Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures: Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday 9781843845294, 1843845296

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LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford. RALPH HANNA is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus), Keble College, Oxford. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, James P. Carley, Alexandra da Costa, Anne Hudson, Ian Johnson, Daniel Orton, Susan Powell, Denis Renevey, Michael G. Sargent, Annie Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Barry Windeatt.

Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures

The essays presented in this volume respond to and build upon the hugely influential work of Vincent Gillespie in these fields, offering a variety of approaches, spiritual and literary, bibliographical and critical, across the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation and beyond. Topics addressed include the Wycliffite Bible; the Assumption of the Virgin as represented in medieval English culture; Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock; and the survival of late medieval piety in early modern England.

Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday

From the great age of pastoral expansion in the thirteenth century, to the revolutionary paroxysms of the English Reformation, England’s religious writings, cultures, and practices defy easy analysis. The diverse currents of practice and belief which interact and conflict across the period – orthodox and heterodox, popular and learned, mystical and pragmatic, conservative and reforming – are defined on the one hand by differences as nuanced as the apophatic and cataphatic approaches to understanding the divine, and on the other by developments as profound and concrete as the persecution of declared heretics, the banning and destruction of books, and the emergence of printing.

Cover image: The Annunciation, from the ‘De Grey’ Hours, National Library of Wales MS 15537C, fol. 38r.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN RELIGIOUS CULTURES Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday Edited by Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna

Edited by Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna

•• Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures

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••

Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday Edited by

Laura Ashe

and

Ralph Hanna

D. S. BREWER

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© Contributors 2019 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 2019 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge isbn 978 1 84384 529 4 D. S. Brewer is 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 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 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 This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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Contents List of Illustrations Preface: Laura Ashe Abbreviations

vii viii xii

I After L ateran IV: the Thirteenth Century

1 Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde and the House Without Walls annie sutherland 3



2 The Original Audience and Institutional Setting of Edmund Rich’s Mirror of Holy Church: The Case for the Salisbury Canons Nicholas Watson 21



3 The Category of the Poetic and the Work of Roger Bacon Daniel Orton 43

II Monumental Contributions: the L ater Fourteenth Century 4 Earlier Version/Later Version – in the Wycliffite Bible Is that the Only Choice? Anne Hudson 63

5 Patterns of Circulation and Variation in the English and Latin Texts of Books I and II of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Michael G. Sargent 83

6 Assumptions: The Virgin’s Ends in Medieval English Culture Barry Windeatt 101

III Arundel, Chichele, and after: the Fifteenth Century

7 Mediating Voices and Texts: Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock Ian Johnson 127

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Contents

8 Santa Zita and Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540 Susan Powell 147 9 ‘Syre, we neuer yet tasted ne haue not dronke of our best wyne’: Late Medieval Popular Religion and the Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus Denis Renevey 167

IV. Reform or Renewal? the Sixteenth Century 10 ‘An hard bone for ye fleshly mynded to gnaw vppon’: Reading Habits in Contention Alexandra da Costa 187 11 Reading Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England Tamara Atkin 209 12 John Leland on William, Lord Mountjoy’s Lost Manuscript of the Annals of the Mysterious John, Abbot of B. James P. Carley 243 Vincent Gillespie: Ralph Hanna 261 Vincent Gillespie: a Bibliography 267 Index 275 Tabula Gratulatoria 284

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Illustrations

Nicholas Watson, The Original Audience and Institutional Setting of Edmund Rich’s Mirror of Holy Church Fig. 2.1 Latin and French versions of Edmund’s Mirror by order of composition 23 Fig. 2.2 General Structure of The Mirror of Holy Church according to L1 30 Barry Windeatt, Assumptions: The Virgin’s Ends in Medieval English Culture Fig. 6.1 © The British Library Board. Additional MS 29704, fol. 132v (detail). The Reconstructed Carmelite Missal. 103 Fig. 6.2 Book of the Fraternity of Our Lady’s Assumption, London Metropolitan Archives, City of London CLC/L/ SE/A/004A/MS 31692, from the Worshipful Company of Skinners Collection, fol. 41. 105 Fig. 6.3 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Fitzwilliam MS 48 (The Carew Poyntz Hours), fol. 81r (detail). The Virgin’s deathbed. 108 Fig. 6.4 St John’s College, Cambridge, MS K. 21, fol. 66/103. The Virgin sits up in her tomb, with Christ embracing her. By permission of The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. 115 Susan Powell, Santa Zita and Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540 Fig. 8.1 Santa Zita. Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540, fol. 148v. By permission of the Ministero dei Beni delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo – Biblioteca Statale di Lucca. 148 The editors, contributors and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons 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.

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Preface •  laura ashe • In his 2013 essay on ‘fatherless books’, Vincent quotes Thomas Gascoigne’s account of Reginald Pecock’s defence at his 1457 trial for heresy, that he wished to be answerable only for books he had written in the last three years. Aside from the idea of writing ‘books’ in that time period, this is a plea with which almost any modern academic could sympathize. Not Vincent though. His huge corpus (of writings), scattered across journals and decades, consistently shows vast knowledge, understanding, and literary sensitivity, whatever the subject under his eye. When a collection of his most important essays was made newly accessible in the volume Looking in Holy Books, he might have recalled Richard Whitford’s explanation for printing his twenty-year-old treatise in 1537: ‘And nowe of late I haue been compelled […] to wryte it agayne & agayne. And bycause that wrytynge vnto me is very tedyouse I thought better to put it in print.’1 Sending out multiple offprints is no doubt less tiring than copying the whole thing out again (especially if the thing is A dayly exercise and experience of dethe), but the long list of Vincent’s publications shows how he has haunted and shaped the field, setting the agenda with a self-effacing modesty (‘This is a very simple argument’). This volume begins with the thirteenth century, that great age of pastoral expansion, religious educational programmes, and the first real efflorescence of vernacular religious writings: in many ways, the ground for Vincent’s earliest work on pastoral manuals and vernacular miscellanies. Annie Sutherland examines a resonant image in Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde, of Christ’s birth taking place in a ‘house without walls’. She traces and elaborates the literal, descriptive aspects of this image – illuminating a continuity in communal, roadside life from the first-century Middle East to thirteenth-century England – and considers its implications for anchoritic readers, whose lives are seemingly defined by walls, but whose apotheosis of spiritual attainment renders all walls immaterial. Nicholas Watson takes on the vastly influential Mirror of Holy Church of Edmund of Abingdon, arguing for its composition a decade later, and for a 1

Quoted in Gillespie, ‘Fatherless Books’ (2013), p. 153. For full details of this and other works, see the bibliography, pp. 267–73.

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different audience, than is elsewhere suggested. In locating the Mirror in the context of the Salisbury canons, Watson uncovers newly available implications in the work’s emphases and omissions. The afterlife of this adaptive monster, in multiply branching French, English, and Latin versions, is here given brilliant clarity, amply demonstrating the vitality of compendious religious texts in an age of insatiable vernacular and Latinate interest. Then, in a different direction, Vincent’s current graduate student Daniel Orton develops his mentor’s account of medieval philosophies of literature and literary theory. Orton describes Roger Bacon’s elaboration of literature’s ethical affect, pitched against a prevailing contemporary atmosphere of distrust. Bacon’s purposeful deployment of the classical inheritance in defence of poetic art is shown to stand at the origins of medieval humanism. With the move into the fourteenth century we reach the monumental figures of John Wyclif and Anne Hudson; Michael Sargent scales Walter Hilton’s mountainous work, and Barry Windeatt questions Our Lady’s assumptions. In Hudson’s chapter on the Wycliffite Bible she attends to its makers’ development of translation strategies, and the processes by which this vast undertaking clarified and refined the relations of English with Latin, and of language with both time-bound and eternal truth, literal and allegorical meanings. Hudson’s elaboration of a particular manuscript text, poised between the ‘Early’ and ‘Late’ versions, provides a fascinating picture: both of individuals making minute choices, weighing the consequences of their decisions; and of a grand project under concerted direction and management. This spirit of oversight and innovation – and of the importance and primacy of English – also emerges in Sargent’s discussion of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and Fishlake’s Latin translation, as the experimental character of Hilton’s Book II is brought into focus by Fishlake’s changes and omissions. Sargent sees in Hilton’s work an attempt to develop an English vernacular literature of contemplation, even kenosis – as Vincent described it in his work with Maggie Ross on Julian of Norwich,2 and again in his moving meditation on writings about death and eternity.3 Fishlake’s text, Sargent argues, belongs to a different and orthodox tradition of devotion, parallel with Nicholas Love’s Mirror, an affective and sensory focus on Christ’s humanity and Passion. Finally in this section, Windeatt offers a thematic rather than a textual approach to matters of popular devotion, describing the varied ways in which authors negotiated with the idea of the Virgin Mary’s bodily assumption into heaven. In some versions Doubting Thomas arrives in time to witness her ascent, and she throws her girdle down to him as proof. Nevertheless we must assume that blessed are they that have not had a belt lobbed at them, and have believed. 2 3

Gillespie and Ross, ‘“With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly...”’ (2004). Gillespie, ‘Dead Still/Still Dead’ (2011).

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laura ashe

The fifteenth century has been the site of some of Vincent’s most important recent contributions, not least in the two hugely influential Oxford conferences After Arundel (2009) and After Chichele (2017), and their subsequent (and forthcoming) proceedings volumes. Resisting the temptation to call the present volume After Gillespie has been aided by the knowledge that besides the apophatic and the cataphatic, Vincent is also a master of the emphatic. Some things are not to be sworn at (they are the ineffable), but recent scholarship has had a great deal to say on the importance of voice. Ian Johnson’s chapter describes the mediating voices of Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock, teasing out the authors’ weaving together of scriptural with their own authority, in rhetorical modes of direction and persuasion. Johnson’s description of these writers’ strategies of marking (and appropriating) sources and authorities chimes with Vincent’s work on ‘Authorship, Attribution and Orthodoxy’ in the period.4 The twists and turns of the period’s religious politics – Vincent memorably describes ‘Chichele’s marked and damaged, perhaps even mildly traumatized, generation of church leaders’ – emerge in what writers do and do not say, and (perhaps above all) in what they claim they are saying.5 Susan Powell then gives us a welcome trip to Tuscany, illuminating the unexpected English connections of the Italian saint Zita, who is mysteriously in some traditions associated with the finding of lost keys. Since Vincent and Sue have often worked together, I didn’t like to ask whether this was a pointed reference. Meanwhile Denis Renevey plunges into the detail of late-medieval popular devotional practices, with a focus on devotion to the Holy Name. His study captures the habitus of the pre-Reformation church (or the university committee meeting), the ritualization of repetitious practices and habits of thought which train the mind in proper devotion. Vincent has always taken the long view of the changing phenomena he analyses, as shown by the breadth and reach of his editing (with Susan Powell) of A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476–1558, in which he observes that ‘both sides [of the reformation debate] used the press to tussle for intellectual control of the evolving argument and of the ideological high ground’.6 This tussle emerges in the lay reading strategies under debate and in conflict in Alexandra da Costa’s chapter, and in its translation to the commercial world in Tamara Atkin’s investigation of a mid-sixteenth-century bookseller’s inventory. Da Costa examines the sixteenth-century evolution of the idea of reading as contemplative meditation, sensory and affective indulgence, and daily devotional practice. Her study combines with Sargent’s and Renevey’s chapters to show the constant reshaping and refining of vernacular the 4

Gillespie, ‘Fatherless Books’ (2013). Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church’ (2011), p. 14. 6 Gillespie, ‘Introduction’, in A Companion to the Early Printed Book (2013), p. 5.

5

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ology and its reading practices, in the light of shifting religious politics. Atkin’s chapter picks up Vincent’s observation of ‘the socio-political tension between continued clerical agency and growing lay self-determination’ in the wake of the Reformation,7 and she demonstrates that market forces, as embodied in the inventory of a London bookseller in 1553, imply a serious, self-determined lay market for religious texts that we might imagine to have been discarded or eclipsed. Finally, James Carley gives us a long goodbye of impressive detective work, allowing the cracked John Leland to perch on his desk, drink his scotch, and send him on the hunt for a vanished abbot. The present volume gathers together contributions from Vincent’s friends and colleagues, students and collaborators. It reflects his own interests, and those he has inspired in others, and offers a glimpse of the huge contribution he has made to the academy both at first hand, and in the wider influence of his research, teaching, and collegiality. Too many books spoil the prof, but it seemed a good moment to produce one more, in celebration of a man who has done so much for our field, and for us as individuals. Thanks, Vincent.

7

Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Theology’ (2008), p. 407.

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Abbreviations ANTS AS BL CCCM

Anglo-Norman Text Society Acta Sanctorum (Antwerp and Brussels, 1643–1940) British Library Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1966–) CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout, 1953–) DMLBS Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Online (Turnhout, 2013) EETS Early English Text Society LALME Angus McIntosh, Michael L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin, eds, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediæval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen, 1986) LLTA, LLTB Library of Latin Texts Series A, Series B (Turnhout, 2018) MED Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn, and Robert E. Lewis, 14 vols (Ann Arbor, 1956–99) ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (Oxford, 2018)

OED Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford, 2018) PL Patrologiae cursus completus […] Series Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64) RS Rolls Series (Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores; or, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages) TNA The National Archives

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• PART I • After Lateran IV: The Thirteenth Century

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• 1 • Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde and the House Without Walls •  Annie Su therl and • I am a seeker In time for that which is Beyond time, that is everywhere And nowhere; no more before Than after, yet always About to be.1

I begin my paper with a quotation from R. S. Thomas, whom Vincent Gillespie once described to me as ‘the sublime poet of divine apophasis’. Of course, this is a description which applies as well to Vincent as it does to the irascible Welsh poet; his academic reflections on ‘[t]he play of absence and presence’ which characterize ‘the human experience of engagement with the ineffable’ have always teetered on the brink of the poetic.2 Yet, as is the case with R. S. Thomas, the apparently effortless lyricism of Vincent’s writing has been hardwon, born of rigorous engagement with difficult questions. My choice of quotation is based on Thomas’s location of the object of his enquiry ‘everywhere / And nowhere’. In situating that which he seeks in a realm of impossible paradox, the poet positions himself in a theological tradition which recognizes the incapacity of language fully to capture the essential alterity of the divine. He echoes Anselm of Canterbury (who echoes Augustine of Hippo) in finding God ‘ubique et semper et nusquam et numquam’ (‘everywhere and always and never and nowhere’).3 In taking us back to the theological landscape of early medieval England, this recollection of Anselm is pertinent; the influence of his prayers and meditations on the anchoritic 1 R. S. Thomas, ‘Abercuawg’, in Collected Poems 1945–1990 (London, 1993), p. 340. 2 Vincent Gillespie (with Maggie Ross), ‘The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich’, in his Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 277–305 (p. 277). 3 Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, ed., S. Anselmi Opera Omnia, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1940–61), I. 41. For Vincent Gillespie’s own comments on the medieval preoccupation with a God who is everywhere and nowhere, see his ‘Postcards from the Edge: Interpreting the Ineffable in the Middle English Mystics’, in Looking in Holy Books, pp. 307–37 (pp. 317–18).

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literature which is the focus of this chapter has been long recognized.4 Indeed, the rhetorical and theological delight that Anselm takes in the exploration of divine paradox (God as compassionate yet beyond passion; Christ as strong in his weakness, lofty in his lowliness, and powerful in his impotence) informs the English material under consideration here. A discursive mode founded on paradox and apparent antithesis is fundamental to its effective operation. The focus of this chapter is on anchoritic literature’s preoccupation with the paradox of the enclosed life as fundamentally exposed, and exposing. Anyone familiar with Ancrene Wisse and its associated literature (the texts of the so-called Katherine and Wooing Groups) will know that these writings share a preoccupation with walls, both literal and metaphorical.5 Most notably, the rhetoric of Ancrene Wisse emphasizes that its anchoritic readers are bound by the walls of both anchorhold and body, and it repeatedly reiterates the dangers of violating these boundaries.6 While those of the anchorhold can be breached by the act of reaching beyond the window, or the unnecessary exposure of any part of oneself to the world outside, those of the body are rendered vulnerable by any failure to discipline one’s sensory impulses.7 In Part 2 of the text, for example, the author offers this dire warning to those anchorites who dare to transgress the boundaries of both body and cell: 4 See, e.g., Michael G. Sargent, ‘What Kind of Writing is A Talkyng of þe Loue of God?’, in The Milieu and Context of the Wooing Group, ed. Susannah M. Chewning (Cardiff, 2009), pp. 178–93. 5 See Bella Millett, ‘The Ancrene Wisse Group’, in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 1–17. When I refer to the ‘Wooing Group’, I include Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde (BL Cotton MS Titus D. XVIII, fols. 127r–133r); and (in BL Cotton MS Nero A. XIV) On God Ureisun of ure Lefdi (fols. 120v–123v); On Wel Swuðe God Ureisun of God Almihti (fols. 123v–126v; also partially extant in Lambeth Palace MS 487); the Oreisun of Seinte Marie (fols. 126v–128r, partially extant in BL Royal MS 17 A. XXVII, whence its title); and On Lofsong of ure Louerde (fols. 128r–131r). See also Ralph Hanna, ‘Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487: Some Problems of Early ThirteenthCentury Textual Transmission’, in Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care: Essays in Honour of Bella Millett, ed. Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 78–88; Bella Millett, ‘Scribal Geography’, New Medieval Literatures 13 (2011), 183–97. 6 The equation between bodies and walls of course has a long pedigree and was a medieval commonplace. See, e.g., Honorius of Autun (1080–1154) on Song of Songs 2:9: ‘Paries est nostra mortalitas. Post parietem Christus stetit, cum mortalem carnem de Virgine sumpsit’ (PL 172, cols. 502–3: ‘The wall is our mortality. Christ stood behind the wall when he assumed mortal flesh through the Virgin’). Alan of Lille (c. 1128–1202) on the same verse: ‘Paries noster dicitur caro nostra, quae inter nos et Deum est posita’ (PL 210, col. 68: ‘Our wall is called our flesh, which is placed between us and God’). 7 For comprehensive listings of references to walls in this anchoritic literature, see Jennifer Potts, Lorna Stevenson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds, Concordance to Ancrene Wisse (Cambridge, 1993), p.  836; and Lorna Stevenson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds, Concordances to the Katherine Group and the Wooing Group (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 570, 950.

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde Hweðer ei totilde ancre fondede eauer þis [i.e., the danger of the external world] þe beakeð eauer utward as untohe brid i cage? Hweðer þe cat of helle cahte eauer towart hire, ant lathe wið cleaures hire heorte heued? Ȝe, soðes, ant droh ut al þe bodi efter wið clokes of crokede ant kene fondunges, ant makede hire to leosen baðe Godd ant mon wið brad scheome ant sune, ant bireafde hire ed an cleap þe eorðe ant ec to heouene. Inoh sari lure? To wraðer heale beakede eauer swa ut ancre.8 (Has any curious anchoress, always poking her nose outside like an untamed bird in a cage, ever found this out? Has the cat of hell ever snatched at her, and seized the head of her heart with its claws? Yes, certainly, and dragged out the whole body after it with the claws of hooked and sharp temptations, and made her lose both God and man with immense shame and sin, and deprived her at one stroke of earth and heaven too. A sad loss indeed! It has always turned out badly for any anchoress who looked out like this.)9

Anchoritic boundaries, both literal and figurative, are to be carefully constructed and attentively maintained, for they shield the vulnerable self from the predations of the outside world. In fact, the author uses the image of a space unprotected by walls to represent the situation of those who place themselves in spiritual peril, making themselves vulnerable to demonic attack. Speaking of anchorites who are not careful to guard their mouths against ungoverned gossip, for example, he draws on Proverbs in likening them to cities without walls: Qui custodit os suum custodit animam suam; ‘Hwa-se witeð wel his muð, he witeð’, he seið, ‘his sawle’. Sicut urbs patens et absque murorum ambitu, sic, et cetera. Qui murum silencii non habet, patet inimici iaculis ciuitas mentis; ‘Hwase ne wiðhalt his words,’ seið Salomon þe wise, ‘he is as þe burh wiðute wal þet ferde mei in oueral.’10 (Whoever guards his mouth guards his soul; ‘Whoever guards his mouth well’, he says, ‘guards his soul.’ Like a town that is open and without a circuit of walls, etc. If anyone does not have a wall of silence, the city of his mind is open to the spears of the enemy; ‘If anyone does not restrain his words,’ says Solomon the wise, ‘he is like the city without a wall that an army can enter from every side.’ [p. 30])

8 Bella Millett, ed., Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 with Variants from other Manuscripts, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 325 & 326 (Oxford, 2005–6), Part 2, p. 40/784–91. Henceforth cited by part and page/line number. 9 Bella Millett, trans., Ancrene Wisse, Guide for Anchoresses: A Translation (Exeter, 2009), p. 40 (henceforth cited by page number). 10 Ancrene Wisse, Part 2, p. 30/398–403. See Proverbs 13:3 and 25:28.

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Even if, according to the author, his readers remain physically within the walls of the anchorhold, they must still guard against ungoverned emotional and spiritual wandering; against the un-walled heart, as it were: [F]or nawt ha beoð bilokene inwið wah oðer wal þe þes ȝeten openið, bute aȝein Godes sonde, ant liueneð of sawle. (Part 2, p. 41/816–18) ([I]t is pointless for people to be confined inside a wall or enclosure if they open these gates, except to receive God’s message, and sustenance for the soul. [p. 41])

In fact, bodily enclosure would appear to be of no significance if unaccompanied by the equally rigorous segregation of the ‘heorte’: Ah ȝef ha entremeateð hire of þinges wiðuten mare þen ha þurfte, ant hire heorte beo utewið, þah a clot of eorðe, þet is, hire licome, beo inwið þe fowr wahes, ha is iwend … ut. (Part 3, p. 66/732–4) (But if she involves herself in outside affairs more than she needs to and her heart is outside, even if a clod of earth, that is, her body, may be inside the four walls, she has gone out. [p. 66])

Like Ancrene Wisse, the Wohunge of ure Lauerde also invokes the rhetoric of the wall. In fact, the meditation culminates with the speaker imagining herself crucified alongside Christ while enclosed within ‘fowr wahes’: Mi bodi henge wið þi bodi neiled o rode . sperred querfaste wið inne fowr wahes & henge i wile wið þe & neauer mare of mi rode cume til þat i deie .11 (May my body hang with your body nailed on the cross, fastened, transfixed within four walls, and I will hang with you and never more come from my cross until I die.)

The trope of the anchoritic life as death, so central to Ancrene Wisse, is here vividly rendered as a co-crucifixion with Christ, an agony in which the anchorite hopes to participate without interruption for the duration of her earthly existence. Assuming the Wohunge to have functioned as part of the vernacular devotional routine of anchorites (perhaps along the lines of the ‘redunge of Englisc oðer of Frensch, hali meditatiuns’ referred to in Part 1 of Ancrene Wisse), these ‘fowr wahes’ would appear to be those of the cell.12 The female

11 W. Meredith Thompson, ed., Þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd, EETS o.s. 241 (London, 1958), p. 36/590–95. Henceforth cited by page/line number; translations are my own. 12 Ancrene Wisse, Part 1, p. 18/394. Of course, Þe Wohunge also appears to have been read outside the anchorhold. BL Cotton MS Titus D. XVIII, which contains the sole extant copy, also contains a copy of Ancrene Wisse which has, at some point, been adapted for a mixed audience. Note also its later adaptation for inclusion in A Talkyng of þe Loue

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde

speaker’s affective crucifixion with Christ is facilitated by the austere protection of the anchoritic walls.13 Given the preoccupation with walls which we find in these texts, it is curious that so little attention has been paid to the very striking account of Christ’s birth in a ‘waheles hus’ (‘wall-less house’) in the Wohunge itself.14 Occurring at roughly the mid-point of the text, following the extended meditation on Christ’s desirability, the Wohunge’s account locates Christ’s nativity very precisely to a house without walls. Directly addressing Christ, the speaker states: Poure þu born was of þe meiden þi moder . for þenne iþi burð tid in al þe burh of belleem ne fant tu hus lewe þer þine nesche childes limes inne mihte reste . Bot in a waheles hus imiddes þe strete . poure þu wunden was irattes & i clutes & caldeliche dennet in a beastes cribbe. (Wohunge, pp. 28/321–29/329; my emphasis) (Poor, you were born of the virgin your mother. For then, at the time of your birth, in all the town of Bethlehem you did not find any house-shelter where your soft child’s limbs might rest. But in a wall-less house in the middle of the street, you were poorly wrapped in rags and scraps and coldly lodged in an animal’s manger.)

From this starting point, she then proceeds to a lengthy consideration of Christ’s incarnate life, focused on the motif of poverty: Bote swa þu eldere wex .’ swa þu pourere was . For i þi childhad hafdes tu þe pappe to þi fode . & ti moder readi hwen þu pappe ȝerndes . Bote hwen þu eldere was . þu þat fuhel ofluht . fisch iflod folc on eorðe fedes .’ þoledes for wone of mete moni hat hunger as clerkes witerliche in godspel reden . & tu þat heuene & eorðe & al þis werld wrahtes . nauedes in al þis werld hwer þu o þin ahen þi heaued mihtes reste . Bot baðe ȝung & eldre alle Gate þu hafdes hwer þu mihtes wrihe þine banes . Ah atte laste of þi lif hwen þu for me swa rewliche of God (Sister M. Salvina Westra, ed./ trans., A Talkyng of þe Loue of God (The Hague, 1950). 13 Elsewhere the wall is used as a metaphor of exclusion from God: ‘[m]inne sunnen beoð wal bi tweonen me . & þe’: Ureisun of God Almihti, in Þe Wohunge, ed. Thompson, p.  7/90. It is much more common, however, for the protective capacities of the wall (both literal and figurative) to be emphasized in this anchoritic literature. 14 On Þe Wohunge’s wall-less house, Denis Renevey comments, ‘[t]he audience is made to feel the comfort of the reclusorium in comparison with the coming of Christ on earth, in a house without walls’: ‘Enclosed Desires: A Study of the Wooing Group’, in Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, eds William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 39–62 (p. 57). Cf. Catherine Innes-Parker: ‘[t]he “wall-less house in the midst of the street” contrasts the four narrow walls of the anchorhold attached to the church, in which the anchoress dwells, for at least she has four walls’: The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers (Peterborough, Ontario, 2015), p. 133, note 65.

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An n ie Su therl and hengedes on rode . ne hafdes in al þis world hwer wið þat blisfule blodi bodi þu mihtes hule & huide . (p. 29/329–50) (But as you became older, so you became poorer. For in your childhood, you had the breast as your food, and your mother ready when you needed the breast. But when you were older, you who feeds the birds in flight, the fish in the water and people on earth, suffered for lack of meat many hot hungers, as scholars clearly read in the gospel. And you who made heaven and earth and all this world did not have anywhere in this world where you might lay your own head. But always, both young and old, you had the means to cover your bones. However, at the last moment of your life, when you hung so pitifully for me on the cross, you did not have, in all this world, anything with which you might cover and hide your blessed, bloody body.)

This meditation has much in common with Ancrene Wisse’s reflection on the poverty of the incarnate Christ. Featuring in Part 4 of the text, this reflection begins with his birth in Bethlehem: For þa he wes iboren earst, þe þet wrahte þe eorðe ne fond nawt on eorðe swa muche place as his lutel licome mahte beon ileid upon. Swa nearow wes þet stude þet unneaðe his moder ant Iosep seten þrin; ant swa ha leiden him on heh up in a creche, wið cluttes biwrabbet, as þet Gospel seið: Pannis eum inuoluit. (Part 4, p. 98/1156–61) (For when he was first born, he who made the earth did not find enough space on earth for his little body to be laid on. That place was so narrow that there was barely room for his mother and Joseph to sit in it; and so they laid him high up in a crib, wrapped in rags, as the Gospel says: She wrapped him in rags. [p. 98])

It then proceeds, as in the Wohunge, to pursue this motif of poverty through his earthly life: Her-efter þe poure [Leafdi] of heouene fostrede him ant fedde wið hire lutle milc as meiden deh to habben. Þis wes muche pouerte, ah mare com þrefter; for lanhure þe-ȝet he hefde fode as feol to him, ant i stude of in, his cradle herbearhede him. Seoððen, as he meande him, nefde he hwer he mahte his heaued huden: Filius hominis non habet ubi capud suum reclinet […] Ah alre meast pouerte com ȝet her-efter. For steort-naket he wes despuilet o þe rode; þa he meande him of þurst, weater ne mahte he habben; ȝet, þet meast wunder is, of al þe brade eorðe ne moste he habben a greot forte deien upon. (Part 4, p. 99/1162–78) (Then the poor Lady of heaven nourished and fed him with the little milk a virgin might be expected to have. This was great poverty, but more came later; because at least then he still had the kind of food that he needed, and instead of an inn, his cradle gave him lodging. Later, as he complained, he had nowhere

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde that he could lay his head: The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head […] But the greatest poverty of all came even later than this. For he was stripped starknaked on the cross; when he complained of thirst, he was not allowed any water; furthermore, which is the most remarkable thing, of all the broad earth he was not allowed the smallest piece to die on. [p. 99])

However, although these meditations share many details (the wrapping of the baby’s body in ‘cluttes’, the absence of any place for Christ to lay his ‘heaued’, the nakedness of his body ‘on rode’), the Wohunge’s ‘waheles hus’ does not appear in Ancrene Wisse. In focusing, instead, on the ‘nearow … stude’ as the location of the nativity, the Ancrene Wisse author parallels Christ’s poverty with that of the anchorite, who is also enclosed, he tells us, ‘i nearow stude’ (Part 6, p. 142/421). It is, however, entirely characteristic of the Ancrene Wisse author that, having spoken of his anchoritic reader living in a ‘nearow stude’, akin to Christ’s enclosure as a ‘reclus’ in the ‘nearow wununge’ (‘constricted space’) of Mary’s womb, he proceeds immediately to contrast the luxury of her ‘fowr large wahes’ (‘four spacious walls’) with Christ’s ‘nearow cader’ (‘narrow cradle’: Part 6, p. 142/419–23). Her four walls afford her the space and protection which was denied Christ, and appear to set her apart from him in his un-walled vulnerability. The image of the house without walls is all the more intriguing because it is not biblical in origin. The circumstances of Christ’s birth are not mentioned in the gospels of either Mark or John. Matthew does describe Christ’s birth (1:25 and 2:1) but does not name the building in which he was born (although the wise men are later said to enter a non-descript ‘domus’ to greet the Christchild [Matt. 2:11]). Luke’s gospel is, in fact, the only one to provide readers with any detail regarding the circumstances of the Nativity, telling us: Et [Mary] peperit filium suum primogenitum, et pannis eum involvit, et reclinavit eum in praesepio: quia non erat eis locus in diversorio. (Luke 2:7) (And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.)

Locating the Christ child simply in the ‘praesepium’ (‘manger’), Luke does no more than tell us where he was not born (‘not erat eis locus in diversorio’: ‘there was no space in the inn’). This reference to the ‘diversorium’ is, however, important, since it provides a specific location with which Christ’s nativity can be associated, by means of both proximity and negation. Indeed, it was a term taken up by Augustine, who comments, in one of his many sermons on the Nativity, that ‘[a]ngustus erat diversorium, involutus pannis, in praesepe positus est’ (‘the inn was cramped; he was wrapped in swaddling clothes and

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An n ie Su therl and

placed in the manger’), seeming to locate Christ’s birth to the very place from which Luke tells us that he was excluded.15 Other early commentators, apparently prompted by Luke’s reference to the ‘praesepium’, locate Christ’s birth to a stable. John Cassian, for example, speaks of the ‘stabulum … in quo Christus Dominus noster natus est’ (‘the stable … in which Christ our Lord was born’).16 It is this tradition that appears to inform the medieval devotional and theological writing generally cited as sources and analogues for the texts of the Ancrene Wisse and ‘Wooing’ Groups. Bernard of Clairvaux (cited approvingly in Part 6 of Ancrene Wisse), for example, goes to great pains to detail the circumstances of the Nativity, telling us that ‘in stabulo nascitur Christus, et in praesepio reclinatur’ (‘Christ was born in a stable and laid in a manger’).17 And Peter Abelard, whose Hymn on the Nativity, like Ancrene Wisse and the Wohunge, emphasizes the contrast between Christ’s divine omnipotence and his human poverty, claims that ‘celi domina / Pro cameris intravit stabula’ (‘the queen of heaven, instead of a room, she entered the stable’).18 The word ‘stabulum’ can refer ambiguously to accommodation for both animals and people.19 The slipperiness of the term, encompassing both ‘animal shelter/stabling’ and ‘inn’, is important, as it clarifies Aelred of Rievaulx’s comments on the circumstances of the Nativity. Instructing his anchoritic reader in her meditative activity, he tells her to accompany the expectant Mary to Bethlehem, and goes on: [I]n hospitium diuertens cum illa, assiste et obsequere parienti, locato que in praesepi paruulo, erumpe in uocem exultationis, clamans cum isaia: paruulus natus est nobis, filius datus est nobis.20 (Turning into the inn with her, attend and comfort her as she gives birth. And when the baby has been placed in the manger, burst out in a voice of rejoicing, calling out with Isaiah: a child is born to us, a son is given to us.)

While he locates Christ’s birth to a definite ‘hospitium’ rather than an ambiguous ‘stabulum’, he clearly has in mind a situation similar to that envisaged by Bernard and Abelard, and indeed Augustine; this is a poor ‘hospitium’ which 15 Sermo CLXXXIX, ‘In Natale Domini 6’, PL 38, col. 1006. Cf. Sermo CLXXXVIII, ‘In Natale Domini 5’, PL 38, col. 1004; Sermo CCII, ‘In Epiphania Domini 4’, PL 38, col. 1034. 16 John Cassian, ‘De Coenobiorum Institutis Libri Duodecim’, PL 49, col. 192. 17 In Nativitate Domini, Sermo II, ‘De loco, tempore et aliis circumstantiis Nativitatis’, PL 183, col. 123. 18 Verbo Verbum Virgo Concipiens, PL 178, col. 1789. Bella Millett points out this similarity in her notes to Part 4 of Ancrene Wisse (p. 181). 19 DMLBS, s.v. ‘stabulum’, online at [accessed 12 June 2018]. 20 Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum, Part 3, CCCM 1.

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde

contains a ‘praesepium’, itself meaning either a manger or food trough, serving as a temporary crib, or (more broadly) an animal’s stall.21 The ‘diversorium’, ‘stabulum’, ‘hospitium’, and ‘praesepium’, therefore, all feature in patristic and medieval accounts of the Nativity. Yet, while Ancrene Wisse and the Wohunge pick up on the ‘praesepium’ (the former speaks of ‘a creche’ and the latter ‘a beastes cribbe’), neither echoes any of the other terminology. Most particularly, none of the sources or analogues cited appears to provide any model for the Wohunge’s ‘waheles hus’. A ‘casa sine pariete’ does, however, appear in the thirteenth-century Speculum Religiosorum of Edmund of Abingdon (1174–1240), the influence and importance of which has only recently begun to be widely appreciated.22 His Speculum, a simple guide to the religious life and the patterns of monastic prayer, has been described by its editor as ‘thoroughly traditional’.23 Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) its understated nature, it proved very popular and was, in the words of Nicholas Watson, ‘an exceptionally mobile work’.24 Extant in about eighty manuscripts, Edmund’s text survives in three languages and many different versions. The earliest of these, the Speculum Religiosorum itself, dates to the early thirteenth century (most probably before Edmund became archbishop of Canterbury in 1234) and seems likely to have been written for a religious audience.25 For the purposes of this chapter, the most interesting part of the Speculum is the series of fourteen short meditations on the life of Christ which Edmund appends to the seven canonical hours in the latter part of the treatise. Each hour has two meditations attached to it: one on the Passion and one on some other aspect of, or event in, Christ’s earthly life. The first of these meditations, to be undertaken before Matins, involves consideration of the circumstances of Christ’s birth, followed by consideration of the circumstances of his betrayal.

21 DMLBS, s.v. ‘praesepe’. 22 For discussion see Cate Gunn, ‘Reading Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum as Pastoral Literature’, and Nicholas Watson, ‘Middle English Versions and Audiences of Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum Religiosorum’, in Texts and Traditions, ed. Gunn and Innes-Parker, pp.  100–14, 115–31; Laura Ashe, The Oxford English Literary History vol. 1: 1000–1350. Conquest and Transformation (Oxford, 2017), pp. 335–43; and Nicholas Watson’s chapter in the present volume. 23 Edmund of Abingdon, Speculum religiosorum and Speculum ecclesie, ed. Helen P. Forshaw, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 3 (London, 1973), p. 19. 24 Watson, ‘Middle English Versions’, p. 115. 25 Wilshere, the editor of the Anglo-Norman Miroir, suggests that the Speculum Religiosorum was written c. 1213–14 (A. D. Wilshere, ed., Mirour de Seinte Eglyse, ANTS 40 (London, 1982), p. xix). Gunn broadly agrees (‘Reading Edmund of Abingdon’). Forshaw dates it more tentatively to the pre-1220s (p. 16). Watson finds dating it to the 1220s ‘particularly attractive’ (‘Middle English Versions’, p. 118); see also his chapter, below.

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The outline of the Nativity is much more comprehensive than that of the Passion, and begins: Ante matutinas sive nocte media cogitare debes de temporo, loco, et hora in quibus Christus natus est. Tempus erat hiemale, quando maxima frigiditas solet dominari; hora noctis media, periculosior, durior, seu gravior aliis horis, ideo dicitur intempestatum; locus erat in via, in casa sine pariete. Pannis involutus, instita ligatus, in praesepe positus ante bovem et asinum erat Iesus, quia non erat ei locus in diversorio.26 (Before Matins or in the middle of the night you must think about the season, place, and time in which Christ was born. The season was winter, when the greatest chill tends to dominate; the hour was midnight, more dangerous, harder, or more oppressive than other hours because it is said to be stormy; the place was in the street, in a house without a wall. Jesus was wrapped in cloths, wound in swaddling-bands, and placed in a manger before an ox and an ass, because there was no room for them in the inn.)

The Anglo-Norman Mirour de Seinte Eglyse, a translation of the Latin Speculum Religiosorum, is virtually identical: Devant matines devez penser de la nativeté [...] ententivement le tens e le liu e la hore ke nasquit Nostre duz Seynur Jhesu Crist. Le tens estoit enmi yvern, quant il feit plus freit. La hore estoit en la mienuyt, la plus dure hore ke soit. Le liu estoit enmi la voie, en une mesun sanz pareie, de cynces fu envelope, de un liser estoit lié, devant un bof e un asne, en une creche fu coché, pur ço k’il n’avoit autre liu.27 (Before Matins, you ought to think first of the nativity [...] attentively about the season and the place and the hour at which our sweet Lord Jesus Christ was born. The season was in the middle of winter, when it is most cold. The hour was midnight, the hardest hour. The place was in the middle of the street, in a house without walls; he was wrapped in cloths, wound in swaddling bands, before an ox and an ass laid in a manger because there was no other place for him.)

In her edition of the Speculum, Forshaw suggests that the highly influential late-twelfth-century Historia Scholastica of Peter Comestor (d. 1178) might lie behind this imagined birthplace without walls.28

26 Speculum Religiosorum, ed. Forshaw, pp. 82–4 (my emphasis). 27 Mirour, ed. Wilshere, p. 58. 28 Forshaw, p.  84. For background on the Historia Scholastica see James H. Morey, ‘Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible’, Speculum 68 (1993), 3–35.

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde

It is very likely that Peter’s work was known to Edmund, and the parallels are striking, but it is worth noting that there is some difference in the wording of Peter’s description: Difficile fuerat pauperibus, prae frequentia multorum, qui ob idipsum convenerant, vacuas invenire domos, et in communi transitu, qui erat inter duas domus, operimentum habens, quod diversorium dicitur, se receperunt, sub quo cives ad colloquendum, vel ad convisendum in diebus otii, vel pro aeris intemperie divertebant. Forte ibi Joseph praesepium fecerat bovi et asino, quos secum adduxerat, in quo repositus est Jesus.29 (It was difficult for those who were poor, because of the huge crowds which gathered on account of this [the census], to find empty houses. And in the public thoroughfare, [in a space] with a roof which was between two houses, called a roadside inn, they took them in, beneath which [roof] citizens gathered to chat, or to pass the time on days of leisure, or took shelter during intemperate weather. It’s likely Joseph had made there a manger for the ox and the ass which he had brought with him, into which Jesus was placed.)

Peter, Edmund, and the Wohunge, therefore, all state that Christ was born in the middle of the street (‘imiddes þe strete’ / ‘locus erat in via’ / ‘in communi transitu’ respectively); this is the most obvious link between them. But while Edmund and the Wohunge say that there was a ‘waheles hus’ / ‘casa sine pariete’ in this location, Peter Comestor says that there was in the middle of the street a ‘diversorium’, usually translated as ‘inn’, but describes this gathering-place only as a covered space between two dwellings. The movement from ‘diversorium’ to ‘casa sine pariete’ can be further elucidated by reference to the wording of the Speculum Ecclesie, generally held to be a translation of the Anglo-Norman Mirour back into Latin.30 In its chapter ‘De nativitate Domini et eius capcione ad matutinas’, the Speculum Ecclesie reads slightly differently from both the Speculum Religiosorum and the Mirour de Seynte Eglyse. Referring explicitly to the ‘diversorium’, it includes details which are in Peter Comestor’s text and do not appear in the Speculum Religiosorum, the Mirour de Seinte Eglyse, or the Wohunge: Ante matutinas de nativitate Domino primo debes cogitare [...] diligenter tempus, locum et horam in quibus natus fuit Dominus noster Iesus Christus dulcis. Tempus fuit in medio hyemis, quando maximum frigus fuit; hora erat in media nocte, que est hora durissima; locus erat in media via, in una domo sine pariete, qui dicitur diversorium a divertendo: nam illic homines divertebantur pro 29 Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica, PL 198, cols. 1539–40. 30 For discussion of the relationship between the Speculum Religiosorum and the Speculum Ecclesie, see Gunn, ‘Reading Edmund of Abingdon’.

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An n ie Su therl and pluvia et aliis tempestatibus. In qua fuit pauperrimis panniculis involutus, cum una fascia ligatus, et in presepe positus, coram bove et asino, quia non habuit alium locum in diversorio.31 (Before Matins you should think first of the Lord’s nativity [...] attentively about the season, place and time in which our sweet Lord Jesus Christ was born. The season was the middle of winter, when it was at its coldest; the hour was in the middle of the night, which is the harshest hour; the place was in the middle of the street, in a house without walls, which is called a roadside inn, from the word meaning ‘to turn off from the road’: for men were diverted there because of rain or other bad weather. In this place, he was wrapped in the most meagre rags, and placed in the manger, in the presence of the ox and the ass, because there was no other space in the inn.)

