þan saide þe fende, ‘All þat was in þe ȝerde was be neddir, and þat was in þe lepis was verray brede: and þat was onely throw þi myght and þi vertu.’ þan saide Criste, ‘Sen I ame als myghty now as I was þan, why may I noght make my verray body to be now in þe handes of prestes, sen þat it is no more trauaile ne maistry to my godehede þan þe oþir? And þarefor now, fadir of lesynges, as þi malice is alþirmoste, so my charite is abowue all charites’.47

In this example Christ provides two biblical examples to defeat the devil tormenting Bridget. The first example is the staff of Moses,48 while the second example, from the New Testament, notes the twelve baskets of bread left over from the miracle of the loaves and fishes.49 In both cases, divine intervention results in a physical transformation of a concrete object to demonstrate God’s might. Moses’s staff eats the other staffs transformed by Pharaoh’s wise men and thus shows its superiority as it has truly become a snake. The fiend also has to admit that the extra barley loaf pieces collected after the five thousand have eaten are also bread. Divine transformation – caused by God’s holy servants on earth – has lasting consequences and God’s powers are unlimited. The sophistry and the rudeness of the devil are no match for divine emissaries. The Orcherd of Syon explains that there are two levels of understanding of the eucharist, virtuously (that is, morally) and sacramentally, just as Love had argued in the ‘Treatise on the Sacrament’. God states: summe resceyuen Cristis flesch and his blood vertuously, and summe sacramentaly, comownynge þat blessid sacrament wiþ affeccioun of charite. For Lanfranc uses Ambrose, De mysteriis and the example of Moses’s staff to argue against the Berengarian controversy. See C. Radding and F. Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078–1079 (New York, 2010), p. 22.

45

See Matthew 14. 16–20.

46

Liber Celestis, ed. Ellis, p. 306.

47

See Exodus 7. 8–13.

48

Matthew 14. 13–21 and John 6. 1–14.

49

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 197

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

1 9 8    C . Annet t e G r i sé

he þat gooþ to þat sacrament wiþ affeccioun, he fyndeth myche swetnesse; and he þat gooþ þerto moore of custum and vse þan for affeccioun, he fyndeþ litil swetnesse. For he þat enforseth hym wiþ al his soule to make opin his affeccioun in me, and knytteþ it to me wiþ þe verry liȝt of intellect, he knowiþ myche; and he þat knowiþ myche loueþ myche; and he þat loueþ myche, taasteþ me riȝt swetely.50

The ‘vertuous’ reception brings sweet tastes and sensations, for the love that the Christian brings is repaid to him by God. The ‘sacramental’ communion is performed out of custom and therefore does not bring rewards. The deeper understanding leads to a new perception of the eucharist, which then leads to a change in the soul – an imprinting of sealing wax, a staff that turns into a serpent or a mirror that reflects back the image of the Trinity. These more specific arguments are made through visual metaphors which represent the spiritual change a person is meant to undergo when they take or see communion. This reception – either by mouth or by sight and hearing during the elevation of the host – when accompanied by intellectual understanding and faith, leads to spiritual improvement. This can be done properly only if the reader follows the orthodox teachings supplied in these visionary women’s texts.

Conclusion: ‘gosteli undirstandynge … to hele of þaire saule’

Late medieval English eucharistic debates influenced the discussions found in the Middle English religious literature of the time, following upon continental European traditions. This essay has concentrated on the Middle English translations of Continental female visionary writings and the ways these texts participated in contemporary eucharistic discussions. The lives and revelations of this group of holy women have been chosen to confirm current orthodox teachings on eucharistic theology in several ways. They used the language of the sacrament in their discussions of communion, they highlighted the moment of transubstantiation and the elevation of the host in the mass and they chose familiar imagery that drew on theological debates about the eucharist. They translated the symbol of transubstantiation into a literal showing of the body of Christ: their visions made the invisible visible and they described and acted out this transformation process. The language and imagery used in the Middle English versions of these texts draw upon similar ideas as other orthodox reforming texts, such as Love’s Mirror. Supporting the tradition of orthodox teachings on eucharistic theology that came out of fifteenth-century England, these texts illustrate 50

Orcherd, ed. Hodgson and Liegey, p. 147.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 198

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

‘ Trowe s þo u , f o o l , þat þi s ka ke of brede is God?’   199

that – when removed from their immediate context – Continental female visionary writings could be appropriated to new circumstances.51 Heterodox challenges may change, but the need to assert orthodox principles continued.52 The translations of the lives and revelations of these women proved appealing to a vernacular audience which was discovering more personal forms of piety and looking for more models for their devotional practices. The texts described the holy women’s commitment to the sacramental nature of communion and to the transformative potential of transubstantiation which blurred the lines between the physical and spiritual worlds found in the Real Presence. Within the context of heightened awareness of the challenges in maintaining eucharistic doctrine in the face of various voices with diverse opinions, the Middle English versions of female visionary writings described theological debates in easy-to-follow terms, using the eucharistic language that other Middle English writers were also employing. In this way, these texts were useful teaching aids in fifteenth-century England by supporting orthodox beliefs about the eucharist while encouraging the audience to gain a closer, personal response with Christ.

See Lindenbaum’s discussion of the London rectors – many of whom she notes became Carthusian and Bridgettine brothers – as producing a programme of orthodox reform in fifteenth-century vernacular sermons. The characteristics of this programme are very similar to what the texts of this study illustrate: S. Lindenbaum, ‘London after Arundel: Learned Rectors and the Strategies of Orthodox Reform’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 187–208. See also Brown’s comments on the use of Bridget’s and Catherine’s writings in and out of Syon: for example, J. N. Brown, Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Toronto, 2019), p. 116.

51

Fiona Somerset’s definition of ‘mainstream’ instead of ‘orthodox’ theology seems helpful in explaining the lack of a clear definition between heterodox and non-heterodox beliefs in this period. See F. Somerset, Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif (Ithaca NY, 2016).

52

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 199

1/29/2021 7:58:20 AM

9 Walter Hilton’s Confessions in De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis MARLEEN CRÉ

I

t

f we think about the authors whose texts or books we read as compagnons de route, Michael Sargent has travelled long distances with Walter Hilton. Michael’s 2017 EETS edition of Book II of the Scale of Perfection and his meticulous work on the manuscript tradition and reception of the Scale will be consulted by scholars for decades to come.1 Hilton’s Scale is one of ‘those Middle English works that survive in large numbers of manuscripts’, as with its forty-nine extant copies it comes in eighth place in the list offered by Sargent, who points out that ‘we might critically deduce from the mere numbers not the “popularity or importance” in any direct, absolute sense, but at least the size of the possible readership’.2 It would be inaccurate to say that there is a contrast between this large number of surviving manuscripts and the scholarly attention that Hilton has received over the last decades, as Hilton’s works have all been edited, and his works have been studied by, among others, Helen Gardner, Stan Hussey, John Clark and Michael Sargent, and anyone approaching a text by Hilton stands on the shoulders of these giants. I do believe it is accurate, however, to say that Hilton, in spite of having a faithful band of scholarly admirers, deserves even more visibility, both as an author and as a spiritual adviser. In addition, I felt that, as a scholar, but also as a reader, W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection Book II, An Edition Based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford, 2017 for 2016). For a bibliography of Sargent’s writings on Hilton see pp. clvii– clviii. References to this edition are by chapter and line numbers.

1

M. G. Sargent, ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on Some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44 (p. 206).

2

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 200

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   201

I did not know Hilton enough, and decided to set out and reread his texts. In this essay, I embark upon this journey, focusing on Hilton’s earliest Latin letters, De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis.3 It is debatable whether, for scholars of literature, it is still allowed to look for the author in the work. Yet it is also undisputable that we, as scholars, are also readers, and that we may enjoy and be captivated by a text that we also analyse and contextualize. As texts are written by people, we read and hear their voices in the texts. For instance, when I read Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love, I can write an essay about how exactly she talks about illness and pain in the text, and about how pain becomes a metaphor for sin without losing its literal meaning. Simultaneously, I can be charmed by a passage or a sentence on a different level, the level of me as a reader who responds to Julian’s text emotionally. I do not believe we read medieval spiritual, mystical or visionary texts the way we read a novel or another work of fiction, but I do believe we also respond emotionally, and that our emotions work in dynamic interaction with the intellectual or analytical.4 Thus, authors and texts can become our compagnons de route not only because our studies have added to our knowledge and understanding of them, but also because their voices are present to us, and become familiar. A striking characteristic of Scale II is that this text reflects Hilton’s patience and wisdom as a spiritual guide. Hilton addresses his audience directly in first-person utterances that are aimed at reassuring the reader and that express the author’s belief and trust in God’s mercy and love. If þou wilt wyte þan if þi soule be reformed to þe ymage of God or non, by þat I haue seide þou mayght haue entre. Ransake þin owen conscience and loke what þi wil is, for þerin stondeth al. If it be turned fro al dedly sinne þat þou wuldest for no þyng wytendly and wifully breke þe comaundement of God, and for þat þat þou hast mysdone here before ageyns his byddynge 3

4

Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. J. P. H. Clark and C. Taylor, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 124 (1987). References to this edition are as follows: De imagine peccati becomes DIP, followed by line numbers, and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis becomes EUPR, also followed by line numbers.

I remain intrigued by the passage in which we get a look at Julian’s sickroom, where she is gravely ill in bed. She is shown the devil’s powerlessness, and laughs at this: ‘For this sight, I laught mightely, and that made them to laugh that were aboute me, and ther laughing was a liking to me’ (A Revelation of Love 13/20–21). The laughter in the sickroom makes this passage such an unexpectedly idiosyncratic one, that I would argue it shows us a glimpse of Julian as a person. The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. N. Watson and J. Jenkins (Turnhout, 2006), p. 171.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 201

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 0 2    Mar l ee n C ré

þou hast schriuen þe mekly, with ful herte to lefe it and with sorwe þat þou dedist it: I seye þan sikirly þat þi soule is reformed in feith to þe lyknes of God. (9/24–32; italics mine)

We see here that Hilton uses the first person singular in order to signpost, i.e. to refer to things he said earlier (‘by þat I haue seide’), but it also often signals emphasis on his belief in his message, as when he uses the adverb ‘sikirly’ in the passage above. The many instances of the phrase ‘I hope’ in Scale II also need to be read as such.5 At times Hilton’s authorial interventions are meta-textual; he reflects on his use of words, and his authority can be seen to derive from his thorough theological knowledge. Bot perchaunce now bygynnes þu to wondren whi I sey o tyme þat grace werketh al þis, and anoþer tyme I sey þat lufe werketh, or Jesu werketh, or God werketh. Vnto þis I sey þus, þat when I sey þat grace werkeþ, I mene lufe, Jesu and God. For al is one, and noȝt bot one: Jesu is lufe, Jesu is grace, Jesu is God; and for he werketh alle in vs by his grace for lufe as God, þerfore may I vsen what word þat I wil of þis foure after my steryng in þis writynge. (42/138–44)

In this essay I return to the roots of what Gordon Mursell has called Hilton’s ‘exceptional wisdom as a spiritual director’ and ‘warm and pastoral affectivity’.6 The Latin letters De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis, two early works, record Hilton’s answers to problems or questions raised by two masculine correspondents.7 Both letters address the correspondent as ‘beloved brother in Christ’ (DIP 1).8 This phrase signals the similarity of circumstance between Hilton and the correspondents, as well as the emotional involvement and connection Hilton feels with them. Whereas, in the Scale, Hilton addresses a feminine audience for whom he is a reassuring guide to the spiritual life, in the letters discussed here, presumably because they are originally written to men close to Hilton, there is greater scope for A good example of a passage in which Hilton repeats the phrase ‘I hope’ three times is Scale II (7/53–63–71).

5

G. Mursell, English Spirituality from the Earliest Times to 1700 (Louisville KY, 2001), pp. 179, 210.

6

For a chronology of Hilton’s works, see Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, trans. J. P. H. Clark and R. Dorward, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1991), pp. 13–19 and The Scale of Perfection, ed. Hussey and Sargent, pp. lxxiv–lxxxvii.

7

De imagine peccati has ‘dilecti in Christo frater’ (DIP 1) in the vocative of address, and the Epistola ‘Dilecto in Christo fratri’ (EUPR 1) has the same phrase in the dative required by the grammatical structure of the address.

8

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 202

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   203

Hilton to compare or contrast himself to his correspondents and to identify with their problems. This is not to say that Hilton does not identify with the feminine readers of the Scale, as he does by virtue of leading the religious life, which is universal. It is clear, however, that to his masculine correspondents Hilton expresses himself with greater candour, and that his presence in the letters, in first-person passages, has greater urgency. Both letters seem to have been written with a wider audience than the original correspondent in mind, and even this audience was most likely masculine.9 The broader applicability of the letters does not invalidate their concrete occasion, just as Hilton’s first-person passages are didactic (and as such can be seen as constructed) as well as autobiographical (hence ‘confessions’ in the title) because they express Hilton’s authentic reflections, frustrations and beliefs. When Barry Windeatt writes that ‘both Hilton … and the Cloud-author cast themselves as still travelling towards a goal, and so having limited experience from which to describe what they nonetheless assist their readers towards’,10 he hints at the tension between self-derogatory remarks and assertions of inexperience (themselves on the verge between being humility tropes and authentic expressions of these feelings) and the reality that Hilton was more experienced as a contemplative than he lets on, which is suggested by the level-headedness with which Hilton will go on to write the Scale. Windeatt also points out that even though Hilton denies being an experienced contemplative, his works show his ‘developing understanding’ of the spiritual life, its theological and biblical grounding and its psychological challenges.11 This essay will argue that there is a difference in style between Hilton’s confessions in both letters, which could be the result of Hilton’s empathetic adaptation of his style and method to his correspondent and his theme. This difference could also reflect Hilton’s own development as a solitary and religious. In Epistola de utilitate Hilton’s first-person interventions seem to be less rawly emotional and more measured than his interventions in the earlier De imagine peccati. In De imagine peccati, Hilton identifies with the solitary correspondent more closely than in Epistola de utilitate, in which he positions himself as both like and unlike Horsley with regard to the choice of the regular religious life. In both texts, however, the first-person passages occur at the centre of the text (in the middle of their linear progression). Thus, Hilton effectively places himself in the middle of his letters as his correspondents’ The Epistola expresses this explicitly, as we will see later.

9

B. Windeatt, English Mystics of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1994), p. 7, italics mine.

10

Ibid., p. 109.

11

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 203

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 0 4    Mar l ee n C ré

fellow traveller through the life they have chosen or are about to choose and the particular problems their vocation throws in their way. The confessions guide them, and Hilton too, beyond the low points of their experience to a promise of what a stable and rewarding religious life can bring them. Balance and caution already feature in Hilton’s early Latin letters, written when he had not yet become established in his life at Thurgarton and was still developing as a spiritual guide, even perhaps just setting out to be one. Though the letters remain silent as to their material context, they suggest that the letter writers sought Hilton out as someone who could help them.12 We enter the realm of speculation here, but it is not unthinkable that Hilton was a regular letter writer who chose to reply to some questions he received in greater detail, in the form of a short treatise, because the issue interested him – possibly exactly because it touched upon his own questions and his own quest for the religious life that suited him.

Introducing De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis

De imagine peccati, ‘probably Hilton’s earliest extant work’, is a letter addressed to a solitary.13 The text has the image of sin in the soul as its focal point, and elaborates on how this image should be eradicated and replaced by the image of God in the soul.14 It breaks down this image, this idol, as composed of pride (‘superbia’, DIP 39), envy (‘inuidia’, DIP 191), sloth (‘accidia’, DIP 237) and gluttony (‘gula’, DIP 345). When discussing gluttony, Hilton shifts his focus to the five senses, and comments on the dangers of taking delight in sensual pleasure – in gluttony of the senses, as it were (DIP 345–406). As in many of his texts, Hilton comments on ‘pure intention’ and how, in the spiritual life, for 12

13

14

On the circles in which Hilton moved, see M. G. Sargent, ‘Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Collections’, in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday, ed. S. Horobin and L. R. Mooney (York, 2014), pp. 159–62.

Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 69. De imagine peccati survives in four manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus D ix (third quarter fifteenth century) and MS Royal 6 E III (third quarter fifteenth century), the manuscript that contains both texts discussed in this essay; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 115 (early fifteenth century) and MS Lat. th. D. 27 (third quarter fifteenth century), which also contains Epistola de utilitate et prerogatiuis religionis. On this theme, central in all of Hilton’s writings, see J. P. H. Clark, ‘Image and Likeness in Walter Hilton’, Downside Review 47 (1979), 204–20.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 204

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   205

laypeople, solitaries and people living in monastic orders, this ‘pure intention’ rests on humility. In De imagine peccati humility is described as the recognition of oneself as a sinful wretch. [V]era humilitas est vt magna te operantem magnum te nescians, et omnibus mirabilem et spectabilem teipsum miserrimum et vilissimum cognoscas. (DIP 118–20) (True humility is not to know yourself as great even while you do great things, so that you recognize yourself, extraordinary and noteworthy to all, as most wretched and sinful.)

It is not surprising that De imagine peccati mentions what Hilton calls imperfect humility (the recognition of one’s sinful self ) and uses the term ‘miserrimum’ (‘most wretched’) to describe what the corresondent should recognize himself to be. Perfect humility (‘the humility which looks beyond the self to the greatness and love of God in Christ’)15 is taught and described in Scale II, in which Hilton instructs his audience in the advanced spiritual life and contemplation. The movement from imperfect to perfect humility is essentially conversion: a movement away from the self in the world, to whom reputation and embarrassment matter, to God, in whose loving embrace the soul can find true rest. In De imagine peccati, however, this movement is subtly hinted at rather than explicitly named in the exegetical passage that follows the passage quoted above, offering a reading of Luke 10. 17 and 20, in which the disciples rejoice because they have been given the power to drive out demons. Si michi non credis, crede uel Evangelio. […] Vnde gloriabatur discipuli? Numquid credebant potestatem faciendi miracula ex seipsus? Non, sed ex Deo. Numquid pro meritis suis? Non, sed gratis. Numquid iactantes menciebatur se habere quod non habuerunt? Non, sed pocius confitentes verum, quasi gracias agebant Deo. Cur ergo reprehensi, nisi quia preferebant se ceteris inaniter, gloriantes se hec dona pre aliis singulariter acepisse, gloriam Deo debitam sibi temere vsurpantes, quorum elacionem Christus repressit, dicens, Nolite gaudere, etc. (DIP 121–32) (If you do not believe me, then believe the Gospel. […] What made the disciples rejoice? Can it be that they believed they had the power to do miracles from themselves? No, they had this power from God. Can it be that they believed they had this power from their own merits? No, they had it freely. Can it be that they arrogantly pretended to have what they did not Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 343.

15

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 205

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 0 6    Mar l ee n C ré

have? No, in truth, they acknowledged this, rather, and as it were thanked God. Why then were they reprimanded, if not because they foolishly preferred themselves to others, priding themselves on having exceptionally received these gifts before the others, usurping the glory owed to God to themselves? Christ restrained their exaltation, saying ‘Do not rejoice’, etc.)

In order to become truly Christ-like, the disciples have to turn away from their self-seeking pride of having received God’s gifts for their own sakes and have to rejoice at living their lives for God. Hilton’s exegesis in this passage rests on the game of questions and answers, the first three of which would seem to merit a positive answer. The triple repetition of ‘non’ creates curiosity and anticipation about what the real reason was for the reprimand the disciples received. Hilton subtly delays the gratification of the correct answer by first voicing the reader’s likely question (‘Cur ergo reprehensi?’) before finally giving it (they prided themselves). In this intellectual game, Hilton cleverly draws the reader in as his direct interlocutor, creating identification and familiarity that allow both writer and reader to connect in thinking the Gospel reference through and, through that connection, to arrive at a deeper understanding of what true humility is. De imagine peccati drives home the necessity to destroy the image of sin in the soul, the idol that the proud believer turns it into, and the necessity to carry within the soul the ‘ymaginem celestis, scilicet Christi’ (DIP 468–9) (‘the heavenly image, indeed that of Christ’) rather than the empty likeness of sin. Indeed, just as the taste of spiritual appetite is the antidote to the gluttony of the senses, the image of Christ in the soul destroys the idolatrous image of sin. If we were to use the language of the Scale to explain the conversion the text teaches, Hilton is clearly teaching the correspondent to reform in faith.16 Sed interim exclama in corde tuo vbi Deus audit, O quis liberabit me de corpore mortis huius, quis hoc ydolum comminuet? Et audias diuinum responsum, Gracia Dei per Ihesum Christum. (DIP 505–7) (And in the meantime, call out in your heart where God listens, O who will release me from the body of this death, who will smash this idol? And may you hear the divine response, by God’s grace through Jesus Christ.)

16

See, for instance, Scale II 9/8–10: ‘We þat arn ryghtyd and reformed þurgh feith in Crist han pes and acorde made betwixen God and vs, not ageynstondende þe viciouse felynges of oure bodi of synne.’

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 206

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   207

Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis survives in thirteen manuscript copies, arguably making it the Latin epistle with the largest readership.17 That this letter was addressed to Adam Horsley, an Exchequer official who entered Beauvale charterhouse in 1386, doubtless contributed to its wider dissemination, in which the Carthusians seem to have played a part.18 The text carefully lays out its argument of why entering the religious life is the right path for Adam Horsley, and repeatedly insists that the Carthusian order is suitable for him.19 The religious life is aimed at human perfection of perfect love of God and one’s neighbours ‘cum vera humilitate plenaque mentis deuocione’ (EUPR 36) (‘with true humility and full devotion of the mind’). Love of God is impeded London, British Library, MSS Harley 3852, Royal 6 E III, and Royal 8 A VII; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Digby 33, Lat. th. d. 27, Lat. th. e 26, Lat. th. f. 20, Rawlinson C. 397 and Tanner 4; Oxford, Merton College MS 47 and Magdalen College MS 93; Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B iv 41; Dublin, Trinity College, MS 216.

17

The text itself does not mention him as the recipient of the letter. In MS Digby 33 the colophon reads: ‘Hec epistola scripta fuit a magistro Waltero de Hilton, postea canonico de Thurgarton, domino Ade de Horsley monacho de Beuale ordinis Cartusie tunc futuro.’ Bodleian Library MSS Latin th. d. 27 and Latin th. e. 26, Merton College Library MS 47 and Magdalen College Library MS 93 have the ‘Carthusian colophon’ (with small differences): ‘Incipit epistola magistri Walteri Hilton de vtilitate et prerogatiuis religionis et precipue ordinis Cartusiensis, quam quidem epistolam idem Walterus primus direxit cuidam venerabili baroni scakkarii domini regis ordinem Cartusiensem intrare disponenti; nomenque eiusdem erat Adam Horsley, qui eciam dictum ordinem Cartusie postea ingressus, laudabiliter in eodem perseuerauit.’ MS Digby 33 is an early fifteenth-century manuscript with a Coventry Cathedral cleric ownership inscription. It is assumed that the information in the colophon mentioning Adam Horsley (fol. 31v) was provided by Coventry charterhouse. Evidence of shared use of manuscripts by Coventry charterhouse and Coventry cathedral can also be found in MS Digby 115, in which a copy of De imagine peccati survives. Latin th. e. 26 has an ownership inscription for Sheen charterhouse. The inscription, on fol. 145v, names John Feriby (d. 1444) as the scribe of the manuscript. The colophon naming Adam Horsley is on fol. 120v, the first page of the Epistola de utilitate. Latin th. d. 27 is a manuscript dated after 1446, with links to Coventry charterhouse. The colophon was written on fol. 131v. Merton MS 47, written in a hand of the second half of the fifteenth century, has the colophon on fol. 239r and carries an ownership inscription of William Romsey, fellow of Merton until 1485 (d. 1501). Magdalen MS 93 has the colophon on fol. 160v. Most of this manuscript was written by John Dygon, admitted to Sheen charterhouse in 1435, who dates the completion of his copying work to 1438 and 1444, and who donated this manuscript, with five others, to Magdalen College. Clark and Taylor, pp. 20–2, 26–33, 33–6, 41–3, 43–6, 103, 116, 361.

18

See EUPR 32, 560–2, 572–4, 734–6 and 862.

19

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 207

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 0 8    Mar l ee n C ré

by ‘concupisciencia carne, et concupisciencia oculorum, et superbia vite’ (EUPR 45) (‘the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and pride of life’). The vices need to be replaced by the virtues enshrined in the religious vows: ‘carnis continencia, paupertate voluntaria, et vera obediencia’ (EUPR 56–7) (‘chastity, voluntary poverty and true obedience’). Perfection should be sought with intention, but, as Hilton points out early in the text, ‘Hanc intencionem habere facile est, ipsam vero perfectionem difficile’ (EUPR 74–5) (‘It is easy to have this intention, but to have perfection itself is difficult’). Leading the religious life helps the believer on the way to perfection. After going over the history of the early Church and the place of the monastic life in this history (EUPR 100–80), Hilton discusses the three advantages of this life. First, the religious life destroys the great opportunity for vice (EUPR 181–226), in particular pride, avarice, sloth, gluttony and lechery. These vices are counteracted by virtues: humility, patience, meekness, sobriety and chastity. Second, those living under a rule are obedient and submit to the discretion and reasonable regulations of a superior (EUPR 228–340). The superior helps the religious when they are put to the test, supports them in their intention to lead a virtuous life and keeps them from holding heretical opinions. Third, entry into the religious life is like a second baptism that removes the stain of sin (340–449). It is a way of life that is deemed excellent by the Church on earth and that will be rewarded by the triumphant Church in heaven. The images to describe entry into the religious life are rich and manifold. Entering a monastic order is like a spiritual baptism that returns the new religious to his childhood and gives him a second chance to grow and mature. The new religious’s offering of himself to God is like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: he should offer up to God what he loves most.20 This image links the themes of pure intention and conversion and obedience. Obedience to a superior is ‘vera humilitas’ (EUPR 586) (true humility), and the new religious should be prepared to carry out manual work and menial tasks ‘velud asinus racionalis’ (EUPR 591) (like a rational donkey).21 20

21

The reference in the text is oblique: the charterhouse is like a mountain that will be scaled, ‘et ibi filium tuum immolabis’ (EUPR 574) (and there you will sacrifice your son). See Genesis 22. 1–18.

Isaiah 1. 3. Hilton anticipates that Horsley (and any reader after him) might well take offence at this comparison: ‘Nec ducas ad iniuriam quod ego remitto te ad asinum, ut ab eo discas obedienciam, cum sapiens eciam me stolidum remittit ad formicam, dicens michi sic: Vade ad formicam o piger, et considera opera eius et disce ab illa sapienciam; sic et ego in presenti dico tibi, vade ad asinum et disce ab eo obedienciam. Durum est quod dico opere adimplere, set amor Dei omnia dura et aspera mollia facit et plana’ (EUPR 626–31). (Do not take it as an insult that I send you back to the donkey, so that you may learn obedience from it, because the

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 208

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   209

Hilton anticipates Horsley’s possible worries and anxieties. He (and any subsquent reader) might argue, for instance, that in the secular life he is freer to choose his own devotions, whereas in the religious life he will have to follow the observances required by the rule. If he persists patiently in the observances, Hilton teaches, they will bring him great humility: ‘Verumptamen nunquam peruenies ad istam humilitatem nisi per talem humilacionem’ (EUPR 787–8) (‘Even so, you will never come to such humility unless through such humiliation’). Indeed, God prefers humble deeds. He was better pleased with David dancing before the Ark than he was with David’s military achievements (his defeat of Goliath and of the Philistines).22 Finally, Hilton invites Horsley to scrutinize his intentions and to take a leap of faith, which, ironically, is a leap away from the insecurity of doubt and fear to the secure foundation of the religious life in Christ. Cur ergo trepidas? Quid temes? Ffundamentum securum est absque labe erroris vel heresis vel diuine transgressionis, quia supra petram, id est Christum, fundata est religio. (EUPR 888–9) (Why then do you waver? What do you fear? The foundation is safe and away from the blemish of error or of heresy or of violation of the divine, because the religious life is founded on the rock which is Christ.)

First-person confessions in De imagine peccati

In both De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis Hilton addresses his readers in first-person passages in which he reflects on his work as a writer and expresses his own feelings. Often the latter are moments of functional reflection. Though some of them read like spontaneous outbursts, Hilton does not indulge in them just for their own sake, but includes them to make a point or to lead his correspondents, and himself, to greater insight or to the making of a decision. Hilton uses these passages as a bridge between the theme of the text (the image of sin in the solitary’s soul, the benefits and prerequisites of the religious life) and strong exhortations aimed at lifting the correspondent out of despair or doubt (how the image of God can be restored in the soul, what the religious life can bring Adam Horsley). wise man also sends me, insensible, back to the ant, speaking to me thus: Go to the ant, o sluggard, and consider her ways, and learn wisdom from her; and in this way I tell you now, Go to the donkey and learn obedience from him. It is hard to carry out what I say in your work, but God’s love renders all hard and bitter things easy and even.) The reference is to Proverbs 6. 6.

In 2 Sam. 6. 14 and 1 Sam. 17. 4, respectively.

22

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 209

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 1 0    Mar l ee n C ré

In addition, Hilton often addresses the questions and issues in the reflective passages from a biblical perspective, showing himself as a keen and perceptive reader of the Bible, weaving relevant Old and New Testament verses into his text that offer clear reassurances to his correspondents’ doubts. In De imagine peccati the first-person confessions occur in the first half of the text, in which Hilton discusses the sins that build the image of sin in the soul. From this low point of self-derogation, doubt and humility, the image of God in the soul can be built up. Hilton repeatedly includes himself in his correspondent’s predicament, as in the opening address of the letter. Dilecte in Christi frater, inter cetera que michi scripsisti ostendere tuam miseriam verbis quibus potueras conatus es, et ymaginem tue feditatis representare mee mentis oculis, non, puto, vt a me auxilium posceres, qui in eadem miseria sum, velut cecus qui seipsum curare non poterit, sed vt a Domino nostro Ihesu Christo propter quem te humiliter subicis, tuam miseriam veraciter recognoscens misericordiam et graciam recipere merearis. (DIP 1–7; italics mine) (Beloved brother in Christ, among other things that you have written to me you have tried to show your wretchedness with words as you were able, and you have tried to represent the image of your foulness to the eyes of my mind, not, I think, because you are asking help of me, who am in the same wretchedness, just as a blind man who could not even take care of himself, but because you, who truly recognizes your wretchedness, deserve to receive the mercy and grace from our Lord Jesus Christ, because of whom you humbly subject yourself.)

The similarity between Hilton and his correspondent is made clear not only by the application of the word ‘miseria’ to both, but also in the use of the image ‘velut caecus qui seipsum curare non poterit’. This image is a telling adaptation of Luke 6. 39 (‘Can the blind lead the blind? Do they not both fall into the ditch?’) and Matthew 15. 14 (‘Let them alone: they are blind and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit’). In both Luke and Matthew, the saying is related to masters and disciples. Whereas the vulgate uses the noun ‘dux’ (leader) and the verb ‘ducere’ (to lead), Hilton uses ‘curare’ (to take care of ), which describes the relationship between a spiritual adviser and the person in his care (just as the noun is used in the expression ‘cura pastoralis’). Moreover, Hilton does not write ‘velut caecus qui caecum curare non possit’, but ‘qui seipsum curare non possit’. His wretchedness prevents him from taking care of himself. How then could he be his correspondent’s spiritual adviser? He clearly doubts his suitability.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 210

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   211

When Hilton describes spiritual pride and the inner voice that tells the proud man how much better he is than all the others and how his own thoughts deceive him (DIP 109–14), he might also be speaking from experience.23 Likewise, when he discusses the sin of sloth, the struggles he describes in exclamatory language suggest the fervour and passion not just of Hilton the spiritual adviser, but of Hilton the solitary who might be questioning his own lack of action (DIP 265–77),24 and the sorry contrast between what the solitary knows he should do and what he manages to. Scio quid vis: vis enim esse humilis sine despectu, cum verus humilis non vult humilis reputari, sed vt vilis confundi. Vis enim esse sine defectu pauper, nomen paupertatis vsurpans, miseriam vero horrendo refugis, cum beata paupertas sit pacienter tollerare miseriam corporis, et cum necesse est libenter gaudere de illa. Vis bene pasci sine solicitudine, bene vestiri sine prouisione. Omnis enim homo in presenti mundo conuersatus, habens membrorum incolumitatem et vsum racionis, ad laborem et profectum se preparat. (DIP 296–304). (I know what you want: you want to be be humble without contempt, because the truly humble person does not wish to be thought humble, but wants to be considered as worthless. You want to be poor without scorn, and, adopting the name of poverty, you flee wretchedness, truly shrinking from it, while happy poverty is to patiently tolerate the wretchedness of the body, and when it is necessary gladly to rejoice in it. You want to eat without anxiety, and to dress without foresight. Every man who dwells in this world who has soundness of limbs and the use of reason, prepares himself for work and success.)

Again, Hilton connects and seems to identify with his correspondent here. The opening phrase ‘Scio quid vis’ not only uses the strongest of the first-person verbs – used only once in De imagine peccati, but cropping up more often in Epistola de utilitate, as we will see – but also serves to link writer and receiver, as it suggests that Hilton knows what the reader wants exactly because he, too, desires to transcend the frustrations of an imperfect religious life and dreams Hilton describes this spiritual pride as ‘iugum tuum quod invitus portas’ (your yoke that you carry against your will), a reference to Ecclus. 40. 1 (‘et iugum grave super filios Adam’), characteristically weaving scriptural references into his text to underscore his point. (See Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 341.)

23

See, for instance, the exclamation ‘O quam delicata et tenera est hec amica tua tibi familiaris’ (DIP 265–6) (O how delicate and infirm is this friend of yours, and familiar to you), in which he may be speaking both to the solitary and to himself.

24

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 211

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 1 2    Mar l ee n C ré

of developing from a flawed into a more patient and humble contemplative. The triple repetition of the verb ‘vis’ in sentence-initial position combines with the qualifiers ‘sine defectu’, ‘beata paupertas’, ‘pacienter’, ‘libenter’, ‘bene’, ‘sine solicitudine’ and ‘sine provisione’, which define the desired mode of life. This language emphasizes Hilton’s identification with his correspondent and his desire to be a better religious free from the image of sin, while at the same time expressing that the desired goal has not been reached. Laypeople, secular clerics and regular clerics, Hilton continues, all have their work and duties. Laypeople work to provide for themselves and try to please God by performing the works of mercy. Secular clergy serve their parishioners in administering the sacraments and working spiritual works of mercy. Regular clergy serve God and their superiors in works of obedience, in vigils and prayers. Solitaries run a much greater risk of falling into idleness and sloth. Hilton’s outbursts regarding this particular sin simultaneously spur his correspondent into action and voice the frustrations that he, too, feels as a solitary, for whom, for lack of external occupation, the challenges to find his place in the Church are much greater than for laypeople, secular and regular religious.25 Quid ergo facimus tu et ego, nostrique similes, homines pigri et inutiles, tota die stantes ociosi? Non laboramus in vinea domini sacramenta ecclesiastica ministrando, nec discurrimus per parochias verbum Domini predicando, nec cetera misericordie opera exhibemus spiritualiter, neque iugum obediencie sub alterius imperio tanquam vitula Effrahim docta diligere trituram voluntarie portamus, nusquam ocupamus locum alicuius ministri eciam minimi in ecclesia ordinati, sed quasi liberi, relicti nostro sensui nostreque voluntati, quasi in nullo ordine sumus. (DIP 319–26) (What then do you and I do, and those similar to us, lazy and useless men, who stand idle all day? We do not work in the vineyard of the Lord in order to administer the sacraments of the Church, nor do we roam our parishes in order to preach the word of the Lord, nor do we perform other works of mercy spiritually, nor do we voluntarily carry the yoke of obedience under the command of someone else like the heifer Ephraim, taught to love the treading of corn. On no occasion do we occupy the place of some other ministry even of the lowest ordained person in the church, but we are like children, having abandoned our senses and our will, as if we are in no order.) 25

A similar exclamation occurs when Hilton comments on gluttony (‘gula’, 345): ‘O quam sepius palliat et excusat se voluptas sub colore necessitatis et infirmitatis!’ (367–8) (O, how more often does pleasure cloak itself and excuse itself under the guise of need and infirmity!)

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 212

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   213

The strands of biblical quotation that Hilton weaves into this passage, like a gold thread that is woven through a piece of fabric and is visible only in places, both reinforce and contradict the moment of the writer’s apparent weakness and indulgent lamentation. The use of Job 10. 22 at the end of the passage carries the weight of despair,26 and associates not being a member of a religious order with absence of order, or chaos,27 yet the opening references to Matthew 20, though used to bewail the solitary’s condition, point the perceptive reader to a more positive reading of the solitary life. ‘About the third hour’, the biblical householder finds some workers in the marketplace standing idle, yet at the end of the parable and even though not all of them worked the same number of hours, all workers receive the same payment, which suggests that even ‘idle’ solitaries will be rewarded in heaven.28 In the following passage, not surprisingly, Hilton argues that he writes this ‘non ad confusionem nostrum … sed ad humilacionem, non ad exprobacionem sed ad instruccionem’ (DIP 328–29) (‘not to confound us … but to make us humble, not to reprove but to teach’). However, the ambivalence expressed about the solitary life remains in the subsequent description of solitaries, in a passage based on Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job, as ‘teneros et quasi infirmos vel subtiles’ (341–2) (‘frail and as it were infirm or delicate’).29 As such, this is a negative appraisal, yet at the same time it reflects the humility taught earlier in the text.

First person confessions in Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis

As in De imagine peccati, the opening passage of the Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis suggests that Hilton is responding to an earlier letter, possibly one of several written to him by Adam Horsley. Unlike De imagine peccati, Epistola de utilitate does not really start out as a text that explains a theological point (the image of sin in the soul and how the vices should be ‘A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order, but everlasting horror dwelleth.’

26

See Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 348 n. 327f. They point out that this verse ‘forms the conclusion of the last reading for the Office of the Dead’, which deepens the richness of meaning of this line in Hilton, as solitaries are dead to the world.

27

Note the reference to Hosea 10. 11 (Ephraim is a heifer taught to love to tread corn), which also occurs in Epistola to underscore the importance and benefits of obedience to a monastic superior.

28

Note the repetition of this vocabulary of delicacy and infirmity, which also occurs in passages quoted in footnotes 22 and 23.

29

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 213

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 1 4    Mar l ee n C ré

replaced by the virtues in order to start restoring the image of God in the soul). Instead, the text aims to help Horsley to follow his heart, and to act on his desire to join the Carthusian order. Epistola de utilitate has fewer emotional exclamations than De imagine peccati, which may be the case because exclamations worked better with the solitary for whom De imagine peccati was written.30 Also, it may have seemed more suitable to bewail one’s sinfulness than the advantages of the religious life. Hilton does not name Horsley in the text, but addresses him as ‘brother in Christ’, the same address he used in De imagine peccati. This form of address suggests that, just as he did the unknown solitary who was the recipient of De imagine peccati, Hilton saw Horsley as someone who shared the religious life with him. It also renders the letter universal, which is exactly what Hilton seems to have intended. It can be read by any ‘brother’ wishing to join a monastic order. Though the use of the word ‘brother’ and the greeting and benediction ‘salutem et Spiritus Sancti graciam’ seem to cast Hilton as Horsley’s equal (and possibly even signal his somewhat more elevated spiritual status), in the first-person confessions Hilton stresses the similarities as well as differences between them. Dilecto in Christo fratri, salutem et Spiritus Sancti graciam. Quia vero ex tenore cuiusdam litere michi nuper transmisse, clare intellexi propositum animi tui ad religionis ingressum, inspirante Deo, a diu conceptum, eiusdem gracia co-operante per assensum mentis tue quasi confirmatum, exultauit cor meum in Domino (EUPR 1–5) (A greeting and good health and the grace of the Holy Spirit to my beloved brother in Christ. Because I clearly understood from the tone of a letter you sent me recently the intention of your soul towards an entry into religion, inspired by God and conceived from long ago, and as it were confirmed through co-operant grace by the ascent of your mind, my heart rejoiced in the Lord.) In only one instance in this text does Hilton insert an exclamation, in which he asserts his inability to explain the extent to which true humility pleases God: ‘O quam multum placet Creatori talis humilacio cordis voluntarie suscepta ; vere explicare nequeo’ (EUPR 805–6) (O how much does such humiliation of the heart voluntarily undertaken please the Creator; truly I am unable to explain it). Characteristically, Hilton turns to the Bible (Isaiah 66. 2) to look for the words he lacks: ‘Querit enim Dominus per Prophetam Super quem requiescet spiritus meus? et respondet, Nisi super humilem et contritum spiritu, et trementem sermones meos’. (EUPR 807–8) (Indeed, God asked through the Prophet ‘On whom will my spirit rest?’ And he answers, ‘Except on him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at my words.’)

30

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 214

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   215

As someone who recognizes the problems someone questioning their vocation might have, Hilton comments on the reasons for writing the letter: vrget me nimis feruens affeccio quam ad te sencio scribere aliquid modicum quod per Dei graciam desiderium tuum scintillatum validius accendere posset ad eiusdem execucionem, omni fluctuosa anxietate remota, expulsoque pariter timore nocturno, celeriter perficiendam. (EUPR 10–14) (the fervent affection I feel for you urged me to write something small that, by God’s grace, could powerfully stir up the spark of your desire into the carrying out of this desire, in order to bring it about quickly, when all stormy anxiety is removed and, equally, nocturnal fear is banished.)

From the beginning of this letter, Hilton pits fervent feelings against more negative, destructive emotions. We will see that he does not always evoke these feelings in the same configuration. At the opening of Epistola, he seeks connection and mutual identification with Horsley. He professes ‘fervent affection’ for him and suggests that he shares ‘stormy anxiety’ and ‘nocturnal fear’ with him, using language to refer to spiritual aridity and doubt due to lack of trust. As pointed out before, Hilton first offers Horsley a discussion of the general utility of the religious life, a brief history of the monastic life and a description of its three advantages. Before Hilton leaves this more general account, and ‘turns to the needs of his reader’,31 he inserts a sequence of passages of functional introspection in the first person, longer than in De imagine peccati. First, he comments on himself as a writer, placing himself beneath both the religious life, which can be its own advocate, and the Church Fathers, who have written about the religious life ‘quia eam experti sunt’ (EUPR 460) (‘because they are experienced in it’). It is important to note that in this passage Hilton describes himself as wretched, and as being foolish (‘insipiencie’ can also mean ‘lack of knowledge’). In doing so, he does not position himself against his correspondent but against the better authors who teach the religious life much better than he does. Parce michi misero, queso, frater karissime, ignosce insipiencie mee, quod ego arrogauerim michi ad presens commendacionem religionis; certissime scio quia non eget commendacio mea. Ipsa pro se respondet et seipsam commendat, si quis illam oculo recto et simplici voluerit intueri. (EUPR 450–54; italics mine) (Bear with me, who am wretched, I beg you, my dearest brother, and forgive me my foolishness, because I claim for myself in person the praise of Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 105.

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 215

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 1 6    Mar l ee n C ré

the religious life. Most certainly I know that my recommendation is not required. The religious life speaks for itself, and commends itself, if one would consider it with an honest and simple eye.)

Hilton then mentions Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm, Hugh of St Victor and ‘specialiter’ (EUPR 458) (‘especially’) Thomas Aquinas as experts – not coincidentally, the authors he draws on in his writings.32 Though Hilton’s letter is but a small stutter (‘balbutire’ EUPR 463) in comparison, he writes it anyway, ‘si quomodo prouocem te et alios quoscumque ad religionis feruenciorum emulacionem’ (EUPR 463–4) (‘if in this way I may challenge you and whatever others to a more fervent ambition for the religious life’). As an assertion of his unsuitability for the task at hand, the passage quoted above is somewhat disingenuous, because Hilton has just proved himself to be eminently capable of writing a convincingly structured and well-balanced apology for the religious life. He is also confident enough to see that ‘alios quoscumque’ could benefit from his text. Yet he does position himself as wretched against his readers, who are already fervent, but whom his text can make even more so. Hilton’s continuing search in his own spiritual life rises to the surface in the next passage as he ponders his own vocation, as well as the question of whether he is the suitable person to provide guidance to Horsley. Here he positions his own wretchedness against Horsley’s fervent desire for the religious life more explicitly than in the previous passage: Set forsan cogitacio tua dicit tibiipsi mirando forsan, cur alios tam instanter ad religionem prouocem, eamque religionem commendem ut sanctam, et tamen eiusdem religionis habitum me suscipere minime dispono. Huic cogitacioni ut estimo respondere plene non esset michi conveniens, neque necessarium tibi, nec forsan multum vtile. Verumptamen aliquid dicam et confitebor miseriam meam. Ffateor me miserum illud spirituale et feruens desiderium ad ingressum religionis ex diuine gracia inspiratum minime sentire sicut sentiri necesse est ab eo qui zelo deuocionis et puro mentis affectu religionem ingredi disponit. Tu vero desiderium religionis gracia Dei seminatum in corde tuo concepisti, ideoque tibi expedit tanquam specialiter a Deo ad hanc vocato istud desiderium nutrire, vt prodeat in maturam spicam realis execucionis. (EUPR 465–76; italics mine) (But perhaps your thinking tells you that perhaps you have to wonder why I will call others so instantly to the religious life, commending this life as 32

In this reference to Bernard, William of St Thierry would have been included, as his Epistola ad Fratres de Monte Dei, which Hilton draws upon, circulated under Bernard’s name. Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. Clark and Taylor, p. 372, n. 457.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 216

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   217

holy, and nevertheless, I am not at all disposed to take up the habit of this religion. To answer to this thought, as I estimate it, would clearly not be comfortable for me, nor necessary for you, nor perhaps very useful. Even so I will say something and I will confess my wretchedness. I say that I, wretched person, do not greatly feel the desire to enter the religious life, inspired by the divine grace as it is necessary to be felt by the person who is disposed to enter the religious life with the fervour of devotion and a pure state of mind. You have really received the desire for the religious life, sown in your heart by God’s grace, and for that reason it is expedient that you, as it were called by God to this life, nourish this desire so that it will sprout into the fruitfulness33 of being truly carried out.)

Hilton repeatedly revisits these feelings in the first-person confessions in this text. His wretchedness is a lack of fervour, and a lack of any clear desire to enter the religious life (i.e. to join an order), which in turn points to a lack of being inspired by divine grace. Hilton calls himself wretched because he has not received this gift. Thus, the contrast between Hilton and Horsley is considerable: Hilton does not feel the fervent desire that, if nourished and turned into action, could lift him out of his wretchedness. Horsley really has (‘vero … concepisti’), which is why he should heed the call and nourish the gift so that it can flourish. This introspective moment is poignant in that Hilton both expresses that it is impossible for him to fully identify with Horsley because of his own lack of fervour and uses this expression of his own feeling of wretchedness to spur Horsley into action. Horsley does not need to feel wretched, because he was given the fervent desire for the religious life that can fill the soul instead. Hilton does not sink into despair, however, as his frank admission that he was not given the grace of the fervent desire of a vocation to the religious life leads to a clear insight that forms the foundation of his wisdom as a spiritual guide: everyone has their gift from God, and if we work in that gift steadily and humbly, God will reward us. Hilton expresses this insight in a virtuoso passage that weaves together various verses from the Pauline epistles, again showing his firm grasp and love of biblical knowledge and his talent for making the Bible provide answers for his own and his correspondent’s predicaments (EUPR 477–91).34 God gives each of us different gifts that he calls upon us The Latin ‘in maturam spicam’ literally translates as ‘into a mature ear (of corn)’.

33

The biblical references worked into this passage are 1 Cor. 7. 7 (But every one hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner and another one after that), Rom. 12. 4 (For as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same office), 1 Cor. 12. 17 (If the whole body were the eye, where would be the

34

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 217

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 1 8    Mar l ee n C ré

to cherish. All have been given a way to come to perfection in life. This means that not all are called to the religious life, and that it would be foolish to try to live a life to which God has not called you. Equally, it would be foolish to try to dissuade anyone with a true vocation from pursuing it. Hilton understands that this insight has direct results for his own state of life. Item econuerso, si Deus ordinauerit michi misero et abiecto, sic uocauerit per graciam suam ut solitarius sedeam, seruiamque, et taliter prout ipse michi donare dignatur, quare non in hac vocacione perseuerabo ? Dicit enim Apostolus, Vnusquisque in qua vocacione vocatus est, in ea permaneat ; tantummodo sciat quisque vocacionem suam quo a Deo sit, et tunc in ea perseueret. Scio quia non omnibus conuenit solitudo, ac eciam scio quod aliquibus non expedit congregacio, et ideo paratus sis tu et quilibet alius obedire diuine vocacioni. (EUPR 504–11) (In the same way, if God ordained me, wretched and humble, and called me in this way by his grace so that I would sit as a solitary, and I would serve him, and in such a way exactly as he thought me worthy to give this gift to, why will I not persevere in this vocation? Indeed the Apostle says, each person who is called to any vocation should remain in it; only everybody should know why his vocation comes from God, and then should persevere in it. I know because solitude does not suit all, and I also know that living in a community is not expedient for everyone, and because of this you and whoever else should be ready to obey the divine vocation.)

Here Hilton comes to terms with his wretchedness (his absence of fervour), as he understands he cannot conjure up a grace he has not been given. He should persevere in the life he has been called to, even if it is hard. It is significant that in this passage we see the strongest first-person verb Hilton uses, ‘Scio’ (EUPR 509), which confirms that he knows that every vocation comes from God. I would argue that in the instances in which he uses this verb he does not just ‘say’ or ‘believe’ certain things because he read accounts by the Church Fathers, but because he lived them and thus ‘knows’ them. The use of the verb ‘scio’, here and elsewhere, gives Hilton’s confessions extra forcefulness.35 He may

35

hearing ? If the whole were the hearing, where would be the smelling?), 1 Cor. 7. 17 (the Lord hath distributed to every one), 1 Cor. 12. 11 (But all these things, one and the same spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as he will), 1 Cor. 2. 12 (Now, we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that have been given us of God).

Compare the verb ‘Scio’ to other first-person verbs in this exhortative part of the Epistola, which lack this force: ‘antequam procedam, volo quod intelligas’ (520–1), ‘Dixi enim supra’ (526–7), ‘Satis enim confido de te’ (530–1), ‘et eciam dico’ (535),

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 218

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   219

regret his wretchedness, but he knows that the religious life is not his vocation. Moreover, it is because of this experiential knowledge that he is well placed to instruct and guide his correspondent: Si enim et ego, omnibus consideratis, tue conuersacioni que iam est similis existerem, et tale desiderium religionis haberem sicut tu, procul dubio ad effectum perduceretur per religionis ingressum. (EUPR 512–14) (And indeed, if I, having considered all things, came to your conversion which is similar now, and had such a desire for the religious life as you have, [I would say that] any doubt about carrying out one’s vocation would be led far off by means of entry into the religious life.)

As in De imagine peccati, the confessional passages here occur in the middle of the text, as a bridge between the exposition of the theme of the letter in the first section of the text and the build-up of the call to action tailored to the correspondent’s needs in the closing sections of the letter. Thus, having cleared away all possible objections why he would be an unworthy teacher, and having accepted the contrast between his own wretchedness and Horsley’s fervour, Hilton devotes himself to helping Adam Horsley make the final decision to follow his desire to enter the religious life by elaborating on the basis of a successful religious life: the nourishing of his desire to enter the religious life so that it grows into an eager will and pure intention, from which all fruitful action springs. Pure intention will help the new religious to turn away from the world so that his soul can be made free for God. Just as it does in De imagine peccati, Hilton’s insistence on humility and fervour runs through the Epistola, as when he teaches that, like ‘vitula Effraym docta diligere trituram’ (EUPR 651–2) (‘the heifer Ephraim taught to love to tread out corn’),36 the religious should learn to carry out all corporeal and spiritual work ‘cum gaudio spiritus ex pura mentis affeccione et fervore dileccionis’ (EUPR 656–7; italics mine) (‘with joy of spirit from pure affection of the mind and fervour of love’). Also, patience and humility are preferred to the practice of immoderate bodily penance through fasting, wearing hairshirts and flagellation. Interestingly, Hilton signals that he knows from experience (as he uses the verb ‘Scio’, EUPR 816) that many choose immoderate bodily practices of penance early in the religious life, and hopes that Horsley will not be discouraged by them. ‘Minime dubio est michi’ (565), ‘Illum tibi propono in exemplum’ (625), ‘ad istud dico’ (704), ‘Alio modo dico et credo’ (721), ‘De isto impedimento tango tibi’ (761), ‘Et confido de te’ (788), and ‘Modicum dico’ (790), etc.

Hosea 10. 11. Note that this verse is also used in De imagine peccati.

36

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 219

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 2 0    Mar l ee n C ré

Scio quia multi sunt opinione et fama sancti et religiosi qui cicius vellent ieiunare vsquequo deficerent per abstinenciam, vigilare et orare et cetera penitencie opera grauiora, videlicet cilicii, flagellorum et ceterorum similium facere. (EUPR 816–20) (I know that there are many, saintly and religious through opinion and reputation, who immediately want to fast until they can no longer function through abstinence. They want to keep vigils and pray and perform other weightier works of penance, such as wearing the hairshirt, flagellations and similar things.)

Conclusion De imagine peccati contains an interesting passage in which Hilton identifies justified anger (in his discussion of envy): Iusta ira in causa Dei est odire et persequi ore et opera vicium et diligere hominem, compati illi, condolere illi et adiuuare, et tamquam pius medicus consolari illum. (DIP 214-16) ( Justified anger for God’s sake is to hate and attack expressions and works of vice, and to love the human being, to feel compassion for him, to empathize with him and to help him, and like a pious physician to alleviate his pain and comfort him.)37

If this description of the pious physician who loves the sinner but hates the sin seems perfectly applicable to Hilton’s tone and presence in his later works, and especially in the Scale of Perfection, in Hilton’s confessions in De imagine peccati and Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis we see his progression from being a ‘cecus qui seipsum curare non poterit’ to the ‘pius medicus’ who shows his correspondents the role in life they have to take on. He moves from occupying the position of the blind man who cannot even take care of himself because he is stuck in the wretchedness of sin, unable to recognize and accept God’s grace, as well as the role they have to strive for, to the position of the pious physician who, in fervour of love and humble purity of intention, can transcend wretchedness by God’s grace and can comfort and reassure people, taking care of himself as well as of them. Hilton shared his correspondents’ 37

In the text this is a response to lines 202–3: ‘et quasi colore iusticie dum peccatum te odire simulas, ipsum hominem pocius odis et contempnis’ (and as if under the colour of justice you then pretend to hate sin, yet the sinner himself you hate and despise more).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 220

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

Wal ter Hilton’s Con f ession s   221

journeys by identifying with them and by connecting his experience to theirs, especially in his first-person confessional passages, in which he tells them about his own struggles in powerful language. This would seem to be at least part of the answer to the question why his texts were popular in late medieval England, and why as a compagnon de route, even for present-day academics, he is excellent company.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 221

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

10

How Canon Lawyers Read the Bible: Hilton’s Scale II and the Wordes Of Poule FIONA SOMERSET

R

t

ecent work on late medieval spirituality in England has focused on tracing out similarities between texts that have rarely been considered alongside one another because they have been thought of as belonging to different schools of thought or confessional affiliation. Michael Sargent has been among those advocating for more close-grained analysis of the varieties of late medieval English spirituality, and in this chapter I respond to an invitation toward comparison that he first issued in the form of a conference session in which four scholars engaged in conversation over texts they suggested to one another.1 I will trace what might seem a surprising sympathy in method and expository style between two works of spiritual advice, probably both composed in the late fourteenth century but circulated mainly in the fifteenth. Both were written in Middle English and aimed at lay as well as clerical readers, but perhaps especially at the burgeoning audience of spiritually ambitious lay persons attracted to ideas of reform.2 The first is the law scholar turned religious solitary turned Augustinian canon Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Book 2, or Scale II, a work Sargent has recently edited; the second is the anonymous and probably lollard Wordes of Poule.3 I am grateful to Michael for organizing this session at Kalamazoo in 2017, and for many other conversations over the years.

1

On this audience see, among others, N. Watson, ‘Piers Plowman, Pastoral Theology, and Spiritual Perfectionism: Hawkyn’s Coat and Patience’s Pater Noster’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 21 (2007), 83–118 and ‘Middle English Versions and Audiences of Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum religiosorum’, in Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays In Honour of Bella Millett, ed. C. Gunn and C. Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 115–31; and N. R. Rice, Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (Cambridge, 2008).

2

W. Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book II, An Edition Based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (2017 for 2016). Hereafter Scale II, cited by page and by chapter and line numbers from

3

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 222

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   223

Both Scale II and the Wordes of Poule offer advice on how to attain a very difficult kind of spiritual detachment, a ‘reformation in feeling’ to use Hilton’s phrase, that depends on moving beyond bodily sensation and emotional engagement to attain spiritual insight.4 Both texts insist repeatedly that the advanced student who progresses in virtue by this means and achieves detachment will attain to direct apprehension of the meaning of scripture. Neither text offers instruction in biblical interpretation, but both engage in extended exegesis of passages from Paul’s letters as they instruct their readers in the attainment of virtue. Their methods of exposition bear striking similarities that are closely echoed in lollard writings, and might profitably be traced more broadly among spiritual writings of this period. In analysing the similarities of method and overall purpose between these texts I do not by any means aim to suggest that Hilton was a covert lollard. I do think that lollard and mainstream writers read each other’s works, and were read by largely overlapping audiences, but I am not even necessarily suggesting that these two writers were reading each other. Instead, I suggest that the congruence between these texts emerges from similarities in reading matter and disciplinary formation. Habits of thought emerge from what one reads and how one has been taught; and Hilton, as much as some lollard writers, the left-hand facing page edition of MS H7, or London, British Library MS Harley 6573. For a new assessment of the little that is known of Hilton’s biography, estimating that Hilton abandoned the legal profession in the late 1370s to early 1380s, spent some time as a religious hermit, then entered the Thurgarton house of Augustinian canons after 1385–86, see Scale II, ed. Sargent, pp. lxxiv–lxxxi. The Wordes of Poule is edited from Cambridge University Library MS Nn. iv. 12 in F. Somerset, ‘A Mirror to See God In: An Edition of “Þe Wordes of Poule”’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 31 (2017), 257–86, and will be cited by its continuous line numbers, with page numbers noted for convenience. Like most scholars in the field I use the terms ‘Wycliffite’ and ‘lollard’ interchangeably, but I prefer ‘lollard’ as a term to describe writings directly influenced by Wyclif in that they translate or cite his writings; or else sharing many characteristics with writings that are demonstrably so influenced. ‘Lollard-interpolated’ writings alter existing works in order to introduce or enhance attention to these lollard concerns; ‘lollard-leaning’ or ‘lollard-inflected’ works evince some interest in them (perhaps, though not demonstrably, introduced by interpolation); ‘lollard affiliated’ writings appear in compilations containing lollard writings. For this terminology, which I think permits a more flexible tracing of influences and interpretation of the interests of both writers and readers than a binary division between heresy and orthodoxy or even than a ‘grey area’ (which permits many shades of grey, but does not trace their etiology), see F. Somerset, Feeling Like Saints (Ithaca NY, 2014), pp. 11–13.

Sargent suggests that Hilton draws the notion of a reformation in feeling from William of St-Thierry’s Lettre d’or; see Scale II, ed. Sargent, p. lxxxiv.

4

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 223

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 2 4    F i ona S ome r se t

was steeped in canon law, as well as an avid reader of spiritual writings and scriptural commentary, even if neither of the texts I examine here cites canon law directly.5 Both of the writers whose work I examine here departed from their legal training into spiritual self-discipline, developing their own form of religious self-making through writing, a religious poesis, in order to advocate for a new way to reform the self into conformity with God’s law as revealed in scripture. A reformation in feeling requires reflection: both authors describe the process they recommend in terms of looking in a mirror, prompted by the conventional concatenation of scriptural quotations that links man made in the image and likeness of God in Genesis 1. 26 and I Corinthians 11. 7 with James 1. 23–24’s admonition to man forgetting his likeness in the mirror as he fails to act on God’s word and I Corinthians 13. 12’s account of our spiritual vision in this life, ‘per speculum in aenigmate’, ‘through a glass darkly’. Many medieval authors equate looking in a mirror with reading or remembering scripture – or with reading some other text, as when Augustine refers to his rule as a little book in which readers may see themselves as in a mirror, or as in any of the many forms of advice writing that refer to themselves as a mirror.6 Our authors, in contrast, locate the mirror in the soul itself, drawing 5

6

Like most lollard-affiliated writings, the Wordes of Poule is anonymous and undated. While it seems unlikely that every writer influenced by Wyclif ’s thought had legal training, as did Wyclif himself, still, the habits of thought it instilled pervade their writings. For more on lollard interest in law see F. Somerset, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’, in The Cambridge Companion to Law and Literature in Medieval England, ed. S. Sobecki and C. Barrington (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 167–77; F. Somerset, ‘Scripting Defense: Textual Arguments and their Readers amid the Pursuit of Heresy in England’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 63 (2019), 153–67; F. Somerset, ‘Trewe and Pretended: The Middle English Rosarium’s Treatise on Law’, in Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods, Impact, Responses, ed. K. Ghosh and P. Soukup (Turnhout, forthcoming). See chapter 8 of The Rule of St Augustine, trans. R. Russell, O.S.A., based on the critical edition by L. Verheijen, O.S.A., La Règle de Saint Augustin, 2 vols., Études Augustiniennes, Paris, 1967, online at http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/ ruleaug.html, accessed 21 October 2018. On the mirror as a trope for self-reflection and its use in later medieval writings see J. Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. (Philadelphia, 2008); S. C. Akbari, ‘Sight Lines: The Mirror of the Mind in Medieval Poetics’, in The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed. N. M. Frelick (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 149–69 (the book as a whole provides a wider comparative scope). Thomas Hoccleve’s innovative refashioning of this trope in the service of religious poesis in his Series has drawn much attention recently: see especially T. Cowdery, ‘Hoccleve’s Poetics of Matter’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016), 133–64; R. Malo, ‘Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve’s Series’, Studies in the Age

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 224

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   225

on Colossians 3. 10, which links the soul’s reform with knowing God through the image of the one who made the soul, a process both authors interpret as primarily introspective.7 The ascetic processes that the texts describe have a different focus, but a similar method. The Wordes of Poule is focused on the mastery of negative emotions that arise in response to suffering. Hilton in Scale II is more broadly interested in the soul’s purification from fleshly and worldly desires, and in a course of spiritual improvement that leads through contemplation to ‘gostly’ understanding. Each text encourages its readers to find the mirror where a process of self-discipline will enable them to see God by focusing their attention within themselves, rather than through reading a text. Yet the exposition of this process in each text proceeds through close engagement with scripture, and especially with Paul’s epistles. Each text promises its reformed readers a new-found certainty in interpreting scripture – one that it seems itself to demonstrate. The Wordes of Poule is structured around a detailed exegesis of the whole of Hebrews 12, though it brings in other texts as well and ends by commenting on a line of the Pater Noster, ‘fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra’ (‘may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’) (Matthew 6. 10). The whole of Scale II might similarly be said to engage with Paul’s epistles, in that Hilton draws the central concept of the ‘reformation in feeling’ from Romans 12. 2, ‘reformamini in novitate sensus vestri’ (‘be reformed in the newness of your feeling’), and cites Paul frequently.8 Where Scale 1’s ninety-two chapters of spiritual advice to an individual anchoress gave more comprehensive advice on contemplative life, Scale II’s forty-six chapters respond to a request for more discussion of how the soul may reform itself in the image of God as promised in Scale 1, and consider the needs of a broader audience of Christians, urging them all toward greater perfection.9 While Hilton’s biblical quotations

7

of Chaucer 34 (2012), 277–305; S. Gayk, chapter 2 in Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 45–83.

Sargent suggests that in chapters 30 and 31 in particular Hilton may be responding to Wycliffite criticisms of private religion (Scale II, p. 431, chapter 30 line 170n.). Certainly Hilton’s attempt to ground in detailed exegesis the process of personal reform through reflection that he describes here provides a striking parallel to similar descriptions in lollard writings.

See Scale II p. 214, chapter 31 line 26; Sargent indexes fifty-seven citations of Paul’s letters ranging from direct quotation to allusion, almost a third of the scriptural citations in the work as a whole.

8

On the relationship between Scale I and Scale II, and for Sargent’s summary of the contents of Scale II, see Scale II, pp. lxxxiv–vi.

9

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 225

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 2 6    F i ona S ome r se t

are frequent, they are unevenly spaced: some chapters are heavily exegetical, while others are more homiletic, or rely on, for example, a staged dialogue or a metaphorical pilgrimage.10 But Hilton presents a detailed exegetical exposition of the ‘reformation in feeling’ in just one of the forty-six chapters of Scale II, chapter 31 – though he does return to it significantly in chapter 43, where he explains that only souls that have properly trained their senses and reformed their feeling can understand scripture.11 For the Wordes of Poule, the soul’s tribulation is a mirror to see God in, as one sees the sun in water. Only the soul that has dismissed anger and hate and greets suffering with patience has water calm enough for the sun to be visible: Þerfor, siþe tribulacioun is a merour to see God inne, as in ^watir^ me seeþ þe sonne, þerfor as to þis syʒt of þe sonne in water behoueþ þat þe water be cleer and quiet, so it behoueþ þat men in tribulacioun make here tribulacioun cler and quiet. Cler fro wraþþe and malice; quiet bi hope to han þerby þe blisse. And þanne tribulacioun is a dewe merour to see God inne. (273/304–9)

While the metaphor is of a visual process, readers here must focus not on seeing, but on a more internal effort of self-awareness and self-mastery. The water that must be made clear and quiet is not a surface they examine from outside. Instead, they are the water, and whether it is calm or disturbed is for them a full-body sensory experience, not an onlooker’s view of a phenomenon that does not affect them directly. Reforming the feelings to conform the soul to God means learning to gain and maintain equilibrium. For Hilton, the mirror of ghostly sight that permits knowledge of self and God needs to be kept bright and clean from fleshly filth and worldly vanity, and held up, away from the earth. Only then may the soul progress from imagination to understanding: [W]ithdragwe þi þoght fro al bodyly þynge outward and fro mynde of þin owne body also and fro al þi fyfe wyttes, as mikel as þou mayght, and þenk of þe kynde of a resonable soule gostly[.] ttt

10

11

For an example of staged dialogue (‘Now seyst þou … As vnto þis, I sey þus’), see p. 100, chapter 20 esp. lines 5 and 13. For the pilgrimage, see chapter 21 lines 110–23. For my previous analysis of Hilton’s chapter 43, in which I compare it with the lollard-interpolated preface to Robert of Gretham’s Miroir in Cambridge University Library MS Ii. vi. 26, see Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, pp. 205–15.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 226

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   227

Nerþeles I sey not þat þi soule schal resten stille in þis knowynge, bot it schal by þis seken heyghere knowynge abofe itself, and þat is þe kynde of God. For þi soule is bot a myroure in þe whilk þou schal seen God gostly. And þerfor þou schalt first fynde þi [[ f. 82v ]] myrrour and kepen it bryȝt and klene fro fleschly fylthe and werdly vanite, and holden it wel vp fro þe erthe, þat þou may seen it and oure Lord þerin also. (pp. 198, 200; chapter 30 lines 22–25, 42–48)

The spatial metaphor here urges the reader to hold the self apart from its surroundings, even above or outside the body if that were possible, in a constant striving for detachment. The ordinary knowing in which the soul should not rest, here in chapter 30, has been acquired by what medieval thinkers understood to be the usual cognitive process, from sensory input (eschewing its perilous pleasures) to internal cognitive processes including memory and imagination (which may easily be led astray) to knowledge about which one can reason (if not swayed by the passions).12 However, spiritual understanding requires a different process, described here through metaphor: first one must find the mirror within the self by withdrawing one’s attention from bodily sensation and awareness, then through contemplation preserve it from filth and hold it away from the world, so that it may reflect God as it should. Both texts sidestep the more ordinary, commonly recognized process of knowledge acquisition through feeling and imagination, instead describing an ascetic process of immersive detachment. This is a form of self-discipline that quells ordinary feelings in order to attain to other, more rarefied ones. It is intriguing that Hilton’s chapter 31, the only chapter that explicitly demonstrates how his ‘reformation in feeling’ is grounded in Paul’s words, takes a curiously defensive turn. Chapter 30 had given a comprehensive account of the process by which one may reform the soul in feeling, culminating in the description of the soul as a mirror kept clean from fleshly filth that we have already examined. A man can know his own soul by leaving behind the bodily wits and imagination, instead contemplating the soul’s own ‘vnseable’, ‘vndedly’ nature. Through this self-knowledge, chapter 30 self-confidently concludes, one can attain to knowing the spiritual nature of God. In chapter 31, in contrast, Hilton demurs: Many medieval descriptions of this process can be found, though with varying subdivision of the roles and names of the faculties involved, and differing assessments of its reliability and pitfalls; there is also some variation in which faculties are understood to be embodied, and which incorporeal. Still a very useful overview is E. R. Harvey, The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1975).

12

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 227

1/29/2021 7:58:21 AM

2 2 8    F i ona S ome r se t

Now I hafe seyd to þe a lytel of reformynge in feyth, and also I hafe touched þe a lytel of þe forthgoynge fro þat reformynge to þe heyghere reformynge þat is in felynge. Not in þat entent as I wold be þese wordes setten Goddys werkynge vndyr a laghe of my spekynge, as for to seyn þu[s] werkeþ God in a soule and non oþer wyse. Nay, I mene not so. Bot I sey after my symple felynge þat oure Lord Jesu werkeþ þus in sum creatures, as I hope. And I hope wel þat he werkeþ oþerwyse also þat passeþ my wytte and my felynge. (p. 212, chapter 31 lines 4–11)

Hilton does not aim to set God’s workings ‘vnder a laghe of my spekyng’, as if it were his words that governed God’s work in the world. Instead, he hopes, ‘after my symple felynge’, that Jesus works this way in some creatures – and that he also works in other ways that surpass Hilton’s wit and feeling. However God may work is not so very important, if the result is perfect love of him. Hilton’s elaborate protestation about his own intentions is surely in part a demonstration of humility. In chapter 26 he had been severe about the spiritual presumption of those who know only the literal meaning of the commandments, and outwardly withdraw from the world, and suppose that they love God perfectly and are entitled to preach and teach to others.13 But Hilton’s protestation differs from the exaggerated protestations of willingness to accept correction that frequently appear at the opening of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century religious writings on contentious subjects, and were a convention of oral academic exercises for all students. It differs not only in its placement, about two-thirds of the way through Scale II rather than at its beginning or end, but because rather than asserting Hilton’s willingness to be corrected, it aims to downplay the certainty of his claims themselves. Hilton’s insistence here that his own ‘simple feeling’ allows him not to be sure, but to hope, suggests to me that he is aware of some of the many places where Wyclif, and lollard writings, make space between the extremes of granting and denying for a middle territory of uncertainty.14 As I have discussed elsewhere, this interest in the modality and voicing of propositional attitudes – in how we frame what we say and in who exactly says it – was widespread in fourteenth-century academic discourse, and can be found in commentaries on biblical and legal and philosophical texts as well as in treatises and quodlibetal questions. Lollard writers led the way in explaining this concept 13

14

See chapter 26’s discussion of true and false sunlight, and esp. pp. 156, 158, chapter 26 lines 18–45.

Hilton refers to hope elsewhere in Scale II as well, and especially where he explains the process of reforming the self. See the following chapters: 10 and 11; 20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30 and 31; 40, 41, 42 and 43.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 228

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   229

in the vernacular for wider audiences, and in turning it to newly contentious ends.15 At the end of the Dialogue between Reson and Gabbyng, for example, an abbreviated adaptation of Wyclif ’s Dialogus, Reason explains that there are four answers to speeches: granting, denying, doubting and supposing.16 The antifraternal tract De Blasphemia expands the range of the middle ground of uncertainty yet further to include guessing and hoping, and gives examples of cases where this is the appropriate attitude: And here knowe we many þinges, byneþe oure byleve, þat we shulde graunte hom, ne denye hom, ne dowte hom; bot suppose hom, gesse hom, or hope hom. As if a mon asked me wheþer þis bread were Gods body, I wolde nouþer byleve þat, ne dowte hit, ne denye hit, bot suppose þat his were so, bot if I had contrarye evydence. … And so if þo pope asked me wheþer I were ordeyned to be saved, or predestynate, I wolde sey that I hoped so, but I wolde not swere hit, ne ferme hit wiþouten condicioun þof he grettly punyscht me; ne denye hit, ne doute hit, wolde I no wey.17

Granting, denying and doubting are the conventional responses in logic, taught in academic exercises in the fourteenth-century university; but it seems that texts like these want to open up a wider range of affectively inflected stances toward uncertainty, on topics that are not merely academic (if anything is) but that they expect their readers to care about deeply. We do not know whether we ourselves or others around us are saved: we may hope and suppose, but we can have no certain knowledge; and thus, we need not accept the determinations of holy church when they assert that someone is, or is not, a member of the true church.18 F. Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998), esp. chap. 6, pp. 179–215. Now see also Uncertain Knowledge in the Middle Ages, ed. D. G. Denery II, K. Ghosh and N. Zeeman (Turnhout, 2014); R. Pasnau, After Certainty: A History of our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions (Oxford, 2017); K. Ghosh, ‘“And so it is licly to men”: Probabilism and Hermeneutics in Wycliffite Discourse’, The Review of English Studies, n.s. 70 (2019), 418–36.

15

‘Dialogue between Reson and Gabbyng’, in Four Wycliffite Dialogues, ed. F. Somerset, EETS OS 333 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 43–53; see p. 53 lines 357–73.

16

De Blasphemia is printed as ‘De Blasphemia, Contra Fratres’, in Select English Works of John Wyclif, ed. T. Arnold, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1871), III, 402–29; for this passage see p. 426 lines 16–21, 29–32. Punctuation modified.

17

On how these concerns played out when accusations of heresy or excommunication were threatened, see I. Forrest, ‘William Swinderby and the Wycliffite Attitude to Excommunication’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60.2 (2009), 246–69; Somerset, ‘Scripting Defense’; Somerset, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’.

18

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 229

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 3 0    F i ona S ome r se t

As I discuss in more detail elsewhere, the Thirty-Seven Conclusions (perhaps the most contentiously legalistic of all lollard writings, and bristling with quotations from the books of canon law across its length) is similarly concerned to teach readers how to feel and what to do when they feel uncertain.19 Conclusion 35, corollary 1 directs that readers should accept truthful determinations of the Church of Rome ‘meekly, and certeynly withouten doute eyther grutching of conscience’, but reject obviously false determinations: ‘vtturly, as the venym of the deuil’. Where they are uncertain, however, they should ‘neyther take it as beleue, neyther dispise it as false, but rest mekely without dread in truth and fredom of holy scripture that may not erre, and suffiseth to saluation without sinfull man’s clouting’.20 When in doubt, they should rest meekly without fear in truth. Again, these recommended responses are strongly inflected by feeling, for these are far from neutral decisions. Of course readers who remain meekly and fearlessly uncertain of the Church’s determinations while they repose in the truth of scripture must at the same time be certain of the truth of their interpretation of scripture, and confident in rejecting the patches sinful men have applied to its true meaning. But that is a problem the text does not resolve. Hilton is clearly deploying this same vocabulary as he opens up an affective space for uncertainty, for hoping in simple feeling, several times across Scale II. He does so in part because of his academic training, but in part also I think because he is observing and responding to lollard vernacular discourse. Like the Thirty-Seven Conclusions, Hilton models for his readers how to embrace uncertainty by grounding his explanation in holy scripture: Nerþeles, first, þat þou take not þis maner of spekynge of reformynge of a soule in felynge as feynenge or fantasye, þerfor I schal grounden it in Seynt Poulys wordes where he seyth þus: Nolite conf[o]rmari huic seculo, sed renouamini in nouitate sensus vestri. (pp. 212, 214, chapter 31 lines 23–26)

The language Hilton uses to describe the proof by scripture he goes on to give seems closely observant of lollard argumentation. He says he will ‘found’ (in the chapter rubric, p. 212 chapter 31 line 2) or ‘ground’ (here in the quotation) his account ‘in Seynt Poulys wordes’, and he does so because he fears that some might take his account as ‘feynenge’ or ‘fantasye’. He seems to share the worries we in find, for example, in the ‘Prologue to Isaiah and the Prophets’, found in copies of the Wycliffite Bible translation, where the writer tells us 19 20

Somerset, ‘Scripting Defense’.

The Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards, published as the Remonstrance against Romish Corruptions in the Church, ed. J. Forshall (London, 1851), p. 131 lines 9–26, quotations from lines 15–17, 19–20, 22–5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 230

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   231

Men moten seke þe treuþe of þe text and be war of gostli vndurstonding eþer moral fantasie, and ȝyue not ful credence þerto, no but it be grounded openly in þe text of hooli writ in o place eþer oþer, eþer in open resoun þat mai not be avoided, for ellis it wole as likyngli be applied to falsnesse as to treuþe. And it haþ disseyued grete men in oure daies, bi ouer-greet trist to her fantasies.21

This prologue too denies ‘ful credence’ to what remains uncertain. Its vocabulary, and its constellation of concerns, are closely similar to Hilton’s: ‘gostli vndurstonding’ is what the writers want, but they are concerned about the work of the imagination – fantasies are what the imagination produces, and ‘fantasie’ is also another name for the imagination.22 They insist on clear and open grounding in the words of scripture, or in open reason, as a means toward the ‘truth of the text’.23 That an exposition grounded in scripture or reason might arrive at a self-evident and incontrovertible truth, rather than a conclusion open to further interpretation or argument, might itself be regarded as a fantasy of a kind. Even so, in the lollard ‘Prologue to Isaiah and the Prophets’, and between Hilton’s grounding in scripture and his ambivalent reliance upon ratiocinative exposition, scripture and reason are presented as secure alternatives to the unbridled fantasy. A similar kind of overt reliance on scripture and reason, unconcerned by the ‘clouting’ (as Conclusion 35 in the Thirty-Seven Conclusions contemptuously calls it) required to stitch a given scriptural quotation to the situation at hand through paraphrase, was a habit of thought that was built into legal discourse and commentary. Wyclif and lollard writers learned to pair scripture with reason as a ground for truth, I think, from the exposition of the

‘The Prologue to Isaiah and the Prophets’, in The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate, ed. M. Dove (Exeter, 2010), pp. 86–8, p. 87 lines 46–51. This prologue to the prophetic books seems to have been composed by the Wycliffite Bible translators during the revisions that produced the Later Version, and appears in all extant manuscripts of this revised version of the biblical translation that include the book of Isaiah; for details see pp. xxx–ii.

21

On late medieval understandings of the imagination and their use in literary works, see M. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2011) and N. Watson, ‘The Phantasmal Past: Time, History, and the Recombinative Imagination’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010), 1–27.

22

On the frequency with which lollard writers cite scripture and reason as their grounding, see Somerset, Clerical Discourse, pp. 181–3.

23

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 231

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 3 2    F i ona S ome r se t

foundations of law in Gratian’s Treatise on Laws, the first twenty distinctions of the first book of the Decretum.24 The first distinction of Gratian’s Decretum quotes and explains Isidore’s Etymologia to anatomize the types of law and their sources and jurisdiction. Capitulum 5 explains ‘consuetudo’, custom. Isidore explains that custom is a type of law drawn from cultural mores, and asserts a broad conformity between law grounded in ratio and law grounded in scriptura: Consuetudo autem est ius quoddam moribus institutum, quod pro lege suscipitur, cum deficit lex. Nec differt, an scriptura, an ratione consistat, quando et legem ratio commendat. (cols. 3–4) (Custom is a sort of law (ius) established by usages and recognized as ordinance (lex) when ordinance (lex) is lacking. It does not matter whether it is confirmed by writing (scriptura) or by reason, since reason also supports ordinances (lex).) (p. 5)

Even if lollard writers are typically suspicious of established custom where it might conflict with scripture and reason, I think they are influenced by Gratian’s gloss of this second claim, where he first introduces custom as a component of law more generally, and first introduces these paired terms. Gratian too will cast doubt on the reliability of custom later on: he compiles sources that consider where custom should be followed and where discarded for its failure to conform to scripture and reason in distinctions 11 and 12, and particularly D11 c4. Here, however, Gratian introduces scripture and reason as the bases of law for the first time: Cum itaque dicitur, non differt, vtrum consuetudo scriptura, vel ratione consistat; apparet, quod consuetudo partim est redacta in scriptis, partim moribus tantum vtentium est reseruata. (cols. 5–6)

24

Gratian, The Treatise on Laws, trans. A. Thompson, O.P., with the Ordinary Gloss trans. J. Gordley, introduction by K. Christensen (Washington DC, 1993). Since there are ambiguities of definition for every term Gratian uses in this foundational section, I will quote this translation. Their translation uses the 1582 Rome edition of the Decretum with Glossa Ordinaria as well as interlinear glosses, and for the Latin I will quote the digitized copy of that edition available online at http:// digital.library.ucla.edu/canonlaw/ (most recently accessed 4 November 2018), cited by column numbers (both, since the text lies between). While there is of course considerable variation in the interlinear and marginal glosses, though less so in the Glossa Ordinaria, among manuscript copies I will use the glosses in this easily accessible authoritative edition as a representative example.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 232

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   233

(So, when it says, ‘it does not matter whether custom is confirmed by writing (scriptura) or by reason’, this shows that, in part, custom has been collected in writing, and, in part, it is preserved only in the usages of its followers.) (p. 6)

It does not matter whether custom is grounded in scripture or reason, Isidore had said; Gratian explains that this obviously implies that custom is in fact partly written, and partly preserved in cultural mores. Gratian uses the terms scriptura and ratio rather differently than lollard writers will later use ‘scripture’ and ‘resoun’: scriptura seemingly refers to written sources more broadly, rather than only to the Bible, and, as Gratian draws his own conclusion here, he seems to present ratio as equivalent to cultural mores, even though later in distinctions 11 and 12 he will go on to qualify the relationship between them more carefully. Where lollard writers pair scripture and reason as sources of authority, their emphasis, as here, is on their compatibility and complementarity; they leave the problem of determining what is compatible with reason, and how reason might complement and extend scripture, similarly unresolved. One way that scripture can be accommodated to reason (or indeed to cultural mores) is through what Conclusion 35 of the Thirty-Seven Conclusion has disparagingly called ‘clouting’: expository paraphrase that stitches a given quotation more neatly to the situation it is quoted to support. This kind of ‘clouting’ is pervasive in canon law commentary, where many distinctions cite scripture as if its proof of the point it supposedly bolsters were self-evident, even as supplementary marginal and interlinear glosses are supplied to complete the claim. Interlinear glosses explain scripture quoted to prove an argument explicitly by adjusting its wording, with or without an ‘id est’, ‘that is’, to link the gloss to the quotation. Distinction 19 capitulum 8, for example, uses deft interpolation to fit 1 Cor. 3. 6–7 for explaining that Paul, speaking for Christ, endorses the efficacy of the sacraments even when performed by a heretic: ita ille, per quem loquitur Christus, Paulus affirmat, Ego plantaui,d Apolloe rigauit:f sed Deus incrementum dedit.g Itaque neque qui plantat est aliquid, neque qui rigat; sed qui incrementum dat Deus. (cols. 111–12) (Thus the one through whom Christ speaks, Paul that is, affirms ‘I planted, Apollo watered, but God gave the increase. So neither the one who planted nor the one who watered is anything, for God gave the increase.’) (p. 83)

The interlinear glosses to the underlined lemmata are keyed to the superscript letters and glossed at top left of the first image cited in n. 25: some manuscript copies supply letters or symbols keyed to marginal glosses, as here, while others write the glosses above the words they explain, as the second

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 233

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 3 4    F i ona S ome r se t

image cited in n. 25.25 The glosses equate planting with preaching, specify that Apollo is Paul’s disciple, explain that watering is equivalent to baptism and name the increase God gives as grace and the remission of sins. Even if the interpretation is conventional enough to be unremarkable, the glosses spell it out as a matter of one-to-one correspondence with the biblical text. Similarly, a marginal gloss might stitch a biblical quotation to a paraphrase by means of ‘that is’, and sometimes in a way that seems incongruous, as when in Distinction 20 Gratian explains that when Christ gave Peter the keys of the kingdom (Matt. 16. 19), the first key gave Peter the power to distinguish between leper and leper. The image cited in n. 26 shows the layout in the 1580 edition.26 The marginal gloss keyed to letter ‘c’ in the text first quotes the lemma in italics, then explains: inter lepram et lepram] id est, inter causam et causam. alludit ei quod fiebat in lege. (col. 114) (between leper and leper: that is, between one matter and another. This alludes to what was done in the Law [Lev. 14. 2–4].) (p. 85)

An allusion to Leviticus might not seem the most obvious way to explain the significance of the first key Christ gave to Peter, but the supplemental gloss spells out Gratian’s reference, then goes on to interpret its significance. Expository paraphrase of scripture of course appears in a variety of genres including homiletic writing, theological exposition and both marginal and freestanding scriptural commentaries.27 However, the type of scriptural paraphrase that appears in legal contexts is compressed and instrumental in ways that are quite distinctive, if not entirely unique. It is intriguing that Hilton’s exegetical method, like that of many lollard writings, incorporates a kind of 25

26

27

For the first image referenced, see http://digital.library.ucla.edu/canonlaw/ librarian?ITEMPAGE=CJC1&NEXT; for the second, see https://www.e-codices. unifr.ch/en/acs/0089/11r/0/Sequence-1882, top left quarter of the folio.

http://digital.library.ucla.edu/canonlaw/librarian?ITEMPAGE=CJC1&PREV marginal gloss c in the right column, near the end of the italicized passage.

On expository paraphrase and its genres see also K. Zieman, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter and the Possibilities of Vernacular Scriptural Commentary’, in The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation, ed. T. Atkin and F. Lenaghan (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 149–70. On English vernacular psalm commentary in the context of the longer tradition of medieval commentaries on the psalms see M. Kuczynski, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1995); see esp. pp. 170–6, on the Wycliffite psalter Bodley 554 and its glosses see A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, ed. M. Kuczynski, 2 vols., EETS OS 352, 353 (Oxford, 2019, 2020).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 234

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   235

compressed paraphrase that resembles that found in legal commentary, but contrasts (as we will see) with a more broadly popular method for expounding scripture that Rolle had developed around the middle of the fourteenth century, but that was progressively adapted in three successive lollard revisions.28 Hilton seems to agree with lollard writers that the solution to trusting our imaginations too much as we seek spiritual understanding is to ground our arguments openly in scripture and reason. However, his method, like that of lollard writers or that of the commentators on the Decretum, may seem difficult to distinguish from the ‘clouting’ of sinful men. Hilton does not produce an extended analysis of one chapter of a single Pauline epistle, as does the Wordes of Poule. Instead, he concatenates verses from Paul that address renewal through some sort of radical change: Romans 12. 12, Colossians 1. 9, Ephesians 4. 23–24, Colossians 3. 9–10. In the passages quoted below I distinguish scriptural quotation from interpolative commentary as J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Stephen Lahey and I did in our anthology of Wyclif ’s and lollard writings. Only the underlined words are direct translation. The words interpolated in front or in the middle of quotations, or else appended after a ‘that is’, behave as if they are part of the quotation or else merely explanatory, but in fact they tie the quotation to the case being made with its help, and elaborate and adapt its meaning: Nolite conf[o]rmari huic seculo, sed renouamini in nouitate sensus vestri. Þat is: Ʒe þat are þurgh grace reformed in feith, conforme ȝow not henforward to maners of þe werd, in pride, in coueytyse, and oþer synnes, bot be ȝe reformed in newhed of felynge.

Here, ‘þat is’ functions to link Latin quotation with English translation, rather than lemma with gloss. But the translation is an interpolated paraphrase that stitches the quotation to its application. Notice that ‘You that are through grace reformed in faith’, interpolated in front, addresses the quotation to the spiritually ambitious readers at the stage of spiritual progress that interests Hilton here. ‘Henforward’, the next interpolation, similarly places Paul’s advice at one stage of the larger process Hilton has described. ‘In pride, in couetyse, and other synnes’ specifies what should be left behind by his aspiring readers. Hilton repeatedly emphasizes that he is presenting what Paul himself said; but the ‘that is’ used in this discussion and frequently throughout the more exegetical parts of Scale II interposes Hilton’s own voice, in a kind of supplemental ventriloquizing of the voice of Paul that is not clearly visible to readers who cannot understand Latin. Just like interlinear or marginal glosses in canon On these adaptations more broadly see Zieman, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter’ as well as her book in progress on the topic; Kuczynski, Prophetic Song, esp. pp. 14–19, 165–88.

28

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 235

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 3 6    F i ona S ome r se t

law that patch scriptural quotations to the circumstances they are quoted to support, but in a way that conceals the stitches for Hilton’s readers who cannot understand Latin and distinguish his patchwork from his translation, Hilton substitutes his own words for those of Paul even as he disclaims any intention to put God’s power ‘under a law of my spekyng’. By way of contrast, consider how Rolle’s English Psalter handles psalm 1 verse 2’s description of how the ‘beatus vir’, or ‘blisful man’, adheres to God’s law. In his innovative attempt at vernacular commentary Rolle simplifies his source while focusing attention on each psalm’s import for the contemplative life.29 However, even as he compresses and narrows, Rolle clearly demarcates translation from exposition: Sed in lege domini voluptas eius, et in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte. Bot in laghe of lord the will of him, and in his laghe he sall thynke day and nyght. Hys wil is in godis laghe that kepis it gladly, and for luf, noght for dred and in sarynes, swa that he has na noy of trauaile in godis seruys. And that will is noght ydell na shortly, [bot he sall thynke in hys laghe – noght out tharof as ill men dos – day and nyght; that is, assiduelly, in wele and wa. Or ay when he sall thynke he sall thynke thar in; noght anly in the lettirs of the laghe, bot in halynes of stabil purpos in cristes luf. For this thoght of his laghe is lastand kepynge of halynes.]30

Paraph markers separate the Latin verse from a translation that cleaves close to the syntax and vocabulary of the Latin, then again from a commentary that paraphrases and further explains the translation, phrase by phrase, in Rolle’s effort to show his devotional reader what it would mean for a believer to have his will in the law of the lord, and think on it day and night. In the course of this expository paraphrase, Rolle does use ‘that is’ to introduce a substitute phrase and explanatory paraphrase. But he does so in his interpretation 29 30

See Kuczynski, Prophetic Song, p. 6; Zieman, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter’, p. 155.

Quoted from the online version of The Psalter, or Psalms of David and certain canticles with a translation and exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. H. R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884), in the Middle English Compendium, https://quod.lib. umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;cc=cme;view=toc;idno=AJF7399.0001.001 (accessed 5 November 2018). I have removed textual notes, modified punctuation and expanded abbreviations, but left the paraph markers transcribed from the manuscript in place. The square brackets are inserted to indicate where the lollardinterpolated version labelled by Hudson as R1 diverges most significantly. For a fuller description of how the Latin text and English translation are presented across the manuscripts of Rolle’s English Psalter see A. Sutherland, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300–1450 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 256–8.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 236

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   237

rather than his translation, and this phrase introduces first one, then another supplementary interpretation that do not cancel one another out, but have the clearly demarcated role of substituting more easily understood phrases that apply the psalm’s evocative literary language to everyday contemplative life. ‘Day and night’, Rolle explains, means ‘assiduously, in wellbeing and in woe, or whenever he is thinking; and not only in the letter of the law, but in the holiness of stable purpose in the love of Christ’. The lollard-interpolated version, in contrast, diverges significantly for the portion of the quoted commentary enclosed in square brackets (compare with the previous quotation): For it is þouhteful in Goddes lawe, not out þereof as yuel mennes is, but contynuely þenkyng þerinne, in wele and wo boþe day and nighte. For a deuoute mannes þought is euer þerinne, not onely in þe lettris of þe lawe, but in holynesse of stable purpos in Cristis loue, for stable þought in Goddis lawe is lastyng kepyng of holynesse.31

The revisers depart from Rolle’s painstaking explanation into an extended exploration of the contrast between having one’s will in God’s law as opposed to out of it that Rolle mentions, but does not develop. They subsume Rolle’s explanation of ‘day and night’, as well as his contrast between keeping the letters of the law and maintaining stable purpose, into this thematic development. This is a relatively subtle change, but even here we can see the lollard tendency to integrate interpretation into quotation so that their voices merge, rather than separating them. To appreciate the complexity of the play with voicing that expository paraphrase permits in the Wordes of Poule, as in Hilton’s Scale II, we might consider the dizzying recursive process of attribution that links quotations of the voice of the blood of Christ across the Wordes of Poule. Hebrews 12. 24 gives us the ‘sanguinis aspersionem melius loquentem quam Abel’, or as the Wordes writer puts it, ‘þe sprynging of blood betere spekynge þan Abel’. In expounding this enigmatic phrase the Wordes writer gives this blood not just a voice, but personhood, as ‘þe blood of Crist sched in his passion betere spekenge for veniaunce whan we suffre tribulacioun þan dede þe blood of Abel þat cryede veniaunce vpon Caym þat slouʒ him’. When it speaks vengeance, the Wordes writer explains, the blood of Christ speaks in Paul’s words: Þe blood of Crist now in heuene spekeþ þis veniaunce to hem þat couwardli fleen to suffre persecucioun for his sake, and on þat oþer syde, as greet mercy Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles, ed. A. Hudson, 3 vols., EETS OS 340, 341, 343 (Oxford, 2012–14), p. 10 lines 55–60.

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 237

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 3 8    F i ona S ome r se t

or gretter to hem þat wilfully suffre persecucioun for him. Seiþ þe apostil, ‘Seeþ þat ʒee forsaken not þe spekere’,32 þat is to seie, þat blood of Crist spekynge þat þat seiþ þe apostil, ‘If we suffre wiþ him we schuln reigne wit hym’.33 … And on þat oþer syde, þe blood of Crist to hem þat pursuen spekeþ as meche veniaunce.

Paul says, see that you do not reject the speaker. But that speaker is not Paul, according to the Wordes author, but the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ, in turn, is speaking what Paul says in 2 Timothy 2. 12, ‘if we suffer with him then we shall reign with him’, promising vengeance to those who flee as cowards from tribulation (although this bit is not quoted), and reign in heaven to those who suffer it. The ‘that is’ of expository paraphrase in this case stitches Paul’s admonition not to forsake the speaker to the voice it attributed to the blood of Christ in interpreting Hebrews 12. 24, then attributes to that voice Paul’s words in 2 Timothy 2. 12. The first-person voice of Paul’s words, ‘if we suffer with him then we shall reign with him’, is not spoken in the voice of Christ himself, for Christ as person is object, not subject. The ‘we’ is Paul and his fellow Christians; ‘him’ is Christ. The blood of Christ has acquired a metaphorical personhood that seems to be separate from that of Christ himself, or that perhaps can be identified with the corporate body of Christ that is the Church as a whole. This voice is able to promise vengeance and glory to those who suffer tribulation patiently, and it does so by speaking for Paul, in Paul’s voice. It is important I think to see that this expository method emerges not from an insensitivity to voice, but a fascination with it, in both Hilton’s and lollard writings. To be sure, fascination with voice is a more widespread phenomenon in medieval writing, and, as David Lawton has recently argued, it is particularly important to understanding how the religious poesis of medieval Christianity has grounded literary poesis across Europe and the anglophone world up to the present.34 For my part, I want to encourage more attention to commentary as a form of poesis, and to the range of commentating disciplines that many writers would have been exposed to, as well as the ways that commentary surfaces when their religious poesis is under pressure. What have we learned, then, by considering commonalities between these writers who are often thought of as strongly opposed, but who similarly aim to address reform-minded, spiritually aspiring readers in the vernacular? Both 32 33 34

Hebrews 12. 25 ‘Videte ne recusetis loquentem’.

Timothy 2. 12 ‘Si sustinebimus, et conregnabimus’.

D. Lawton, Voice in Later Medieval English Literature: Public Interiorities (Oxford, 2017).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 238

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

How C anon L a wyers Read the B ible   239

Hilton and the writer of the Wordes of Poule convey to us a process of religious self-making that is acutely sensitive to feeling, and acknowledges pain and suffering, but at the same time asks its readers not to feel what they feel, but to feel otherwise. They encourage hope in place of certainty, but at the same time promise their readers (and seem to demonstrate) a new sense of assurance in discerning biblical truth. Their modes of intrumentalized exegesis are similar in many ways, and may borrow more heavily from their training in law than from their reading of spiritual works and biblical commentary; certainly they develop a distinctive mode of exegetical exposition in the vernacular that differs sharply from what we find in Rolle’s English Psalter. If we take the time to read Hilton’s Scale II and the Wordes of Poule carefully, we discover that their experimentation with voice and personhood is as dazzling as that of Piers Plowman or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or Thomas Hoccleve’s Series, even if less conventionally poetic.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 239

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 240

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

IV

Texts and Contours of Religious Life

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 241

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 242

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

11 Beauty in Liturgy: The Carmelites and the Resurrection KEVIN ALBAN

C

t

armelites are perhaps best known for their charism of prayer and contemplation. In the popular imagination, members of the order conduct enclosed, secluded lives best exemplified by Teresa of Avila (1515–82) and her nuns. Although Teresa and her companions lived in an environment of liturgy and devotion, the emphasis she brought to the religious life was on the interior life and not the external, liturgical forms of prayer.1 However, the distinction between interior and exterior is to an extent an artificial one, useful perhaps for the purposes of analysis. The honouree of this volume is a fine example of a scholar who appreciates the devotional culture in which contemplative texts are produced and the important connection between context and content. The Carmelite order, originating in Palestine in the early thirteenth century and present in Europe from the middle of that century, was one of two mendicant orders in the Middle Ages that had its own ‘rite’, or way of celebrating the Mass and Office. The other order was the Dominicans, and their liturgical history has been well investigated and documented.2 By contrast, the history of the Carmelite rite has been produced only relatively recently. In some ways this is surprising, given that Carmelite writings on prayer and contemplation were elaborated in that atmosphere and context of liturgical devotions. One of the reasons for the relative neglect of this area of Carmelite life may be that in 1972 the General Council of the Carmelite order decided to put the rite into abeyance. The reason given at the time was that congregations were unfamiliar The Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (O. Carm.) is the order intended here. The Discalced Carmelites, founded by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, never adopted the Carmelite Rite on their independence in the sixteenth century.

1

For example, W. Bonniwell, History of the Dominican Liturgy, 1215–1945, 2nd rev. edn (New York, 1945).

2

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 243

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 4 4    K e v i n Al ban

with this form of the Mass.3 The promulgation of ‘Summorum Pontificum’4 by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 and the explanatory Instruction ‘Universae Ecclesiae’ in 2011 opened the way for the use by religious orders of their own rites where they existed.5 Inevitably this gave rise to some reflection on the value of these forms which were proper to some religious orders. In the Carmelite order, while there was no real move to restore the ancient liturgy, there was, however, some interest in re-examining the inspiration and theological dimensions of that rite.6 Two congresses were held in 2006 and 2009 to examine Carmelite liturgy, both in its historical form and in a modern context. In 2010 another conference was held in Rome on contemplation at which Michael Sargent was the keynote speaker.7 His paper drew attention to the fact that ‘contemplation was the form of work characteristic of the religious orders, and it took its place alongside the other forms of work that were proper to the monastery: the “opus Dei” of singing the liturgical office’.8 Contemplation and liturgy are the key characteristics of the religious life, not only, I would contend, in the monastic tradition but in the mendicant as well. One of the leading scholars at these liturgical congresses was Arie Kallenberg (1926–2015), who had compiled a commented catalogue of Carmelite

3

4

5

See G. Midili, ‘La liturgia nei documenti carmelitani dal 1971 al 1995’, in Fons et culmen vitae carmelitanae: Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar S. Felice del Benaco, 13–16 June 2006, ed. K. Alban (Rome, 2007), pp. 143–66.

Motu proprio of Benedict XVI, ‘Summorum Pontificum’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 99 (2007), 777–81. Instruction of the Pontifical Commission ‘Ecclesia Dei’, ‘Universae ecclesiae’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 103 (2011), 413–20, n. 34: ‘The use of the liturgical books proper to the Religious Orders which were in effect in 1962 is permitted.’