It seems likely that whoever was responsible for the Speculum Ecclesie had opportunity to consult Peter Comestor in producing their translation of this passage. The result is that here for the first time, we have the ‘diversorium’ and the house without walls identified with each other (‘in una domo sine pariete, qui dicitur diversorium’)32 All this clarifies the ‘poverty’ of Augustine’s ‘diversorium’. As glossed by Peter Comestor and subsequently expanded in the Speculum Ecclesie, the word in this context has more specific and limited connotations than ‘inn’ or ‘guesthouse’, meaning no more than a roadside shelter, a place without walls. The precise nature and properties of this ‘diversorium’ seem to have been a topic of discussion among early medieval scholastic theologians, who attempted variously to comprehend and articulate the material conditions of Christ’s birth. Most notable, perhaps, are the efforts of Thomas of Chobham (d. 1233x6), who, in his Summa de Arte Praedicandi, goes to great lengths to clarify the circumstances of the Nativity, locating it specifically to a ‘xenodochium’: Xenodochium est ubi aduene et peregrine qui non habent hospitium recipiuntur. Talem domum consecrauit Dominus ortu suo, quia talis fuit domus illa in qua natus fuit in Bethleem. Erat enim quedam domus ibi communis, in qua hospitabantur peregrine et erat ibi diuersorium in quo recipiebantur quidam honestius quam alii, et erat ibi alius locus in quo venientes ad forum reponebant iumenta et alias res suas. Cum autem beata Virgo, sicut legitur in Evangelio, venire ad

31 Speculum Ecclesie, ed. Forshaw, pp. 83–5; my emphasis. I am grateful to James Anderson for his help in translating this passage. 32 This is, in fact, precisely how the stable is often figured in medieval visual representations of the Nativity. See Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols. (London, 1971–72), I. 1–186.

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Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde locum illum ad faciendum professionem suam et pre multitudine populi non esset ei locus in diuersorio, diuertit ad stabulum et ibi peperit Saluatorem.33 (A xenodochium is a place where immigrants and travellers who do not have any lodgings are received. The Lord sanctified such a dwelling in his birth, because such was the dwelling in which he was born in Bethlehem. For there was in that place a certain public dwelling in which travellers were offered shelter. And there was in that place a roadside inn into which those who were more reputable than others were accepted. And there was in that place another location in which those coming to market left their mules and their other things. And when as we read in the Gospel the Virgin came to that place to take part in the census and, because of the mass of people, there was no space for them in the inn, she turned aside to the stable and there gave birth to the Saviour.)

Echoing Luke’s terminology (‘non esset ei locus in diuersorio’), Thomas of Chobham nonetheless situates Christ’s birth in a location which has much in common with Peter Comestor’s ‘diversorium’. It is a place that welcomes those who otherwise have no shelter, a place in which animals rest alongside people, in a pattern of life familiar to any medieval Christian; and a place into which entry is secured by the act of turning (Mary ‘diuertit ad stabulum’) towards the ‘domus’ that reveals itself when there is no apparent space left. To return, now, to Þe Wohunge, it seems clear that the ‘waheles hus imiddes þe strete’ is indebted to this scholastic preoccupation with the material circumstances of Christ’s birth. Whether the author was inspired by Edmund of Abingdon’s ‘casa sine pariete’ situated ‘in via’, by Peter Comestor’s ‘diversorium’ situated ‘in communi transitu’, or by some other source, is impossible to say. The closeness of ‘waheles hus’ to ‘casa sine pariete’ makes it tempting to speculate that the Wohunge author is borrowing directly from Edmund.34 But the (albeit later) Speculum Ecclesie’s equating of the ‘diversorium’ with the ‘casa sine pariete’ suggests that this was a parallel commonly observed; the wall-less state of the ‘diversorium’ was widely attested. Furthermore, we need not limit ourselves to an insular source in tracing the origins of the ‘waheles hus’; Bella Millett’s work on Þe Wohunge has already suggested that its anonymous author was influenced by contemporary trends in continental preaching and theology. She persuasively situates the text’s meditation on the desirability of Christ (which precedes the meditation on the Nativity) in the context of sermons 33 Thomas of Chobham, Summa de Arte Praedicandi, ed. Franco Morenzoni (Turnhout, 1988), ch. 2, lines 417–27. I am very grateful to Bella Millett for alerting me to this reference. 34 If Wilshere’s dating of the Speculum Religiosorum to 1213–14 is accepted, there is a possibility of influence on the Wohunge author. If Watson’s preference for the 1220s is accepted, direct influence is less likely.

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on marriage preached in Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century.35 Indebted to a topos which appears to have developed in late twelfth-century Paris, Millett argues that these sermons and Þe Wohunge (along with Hali Meiðhad and Part 7 of Ancrene Wisse) ‘are drawing on a common tradition’, and that ‘the resemblances are close enough to suggest, if not a single written source, at least a single milieu where the topos developed the features shared by both groups of works’.36 She speculates elsewhere that the Wohunge author ‘may, given the close links of his work with contemporary Paris preaching, have travelled beyond the borders not just of Cheshire but of England’.37 The apparently scholastic background of the ‘waheles hus’ might provide further support for this idea. We know that Thomas of Chobham and Edmund of Abingdon travelled between England and France; it is no great stretch to imagine that the Wohunge author might have done so too.38 Despite the continental link, however, it seems unlikely that the historical reality of ‘waheles hus’ would have been uppermost in the mind of Þe Wohunge’s meditative reader, or necessarily in that of its author. Appearing as it does in a text which makes pointed reference to the ‘fowr wahes’ of the anchorhold, the ‘waheles hus’ might be said to acquire a particular symbolic resonance. While the ‘casa sine pariete’ may have originated in an attempt to clarify the literal circumstances of Christ’s birth, it has the potential to accrue extraordinary potency in the imagination of an enclosed anchorite, experienced in the practices of ruminative reading and reflective meditation. What, then, might this house have meant to this attentive reader, and how might she have interpreted its absent walls? As noted earlier in this chapter, walls are often equated with the flesh, both in medieval anchoritic literature and elsewhere. It is possible, therefore, that Þe Wohunge’s absent walls might be interpreted as signalling something of Christ’s relationship with his own physical form. But the ‘waheles hus’ cannot be read as an indication that Christ was somehow not fully embodied, not truly incarnate. The point of the incarnation was that Christ ‘was made flesh 35 Bella Millett, ‘“The Conditions of Eligibility” and Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd’, in Milieu and Context, ed. Chewning, pp. 26–47. 36 Millett, ‘Conditions of Eligibility’, p. 42. 37 Millett, ‘Scribal Geography’, p. 195. 38 Further evidence of insular interest in the circumstances of Christ’s birth can be seen in the thirteenth-century Franciscan Thomas of Hales’ Vite Sancte Marie, which reproduces almost exactly Peter Comestor’s wording: ‘In communi transitu qui erat inter duas domos, operimentum habens, se receperent, sub quo ciues ad conuisendum, uel colloquendum, in diebus otii, uel pro aeris intemperie diuertebant.’ Sarah M. Horrall, ed., The Lyf of Oure Lady: The ME Translation of Thomas of Hales’ Vita Sancte Marie (Heidelberg, 1985), pp. 55–6. Cf. a much abbreviated version in an Anglo-Norman sermon attributed to Thomas of Hales: M. D. Legge, ed., ‘The Anglo-Norman Sermon of Thomas of Hales’, Modern Language Review 30 (1935), 212–18 (p. 215).

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and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14); Christ was necessarily born within the ‘walls’, as it were, of human flesh, and he (and the anchorite) know this perfectly well.39 Instead, what the ‘waheles hus’ might suggest, in the context of this meditation, is that Christ has a proper disregard for the physical wall as an unerring signifier of the fully enclosed self. For Christ, and for the correctly disposed anchorite, the physical wall (of cell or birthplace) should be of little significance. Walled or wall-less, Christ remains the same and so, ideally, does the anchorite. In fact, in the circumstances outlined in Þe Wohunge, the wall is fundamentally immaterial (which, of course, it literally is, by virtue of its absence). Christ, knowing who and what he is, and appropriately confident in his capacity to regulate his senses and his appetites, and in his ability to respect the limitations of his human body, has no need of any external walls. And neither, ideally, does the anchorite. The house’s ‘waheles’ state might also be read as suggesting something of Christ’s utter vulnerability. It is reminiscent of the shield with no sides to which his human form on the cross is likened in Part 7 of Ancrene Wisse, its sidelessness ‘for bitacnunge þet his deciples, þe schulden stonden bi him ant habben ibeon his siden, fluhen alle from him ant leafden him as fremede’ (Part 7, 147/104–6: ‘signifies that his disciples, who should have stood by him and been his sides, all fled from him and abandoned him like strangers’ [p. 147]). At the moment of his birth, just as at the moment of his death, Christ makes himself entirely available to those for whom he has become incarnate. He is like the anchorite in Part 1 of Ancrene Wisse, who is encouraged to open her heart to all those in pain: Bi dei sum time o[ð]er bi niht gederið in ower heorte alle seke ant sarie, [þa wa þet pouere] þolieð, þe pinen þe prisuns habbeð þer ha liggeð wið irn heuie ifeðeret (nomeliche of þe Cristene þe beoð i heaðenesse, summe i prisun, summe in ase muche þeowdom as oxe is oðer asse); habbeð reowðe of þeo þe beoð istronge temptatiuns. Alle hare sares setteð in ower heorte ant sikeð to ure Lauerd, þet he neome reowðe of ham ant bihalde toward ham wið þe ehe of his are. (Part 1, 12/196–203) (At some time of the day or night gather into your heart all those who are ill and wretched, the misery that the poor suffer, the torments that prisoners endure where they lie heavily weighed down with iron (especially those of the Christians who are in heathen territory, some in prison, some in as much servitude as an ox or an ass is); feel compassion for those who are attacked by strong

39 As Gillespie and Ross put it, ‘Christ’s lapse into language in the incarnation is his own freely given sacrifice of his ineffable nature on the altar of human meaning’: Gillespie and Ross, ‘The Apophatic Image’, p. 279.

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An n ie Su therl and temptations. Take all their sorrows into your heart and sigh to our Lord, so that he may take pity on them and look towards them with the eye of his mercy. [p. 12])

In the wall-less house, and in the cell, Christ and the anchorite empty themselves utterly. It is the perfect location for kenosis.40 But how, conceptually speaking, is the anchorite to imagine a house without walls (given that this is the only image with which the reader of Þe Wohunge is provided, unlike the reader of the Speculum Ecclesie, who is also supplied with the ‘diversorium’ as an alternative)? Surely walls are one – or four – of the defining features of the house, in the Middle Ages as today? They delineate the space of the house, that which distinguishes the domestic from its nondomestic environs. Yet what we have in Þe Wohunge is a house which is not only without walls but is also ‘imiddes þe strete’. To return to the beginning of this chapter, it is, in a sense, both ubique (it is in the middle of the street, at the centre of the action, in the way of all that is happening) and numquam (it does not exist as a defined and delineated space).41 In the context of Þe Wohunge, the wall-less house in which Christ is born is, in fact, a quintessentially apophatic space, an impossible place defined by the absence of that which makes it what it is. To borrow from Gillespie and Ross, it is a ‘deliberately subversive’ space, a ‘sign of contradiction, allowing the creative tension between its conflicting significations to generate a precious stillness, a chink in the defensive wall of reason’ (or, as is the case in Þe Wohunge, the complete absence of any such 40 For other examples of allegorical readings of the ‘diversorium’ / ‘casa sine pariete’ / ‘domus inter duos muros’, see, e.g., Ps. Jerome’s commentary on Luke 2:7: ‘locus in diversio, id est, domus inter duos muros, duas januas habet: figuram Ecclesiae, inter paradisum, et mundum’ (PL 30, col. 569: ‘space in the inn, that is, a dwelling between two walls, possessing two entrances: a figure of the Church, between paradise and the world’). See also Innocent III, Sermones de Sanctis, Sermo 8: ‘Et intrantes domum, illud videlicet diversorium, de quo dicit evangelista: “Quia non erat eis locus in diversorio”, invenerunt puerum cum Maria matre eius. Hic est lapis angularis, ad quem duo parietes convenerunt, unus videlicet ex Judaeis, id est pastores, ad verbum angeli, alter ex gentibus, id est magi, ad signum stellae.’ (PL 217, col. 486: ‘And entering the dwelling, clearly the inn, of which the Evangelist says: “Because there was space in the inn”, they found the boy with Mary his mother. This is the corner-stone, at which the two walls met, one of course from Judaea, that is the shepherds, according to the words of the angel, the other from the Gentiles, that is the Magi, according to the sign of the star’) I am again grateful to Bella Millett for alerting me to these two instances. 41 In response to hearing an early draft of this paper, Vincent Gillespie suggested that the wall-less house in the middle of the street might well have reminded the medieval reader of the town marketplace, conventionally a canopied stone structure, centrally located and open to the elements. Given that, in Part 8 of Ancrene Wisse, the anchorite is warned against conducting any ‘chaffere’ or behaving as a ‘chepilt’ (tradeswoman), an invocation of the marketplace in Þe Wohunge would be in keeping with this literature’s pervasively paradoxical rhetorical strategies (Ancrene Wisse, Part 8, p. 158/101–5).

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walls), a stillness – and unenclosure? – ‘that allows slippage into apophatic consciousness’.42 In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard claims that: [The house] maintains [man] through the storms of the heavens and through those of life. It is body and soul. It is the human’s first world. Before he is ‘cast into the world’, as claimed by certain hasty metaphysics, man is laid in the cradle of the house. And always, in our daydreams, the house is a large cradle. A concrete metaphysics cannot neglect this fact, this simple fact, all the more, since this fact is a value, an important value, to which we return in our daydreaming. Being is already a value. Life begins well, it begins enclosed, protected, all warm in the bosom of the house.43

For Þe Wohunge’s Christ to have been capable of beginning his life in an unenclosed, unprotected, cold location – the very opposite of Bachelard’s life begun well – is remarkable. The fringes of human society have always suffered such conditions; millions have been born like Christ, and that is part of the point: that he experienced the greatest common humility of human flesh. But it is also and equally a sign of his godhead, for by Bachelard’s logic of individual formation, only a being utterly sure of his own identity, his boundaries, and his walls, would be able to begin his exceptional existence in the absence of the protective enclosures which go to formulate and nourish the human. Yet it seems that the anchorite, although enclosed within ‘fowr wahes’, is expected to mirror Christ in cultivating a complete vulnerability to the world, to its torments and sorrows. To return, finally, to Peter Comestor, she is to situate herself in a ‘diversorium’, a roadside inn where passers-by shelter from the rain, dwelling securely in a home that is not a home.

42 Vincent Gillespie (with Maggie Ross), ‘“With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly”: On Reading Julian of Norwich’, Mystics Quarterly 30 (2004), 126–41 (p. 134). As they go on to claim, ‘[t]o read in this way is not a short-cut; it is rather a quantum leap’. 43 Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston, MA, 1969), p. 7.

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• 2 • The Original Audience and Institutional Setting of Edmund Rich’s Mirror of Holy Church: The Case for the Salisbury Canons •  Nichol as Watson •

‘Causa vitandi curiositatem verborum’ The text or textual cluster known as The Mirror of Holy Church represents one of the more egregious examples of Paul Zumthor’s mouvance – the unregulated proliferation of versions and rewritings endemic to many forms of manuscript culture – found in medieval religious literature.1 Written in Latin in the early thirteenth century, the work could be regarded as having led a relatively decorous existence for 150 years or so, circulating widely in books that make clear the high regard in which it was held by literate Christians of different backgrounds, were it not for the fact that all twenty-eight full or partial copies that survive from before the second half of the fourteenth century preserve not the original Latin text but an elegantly colloquial translation into French (F). Making no mention that it is rendering a work first composed in Latin, this translation travelled in at least two versions, A and B, as one of the best-known insular French prose texts of the period.2 It is largely as a result of this translation that the identity of the work’s famous author remained known to medieval (and modern) readers. He was Edmund Rich, the learned, ascetic, and passionately driven eldest son of a well-off devout merchant couple from Abingdon. After periods of study at Oxford and Paris, Edmund became in turn master of arts and doctor of theology at Oxford (c. 1196–1202, c. 1214–22), secular canon, cathedral treasurer, 1 Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris, 1972), Chapter 2. Sigla for versions of the Mirror are from Alan D. Wilshere, Mirour de Seinte Eglise, ANTS 40 ( London, 1982). For the title, see note 16. 2 Ruth Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, ANTS O.P. 3 (London, 1999), §629. For A and B, see Wilshere, ed., Mirour, pp. ix–xvii.

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and celebrated preacher at Salisbury (c. 1222–33), an unusually embattled archbishop of Canterbury (1233–40), and finally ‘seynt Edmund de Pounteny’ (as many copies of F call him), a cognomen that identifies him with the Cistercian house of Pontigny in France, where he is buried.3 The flurry of vitae and other life records written in the period immediately before and after his canonization in 1246 never allude to the work, and most, perhaps all, allusions to his authorship in later copies directly or indirectly derive from F.4 Sometime in the second half of the fourteenth century, we receive confirmation both that the Mirror was still in demand and that its French versions were still regarded as authoritative from the circumstance of the B version’s translation into Latin. This Latin version (L2), which again names the work’s author while making no mention of its status as a translation, gradually displaced the French versions as the canonical form of the text. It survives in at least eighteen medieval copies and a print edition of 1519, and was included in all editions of Marguerin de la Bigne’s Sacrae Bibliothecae Sanctorum Patrum between 1589 and 1677. The most successful of no fewer than three translations produced during the next seventy-five years, it was made at roughly the same time as our earliest copy of an important fourth Latin version (L1), found in the late fourteenth-century section of an early thirteenth-century codex owned by the Augustinian canons of Baswich Priory, near Stafford: Oxford, Bodleian Library Hatton MS 26. L1 also survives in four other, closely related fifteenth-century books and two fragmentary copies of the same period.5 Not until the scholarship on the Latin and French manuscripts of the Mirror carried out by Helen Forshaw and Alan Wilshere several decades ago did it become finally clear: (1) that there are several Latin versions, not one; (2) that L2, the Latin version known to scholars from de la Bigne’s printed editions, is a translation from the French, not Edmund’s original text; (3) that the Mirror was nonetheless first written in Latin, not French; and (4) that L1, the version 3 The fullest account is C. H. Lawrence, The Life of St Edmund by Matthew Paris (Stroud, 1996), pp. 1–99. 4 See C. H. Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon: A Study of Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960), which discusses all the vitae and their relationships, edits two, by Eustace of Faversham and Matthew Paris, as well as a group of private testimonies to Edmund’s sanctity, the Quadrilogus. Vitae by two figures Lawrence calls Anonymous B and C are edited by William Wallace, The Life of Edmund of Canterbury from Original Sources (London, 1893), pp. 613–42, 589–612, attributed to Robert Bacon and Richard Rich, respectively. The Pontigny vita is in Edmund Martène and Ursinus Durand, Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum III (Paris, 1717), cols. 1775–1826. The important vita by Anonymous A remains unedited. Paris’s French verse vita is edited in A. T. Baker, ‘La vie de seint Edmond, archêveque de Cantorbéry’, Romania 55 (1929), 332–81. 5 For manuscripts of L1 and L2, see Helen P. Forshaw, ‘New Light on the Speculum Ecclesie of Saint Edmund of Abingdon’, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 38 (1971), 7–33 (pp. 15–16), which also lists ten copies of L3 (the ‘Bodley 54 recension’) and one of L4 (the ‘Rawlinson C.72 recension’).

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in Hatton discovered by Forshaw while she was writing her M.A. thesis, is not a translation but a direct descendant of Edmund’s Latin.6 Fig. 2.1  Latin and French versions of Edmund’s Mirror by order of composition 1. L1 (Edmund’s Latin text) = Forshaw’s ‘Speculum religiosorum’ 2. F, A version (French translation of L1) = Wilshere’s ‘Mirour de Seinte Eglise’ A 3. F, B version (modification of F, A) = Wilshere’s ‘Mirour de Seinte Eglise’ B 4. L2 (Latin translation of F, B version) = Forshaw’s ‘Speculum ecclesie’ (5. L3 and L4, both also likely translated from F, await further research.)

Between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Latin versions of the Mirror, the majority of them attributed to Edmund, had many readers, some in religious houses, quite a number among the parish clergy.7 Yet, throughout this period, the language in which many would have encountered materials from the work, knowingly or not, was English. An early adaptation, Þe Spore of Loue, a poem in rhyming couplets from the College of the Annunciation of St Mary in Leicester (and one of two renderings of the work into English verse), may be from as early as the 1360s. By 1400, the full work had been translated twice from insular French into English prose, to be followed in the next hundred years by at least two more full translations, one of them printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521, besides a further, nearly complete translation, which comprises the bulk of the anonymous lay treatise Memoriale Credencium (c. 1400). Single chapters of the Mirror, notably its brilliantly concise commentary on the Pater noster, also had vigorous independent circulation, helping to fill the need for sophisticated vernacular expositions of the articles of the faith that was felt with special urgency at this period.8 Indeed, the proliferation of material from the work was such that readers of English religious 6 Forshaw, ‘New Light on the Speculum Ecclesie’ and ‘St Edmund’s Speculum: A Classic of Victorine Spirituality’, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge 39 (1972), 7–40; A. Wilshere, ‘The Latin Primacy of St Edmund’s ‘Mirror of Holy Church’, Modern Language Review 71 (1976), 500–12. The claim that the work was originally written in French was first made by Harry Wolcott Robbins, Le Merure de Seinte Eglise (Lewisburg, PA, 1925). 7 See, e.g., London, British Library Harley MS 5541 (L1); London, British Library, Royal MS 5.C.III, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 110, and Cambridge University Library MS Ff 5.36 (L2). See Edmund of Abingdon, Speculum religiosorum and Speculum ecclesie, ed. Helen P. Forshaw, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 3 (London, 1973), pp. 3–11. 8 Nicholas Watson, ‘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. Cate Gunn and Catherine Innes-Parker (York, 2009), pp. 115–31; Memoriale Credencium: A Late Middle English Manual of Theology for Lay People, ed. J.

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prose could hardly have avoided becoming familiar with it in multiple forms. The beautiful concision that characterizes the Mirror in all three of its languages, ‘simply’ written ‘to prevent artificiality of diction’ (‘faciliter … causa vitandi curiositatem verborum’) as the Prologue to L1 puts it, was as familiar a part of the stylistic soundscape of late Middle English religious literature as the intimate directness of Ancrene Wisse and the sonorous grandeur of Richard Rolle.9 Even before Forshaw’s edition of two of the Latin versions in 1973, which distinguishes L1 from L2 by calling the first Speculum religiosorum, the second Speculum ecclesie, scholars were already treating the work’s history as an example of another kind of mouvance: outwards from the monastic environment implied by the first title into the world of lay religiosity implied by the second.10 Largely on the basis of the treatments which its two versions give to the work’s penultimate chapter, on the ‘troiz degrez de contemplacion’, Wilshere’s 1982 edition of F also sees a shift from the earlier A version, written for professional religious, to B, an adaptation for priests and laypeople. Accounts of the text in its English instantiations follow suit, presenting the work as a crucial instance of ‘laicization’, defined by Vincent Gillespie as the ‘assimilation by the laity of techniques and materials of spiritual advancement that had historically been the preserve of the clerical and monastic orders’.11 This view is broadly congruent with the presentation of Edmund by his most celebrated hagiographer, the Benedictine Matthew Paris, in a remarkable vita that depicts the saint as an obstinately unworldly figure whose archiepiscopate ended in failure and who might have been better off as a monk.12 In this chapter I argue that this view of the work, its author, and its history nonetheless needs revising. The absence of early copies and external evidence obliges any argument about its origins to work outwards from the text itself: a process made difficult both by the abstraction that typifies Edmund’s approach to his topic – the Christian life as contemplative practice – and by frequent H. L. Kengen (Nijmegen, 1979); Anna Lewis, ‘Textual Borrowings, Theological Mobility, and the Lollard Pater Noster Commentary’, Philological Quarterly 88 (2009), 1–23. 9 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 28/3–4 (references to L1 are by page/line number). 10 E.g., W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 223–4, and Eric Colledge, The Medieval Mystics of England (NewYork, 1961), pp. 50– 4. The chief exception was Robbins, Le Merure. 11 Vincent Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Books of Religion’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 317– 44 (p. 317). 12 See especially caps. 27–49, a litany of humiliations, in Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 249–71, translated in Lawrence, Life of St Edmund, pp. 143–61. Although other thirteenth-century writers represent Edmund as a strong archbishop in the direct line of Becket, in modern times Matthew’s characterization of his unworldliness has been widely influential.

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lack of agreement between the two versions of the work that can claim any textual authority, L1 and the A version of F.13 However, an analysis of the Mirror’s somewhat elusive addresses to a succession of imagined or potential audiences suggests that it was written neither for the male monastics that Lawrence, Forshaw, and Wilshere take to have been its original recipients, nor for professional religious more broadly, but was always meant to reach the mixed religious, secular, and lay audience that read the work in practice. Moreover, it was meant to do so primarily through the efforts of the group who emerge from the analysis as its initial addressees, members of the secular clergy. Rightly disputing an old tradition that identifies the Mirror with Edmund’s dying days at Pontigny, Lawrence suggests that the work was composed during a year which Edmund spent living with the Augustinian canons at Merton in 1213–14.14 I argue that it instead belongs to the decade he spent at Salisbury in the 1220s and early 1230s, between his years at Oxford and his election as archbishop, and represents his response to the distinctive spiritual culture he found there. The Mirror is another of the many contributions to Christian worship and practice associated with medieval Salisbury, and a major witness to the religiosity of the community at the heart of the diocese: the cathedral’s secular canons, the group for whose immediate benefit I believe it was written. This matters for two interrelated reasons. First, it helps to explain some puzzling features of the Mirror, including the work’s unusual account of contemplative practice as incorporating preaching, teaching, and other works of the activa vita; its assumption that the ‘perfect’ life is open, in principle, to all; and its subdued but persistent concern with spiritual status, a topic that had preoccupied the Salisbury canons since their foundation. Second, it allows us to situate the Mirror near the beginning of the late-medieval explosion of material written for and about the secular clergy and their spiritual aspirations that Vincent Gillespie has done much to illuminate.15 Despite his pointed 13 As noted, e.g., by Wilshere, ed., Mirour, pp. xiv–xvii, who cites several instances in which the A version of F may be closer to what Edmund wrote than L1, establishing that its witness needs to be taken seriously. 14 Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 121–2; Life of St Edmund, p. 12; Wilshere, ed., Mirour, pp. xviii–xix, which traces the tradition of a Pontigny provenance ‘at least’ back to the first printed edition of 1519. 15 Vincent Gillespie, ‘The Literary Form of the Middle English Pastoral Manuals, with Particular Reference to the Speculum Christiani and some related texts’, unpubl. D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1981); ‘Doctrina and Predicacio: The Design and Function of some Pastoral Manuals’, in Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout, 2011), pp.  3–20; ‘The Cibus Anime Book 3: a Guide for Contemplatives?’, Analecta Cartusiana 35 (Salzburg, 1983), pp. 90–119; ‘Building a Bestseller: The Priest, the Peartree, and the Compiler’, in ‘This tretice, by me compiled’: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout, forthcoming).

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inclusion of the ‘clerical … orders’ within his account of laicization, scholars too often view the phenomenon solely in relation to monastic writers, texts, and practices of ‘spiritual advancement’, implicitly conceding the truth of an account of the secular clergy as, by and large, an unimpressive group, most notable for the ‘ignorantia’ attributed to them in the most celebrated medieval English characterization of their capacities, the decree Ignorantia Sacedortum issued by archbishop John Pecham of Canterbury in 1281.16 This essay contributes to an ongoing reappraisal of this outdated but abiding account. ‘Videte vocacionem vestram’ Videte vocacionem vestram (1 Cor 1:16). Ceo moz de l’apostle partinent a nus gent de religion. ‘Veez’, fet il, ‘a quey vus estes apellee’. E ço dist il pur nus exciter a perfection. E pur ço, quele hure qe jo pense de mey memes, de nuyt u de jur, de une part ay jo joie grant, de autre part grant dolur: joie pur la seinte religion, dolur e confusion pur ma fieble conversacion. E ço n’est pas merveile, ke jo ay grant enchesun. Kar issi dist seint Eusebie en un sermon: ‘Venir a religion est sovereyne perfection, nent parfitement vivre suvereine dampnation’. E pur ço n’avét turn ke un, vus ki vivét en religion, ço est trayre a la voye de perfection, si com vuz volez vostre salvation, lesser quantke est en ço mund e quancke a luy apent, e mettre vostre poer de vivre parfitement.17 (Consider your calling. This saying of the apostle pertains to us religious people. ‘Consider’, he says, ‘to what you have been called’. And he says this to excite us to perfection. And on this account, as often as I think of myself, by night or by day, on the one hand I have great joy, on the other hand great sorrow: joy for holy religion, sorrow and confusion for my feeble conversation. Nor is this any wonder, since I have good reason for this. For the blessed Eusebius says this in a sermon: ‘To come to religion is highest perfection; not to live perfectly deepest damnation’. And thus there is no recourse but one, you who live the religious life: that is, to take yourself to the way of perfection, as you desire your salvation; to leave all that is in the world and all that pertains to it; and to apply your whole energy to live perfectly.)

If we read the first chapter of the Mirror in F or one of its descendants – the only form in which the chapter was available to scholars before the appearance 16 Councils and Synods II, A.D. 1025–1313: Part II, 1265–1313, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964), pp. 900–5. 17 Wilshere, ed., Mirour, A version, Chapter 1 (all translations are my own). For the source, see Eusebius Gallicanus Collectivio Homiliarum, ed. F. Glorie, CCSL 101A (Turnhout, 1970–71), pp.  522–30. For a recent close comparative reading of L1 and F1, see Laura Ashe, The Oxford English Literary History vol. 1: 1000–1350. Conquest and Transformation (Oxford, 2017), pp. 335–43.

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of Forshaw’s edition of L1 – the view that the work was written for monastics seems inevitable. Here ‘seynt Edmund de Pounteny’ addresses a professional religious readership among whom he numbers himself (‘nus gent de religion’), urging them to identify their vocacio not with the monastic life in itself but with its goal, ‘perfection’. Yet in this form the chapter has two curious features. First, its title, ‘Coment homme deit regarder sun estat’ (‘how a person should consider his estate’), suggests a more general address than the chapter itself, one more congruent with the title given the work in most copies of F, Mirour de Seinte Eglise, which may well derive from Edmund’s original Latin.18 Second, although several of his siblings became monks or nuns, Edmund cannot have referred to himself as a genz de religion because he was not a member of a religious order but a secular cleric. This point is made repeatedly by his vitae, which (despite deriving from sharply differing institutional perspectives) all emphasize the fact that he went about clad ‘in habitu seculari’, the holiness of his manner and conversation despite this garb as much a matter of surprise to the Cistercians of Pontigny in 1240 as to the Augustinians of Merton twenty-five years earlier.19 Indeed, the vitae agree that Edmund’s ability to maintain a rigorous round of prayer and ascetic practice in seculo was essential to his claim to sanctity. Especially when read in the light of his biography, the opening of F raises more questions than at first appear. While it, too, raises questions, the chapter in L1 may be closer to what Edmund first wrote: Videte vocacionem vestram (1 Cor 1.26). Verbum hoc apostoli precipue competit religiosis, quod ipsos excitat ad vite perfectionem per crebram sui consideracionem. Quociens meipsum considero ex una parte multum gaudeo, ex alia vero multum doleo. Gaudeo plane pro sancta religione; doleo pro mea debili et imperfecta conversacione. Nec est mirum. Dicit enim beatus Eusebius in quodam sermone: ‘religionem intrare summe perfectionis est; imperfecte20 vivere summe dampnacionis est’. Unde religioso summe necessarium est vivere perfecte, id est, ad viam et formam perfectionis tendere. Cum ergo consilio Domini religionem 18 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, declares that ‘the title of the original Latin text was Speculum Religiosorum’ (p. 1). Yet this title is not found in the acephalous Hatton 26, occuring in only three, closely related late copies of L1 (C1–C3); it may have been modelled on that of the work’s opening chapter in L1. The title Mirour de seinte eglise is frequent in copies of F. 19 The Merton canons exclaim over how Edmund, ‘inter seculares gradiens non solum religiosus sed etiam forma tocius religionis inter eos videbatur’, in the Vita of Eustace of Faversham; the Cistercians ‘Mirabuntur utique tantam in seculari vigere religionem’ in the Vita of Matthew Paris: Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 207, 263. 20 Forshaw adds ‘in ea’, from other MSS of L1 as well as the source; omitted here because not in F.

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N ich ol as Wats on ingrediens adhesisti, illud ne deseras, [si salutem tuam desideras],21 sed ex toto mundum relinque et quicquid ad eum pertinet, et totum appone conatum summamque diligenciam ut perfecte vivas.22 (Consider your calling. This saying of the apostle especially pertains to religious, which urges them to perfection of life through frequent reflection on the same. As often as I reflect upon myself, on the one hand I rejoice greatly on the other I greatly grieve. I rejoice exclusively on behalf of holy religion; I grieve for my feeble and imperfect conversation. Nor is this any wonder. For the blessed Eusebius says in a certain sermon: ‘to enter religion is the height of perfection; to live imperfectly is the depth of damnation’. Hence it is above all necessary to a religious person to live perfectly, that is, to strive towards the way and the form of perfection. So you who with God’s counsel have determined to undertake religion, do not abandon it if you desire your salvation, but wholly relinquish the world and whatever pertains to it, and apply your whole energy and highest love that you may live perfectly.)

Here Edmund no longer identifies directly with ‘religiosis’, who are described in the third person, not the first, and whose special association with the ‘perfect life’ is stated more emphatically than in F. Besides including an extra sentence on ‘religiosis’, the chapter in L1 carries the title ‘Qualiter quisque religiosus status suum tenetur observare’ (‘how every religious person should be careful to consider his estate’). On the other hand, he still treats himself as if he were religiosus, heeding the call to give crebra consideratio to the perfect life, finding both joy and grief at the thought of sancta religio, and justifying these responses by quoting Eusebius Gallicanus, who threatens damnation to all whose conversacio is as inadequate as Edmund acknowledges his to be. This narratorial stance is again congruent with the vitae, which praise the ‘marvellous fervour of [Edmund’s] religion’ (‘mirabili religionis fervore’) and the ‘true concord’ that his life exhibited ‘between perfect religion and the world’ (‘veram concordiam religionis perfecte cum seculo’), one of the qualities said to have first brought him to the attention of Richard Poore, bishop of Salisbury.23 Although I will have more to say on this issue later, the imagined addressee of the chapter, one who has ‘entered’ or ‘undertaken’ religio, may here be religiosus, professed as a monk, canon, friar, nun, hermit, or anchorite.24 21 Not in Hatton but included here because found both in other MSS of L1 and in F. 22 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 32/3–14. Translations are my own, although I have gratefully consulted David J. Theroux, S.S.E., Edmund of Abingdon’s Mirror of Religious: A Translation with an Introduction (St Michael’s College, privately printed, 1990). 23 Both phrases are from the vita by Anonymous C, perhaps a Salisbury canon. See Wallace, Life of Edmund, pp. 608, 604. 24 On the word religio and its associations in the Mirror, see Cate Gunn, ‘Reading Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum as Pastoral Literature’, in Texts and Traditions, ed. Gunn and

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But Edmund’s public commitment to religio despite his secular status suggests that the implied readership of the chapter is wider, potentially comprising any member of the church who practises renunciation to follow the way of perfection. Sancta religio, L1 carefully posits, is not, after all, for religiosi alone. ‘Sufficientem habes … materiam’ After Chapter 1, Edmund leaves the topic of religio, to touch briefly on what it means to ‘live perfectly’, the subject of Chapter 2, and then goes on to extrapolate at length the answers to this question given by this chapter. ‘Perfecte vivere’ is to live ‘honourably towards God’ (‘honorabiliter quoad Deum’), with the moment-by-moment attention to his will in thought, word, and deed, and in all the perceptions, motions, and postures of the body, that is the primary road to fulfilling God’s will for ‘santificacio vestra’.25 Such attention, which begins with the rigorous inculcation of ‘knowledge of the truth’ (‘cognitio veritatis’), is attained in part through paraliturgical and meditative practices of self-knowledge (Chapters 3–4), but mainly through contemplation of God in his creation (Chapter 5), the Scriptures (Chapters 6–16), and his human and divine natures (Chapters 17–24, 25–29). In practice, this threefold enquiry into God through contemplation also includes: 1 A guide to living, via exposition of the structures of knowledge, belief, and prayer essential for this purpose that comprise the central chapters on the Scriptures. 2 A double set of paraliturgical meditations on Christ’s earthly life according to the canonical hours, so that none ‘goes by without your being caught up sweetly in God’ (‘ut nulla hora te pretereat quin valeas in Deo dulciter occupari’: p. 82/21–22). 3 Two sets of reflections on God’s nature, as revealed (a) through the reason by enquiry into the principles of being, (b) through the soul, made in the image of God and greater by far than the entire material creation, by way of the apprehension of God (i) in itself, (ii) around itself, (iii) lastly, ‘all bodily images banished’ (‘omnem ymaginacionem corporalem … relegare’: p. 104/23), above itself.

Parker, pp. 100–14 (pp. 104–7). 25 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 32/17–34.7.

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N ich ol as Wats on Fig. 2.2  General Structure of The Mirror of Holy Church according to L1 1 Introductory a Incipit and list of 30 chapters b Chs. 1–2: Introduction i Religio requires religiosi and others to learn perfecte vivere ii Perfecte vivere means to live honorabiliter, amicabiliter, humiliter, in pursuit of the voluntas Dei, that is, sanctificacio vestra

2 Living Honorabiliter via Cognicio Veritatis: Meditation on the Self c Ch. 3. Knowledge of One’s Failings, through frequent recollection d Ch. 4. Knowledge of God’s Kindnesses, with daily prayers and exercises

3 Living Honorabiliter via Cognicio Veritatis: Three Modes of Contemplation of God

e Ch. 5. In the Creation. f Chs. 6–16. In the Scriptures iii Chs. 7–10. Seven Sins, Seven Evangelical Virtues, Seven Gifts of Spirit, Ten Commandments iv Chs. 11–14. Three Theological Virtues, Twelve Articles of Faith including Seven Sacraments, Four Cardinal Virtues, Six Works of Mercy v Chs. 15–16. Seven Petitions in Pater Noster, Seven Bodily and Spiritual Dotes in Heaven, Seven Pains of Hell g Chs. 17–24. In His Humanity, via Meditations According to the Canonical Hours vi Ch. 18. Before Matins: Nativity and Betrayal vii Ch. 19. Before Prime: Buffeting and Resurrection Appearances viii Ch. 20. Before Terce: Flagellation and Pentecost ix Ch. 21. Before Sext: Incarnation and Crucifixion x Ch. 22. Before Nones: Death and Ascension xi Ch. 23. Before Vespers: Deposition from Cross and Last Supper xii Ch. 24. Before Compline: Entombement and Agony in Garden h Chs. 25–29. In His Divinity, Where He Lies Partly Revealed, Partly Concealed xiii Ch. 26. Through the Reason, via Inquiry into the Self and Its Origins xiv Chs. 27–28. Through the Reason, via Inquiry into the Principles of Being xv Ch. 29. Through the Threefold Contemplation of God in the Soul, in His Qualities, and in His Imageless Being

4 Living Amicabiliter and Humiliter via Dilectio Bonitatis

xvi Ch. 30. Proper ordering of love for neighbour and for God. Conclusion

Finally, ‘perfecte vivere’, which demands ‘love of goodness’ (‘dilectio bonitatis’) as well as ‘knowledge of the truth’, also requires Christians to live ‘amicably in relation to neighbours’ (‘amicabiliter quoad proximi’) and ‘humbly’ (‘humiliter’) in relation to the self and to God: topics announced in Chapter 2 as the second and third heads under which ‘perfecte vivere’ is to be discussed, and given brief treatment in the work’s last chapter (Chapter 30). With the

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exception of one key passage, religiosi and their special claims to perfection cease to occupy the work’s attention.26 Instead, the exposition opens out to address a series of different imagined audiences. Representatives of these audiences appear in the text on four occasions, in three of them as fictional interlocutors, starting with the generic ‘aliquis’ who asks ‘what is God’s will?’ (‘Que sit voluntas Dei?’), at the end of Chapter 2, then continuing more pointedly with a ‘laicus vel illiteratus’ who is anxious that his or her inability to ‘understand letters’ (‘litteras … intelligit’) makes contemplation of God in the Scriptures impossible, in Chapter 6. This second figure has to be reassured that Latin competency is not necessary in order to carry out this mode of contemplation, since ‘what can be written can also be spoken and expounded’ (‘quod potest scribi, potest pronuciari et exponi’): Unde si non intelligas, audi doctores ecclesie predicatores et sic intelliges. Et quando quod audieris de Scripturis in communi sermone sive in speciali colloquio sive collucucione, statim attende et attencius perpende quid tibi prodesse poterit ad salutem.27 (So if you do not understand, hear doctors and preachers of the church, and so you will understand. And when you hear something from the Scriptures, whether in public discourses or in private colloquia or conversation, listen urgently and attentively assess what can profit you towards salvation.)

The reduction of God’s word to an ensuing series of briefly expounded lists responds to this unlearned reader’s need to read the Scriptures salvifically and tropologically, and shows how the ‘cognicio veritatis’ to which the Mirror points is initially practical, not speculative, in orientation. The appearance of this non-literate interlocutor also supports the view that Edmund was not writing wholly for religiosi. Yet nor was he directly writing in Latin to laici et illiterati. The chapters on the Scriptures also include two more addresses to readers. One is an individual religiosus: specifically, a ‘claustralis’ (monk or nun), who interrupts the exposition of the works of mercy in Chapter 14 in uncertainty, noting that ‘I cannot carry out the works of mercy since I have placed myself freely here under another’s rule’, to conclude that ‘it seems better for me to lead a secular life in which such things can be performed’ (‘Ego quidem non possum facere opera misericordie, quoniam hic sum ab aliena potestate me sponte supposui. Unde michi melius videtur vitam ducere secularem, in qua possunt talia exerceri’: p. 70/1–4). Although this comment confirms that the contemplative life is not for religiosi alone, Edmund is again 26 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, pp. 34/12–13, 108/23–24, 110/12. 27 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, pp. 34/6, 46/35–48/6.

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reassuring. Since intention is infinitely greater than action, it is better to have pity for others’ pain than to be able to give the whole world to the poor (‘melius est habere misericordiam … sub aliena miseria quam totum mundum posse pauperibus erogare’). Morever, is it not true, both that to judge is better than to be judged, and that ‘pauperes’ will judge ‘divites’ at the Last Day? 28 The other addressee, who appears at the end of the section on the Scriptures in Chapter 16, is different, not only because he does not first ask a question, but also because in speaking to him Edmund emphasizes the suitability of this section for this kind of reader, not its likely difficulties: Explicit secundum genus contemplacionis que est in Scripturis. … Si habeas enim prescripta, cum theologicis, quantemcumque sciencie fuerint, loquendi habes materia; et cum laicis, quantemcumque fuerint ruditatis, colloquendi habes et docenti facultatem. Nam cum sapientibus colloquendo proponere poteris aliquam materiam prelibatam; quando vero cum ignorantibus habueris colloquium, libenter et benigne doctrine dulce poculum teneris propinare. Sufficientem enim habes colloquendi materiam, vitam dirigendi propriam, et aliorum mores in melius corrigendi. (pp. 80/25–82/6) (Here ends the second kind of contemplation, by way of the Scriptures. … If you have what is written above, you have material for speaking with theologians, however great their knowledge may be; and with the laity, however great their ignorance, you have what is needed to converse and to teach. For when you are conversing with the wise you will be able to propose some of the topics just discussed; but when you are conversing with the ignorant you are obliged to pledge the cup of sweet doctrine freely and willingly. Thus you have enough material for conversation; for arranging your own life; and for correcting the behaviour of others for the better.)