The General Council of the Order authorized only one priest to celebrate the Carmelite rite at the request of the diocesan ordinary: Atti del Consiglio Generale, Sessione n. 248, 5 March 2012 (Archivio Generale Carmelitano, Rome). For some years the Carmelite hermits of Lake Elmo, Minnesota had revived some elements of the Carmelite rite of the Mass and the Divine Office. In 2003, the bishop of Cheyenne, Wyoming, authorised the self-styled ‘Carmelite monks’ of Cody to use the Carmelite rite. The motu proprio of 2007 and the Instruction of 2011 allowed the community to opt to use the rite themselves without any permission or authorization.

6

7 8

The papers from this conference are still to be published.

M. G. Sargent, ‘Laying Sticks to the Fire: The Work of Contemplation in Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 244

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   245

liturgical manuscripts as his doctoral thesis, published in 1962.9 In the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium Kallenberg continued his liturgical research by drawing attention to the spirituality of the Carmelite rite. He emphasized in particular the importance of the theme of the Lord’s Resurrection and how that emerged from typically Carmelite celebrations. This emphasis on Resurrection is not new to Catholic theology today. The Second Vatican Council asserted that every Sunday was to be a celebration of the Resurrection and that it was at the centre of Christian life and experience.10 In the first part of this essay, however, I wish to look at the subject of the Resurrection in the Carmelite rite from the perspective of beauty; it is my contention that this approach can bring a renewed appreciation of Carmelite liturgy, avoiding nostalgia on the one hand or historicism on the other. I would like to suggest that the category of beauty can connect the interior disposition of the believer with its external manifestation. In the second part of this essay, I would like to look at how the Resurrection spirituality of the liturgy may have influenced other dimensions of Carmelite life, in particular the choice of the day on which to profess vows and the adoption of a plain, white mantle as the habit of the order in 1287 in place of a striped cloak. In this I hope to show that Resurrection themes pervaded other areas of Carmelite life, such as key events and even the material culture of the choice of fabric. I work and write as a member of the Carmelite order.

Beauty in theology

Beauty is not simply the object of an attraction or an external characteristic, but the object of the thinking process itself as it ‘dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another’.11 The apprehension of the beautiful presupposes, and in classical Western metaphysics is convertible to, the search for truth by the intellect and the search for the good by the will. Beauty is the object of the intellect and the will combined, as the synthesis of that which is real and that which is desirable or sought after. Therefore, it is so much more than a superficial attractiveness; beauty has an intellectual and a moral unity evincing a depth of attitude and connection. P. Kallenberg, Fontes liturgiae carmelitanae: Investigatio in decreta, codices et proprium sanctorum (Rome, 1962).

9

Sacrosanctum concilium, n. 102: ‘Every week, on the day which she has called the Lord’s day, she keeps the memory of the Lord’s resurrection.’

10

H. U. Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 2nd edn, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1982–89), I, 18.

11

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 245

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 4 6    K e v i n Al ban

Believers would maintain that identity as individuals and as humanity is celebrated and recalled in a fundamental way when we engage in public acts of worship, when we celebrate and recall the saving Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we affirm the centrality of the liturgy as the source and summit of all that the Church does.12 The action of Christ embedded in a meal is the most intimate and significant manifestation of this sacrifice. It is not the memory of a dead man’s sacrifice, but the celebration of the Lord of Life who is present in a sacramental form and who will come in a triumphant form in the future; it is the celebration of the Risen Lord as the one who gives meaning and identity. This action of the celebration of the life offered to us draws our attention to the Resurrection in a particular way, the sacrifice in the past that we present in the present to nourish our hope in a future glory. Hence, in this perspective there has been a strong emphasis in the liturgy of the eucharist – but ultimately in all liturgy – on the centrality of the Resurrection. The triad of the truth, goodness and beauty of being finds a parallel in the triad of: • the past where we understand the truth of our redemption. • the future where we desire to be fully realised in the total goodness of life. • the present which brings the past and future together in the beauty of a renewed existence here and now. The liturgy embodies the objects of the intellect and the will taken individually, and the synthesis of the true and the good, in beauty. The symbol of this synthesis, in the deepest sense of the word, is the Risen Lord. So, the centrality of the Resurrection provides the object above all of the movement of the human spirit as it strives to understand, as it desires and as it apprehends the Risen Lord. In the Eastern tradition, beauty is seen as a divine energy, rather than an intelligible property of being. Beauty, according to a recent article by Ernesto Mainoldi, is defined not by external appearances but as a manifestation of something hidden, a vehicle of transcendent meaning.13 The development of the idea of a ‘hypostasis’ in ontology allowed the transcendent and the immanent to come together but ‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’, as the classic expression of hypostasis in the 12

13

Sacrosanctum concilium, n. 9: ‘Nevertheless the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the font from which all her power flows.’ E. S. Mainoldi, ‘Deifying Beauty: Towards the Definition of a Paradigm for Byzantine Aesthetics’, Aisthesis 11 (2018), 13–29.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 246

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   247

Council of Chalcedon has it.14 The divine nature is represented in the icon of human nature as its visible manifestation. But this is not a one-way process from the divine to the human. The totality of human nature, intellect and emotion participates in the divine in the process of theosis. The divinization of the human is achieved in the sensations of beauty that art evokes, for example, and in which art is a vehicle for those divine energies that enable human participation in the Godhead. The beauty of art, of liturgy, of the liturgical space are all a sharing in the energy of God-as-beauty-itself. Michael Sargent makes a similar point in his contribution to the conference on Carmelite contemplation mentioned above when he notes that contemplation is the act of concentration on and observation of ‘emptied space’. This is the truest and deepest sense of the ‘beauty of the liturgy’ and it is my argument that the Carmelite emphasis on Resurrection in liturgy is one of the ways in which the order understood itself and which goes beyond a superficial sense of historical identity and touches the heart of the charism. The self-understanding of Carmelites was not confined to an interior process of introspection and individual meditation, but it was made public and visible in the liturgical forms that the order chose to adopt. The value of an accessible and distinctive liturgical form was readily appreciated by the religious orders who had their own rites in the Middle Ages. This was not only a question of devotion or aesthetics, but it had practical implications in terms of recruitment and donations to be able to distinguish one order from another. Beauty is perhaps the category that can function as the link between the interior process of sharing in the divinity of the Godhead and the expression of that process in a visible way. It is important to consider, therefore, the process by which the Carmelites came to adopt a distinctive way of celebrating Mass and Office.

The liturgy and the early history of the Carmelites

The Carmelite rule is, properly speaking, a ‘rescript’ from Albert of Jerusalem (d. 1214) addressed to a group of hermits living on Mount Carmel, above Haifa in the Holy Land. It seems probable that the group were experiencing some difficulties living together and that they turned to Albert to provide some solutions.15 Albert’s intervention can be dated only across a period from ‘Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith’, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols., ed. Norman Tanner (London, 1990), I, 86.

14

K. Waaijman, The Mystical Space of Carmel: A Commentary on the Carmelite Rule (Leuven, 1999) analyses the rule primarily as a letter.

15

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 247

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 4 8    K e v i n Al ban

1206 when he became patriarch and his death in 1214.16 The liturgical provisions in the Rule of Albert are quite sparse and can be summed up in four points, which probably confirm existing practice:17 • • • •

listening to Scripture18 regular attendance at Liturgy19 alternative prayers for those who cannot read the psalms20 fasting every day from the Exaltation of the Cross to Easter Sunday21

The only ‘new’ provision may have been to build an oratory in the middle of the cells in the wadi where the hermits lived: ‘An oratory is to be built as conveniently as possible in the midst of the cells; you are to gather daily in the morning for Mass, where this is convenient.’22 That oratory survives in part and, from an account of an itinerary to Jerusalem written between 1229 and 1239, it appears that ‘there is a very beautiful and delightful place where the Latin hermits who are called friars [brothers] of Carmel live. There is a very beautiful little Church of Our Lady.’23 This dedication is confirmed by similar 16

17

18

19

20

21

22 23

P. Mullins, The Carmelites and St Albert of Jerusalem: Origins and Identity (Rome, 2015).

The latest and best translation is The Rule of St Albert, as approved by Innocent IV (1247), leaflet circulated with the Carmelite Secular Order Newsletter, September 2003. This appears as an appendix in Celebrating St Albert and his Rule: Rules, Devotion, Orthodoxy and Dissent, ed. M. Sauer and K. Alban (Rome, 2017). Otherwise, see The Rule of St. Albert, ed. H. Clarke and B. Edwards (Aylesford, 1973). Rule n. 7, ‘You are, however, to eat in a common refectory what may have been given to you, listening together to a reading from holy Scripture, if this can conveniently be done.’

Rule n. 11, ‘Those who have learned to say the canonical hours with the clerics should do so according to the practice of the holy Fathers and the approved custom of the Church.’

Rule n. 11, ‘Those who do not know the hours are to say the Our Father twenty-five times for the night office – except for Sunday and solemn feasts when this number is doubled, so that the Our Father is said fifty times. It is to be said seven times for the morning Lauds and for the other Hours, except for Vespers when it must be said fifteen times.’ Rule n. 16, ‘You are to fast every day except Sundays from the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross until Easter Sunday, unless illness or bodily weakness, or other just cause counsels a lifting of the fast, since necessity has no law.’ Rule n. 14.

‘The Holy Pilgrimages (1229–1239)’, in Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291, ed. D. Pringle, Crusade Texts in Translation 23 (Farnham, 2012), p. 168.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 248

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   249

accounts of pilgrimage routes in the middle of the thirteenth century and later. However, it would be a mistake to see the hermits as isolated or cut off from the world around them. There is evidence of early outreach in the presence of a bell tower to enable a call to prayer. There are also signs of lay involvement in the hermitage in the form of a husband and wife burial, possibly of lay benefactors.24 It seems that, following the well-known principle of taking on the rite of the local Church, that of the patriarchate of Jerusalem, the hermits adopted the Rite of the Holy Sepulchre.25 The rite was essentially Gallo-Roman, that is, a Roman rite modified by French forms. This was the rite used in the church at the heart of the local diocese and, arguably, at the heart of Christendom itself. The recovery of the burial place of Christ and the location of his Resurrection was one of the principal aims of the crusading movement. Beyond the military form of pilgrimage called the ‘crusades’, was the better-known ‘devotional’ pilgrimage to the Holy Land that had Jerusalem and the Lord’s tomb as its goal.26 The hermits would have been very aware of the number of pilgrims on their way to and from Jerusalem, stopping as they did frequently on Mount Carmel to break their journey.27 The whole sitz im Leben of the early Carmelites is imbued with the goal and objective of the pilgrim guests. The Sanctoral of the Jerusalem patriarchate was taken on by the Holy Sepulchre church and blended with its own emphasis on the Resurrection. The calendar and propers which include Old Testament saints remind us of the fundamental journeys of Abraham and Moses.28 At the same time, the life of Christ is made visible in processions around the church of the Holy Sepulchre E. Friedman, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel – A Study in Carmelite Origins (Rome, 1979), especially chapter III, ‘Byzantine Monasticism on Mount Carmel’, pp. 60–103, and D. Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–2009), II, 249–57.

24

C. Dondi, ‘La liturgia del Santo Sepulcro di Gerusalemme: origine, adozione da parte degli ordini religiosi (e militari) e sopravvivenze’, in We Sing a Hymn of Glory to the Lord: Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar, Rome 6–8 July 2009, ed. K. Alban (Rome, 2010), pp. 71–84.

25

C. Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005). The place of Christ’s Resurrection and the liturgy of its commemoration had been the object of pilgrimage and imitation from a very early date in the history of the Church. See, for example, R. Salvarini, La fortuna del Santo Sepolcro nel medioevo: Spazio, liturgia, architettura (Milan, 2008).

26

‘The Holy Pilgrimages (1229–1239)’, p. 169.

27

C. Dondi, The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Turnhout, 2004), p. 46.

28

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 249

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 5 0    K e v i n Al ban

symbolizing the journey of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem and the specific journey of the Via Crucis, marking out in a topographical form the events of the final days of the earthly life of Jesus.29 The importance of movement and journey, representing an interior transformation, as well as external historical events, cannot be overstated. This is at the root of the medieval pilgrimage, wherever it happened. However, the idea of pilgrimage of the Middle Ages had as its ideal goal the Holy City of Jerusalem, and within that the places most closely associated with the saving work of Christ. When the hermits on Mount Carmel adopted the Rite of the Holy Sepulchre, they also took on a liturgical emphasis on the Resurrection which gradually shaped the spirituality of the order in ways perhaps less obvious than devotion to Mary or to Elijah. Already in the Formula of St Albert there is perhaps a hint of this in the provision that the hermits fast from the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross to Easter Sunday. It is a sort of ‘dietary pilgrimage’ from the Cross to the Resurrection which embodies in a very concrete way the focus on the saving work of Christ. It is a reminder at a very basic level that the goal of life itself is the Resurrection; that the fullness of sustenance is found in the Risen Body of Christ; that the end of the fast which is enjoyed on Easter Sunday is an anticipation of the heavenly banquet.

A note on Carmelite liturgical sources

All students of Carmelite liturgy are indebted in the first place to the compilation of manuscripts by Arie (Paschalis) Kallenberg, whose name and work have already been mentioned in this essay.30 In his 2007 essay, he summarizes and analyses more recent work on liturgical manuscripts by another Carmelite, James Boyce (1950–2010).31 Boyce’s main interest was the liturgical music of the medieval Carmelites, but he also published on Carmelite liturgy in general.32 29

30

31

32

It is to the Carmelite author Jan Pascha (c. 1459–1539) that we owe the devotion ‘The Stations of the Cross’, which gives a para-liturgical framework to the topographical Via Dolorosa. See J. Pascha – J. Heigham, The Voyage of the Cross: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem (1604–1605) (Rome, 2016). See note 8 above. Not to be forgotten in the field of Carmelite liturgical scholarship is the Catalan A. Forcadell, ‘Ritus Carmelitarum Antiquae Observantiae’, Biblioteca Carmelitana 2, Ephemerides Liturgicae, 63 (1950).

A. Kallenberg, ‘From Gallican to Sepulchre to Carmelite Rite – A Short Reflection on the Origins of Carmelite Liturgy’, in Fons et culmen, ed. Alban, pp. 55–73.

J. Boyce, Carmelite Liturgy and Spiritual Identity: The Choir Books of Kraków (Turnhout, 2008) is Boyce’s most substantial contribution to Carmelite musicology.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 250

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   251

The key text here for understanding medieval Carmelite liturgy is the Ordinal of Sibert de Beka (c. 1260–1332).33 This is a liturgical ordo that sets out the references of the texts for both Mass and Office for the Carmelite calendar.34 It was published by the General Chapter in 1312 and ‘established absolute liturgical uniformity throughout the entire order’.35 Both Kallenberg and Boyce, however, point out that there are texts of the thirteenth century that shed light on Carmelite liturgical celebrations. Another manuscript from Paris (BN Lat. 884) is a missal which is very clearly Carmelite, judging by the incipit on fol. 8: ‘missale fratrum ordinis beate Marie de Monte Carmeli secundum usum Dominici Sepulchri’. This missal is usually dated sometime between 1297 and 1306. The use of the ancient title ‘Brothers of Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel’ may point to an earlier date, however.36 There is a third document from the late thirteenth century which points to the use of the Rite of the Holy Sepulchre by Carmelites: an ordo which was used in England.37 This is dateable to around 1265 and, although it does not mention the commemoration of the Resurrection on the last Sunday of the liturgical year, it does prescribe a daily commemoration of the Resurrection and includes a number of feasts from the Palestinian calendar, such as those of Isaac, Jacob and Moses. Kallenberg suggests that Sibert compiled his ordo with an eye to this earlier one.

The Carmelite Rite of the Holy Sepulchre

The principal feature of the Carmelite rite which distinguishes it from other rites proper to religious orders is the reproduction of the ceremonies associated with the Resurrection in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. These ceremonies fall into two broad categories: either unique feasts, such as Easter Sunday and the last Sunday of the liturgical year, or celebrations held on a weekly basis. See also his Praising God in Carmel: Studies in Carmelite Liturgy (Washington DC, 1999).

K. Alban, ‘Sibert de Beka – The Man and His Times’, in We Sing a Hymn of Glory, ed. Alban, pp. 17–23.

33

The critical edition of the Ordinal by B. Zimmerman is printed as an appendix in We Sing a Hymn of Glory, ed. Alban.

34

J. Boyce, ‘Carmelite Liturgical Spirituality’, in Boyce, Praising God, p. 336.

35

K. Alban, ‘Titolo ufficiale e popolare dell’Ordine’, in Dizionario Carmelitano, ed. E. Boaga and L. Boriello (Rome, 2008), pp. 958–60.

36

‘Antiquum ordinis Carmelitarum Ordinale saec. XIII’, ed. Patrick of St Joseph, Études Carmélitaines (1912–15).

37

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 251

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 5 2    K e v i n Al ban

The climax of the liturgical year, Easter Sunday, was celebrated with a solemnity common to the whole Church. It is interesting, however, to note that the Carmelite theologian Thomas Netter of Walden (d. 1430) makes two references to the Paschal Mystery in a liturgical context. First, he notes that in the Rite of the Church of Jerusalem the kiss of peace is exchanged among the ministers immediately after the gospel, rather than immediately before communion, as in the Roman rite. Netter says that this feature of the Carmelite rite is a ‘suggestion of the Holy Spirit’ that peace is communicated in the sacred words of Christ, recalling, ‘peace I leave you’ ( John 14. 27). Those words occur in the ‘Farewell Discourse’ ( John, chapters 14 to 17) during the Last Supper and therefore in a paschal context. This liturgical variant also recalls the appearances of the Risen Christ in Matthew, Luke and John where ‘peace be with you’ is a characteristic greeting, underscoring again the Resurrection dimension of the Carmelite rite.38 Netter also observes that one of the preferred days for professing vows was Easter Sunday.39 This custom draws attention very neatly to the integration of Carmelite religious life with the Paschal Mystery. The three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are professed in the context of the celebration of the salvation of humanity in the saving acts of Jesus Christ, culminating in the Resurrection. Again, in the contemporary framework of a Vatican II understanding that religious life is an extension of baptism, this view of the vows and the Resurrection is taken for granted.40 Yet, in the context of a very different theology of the religious life in the Middle Ages, the Carmelite practice reveals how deeply Resurrection spirituality was embedded in the order. 38

39

40

T. Netter, Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei catholicae ecclesiae contra Wiclevistas et Hussitas, ed. E. Blanciotti (Venice, 1757–59), Book VI article 33: ‘Istud osculum pacis est sacerdotis et ministrorum et solet dari in pluribus ecclesiis secundum usum Hierosylmitanae ecclesiae quem huicusque retinet Carmelitae et post lectum sacrum evangelium fieri eo quod statim suggestione Spiritus Sancti concepta per sacra verba communicatur pax dicente Christo ille suggeret vobis omnia quaecumque dixero vobis et infert, pacem relinquo vobis.’

Netter, Doctrinale, VI, article 80: ‘Aptentur dies triumphales Christi ut putam Resurrectionis aut Nativitatis, vel matrius eius sacra celebritas qua post reditum a Babylone templum domino dedicetur.’

Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life ‘Perfectae Caritatis’, Proclaimed By His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965 n. 5. ‘Members of each institute should recall first of all that by professing the evangelical counsels they responded to a divine call so that by being not only dead to sin (cf. Rom. 6. 11) but also renouncing the world they may live for God alone. They have dedicated their entire lives to His service. This constitutes a special consecration, which is deeply rooted in that of baptism and expresses it more fully.’

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 252

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   253

The last Sunday of the liturgical year was marked by a solemn commemoration of the Resurrection with chants and texts specially chosen, not simply a reproduction of Easter Sunday. The importance of this feast is underlined by the fact that the Ordinal of Sibert de Beka spends a lot of space on how to adjust the celebration of the solemn commemoration when it clashes with other feasts at the end of November. Everything is to be done to preserve some elements of the Resurrection even in the context of other celebrations. Sometimes the solemn commemoration would clash with the Presentation of the Virgin, but even that had to give way to the recalling of the Paschal Mystery. This celebration usually falls in November, the month of the dead, or only a few days after. Remembering the dead is concluded by recalling their ultimate destiny in the commemoration of the Resurrection. Consideration of the Paschal Mystery begins on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, marked also by the practice of fasting which would end on Easter Sunday. The year reaches its climax at Easter, yet along the way, as it were, between 14 September and Easter Sunday is the Solemn Commemoration at the end of the year which refocuses attention and serves as a preparation for the Nativity in December. The whole of the season from Easter to Advent is bracketed by the Resurrection. From Easter to Easter. The year and its liturgies are shot through with this paschal theme, as the weekly celebrations also show. In this second category then, of weekly commemorations, a solemn procession was held in the Holy Sepulchre church every Saturday night after vespers, recalling the itinerary inscribed in the celebration of the Easter Vigil. This was followed by a dawn Mass on Sunday, together with another procession after Matins. These practices were followed in the Carmelite rite, where every weekend was effectively a celebration of the Resurrection. The use of processions recalls all the notable pilgrimages of Abraham, Moses and Jesus and reminds Carmelites of the goal of all Christian lives. On Sundays there were additional antiphons at vespers and a three-fold alleluia designed to underline the theme of Resurrection.

Later witnesses to the Carmelite emphasis on the Resurrection The Carmelite emphasis on the Resurrection was not confined to liturgical texts, nor to the specific way of celebrating the Mass or Divine Office. There are traces of the Resurrection dimension in some of the key medieval texts of the order. In 1287, at the General Chapter celebrated in Montpellier, the assembled friars voted to change the style of mantle that they wore from a

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 253

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 5 4    K e v i n Al ban

pallium barratum, or striped cloak, to a plain white one.41 This change was controversial because it seemed to indicate that the Carmelites were searching for a new way of expressing their identity in an age when attachment to forms of dress rooted in history and tradition was highly prized. Andrew Jotischky has examined this change in some detail and observes that the adoption of a plain white cloak could be connected with the appropriation of the biblical figure of Elijah, via various patristic and medieval texts.42 There may, however, be other forces at work here which reflect particular medieval theories of colour and form. Several commentators, including Jotischky, have noted that the striped cloak may have given rise to derision and ridicule on the part of other religious, and even lay people. Felip Ribot, writing about 100 years after the change to the all-white cloak, makes the same point: Now in the various parts of Europe – such as Italy, Germany, England, France and Spain – the striped cloak was seen by Christians as unsuitable for religious, and because of its different colours it was held up to ridicule by many people. Therefore, the members of the Order sought to change it, and in its place to wear a more suitable (honestior) garment.43

It would appear that one of the reasons for the mockery and scorn expressed by those who saw the Carmelite striped cloak was the connotation of stripes as indicating illegitimacy. It is possible that Ribot may be alluding to this in his choice of adjective, honestior, to describe the new cloak the Carmelites chose. This idea is also expressed in the barring of a quarter- or half-shield in heraldry. Another reason for this popular reaction to the striped cloak may also be that a ‘coat of many colours’ indicated poverty and a marginalized

41

42

43

The acts of the 1287 chapter no longer survive, but there are two notarial instruments which gave effect to the decision to change the colour and style of the cloak, Notum sit and Invocantes. They have been edited in Medieval Carmelite Heritage – Early Reflections on the Nature of the Order, ed. A. Staring, Textus et Studia Historica Carmelitana 16 (Rome, 1989), pp. 54–70, with an introduction at pp. 49–53. A. Jotischky, The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002), pp. 45–64.

The Ten Books on the Way of Life and Great Deeds of the Carmelites, trans. R. Copsey (Faversham, 2005), p. 101. Latin in F. Ribot, De institutione et peculiaribus gestis religiosorum Carmelitarum VII, 7, in Speculum Carmelitanum, ed. Daniel of the Virgin Mary (Antwerp, 1680), I, 69: ‘In diuersis autem Europe partibus, ut puta in Ytalia, Alammania, Anglia, Francia, et Yspania, pallium barratum Christianis minus religiosum uidebatur, et propter eius uarios colores in derisum a pluribus habebatur. Propterea professores huius religionis desiderabant ipsum dimittere, et loco eius alium honestiorem habitum assumere.’

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 254

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   255

position in society. Clerics were specifically prohibited from wearing striped, gaudy clothes as unbecoming to their state.44 Carmelite writers themselves reflected on the meaning of the white cloak and Ribot advanced the view that the original garment had been plain, but that the Saracen invaders of the Holy Land had forced the Carmelite hermits to change to a striped cloak: Now the wearing of the white cloak denotes that the monks of this profession should preserve purity of mind, and also guard the holiness of the flesh … Elijah who was the first to wear this white cloak, introduced it to the monks, for the open white cloak signifies to the monk that he should give example of the search for holiness, not only mentally, but also in his flesh.45

The switch back to a white cloak in 1287, as Ribot saw it, could therefore be presented as a restatement and a reinforcement of the essential Carmelite vocation lived by Elijah. Of course, the figure of Elijah was always coloured spiritually by the incident in the second book of Kings (2 Kings 2. 1–12) where he is taken up in a fiery whirlwind, anticipating in some sense the ascent of the risen Christ (Acts 1. 6–11). In both incidents there is the promise of the Spirit and in both cases the presence of witnesses. The day that was selected by the 1287 General Chapter for the change from striped to a plain white cloak was the feast of St Mary Magdalen, and again this is significant.46 Gregory the Great had stated definitively that Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany and the woman who was caught in adultery were one person.47 This gave rise to the popular presentation of Mary Magdalen, who turned from sin to discipleship, in a dramatic way. The conflation of the figures of Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany also helped to promote the view that Mary Magdalen became a contemplative as a result of Jesus’s

See M. Pastoureau, The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. J. Gladding (New York, 2001).

44

The Ten Books, trans. Copsey, p. 99; Ribot, De institutione, VII, v: ‘Huius autem pallii albi gestacio significat monachos istius proffessionis debere et puritatem mentis seruare, et eciam sanctimoniam carnis custodire … Hinc Helias qui primus usum huius pallii albi in monachis introduxit, per hoc significauit monachum pallio albo opertum debere exemplo eius seruare sanctimoniam, nedum in mente sed eciam in carne.’

45

Staring, Medieval Carmelite Heritage, p. 54.

46

Gregory the Great, Homilia 33, in Homiliae in evangelia Lib. II, PL LXXVI, 1075– 314.

47

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 255

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

2 5 6    K e v i n Al ban

encouragement. (Luke 10. 38–42).48 A sinner who becomes a contemplative disciple functions as a powerful emblem for an order that changes from an ambiguous striped cloak to a pure white one in imitation of the first contemplative, Elijah.49 The final and most relevant aspect of Mary Magdalen for a Carmelite spirituality of Resurrection is her role at the end of John’s gospel (20. 1–2 and 11–18). She not only discovers the empty tomb but is the first person to meet and talk with the Risen Lord. The adoption of the white cloak on the feast of St Mary Magdalen draws together important elements for understanding the relationship between Carmel and the resurrection. It is a relationship of transformation, from sin to virtue, indeed to contemplation. The ongoing witness of the order to the Resurrection in its liturgy is instanced in the figure of Mary Magdalen, premier witness to the Risen Christ and bearer of that news to the disciples. Between the change to a white cloak in 1287 and Felip Ribot’s reflection on that event around a century later, there is an important testimony to the significance of this event in the writings of the Carmelite scholastic John Baconthorpe.50 The doctor resolutus, as he was dubbed, is generally reckoned to be one of the most adept and systematic synthesizers of the Elijan and Marian traditions of the order.51 In all his Carmelite works he emphasizes the origins of the order with the prophet Elijah and the outstanding model for Carmelite life in Mary. However, in one of his works, In Praise of Carmelite Religion, Baconthorpe comments on the meaning of the plain white cloak adopted in 1287: ‘Carmelites show in the habit the grace and glory of the resurrection, as much the grace as the glory of the resurrection, anticipated by the angels who

48

49

50

51

As an indication of the popularity of the view that Mary Magdalen was a contemplative, many monasteries of nuns were dedicated to her. K. Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000), pp. 116–42. The view that Elijah was the ‘founder’ of the religious life goes back to John Cassian in the Institutiones and the Collationes. However, writers as early as Tertullian identified Elijah as a model of virtue and prayer. See J. Ackerman, Elijah: Prophet of Carmel (Washington DC, 2003), especially pp. 100–5.

J. Marenbon, ‘Baconthorpe, John (c. 1290–1345x1352), Carmelite friar, theologian’, Dictionary of National Biography, 23 Sepember 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/1011.

C. O’Donnell, ‘A Loving Presence: Mary and Carmel, A Study of the Marian Heritage of the Order’, in Carmelite Spiritual Directory Project 6 (Melbourne, 2000), pp. 33–4.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 256

1/29/2021 7:58:22 AM

B ea ut y in Liturg y   257

it is stated were sitting [at the tomb] in white [garments].’52 It is noteworthy that Baconthorpe stresses both the external appearance (the glory) and the interior effect (the grace) of the Resurrection. The Carmelite white cloak is not only an external sign of the Risen Christ, it also functions as a real symbol tracing a path from the tangible mantle to the effect on the soul of the grace of the Resurrection. This is all the more remarkable because Baconthorpe breaks off his treatment of the habit in a historical context to deal with the theological meaning of the white cloak without referring to Mary or Elijah, who dominate all his Carmelite writings. Baconthorpe’s choice to associate the Carmelite white cloak with the Resurrection in the middle of a very detailed treatment of Mary’s place in the order may reflect a belief found in some patristic authors that Mary was a witness to the Risen Christ and proclaimed this message to the apostles.53 There is some evidence in the late antique Church, taken up and developed in the medieval period, that it was Mary, mother of Jesus, who visited the garden where Jesus was buried on Easter morning and it was to her that he appeared first of all. Various authors take up this theme with their own interpretations of the gospel texts. The apocryphal Gospel of Philip (second century) conflates the three Marys of Mark’s account into one, the mother of Jesus.54 Maximus of Turin, a fourth-century writer, preserves a story regarding the anointing of the corpse of Jesus: an angel appears to Mary and commands her to tend to Jesus. Just as Mary tended the infant Jesus, notes Maximus, she now looks after the dead Jesus.55 Ephrem the Syrian (fifth century) maintains that Mary mother of Jesus was the ‘Mary’ who goes to the tomb early in the morning, as recounted by John 20. 1, and that Jesus appears to his mother before anyone else.56 Caecilius Sedulius, a Christian poet, adds that Mary and J. Baconthorpe, Laus religionis carmelitanae, Lib. VI, cap. 2 in Staring, Medieval Carmelite Heritage, p. 249.

52

Epiphanius of Salamis and Ephrem the Syrian are among the more important authors who claim Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw the Risen Christ. This is discussed in K. Alban, ‘The Treatment of Mary in the Doctrinale of Thomas Netter as a Resource for Contemporary Theology’, in Thomas Netter of Walden: Carmelite, Diplomat and Theologian (c. 1372–1430), ed. Johan Bergström-Allen and Richard Copsey (Faversham, 2009), pp. 35–61.

53

Evangelium Philippi, c. 107 in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, 7 vols., ed. S. Alvarez Campos (Burgos, 1970–9), I, 343.

54

Maximus, Sermo 39, 1 in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, ed. Alvarez Campos, III, 2041.

55

Ephrem, Cur ad Mariam angelus venerit, 21, 22, in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, ed. Alvarez Campos, II, 1449.

56

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 257

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 5 8    K e v i n Al ban

other women continued to visit Christ’s tomb after his death until it became too conspicuous in the eyes of the Jewish authorities.57 The author of Liber Ioannis Evangelista de Dormitione (sixth century)58 and John of Thessalonika (seventh century)59 both have Mary visit the tomb before the other women on Easter morning. Although there is no mention of Mary’s witness to the Risen Christ in Baconthorpe, it is suggestive that he identifies the white cloak of the Carmelites with the Resurrection precisely at a point where one might have expected to find a reference instead to Mary. The point here is that the Carmelite liturgy, with its strong connection to the Holy Sepulchre, was not the only way in which emphasis on the Resurrection was expressed. The nature of the relationship between liturgy and spirituality is too vast in scope to enter into here, but it seems to be the case that the Carmelites did not restrict their devotion to the Resurrection to the celebration of Mass and Office, but expressed it in a visible and tangible way.

57

58

59

Caecilius Sedulius, Carmen Paschale, 5, 321–25, in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, ed. Alvarez Campos, III, 2196. Anon., Liber Ioannis Evangelistae de dormitione Mariae, in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, ed. Alvarez Campos, IV/2, 5009–11.

John of Thessalonika, In mulieres unguentiferas, 1, in Corpus Marianum Patristicum, ed. Alvarez Campos, IV/2, 4792.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 258

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

12 Otherworldly Visions: Miracles and Prophecy among the English Carthusians, c. 1300–1535 MARLENE VILLALOBOS HENNESSY

I

t

n his magisterial study, The Religious Orders of England, Dom David Knowles identified what he saw as a discomfiting contradiction at the heart of the Carthusian order in the later Middle Ages. On the one hand, he noted that the order continued to attract vocations of a very high quality, drawing many of their number from the universities and upper echelons of society; for this reason and also because of their legendary austerity, ‘they stood above the level to which satire or contempt could attain’.1 On the other hand, he identified ‘a love of the marvelous which sometimes extends beyond the bounds of good sense’,2 which reached its apex in the writings of Maurice Chauncy (d. 1581), the Carthusian monk and priest of London charterhouse who wrote four different versions of a work that narrated, with marked pathos, an eyewitness account of the tragic fate of his brethren who refused to take the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of England.3 Chauncy’s works are, indeed, full of stories of omens, portents, D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1948–59), II, 134. The foundational historical study remains E. M. Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930).

1

Knowles, Religious Orders II, 137.

2

The four versions are now published in The various versions of the Historia aliquot martyrum anglorum maxime octodecim Cartusianorum sub rege Henrico Octavo ob fidei confessionem et summa pontificis jura vindicanda interemptorum, by Dom Maurice Chauncy, 3 vols., ed. J. P. H. Clark, with Introduction by P. Cunich, Analecta Cartusiana 86 (2006 and 2007). See the convenient account of the difference between the four versions in J. P. H. Clark, ‘Dom Maurice Chauncy and the London Charterhouse’, 86.2 (2006), 1–13 and the excellent discussion of Chauncy by Cunich,

3

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 259

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 6 0    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

prodigies and supernatural happenings, and suggest that he shared a distinct taste for marvels and miracles more commonly ascribed to late medieval popular religious culture.4 This essay aims to examine the broader history of otherworldly visions, miracles and prophecy among the English Carthusians during the pre-Reformation period, operating from an assumption that the orthodox monastic culture of the English Carthusians was manifestly ‘a culture of the miraculous’.5 This devotional culture of marvels and miracles, in my view, bore the distinct imprint of what Michael Sargent memorably called ‘the literary character of the Carthusian order’.6 From its inception in the eleventh century until its brutal suppression in England at the Henrician Reformation, the order produced numerous texts and images that imagined wondrous, energetic networks of communication between the dead and the living. Miracle and prophecy, moreover, often converged with the death-oriented piety of the Carthusians in unexpected ways – ways that are vitally linked to the history of the order in England.7 ‘Maurice Chauncy and the Charterhouses of London and Sheen Anglorum’, in 86.1 (2006), 1–57. The so-called ‘short narration’ was also edited and translated in M. Chauncy, The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers: A Short Narrative, ed. G. W. S. Curtis (London, 1935).

For Chauncy’s context, see V. Gillespie, ‘The Permeable Cloister? Charterhouses, Contemplation and Urban Piety in Later Medieval England: The Case of London’, in The Urban Church in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Clive Burgess. Proceedings of the 2017 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Harry and C. Steer (Donington, 2019), pp. 238–57 (pp. 238–41) and M. G. Sargent, ‘Chauncy, Maurice (c. 1509–1581), Prior of Sheen Anglorum and Martyrologist’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew, B. Harrison and others, https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5199 (accessed 4 December 2019).

4

5

6

7

Quotation from F. Riddy, ‘“Women talking about the things of God”: A Late Medieval Sub-culture’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. C. M. Meale (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 104–27 (p. 115).

M. G. Sargent, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), 225–40 (p. 240). A revised form of this landmark essay is forthcoming in The Carthusians in the City: History, Culture and Martyrdom at the London Charterhouse c. 1370–1555, ed. J. M. Luxford (Toronto, 2021). For his enduring friendship and supreme scholarly generosity, I owe Michael a profound debt of gratitude.

The death-oriented piety of the order is discussed in M. V. Hennessy, ‘The Remains of the Royal Dead in an English Carthusian Manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049’, Viator 33 (2002), 310–54. On the broader social context, see A. Appleford, Learning to Die in London, 1380–1540 (Philadelphia, 2015), pp. 98–136 and passim.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 260

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   261

The living and the dead Miraculous commerce with the dead was, indeed, central to the Carthusian origin story, for a revenant had played a starring role in the foundation of the order. A popular legend relates that St Bruno of Cologne (d. 1101) attended the funeral of Raymond Diocrès (d. 1084), canon of the cathedral of NotreDame in Paris, only to see the corpse rise from its coffin and address the crowd at the funeral, declaiming three different times to the terror-stricken onlookers that he had been judged, sentenced and damned before God. The shock of this animated spectre reportedly terrified Bruno, who fled to ‘the desert’ with his companions to found the Grande Chartreuse in 1084.8 The story, sometimes called the ‘Miracle of Paris’ or ‘damnatio Parisiensis’, was memorialized in the sumptuously illuminated Belles Heures of Jean, duke of Berry, the earliest surviving example of what is referred to as ‘the Bruno cycle’, a sequence of texts and images that narrate the origins of the order and the early history of its founders.9 The Bruno cycle of illustration and iconography also appear in the printed Tertia compilatio statutorum ordinis Carthusiensis (Basel, 1510), which further ensured that the pictorial narrative would play a key role in Carthusian institutional history and identity formation, as Julian Luxford has shown.10 The story also appears in a Middle English poem on the foundation of the order that survives in the early sixteenth-century Carthusian manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 160 at folios 78r–v, where it is described as ‘a ferfull mervall in parise’.11 The legend of this prodigious funeral continued to be attached to Bruno and the Carthusians for hundreds of years, and

The narrative is retold and illustrated in T. Husband, The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (New York, 2008), pp. 154–63.

8

9

Executed by the Limbourg brothers between 1405 and 1408/9, these full-page, deluxe miniatures were inserted at fols. 94r–7v, appropriately heralding the Office of the Dead that follows. These prodigious young artists took up the subject again three years later on a single folio (86v) in the lavish Très Riche Heures (c. 1411).

J. M. Luxford, ‘Texts and Images of Carthusian Foundation’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities: The British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K. Stöber (Berlin, 2009), pp. 275–305 (p. 282).

10

C. B. Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History in Later Medieval England, with special reference to the Order’s Relations with Secular Society’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1981), pp. 477–8.

11

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 261

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 6 2    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

was also taken as a subject by later artists such as Daniele Crespi (d. 1630), among others.12 As this origin story illustrates, the boundaries between the living and the dead could be disquietingly permeable. Stories connected with the foundation of the London charterhouse, which was formally established in 1371, also suggest an atmosphere thick and heady with images of dead souls fluidly trafficking between worlds. Ghostly liturgical processions were seen haunting the charterhouse precincts, a former plague burial ground with some 50,000 bodies believed to be interred there: ‘Also it is said that the same lord of Mawny, after the hallowing of the aforesaid cemetery and burial of so many bodies in it, saw crowds of spirits with lighted candles going in procession in the same cemetery.’13 The cell was quite fittingly a grave for the monks there, who had already died to the world when they became Carthusians.14 A Middle English poem on the founding of the Carthusian order explicitly acknowledges this tautology: ‘þe celle is the grafe fro þis trobyld lyfe vexacion,/ And of heuenly lyfe þe entre & consolacion.’15 Other strange, fantastical sights at the London charterhouse include a ‘golden pillar descending from heaven’ into the cell of a monk renowned for his piety, Guy de Burgh (ord. 1354), also reported by the founder, Sir Walter de Manny (d. 1372), an armigerous soldier of fortune and administrator under King Edward III.16 At Coventry charterhouse, too, the 12

13

14

15

16

See https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/344914 (accessed 29 March 2019).

W. St John Hope, The History of the London Charterhouse, from its Foundation to the Suppression of the Monastery (London, 1925), p. 60; Latin text at p. 82: ‘Idem dictum est quod idem dominus de Mawny post dedicacionem cimiterij predicti et sepulturam tantorum corporum in eadem vidit catervas spirituum cum accensis luminaribus processionaliter in eodem cimiterio procedentes.’

The idea of the cell as a grave is treated more fully in Hennessy, ‘Remains of the Royal Dead’, pp. 324–6, and in M. V. Hennessy and M. G. Sargent, ‘The Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 179–97 (p. 185).

C. Brown and R. H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse [IMEV] (New York, 1943), no. 435. On this poem, see the brief studies by R. H. Bowers, ‘Middle English Verses on the Founding of the Carthusian Order’, Speculum, 42 (1967), 710–13, and R. Boyer, ‘The Companions of St Bruno in Middle English Verses on the Founding of the Carthusian Order’, Speculum 53 (1978), 784–5. Interestingly, even the author of the chronicle is sceptical of this prodigy, as only the cell of the prior was built when Manny died. The monk Guy de Burgh also allegedly caused a barren woman to become pregnant: ‘But it is said that a certain earl of Warwick who had a barren wife came to this house and asked the prior that, if he had amongst his brethren any more holy, he should stir them up to pray for

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 262

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   263

first prior, Robert Palmer (d. 1409), formerly a monk of London and a ‘most devout hermit and priest’, allegedly resuscitated a dead man.17 English manuscripts and early printed books from the period also accord monks in the order great success in the afterlife. The Pomander of Prayer (STC 25421.5), ‘written by a Carthusian but edited by an anonymous Birgittine’, with four editions printed between 1528 and 1532,18 tells the story of a ‘holy contemplatife father’ who had a vision of a Carthusian monk ravished into heaven ‘by a grete company of glorious angels and saintes’.19 In a similar vein, a Middle English poem in E Museo 160 (fol. 89r) describes a vision of heaven, hell and purgatory, based on the Fasciculus Temporum of Werner Rolevinck, in which a Carthusian prior is one of three privileged souls who has entered heaven: A dredfull vision to vnderstande To on holy heremet was shewet nowe He saide I se to hell sinkande Sowles ranker then ony snowe To purgatory I se others flowe Os the snow when it snowes fayrlyeee But to paradise I se non gowe Of all the sorte saue only three A bishop & a priore free Of the Charterhouse with a wido of Rome Affore pop Inocentius this did he see.20

him to the end that offspring by his wife be given him by the Lord.’ The prior went to Guy, who prayed and revealed she would have a son. And she did. From St John Hope, History of the London Charterhouse, pp. 59–60, 81.

J. M. Luxford, ‘The Charterhouse of St Anne, Coventry’, in Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and Its Vicinity, ed. L. Monckton and R. K. Morris (Leeds, 2011), pp. 240–66 (p. 241).

17

Quotation from A. Barratt, Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England. A Study of London, British Library, MS Harley 494 (Turnhout, 2009), p. 153; see also R. 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. M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 205–13.

18

Barratt, Anne Bulkeley, p. 153, with references. Printed by Robert Copeland in 1531, this work is sometimes attributed to Richard Whitford.

19

Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, p. 271. On this manuscript, see also L. Cox Ward, ‘The E Museo 160 Manuscript: Writing and Reading as Remedy’, in

20

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 263

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 6 4    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

In the hermit’s vision, the Carthusian, together with a bishop and an unnamed Roman widow, is part of an elect circle able to escape the bitter snows of hell and purgatory and gain direct entry into paradise. The passage supports Peter Marshall’s pithy observation that ‘Carthusians were the monks you knew were going to heaven’.21 Some English Carthusians reported eloquent contact with dead souls in heaven, hell and purgatory. According to the anonymous sixteenth-century chronicle of the foundation of the London charterhouse, John Homersley (d. 1450), a monk of legendary piety, was said to have encountered the ghosts of his dead parents, his kinsmen, fellow monks, other ‘good spirits’, and he even saw Henry V ‘being wholly delivered from the realms of purgatory’. In addition, he prognosticated the precise hour of the king’s deliverance, at a time independently corroborated by an anchorite of Westminster.22 After the death of his own prior, John Maplestead (d. 1440, prior of London 1412–40), Homersley had a vision that suggested Maplestead’s entrance to heaven was not so smooth, for ‘he was not perfect in his dealings’ and committed unspecified sins in his role as prior.23 The burdens of office seem to have followed another prior into the afterlife, suggesting the continuous, ongoing nature of his monastic identity. John Batmanson (d. 1531), prior of Hinton (1523–9) and London (1529–31), allegedly sent a message to his brethren from beyond the grave about the need for greater ascetic austerity.24 According to a contemporaneous letter, just after he died the sexton had a ‘holie revelation’ in which he saw Batmanson praying with the ghost of the previous prior on behalf of monks of the order: knelyng before the Trinitie makyng intercession to the Father of heven for or religion; and in the same revelation, it was shoyd to the forseid sextan, that or cloth whiche we did ware for or abbatis at that tyme was to fine, and that we must were more courser cloth and vpon this or priors commaundid all ther subdites to caste away or fine abbatis (the whiche were surlie but of a little price) and that we sholde were abbatis de vilissime panno, that is to say, of blankethe cloth. And for a testimonial of the same, ther was a little pece

21

22 23 24

The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. 4, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 130.4 (Salzburg, 1995), 68–86.

P. Marshall, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation (New Haven and London, 2017), p. 61. St John Hope, History of the London Charterhouse, pp. 62–3. Ibid., p. 63.

G. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012), pp. 204–5.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 264

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   265

of blanket clothe broght to the Cherterhouse of Shene to demonstrate the same revelation, but whether the same pece of cloth was sent from heven by some angell or nat, surlie I can nat tell; but the very trouth is that the proctor of Shene (whos name was Baylie) did show the same pece of clothe to his prior and all hys covent. Also the same sextan had in his holie revelation that we must eet or meet nat in puder platers, but in treen [wooden] dishes, what other thynges he hadde in his revelation, surlie I can nat tell, saving oonlie that we must nat hau iii abbat in store, but oonlie twan.25

Revelations and ‘ghostly sights’ frequently carried messages of reform, but this one was especially exacting and materially minded, for it specified the kind of cloth that should be used for monastic habits, the number of habits to be owned by each monk and even the kind of dinnerware that was appropriate: wood and not pewter.26 The message was also authenticated by a cloth relic (‘pece of clothe’) that fell from the sky, reportedly sent by an angel, which was later brought to the monks at Sheen. Although the author of the letter expresses uncertainty about the heavenly provenance of this piece of cloth (‘surlie I can nat tell’), it is clear that it circulated with some measure of pious credulity and success, for the monks of London immediately ‘caste away or fine abbatis’. For some of the monks at least, the cloth relic was a potent symbol of both Batmanson’s holiness and the corporate identity symbolized in the habit. Emphasis on uniformity of custom, rite and observance, and conformity in external matters great and small, was and is still a central tenet of Carthusian life, reflected in the boast, ‘Never reformed because never deformed’ (‘Nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata’). The sexton’s revelation reflects the same emphasis on total uniformity, austerity and discipline. The cloth relic, like a heavenly letter addressed to all of the English Carthusians, was a site-specific, in-house miracle that the monks circulated among themselves as a material reminder of the unique and exalted position held by their order – and the high ascetic standards expected of them.27 The story is even more remarkable in light of the stark absence of first-hand accounts of relic acquisition, circulation Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 390–1, in Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII [LP], ed. J. Gardiner et al., 21 vols. (London, 1862–1910), VII, no. 1047.

25

See D. Despres, Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature (Norman OK, 1990).

26

The monks were the primary audience for the relic; this narrow, targeted appeal makes sense in light of the intentional isolation of the order. Although they would have had relics at their altars and possibly elsewhere inside their churches and monasteries, they would not have been on the scale of those that attracted large

27

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 265

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 6 6    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

or even post-Dissolution dispersal among English Carthusians of this period. There is no surviving relic-list for any of the English charterhouses, as far as I am aware.28 The letter’s description of the cloth relic is thus also significant evidence of belief in the miraculous in English charterhouses during the period.

Miraculous textuality

A particular subset of miracles that can be associated with the English Carthusians is connected to the order’s ‘text-centered piety’.29 These involve incidents of what I will refer to as ‘miraculous textuality’: narratives in which books are subject to divine production and, especially, editorial supervision. The aforementioned John Homersley was not only renowned within the order for his otherworldly visions and commerce with the dead, but he was also singled out for his pious scribal productivity.30 His attitude towards the copying of manuscripts was highly disciplined and characterized by a feeling of brotherly charity: ‘For he was incessantly writing sacred books for the church, for the frater, and for the cell; carrying what he had written to the prior’s cell, he did not take care that they should be lent to anyone or put anywhere, but leaving them there with the prior he returned in silence to his cell.’31 His textual output was matched by the perfect obedience that he exercised when he gave the prior the right to the disposition of every book. The Virgin Mary appeared to him in one vision to point out a scribal error in a manuscript he had just copied: Quadam vice cum scribendo erraret. astitit ei domina et patrona nostra mater dei et cum ea spiritus cujusdam sacerdotis antea defuncti qui dum viveret pergamenum pro libris scribendis eidem Johanni Homersley ex facultatibus suis ministrabat. tunc domina nostra beatissima errorem suum

28

29

30 31

crowds like those found at popular pilgrimage sites such as the Holy Rood of Bromholm, Norfolk, or the Holy Blood at Hailes Abbey, Gloucestershire.

For example, London, PRO, E. 117/12/20, ‘Declaration of the goods of the London Charterhouse, 1539’ does not mention any relics as such. Houghton’s severed arm and a piece of his bloody hairshirt were venerated as relics, but after being hidden in the ground did not survive an attempt to smuggle them abroad. See Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, ed. Curtis, p. 99 n. 1 and p. 105 (on Houghton’s pocket-book).

Quotation from B. Egan, ‘Introduction’, in Oswald de Corda, Opus Pacis, ed. Egan, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Medieualis 179 (Turnhout, 2001), p. 87. Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 277–8.