Edmund’s materials on the Scriptures – represented as situated half way between the scholarship of learned theologians and the needs of the ignorantes – should be used by this figure both for personal sanctification through contemplation and in study, teaching, and ethical correction. Were it not for this last passage, we might conclude that the work is being written with no particular readership in mind, gradually working its way outwards from its opening address to religiosi to incorporate all the estates of Holy Church without having any direct plan of action as to how to reach this broad readership in practice. However, because the figure addressed here is clearly crucial to this plan, and because his professional status (unlike that of earlier addressees) need not be identified, he presumably represents the actual readership for whom the Mirror was first written. 28 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 70/6–7, 13–14.

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‘Qui sunt veri pauperes’ Can we say anything more specific about this readership? If Lawrence is right that the work belongs to Edmund’s year at Merton in 1213–14 – which Matthew Paris says he spent in fierce theological study, while participating with intense fervour in the divine office29 – it would indeed likely consist of regular canons: religiosi with pastoral responsibilities to the laity, such as the Augustinians who made and owned the Hatton copy of L1. This possibility does not account for the quiet struggle for possession of the word religio in Chapter 1. But it does much to account for the somewhat hybrid nature of the work, especially if we identify the addressees of Chapter 16 with the ‘doctores ecclesie predicatores’ of Chapter 6, who teach the Scriptures to the ‘illiteratus vel laicus’ by preaching or ‘in speciali colloquio’. As contemplatives who also had pastoral obligations, regular canons would have the structurally doubled relationship with the Mirror that Chapter 16 describes and that its address to various constituencies enables, now reading it for their own benefit, now using it in teaching others. It is not surprising that regular canons remained among the work’s most faithful readers in practice. A second possibility, however, is that the readership Edmund had in mind in Chapter 16 consisted primarily of secular priests like Edmund himself: another group who might be expected to read the Mirror simultaneously for devotional and pastoral purposes. One further passage, the sequel to the answer given the ‘claustralis’ in Chapter 14, especially points towards this conclusion. In responding to the thought that it might be better for a ‘claustralis’ to live the ‘vitam … secularem’ and perform the works of mercy, rather than continue a life of sequestered obedience and voluntary poverty, Edmund proposes a reading of one of the Beatitudes, ‘blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God’ (‘Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum est regnum celorum’: Matt. 5:3), around a careful reconsideration of poverty and riches.30 Like the ‘avari et cupidi’ who both possess and love wealth, those ‘mendici miseri’ and ‘falsi religiosi’ who long for riches they do not have are reproved by God as though they were rich (‘divites’), and may no more ‘enter the kingdom of heaven’ (‘intrare in regnum celorum’) than a camel may pass through a needle’s eye (Matt. 19:24).31 In the same way, like the ‘vere religiosi’ who desire the poverty to which they are vowed, ‘boni seculares’ who have wealth but do not desire it are judged by God as though they were ‘pauperes’: Quidam habent eas sed non diligunt eas; tamen possidere volunt, et non ab eius possidere, ut proprium, sed ad bonum usum et utilitatem proximorum, ut 29 Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 230–2. 30 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 70/17–18. 31 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, pp. 70/24–72/2.

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N ich ol as Wats on boni seculares bene sua dispensantes. Sed pauci sunt tales. Quidam autem sunt tales qui nec habent, nec habere cupiunt, nec eas diligunt, nec omnino possidere volunt, ut sunt sancti viri vere religiosi. Hii sunt vere pauperes quorum est regnum celorum. (p. 72/2–8) (Some people have [riches] but do not desire them. Though they wish to possess them as their own, and not be possessed by them, they want this for the good use and service of their neighbours. These are good seculars, who dispose of their goods well. But there are few of these. And there are some people who neither have, nor desire to have, nor love them, nor want to possess them at all. These are holy men who are truly religious. Such are truly the poor, whose is the kingdom of heaven.)

The passage leaves it grammatically open whether the ‘vere pauperes’ consist of both ‘boni seculares’ and ‘vere religiosi’, or this second group alone. Yet Edmund’s intent is clearly to include ‘boni seculares’ among the true poor who have heaven in both ‘promissione’ and ‘possessione’. Although neither here nor later does the text suggest a connection between ‘boni seculares’ and the clerical readers addressed in Chapter 16, the connection may be the key to this discussion, which is curiously tangential to its immediate context, successfully functioning neither as a reply to the ‘claustralis’ nor as direct exposition of the works of mercy, the chapter’s declared theme. A rare digression in a tightly focused work, it apparently responds to a pressure external to the text itself. Any such pressure would be partly personal. As his vitae suggest, Edmund was as much preoccupied with how to dispose his wealth virtuously as he was with his fierce regime of prayer, study, and selfdenial. Now conspicuously frugal (as when refusing to pay a dowry to enable his two sisters to enter a religious house), now effusively extravagant (as when giving away ‘omnia … que habebit’ on his election as archbishop), his concern to be numbered with the ‘boni seculares’ who use their wealth well was as clear to contemporaries as it was evidently thought appropriate to the devout inheritor of a small bourgeois fortune. No reader who knew the author’s identity would miss the self-referential character of a passage which turns on the Latin form of Edmund Rich’s family name, Divites.32 Yet the passage does not only remind us of the author’s wealth. It alludes to the institutional context of that wealth: Edmund’s profession as a cleric, living the ‘vitam … secularem’, whose engagement in worldly commerce 32 Incidents reported by Anonymous C in his vita, in Wallace, Life of Edmund, pp. 595–6, 609. ‘Divites’ and ‘divicias’ occur seven times in the course of Chapter 14, five of them in its final section. On Edmund’s family name, see David N. Bell, ‘The Mirror of the Church of Saint Edmund of Abingdon Revisited’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 51 (2016), 157–80; Matthew Paris’s vita, in Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, p. 222.

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was no personal matter, but integral to his priestly duties. In principle, the twice-repeated word secularis might refer to anyone not religiosus, including Chapter 6’s laicus.33 In practice, Edmund’s presence in the passage, and that of the ‘claustralis’ who introduces the possibility that the ‘vitam … secularem’ is superior to the vita religiosa, focus the discussion around the sole estate of Holy Church that the Mirror does not otherwise mention: the secular clergy, the one group of ordained clerics who took no vow of poverty. What is more, the work does so in a manner that prompts direct comparison between the lives of claustrales and seculares, whose most virtuous members, despite their wealth, here have as secure a claim on the ‘regnum celorum’ as the best religiosi. This comparison would have little urgency for the Augustinians of Merton, nor for religiosi in general, and would be of only general pertinence to many members of the secular clergy, whose lives were quite different from those of religiosi. But it might be of extraordinary interest to secular clerics living in community, whose way of life most nearly resembled that of claustrales, and who had most both to gain and to lose by the comparison which the chapter quietly but distinctly urges upon us. Chapter 14 thus makes best sense if we assume that the Mirror was aimed not at regular canons but at secular canons, and that it sets out to uphold their way of life. It seems most likely, then, that Edmund did not write the Mirror for religiosi during his years as an Oxford magister, but at a later moment, when he himself was part of a secular community and had an interest in affirming its status and helping to shape its self-understanding. To understand the work’s complex layering of address to imagined audiences and the moments of carefully contained anxiety and assertiveness that they precipitate, we thus at turn last, in the final section of this essay, to early thirteenth-century Salisbury. ‘Omnes sanctorum ordines in terra’ The community of secular canons which Edmund joined in 1222 was both old and new. Founded after the diocese of Sherborne was moved to Sarum in the 1070s, and well resourced from the start, fifty years later the canons had already acquired an impressive cathedral in which to worship, a substantial library, and a distinctive institutional identity, manifested both in the distinctive collection of books they copied and annotated and in the organization 33 DMLBS, s.v. ‘saecularis’, online at [accessed 13 June 2018], offers both ‘lay’ and ‘member of clergy not under obedience to a monastic or sim. rule’. In F, the ‘claustralis’ suggests becoming ‘seculere’, preserving L1’s first use of the term, but translates ‘boni seculares’ as ‘prudeshummes de ço secle’ (‘worthy people of this world’), rendered by L2 as ‘probi homines illius mundi’: Wilshere, ed., Mirour, Chapter 16.11, 56–7; Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 73/5. F here either misses the sense of L1 or deliberately adapts the text for a different readership.

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of the site itself, which suggests their commitment to living some form of common life.34 During the early 1200s, however, two bishops, Herbert Poore and his successor and brother Richard, took the much-publicized decision to translate the cathedral from its hilltop site within a castle to a site in the valley, free from associations with martial violence and royal power.35 Edmund’s arrival thus took place during a time of remarkable creative ferment for the community. The design of the cathedral, fully complete before building got underway in 1220, offered a ‘brilliant reflection of the modernist vision of the reformed church’ formally birthed by the Fourth Lateran Council a few years earlier, in its soaring vertical lines, lucid disposition of internal space, and scrupulous decorative restraint.36 What is more, starting in 1217, Richard Poore had begun to lay out what we can think of as an analogous vision of the diocese over which he and the canons exercised spiritual authority, through synodal statutes that sought to discipline clerical belief and behaviour and systematize pastoral care and parish worship as the Council had decreed.37 These statutes proved almost as influential as another work that was systematized at this period: the Sarum Rite, an adaptation of the monastic liturgical round to the needs of a secular institution, that in time spread across almost the entire ecclesia Anglicana.38 Salisbury’s ability to attract a figure of Edmund’s stature from Oxford to the ‘flowing waters’ of the ‘valleys of mount Syon’ – there to be ‘planted among the nobler trees’ as treasurer, as one hagiographer put it – and to grow his reputation as preacher, scholar, and administrator to the point that he was appointed archbishop eleven years later, is one among many signs of the prestige enjoyed by its bishops and canons during this era.39 34 On the library, see Theresa Webber, Scribes and Scholars of Salisbury Cathedral, 1075– 1125 (Oxford, 1992). On the site, see John Montague, ‘The Cloister and Bishop’s Palace at Old Sarum with Some Thoughts on the Origins and Meaning of Secular Cathedral Cloisters’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 159 (2006), 48–70. On the common life in early twelfth-century Salisbury, see D. E. Greenway, ‘The false Institutio of St Osmund’, in Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall, ed. D. Greenway, C. Holdsworth, and J. Sayers (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 77–101. 35 For a synthetic account, see Christian Frost, Time, Space, and Order: The Making of Medieval Salisbury (Bern, 2009). 36 Matthew M. Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting of Salisbury Cathedral: Art, Liturgy, and Reform (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 49. For a study of cathedral building at this period in the context of theological, aesthetic, and institutional developments see Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170–1300 (New Haven, 2004). 37 Councils and Synods II, A.D. 1025–1313: Part I, 1205–1265, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964), pp. 57–96; C. R. Cheney, ‘The Earliest English Diocesan Statutes’, English Historical Review 75 (1960), 1–18. 38 Richard W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge, 2009), especially pp. 365–87. 39 Anonymous C, vita, in Wallace, Life of Edmund, pp. 604–5: ‘Tot mirabilia sapienter expertus vir venerabilis et discretus Ricardus, Episcopus Sarisburiensis, urbis translator

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Mindful of Edmund’s years in Salisbury, scholars sometimes point to similarities between the Mirror’s section on the contemplation of God in the Scriptures and the sections of Poore’s statutes that deal with the creed, deadly sins, and sacraments, noting that Poore, Edmund, and others at Salisbury are all likely to have studied at Paris under the future archbishop, Stephen Langton, and that the cathedral subdean, the preacher Thomas Chobham, was an important theorist of pastoral care.40 In the same vein, we may note the congruity between the cultivation of a biblically inspired plain style for Salisbury’s new cathedral and its worship and the Mirror’s ethical aesthetic, manifested both in its opening eschewal of ‘curiositatem verborum’ and its repudiation of ‘words composed in meter or in an elaborate style’ (‘verbis rithmicis aut curioso dictamine compositis’) in preference to words ‘declared and taught by God himself ’ (‘posuit ipse Deus et docuit’) in the recitation of private prayers, the subject of a polemical digression in Chapter 15.41 The prayers and meditations of the Mirror, some of them said morning and evening, others before each of the canonical hours, could readily be used as private additions to the Salisbury version of the Daily Office. What is more, they could as easily be adapted to the simpler liturgies of the parishes to which over half the cathedral’s 106 canons were appointed as prebendaries, and where many may have lived for much of each year.42 magnificus ... considerans et admirans Eadmundi tot excellencias; et quod vernans, florens, fructificans; vernans virtute, florens sciencia, fructificansque doctrina, secud irriguos decursos aquarum in vallibus montis Syon, in locis virentibus, inter ligna plantari nobilia dignus esset (cf. Psalm 1:3).’ (‘The bishop of Salisbury, Richard [Pore], the noble translator of the city, a learned, worthy and sensible man, wise in such marvelous doings, considered and wondered at such excellences in Edmund. Since Edmund was burgeoning, flowering, and bearing fruit ­– burgeoning in virtue, flowering in learning, and bearing fruit through teaching – he judged him worthy to be planted among the worthier trees in the verdant places, like a well-watered plant besides the streams in the valleys of mount Syon.’) 40 See, e.g., Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall-Painting, pp. 23–27; Andrew Reeves, Religious Education in Thirteenth-Century England: The Creed and Articles of the Faith (Leiden, 2015), pp. 133–40, which situates the Mirror within the wider episcopal program of lay education inaugurated by Poore’s statutes but suggests its possible influence on that programme. 41 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 74/3, part of a passage that might be taken as an attack on the Anselmian tradition of heavily rhetorical and personal prayer. Reeve, ThirteenthCentury Wall Painting, pp. 42–9, is concerned to qualify scholarly claims that Salisbury was visually austere, while noting the building’s regularity, and refusal of extra-biblical ornamentation. 42 For the lives of secular canons, see Julia Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval West: Secular Clerics, Their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c. 1200 (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 269–309; David Lepine, A Brotherhood of Canons Serving God: English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1995). For Salisbury’s residence rules at this period, see Charters and Documents Illustrating the History of the Cathedral, City and Diocese of Salisbury in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, ed. W. H. R. Jones and

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Indeed, the whole project of sanctification outlined by the work has the same mobility as its chapters on the Scriptures, and might be helpful to the canons in one way during periods residing ‘cum theologicis’ at Salisbury, and in another in periods spent ‘cum laicis’, ‘cum ignorantibus’, or cum claustrales, wherever their responsibilities took them. Defining sanctification as the goal of the perfect life, the work in practice outlines a programme mainly consisting of meditative or contemplative exercises, mixed with pastoral teaching and doubling as a course of intensive theological study. One way to think about the Mirror in a Salisbury context is thus as a vade-mecum, meant to help readers to carry a private version of the ethos of the Salisbury community with them into the saeculum, where it was still their duty to live (in Edmund’s notably secularizing phrase) ‘honorabiliter quoad Deum’.43 However, there is also another way to think about the Mirror in this context: as an attempt to define the way of life of secular canons as a way of perfection, similar in dignity to that of religiosi, despite involvement in worldly pursuits and financial dealings that made it also similar in kind to that of laici. Like members of other secular communities, many Salisbury canons lived on income derived from their parishes, but were obliged to use part of their wealth to sustain the activities of their cathedral. For Edmund, whose income came from one of the diocese’s richest livings at Calne, this meant heavy expenses, connected first to his position as treasurer, responsible for the building’s crosses, reliquaries, and other precious objects; second, to the building works, to which canons of his day made major contributions; third, to his obligations to perform the works of mercy, a formal duty of canons with which they had become closely identified.44 Even though such expenses were necessary, however, witnesses to his life at this period such as Richard Dunstable, a member of his Salisbury familia, suggest that he remained preoccupied with his status as dives, making public displays both of personal generosity and of W. D. Macray (London, 1891), pp. 209–10. According to the vita by Anonymous A, Edmund himself was often out of residence, spending time at his parish, touring the country preaching, and on monastic retreats: Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 122–4; Life of St Edmund, pp. 36–43. 43 Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p.  32/19, a deliberate misquotation of Edmund’s source, Bernard’s Sermo I in sollemnitate Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, which reads not ‘honorabiliter’ but ‘ordinaliter’. See Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq et al., 8 vols. (Rome, 1957–77), V. 190. Forshaw’s insertion from this source at p. 32/18–19 is in no copy of L1 and should be rejected. 44 See Sarum Customary Online [accessed 13 June 2018], 5.1–2; Vetus Registrum Sarisberiense, ed. W. H. Rich Jones, 2 vols. (London, 1883–84), II. 8, 41; David Lepine, ‘Cathedrals and Charity: Almsgiving at English Secular Cathedrals in the Later Middle Ages’, English Historical Review 126 (2011), 1066–96. The testimony of Edmund’s chancellor, Robert, identifies his time at Salisbury with the ‘operibus misericordie’ in the Quadrilogus: Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, p. 193.

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indifference to wealth, sometimes outspending his considerable income in the process.45 Moreover, while documents like the Sarum Customary are matterof-fact about the canons’ involvement with money, there are signs that he was not alone in his concerns. While they can be noted only in summary form here, parallels between the Mirror and two earlier Salisbury texts appear to situate the work within a long-established community tradition of rumination on wealth, spiritual status, and the place of secular canons in the life of Holy Church more broadly. One of these texts is the Meditationes Godwini, written by a Salisbury cantor, Godwin (fl. 1122), a defence of the dignity of all the estates of Christian life, especially those of secular canons.46 Like Edmund’s Chapter 14, the Meditationes is a commentary on Matthew 5:3, ‘Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniam ipsorum et reginum celorum’, and makes resourceful use of the terms pauperes and divites to consolidate a distinction between the materially poor and the pauperes spiritu, and so create a space in heaven for the virtuous but materially rich, clerical and lay. Also like Edmund’s chapter, the work makes much of the contrast which Jesus draws in Matthew 19 between those who give away their all to attain perfection, and the rich who squeeze into heaven like a camel through a needle’s eye. Writing when distinctions between the orders of the church were still solidifying, Godwin offers a fiercer defence of those who do not practise voluntary poverty than does Edmund, attacking monastic exegesis of verses that privilege the lives of religiosi: ‘What then? Did the Lord mean this saying to exclude every rich person from the kingdom of heaven? Heaven forbid!’ (‘Quid ergo? Nunquid Dominus omnem diuitem a regno celorum hac sententia intendit excludere? Absit!’), he exclaims. But the structures of his argument and Edmund’s are closely related. The two men do not always agree. In discussing the need to renounce family in obedience to Matthew 19:29, Godwin reads the verse allegorically, in order to protect the lives of the married, where Edmund – writing at a time when clerical marriages were under intense institutional pressure – is more cautiously literal.47 Yet, whether or not 45 As reported in the Quadrilogus, in Lawrence, St Edmund of Abingdon, pp. 188–92. We have evidence for Edmund’s financial problems from the Vetus Registrum Sarisberiense, ed. Rich Jones, II. 65, where under the year 1226 he is one of those cited for failure to pay his contribution to the building fund. 46 This unedited work survives only in a copy owned by the Benedictine house of St Mary’s, Abingdon, where Edmund and his family had many dealings: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 96, which represents the Meditationes as addressed to a recluse named Rainilva (fol. 8r). For commentary, see Webber, Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury, pp. 123–9, which I for the most part follow here; Hugh M. Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 84–5, 355–62. 47 Digby 96, fols. 9–12. Compare Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 38/3–16, on family relationships, though Edmund, too, avoids mention of clerical celibacy. On clerical marriage across this period, see Thomas, Secular Clergy in England, pp. 154–89.

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Edmund knew the text directly, a reading of the Meditationes illuminates his choice of subjects in the Mirror, showing not only why the work opens by raising the subject of perfectio in the institutionally specific way that it does, but also why this opening then leads to a second confrontation, this time via the intrusion of the querulous ‘claustralis’, with the topic of riches discussed by Jesus in Matthew 19. The Meditationes also illuminates a feature of the Mirror that seemed so baffling to some mid twentieth-century scholars that its very integrity as a work was briefly put in doubt: its address to a range of readers as wide as ‘all orders of the saints in earth’ (‘omnes sanctorum ordines in terra’), despite its call to perfectio and a life of contemplation.48 Although Godwin writes in defence of secular clerics, he delays discussing them directly, first building a model of the perfect life applicable to all, including the laity.49 In this, he is adopting a discursive stance that is still more clearly manifest in our other early Salisbury text, the Scala virtutum, a late eleventh-century work that was still read daily in the Salisbury refectory in the fifteenth century, and was thus very probably known to Edmund.50 The Scala virtutum is an abbreviation of a seventh-century florilegium, Defensor’s Liber scintillarum, organized into an account of the Christian life as a ‘sacratissime’ ladder of thirty rungs, with faith, hope, and charity at the bottom, wisdom, good will, and perseverance at the top. The two sides of the ladder are the Eucharist and the memory of one’s baptismal vows, and it serves to enable ascent to the ‘perfection of the virtues’ (‘uirtutum perfectionem’), despite the eight enemies that seek to interrupt this process. Like the Meditationes and the Mirror, the Scala gives space to the relationship between virtue, wealth, and the works of mercy, representing almsgiving, hospitality, and visiting the sick as its seventeenth, eighteenth, and twenty-fourth rungs, and the love of money as the third of its eight deadly sins. Also like both texts, however, its model of the Christian life is general enough to be used in preaching and teaching others, including the laity. Many rungs deal with the virtues needed to live in any kind of community, whether household, monastery, or town:

48 See Dominica Legge, ‘Wanted – an Edition of St Edmund’s Merure’, Modern Language Review 54 (1959), 72–4; Eric Colledge, The Medieval Mystics of England (London, 1962), pp. 125–40; countered by Forshaw, ‘New Light on the Speculum Ecclesie’. For the quotation, see Forshaw, ed., Speculum, p. 78/2, expounding the fourth clause of the Pater Noster. 49 Webber, Scribes and Scholars, p.  127. Godwin’s discussion of the secular clergy and their relationship with monks and regular clerics begins on fol. 20, discussing the early church of Acts 4. 50 Identified and discussed in Webber, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 116–23; edited from a single early copy, pp. 171–83.

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patience, mildness, forgiveness, justice, mercy, respect for elders.51 Although it anticipates Edmund in the links it draws between the events of Christ’s passion and the canonical hours and division of the Christian life into thirty (the same number of rungs as the Mirror has chapters), the Scala has no interest in inward contemplation, a theme which Edmund develops especially from two of Godwin’s contemporaries, Hugh of Saint-Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux.52 But like the Meditationes, it helps to explain both the practical character of Edmund’s treatment of this theme and his concern to emphasize its openness to all. More specific connections between the Mirror and Salisbury texts and books such as these await study. One question that needs answering in relation to the work’s first chapter in particular is whether the canons – who made copies of a number of religious rules during the first decades of their existence, as they did the monastic sermons of Eusebius Gallicanus on which that chapter draws53 – sometimes understood or represented themselves as religiosi, at least during the first phase of their existence, despite the term that was coming to be used of their way of life, canones seculares. If they did, Edmund, influenced by this early usage, may have been attempting, at least tentatively, to revive it.54 The influence of the spiritual self-understanding of the cathedral’s secular canons on the work may prove to have been a major factor in determining the breadth both of its address and of its circulation, in all the versions and forms detailed at the outset of this essay. While the Mirror remains an example of laicization in Gillespie’s broad sense of this term as involving clerics as well as monks, that is, the work may show that this process was less linear, and less a phenomenon of the final two medieval centuries alone, than is sometimes assumed. In seeking to align the spiritual aspirations of secular canons with those of religiosi, the Mirror clearly hoped to contribute to ongoing efforts to sacralize the priestly office – efforts inscribed into the design of Salisbury’s new cathedral itself.55 Yet, despite its advocacy of the vita perfecta, the work also suggests the persistence of an older model, one that stressed the contiguity between 51 Webber, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 172–6, respectively rungs four, six, seven, fifteen, sixteen, nineteen. 52 Webber, Scribes and Scholars, p. 182, a forceful endorsement of the daily office as ‘promissionum perfectio’. On Hugh and Bernard’s influence on the Mirror, see Forshaw, ‘New Light on the Speculum Ecclesie’; Bell, ‘Mirror of the Church’. 53 Webber, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 40, 113–39. For the Salisbury copy of Eusebius Gallicanus, in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 392, which includes the homily used by Edmund, see her Appendix I. 54 Speculum virtutum seems to imply this self-understanding by describing the hours of the daily office, which the canons of course said, as ‘religionis sunt officiis deputata’; Webber, Scribes and Scholars, p. 182. 55 Reeve, Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting, pp. 31–49, drawing out parallels with Canterbury, a monastic cathedral.

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secular priests and the laity, and the availability of perfectio, however defined, to all. The twenty-third rung of the Scala virtutum is ‘exemplum bonum’, and is attained by those who ‘provide an example to all people in your thoughts, words and deeds, in your manner of being, in charity, in faith, and in every good thing (‘ut exemplum prebeatis omnibus hominibus in uos considerantibus, in uerbis, in moribus, in conuersatione, in caritate, in fide, et in omni bonitate’).56 Perhaps it was the Salisbury canons themselves of whom Edmund was thinking in naming his work, as least according to a number of thirteenthcentury copies of its French translation, the ‘mirour de seinte Eglise’.57

56 Webber, Scribes and Scholars, p. 176. 57 A version of this essay was given as the annual St Edmund of Canterbury Lecture at St Michael’s College, Vermont, on his feast day, 16 November 2015. I am grateful to the college, and to the Edmundites, for their warm hospitality.

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• 3 • The Category of the Poetic and the Work of Roger Bacon* •  Daniel Orton • Ernst Curtius, in his most well-known work, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, writes that ‘the great scholastics of the thirteenth century are not interested in poetry. You will look in vain for a scholastic vindication of it’.1 It is not until the end of the century, and within the humanist coteries of northern Italy, that we first discover the applied desire to promote the status and function of poetry and defend its appointment as an essential category of study.2 However, this enduring assessment of the period has more recently been challenged by an increasing critical awareness of the poetic and humanistic interests of the early university men.3

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Medieval Research Seminar in Oxford, March 2018. I am thankful to the participants and organizers of that event for their helpful comments. This paper is also uniquely indebted to Vincent Gillespie, whose depth of knowledge and generosity of time and counsel have been instrumental in its production. All errors are entirely my own. 1 Ernst Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard Trask (Princeton, 2013), p. 593. 2 On the activities of scholasticism and humanism being ‘formidable opponents’, with the latter superseding the former, see Concetta Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics, 1250–1500 (London, 1981), p.  18. On literary humanism as a unique product of mid-thirteenth-century Padua, see Leighton Reynolds and Nigel Wilson, Scribes and Scholars (Oxford, 1991), p. 124; Roland Witt, ‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden, 2000). 3 Alastair Minnis cautions against Greenfield’s generalizations (Alastair Minnis and A. B. Scott, eds, Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism [Oxford, 1998], p. 10) and Robert Black has suggested that Witt’s narrow definition of humanism necessarily limits the full history of the period (‘The Origins of Humanism’, Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. Angelo Mazzocco [Leiden, 2006], pp. 37–71). Paul Kristeller has suggested that the Italian humanists likely developed their study and imitation of the classics ‘under the impact of influence received from France after the middle of the thirteenth century’ (Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters [Rome, 1956], p. 651); cf. Vincent Gillespie, ‘The Senses in Literature: The Textures of Perception’, A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages 500–1450, ed. Richard Newhauser (Oxford, 2014), pp. 153–73 (p. 165); Louis John Paetow, The Morale Scolarium of John of Garlande (Berkeley, 1927).

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In particular, the work of Roger Bacon OFM (d. 1292) represents perhaps the most substantial and egregious exception to this broad historical narrative. Compelled by his ambitions for pedagogic reform, Bacon argued for the privileged utility of poetry, claiming it as an important mode of moral persuasion and insisting on the recovery and re-evaluation of antique texts. Writing in the mid-thirteenth century in Paris and Oxford, Bacon not only offers us a unique response to the category of the poetic, but also serves as an important marker in charting the development of literary humanism in the period. Central to Bacon’s high estimation of poetic discourse is his assertion that moral science was the most noble part of philosophy and the final purpose of all knowledge.4 Bacon had recognized that the procedures of speculative logic were unable to adequately influence right action. The abstract complexities and linearity of dialectic and demonstration, which relied on the imperfect and fallen mechanisms of human perception, had only a limited impact on the will, and were considered unfit for the practical rigours of moral philosophy.5 Thus, while the speculative sciences culminated in naked truth, the practical sciences – moral philosophy and theology – pursued behavioural reform by stirring the individual to good works.6 The immediacy of poetic discourse, then, which appealed directly and suddenly to the mind, worked to circumvent the defective systems of logical analysis, and to configure the moral habits of the individual in a revelatory process of forceful induction.7 As such, the persuasive strategies of poetic arguments were considered essential knowledge for the moral philosopher and necessary for the full investigation and understanding of all science.8 ‘Wisdom without elo 4 ‘Set theologia est scienciarum nobilissima; ergo illa que maxime convenit cum ea, est nobilior inter ceteras’ (‘While theology is the noblest of the sciences, the science that is most closely related with it [moral philosophy] is more noble than the others’: Roger Bacon, Moralis philosophia, ed. Eugenio Massa [Zurich, 1953], p. 4). Henceforth cited as MP. 5 MP, pp. 209, 247, 256. 6 ‘Nam finis speculative est veritas, finis practice est bonum’ (‘The end of speculative science is truth, the end of practical science is good’: MP, p. 249). Bacon builds here on the Aristotelian maxim that moral philosophy ‘non est contemplacionis gratia, set ut boni fiamus’ (‘is not for the contemplation of grace, but that we might become good’: MP, p. 250); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert Bartlett and Susan Collins (Chicago, 2011), II. 2, 1103b, 26–28. 7 MP, p. 249. 8 ‘[M]oralis philosophus scit uti sermone suavi’ (‘The moral philosopher knows the use of sweet discourse’: Roger Bacon, Opus tertium, in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer, RS 15 [London, 1859], pp. 3–310, at p. 306). Henceforth cited as OT. See Vincent Gillespie, ‘The Study of Classical Authors: From the Twelfth Century to 1450’, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2: The Middle Ages, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 145–235 (pp. 170–1).

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quence’, Bacon writes, ‘is a like sharp sword in a paralyzed hand; eloquence without wisdom is a sharp sword in an enraged hand.’9 To this end, Bacon argues for the important priority of poetic discourse among the categories of study, inverting the hierarchy of classification drawn from Aristotle’s Organon to regard the Poetics and Rhetoric as ‘the two better books of logic’ (duos libros logicae meliores).10 But poetry, in particular, served the interests of moral philosophy and theology with a singular efficiency and purpose, moving audiences in matters of worship, laws, and virtues.11 We are told, in a conflation of Horatian and Averroistic models of poetic function, that truthful poets (poete veraces) direct their readers to love good and hate error by condemning vice and praising virtue, because they wish to be useful and to delight.12 Bacon’s repeated claim for poetry as the principal mode of moral and theological expression was part of an important academic intervention, interrupting what he considered to be a sustained period of intellectual and institutional decay: In the last forty years certain men have risen up in the university, who made themselves masters and doctors of the study of theology and philosophy, when they have learned nothing worth knowing … They are themselves inexperienced boys, both of the world and the wise languages – Greek and Hebrew – which are necessary for study … They do not know all the parts and sciences of the philosophy of the world that contain wisdom, even though they presume to know about the study of theology, which requires every human wisdom.13

9 ‘[S]apientia sine eloquentia est quasi gladius acutus in manu paralytici, sicut eloquentia expers sapientiae est quasi gladius acutus in manu furiosi’: OT, p. 4. Cf. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. J. B. Hall (Turnhout, 2013), 1.7. 10 Roger Bacon, Opus maius, ed. J. H. Bridges (London, 1897–1900), rev. edn LLTB (Turnhout, 2017), III, p. 33; henceforth cited as OM. See O. B. Hardison, Poetics and Praxis, Understanding and Imagination, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Athens GA, 1997), pp. 23–4. 11 ‘[N]os flectunt ad opus in cultu divino, legibus et virtutibus’: MP, p. 255. 12 MP, p. 255; OM, III, pp. 72, 86. See Horace, Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cambridge, 1926), pp. 478–9; Laurentius Minio-Paluello, ed., De arte poetica, Cum Averrois Expositione (Brussels, 1968), p. 41. 13 ‘Quod a quadraginta annis surrexerunt quidam in studio, qui seipsos creaverunt in magistros et doctores studii theologiae et philosophiae, cum tamen nunquam didicerunt aliquid dignum … Hi sunt pueri inexperti seipsos et mundum et linguas sapientiales, Graecam et Haebraeam, quae necessariae sunt studio … ignorant et omnes partes et scientias philosophiae mundi cum sapientia, quando praesumunt de studio theologiae, quod requirit omnem sapientiam humanam’: Roger Bacon, Compendium studii philosophiae, in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer, RS 15 (London, 1859), pp. 393–519, at p. 425. Henceforth cited as CSP.

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The proposed corrective, which required engaging ‘every human wisdom’ in study, is sustained by the universal scope of Bacon’s moral philosophy and theology:14 If theology recognizes soteriological truth as its own wherever it finds it, moral philosophy claims as its right anything it finds written elsewhere pertaining to it.15

It is an inclusive and comprehensive vision of knowledge, which not only sanctions the necessary exploration of all secular writing, but insists on the lasting moral and theological relevance of the literary deposit of the past. However, Bacon laments that recovery of this knowledge has been frustrated by a lack of training both in the logic of poetry and in the ancient languages (Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac).16 The translation of Averroes’ ‘Middle Commentary’ on Aristotle’s Poetics had been compromised because the translator ‘did not know anything worthwhile concerning languages or the sciences’.17 The rich taste of the original text had been reduced, Bacon says, to a faint scent by the attenuating effects of sustained reproduction and commentary.18 According to Bacon, if scholars are to rejoice in the wisdom of the ancient poets, it is necessary to be trained in the science of their art and in the original languages of their work.19 The urgency of his injunction suggests an academic environment where the status of poetry had become a point of potential division. Within the factional conflicts attending the development of the university, the category of the poetic had become a consistently disputed subject. In examining the period’s disparate attitudes to the nature and function of poetry, a new literary identity comes into focus that relies increasingly on the methods and materials of scholasticism. As we will see, the work of Michael of Cornwall in the 1250s provides an important – and underexamined – response to the transformative influence of Aristotelian philosophy on the study of poetry, which resonates with Bacon’s own literary and disciplinary emphases, and affirms Paris as a centre of poetic inquiry. The emergence of the university in the thirteenth century, together with the rediscovery of Aristotle, produced new structures of learning in Paris 14 Cf. ‘Quia omnes scientiae sunt connexae … nec potest una sciri sine alia’ (‘For all of the sciences are connected … nor can one be known without the other’: OT, p. 37). 15 ‘Si enim theologia veritates salutiferas esse suas intelligit, ubicumque eas invenerit … sic et moralis scientia in suum ius vendicat quicquid de rebus sui generis reperit alias esse scriptum’: MP, p. 5. 16 CSP, p. 433. 17 ‘Nullus … scivit aliquid dignum de linguis et scientiis’: CSP, p. 471. 18 MP, p. 267. 19 CSP, p. 463; OT, p. 88.

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that had an enduring influence on the status of poetry. As the focus of intellectual activity moved away from the cathedral schools to the university – from Orléans and Chartres to Paris – the study of the classics gave way to the study of logic.20 The Norman cleric Henri d’Andeli famously claimed that ‘Paris and Orléans are at odds, because they differ about learning’.21 For writers like d’Andeli, the logic of Paris had tragically routed the intellectual traditions and literary criticism of the schools. But already in the twelfth century, Gerald of Wales (d. 1216) had predicted that the abuse of logic would stifle the study of literature, and in his De naturis rerum Alexander Neckham (d. 1217) had registered his concerns about the increasingly partisan interests of logic within the liberal arts at Paris.22 The changed arts curriculum of 1215, which established logic as the principal subject of study, appears to have confirmed these anxieties.23 Nonetheless, it would be wrong to assume that the influence of the cathedral schools had been suddenly and wholly expunged from Paris, or to suggest that the exploration of literary texts had been fully abandoned in the pursuit of logic.24 Even in the middle of the century, grammarians like John of Garland (d. 1270) – whom, Bacon tells us, he heard lecture on the novos libros poëtarum et antiquos – could still describe Paris as a centre of poetic enterprise.25 Rather than limiting literary productivity, the popular reception of Aristotelian philosophy served to inspire new ways of thinking about poetry. Michael of Cornwall’s mid-century flyting with Henry of Avranches (d. 1260) asserts a set of intellectual allegiances which, like Bacon’s own commitments, indicate that the curricular priorities of Paris 20 Gillespie, ‘Study of Classical Authors’, pp. 145–50. 21 Henri d’Andeli, The Battle of the Seven Arts, ed./trans. Louis John Paetow (Berkeley, 1914): ‘Paris et Orliens ce sont .ij. … Qu’il ne sont pas de une science’ (p. 37). 22 ‘Abusus dialecticae disciplinae … literaturam non mediocriter enervat et suffocat’ (‘The abuse of the dialectical disciplines immeasurably enervates and suffocates literature’); ‘Omni tempore literaturae sugillatrix logices abusio fuerit’ (‘The abuse of logic will forever be the insulter of literature’): Gerald of Wales, Gemma ecclesiastica, ed. J. S. Brewer, in Giraldi Cambrensis: Opera, 8 vols. (London, 1861–91), II. 351, 355; Alexander Neckam, De naturis rerum libro duo, ed. Thomas Wright, RS 34 (London, 1863), pp. 283–307. For Bacon’s low opinion of Neckam, see CSP, p. 457. 23 See Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Heinrich Denifle and Émile Chatelain, 4 vols. (Paris, 1891–99), I. 78–9; Lynn Thorndyke, ed./trans., University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944), pp. 27–30; Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1895; 1936), I. 440. 24 Edward Rand, ‘The Classics in the Thirteenth Century’, Speculum 4 (1929), 249–69. 25 CSP, p.  452. ‘Parisiana iubar diffundit gloria, clerus / Crescit, Apolineas fons iaculatur aquas’ (‘The fame of Paris diffuses splendor, the clerical order thrives, the fountain breaks forth the waters of Apollo’: The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garland, ed./trans. Traugott Lawler [New Haven, 1974], p. 1).

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did not censure poetic endeavour but, rather, encouraged the development of new poetic theories.26 In his brash poem, Michael purports to acknowledge that his rival, Henry, is more accomplished in the metrical and linguistic strategies of the ars poetria, before condemning the insufficiency of these modes of knowledge: If you are better than me, it is because poetry is more greatly known to you, nevertheless, you are not prepared according to the reasoning of Aristotle as I am … For I know that I am less than you and not mighty in the arts of poetry, which you know, but you do not know the methods of the arts.27

A tribute to the rutted paths of grammatical study, Henry is a pseudopoeta (line 627), knowing the superficial rules of poetry – the systems of metre, rhyme, and poetic language – but not the logical methods and Aristotelian reasoning of the new liberal arts. Michael condemns Henry’s knowledge as a hollow shell of tropic standards and metrical regulation that lacks any greater wisdom. ‘You know grammar’, Michael writes, ‘but you do not know natural philosophy or logic.’28 Representing himself as part of an emergent class of liberal artists driven by reason and logic, Michael claims that his ars has defeated the anodyne material of grammatical teaching.29 According to Michael, the art of poetry is useless in isolation – a childish distraction – and must therefore be forged with a deeper purpose: You prefer boyish things, like plain prose or rhythm or meter – but what use are they? They offer absolutely nothing worth reflecting on, as it were, unless you know more. Whence, if the metrical art is sufficient for you, you propose

26 Peter Binkley, ‘The Date and Setting of Michael of Cornwall’s Versus Contra Henricum Abrincensem’, Medium Ævum 60 (1991), 76–84; J. C. Cox, ‘Master Henry of Avranches as an International Poet’, Speculum 3 (1928), 34–63 (p. 42); The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England, ed. J. C. Russell and J. P. Heironimus (Cambridge, 1935), p. 152. 27 ‘Si maior me sis, quia sit magis ipsa poesis / Nota tibi, non es adeo tamen ad raciones / Promptus Aristotilis ut ego … Nam quamvis te sim minor et non forte poesim / Noscam, quam noscis, tamen artis non methodos scis’: ed. Alfons Hilka, ‘Eine mittellateinische Dichterfehde: Versus Michaelis Cornubiensis contra Henricum Abrincensem’, in Mittelalterliche Handschriften: Paläographische, Kunsthistorische, Literarische und Bibliotheksgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag von Hermann Degering, ed. A. Bömer and J. Kirchner (Leipzig, 1926), pp. 123–54, ll. 37–67. 28 ‘Grammaticalia scis, sed naturalia nescis, / Nec logicalia scis’: ll. 155–6. 29 ‘Raciones sunt michi prompte’ (line 195: ‘The power of reasoning is ready at hand for me’); ‘Ars Mihi, pars tibi se subiecit’ (line 115: ‘My arts have subjugated your parts’). Partes here refers to the study of grammar, whose Donatian introduction was structured according to the eight parts of speech.

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Michael claims for himself a new kind of authorial identity, the poeta philosophicus, whose literary production is informed by the study of philosophy and Aristotle, and less by the prescriptive codes and registers of the ars poetriae (although he does not entirely jettison this kind of learning). As such, he defines himself in opposition to what he considers to be the arrested development and anti-intellectualism of literary scholars who despised philosophers and wisdom itself, producing a creative and affirming literary response to the disciplinary precedence of logic.31 For Michael, the philosophical focus of the artes, while often critical of the study of the auctores, did not preclude the possibility of poetic innovation. His poem appears to instantiate the intellectual tastes of a new class of writers, eager to apply the principles of university logic and learning to their literary work. Michael invokes a new type of poetic authority, which was not only drawn from the imitation of established styles, but from the reception of Aristotle and the methods and disciplines of university training. It not only identifies a ready audience for the reception of the Poetics, but also anticipates the enlarged poetic horizons of the Italian secular poeta and, as we will see, Bacon’s own persuasor. It is not insignificant, then, that the poem looks to Paris as the centre of this type of philosophical and literary achievement. ‘You will fear Paris’, Michael says, ‘more than you have feared me.’32 As a nexus of intellectual activity – accommodating both the study of logic and poetry – Paris represented a principal site of disciplinary tension and reform. Language and literature were contested subjects, not only challenged and changed by the zealous promotion of logic in the liberal arts, but also by the poetical concerns of theologians and the interests of newly established religious orders. As we will see, it was within the context of these theological and ecclesiastical developments that the reception of Aristotle had begun to blur the clear division between what was poetic and what was scriptural, elevating the status of literary language, and allowing poetry a new kind of inspired and prophetic authority. Exempt from studying or teaching in the faculty of arts, the mendicant 30 ‘Immo puerilia mavis, / Utputa sunt prose vel ridmi vel metra; pro se / Talia quid prosunt? Quasi prorsus pro nichilo sunt / Hec reputanda, nisi plus noveris. Unde tibi si / Sufficit ars metrica, proponis te fieri qua / Mundi maiorem, meliorem fassus ego rem / Philosophos fiam’: ll. 74–80. 31 ‘Nos philosophos spernas ipsamque sophiam’ (l. 190: ‘You despise us philosophers and wisdom itself ’). 32 ‘Parisius metues me tu plus quam metuebas’: line 314.

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orders came to Paris in the 1210s with the exclusive intent of studying theology.33 To this end, in 1228, under the direction of Jordan of Saxony OP (d. 1237), the Dominicans explicitly limited the parameters of their syllabus, prohibiting the study of secular literature and philosophy: [The students] shall not study the books of the Gentiles and philosophers … They shall not learn secular sciences nor even the arts which are called liberal … but shall read only theological works, whether they be youths or others.34

These areas of secular study, so important to Bacon’s theology and moral philosophy, were therefore denied to Dominican students. Supported by papal beneficence, the Dominicans sought to recruit new talent with an evangelical sincerity. Jordan of Saxony, in particular, was noted for his ability to convert arts students to the order, leading them from the flavourless ‘water’ of pagan philosophy and literary texts to the ‘stronger wine’ of the sacred page.35 Indeed, the Dominicans – more so than any other single group – propounded a consistently jaundiced view of poetry and the human arts. While Bacon rebuked what he saw as the intellectual puerility of both Albert the Great OP (d. 1280) and Thomas Aquinas OP (d. 1274) on these issues, he also laments that the ignorance and prejudice of the Dominicans lead them to erase poetic material from Scripture itself:36 And this corruption is made worse when someone corrects according to his own will ... Someone alters what he does not understand, which is not permitted in the books of the poets; but the Dominicans in particular intrude themselves with this sort of correction.37

The clear lack of linguistic and literary training, combined with an institutionalized aversion to all things poetic, results in the distortion of holy Scripture. These textual anxieties, and the express desire to separate the divine mind 33 See Alan Cobban, Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 91–4; Marian Michèle Mulchahey, ‘First the Bow Is Bent in Study…’: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto, 1998), pp. 362–4; Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education (c. 1210–1517) (Leiden, 2000), pp. 53–8; Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge, 2012), p. 115; David Luscombe, ‘Monks and Friars’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert Pasnau and Christina Van Dyke (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 63–75. 34 Trans. Thorndike, University Records, p. 30; ‘[Studentes] in libris gentilium et philosophorum non studeant, … Seculares scientias non addiscant, nec etiam artes quas liberales vocant … sed tantum libros theologicos tam iuvenes quam alii legant’: Chartularium Parisiensis, p. 112. 35 Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica (Rome, 1896), I. 141. 36 CSP, p. 425. 37 ‘Et in hoc aggravatur haec corruptio, quod quilibet corrigit pro sua voluntate. ... quilibet mutat quod non intelligit, quod non licet facere in libris poëtarum. Sed Praedicatores maxime intromiserunt se de hac correctione’: OT, p. 93.

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from the human hand, appear symptomatic of an increased awareness of the shared literary effects and conventions of secular poetry and Scripture. The comparative study of biblical and literary language, which had been motivated by a common interest in Aristotelian moral philosophy, reshaped the way that Scripture was read in the period. It had not only furnished biblical exegesis with new technical dialects and modes of analysis, but also generated an interest in Scripture’s affective force, its stylistic abundance, and the textual strategies of the human author.38 As a result, new questions were asked about the scientific classification and theological potential of all poetic discourse and, in turn, about the important differences between human poetry and Scripture. Albert the Great resolved this issue by distinguishing between the divine wisdom of sacred poetry, which expressed unquestionable truths through figurative language, and the duplicitous nature of human poetry, which proceeded by the wonders of lies and fables.39 ‘The poetic mode’, he writes, ‘is the weaker among the modes of philosophy’, before concluding that all human poetry is deceptive and harmful (deceptoria et mendosa) and could only return the reader to worldly things.40 Interestingly, Albert nevertheless appears comfortable with the axioms of the Arabic Poetics, possibly received through the works of al-Farabi. Flirting with the ethical and affective criteria cited by Bacon, he says that poetry intends to move the reader to love or hate by the melodic patterning of verse.41 Poetic propositions (propositiones poeticae), he explains, are imaginative and imitative: they imprint into the soul things to be loathed or things to be pursued.42 Nonetheless, for Albert, and for Thomas after him, the fictive and inherently human element of poetry was inevitably troubling, guaranteeing its place as the lowest and weakest form of logic. Like Albert, Thomas was unimpressed by the truth-content of literary language, arguing that poets employ metaphors only for superficial delight, while Scripture uses them

38 Alistair Minnis, ‘The Trouble with Theology: Ethical Poetics and the Ends of Scripture’, in Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice, ed. Stephen Partridge and Erik Kwakkel (Toronto, 2011), pp. 21–37; Minnis, ‘Ethical Poetry, Poetic Theology: A Crisis of Medieval Authority?’, in Medieval and Early Modern Authorship, SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 25, ed. Guillemette Bolens and Lukas Erne (Tübingen, 2011), pp. 293–308. 39 Curtius, European Literature, p. 877. 40 ‘Poeticus enim modus infirmior est inter modos philosophiae’: Albertus Magnus, Summa theologia, in B. Alberti Magni ... Opera Omnia, ed. Etienne César Auguste Borgnet, 38 vols. (Paris, 1890–99), XXXI. 23–4. 41 Super Porphyrium de V universalibus, in Alberti Magni Opera, I. 16. 42 Analytica Posteriora, in Alberti Magni Opera, I. 7. Cf. Averroes’ imaginative syllogism (Gillespie, ‘Study of Classical Authors’, p. 160).

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out of necessity and utility.43 Although he allows some concessions for the possibility of moral benefit, Thomas states that in human science, nothing can be found except in the literal sense: there can be no theological or revelatory depth to human art.44 The Franciscan writers of the period, while working to similar ends, pursued alternative priorities. For Alexander of Hales OFM (d. 1245) and his pupils, the Bible proceeded by authority and according to the figurative processes of the modus poeticus (which was historic, parabolic, and metaphoric), and was not intelligible to any art or science that depended upon the powers of human reason.45 While the lesser sciences sought to inform the intellect through the mechanisms of syllogistic reasoning, biblical science worked to induce a state of piety (affectum pietatis). For Alexander, Scripture was not reducible to scientific fact or rational argument but, rather, proceeded through poetic and mystical statements (sermones mysticos) that stirred the reader to action.46 Bonaventure OFM (d. 1275) similarly directed his understanding of biblical exegesis according to the principles of Aristotelian moral philosophy, arguing that the multiplices modi of Scripture exist so that we might become good, not by mere deliberation, but by a disposition of the will: Our affections are moved more strongly by examples than by arguments, by promises than by logical reasonings … Scripture, therefore, had to avoid the mode of proceeding by definition, division, and inferring.47

According to Bonaventure, Scripture was like all moral philosophy, it must rise above the logical systems of definition and division and move the affections of the reader through poetic statements. But the newly shared methods and objectives of sacred and secular writing had unintentionally begun to erode the formal distinction between them, and as the status of poetry rose to 43 Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, trans. John Rowan (Chicago, 1961), p.  34; Summa theologiae, ed. Thomas Gilby et al., 61 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 1.1.9; Greenfield, Humanist and Scholastic Poetics, pp. 48–53. 44 Aquinas,  Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, trans. Richard Berquist (South Bend, 2007), p. 3; Summa theologiae, 1.1.10; Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, p. 34. 45 ‘Omnis modus poeticus est inartificialis sive non scientialis, quia est modus historicus vel transumptus, qui quidem non competunt arti; sed theologicus modus est poeticus vel historialis vel parabolicus’: Alexander of Hales, Summa theologica (Quaracchi, 1924– 28), I. 7. Bacon was unimpressed with the rigour of Alexander’s work: see OT, p. 30. 46 Summa theologia, I. 8. 47 ‘Et quia magis movetur affectus ad exempla quam ad argumenta magis ad promissiones quam ad ratiocinationes … scriptura ista non debuit habere modum definitivum divisivum et collectivum’: Bonaventure, Breviloquium, in Opera Omnia, vol. 5 (Quaracchi, 1891), Prologue, para. 5.

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meet that of Scripture, Scripture was exposed to the earthly realities of human authorship.48 The discursive strategies of the human authors of Scripture were tacitly acknowledged as valued parts of its ultimate effect and work. By extension, texts that exploited the same linguistic and structural methods as Scripture, and which achieved the same affective and ethical ends, could assume a new theological status. In contrast to Albert and Thomas, who insisted on the limited capacity of human poetry to speak of divine things, here, the potential for human effort to produce inspired or authoritative texts had become reducible to a set of theoretical propositions. The shared objectives and methods of biblical and poetic writing necessarily coalesced, to reveal the moral and theological potential of all human art. For writers like Bacon, the dissolution of these categorical distinctions proved liberating, exposing the theological and revelatory power of poetic language. As we will see, the collective force of Bacon’s own statements regarding the nature of poetic discourse explore these new possibilities. The sum of Roger Bacon’s literary theory does not survive in a singular treatise, or within a coherent system of argumentation.49 Rather, it is preserved in the form of discontinuous statements and excursus diffused throughout his entire corpus. The final achievement of these discussions represents a shifting and synthetic analysis of poetic language, a provisional outline of his full thought. In its totality, Bacon’s impassioned commentary testifies to his belief in the necessary precedence and benefit of all rhetorical and poetical discourse. Throughout his work, he consistently claims a special priority for the categories of rhetoric and poetics, placing significant emphasis on the persuasive force of the logical arts to influence the will and move the mind ad amorem veritatis.50 But for Bacon, the beauty and melody of these practical arguments also included an explicit theological and revelatory power, which, by moving beyond the mechanical analyses of the speculative sciences, could elevate the mind into the sudden fullness of divine knowledge. For Bacon, poetry was both moral and theological (morale et theologicum).51 48 Minnis, ‘The Trouble with Theology’, pp. 21–37. 49 Although Bacon claims to have produced a treatise on rhetoric, it remains unidentified: Roger Bacon, Communia Mathematica, Opera hactenus inedita, ed. Robert Steele and Ferdinand Delorme (Oxford, 1905–40), p. 17; Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on Rhetoric and Poetics’, in his Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays (Leiden, 1997), p. 133. 50 Roger Bacon, Opus tertium: Fragment, ed. Pierre Duhem (Quaracchi, 1909), p.  178 (henceforth cited as OTF); OM, III. 88. 51 OTF, p. 158; MP, pp. 251, 258.

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As interrelated and independent modes of persuasion, the categories of rhetoric and poetics exploited the affectivity of language in similar ways within sacred and secular philosophical writings. Rhetorical arguments sought psychological assent through the use of lucid statements, eloquently dissolving the knots of questions and doubts to achieve acquiescence. Poetic arguments sought to project images and likenesses onto the sensitive plate of the imagination, which, in delighting the reader with beautiful similitudes, influenced the active response of assessment.52 Although Bacon was explicit in formally discriminating between poetics and rhetoric, he builds on a common taxonomy of persuasive discourse to suggest a set of methods and objectives united in their effect: The poet, like the orator, renders the listener docile through his teaching, he makes the reader attentive through delight, and compels the reader to work by moving or persuading.53

These practical arguments, that is, rhetorical and poetic arguments, were used abundantly in holy Scripture by the prophets, the apostles, and Christ, and in all the books of the saints.54 Rejecting Albert and Thomas’s declaration that human poetry could only lead back to human things, Bacon sharpens the theological application of these discourses into a powerful vindication of human art, claiming that poetic effort could lead man beyond himself, to the consideration of eternal things. While practical arguments in general were able to excite and persuade the reader ad amorem felicitatis aeternae­, enticing us toward a state of grace, poetic arguments in particular were classified as the most powerful means of soteriological persuasion (in salutiferis rebus… fortissima). According to Bacon, poetry pertains to salvation (pertinet ad salutem).55 This is a radical expansion of the common accessus claim that all poetry pertains to ethics, and is characteristic of Bacon’s desire to enlarge the role of poetry within the sciences, and within his own system of knowledge.56 Bacon aspired to nothing short of the full apotheosis of poetic discourse. ‘Therefore I have elevated these arguments and the styles in which they are made to divine arguments.’57 Poetry is to be raised over all other philosophical modes (super modos philosophicos), he continues, and to be included among the divine modes of persuasion (i.e. miracles, prophecy,

52 See OM, III, p. 86; MP, pp. 252, 258. 53 ‘Unde tam poeta quam orator … docendo reddat auditores dociles, per delectationem faciat attentos, et promovendo seu flectendo cogat in opus’: OM, III, p. 87. 54 OM, III. 86; OT, p. 266; OTF, p. 179; MP, p. 261. 55 OM, III. 86–7. 56 OM, III. 87. 57 ‘Ideo elevavi hec argumenta et stilos in quibus fiunt ad divina’: OTF, p. 179.

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revelation).58 For Bacon, poetry was theology; it was redeemed and redemptive. While he appears suspicious of the vanity and moral ambiguity of poets like Ovid, Bacon elsewhere argues that God had consistently and universally revealed his sacred truths to the pagan prophets and poets of the past: ‘God has revealed much of himself to the little women (mulierculis) and the Sibyls.’59 Dispensing with convention, Bacon’s mulierculae and prophetesses do not represent sensual curiosities, but instead agents of spiritual communion.60 They use their generative influence to inform the music of verse and rapture audiences into the sapiential ecstasies of divinity. As a divine mode of persuasion, poetic discourse worked through the musical power of language to forcefully apprehend the mind and transform the will in matters of faith and right action (in fide et moralibus).61 The euphony of poetry represented a form of transcendence, where the melody and beauty of words seized the soul with delight and lifted the mind above itself to an encounter with divine wisdom. Drawing on the Averroistic Poetics, Avicenna, and al-Farabi’s De scientiis, Bacon explains that poetic arguments should be made with beautiful rhythms and metres, and sublime and decorous words, but also with prose and the rhetorical colours of every kind of adorned speech, in order to achieve the force of revelation.62 For Bacon, this type of discourse was especially suited to divine knowledge. He explains that the Holy Spirit chose to express his truth through the musical laws of metre and rhythm, in order to attract the reader to the more intimate things of divine wisdom.63 According to Bacon, knowledge of music was fundamental to the success of poetic discourse: much of the power of Scripture had been lost, he complained, because translators did not know how to render the metre of Hebrew into Latin.64 For Bacon, the harmony and proportional beauty of 58 OTF, p. 179. 59 ‘Et Sibillis mulierculis Deus multa de se revelavit’: OTF, p. 160; cf. OM, III. 73. 60 The locus classicus for understandings of mulierculae in the period is 2 Tim. 3:6–7; Anne E. Lester, ‘Women Behind the Law: Lay Religious Women in Thirteenth-Century France and the Problem of Textual Resistance’, in Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinksy (New York, 2015), pp. 183–202. Cf. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, in The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, MA, 1973), 1.P1.29. 61 OT, p. 309. 62 Dominicus Gundissalinus’s Latin translation of Al-Farabi’s Isa al-ulum was known in the period as De scientiis (Peter Victor Loewen, Music in Early Franciscan Thought [Leiden, 2013], p. 138); OT, pp. 266–7, 307. 63 OT, p. 266. 64 ‘Sed translatores Latini non habuerunt illam musicae potestam’: OT, p. 267.

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poetry determined its ability to impact on the mind of the reader, for ‘our minds are changed according to the properties of musical harmonies’.65 The musical, rhythmical, and imagistic strategies of poetic language work together to generate levels of awareness that transcend rational consciousness, allowing the reader to apprehend the invisible things of God. This, of course, contravenes the standard Dominican and Thomist approach to the poetic. In the encounter with poetry the mind is suddenly and forcefully raptured (subito et fortiter rapiatur) beyond itself, and compelled to the love of the object of persuasion (ad amorem rei persuasae).66 Bacon consistently invokes the rich semantic range of rapere to explain his theory of literary response, ascribing to poetic language the cumulative power to seize, enrapture, ravish, and carry the mind away in ecstasy.67 The poetic mode has the potential to achieve visionary results. But perhaps more immediate to his imagination was the conversion of Paul, who, as Bacon tells us, was forcibly raptured [raptus fuit] to the third heaven and transformed in a sudden reversal of his will.68 Bacon explains that when confronted with the full sublimity of poetic discourse: The mind is suddenly raptured into the love of good and the loathing of evil, to the extent that the whole man, without prevision, is raptured and elevated above himself, so that he might not have his own mind in his power.69

Here, the radical power (radicalis potestas) of poetry enraptures the psychological faculties of the reader in toto, dispossessing the mind of intellectual and interpretative control. The immediacy of poetic discourse resists the forceful striving (violentia) of the reader to artificially impose meaning onto the text; instead, through the power of poetic language, it elevates the mind sine praevisione.70 That is, the reader is seized unexpectedly, and in a way which cannot be forecast or understood by codified systems of logic or exegesis, so that he might be wholly transformed in a sudden and forceful Pauline instant. If he was evil, Bacon says, he might desire good; if he was imperfect, he might assume a mind of perfection.71 For Bacon, the powerful and sweet virtue of 65 ‘Animi nostri immutantur secundum proprietatem musicae harmoniae’: OT, p. 300. 66 OT, p. 266. 67 For the full lexical range of the verb, from the sexual to visionary, see DMLBS s.v. rapere 68 OT, p. 187; 2 Cor. 2:12. 69 ‘Ut animus subito rapiatur in amorem boni et odium mali; quatenus homo totus sine praevisione rapiatur et elevetur supra se, et non habeat mentem in sua potestate’: OT, p. 307. 70 Bacon explains that the reader will become good, ‘non violentia, sed virtute sermonis potenti et suavi’: OT, p. 306. 71 ‘Sed si fuerit malus amore boni absorbeatur; si imperfectus, induat animum perfectionis’: OT, p. 306.

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words could not be captured within any hermeneutic system, but rather operated according to its own poetic logic, which denied linear signification and worked through sublime likenesses and rhythms to deal directly with the will. These principles appear to have been drawn not only from the Arabic texts of Aristotle, but from established devotional and exegetical practices. In his interpretation of Leviticus 26, Richard of Saint-Victor writes: When the sweetness of contemplation raptures us above ourselves … we exceed our human senses and become alienated from ourselves in divine affection.

For Richard it is through the ‘connection of some kind of similitude’, which stuns the mind with something new and striking, that the individual is suddenly raised above themselves to consider eternal matters.72 The defamiliarizing force of metaphoric language, which Richard describes here, appears partly to have shaped Bacon’s own understanding of the revelatory and transformative nature of the poetic experience. Because of the immense moral and theological power of poetry, Bacon considered it essential to the intellectual prosperity of the university and to the spiritual life of the church, fulfilling important instructional, homiletic, and pastoral functions. As such, he insisted on both the theoretical study and practical application of poetic arguments.73 These arguments were to be used by a new type of moral theologian that he called a persuasor. As Bacon explains, the persuasor makes sublime discourses (sermones sublimes) in all forms of adorned speech, in metre, rhythm, and prose, using examples, reasoning, authorities, and metaphors to change the affections of his audience for the purposes of consolation, encouragement, and the improvement of the will. It is a diverse cache of discursive tools which appears to echo the inclusivity and purpose of the multiplices modi of Scripture. Bacon considered that contemporary preaching had been emptied of all wisdom and eloquence, and insisted that the skills of the persuasor should use sublime and forceful words to generate praedicandi argumenta ‘so that the faithless would be converted to the faith, and the faithful would be preserved in faith and morality’.74 While these broad proselytistic objectives were commonplaces of preaching manuals, Bacon’s persuasor achieves them by distinctive means: as an exemplary moral philosopher and theologian – a poet, orator, preacher, priest, and prophet – the persuasor confi 72 ‘Tractates On Certain Psalms’, Writings on the Spiritual Life: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, Walter, and Godfrey of St. Victor, ed./trans. Christopher Evans, et al. (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 226, 192, 341. 73 ‘Scilicet docens componere argumentum poeticum, et utens eo’ (OT, p. 308); Gillespie, ‘Senses in Literature’, p. 165. 74 ‘Ut infideles ad fidem convertantur, et fideles in fide et moribus conserventur’: OT, pp. 304–5.

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dently and eloquently manipulates the music and language of poetic arguments to elevate the minds of their audience into revelatory states of divine concord, leading them to the love of good and their salvation. In this way, Bacon constructed a performative model for his revisionary programme of study, loading the figure of the persuasor with the important literary, humanistic, and intellectual qualities which he saw lacking within the universities and the church. By means of his considerable control of his art – directing the mind of the reader to whatever he intends [intendit] – the persuasor assumes significant theological, philosophical, and prophetic authority.75 The independent prophetic and ministerial powers of the persuasor appear to anticipate the range of responsibilities held by the secular poeta of the later Italian writers. For Dante (d. 1321), the poet was a theologian chosen by God to reveal mystical truths through figurative language, but also a philosopher concerned with the logic of ethics.76 Echoing Bacon’s own position with some consistency, the Paduan Albertino Mussato (d. 1329) described poetic discourse as a second theology, arguing that it was a divine science and a mode of revelation sent from heaven, which not only was above the other sciences, but included and pervaded them all.77 These humanist explorations of poetry, while drawing on a diverse and deep range of literary and academic materials, appear indebted to the classicising achievements of scholastic writers like Bacon, who considered the affective and reformative powers of language to be important categories of study and necessary tools for the advancement and instruction of the church. The contours of Bacon’s project expose some of the institutional and intellectual tensions informing his work. For Bacon, the waning commitment to literary studies and the intellectual decline of Paris followed hard upon the rise of the mendicant orders, and the increased professionalization of the academic class. In response, he sought to prioritize the enriching study of philosophy and literature, placing great emphasis on both the universal application of Aristotle, and the redemptive power of poetic language. The mutual properties and goals of literary and biblical texts validated the theological potential of all poetry, and subsequently redefined the para­ meters of what constituted a poet. Indeed, the enlarged disciplinary scope of Michael of Cornwall’s poet, who turned from the dry formulae of the ars poetriae to scholastic philosophy, recalls the intellectual and literary priori 75 OT, p. 304. 76 Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia, ed./trans. Steven Botterill (Cambridge, 1996), 2.4.5; Epistolae, ed. Paget Toynbee (Oxford, 1966), 13.16. 77 Albertino Mussato, Opera (Venice, 1630), rpt in Thesaurus Antiquitarum et Historiarum Italiae, ed. Joannes Georgius Graevius (Leiden, 1722), Ep. 4, col. 41B; Ep 7, cols. 44D, 57B; Ep. 18, cols. 16E, 61B.

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ties of Bacon’s own persuasor, who was to fulfil a distinctly philosophical and theological mandate. Bacon discovered in the persuasor the perfection of his intellectual and literary projects, creating a figure who, through exploiting the reformative and enrapturing power of poetic discourse, served the spiritual and moral needs of the church. As we have seen, Bacon pursues a fierce defence of poetic discourse, arguing for its status as a divine science and insisting on the theological, revelatory, and redemptive potential of all forms of literature. While the full flowering of medieval humanism, in its conception and completion, is conventionally associated with the special intellectual and cultural conditions of northern Italy, the humanistic intensity of Bacon’s work, as he sought to recover the thought of ancient writers and ennoble the efforts of human art, suggests an alternative history of the period. In his insistence on the return to literary studies and ancient standards of eloquence, Bacon establishes himself as an important originary figure within the history of literary humanism. However, Bacon’s humanistic campaign was largely unsuccessful, and his desire for a reformed programme of study fell short of its ambitious objectives. In many ways his academic career was a failure, and he died a political and institutional exile. Nonetheless, the literary principles which he had championed so fervently took root elsewhere, finding fertile ground within small groups of educated laymen in northern Italy, who, by building on the accomplishments of earlier academic writers, developed a productive and innovative approach to the rehabilitation of antique texts. Here Bacon would have been able to see a reflection of his own ideas and aspirations, as the role of the poet took on the prophetic mission of the vates.78

78 Brian Fitzgerald, Inspiration and Authority in the Middle Ages: Prophets and their Critics from Scholasticism to Humanism (Oxford, 2017), pp. 193–229.

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• PART II • Monumental Contributions: The Later Fourteenth Century

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• 4 • Earlier Version / Later Version – in the Wycliffite Bible Is that the Only Choice?* •  Anne Hudson • Study of the Wycliffite Bible (WB) still works with a simple dichotomy between two versions: these were distinguished in the eighteenth century, their sequence being established by the monumental 1850 edition of the entire text in two forms by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden (FM), which has not yet been superseded.1 The differences between the two are, we are told, between a preliminary, very literal rendering of the Vulgate (Earlier/Early Version, here EV) – Latin ‘Englished’, only intelligible with the Vulgate alongside it – and a complete revision (Later/Late Version, here LV) that produced a free-standing, idiomatic rendering. Anyone who works with the texts can readily identify each of these: a few characteristic constructions and idioms suffice to make the designation of Earlier as against Later a simple choice on which one is very unlikely to be faulted.2 But with around 250 copies of WB, in whole or in part, are there no other forms, blends, confusions, or muddles?3 My paper is an * This paper derives from work done in association with the AHRC-funded project ‘Towards a New Edition of the Wycliffite Bible’ (Research Grant AH/N001591/1), and I am grateful to the Principal Investigator Elizabeth Solopova, and my colleagues Daniel Sawyer and Cosima Gillhammer (further supported by the Oxford Fell Foundation and the Ludwig Fund at New College) for their comments. 1 The edition was published by Oxford University Press in four volumes in 1850. For an account of the problems encountered by the editors in regard to the publication see Hudson, ‘Editing the Wycliffite Bible’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden, 2017), pp. 450–66 . 2 FM normally use the comparatives, Earlier and Later rather than the positives; uncertainty about a precise date for either makes their preference understandable, though most critics (including this one) show some inconsistency in usage. 3 The most recent list of manuscripts is by Solopova, ed., in Wycliffite Bible, pp. 484–92, but book sale catalogues frequently modify details of ownership, content and number. Earlier lists that were influential on their appearance are in FM, I. xxxiv–lxiv; Conrad Lindberg, ‘The Manuscripts and Versions of the Wycliffite Bible: a preliminary survey’, Studia Neophilologica 42 (1970), 333–47; and Mary Dove, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 281–306.

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investigation of a single manuscript which, I suggest, makes the usual choice a matter of doubt. Before coming to the manuscript which is the particular focus here, Oxford, New College MS 67, some general points need to be made. The importance of revision to the development of a completed English text was already introduced by the writer of the so-called General Prologue (GP), a work which will be crucial to the discussion later in this paper.4 The authority claimed by the writer of this poorly preserved document would be hard to challenge, not least since it in general anticipates a modern reading of the manuscripts. One striking feature of the whole translational project that has excited surprisingly little comment is the consistency with which the overwhelming majority of manuscripts persist with either EV or LV throughout their content, rather than mixing the two from book to book (or concocting other, more complicated blends). It is worth briefly considering this point and its implications. The first observation is the easily divisible nature of the Bible’s structure. Divisions into books are for the most part clear, and most WB manuscripts mark those divisions by running heads and with rubricated incipits and explicits; large sections of each testament are divided into book units of a moderate but measurable length (the ‘minor prophets’ in the Old Testament and some of the Pauline and Catholic epistles in the New Testament are much briefer than the norm, and so might be subject to more scribal uncertainty); a few books are traditionally divided (Kings into four, others into two), but this is clearly marked. The opportunities for a shift of exemplar at a change in biblical book are therefore clear and repeated. But any shift in exemplar does not in the vast majority of cases involve a switch from EV to LV or the reverse. In her ground-breaking book The First English Bible, Mary Dove uses an abbreviation which seems to confuse the issue, the absence of shift, rather than clarifying it. This is the abbreviation ELV, and Dove seems never to explain it.5 From usage of its component parts it must be assumed that it stands for Earlier-Later-Version. Dove, however, has taken over the abbreviation, and its usage, from Conrad Lindberg – though Lindberg himself never explains it. Lindberg first includes ‘ELV’, expanded ‘Early and Later Version’, in the list of abbreviations for the second volume of his edition of MS Bodley 959, published in 1961, and it is repeated without variation in the later volumes. The first term is always the positive adjective, the second the comparative, 4 Printed in FM, I. 1–60, and more accurately and informatively by Mary Dove, ed., The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate (Exeter, 2010), pp. 3–86; for further references see below, esp. Kantik Ghosh, ‘The Prologues’, in Wycliffite Bible, ed. Solopova, pp. 162–82 (pp. 167–72). 5 It is not included in the table of abbreviations pp. x–xiii, nor in the General index pp. 307–13, nor at the head of the index of manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible (pp. 281–306), though it is mostly used in this last section.

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but the significance of this is never stated or discussed.6 In fact actual usage of ELV by Lindberg in his manifold publications seems to be extremely rare. But almost certainly the underlying reason for Dove’s incorporation of the form is Lindberg’s 1970 essay surveying the manuscript versions.7 Classifying the manuscripts (p. 338), he states that ‘17 MSS are in ELV’, and expands the abbreviation ‘ELV = partly in EV, partly in LV’ (p. 333). Looking at Dove’s brief descriptions of these seventeen, it is clear she has eliminated over half of Lindberg’s (ten removed, seven retained). She does not appear to have added any to the group covered. But ELV does not designate a separable version: the initials are descriptive of amalgamation, for instance of prologues that are characteristic of the version not found in that manuscript’s text (e.g. Oxford, Bodley MS 183 or Fairfax MS 2), or the use of extracts in a lectionary whose majority form is in the other version (e.g. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex MS 99 or Trinity College, Dublin MS 75); only a very few, such as Lambeth MS 25, switch from one version to another within the main text. The abbreviation ELV should be abandoned as confused and misleading. The number of manuscripts that in any way switch between EV and LV is tiny – and far less frequent than would be expected from a random, or unsupervised, choice. Scribes must have been firmly directed to continue with the same version at all costs; even if they do not proceed linearly from Genesis to Apocalypse, or some segment of that sequence, and departure is not unknown even if not common,8 they must stick by a single version for all material. But how did they recognize and distinguish between EV and LV? The easy answer is in the same way as the modern textual critic: by looking at the categories of difference outlined in chapter 15 of the GP. But could the medieval scribe realistically be relied on to scrutinize that evidence whenever he started on a supply of text from a new source? No instructions survive; no markings indicate those changes of supply. My previous analysis of the early Wycliffite enterprises stressed the essential presence of an organizing authority to provide its schemes, and to compel their adoption and continuance. I did not mention the WB versions then – but arguably they are the most crucial examples: they are simple to describe, and departure from them should be easy to perceive. What evidence are we not seeing? At this point it is appropriate to consider the manuscript which is the reason for this paper: Oxford, New College MS 67 (N). N is labelled V in FM’s edition 6 Conrad Lindberg, The Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible, 8 vols. (Stockholm, 1959– 97), II. 279. It is not in the list of abbreviations in vol. 1 (1959), p. 212. 7 Lindberg, ‘Manuscripts and Versions’. 8 For instance, BL MS Harley 3903, with LV Job and Tobit in that order (Dove, First English Bible, p. 291); Oxford, Bodl. Rawlinson MS C.752, with LV gospels, Apocalypse, Jude, in that order (p. 301).

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and, as their italicization implies, is regarded as being an EV copy.9 The eccentricity of this manuscript is obvious even with a fairly superficial inspection. The first point, the more striking feature, is the appearance of marginal glosses alongside the text of the Pauline epistles to the end of the New Testament (fol. 108v onwards), though petering out in Apocalypse; the second feature is less immediately recognizable, since it consists in a frequent silent replacement of the EV readings from the start of Romans to the end of the New Testament, the majority of such replacements bringing the text into closer alliance with those regarded as LV. Both of these features need more careful analysis, and this chapter will only briefly consider the glosses. FM recognized that N’s glosses are close to, but not identical with, glosses found in Romans–Jude in BL Harley MS 5017; both sets repeatedly and correctly attribute their material to Nicholas of Lyra. Harley is the third volume of a complete WB, whose first volume is now BL Royal MS 18 C.ix, covering Genesis–Job; the second volume is lost. Royal has much glossing, again attributed to Lyra, and laid out in closely similar form to Harley.10 Despite the link through the glosses of N to Harley, it is important to note that the textual affiliations of N are not replicated in the latter: if, as FM thought, N is an EV manuscript, Harley (and its Royal relation) are certainly and unequivocally LV. Intriguing though these glosses are, they do not contribute directly to the other problem of N – to which I now turn. N, though on a cursory examination by no means consistent in hand or layout, cannot easily be divided into sections, let alone booklets. The first part, the four gospels, presents an unaltered (and unglossed) transcription of the four gospels in EV. The normal order of biblical books at this point is followed, with the Pauline epistles including Hebrews, then Acts, the Catholic epistles, and finally Apocalypse. The textual features I am here concerned with affect N’s text of Romans onward; the appendix gives one chapter of N’s version, along with the Vulgate, and the equivalent EV and LV texts. Comparisons of the two versions of WB have normally taken the features described in the last chapter of GP as their starting point; such a start is reasonable enough, but, as will emerge here, it is not sufficient to stop with those features. The first matter that the GP writer covers is the feature which brings about the most striking differences between EV and LV, namely the use of participles.11 The GP description covers the frequency of participle usage in Latin, not only full ‘ablative absolute’ constructions, but also cases where the participle is attached to a noun, often the subject or direct object of the clause. All these uses, and 9 A full description, together with a plate (no. 16 of fol. 140r) appears in Elizabeth Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool, 2016), pp. 259–63. 10 Dove, First English Bible, pp. 249–51 (Royal); p. 248 (Harley). 11 A useful analysis of this change is in Hiroshi Yonekura, The Language of the Wycliffite Bible: The Syntactic Differences between the Two Versions (Tokyo, 1985), pp. 411–42.

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especially the absolute usage, are unfamiliar in the vernacular (save in the case of clear imitation of Latin). But, as the GP writer implies, to substitute for the participle a finite verb governed by a subordinating conjunction requires a decision about the relationship of participle to the rest of the sentence. This decision must have been taken in every case individually, during the revision of EV to LV. Acts 7 provides the following clear cases. (i) Cases where absolute usage is resolved: 7:21 exposito illo, EV him putte out, LV (anticipated by N) whanne he was putt out – the relation is taken to be a temporal one; cf. 7:30 expletis annis (EV ȝeer fulfillid, N and LV whanne he hadde fillid), 7:59 positis genibus (EV þe knees putte, N and LV he knelide and); and at 7:31 an instance is slightly more complicated than these with accedente illo, producing EV him cumminge, N and LV whanne hee neiȝhide. All the cases where LV has suppressed an absolute construction are likewise resolved in N.12 (ii) More varied cases, in which an appositive participle is replaced by a finite verb plus preceding conjunction: e.g. 7:9 patriarchae aemulantes (EV þe patriarkis hauynge enuy, N and LV þe patriarkis hadden enuie ... and); the remaining examples are comparable, all involving a temporal relationship plus and. Here, however, N and LV are not entirely consistent in their practice: first, while they often retain the participle as the introduction to speech: e.g. 7:27 dicens, EV, N and LV seynge – in 7:31 the same participle dicens is retained in EV but resolved in N and LV (for no perceptible reason). This use of dicens, or its synonyms, is very common in Vulgate Latin, and it seems likely that stylistic factors may be decisive here. In 7:58 two parallel participles are differently treated in N and in LV. Another difference claimed by the writer of GP to differentiate EV from LV is in the use of forsoþe, or occasionally soþlice.13 It is claimed that LV should vary the translation of Latin autem and enim, whilst EV had mechanically rendered both as forsoþe, usually placed near the start of a sentence or clause. Here stylistic issues seem to be dominant – it is not claimed that the EV rendering is inaccurate, misleading, or misinterpreting the Latin sense. But here N noticeably does not follow LV usage. There are twenty instances of autem in chapter 7; all are translated forsoþe in EV, and all twenty are retained in N14 – LV replaces every one of them with and or but.15 The obvious implication 12 See, e.g., verses 9, 24, 30, etc. 13 Lines 2836–8. 14 See, e.g., 7:6, 11, 12, 14. 15 It is not entirely clear outside Acts 7 whether N so consistently retains the EV usage of forsoþe: FM record the LV variants (eg Romans 1:19, 2:12, 14 etc ), but do not claim to

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is that this modification, one whose possible incidence should be simple to identify, was undertaken as a separate enterprise, unconnected with more complex alterations such as participle resolution. This should not be taken to necessitate a chronological sequence: in a collaborative enterprise such as the WB production, more than one set of workers may be engaged simultaneously on different changes at the same point in the base Vulgate text. The remaining changes between EV and LV mentioned in the GP are less easily matched from the texts. Some are inadequately described for certainty of recognition,16 others seem from the description to refer to changes that were only very occasional, and very specifically described, in the text;17 some fall under both headings.18 But there is one change not mentioned in GP which certainly characterizes LV as updated from EV, and which is found in N. This involves the auxiliary in the Vulgate typical past tense passive, its use of forms of the kind amatus sum.19 These are regularly matched in EV translation with present tense forms of the verb to be. But in LV where a past tense is in question the auxiliary is regularly was/were. In N usually the LV usage is found in such cases: thus Acts 7:13 manifestatum est, EV is maad knowen, N and LV was maad knowen (cf. earlier in the same verse cognitus est, EV, N, and LV was (maad) knowen); 15 defunctus est, EV is deed, N and LV was deed; 16 translati sunt ... positi sunt, EV ben translatid ... ben putte, N and LV weren translatid ... weren putt; 31 facta est, EV is maad, N and LV was maad; 39 aversi sunt, EV ben turnyd, NC and LV weren turned. This is not a universal modification (unlike the LV suppression of forsoþe): when the verb refers to a continuing situation, the past tense of ben is already found – see, for instance, 7:4 mortuus est EV, N, and LV was deed, but 17 multiplicatus est, EV was multiplied, N and LV multeplied; 20 natus est ... fuit gratus ... nutritus est, EV, N, and LV all instances was; 22 eruditus est ... erat potens EV, N, and LV both was; 42 scriptum est, EV, N, and LV is. The variety of situations in these examples makes it clear that some thought must have gone into the eventual decision of whether or not to modify the translation. Not mentioned in GP, nor explained elsewhere in the text, are the double glosses: it is characteristic of many copies of WB to provide alternative give all divergencies – this repetitive replacement is exactly the sort of variant they tend to omit (see their disclaimer, I. xxxiv–lii). 16 GP 2966 concerning the sense of secundum as ‘after’ or ‘by’. 17 GP 2950 concerning the care needed in dealing with equiuok wordis (e.g. sharp or swift). 18 GP 2963 dealing with the sense of ex: this might seem similar to the case of secundum, but with ex a more considerable variation of sense seems available than the simple twofold division mentioned (of or bi). 19 For a brief account of the changing usage of the verbs be and have as auxiliaries of the past tense and passive mood, see Tauno F. Mustanoja, A Middle English Syntax. Pt 1. Parts of Speech (Helsinki, 1960), pp. 499–510 and references there.

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translations of Vulgate words, usually linked with forms of eiþer, or, oþer. They may be underlined in red and/or black, in whole or just one of the two elements, and may be repeated, or even occur alone, in the margin. The frequency of these alternatives varies, but they are most common in EV. Precise numbers of cases should be treated with suspicion: it can be difficult to distinguish an original scribe’s markings from those of a subsequent, even modern, corrector, and underlining may be faint; FM likewise is not an altogether reliable or helpful witness especially when marking, or failing to record, these pairings.20 The motive for some pairs is clear: technical terms, or Latinate vocabulary of dubious borrowing before the WB, are primary cases; terms which had wide but unspecific force as terms of philosophy or theology similarly often are doubled. But some pairs are difficult to explain: neither term in doubles such as alyue or quyke (Acts 1:3), wickid or schrewid (Acts 2:41), or taste or ete (Acts 10:10) seems likely to have been uncertain in sense to any late fourteenth-century reader. The LV readings of these doublets are usually reductions to a single word, though this may be either the first or the second of the pair; Latinate vocabulary tends to be removed, the native equivalent remaining, but this is certainly not the single cause. Some pairs recur: not only technical vocabulary (that may occur more than once but at a distance that could account for the reminder), but also it may be that attention to the varying sense of words such as anima accounts for recurrent glossing.21 Tracing these doublets through the text provides some insight into the processes through which the workers arrived at the final version. The EV text of FM’s edition shows in Acts about 150 pairs of such glosses. Roughly two-thirds of these are retained without modification in N, always within the text block, and usually but not invariably underlined.22 Some dozen cases are changed in N, but by methods that vary according to individual circumstance; the remainder, about fifty cases, simplify to a single word, and that in agreement with LV as found in FM’s edition.23 It is hard to see the factors leading to inclusion in this final group, or, to put it in a definable historical order, the factors (at least in a good majority of the group) that slowed down the processes of simplification. 20 FM tend to regard any marginal record as coming from a corrector, implied to be other than the main scribe, making insufficient allowance for a difference in appearance in the margin attributable to changes in a scribe’s circumstances of writing. Given the length of the text and the complexity of their editorial task, comparative judgements are necessarily tentative. 21 See e.g. Acts 20:24, 27:10, 22, 44. MS Fairfax 2, the LV copy text used here, is a poor representative since it tends to retain EV double glosses, or even to add new doublets not found in the earlier text (see e.g. 7:54, 57). 22 See e.g. 7:3, 10, 20, 34. 23 For examples in Acts see FM’s variants, which are for this feature a fairly complete record.

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Are there any parallels to the changes of N? This is easily answered in regard to N’s entire repertoire of LV characteristics in an EV frame: no such mixture in a section of roughly parallel length even to chapter 7 of Acts has been found. It is easy to admit that numerous copies of the New Testament exist that still have not been analysed in any detail; even a simple designation of EV or LV may hide significant variants. But FM’s variants in the New Testament section from Romans to Jude involved with N’s eccentricities are revealing: they repeatedly cite V (their siglum for N) on its own, at a frequency far outstripping any other single manuscript. Since Lindberg and Dove would have been alerted by FM’s variants, it must be assumed that they looked for parallels to N and did not find anything relevant. Lindberg and Dove do cite a few cases of EV manuscripts that have been modified towards LV’s text. One of these is BL Additional MS 11858 (FM’s U), claimed by FM as clearly influenced by LV.24 U contains the New Testament, and the influence of LV is said to be found (outside prologues) in Matt. 1:1–Luke 19:13. Direct comparison with N is not possible: N contains unmodified EV for the whole of all four gospels, whilst U does not have the LV readings in N’s section from Romans on. Random checking of readings in U’s text of Matthew and Mark found no useful N-type versions. Even less was found in considering BL Harley MS 2249 (FM’s b), which was thought by Madden to be in the same hand as BL Additional MS 11858 (see his signed pencil notes on the opening fly-leaves of each of the two); Harley 2249 contains Joshua 19:19–Ps. 144:13, but interestingly in LV. This would be an unusual case of a single scribe writing both EV and LV – but is the hand the same? Further investigation would be needed if this possibility were thought to be significant. Can any conclusions be drawn, or suggestions usefully supported, from N’s text? It seems to me that the categorization of changes from, or retentions of, EV readings confirms that N derives from the central translational endeavour, and, albeit uniquely recognized so far, is not simply an individual’s isolated effort. All modifications in N’s text are placeable within categories that are not peculiar to N. N was working from an EV exemplar, and was configuring a revision that was already under way – eccentric substitutions such as Jude 1:6 N he reseruede vndir derknesse aungels, replicated in LV, for EV aungels þat kepten not his princehed, cannot be N’s independent invention. Equally clearly, however, LV was, when N was written, not yet available in its final form: retention of forsoþe and of some participial constructions, and the presence of a majority of EV double renderings, make that certain. The writer of GP might well have wanted to send the scribe of N back for a further correction of his text – ‘could try harder’ might well have been his comment. But I think the 24 Dove, First English Bible, p. 289, citing Lindberg, ‘Manuscripts and Versions’, MS no. 39 (p. 334).