St John Hope, History of the London Charterhouse, p. 60, Latin text at p. 82.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 266

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   267

ubi in scribendo deffecit sibi manifestavit. et ut librum emendaret. dulciter ammonuit. et sic disparuit. (On a certain occasion when he made a mistake in writing there appeared to him Our Lady and patron the Mother of God, and with her the spirit of certain priest before dead who while living used to supply parchment for writing books to the same John Homersley according to his means. Then our most Blessed Lady pointed out to him his mistake where he made default in writing, and kindly warned him to amend the book, and so disappeared.)32

This manifestation of miraculous textuality vividly reflects the order’s special concern for textual correction and the accurate copying from exemplars, and it mingles a disciplined editorial aesthetic with a Marian vision, which occurred, appropriately, at the London charterhouse, House of the Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Virgin functions here as divine corrector and editorial supervisor, overseeing the written page’s appearance and correctness. Standing by the Virgin’s side was the ghostly presence of a priest, who had been the monk’s parchment supplier when he was alive, drawing attention to the wider textual community involved in the making of books – and even suggesting that this collaborative network extends into the afterlife and can include the dead. Homersley’s vision is also indicative of the broader spiritual significance of writing and books in Carthusian life.33 From the order’s inception, the copying of manuscripts was sanctioned as a form of devotional labour appropriate to the privacy of the cell, a manifestation of the oft-cited dictum of Guigo’s Consuetudines: ‘Since we are not able to speak, we preach with our hands.’34 In keeping with this tradition, the order actively collected, copied, corrected books and built large and important libraries; moreover, Carthusian manuscripts were ‘famed for accuracy’.35 Despite the loss and dispersal of Ibid., p. 83.

32

See Sargent, ‘Transmission by the English Carthusians’, pp. 225–40.

33

Cf. ‘Libros quippe, tanquam sempiternum animarum nostrarum cibum cautissime custodiri, et studiose volumus fieri, ut, quia ore non possumus, Dei verbum manibus praedicemus’, as cited in M. G. Sargent, ‘The Problem of Uniformity in Carthusian Book Production from the Opus Pacis to the Tertia Compilatio Statutorum’, in New Science out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 122–41 (p. 124). Sargent notes the passage also appears in Adam of Dryburgh’s (d. 1212) De Quadripertito Excercitio Cellae.

34

Quotation from B. Gilbert, ‘Early Carthusian Script and Silence’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 49.3 (2014), 367–97 (p. 371). See also Sargent, ‘Transmission’, pp.

35

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 267

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 6 8    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

innumerable manuscripts and books that resulted from the suppression of the monasteries, the English brethren followed this pattern and have been rightly celebrated for their scribal and editorial work and for their role as translators: among their number were practised scribes such as Stephen Doddesham, James Grenehalgh, John Whetham and William Darker, as well as the distinguished translators Nicholas Love and Richard Methley.36 This instance of miraculous textuality not only expresses Homersley’s own scribal aesthetic and its attendant anxiety but also highlights his concern for the larger community of readers who need to read accurate texts. The vision recalls the cloth relic discussed earlier and the idea that the Carthusians were, in the words of Daniel Wakelin, ‘an order which encourages moral and institutional obedience in the tiniest of details’.37 It was especially important that single letters, syllables, words or phrases be correct for the recitation of the liturgy and for reading aloud in the refectory during mealtimes.38 Ever attentive to matters of conformity, the Carthusians formulated specific rules for

36

37

38

225–40; R. B. Marks, The Medieval Manuscript Library of the Charterhouse of St. Barbara in Cologne, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 21–22 (1974), I, pp. 37–40; M. A. and R. H. Rouse, ‘Correction and Emendation of Texts in the Fifteenth Century and the Autograph of the Opus Pacis by Oswaldus Anglicus’, in Scire litteras: Forschungen zum mittelalterlichen Geistleben, ed. S. Krämer and M. Bernard (Munich, 1988), pp. 333–46. The foundational study is P. Lehmann, ‘Bücherliebe und Bucherpflege bei den Kartäusern’. Reprinted in Erforschung des Mittelalters, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 1960), III, 121–42.

See A. I. Doyle, ‘William Darker: The Work of an English Carthusian Scribe’, in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users: A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 199–211; A. I. Doyle, ‘Stephen Dodesham of Witham and Sheen’, in Of the Making of Manuscripts, their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. P. R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 94–115; A. I. Doyle, ‘English Carthusian Books not yet Linked with a Charterhouse’, in ‘A Miracle of Learning’: Studies in Manuscripts and Irish Learning. Essays in Honour of William O’Sullivan, ed. T. Barnard, D. Ó Cróinin and K. Simms (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 122–36 (126–27); and A. I. Doyle, ‘Book Production by the Monastic Orders in England’, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills CA, 1990), pp. 1–19 (pp. 13–16). For James Grenehalgh, see M. G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 85 (1984); for Love, see Nicholas Love, ‘The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’: A Full Critical Edition, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), as well as the numerous critical essays on Love by Sargent listed in the bibliography of his writings in this volume. Methley is discussed in greater detail below. D. Wakelin, Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375–1510 (Cambridge, 2014), p. 23. Wakelin, Scribal Correction, p. 22 and Sargent, ‘Problem of Uniformity’, p. 129.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 268

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   269

punctuation and were in the vanguard in matters of textual uniformity.39 A tradition of close correcting was consistent among the Carthusians, who continued to ‘hand copy and correct manuscripts long into the age of printing’.40 A. I. Doyle has shown that copies of Nicholas Love’s Mirrour, for example, demonstrate a ‘remarkable uniformity of execution, arrangement and language’, which he ascribes to the author’s own exacting standards and attention to detail – efforts that stood to benefit a wide and heterogenous community of readers.41 Sargent has demonstrated that James Grenehalgh (d. 1530), in particular, was also preoccupied with problems of uniformity and was a canny if conservative textual editor.42 Hence English Carthusian scribes, who actively exchanged books with their Continental brethren, seem also to have shared a passion for the clarity and accuracy of texts and the overall appearance of the written page.43 Homersley’s Marian vision reflects the same ethos of micro-correction, an ethics of the manuscript page in which every word, letter and minim is also subject to miraculous oversight. Mary models the practical procedures of scribal correction that the monk is to follow. Writing the page and emending it is a devotional, mimetic exercise sanctified by Mary’s touch. The Virgin Mary was not the only editorial overseer – demons, too, could manifest in some instances of miraculous textuality. This concern can be seen in the writings of Richard Methley (1450/51–1527/28), a distinguished On the distinctive punctuation used by the order, see A. I. Doyle, ‘Book Production’, pp. 13–15, and M. B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley, 1993). On uniformity, the locus classicus is the Opus Pacis (ed. Egan), written in 1417 by Oswald de Corda (d. 1435), who was the Bavarian-born prior of the Vallis Virtutis charterhouse in Perth, Scotland (1429–34), and the former vicar of the Grande Chartreuse. For rich discussions of this text and its interest in emendation, see Sargent, ‘Problem of Uniformity’, pp. 122–1, as well as Rouse and Rouse, ‘Correction and Emendation’, pp. 333–46 and Rouse and Rouse, ‘Backgrounds to Print: Aspects of the Manuscript Book in Northern Europe of the Fifteenth Century’, in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, 1991), pp. 449–66 (p. 456).

39

De Corda, Opus Pacis, ed. Egan, p. 87.

40

A. I. Doyle, ‘A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries, with Special Consideration to the Part of the Clergy Therein’ (unpublished D. Phil. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1953), p. 143.

41

Sargent, James Grenehalgh, pp. 73–109, and now idem, ‘Problem of Uniformity’, pp. 122–41.

42

For the continental context, see Rouse and Rouse, ‘Correction and Emendation’, pp. 333–46.

43

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 269

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 7 0    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

translator and the most noteworthy English Carthusian mystical writer of the period.44 Towards the end of the Refectorium Salutis, written in 1487, Methley interprets one of his own diabolic temptations through the lens of manuscript production: contigit paulo ante, vt temptaret me diabolus dicens me non debere velle dissolui et esse cum Christo, quia libros habui quos cum correxissem prius, tamen postea reuersus aliquid incongruum reperi, scilicet verbum, sillabam, l[i]tteram, vel forte titulum aut aliquid huiusmodi. Et ideo ait debere me tardare et iterum corrigere; et ecce dum Simbolum dicerem, subito in spiritu illuminatus vidi ob hoc non deberem cessare a casto desiderio deposicionis corporalis propria, [ad] christum pure propter se optinendum. Nam vidi, sicut quicumque spiritu dei aguntur, hii filii sunt dei, sic si deus hominem mortalem tulerit a corpore ad se per vim eximii doloris et amoris, proinde non solum anime sed et correccioni librorum ac et omni necessitate, quecumque sit illa, quia impossibile est ibi deesse diuinum auxilium vbi deesse contigerit humanum in electis dei. (It [had] happened a little before, as the devil was tempting me saying that I ought not to want to be dissolved and be with Christ because I had books which, although I had corrected [them] previously, I nonetheless returned afterwards and discovered something unsuitable, namely a word, a syllable, a letter, or by chance a title or anything of such a kind. And therefore he said that I ought to slow down and correct again. And behold while I was [later in my cell] saying the Creed, I was suddenly illuminated in the spirit and saw with regard to this that I ought not to leave off from the chaste desire of my own bodily disposition desiring purely Christ for himself. For I saw, as it were, [that] whatever people are driven by the spirit of God are the children of God; thus if God has brought a mortal man from the body to himself through the power of exceptional sorrow and love, in like manner [does he do so] not only for the soul but also for the correction of books and also in 44

See Knowles, Religious Orders, II, pp. 137, 224–6; M. G. Sargent, ‘Methley, Richard (1450/51–1527/8)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). The differences (and similarities) between Love and Methley have been brilliantly explored in V. Gillespie, ‘Haunted Text: Reflections in The Mirrour to Deuote Peple’, in Medieval Texts and Contexts, ed. D. Renevey and G. D. Caie (London, 2008), pp. 136–66 (pp. 138–39). See also K. Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 203–36 and L. S. Miles, ‘Richard Methley and the Translation of Vernacular Religious Writing into Latin’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 449–67.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 270

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   271

every necessity, whatever that may be, because it is impossible for divine aid to fail where it has happened that man fails in the chosen things of God.)45

Methley displays the same concern for correction and emendation seen in Homersley’s vision, and here word, syllable, letter and title are all sites of potential micro-error and malformity. For this reason Katherine Zieman calls it a ‘monastic anxiety dream’.46 What is also noteworthy, however, is the way Methley makes an explicit book/body analogy. As he describes it, when he is trying to dissolve his corporeity in order to fuse with Christ in an apparently apophatic mystical experience, the devil calls to mind textual errors in his manuscript books that he has already corrected and urges him to slow down and correct again, calling him back to his body. The devil suggests that books already corrected need further correcting and are still full of previously hidden errors; this ongoing, continuous process parallels his own (imperfect) spiritual formation. His body is the book that constantly needs correcting and is both the object and agent of metamorphosis – because the copying of books is also, of course, dependent upon his body. The manuscript is the model of the self, a template of subjectivity, and the body is a vehicle for union with Christ and for copying books; they are material equivalences.47 Christ calls those to him for the physical dissolution that precedes union – and for the correction of books. Even if man fails, and the book has errors, God never does. He is the supreme scribe and the perfect divine textual editor over all scribes. Methley’s text also recalls by association the trope of the book of conscience in which one’s sins are inscribed in a manuscript book.48 Such imagery is indebted to biblical imagery such as that found in Revelation 20. 12, ‘And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the All of Methley’s surviving works are now edited in The Works of Richard Methley, ed. J. Clark and J. Hogg, Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality, Analecta Cartusiana 64.1 (2017); (quotation p. 49, lines 1–11). See also J. Hogg, ‘Richard Methley: A Mystical Diary: The “Refectorium Salutis”’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana 55.1 (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 208–38.

45

K. Zieman, ‘Monasticism and the Public Contemplative in Late Medieval England: Richard Methley and his Spiritual Formation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42.3 (2012), 699–724 (pp. 717–18).

46

Cf. E. Jager, The Book of the Heart (Chicago and London, 2000). On the book as model and mirror of the self, see K. A. Smith, The Taymouth Hours: Stories and the Construction of the Self in Late Medieval England (London, 2012), pp. 3–4 and passim.

47

On the conscience as a book, see Jager, Book of the Heart, pp. 42–60, 139–50 and passim. Chauncy uses the related motif of the ‘book of life’ in the context of the London martyrs, in Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, ed. Curtis, p. 123.

48

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 271

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 7 2    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.’49 By the late Middle Ages it was a commonplace that upon death an individual’s sins were enshrined in a material book that was then read and judged.50 Some of this imagery was influenced by the ‘bookkeeping mentality’ often ascribed to the period and made vivid in many examples of religious art and literature.51 The devil suggests to Methley that his body is a kind of book of conscience because it needs ongoing correction, erasure and reinscription. In this way, the devil, too, plays a role in Methley’s textual imaginary. Yet God reassures him that the correction of manuscripts is a divinely sanctioned necessity – and that his imperfect book/body is part of God’s plan.52 49

50 51

52

Cf. Daniel 7. 10, and see E. R. Curtius, ‘The Book as Symbol’, in European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, 1953), pp. 310–11. See Jager, Book of the Heart, pp. 42–9, 55.

See J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1981), pp. 228–9, with references. The ‘bookkeeping mentality’ is discussed in, for example, A. Angenendt et al., ‘Counting Piety in the Early and High Middle Ages’, in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. B. Jussen, trans. P. Selwyn (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 15–54.

On the corporeal connection between bodily ‘necessities’ and copying books, cf. Adam of Dryburgh (d. 1212), whose writings might have influenced Methley’s thinking here: ‘Semper enim viri religiosi, qui tamen literati sunt, prout eis posse corporalis sanitas administrat; cum ab oration, lectione, meditatione, et necessitatibus (quod nequaquam tacendum est) corporalibus, et necessariis substentaculis corporis vacant; in quantum tempus et ratio exegerit; non quidem prout eorum voluntas elegerit, magis autem sicut praesidentis auctoritas discrete, et discretion authentica dictaverit; libris utique vel praeparandis, vel conficiendis, vel ligandis, vel emendandis, vel ornandis, vel illuminandis, vel intitulandis, vel iis quae ad ista pertinent ordinandis, faciendis et perficiendis, sollicite intendere debent. Et cum hoc in omni ordine decens et congruum sit, sed magis in ordine nostro Carthusiensi, aptum utique hoc est, et pulchrum.’ (Indeed always, religious men, who are also literate, should write and copy according to how their bodily health permits and when they are free from prayer, reading, meditation, bodily necessities (about which we should by no means be silent), and activities on which the body depends. The scribes should copy as much as time and reason require, but they should not follow their own wills in this but rather should do as the discerning authority and authentic discretion of the prior shall dictate. Thus they ought to carefully direct their attention especially to the preparing, completing, binding, correcting, decorating, illuminating, or intitling [sic] of books, or to things which assist in these operations. And while this is fitting and proper in every [religious] order, it is more apt and beautiful in our Carthusian order.) The Latin text is in St Bruno, et al., PL 153.881, where it is misattributed to Guigo II. The English translation appears in Marks, Medieval Manuscript Library, I, p. 38. The passage is also discussed in Knowles, Religious Orders, II, p. 224 and Gilbert, ‘Early Carthusian Script’, p. 395.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 272

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   273

Elsewhere Methley describes his own personal encounters with demons, who are banished by invoking the Holy Name, which he closely associates with the making of books. In the Scola amoris languidi, for example, when discussing the power of the Holy Name, he claims demons have visited to him in his cell: In nomine iesu demonia eicio, quia spiritualiter et aliquando visibiliter, per multa figmenta venientes demones, ad me manentem in cella, hoc nomine aufugiunt sine mora. In nomine iesu linguis loquor nouis, vt dicunt ali[qui] de me qui audierunt, aut libros quos per graciam scripsi legerunt. (In the name (of ) Jesus, I cast out demons, because spiritually and sometimes visibly demons in many forms, coming to me while remaining in [my] cell, flee away without delay because of this name. In the name (of ) Jesus I speak with strange tongues, as some men say who have heard me or have read the books that I have written through (divine) grace.)53

The idea that the Holy Name drives out demons was traditional, and appears, for example, in the writings of Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349), ‘For it chaces devels, and destroyes temptacions, and puttes away wykked dredes and vices, and clenses pe thoght.’54 The well-known English Carthusian manuscript London, British Library, MS Additional 37049 is full of texts and images that celebrate the performative, wonder-working powers of the Holy Name.55 Methley extends these powers to hearing and reading the texts that Works of Richard Methley, ed. Clark and Hogg, pp. 14–15.

53

From ‘The Commandment’, in English Writings of Richard Rolle Hermit of Hampole, ed. H. E. Allen (Oxford, 1931), p. 81. On Rolle’s devotion to the Holy Name, see D. Renevey, ‘Name Above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection I’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland, Wales, Exeter Symposium VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 103–21. The subject is also treated in N. Watson’s foundational study, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 18–19, 55, 149–50, and passim.

54

Additional 37049 is also full of the vernacular writings of Richard Rolle, as well as his portrait. On the Holy Name in this manuscript, see D. Renevey, ‘The Name Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations, and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England’, in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. 9, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 130 (Salzburg, 1996), pp. 127–48; J. Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago, 2007), passim; and M. V. Hennessy, ‘Three Marian Texts Including a Prayer for a Lay-Brother in London, British Library MS Additional 37049’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, vol. 14, Regional Manuscripts 1200–1700, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (London, 2008), pp.

55

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 273

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 7 4    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

he has copied, composed or translated. His own work as a monastic scribe and author is thus figured as a form of textualized speech akin to the Holy Name and a means to ‘fight the devil’s insidious wiles with pen and ink’.56 Chronicle accounts give the impression that demonological imaginings like Methley’s were relatively commonplace at English charterhouses, especially at London. Homersley also complained of visits by Satan himself in the form of two demons, one of whom gave his name as ‘Asmodeus’, the name of a demon who appears in the Book of Tobit, the Talmud and other sources.57 The London monk Thomas Clough (d. 1432) claimed the same demons plagued him in his cell. After Clough died, his ghost appeared to Homersley to entreat him for prayers on his behalf.58 In the 1450s an anonymous Carthusian translated a vernacular visionary text by a layman named Edmund Leversedge, replete with apparitions of demons, a near-death experience and an otherworldly journey.59 William Tynbegh, Irishman and prior of London (1500–29), was found lying on the floor of his cell, badly wounded after allegedly battling infernal spirits.60 These diabolic encounters were illustrated in two 1608 editions of Chauncy’s narrative, which also describe how, before his profession, he had been miraculously rescued from the Saracens in Jerusalem by an icon of St Catherine.61 Demons even were said to plague Thomas Salter, a discontented monk of London, who was padlocked into his cell as

56

57

58 59

60 61

163–79. The Carthusian order may have played a special role in promoting Holy Name devotions; see J. A. Gribbin, Aspects of Carthusian Liturgical Practice in Later Medieval England, Analecta Cartusiana 99.33 (Salzburg, 1995), pp. 48–9.

Quotation from Cassiodorus, Institutiones I, xxx.1, but the sentiment was traditional in many monastic writings.

St John Hope, History of the London Charterhouse, pp. 61–2. Homersley lived there during the reign of the second prior, Dan John Okenden/Ockenden (1397–1412). St John Hope, History of the London Charterhouse, p. 62.

See the fascinating discussion in V. Gillespie, ‘Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland and Wales, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 241–68 (p. 244). The text is edited as The Vision of Edmund Leversedge: A 15th-Century Account of a Visit to the Otherworld Edited from BL MS Additional 34, 193 with an Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. W. F. Nijenhuis (Nijmegen, 1991). Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 279.

See M. Chauncy, The history of the sufferings of eighteen Carthusians in England: who refusing to take part in schism, and to separate themselves from the unity of the Catholic Church, were cruelly martyred (London, 1890), pp. 32–33, where it mentions he was ‘taken up into heaven’ to see dead friends. Also discussed in Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 347–8.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 274

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   275

punishment for his intransigence and disobedience after he served as one of Cromwell’s informers and cast aspersions on his brethren.62 Some visions, though not necessarily demonic, also took a dark turn. For instance, George Norton, monk of London, saw a crucifix turn its back on him, ‘whereupon he went out of his mind and remained in that miserable state for half a year’; after being placed on suicide watch, he eventually got dispensation to leave the order sometime between 1529 and 1531 and became a canon in the West Country.63 The literary culture of the English Carthusians was also rich in Marian texts that often involved demons. They owned at least two manuscripts of Marian miracles, one in rhythmic verse; a literary dialogue between Mary and John; and an exposition on the Ave Maria.64 John Blacman gave Witham his own copy of the Miracles of the Virgin.65 MS Additional 37049 also contains numerous Marian texts and illustrations, celebrating her physical beauty, her Holy Name, miracles and her role as intercessor.66 In one of nine miracles of the Virgin in this manuscript,67 a slothful servant of St Anselm is freed from a demon’s grasp when he calls upon the name of Mary.68 The monk who stays Chauncy, The history of the sufferings, pp. 38–9. See also Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 387, 418, 425, 486, 503.

62

LP, VI, no. 1046; Chauncy, The history of the sufferings, p. 39; see also Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 298, 387, 389.

63

A. I. Doyle, ‘Carthusians’, in Syon Abbey, with the Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. V. Gillespie and A. I. Doyle, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London, 2001), p. 797. Syon had eight manuscripts with Marian miracles, plus sixteen other Marian items, including devotional alphabets, treatises and so on.

64

R. Lovatt, ‘The Library of John Blacman and Contemporary Carthusian Spirituality’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992), 195–230 (p. 205).

65

Hennessy, ‘Three Marian Texts’, pp. 163–79; Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, pp. 170–8, 184–7, 208; A. Williams Boyarin, ed. and trans., Miracles of the Virgin in Middle English (New York, 2015), p. 133.

66

See ‘Catalogue of Middle English Miracles’, in P. Whiteford, The Myracles of Oure Lady, ed. from Wynkyn de Worde’s edition, Middle English Texts 23 (Heidelberg, 1990), pp. 97–134, esp. pp. 120–1 for a list and discussion of all of the Marian miracles in Additional 37049. He notes (p. 121), ‘No source is known for these miracles. The stories they narrate are generally of common currency, although the details in some of them are unique.’ For a small sample of Middle English Marian miracles with continental Carthusian associations, see Whiteford no. 10, p. 51 and no. 28, p. 61.

67

The attribution ‘servant of St. Anselm’ is problematic, and could refer to a monk, lay brother, a member of Anselm’s household staff while he served ecclesiastical office or someone in his circle; see R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059-c. 1130 (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 194–202.

68

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 275

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 7 6    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

in bed is a common topos; the name of Mary frequently drives away the devil and the related phrase ‘Holy Mary, help me’ is found in several other tales.69 In another related tale, a lay brother is carried off by a demon and, after Mary’s intercession, set down far from home.70 Marienlegenden were a monastic genre, and monastic libraries generally had such items available to them; they were especially useful for reading in the chapel and refectory on the feast days of the Virgin.71 Although not much is known about the English Carthusian John of Olney (fl. 1350), we do know that he wrote five books of Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary.72 Carthusians also appear as protagonists in Miracles of the Virgin written outside the order. The prolific Johan Herolt (d. 1468), prior of the Dominican monastery in Nuremberg, includes three separate stories that feature Carthusians, one of whom is rewarded for his Marian devotion with a

69

70

71

72

The text could derive from some version of the Miracula S. Anselmi, but this story does not appear in Memorials of Saint Anselm, ed. R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt (London, 1969). The reference could be to the nephew of Archbishop Anselm, Anselm the Younger, who had a distinguished ecclesiastical career, spent time in England as abbot of Bury St. Edmund’s and influenced the literary dissemination of miracles of the Virgin in England and on the Continent. See Southern, ‘The English Origins of the “Miracles of the Virgin”’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958), 176–216, esp. 190–9.

See F. C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales, Folklore Fellows Communications vol. 86, no. 204 (Helsinki, 1969). ‘The character of the monk who stays in bed is found elsewhere (see Tubach, Index 1160, 4442, and 4443). Caesarius has an amusing anecdote with this motif, in which a young monk, afraid of the cold, stays in bed and his prior sees four devils in there with him keeping him warm (1851: I, 197–8, No. 28). The monk’s cry, Holy Mary, help me, is also found in a number of miracles (see Tubach, Index 1594 (e) and Gripkey 1952: 21, No. 58)’. From Whiteford, The Myracles of Oure Lady, p. 83. Tubach, Index Exemplorum, #3449, p. 268 (on Mary’s name), and #1581, p. 130: ‘Devil carries off lay-brother. A lay-brother was carried off by the devil and deposited in a distant place.’ The miracle also shares some elements with another catalogued by Whiteford: a monk, whose mind wanders during the divine office, is brought to judgment by a black devil while lying at home in his bed, but is freed upon calling Mary’s name. See Whiteford, The Myracles of Oure Lady, no. 20, p. 57, and compare his remarks on no. 36, p. 90. C. M. Meale has shown that extant English manuscript evidence of prose and verse miracles of the Virgin is rich and heterogeneous, with diverse contexts and potential audiences. See Meale, ‘The Miracles of Our Lady: Context and Interpretation’, in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 115–36 (pp. 116–19). Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 339. He also wrote another book of ‘Solitary Meditations’.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 276

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   277

vision in heaven of the Rosary’s efficacy and divine favour.73 There were other kinds of Marian encounters at English charterhouses. At Mount Grace, John Wilson (d. 1557), who was prior there from 1522 to 1539, agreed to readmit a young priest who had left five years earlier unable to make his profession, mainly because the Virgin Mary had miraculously intervened: ‘bot onely by miracule of Our Blissed Lady he had loost his witte’.74 Wilson was also said to have experienced visions, including one in which Christ assured him that in the future there would be three times as many charterhouses in England.75 Dom Stephen of Flanders, monk of Hinton (d. c. 1500), ‘a visionary, of some contemporary fame’,76 had a vision of Mary Magdalene, his special patroness and intercessor, and claimed that he held a dialogue with her ‘raptus in mentis excessem’, later recounted by Petrus Dorlandus (d. post 1525) in his Chronicle of the Carthusian Order.77

Visions and voices

All of these encounters with heavenly and infernal spirits led to some anxious questioning inside and outside of the order.78 Some Carthusians were Johannes Herolt, Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, transl. C. C. Swinton Bland (New York, 1928), no. 29, pp. 48–51 concerns an English Carthusian monk named Henry, whose great regard for Mary allows him to receive sacrament before death; cf. no. 92, p. 120, also Carthusian; and no. 99, pp. 131–3, Carthusian of Treves, c. 1431 has a vision in heaven of Rosary’s efficacy and divine favor. Two copies of this work were owned by Syon, who also owned other texts by him. See Syon Abbey, ed. Gillespie and Doyle, p. 742.

73

Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, p. 172.

74

He resisted the Oath of Supremacy and was imprisoned for a time; he later joined Sheen refounded. See Knowles, Religious Orders, III, pp. 239–40, and L. Le Vasseur, Ephemerides Ordinis Cartusiensis, 4 vols. (Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1890), III, 264.

75

Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, p. 506; See The Victoria History of the County of Somerset, ed. W. Page (London, 1906), vol. VI, p. 219; Le Vasseur, Ephemerides, III, 512–15.

76

E. M. Thompson, A History of the Somerset Carthusians (London, 1895), pp. 268–70, with abridged translation at pp. 270–4. For Petrus, see Le Vasseur, Ephemerides, II, 512–15 and A. I. Doyle, ‘A Manuscript of Petrus Dorlandus of Diest’s Viola Animae’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 155–62.

77

Three excellent studies on the broader subject include R. Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York, 1999); N. Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca NY and London, 2003); and D. Elliott, Proving Woman: Female Spiritual and Inquisitorial Practices in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2004).

78

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 277

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 7 8    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

not content merely to record miracles and marvels, but chose to analyse these phenomena with a critical eye. Even Methley wrote a (acephalous) treatise on the discernment of spirits, the Experimentum Veritatis, which appears in a manuscript with his ‘Epistle to Hew Hermyte’ in London, PRO MS SP I/239.79 Sargent, who diplomatically transcribed the text, observes that the treatise concerns how to evaluate ‘angelic apparitions, voices and prophecies’, especially those experienced by the contemplative, in order to determine their truth or falsehood and whether the source is demonic or angelic.80 Chapter 15, for example, focuses on the discernment of voices and apparitions, ‘the ways that a good or evil angel can appear or speak, how they can be distinguished from one another, and how both can be distinguished from the voice with which one speaks to one’s self ’.81 Chapters 18–20 of this work concern modern-day prophets and evangelists and discuss how to trick an evil angel into revealing itself.82 The subject matter also can be connected thematically to the multiple voices of his own bibliophilic demonic temptation. Methley’s treatise also makes clear that he was personally interested in supernatural phenomena, including angels and demons, miracles and marvels, as well as the mystics, prophets and evangelists in his midst, both inside and outside the charterhouse.83 Influences on the question include not only Methley’s confrère John Norton (d. 1522), who was prior of Mount Grace from 1509 to 1522 and author of several texts on the contemplative life,84 but also female textual authorities such as Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena,85 as well as Methley’s controversial contemporary, Elizabeth Barton, the Maid of Kent (d. 1534), a Benedictine nun from the convent of St Sepulchre’s near 79

80 81 82

83

84

85

The text is diplomatically transcribed in M. G. Sargent, ‘Self-Verification of Visionary Phenomena: Richard Methley’s Experimentum Veritatis’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana, 55.2 (1981), pp. 121–37. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid., p. 122.

Chapter 18, for example, is called ‘De evangelistis & prophetis moderni temporis & diabolic dolis’; see Sargent, ‘Self-Verification’, pp. 128–9.

J. Hogg, ‘Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality’, Collectanea Cartusiensia, 3, Analecta Cartusiana, 82.3 (1980), 1–43 (p. 31). See J. Clark and J. Hogg, Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality, vol. 3: The Works of John Norton, Analecta Cartusiana 64.3 (2016).

See J. N. Brown, ‘From the Charterhouse to the Printing House: Catherine of Siena in England’, in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice. Texts, Readers, and Transformations, ed. N. R. Rice (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 17–45 (p. 21), now revised in Brown, Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Toronto, 2019).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 278

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   279

Canterbury who was hanged at Tyburn in 1534, aged 28.86 Barton’s visions began in 1525 and Methley died in 1527/28, so they would have overlapped for just a few years. Nevertheless, by 1528 Barton had already achieved great national notoriety and had even met Cardinal Wolsey, so Methley was probably well aware of her reputation.87 Barton had ‘direct links with Syon Abbey’,88 where she first met Thomas More in 1533, had received ‘enthusiastic reception’ at both Sheen and London89 and counted several Carthusians among her adherents and correspondents, including at least three monks and one lay brother, who seemingly valued her visions, her prophecies and her piety.90 Other texts affiliated with the Carthusians reflect the same interest in the classification of miracles and other supernatural phenomena.91 Norman Blake has noted that in The Treatise on the Sacrament, a text that circulated with copies Sargent, ‘Self-Verification’, p. 121.

86

See the excellent, revisionist study by D. Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 51–80; and now N. B. Warren, ‘The Mystic, the Monarch, and the Persistence of the Medieval: Elizabeth Barton and Henry VIII’, in Women of God and Arms: Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380–1600 (Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 119–38.

87

For her links to Syon, see A. da Costa, Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy 1525–1534 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 116–17, including the cagey envoy concerning Barton included in Richard Whitford’s Dayly exercyce and experience of dethe (London: Robert Redman, ?1534) (STC 25413.7), ‘Whitford’s envoy is testimony that Syon was dangerously willing to rally behind God’s messenger and only reluctantly abandoned her’ (p. 117).

88

Watt, Secretaries of God, p. 53. More’s letters suggest that some of the Syon brethren were sceptical of Barton and her prophecies; however, she still had a wide circle of support that included the Abbess, Agnes Jordan and the Confessor, John Fewterer. See The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. F. Rogers (Princeton, 1947), pp. 484–6.

89

Supporters and correspondents include Henry Man (Procurator of Sheen by 1533, Prior of Witham 1534–35, and then of Sheen 1535–40); Brother William Howe (lay brother of Sheen and Hinton); Henry Ball (monk and vicar of Sheen); and John Michel (also Mychell), Procurator of Sheen and Prior of Witham (1536–39), among others. See Rowntree, Appendix VI, ‘Biographical Dictionary of the English Carthusians’, in Studies in Carthusian History, pp. 485–546; and LP, VI, nos. 589, 835, 1149 (ii), and 1468.

90

For a detailed discussion of works on the discretion of spirits and prophecy at Syon, including Whitford’s Dayly exercyce and experience of dethe, see V. Gillespie, ‘Visionary Women and Their Books in the Library of the Brethren of Syon’, in Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain, ed. J. Willoughby and J. Catto (Toronto, 2018), pp. 40–63 (44–55), who notes that the brethren took a rather cautious view of prophetic and visionary activity, especially where the nuns were concerned.

91

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 279

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

2 8 0    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

of Nicholas Love’s Mirror, the words miracle and merueyl are often linked in an alliterative doublet, which suggests that the concepts were paired but differentiated.92 In a fifteenth-century manuscript owned by Coventry charterhouse, a short treatise was added at the beginning of the manuscript on the subject of marvels and prophets, ‘Vt inclusi no querant signa et mirabilia fieri nichil, quia per ostentacionem faciant et vanam gloriam omnino fugiant.’93 The author expresses a certain degree of scepticism towards the miraculous: our Lord and Saviour did not say By signs and wonders ye shall know them, nor did he promise that on the day of judgment a reward to those who perform signs and marvels, but to those who fulfill his commandments… He did not say that they are blessed who perform signs and wonders, but those who are humble in spirit, merciful, mourning and performing good works.94

Signs and wonders were deemed outside the boundaries of both scripture and monastic custom, trumped by humility, good works and the pious observation of the Ten Commandments, all held up as appropriate models of ethical conduct. There were other even more questioning members of the order, and some engaged in debate over the merits of extreme forms of sensory devotion such as those associated with Richard Rolle, whose works were actively transmitted along Carthusian channels.95 The hermit Thomas Bassett wrote a Defensorium of Rolle sometime between 1390 and 1410 against an anonymous Carthusian who was particularly suspicious of Rollean mystical excess.96 The broader category that was open to question was what Sargent aptly called ‘the perceptible 92

93

94 95

96

N. Blake, ‘Some Comments on the Style of Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July, 1995, ed. S. Oguro, R. Beadle, and M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 99–114 (p. 114). The distinction was traditional and is discussed in R. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, 2013), pp. 334–5, with references. From Cambridge, Christ’s College, MS DD. I. II, fols. i v-iii r. Edited and translated in The Chastising of God’s Children, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge (Oxford, 1957), p. 56. Chastising of God’s Children, pp. 56–7.

See M. G. Sargent, ‘Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, 5 vols. (Salzburg, 1981–2), I, pp. 160–205; Watson, Richard Rolle, pp. 262–4; and R. Hanna, ‘The Latin Transmission of Richard Rolle’s Latin Works’, The Library 14 (2013), 313–33. Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is another text that takes a dim view of Rollean calor. See M. G. Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Re-Considered’, Medium Aevum, 52.2 (1983), 189–216 (pp. 195–6).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 280

1/29/2021 7:58:23 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   281

love of God and the experiences which flowed from it’.97 The writings of the Flemish mystic John van Ruysbroeck (d. 1381) also came in for censure, despite their popularity among the Carthusians, who often mistakenly thought he was one of the order.98 On the other hand, the English Carthusian manuscript Additional 37049 is distinctly and unapologetically Rollean in tone and textual content.99 John Blacman (d. 1485?), the chaplain/biographer of Henry VI and later Carthusian clericus redditus at Witham charterhouse,100 bequeathed sixty-nine volumes to Witham, including several works by Rolle, and he seems to have especially embraced the devotional and mystical tradition to which his works belong, as Roger Lovatt has detailed.101 Discretio spirituum was also a subject of interest to the so-called ‘red ink annotator’ of the manuscript that contains the Book of Margery Kempe, London, British Library, MS Additional 61823.102 Following Hope Emily Allen, several scholars have discussed ‘parallels between the red annotations and Margery’s affective mystical experiences with Richard Rolle, John Norton

Sargent, ‘Self-Verification’, p. 122.

97

For criticism of Ruysbroeck, see the Confirmacio Ordinis Carthusiensis in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 1401, esp. fol. 86v; and Chastising of God’s Children, pp. 54–61, as well as Lovatt, ‘Library of John Blacman’, p. 211 n. 49. For the mistaken idea that he was a Carthusian, see M. G. Sargent, ‘The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete’, Viator 28 (1997), 253–79 (p. 262).

98

M. V. Hennessy, ‘Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late Medieval English Manuscript’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. R. Fulton and B. W. Holsinger (New York, 2007), pp. 182–91 and Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness, pp. 134–52, 187–9.

99

Blacman had a full academic career from the late 1430s through the mid-1450s, and wrote a vivid biography of King Henry VI, for whom he served as chaplain, before trying his vocation at London charterhouse in 1457; apparently unsuccessful in his novitiate there, he moved on to Witham as a clericus redditus about 1463, but never made his profession and died outside the order. See R. Lovatt, ‘John Blacman: Biographer of Henry VI’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 418–44; idem, ‘A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited’, in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. A. J. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 172–97; and M. R. James, ed. and trans., Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman’s Memoir (Cambridge, 1919).

100

The Horologium Sapientiae also frequently circulated with Rolle’s works; see Lovatt, ‘Library of John Blacman’, pp. 212–13; Blacman’s donations are listed and described in Doyle, ‘Carthusians’, pp. 630–51.

101

Voaden, God’s Words, p. 153.

102

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 281

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 8 2    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

and particularly Richard Methley’.103 The annotator wrote approvingly of Kempe’s performative mysticism and identified himself as a practitioner of this style of emotive, sensory devotion; he also refers explicitly to Methley and Norton as forerunners in this regard. These two figures certainly shared many commonalities. As Lovatt observed: ‘Not only were Methley and Norton leading members of the Mountgrace community but both men also wrote extensively on the contemplative life. Their works are far from identical in character but they do manifest a recognizably analogous “enthusiastic” piety of visions and voices, of sensory ecstatic experiences retold in circumstantial and meaningful detail’.104 From this view, Vincent Gillespie has also noted the Carthusian interest in the ‘raw data of psychic phenomena’.105 Methley dedicated two of his translations to Norton, whom he succeeded as prior. Tekla Lenor Bude has recently demonstrated that Norton’s works contain many concerns later reflected in Methley’s Refectorium; the two writers seem to be in monastic conversation with one another, and both were especially devoted to the Virgin Mary.106 In Norton’s Devota lamentacio (Devout Lamentation), an autobiographical work and ‘mystical diary’, he recounts a Marian vision he had after mass on the Friday before Whitsunday (20 May) in 1485, his third year as a Carthusian: immediate post Missam sedenti in cella, apparuit michi in spiritu repente rapto, gloriosissima Domina angelorum Maria Mater Ihesu, veri Dei et veri hominis, piisima induta habitum monialum nostri ordinis cum magna multitudine virginum, eodem habitu utencium. (immediately after Mass, sitting in my cell, appeared to me, suddenly ravished in spirit, the most glorious Lady of the angels, Mary, the mother of

Quotation from K. A-M. Bugyis, ‘Handling the Book of Margery Kempe: The Corrective Touches of the Red Ink Annotator’, in New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices, eds. K. Kerby-Fulton, J. Thompson, and S. Baechle (Notre Dame, 2014), pp. 138–58 (p. 139). On Kempe and Methley, see Lochrie, Margery Kempe, pp. 209–20; the passages in question are in M. Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS OS 212 (London, 1940), pp. xxxvi–xliii, 29 n. 3, 68 n. 7, 88 n. 3, 105 n. 4, 174 n. 5.

103

Lovatt, ‘Library of John Blacman’, p. 214.

104

V. Gillespie, ‘Dial M for Mystic’, p. 244. See also Miles, ‘Richard Methley’, p. 462.

105

T. L. Bude, ‘Musica Celestis: Mystical Song in Late Medieval England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2013), pp. 58–114.

106

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 282

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   283

Jesus, truly God and truly man, the most pious lady wearing the habit of our Order with a great multitude of virgins, using the same dress.)107

Mary is clothed in the habit of a Carthusian nun and accompanied by a host of virgins in the same habit, as well as a choir of angels; this instantiation of Rollean canor is what Bude refers to as ‘mystical song’.108 In the same vision, he saw another Carthusian monk successfully attain salvation. This unusual, understudied work also includes dialogues with an angel and with Christ, and one in which Mary informs Norton that he will receive heavenly gifts that are described in his other works, Musica Monachorum and the Thesaurus cordium vere amantium (fols. 28r–76v). The Thesaurus also records another visionary experience in which Norton was rapt from himself and travelled in spirit to a holy mountain, where he found a golden castle full of divine music made by men, angels and saints, which he describes as ‘a miraculous melody of the heart’.109 Norton’s treatises were copied as a gift for the reforming humanist and book collector, William Melton (d. 1528), chancellor of York Minster, who wrote a prefatory letter concerning each treatise that appears in Lincoln Cathedral MS 57, the only extant copy of Norton’s Latin mystical works,110 copied by the scribe Robert Fletcher, monk of Mount Grace, ordained in 1506; he was also apparently ‘subject to visions’ and revelations.111 In 1534, a fellow monk wrote about him: Jhesus. Of an holye reuelation. At Monte Grace, ther is a brother that hath revelationys, but what is revelations be, surloe I can nat tell, but a great name goith vpon hym through oute or religion in this realme. I pray God

From Lincoln Cathedral, MS 57, fols. 79v-80r (now at Nottingham University), now edited in The Works of John Norton, ed. Clark and Hogg, p. 73. For evidence of Methley’s Marianism, see his ‘Epistle to Hew Hermyte’, in Works of Richard Methley, ed. Clark and Hogg, pp. 89–94 (pp. 90, 92).

107

Bude, ‘Musica Celestis’, p. 112; the vision is also discussed in B. Windeatt, ‘1412– 1534: Texts’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, ed. S. Fanous and V. Gillespie (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 195–224 (p. 214).

108

Fols. 53r–69v (64r); see Bude, ‘Musica Celestis’, p. 61. According to Clark and Hogg, The Works of Norton, p. xii, n. 4, Norton also had a vision in which Christ promised him that one day there would be thirty-three charterhouses in England.

109

For Melton’s career, see A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 400–1.

110

LP, VII, no. 1047; See Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 391; Fletcher signed his work in Lincoln Cathedral, MS 57 at fols. 2r and 79r.

111

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 283

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 8 4    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

that his revelations may proue better than the maidis of Kent. His name as I here say is Flecher.112

The letter was written just after Elizabeth Barton’s execution, which provided a pretext for forcing the Oath of Succession on the people of London; this chain of events swept in the ‘troubles’ that would consume the Carthusians.113 The repetition of the word ‘revelation’ in the letter in the context of Barton also suggests how the term could overlap with ‘prophetic modes’.114 Although we have no record of the content of Fletcher’s revelations, in this tumultuous national atmosphere, prophecy was increasingly dangerous.115 A Cistercian of Jervaulx, George Lazenby, was executed in August 1535 for seeking to ‘establishe his treason with revelations from Our Lady and St Anne’.116 Lazenby claimed to have received some of his visions in the chapel of the Carthusians at Mount Grace.117 In spite of the potential for controversy or hazard, the letter makes clear that Fletcher’s ‘great name’ was spreading like wildfire among the English Carthusians, and he must have claimed a kind of spiritual kinship with the visions and voices of Norton and Methley, who had both been his priors. LP, VII, no. 1046–47 (ii); see also LP, VIII, no. 85. Printed in full in Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 391. Fletcher is also discussed in The Works of John Norton, ed. Clark and Hogg, p. xiii.

112

F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 2 vols. (London, 1889) I, 203.

113

See M. Bose, ‘Prophecy, Complaint and Pastoral Care in the Fifteenth Century: Thomas Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum’, in Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. C. Gunn and C. Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 149–62 (p. 149).

114

Standard works on prophecy in the period leading up to this include, K. Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1990); Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford, 1969); L. Coote and T. Thornton, ‘Merlin, Ereldoune, Nixon: A Tradition of Popular Political Prophecy’, New Medieval Literatures 4 (2001), 95–137. The most comprehensive discussion is now Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion, pp. 188–204.

115

LP, VIII, no. 1069. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1971), pp. 390–408, shows that prophecy was popular among all social classes, including the learned and elite, Catholic and Protestant, especially at a time of crisis and upheaval, ‘usually to demonstrate that some drastic change, either desired or already accomplished, had been foreseen by the sages of the past’ (p. 415).

116

117

L. E. Whatmore, The Carthusians under King Henry the Eighth, Analecta Cartusiana 109 (Salzburg, 1983), 146–53 (p. 149).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 284

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   285

Prophecy

In sixteenth-century England, prophecy and politics were deeply intertwined in ways that increasingly came to impact upon the order. Some of the monks were also susceptible to divinations of a political cast. The closely affiliated monks of Syon owned and read books of religious and political prophecy.118 The verse chronicle of world history in the Carthusian manuscript E Museo 160 contains a positive image of Merlin, who was said to have been born for a heavenly purpose, even if he had been sired by an incubus: ‘merline begeten apon a woman by a fend/ 3it thou was of holy life & had spirit of prophe’.119 In 1548 a mason was said to have discovered a prophecy hidden in the wall of the Carthusian house of Hinton in Somerset, which included the so-called ‘Hempe prophecy’, an acrostic that reads, in one variant, ‘After hempe is sowen and growen/Kings of England shall be none’. This prophecy originated during the Henrician period and the letters HEMPE were meant to signify Henry; Edward VI; Mary; Philip of Spain; and Elizabeth. Yet another written forecast was said to have been found in a cell at Syon.120 Political prophecy also touched the Carthusians in an undeniably tragic way: in 1521 Nicholas Hopkins, a monk and vicar of Hinton charterhouse and formerly of Coventry, convinced the third duke of Buckingham, Edward Stafford (d. 1521), that Henry VIII would have no male heirs and he would succeed him.121 Stafford was descended from Edward III and was the largest private landowner in the country, so he was uniquely positioned to inflame Henry’s dynastic fears. Hopkins had accurately predicted the death of James IV at Flodden, and his prognostications allegedly encouraged the duke to seek the throne. Hopkins was Suffolk’s confessor and ‘ghostly father’, as well as the vicar of the conventual church; Stafford had proven a valuable patron of the charterhouse: his donations allowed the monks to do building works, including ‘subterranean aqueducts, long and deeply dug and furnished with leaden pipes’, which delivered a water supply to the cells and cloister.122 At Cf. Thomas, Religion and the Decline, p. 130: ‘The possibility of religious prophecy was also admitted in more orthodox circles.’ See also p. 400; LP, VIII, no. 214–15; and Syon Abbey, with the Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. Gillespie and Doyle, p. 801.

118

119 120 121

122

Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, p. 260 (citing fol. 47r). Thomas, Religion and the Decline, p. 391, and see p. 412.

On Buckingham, see B. J. Harris, Edward Stafford: Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478–1521 (Stanford, 1986).

E. T. D. Foxcroft, ‘The Carthusian Priory of Hinton’, Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club 7 (1891), 293–307 (p. 299). Charitable giving was expected of him, and he gave regularly and generously for building projects,

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 285

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 8 6    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

Hopkins’s urging, Stafford had also financially sponsored the education of a young clerical aspirant at Oxford and paid for his board, clothes, medical care, ink and writing paper.123 Hopkins had also advised Stafford ‘to cultivate the goodwill of his countrymen’.124 For indulging in Hopkins’s vain prophecy of ambition, the duke of Buckingham, the highest peer in England, was executed for high treason in 1521.125 The bulk of charges against him were based upon conversations or messages with Hopkins, who was probably at most a ‘reluctant witness’.126 Although the Carthusians requested that Hopkins be transferred within the order as punishment, he died a few months after confinement in the Tower, of unknown cause or locale.127 Popular legend has it that he was so distraught over his role in the duke’s downfall that he died of a broken heart.128 He was later memorialized by William Shakespeare, who referred to him as ‘that devil-monk,/ Hopkins, that made this mischief ’ (Henry VIII, 2.1.22–23).129 As the political events that preceded the Henrician Reformation began to engulf the London charterhouse, the number of reported supernatural occurrences continued and possibly even intensified. A monk named John Darley twice saw the spirit of a dead monk standing in the doorway to his cell, the elderly Robert Raby (d. 1534, monk of Coventry and London ), whom he had attended in his last illness.130 A letter survives, written in his own hand, dated 25 June 1537, that describes his ghostly encounters. Darley seems to church construction, and chantries (see Harris, Edward Stafford, p. 91, with references); J. Hogg, ‘Architecture of Hinton Charterhouse’, Analecta Cartusiana, 25 (1975), li–liv; LP, III, I, nos. 1285, 1277, 1204, 1276.

Harris, Edward Stafford, p. 91; LP, III.1, p. cxv, no. 1277; J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey, ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1884), I, p. 386, n. 2, and see p. 381.

123

Harris, Edward Stafford, p. 182.

124

Watt, Secretaries of God, p. 54.

125

Harris, Edward Stafford, p. 190.

126

Thompson, History of the Somerset Carthusians, p. 279–93; idem, Carthusian Order, pp. 373–4.

127

Harris, Edward Stafford, p. 189. LP, III.1, p. cxv, and Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII, pp. 381, 386.

128

William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. S. Wells and G. Taylor (Oxford, 1988), p. 1202. See Harris, Edward Stafford, pp. 91–4, 182–8.

129

Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, pp. 176, 512. Chauncy reports that Darley was unhappy with the food at London and said he would prefer to eat toads instead of the fish on offer; thereafter he was plagued by toads who swarmed him for three whole months. Chauncy, The history of the sufferings, pp. 40–1.

130

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 286

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   287

have encouraged communion with the dead, as before Raby died, he asked him to visit him, ‘yff the dede man come to the qwyke … Item, the same day at v. of the cloke after none, I beyng in contemplacion in our entre in our ssell, sodanly he appered unto me in a monkes habit, and said to me, “whhy do ye not ffolow our father?”’131 In order to give greater credence to his vision, he gives the exact time and location of the event and, perhaps more importantly, he commits it to writing and signs the letter, authenticating his experience and giving it documentary status. Raby’s apparition also questions why Darley does not ‘ffolow our father’, meaning John Houghton (d. 1535), the prior of London charterhouse, who had been disembowelled, quartered and beheaded at Tyburn for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy. Houghton, the first of eighteen English Catholic martyrs to die for his faith, was later beatified and canonized, and, according to Chauncy, had prophesied his own martyrdom.132 Raby reported to Darley that Houghton was now resting at the top of a heavenly hierarchy, ‘next unto the angels in heaven’.133 Other monks, too, had consoling visions of the Carthusian martyrs. Richard Croftes (or Crotes), monk of Coventry, was so distraught about the bloody events unfolding around him that, in ‘a fit of religious melancholia’, he was about to drown himself in the monastery’s fishpond, when he claimed that he was prevented from doing so by the ghostly presence of the martyrs, who interposed themselves inside a great light.134 According to the retrospective report of Chauncy, there had been ‘portents and wonders’ preceding the violent executions.135 For example, in the months before his death, Houghton came to visit Mount Grace with a few other monks to discuss the political LP, VIII, no. 932; see also Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 297. The letter, written in 1537, is also published in W. J. D. Roper, Chronicles of the Charter-house (London, 1847), pp. 36–8.

131

Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, ed. Curtis, p. 63. Houghton also had an experience with eucharistic vision. When Houghton was sacristan, a sick monk had vomited a host. Unable to burn it and worried about it, he consulted a devout lay brother, who ‘had a vision, in which he saw a large crowd, with candle in hand, proceed to the sacristy, and after adoration, go to a certain chest, open it and then disappear after some delay. This signalled to Houghton that he should consume the host, which he did with relish: ‘All there could see that he was overcome by its delightful taste.’ L. E. Whatmore, The Carthusans under King Henry the Eighth, Analecta Cartusiana 109 (Salzburg 1983), p. 11.

132

Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 297, 428 (on Raby); pp. 425–9 (on Darley).

133

Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 460; Rowntree, ‘Studies in Carthusian History’, p. 500; Le Vasseur, Ephemerides, I, 578–9.

134

Gasquet, Henry VIII, I, p. 207; Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, ed. Curtis, pp. 57–8.

135

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 287

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 8 8    Mar l ene V i l l al o bo s He nne ssy

events that would soon destroy them. His monastic robe, which was drying in the sun after being laundered, was attacked and torn by a flock of crows: ‘with grasping claws they violently dragged our father’s garment from the poles on which they hung, plucked them with curved beaks and mangled them bit by bit’.136 In Chauncy’s view, the birds portended Houghton’s coming martyrdom at the hands of ‘the black satellites of Satan’.137 Other foreboding signs included the comet of 1533, the rays of which were said to have ricocheted off London charterhouse; a blood-red orb hanging in the sky; and two swarms of unfamiliar flies that invaded the monastery.138 Chauncy also states that many of the events leading up to ‘the storm of persecution’ had been foretold by an unnamed ‘saintly and devout member of our Order’.139 Yet no miracle or prophecy could prevent what came to pass: in June 1537 the remaining monks of London charterhouse surrendered the priory to the king and were officially suppressed that November.140 The demise and dissolution of the remaining English charterhouses soon followed. In conclusion, the devotional atmosphere in the pre-Reformation English charterhouses was highly charged with a keen interest in visions and visionaries. Revelatory writings, in particular, including texts by and about women visionaries, made their way into Carthusian libraries and sometimes from there back into the world and into the hands of other religious and devout laypeople.141 Religious revelations of all sorts circulated in the English char Chauncy, Passion and Martyrdom, ed. Curtis , pp. 58–9.

136

Ibid., pp. 56–9.

137

Ibid., pp. 56–7.

138

Ibid., pp. 37, 117.

139

D. Knowles and W. F. Grimes, Charterhouse: The Medieval Foundation in Light of Recent Discoveries (London, 1954), p. 16. See the full account in Knowles, ‘The London Charterhouse and its Sister Houses’, in Religious Orders, III, pp. 222–40 and C. Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England, ed. W. D. Hamilton, 2 vols. (Westminster, 1875–77), I, 28.

140

See, for example, J. N. Brown, Three Women of Liège. A Critical Editon of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (Turnhout, 2008), p. 11: ‘In addition to the only Middle English versions of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations and Marguerite Porete’s Mirour, a Carthusian library held the only copy of The Book of Margery Kempe as well as texts associated with women’s spirituality like Suso’s Horologium and several works by Richard Rolle, the male mystic and author.’ The subject is also treated in L. H. McEvoy, ‘“O der lady be my help”: Women’s Visionary Writing and the Devotional Literary Canon’, The Chaucer Review 51 (2016), 68–87; Gillespie, ‘Visionary Women and Their Books’, pp. 40–63; and Hennessy, ‘Miraculous Textuality in the London Charterhouse? British Library, MS Egerton 1821 and “The Lilies of the

141

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 288

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

O ther wor ld l y V ision s   289

terhouses: some were otherworldly, others more quotidian, and a few were starkly political. Some of the monks were also prophecy minded. Regardless of the order’s seclusion, it became increasingly embroiled in dangerous secular affairs, with deadly results for many of the monks.142 Just as the origins of the order were bound up with visions from beyond the grave, its brutal end in England was likewise haunted by ghosts, portents and wonders, and indelibly marked by a death-oriented piety. The English Carthusians inhabited a world in which miracle and prophecy, ghostly marvel and mystical encounter, were embraced, assimilated, interrogated and evaluated. Notwithstanding the more empirically minded in their midst, the bulk of the evidence suggests a diverse yet vibrant culture of the miraculous.

142

Virgin”’, in The Carthusians in the City: History, Culture and Martyrdom at the London Charterhouse c. 1370–1555, ed. J. M. Luxford (Toronto, 2021).

On the difficulty of maintaining this isolation, especially for the London charterhouse, see Gillespie, ‘The Permeable Cloister?’, pp. 238–57, and Hennessy, ‘Remains of the Royal Dead’, pp. 310–54.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 289

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

13 The Body of the Nun and the Syon Abbey ‘Additions’1 JENNIFER N. BROWN

t Bridget’s vision, Syon Abbey and double monasteries in England

I

n this essay I will look at how Syon Abbey served as a site of religious questions and problems concerning orthodoxy and gender in medieval England and examine the ways in which the abbey’s legislative texts reinforced ambiguous gender binaries and representations within the order’s double structure. At the centre of these conflicts, anxieties and disputes stood the body of the nun. Her description, along with the limits of her agency and the transgressions she has the potential to commit are the issues to which the abbey’s texts returned. Within the double order, the nuns’ bodies are brought into relief against the backdrop of the men; the presence of the brothers focuses the gaze on the sexualized bodies of the nuns in ways that a standard female-only convent would not permit. The Syon ‘Additions’, a set of legislative supplements to the general Birgittine rule, offer a particular insight into the way that the order in England embraced and struggled with the double monastic structure. The body of the Syon nun lay at the core of this struggle. Bridget did not plan for an order of nuns in the usual way – founding a house, following an established rule, finding Church and state support. Instead, Bridget had a revelation of what her order and rule would look like, and it was unlike other established orders. Bridget’s vision decreed a house of sixty nuns, with a delineated group of brothers to assist them: thirteen priests, 1

Thank you to the Saturday Medieval Group for comments on an early version of this essay: Valerie Allen, Glenn Burger, Matthew Goldie, Steven Kruger, David Lavinsky and, of course, Michael Sargent, who has remained so much a part of my academic and intellectual life. Thanks as well to Nicole Rice for astute reading and editing of this piece.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 290

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    291

four deacons and eight lay brothers.2 This was one of Bridget’s most notable departures from other houses, even those with a double monastic structure. Here, Bridget envisioned brothers living and serving under the abbess, the ultimate authority of the house, and she saw the Birgittine brothers (technically not monks) as supporting what was, at its core, a house for women. The brothers, like the sisters, vowed to follow her rule, which she conceived in the visions; however, it did not officially become codified the way she imagined and was interpolated into the Augustinian rule when ultimately implemented. In 1346 the mother house was founded by Bridget in Vadstena, Sweden. Bridget conceived that only the sisters would elect the abbess, who would also lead the brothers. Together, the sisters and brothers would elect a ‘confessor general’ who, Christopher de Hamel notes, ‘supervised the spiritual welfare of the whole monastery and was responsible to the abbess for the rule of the male part of the Abbey’.3 From 1374 to 1381, Bridget’s daughter Catherine served as abbess of the house, bringing her mother’s relics with her to the abbey. When Henry V founded the Birgittine house of Syon Abbey in 1415, it was not too long after Catherine’s death and within the institutional memory of Vadstena’s founding. As Syon became established and grew, it needed to negotiate its unusual structure and eventually its prominent position within the English devotional landscape, always with its unusual double structure and the body of the nun at the margins of discussion. Syon was eventually the largest nunnery in England until its suppression under Henry VIII at the start of the English Reformation. Although the Birgittine brothers were perhaps more visible than the nuns, the abbey was still primarily understood and known as a convent. Even numerically, with sixty nuns and twenty-five men at full capacity, the women had a significant advantage. From the beginning, Syon departed from some of the customs established at Vadstena in favour of adhering more closely to Bridget’s vision, resulting in a system that supported the sisters there more fully than many other convents and even Vadstena abbey had done. The brothers’ position at Syon Abbey was therefore always awkward. It seems that Bridget had not fully counted on or understood the gender dynamics that could arise when the women were given central positions of power and authority within a double monastery. However, it was one thing for the Birgittine monks to devote themselves to an order conceived by a woman, another entirely to be subjugated to women within See ‘Regula Sancti Salvatoris’, in Codex Regularum Monasticarum et Canonicarum quas ss. patres monachis, canonicis & virginibus sanctimonialibus servandas præscripserunt, ed. L. Holste, 3 vols. (Augsburg, 1759; repr. 1957), III, 107–16.

2

C. de Hamel, Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and Their Peregrinations After the Reformation (London, 1991), p. 52.

3

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 291

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 9 2    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

the monastic context. One of the questions that the brothers brought up immediately at Vadstena, which was then carried over to Syon, was whether the brothers operated as their own monastery within the abbey. They believed and wanted it confirmed that the abbey functioned as two communities – the brethren and the sisters – within the whole.4 Bridget’s vision, in which the monks were essentially present to serve the nuns, was never fully realized. The rules were rewritten to give the monks their own prior and, in 1413, John XXIII issued a bull that stated the Birgittines were in fact two monasteries, not one. Their separateness at times was highlighted. For example, the brothers followed the liturgy consistent with their parish (here, London, which was the Use of Sarum), but the sisters followed a Marian mass. This disparity resulted in two very different forms of worship for the brothers and sisters, further dividing them intellectually and spiritually despite their shared location and devotion to Bridget. The liturgical separation went some way to ease the concerns about the relations between the brothers and sisters within Syon, but outside of it, uneasiness about the existence of double monasteries continued. This anxiety peaked in 1422, only a few years after Syon’s founding, when Pope Martin V issued a papal bull explicitly forbidding the double monastic structure and indicating that any new foundations had to be single monasteries. Although there were really very few double monasteries remaining by then, such as those in the Gilbertine order, their existence loomed large in the anxious imagination of the Church hierarchy. Syon Abbey received the news of the Bull as a direct political and theological threat to their order and the highly important abbey that they had built. They immediately went into action – emissaries from Syon travelled to the Vatican to argue their position before the papal court. Syon’s swift response to the Bull shows that even though the Bridgittines were insistent that they were ‘two monasteries’ operating independently of one another, their coexistence and united identity were extremely important to both the brothers and the sisters who lived there. While the sisters remained cloistered, the brothers were active in the world – and it was a delegation of Syon brothers who went to Rome to argue forcefully not only for Syon’s existence, but for the double monastic structure as an important spiritual way of life. Ultimately, they succeeded in getting the Bull reversed and were allowed a dispensation to continue with the set-up they had established at Syon, but the suspicions surrounding the double monastic structure H. Cnattingius, Studies in The Order of St. Bridget of Sweden I: The Crisis in the 1420s (Stockholm, 1963), p. 25.

4

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 292

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    293

persisted, as did suspicions about the very text authorizing its existence – the revelations of Bridget of Sweden.5 Although Syon is the only fifteenth-century house of both brothers and sisters founded in England, precedents already existed. The most comparable order in England was the Gilbertine order, founded in the twelfth century. Although only one copy of the Gilbertine rule survives (Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 136), Brian Golding has demonstrated that it was consistently edited and altered to deal with various legislations and pressures against the rule, many of the same concerns that would later arise with the founding of Syon.6 With the Gilbertines, each generation brought its own suspicions and anxieties to bear on the house’s complex structure. As with Syon Abbey, the nuns are the focus of the order, but the legislations show that there were always problems with the coexistence of the nuns and their canons. For example, one of the first alterations to the Gilbertine rule was a regulation demanding that the nuns and canons should have the same food and drink, indicating that the latter were eating and drinking better than the former. Another regulation indicated that the nuns should not be able to wear ‘expensive furs’ but should, rather, dress appropriately to the poverty required of the monastery.7 The Gilbertine rule’s later ‘Additions’, however, speak more clearly to some of the issues that I will examine here surrounding the Syon ‘Additions’: anxiety about the nun’s body in a spiritual space populated by men. For example, the rule indicated that ‘no one, lay or clerical, was to speak alone with a nun, but only in the presence of a witness and by permission. No nun or lay sister was to stay at any of the house’s granges and nuns could leave the cloister only to visit neighbours or kin in case of great necessity and with special permission.’8 The nuns were subject to claustration – barred from leaving the convent – both as a matter of discipline and as an expression of anxiety about women on their own in public. The canons had no such regulations. We see claustration in Syon as well, where even the abbess, although the head of the monastic community, was confined within the abbey walls. The confessor general, conversely, represented the abbey’s public face and travelled on business related to the abbey. In this way the private/public division of labour at the abbey mirrored the See R. 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 68.2 (Salzburg, 1984) for more on this.

5

See B. Golding, ‘Keeping Nuns in Order: Enforcement of the Rules in ThirteenthCentury Sempringham’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59 (2008), 657–79.

6

7 8

Ibid., 661. Ibid., 664.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 293

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 9 4    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

domestic arrangements of married laymen and women. The brothers’ hands in shaping the rules (and especially the Syon ‘Additions’, which I will look at more closely) demonstrated a subtle power that directed the sisters and the abbess in various ways. In addition to the insecurities surrounding the existence of a double monastery, the abbey experienced internal and external tensions related to Bridget of Sweden herself. The saint’s canonization was affirmed no fewer than three times, in 1391, 1415 and 1419, because each time her sanctity was brought into question. The fraught, repeated process of Bridget’s canonization reflected larger anxieties in the Church about visionary women and the veracity of their claims to discourse with God. Bridget of Sweden, like her visionary contemporary Catherine of Siena, was both credited and blamed for Pope Gregory XI’s move to Rome after the papacy had moved to Avignon, resulting in the schism. Both women had convinced the pope by recounting their visions of God’s desire for the papacy to move back to Rome.9 Jean Gerson’s powerful 1419 treatise, De probatione spirituum, advised readers to avoid women who claimed any visionary power, declaring they were false prophets and that those who listened to them (as Gregory XI had listened to both Bridget and Catherine) were fools. The Syon brothers had Gerson well represented in their libraries and yet were professed to an order that started with such a woman. The defence of Bridget’s visions as valid permeates many Syon texts, from Discretio spirituum (Discernment of Spirits) texts which outlined how to determine whether a vision was divine or demonic in origin, to explicit mentions in rules for the sisters and brothers to the effect that denying the veracity of St Bridget’s visions or claiming they were dreams was a sin of the highest order. These concerns also dovetailed with broader English concerns about heresy associated with Lollardy and which vernacular texts should be available to laity, another anxiety at the margins of late medieval devotion.10 Indeed, concerns about Bridget and concerns about Lollardy intersected visibly in England through the work of the English Benedictine Adam Easton, who became a cardinal in 1381. Easton had been at the papal curia in Rome in 1367 (after studying at Oxford) and was then sent back to England as an envoy to Edward III in 1368. His connections both to Rome and to 9

For the authoritative analysis on the visionary women and their effects on the schism, see R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (University Park, 2006).

10

See M. G. Sargent, ‘The Anxiety of Authority, the Fear of Translation: The Prologues to The Myroure of Oure Ladye’, in ‘Boodly bot meekly’: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. C. Batt and R. Tixier, The Medieval Translator 14 (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 231–44.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 294

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    295

the English court are significant here. After Urban V died and Gregory XI became pope, Easton began to express interest in Wyclif, parsing out what he saw as a clear heretical threat. It is likely that much of Gregory’s condemnation of Wyclif ’s work in the document known as De Civili Dominio comes from Easton’s correspondence and insights.11 Perhaps on the strength of his work identifying heresies in Wyclif, Easton was called on by Gregory to examine another site of potential heresy: the works of Bridget of Sweden. Easton was asked to do this, along with some other cardinals, in advance of Bridget’s first, already-contested, canonization in 1391. Easton found Bridget’s work orthodox and wrote a passionate defence of her revelations in his Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae.12 Easton addressed four issues: the possibility of a woman having such a revelation, the idiosyncratic style of the rule, the Pauline prohibitions against women as preachers and whether there should be new orders.13 Easton took all of these on, but each of the concerns shows the more general anxiety about Bridget and the nuns who followed her. One of the issues that Easton addressed as a subtopic in his Defensorium is the revelation of the double monastery. Easton determined that it had the approval of the Holy See and that it was rigorously orthodox, but it was clearly addressed because some found it problematic.14 Easton was firm in his interpretation of Bridget’s orthodoxy, but this was not a given state of affairs for Bridget and her work. The fact that the pope was concerned enough about the implications of her revelations that he convened the cardinals to examine her texts for heresy in advance of her canonization, and the fact that this canonization did not fully ‘stick’, point to residual anxiety about her legacy.

Regulating Syon Abbey

The route that Bridget’s revelation took to a rule approved by the Pope and recognized – as Cardinal Easton argued – for its rigour and orthodoxy, was labyrinthine. Bridget’s revelation from Christ, which formed the core of the order, was written down in Sweden in the 1340s but was not authorized by the See M. Harvey, ‘Adam Easton and the Condemnation of John Wyclif, 1377’, The English Historical Review 113 (1998), 321–34.

11

This survives in five copies and a fragment, indicating some circulation.

12

See F. R. Johnston, ‘English Defenders of St. Bridget’, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order: Volume 1, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1993), pp. 263–75.

13

J. Hogg, ‘Adam Easton’s Defensorium sanctae Birgittae’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland, and Wales: Exeter Symposium VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 213–40 (p. 237).

14

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 295

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 9 6    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

Church.15 In 1370, the Regula Sancti Salvatoris, based largely on the Augustinian rule, was approved by Pope Urban V, who followed the fourth Lateran Council’s dictum that any new order had to be based on a previously approved rule, meant to inhibit the establishment of new orders.16 In this version, the Birgittine rule was subordinated to the Augustinian.17 In 1378, Pope Urban VI issued a bull that superseded the earlier Regula, but while it restored some of the original Birgittine vision, much of the detailed operations of the order and how it differed in its function as a double monastery with an abbess in charge was unclear. To this end, many additional texts were written for the Birgittines, meant to supplement the core rule, essentially Augustinian, and to clarify the vision that Bridget had for the sisters and the brothers of the order.18 One of these was the liturgy indicated for the sisters, translated into English as The Myroure of Oure Ladye. This liturgy was quite separate from that of the men, who at Syon followed the ordinary Use of Sarum. Added to the Myroure are the Addiciones prioris Petri and later The Responsiones, both supplements to the rule. The former of these was written by Bridget’s confessor Petrus Olavi in 1380. The Addiciones were never approved by the papacy, but Vadstena formally adopted them in 1429. This supplement contradicted some of the original rule and was clearly concerned with the daily functions of the convent. Although the abbess had to have approved the supplement, it in many ways served to subordinate her own authority, as well as the agency of the nuns under her care. Conversely, the Regula outlined the basics for the men and women of the monastic community and did not give any directions for actual quotidian living, but it was instead concerned with prayer, hierarchy and structure. The Addiciones provided the more detailed rules regarding the operation of the abbey and the behaviour required of its nuns and brothers (and lay brothers, who also had their own Addiciones). While many of the other convents founded after Vadstena, throughout Europe, chose to adopt the Vadstena ‘Additions’ as they stand, Syon Abbey created its own version of the ‘Additions’, departing from the originals on both a macro and a micro level, as I will examine in more detail. 15

16 17 18

E. Andersson, ‘Responsiones Vadstenenses: Perspectives on the Birgittine Rule in Two Texts from Vadstena and Syon Abbey: A Critical Edition with Translation and Introduction’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Stockholm University, 2011), p. 5. See de Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 52.

Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, p. 5.

The ‘Augustinian Rule’ circulated in varied forms during this period. For some of these complexities, see L. Verheijen, O.S.A., La Règle de Saint Augustin, 2 vols. (Paris, 1967), I: Tradition manuscrite.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 296

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    297

Another important Birgittine document, unique to Syon Abbey, is a letter known as the Responsiones, comprised of a series of questions and answers about Birgittine life. Both Syon and Vadstena had copies of this text, which was likely an exchange between the two houses at first, but the Syon version, while ostensibly a translation of the Vadstena one, departed significantly in many places. For example, the Swedish text explicitly stated that the abbess be elected by both the brothers and the sisters, while the English version does not.19 But both versions are interested in gender dynamics within the monastic house. For example, one of the questions in the English text reads ‘Item, quare precedunt fratres in divino officio, cum surores sint principales?’ (‘Why do the brothers precede (the sisters) in the divine office, although the sisters are more important?’)20 The answer states ‘Forsitan quia fratres forciores sunt ad vigilias et labores. Et eciam super hoc est spiritualis revelacio’ (‘Perhaps because the brothers are stronger when it comes to vigils and work. There is also a spiritual revelation regarding this matter’).21 These exchanges reinforced the purported primacy of the nuns within the house, but also show the ways in which the day-to-day life did not reflect this primacy. The symbolic valence of the brothers preceding the nuns into office (and the indication that they are ‘stronger when it comes to vigils and work’) served to undermine the nuns as central to the abbey and further divided the men and women from each other. Many of these legislative texts were concerned with staking the claim of the Birgittines as separate from other orders and fulfilling Bridget of Sweden’s vision of what she wanted the order to be. As Roger Ellis has noted of English Birgittine spirituality, these elements can be teased out of different parts of the legislative texts to show a ‘collective spirituality’ shaped by the governance of the abbey.22 For example, Ellis notes that while the sisters were allowed to converse with secular friends and family on Sundays and feast days, another member of the order always had to be present. Even then, the sister sat at a grate, just as an anchoress might, with a physical barrier between her and the outside world. This provision ensured a kind of group decorum centred on the abbey as a collective and not on the nuns as individuals. The nun is safe when supervised, but alone she is open to peril, either enacted upon her or by her. While some parts of the rule nod toward the nuns’ spiritual growth and centrality to the mission of Bridget – for example, the priests must give the gospel in the vernacular on Sundays so that the sisters can fully understand – an See Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, pp. 70–1.

19

Ibid., pp. 138–9.

20

Ibid., pp. 138–9.

21

Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, p. 2.

22

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 297

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

2 9 8    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

inordinate portion of the rule regulated the interaction between the male and female inhabitants of the abbey. Monks, Ellis writes, ‘may see and hear the nuns only when they administer the Eucharist to them. When they hear the nuns’ confessions, and when they have to consult with them concerning necessary matters, neither party must see the other.’23 Monks are allowed in the nuns’ quarters only to administer the sacraments to a sick sister or for the removal of a deceased sister’s body for burial. The nuns become sexualized only when they are near the brothers, for the existence of the two in the same place serves to bring the women into focus, as the regulatory texts insist that their bodies be policed in various ways.

The Syon ‘Additions’ for the nuns

An incomplete fifteenth-century manuscript, London, British Library MS Arundel 146, preserves Syon’s version of the Addiciones to the Birgittine rule known as the Syon ‘Additions’. These legislative texts, composed between 1425 and 1473, are based on the original Addiciones but depart from them considerably. Through a comparison between the two, one can see some of the fundamental distinctions between the Swedish house at Vadstena and the English abbey in Syon. The sexualized body of the nun, and the anxieties it caused for the male brethren around her, remain at its centre. There is an Addition for the brethren, the sisters and the lay brothers, defining the actual ‘rules’ of living that the Rewyll of Saint Sauoir does not fully provide. Roger Ellis has noted that class differences are articulated among the various ‘Additions’, where, for example, lay brothers are told to drink with both hands while sisters are told to hold the cup in their right hand and steady it with only one finger of the left.24 In expanding the Birgittine rule both in scope and detail, the writer and translators of these texts enumerate many of the concerns and possible threats endemic to communal, bi-gendered life. The tone of each of the three ‘Additions’ (for the brothers, for the lay brothers and for the sisters) is markedly different depending on its audience, but the difference is most starkly apparent according to gender. The brothers are encouraged in their intellectual and pastoral duties, for example, given time off from their choir duties in order to prepare a sermon or to take as many books as they need to study.25 While 23 24 25

Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 71.

See V. Gillespie, ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, Religion and Literature 37 (2005), 27–49 (p. 29).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 298

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    299

both ‘Additions’ are concerned with sinful behaviour, a great focus of the sisters’ potential sins centres on interaction (or desire for interaction) with the brothers. The priest who translated and amended the text for the Syon women was either consciously or subconsciously responding to objections about the men and women’s shared monastic space. In practice the Birgittine brothers and sisters rarely met or had contact unless a priest was administering the sacraments to the sisters. Even the chapel was constructed so ‘that the men entered on the ground floor and women crossed over a bridge above the north aisle on the upper floor-level into a kind of mezzanine gallery suspended above the nave’, ensuring a separation where ‘neither sex could see the other’.26 But the shared space of the monastery was still shared space, and that fact – however imaginary – drives the ‘Additions’. While both versions of the ‘Additions’ list possible sins and their punishments, the text for the sisters remains centreed on the nuns’ bodies in ways that the brothers’ version does not. The sisters’ text shows that even for men and women occupying similar positions in the abbey, the women could not escape the cultural and sexual valences of their bodies. In a Birgittine context the original purpose of the monks is one of support and supplement to the nuns who are housed there, and indeed the evidence shows that Syon more readily accepted this paradigm than Vadstena.27 Yet the Syon text makes it clear that the women’s bodies and thoughts were seen as ultimately unruly and in need of control by their superiors and the men around them. The Syon ‘Additions’ notably begins with one section entitled De Culpis, a list of offences and punishments that originally circulated separately in Vadstena from their own Addiciones or, in some cases, was added as an Appendix. The Syon ‘Additions’ emphasize this section’s importance by opening the document with it, having it govern everything that comes afterward. Christer Henriksén has shown that this part of the ‘Additions’ draws from several traditions including ‘the rule of St. Benedict, the constitutions of the Cistercians … [and] the rule of St. Augustine’.28 These rules, however, were originally written for men functioning inside a single-sex monastery. The text developed a different valence when it was adapted for the bi-gendered monastic setting of Syon Abbey. Although both the ‘Additions’ for the brothers and the sisters begin with a form of De Culpis, the one for the women places their bodies at its centre. Both, however, are certainly concerned with the kinds of sin that the close quarters may invite, or at least in defending against suspicions of that kind. De Hamel, Syon Abbey, p. 53.

26

See Andersson, Responsiones Vadstenenses, p. 13.

27

De Culpis, ed. C. Henriksén (Uppsala, 1990), p. 19.

28

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 299

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

3 0 0    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

The fact that the Syon ‘Additions’ begin with the De Culpis sets the tone for the text as a whole; it is separated from the rest of the text by a space of only seven lines, and its pagination and chapter numbers continue seamlessly. While based on a Vadstena text, De Culpis is greatly expanded in the Syon ‘Additions’ – for example, where the Vadstena list of De Culpis, Primo de Leuibus, originally lists twenty-one light faults for which a sister may transgress, the Syon ‘Additions’ list twenty-nine. This section additionally outlines what to do for the various ‘defautes’ of the nuns and how the ‘takyng of dyscyplynes’ needs to be enacted (a description not in the original at all). The ‘lyght defautes’ include transgressions such as attending service without ‘her hoole habite’, or, for the nun in charge of the ‘kepyng of the bokes’, for allowing them to be borrowed by the sisters when they are needed for chapter readings. But even the light faults are careful to outline that the nuns’ bodies are under surveillance and subject to punishment, as the ‘Additions’ caution: ‘If any by neglygente in dyuyne seruyse, or be lyght or lokynge aboute, or be any vnreligious demenynge of hede, eygh, hande, or fote, schew there any lyghtnes of chere, or sluggeschly slepe, or be slomry29 in any couentual acte.’30 There is no analogous transgression in the Latin De Culpis. All parts of the sisters’ bodies are watched here. Disjointed, the transgressing women become a collection of disobedient heads, eyes, hands and feet. If the male gaze is one that separates women into their constitutive parts (like the poetic device of the blazon), here the brotherly eye sees the nun as an unruly body whose parts will misbehave on their own. Even the sisters’ affect is policed and subject to transgression here: too light, too cheerful, too sluggish or too sleepy. The nuns are set against each other in these proscriptions, participating in a dual surveillance of their own sins and faults and those of their fellow sisters. Their voices, too, are subject to discipline; there is admonishment for speaking in a loud voice, vain speech or ‘if any dissolutly laugh, or styr any other by worde or by dede, to do the same’.31 These light faults may merit a verbal punishment (declaring wrongdoing and reciting the psalms, for example). However, it is not the severity of the punishment that is so much at issue here as it is the recitation of wrongdoing. The nun’s body and self are dissected – her limbs, her affect, her voice – and each is subject to regulation. And the ‘Additions’ not only push the sisters to self-report these vices, but also encourage surveillance against one another. If the subject does not ‘proclame themself wylfully, but be Likely the word ‘slumbri’, meaning sleepy.

29

J. Hogg, ed. The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure: The Syon Additions for the Sisters from the British Library MS Arundel 146 (Salzburg, 1980), p. 2.

30

Ibid., p. 3.

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 300

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    301

proclamyd of other, the penanyce schal be the gretter. And forsothe, yf suche defauted be had in custom, bodyly duscuplyne is to be ȝouen.’32 Of course, the penitent who wilfully submits her faults and chooses to be punished embodies a kind of piety well known through hagiographies – that of the saint who confesses the most minor of sins, such as fasting too much. The latter formulation, however, where the sisters’ transgressions are made known by another nun, is more sinister, and the fact that a ‘greater penance’ is called for increases the sense of culpability. The ‘Additions’ not only lay out what transgressions require punishment but, significantly, also lay out in detail how these punishments should be meted out. Indeed, the description of what is called ‘the bodily discipline’, a lashing, is described in cinematic detail. The text enumerates who should be present, where they may look and even what they should feel while witnessing the discipline. The voyeurism of the text is erotic in its detail and, as such, demonstrates the parodox of the brothers clearly imagining the bodies of the nuns that they decidedly should not see. The description begins by setting the scene, staging the body and clothing of the faulty nun: Therfor, whan the defaute of any suster is suche, that by reguler sentence, sche deserueth a disciplyne, the suster commaunded to make her redy þerto, schal stonde vp in the same place, where as sche knelyd before the abbes, doyng of her mantel and late it fal down behynde her. And then sche vnder her cowle, shal take the hynder extremytees therof, and ley al honestly in her nekke, drawyng her armes out of her sleues, to the elbowes at ferdest, and baryng the scholdres of her bakke as ferre, vnto the bare skyn; and so knelyn aȝene in þe seyd place, and also enclynynge, with alle mekenes schal take her disciplyne.33

Just as the transgressions are a series of body parts (head, eyes, etc.), so is the body receiving its punishment – a neck, an arm, a shoulder, a back. But it is the intimacy of description that is most striking here. The nun must kneel before the abbess, undo her dress and move her veil and habit so that her arms, shoulders and back are bare and awaiting her punishment. She undoes her mantle and ‘lets it fall down behind her’, she removes her arms from her sleeves up to her elbows, making sure her shoulders and back are bare. She ‘enclynes’ forward. The transgressor’s body is eroticized as the strip-tease of her undressing is laid out point by point, underscoring her active agency even as it calls for her submission and ‘mekenes’ before the abbess and the audience Ibid., p. 4.

32

Ibid., pp. 3–4.

33

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 301

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

3 0 2    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

of ‘the suster commaunded to make her redy’. The other audience, of course, is the reader of the texts, who is invited to imagine this punishment as it will play out. The author of the Syon ‘Additions’ continues to prescribe the ritual of the punishment, noting that the nun who administers the lash cannot be any ‘of them that proclamed her, but another suster or sustres’, perhaps mitigating the chance of a vindictive nun who gets to mete out the punishment for which she is responsible. The lasher, along with the other present women, is told where to look and how to act in the face of the punishment: ‘And whylst any disciplyne is in ȝeuyng for correccion, alle the sustres, excepte the abbes or presidente, and the ȝeuer of ȝeuers þerof, schal not beholde her, or them that be disciplyned, but caste downe ther hedes and syght towarde the erth, as yf they scholde beholde it at ther fete, hauyng compassion of her suster or sustres.’34 Again, heads, eyes and feet are surrounding the punishment, not whole bodies. The witnessing nuns cannot actually watch the lashing; they are meant to look at their feet and summon compassion for the sister that way, even as the event is constructed as an act of public humiliation and public shame. The script of the penance is similarly already written: ‘And whylst any is disciplyned, sche schal nothyng say butte Mea culpa, I wyll amende. Whiche sche schal reherse thykke and many tymes, and none other schal speke at that tyme. Whan the abbes sayeth it suffyseth, sche or they that ȝeue the disciplyne, schal cese forthwith, at þe seyd worde.’35 The accused can only utter ‘mea culpa’, the other nuns remain silent; only the abbess’s words will stop the discipline. Although the roles are set out, and the words are written here by a brother, ultimately the abbess’s authority is at least superficially preserved as she determines the end of the crime. The abbess’s authority is, however, somewhat undermined in the minutiae of the description – she administers a punishment that is outlined in every detail. The abbess appears to be the ultimate and final authority, but there is a sleight of hand; she is the director of this macabre play, but the playwright is the brother who penned the ‘Additions’. As expected, the punishments increase in intensity as the faults become more ‘greuous’. And the more grievous faults are ones that most directly reflect the concerns about men and women sharing the close quarters of the double monastic house and the scrutiny of the female body that underlies this anxiety. Under the category of ‘more greuous defautes’ listed in the ‘Additions’, we have transgressions listed: ‘If any be founde in any suspecte place, spekyng with any 34 35

Ibid., p. 5. Ibid.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 302

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    303

brother, or with any seculer persone man or woman’,36 and ‘if any make confession to any other preste, than is assygned her by the general confessour’.37 Here, the anxiety about the kinds of interactions between the sexes in the double monastic setting are highlighted. It is not so much actual sex that is the worry (although this, of course, is a major transgression); it is the emotional interchange that would be more common in this enclosed environment. The ‘Additions’ are directed to the women, of course, so the punishment is for her ‘speaking with any brother’ (not the other way around), and the concern centres on her body being in a ‘suspect place’, movement of the body where it does not belong, out of its limits. Here, the focus on her body is not on its parts but its whole. The body can be in violation in its very movement around Syon’s grounds; it can be ‘out of bounds’ in more ways than one. These faults require the bodily discipline twice a week ‘at leste’, as well as a host of additional punishments regarding what the transgressing nun can and cannot eat and the prayers she needs to recite. The most severe category is that of ‘most greuous defautes’; these violations are deserving of the imprisonment of those who are ‘conspiratours, sclaunderers, mankyllers, violent smytyrs, incontynente lyuers or brekers of chastite and apostates, and they that be vncorrigible’.38 Among these ultimate faults here, along with committing murder and apostasy, is inviting others (the brothers) into fleshly sin. The ‘Additions’ state that ‘if any sende oute lettres of lewde affeccion, or of sclaunder of any persone, or þerto make bylles or rymes, inwarde or outewarde’39 or, of course, ‘if any fal openly into fleschly syn, kyndly or vnkindly’, they should also be imprisoned.40 A ‘bylle’ here seems to be a personal letter of message (‘bille’ in Middle English Dictionary), and ‘rymes’ are songs or poems, the transgression of schoolgirls. The movement from speaking to writing invites an even greater punishment. While the brothers of Syon Abbey fought for the right to maintain the double monastery, they simultaneously, through the ‘Additions’, policed the concerns and anxiety that were brought up by the idea of the double-gendered living space. Although much of this anxiety seems to manifest in a fear about sexual contact (again, always focused on the body of the nun), marginal concerns lurking at the edges of the rules relate to men and women thinking, studying and praying together. This tension between what is forbidden and perhaps Ibid., p. 11.

36

Ibid., p. 12.

37

Ibid., pp. 16–17.

38

Ibid., pp. 15–16.

39

Ibid., p. 16.

40

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 303

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

3 0 4    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

what is desired manifests in an erotics of the nuns’ bodies in their descriptions of the bodily discipline even as they demonstrate the dire consequences of enacting that desire. For the author and readers (both male and female) of the ‘Additions’, they can script the whole cycle of this – the transgression through to the punishment. They can imagine women’s body parts in all parts of this cycle, but not the woman herself. Reduced to her body, she is stripped of her agency and individuality just as surely as she is stripped of her mantle in the face of a lash. But this blurring of individuality also functions to emphasize the role of the collective within the convent. Both Roger Ellis and Leena Enqvist have read the ‘Additions’ as demonstrating the importance of community in the abbey. Ellis sees the ‘Additions’ as a firm way of showing how the Birgittines are different from the other orders in England, establishing themselves as distinct both from Vadstena and from the other orders from which the new English nuns and priests come. Part of this is in the verbal construction of the ‘Additions’, frequently framed as a negative (‘The sisters shall not …’). This construction implies that the other orders are allowing things to happen that the Birgittines are explicitly prohibiting.41 The De Culpis is meant to elicit the best of the nuns, where they self-regulate for their sins in a public way. Ellis sees this focus on the nuns’ humility particularly in the fact that any accuser cannot be an enemy of the accused, so that the charge is taken seriously and that the idea of a personal vendetta is removed from the moment of accusation. Enqvist, likewise, sees the De Culpis as a positive construction where the points of both the transgressions outlined and their punishments are about maintaining a communal social fabric. This, she argues, is why silence and separation are some of the most extreme punishments – the silence would cause the penitent nun and the community to be ‘constantly reminded of the fault she had committed’.42 Both see that the more grievous faults are those that tear at the social fabric of the abbey (spying, lying), and that light faults (not returning a book) are more individual sins. Of course, such social sins bring us back to the coexistence of the priests and the nuns. What would most tear at the communal life and social fabric of the abbey would be a sexual transgression or a violation of the hierarchy. The peaceful coexistence depends on everyone adhering to their assigned role. 41

Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, p. 80, pp. 82–9.

L. Enqvist, ‘Syon Abbey and the List of Faults: An Example of Shaping Social Life in a Medieval Birgittine Community’, in The Birgittine Experience: Papers from the Birgitta Conference in Stockholm 2011, ed. C. Gerjot, M. Åkestam, and R. Andersson (Stockholm, 2013), pp. 307–22 (p. 319).

42

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 304

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    305

Notably, one way in which the Syon ‘Additions’ differs from the Vadstena texts is to give more power to the abbess. While the detailed scripting of the ‘Additions’ does seem to disempower the abbess in her choices as to how and when to administer punishment to transgressing sisters, she is still the governing authority of both the men and the women in a way that she is not at the Swedish motherhouse. In Vadstena, the brothers and sisters elect the abbess together, with both parts having a vote, but one of the first changes that Syon enacts is to establish that the abbess is elected only by the nuns – the brothers have no say. Taking the men’s votes out of the electoral process decidedly gives more power to the sisters in the decision as to who will lead them. In addition, the Syon ‘Additions’ makes small changes that reflect a greater power on the abbess’s part. For example, the abbess had a private room in the convent, used to conduct business. While Vadstena’s rules specify that the abbess could sleep there, Syon’s also allow eating in the room, permitting more privacy and autonomy. Vadstena’s rules specifically state that the abbess must eat with the community, so this shift is deliberate and gives the abbess an increased agency and power in Syon.

The brothers’ ‘Additions’

In the Syon ‘Additions’ we have the useful opportunity to compare the same type of text as constructed for the brothers. While structured similarly, the brothers’ ‘Additions’ frame the De Culpis section quite differently. For the brethren, the anxiety of contact between the sexes within the abbey is still highlighted, but the construction of the punishment loses its voyeuristic quality so prevalent in the sisters’ ‘Additions’, as the focus is more on the shame of the penitent monk rather than his body. For example, a ‘light default’ for the brothers homes in on over-familiarity between nuns and monks: ‘If any sustyr or brother speketh vnreuerently to other, or ȝet calle or name other by ther propyr name, withoute such addicion putt afore: Sustyr; Syr; or Brother or suche other accordyng to ther state and degre; If any festenyth ther syght to the sustres grates wher that they may be seen.’43 The regulation of tone, speech and sight are at the centre of these regulations. Notably, the discipline of the nuns is again brought to the forefront even though this section is inside the brothers’ ‘Additions’. Neither brethren nor sisters may speak in a familiar manner, for the lack of title and use of nicknames or secular

Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure: The Syon Additions for the Brethren and the Boke of Sygnes from the St. Paul’s Cathedral Library MS (Salzburg, 1980), p. 21.

43

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 305

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

3 0 6    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

names would indicate that familiarity. Likewise, the men are admonished from looking at the sisters when they are in view. Notably, however, the sexual sins that permeate the sisters’ ‘Additions’ are downplayed or absent from the brethren’s. For example, while the sisters have listed as one of their most grievous sins the ‘letters of lewd affection’, including the more innocuous ‘bylles or rymes’, in order to be subject to the same punishment, the brethren must openly ‘sende oute any lettres of carnal affeccioun or of sclaunder’,44 a significantly more extreme form of missive than a rhyme. Likewise, the writing of ‘rymes’ has a punishment only in a specific scenario for the brothers: ‘If any be rymes, verses, or scrowes45 cast forth within or withoute, defame or sclaunder the abbes or confessour, sustyr or brother of ay cryme, al yf they wer or be defauty in the same.’46 The focus for the brothers here is the fact that the rhymes may be slanderous, especially against the superiors of the abbey – the abbess and the general confessor. Even the ‘letters of carnal affection’ are the same as ‘slander’, nor is the gender of the recipient of such a letter identified, pointing to some of the fears of sex between men – the ‘fleschly synne kyndly or vnkyndly’, a grievous sin in both ‘Additions’. One of the ‘more greuous defautes’ for both the brothers and sisters is ‘if any afferme the reuelacions of saynt birgitte as dremes, or els detracte hem’.47 This prohibition draws attention to the theological conundrum for the brethren at the centre of their order – it is based on a woman’s revelations at a time when the Church is writing vehemently against such visions. However, the sisters were perhaps less likely to be drawn into this particular sin. The Syon Abbey brethren were, in many ways, public intellectuals; their considerable library and relationships with publishers like Wynkyn de Worde put them at the forefront of theological thought, disseminated to religious and lay readers alike.48 This prominence also means that they were steeped in the theological debates of the day. Some of these directly affected the order, such as the idea of a double monastery. More significantly, the brothers had to confront the formidable campaign against women visionaries that was waged in the wake of the schism. Many blamed this breach upon Catherine of Siena and Bridget herself for urging Pope Gregory XI to move the papacy from Avignon back to Rome. Jean Gerson was one of the most prominent theologians to 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid., p. 30.

A scroll, a document (MED ‘scrou(e’)).

Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure: Syon Additions for the Brethren, p. 30. Ibid., p. 27.

See V. Gillespie, ed., Syon Abbey, with the Libraries of the Carthusians (London, 2001).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 306

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    307

write to oppose the canonization of Bridget, questioning her visions in De probatione spirituum, after writing Discretio spirituum, De distinctione verarum revelationum a falsis, on how to determine whether a vision was true or not (concluding that they are mostly false).49 While these particular works are not listed by name in the Syon catalogue, no fewer than seventeen different works by Jean Gerson are listed there (and some have vague encompassing titles like Opera, that may very well include pieces of the anti-visionary texts). So the brothers well knew these theological debates and, indeed, as they were participating so thoroughly in the devotional climate of the time, they would have had to contend quite directly with the question of Bridget’s visions specifically and women’s visions generally as a means to God. These questions came to a head right before the Reformation, when the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’, Elizabeth Barton, had ties and supporters in Syon. Brothers had to choose whether to support Barton – and thus defy the king – or denounce her visions as false – bringing suspicion on the idea of women’s visions generally. The sisters’ surviving texts, however, point to a more encouraging view of women’s divine visions. For example, The Orcherd of Syon, Catherine of Siena’s visionary book The Dialogue, was translated into English specifically for the sisters, and contains within it its own Discretio spirituum pointing to how the recipient of a vision could know its source. The Orcherd thus shows how virtually the same rule for both men and women may have a very different valence depending on whether it is in the brothers’ ‘Additions’ or the sisters’. The punishment for the brothers is laid out in nearly as much detail as it is for the women and similarly places the body of the punished at its centre. However, the body of the punished brother is not as sexualized as it is that of the sister in her ‘Additions’, and the woman’s flesh is clearly more shameful in its description of what can be seen/not seen and how the penitent prepares her/himself for the penance. The brothers’ ‘Additions’ read: Whan any therfor is commaundyd to make hym ready to dysciplyne, he schal go to the neder party of the chapter hows. And ther vnder hys cowle, he schall preuyly drawe hys armes oute of hys sleuys, and vnder hys cowell make hys body bare from hys nekke vnto hys middes and than gyrde hymselfe streyte, that hys clothes falle down no lowgher. Thys doon, he schall turne aȝene to the place where he was tofore. And ther before the presidente R. Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York, 1999), p. 55. See also W. L. Anderson, ‘Gerson’s Stance on Women’, in A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. Brian Patrick McGuire (Leiden, 2006), pp. 293–316.

49

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 307

1/29/2021 7:58:24 AM

3 0 8    J e nni f e r N. Brow n

castynge the vtter parte of hys cowle ouer hys hede he schal fall down vpon hys knees and elbowes, for to receyue mekly hys penaunce of disciplyne. And whilst he is disciplyned, he schal nothyng say but Mea culpa. I wyl amende me. And thys he schal reherse ofte and thyk. And whan the dyscipline is doon, he schal clothe hymselfe aȝene in the same place, and not go thens, tyl the president hath ȝouen hys ful iugeetmente and seyd to hym Goo vnto ȝour place. For than he schal inclyen and go to hys sete.50

As with the sisters’ ‘Additions’, the brother is told how to bare his back, but does not need to hold the garment up to his chest in the way the sister is instructed; the women need to be policed as sexual creatures while the men do not. The penitent is, however, instructed as to how his body is inclined, with knees on elbows and his cowl over his head. He is placed in a position of subjection, even if the sexualization of his body is absent from its description. Ultimately, the length of the sequence describing the brothers’ punishment is about half of that describing the sisters’. It lacks the detail of who is present (and in this case, the abbess is not there, removing the eye of the ultimate authority governing the abbey as a whole), noting that he has bared his back, but not the details of baring the elbows, shoulders, bare skin, the angle of the incline, etc. The brother is also expected to clothe himself after the punishment, not receiving the help to do so which is outlined for the sister. Notably, the other witnessing brothers are also left out of this description, not given the directives to ‘look at their feet’ or ‘have compassion’ for the disciplined body in front of them. Finally, for the sisters, the abbess determines whether the punishment is sufficient and may ask for more. For the brothers, the lashes are predetermined and finished when completed. Placed within the longue durée of the Middle Ages, where some convents established in the twelfth century continued until the Dissolution of the monasteries, Syon Abbey seems to have a relatively brief tenure at just over a century in England. However, its status, wealth, reputation and intellectual output situate it as an important nexus of cultural anxieties in England through the late Middle Ages and into the Reformation. The anxieties of men and women living together under the auspices of the double monastic structure, however, are about much more than sex and instead seem to represent a confluence of many contemporary conflicts. Well before the Reformation, Syon was a place where concerns about orthodoxy and heresy loomed large. This is most evident in the appointment of the Benedictine English cardinal, Adam Easton, to a committee to read Bridget’s revelations closely and determine their orthodoxy. Of course, the entire foundation of Syon Abbey was built on a revelation – if 50

Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, Syon Additions for the Brethren, p. 22.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 308

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

T h e Bo dy o f t h e Nu n and t h e S yon A bbe y ‘Addition s’    309

her visions were false, so was the considerable authority that Syon Abbey held in late medieval England. As Easton’s previous writings had explicitly outlined the heresy inherent in Wyclif ’s work, they were somewhat linked. Both suggested access to the scripture in the vernacular, and both espoused and envisioned a religious life where a priest’s role was greatly diminished. That Easton found Bridget’s revelations orthodox only temporarily stayed suspicions surrounding the abbey, and during and after the Reformation – even when Syon was no longer in England – those suspicions followed them.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 309

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

14 The Early Sixteenth Century at Syon: Richard Whitford and Elizabeth Gibbs MARY C. ERLER

A

t

t present the earliest writing that survives from Richard Whitford’s large body of work is his 1525 translation of the Augustinian rule (STC 922.3). Though he had entered religious life probably in 1511, the year of his will, his activity in the following fourteen years has not been traced,1 and this silence stands in sharp contrast to the flood of his publications in the later 1520s and the 1530s. Yet there is much to be said about Whitford’s first years at Syon, a period, for him, as active as the better-known conclusion of his career. During this time the monastery was ruled by Abbess Elizabeth Gibbs (1497–1518), whose influence on Whitford he twice commemorated after her death and whose promotion of formational reading for Syon nuns was extensive.2 Whitford’s arrival at Syon would have come a little more than halfway through the tenure of Abbess Gibbs, and his recollections suggest that she was the force behind two of his early works. His A Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe does not survive before an edition dated [1534?] (STC 25413.7), but in this edition’s preface, since Whitford recalls that he wrote it ‘more then .xx. yeres ago at the request of the reuerende Mother Dame Elizabeth Gybs … And by the oft callyng vpon and remembraunce of certayne of hyr deuout systers’, its composition may be dated around 1513. (Whitford adds that he has lately written the work out many times in response to requests and now 1

2

‘His will is dated 14 February 1510/11 and proved 24 January 1511/12, so he may have joined Syon between these two dates.’ Syon Abbey with the Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. Vincent Gillespie, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London, 2001), p. 592. Whitford’s entire chronology is confused for several reasons: the publication and re-publication of his short pieces in portmanteau volumes, the uneven survival rate of these inexpensive octavo collections and perhaps as well what seems his disorderly method of work. Susan Powell has given a detailed account of Abbess Gibbs’s influence in The Birgittines of Syon Abbey, Preaching and Print (Turnhout, 2017).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 310

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    311

is moved ‘to put it in print’.) Likewise in the Book of Patience, published as part of Whitford’s final work in 1541, he says ‘I wrote this worke many yeres ago (as I sayd of ye werke of deth) & by lyke occasion’ (fol. A ii), that is, at the instigation of Elizabeth Gibbs. Because Patience refers to ‘your draft of dethe’, Patience is probably subsequent to that work, perhaps around 1514. Finally, Whitford’s Werke for Housholders, though it is not connected explicitly with Abbess Gibbs, was also written earlier than its publication date would indicate. The first surviving edition of Werke is dated [1530?] (STC 25421.8), but James Hogg has pointed out that Dethe contains two references to Werke,3 which must thus have been written before c. 1513, possibly, as has been suggested, before Whitford’s c. 1511 entry into religion.4 To these three writings of Whitford’s early years, Werke (before c. 1513), Dethe (c. 1513) and Patience (c. 1514), his work on the 1516 Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande can now be added: he is responsible for its translation, condensation and prologue. Of these four books, all except Werke have connections with Abbess Gibbs.

Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande

In 1516 Syon Abbey arranged with printer Richard Pynson to publish the Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande (STC 4602), a collection in English of short lives of Welsh, English and Irish saints.5 The effort has always been credited to Syon because the book also included a life of St Birgitta of Sweden, the Birgittine founder, and a text of Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life, the third part of his Scala perfectionis, a devotional work of special interest to Syon. At about the same time, Pynson’s contemporary Wynkyn de Worde brought out a folio edition in Latin of roughly the same saints’ lives, the Nova legenda Anglie (STC 4601), derived from John of Tynemouth’s fourteenth-century hagiographical collection, Sanctilogium Angliae Walliae Scotiae et Hiberniae.6 It was probably also produced for Syon.

Richard Whytford’s Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection. ed. J. Hogg, 5 vols. (Salzburg, 1979), A Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe I. ii. pp. 141–2.

3

For a fuller discussion of this dating, see M. C. Erler, Reading and Writing during the Dissolution: Monks, Friars and Nuns 1530–1558 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 130–1.

4

The Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande, ed. M. Görlach, Middle English Texts 27 (Heidelberg, 1994).

5

A recent treatment of the Sanctilogium is V. Blanton, ‘The Lost and (Not) Found: Sources for Female Saints’ Legends in John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium’, in A Companion to British Literature Vol. I: Medieval Literature 700–1450, ed. H. Chang, R. De Maria Jnr. and S. Zacher (New York, 2014), pp. 65–80.

6

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 311

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

3 1 2    Mar y C . Er l e r

Scholars have not seen the two publications as explicitly linked, yet the Syon associations of both, the paired nature of their texts and their nearly simultaneous publication suggest an intention on Syon’s part to offer this authoritative hagiographic collection to two readerships, through the publication of these two sharply differentiated versions. In addition, the prologue to the Kalendre presents the characteristic voice of Syon’s Richard Whitford, about five years after his Syon entry. Since the woodcut image of St Birgitta in this volume bears the initials E. G. for Elizabeth Gibbs, Syon’s abbess from 1497 to 1518, this edition of the Kalendre suggests an early collaboration between Whitford and Gibbs, recalling the partnership that he referred to in Dethe and Patience.7 The source for de Worde’s 1516 Nova legenda Anglie8 has not been identified, but we might note that Syon’s library owned a two-volume set of lives of the saints based mainly on the Sanctilogium and copied for Syon probably in the 1430s by Carthusian scribe Stephen Dodesham (d. 1481/2). A. I. Doyle suggested that the manuscript was later annotated by Syon monk Simon Wynter (d. 1448).9 A gift to Syon from the duchess of Clarence, Wynter’s spiritual charge, it is richly illuminated, containing nine historiated initials in the style of Herman Scheerre.10 The first volume survives, the second is missing.11 In the manuscript the lives are ordered by month, following the liturgical calendar; in the print they have been alphabetized and fifteen lives have been added. The manuscript’s relation to de Worde’s print has not been investigated. That its printer, de Worde, gave a copy of the Nova legenda Anglie to the house’s library also suggests institutional patronage, as does the Nova legenda’s ownership by additional members of the Syon community. William Barnarde’s copy probably came to the library at his death on 25 October 1517, about a year and a half after the book’s publication. These two copies, de Worde’s

7

8 9

For names of Syon office-holders I have used the spelling given by The Heads of Religious Houses England and Wales III 1377–1540, ed. D. M. Smith (Cambridge, 2008). Nova Legenda Anglie, ed. C. Horstman (Oxford, 1901).

A. I. Doyle, ‘Stephen Dodesham of Witham and Sheen’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. P. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 94–115 (p. 98).

10

11

C. de Hamel, Syon Abbey, The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and Their Peregrinations after the Reformation (Otley, 1991), pp. 64–5, 118. Gillespie, Syon Abbey, Sanctilogium, M 1, M 2, SS1.734–5. The surviving volume is Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Sankt Georgen 12. I have not seen the manuscript.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 312

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    313

and Barnarde’s, were part of the Syon collection12 but are not known to survive. A third copy, however, owned by another Syon brother, David Curson, is currently London, Lambeth Palace Library, [ZZ]1516.3 (formerly Sion College L40.4/94).13 Though Wynkyn de Worde often printed for Syon, the brothers’ catalogue records only two books given to the institution by him: a Latin–English dictionary, his Ortus vocabulorum (Syon, SS 1.75), in 1500,14 and the Nova legenda Anglie in 1516 (Syon, SS 1.763). These were Latin folio editions, large books intended primarily as reference works for the use of the brothers, hence destined for their library rather than that of the sisters. The rationale for the printer’s gift might be both the two volumes’ usefulness and their significant expense. The English Kalendre offered an abbreviated version of the Latin Legenda (hence ‘calendar’ in the sense of ‘list’ rather than ‘time-marker’.) Consequently, as its preface says, the two were related and could be used together. If anything in the shorter Kalendre is ‘mystaken’ the reader shall ‘refourme it by þe legende’. ‘Everythynge in this treatyse is shortly touched more lyke to be a kalendre then a legende.’15 Because the two works are so closely connected, a single point of origin is indicated. Sponsorship of both books by Syon is further supported by the dates of publication, which suggest an effort to produce both Latin and English versions at about the same time – the last days of February 1516. If so, this might account for the way the Kalendre’s modern editor describes it: ‘a job done in a

Gillespie, Syon Abbey, Barnarde, M 28, SS1. 761; Wynkyn, M 30, SS1.763, both pp. 228–9.

12

This copy has two donation inscriptions from Curson ‘Ad Ricardum Pytte bathoniensis’ on fol. A i and a second similar inscription on the titlepage. According to a printed catalogue description found loose in the Yale University Beinecke Library copy of NLA, another copy of NLA was owned by the prior of the Carthusian charterhouse in Hull. On the verso of the last leaf is the inscription ‘Orate pro dompno Radulpho Malevorere quondam prior domus Carthusiensis prope Hull anno Rex Henricus viij xxvij’ [1536]. The prior’s name heads a list of the community dated 1536 (VCH York III. 191, cited as ‘Suppression Papers ii. 199’). This copy is listed as in private ownership (Mr. C. Hohler) in Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, ed. N. R. Ker, 2nd edn (London, 1964), p. 106; no entry in A. G. Watson, Supplement (London, 1987).

13

Ortus vocabulorum, ed. R. C. Alston, English Linguistics 1500–1800, A Collection of Facsimile Reprints, no. 123 (Menston, 1968). The colophon mentions other similar competing dictionaries, for instance Reuchlin’s Breviloquium (1480) and ‘claims to describe all the words found in these’. Ten editions appeared up to 1532.

14

Kalendre, ed. Görlach, pp. 42–3.

15

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 313

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

3 1 4    Mar y C . Er l e r

hurry and with little regard for detail’.16 The Kalendre’s prologue says ‘it is but of late tyme syth the sayde Legende was gatheryd togyther in suche maner as it is nowe’ and indeed the Legenda and Kalendre were printed almost simultaneously. The dates are: STC 4602, Kalendre, part one (saints’ lives), no date STC 4602, Kalendre, part two (Life of Birgitta), 20 Feb 1516 STC 4601, Nova legenda Anglie, 27 Feb 1516 STC 4602, Kalendre, part three (Mixed Life) 28 Feb 1506 [or recte? 29 Feb 1516]17

Early printing’s calculation of audience has been frequently noticed, particularly through its carefully differentiated production of books of hours, perhaps printing’s largest seller. Books of hours’s great variety, their appearance in different sizes, in different languages and at different levels of expense, has been thought to indicate a serious attention to marketing.18 Stories of saints too were broadly appealing enough to warrant a similar pattern of publication, one that recognized the needs of diverse consumers. Kathleen Scott has published two lists of merchant bookowners totalling 182 names, and though the number of books of hours/primers is large (thirty-seven), fourteen copies of saints’ lives are recorded, roughly similar to the eleven listed works of Lydgate.19 Subsequently Caroline Barron examined Scott’s second list for London merchant names; out of 150 books owned by this group, she found twenty-one copies of the Legenda aurea in Latin and English, perhaps the most popular work of hagiography.20 What Manfred Görlach says of the Kalendre is equally true of the Nova Legenda: that it was important as ‘the last 16 17

18

19

20

Ibid., p. 7.

The Mixed Life is dated the last day of February 1506, i.e. 28 February. A date in 1506 would indicate an earlier lost edition, but an error in dating (1506 for 1516) has seemed more likely. The year 1516 was a leap year; hence 29 February is its last day. M. C. Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyue Well and the Coming of English in Françoise Regnault’s Primers of the 1520s and 1530s’, The Library 6th ser. VI.3 (September 1984), 229–43.

K. L. Scott, ‘Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages’, in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. C. Meale and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 150–77 (pp. 151–2).

C. M. Barron, ‘What Did Medieval Merchants Read?’ in Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton, ed. M. Allen and M. Davies (London, 2016), pp. 43–70 (p. 44).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 314

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    315

legendary [saints’ biographies] to be printed before the Reformation’.21 The two books, the English and the Latin, the short and the long versions, can be seen as part of a continuing effort to strengthen and inform religious life both inside and outside the monastery. The Kalendre opens with a long prologue (fols. 1v–4v) in which the anonymous writer gives an extensive rationale for the project and attempts to defend his work, both of translation and condensation. The voice seems likely to be that of Richard Whitford, since the prologue uses one of Whitford’s most often-repeated expressions. If mistakes are found, it asks ‘that it wyll please [the reader] to take it for þe best’.22 Other works of Whitford’s employ this phrase repeatedly: in the preface to the Syon Martiloge (1526) he wrote that he was ‘trustynge therfore in your charite/that ye wyll ascry[b]e, applye/ & take all thynge vnto the best’ [no signature, second leaf verso]. Speaking of his version of the Golden Pystle [1531] he says, ‘I beseche you take all vnto the best’ [b 4]. Again he asks at the end of his translation of St Bernard’s ‘Of precept and dispensation’ in Pype of Perfection (1532): ‘I beseche you applie all vnto the beste’(fol. CC.xxxvi v). Finally, in the piece of a sermon ‘On Detraction’ he had written at the start of his career and published in his last work, Dyuers holy instrucyons and teachynges (1541), he says again, ‘Take all vnto the best I pray you’ (fol. Y5v). Besides its appearance in the Kalendre, the phrase is thus found elsewhere four times, both early and late in Whitford’s writing. In addition, some similarities in language can be noted between Whitford’s Dethe, composed around 1513, and the Kalendre’s 1516 prologue. Both texts advise readers to have confidence in the saints and both use the language of surety. Dethe calls saints ‘faithfull frendes with whome well acquaynted and fully knowen/ you ben nowe and of longe tyme haue ben very familyer and whomely. Truste you surely in them, for they wyll nat deceyue you’ (pp. 106–7). Kalendre’s prologue says ‘sythen we be sure … þat [saints] be redye to pray for all that wyll deuoutly call vnto them, sure also … þat theyr prayer shalbe herde, lette vs deuoutly as we can with all our hartes call vnto them for helpe to pray for vs’ (p. 45). Whitford’s somewhat defensive sentiments in the Kalendre’s prologue suggest that the work both of translation and of abbreviation was his own. He mentions the reader’s possible criticisms of the translation: (‘if any thynge herein be … nat spoken in conuenyent Englysshe’ (fol. 4)) or possible dislike of what Kalendre’s editor, agreeing with Whitford, calls its ‘drastic abridgement’ (p. 34): ‘if it be ouer shortlye touched or nat suffycyently expressyd’ Kalendre, ed. Görlach, p. 6.

21

Ibid.

22

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 315

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

3 1 6    Mar y C . Er l e r

(fol. 4). The text’s editor suggests other ways that Whitford’s anticipation of criticism might have been justified, referring to ‘a simplification of lexis and syntax … throughout … lexis is frequently simple and repetitive’, while the syntax presents ‘endless strings of sentences and clauses connected with and’ (pp. 35–6). The further work involved in editing whatever manuscript was used to produce the contemporary Latin edition of Nova legenda Anglie is not mentioned, but perhaps it was Whitford’s also. Certainly he knew of it: in the Kalendre prologue he refers to its recent completion ‘in suche maner as it is nowe’ (fol. 4).

The traces of Abbess Gibbs

In addition to Whitford’s statements, woodcut evidence associates Abbess Gibbs with other Syon publications. The cut of St Birgitta on the title page of the saint’s life that accompanies the Kalendre, referred to above, contains the initials E. G. in its bottom floral border (Figure 1). The E is reversed to suggest a mirror image of the G.23 Though the edition is dated 20 February 1516, the state of the cut makes it impossible that this is its first appearance. Edward Hodnett observes ‘cracks in each border, 2 mm. break bottom border, right bottom border gone’.24 We can thus posit an edition (probably of the life of Birgitta) earlier than 1516, containing the cut in a less imperfect impression and produced during the reign of Abbess Gibbs.25 This English image is a copy of a Flemish woodcut pasted into a manuscript collection of prayers from Syon (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS McGuire 31.54.700) (Figure 2). Below the image of the saint an inscription reads ‘S birgitta bidt voor ons’. The source woodcut does not have the E. G. initials, so it appears that Pynson, the printer of the English book, had the Continental image of Birgitta copied, adding the initials of the English abbess either for this book This image is discussed by Powell, Birgittines, p. 34, and is reproduced in her ‘Appendix B, A List of Woodcuts of St Birgitta in Printed Editions Associated with Syon Abbey’, pp. 280–1.

23

E. Hodnett, English Woodcuts 1480–1535: Additions and Corrections (Oxford, 1973), no. 1349 (not noticing the initials). This cut of St Birgitta was used twice more after the abbess’s death: in monk of Chester Henry Bradshaw’s 1521 Lyfe of Saint Werburge, where it has generally been thought merely to indicate its printer Pynson’s provision of a generic nun-image, and in Syon author William Bonde’s 1526 Pylgrimage of Perfection (Hodnett, Woodcuts, p. 323).

24

A. M. Hutchison and V. O’Mara describe the two E. G. cuts in ‘The Lyfe of Seynt Birgette: An Edition of a Swedish Saint’s Life for an English Audience’, in ‘Booldly bot meekly’: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. C. Batt and R. Tixier (Turnhout, 2016).

25

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 316

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

Figure 1. St Birgitta of Sweden, title page of Lyfe of seynt Birgette, accompanying the Kalendre of the Neue Legende of Englande, woodcut, has E. G. initials with E reversed to mirror G. 1516. STC 4602, Hodnett 1349. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 317

1/29/2021 7:58:25 AM

Figure 2. St Birgitta of Sweden, woodcut, Flemish, probable source of Figure 1. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS McGuire 31.54.700.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 318

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    319

or for a possible earlier edition before 1516. That the Continental woodcut was used to decorate a Syon manuscript prayer-book demonstrates the early sixteenth-century continuity of Syon’s connections with a Low Countries Birgittine house, probably Maria Troon, Dendermonde.26 It is likewise possible that it was Abbess Gibbs who was responsible for the printing of the Myrroure of Oure Lady, the Birgittine liturgical offices. The only surviving edition is dated 4 November 1530, and it carries on its title page verso a different, considerably more expert woodcut of St Birgitta, again with the joined initials E. G. in the border below (Hodnett no. 2029) (Figure 3). This E. G. cut appears only in the Myrroure.27 Abbess Gibbs had died twelve years earlier and it is unlikely that a woodcut identifying her sponsorship would have been created so long after her death. Rather, we might see the 1530 edition of Myrroure as a reprint of a lost edition, published probably before Abbess Gibbs’s death date, 30 August 1518. This suggestion is strengthened by the state in 1530 of the Myrroure’s seven cuts, all unique to this volume and almost all somewhat damaged. For instance, of the Coronation of the Virgin (no. 2050), Hodnett notes ‘wormholes, border badly broken’. In an Image of Pity cut (no. 2024), the border is entirely gone. The E. G. cut of St Birgitta (no. 2029) has ‘right border weak, a break in the nun’s hood’.28 Since none of the seven cuts is registered as appearing in other books before the 1530 edition of the Myrroure, their damaged condition is likely to be attributable to their appearance in one or more lost editions of Myrroure previous to 1530, and probably previous to 1518. The Myrroure’s colophon says ‘Thys Boke was Imprynted at the desyre and instaunce of the worshypfull and deuoute lady Abbesse of the worshypfull For more detail on Syon’s connections with Dendermonde, see M. C. Erler, ‘The Transmission of Images between Flemish and English Birgittine Houses’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue, ed. V. Blanton, V. O’Mara and P. Stoop (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 367–82.

26

E. Gordon Duff, A Century of the English Book Trade (London, 1948), p. 45, wrongly says of printer Richard Faques, ‘On the reverse of the titlepage [of Myrroure] is a woodcut with the engraver’s mark, E. G., also found on a cut of St Katherine used by Pynson’. Pynson’s cut of St Katherine is reproduced by Hodnett in his Additions and Corrections section, as Fig. 12, p. 28, but it has no initials. Duff might have been thinking either of the Birgitta cut in Kalendre or its use for St Werburge in Bradshaw’s life of that saint, see note above (Hodnett, Woodcuts, p. 323). Syon publications were identified visually in various ways: a unique cut of Christ as Salvator Mundi which appears only in Bonde’s 1526 Pylgrimage of Perfection has what Hodnett calls ‘two [blank] slots for names, presumably those of the abbess and confessor general’ (Hodnett, Woodcuts, no. 1350, p. 323).

27

Hodnett, Woodcuts, pp. 399–400, 403.

28

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 319

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Figure 3. St Birgitta of Sweden, title page verso of The Myrroure of Oure Lady, woodcut. 4 November 1530. STC 17542, Hodnett 2024, 2029. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 320

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    321

Monastery of Syon. And the reuerende fader in god. Generall confessour of the same’. In 1530 these two would have been Abbess Agnes Jordan (1520–39) and Confessor General John Fewterer (1523–36), but if there were an earlier printing those responsible would most likely have been Elizabeth Gibbs (1497–1518) and either Stephen Saunder (1497–1513) or John Trowell (1513–23). Gibbs and Saunder were contemporaries in office, both having been elected in 1497,29 she the fifth abbess, he the fifth confessor general. (There is nothing to connect Whitford with the Myrroure – unless it was he who copy-edited the printed text and produced the printed errata list included in some surviving copies: ‘Here folowes the faultes of thys sayd boke that is yuel corrected’.)

Elizabeth Gibbs and William Darker

Besides the abbess’s role in Syon’s printing, her tenure shows a similar interest in the production of manuscripts and suggests a pattern of collaboration with the Carthusian scribe William Darker (d. 1512/13) not unlike the abbess’s later relationship with Richard Whitford. Darker’s 1502 dedication to her of the first three books of the Imitatio Christi in Glasgow, Hunterian MS 136 (T.6.18) is well known. O vos omnes sorores et ffratres presentes et futuri, orate queso pro uenerabili matre nostra Elizabeth Gibbis, huius almi monasterii Abbessa, necnon pro devote ac religioso viro Dompno Willielmo Darker … qui … hunc librum conscripsit. [i.2]30

Darker wrote a number of other manuscripts, the contents of which make their direction to Syon clear, though their ties are less explicitly stated. All have been identified and discussed by A. I. Doyle.31 Unequivocally Syon’s is a Darker manuscript containing both the Bridgettine rule and the Augustinian, Cambridge, University Library Ff.vi.33. Another link to Syon is found in Smith, The Heads of Religious Houses, 698–9. Saunder had been a Syon monk for almost twenty years when he was elected and he served until his death in 1513. On Saunder’s books, see V. Gillespie, ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, in Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion c. 1400–1700, ed. E. A. Jones and A. Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104–28 (p. 123).

29

J. Young and P. H. Aitken, eds., A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1908), p. 124.

30

A. I. Doyle, ‘William Darker: The Work of an English Carthusian Scribe’, in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users: A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 199–211.

31

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 321

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 2 2    Mar y C . Er l e r

Oxford, Bodleian MS Laud misc 517, whose principal text, a unique Middle English translation of pseudo-Bernard’s Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, Doyle thinks ‘likely’ to have been made for the Bridgettines.32 This work was particularly favoured by St Birgitta; indeed a surviving manuscript was owned by the saint. Its recent editor has observed that a Latin manuscript of the text now in Sweden has this inscription: ‘Our blessed mother St Birgitta continuously carried this book which is entitled the doctrine of Bernard to his sister in her lap and for this reason it must be kept among her relics.’33 The editor observes that it is ‘quite likely that Birgitta of Sweden played an important role in diffusing [this work]’. In the Laud manuscript, a translation of this early thirteenth-century text addressed to nuns is followed by three shorter texts which offer variations on the topics of the Manere. Doyle has edited one of them, a reflection on five aspects of eucharistic devotion which opens ‘Seynt albert the byschop seyth thes wordis’. It appears again in a well-known Syon anthology of short devotional texts written by diverse hands, London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 546 (one of the contributor’s hands is Darker’s)34, and in two other nuns’ manuscripts investigated by Doyle: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 322 and London, British Library MS Harley 1706, both associated with Dartford and Barking. 35 The Manere manuscript, Laud misc 517, is likely to have been written for Syon between 1471 and 1513, when Darker was at Sheen. During the last fifteen years of this period Elizabeth Gibbs was Syon’s abbess and it is possible that, like the Imitatio Christi manuscript, Laud misc. 517 was also commissioned by her, given its central instructive text for religious women, that text’s endorsement by St Birgitta and the suggestive character and other occurrences of its short works.

32

33

34 35

A. I. Doyle, ‘A Text Attributed to Ruusbroec Circulating in England’, in Dr L. Reypens-Album, ed. A. Ampe (Antwerp, 1964), pp. 153–71 (p. 161). The Manere of Good Lyvyng’: A Middle English Translation of pseudo-Bernard’s Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, ed. A. E. Mouron (Turnhout, 2014), ‘Hunc librum qui intitulatur doctrina Bernardi ad sororem, portauit beata mater nostra sancta Birgitta continuo in sinu suo ideo inter reliquias suas asseruandus est’ (Uppsala University Library UUB, MS C 240), pp. 13, 3. Doyle, ‘A Text’, pp. 169–71.

A. I. Doyle, ‘Books Connected with the Vere Family and Barking Abbey’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society n.s. 25 (1958), 222–43.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 322

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    323

Elizabeth Gibbs and Thomas Prescius?36

Another Syon manuscript, one studied by Michael Sargent, allows us to speculate about Elizabeth Gibbs’ role in its commission.37 A foundational work for religious, the Formula noviciorum was composed by David of Augsburg, as Sargent says, ‘a member of the first generation of Franciscan friars in German-speaking lands … tradition records him as novice-master in Regensburg by 1240.’38 In 1246 he was one of four papal visitors to convents of woman canonesses there, the period when he composed the Formula. Sargent calls this work ‘the outgrowth both of its author’s experience and of needs felt in the Franciscan order’, noting the existence of over 450 manuscripts, in whole or in part.39 Two Middle English translations exist: the first in Cambridge, Queens’ College MS 31 (late fifteenth century), translated and written by one W. Paterson, the second in Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.ii.33 (early sixteenth century),40 which Sargent calls ‘a revised and augmented version’ of the Queens’ College text, and which ends ‘Wrytten by the hond of Thomas Prestins, [Prestius?] brother of Syon’.41 This form of words might suggest that Prescius was merely the manuscript’s scribe, but both Sargent and Vincent Gillespie have identified him as the version’s translator as well.42 They have also pointed out the many textual adaptations made for the nuns of Syon – for instance, a long original passage printed by Sargent warning against curiosity (elaboration) in needlework and elsewhere (‘do thy werke wele & substantially as the thing requyrith, avoydyng alwey al curiositee, which is a perillouse vice, Prescius’s surname appears in various forms in the Syon Martiloge, the Syon catalogue, and his pension payment (see Gillespie, Syon Abbey, p. 584). Susan Powell calls him Prescius (Bridgettines, p. 17), which I have chosen as well since it agrees most closely with his pension (Precyouse).

36

M. G. Sargent, ‘David of Augsburg’s De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione in Middle English’, in Satura, Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo, ed. N. M. Real and R. E. Sternglantz (Donington, 2001), pp. 74–102. For more on this work see B. Roest, Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004), pp. 209–14.

37

Sargent, ‘David of Augsburg’s De Exterioris’, p. 79.

38

Ibid., p. 80.

39

P. S. Jolliffe, ‘Middle English Translations of De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione’, Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974), 259–77. And see D. Pezzini, ‘David of Augsburg’s Formula Novitiorum in Three English Translations’, in The Medieval Translator, ed. R. Ellis, R. Tixier and B. Weitemeier (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 321–47.

40

Sargent, ‘David of Augsburg’s De Exterioris’, 78.

41

Gillespie, Syon Abbey, p. 584.

42

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 323

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 2 4    Mar y C . Er l e r

moch reynyng among sewares specially, now in these days …. the first evyl … is the grete losse of tyme … grete occasion of vainglory … occasion to … draw theire myndis from God & heuynly thyngis’). Provision of this classic text of religious formation in a version designed particularly for Syon nuns brings Elizabeth Gibbs to mind, but we do not know when Prescius joined the community, though he was present at its end, was awarded a pension in 153943 and died, according to the Martiloge, on 12 March 1544. A deacon, he is registered as the donor of four books to Syon (H 14 Prestins; I 49 Prestius; Q36 Prescius; R 21 Prescius) but none of the four entries to the library’s Registrum is written in the hand of Thomas Betson, the collection’s librarian. Vincent Gillespie observes that it is not clear whether before his 1516 death Betson may have supervised the other hands that enter books in the register, hands that continue Betson’s entries after his death until 1524,44 the approximate date at which work on the catalogue ceased. It is perhaps most likely that Prescius’s four books were entered between 1516 and 1524, though the gift may have been made earlier. The books came to the library probably two decades before their owner’s death, but the date at which he himself came to Syon is uncertain. It is possible that Prescius was at Syon before 1518 when Abbess Gibbs died and was influenced by her in producing a version for Syon nuns of this important text (Syon owned several Latin manuscripts of it). The abbess’s involvement would seem particularly suitable, because Formula noviciorum has been compared with the Liber de modo vivendi ad sororem (the Birgittine favourite which as we have seen appears in Middle English in Laud misc 517, a manuscript which has Syon, perhaps Gibbsian, connections). Both are lengthy, classic, early thirteenth-century works either conceived for religious women or emended for them.45

Elizabeth Gibbs and William Bonde?

In the second decade of the sixteenth century, four of the men whom we regard as central to the institution’s history entered Syon. They had known each other at Cambridge previously: Whitford and Bonde were fellows of G. J. Aungier, The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery (London, 1840), p. 90.

43

Gillespie, Syon Abbey, p. l [fifty].

44

Jolliffe, ‘Middle English Translations’, calls the Manere of Good Lyuynge, the Middle English translation of Liber de modo vivendi, the text favoured by St Birgitta, ‘most comparable [to Formula noviciorum] in size and treatment’, note 80. Manere’s editor dates it end of the twelfth century or first quarter of the thirteenth (Manere, ed. Mouron, p. 5), while B. Roest, Franciscan Literature, assigns the Formula noviciorum to the 1240s, p. 210.

45

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 324

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Th e Ear l y S i x teen th Cen tur y a t S yon    325

Queens’ College together, as were Bonde and John Fewterer at Pembroke College (their contemporary at Cambridge, though himself at Christ’s and later at Corpus Christi, was Richard Reynolds). Their collective impact on Syon must have been great; they represented about a third of the priestly group there and their arrivals were closely spaced over just about five years, c. 1510–15. Whitford’s entrance around 1511 was probably close in time to Bonde’s, whose last mentions at Cambridge come from 1509/10.46 These were the years just before the 1516 death of Betson (whose Ryght Profytable Treatyse in 1500 slightly anticipated the instructive writing these men would produce), and before the death of Syon’s abbess in 1518. Whitford remembered the abbess’s influence on his writing; Bonde said something similar, though the person he addressed remains anonymous. In his important Pylgrimage of Perfection (1526) Bonde gives an account of that work’s genesis, explaining to someone unnamed that ‘after my entrance to religion’ (presumably after 1510) his intention had been to make ‘a compylation of doctours’ written in Latin but ‘your charity preuayled and letted me’, and he ended by writing the book in English, ‘wherby it might be the more accepte to many and specyally to suche that vnderstande no latyn & so to make you parteners in the same’ (fol. A ii). The person whose influence is here acknowledged may be Elizabeth Gibbs, since this statement recalls Whitford’s account of her direction of his talents into writing for a vernacular audience.47 The plural ‘parteners’ is significant – no longer, perhaps, Gibbs but in particular the female Syon community, the ‘many’ for whom English writing will be ‘accepte’. In their later memories of how their writing evolved, for both Whitford and Bonde the second decade of the sixteenth century, the productive early years of their vowed life at Syon, is given particular significance.

Conclusion

Syon’s troubled last years have recently been the focus of scholarly attention, and certainly the rich publication record and complicated political positioning of the 1530s deserve this notice. The 1500s and 1510s show us an earlier period at Syon, one in which its established figures, Gibbs and Betson, were active, along with the newcomers Whitford, Bonde and others whose presence would mark the abbey’s final decades. The emphasis in this period is forward Gillespie, Syon Abbey, p. 569.

46

Susan Powell has earlier suggested Elizabeth Gibbs as the anonymous adviser in Bonde’s acknowledgement, see Birgittines, p. 38. His Pylgrimage was not published until eight years after Gibbs’s death, in 1526, at which time the prologue’s direct address (to ‘you’) might suggest an earlier edition during the abbess’s lifetime.

47

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 325

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 2 6    Mar y C . Er l e r

looking and Syon’s confidence in its reforming role is visible – to create a purer version of religious life, particularly female religious life (Gibbs’s attention to female religious formation) and to embody a tender and attentive pastoral care (Whitford’s manuals for laity). The moment was one of optimism, bolstered by accomplishment and registered by the successful, continuous, programme of writing and publication sustained in these years. Table: R. Whitford’s and E. Gibbs’ activity c. 1511–18 Before c. 1513, possibly before c. 1511

R. W. composes Werke for Housholders

c. 1514

R. W. composes Book of Patience, E. G. commissions

c. 1513

20 Feb. 1516 1517 30 Aug. 1518

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 326

R. W. composes Dethe, E. G. commissions

R. W. translates, abbreviates, writes preface to Kalendre, with E. G.-initialled woodcut R. W. translating Augustinian rule E. G.’s death

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

Bibliography Manuscripts

Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS 2544–5 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2823 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 6686 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. ii. 33 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. v. 55 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. iv. 30 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. v. 40 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. vi. 33 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Gg. i. 7 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Gg. i. 14 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Hh. i. Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii. i. 36 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii. vi. 26 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Kk. v. 32 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ll. i. 8 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Nn. iv. 12 Cambridge, Christ’s College, MS DD. I. II Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 669*/646 Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 2125 Cambridge, Queens’ College, MS 31 Cambridge, St John’s College MS G. 35 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS N. 17 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 293 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 1401 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 1. 38 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 14. 7 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 14. 38 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 15. 18 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 2. 53 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 7. 47 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 3. 13 Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Duke of Devonshire MS Clitheroe, UK, Stonyhurst College MS A.vi.24 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 216 Dublin, Trinity College, MS A. 5. 7 Dublin, Trinity College, MS C. 5. 20 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B iv 41 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 6126

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 327

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 2 8    B i bl i o g r aphy Edinburgh University Library, MS 91 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS A. 7. 226 Glasgow, Glasgow University, Hunterian Collection, MS Hunter 136 (T. 6. 18) Gloucester, Gloucester Cathedral, MS 1 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Sankt Georgen 12 Leeds University Library, MS Brotherton 15 Lincoln, Cathedral Chapter Library, MS 57 Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library, MS 91 London, British Library, MS Additional 4340 London, British Library, MS Additional 11748 London, British Library, MS Additional 22283 London, British Library, MS Additional 23198 London, British Library, MS Additional 30031 London, British Library, MS Additional 33995 London, British Library, MS Additional 37049 London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 London, British Library, MS Additional 43406 London, British Library, MS Additional 61823 London, British Library, MS Arundel 91 London, British Library, MS Arundel 146 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E. vii London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus D ix London, British Library, MS Harley 45 London, British Library, MS Harley 330 London, British Library, MS Harley 1022 London, British Library, MS Harley 1035 London, British Library, MS Harley 1706 London, British Library, MS Harley 2387 London, British Library, MS Harley 2397 London, British Library, MS Harley 3852 London, British Library, MS Harley 6573 London, British Library, MS Harley 6615 London, British Library, MS Harley 6579 London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 362 London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E III London, British Library, MS Royal 8 A VII London, British Library, MS Royal 17 A I London, British Library, MS Royal C VIII London, British Library, MS Royal 17 C XVIII London, British Library, MS Sloane 2515 London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 524 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 72 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 432 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 472 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 546 London, PRO, E. 117/12/20

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 328

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

B ibliogr aphy   329 London, PRO, MS SP I/239 London, Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4 London, Westminster School, MS 4 Manchester, Chetham Library, MS 6690 Manchester, Manchester University Library, MS Rylands F. 4. 10 Michigan State University, MS 1 New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya MS 3 New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317 New York, Columbia University Library, Plimpton MS 257 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MS McGuire 31.54.700 Nottingham, University of Nottingham, Lincoln Cathedral MS 57 Oxford, All Souls College, MS 25 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 100 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 354 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 549 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 592 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 789 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 115 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 33 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 136 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 322 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 35 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 160 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax MS 2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 18 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. D. 27 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. e. 26 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. f. 20 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 23 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 174 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 517 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 602 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lawn f. 367 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 160 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 285 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 397 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 894 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 4 Oxford, Brasenose College, MS 9 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 93 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 141

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 329

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 3 0    B i bl i o g r aphy Oxford, Merton College, MS 47 Oxford, University College, MS 28 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 10861 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Library, MS Codex 218 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Library, MS E. 3 Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Library, MS Taylor 11 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS VIII San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 112 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 266 Warminster, Longleat House Library, MS 298 Windsor, St George’s Chapel Library, MS E. I. I Worcester, Cathedral Chapter Library, MS F. 172

Printed Books London, Lambeth Palace Library [ZZ] 1516.3

Primary Sources Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur ..., ed. Socii Bollandiani, 68 vols. (Antwerp, Tongerloo, and Brussels, 1643–1925). Acta S. Sebastiani, in Acta Sanctorum Ianuarii, II, 265–78. Adam of Dryburgh [attrib. to St Bruno], et al., Opera omnia …, PL 153, 881. Albert, St, The Rule of St. Albert, ed. H. Clarke and B. Edwards (Aylesford, 1973). Aldhelm, St, Aldhelm: The Prose Works, trans. M. Lapidge and M. Herren (Cambridge and Totowa NJ, 1979). Alphabetum graecum una cum multis alijs quae expeditum: quem reddunt ad Grammaticam Graecam capessedam, printed by Chrétien Wechell (1530, USTC 146104). Andersson, E., ‘Responsiones Vadstenenses: Perspectives on the Birgittine Rule in Two Texts from Vadstena and Syon Abbey: A Critical Edition with Translation and Introduction’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Stockholm University, 2011). Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, et al., 10 vols. (New York, 1885–97). ‘Antiquum ordinis Carmelitarum Ordinale saec. XIII’, ed. Patrick of St Joseph, Études Carmélitaines 1912–13 (Tamines, 1912). Aquinas, St Thomas, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Chapters 13–21, trans. F. Larcher and J. A. Weisheipl (Washington DC, 2010). Arnold, T., ed., Select Works of John Wyclif, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1871). Ars Quatuor Coronatorum. Being the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 (London, 1888–). Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 330

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

B ibliogr aphy   331 ———, Beda Venerabilis, Opera didascalia, II, ed. C. W. Jones, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123B (Turnhout, 1977). Bell, D. N., What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries, Cistercian Studies 158 (Kalamazoo, 1995). Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, ed. Socii Bollandiani, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1898–1901). Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracensis, ed. S. Lawley, 2 vols., Surtees Society 71, 75 (London, 1880–83). Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum, ed. F. Procter and C. Wordsworth, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1882–86). Bridget, St, of Sweden, The Liber Celestis of St. Bridget of Sweden, ed. R. Ellis (Oxford, 1987). ———, The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, ed. W. P. Cumming (London, 1929). Brown, C. and Robbins, R. H., eds., The Index of Middle English Verse [IMEV] (New York, 1943). Brown, J. N., ed., Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis, and Marie d’Oignies (Turnhout, 2008). Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Byrhtferth of Ramsey: The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009). Caxton, W., The Golden Legende or Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton, ed. F. S. Ellis, 7 vols. (London, 1900). The Chastising of God’s Children, ed. J. Bazire and E. Colledge (Oxford, 1957). Chauncy, M., The Passion and Martyrdom of the Holy English Carthusian Fathers: A Short Narrative, ed. G. W. S. Curtis (London, 1935). ———, The history of the sufferings of eighteen Carthusians in England: who refusing to take part in schism, and to separate themselves from the unity of the Catholic Church, were cruelly martyred (London, 1890). ———, The various versions of the Historia aliquot martyrum anglorum maxime octodecim Cartusianorum sub rege Henrico Octavo ob fidei confessionem et summa pontificis jura vindicanda interemptorum, by Dom Maurice Chauncy, ed. J. P. H. Clark, with Introduction by P. Cunich, 3 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 86 (2006 and 2007). Constituciones artis gemetrie secundum Euclyde, in The Two Earliest Masonic Mss: The Regius Ms. (B.M. Bibl. Reg. 17 A I), the Cooke Ms. (B.M. Add. ms. 23198), ed. Knoop, D., G. P. Jones and D. Hamer (Manchester, 1938), pp. 104–50. Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium’, Solemnly promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on December 4, 1963. Day, S. M., ‘A Critical Edition of The Privity of the Passion and The Lyrical Meditations’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1991). De Corda, O., Opus pacis, ed. B. Egan, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Medieualis 179 (Turnhout, 2001). De Culpis, ed. C. Henriksén (Uppsala, 1990). Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life ‘Perfectae Caritatis’, Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965. DeWorde, W., The Myracles of Oure Lady, ed. from Wynkyn de Worde’s edition, ed. P. Whiteford, Middle English Texts 23 (Heidelberg, 1990).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 331

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 3 2    B i bl i o g r aphy Dove, M., ed., The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate (Exeter, 2010). Four Wycliffite Dialogues, ed. F. Somerset, EETS OS 333 (Oxford, 2009). Funk, F. X., ed., Patres apostolici, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1901). Gardiner, J. et al., eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII [LP], 21 vols. (London, 1862–1910). Gilte Legende, ed. R. Hamer with V. Russell, 3 vols., EETS OS 327, 328, 339 (Oxford, 2006–12). A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, ed. M. Kuczynski, 2 vols, EETS OS 352, 353 (Oxford, 2019, 2020). Gratian, Decretum: in Corpus juris canonici emendatum et notis illustratum, Gregorii XIII. pont. max. iussu editum, 4 vols. (Rome, 1582). ———, The Treatise on Laws, trans. A. Thompson, O.P., with the Ordinary Gloss trans. J. Gordley (Washington DC, 1993). Gregory the Great, St, Homilia 33 in Homiliae in evangelia Lib. II, PL 76, 1075–1314. Hamer, R. and V. Russell, eds., Supplementary Lives in Some Manuscripts of the ‘Gilte Legende’, EETS OS 315 (Oxford, 2000). Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman’s Memoir, ed. M. R. James (Cambridge, 1919). Herolt, J., ed., Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. C. C. Swinton Bland (New York, 1928). Hilton, W., The Scale of Perfection Book II: An Edition Based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford, 2017 for 2016). ———, The Scale of Perfection, trans. J. P. H. Clark and R. Dorward (New York, 1991). ———, Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. J. P. H. Clark and C. Taylor, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 124 (1987). Holmes, M., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. edn (Grand Rapids MI), 1992. The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books in the Earliest English Versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, ed. J. Forshall and F. Madden, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1850). Horstman, C., ed., Nova Legenda Anglie (Oxford, 1901). ———, ‘Prosalegenden: Die Legenden Des Ms. Douce 114’, Anglia 8 (1885), 102–96. Hudson, A., ed., Two Wycliffite Texts: The Sermon of William Taylor 1406, and the Testimony of William Thorpe 1407, EETS OS 301 (Oxford, 1993). Iacopo da Varazze ( Jacobus de Voragine], Legenda aurea, ed. G. Maggioni, 2nd edn, 2 vols., Millenio medievale 6, Testi 3 (Tavarnuzze, 1998). ———, trans. W. G. Ryan, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993). Instruction of the Pontifical Commission ‘Ecclesia Dei’, ‘Universae ecclesiae’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 103 (2011), 413–20. Jenks, J. P., ed., ‘A Critical Edition of Meditations on the Passion: Michigan State University MS 1’ (unpublished dissertation, Michigan State University, 1956). John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. and ed. F. X. Taney, Sr., A. Miller and C. M. Stallings-Taney (Asheville NC, 2000).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 332

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

B ibliogr aphy   333 Julian of Norwich, The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, ed. N. Watson and J. Jenkins (Turnhout, 2006). The Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande, ed. M. Görlach, Middle English Texts 27 (Heidelberg, 1994). Kallenberg, P., ed., Fontes liturgiae carmelitanae: Investigatio in decreta, codices et proprium sanctorum, Textus et Studia Historica Carmelitana 5 (Rome, 1962). Kempe, M., The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS OS 212 (London, 1940). Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations and Commentary (Oxford, 2018). Le Liber Pontificalis: texte, introduction et commentaire, ed. L. Duchesne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886–92). Love, N., Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, ed. M. G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005). Lydgate, J., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. McCracken, EETS ES 107 (London, 1911). The Lyf of Seint Ierom, printed by Wynken de Worde, c. 1499/1500 (STC 14508). ‘The Manere of Good Lyvyng’: A Middle English Translation of pseudo-Bernard’s ‘Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem’, ed. A. E. Mouron (Turnhout, 2014). Le Martyrologe d’Usuard, texte et commentaire, ed. J. Dubois (Brussels, 1965). Mechtild of Hackebourn, The Booke of Gostlye Grace, ed. T. A. Halligan (Toronto, 1979). Meditaciones de passione Christi olim sancto Bonaventurae attributae, ed. C. M. Stallings (Washington DC, 1965). Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, ed. J. Meadows Cowper, EETS OS 60 (London, 1875). Methley, R., The Works of Richard Methley, Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality, ed. J. P. H. Clark and J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 64:1 (2017). The Middle English Liber Aureus and Gospel of Nichodemus, ed. W. C. Marx, Middle English Texts 48 (Heidelberg, 2013). Migne, J.-P., ed., Patrologia cursus completus … Series Latina, 221 vols. [PL] (Paris, 1844–64). Miracles of the Virgin in Middle English, ed. and trans. A. W. Boyarin (New York, 2015). Mirk, J., Instructions for Parish Priests by John Mirk, ed. J. Peacock, EETS OS 31 (1868), rev. edn, ed. F. Furnivall (London, 1902). The Missal of Robert of Jumièges, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 11 (London, 1896). The Missal of St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, ed. M. Rule (Cambridge, 1896). The Monastic Breviary of Hyde Abbey, Winchester, ed. J. B. L. Tolhurst, 6 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 69–71, 76, 78, 80 (London, 1932–42). More, T., The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. F. Rogers (Princeton, 1947). A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A Prose Version of the Speculum Vitae, ed. from B.L. MS Harley 45, ed. V. Nelson (Heidelberg, 1981). Netter, T., Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei catholicae ecclesiae contra Wiclevistas et Hussitas, ed. E. Blanciotti (Venice, 1757–59).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 333

1/29/2021 7:58:26 AM

3 3 4    B i bl i o g r aphy Norton, J., Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality, vol. 3: The Works of John Norton, ed. J. P. H. Clark and J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 64:3 (2016). Ordinale Exon(iense), ed. J. N. Dalton et al., 4 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 37, 38, 63, 79. (London, 1909–40). Oswald de Corda, Opus pacis, ed. B. Egan, Corpus Christianorum: Continuatio Medieualis 179 (Turnhout, 2001). Passio SS. Quattuor Coronatorum, ed. H. Delehaye, Acta Sanctorum Novembris, III, 765–79. Pringle, D., ed., Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, 1187–1291, Crusader Texts in Translation 23 (Farnham, 2012). Rauer, C., ed., The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge, 2013). Raymond of Capua, ‘Here Begynneth the Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis the Blessid Virgin’, STC 24766.3 (Westminster, 1500). Regula Sancti Salvatoris, in Codex Regularum Monasticarum et Canonicarum quas ss. patres monachis, canonicis & virginibus sanctimonialibus servandas præscripserunt, ed. L. Holste, 3 vols. (Augsburg, 1759; repr. 1957). The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure: The Syon Additions for the Brethren and the Boke of Sygnes from St Paul Cathedral Library MS, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1980). The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure: The Syon Additions for the Sisters from the British Library MS Arundel 146, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1980). Ribot, F., De institutione et peculiaribus gestis religiosorum Carmelitarum, in Speculum Carmelitanum, ed. Daniel of the Virgin Mary (Antwerp, 1680). Rolle, R., English Writings of Richard Rolle Hermit of Hampole, ed. H. E. Allen (Oxford, 1931). ———, The Psalter, or Psalms of David and certain canticles with a translation and exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. H. R. Bramley (Oxford, 1884). ———, Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles, ed. A. Hudson, 3 vols., EETS OS 340, 341, 343 (Oxford, 2012–14). The Rule of St Augustine, trans. R. Russell, O.S.A., based on the critical edition by L. Verheijen, O.S.A., La Règle de Saint Augustin, 2 vols., Études Augustiniennes (Paris, 1967). The Sarum Missal: edited from three early manuscripts, ed. J. Legg (Oxford, 1916). Shakespeare, W. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. S. Wells and G. Taylor (Oxford, 1988). The Siege of Jerusalem, ed. R. Hanna and D. Lawton, EETS OS 370 (Oxford, 2003). Sisam, K., ed., Fourteenth-Century Verse and Prose (1921; rptd. Oxford, 1955). The South English Legendary, ed. C. D’Evelyn and A. J. Mill, 3 vols., EETS OS 235, 236 and 244 (London, 1956, 1959). Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition, ed. R. Hanna, 2 vols., EETS OS 331, 332 (Oxford, 2008). Taguchi, M. and Y. Iyeiri, eds., Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ, Middle English Texts 56 (Heidelberg, 2019). Tanner, N., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London, 1990). Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards, in Remonstrance against Romish Corruptions in the Church, ed. J. Forshall (London, 1851).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 334

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   335 The Vision of Edmund Leversedge: A 15th-Century Account of a Visit to the Otherworld Edited from BL MS Additional 34, 193 with an Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. W. F. Nijenhuis (Nijmegen, 1991). Waters, C. M, ed., Virgins and Scholars: A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria (Turnhout, 2008). Whytford, R., The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection, ed. J. Hogg, 5 vols. (Salzburg, 1979), V: A Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe. Willibrord, St, The Calendar of St Willibrord from MS. Paris Lat. 10837, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 55 (London, 1918). Wormald, F., ed., English Benedictine Kalendars after A.D. 1100, 2 vols., Henry Bradshaw Society 77, 81 (London, 1939, 1946). Wynter, Simon, ‘The Life of St Jerome’, ed. Claire Waters, in Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, ed. A. C. Bartlett and T. H. Bestul (Ithaca NY, 1999), pp. 143–63, 232–49.