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writer of GP would not have disowned N. And N, in his turn, throws useful light on GP: it reminds us that the writing of GP must be dated before, not after the completion of all the features of that final LV. More contentiously, it points to the insufficiencies of GP’s account: GP fails to mention certain important changes made after the circulation of EV, but before the ‘standard’ LV text that is so predictable: forsoþe has not yet been banished from N but has gone by the finalizing of LV; changes to the tense of auxiliary verbs to specify time are not yet systematic; double translations have not yet been fully banished. Elsewhere, and based on factors not relevant here, I have suggested that GP was never properly finished – that it was abandoned, or perhaps confiscated abruptly, and was neither corrected nor completed.25 The sudden shift in the last sentences from technical linguistic detail to a somewhat vacuous prayer, coupled with the details of the surviving copies, is persuasive of such an uncovenanted conclusion.26 So, although N does not offer us a viable escape from the EV/LV dichotomy, it has considerably more interest than has hitherto been acknowledged. It also points to some of the working practices of the translators: changes were made one by one, some of them fairly automatically (forsoþe suppression), but others requiring a fresh analysis of each separate case (participial differentiation). That even the simplest categories of change are not absolutely uniformly applied should not surprise; the more surprising is that the computer-born ‘search and replace’ command is so appropriate here. A full analysis of N requires a complete edition of its parts, EV gospels, and then the more fluctuating epistles and Acts, to make a proper assessment of its variants.27 Until that is available, N remains something of an enigma.

25 Hudson, ‘The Origin and Textual Tradition of the Wycliffite Bible’, in Wycliffite Bible, ed. Solopova, pp. 133–61 (pp. 147–9). 26 Dove, Earliest Advocates, p. 85, note, immediately following a comment on the ambiguity of secundum: ‘Many siche aduerbis, coniuncciouns and preposiciouns ... Bi þis maner, wiþ good lyuyng and grete trauele men moun come to trewe and cleer translatyng and trewe vndurstondyng of hooli writ, seme it neuere so hard at þe bigynnyng. God graunte to vs alle grace to kunne wel and kepe wel hooli writ, and to suffre ioiefuli summe peyne for it at þe laste. Amen.’ (2966–703) 27 I have deliberately omitted here the question of the relation, if any, between the Lyra glosses and the material considered here discussed by H. Hargreaves, ‘The Marginal Glosses to the Wycliffite New Testament’, Studia Neophilologica 33 (1961), 285–300; the suggestions there do not exhaust the possibilities, but set out some of the evidence.

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Appendix Actis of Apostlis 7. Four versions of each verse (with separating symbols as shown) are here given: Vulgate; // EV from London BL Egerton MS 618, fols. 77vb–79ra; # Oxford, New College MS 67, fols. 143r–144r; % LV from Oxford, Bodleian MS Fairfax 2, fols. 367vvb–368rb. The verse numbering, not present in the medieval manuscripts, has been added from the Vulgate. 1 Dixit autem princeps sacerdotum si haec ita se habent // Forsoþe þe prince of preestis seyde to Steuen ȝif þes þingis han hem so # Forsoþe þe prince of prestis seide to Steuene wher þese þingis han hem so % And þe prince of prestis seide to Steuene wheþer þes þingis han hem so. 2 Qui ait: Viri fratres et patres, audite. Deus gloriae apparuit patri nostro Abraham, cum esset in Mesopotamiam, priusquam moraretur in Charram; et dixit ad illum // The whiche seiþ ‘Men, breþeren and fadres, heere ȝee. God of glorie aperede to our fadir Abraham whanne he was in Mesopotanye bifore he dwelte in Carram and seide to hym # whiche seide Men, briþeren and fadris ‘Here ȝee, þe God of glorie apperide to oure fadir Abraham whanne he was in Mesopotamye bifore he dwelte in Carram, and seide to hym % wiche seide ‘Breþern and fadris here ȝe God of glorie apperide to oure fadir Abraham whanne he was in Mesopotanye bifore þat he duelte in Carram and seide to him 3 Exi de terra tua et de cognatione tua, et veni in terram quam tibi monstravero // ‘Goo out of þi lond and of þi cognacioun or kynred, and cum into þe londe whom I schal schewe to þee.’ # Go out of þi lond and of þi cognacioun eiþer kynrede and come into þe lond which I schal schewe to þee % ‘Go out of þi lond and of þi kinrede, and come into þe lond wich I shal shewe to þee.’ 4 Tunc exiit de terra Chaldeorum et habitavit in Charram. Et inde postquam mortuus est pater eius, transtulit illum in terram istam in qua nunc vos habitatis. // Thanne he wente out of þe londe of Caldeis and dwelte in Carram; and þens after þat his fadir was deed he translatid him into þis lond in whiche ȝee dwellen nowe. # Þanne he went out of þe lond of Caldeys and dwelte in Carram, and fro þennes aftir þat his fadir was deed, he translatide hym into þis lond in which ȝe dwellen now % Þanne he wente out of þe lond of Caldes and duelte in Carram. And fro þennes aftir þat his fadir was deed, he translatide him into þis lond in wiche ȝe duellen now. 5 et non dedit illi hereditatem in ea nec passum pedis et repromisit dare illi eam in possessionem et semini eius post ipsum cum non haberet filium //And he ȝaue not to him heritage in it, a paas of foot, but he aȝeinbihiȝte forto ȝeue to him it into possessyoun and to his seed after hym whanne hadde nat a sone. # And he ȝaf not to him eritage in it neþer a paas of foot but he aȝenbihiȝt forto ȝeue to hym into possessioun and to

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his seed aftir hym whanne he hadde not a sone. % and he ȝaf not to him eritage in it neþer a paas of a foot but he bihiȝte to ȝife him it into possessioun and to his seed aftir him whanne he hadde not a sone 6 Locutus est autem Deus quia erit semen eius accola in terra aliena, et servituti eos subicient et male tractabunt eos annis quadringentis // Forsoþe, God spak to hym for his seed schal be a cumlynge or gest in an alien lond, and þei schuln suget hem to seruage and schuln yuel trete hem foure hundriþ ȝeeris and þritty. # Forsoþe God spac to hym þat his seed schal be comelyng in an alyen lond, and þei schulen hem soget to seruage and schulen yuel treete hem foure hundrid ȝeeris and þritty % And God spaac to him þat his seed shal be comeling in an alien lond, and þei shulen make hem sogett to seruage, and shulen yuele trete hem foure hundrid ȝeris and þretti. 7 et gentem cui servierint iudicabo ego dixit Deus, et post haec exibunt et deservient mihi in loco isto. // ‘And Y schal iuge þe folc to whiche þei schuln serue,’ seiþ þe Lord. ‘And after þese þingis þei schuln go out and þei schuln serue to me in þis place.’ # ‘And I schal iuge þe folc to which þei schulen serue’ seiþ þe Lord ‘and aftir þese þingis þei schulen go out and þei schulen serue to me in þis place’ % ‘And I shal juge þe folc to wich þei shulen serue,’ seiþ þe Lord, ‘and aftir þes þingis þei shulen go out and þei shulen serue to me in þis place.’ 8 Et dedit illi testamentum circumcisionis, et sic genuit Isaac et circumcidit eum die octava, et Isaac Iacob, et Iacob duodecim patriachas. // And he ȝaue to him a testament of circumcisioun and so he gendride Ysaac and circumcydide him in þe eiȝt day, and Ysaac gendride Iacob and Iacob þe twelue patriarkis. # And he ȝaf to him þe testament of circumsicioun and so he gendride Isaac and circumcidide him in þe eiȝtþe day. And Ysaac gendride Iacob, and Iacob gendride þe twelue parriarkis % And he ȝaf to him þe testament of circumcision; and so he gendride Isaac and circumcidide him in þe eiȝtþe dai, and Isaac gendride Iacob and Iacob gendride þe twelfe patriarkis; 9 Et patriarchae aemulantes Ioseph vendiderunt in Aegyptum. // And þe patriarkis, hauynge enuy to Ioseph solden him into Egypte. # And þe patriarkis hadden enuie to Ioseph and seelden him into Egipt % and þe patriarkis hadden envie to Ioseph and solden him into Egipte. 10 Et erat Deus cum eo; et eripuit eum ex omnibus tribulationibus eius, et dedit ei gratiam et sapientiam in conspectu pharaonis regis Aegypti et constituit eum praepositum super Aegyptum et super omnem domum suam // And God was wiþ him and delyuerede hym of alle his tribulaciouns, and ȝaue to him grace and wisdam in þe siȝt of Pharao kyng of Egipt. And he ordeynede him prouost or souerein on Egipte on alle his house. # And God was wiþ him and delyuerede him of al his tribulaciouns and ȝaf to hym

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grace and wisedom in þe siȝt of Farao, king of Egipt. and he ordeynede him prepost eiþer souereyn on Egipt and on alle his hous. % And God was wiþ him, and delyueride him of alle hise tribulacions; and ȝaf him grace and wisdam in þe siȝt of Farao king of Egipt, and he ordeynede him souerein on Egipt and on al his hous. 11 Venit autem fames in universam Aegyptum et Chanaan et tribulatio magna, et non inveniebant cibos patres nostri, // Forsoþe hungre came into al Egipte and Canaan and grete tribulacyoun and oure fadris founden nat metis. # Forsoþe hungur cam into al Egipt and Canaan and greet tribulacioun and oure fadris founden not meteis. % And hungre cam into al Egipt and Canaan, and greet tribulacion; and oure fadris founden not mete. 12 Cum audisset autem Iacob esse frumentum in Aegypto misit patres nostros primum. // Forsoþe whanne Iacob herde whete forto be in Egypt, he sente oure fadris first. # Forsoþe whanne Iacob hadde herd þat whete was in Egipt, he sente oure fadris first % But whanne Iacob hadde herd þat wheete was in Egipt, he sente oure fadris first; 13 et in secundo cognitus est Ioseph a fratribus suis, et manifestatum est pharaoni genus eius // And in þe secunde tyme Ioseph was knowen of his breþeren, and his kyn is maad knowen to Pharao. # And in þe secunde tyme Ioseph was knowen of his briþeren and his kyn was maad knowen to Faraoo. % and in þe secunde tyme Ioseph was knowen of his breþern, and was maad knowen to Farao. 14 Mittens autem Ioseph accersivit Iacob patrem suum et omnem cognationem in animabus septuaginta quinque. //Forsoþe Ioseph sendynge clepide to him Iacob his fader and alle his cognacioun in seuenty and fyue soulis. # Forsoþe Ioseph sente and clepide Iacob his fadir and al his cognacioun in men seuenty and fyue. % And Ioseph sente and clepide Iacob his fadir and al his kinredene, seuenti and fife men; 15 Et descendit Iacob in Aegyptum et defunctus est ipse et patrres nostri. // And Iacob discendide into Egipt and is deed, he and oure fadris. # And Iacob cam doun into Egipt and was deed, he and oure fadris % and Iacob cam doun into Egipt and was deed, he and oure fadris. 16 et translati sunt in Sychem et positi sunt in sepulchro quod emit Abraham pretio argenti a filiis Emmor filii Sychem. // And þei ben translatid into Sichym and ben putte in þe sepulcre þat Abraham bouȝte by pris of syluer of þe sonys of Emor, þe sone of Sichem. # And þei weren translatid into Sichen and weren put in þe sepulcre þat Abraham bouȝt bi prijs of syluer of þe sones of Emor, þe sone of Sichen. % And þei weren translatid into Sichem, and weren leide in þe sepulcre þat Abraham bouȝte bi prijs of siluer of þe sones of Emor, þe sone of Sichem. 17 Cum appropinquaret autem tempus repromissionis quam confessus erat Deus Abrahae, crevit populus et multiplicatus est in Aegypto. // Forsoþe

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whanne þe tyme of biheest came niȝ, þe whiche God hadde knowelechide to Abraham, þe puple wexe and was multiplied in Egipt, # Forsoþe whanne þe tyme of biheest cam nyȝ which God hadde knoulechid to Abraham, þe puple wax and multiplied in Egipt % And whanne tyme of biheest cam nyȝ wiche God hadde knowlechid to Abraham, þe puple waxide and multipliede in Egipt 18 quoadusque surrexit rex alius in Aegypto qui non sciebat Ioseph. // til anoþer kynge roos in Egypt, þe whiche knewe nat Ioseph. # til anoþer king roos in Egipt which knew not Ioseph % til anoþer king roos in Egipt wich knew not Ioseph. 19 Hic circumveniens genus nostrum, adflixit patres ut exponerent infantes suos ne vivificarentur. // This bygylynge our puple tourmentide oure fadris þat þei schulden putte out here ȝonge children lest þei were quycknyd. # Þis bigilide oure kyn and turmentide oure fadris þat þei schulden put out her ȝunge children lest þei weren qwekenid % Þis bigilide oure kyn and turmentide oure fadris, þat þei shulden putte awei her ȝonge children for þei shulden not life. 20 Eodem tempore natus est Moses et fuit gratus Deo; qui nutritus est tribus mensibus in domo patris sui. // In þe same tyme Moyses was born and he was acceptid or loued of God, and he was nurischid þre moneþis in þe house of his fadir. # in þe saame tyme Moises was born and he was acceptid or loued of God, and he was nurschid þre moonþis in þe hous of his fadir % In þe same tyme Moises was born, and he was loued of God. And he was noriȝsshid þre moneþis in þe hous of his fadir; 21 Exposito autem illo, sustulit eum filia pharaonis et enutrivit eum sibi in filium. // Forsoþe him putte out, þe douȝter of Pharao toke him vp and nurschide him into a sone to hir. # Forsoþe whanne he was put out, þe douȝtir of Faro took him up and nurschide him into a sone to hir % and whanne he was putt out in þe flood, þe douȝtir of Farao took him vp and noriȝsshide him into hir sone. 22 Et eruditus est Moses omni sapientia Aegyptiorum et erat potens in verbis et in operibus suis, // And Moyses was lernyd in alle þe wisdam of Egypcyanys, and he was myȝti in his wordis and werkis. # And Moises was lerned in al þe wisdom of Egipcians, and he was myȝty in his wordis and werkis. % And Moises was lerned in al þe wisdam of Egipcians, and he was miȝti in hise wordis and in his werkis. 23 Cum autem impleretur ei quadraginta annorum tempus, ascendit in cor eius ut visitaret fratres suos filios Israhel. // Forsoþe whanne þe tyme of twenty ȝeer was fulfillid to hym, it stiȝede vp into his hert þat he schulde visite his breþeren, þe sones of Yrael. # Forsoþe whanne þe tyme of fourty ȝeer was fillid to hym, it stiȝide up into his herte þat he schulde visite his briþern þe sones of Israel % But whanne þe tyme of fourti ȝeer was fillid

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to him, it roos vp into his herte þat he shulde visite his breþern þe sones of Israel. 24 Et cum vidisset quendam iniuriam patientem vindicavit illum et fecit ultionem ei qui iniuriam sustinebat percusso Aegyptio. // And whanne he seeȝe man suffringe wronge, he vengide hym and dide veniaunce to hym þat suffride wronge, þe Egipcian slayn. # And whanne he say sum man suffringe wrong, he vengide him and dide veniaunce to him þat suffride wrong and he kyllide þe Egipcian. % And whanne he saw a man suffringe wrong, he vengide him and dide vengeaunse for him þat suffride wrong. And he killide þe Egipcian 25 Existimabat autem intellegere fratres quoniam Deus per manum ipsius daret salutem illis, at ilii non intellexerunt. // Forsoþe he gesside breþeren forto be vndirstonde for God by þe hond of him schulde ȝeue to hem helþ. But þei vndirstoden not. # Forsoþe he gessiide þat his broþer schulde vndirstonde þat God schulde ȝeue to hem helþe bi þe hond of hym. But þei vndirstooden not. % for he gesside þat hise breþern shulden vndirstonde þat God shulde ȝife to hem heelþe bi þe hond of him; but þei vndirstoden not. 26 Sequenti vero die apparuit illis litigantibus et reconciliabat eos in pacem dicens ‘Viri, fratres estis, ut quid nocetis alterutrum?’ // Forsoþe in day suynge he aperide to hem chydynge, and he recounceylede hem in pese seyinge ‘Men ȝee ben breþeren, wherto noiȝen ȝee eche oþer?’ # Forsoþe in þe day suynge he apperide to hem chydinge and he recounsilide hem in pees and seide ‘Men ȝe ben briþeren; whi noyen ȝe ech oþer?’ % For in þe day suynge he apperide to hem chidinge, and he acordide hem in pees and seide ‘Men, ȝe ben briþern, whi noyen ȝe ech oþer?’ 27 Qui autem iniuriam faciebat proximo reppulit eum dicens ‘Quis te constutuit principem et iudicem super nos?’ // Forsoþe he þat dide wronge to his neiȝebore puttide him aweye, seyinge ‘Who ordeyned þe prince and domesm[an] on vs?’ # Forsoþe he þat dide wrong to his neiȝebore puttide hym awey seyinge ‘Who ordeynede þee prince and domesman on us?’ % But he þat dide þe wrong to his neiȝbore puttide him awei and seide ‘Who ordeynede þee prince and domesman on vs?’ 28 ‘Numquid interficere me tu vis, quemadmodum interfecisti heri Aegyptium?’ // ‘Wheþer þou wolt slea me as ȝisterday þou killidist þe Egipcian?’ # ‘Wher þou wolt slee me as ȝistirday þou killidist þe Egipcian?’ % ‘Wheþer þou wole slee me as ȝisterdai þou killidist þe Egipcian?’ 29 Fugit autem Moses in verbo isto et factus est advena in terra Madiam, ubi generavit filios duos. // Forsoþe in þis word Moyse fleiȝ, and was maad a cumlynge in þe lond of Madyan where he gendride two sonys. # Forsoþe in þis word Moises fley and was maad a comeling in þe lond of Madian

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where he gendride twey sones % And in þis word Moises flei, and was maad a comeling in þe lond of Madian where he bigatt twei sones. 30 Et expletis annis quadraginta, apparuit illi in deserto montis Sina angelus in igne flammae rubi. // And fourty ȝeer fulfillid, an aungel apeerede to him in fiir of flawme of a busch in desert of þe mount of Synai. # And whanne he hadde fillid fourty ȝeer, an aungel apperide to him in fijer of flawme of a busch in desert of þe mount of Syna. % And whanne he hadde fillid fourti ȝeer, an aungel apperide to him in fijr of flawme of a buyȝss in desert of þe mount of Syna. 31 Moses autem videns admiratus est visum et accedente illo ut consideraret, facta est vox Domini dicens // Forsoþe, Moyses seeyinge wondrid þe siȝte, and him cumminge to þat he schulde þe voice of þe Lord is maad to him sayinge # Forsoþe Moises siȝ and wondride on þe siȝt. And whanne hee neiȝhide to biholde þe vois of þe Lord was maad in him and seide % And Moises saw and wondride on þe siȝt, and whanne he neiȝde to biholde, þe vois of þe Lord was maad to him and seide 32 ‘Ego Deus patrum tuorum, Deus Abraham et Deus Isaac et Deus Iacob.’ Tremefactus autem Moses non audebat considerare. // ‘I am God of ȝoure fadris, God of Abraham, God of Ysaac, God of Iacob’; Moyses maad tremblinge durst not byholde. # ‘I am God of ȝoure fadris, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Iacob’; Moises was maad tremblinge and durste not biholde % ‘I am God of ȝour fadris, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Iacob.’ Moises was maad trembling and durste not biholde 33 Dixit autem illi Dominus ‘Solve calciamentum pedum tuorum; locus enim in quo stas terra sancta est.’ // Forsoþe God seide to hym ‘Vnbynde þe schoo of þi feet, for þe place in whiche þou stondist is hooly erþe.’ # Forsoþe God seide to him ‘Vnbynde þe schoon of þi feet, for þe place in which þou stondist is hooly erþe.’ % but God seide to him ‘Do of þe shoon of þi feet, for þe place in wich þou stondist is holi erþe.’ 34 ‘Videns vidi adflictionem populi mei, qui est in Aegypto et gemitum eorum audivi et descendi liberare eos; et nunc veni et mittam te in Aegyptum.’ // ‘I seeynge sawȝ þe affliccyoun or tourmentynge of my puple þat is in Egypt, and Y herde þe mournynge of hem, and I came doun forto delyuere hem. And nowe come þou, and I schal sende þee into Egypt.’ # ‘I seeinge say þe affliccioun eiþer turmenting of my puple þat is in Egipt and I herde þe moornynge of hem, and I cam doun forto delyuere hem and now come þou, and I schal sende þee into Egipt.’ % ‘I seynge saw þe turmenting of my puple þat is in Egipt, and I herde þe moornyng of hem, and I cam doun to delyuere hem. And now come þou and I shal sende þee into Egipt.’ 35 Hunc Moysen quem negaverunt dicentes ‘Quis te constituit principem et iudicem, hunc Deus principem et redemptorem misit cum manu angeli qui apparuit illi in rubo.’ //This Moyses whom þei denyeden seyinge ‘Who

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ordeynede þee prince and domysman on vs? God sente þis prince and aȝeinbyer wiþ þe hond of þe aungel þat apeered to hym in þe busche.’ # þis Moyses whom þei denyeden seyinge ‘Who ordeynede þee prince and domesman on vs? God sente þis prince and aȝenbiȝere wiþ þe hond of þe aungel þat apperide to him in þe busch’ % Þis Moises whom þei denyeden seijng ‘Who ordeynede þee prince and domesman on vs?’, God sente þis prince and aȝenbier wiþ þe hond of þe aungel þat apperide to him in þe buyȝss. 36 Hic eduxit illos faciens prodigia et signa in terra Aegypti et in Rubro mari et in deserto annis quadraginta, // This ledde hem out doyinge wondris and sygnys in þe lond of Egypt and in þe Rede Se and in desert fourty ȝeeris. # þis Moises ledde hem oute and dide wondris and singnes in þe lond of Egipt and in þe Reed See and in desertes fourty ȝeris % Þis Moises ladde hem out and dide wondris and signes in þe lond of Egipt and in þe Rede See and in desert fourti ȝeris 37 Hic est Moses qui dixit filiis Israhel ‘Prophetam vobis suscitabit Deus de fratribus vestris tamquam me.’ // This is Moyses þat seide to þe sonys of Yrael ‘God schal reise to ȝou a prophete of ȝoure breþeren: as me ȝe schuln heeren him.’ # þis is Moises þat seide to þe sones of Israel ‘God schal reyse to ȝou a profete of ȝoure briþeren; as me ȝe schulen here hym.’ % Þis is Moises þat seide to þe sones of Israel ‘God shal reise to ȝou a profete of ȝour breþern: as me ȝe shulen heere him.’ 38 Hic est qui fuit in ecclesia in solitudine cum angelo qui loquebatur ei in monte Sina et cum patribus nostris, qui accepit verba vitae dare nobis. // þis is þat was in þe chirche in wildrenesse wiþ aungel, þat spac to him in þe mount of Synay and wiþ oure fadris, þe whiche tolde wordis of liif forto ȝeue to vs. # þis it is þat was in þe chirche in wildirnesse wiþ þe aungel þat spac to him in þe mount Syna and wiþ oure fadris which took wordis of lijf forto ȝeue to us % Þis it is þat was in þe chirche in wildirnesse, wiþ þe aungel þat spac to him in þe mount Syna, and wiþ oure fadris wich took wordis of lijf to ȝife to vs. 39 cui noluerunt oboedire patres nostri sed reppulerunt et aversi sunt cordibus suis in Aegyptum // To whome oure fadres wolden not obeye but puttiden him aweye and ben turnyd aweye in her hertis into Egypt, # To whom oure fadris wolden not obeye but puttiden hym awey and weren turned awey in her hertis into Egipt % To whom oure fadris wolden not obeie, but puttiden him awei and weren turned awei in hertis into Egipt, 40 dicentes ad Aaron ‘Fac nobis deos qui praecedant nos; Moses enim hic, qui eduxit nos de terra Aegypti nescimus quid factum sit ei.’ // Seyinge to Aaron ‘Make þou to vs goddis þat schuln go byfore vs. Forsoþe to þis Moyses þat ladde vs out of þe lond of Egypt, we wyten not what is to don to hym.’ # seyinge to Aaron ‘Make þou to us goddis þat schulen goo bifore

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vs for to þis Moyses þat ledde us out of þe lond of Egipt we witen not what is don to hym.’ % seijnge to Aaron ‘Make þou to vs goddis þat shulen go bifore vs, forto þis Moises þat ladde vs out of þe lond of Egipt we witen not what is doon to him.’ 41 Et vitulum fecerunt in illis diebus et obtulerunt hostiam simulacro et laetabantur in operibus manuum suarum. // And þei maden a calf in þo days and offreden an host to þe symulacre, and þei gladdeden in þe werkis of her hondis. # And þei maden a calf in þoo daies and offriden a sacrifice to þe symylacre and þei weren glad in þe werkis of her hondis % And þei maden a calf in þo daies, and offriden a sacrifice to þe mawmet, and þei weren glade in þe werkis of her hondis. 42 Convertit autem Deus et tradidit eos servire militiae caeli, sicut scriptum est in libro Prophetarum ‘Numquid victimas aut hostias obtulistis mihi annis quadrqaginta in deserto domus Israhel?’ // Forsoþe God turned and bitoke hem forto serue to þe knyȝthod of heuen, as it is writen in þe booke of prophetis ‘Where ȝee offriden to me slayn sacrifices or ostis fourty ȝeeris in desert, ȝee hous of Yrael’ # Forsoþe God turnede and bitook hem forto serue to þe kniȝthod of heuene as it is writen in þe book of profetis ‘wher ȝe hous of Israel offriden to me slayn sacrifices eiþer sacrifices fourty ȝeeris in desert’ % And God turnede and bitook hem to serue to þe kniȝthode of heuene, as it is writen in þe book of profetis ‘Wheþer ȝe hous of Israel offriden to me slain sacrifices eþer sacrifice fourty ȝeris in desert?’ 43 ‘Et suscepistis tabernaculum Moloch et sidus dei vestri Rempham, figuras quas fecistis ad adorare eas, et transferam vos trans Babylonem.’ // ‘And ȝee han taken þe tabernacle of Moloc and þe sterre of ȝour god Remfam, fyguris þat ȝe haan maad forto wirschippe hem. And Y schal translate ȝou into Babiloyne.’ # ‘And ȝe han tabernacle of Moloc and þe sterre of ȝour of god Renfam figuris þat ȝe han maad forto worschipe hem and I schal translate ȝou into Babiloyn’ % ‘and ȝe han taken þe tabernacle of Moloc, and þe sterre of ȝoure god Renfam, figuris þat ȝe han maad to worshipe hem. And I shal translate ȝou into Babilone.’ 44 Tabernaculum testimonii fuit patribus nostris in deserto, sicut disposuit, loquens ad Mosen ut faceret illud secundum formam quam viderat. // The tabernacle of wytnessynge was wiþ oure fadris in desert as God disposide to hem, spekynge to Moyses þat he schulde make it vp þe fourme þat he sawȝ; # þe tabernacle of witnessing was wiþ oure fadris in desert, as God disposide to hem and spac to Moises þat he schulde make it bi þe fourme þat he say % Þe tabernacle of wittnessing was wiþ oure fadris in desert, as God disposede to hem and spac to Moises þat he shulde make it aftir þe fourme þat he saw; 45 quod, et induxerunt suscipientes patres nostri cum Iesu in possessionem gentium, quas expulit Deus a facie patrum nostrorum usque in diebus

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David. // þe whiche, and oure fadres takynge wiþ Iesu, brouȝten into þe possessioun of heiþen men, þe whiche God puttide aweye fro þe face of oure fadris til in þe dayes of Dauid. # which and oure fadris token wiþ Ihesu and brouȝten into þe possessioun of heþene men whiche God puttide awey fro þe face of oure fadris til in þe daies of Dauiþ % wich also oure fadris token wiþ Ihesu, and brouȝten into possession of heþene men. Wich God puttide awei fro þe face of oure fadris, til in þe daies of Dauid 46 qui invenit gratiam ante Deum et petiit ut inveniret tabernaculum Deo Iacob. // Þat fonde grace anentis God, and axid þat he schulde fynde a tabernacle to God of Iacob. # þat foond grace anentis God and axide þat he schulde fynde a tabernacle to God of Iacob % þat foond grace anentis God and axide þat he shulde finde a tabernacle to God of Iacob. 47 Salomon autem aedificavit illi domum. // Salomon forsoþe bildide an house to him. # Salomon forsoþe bildide an hous to him. % But Salon bildide þe hous . 48 Sed non Excelsus in manufactis habitat, sicut propheta dicit // Bot þe Heeȝ dwelliþ not in maad þingis bi hond, as he seiþ þe prophete: # But þe hiȝ God dwelliþ not in þingis maad bi hond, as he seiþ bi þe prophete % But þe hiȝ God duelliþ not in þingis maad bi hond, as he seiþ bi þe profete 49 ‘Caelum mihi sedes est, terra autem scabillum pedum meorum. Quam domum aedificabitis mihi,’ dicit Dominus ‘aut quis locus requietionis mea est?’ // ‘Heuen is a sete to me, þe erþe soþely þe stool of my feet. What hous schuln ȝee beelde to me’ seiþ þe Lord ‘or whiche is my restinge?’ # ‘Heuene is a seete to me, þe erþe forsoþe is þe stool of my feet. What hous schulen ȝe bilde to me’ seiþ þe Lord, ‘eiþer what place is of my resting?’ % ‘Heuene is a seete to me, and þe erþe is þe stool of my feet. What hous shulen ȝe bilde to me?’ seiþ þe Lord, ‘eþer what place is of my resting?’ 50 ‘Nonne manus mea fecit haec omnia?’ // ‘Wheþer my hond maade not alle þes þingis?’# ‘wher myn hond made not alle þese þíngis?’ % ‘Wheþer mijn hond made not alle þes þingis?’ 51 ‘Duri cervice et incircumcisi cordibus et auribus vos semper Spiritui Sancto resistis, sicut patres vestri et vos.’ // ‘Wiþ hard noll and vncircumcidid hertis and eris, ȝee wiþstonde euermore þe Holy Goost – as and ȝoure fadris, so and ȝee.’ # ‘wiþ hard nol and vncircumcidid hertis and eeris ȝe wiþstoden euermore þe Hooly Goost as and ȝoure fadris so and ȝee’ % ‘Wiþ harde nolle and vncircumcidid hertis and eeris, ȝe wiþstooden euermore þe Holi Goost. And as ȝoure fadris, so ȝe.’ 52 ‘Quem prophetarum non sunt persecuti patres vestri? Et occiderunt eos, qui praenuntiabant de adventu Iusti, cuius vos nunc proditores et homicidae fuistis.’ // ‘Whom of þe prophetis han not ȝour fadris pursued, and han slayn hem þat biforeteelden of þe cummynge of þe iust whos tratours and

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menslears ȝe weren nowe?’ # ‘whom of þe prophetis han not ȝoure fadris pursued and han slayn hem þat byforetelden of þe comyng of þe iust whos traytouris and mansleeris ȝe weren now?’ % ‘Whom of þe profetis han not ȝoure fadris pursued? and han slayn hem þat biforetolden of þe coming of þe riȝtful man whois traitours and mansleers ȝe weren now?’ 53 ‘qui accepistis legem in dispositionem angelorum et non custodistis.’ // ‘þe whiche token þe lawe in ordynaunce of aungels and han not kepte.’ # ‘whiche token þe lawe in ordynaunce of aungeles and han not kept.’ % ‘wiche token þe lawe in ordenaunse of aungels and han not kept it.’ 54 Audientes autem haec, dissecabantur cordibus suis et stridebant dentibus in eum. // Forsoþe, þei heerynge þese þinges, weren dyuersly tourmentid in hertis, and gnaystiden or grenneden into him. # Forsoþe þei herden þese þingis and weren deuersly turmentid in her hertis and gnastiden eiþer grennden wiþ teeþ on hym % And þei herden þes þingis, and weren dyuerseli turmentide in her hertis and grenneden wiþ teeþ on him. 55 Cum autem esset plenus Spiritu Sancto, intendens in caellum vidit gloriam Dei et Iesum stantem a dextris Dei. et ait ‘Ecce video caelos apertos et Filium hominis a dextris stantem Dei.’ // Forsoþe whanne Steuene was ful of þe Hooly Goost, he byholdinge into heuene sawe þe glorie of God and Iesu stondinge of þe riȝt half of þe vertu of God. And he seiþ ‘Loo, Y see heuens opnyd and þe sone of man stondinge on þe riȝt half of þe vertu of God.’ # Forsoþe whanne Steuene was ful of þe Hooly Goost he biheeld into heuene and say þe glorie of God and Ihesu stondinge on þe riȝt half of þe uertu of God and he seide ‘Loo I see heuenes openid and þe sone of man stondinge on þe riȝt half of þe uertu of God’ % But whanne Steuene was ful of þe Holi Goost, he biheuld into heuene and saw þe glorie of God, and Ihesu stondinge on þe riȝt half of þe vertu of God. And he seide ‘Lo, I se heuenes opened, and mannes sone stondinge on þe riȝt half of þe vertu of God.’ 56 Exclamantes autem voce magna continuerunt aures suas et impetum fecerunt unanimiter in eum // Forsoþe, þei criynge wiþ grete voice helden togydre þeir eris and maden togider asaut or feersnesse into him. # Forsoþe þei crieden wiþ greet vois and heelden togidere her eeris and maden wiþ oo wille a sauȝt or feernesse into hym % And þei crieden wiþ a greet vois and stoppiden her eeris, and maden wiþ oo wille assauȝt into him. 57 et eicientes eum extra civitatem lapidabant. Et testes deposuerunt vestimenta sua secus pedes adulescentis qui vocabatur Saulus. // And þei castynge him out of þe cite stooneden. And þe witnessis diden of her cloþis besidis þe feet of a ȝunge man þat was clepide Saul. # And þei castiden hym out of þe citee and stoneden, and witnessis diden of her cloþis bisydis þe

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feet of a ȝung man þat was clepid Saul. % And þei brouȝten him out of þe citee and þei stoneden him and þe wittnessis diden her cloþis bisidis þe feet of a ȝong man þat was clepid Saul. 58 Et lapidabant Stephanum invocantem et dicentem ‘Domine Iesu, suscipe spiritum meum.’ // And þei stooneden Steuen inclepinge and seynge ‘Lord Ihesu, receyue my spirit # And þei stoneden Steuene clepinge to help and seyinge ‘Lord Ihesu resseyue my spirit’ % And þei stoneden Steuene þat clepide God to help, seijnge ‘Lord Ihesu, receyue my spiritt!’ 59 Positis autem genibus clamavit voce magna ‘Domine, ne statuas illis hoc peccatum’; et cum hoc dixisset, obdormivit. Saulus autem erat consentiens neci eius //Forsoþe þe knees putte, he criede wiþ grete voice seynge Lord sette þou not to hem þis synne for þei witen not what þei don # Forsoþe he kneelede and he criede wiþ greet vois seyinge ‘Lord, sette to hem þis synne ’28 % and he knelede and criede wiþ a greet vois and seide ‘Lord, sette not to hem þis synne!’ 60 // And whanne he hadde seide þis þing, he slepte in þe Lord. # and whanne he hadde seid þis þing he slept in þe Lord. % And whanne he hadde seid þis þing he diede.

28 These words are removed from the LV text following the comment by Lyra, translated in N fol. 144r margin; they do not appear in the modern Vulgate.

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• 5 • Patterns of Circulation and Variation in the English and Latin Texts of Books I and II of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection • michael g. sargent • Walter Hilton wrote a number of works of spiritual guidance in Latin and English in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, some of which circulated widely enough and in forms varied enough to raise questions not merely of authorial or scribal revision, but even of fundamental change in the conceptualization of the work itself. The aim of the present study is to examine the patterns of circulation of, and variation in, the two books of the English text of The Scale of Perfection and Thomas Fishlake’s Latin translation of the Scale, in order to unpack the changes of audience and intent manifest in them. For the most part, Hilton’s works are written as pieces of correspondence clearly aimed at the spiritual needs of those to whom he wrote. To Adam Horsley, an Exchequer official who wished to leave his secular clerical career to join the Carthusian order, Hilton wrote his Latin letter De Utilitate et prerogativis religionis.1 To another correspondent (possibly another lawyer, John Thorpe), he wrote the letter Ad Quemdam seculo renunciare volentem to discourage the fulfilment of an ill-considered vow made in illness to enter a religious order: ‘mihi videtur quod non convenit tibi ingressus religionis.’ (‘It seems to me that it is not appropriate for you to enter a religious order.’)2 To an unknown member of the gentry who desired to engage in contemplation but had family and responsibilities that prevented him from leaving the active world, Hilton wrote his English Epistle on the Mixed Life.3 The Scale of Perfection presents itself similarly as a personal work of spiritual direction. The first book of the Scale, written for a woman who had recently 1 Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, ed. John P. H. Clark and Cheryl Taylor, Analecta Cartusiana 124, 2 vols. (Salzburg, 1987), I. 103–­73. 2 Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, II. 245–98, at ll. 884–5. 3 Walter Hilton’s Mixed life: edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472, ed. S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson (Salzburg, 1986).

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been enclosed as an anchoress, comprises an introductory essay on the contemplative life and an introspective guide to the eradication of the impulse toward each of the seven deadly sins. In this programme of moral reformation, meditation on the humility and charity of Jesus, his incarnation, Passion, and death, plays an important role, as does the sensual experience (tears, warmth, and sweetness) of the love of God. The second book of the Scale,4 nominally addressed to the same person, who had asked Hilton for further explanation of the first book’s metaphor of the reformation of the corrupted image of God in the soul, comprises both an explanation of the theology of justification (reformation of the soul to the image of God in faith) and a discussion of contemplation that is closer to the affective tradition of the Victorines and early Carthusians (reformation of the soul to the image of God in faith and in feeling). The two books differ markedly in their attitudes toward the role of affect in the contemplative life, and Thomas Fishlake apparently seeks to reverse this difference through a large number of relatively small local changes in the Latin text of Scale II. We must recognize here that the word ‘affect’ is used in three ways in the discussion of late medieval contemplative literature. The first is in the discussion of twelfth- and early-thirteenth century theologians and monastic writers such as William of Saint-Thierry, Richard and Hugh of Saint-Victor, Thomas Gallus, and the Carthusians Hugh of Balma, Guigo de Ponte and Guigo II of the Grande Chartreuse, and – in English – the corpus of writings associated with The Cloud of Unknowing.5 For all these authors the grace-infused affect of love, not knowledge, is the proper mode of the soul’s approach to God. This form of affect is not situated in particular body parts or bodily experiences (except when it is located in the heart, as a generalized seat of loving affect), but acts as a total disposition of the whole person – a habitus voluntatis.6 The second way that the term ‘affect’ is used in discussion of late medieval contemplative literature is to locate it specifically, bodily, in the heart: ‘just as if you were to put your finger in a flame, it would feel a sensible heat’, as Richard Rolle describes it in the Incendium amoris, the text in which this kind of affect

4 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, Book II: An Edition based on British Library MSS Harley 6573 and 6579, ed. begun by S. S. Hussey, completed by Michael G. Sargent, EETS o.s. 348 (Oxford, 2017). Henceforth cited as Scale II by chapter/line number. 5 Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism (New York, 1994), pp.  225–74, 353–62, 363–418; McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism 1350–1550 (New York, 2012), pp. 396–424; Dennis Martin, ed./trans., Carthusian Spirituality: The Writings of Hugh of Balma and Guigo de Ponte (Mahwah, NJ, 1997); John P. H. Clark, The Cloud of Unknowing: An Introduction, Analecta Cartusiana 119: 4–6 (Salzburg, 1995). 6 J. P. H. Clark, ‘The “Lightsome Darkness” – Aspects of Walter Hilton’s Theological Background’, Downside Review 95 (1977), 95–109, at 108.

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is most often described in English literature on contemplation.7 Allied to this form of affectivity, often overlapping with it, is the imaginative devotion to the life, and particularly to the Passion of Christ, that is what the presentday reader most often thinks of in response to references to medieval affective meditation.8 Each of these three forms of affectivity plays a role in Hilton’s Scale of Perfection.9 Scale I, probably written in the 1370s or early 1380s, opens with a treatment of the contemplative life according to the scholastic method of division of the topic: the distinction of the active and contemplative lives, the three parts of contemplation, and the two degrees of the second part. The first mention of affect occurs in the introductory description of the second part of contemplation.10 This is that form of contemplation appropriate to a man or woman ‘withouten vnderstondyng of gostly thynges’, not even the specific teachings of scripture, but who feels savour, delight, and comfort in prayer and meditation (‘thynkyng’), though s/he does not know what it is. Rather, such a devout soul feels ‘mony swete teres, brennand desyres and mony still mournynges’ that cleanse the heart, and make it melt into the sweetness of Jesus. This form of contemplation, Hilton says, lies principaly in affeccion withouten vnderstondyng of gostly thynges, and þis is comunly of symple and vnlettred men whilk gyuen hem holly to deuocion. And þis is feled on þis maner: when a man or a woman in meditacion of God feleȝ feruour of loue and gostly swetnes by mynd of his passion or of any of his werkes in his manhed …11

or he feels trust in the mercy and forgiveness of God, or reverence for the justice of God,

7 The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Margaret Deanesly (Manchester, 1915), p. 146: ‘sicut si digitus in igne poneretur feruorem indueret sensibilem’. See McGinn, Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, pp. 339–70, esp. pp. 351–2. 8 Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia, 2010); Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 2011). 9 Michael G. Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Affective Turn’, in ‘This Tretice, by me compiled’: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Dinessen, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout, forthcoming). 10 Scale I, chapter 5. Text based on Cambridge University Library MS Add. 6686, the provisional base-text of the incomplete edition of A. J. Bliss, which I am presently working to bring to completion. I wish to thank the Bliss family for permission to use Prof. Bliss’s materials for the edition of Scale I, which include a copy of Rosemary Birts, ‘The Scale of Perfection, by Walter Hilton, Canon at the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton, Book I, Chapters 38–52’, unpubl. M. Litt. thesis (Oxford, 1951). 11 Scale I, chapter 5: CUL MS 6686, p. 281a. All references to Scale I in the present discussion are taken from A. J. Bliss’s text.

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Michael G. S argent or in preyere he feleȝ þe þoȝt of his hert drawȝe up fro all erthly thynges, streined togedre with all þe myȝtes of it upstiȝand into oure Lord by feruent desyre and with gostly delyte.

The fervour of love and spiritual sweetness, and meditation on the manhood and the Passion of Christ, are thus the defining characteristics of what Hilton describes as the second part of contemplation, that which is available to the devout but uneducated (at least not theologically educated) laity, among others. This part of contemplation has two degrees, the lower of which corresponds roughly to the ‘mixed life’ that he describes in his letter on that subject; the higher degree is appropriate, rather, to those who have leisure for a life of prayer. The third part of contemplation lies in cognition and affection: Hilton characterizes the difference between them by describing the second part as ‘burning love in devotion’, and the third as ‘burning love in contemplation’.12 He cautions at this point: [V]isions or reuelacions of any maner spirite in bodily apperyng or in ymaginyng, slepand or wakand, or elles any oþer felyng in þe bodily wittes made as it were gostly, eiþer in sowynyng of þe ere or saueryng in þe mouth or smellyng at þe nese, or elles any felable hete as it were fyre glouand and warmand þe brest or any oþer partie of þe bodie, or any thyng þat may be feled by bodily witt (þoȝ it be neuer so comfortable and lykand), arn noȝt verrely contemplacion ne þei arn bot simple and secundarie, þoȝ þei ben gode in regard of gostly vertus and in gostly knowyng and louyng of God.13

The echoes of Richard Rolle here are unmistakable. Hilton does not condemn outright such experiences as ‘tasting in the mouth or smelling at the nose, or any perceptible heat, as it were fire glowing and warming the breast or any other part of the body’: he points out only that they may be deceptive. Hilton goes on to note that the contemplative life normally consists in reading, meditation, and prayer, but that ‘redyng of Holy Writt may þou noȝt wel vse’ – presumably, his reader’s Latin and her way of life are not sufficient to the intensive exercise of ‘mastication’ of the scriptural text characteristic of monastic spirituality.14 The next several chapters of Scale I offer a desultory treatment of various topics concerning first prayer, then meditation. In treating of prayer, Hilton refers to the fire of love, noting again that it is not to be understood physically: 12 Scale I, chapters 8–9. 13 Scale I, chapter 10: CUL 6686, p. 284a–b. 14 Scale I, chapter 15. See Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York, 1961).

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Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection Alle men þat speken of þe fyre of loue knowen noȝt wel what it is. For what it is I can noȝt tell þe, safe þis may I tell þe, þat it is neiþire bodily ne it is bodily feled. A soule may fele it in preyere or in deuocion, whilk soule is in þe bodie, bot he feleȝ it noȝt by no bodily witt. For þoȝ it be so þat if it wirk in a soule, þe bodie may turne into a hete as it were chaufed for likand trauaile of þe spirit; neuerþeles þe fyre of loue is noȝt bodily, for it is only in þe gostly desire of þe soule. (Ch. 26: CUL 6686, p. 298b)

Hilton opens his treatment of meditation with a discussion of compunction for one’s sins, with its ‘soroe of hert, grete wepynges, and mony teres of þe eȝe’ (ch. 34, p. 305a). His next subject is meditation on the life and Passion of Christ: [S]odenly þi thoȝt is drawen up fro all worldly and fleschly thynges, and þe thynkeȝ as þou seeȝ in þi soule þi Lord in bodily liknes as he was in erth: how he was taken of þe Jues and bounden as a thefe, beten and despised, scourged and demed to þe deth, how mekely he bare þe crosse upon his bak and how cruely he was nayled þerupon; also of þe crown of thornes upon his hede and of þe scharp spere þat stong hym to þe hert, and þou in þis gostly siȝt feleȝ þi hert stired into so grete compassion and pitie of þi Lord Jesu þat þou mourneȝ and wepeȝ and crieȝ with all þe myȝtes of þi bodie and of þi soule … and also ouere þis þou feleȝ so mykel godenes and mercie in oure Lord þat þi hert riseȝ up into loue and gladnes of hym, with mony swete teres. … For a man schal noȝt come comunly to gostly delite in contemplacion of þe godhed bot if he come first in ymaginacion by bitternes and compassion of his manhed. (Ch. 35, p. 306a–b)

Hilton next takes up the question of how this meditation on the manhood of Christ might be withdrawn from the contemplative and, in a long passage derived in part from William Flete, how to withstand diabolical temptation to despair. This section – and the first half of Scale I – closes with a discussion of the necessity of the Passion of Christ in the economy of human salvation.15 In the latter half of Scale I, the discussion of the eradication of the impulse toward the seven deadly sins, consideration of the Passion of Christ falls into the background. The explication of the doctrine of justification that makes up the first ten chapters of Scale II comprises first a discussion of the necessity of the sacrifice of the innocent God–man (drawn from Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus homo), and second an explanation of the necessity of faith to salvation, and the two sacraments by which the grace of reformation in faith is effected: baptism and penance. The next ten chapters comprise a transition, beginning with an exhortation to reformation in faith from a life of sin, and ending with 15 Scale I, chapter 44. It is at the end of this chapter that the famous ‘Holy Name passage’ is added in some manuscripts: see below, pp. 90–1.

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an exhortation to reformation in faith and in feeling. In the next several chapters, Hilton appears to be searching for an apt metaphor to describe this latter reformation. The first, occupying Chapter 21 (entitled ‘An entre [introductio in the Latin] how þou schalt come to þis reformyng’), is that of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. However, this metaphor is dropped two chapters later, following the travailing soul’s response to the enemies that attack it on the way: ‘þenk on þi lesson – þat þou art noȝt, þou hast noȝt, þou maight noȝt lesen of erthly gode, þou coueytest noȝt bot þe lufe of Jesu – and hold forth þi weye to Jerusalem.’16 The next several chapters distinguish the unreformed state of the soul from the two states of reformation using metaphors of sunlight and darkness, particularly that of the ‘lyghty myrkenes’.17 This phrase will recur throughout the second half of Scale II to describe the deformity in and through which the soul must work – by the light of grace – to reformation in faith and in feeling. Reverting to an issue raised in Scale I, the twenty-ninth chapter of Scale II states again (as an objection raised by his reader) what Hilton sees as the limitation of imaginative devotion to the humanity and the Passion of Christ. [Þ]er are many soules newly turned to God þat han many gostly felynges. Sum han grete compunccions for here synnes, and sum han grete deuocyons and feruours in preyers and han often sundri touchynges of gostly lyȝt in vnderstondynge, and sum han oþer maner felynges of confortable hete or grete swetnes; and nerþeles þese soules come neuer fully in þis restful myrknes þat I speke of, with feruent desyre and lastend þoght in God. … [Þ]ese gostly felynges, where þei standen in compunccyon or in deuocyon or in gostly ymaginacyon, are not þe gostly felynges whilk a soule schal hafe and fele in þe grace of contemplacyon. I sey not bot þat þei are sothfast and graciously ȝofen of God. Bot þese soules þat felen swilke are not ȝit reformed in felynge, ne þei kan not ȝit þe ȝifte of perfeccyon ne gostly þe brennynge lufe in Jesu as þei may come to. (Scale II, ch. 29/5–21)

He continues: For wyte þou wel, fele a soule neuer so mikel feruour, so mikel þat him þenkeþ þe body may not bere it, or þogh he melte al into wepynge, as longe as his þynkynge and his beholdynge of God is al in ymagynacyon and not in vnderstondynge, he come not ȝit to perfyte lufe ne to contemplacyon. 16 Scale II, ch. 22/70–72. 17 Scale II, ch. 24/2. It is important to note here that, as J. P. H. Clark has demonstrated (‘Lightsome Darkness’), this phrase, which occurs in varying forms in Hilton and The Cloud of Unknowing, means completely different things to the two writers. For Hilton, the ‘myrkenes’ is the corruption in which the soul no longer resembles God; for the Cloud, it is the ‘unknowing’ in which the human soul, limited by its very nature, most closely approaches the infinite God.

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Hilton goes on to describe the forms of affect that accompany compunction for sin – and that result in the gifts of heat, sweetness, and song, characteristic of the spirituality of Richard Rolle – as aspects of the beginnings of conversion from a life of sin. They are part of the reformation of the soul to the image of God in faith, not the reformation in faith and in feeling: Vpon þe same wyse it may be seyd of oþer maner felynges þat are lyke to bodily: as herynge of delytable songe, or felynge of confortable hete in þe body, or seenge of lyȝt, or swetnes of bodily sauour. Þese are not gostly felynges, for gostly felynges are felt in þe myȝtes of þe soule, principally in vnderstondynge and in lufe and lytel in ymaginacion. Bot þese felynges are in ymaginacyon, and þerfor þei are not gostly felynges, bot whan þei arn best and most trewe ȝit are þei bot owtward toknes of þe inly grace þat is felt in þe myȝtes of þe soule. (Scale II, ch. 30/163–70)

The second half of Scale II describes the reformation in faith and in feeling, and its effects. Scale I circulated widely in England before the addition of Scale II: nearly half of the surviving manuscripts of the first book lack the second;18 they are more widely disseminated geographically;19 and they survive in versions with 18 See Scale II, p. xxviii. Seventeen manuscripts of Scale I (of thirty-nine originally complete manuscripts) lack Scale II completely; in another two, H and R, Scale II has been added by other hands; in yet another, H7, Scale II begins in the same hand as Scale I, but is continued after the first lines by another hand; and in another, H2, Scale I is followed by a copy of the Latin version of Scale II in another hand. See the appended list of sigla, below. 19 Most notable are V and S, from the West Midlands, and the affiliational group centered on R, from Yorkshire. On the latter, see Ralph Hanna, The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue (Exeter, 2010), nos. 94, 12, and 15.

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major textual variation. Since Evelyn Underhill published her modernization of the Scale in 1923, it has been known that some manuscripts have an additional passage on devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus at the end of Scale I, chapter 44, a number of expansions to the text that she characterized as Christocentric, and varying systems of chapter division, all of which were added into her base text, H, in later hands.20 Helen Gardner made the presence or absence of the ‘Holy Name passage’ and associated expansions the criteria for distinguishing the various forms of Scale I,21 and they have remained major criteria in all discussions of the text since. In 1951, Rosemary Birts (later Dorward), a student of Helen Gardner, produced an edition of chapters 38–52 of Scale I based on a collation of all manuscripts then known. The textual criteria upon which Dorward based her classification of the manuscripts comprised (1) the full text; (2) the presence or absence of different versions of the expansions; (3) chapter headings; and (4) chapter divisions. In 1963, A. J. Bliss took over the project of producing a critical edition of Scale I: to a large extent, his work is based on Dorward’s, and his results are similar.22 The primary difference is that Bliss distinguished several types of interpolations in the text: the Christocentric expansions, and two different series of minor, primarily explanatory, interpolations occurring among particular (possibly affiliated) groups of manuscripts.23 Dorward distinguished two main manuscript groups, which she designated N and OQ. Group N (Bliss’s group Z) comprises MSS R (with D and F), VS and Pl, B, H3, Ld, U, Ln, and Ws, sometimes varying with T2, Lt and Ry.24 The group is distinguished by a number of minor readings throughout the text, including ninety-two or ‑three chapter titles; it lacks the expansions generally;25 and six manuscripts of fifteen lack the ‘Holy Name passage’.26 Two-thirds of the manuscripts of the N group lack Scale II: D, F, V, 20 The Scale of Perfection, by Walter Hilton, Canon at Thurgarton, Newly edited from MS sources, with an Introduction, ed. Evelyn Underhill (London, 1923), pp. xliii–xlv. 21 Gardner, ‘The Text of “The Scale of Perfection”’, Medium Ævum 5 (1936), 11–30. 22 See the comparison of Dorward’s and Bliss’s results in Michael 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. Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 509–34, at p. 518. 23 It is possible that Bliss’s analysis of the textual data depends too much on patterns found among the various sets of interpolations. This is one conclusion that I will be testing in my own tabulation of the results of collation of the manuscripts, which will proceed, as in the edition of Scale II, by identifying affiliated manuscripts in order of group size (pairs first, etc.). See Scale II, pp. xvi–civ. 24 T2, Lt and Ry belong to Dorward’s Group N (Bliss’s Z) for Scale I, chapters 1–10 and 15–52, and to Dorward’s Group Q (Bliss’s K) 11–14 and 52 to the end. 25 U, a late Yorkshire copy otherwise affiliated with RDF, has the expansions, and Ws has one of the expansions. 26 RDF, H3, B, and Ld lack the passage; Ws, Ln, and U have it, as do VS and Pl, and T2Lt and Ry, which Dorward classified as of mixed affiliation (NO).

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S, U, H3, Ln, and the mixed manuscripts T2, Lt, and Ry; one-third have Scale II: R (added in a later hand in a different dialect),27 Pl, B, Ld, and Ws. Dorward’s Group O (Bliss’s Group G) comprises five manuscripts: C, A, and LPB3, and occasionally the conflated E, sometimes varying with T2, Lt and Ry on the one hand, and with H5, Hu and Wo (Bliss’s Group X) on the other.28 Dorward’s Group O is distinguished by a number of minor readings throughout the text, including ninety-two or ‑three chapter titles; C and A lack the Christocentric expansions, but according to Bliss, G and X have a set of minor, explanatory interpolations occurring in chapters 4–22 and 71–84 (thus not in the section collated by Dorward). C, A, and LPB3 have the ‘Holy Name passage’, but As, H5, Hu, and Wo lack it. Half of the manuscripts of the N group lack Scale II: C, together with T2, Lt and Ry (Group NO), Hu, and Wo; A, As, LPB3, and H5 have it. Dorward’s Group Q comprises seventeen manuscripts: Cc, J, H2, H4, H7, N, and Sr (Bliss’s Group Q), and H, T, Ch, Hu2, Lw, Sr, and W, together with As in the first eighty chapters of the text, and the conflated E (Bliss’s Group K). The group is distinguished in a large number of minor variations in common throughout the text. The Christocentric expansions, Bliss notes, occur in chapters 11–25, 35–54, and 74–91 of Group K and, in varying versions, in U and Wo. Bliss’s Groups Q and K also share a series of minor, explanatory expansions occurring in chapters 35–58. Sr, T, W, Lw, and E have the ‘Holy Name passage’; Cc and Q lack the passage, as did H originally. Two-thirds of the manuscripts of Group Q have Scale II: H, T, W, Lw, Ch, and Hu2, together with LPB3, E, and As; and the three manuscripts Cc, H7, and Sr that present texts unaffiliated to other forms of Scale II. N, H4, H2, J, and St lack Scale II. H, T, W, Lw, Ch, Hu2, and the second half of As comprise the Carthusian/Birgittine Group of manuscripts of Scale II; LPB3, and H5 (which lacks Scale I) comprise the London Group; E represents a conflation of the two groups. Bliss also noted a passage on Charity added at the end of Scale I, chapter 70. This passage is lacking in Bliss’s Z manuscripts (Dorward’s N) RDF, H3, VS, and Pl, B and Ld, and in Bliss’s Q and K manuscripts (Dorward’s O) Cc, N, H2, and J, Ch and St. H also originally lacked this passage, which was supplied, like the ‘Holy Name passage’, on an added leaf.

27 The scribal dialectal profile of booklets 1–3 of R is LALME LP 22: Northern, probably Yorkshire. Hanna, English Manuscripts, item 94, notes that the scribal dialect of the fourth booklet, containing only Scale II, is probably to be located on the Ely–Norfolk border, with which Scale II, pp. lx–lxi, concurs. 28 As, a manuscript that changes affiliation in both books of the Scale, is affiliated with Q until early in Scale I, chapter 81, and with O from there until the end of that text. It is affiliated with the Theocentric Group of manuscripts of Scale II for the first half of that text, and the Carthusian/Birgittine group for the latter half.

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To judge from a comparison of Dorward’s and Bliss’s substantial, but incomplete, work on the text of Scale I with the completed edition of Scale II, the second book was added on an ad hoc basis to copies of the first book already in circulation; there are few persistent patterns of affiliation that apply to both sides. The most important exception is the group of manuscripts already noted as having Carthusian or Birgittine affiliations: manuscripts H, T, W, Lw, Ch, and Hu2 all belong to Dorward’s Group Q for Scale I (Bliss’s Group K). T, W, and Lw are a closely affiliated group of manuscripts of Scale II; and Ch and Hu2 are a closely affiliated pair. H, written around 1400, has a scribal dialectal profile that locates it in southern Lincolnshire (LALME 1, 113), but it belonged to London Charterhouse by the middle of the fifteenth century; T was written by Robert Benet, procurator of Sheen Charterhouse (d. 1517/18), and annotated there by James Grenehalgh; Ch was annotated by Grenehalgh, probably at Coventry Charterhouse; Hu2 was written by John Clerk of Hinton Charterhouse (d. 1474). W was printed by Wynkyn de Worde at the request of Lady Margaret Beaufort; the copy in the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia was annotated by James Grenehalgh, who corrected it against T and H8, a manuscript of Fishlake’s Latin translation. E, which belonged to London Charterhouse, is a conflated manuscript of the Carthusian/Birgittine and the London manuscript groups for both books of the Scale. The affiliations of the Carthusian manuscripts are the same for both books of the Scale, which indicates a degree of control over the origin and content of their texts. Four other manuscripts of Scale II belong to the Carthusian/Birgittine group, B, Ld, Ws, and H5. Of these, B and Ld, a persistent pair of manuscripts of Scale II, are affiliated copies of the N version of Scale I, according to Dorward. Ld, with a Cambridgeshire scribal dialectal profile (LALME LP 672), contains a fragment of a record of a grant to Syon from the time of Edward IV; B has a South-Western scribal dialectal profile.29 H5 and Ws are a closely affiliated pair of manuscripts of Scale II; they share with H a number of eye-skip omissions in Scale II. H5, which was given to Syon Abbey by Margery Pensax, recluse at Bishopsgate, is a manuscript of combined OQ affiliation for Scale I, together with Wo and Hu. Ws is closely affiliated with Ln (which lacks Scale II) for Scale I. As, which belonged to Rose Pachet, a sixteenth-century nun of Syon, changes affiliation within both books of the Scale. The origins of copies of Scale I connected to Syon Abbey thus appear more disparate than those of the Carthusian copies, but there was still a loose connection between them. The London Group of manuscripts of Scale II comprises five manuscripts: the three-manuscript group LPB3 and H6 (which lacks Scale I), and the conflated manuscript E. L, which has a Cambridgeshire scribal dialectal profile 29 Characterized as ‘southwestern, perhaps Gloucestershire’ in correspondence between Angus McIntosh and A. J. Bliss; see Scale II, pp. xxxii–xxxiv.

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identical to that of Ld (LALME LP 672), is the ‘Common Profit’ book made from the goods of the London grocer John Killum (d. 1418). P, dialectally localized at the southern border of the city,30 belonged to Henry Langford, organmaker, who dwelt in the Minories. H6 was purchased by Elizabeth Horwood, prioress of the Minoresses, for the use of her convent. B3, written in Central Midland Standard dialect,31 has sixteenth-century inscriptions connecting it to Lyme Regis. According to Bliss, LPB3 change affiliation over the course of Scale I, affiliating with Group G from the beginning of the text to the end of chapter 10 and from chapter 15 to the middle of chapter 52; for chapters 11 to 14, and from the middle of chapter 52 to the end of the text, they affiliate with K. The relationship between the London Group and the other manuscripts of Scale I, and the relationship of its texts of Scale I and Scale II, require further study. One further group of five manuscripts of Scale II shares the feature that where other manuscripts use Christocentric terms, referring to ‘our Lord Jesus’ or ‘Jesus Christ’, they often use the theocentric terms ‘God’ or ‘our Lord’ instead – and they use the same terms in the same places. Four of these manuscripts also have Scale I. Two of them are connected to early copies of the N group (thus lacking the Christocentric expansions to Scale I and the ‘Holy Name’ and ‘Charity’ passages): R (the Northern manuscript from which D and F derive), to which the second book of the Scale has been added by a later, East Midland hand; and Pl (closely affiliated to the copy of Scale I in VS), written in the mid-fifteenth century in a hand localizable to northern Surrey. Two others of the Theocentric Group of manuscripts of Scale II, A and As, have Group O affiliations for Scale I. A has mixed Midland and Dorset dialectal markers,32 and was purchased in the mid-fifteenth century for the nuns of Shaftesbury Abbey. As, which changes affiliation for both books of the Scale, agrees with Dorward’s Q group (Bliss’s K) for the first eighty chapters of Scale I, then changes to O (Bliss’s G) for the remainder; it belongs to the Theocentric 30 Characterized as ‘in the southern part of present Greater London, just north of the junction of northeastern Surrey and northwestern Kent’ in correspondence between McIntosh and Bliss; see Scale II, pp. lvii–lviii. 31 M. L. Samuels, ‘Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology’, in Margaret Laing, ed., Middle English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems (Aberdeen, 1989), pp. 64–80, at p. 79, n. 5. Anne Hudson has recently observed that Central Midland Standard may not be a regional dialect at all, but an unlocalizable orthography intelligible throughout the country – and possibly originating in London. See Hudson, ‘Observations on the “Wycliffite Orthography”’, in Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts: Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna, ed. Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 77–98. 32 Characterized as ‘Dorset overlaying some kind of Midland English, but also with signs of some more southerly overlay’ in correspondence between McIntosh and Bliss; see Scale II, pp. xxix–xxxi.

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Group for the first half of Scale II, and to the Carthusian/Birgittine Group for the second half. M, which comprises Scale II alone, also shares a number of readings with the Theocentric Group. If, as is the common conjecture, the form of Scale I that lacks the Christocentric expansions and the ‘Holy Name’ and ‘Charity’ passages is the earliest form of the text, to which the author (or others) later added other material, then the possibility must be explored that the earliest form of both books of the Scale was more theocentric than Christocentric in its expression. Thomas Fishlake’s version of The Scale of Perfection circulated remarkably widely for a Latin translation of a text originally written in English: fourteen manuscripts survive of both books, and three have Scale I alone; one manuscript has an English Scale I and a Latin Scale II. Eight manuscripts of the Latin version survive in continental European libraries (one, Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek MS C.159, was written in England, by Clement Maidstone of Syon Abbey). The textual relationship between the English and Latin versions of the two books of The Scale of Perfection is not clear. According to Dorward, the Latin of Scale I was made from an early manuscript of Group O; Bliss specified further that the Latin text was closer to LPB3 than to C or A. The Latin text of Scale I lacks the Christocentric expansions, but has the ‘Holy Name’ and the ‘Charity’ passages. Hussey argued that LPB3 was the textual source of the Latin version of Scale II as well,33 but full collation of the Latin and English texts has shown that this is not so. H7, Cc and Sr all agree more often with the Latin than LPB3, but none was the source of the Latin text. The text of the Latin version of Scale II is close enough to the English original to allow for detailed comparison, and occasionally for the hypothetical reconstruction of the English text upon which the Latin translation is based.34 At one point, for example, the reading of the English text is ‘slepen’; this is translated as ‘cum aliis loqui’ – probably representing an English variant ‘speken’ (a confusion of graphic similars). At another, the English text has two variants in describing the result of the ‘black cloud of heresy’: prideful heretics ‘reynen’ or ‘schewen’ error ­­– the Latin version, ‘disseminant’ probably represents a no-longer-surviving version of the second variant, ‘sewen’. Again, where the English text reads ‘dredes’, the Latin has ‘actus’ – presumably representing a no-longer-extant variant ‘dedes’.35 A particularly significant form of variation between the English and Latin versions of Scale II, however, is a tendency to Christocentric expressions in the Latin. This includes 124 cases of substitution or expansion of phrases like ‘Jesus Christus’ or ‘Dominus noster Jesus Christus’ for ‘God’ or ‘our Lord’ in 33 Hussey, ‘Latin and English in The Scale of Perfection’, Mediæval Studies 35 (1973), 456–76. 34 Scale II, pp. civ–cviii. 35 Scale II, chs 23/55; 26/63; 28/49.

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the English text; these overlap with thirty-five Christocentric expansions, such as ‘visionem Jesu Christi, ad considerandum intime humilitatem humanitatis sue et ad gustandum modicum de bonitate deitatis sue’ (‘the vision of Jesus Christ, for the deepest contemplation of his humble humanity and something of the taste of the greatness of his divinity’), for the English text’s ‘syght of sothfastnesse, how Jesu is alle and þat he doth al’ (Scale II, ch. 37/32–3). This tendency in the Latin version of Scale II parallels the Christocentric expansions in Scale I, but we must note that according to Dorward and Bliss, the Latin text of Scale I was not made from the form of the text containing the expansions. As Bliss noted in a letter to Stan Hussey, there are no Christocentric expansions in Latin Scale I, either carried over from the underlying English text or added by Fishlake.36 Likely related to the tendency to Christocentric expansion in the Latin text of Scale II is its omission of all but one of the passages cited above from chapter 30 (among others), dealing with the limitations of imaginative meditation, as well as a number of other passages to the same effect.37 Hilton often points out the limitations of devotion to the ‘calor, canor, and dulcor – heat, sweetness, and song’ characteristic of the mystical experiences and doctrine of his predecessor Richard Rolle. He describes imaginative meditation in the Bonaventuran tradition – like that of Nicholas Love’s near-contemporary Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ – as equally characteristic of the early stages of the contemplative life. Yet this is precisely the kind of devotion that Thomas Fishlake encourages by the additions and omissions he has made in his translation of Scale II. We should remember in this context that devotion to the humanity and Passion of Christ were not only – or even primarily – vernacular phenomena. The development of ‘texts of the Passion’, as Thomas Bestul terms them,38 was a prominent Latin literary trend before it manifested itself in the vernacular, and a core part of that tradition is still to be identified with such pseudoBonaventuran Latin works as the Stimulus amoris and the Meditationes vitae Christi. The shift to the vernacular is an important component of late medieval devotional and contemplative literature­­– a move in which Hilton played a large role – but it is not simply to be identified with the rise of affective devotion, in the sense either of ‘heat, sweetness, and song’, or of tears of compunction or compassion. 36 Letter dated 15 September 1969. 37 See above, pp. 88–9: the passages at Scale II, ch. 30/53–104 are all omitted. 38 Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1996); see also Tobias A. Kemper, Die Kreuzigung Christi: Motivgeschichtliche Studien zu lateinischen und deutschen Passionstraktaten des Spätmittelalters (Tübingen, 2006); Falk Eisermann, ‘Stimulus amoris’: Inhalt, lateinische Überlieferung, deutsche Übersetzungen, Rezeption (Tübingen, 2001).

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The Latin version of Scale II also omits references to Hilton’s key concept of the ‘mirkness’ in which the soul toils (in cooperation with divine grace) towards the gift of contemplation, often substituting ‘humilitas’ (presumably translating ‘mekenes’, in phrases like ‘Hec est ergo bona humilitas ad nichilum’ for ‘Þis is þan a gode mirknes and a ryche noȝt’).39 This may in part reflect a problem in dialectal translation: later, more dialectally standard manuscripts of the English text tend to substitute forms of ‘darkness’ for the Northern form ‘mirkness’.40 The fact remains, nonetheless, that changes like this in the Latin text emphasize the concepts of humility and imaginative devotion found to be dominant in that version, and obfuscate the characteristic concepts of Hilton’s theology of the contemplative life. Fishlake’s tendency to translate Hilton’s many references to ‘feeling’ in Scale II as ‘sensacio’ is presumably part of this same reconceptualization of the text. Hilton does use the word ‘feeling’ to refer to physical sensations, and to the moral sense of ‘feeling’ one’s own sinfulness. But his most important use of the word is in the terms in which he presents the active and the contemplative lives: a reformation of the fallen soul to the image of God ‘in faith’, and ‘in faith and in feeling’.41 In these terms, the moral minimum for salvation is a reformation of the soul in faith. The experiences of spiritual beginners, including compunction for one’s sins, tears, imaginative sympathy (compassion) with the Passion of Christ, heat, sweetness, and song, so long as they are corporeal, are all part of the reformation in faith. They are not contemplation. ‘Reformation in faith and in feeling’, for Hilton, involves an affective conversion, brought about by grace: it is true contemplation. It is not ‘sensation’; yet this is how Fishlake invariably translates it. A more extensive change made by Fishlake is the omission of a 360-word passage in Hilton’s defence of the necessity of oral confession. Hilton points out that one of the utilities of confession is that some sinners do not feel compunction before they are actually confessing to a priest, and concedes, ironically, that if people were more morally self-aware, the church might not have needed to require annual confession.42 This entire passage is omitted from Fishlake’s translation: it is possible that the earnest Carmelite did not see the fitness of the ironic argument. The discussion of criticism of church practices in Scale 39 Scale II, ch. 27/138. The Latin phrase ‘humilitas ad nichilum’ also obscures Hilton’s reference to the ‘good mirkness and rich nought’ that is one of his characteristic descriptions of the contemplative experience. It is in passages like this that Hilton shows himself most deeply in conversation with the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. 40 There are a total of seventy-three readings throughout the text in which H7, H, R, L, As, Sr, Ws, Ch, P, Cc, M, and Pl support ‘mirk-’, ‘myrk-’ where B, H5, B3, As, Lw, A, Hu2, E, H6, Ld, T, and W read ‘dark-’, ‘derk-’. 41 See Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Affective Turn’. 42 Scale II, ch. 7/51–81.

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Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection

II does not reflect a need to suppress references to alternative conceptualizations of church history; Fishlake’s Latin version is much more sensitive to the perceived threat of Wycliffite criticism of the late medieval church. Hilton’s English Scale II is a work of affective contemplation of God in the Victorine/Cistercian/Carthusian tradition, consciously in dialogue with the best representative of this contemplative tradition in late medieval England, The Cloud of Unknowing.43 Thomas Fishlake’s Latin version of Scale II is a work of sensory, affective devotion to the humanity and the Passion of Jesus, closer to the tradition of sympathetic imagination of the life and Passion of Christ represented by Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Hilton wrote Scale II in a moment of exploration, of the possibility of creating a version of contemplative literature in the monastic tradition in the English vernacular, a moment that he shared with the Cloud-author. Yet in that same moment, in Nicholas Love’s Mirror, in Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, and later, in the eventual publication of the Carthusian/Birgittine version of the Scale of Perfection by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494 (at the behest of Lady Margaret Beaufort), with the Epistle on the Mixed Life added as a ‘Third Book’, contemplation ceded to devotion. The second book of Fishlake’s Latin Scala perfectionis was part of that movement, too. Appendix Sigla of the Manuscripts of The Scale of Perfection A As B B2 B3 B4 Bn Br C Cc

British Library MS Additional 11748 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, All Souls’ College MS 25 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 100 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 584 (Scale II: Latin) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 592 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat theol. e. 26 (Scale I and II: Latin) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 3610 (Scale I and II: Latin) Brussels, Bibliothèque royale MS 2544–5 (Scale I and II: English) Cambridge, University Library MS Additional 6686 (Scale I: English) Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS R.5 (James 268) (Scale I and II: English) Ch Chatsworth (Scale I and II: English) D Cambridge, University Library MS Dd.v.55 (Scale I: English) E Cambridge, University Library MS Ee.iv.30 (Scale I and II: English) Ed Edinburgh Fragments (present location unknown) (Scale I: English)

43 J. P. H. Clark, ‘Sources and Theology in The Cloud of Unknowing’, Downside Review 98 (1980), 83–109.

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Es F G H H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8 H9 He Hu Hu2 J Jo L Ld Ln Lt Lw M Ma Mo N Na P Pl Pn Pr R R2 R3 Ri

Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria MS Lat. 999 (Scale I and II: Latin) Cambridge, University Library MS Ff.v.40 (Scale I: English) Corrections by James Grenehalgh in H8, T and the Rosenbach copy of W British Library MS Harley 6579 (Scale I and II: English) British Library MS Harley 330 (Scale I: English; Scale II: Latin) British Library MS Harley 1022 (Scale I: English) British Library MS Harley 1035 (Scale I: English) British Library MS Harley 2387 (Scale I and II: English) British Library MS Harley 2397 (Scale II: English) British Library MS Harley 6573 (Scale I and II: English) British Library MS Harley 6576 (Scale I and II: Latin) British Library MS Harley 6615 (Scale I: extract in English) Yale University, Beinecke Library MS Osborn fa54 (olim Heneage 3083) (Scale I and II: Latin) San Marino, Huntington Library MS 112 (Scale I: English) San Marino, Huntington Library MS 266 (Scale I and II: English) Cambridge, St John’s College MS G.35 (James 202) (Scale I: English) Oxford, St John’s College MS 77 (Scale II: extract in English) Lambeth Palace Library MS 472 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud misc. 602 (Scale I and II: English) British Library MS Lansdowne362 (Scale I: English) Longleat House Library MS 298 (Scale I: English) Yale University, Beinecke Library, Prof. T. Takamiya’s MS 3 (olim Luttrell Wynne) (Scale I and II: English) Cambridge, Magdalene College MS F.4.17 (Scale II: English) Marseilles, Bibliothèque municipale MS 729 (Scale I and II: Latin) Oxford, Magdalen College MS 141 (Scale I: Latin) National Library of Scotland MS 6126 (Scale I: English) Naples, Biblioteca nazionale MS VII.G.31 (Scale I: Latin) London, Inner Temple Library MS Petyt 524 (Scale I and II: English) Columbia University Library MS Plimpton 257 (Scale I and II: English) University of Pennsylvania Library MS Codex 1559 (olim New York: Hispanic Society of America) (Scale I and II: Latin) Princeton University Library Taylor MS 22 (olim John Shirwood) (Scale I and II: Latin) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.285 (Scale I and II: English) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.397 (Scale I and II: Latin) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.894 (Scale I: extracts in English) Ripon Cathedral fragment (Scale II)

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Ro Ry S Sr St T T2 Td Td2 Th U Up Up2 Ut V W Wc Wo Ws Y

British Library MS Royal 17.c.xviii (Scale I: extracts in English) Liverpool University Library MS Rylands F.4.10 (Scale I: English) British Library MS Additional 22283 (Simeon) (Scale I: English) University of Pennsylvania Library MS Codex 218 (olim Stonor) (Scale I and II: English) Stonyhurst College MS A.vi.24 (Scale I: English) Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.15.18 (James 354) (Scale I and II: English) Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.7.47 (James 1375) (Scale I: English) Dublin, Trinity College MS A.5.7 (122) (Scale II: extracts in English) Dublin, Trinity College MS C.5.20 (352) (Scale I and II: extracts in English) Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library MS 91 (A.5.2.: Thornton) (Scale I: extract in English Oxford, University College MS 28 (Scale I: English) Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek MS C.159 (Scale I and II: Latin) Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek MS C.618 (Scale I and II: Latin) Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek MS 5.F.34 (Scale I and II: Latin) Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon) (Scale I: English) Wynkyn de Worde, 1494 (S.T.C. 14042) (Scale I and II: English) Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4 (Scale I and II: extracts in English) Worcester Cathedral Chapter Library MS F.172 (Scale I: English) Westminster School MS 4 (Scale I and II: English) York, Dean and Chapter Library MS xvi.K.5 (Scale I and II: Latin)

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• 6 • Assumptions: The Virgin’s Ends in Medieval English Culture • barry windeat t*  • Margery Kempe reports visiting near Jerusalem ‘the place ther owyr Lady was beriid’,1 but as such a devout person would believe, the Virgin’s tomb had been occupied only briefly before Mary was assumed into heaven integrally in body and soul. Kempe is following in the footsteps of St Bridget of Sweden, who at the Virgin’s tomb receives a vision of Mary, who tells her firmly: ‘Know that there is no human body in heaven apart from the body of my glorious Son and my own body’ (Liber Celestis, 7.26).2 Satisfyingly surpassing St Bridget, Kempe has visions at the Virgin’s tomb not only of Mary but of Christ as well (ch. 29). Kempe also sees herself present at the death of the Virgin and weeps so much that the apostles try in vain to silence her, but Mary thanks her and promises remission of sins (ch. 73). When Christ assures Kempe that he will be present at her death with companies of angels, apostles, and saints (ch. 22), Kempe envisages her own end by means of the iconography of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin. In such moments Kempe reflects the Assumption’s

* I first met Vincent Gillespie when, along with four other hopeful medievalists, we were interviewed for a teaching post at St Anne’s College, Oxford, a former women’s college which had only recently opened its Fellowships to men. There ensued the most terrifying interview experience of my life: an afternoon subject interview, ordeal by High Table dinner, and an interview with the whole Governing Body the next day. After the dinner, Vincent, Alastair Minnis and I – huddled together for safety in the dim lamplight of an archway in the College – realized that the other three candidates had been dismissed into outer darkness and that we three alone went forward to the next day’s tournament. At my interview the following day – I was editing Troilus at the time – I was asked, among other questions, if I had a new gloss for ‘kankedort’ (TC, 2.1752). I didn’t. Since those days Vincent has gone on, first at St Anne’s and subsequently as Tolkien Professor, to blaze trails exploring medieval English religious literature, and advancing medieval studies more largely, which it is a great pleasure to salute here. 1 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Harlow, 2000). 2 The Revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden, trans. Dennis Searby, with notes by Bridget Morris, 4 vols. (Oxford, 2006–15), IV. 256. Bridget’s Virgin may be scotching suggestions that such as Enoch and Elijah were also bodily in heaven.

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familiarity and significance in later medieval English culture.3 The Assumption was a major feast, celebrated with splendid liturgy and music,4 and as one of the Joys of the Virgin it was much depicted in all the arts: Mary, wafted by angels, soars up towards her coronation in heaven by her son, in an image of exuberant triumph. Yet nagging doubts and questions had arisen since the earliest times about this non-scriptural episode. Stories of Mary’s passing away, obsequies, and assumption into heaven originate in apocryphal literature from the fourth century onwards with various accounts in Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Greek, as well as in Latin. The nature of Mary’s transition from this life to the next – was there a death or a ‘dormition’, a kind of falling asleep? – was a source of contention, as also was her bodily assumption into heaven.5 For the later medieval West at least, the most influential narrative sources were the Transitus Mariae attributed to Pseudo-Melito of Sardis, and the Transitus A (actually a thirteenth-century Italian composition, but supposedly authored by Joseph of Arimathea).6 An influential synthesis was presented in Jacobus de Voragine’s account of the Assumption in The Golden Legend.7 Reservations about the authenticity of the Assumption were attributed to St Jerome and St Augustine, and although these critiques were actually written by others, the great authority of these saints served to sow persisting doubts and uncertainties.8 In his Summa Theologiae Thomas Aquinas simply ignores the subject of the Assumption, in an eloquent silence. The constant components in the story of Mary’s life after Christ’s Ascension comprise: (1) an angel visits Mary, telling of her impending end and presenting a palm to be carried before her bier; (2) the apostles are miraculously reassembled at Mary’s house, transported back in clouds from far-flung missions; (3) Christ visits Mary at her life’s end and her soul ascends to heaven; (4) a Jew who grabs Mary’s bier finds his hand miraculously cleaves to it, but he and other Jews are converted; (5) Mary’s soul is reunited with her body, and she is assumed body and soul into heaven; (6) in a popular later accretion – deriving from Transitus A – Doubting Thomas, arriving too late for Mary’s funeral, 3 For the pre-Conquest period, and editions of Old English Assumption homilies, see Mary Clayton, The Apocryphal Gospels of Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1998). 4 The Sarum Missal in English, trans. F. E. Warren, 2 vols. ((London, 1911–13); for the Assumption liturgy, see II. 462–74. 5 S. C. Mimouni, Les Traditions anciennes sur la Dormition et l’Assomption de Marie: Études littéraires, historiques et doctrinales (Leiden, 2011). 6 For both texts, see The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliott (Oxford, 1993). 7 The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W. G. Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1993). The Transitus was also used in Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale. 8 For the Pseudo-Jerome, see Paschasius Radbertus (c. 790–865), De assumptione Sanctae Mariae Virginis, CCCM 56C; for Pseudo-Augustine, PL 40, cols. 1141–8.

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Fig. 6.1  The British Library Board. Additional MS 29704, fol. 132v (detail). The Reconstructed Carmelite Missal. Within the initial ‘G’ (‘Gaudeamus’) are six incidents: (1) extreme left: angels assemble the apostles; (2) left: the Virgin’s deathbed; (3) right: funeral of the Virgin, with one Jew stuck to the bier and another falling downwards; (4) centre: disciples around the Virgin’s closed tomb; (5) above: Coronation of the Virgin, and (6) the Virgin drops her girdle to Thomas.

witnesses the Assumption and Mary drops her girdle down to him as proof.9 Whether or not the legend originally emerged in order to account for the lack of any shrine containing Mary’s body, the legend’s components evidently aim to furnish Mary with matching equivalents of her son’s entombment, resurrection on the third day, and subsequent ascension into heaven. The angel’s announcement to Mary of her impending death, and presentation of the palm, inevitably recalls the Annunciation and its iconography, while the Thomas material mirrors the Gospel episode: now Thomas is the believer disbelieved but showing others evidence (fig. 6.1). 9 Wall-paintings including all these episodes survive at St Mary’s Church, Chalgrove, Oxfordshire.

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Narrative treatments of the Assumption in post-Conquest England develop through a diversity of writing and contexts. Wace treats the Assumption thoughtfully in the last section of his Conception Nostre Dame,10 and Gervase of Tilbury mentions a now-lost work of his on The Passing of the Blessed Virgin and the Deeds of Her Apostles.11 The earliest Middle English verse narrative of the Assumption is a 240-line fragment in couplets of c. 1250, preserved alongside copies of King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour in Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.4.27.2 and opening in jaunty style: ‘Merie tale telle ihc þis day’. Five fourteenth- and fifteenth-century copies survive of the full text of this early couplet version, including one – Chetham MS 8009 – alongside romances and saints’ lives.12 Another English treatment of the Assumption as a distinct single work is the 732-line Auchinleck Assumption in tail rhyme, included in the Auchinleck MS (National Library of Scotland MS 19.2.1) of c. 1330–40.13 The continuing popularity of the thirteenth-century couplet Assumption in its varying revisions is attested by its absorption into much longer works and collections, with or without the episode of St Thomas and the Virgin’s girdle. This couplet version Assumption is included (minus the Virgin’s girdle episode) at the relevant point in Cursor Mundi,14 and it is included without the Virgin’s girdle story in many manuscripts of the South English Legendary.15 However, the unedited Lambeth Assumption presents an independent 365-line redaction of the couplet version which contains the Virgin’s girdle episode, included in a manuscript of the South English Legendary (in Lambeth MS 223, fols. 43r–48r). The fourteenth-century Northern Homily Cycle absorbs the early couplet Assumption, and includes the Virgin’s girdle episode.16 The unedited Huntington Assumption is a version independently derived from the Golden Legend but minus the Virgin’s girdle episode, included in a Northern Homily Cycle text (Huntington Library HM 129, fols. 218r–220r). The account of the Assumption which concludes the early fifteenth-century Metrical Life

10 Wace: The Hagiographical Works, trans. Jean Blacker, Glyn S. Burgess, and Amy V. Ogden (Leiden, 2013), including the text of the Conception ed. William Ray Ashford, unpubl. Ph.D. thesis (University of Chicago, 1933). 11 Otia Imperialia, ed. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), 3.25 (p. 607). 12 The early couplet versions in Gg.4.27.2, BL MS Add. 10036, and MS Harley 2382 are presented in King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of Our Lady, ed. G. H. McKnight (London, 1901); references henceforth by page/line numbers. 13 M. Schwarz, ‘Kleine Publicationen aus der Auchinleck-HS: IV. Die Assumptio Mariae in der schweifreimstrophe’, Englische Studien 8 (1885), 427–64 (pp. 448–57). 14 Cursor Mundi, ed. Richard Morris, vol. IV, EETS o.s. 66 (London, 1877), lines 20,011– 848. 15 The South English Legendary, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, 3 vols., EETS o.s. 235, 236, 244 (London, 1956–59), II. 365–73. 16 Altenglische Legenden: Neue Folge, ed. C. Horstmann (Heilbronn, 1881), pp. 112–18.

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Fig. 6.2  Book of the Fraternity of Our Lady’s Assumption, London Metropolitan Archives, City of London CLC/L/SE/A/004A/MS 31692, from the Worshipful Company of Skinners Collection, fol. 41. The Virgin is assumed wearing a mantle lined and a robe richly hemmed with ermine, the principal symbol of the Skinners’ Company. An angel on the right displays the ermine cap used as a badge by the Company. Painted c. 1491.