Secondary Sources Ackerman, J., Elijah: Prophet of Carmel (Washington DC, 2003). Agamben, G., ‘From the Book to the Screen: the Before and After of the Book’, in The Fire and the Tale, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa (Stanford, 2017), pp. 83–108. Akbari, S. C., ‘Sight Lines: The Mirror of the Mind in Medieval Poetics’, in The Mirror in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: Specular Reflections, ed. N. M. Frelick (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 149–69. Alban, K, ed., Fons et culmen vitae carmelitanae: Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar S. Felice del Benaco, 13–16 June 2006 (Rome, 2007). ———, ‘Titolo ufficiale e popolare dell’Ordine’, in Dizionario carmelitano, ed. E. Boaga and L. Boriello (Rome, 2008), pp. 958–60. ———, ‘The Treatment of Mary in the Doctrinale of Thomas Netter as a Resource for Contemporary Theology’, in Thomas Netter of Walden: Carmelite, Diplomat and Theologian (c. 1372–1430), ed. J. Bergström-Allen and R. Copsey (Faversham, 2009), pp. 35–61. ———, ed., We Sing a Hymn of Glory to the Lord. Preparing to Celebrate Seven Hundred Years of Sibert de Beka’s Ordinal 1312–2012: Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar, Rome 6–8 July 2009 (Rome, 2010). Allen, H. E., ‘The Authorship of the Prick of Conscience’, Radcliffe College Monographs 15 (Boston, 1910). ———, ‘The Speculum Vitae: Addendum’, PMLA 32 (1917), 133–62. Alston, R. C., ed., Ortus Vocabulorum, English Linguistics 1500–1800: A Collection of Facsimile Reprints 123 (Menston, 1969). Alvarez Campos, S., ed., Corpus marianum patristicum, 7 vols. (Burgos, 1970–79). Amore, A., ‘Quattro Coronati, santi, martiri’, in Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols. (Rome: 1961–70), X, 1276–86. Anderson, W. L., ‘Gerson’s Stance on Women’, in A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. Brian Patrick McGuire (Leiden, 2006), pp. 293–316.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 335

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 3 6    B i bl i o g r aphy Angenendt, A. et al., ‘Counting Piety in the Early and High Middle Ages’, in Ordering Medieval Society: Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, ed. B. Jussen, trans. P. Selwyn (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 15–54. Appleford, A., Learning to Die in London, 1380–1540 (Philadelphia, 2015). Armstrong, E., ‘The Origins of Chrétien Wechel Re-Examined’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 23.2 (1961), 341–46. Aungier, G. J., The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery (London, 1840). Barad, K., Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement Between Matter and Meaning (Durham NC, 2007). Barber, B. and C. Thomas, The London Charterhouse (London, 2002). Barratt, A., Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England. A Study of London, British Library, MS Harley 494 (Turnhout, 2009). ———, ‘The Virgin and the Visionary in the Revelation of St Elizabeth’, Mystics Quarterly 17 (1991), 125–36. Barron, C. M., ‘What Did Medieval Merchants Read?’, in Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton, ed. M. Allen and M. Davies (London, 2016), pp. 43–70. Bartlett, R., Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, 2013). Benedict XVI, ‘Summorum Pontificum’, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 99 (2007), 777–81. Bennett, A. R., ‘The Ecology of Articulation and Aggregate Reading’, PMLA 131.2 (2016) 356–63. ———, (Bennett Segler, A.), ‘Picturing Queer Desire in the Vernon Manuscript’, View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 5 (2014) [accessed 4 May 2020]. Benson, C. D., ‘The Langland Myth’, in William Langland’s Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays, ed. Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (New York, 2001), pp. 83–100. Bernard, G., The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (New Haven, 2012). Berschin, W., Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, 4 vols. in 6 (Stuttgart, 1986–2004). Blaise, A., Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens (Turnhout, 1954). Blake, N., ‘Some Comments on the Style of Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July, 1995, ed. S. Oguro, R. Beadle, and M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 99–114. Blanton, V., ‘The Lost and (Not) Found: Sources for Female Saints’ Legends in John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium’, in A Companion to British Literature Vol. 1: Medieval Literature 700–1450, ed. H. Chang, R. De Maria Jr, and S. Zacher (New York), 2014), pp. 367–82. Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R., Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417 (University Park, 2006). Boffey, J. and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London, 2005). Borland, C. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Mediæval Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh, 1916). Bose, M., ‘Prophecy, Complaint and Pastoral Care in the Fifteenth Century: Thomas Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum’, in Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care:

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 336

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   337 Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. C. Gunn and C. Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 149–62. Bowers, R. H., ‘Middle English Verses on the Founding of the Carthusian Order’, Speculum 42 (1967), 710–13. Boyce, J., Praising God in Carmel: Studies in Carmelite Liturgy (Washington DC, 1999). ———, Carmelite Liturgy and Spiritual Identity: The Choir Books of Kraków (Turnhout, 2008). Boyer, R., ‘The Companions of St Bruno in Middle English Verses on the Founding of the Carthusian Order’, Speculum 53 (1978), 784–5. Brantley, J., Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago, 2007). Brewer, J. S., The Reign of Henry VIII from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey, ed. J. Gairdner (London, 1884). Brooks, N., ‘Canterbury, Rome, and the Construction of English Identity’, in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald Bullough, ed. J. M. H. Smith (Leiden, 2000), 221–46. ———, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury: Christ Church from 597 to 1066 (Leicester, 1984). Brown, J. N., ‘From the Charterhouse to the Printing House: Catherine of Siena in England’, in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations, ed. N. R. Rice (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 17–45. ———, Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Toronto, 2019). Brown, M. P., ‘Paris, BN lat. 10861 and the Scriptorium of Christ Church, Canterbury’, Anglo-Saxon England 15 (1986), 119–37. Bryan, J., Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 2008). Bude, T. L., ‘Musica Celestis, Mystical Song in Late Medieval England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2013). Bugyis, K. A.-M., ‘Handling the Book of Margery Kempe: The Corrective Touches of the Red Ink Annotator’, in New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices, ed. K. Kerby-Fulton, J. Thompson, and S. Baechle (Notre Dame, 2014), pp. 138–58. Bynum, C. W., Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia, 2007). Caciola, N., Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca NY, 2003). Cambridge, E., ‘The Architecture of the Augustinian Mission’, in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. R. Gameson (Stroud, 1999), pp. 83–106. Clark, J. P. H., ‘Image and Likeness in Walter Hilton’, Downside Review 47 (1979), 204–20. Cnattingius, H., Studies in The Order of St. Bridget of Sweden I: The Crisis in the 1420s (Stockholm, 1963). Connolly, M., ‘Books for the “helpe of euery persoone þat þenkip to be saued”: Six Devotional Anthologies from Fifteenth-Century London’, The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003), 170–81.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 337

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 3 8    B i bl i o g r aphy Connor, P. W., ‘Hypertext in the Last Days of the Book’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 74.3 (1992), 7–24. Cooper, L. H., ‘The “Boke of Oure Charges”: Constructing Community in the Masons’ Constitutions’, Journal of the Early Book Society 6 (2003), 1–39. Coote, L. and T. Thornton, ‘Merlin, Erceldoune, Nixon: A Tradition of Popular Political Prophecy’, New Medieval Literatures 4 (2001), 95–137. Coppack, G. and M. Aston, Christ’s Poor Men: The Carthusians in England (Stroud, 2002). Copsey, R., trans., The Ten Books on the Way of Life and Great Deeds of the Carmelites (Faversham, 2005). Cowdery, T., ‘Hoccleve’s Poetics of Matter’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016), 133–64. Cross, J. E., ‘English Vernacular Saints’ Lives Before 1000 A.D.’, in Hagiographies, ed. Goullet and Philippart, II, 413–27. Cunich, P., ‘The Brothers of Syon, 1420–1695’, in Syon Abbey and its Books, ed. Gillespie and Doyle , pp. 39–81. ———, ‘Maurice Chauncy and the Charterhouses of London and Sheen Anglorum’, Analecta Cartusiana 86:1 (2006), 1–57. Curtius, E. R., European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. Trask (Princeton, 1953). da Costa, A., Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy 1525–1534 (Oxford, 2012). Dagenais, J., ‘Decolonizing the Medieval Page’, in The Future of the Page, ed. P. Stoicheff and A. Taylor (Toronto, 2004), pp. 37–70. Davis, L. F., ‘Manuscript Roadtrip: The Promise of Digital Fragmentology’, 13 July 2015, [accessed 22 January, 2020]. de Hamel, C., Syon Abbey: The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation: An Essay (Otley, 1991). de Rossi, G. B., ‘I Santi Quattro Coronati e la loro chiesa sul Celio’, Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 3rd s. 4 (1879), 45–90. Denery D. G. II, K. Ghosh and N. Zeeman, eds., Uncertain Knowledge in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2014). Descola, P., Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago, 2013). Despres, D., Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature (Norman OK, 1990). D’Evelyn, C., ‘Legends of Individual Saints’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, ed. J. B. Severs et al., 11 vols. (Hamden CT, 1967–), II, 561–635. Dondi, C., The Liturgy of the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem: A Study and a Catalogue of the Manuscript Sources (Turnhout, 2004). ———, ‘La liturgia del Santo Sepulcro di Gerusalemme: origine, adozione da parte degli ordini religiosi (e militari) e sopravvivenze’, in We Sing a Hymn of Glory, ed. Alban, pp. 71–84. Doyle, A. I., ‘Book Production by the Monastic Orders in England’, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills CA, 1990), pp. 1–19.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 338

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   339 ———, ‘Books Connected with the Vere Family and Barking Abbey’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society n.s. 25 (1958), 222–43. ———, ‘Codicology, Paleography and Provenance’, in The Making of the Vernon Manuscript: The Production and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library. MS Eng. poet. A. 1., ed. W. Scase (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 3–25. ———, ‘English Carthusian Books not yet Linked with a Charterhouse’, in ‘A Miracle of Learning’: Studies in Manuscripts and Irish Learning. Essays in Honour of William O’Sullivan, ed. T. Barnard, D. Ó Cróinin and K. Simms (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 122–36. ———, ‘A Letter Written by Thomas Betson, Brother of Syon Abbey’, in The Medieval Book and A Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. A. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 255–67. ———, ‘A Manuscript of Petrus Dorlandus of Diest’s Viola Animae’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 155–62. ———, ‘Publication by Members of the Religious Orders’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. J. J. Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 109–23. ———, ‘Stephen Dodesham of Witham and Sheen’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. P. R. Robinson and R. Zim (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 94–115. ———, ‘A Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries, with Special Consideration to the Part of the Clergy Therein’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge), 1953. ———, ‘A Text Attributed to Ruusbroec Circulating in England’, in Dr L. ReypensAlbum, ed. A. Ampe (Antwerp, 1964), pp. 153–71. ———, ‘Thomas Betson of Syon Abbey’, The Library 5th s. XI (1956), 115–18. ———, ‘William Darker: The Work of an English Carthusian Scribe’, in Medieval Manuscripts, Their Makers and Users: A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 199–211. Drucker, J., The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909–1923 (Chicago, 1994). Duff, E. G., A Century of the English Book Trade (London, 1948). Duffy, E., Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers 1240–1570 (New Haven, 2006). ———, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–1580, 2nd edn (New Haven, 2005). Eggert, P., ‘Apparatus, Text, Interface: How to Read a Printed Critical Edition’, in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. N. Fraistat and J. Flanders (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 97–118. Elie, H., ‘Chrétien Wechel, Imprimeur à Paris’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 29 (1954), 181–97. Elliott, D., Proving Woman: Female Spiritual and Inquisitorial Practices in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2004).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 339

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 4 0    B i bl i o g r aphy Ellis, R., ‘“Flores ad Fabricandam … Coronam’: An Investigation into the Use of the Revelations of St Bridget in Fifteenth-Century England’, Medium Aevum 51 (1982), 163–86. ———, ‘Viderunt Eam Filie Syon: The Spirituality of the English House of a Medieval Contemplative Order from its Beginnings to the Present Day’, Analecta Cartusiana 68:2 (Salzburg, 1984). Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500 (Cambridge, 1963). Enqvist, L., ‘Syon Abbey and the List of Faults: An Example of Shaping Social Life in a Medieval Birgittine Community’, in The Birgittine Experience: Papers from the Birgitta Conference in Stockholm 2011, ed. C. Gerjot, M. Åkestam, and R. Andersson (Stockholm, 2013), pp. 307–22. Erler, M. C., ‘The Maner to Lyue Well and the Coming of English in Françoise Regnault’s Primers of the 1520s and 1530s’, The Library 6th s. VI.3 (September 1984), 229–43. ———, Reading and Writing during the Dissolution: Monks, Friars and Nuns 1530–1558 (Cambridge, 2013). ———, ‘The Transmission of Images between Flemish and English Birgettine Houses’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue, ed. V. Blanton, V. O’Mara and P. Stoop (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 367–82. ———, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002). Falls, D. J., Nicholas Love’s Mirror and Late Medieval Devotio-Literary Culture: Theological Politics and Devotional Practice in Fifteenth-Century England (Abingdon, 2016). Fischer, C., ‘Die “Meditationes vitae Christi”, ihre handschriftliche Ueberlieferung und die Verfasserfrage’, Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 25 (1932), 3–35, 175–209, 305–48, and 449–83. Forcadell, A., ‘Ritus Carmelitarum Antiquae Observantiae’, Biblioteca Carmelitana 2, Ephemerides Liturgicae 63 (1950). Forrest, I., ‘William Swinderby and the Wycliffite Attitude to Excommunication’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 60.2 (2009), 246–69. Fox, R. L., Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine (Harmondsworth, 1986). Foxcroft, E. T. D., ‘The Carthusian Priory of Hinton’, Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club 7 (1891), 293–307. Friedman, F., The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel – A Study in Carmelite Origins (Rome, 1979). Funk, F. X., ed., Patres apostolici, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Tübingen, 1901). Garrison, J., ‘Mediated Piety: Eucharistic Theology and Lay Devotion in Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne’, Speculum 85 (2010), 894–922. Gasquet, F. A., Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 2 vols. (London, 1889). Gayk, S., Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2010). Geographies of Orthodoxy project website: [accessed 29 September 2015]. Ghosh, K., ‘“And so it is licly to men’: Probabilism and Hermeneutics in Wycliffite Discourse’, The Review of English Studies 70 (2019), 418–36.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 340

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   341 ———, ‘Manuscripts of Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and Wycliffite Notions of Authority’, in Prestige, Authority and Power in LateMedieval Manuscripts, ed. F. Riddy (York, 2000), pp. 17–34. ———, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge, 2002). Gilbert, B., ‘Early Carthusian Script and Silence’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 49.3 (2014), 367–97. Gillespie, V., ‘ The Book and the Brotherhood: Reflections on the Lost Library of Syon Abbey’, in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, V. Gillespie, and R. Hanna (London, 2000), pp. 185–208. ———, ‘Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland, and Wales: Exeter Symposium VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 241–68. ———, ‘The Haunted Text: Reflections in The Mirrour to Deuote Peple’, in Medieval Texts and Contexts, ed. D. Renevey and G. D. Caie (London, 2008), pp. 136–66. ———, ‘The Permeable Cloister? Charterhouses, Contemplation and Urban Piety in Later Medieval England: The Case of London’, in The Urban Church in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Clive Burgess, Proceedings of the 2017 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Harry and C. Steer (Donington, 2019), pp. 238–57. ———, ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, Religion and Literature 37 (2005), 1–23. ———, ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, in Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing, and Religion, c. 1400–1700, ed. E. A. Jones and A. Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104–28. ———, ‘Syon and the New Learning’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. J. G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 75–95. ———, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English: Twenty-First Century Approaches, ed. P. Strohm. (Oxford, 2007), pp. 401–20. ———, ‘Visionary Women and their Books in the Library of the Brethren of Syon’, in Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain, ed. J. Willoughby and J. Catto (Toronto, 2018), 40–63. ——— and A. I. Doyle, eds., Syon Abbey, with the Libraries of the Carthusians, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London, 2001). ——— and A. Hudson, ‘Introduction’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the 21st Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), 1–14. ——— and K. Ghosh, eds., After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England (Turnhout, 2012). Gimpel, J., The Cathedral Builders, trans. T. Waugh (New York, 1983). Gitelman, L., ed., Raw Data is an Oxymoron (Cambridge MA, 2013). Golding, B., ‘Keeping Nuns in Order: Enforcement of the Rules in Thirteenth-Century Sempringham’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59 (2008), 657–79. Görlach, M., ‘Middle English Legends, 1220–1530’, in Hagiographies, ed. Goullet and Philippart, 1, 429–85.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 341

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 4 2    B i bl i o g r aphy Goullet, M. and G. Philippart, ed., Hagiographies: histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, 7 vols. (Turnhout, 1994–2018). Gray, A., ‘A Carthusian Carta Visitationis of the Fifteenth Century’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 40 (1967), 91–101. Greetham, D. C., Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1994). Gretsch, M., ‘Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 57: A Witness to the Early Stages of the Benedictine Reform in England?’, Anglo-Saxon England 32 (2003), 111–46. Gribbin, J. A., Aspects of Carthusian Liturgical Practice in Later Medieval England, Analecta Cartusiana 99:33 (Salzburg, 1995). Guyon, J., ‘Les Quatre Couronnés et l’histoire de leur culte des origines au milieu du IXe siècle’, Mélanges de l’école française de Rome, Antiquité 87 (1975), 505–61. Hall, M., Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany (New York, 2011). Hanna, R., ‘Augustinian Canons and Middle English Literature’, in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, R. Hanna and V. Gillespie (London, 2000), pp. 27–42. ———, ‘Contextualizing The Siege of Jerusalem’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992), 109–22. ———, ‘The Latin Transmission of Richard Rolle’s Latin Works’, The Library 14 (2013), 313–33. Haraway, D., ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century’, in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1991), pp. 149–82. Harman, C., ‘From Feudalism to Capitalism’, International Socialism 2.45 (1989), 35–87. Harris, B. J., Edward Stafford: Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478–1521 (Stanford, 1986). Harvey, E. R., The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London, 1975). Harvey, M., ‘Adam Easton and the Condemnation of John Wyclif, 1377’, The English Historical Review 113 (1998), 321–34. Hayles, N. K., Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary (Notre Dame, 2008). ———, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago, 1999). ———, How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Chicago, 2012). Hellinga, L., ‘Tradition and Renewal: Establishing the Chronology of Wynken de Worde’s Early Work’, in Incunabula and Their Readers: Printing, Selling and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century, ed. K. Jensen (London, 2003), pp. 13–30. Hennessy, M. V., ‘The Remains of the Royal Dead in an English Carthusian Manuscript, London, British Library, MS Additional 37049’, Viator 33 (2002), 310–54. ———, ‘Aspects of Blood Piety in a Late Medieval English Manuscript’, in History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter of Person, ed. R. Fulton and B. W. Holsinger (New York, 2007), pp. 182–91. ———, ‘Three Marian Texts Including a Prayer for a Lay-Brother in London, British Library MS Additional 37049’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, vol. 14, Regional Manuscripts 1200–1700, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (London, 2008), pp. 163–79. ———, ‘Miraculous Textuality in the London Charterhouse? British Library, MS Egerton 1821 and “The Lilies of the Virgin”’, in The Carthusians in the City: History,

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 342

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   343 Culture and Martyrdom at the London Charterhouse c. 1370–1555, ed. J. M. Luxford (Toronto, forthcoming 2021). ——— and Sargent, M. G., ‘The Latin Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 179–97. Hirsh, J., ‘Prayer and Meditation in Late Mediaeval England: MS Bodley 789’, Medium Aevum 48 (1979), 55–66. Hodnett, E., English Woodcuts 1480–1535: Additions and Corrections (Oxford, 1973). Hogg, J., ‘Architecture of Hinton Charterhouse’, Analecta Cartusiana 25 (1975), i–xcvi. ———, ‘Adam Easton’s Defensorium sanctae Birgittae’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland, and Wales, Exeter Symposium VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 213–40. ———, ‘Mount Grace Charterhouse and Late Medieval English Spirituality’, Collectanea Cartusiensia 3, Analecta Cartusiana 82:3 (1980), 1–43. ———, ‘Richard Methley: A Mystical Diary: The “Refectorium Salutis”’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana 55:1 (1981), 208–38. Holmes, M., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. edn (Grand Rapids MI, 1992). Honkapohja, A. Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production: A Codicological and Linguistic Study of the Voigts-Sloane Manuscript Group (Turnhout, 2017). Hope, W. St John, The History of the London Charterhouse from its Foundation until the Suppression of the Monastery (London, 1925). Hornbeck J. P. II, What is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010). Horsfield, R. A., ‘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. M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 205–13. Hudson, A., Lollards and Their Books (London and Ronceverte WV, 1985). ———, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988). Hughan, W. J., The Old Charges of British Freemasons, 2nd edn (London, 1895). Husband, T., The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry (New York, 2008). Hutchison, A. M. and V. O’Mara, ‘The Lyfe of Seynt Birgette: An Edition of a Swedish Saint’s Life for an English Audience’, in ‘Booldly bot meekly’, Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. C. Batt and R. Tixier (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 173–208. Illich, I., In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s ‘Didascalicon’ (Chicago, 1993). Jackson, P. and M. Lapidge, ‘The Contents of the Cotton-Corpus Legendary’, in Holy Men and Holy Women, ed. Szarmach, pp. 131–46. Jager, E., The Book of the Heart (Chicago, 2000). James, M. R., The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge: A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1900–4). James, S., ‘Rereading Henry Suso and Eucharistic Theology in Fifteenth-Century England’, The Review of English Studies n.s. 63 (2012), 732–42.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 343

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 4 4    B i bl i o g r aphy Jansen, K., The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000). Johns, A., The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Cambridge, 1999). Johnson, I., The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation, and Vernacular Theology (Turnhout, 2013). ———, ‘Middle English Life of Christ’, in The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, ed. R. Ellis (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 69–85. ———, ‘The Middle English Meditationes vitae Christi: Textual Details, Corpus, and Repertoire’, in Every (Wo)Man’s Books of Salvation: The Most Popular Medieval Religious Texts in Europe, their Circulation and Reception, ed. G. Veysseyre, F. Bourgne and R. Gay-Canton (Turnhout, in preparation). ———, ‘What Nicholas Love did in his Proheme with St Augustine and Why’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, pp. 395–92. ——— and A. F. Westphall, eds., The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013). Johnston, F. R., ‘English Defenders of St Bridget’, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order: Volume 1, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg, 1993), pp. 263–75. Jolliffe, P. S., ‘Middle English Translations of De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione’, Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974), 259–77. Jones, E. and A. Walsham, ed., Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion c. 1400–1700 (Woodbridge, 2010). Jones, W. R., ‘Lollards and Images: The Defense of Religious Art in Later Medieval England’, Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (1973), 27–50. Jotischky, A., The Carmelites and Antiquity: Mendicants and Their Pasts in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2002). Kallenberg, A., ‘From Gallican to Sepulchre to Carmelite Rite – A Short Reflection on the Origins of Carmelite Liturgy’ in Fons et culmen vitae carmelitanae, ed. Alban, pp. 55–73. Karnes, M. Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2011). ———, ‘Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ: Interiority, Imagination and Meditations on the Life of Christ’, Speculum 82 (2007), 380–408. Keiser, G. R., ‘Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon Wynter, and Yale University MS 317’, Yale University Library Gazette 60 (1985), 32–46. ———, ‘Serving the Needs of Readers: Textual Division in Some Late-medieval English Texts’, in New Science out of Old Books, Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 207–26. ———, ‘St Jerome and the Brigittines: Visions of the Afterlife in Fifteenth Century England’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 143–52. Kelly, S. and R. Perry, ‘“Citizens of Saints”: Creating Christian Community in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 23’, in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers and Transformation, ed. N. R. Rice (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 215–37.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 344

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   345 ———, ‘Devotional Cosmopolitanism in Fifteenth-Century England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 363–80. ——— eds., Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life (Turnhout, 2014). Ker, N. R., ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn (London, 1964). Kerby-Fulton, K., Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1990). ———, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, 2006). Knowles, D., The Religious Orders in England, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1948–59). ——— and Grimes, W. F., Charterhouse: The Medieval Foundation in Light of Recent Discoveries (London, 1954). Kohn, E., How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley, 2013). Kuczynski, M., Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1995). Kumler, A., ‘The Multiplication of the Species: Eucharistic Morphology in the Middle Ages’, The Review of English Studies n.s. 59/60 (2011), 179–91. Lanéry, C., ‘Arnobe le Jeune et la Passion de Sébastien (BHL 7543)’, Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 53 (2007), 267–93. Lapidge, M., ‘A Tenth-century Metrical Calendar from Ramsey’, Revue Bénédictine 94 (1984), 326–69. ———, ‘Ælfric’s Sanctorale’, in Holy Men and Holy Women, ed. Szarmach, pp. 115–29. Latour, B., ‘Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest’, in Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1999), pp. 80–112. Lawton, D., Voice in Later Medieval English Literature: Public Interiorities (Oxford, 2017). Lee, A. D., ‘Traditional Religions’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. N. Lenski (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 159–79. Le Goff, J., The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1981). ———, Medieval Civilisation, trans. J. Barrow (Oxford, 1988). Lehmann, P., ‘Bücherliebe und Bucherpflege bei den Kartäusern’, in Erforschung des Mittelalters, 5 vols. (Stuttgart, 1960), III, 121–42. Le Vasseur, L. Ephemerides Ordinis Cartusiensis, 4 vols. (Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1890). Lindenbaum, S., ‘London after Arundel: Learned Rectors and the Strategies of Orthodox Reform’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 182–208. Liszka, T. R., ‘The South English Legendaries’, in Rethinking the South English Legendaries, ed. H. Blurton and J. Wogan-Browne (Manchester, 2011), pp. 23–65. Lochrie, K., Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, 1991). Lovatt, R., ‘The Library of John Blacman and Contemporary Carthusian Spirituality’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43 (1992), 195–230. ———, ‘John Blacman: Biographer of Henry VI’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 418–44.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 345

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 4 6    B i bl i o g r aphy ———, ‘A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited’, in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. A. J. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 172–97. Luxford, J. M., ‘Carthusian Monasticism and the London Charterhouse’, in Revealing the Charterhouse, ed. C. Ross (London, 2016), pp. 41–66. ———, ‘The Charterhouse of St Anne, Coventry’, in Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity, ed. L. Monckton and R. K. Morris (Leeds, 2011), pp. 240–66. ———, ‘Texts and Images of Carthusian Foundation’, in Self-Representation of Medieval Religious Communities, The British Isles in Context, ed. A. Müller and K. Stöber (Berlin, 2009), pp. 275–305. Macy, G., I. C. Levy, and K. Van Ausdall, eds., A Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2012). Madan, F. et al., A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1895–1953). Mainoldi, E. S., ‘Deifying Beauty: Towards the Definition of a Paradigm for Byzantine Aesthetics’, Aisthesis 11 (2018), 13–29. Mak, B., How the Page Matters (Toronto, 2011). Malo, R., ‘Penitential Discourse in Hoccleve’s Series’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34 (2012), 277–305. Mann, J., ‘The Power of the Alphabet’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1994), 21–50. Marder, M., Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life (New York, 2013). Marenbon, J., ‘Baconthorpe, John (c. 1290–1345x1352), Carmelite Friar, Theologian’, Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 . Marks, R. B., The Medieval Manuscript Library of the Charterhouse of St Barbara in Cologne, 2 vols., Analecta Cartusiana 21–22 (1974). Marshall, P., Heretics and Believers. A History of the English Reformation (New Haven and London, 2017). Mauk, B., ‘Scattered Leaves’, The New Yorker Jan 6, 2014, [accessed 22 January 2020]. McCaffery, L. and S. Gregory, ‘Haunted House: An Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski’, Critique 44.2 (2003), 99–135. McCord Adams, M., ‘Eucharistic Eating and Drinking’, in Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Gilles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham (Oxford, 2010). McEvoy, L. H., ‘“O der lady be my help”: Women’s Visionary Writing and the Devotional Literary Canon’, The Chaucer Review 51 (2016), 68–87. McGann, J., A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Charlottesville, 1992). McIntosh, A., et al., A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols. (Aberdeen, 1986). McNamer, S., ‘Further Evidence for the Dating of the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi’, Franciscan Studies 50 (1990), 235–61. ———, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2010).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 346

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   347 Meale, C., ‘The Miracles of Our Lady: Context and Interpretation’, in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 115–36. Midili, G., ‘La liturgia nei documenti carmelitani dal 1971 al 1995’, in Fons et culmen vitae carmelitanae, ed. Alban, pp. 143–66. Miles, L. S., ‘Richard Methley and the Translation of Vernacular Religious Writing into Latin’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 449–67. Millet, B., ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, ed. D. Renevey and C. Whitehead (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 21–40. ———, ‘Whatever Happened to Electronic Editing?’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 47–53. Mooney, L., et al., eds., The DIMEV: An Open-Access Digital Edition of the ‘Index of Middle English Verse’ [accessed 4 May 2020]. Morris, C., The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford, 2005). Mullins, P., The Carmelites and St Albert of Jerusalem: Origins and Identity (Rome, 2015). Mursell, G., English Spirituality from the Earliest Times to 1700 (Louisville KY, 2001). Nichols, S. and S. Wenzel, The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor, 1996). O’Donnell, C., ‘A Loving Presence: Mary and Carmel. A Study of the Marian Heritage of the Order’ in Carmelite Spiritual Directory Project 6 (Melbourne, 2000). Parkes, M. B., Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Berkeley, 1993). Pascha, J., and J. Heigham, The Voyage of the Cross: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Hierusalem (1604–1605) (Rome, 2016). Pasnau, R., After Certainty: A History of our Epistemic Ideals and Illusions (Oxford, 2017). Pastoureau, M., The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, trans. Jody Gladding (New York, 2001). Patterson, L,. ‘The Logic of Textual Criticism and the Way of Genius: The KaneDonaldson Piers Plowman in Historical Perspective’, in Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 77–113. Péri-Nagy, Z., ‘Vox, Imago, Littera: Nicholas Love’s Mirrour of the Blessed Life of Jesu Criste’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University, 2014). Perry, R., ‘An Introduction to Devotional Anthologies: One Volume “Collections” and Their Contexts’, Queeste: Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries 2 (2013), 119–33. ———, ‘Manuscript Profiles’, on the Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion, Geographies of Orthodoxy website: [accessed 12 October 2017]. ———, ‘“Some sprytuall matter of gostly edyfycacion”: Readers and Readings of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 347

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 4 8    B i bl i o g r aphy Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Johnson and Westphall, pp. 51–81. ———, ‘“Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke”: The Cultural Locations of Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition’, Speculum 86 (2011), 419–54. Peters, J. D., The Marvellous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (Chicago, 2015). Pezzini, D., ‘David of Augsburg’s Formula Novitiorum in Three English Translations’, in The Medieval Translator, ed. R. Ellis, R. Tixier and B. Weitemeier (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 321–77. Pfizenmaier, S., Charterhouse Square: Black Death Cemetery and Carthusian Monastery, Meat Market and Suburb (London, 2016). Pickering, O. S. and V. M. O’Mara. The Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist 13: Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library including those formerly in Sion College Library (Cambridge, 1999). Powell, S., The Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print (Turnhout, 2017). Prescott, A., ‘The Old Charges Revisited’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 (2005), 25–38. ———, ‘Some Literary Contexts of the Regius and Cooke Manuscripts’, in Freemasonry in Music and Literature: Transactions of the Fifth International Conference, 1 and 2 November 2003, The Canonbury Papers 2, ed. T. Stewart (London, 2005), pp. 43–77. Pringle, D., The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1993–2009). Quentin, H., Les martyrologes historiques du Moyen Âge: étude sur la formation du Martyrologe romain (Paris, 1908). Radding, C., and F. Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078–1079 (New York, 2010). Raschko, M., ‘Common Ground for Contrasting Ideologies: The Texts and Contexts of A Schort Reule of Lif’, Viator 40.1 (2009), 387–410. Reakes, J., ‘The Middle English Prose Translation of the Meditaciones de Passione Christi and Its Links with Manuscripts of Love’s Mirror’, Notes and Queries 27 (1980), 199–202. Reeves, M., The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford, 1969). Renevey, D. ‘Name Above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection I’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland, Wales, Exeter Symposium VI, ed. M. Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 103–21. ———, ‘The Name Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations, and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England’, in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians 9, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 130 (Salzburg, 1996), pp. 127–48. Rice, N. R., Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (Cambridge, 2008).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 348

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   349 Riddy, F., ‘“Women talking about the things of God”: A Late Medieval Sub-culture’, in Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500, ed. C. M. Meale (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 104–27. Roest, B., Franciscan Literature of Religious Instruction before the Council of Trent (Leiden, 2004). Roper, W. J. D., Chronicles of the Charter-house (London, 1847). Rothschild, V., ‘Government Regulation of Trade Unions in Great Britain: I’, Columbia Law Review 38 (1938), 1–48. Rouse, M. A. and R. H., ‘Correction and Emendation of Texts in the Fifteenth Century and the Autograph of the Opus Pacis by Oswaldus Anglicus’, in Scire litteras: Forschungen zum mittelalterlichen Geistleben, ed. S. Krämer and M. Bernard (Munich, 1988), pp. 333–46. ———, ‘Backgrounds to Print: Aspects of the Manuscript Book in Northern Europe of the Fifteenth Century’, in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, 1991), pp. 449–66. ———, ‘The Commercial Production of Manuscript Books in Late ThirteenthCentury and Early Fourteenth-Century Paris’, in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, 1990), pp. 103–15. Rowland, I. D., Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic (Chicago, 2008). Rowntree, C. B., ‘Studies in Carthusian History in Later Medieval England, with Special Reference to the Order’s Relations with Secular Society’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York, 1981). Rudy, K. M., Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts (Cambridge, 2016). Rushworth, R., Saints in English Kalendars before 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society 117 (London, 2008). Russell-Smith, J. M., ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Religious Images’, Dominican Studies 7 (1954), 180–214. Rykwert, J., ‘On the Oral Transmission of Architectural Theory’, AA Files No. 6 (May 1984), 14–27. Salter, E., Nicholas Love’s ‘Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg, 1974). Salvarini, R., La fortuna del Santo Sepolcro nel medioevo: Spazio, liturgia, architettura (Milan, 2008). Sanok, C., New Legends of England: Forms of Community in Late Medieval Saints’ Lives (Philadelphia, 2018). Sargent, M. G., ‘The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete’, Viator 28 (1997), 253–79. ———, ‘The Anxiety of Authority, the Fear of Translation: The Prologues to The Myroure of Oure Ladye’, in Booldly bot meekly: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. C. Batt and R. Tixier (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 231–44. ———, ‘Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Collections’, in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday, ed. S. Horobin and L. R. Mooney. (York, 2014), pp. 159–62.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 349

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 5 0    B i bl i o g r aphy ———, ‘Censorship or Cultural Change? Reformation and Renaissance in the Spiritual of Late Medieval England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Gillespie and Ghosh, pp. 55–72. ———, ‘Chauncy, Maurice (c.1509–1581), Prior of Sheen Anglorum and Martyrologist’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 . ———, ‘Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, 5 vols. (Salzburg, 1981–82), I, 160–205. ———, ‘David of Augsburg’s De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione in Middle English’, in Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo, ed. N. M. Real and R. E. Sternglantz (Donington, 2001), pp. 74–102. ———, ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, in Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the 21st Century, ed. V. Gillespie and A. Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 509–27. ———, ‘A Geographical Postscript’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe, ed. S. Kelly and R. Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 607–33. ———, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85, 2 vols. (Salzburg, 1984). ———, ‘Methley, Richard (1450/51–1527/8)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 . ———, ‘The Problem of Uniformity in Carthusian Book Production from the Opus Pacis to the Tertia Compilatio Statutorum’, in New Science out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 122–41. ———, ‘Self-Verification of Visionary Phenomena: Richard Methley’s Experimentum Veritatis’, in Kartäusermystik und -Mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana 55:2 (1981), 121–37. ———, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), 225–40. ———, ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’, Medium Ævum 52.5 (1983) 189–216. ———, ‘What do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44. _____ and Hennessy, M. V., ‘The Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. M. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 179–97. Sauer, M. and K. Alban, eds., Celebrating St Albert and his Rule: Rules, Devotion, Orthodoxy and Dissent (Rome, 2017). Sawyer, D. ‘Navigation by Tab and Thread: Place-markers and Readers’ Movements in Books’, in Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England, ed. M. C. Flannery and C. Griffin (New York, 2016), pp. 99–114. Scott, K. L., ‘Past Ownership: Evidence of Book Ownership by English Merchants in the Later Middle Ages’, in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. C. Meale and D. Pearsall (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 150–77.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 350

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   351 Shaner, M., ‘Instruction and Delight: Medieval Romances as Children’s Literature’, Poetics Today 13.1, Children’s Literature (Spring 1992), 5–15. Shelby, L. ‘The Geometrical Knowledge of Mediaeval Master Masons’, Speculum 47 (1972), 395–421. Smith, D. M., ed., The Heads of Religious Houses England and Wales III: 1377–1540 (Cambridge, 2008). Solopova, E., Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool, 2016). Somerset, F., ‘Censorship’, in The Production of Books in England 1350–1500, ed. A. Gillespie and D. Wakelin (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 239–58. ———, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 1998). ———, Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings After Wyclif (Ithaca NY, 2014). ———, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’, in The Cambridge Companion to Law and Literature in Medieval England, ed. S. Sobecki and C. Barrington (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 167–77. ———, ‘A Mirror to See God In: An Edition of ‘Þe Wordes of Poule’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 31 (2017), 257–86. ———, ‘Scripting Defense? Textual Arguments and Their Readers amid the Pursuit of Heresy in England’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 63 (2019), 153–67. ———, ‘Trewe and Pretended: The Middle English Rosarium’s Treatise on Law’, in Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods, Impact, Responses, ed. K. Ghosh and P. Soukup (Turnhout, forthcoming). Souter, A., A Glossary of Later Latin to 600 A.D (Oxford, 1949). Southern, R. W., ‘The English Origins of the “Miracles of the Virgin”’, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958), 176–216. ———, Saint Anselm and his Biographer: A Study of Monastic Life and Thought, 1059–c. 1130 (Cambridge, 1963). ——— and F. S. Schmitt, eds., Memorials of Saint Anselm (London, 1969). St John Hope, W., The History of the London Charterhouse, From its Foundation to the Suppression of the Monastery (London, 1925). Staring, A., Medieval Carmelite Heritage – Early Reflections on the Nature of the Order (Rome, 1989). Stenton, F., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971). Stover, E. V., ‘A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A Note on a Recently Acquired Manuscript’, The Library Chronicle 16 (1950), 81–86. Sutherland, A., English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300–1450 (Oxford, 2015). Szarmach, P. E., ed., Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts (Albany NY, 1996). Tanner, Norman, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984). Tennen, D., Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation (Stanford, 2017). Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Belief in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century England (New York, 1971). Thompson, E. M., The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930). ———, A History of the Somerset Carthusians (London, 1895).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 351

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 5 2    B i bl i o g r aphy Treharne, E., ‘Romanticizing the Past in the Middle English Athelston’, The Review of English Studies n.s. 50 (1999), 1–21. Tschichold, J., The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design (London, 1991). Tubach, F. C., Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki, 1969). Van Engen, J., ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History, 77.2 (2008), 257–84. Voaden, R., God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York, 1999). Von Balthasar, H. U., The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, 2nd edn, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1982–89). Waaijman, K., The Mystical Space of Carmel: A Commentary on the Carmelite Rule (Leuven, 1999). Wakelin, D., Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375–1510 (Cambridge, 2014). Wampole, C., Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor (Chicago, 2016). Ward, L. C., ‘The E Museo 160 Manuscript: Writing and Reading as Remedy’, in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians 4, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 130.4 (Salzburg, 1995), pp. 68–86. Warren, M. R., ‘The Politics of Textual Criticism’, in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. N. Fraistat and J. Flanders (Cambridge, 2013), 119–34. Warren, N. B., Women of God and Arms. Female Spirituality and Political Conflict, 1380– 1600 (Philadelphia, 2005). Watson, A. G., ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Supplement (London, 1987). Watson, N., ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), 822–64. ———, ‘The Phantasmal Past: Time, History, and the Recombinative Imagination’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010), 1–27. ———, ‘Piers Plowman, Pastoral Theology, and Spiritual Perfectionism: Hawkyn’s Coat and Patience’s Pater Noster’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies 21 (2007), 83–118. ———, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991). ———, ‘Middle English Versions and Audiences of Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum religiosorum’, in Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. C. Gunn and C. Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 115–31. Watt, D., Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. (Cambridge, 1997). Webber, T., Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral, c.1075–c.1125 (Oxford, 1992). Westphall, A. F., ‘The Passion in English: Meditations on the Life of Christ in Michigan State University MS 1’, Neophilologus 97 (2013), 199–214. ———, ‘Textual Profile’ of the Meditations on the Supper of our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: [accessed 12 October 2017].

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 352

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

B ibliogr aphy   353 ———, ‘Textual Profile’ of the passion meditation in Michigan State University MS 1 on the Geographies of Orthodoxy website: [accessed 29 September 2015]. Whatley, E. G., ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, in Hagiographies, ed. Goullet and Philippart, I, 429–99. ———, A. B. Thompson, and R. K. Upchurch, eds., Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections (Kalamazoo, 2004). Whatmore, L. E., The Carthusians under King Henry the Eighth, Analecta Cartusiana 109 (Salzburg, 1983). Wilmart, A., ‘Un témoin anglo-saxon du calendrier métrique d’York’, Revue Bénédictine 46 (1934), 41–69. Windeatt, B., ‘1412–1534: Texts’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, ed. S. Fanous and V. Gillespie (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 195–224. ———, English Mystics of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1994). Wogan-Browne, J., N. Watson, A. Taylor, and R. Evans, eds., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520 (Exeter, 1999). Wood, D., Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge, 2002). Woodford, A. F. A., ‘The Quatuor Coronati: the Legend as Given in the Arundel MS’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 1 (1888), 78–86. Wriothesley, C., A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D.1485 to 1559, ed. W. D. Hamilton, 2 vols. (Westminster, 1875–77). Yeager R. F., ‘John Gower’s French and his Readers’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. J. Wogan-Browne et al. (York, 2009), pp. 135–46. Young, J. and P. H. Aitken, eds., A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1908). Zieman, K., ‘Monasticism and the Public Contemplative in Late Medieval England: Richard Methley and his Spiritual Formation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42.3 (2012), 699–724. ———, ‘Rolle’s English Psalter and the Possibilities of Vernacular Scriptural Commentary’, in The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation, ed. T. Atkin and F. Lenaghan (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 149–70. Zumthor, P., Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris, 1972).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 353

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 354

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

Contributors Kevin Alban is Prior Provincial of the British Province of Carmelites and teaches in Oxford and London. He completed a doctorate in Medieval Church History which was published as The Teaching and Impact of the ‘Doctrinale’ of Thomas Netter of Walden (2010). He has published some twenty-five articles on history, spirituality, liturgy and Mariology. He has edited Fons et culmen vitae Carmelitanae, Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar, S. Felice del Benaco, 13–16 June, 2006 (2007); We Sing a Hymn of Glory to the Lord, Proceedings of the Carmelite Liturgical Seminar, Rome, 6–8 July, 2009 (2010); Celebrating St Albert and his Rule. Rules, Devotion, Orthodoxy and Dissent (2018); and Revisiting the Fountain of Elijah – Essays in Honour of Wilfrid McGreal (2019). A. R. Bennett’s research and publications concern the intersections of book history, media studies, medieval literature and the digital humanities. They are primarily interested in the ways that medieval manuscripts make meaning across multiple registers of images, text and material and in how those visio-textual strategies translate across multiple forms of media in different cultural moments. Bennett is building a database of Middle English manuscripts and their texts in order to facilitate a comprehensive, statistical and graphical look at the whole of English manuscript culture in the last of the pre-print era. Jennifer N. Brown is Professor of English and World Literatures at Marymount Manhattan College. Her research interests are in medieval devotional culture, especially texts for, by and about women. Her books include Fruit of the Orchard: Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (2018); Three Women of Liège: A Critical Edition of and Commentary on the Middle English Lives of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, Christina Mirabilis and Marie d’Oignies (2008); as well as the collections Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture (2012), co-edited with Donna Bussell, and Sexuality, Sociality, and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts (2012), co-edited with Marla Segol. Marleen Cré teaches English at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels and is an independent scholar affiliated with the Ruusbroec Institute, University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on late medieval mystical and devotional texts in their manuscript contexts, on devotional compilations and on authors Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and Marguerite Porete. She has published Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (2006) and co-edited the collection Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England (2020). Mary C. Erler is Distinguished Professor of English at Fordham University. Her books include Reading and Writing during the Dissolution: Monks, Friars and Nuns 1530–1558 (2013); Records of Early English Drama (REED): Ecclesiastical London (2008); and Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (2002). With Maryanne Kowaleski, she edited Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 355

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

3 5 6    L i st o f C ont r i bu t o r s in the Middle Ages (2003) and Women and Power in the Middle Ages (1988). In 2018 she published ‘The Correspondence of Margaret Vernon’, http://emlo-portal.bodleian. ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=margaret-vernon. David J. Falls obtained his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Geographies of Orthodoxy Project’. He is now a teacher and A Level English Linguistics and Literature, and Extended Project Qualification coordinator at Aylesbury High School. He maintains an interest in late medieval religious writing and religious orders. His publications include ‘The Carthusian Milieu of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’ (2013) and Nicholas Love’s Mirror and Late Medieval Devotio-Literary Culture: Theological Politics and Devotional Practice in Fifteenth-Century England (2016). C. Annette Grisé is Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Her research interests include vernacular religious literature, with a particular focus on issues of gender in production and reception. She has published articles and book chapters on Syon Abbey, medieval women mystics, and Middle English devotional literature. She co-edited a collection of essays entitled Readers, Reading, and Reception in Medieval English Devotional Literature and Practice (2017). Marlene Villalobos Hennessy is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Hunter College, City University of New York. Her research interests are in late medieval British manuscripts and religious culture. She has edited a collection of essays, Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (2009) and is the author of a reference work, An Index of Images in English and Scottish Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, c. 1380–c. 1509. Scottish Manuscripts and English Manuscripts in Scotland. Fascicle I: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (2021). Ian Johnson is Professor of Medieval Literature, University of St Andrews. With Alastair Minnis he edited The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume II. The Middle Ages (2005). He has interests in Latin and vernacular medieval literary theory, translation, devotional literature, Chaucer and miscellaneous textuality. His books include The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation and Vernacular Theology (2013); The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, edited with Allan Westphall (2013); The Impact of Latin Culture on Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing, edited with Alessandra Petrina (2018); and Geoffrey Chaucer in Context (2019). Stephen Kelly is former Head of English at the School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast, with research interests in medieval religious and historiographical writing, cultural and intellectual history, translation and cultural theory. Imagining History in Medieval Britain will appear from Bloomsbury in 2022. Previous publications include Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, co-edited with Ryan Perry (2014). With Perry, he is currently preparing ‘Meke Reverence and Devotion’: A Reader in Late Medieval English Religious Writing for Exeter Medieval Texts.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 356

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

List of Con tr ibutors   357 Laura Saetveit Miles is associate professor of British literature in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen, Norway. She works on devotional, visionary and monastic literature and manuscripts in medieval England, and her publications cover the Virgin Mary, Julian of Norwich, Birgitta of Sweden, Richard Methley, Syon Abbey and queer approaches to women’s writing. Her monograph The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England was published in 2020. Her current project is on St Birgitta of Sweden’s influence on medieval English culture. Ryan Perry is senior lecturer at the University of Kent and co-director of its Centre of Medieval and early Modern Studies. His research interests focus on Middle English manuscript cultures in the later Middle Ages. He has published widely on material aspects of medieval textual culture and on a variety of literary traditions including historiographical writing and especially religious literature. He undertook the codicological research underwriting the digital outputs for the Arts and Humanities Research Council project Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, 1350–1550 (2010) and co-edited Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life (2014). Nicole R. Rice is Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York. Her scholarship explores connections among late medieval religious culture, social life and literature, with a focus on devotional prose and drama. Her books on devotional texts and manuscripts include Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature (2008) and the edited collection Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations (2013). With Margaret A. Pappano, she co-wrote The Civic Cycles: Artisan Drama and Identity in Premodern England (2015). She is currently completing a book entitled Hospitals and Literary Practice in England, c. 1350–c. 1552. E. Gordon Whatley is Emeritus Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His current research focuses on early Christian Latin hagiography, specifically the preparation of an edition of the two earliest versions of the fifth-century legend of St Eugenia of Rome. In addition to articles on Old English and Middle English hagiography, his publications include The Saint of London: The Life and Miracles of St Erkenwald (1989); Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (co-authored with J. A. McNamara and J. E. Halborg, 1992); Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Volume One: Abbo of Fleury, Abbo of SaintGermain-des-Près, Acta Sanctorum (with F. M. Biggs, T. D. Hill and P. E. Szarmach, 2001); and Saints’ Legends in Middle English Collections (ed. with A. B. Thompson and R. K. Upchurch, 2004).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 357

1/29/2021 7:58:27 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 358

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Michael G. Sargent’s Publications Monograph

James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, Analecta Cartusiana 85 (Salzburg, 1984).

Editions of Medieval Texts

The Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter, ed. in collaboration with James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 100, vols. 1–6, 10 (Salzburg, 1982–87). Nicolas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, with Introduction, Notes and Glossary (New York, 1992). Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Reading Text. A Revised Critical Edition, Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 2004). Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. A Full Critical Edition, Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 2005). Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book II. An Edition based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. S. S. Hussey and M. G. Sargent, EETS OS 348 (Oxford University Press, 2017 for 2016).

As Editor

Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20–22 July, 1995, ed. with S. Oguro and R. Beadle (Cambridge, 1997).