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of Christ apparently represents an independent adaptation from the Latin ­sources.17 The York Plays devote two plays to the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, and once also included a Funeral of the Virgin play.18 The N-Town Play includes an Assumption Play seemingly specially imported into the cycle.19 Chester formerly had an Assumption Play and Wakefield probably did; the lost Beverley and Newcastle cycles included Assumption Plays, and Lincoln had an Assumption Play in the fifteenth century.20 The Assumption is also a natural focus for Marian lyrics. Assumption Plays are recorded as part of the spectacle of civic welcomes and royal entries,21 and because guilds were dedicated to the Assumption, the Virgin’s triumphant end is woven into textures of civic observance and ritual (fig. 6.2). Early narrative sources for the Assumption may be unworthy of their theme,22 but that only makes their English versions more revealing evidence of reception and re-evaluation. To pursue how successive English treatments rewrite key component episodes of the Assumption narrative is to observe divergent developments, where confidence coexists with uncertainty. While the Latin sources report little of Mary’s life after Christ’s Ascension, English versions expand on her life of practical charity and piety. The Metrical Life claims that Mary devoted herself to teaching maidens in the temple as ‘a maystresse / To teche her childer in all wise / Boþe norture and clergyse’ (see 4836–53). In the early couplet version and Cursor Mundi Mary lives in the temple ‘Amonge þe nunnes in þat stede’, ministering to the needy:

17 The Metrical Life of Christ: ed. from MS BM Add. 39996, ed. Walter Sauer (Heidelberg, 1977). 18 Music for the angelic singing in the York Assumption Play is the largest extant body of music for any medieval English play; see The York Plays: a critical edition of the York Corpus Christi play as recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, ed. Richard Beadle, 2 vols., EETS s.s. 23–4 (Oxford, 2009–2013), I. 466–75. 19 The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D. 8, ed. Stephen Spector, 2 vols., EETS s.s. 11–12 (Oxford, 1991), II. 527. 20 Rosemary Woolf, The English Mystery Plays (Oxford, 1972), pp. 409–10. 21 For Assumption pageants in royal entries, especially those of queens, see Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: theatre, liturgy, and ritual in the medieval civic triumph (Oxford, 1998), pp. 289–318. Henry VII’s entry to York in 1486 included an Assumption pageant: ‘Our Lady commyng frome hevin and welcome the king … and þervpon ascend ayene into heven wit angell sang; and þer schall it snaw by craft, to be made of waffrons [wafers] in maner of snaw’: Records of Early English Drama: York, ed. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1979), I. 142. 22 ‘The Transitus stories are poor literary specimens. Long-winded, puffed up, stuck in a morass of stock images and metaphysical formulas, the episodes are barren of spiritual content … while the stratagems of the Pseudo-Melito require the ludicrous clumsiness of Mary’s soul going up, coming down, and going up again’: Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex (Oxford, 1976), p. 88.

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The Virgin’s Ends in Medieval English Culture Seke and hole sche dide gode And seruede hem to hande and fote. Naked and hungry sche cloþed and fedde; Cold and seke sche brouȝt to bedde. (p. 113/69–72)

Indeed, in the Northern Homily Cycle her duties include those of a washerwoman (‘Wilfuli to wasche and wring’: Altenglische Legenden, p.  112/19). Unlike in the Latin sources, the angel’s visit to Mary hence takes place in a temple setting (‘on a day þe temple wiþynne, / In a quere only …’ (Metrical Life, lines 4989–90).23 The angel’s visit to Mary with news of her soul’s imminent passing from her body is related simply in the Transitus Mariae. The angel greets Mary (‘Hail, blessed of the Lord …’ Apocryphal NT, p.  709), presenting her with a palm branch from paradise. The Golden Legend follows this account closely, but some English versions invite comparisons with the Annunciation by having the angel greet ‘Marie, ful of grace’.24 The Auchinleck Assumption makes a disquisition on the palm’s symbolism into the poem’s opening flourish (lines 1–78). The Metrical Life repeatedly emphasizes the palm’s symbolism, which the angel describes to Mary as a sign of the victory represented by the incarnation (lines 4902–5), a symbolism Mary duly interprets for the assembled apostles (5046–8), for it is as a virgin that St John should bear this palm before Mary’s bier (5298–9). English versions also show divergences over such features of the sources as the angel’s declining to give his name when Mary asks him – in some English accounts he identifies himself as Gabriel, highlighting the Annunciation parallel – or Mary’s urgent plea in Transitus Mariae that Christ protect her from Satan and devils. Christ’s reassurance is bracing: ‘you will see him according to the law of mankind, whereby the end, even death, is allotted to you; but he cannot hurt you for I am with you’ (Apocryphal NT, p. 711). By contrast, in the Golden Legend Christ promises that Mary will not see the devil, and most English versions prefer this fond filial protectiveness. The Auchinleck Assumption is exceptionally alert to affect and so here, because Christ had so feared his own death that he sweated blood, he knows Mary will be frightened and reassures her that she will not see the devil (lines 265–88, 349–52). In Cursor Mundi and the Northern Homily Cycle Christ assures Mary that she will see only him and angels, and in the Lambeth Assumption Christ affectionately reassures his mother:

23 The one episode little elaborated in English accounts is the apostles’ miraculous assembling. 24 Michael G. Sargent, ‘The McGill University Fragment of the “Southern Assumption”’, Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974), 186–98 (p. 191).

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barry w i ndeat t ‘Moder,’ he saide, ‘ne drede þe not. Nyl I not þat þu him se; Ne come hit neuer in my þoȝt þat he shuld come bifore þee …’ (Lambeth MS 223, fol. 46r)

John Mirk’s Festial has the angel assure Mary on this point without her needing to ask. By contrast, in the Metrical Life Mary receives no assurance, and in the York Play of The Death of the Virgin, which ended with dumbshow of the devil’s vainly trying to seize Mary’s soul, Christ tells Mary: ‘But modir, þe fende muste be nedis at þyne endyng, / In figoure full foule for to fere þe’ (I. 421/154–5). Christ’s exchanges with Mary about her fear of the devil are sometimes linked in English treatments of the Assumption with his awarding her at this point the power to save any who call on her repentantly. Description of the Virgin’s soul leaving her body is typically spare in the Transitus Mariae. Christ arrives with a great light and a multitude of angels singing hymns and says to Mary, ‘Come you most precious pearl, enter into the receptacle of eternal life’ (Apocryphal NT, p. 711). Mary lies on her bed and ‘giving thanks to God, she gave up the ghost’. The apostles see that her soul is of

Fig. 6.3  © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Fitzwilliam MS 48 (The Carew Poyntz Hours), fol. 81r (detail). The Virgin’s deathbed: Christ stands behind, holding the Virgin’s soul, a small female figure, draped and seated on his arm. 1350–1400.

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inexpressible whiteness, before Christ delivers the soul to Michael and all are received back into heaven. In the Golden Legend’s first account of the passing of Mary’s soul, when Christ appears the son and mother have a brief dialogue trading biblical allusions, in which Mary echoes phrases from the Magnificat. The moment of transition is described as a flight and embrace: ‘Then Mary’s soul went forth from her body and flew to the arms of her son’ (Golden Legend, II. 80). The spirits still in heaven marvel to hear ‘the singing of the ascending throngs’ and are surprised when they see ‘their King carrying the soul of a woman in his arms and observed her leaning upon him’, but this is how Mary’s radiant soul is taken into heaven. Later, when citing other accounts, the Golden Legend records tersely: ‘Then the Lord descended with a multitude of angels and took up the soul of his mother’ (II. 91). In visual culture Christ is often depicted at the Virgin’s deathbed, holding Mary’s soul, shown as a small child, in his arms (see fig. 6.3). Of all English vernacular accounts, the N-Town Play of the Assumption of Mary attempts to realize most closely the Golden Legend’s wording and the iconographical tradition. After exchanges in Latin between Christ and Mary, a stage direction prescribes that Mary’s soul shall exit from her body into the bosom of the Lord (‘Hic exiet anima Marie de corpore in sinum Dei’: I. 400/329). Perhaps taking up a doll to represent Mary’s soul, Christ then says: ‘Now com, my swete soule in clennesse most pure / And rest in my bosum, brithtest of ble … / With this swete soule now from you I assende’: I. 400/330–8). Describing the passing of Mary’s soul in an Assumption sermon John Mirk’s Festial follows the Golden Legend in representing Mary’s soul as being very much handled by Christ: ‘Cryste toke hur soule in hys armes … And so wyth hys modur soule cleppyng in hys armys in syght of þe postelus he bare it vp into heven’,25 although Mirk omits the soul’s flight into Christ’s arms, which the Huntington Assumption retains (‘And hyt flagh in to Cristis hand, / And he bare hyt to þe ioy þat euyr is lestand’: fol. 219v). The Golden Legend’s account is also followed selectively in the South English Legendary, although the flight of the soul and its ascent cradled in Christ’s arms are touches written out of this English account: Mid þis word hure soule wende · into hure sones arme … [The apostles] bihulde hou oure Louerd bar · is moder soule anhei. (II. 370/141, 151)

As the Death of the Virgin is rewritten in English versions, all kinds of new emphases appear, as if struggling to turn this mysterious process, of a unique dying, into a narrative sequence. Wace gives an unadorned account (‘Dunc est 25 John Mirk’s Festial, ed. Susan Powell, 2 vols., EETS, o.s. 334–5 (Oxford, 2009–11), I. 201– 2/69, 72–3.

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l’arme del cors eissue / E Jesus Crist l’a receüe. / A saint Michiel la comanda’ [‘Then her soul left her body / And Jesus Christ received it; / He entrusted it to St Michael’: lines 1533–5]), although Wace’s text identifies the death with the assumption (‘En Mont-en-Syon, ce creun, / Fu faite cele asumptiun ... / Iluec prist Deus l’arme sa mere’ [‘On Mount Zion we believe, / Did this Assumption take place … / There God took the soul of his mother’: 1545–9]). When Christ’s appearance to his mother is retold in the early couplet tradition, the process by which Mary’s soul leaves her body is recounted differently in different manuscripts. In one version Christ simply ‘receives’ the soul (‘And he hure soule vndrestode’, p. 126/564), commits it to Michael, and the soul is taken up to heaven with angelic song. In another manuscript Christ ‘takes’ Mary’s soul – this is annotated in the margin ‘Ihesus assumpsit animam matris’ – whereupon the soul is taken up by the heavenly company but without any music: and when he had the soule hent and she was fro the body went, Then all the verdoune of heuene fett that soule full aboue. (p. 126/453–6)

When this early couplet version is absorbed into Cursor Mundi there is intriguing divergence between manuscripts over whether Christ took (‘hent’) the soul, or ‘sent’ it, or indeed whether Mary sent it forth herself (line 20,673). In the Auchinleck Assumption Mary simply dies first and then ‘as hit telleȝ in þe bok, / Þe soule out of here bodi he tok’ (lines 361–2). In the York Play of The Death of the Virgin, Mary in her final words gives and sends her soul to her son: Here thurgh þi grace, god sone, I giffe þe my goste. Mi sely soule I þe sende … Ressayve it here into þyne hende … (I. 421/170–1, 174)

Christ then commands angels: ‘bringe me my modir to þe highest of heuene’ (177). In its version of the passing of Mary’s soul the Northern Homily Cycle writes out any active role for Christ: he urges Michael to safeguard Mary’s soul and ‘Þan scho transed þare als fast / And þe saul fra þe body past’ (p. 116/325–6). Since the verb ‘transen’ may mean either to swoon or to die, the author’s choice of term here appears studiously ambivalent about this mysterious moment of dormition or death, and any angelic song is also omitted from the ascent of Mary’s soul (327–30). After all, the Virgin herself had told St Bridget that her soul was released from her body during exultant contemplation (Liber Celestis, 6.62). In the Lambeth Assumption it is angels who take a large role in the transference:

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For the Metrical Life, the Virgin’s death is a focus of intense devotion in its much elaborated version of events. The moment when Mary takes to her bed prior to her death here becomes a sequence of moments. First, Mary lies on her bed, lucid but failing (lines 5126–9), whereupon a wonderful light, brighter than the sun, glides into the hall and a voice is heard in the air saying softly, ‘I am wiþ ȝow now & ay, / Was I neuer ȝet away’ (5150–1). At this, Mary gets up from bed and ‘Magnificat sche saide kneland’ (5158), underlining the parallels between the Annunciation and Assumption episodes. With that, Mary again retires to bed until dawn, when a great sweetness is experienced. Subsequently: About prime of þe day, Iesu Crist in flessh & blode Right bifore oure Lady stode But no man myght him verray se, Safe hirself in certeyntee. (5193–7)

The precise timing of events, the stress on Christ’s bodily form, and the mysterious visibility of Christ only to Mary herself, are individual touches in the Metrical Life. The subsequent detailing of how Mary’s soul leaves the body is again exceptional, alluding to belief that the soul left the body through the mouth at death: A gleme come from Heuen right Glode about hir mouþe ful light. Wiþ þat sche ȝelde vp þe goste. (5206–8)

Christ receives Mary’s soul ‘Bitwene his hondes softely’ (5211) and commits it to Michael ‘As it telleþ in þe boke’ (5213). Indeed, that is all that many books do say about this mysterious migration of Mary’s soul. Here, by contrast, bystanders witness a marvel: Þat alle þo þat were negh Spake of þat miracle hegh, Verraily to se so Þe soule out of hir mouþe go. Þe schappe of a dowve hit hade, Wiþ ech a man ioye hit made, For þe sonne in someresday Was not so clere by no way. (5216–23)

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In this account the transference of Mary’s soul to heaven is witnessed at a remove, not visually but through the hearing of angelic song (‘And oure Lady hem amonge, / As þai broghten hir to Heuene / Wip myche ioye & angels steuene’: 5246–8). In all accounts, the twin marvels of the passage of Mary’s soul and its later return from heaven are bridged by Jews’ violation of her funeral, thereby allowing for further miracles and conversions. Transitus Mariae gives a lengthy, circumstantial account – and the Golden Legend a succinct one – of how, as Christ instructs, the apostles carry Mary’s bier towards the site of burial but ‘a prince of the priests of the Jews’ is so resentful of Christ and his mother that he lays sacrilegious hands on the bier, aiming to throw Mary’s body to the ground: ‘And forthwith his hands dried up from his elbows and stuck to the bier – and when the apostles lifted the bier, part of him was hanging loose and part stuck to the bier’ (Apocryphal NT, p. 712). Meanwhile the Jews around are struck blind. The Jewish priest reminds Peter how he spoke up for Peter on the night when the latter denied Christ, and at Peter’s advice the Jew declares his belief in Christ, is cured, and goes to preach to the Jews, curing their blindness with the palm branch. The potential for farce in this interlude is developed in some of the English accounts, exploiting the possibilities for either the Jew’s whole body to hang from the bier, or just his hands and forearms, torn off at the elbows. Mirk’s Festial vividly describes the latter scene: ‘Anone boþe hys handys weron pullud of be þe elbowe and hengud so stylle on þe bere, and wyth hys stompus stode crying and ȝellyng for ache and wo þat he suffred’ (I. 202/82–5). Going one better, the Metrical Life imagines the Jew hanging paralysed both hand and foot: Also boþe his fete were þen Croked aȝen to his knen, And by þe bere he hanged so And myght not stire to ne fro. (5366–9)

The violence of both gesture and language characterizing the Jews in all accounts of the Virgin’s funeral is stressed by the N-Town Play author, who in a stage direction has the Jew leap on the bier like a madman before finding himself hanging by his hands (‘Hic saltat insanus ad feretrum Marie et pendet per manus’: I. 404/422). The underlying idea that Mary’s body will be sullied by being cast to the ground is emphasized in English accounts, where the Jews variously aim to throw Mary’s body into mud, swamps or foul pits – only underscoring the imminent contrast with her triumphant upward trajectory in her Assumption. The disrespectful and unbelieving manhandling – perhaps

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a parody of the reverent touching of relics26 – is in pointed contrast with the otherworldly and immaterial, where true power is shown to inhabit. Whole crowds are rendered immobile when attempting to attack the bier, and in one early couplet version the futility of their armour is highlighted: ‘alas, whi leie ȝe so, In ȝoure armour so fast ycliȝt, That beþ so faire and so bryȝt? Ȝoure speres, ȝour schildes, helpeþ ȝow nouȝt’ (p. 131/718–21)

This may explain why in the Funeral of the Virgin stained glass panel in St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, the Jew stuck fast to Mary’s bier is depicted wearing contemporary armour.27 The lost York play of the Funeral of the Virgin was apparently discontinued because it was both unscriptural and liable to excite more laughter and uproar than devotion.28 The key moment of Mary’s soul and body being reunited before her Assumption is reimagined in such divergent accounts across the English versions as to suggest some continuing uncertainty about how this special manner of resurrection should be narrated. In Transitus Mariae Christ appears just after the apostles have placed Mary’s body in the tomb and asks them what they wish for her, which is that he raise Mary up and take her with him to heaven. At Christ’s command, the archangel Michael brings Mary’s soul and rolls away the stone from the door of her sepulchre. Mary rises from the grave when Christ calls her. The reunion of body and soul must have occurred, but it goes undescribed. Angels bear Mary into paradise while Christ is received up into heaven again. The Golden Legend follows this account but pays closer attention to Mary’s soul. Here Michael ‘presented Mary’s soul before the Lord’, and after Christ calls on Mary to rise, ‘Thereupon Mary’s soul entered her body and she came forth glorious from the monument’ (II. 82). In its more summary second account of the Assumption the Golden Legend tells how the apostles, waiting by Mary’s tomb on the third day, ‘were wonderstruck when they saw that the Lord had come down and was carrying away the Virgin’s body in glory’ (II. 92), but without describing how soul and body were reunited. The N-Town Play of the Assumption again dramatizes this episode by following the Golden Legend, although here Michael invites Christ to rejoin his mother’s soul and body: ‘Ya, gloryous God, lo, the sowle here prest now / To this blissid body likyth it you to fest now…’ (I. 408/505–6). A stage direction 26 A. E. Nicholls, ‘The Hierosphthitic Topos, or the Fate of Fergus: Notes on the N-Town Assumption’, Comparative Drama 25 (1991), 29–41. 27 D. King, The Medieval Stained Glass of St Peter Mancroft Norwich (Oxford, 2006), Plate 9. 28 Records of Early English Drama: York, II. 732.

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baldly prescribes that hereupon her soul should go into Mary’s body (‘Hic vadit anima in corpus Marie’) – perhaps in some dumbshow – while Christ commands: ‘Go thanne, blyssid soule, to that body ageyn’ (509). The South English Legendary also follows the Golden Legend closely, with the apostles outlining to Christ: ‘Þat þou also þi moder soule · to þe body aȝen sende / Ac lete boþe body and soule · wiþ þe to heuene wende’ (II. 373/225–6). Christ agrees, Michael fetches the soul, and Christ cries out: ‘Mi lemman aris mi swete moder · aȝen kunde þei it beo’ Mid þis word þe holy soule · to þe holy body gan fleo And heo aros to hure sone · as þe apostles alle iseie (II. 373/233–5)

Other English versions confront very directly the mysterious moment when Christ reunites his mother’s soul and body. In the Auchinleck Assumption’s bold account the whole operation of bringing the soul back down from heaven and reuniting it with Mary’s body is performed by Christ himself without delegation: He browte here soule vt of heuene Into erthe amang mankenne; Jesu, as hit was his wille, Wente to þe bodi al stille And putte þe soule þer inne (lines 542–6)

A little later Christ’s role in reuniting body and soul is re-emphasized in a description of the bodily Assumption: Þerfore Jesu ful of miȝt Brouwte here soule fram heue liȝt Whiȝ murthe of aungles steuene; And soule and bodi and flessch and bon Ȝhe was boren vp anon In to þe blisse of heuene (553–8)

The Huntington Assumption gives Christ an equally direct role in the marvellous process: Þan cowplyd Crist to þat body Þe gaste and quyknyd hyt in hy. And Crist with his fair fellawschyp Bare Mary with ham to wyrschyp (fol. 220r)

By contrast, in the Lambeth Assumption, the reunion of Mary’s soul with her body is undertaken by unspecified angels while the apostles sit nearby:

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The Virgin’s Ends in Medieval English Culture And as þai seten in a place, þere ȝeden angels many oon; Þurȝ Ihesu hir sones grace þai toke þe body of the stone; Þe soule þai bere to þe body & bar hir to heuen ywis; Ihesu come aȝeyn our Lady & made hir quene þere he kyng is. (fol. 47r)

Mirk’s account of the moment of resuscitation adds its own emphases to the Golden Legend: Christ comes from heaven ‘and Seynt Michael bering oure Lady soule in hys armes bryther þan þe sonne’, but here Christ delegates to the angel the operation of reuniting Mary’s body and soul (‘Mychael, do my modur

Fig. 6.4  St John’s College, Cambridge, MS K. 21, fol. 66/103. The Virgin sits up in her tomb, with Christ embracing her. By permission of The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge.

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soule into þe body aȝeyne’). Against a background of angelic minstrelsy Christ summons his mother with a four-line lyric and she responds with another (‘I come wyth þe to þi boure aboue’). Most strikingly vivid is the body language of Mary’s moment of revival: ‘Þan þe body satte vp and lokyd to Criste and sayde …’ (I. 203/107: see fig. 6.4). But some accounts from England are markedly more circumspect about describing the reunion of Mary’s soul and body. For Wace it is a question of an empty tomb in which no body remains, and he affirms belief in Mary’s resuscitation, but he does not narrate these events: Ancor parest e ancor dure En Josaphat la sepulture, O li cors Nostre Dame fu Qui puis n’i pot estre veü. Le jor meïsme en fu portez Que el sepulcre fu posez. Le cors n’i pot hom puis trover Quar Deus l’ot fait resusciter. (lines 1733–40) (Still visible and still surviving / Is the tomb in Josaphat, / Where the body of Our Lady was, / Which could not thereafter be seen. / It was taken away on the very day / It was placed in the tomb. / No one could find the body afterwards, / For God had brought it back to life.)

With comparable circumspection, different manuscripts of the early couplet version contain divergent accounts of what happens to Mary’s body. In one text Christ orders the apostles home after Mary’s burial and as soon as they have left, ‘[Christ] gon to take vp anone / his moder body of the stone’ (p. 132/601– 2). This transformation is associated with mysterious light but without explicit mention of the soul: ‘in that body he dud a leme, / brighter then the sonne beme, / and made here quene of heuene blisse’ (p. 133/607–9); in the margin is a note: ‘resussitacio corporis Marie’. In another of the early couplet versions the apostles keep vigil until the morning: ‘Thei loked where þat bodi lai: / Thei overturned þat ilke stone; / Bodi þei founde þer none’ (p. 132/764–6) and conclude: ‘The bodi was in to paradis’ (772). What they do find in the tomb is manna, betokening Mary’s purity of life. Yet when the early couplet version is absorbed into Cursor Mundi, the Assumption is not actually described, and the possibility of it is coolly attributed to ‘sum bok’: Son þar efter, sum bok sais, Our Lauerd him lightd of his palais And his hali court he cam To fote his moder bodi ham; Sais þer scho es in fleche & ban. (lines 20775–9)

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Nor, in the Northern Homily Cycle version of events, is there any general witnessing of the reunion of Mary’s soul and body: the apostles go home to their dinner after the burial and are unaware of the disappearance of Mary’s body until informed later by St Thomas. After the apostles have departed, Mary’s body and soul are reunited and assumed quite briskly: Als-sone God has his angels sent, And brought þe soul of oure Lady Ogan unto þe blissed body, And bath togeder gert þam wend To be in blis withowten end. (p. 117/444–8)

The mysteries of how Mary’s soul and body are reunited and assumed remain implicit and undescribed in the Metrical Life – the presence and departure of her body being conveyed by the presence, and then absence, of marvellous fragrance and angelic harmony. The apostles keep vigil at the tomb after burying Mary and are encompassed by a fragrant balm, stressed to surpass earthly comparison (lines 5460–5), while angels are present above ‘þicker þen sterres in þe nyght’ (5467). But in the morning the sweetness is diminished and the angelic sounds overhead have vanished. Convinced that ‘Oure Lady was taken with angels away’ (5479), the apostles open the tomb and find it empty except for ‘a pouder, manna hight’ (5484), and ‘wisten wele sche was in Heuen’ (5488). Here, marvellous tokens substitute for a general witnessing, and the York Plays also evade the need to show the moment when Mary’s body and soul are reunited by dramatizing the Assumption episode at a remove through the story of Thomas’s belated arrival and receipt of Mary’s girdle, dropped to him while she is assumed. In Transitus A St Thomas – who has somehow not been transported to Mary’s house with the other apostles – is marvellously wafted from India at a later point, just in time to see Mary’s body being assumed while the other apostles are elsewhere. Mary throws down her girdle to serve him as proof that he alone has seen her Assumption. Meeting the other apostles, he claims Mary’s body is not in the tomb. Irritated, they remind him of his lack of faith in Christ’s Resurrection. But when they open the tomb, it is empty. The Golden Legend narrates the girdle episode briefly but includes the story of Thomas’s absence, and his doubt when he did arrive, among ‘things that obviously are to be repudiated’ (II. 82). In the early couplet version Thomas sees Mary as she ascends (‘He saw a briȝtnesse bi him glide’, p. 133/780) and begs her for some token to validate him as an Assumption witness. Mary lets fall a rich girdle ‘That sche hure self hadde wrouȝt, / Off silk and gold wounden in pal’ (p. 133/794–5), aligning this episode with traditions of Mary as weaver of Christ’s seamless robe and of the veil of the Temple. The apostles greet Thomas tartly (‘Thomas of Ynde, / Euer art þou

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bihynde!’ p. 133/807–8), but Thomas is proved right when they find the tomb empty except for ‘a manere floure at þe grounde. / That floure was “manna” yclepid’, p. 134/846–7). Neither Cursor Mundi nor the South English Legendary include the Thomas material, but the Northern Homily Cycle includes a full account, which stresses the brilliant light that Thomas sees accompanying the Assumption: He saw a brightnes in þe aire, And al about him bemes faire, And als he luked up in that light He saw our Ladies body bright. (p. 117/459–62)

As ever, the Metrical Life takes a distinctive approach: here Thomas is still in India when he sees the angelic host bearing Mary aloft and he complains to her about being left out of her funeral (lines 5497–9). Rather exceptionally in the girdle legend, Mary addresses him, soothing his ruffled feelings (‘be not wroth … þou art trewe as any stele’, 5500–3), and throws Thomas her girdle. But since Thomas remains in India in this account the story of his exchanges with the apostles and their discovery of Mary’s empty tomb is not included. In the Lambeth Assumption Thomas bears crucial witness to Mary’s bodily assumption: ‘“Ffor I segh with flesch & blode wher our Lady to heuen went”’ (fol. 47v). This version plays on the paradoxes of seeing and believing, and not seeing and disbelieving, in the Thomas story. The apostles comment testily: ‘“Of þat we seen all & somme, Thomas, þu wolde vs make blynde!” … “Wenestow to make vs all mad, Thomas, þurȝ þi mysbeleve?”’ (fol. 47v). But after the apostles find Mary’s tomb empty, the Lambeth text ventures the type of general conclusion rare in English Assumption narratives: ‘We may wete by þis tokenynge þat no man may with een se / Þe mykel myȝt of heuen kyng ne his derworth priuyte’ (fol. 47v). ‘All that has been said so far, however, is apocryphal’, concludes the Golden Legend’s influential account of the Assumption (II. 82), citing doubts attributed to St Jerome. But against this, the Golden Legend also cites the Revelations of Elisabeth of Schönau, where an angel interprets her vision of the Assumption, declaring forthrightly: ‘You were shown how our Lady was assumed into heaven in the flesh as well as in the spirit’ (II. 83). Elisabeth’s Assumption vision is translated into a short poem in Anglo-Norman verse,29 and Mirk’s Festial also cites the angel’s explanation to Elisabeth, concluding firmly: ‘Þus clerkys preuen þat oure Lady was assumpte bodyly into heven’ (I. 205/180–1). Overall, the Golden Legend treads a careful line, in which for the church the Assumption is a matter of piety (‘She was assumed integrally in soul and body, as the Church piously believes’), a belief for which various saints have 29 Poem on the Assumption, ed. J. P. Strachey (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 15–26.

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presented reasons and arguments, even if ‘the Church prefers to hesitate reverently rather than define something hastily’. It was inferred that since Christ possessed the power to accord his mother this privilege of assumption he would surely have done so. As the Pseudo-Augustine argued, it was only fitting that Christ would want to save from putrescence that incorrupt body in which he became incarnate. The Huntington Assumption is distinctive among English accounts in how much it engages with named sources and authorities, marshalling them to its case: Þus wos tane as þis day Mary To heuyn in soule and body As Austyne preuyth apertely And Seint Bernard and Gregory And I will tell ȝyff ȝe woll lyth How cumly har reyssounys þay kyth. (fol. 220r)

The Huntington text is also unusual in expanding on the Golden Legend’s opening attribution of its source for the Assumption to ‘a small apocryphal book attributed to John the Evangelist’ (II. 77). The Huntington version admits apocryphal texts’ distance from scripture (‘Bot othir bokys beth manyfald / Bot sum beth sikkyr and sum beth in were’: fol. 218v) and their potential to mislead: As þis forsaid boke vs tellys Þat is in were to spek in spellys And gode noght forthi is to ken What hyt will mene to lewyd men. (fol. 218v)

But the Huntington Assumption nevertheless follows a source where ‘Is tochid mokyll off our matere … / How scho wos vptake in gaste and body’ (fol. 218v). Augustine is cited on the consequence of Christ and Mary being of one fleshly nature: Þan was his flesche þe to party Off Maryis blessid body And no right ware as þynk me Þat þeis partyis schold partid be Þe tane in erth þe tothir in heuyn So ware þays partyis set vnevyn Bot ȝyff þe to part war in blys Þe tothir schall be as hyt now is. (fol. 220r–v)

St Bernard is also cited on how Christ, who is pleased that his saints have worthy shrines, would want a fitting location for his mother’s body (fol. 220v),

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and Gregory is cited that it is only reasonable that Mary should escape bodily corruption: With othir reyssounys many ane May men preue þat scho was vptane Ffor hyt ware noght right ne worthy Þat wormys schold ett þat body W[h]are in God restyd bodely And bare þare off to heuyn party. (fol. 220v)

In concluding his Assumption poem Wace’s studied openness reflects this tradition that the Assumption is something for considered belief: Christ could easily accomplish it – witness his other miracles – and it was his duty as a son to save from rotting that body ‘Dunt la char Damnedé fu faite’ (‘from which the flesh of the Lord God was created’: 1751). The South English Legendary shows itself alert to these questions when it has Christ summon his mother from her tomb: ‘Wiþoute wem also of rotynge · hit schel arise of stone’ (II. 373/232). By contrast, when absorbing the early couplet version into its text Cursor Mundi interpolates the Pseudo-Jerome’s reservations immediately after describing the apostles’ discovery of Mary’s empty tomb: Bot herto seiþ Ieronym: He wol not take þat book on him Wheþer hit be so or nay Þei þe body be mist away. (lines 20789–92)

Other voices counter that the Assumption may be proven by appeals to reason: And as I byleue wel Body and soule, flesch and fel, Sho was vp to heuon take, As I can þer-to skiles make.30

According to the Meditation’s rather passionate argument about the Assumption, Mary’s sinlessness makes it ‘semeþ al aȝeyns resoun / Sho shulde turne to corrupcyoun’ (2083–6), and since Mary’s body was ‘of þe same kynde’ as Christ’s, ‘To wermes mete hou myȝte it wende?’ (2087–90). In an Assumption sermon John Mirk labours with gruesome detail that to leave his mother’s body subject to normal decomposition would have been so intolerable for Christ that instead he raised her up to eternal purity and honour:

30 Meditations on the Life and Passion of Christ, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn, EETS o.s. 158 (London, 1921), lines 2079–82.

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Mirk also lingers over the decomposing breasts, lips, face, hands, and arms that Christ would be reluctant to see in his mother. This is part of a recurrent rhetorical pattern: the more that the Assumption moves authors to evoke the special purity of Mary, the more they protest at the repugnant idea of her flesh being prey to bodily decay, although protesting too much does not always convince. Much was at stake, for devotion to the Assumption represented the apogee of a wider incarnational aesthetic in late medieval English culture. Christ’s Ascension came first and was biblical, but the glorious exceptionalism of Mary’s bodily assumption implicitly celebrated human bodiliness, even if the body was as special as the Virgin’s. Contemplating Mary’s unique favour reminds various authors of Assumption narratives of its implications for humankind. The Auchinleck Assumption exclaims in its closing stanzas ‘Wel owte we be blithe of mod: / Heuene is oure þourgh kinde of blod’ (lines 739–40), and at the conclusion of one text of the early couplet version even the hearing of this ‘vie’ or life of Mary in her Assumption is believed to have an apotropaic effect, saving men from misadventure and women from peril in childbirth (p. 135– 6/879–92). In the Metrical Life, having witnessed the radiance of Mary’s soul as it leaves her body, St Peter asks God if anyone else will have such a radiant soul, only to hear a heavenly voice revealing that all true servants of God will indeed have such souls in heaven (lines 5224–33). It follows that the Assumption’s radiance and melody is celebrated in a correspondingly aureate poetry of praise, as in this five-stanza angels’ song of the Assumption: … Þis day of þe sanctificate Þe courte of heuen celestial Honouren with ioye perpetual: Apostels were sary of þin absence At þi bodily dormycione; Aungelys ioyed of þi presence At þi glorius assumpcione. Now haue we both fruycione Of the with þi forme coronate, In body and soule glorificate … 31 31 Interpolated into a manuscript of The Pilgrimage of the Soul; see P. D. Roberts, ‘Some Unpublished Middle English Lyrics and Stanzas in a Victoria Public Library Manuscript’, English Studies 54 (1973), 105–18 (111–12). Cf. Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939), pp. 65–7, ‘A Song of the Assumption’.

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Not least, representing the Assumption in medieval drama entails the special effects of a spectacular showpiece, the uplift in all senses of ascents with hoists and heavenly choirs. Yet at the same time the doubtful authority of the Assumption legend made an underlying unease inseparable from what is ostensibly the most triumphant of festivals. The iconography of the Assumption might be triumphantly affirmative, because artists need not confront those singularities that evidently baffled some who wrote of the unique relation of soul and body in Mary’s death and Assumption. Wace alludes to the Assumption as if replying cagily to an awkward question: Ne puis dire ne afermer, Ne je nel vueil ci aconter, Que hom ne feme qui vesquist Puis cele hore le cors veïst. ... Se l’om demande que je crei Del cors, s’il est en ciel par sei E l’arme par sei ensement, De ce respondrai je briément: Ce crei qu’ele est resuscitee E vive e mielz qu’ele n’iert nee. (1721–4; 1741–6) (I cannot say or affirm, / And I do not wish to relate it here, / That any man or woman alive / Saw the body after that time … / If asked what I believe / About the body, if it is alone in heaven, / Together with the soul, / To this I shall respond briefly: / I believe this, that she was brought back to life / And is alive, better than when she was born.)

It is also striking how the preachers of some sermons on the Assumption place their focus firmly on celebrating the Virgin in general, or in exegesis of Marian symbolism, and keep to a minimum or ignore any reference to the apocryphal narrative of the Assumption, presumably because it was viewed as a difficulty.32 Mirk’s Festial suggests a double view of the Assumption by including two sermons for the feast: one which dwells on the beloved legend and one which makes very little of it. The Virgin might observe to St Bridget that ‘no other creature’s body is so close to God as my own’ (Liber celestis, 1.9) and argue that Jerome’s scrupulous preference not to define what he had not been shown of her Assumption does not constitute actual doubt (6.60). But Mary herself also 32 As in ‘A Nunnery Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption in Cambridge University Library MS Hh.1.11’, in A Study and Edition of Selected Middle English Sermons, ed. V. M. O’Mara, Leeds Texts and Monographs 13 (Leeds, 1994), pp. 141–221; and in the Assumption sermon in Middle English Sermons, ed. W. O. Ross, EETS o.s. 209 (London, 1940), pp. 241–61.

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has to admit that it was God’s will that ‘my Assumption was not known to the multitude nor preached by many’, so as not to compete with Christ’s Ascension (6.61). The Virgin Mary comments to St Bridget elsewhere – with a disapproving sniff – that while some ‘wickedly deny that I was assumed body and soul … there are others who simply do not know better’ (1.9).

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• PART III • Arundel, Chichele, and after: The Fifteenth Century

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• 7 • Mediating Voices and Texts: Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock • ian johnson  • Vincent Gillespie has always had distinctive and important things to say on how – in the unavoidable swirl of intertextuality – texts, voices, persons, and different authorial roles mediate each other, be it in production or reception. This essay therefore alights on two Middle English religious writers, Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock, who mediate voices, discourses and conditions of the soul across a range of textual occasions. The distinctive richness and fertile variety of textual mediation under consideration here would seem appropriate for the dedicatee of this Festschrift, whose hallmark is an extraordinary scholarly, critical, and psychological facility with a universe of texts, writers, and readers behaving diversely with other texts, writers, and readers. In mediating between his Latin source and his own literary input, Nicholas Love takes care, in his Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, to distinguish between materials translated from the mighty Meditationes vitae Christi, labelled in the margin with a ‘B’ (for Bonaventura, the revered Franciscan doctor to whom the work was then attributed) and materials he has added himself. Love’s voice and words are signalled by the marginal initial ‘N’, although he does not always use it when he makes his own additions.1 The dialogic 1 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter, 2005), henceforth cited by page and line numbers in the main body of this chapter. For the Meditationes vitae Christi, see Opera omnia sancti Bonaventurae, ed. A. C. Peltier, 15 vols. (Paris, 1864–71), XII (1868), pp. 509–630. This is the edition Sargent uses (henceforth cited in the main text), because it is apparently closer to the version of the Latin source Love used than other modern editions. For a translation see John of Caulibus, Meditations on the Life of Christ, trans. Francis X. Taney, Anne Miller, and C. Mary Stallings-Taney (Asheville, 1999), henceforth cited by page and line numbers in the main text. The major study of the Mirror is still Elizabeth Salter, Nicholas Love’s ‘Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’, Analecta Cartusiana 10 (Salzburg, 1974). See also Kantik Ghosh, ‘Nicholas Love’, in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 53–66. For a study of the Middle English life of Christ, see Ian Johnson, The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation, and Vernacular Theology (Turnhout, 2013), especially chapter 3 on Love’s Mirror, pp. 95–146. I would also like to thank Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna warmly for their perceptive editorial interventions and constructive comments.

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which Love constructs between these two initials and between the texts and voices that they represent is more complex than one might initially suppose. On the one hand, passages labelled with a ‘B’ are authoritative, rendered from the Latin auctor, with Love’s vernacular offerings being correspondingly modest vernacular fare. On the other hand, ‘N’ is the mark of an ordained preacher with a confidently assertive voice sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authority, especially when he defends an orthodox understanding of the Eucharist or engages in anti-Lollard polemic. For our purposes, chapter 36 in the Die Jouis section of the Mirror, ‘How oure lorde Jesus came aȝeyn to Bethanye þe saturday before Palmesoneday, & of þe sopere made to him þere, & of þoo þinges done þeratte’, provides some telling examples of how Love negotiates his original, and how he changes and adds to it (pp. 135/23–139/17). At the opening of chapter 36, Love deploys his initial against a short passage in which Jesus is declared to be sovereign doctor and master of all virtues, in both teaching and example: ‘OVure lord Jesus souereyn doctour & maister of al vertues not onely by worde teching, bot also by ensaumple ȝiuyng’ (p. 135/27–8). It is important to understand at the outset that, for Love, Christ is master of all virtues (rather than of the specialist Franciscan ones identified in the Latin), and more than an exemplar of ethical conduct; he rules virtues as their ‘master’ or ‘lord’ wherever and whenever they operate. Virtues, for Love, pertain especially to Christ and salvation, and his version of the life of Christ makes more of virtues than does his source. Before proceeding to analyse chapter 36 more fully, it makes sense to go further into Love’s understanding of how Christ relates to virtues, as it affects this chapter distinctively. It was customary in medieval penitential tradition to regard virtues as spiritually remedial instruments to be acquired and put to work by Christians. Love is in harmony with this tradition, but, invoking in his proheme a telling passage from St Augustine’s De agone christiano, he makes the particular point of categorizing virtues as belonging not so much to the penitent as to Christ, and as arising from Christ’s curative nature as ‘medicyne of man’ (p. 9/23).2 Virtues, then, function to salvific ends: salvation and virtues cannot happen without Christ, which makes understanding his incarnate life through devout imagination supremely important.3 Virtues, for Love, are exercised by the human soul freely cooperating with God’s grace through those virtues. A Christocentric perspective on the nature and function of virtues is thus at the centre of his whole project of revoicing the Meditationes vitae Christi. 2 For Love’s theological position with regard to the relationship between virtues and Christ, and as influenced by St Augustine, see Johnson, Middle English Life of Christ, pp. 125–36. 3 For Love’s concept of devout imagining, see ibid., pp. 102–14.

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock

With Christ, virtues are not exercised simply as exemplary conduct. They also function in the service of providence, as when he turns to face his enemies and his imminent Passion, using the cardinal virtue of fortitude: ‘strenghe’: so nowe he vsede þe vertue of gostly strenghe in þis turnyng aȝeyne to hese enmyes, when þe dewe tyme was come in þe which he wolde by his fre wille offre him to þe passione, & strongly & myhtyly suffre þe malice of hese pursueres in to þe vtturest ende, þat was þe harde deþ. (p. 135/33–7)

Here, this virtue is used in support of a redemptive process controlled by the divinity. Intriguingly, the Latin does not mention strength and might. In adding ‘strongly & myhtyly’ at the opening of the chapter, Love sets the conditions for understanding what follows by emphasizing the working through of the divine will, in all its providential strength and might, as the driving force of the narrative and of its exemplary function (and, of course, of cosmic history). In the case of Christ, the triumphant strategy and action of the omnipotent will exercised through the Passion transcend normal earthly logic. The meditating reader should accordingly be able to pick up on the theological mediation of feeling compassionate anxiety and sympathy for Christ’s suffering while gaining comfort and fortification of faith from the strength and might of the lord of virtues:   And so vsede þe lorde of vertues þese foure principale vertues, þat is to sey, prudence, & temperance, strengþe & rihtwisnes, for oure doctrine & informacion in vertues. (p. 136/10–12)

Though literally translating the source’s ‘Dominus virtutum’ (Peltier, p. 593), the collocation ‘lorde of vertues’ would, for readers mindful of Love’s explicitly stated understanding of how virtue works Christologically, mean much more. For them, the designation is not just about the teaching of virtues – ‘oure doctrine’ – it is also about something more important, our ‘informacion in vertues’: ‘informacion’ has an etymological suggestion of formativity and shaping of habitus, in other words the habituating of the soul to the salvific exercise of virtue through Christ. It is, furthermore, interesting to note at this point that the cardinal virtues actuated here in such a Christian fashion, being of classical origin, are distinctively open to actuation by ‘natural man’ in imitation.4 The nature of the challenge to Christ’s exercise of virtues and management of providence is interestingly remodulated by Love in changes to the Meditationes. The Latin straightforwardly tells us that on the Sabbath before Palm Sunday Jesus returned to Bethany, a town about two miles from Jerusalem. Love complicates and sensitizes this proximity. As in the Latin, he tells us that on the Sabbath before Palm Sunday Christ came to Bethany. Significantly, 4 I am grateful to Ralph Hanna for this observation.