Articles and Chapters

‘The McGill University Fragment of the “Southern Assumption”’, Mediæval Studies 36 (1974), 186–98. ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), 225–40. ‘A New Manuscript of The Chastising of God’s Children with an Ascription to Walter Hilton’, Medium Ævum 46 (1977), 49–60. ‘A Source of the Poor Caitif Tract “Of Man’s Will”’, Mediæval Studies 41 (1979), 535–39. ‘Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle’, in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker 1, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 55:1 (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 160–205. ‘The Self-Verification of Visionary Phenomena: Richard Methley’s Experimentum Veritatis’”, in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker 2 (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 121–37.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 359

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 6 0    M ic h a e l G. S a r g e nt ’s P u bl ic at ion s ‘Two Fifteenth-Century Letters to the General Chapter: Staatsarchiv Wertheim F 73a/69’, in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker 5 (Salzburg, 1982), pp. 47–55. ‘The Organization of The Scale of Perfection’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Dartington, 1982, ed. M. Glasscoe, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 1982), pp. 231–61. ‘Ruusbroec in England: The Chastising of God’s Children and Related Works’, in Historia et Spiritualitas Cartusiensis: Colloquii Quarti Internationalis Acta, ed. J. de Grauwe (Destelbergen, 1983), pp. 303–12. ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’, Medium Ævum 52 (1983), 189–216. ‘Was Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Booke of Gostlye Grace Translated from Middle Dutch? Some Observations’, with V. Gillespie, Ons Geestelijk Erf 57 (1983) 341–54. ‘Minor Devotional Writings’, in Middle English Prose: A Critical Survey of Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick NJ, 1984), pp. 147–75. ‘Bonaventura English: A Survey of the Middle English Prose Translations of Early Franciscan Literature’, in Spätmittelalterliche geistliche Literatur in der Nationalsprache 2, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 106:2 (Salzburg, 1984), pp. 145–76. ‘Three Notes on Middle English Poetry and Drama’, in A Salzburg Miscellany: English and American Studies 1964–84, ed. E. Stürzl, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Poetic Drama and Poetic Theory 27:6, vol. 2 (Salzburg, 1984), pp. 131–80. ‘Die Handschriften der Cartae des Generalkapitels: ein analytischer Überblick’, in Kartäuserregel und Kartäuserleben 2, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 113:2 (Salzburg, 1985), pp. 5–46. ‘The Heneage Manuscript of Calculus de Perfectione Filiorum Dei and the Middle English Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 59 (1985) 533–59. ‘“Le Mirouer des simples âmes” and the English Mystical Tradition’, in Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter, ed. K. Ruh (Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 443–65. ‘Richard Rolle de Hampole’, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ed. M. Viller et al., 45 vols. (Paris, 1932–95), XIII, cols. 572–90. ‘Richard Rolle: Sorbonnard?’, Medium Ævum 57 (1989), 284–90. ‘English Mystical Writings’, in collaboration with V. Lagorio, Section XXIII of A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, ed. A. E. Hartung (Hamden, 1993), pp. 3049–137, 3405–71. ‘The Ideal of Uniformity in Carthusian Book Production, from the Opus Pacis to the Tertia Compilatio Statutorum’, in New Science out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. R. Beadle and A. J. Piper (Menston, 1995), pp. 122–41. ‘Versions of the Life of Christ: Nicholas Love’s Mirror and Related Works’, Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies 42 (1995), 39–70. ‘The Textual Affiliation of the Waseda Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Nicholas Love at Waseda, pp. 175–274. ‘The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete’, Viator 28 (1997), 253–79. ‘David of Augsburg’s De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione in Middle English’, in Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo, ed. N. M. Reale and R. E. Sternglantz (Donington, 2001), pp. 74–102.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 360

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Mi c h ael G . S argen t ’s P ublic ation s   361 ‘Mystical and Devotional Writings in Middle English’, ‘Hilton, Walter’, ‘Love, Nicholas’ and ‘Rolle, Richard’, in Medieval England: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1998). ‘Maurice Chauncy’ and ‘Richard Methley’, in The New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). ‘The Holland-Takamiya Manuscript of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R. Linenthal and J. Scahill (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 135–47. ‘Mystical Writings and Dramatic Texts in Late Medieval England’, Religion and Literature 37 (2005), 77–98. ‘The Text of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection in the Vernon Manuscript’, in Text, Language and Interpretation: Essays in Honour of Keiko Ikegami, ed. K. Masahiko, Y. Nakao, S. Ono, K. Noji and N. Shirai (Tokyo, 2007), pp. 19–28. ‘Meditationes Vitae Christi in Translation in Medieval Europe’, in Übersetzung * Translation * Traduction: An International Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, ed. H. Kittel et al., 3 vols. (Berlin, 2007), II, 1354–60. ‘What Do the Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic’s Observations on some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 205–44. ‘The Latin Verses over the Cell Doors of London Charterhouse’, with Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, in Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Luxford (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 179–97. ‘The Program of Illustration in Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ MS 18. 1. 7 and Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 648 of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ’, in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts and their Readers, ed. M. V. Hennessy (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 251–67, 289–92. ‘What Kind of Writing is A Talking of the Love of God?’, in The Milieu and Context of the Wohunge Group, ed. S. Chewning (Cardiff, 2009), pp. 178–93. ‘Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and the Politics of Vernacular Translation in Late Medieval England’, in Lost in Translation? The Medieval Translator 12, ed. D. Renevey and C. Whitehead (Turnhout, 2009), pp. 205–21. ‘Marguerite Porete’, in Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–c.1500, ed. A. Minnis and R. Voaden (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 291–309. ‘Censorship or Cultural Change? Reformation and Renaissance in the Spirituality of late Medieval England’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. V. Gillespie and K. Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 55–72. ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection in Continental Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, Textus 24 (2011), 549–62. ‘Walter Hilton on the Gift of Interpretation of Scripture’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England VIII, ed. E. A. Jones (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 51–8. ‘Organic Metaphors and Manuscript Relations: Stemma – Cladogram – Rhizome’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Midle English Tradition, ed. I. Johnson and A. Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 197–263.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 361

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 6 2    M ic h a e l G. S a r g e nt ’s P u bl ic at ion s ‘Manuscript Textuality’, in The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, ed. J. Flanders and N. Fraistat (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 224–35. ‘Medieval and Modern Readership of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties: the Old French and English Traditions’, in Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers and Transformations, ed. N. R. Rice (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 47–89. ‘Medieval and Modern Readership of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties: the Continental Latin and Italian Tradition’, in In Principio fuit Interpres: The Medieval Translator 15, ed. A. Petrina (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 85–96. ‘Editing Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The Case for a Rhizomorphic Historical Edition’, in Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-first Century, ed. A. Hudson and V. Gillespie (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 509–34. ‘Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections’, in Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday, ed. S. Horobin and L. Mooney (York, 2014), pp. 159–76. ‘A Geographical Postscript’, in Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. S. Kelly and R. Perry (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 607–33. ‘Nicholas Love as an Ecclesiastical Reformer’, in Carthusians as Reformers, ed. J. van Aelst and M. van Dijk, Church History and Religious Culture 96 (2016), 40–64. ‘The Anxiety of Authority, the Fear of Translation: The Prologues to The Myroure of oure Ladye’, in ‘Booldly bot meekly’: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, ed. R. Tixier and C. Batt (Turnhout, 2018), pp. 231–44. ‘Affective Reading and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection at Syon’, in Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Mary C. Erler, ed. M. Chase and M. Kowaleski (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 130–49. ‘Patterns of Circulation and Variation in the English and Latin Texts of Books I and II of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, in Medieval and Early Modern Religious Culture: Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his 65th Birthday, ed. L. Ashe and R. Hanna (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 245–68. ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection in Devotional Compilations’, in ‘This Tretice, by me compiled’: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. M. Cré, D. Denissen and D. Renevey (Turnhout, 2020), pp. 83–99. ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings: a Reconsideration’, in The London Charterhouse, ed. J. Luxford (Toronto, at press). ‘The Carthusians in Medieval England: The Desert, the Church, and the State’, in Carthusian Monasticism: History, Life, Work, ed. D. Yocum and S. Molvarec (Kalamazoo, at press).

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 362

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Mi c h ael G . S argen t ’s P ublic ation s   363

On-line publications

‘Marguerite Porete: A Complete Collation of the Section of Text for which all Manuscript Witnesses Survive’, http://jgrenehalgh.com. ‘Patterns of Textual Affiliation in the Manuscripts of Love’s Mirror’, http://www.qub. ac.uk/geographies-of-orthodoxy/resources/

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 363

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 364

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Index Aarsleff, Hans  91 Abbess  xxv, 171, 291, 293–4, 296–7, 301–2, 305–6, 308, 310–12, 316, 319, 321–2, 324–5 Abbey of the Holy Ghost  65n40, 68 Ackerman, J.  256n49 Act of Parliament (1425)  34–5 Adam of Dryburgh  272n52 Addiciones prioris Petri  296, 298–9 Adelphi (publisher)  98 Aemilianae, titulus (house church, Rome) 28 Æthelstan (‘Adelstonus’), k. of Wessex, k. of England  33–4, 38–9 affectio/affectus/‘affectioun’  134, 146–7, 216 Agamben, Giorgio  85–9, 92, 98–101 Alban, Kevin  257n53 Albert, St  247–48, 322 Rule of St Albert  248, 250 Aldhelm of Malmesbury  43 Allen, Hope Emily  155–6, 281 Althusser, Louis  91 Amore, Agostino  27 anchoress  225, 297 anchorite 264 Ancrene Wisse (Ancrene Riwle) 56n2, 60n30, 70, 91 angels  38, 135, 183, 189, 191, 194, 257, 263, 265, 278, 282–3, 287 Anne, St  284 Anselm, St  69, 216, 275 anthology-(ies) (see also miscellanies)  140–2, 150, 322 Aquinas, St Thomas  146–7, 180, 216 Arboreal metaphors  89, 96–8 Aristotle  92, 99, 101 Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (journal) 25–6 Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (ME poem) 34

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 365

Arundel, Archbishop Thomas  xvii, xx, 37n58, 139, 152, 156, 181 Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409 (see Arundel, Archbishop Thomas) asceticism  182, 184–6, 225, 227, 264–5 Asclepius (god of healing)  30–1, 40n66, 45–6 Augustine, St  12, 87, 161–2, 164, 195, 224 Augustinian canons 141n33, 223n3 Augustinian rule  141, 170, 188, 222–4, 291, 296, 299, 310, 321, 326 Avignon Papacy  294, 306 Ayenbite of Inwyt  155n8, 168, 174 Baconthorpe, John  256–8 banquet (symbol of )  187, 189–90, 250 Barking Abbey  171 Barnarde, William  312 Barratt, Alexandra  183n8 Barron, Caroline  314 Barton, Elizabeth (maid of Kent)  278–9, 284, 307 Bassett, Thomas  280 Beaufort, Lady Margaret  16 Beaufort, Thomas  15, 156n11, 169 beauty  xxiv, 103, 113, 117, 243, 245–9, 275 Beauvale Charterhouse  207 Bede, The Venerable Ecclesiastical History 42 Bédier, Joseph  91 Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library  xxiii, 3, 6–7, 10–11, 313n13 Belacyse, Alyse  171 Bell, David  323 Belles Heures of Jean, duke of Berry 261 Benedict, St  299 Benedict XVI (Pope)  244 Benedictine Order  154, 170–1, 278, 294, 299, 308 Bennett, A. R.  54n15

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 6 6    I nde x Bernard, St  216, 315, 322 Berschin, Walter  27 Bersuire, Pierre  87 Bestul, Thomas  95 Betson, Thomas  22, 324–5 Bible  109, 136, 149, 210, 217, 222, 233 Middle English  146 ‘Wycliffite’  56, 59n27, 72, 134, 146–7, 150, 153, 230–1 Birgitta of Sweden (see also Birgittine Order)  11, 22, 179, 188–9, 191, 193–4, 196–7, 278, 290–7, 306–9, 311–12, 314, 316–20, 322, 324 Liber Celestis, The  17, 179, 188n21, 191, 192n31, 194 Revelations of Saint Birgitta 189, 191–2, 194, 308–9 Birgittine Order  xxii–iii, xxv, 3, 6, 11–13, 15–17, 20, 22–4, 188, 191, 199n51, 263, 290–1, 296–9, 304, 311, 319, 321–2, 324 Blacman, John  5, 275, 281 Blake, Norman  279 Blanton, Virginia  311n6 Bliss, Alan  90 Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate  294n9 Bolton Priory  141 Bonaventure (see pseudo-Bonaventure) Bonde, William  324–26 book, idea of  102–5 book of conscience  271–2 Book of Margery Kempe (see Kempe, Margery) Book of Patience  311–12, 326 Book of Vices and Virtues  155n8, 168, 174 bookkeeping mentality  272 Borges, Jorge Luis  85 Boyce, James  250–1 Brent, Margaret  171–2 Breviaries Hyde Breviary (Winchester)  41 Muchelney Breviary  6, 9 Sarum Breviary  41, 45 York Breviary  45–6 bridal mysticism  187 Bridget of Sweden (see Birgitta) Bridgettine Order (see Birgittine)

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 366

Brown, Jennifer N.  199n51 Bruno, Giordano  84 Bruno of Cologne, St  261 Brut Chronicle  33n43, 56, 59n27, 72 Bryan, Jennifer  xx, 109, 224n6 Bude, Tekla Lenor  282–3 Bugyis, K. A-M.  282n103 Byrhtferth of Ramsey  43 Caelian Hill (Rome)  28, 42 Calendar of Willibrord 43 Calvino, Italo  85 Canon Law  222, 224, 230, 233, 235 canonization  294–5, 307 Canterbury 42–3 Canti (Leopardi) 88 Carmelite Order  xxii, xxiv, 243–58 Carson, Anne  103 Carthusian Order  xvi, xxii–iii, 3–6, 11–12, 15–17, 20–1, 23–4, 79–80, 132, 139, 165, 169–70, 188, 199n51, 207, 214, 259–89, 312, 313n13, 321 habit  283, 287 monks  3, 4, 23–4, 262–5, 279, 285, 287–9 nuns 283 priors  132, 139, 179, 263–66, 274, 277–8, 282, 284, 287 ‘text-centered piety’  266 Catherine of Alexandria  274 Catherine of Siena  188–9, 192–5, 278, 294, 306–7 Life of Catherine of Siena, The 189 Orcherd of Syon, The  183, 187n17, 190, 192–3, 197, 307 Catherine of Sweden  291 Caxton, William  17n31 Golden Legend, The  45 censorship  45, 143n42, 150 Charter of Christ  68, 75, 77–9 Chastising of God’s Children, The  xvi, 70, 280–1 Chaucer, Geoffrey  58–9, 65n40, 91, 239 Canterbury Tales, The  58–9, 65n40, 91, 239

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   367 Chauncy, Maurice  259, 274, 286n130, 287–8 Chichele, Henry  156 Christ Ascension  122, 137n18, 193n33 Ascent of Cross  110, 122–3 Crucifixion  112–18, 122–5, 128–30, 148–9 double Crucifixion  148 Divinity (Godhead)  47, 111, 122, 194–5, 247 Humanity (Manhood)  111–12, 117, 122, 136, 194 Incarnation  117, 181, 194 Last Supper  111, 132, 134, 137, 144, 148–50, 181, 184, 252 lives of Christ tradition (see also Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and pseudoBonaventure)  112, 114 Man of Sorrows  114–15 Passion  110–11, 119, 125, 131, 132–4, 136–40, 144–5, 148, 151, 181, 184, 237, 246 Resurrection  xxiv, 111, 122, 243, 245–7, 249–53, 256–8 Christina Mirabilis (also Christina the Astonishing)  179, 184 Christ’s Appeal from the Cross  68, 77 chronicles  56, 72, 262n16, 264, 274, 277, 285 Church of Rome  230 Cistercian Order  170, 284 Clarence, Lady Margaret, duchess of  15–17, 312 Clark, John  200 Claudius et soc., martyrs (Claudius, Nicostratus, Simpronianus, Castorius, Simplicius)  25–32, 37, 39–41, 43–7 claustration 293 Cloud of Unknowing, The  xvi, 73, 203 Cloud author 203 Clough, Thomas  274 Cok, John (Augustinian canon)  141 Comet of 1533  288

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 367

Communion (see also eucharist)  180–2, 184–8, 189–93, 195–6, 198–9, 252, 287 Confession, Sacrament of (see also penance, penitent)  xviii, 7, 15, 157, 167–8, 298, 303 confessions  46, 200, 203–4, 209–10, 213–14, 217–18, 220 Connolly, Margaret  141 Connor, Patrick  93 Constituciones artis gemetrie secundum Euclyde  32–42, 45 contemplation (see also meditation)  24, 95, 126, 205, 225, 227, 243–4, 247, 256 Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God  67–8, 75–9 Cooper, Lisa H.  33 Cooke manuscript (London, BL MS Add. 23198)  26, 32–4 corpus  48–53, 55, 58–9, 61–2, 64–7, 71–81, 90, 174 Costa, Alexandra da  279n88 Cotton-Corpus Legendary  44 Courtenay, William  62 Coventry Charterhouse  262, 280, 285–7 Crespi, Daniele  262 Cromwell, Thomas  275 cross  29, 41, 46, 110, 113–16, 118–19, 121–3, 126–8, 142, 148, 184, 190, 191, 194, 248, 250, 253 crows 288 crucifix (see also Christ, Crucifixion; Cross) 275 cult Catherine of Siena  186 Corpus Christi 180 Quattuor Coronati  25, 27, 46 Cunich, Peter  20n42 Curson, David  313 Cursor Mundi 157 Dagenais, John  103 Danielewski, Mark  103, 105 Dante Alighieri  85, 87 Darker, William  24, 268, 321 Dartford Priory  171, 322 David of Augsburg  323

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 6 8    I nde x Dayly Exercyse and Experyence of Dethe, A   279n88, 310–12 De agone Christiano 161 De Blasphemia 229 De Culpis  299–300, 304–5 De diligendo Deo  162 De Gracia Dei 68 de Felton, Sybil  171 de Hamel, Christopher  22, 291 de Worde, Wynkyn  xxv, 17–18, 183n8, 275n67, 306, 311–13, 316 De Divinis Mandatis Tractatus  68, 75n52, 77–8 dead, communication with  260–2, 266–7, 287 death  5, 123, 260, 274 Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life 252n40 Defensorium of Bridget of Sweden (see also Adam Easton)  295 Defensorium of Richard Rolle (see also Thomas Bassett)  280, 295 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari  92, 96, 97 Thousand Plateaus, A  92, 97 demons  31, 191, 197, 205, 269, 273–5, 276, 278 Dendermonde 319 Derrida, Jacques  97, 103 devil  191, 197, 270–2, 274, 276 Devota lamentacio 282 Dialogue between Reson and Gabbyng 228 Didiscalicon 93 digital editions  101–3, 105 Diocletian (Emperor)  29–31, 37, 40–1, 45–6 Diocrès, Raymond  261 discretio spirituum (discernment of spirits)  271n91, 281, 294, 307 Dissolution (of the monasteries)  20, 171, 266, 288, 308 Dodesham/Doddesham, Stephen  16, 268, 312 Dominican Order  155, 243, 276 Donaldson, E. T. A.  89

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 368

Dorlandus, Petrus  277 Dorothy, St  17 Doyle, A. I.  xix, 16n24, 22n45, 269, 312, 321–2 Drucker, Johanna  98, 102 Duff, E. Gordon  319n27 Duffy, Eamon  151 Durham Peters, John  99 Dyuers holy instrucyons and teachynges  315 Easton, Adam  294–5, 308–9 De Civili Dominio  295 Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae 295 eating (see food) Edward III  262, 285, 294 Edward VI  285 Eggert, Paul  101 Eisenstein, Elizabeth  94 Elijah, prophet  250, 254–57 Elizabeth I  285 Elizabeth of Hungary  179, 183n8 Elizabeth of Spalbeek  179, 184 Ellis, Roger  191, 297–8, 304 Enqvist, Leena  304 Epistle of Susannah, The  68 Epistle to Hew Hermyte  278 epistles, of Paul  217, 225, 235 Erler, Mary  169, 171, 173 eucharist  xviii, xxiv, 22, 150, 180–99, 246, 298, 322 Euclid/Euclyde (see also Constituciones) 33–4 Evangelists (see also Gospels)  38, 278 John the Evangelist  7, 21, 258 Experimentum Veritatis  278 eye(s) of the soul  135, 148 Fasciculus Temporum  263 fasting  135, 174, 180, 182, 185–6, 192, 219–20, 248, 250, 253, 301 feet (as soul/affectio)  134, 144–7 Fewterer, John  321, 325–6 Fifteen Oes 22 Fischer, Columban  133n3 flies 288

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   369 Flodden (battle of )  285 food  149–50, 182–8, 192, 211, 293, 303, 305 Formula noviciorum  323–4 Foucault, Michel  90, 96 Four Crowned Ones, martyrs (see Quattuor Coronati) Franciscan Order  111, 323 Frantzen, Allen J.  91 Freemason, Freemasons  25–6, 34 friars/friaries  142–3, 248, 253, 323 Frieston Priory  170 Gardner, Helen  200 Garrison, Jennifer  182 Gayk, Shannon  xx, 225n6 Geographies of Orthodoxy  xxii, 90, 112, 153 Gerson, Jean  294, 306–7 De probatione spirituum  294, 307 Discretio Spirituum, De distinctione verarum revelationum a falsis  307 Ghosh, Kantik  136 ghosts/ghostly sights  100, 262, 264–5, 267, 274, 286–7, 289 Gibbs, Elizabeth  xxv, 310–12, 316, 319, 321–6 Gilbertine Order  292–3 Gillespie, Vincent  xv, xix, 19, 73, 260n4, 270n44, 274n59, 275n64, 279n91, 282, 288n141, 289n142, 298n25, 306n48, 310n1, 323–4 Gilte Legende  16n24, 17, 45 Gitelman, Lisa  54n15 Glas (Derrida)  103 Glossed Gospels (Middle English)  146–7 glosses/glossing  86, 104, 111, 119, 127, 129, 135, 146–7, 232–5 Gnosticism 96 Golden Pystle  315 Golding, Brian  293 Goldwell, Agnes  171 Görlach, Manfred  314–15 Gospels  136–8, 147, 149, 154, 205–6, 252, 256–7, 297 Gospel of Mark  257 Gospel of Matthew  210, 213, 225, 252

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 369

Gospel of John  147, 252, 256–7 Gospel of Luke  149, 205, 210, 252, 256 Gospel of Philip  257 Gower, John  58–60, 157n19 Confessio Amantis  58–9 Grande Chartreuse  261 Grandisson, John (bishop), Legenda Exon.  41, 45 Gratian 232–4 Decretum 232 Treatise on Laws  232 Greetham, David  92 Greek language and learning  18–20, 92 Gregory the Great, St (Pope)  11, 42, 47, 213, 216, 255 Dialogi  7, 11, 20, 23 Moralia in Job 213 Paraphrastes de sermone Beati Gregorii  11 Gregory XI (Pope)  294–5, 306 Grenehalgh, James  xv–xvii, 20, 24, 61n31, 268–9 Grosseteste, Robert  68 Castle of Love  68 Guattari, Félix (see Deleuze, Gilles) Guigo 267 habits (monastic)  217, 245, 256–7, 265, 282–3, 287, 300–1 Hales, Thomas  142 Lyf of Oure Lady  142 Hanna, Ralph  140, 155–7, 168 Hayles, N. Katherine  104–5 Hell, Harrowing of  132, 137, 142 Hellinga, Lotte  17n31 Hempe prophecy  285 Hennessy, Marlene Villalobos  3, 5, 8, 11, 24, 260n7, 262n14 Henriksén, Christer  299 Henry V  11, 15, 264, 291 Henry VI  281 Henry VIII  259, 285–6, 291 heresy (see also heterodoxy)  150, 155, 209, 223n3, 229n18, 294–5, 308–9 Berengarian heresy  180

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 7 0    I nde x hermit  156, 247–50, 255, 263–4, 273, 280 Herod, King of the Jews  127 Herolt, Johan  276–7 heterodoxy (see also heresy)  xix, xxii, 143, 153, 158, 181, 191, 196, 199 Hilton, Walter  xvi, xviii–xx, xxiv, 25–26, 59–60, 62n34, 64, 67, 73–6, 79–81, 87, 89–90, 200–21, 311 Angels’ Song  67n47, 68 Benedictus 68 Bonum Est  68, 77–8 De imagine peccati xxiv, 200–21 Eight Chapters on Perfection  68, 77–9 Epistola de utilitate et prerogativis religionis  xxiv, 76, 200–21 Mixed Life  68, 76–8, 311, 314 Scale of Perfection  xvi–xix, xxiii–iv, 49, 51–3, 59–83, 87, 90–1, 95, 200–6, 220, 222–3, 225–6, 228, 230, 235, 237, 239, 244n8, 280n96 Scale I 61–84 Scale II  61–84, 87, 90, 95, 201–2, 205, 222–8, 230, 235, 237, 239 Qui Habitat  68, 77–8 Hinton Charterhouse  264, 277, 285 ‘Hoc est corpus meum’  181, 190–1, 194 Hoccleve, Thomas  224n6, 239 Hodnett, Edward  316–17, 319–20 Hogg, James  311 Hölderlin, Friedrich  89 Holland, Joan  171 Holy Land  247, 249, 255 Holy Name  xvi, 143n42, 273–5 Holy Sepulchre  249–51, 253, 258 Hornbeck, J. Patrick  181n4, 235 Horsley, Adam   203, 207, 209, 213–17, 219 Hospital of St Bartholomew, Smithfield 141 House of Leaves (see Danielewski) Hudson, Anne  xv, xix, 38, 236n30 Hugh of St Victor  87, 93, 103, 216 Hussey, S. S.  xviii, 90, 200 Illich, Ivan  93, 100 In the Vineyard of the Text  93

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 370

imagination; (see also meditation)  109– 10, 116, 226–7, 231, 235 imitatio Christi 321–2 indexing tabs  21–3 indulgences  67–8, 72, 77–8 Isidore 232–3 Etymologia 232 Jacopo/Jacobus de Voragine Legenda Aurea (LgA)  7, 39–42, 45, 314 James, M. R.  133n3 James, Sarah  182n6, 188 James IV  285 James of Milan  79, 133n3 Stimulus Amoris  79, 133n3 Jean, duke of Berry  261 Jenks, J. P.  145n46 Jerome, St  7, 11–13, 15–18, 23–4 Jerusalem  248–50, 252, 274 John de Gaytrynge  154 John of Caulibus  113, 135n8 John of the Cross  243n1 John of Thessalonika  258 John of Tynemouth  311 John the Baptist  70 John XXIII (Pope)  292 Johns, Adrian  94 Johnson, B. S.   103–4 Johnson, Ian  117n12, 120n15, 122n17, 160 Jordan, Agnes  321 Jotischky, Andrew  254 Julian of Norwich  xvi, 81, 201, 203, 288n141 Kafka, Franz  89 Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande  xxv, 311, 312–17, 326 Kallenberg, Arie  244–5, 250–1 Kane, George  89–92 Karnes, Michelle  xx, 135–7, 231n22 Keiser, George  15–16, 20 Kelly, Stephen  xix, xxii, 142, 153 Kempe, Margery  xvi, 12n17, 133–4, 170, 281–2, 288n141 Book of Margery Kempe, The  xvi, 133, 281

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   371 Ker, Neil  133n3 Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn  135, 284n115 King of Tars 68 Knoop, Douglas  26, 39 Knowles, David  259 Kuczynski, Michael  234n27 Lachmann, Karl  90 Lahey, Stephen  235 laity  142, 151, 158, 160, 169–70, 172–4, 180, 182, 184, 186, 188, 205, 212, 222, 249, 254, 274, 276, 279, 288, 291, 293–4, 296, 298, 306, 326 lamb (as symbol)  182, 189–90, 195 Lampadius, tribune  30–1, 40, 45–6 Langland, William  58–60, 89 Piers Plowman  51–3, 58–9, 70, 79, 89, 91, 95–6, 239 Lapidge, M.  27n9 Lateran Council (Fourth)  154, 180, 296 Latour, Bruno  55 Lawton, David  140, 238 Lay Folk’s Catechism  7, 70, 154 Layamon 33 Lazenby, George  284 Legend of Ipotis 68 Legenda Aurea (see Jacopo de Voragine) Leo IV (Pope)  28 Leversedge, Edmund  274 Liber Aureus de Passione 138 Liber Celestis (see Birgitta of Sweden) Liber de modo vivendi ad sororem  322 Liber Ioannis Evangelista de Dormitione 258 Life of St Jerome (see Jerome, St and Wynter, Simon) Lindenbaum, Sheila  199n51 Little Office of the Virgin  60 liturgy  xxiv, 43, 186, 192, 243–58, 268, 292, 296 Lochrie, Karma  282n103 Lollard, Lollards, Lollardy  xxiv, 37–8, 42, 134–6, 141–3, 149–51, 155, 181, 188, 222–6, 228–38, 294 London  xix, xxii, 16, 141–42, 199n51, 284, 292, 314

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 371

London Charterhouse  ix, xvi, xxiii, 3–6, 9–11, 21, 23–4, 79, 259, 262–5, 267, 274, 278, 281n100, 286–9 Lovatt, Roger  281–2 Love, Nicholas  xv, xvii–xx, xxii, xxiv, 6, 25, 58n25, 59–60, 90–1, 110–11, 126–31, 132–3, 135, 137–41, 145, 150–1, 152–6, 158–66, 168–70, 172, 174, 180–4, 193n33, 197–8, 268–9, 280 Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, The  xv, xvii–xxiii, 59, 70, 90–1, 110–11, 136–7, 139–40, 150, 152, 156, 163, 165n44, 169–71, 181 Luxford, Julian  xvi, 23n50, 261, 263n17 Lydgate, John  46, 314 ‘The legend of St Austin at Compton’ 46–7 Lynne, Alice  173–4 Lyrical Meditations  110–12, 114, 117, 119–23, 125, 127–8, 130–1 lyrics  36, 68, 101 Mainoldi, Ernesto  246 Mak, Bonnie  98 Mallarmé, Stéphane  84, 87, 101 Manganelli, Giorgio  85–6, 98, 101 manuscripts Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS 2544–5  53, 83 Cambridge, Christ’s College, MS DD. I. II  280n93, 323 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS R.5  83 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 669  /646  141, 157n19 Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 2125  138, 148 Cambridge, St John’s College MS G. 35 ( James MS 202)  82 Cambridge, St John’s College, MS N. 17 16–17 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 293 138n22 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 1401 281n98

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 7 2    I nde x manuscripts (continued) Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 1. 38 147 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 14. 7 133n3 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 14. 38 142 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B. 15. 18  72n48, 83 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O. 2. 53  5, 9 Cambridge, Trinity College MS O. 7. 47 82 Cambridge, Trinity College MS R. 3. 13 157n19 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 2823  157n19, 170 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Additional 6686  73n49, 82 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. i. 17  79n55 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. ii. 33  323 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd. v. 55  52, 75n52, 82 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. iv. 30  72n48, 80 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. v. 40  75n51-n52, 82 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. vi. 33  321 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Gg. i. 7  157n19 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Gg. i. 14  157n19 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Hh. i. 11  179n1 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii. vi. 26  226n11 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ii. i. 36  158n19, 170 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ll. i. 8  158n19

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 372

Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Nn. iv. 12  223n3 Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. v. 32  43n83 Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, Duke of Devonshire MS  83 Clitheroe, UK, Stonyhurst College MS A.vi.24  82 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 216 207n17 Dublin, Trinity College, MS A. 5. 7 83 Dublin, Trinity College, MS C. 5. 20 83 Durham, Dean and Chapter Library, MS B iv 41  207n17 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 6126  82 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ Library MS 18. 1. 7  172n61 Edinburgh University Library, MS 91 140n29 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS A. 7. 226  138n19 Gloucester, Gloucester Cathedral, MS 1  44n88 Leeds University Library, MS Brotherton 15  22 Lincoln, Cathedral Chapter Library, MS 91  157n19, 82 London, British Library, MS Additional 11748  67n47 London, British Library, MS Additional 22283 (see also Simeon MS)  ix, 53, 67n45, 75–6, 78–80, 81n59, 82 London, British Library, MS Additional 23198 (‘Cooke MS’)  26n5, 32n38 London, British Library, MS Additional 30031  140n27 London, British Library, MS Additional 33995  156, 157n19

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   373 London, British Library, MS Additional 37049  83, 260n7, 273, 275, 281 London, British Library, MS Additional 37790  83 London, British Library, MS Additional 43406  6, 9 London, British Library, MS Additional 61823  281 London, British Library, MS Arundel 91 44n88 London, British Library, MS Arundel 146 298 London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E vii  158n29 London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus D ix  204n13 London, British Library, MS Harley 45 171 London, British Library, MS Harley 330  62n33, 63n38, 82 London, British Library, MS Harley 1022  75n51, 82 London, British Library, MS Harley 1035 82 London, British Library, MS Harley 2387  72n48, 83 London, British Library, MS Harley 2397 83 London, British Library, MS Harley 3852 207n17 London, British Library, MS Harley 6573  72n48, 82, 95, 223n3 London, British Library, MS Harley 6579  51n8, 82, 95 London, British Library, MS Harley 6615 82 London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 362  82 London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E III  204n13, 207n17 London, British Library, MS Royal 8 A VII  207n17 London, British Library, MS Royal 17 A I (‘Regius MS’)  26, 32–4, 38

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 373

London, British Library, MS Royal 17 C VIII  156 London, British Library, MS Royal 17 C XVIII  82 London, British Library, MS Sloane 2515  5, 8–9, 11 London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 524  53, 83 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 72 16–17 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 432  16n24, 17 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 472  80, 83 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 546 322 London, PRO, E. 117/12/20  226n28 London, Westminster Cathedral Treasury, MS 4  81n58, 83 London, Westminster School, MS 4  72n48, 83 Manchester, Chetham Library, MS 6690 136n12 Manchester, Manchester University Library, MS Rylands F. 4. 10  82 Michigan State University, MS 1  110–11, 138, 139n23, 144–5, 147, 149 New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Takamiya MS 3  67n47, 82 New Haven, CT, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317  ix, xiii, 3, 6–7, 10–11, 16–17, 24 New York, Columbia University Library, Plimpton MS 257  72n48, 83 Nottingham, University of Nottingham, Lincoln Cathedral MS 57  283n107 Oxford, All Souls College, MS 25  83 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 100 82 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131  5, 9

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 7 4    I nde x manuscripts (continued) Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 354 44n88 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 549 16 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 592  72n48, 83 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779 45n90 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 789  143, 149–51 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851 51n8 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 33 207n17–18 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 115  204 n13, 207n18 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114  179, 183–4, 186 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 136 293 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 322 322 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1 (see also Vernon MS)  9, 53, 67n45, 75–6, 78–80, 81n59, 82 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax MS 2  147 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 18 156 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. d. 27  204n13, 207n17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. e. 26  207n17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. f. 20  207n17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 23  141–2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 174  142 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 517  322, 324 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 602  72n48, 83 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lawn f. 367  19n38

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 374

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 35  xxiii, 152, 154, 156, 158–60, 165, 169–70, 173 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS E Museo 160  261, 263, 285 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 285  63n38, 82 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 397  207n17 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 894, 82 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 4 207n17 Oxford, Brasenose College, MS 9 140n27 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 93 207n17–18 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 141 83 Oxford, Merton College, MS 47 207n17–18 Oxford, University College, MS 28 82 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS lat. 10861  27, 43n80 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Library, E.3  171–2 Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Library, MS Codex 218 (olim Stonor)  83 Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Library, MS Taylor 11  140–1 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS VIII 27n12 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 112  75, 82 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 266  72n48, 83 Warminster, Longleat House Library, MS 298  82 Windsor, St George’s Chapel Library, MS E. I. I  142 Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library, MS F. 172  73n49, 75n51, 82 Margaret, Lady, duchess of Clarence 15–16

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   375 Marie of Oignies  179, 184–5 Martin V (Pope)  292 Martyrologium (see Usuard) marvels  259–60, 278, 280, 289 Marx, William  51–2 Mary, Blessed Virgin  7, 21, 35, 71, 114–15, 127, 186, 250, 257–8, 266–7, 269, 275–7, 282–3, 285, 319 Coronation 319 miracles  7, 266, 275–7 Presentation 253 Mary Magdalene  168, 255–8, 277 Mary of Bethany  255 McAvoy, Liz Herbert  288n141 McGann, Jerome  87, 89 McNamer, Sarah  109, 133n3 Meale, Carol M.  276n71 Mechthild of Hackeborn  xx, 179, 186–90 Booke of Gostlye Grace, The 179 Meditaciones de passione Christi (also Meditationes de passione Christi)  113n9, 132–4, 137–9, 144, 148–9 Middle English Meditationes de Passione Christi  134, 137, 139–42, 144–51 meditatio  11, 135, 148 meditation (see also imagination)  xxiv, 133, 135–7, 139, 144, 148, 154, 165, 180, 247 Meditationes vitae Christi  110, 111, 126, 131, 132, 134–9, 148, 158–9, 168, 170 Meditations on the Supper of our Lord, and the Hours of the Passion 110–11, 119–20, 122, 125, 130–1, 138, 148 Melton, William  283 Merlin 285 metaphysics of the book  86–105 Methley, Richard  xx, 268–74, 278–9, 282–4 miscellany(-ies) (see also anthology)  6, 23, 153 Miles, Laura Saetveit  270n44 Millett, Bella  102 Miltiades (Pope)  31, 40

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 375

miracle (see also marvels)  xxiv, 46–7, 197, 205, 259–61, 265–6, 275–6, 278–80, 288–9 Mirk, John, Instructions for Parish Priests 32 Mirror of St Edmund  67, 73, 75, 77–79 Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, The  (see Nicholas Love) Missals Carmelite missals  251 Jumièges Missal (Canterbury)   27, 43n84 Sarum Missal  43 St Augustine’s Abbey Missal (Canterbury) 35 More, Sir Thomas  279 Moroncini, Francesco  88 Moses  197, 249, 251, 253 Mount Carmel  247–51, 256 Mount Grace Charterhouse  6, 15, 132, 158, 169–71, 277–8, 283–4, 287 mouvance  xxiii, 92–3 Mursell, Gordon  202 Musica Monachorum  283 Myrroure of oure Ladye, The  x, xx, 296, 314, 319–21 Myrrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen  xxiv, 153–5, 158–9, 162–5, 168 mystical song  283 mystics  xxi, 179–80, 184, 270, 278, 281

Netter, Thomas  252, 257 New Testament  28n15, 47, 99, 166, 197, 210 Nicodemus 31 Northern Homily Cycle  68, 158n19 Norwich 140 Nova legenda Anglie  311–14, 316, 326 Nox (Carson) 103 nuns  xxv, 111, 171, 173, 186, 243, 278, 283, 290–309, 310, 322–4 Oath of Succession  284 Oath of Supremacy  259, 287

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 7 6    I nde x Olavi, Petrus  296 Old Charges (Freemasons’ statutes)  26 Old English Martyrology  43–4 Old Testament  47, 210, 249 orb, blood-red  288 Orcherd of Syon, The (see Catherine of Siena) Ordinale Exon(iense) 41n67–8 Origen of Alexandria  147 Ortese, Anna Maria  85 orthodoxy  xvii, 143, 158, 170, 223, 290, 295, 308 ‘left wing orthodoxy’  135 Ortus vocabulorum 313 Oswald de Corda  269n39 otherworldly journey  274 Oxford English Dictionary  100 Oxford translation debate  152 Pascha, Jan  250n29 page as metaphor  98–101, 103–5 Palmer, Robert  263 Pannonia  25, 27, 29, 31 Papal bull  292, 296 Passio SS. Quattuor Coronatorum  26–31, 37–47 Pasolini, Pier Paulo  86 pastoralia (pastoral texts)  143 Pater Noster  143n42, 155, 169, 225 Paterson, W.  323 Paul (Apostle)  225, 233–6 Peckham Constitutions (see Peckham, John) Peckham, John (Archbishop)  154 Penance (see also Penitence)  167–8, 219–20, 301–2, 307 Penitence (see also Penance)  111–12, 120, 122, 125, 130–1, 301, 304–5, 307–8 Péri-Nagy, Zsuzsanna,  195n42 Perry, Ryan  153 Peter (Apostle)  144–6, 234 Peters, John Durham  99 Petrolio (Pasolini)  86 Philip of Spain  285 Phillips, Tom  103

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 376

piety  xxiii–iv, 15, 35, 73, 76, 110, 122, 152, 154, 172, 174, 195, 199, 260, 262, 264, 266, 279, 282, 289, 301 affective piety  73, 122 ‘death-oriented piety’  260, 289 ‘text-centered piety’  266 Pilate, Pontius  30, 117, 122–3, 127 pilgrimage  95, 226, 249–50, 266n27 Pomander of Prayer, The 263 Porete, Marguerite  xvi, xx–xxi, 288n141 porphyry (marble)  30 Porphyry (pseudo-author)  31 Powell, Susan  11n15, 310n2, 316n23, 323n36, 325n47 prayer(s)  4, 7, 24, 35, 112, 125, 130, 134, 140, 164, 173, 189, 212, 243, 248–9, 274, 296, 303, 315–16, 319 Prescius, Prestins, Precyouse, Thomas 323–4 Prescott, Andrew  33–4, 38–9 Prick of Conscience  56, 59–60, 68, 72, 75, 77–9, 157 Pricking of Love  xvi, 67, 77–9 ‘print culture’  94 printing, technology of  94–5 Privity of the Passion  111, 114, 117, 138, 144–5, 148 prodigies 260 prophecy (and prophets)  xxiv, 259–60, 278–80, 284–6, 288–9, 294 psalms  147, 236, 248, 300 Pseudo-Bonaventure (see also Meditaciones de passione Christi; Meditationes vitae Christi)  xix, xxii–iv, 109–10, 113, 125, 131, 132–4, 137, 141, 148–9, 151, 153 160–1 purgatory 263–4 Pylgrimage of Perfection  319n27, 325 Pynson, Richard  311, 316 Pype of Perfection  315 Quattro Coronati, church (Rome)  28, 42 Quattuor Coronati, chapel (Canterbury) 42

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   377 Quattuor Coronati, martyrs (Coronati) 25–47 Quattuor Coronatorum, feast day (8 November)  28, 31–2, 41–5 Quirillus, bishop of Antioch  30–1 Raby, Robert  286 Raschko, Mary  150 Raymond of Capua  185 Reakes, Jason  139n24 Reformation  xxiv, 7, 11, 14, 20, 24, 260, 286, 288, 291, 307–9, 315, Regius manuscript (see manuscripts, London, BL MS Royal 17 A I) Regula Sancti Salvatoris (see also Rewyll of Saint Sauoir) 296 relics  265–6, 268, 291, 322 Renevey, Denis  273n54 Responsiones Vadstenenses  296–7 revelations  32, 179–80, 188, 191–2, 195, 198–9, 264–5, 283–4, 288, 290, 295, 297, 306–9 revelatory writings (see also individual authors and texts)  288 Rewyll of Saint Sauiour (see also Regula Sancti Salvatoris) 298 rhizome (model of manuscript transmission)  xviii–ix, xxii–iii, 87, 90, 92–4, 96–8, 101 Rice, Nicole  154 rite(s)  243–53, 265 Robert of Winchelsey  69 Rolevinck, Werner  263 Rolle, Richard  xvi, xix–xx, 67, 73–6, 79–80, 141–2, 155–8, 234–7, 239, 273, 280–1, 283, 288 Amendment of Life 68 Commandment, The  68, 77, 273 Commentary on the Song of Songs 68 De vita activa et contemplativa  68 Ego Dormio  68, 77 English Psalter  68, 142, 236, 239 Form of Living  68, 76, 141 Incendium Amoris 73 Oleum effusum  67n47, 68

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 377

On the Name of Jesus  68, 273 Parvum Iob sive Libellus in novem lectiones mortuourum 68 Roman Inquisition  84 Rouse, Mary and Richard  61n30 rosary  81, 277 Rudy, Kathryn  51 Ryght Profytable Treatyse  325 Sanctilogium Anglie Walliae, Scotiae et Hibernae 311–12 Saracens  255, 274 Sargent, Michael  xv–xxv, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10–11, 24, 48, 87, 89–93, 95–6, 98, 101–5, 138, 153, 155, 181n6, 222, 247, 260, 278, 280–1, 323 Carthusians  3, 5, 6, 8, 10–11, 260 as editor  xv–xxv, 87, 89–93, 95–6, 98, 101–5 of Walter Hilton  xviii–ix, 87, 90, 95, 200, 222 of Nicholas Love  xvii–xviii, 90–1, 139, 152–3 on James Grenehalgh  xvi, 20, 269 ‘What do the Numbers Mean?’  48 Sarum  41, 46, 292 Said, Edward  91 Salter, Elizabeth  139n24, 141 Salter, Thomas  274 Sanok, Catherine  34n47 Satan (see also devil)  274, 288 Sawyer, Daniel  22 Scale of Perfection, The (see Walter Hilton) Scheerre, Herman  312 Schlyter, Carl Johan  90 Schort Reule of Lif, A  142, 150 Scola amoris languidi  273 Scott, Kathleen  314 screens, digital  100 scribes  7, 11–12, 14, 16, 21–2, 24, 51, 89, 104, 149, 174, 180, 268–9, 271, 274, 283, 312, 321 scripture  135–7, 144, 146, 151, 164, 223–6, 230–5, 248n18, 280, 309 Scrope, Margaret  171

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

3 7 8    I nde x Sebastian, martyr  31 Second Vatican Council (Vatican II)  245, 252 Severus et soc., martyrs (Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus, Victorinus)  32, 40, 44 Shakespeare, William  286 Sheen Charterhouse  6, 11–12, 16–17, 21, 23–4, 169n53, 207n18, 260n4, 265, 277n75, 279, 322 Shirley, John  141, 173 Shropshire 46 Sibert de Beka  251, 253 Siege of Jerusalem 141 Simeon Manuscript (see also London, British Library, MS Additional 22283)  ix, 53, 67n45, 75–6, 78–80, 81n59 Sirmium 31 Solis quadriga (chariot of the sun god, Sol)  30–1, 40, 45–7 Somerset, Fiona  14, 142, 199n52, 223n3, 224n5 Somme le Roi  155, 159, 168 South English Legendary  45, 70 Southern, Richard William  276 Speculum Vitae  140n30, 141, 155–6, 160, 167–8 St John Hope, William  23n50 Stallings-Taney, C. Mary  132n1, 138, 149 Stafford, Edward (duke of Buckingham) 285–6 Stations of Rome  68 Stolz, Michael  92 Stover, Edna  155n8, 158, 172 supernatural phenomena  xxiv, 260, 278–9, 286 Suso, Henry  180n3, 188 Syon Abbey  xxv, 6, 11–12, 15–24, 171, 199n51, 275n64, 277n72, 279, 285, 290–309, 310–16, 319, 321–5 Syon ‘Additions’  xxv, 290, 293–4, 296, 298–308 Tabucchi, Antonio  85 Talking of the Love of God, A  xx, 68

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 378

Tasian marble  30 Ten Commandments  16, 29, 41, 70, 143–44, 154, 167, 228, 280 Tennen, Dennis  102n61 Teresa of Avila  243 Thesaurus cordium vere amantium  283 Thirty-Seven Conclusions  230–1 Thomas Wimbeldon’s sermon  142 Thoresby, John  154 Torah 99 Treatise on the Sacrament, The  139n26, 180, 183, 193n33, 197, 279–80 Tschichold, Jan  94, 103 Tubach, F. C.  276n69–70 Tynbegh, Thomas  274 Un coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard 100 Unfortunates, The ( Johnson)  105 Urban V (Pope)  295–6 Urban VI (Pope)  296 Urbanitatis, ME poem  32 Usuard of St-Germain, Martyrologium  32, 39–42 Vadstena Abbey  291–2, 296–300, 304–5 Vatican 292 Via Labicana  28, 31 Vernon MS (see also Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. a.1)  9, 53, 67n45, 75–6, 78–80, 81n59 visions  xxiv, 7, 12, 21, 180n21, 182–83, 186, 188–90, 192–6, 198, 259–60, 263–4, 266–9, 271, 275, 277, 279, 282–4, 287–9, 290–2, 294, 296–7, 306–7, 309 visionaries  xxii, xxiv, 24, 179–80, 182–4, 188–9, 191–2, 196, 198–9, 201, 274, 277, 279n91, 283, 288, 294, 306–7 Visual Editions (publishers)  103 von Ruysbroeck, John  281 Wakelin, Daniel  268 Walter de Manny  262 Wampole, Christy  96–8 Warren, Nancy Bradley  279n87 Waters, Claire  16n24–25, 17

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

In dex   379 Watson, Nicholas  xviii, xx, 152, 222n2, 231n22, 273n54 Watt, Diane  279n87 Wechell, Chrétien  19 Werke for Housholders  311, 326 Westphall, Allan F.  111n4, 112, 134n5, 138, 144 Whatley, E. Gordon  44n87 Whatmore, L. E.  287n132 Whetham, John  268 William of Nassington  156 William of St Thierry  216n32 Windeatt, Barry  203 Witham Charterhouse  275, 281 Wolsey, Cardinal  279 Wordes of Poule  222–6, 235, 237–9

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 379

Wyclif(fe), John/Wycliffism  151, 181n4, 195, 224n5, 228–9, 231, 295, 309 Dialogues  229 Wycliffite Bible (see Bible) Wycliffite commentaries/sentiments/ ideology  xvii, xxiv, 142–4, 149, 151, 152, 181, 228–9, 231, 235 Wycliffite Sermon Cycle 142 Wynter, Simon  7, 11–13, 15–16, 312 Yorkshire  141, 154, 157 Zieman, Katherine  234n27, 235n28, 271 Zumpt, Karl Gottlob  90 Zumthor, Paul (see also mouvance) 90, 92–3

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 380

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Tabula Gratulatoria Kevin Alban Brandon Alakas Valerie Allen A. R. Bennett Pete Biller Julia Boffey Elizabeth A. R. Brown Jennifer N. Brown Glenn D. Burger Susannah M. Chewning Marleen Cré Orietta Da Rold Martha W. Driver Mary Agnes Edsall Mary C. Erler David J. Falls Vincent Gillespie Matthew Boyd Goldie C. Annette Grisé Marlene Villalobos Hennessy Holly James-Maddocks Ian Johnson Michael Johnston Stephen Kelly Andrew Kraebel Steven F. Kruger David W. Lavinsky Takami Matsuda

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 381

Liz Herbert McAvoy Laura Saetveit Miles Alastair Minnis Veronica O’Mara Caroline Palmer Niamh Pattwell Derek Pearsall Ryan Perry Sue Powell Sherry L. Reames Denis Renevey & Christiania Whitehead Nicole R. Rice Martha Dana Rust Sarah Salih Michelle M. Sauer Daniel Sawyer Wendy Scase Jeremy J. Smith Fiona Somerset Karl Steel Toshiyuki Takamiya John J. Thompson Nicholas Watson Teresa Webber E. Gordon Whatley Jocelyn Wogan-Browne Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 382

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

York Manuscript and Early Print Studies

Series Editors

Orietta Da Rold (Cambridge) Holly James-Maddocks (York)

Advisory Committee

Marilena Maniaci (Cassino), Linne Mooney (York), Nicola Morato (Liège), Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (Cambridge), David Rundle (Kent), Elaine Treharne (Stanford)

This new series builds on and expands York Medieval Press’ ‘Manuscript Culture in the British Isles’. It aims to further the study of handwritten and early print sources for literature and intellectual history in the pre-modern period, and champions an interconnected mode of analysis for the textual, material and cultural, whether the focus is local, regional, national or transnational. It welcomes contributions providing critical approaches to manuscript studies, history of the book, cultural history, philology and editing, whether monographs, edited collections, or catalogues. New proposals should be directed to the series editors and the Director of York Medieval Press: at [email protected], [email protected], pete.biller@york. ac.uk.

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 383

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM

Manuscript Culture FINAL text_ePDF.indd 384

1/29/2021 7:58:28 AM