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however, he adds that Christ did so in fulfilment of an ordinance standing since before the world existed: Redit igitur Dominus Jesus die sabbati ante diem palmarum in Bethaniam, quae est prope Hierusalem, quasi ad duo milliaria. (Peltier, p. 593) (Then on the Sabbath day before Palm Sunday, the Lord Jesus returned to Bethany, which is only about two miles from Jerusalem. [Taney et al, p. 221]) when oure lord Jesus, as it is seide, forto offre him to þe passion in tyme ordeynet of him before þe world, came aȝeyn to Bethanye, þat is to sey þe sabbate nekst before palmes soneday, þe which place is nyhe Jerusalem, as aboute þe space of tweyn myle. (p. 136/16–19)

By doing this, Love invests the chapter with extra dread and foreboding, whilst also enhancing the impression of Christ’s conscious management of action and sentence in accordance with divine ordinance. He also intensifies the narrative situation into one of fraught yet providentially momentous liminality, newly combining the idea of Christ’s self-offering to the Passion with notions of spatial nearness to Jerusalem and temporal nearness to the fullness of time of the Passion. A corresponding tension is exacerbated between Christ’s followers’ fretful uncertainty about what is imminent (an emotion shared by the meditating reader suspending disbelief in the cursive contingency of meditation) and what the reader knows all too powerfully is to come. To offer oneself is to put oneself near something or into the hands of something over which one has no control, to be in a condition of suspense in a potentially protracted present tense. Concomitantly, however, Christ’s offer puts interventionary pressure on those to whom he offers himself, on the action of the narrative, and on the progress of divine history. Nearness, a psychological as much as a physical circumstance, has a cognitive and logistical congruence with Christ’s self-offering. As a function of space, nearness connotes vulnerability; as a function of time it encompasses the unavoidable and the imminent. Christ’s particular situation is of course sui generis – entirely comprehensible and controllable from the point of view of an omniscient, incarnate God driving an ordained narrative of events forward with providential salvific logic. This situation, however, will not be understood from a limited human perspective by Christ’s followers, fretting on the sacred humanity in all its vulnerability. The idea of the Passion being ‘in tyme ordeynet of him before þe world’ – divinely prescribed before the world’s existence – is a transposition of slightly earlier material from the opening of the chapter (‘quia debito tempore imminente, sponte redit, ut se offerat passioni’: Peltier, p. 593). This ordinance pits the vast span of divinely set history, projected from the beginning of time right up to the future Day of Judgement, against unresolved present suspense

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock

and against something about to happen too unbearably soon. So much time – slow controlled time – has elapsed, yet so little time is left, beyond the control of Christ’s followers and readers, yet (in accord with a divine irony not yet resolved) well within the control of the godhead. Through this small transposition, Love emphasizes at this point a scene of tactical liminality, combining narrative irresolution with the preparation of his readers for the Passion, and at the same time assigning or creating a perspective for them remade distinctively by himself from an ordinance of providential authority. In so doing, he remediates not only his immediate source but also a biblical scene, augmenting and complicating its cognitive and affective logistics with a light touch of remodulated phrases. A similar translational touch affects and effects other significant changes to the Latin source, with particular regard to delineating and activating a community of response within the narrative, and by extension within readers. The Meditationes tells us that Lazarus, Martha, and Mary were at a supper arranged in Simon the leper’s house (Peltier, p. 593). Love does the same, though, taking an addition from the Gospel of John, he notes how Martha serves at table: And þere at þat sopere were þese homely gestes with Jesu, þat is to sey Lazare, Martha & Marie, hir sistre. And as John noteþ specialy Martha seruede & Lazare satte at þe borde with oþere þat setene also with oure lorde. Bot Marie ful of brennyng loue to Jesu, & taht withinforþ of þe holi goste‫ ؛‬tuke a ful preciouse oynement & shedde vp on his hede, & also anoyntyng his feet, of þe which precious oynement þe swete sauour filled alle þe hous. (p. 136/23–30)

Martha is worthy of special notice because she represents the Active Life (as Love points out later in his own initial-sanctioned voice). Others are there too, of course – all of the disciples: this is a generalized gathering, socially open in the way that Love’s readership and audience, ‘boþe men & women & euery Age & euery dignite of this worlde’ (p. 10/2–3) are conceived to be open and universal. The original tells us that Mary Magdalene poured a pound of precious ointment on Christ’s head and feet. Love adds a telling detail to this – that the scent filled all the house. This is something for the entire community to savour, an analogue of the spreading love and devotion to be felt and articulated by anyone there capable of receiving or giving it. In another addition, Love tells us that Magdalene, having first anointed Christ with ointment, then anoints him more perfectly with unspeakable joy and sweet tears of devotion (p. 136/34–7) – something for readers to imitate in their own spiritual lives. Constructing a historical faith community within the narrative, Love adds a paragraph declaring the diverse means by which people in the house do service to Jesus. Taken together, they add up to a considerable coverage of types of people and of service to Christ. Simon the Pharisee, a leper cured by Jesus, fulfils, through his hospitality, the call of all humans to the sovereign virtue of

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charity; Mary and Martha represent the contemplative and active lives respectively (which together cover a broad range of conditions of Christians), and Lazarus, having been raised from the dead by Jesus, is witness of the godhead in action in the person of Christ:   And so we mowe se at þat sopere & in þat house þees foure persones doyng to oure lord Jesu trewe seruyce in diuerse maneres, þat is to sey þe maister of þe house by charitable hospitalyte, Lazare by opun witnessynge of his godhede, Martha by bisy mynistringe, as longeþ to trewe actife life, & Marie by feruent loue & deuout wirchipyng, as longeþ to hye contemplatif life. (p. 137/10–16)

Love allots exemplary spiritual characteristics to individual characters presented in sequence at an earlier point in the Mirror, when each protagonist in the episode, telling of how Joseph was privately thinking of leaving Mary on knowing of her pregnancy, is accorded an individual virtue.5 In the house in Bethany, for all their individual distinctiveness, the characters are part of a community with a certain universality, not unlike the readership of this work. This is a community in bono – with which, as we shall see, is contrasted another community, not described in the original but added purposefully by Love – ‘Judas and hees felaghes’ (p. 138/33; also p. 138/10–11) – a community in malo introduced to this biblical scene by Nicholas Love, a community extending with perilous transhistorical relevance to the heterodoxy of his own day. The gathering in Simon the Pharisee’s house is of course already anxious about Christ’s departure to Jerusalem. One of the most dramatic and anxietyinducing moments in the Gospels is the chilling prophecy in Christ’s defence of Mary Magdalene against Judas’s complaint about her pouring expensive ointment over him. The Meditationes derive this from Matthew’s Gospel, when, quoting the words of Christ, the Latin author asks melodramatically about the Virgin’s reaction to her son’s words: Et cum Dominus defendens Magdalenam a murmure proditoris dixit: Mittens hæc unguentum hoc in corpus meum, ad sepeliendum me fecit; an non credis, quod hujus verbi gladius matris animam pertransierit? Quid enim de morte sua poterat expressius dicere? (Peltier, p. 594) (When the Lord, in defending Magdalene against the complaints of the traitor, made the statement, ‘Pouring this ointment on my body, she readied me for burial [Matt 26:12],’ do you not believe that the sword of this remark pierced his mother’s soul? Could he have been more explicit in foretelling his death? [Taney et al, p. 222])

5 For discussion of this, see Johnson, Middle English Life of Christ, p. 120.

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock

Love does something rather different from the source, suppressing the biblical quotation it uses and resorting instead to reported speech, lacking the punch of the Latin, advising that Magdalene’s good deed with the ointment is to be pondered with regard to Christ’s own imminent burial. Love forgoes the drama of these words’ instant piercing of the Virgin’s soul, preferring instead to follow the sentence about mindfulness with a direct address to Jesus, mentioning first Mary Magdalene, then other true friends who were there to react with sorrow and discomfort, and then – and only then – his poor mother. The sharp questioning of the Latin becomes a comparatively delayed declaration, licensing and counselling us to believe that these words pierced her heart more sharply than any sword. Christ is therefore presented as declaring þat gude dede, euer to be hadde in mynde as in anoyntyng before of his body in to þe birying þat folowede after. A lorde Jesu how soryfull & disconfortyng was þis worde, þat so opunly declared þi deþ‫ ؛‬to Marie specialy & to alle oþere trewe freendes þat þere weren, bot souereynly to þi blessed modere. For os we may soþely byleue þat worde persede hir herte more sharply þen any swerde. (p. 137/28–35)

Although the Virgin Mary, placed last in the order of sufferers, is in an emotively emphatic final position, valorized by the supremacy of the adverb ‘souereynly’, it is significant that in the vernacular text, though not in the Latin, the whole community in the house is described as present and reacting to this experience with sorrow and discomfort – everyone, that is, except for Judas and his despised ‘felaghes’ (p. 138/33). Judas, we are told, does not share in the communal distress. Continuing fixedly ‘in his enuyous indignacion’, he sets about betraying Christ (p. 137/38–40). In the very next passage, highlighted by the tell-tale marginal annotation ‘Nota contra lollardos’ (p. 138), Love angles this biblical scene further towards participating in the contemporary politics of religion, treating Judas is if he were in some way a Lollard for being unwilling to hand over resources (symbolized by Magdalene’s ointment) to Christ, that is, to the church. Love proceeds to condemn those who oppose the giving of alms, of other offerings, and of other devotions involving the transfer of resources to Holy Church:   Here mowe we forþermore note specialy to purpose þat þei are of Judas parte þat reprehenden almesdedes, offrynges & oþere deuociones of þe peple done to holi chirch, haldyng alle siche ȝiftes of deuocion bot foly, & seying þat it were more nedeful & bettur, to be ȝiuen to pore men. O Judas þat þus pretendest with þi mouth þe releuyng of pore men, þere as soþely in þe entent of þi herte þat is grondet in enuye aȝeynus men of holi chirch‫ ؛‬it perteneþ not to þe of pore men‫ ؛‬bot raþere þine owne fals coueitise

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ian j ohns on in excusacion of þi nygunrye, þat hast none deuocione & nouht wilt ȝiue of þin owne gode. (p. 137/42–138/10)

Through this addition, Love’s contemporary orthodox political agenda mediates the text, and the text mediates the contemporary political situation. He creates a change of perspective and subject matter for the Meditationes vitae Christi that colours everything else in this chapter, polemical and nonpolemical. For a start, he pointedly turns the highly sensitized term ‘grondet’ – typically used by Lollards to signal expositions and arguments ‘grounded’ authentically in Holy Writ rather than in lesser sources – against such antiecclesiatical wretches, condemning those who, ‘grounded’ in envy rather than Scripture, would oppose men of Holy Church.6 To the same end, Judas is contrasted with the poor widow who gives a tiny amount of money to the Temple equal to ‘þe substance of her lyuelode’ (p. 138/27). For this, Christ ‘souereynly preisede þe pore widowe, for hir gret deuocion, & siede þat hir litel ȝift in goddus siht passede alle þe gret ȝiftes of þe riche men’ (p.  138/28–30). How suitable it is then for Love’s purposes that Judas, in palpable contrast to the poor but devout widow and to Mary Magdalene with her overflowing love, is specifically accused of having no devotion – the devotion, doubtless, that would make anyone a good reader of this text: ‘O Judas … þat hast none devocione’ (p. 138/5–9). Iscariot is not just Christ’s betrayer or a parallel to the typical Lollard/heretic hostile to priestly perquisites and tithes; he is now also the antitype of the life of Christ genre, and of Love’s Mirror especially. Intriguingly, Love goes one step further in condemning Judas – not through any named textual authority, theological argument or invocation of ecclesiastical regulations, but through the alleging of social experience common to anyone, learned or unlearned, who has come across greedy or avaricious folk in the normal course of life: For experience opunly techeþ, þat comunely alle sech Judas felawes bene als coueitous or more þen any oþere, & þat sal he finde soþely in dede, who so haþ to do with hem in one manere or oþere. (p. 138/10–13)

We, that is, everybody, the ‘men & women & euery Age & euery dignite of this worlde’ (p. 10/2–3) at whom this work is aimed, all know ‘people like that’ through common experience. We all know Judas; we have all met him. The name of Judas, after all, was and still is a common-enough insult. It is a short and simple step to sectarianize a condemnation of him, and Love goes there readily, resetting the medium and agenda of this scene. Here, Love very much 6 I would like to thank Ralph Hanna for reminding me about the business of grounding here, and, moreover, for pointing out that this move could also constitute a conventional preacherly figural reading of the Bible.

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talks in his own voice as if preaching or teaching. It is not a voice lacking authority or assertiveness. We turn now from Judas to the Pharisees. Significantly, one of the actions of Christ is, in an addition to Love’s source, exemplified as an exercise of the virtue of righteousness. This is his rebuking of the priests of the law and the Pharisees for their covetousness (as well as his driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple). Here Love mediates this biblical scene by introducing a contemporary agenda focused on his orthodox understanding of the obligation to give to the church. Such a particular species of righteousness is precisely the virtuous conduct that he wants his readers to exercise in the contemporary here and now, in sharp contradistinction to the latter-day ‘felaghes’ of Judas – Lollards and their ilk, who scorn giving to the church. As part of the same agenda, Love recasts the Pharisees as a historic equivalent – as mediatory stand-ins – to the hierarchy of the established church of his own time. When it comes to the vexed issue of payments to the church/synagogue, Love takes pains to remind his readership that Christ never ‘bade þe peple to wiþdrawe auther dymes or offrynges or oþer ȝiftes of deuocione’ (p. 138/17–18). However bad the Pharisees or modern Christian clerics may be, they still have authority that should be respected, and the congregation has inalienable obligations to the institution, regardless of how much Lollards may thunder against these obligations and spurn them. Whereas the church/Pharisees are meant to be obeyed and given donations, Judas and his fellows are ‘sufficiently reprouede & confondet’ by what Christ says and does:   Here mowe we se if we take gude hede to alle þe circumstances þat by þis onely processe and sentence of oure lord Jesus‫ ؛‬Judas & hees felaghes bene sufficiently reprouede & confondet in heere fals opinione & doctrine aȝeynus holy chirch before seid. (p. 138/31–5)

Note the collocation, not in the Latin original, ‘processe and sentence’, which separately identifies the Christ-driven action of the narrative as well as his words of teaching. It is significant that, in a fascinating terminological anachronism appropriating Judas for contemporary polemical ends, Love tells his audience that Judas and his fellows are ‘confondet in heere fals opinione & doctrine aȝeynus holy chirch’, as if they were contemporary heretics. We return now to the community in the house in all their uncertainty. The narrative of the Passion may be well known to the reader, but for these people in that moment it is an unknown matter of dread. Christ gives them some reassurance, but in adapting the source Love makes sure that it is not complete:   Þan amonge þoo hese trewe frendes oure lord Jesus, þat þei shold not be to miche abashede or disturblet with þat vnkeþ dede to come‫ ؛‬tolde hem þat he

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ian j ohns on wolde on þe morowe go opunly in to Jerusalem, and þan were þei alle souereynly aferde, & preiden him hertely & his modere namely þat he wold not put him self so vtturly in to hees enmyes handes & semely forþermore in to þe deþ þat was conspirede wiþ out faile aȝeynus him of þe Jewes. (p. 139/2–9)

The statement that they should not be too perturbed (it is, so it would appear, devotionally appropriate to be perturbed, but not too much) is not in the original. Nor is there any mention in the Latin at this point of ‘þat vnkeþ dede’, the unknown doings to come. Love presumably introduces this to emphasize the uncertainty and anxiety of Christ’s followers, and hence to sharpen the devotion of his meditating readers and hearers. It also prepares the way for another addition, in which he invests the narrative with an uneasy mix of consolation and dread: Bot oure gude lorde confortyng hem aȝeynwarde, bade hem drede nouht & seide, It is þe fadres wille, þat I take þis iourney, & he sal kepe vs & so ordeyne for vs at þis tyme, þat ȝe shale se me among alle myne enmyes in þe grettest wirschipe þat euer ȝe seyhe me, & þei shole haue no powere now aȝeynus me. Bot after þat I haue done alle þat I wille‫ ؛‬to morow at euene we shole come hidure aȝeyne saue & sonde. And þen þorh þees wordes þei were alle wele confortede, bot neuerlese alwey dredynge. (p. 139/9–17)

This reference to Christ’s triumph on Palm Sunday, and to his being held in the greatest worship with his enemies having no power against him, is not in the Latin original. Here, following on from introducing ‘þat vnkeþ dede to come’, Love sets the emotional climate for Christ’s followers and his readers by being more specific than the Latin source about the context and nature of dread. He also complicates the consolation that Christ offers: his Jesus tells them to be comforted and not to dread. He also tells them something that requires of the readership a certain theological discretion, for when he tells his followers that he shall be seen among his enemies in the greatest worship that ever he will be seen in, and that his enemies shall have no power against him, his readers are meant to understand that he is not referring simply to his physical invulnerability (his Passion will soon show how transient this is), but to the overriding providential agenda of the godhead, which unavoidably requires at the appointed time the suffering of the Passion for its triumphant trajectory. And although, as in the Latin original, Jesus provides a certain level of reassurance that he will return safe and sound the next evening, Love takes care to point out, in words additional to the source, that, despite these words of comfort, his followers were ever in a state of dread. Again, as at the beginning of this paragraph, which seemed to express a wish for Christ’s followers to be in a sufficient state of distress but not too much, so here too a balancing mediation would seem to be struck between dread on the one side and

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock

comfort and strength on the other. For those of Love’s readers who appreciate that this promise covers only the next day and is, here, somewhat misleading, this uneasy balance is all the more uneasy, as it would be for those in the house still perturbed by the prophecy of his imminent burial. This mediation is, however, more than a mere matter of balance: it is a strategic process, for ‘comfort’ is to do with strengthening and consolation. Such strengthening ‘comfort’ is a Christ-given means of acknowledging and coping with such dread. Nicholas Love’s adaptation of his source and this biblical scene is subtle and careful, proceeding by sensitively managed detail, but he is prepared to be decisive in interpolating longer passages into his work when he has a particular agenda. He knows what to do with the source and with tradition, and he knows the function and value of his own voice. Something similar could be said of Reginald Pecock, though the original he reworks is a tradition: the entirety of ecclesiastical doctrine and catechetics. The way he mediates this in his own voice and in his own multi-textual system is, to say the least, idiosyncratic, though he shares with Love a sincere intent to enhance the spiritual agency and experience of his readers, and move them towards salvation through enriched sacred discipline. The opening pages of Reginald Pecock’s Donet describe its relationship with his Reule of Crysten Religioun.7 Here, Pecock mediates amongst his own works. Although the Reule deals with the matters most necessary to be understood by Christians, it is nevertheless an advanced work that would take a long time and much labour to work through and absorb. He appreciates that many readers may get quite a way into the Reule but still lack a sense of the big picture, and acknowledges that it would be helpful for them to have an overall sense of what it is about, a ‘general confuse knowing’. Rather typically, Pecock uses the word ‘confuse’ here in an etymologically freighted sense of separate things being poured together to form a whole (from the Latin confundo). The justification for this general pouring together takes the form of one extremely long sentence, clauses poured out loose-endedly over two pages of the modern edition (Donet, pp. 1–2). This manifesto communicates a sense of lofty ambition 7 Reginald Pecock, The Donet ... with The Poore Mennis Myrrour, ed. Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock, EETS o.s. 156 (London, 1921 [for 1918]); The Reule of Crysten Religioun, ed. W. C. Greet, EETS o.s. 171 (London, 1927 [for 1926]). For general studies on Pecock, see Wendy Scase, Reginald Pecock (Aldershot, 1996); V. H. H. Green, Bishop Reginald Pecock: A Study in Ecclesiastical History and Thought (Cambridge, 1945); Charles W. Brockwell, Jr, Bishop Reginald Pecock and the Lancastrian Church: Securing the Foundations of Cultural Authority (Lewiston, 1985), and Kirsty Campbell, The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities (Notre Dame, 2010). For developments in the fifteenthcentury English church as a context for the religious literary culture of the time, see Vincent Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church: Vernacular Theology in England after Thomas Arundel’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 3–42.

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in its arching rhetorical and syntactic span, and in drawing together clausular threads in eventual resolution, it seems to be strangely mimetic of what the Donet is trying to do by marshalling together the Reule in one coherent iteration. Before it gets to any resolution, however, it opens thus:   For as moche as þe book y-callid ‘þe reule of cristen religioun’, with oþire bokis to him perteynyng, is made to renne vpon vij maters moost necessary to eche cristen lyuer to be knowun, and þese maters ben þerynne so tariyngli tretid þat, perauenture, manye reeders, being so desirose to have anoon of þese maters þe comprehensioun and ful taking, or ellis to haue þe general confuse knowing … (Donet, p. 1)

The resolving phase of Pecock’s manifesto, when he triumphantly reaches it, announces that the Donet will provide a foretaste, and ‘a fore assaie’ – in other words a trying out and a testing of the Reule – as well as a broad ‘confuse’ knowledge of it: þat is to seie, forto ȝeue a fore taast, a fore assaie, and a fore general and a confuse knowing of þe ful drauȝt and of þe ful feeding and of þe special siȝt and feeling whiche in þe hool seid book y-callid ‘þe reule of cristen religioun’ to hem schulde be deliuered. (Donet, p. 2)

In good devotional and educational tradition, Pecock uses metaphors of taste and nourishment. He also plays with the ideas of the general and particular by citing ‘special siȝt and feeling’ amidst the flow of notions of general understanding. This is, conceivably, because he wants to emphasize that the Donet does not merely give general access to the Reule: it provides a ‘special siȝt’ of what is general, a particular vision encompassing the whole of the larger work while also communicating a ‘special … feeling’ – a highly particularized feel, intellectual as well as affective, for the work. Such a special type of general understanding and feel can be provided only by one of Pecock’s own specially customized texts, in this case the Donet. Pecock’s works do not just mediate amongst themselves; they also rework church doctrine and conventional catechetical formats. Pecock insists that his system of Four Tables of virtues covers all of God’s commandments as traditionally known. Indeed, ‘no vertu of goddis lawe’ lies outside the thirty-one virtues treated in his Tables:   Lo, sone, þus moche as is now seid of moral vertues, from þe bigynnyng of þe iij chapitre into þe eende of þe xij chapitre, muste nedis be seide, tauȝt and known at þe leest, if goddis comaundementis and his lawe schulde be fulli and parfitli knowen; ech man must nedis haue me excusid if y schulde reherce hem fully; and as, y weene, no vertu of goddis lawe can be assigned which is not euidentli and openly conteyned vndir oon of þe seide xxxj virtues, ȝhe, and so

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock conteyned vndir oon of þilk xxxj vertues þat þe name of þilk oon is uerified vpon þe oþire vertu assigned to be conteyned vndir it, And þerfore þe names of þese xxxj vertues, if þei be had wel and parfitly in mynde, schulen bring into remembraunce of him þat so haþ hem in mynde, y dare weel seie, alle goddis commaundementis and alle moral vertues of his lawe, as openli and as sufficiently as so litil a noumbre of xxxj names may do. (Donet, p. 80)

The thirty-one virtues verify other virtues, which are variants and parts thereof. A grasp and memorization of the thirty-one will equip the mind for the comprehension or exercise of any virtue. If they are remembered, then the full repertoire of God’s moral law and commandments will resource the mind in a working whole, consisting of properly contextualized elements of virtue in a special format of confuse knowing and feeling. Pecock takes pains to point out that his readers should ignore all other systems, because they are so inadequate in comparison to his own that he has gone so far as to write tracts ‘inprouing’ (disproving) them for their uselessness and needlessness, as well as for their insufficiency: Neuerþeles, y weene forto fynde enye straunge foorme fro þis present foorme, and to þe seide purpos, schal be no nede. And forto make good what y haue now seide, þat oþire mennys foormes, taking vpon hem forto teche and trete goddis commaundementis and lawis, ben insufficient and inconuenient to þilk purpos, schal be schewid in a tretice þerfore speciali to be made, whos name schal be þis, ‘þe inprouing of mennys insufficient foormes.’ (Donet, p. 81)

Pecock aims to displace these works by dialectical and polemical exclusion, not by shouting them down, institutional force, or oppressive legislation. For him, reason is all. Indeed, Pecock takes care explicitly to mediate even between his system of reason and Holy Scripture. Advertising their commensurability, he cross-refers in his Donet to his two treatises reconciling them. The first, ‘þe witnessing of þe iiij tablis’, is wholly devoted to this topic, whereas ‘þe prouoker’ contains a single chapter providing a compendious witness to the same:   Sone, wite þow weel þat forto witnes ful wel and openli in holi scripture eche of þese seide xxxj poyntis of þe iiij tablis, which maken þe iiije princypal mater of cristen religioun, y haue bigunne make a special book bi him silf, clepid ‘þe witnessing of þe iiij tablis’; and þerfore, and also for schortnes, y forbere to sette her witnessing here, And for þat a schort witnessing bi holi scripture of þese xxxj pointis making þe iiij tablis, is sett al redi in þe book clepid ‘þe prouoker’, in þe first parti, þe [ ]8 chapitre. (Donet, p. 84)

8 Here, according to the editor, Hitchcock, p. 84 n. 7, is space left in the manuscript for a reference.

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Here, Reginald is not just mediating between the Bible and his own system; he is also acting as mediator between different, mutually self-supporting parts of his oeuvre, in a self-proving and self-valorizing performative act, proving viability in a tautology of cross-referencing mutuality. Here, as in many other places in his works, the practice of referring the reader on to other texts has the effect of exporting a measure of important meaning outside the text, without articulating it. In addition to intertextual reference, Pecock has another distinctive way of textual mediating, when he negotiates between himself, his system, and Holy Scripture. A particularly intriguing example of such mediation occurs when he hermeneutically revoices 2 Corinthians 5:12–14, or rather the Lollard rendering of it, which he quotes not entirely accurately, but still quite closely. I give the Vulgate text first, before Pecock’s response: [12] Non iterum commendamus nos vobis, sed occasionem damus vobis gloriandi pro nobis : ut habeatis ad eos qui in facie gloriantur, et non in corde. [13] Sive enim mente excedimus Deo: sive sobrii sumus, vobis. [14] Caritas enim Christi urget nos ([12] We commend not ourselves again to you, but give you occasion to glory in our behalf; that you may have somewhat to answer them who glory in face, and not in heart. [13] For whether we be transported in mind, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is for you. [14] For the charity of Christ presseth us…)9 And so, sone, þouȝ y be synful and ful of defautis and fer from þe euenesse to seint poul, ȝit to alle þe reders and to alle þe heerers of al what y haue writun or schal write, my conscience reproueþ me not forto seie what poul seide of him silf, ija corinthies, ve chapitre, þus: ‘We commende not vs silf eftsoon to ȝou; but we ȝeuen to ȝou occasioun to haue glorie for vs, þat ȝe haue to hem þat glorien in þe face and not in þe herte. for ouþer we bi mynde passen to god, ouþer we ben sobir to ȝou. forsoþe, þe charite of crist dryuith vs.’ þat is to seie, in pleyner maner þus: ‘I entende not to commende my silf, as for my silf, in eny wordis which y schal write or seie; but y ȝeue an occasioun and a cause þat ȝe considre and knowe ȝou to haue sumwhat wherbi ȝe mowe aȝen stonde vnsufficient teching trouþe, and to aȝenstonde þe techers of vnsufficient and of vntrouþe, And to knowe cleerli necessary trouþis. And among my writingis, if in eny placis of hem y passe þe capacite of ȝoure vndirstonding for þe tyme in which ȝe schulen at þe first rede hem or heere hem, be it to þe preising of god þat his trouþis ben so hiȝe þat þei ben at þe first heering so harde to ȝoure vndirstonding; And if in oþire placis of my writingis, y be so sobre þat þei ben anoon takeable of ȝoure 9 Douay-Rheims Bible and Latin Vulgate (Clementine) online [accessed 8 June 2018].

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock vndirstonding, be it to ȝoure profite, for in boþe þese seide maners for to write, as y hope, þe charite of god me forþ dryueþ.’ (Donet, p. 82)

Pecock would doubtless have been aware that this passage in Corinthians emerges from a context in which St Paul was combatting potential apostolic rivals in Corinth. Paul favoured his own comprehensible theology over his rivals’ public displays of ecstasy and talking in tongues. For him, religious ecstasy was a private business: rational theological discourse should govern the public arena rather than rhetoric and appearances.10 Pecock, the selfappointed latter-day Apostle of the doom of God’s reason, accordingly manipulates these verses to his own ends. St Paul challenges the Corinthians to make a choice between glorying in the external showiness of his rivals and in his own heartfelt piety and teaching. In verse 12 he categorizes being ‘transported in mind’ as something between the individual and God, not to be used for teaching and preaching, unlike sober discourse, which is fit for public consumption. Pecock changes this distinction radically. For a start, he claims that he is giving his readers the equipment to withstand inadequate or insufficient teaching and to recognise necessary truths, that is, ‘aȝenstonde þe techers of vnsufficient and of vntrouþe, And to knowe cleerli necessary trouþis’: Paul does not do this. More remarkably, Pecock confects a new distinction between two situations in which his readers may find themselves on reading his works. The first of these is when his texts pass their understanding, in which case they should be regarded as a form of praise to God, because their truths are so lofty. This does not mean that they are mystical – merely that they are not yet understood by the reason according to which and for which they are made. The second situation is when Pecock’s writings are immediately intelligible, which, straightforwardly enough, is to the immediate profit of readers: no more need be said. In both cases, Pecock claims that ‘þe charite of god me forþ dryueþ’. This can mean two things: first, that his own love of God presses him on; second, that the grace of God assists his reason by shining light on what his mind is endeavouring to judge. This conventional understanding of grace is in no way mystical, being entirely at one with Pecock’s understanding of the soul as operating by divinely given reason. Given Pecock’s prioritization of reason over Scripture, it is telling that he should turn to the latter to justify the fundamentals of his enterprise, though it may also be said that he subsumes these scriptural verses into his own system of rational theology, thereby ostensibly verifying it. It is also noteworthy that he does not translate the Latin Vulgate but instead quotes (near enough) and expounds the Wycliffite Bible (something that he is happy to do elsewhere). The 10 For context, I draw here on The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford, 2001), pp. 1134–5, 1140–1.

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Wycliffite Bible had perfectly respectable scholarly procedures in its translating, and perfectly respectable orthodox aristocrats owned manuscripts of it. Pecock may not therefore have been so subversive (or ironic) in what he does here, even though some ultraorthodox clerics might have been horrified at his vernacular exegetical antics, especially as such antics were in the service of his own idiosyncratic enterprise of a distinctively vernacular theology open to lay idiotae. In his mediating and revoicing of St Paul, Pecock turns the Bible into his own voice for his own ends, mediating it through convenient extrapolation – and even turning biblical commentary into self-commentary, in a robust bid for authority and captatio benevolentiae. Some contemporaries would have regarded this as a questionable warping of the biblical text – an unacceptable form of textual mediation. Such self-interested and somewhat forced interpretations of Scripture were not uncommon in late medieval textual culture; not so common a form of textual mediation, however, is Pecock’s working of cross-referencing into prayer and praise – something that makes his voice distinctive. In the Reule Pecock prays to the Almighty, petitioning for divine teaching at the same time as cross-referring to another part of the same work: Teche vs now how we muste be occupied here in þis lijf wiþ þe and for þee, what for to do and suffer for þee þat we mowe be acceptid of þee to come to þilk blisful eende, siþen bi sentence of þe xix trouþe bifore going in þe ije treti, þou hast ordeyned meenys wherbi oure blisful eende and oure souereyn good schal be of vs deserued to be had and be of vs geten and wiþoute whiche meenys þis blisful eend schal not be of vs deserued to be had neiþer be of vs getun. (Reule, p. 224)

This passage is a generically remarkable hybrid of praise, petition, self-quotation/self-paraphrase, and argumentation, in which Pecock pleads for teaching directed towards salvation. The words following the cross-reference (‘þe xix trouþe bifore going in þe ije treti’) reproduce the beginning of his earlier full treatment of the nineteenth truth (Reule, pp. 131–5). If one goes to the end of this treatment (Reule, p. 135), one sees yet more cross-reference, for not only are the nineteenth truth’s implications for faith referred on to the Book of Faith and to the Folewer, but its implications for the operation of Pecock’s distinctive theology of helping and accepting grace are referred on to another part of the Reule itself. This ceaseless cycle of diversified cross-referral may perhaps be regarded as Pecock’s version of deferral of meaning, an endless chain of self-contextualization and self-mediation, which he would have regarded as a laudably necessary process leading towards the Almighty and heaven. It is well enough known that, for Pecock, the authority of reason, being divine, precedes that of the Bible. Being in harmony with reason, the Bible, to all intents and purposes, follows it. Being made in the image of God, the human soul, by its very nature, has the capacity to exercise reason in order to

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock

grasp and enjoy the truths of God and exercise his laws. Therefore, in his Reule of Crysten Religioun, Pecock prays to God for illumination of the reason rather than of the affectus:   PReisable lord and þankeable god aboue alle þingis, siþen þou hast vouchid saaf of þyn infinite mercy and pitee, loue and desijr to illumyne and enform vs, and so cleerli and so plenteuousely bi liȝt of natural resoun in knowing of vs silf in oure soule side and of þee, ffirst þat þou art and aftir what þou art, what þou art in þi noble dignitees and worþinessis, and þat þou art and schalt be to vs in maner of oure eende and final blis, contynue now ferþer, lord, þin illumynacioun, informacioun and techyng, we bisechen þee. (Reule, pp. 223–4)

Pecock’s development of the rational discipline of meditation and prayer produces some fascinating mediations, and suggests idiosyncratic new voices and combinations of voices. To this end, he mediates amongst his whole system, interior rational argumentation and intellectual synthesis. Each element mediated is charged with pious sentiment and directed towards God. It should not be forgotten that even when Reginald is at his most scholastic – lecturing, glossing, and arguing – he is, in the same motion of thought and textual articulation, facing God in prayer and praise. His prose merges analysis and synthesis with transcendently Godward address: this is his voice. In the fourth treatise of the Reule Pecock correspondingly elaborates a discipline of meditation and prayer, relying on illumination of the reason and an inward pragmatics of reflective argumentation, proceeding from a synthesizing ‘collacioun’ of the matters in his system. The starting point for this, in order that the reason and the will may be rightly aligned, is the illumination of divine knowledge and know-how in our reason:   The iije trouþe is þis: Next aftir we knowen þat þi service, lord, stondiþ in riȝtwisnes bitwene oure wil and oure resoun and bitwene hem boþe and þi wil or þin ordinaunce – as it is schewid bifore in þe ije chapiter of þe iije trety – þe first point specially which we schulde ȝeue vs in þi service is to seche aftir and to gete illumynacioun, þat is to seie kunnyng or knowing in oure resoun and vndirstonding as myche as is necessarie for vs and forto remembre vs þerupon lest we forȝete it and forto calle it into mynde aȝen whanne it falliþ from vs. (Reule, p. 370)

Sufficient judgement within the reason to rule the will and other affective powers may not exist without long thinking and rumination, and therefore not without ‘greet illumynacioun, leernyng or kunnyng and þerupon þe remembring’ (Reule, p.  371). This illumination has to be sought with great effort, ‘wheþer it be bi studie, by meditacioun or bi reeding in holi writt or out of holy writt or bi heering or preching or bi office of þee, lord, and þi seintis preising and þanking or what euer wise a man may come þerto’ (Reule, p. 371).

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The next stage, after the acquisition of ‘illumynacioun, kunnyng and remembering’, is to use these three to help engender the more affective side of personal piety, in other words to ‘vse þe practik or arguyng which is tauȝt here aftir in þis firste party for gendring of wel willing and of compunccioun and for gendring of passional loue and of desijr and of oþere inward passiouns or affectis rehercid in þe iiije trouþe conteyned in þe iij chapiter of þe iije trety afore goyng’ (Reule, p. 372). All affect – love, desire, and other ‘inward affectis’ (Reule, p. 373) – require nourishment, conservation, and maintenance so that they can develop, from being ‘tendre and ȝonge’ and liable to slide lightly away, to being safely established and flourishing (Reule, p. 372). Neatly enough, the very causes that beget them, namely ‘þe same illumynacioun and þe practik of collacioun’ (Reule, pp. 372–3) – ‘collacioun’ being an interior dialogical exercise of correlating, involving argumentative (re)organization, comparison, analysis, and synthesis – also preserves and strengthens them. Pecock then tells us that praising, thanking, and praying to God should be added to this ‘collacioun’ and arguing in order to ‘conseruen, tenden, quyken and encresen in a ful special excellent maner desijr toward þee and toward al þi service and welwilling’ (Reule, p. 373). The approach of the Reule is reflected in the Donet: when Pecock comes to discuss the appropriate procedures for building meditation into prayer, he gives enthusiastically clear, typically cross-referencing advice about how this should be mediated with his system and his works, by what is in effect ‘collacioun’:   In an oþire tyme þou maist bigynne þi meditacioun in þe iiije mater, which is þe lawe of god, as it is tretid in þe first party of ‘cristen religioun’, þe iije trety, and in þe ije party, þe vije trety; And considre how resonable it is, how cleer, how profitable, how fillable [able to satisfy], how gentil, how rewardable. and from þens falle into consideracioun of þe ve mater, and so into þe vj mater, and last into preier. (Donet, p. 211)

Pecock counsels his readers to keep his ‘maters’ (indeed any matters) as separate as possible and to focus on discrete lines of thinking. Nevertheless, he is also aware that the manifestly interlocking nature of his system and of theological reality, coupled with the habitual propensities of the human mind to leap from association to association, will inevitably militate against this. This impulse should therefore be mitigated by a self-conscious discipline endeavouring to alleviate – though it may not be able to do so entirely – the involuntary intermingling of matters and modes of address to God ‘stertmele’, in digressive fits and starts:   Neuerþeles, sone, I wote wel þat þou schalt stertmele and bi litil whilis menge þese maters to gider, wille þou, nylle þou, And þou schalt menge schort preiers

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Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock soone aftir þat þou hast bigunne þi preisingis, and so aftir whilis þou schryvist þee, where aȝens I wole not be. but ȝitt, not wiþstonding þis mengyng which schal so bifalle for habundaunce of consideraciouns and of affecciouns, I wole þat þou make þi cours to kepe þi seid foorme fro mater into mater, as it mai be kept with þe seid schort among mengyngis of preiers. (Donet, p. 211)

The format of church services, in Reginald’s eyes, exacerbates this problem. He is not at all happy with their mixing up of ‘clausulis or processis’ (Reule, p. 406) of praise, prophecies, and other portions of text to the detriment of the coherence, stability, and intensity of addresses to God. He correspondingly argues for them to be regrouped and distinguished more clearly (Reule, pp. 406–7). He also has a related worry about learned clerks’ especial vulnerability in prayer to intrusive diversionary thoughts, generated not just by the mixture of formats in church services but also by the nature of the materials. Some divert the mind by not being understood fully, whereas others, though better understood, engender superabundant diversities of meaning, pulling the mind in several directions at once whilst being said:   The xxxe trouþe is þis þat it is more difficulte and more hardnes for clerkis and vndirstondyng men in latyn to parfitely vse þe maner of preising and of preiyng now vsid, compowned and mengid of psalmes, ympnys, responsis, chapitris, gospels, pistils and oþere suche, þan it is to vnlettrid men and not vndirstondyng men in latyn, fforwhi þe seid vndirstondyng men muste bisette her mynde vpon þe maters of her redyng ouþer vpoun maters of her owne proper divising; but so it is þat þei mowe not in best maner be occupied to biþenke vpon þe maters of her redyng, for whi riȝt as myche þerof schal be vndirstonde so myche þerof schal not be vndirstonde, and of it þat schal be vndirstonden, þer schal be so many dyuersitees so oft y-multiplied and dyuersid þat it schal be inpossible bi kinde eny mannys mynde forto renne from oon into þe oþer, and namely to make þe affect to folewe in so liitil space of tyme as he schal haue to ech of þilk dyuersitees to which he is so hastily and shortli pullid; wherfore it is not esy and delectable gouernance to lettrid men in latyn forto knytte hem to þe sentence of þe letter. (Reule, p. 405)

It is evidently neither easy nor delightful for such learned individuals to apply themselves to prayer, when it is virtually impossible for them to have sufficient control (‘gouernance’) of the deep meaning of the letter (‘þe sentence of þe letter’) of such ecclesiastical texts.11 Pecock accordingly argues for difficult passages to be kept separate, and even for an exposition to be given along with 11 Note here that Pecock in effect translates the learned collocation sententia litterae, made famous by Nicholas of Lyra, as ‘þe sentence of þe letter’ – the profound understanding emerging from the literal level of the text being recited, chanted or read.

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the text. For him, the answer to a problem with a text often seems to be more text or another text: more mediation. Pecock, it would appear, wants everything to be resolved through a collational discipline of interiority, and through an interlocking and profuse system of his own works, fit for the purpose of countering the traditional incoherent discourses of the Church. For him, mediation is remediation. When it comes to heretics and Judas Iscariot, something similar is true for Nicholas Love. Though both Love and Pecock rework materials at the commanding heights of religious culture, each has a strong sense of knowing how to mediate them, using his own voice. Whereas Love carefully reshapes the emotional landscape of his materials and of his readers, giving them a template for meditating on the life and Passion of Christ beyond his text, for living virtuously, and for moving towards hope of heaven in prayer, Pecock endeavours to instill in his readers a rational discipline for understanding and meditating on the ways of the Divinity that gives prayerful access to the Almighty, and a way to salvation through Godward morality and penitent piety. Both writers achieve what they achieve through an interplay of textual mediation, voice, and theological discretion.

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• 8 • Santa Zita and Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540* • susan p owell  • Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540 (olim Phillipps MS 8831) is a vellum manuscript, most likely of the third quarter of the fifteenth century,1 with two distinctive illustrations (fols. 122v and 148v), the first a Man of Sorrows and the second a fine coloured drawing of the saint herself (fig. 8.1).2 Its contents are entirely in Latin. It begins with the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vite Christi and ends with the material on Santa Zita to be described here.3 In between are prayers, short treatises, and excerpts from treatises and sermons * Vincent Gillespie was aware of my interest in Santa Zita when he invited me to join him for the Society of Antiquaries lecture, ‘The cult of St Zita of Lucca in medieval England: the visual evidence’, presented by Caroline Barron and Rupert Webber, 9 November 2006. Since then he has himself visited Lucca, where the saint’s remains lie under the altar in a chapel of the church of San Frediano, and he will therefore, I trust, be interested in this account of the materials relating to the saint in a fifteenth-century English manuscript. 1 It was sold at auction by Sotheby’s 30 November 1971 (lot 509) and acquired in 1972 by the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione for the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca. 2 For both images see Susan Powell, ‘Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540’, in Middle English Manuscripts and their Legacies, ed. Anna Dow, Richard Lawrie, and Corinne Saunders (Leiden, forthcoming). The second image is also illustrated in the Sotheby catalogue, Plate 16 and in Natale Sarti, Zita di Lucca: La Vergine dei Fiori e della Carità (Lucca, 1997), Plate 11 (caption wrongly placed under Plate 10 and v.v.). 3 For the fullest account of Santa Zita and her connections with England see Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint: Zita of Lucca and England’, in Freedom of Movement in the Middle Ages, ed. Peregrine Horden, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 15 (Donington, 2007), pp. 186–202; reprinted in Medieval London: Collected Papers of Caroline M. Barron, ed. Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo, 2017), pp. 193–212. Some of Barron’s material is acknowledged as dependent on the seminal article by Thorlac Turville-Petre, ‘A Middle English Life of St Zita’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 35 (1991), 102–5, which brought to light a single leaf of a Middle English prose Life of Zita (see further below); and the follow-up article by Sebastian Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England: An Introduction’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 37 (1993), 83–9. I am grateful for useful correspondence with both Caroline Barron and Thorlac Turville-Petre, and for recent extensive correspondence with Gianni Bergamaschi of the Istituto Storico Lucchese, who is studying the transmission of the Vita. I refer to the saint throughout this essay by her present-day Italian title, Santa Zita; in medieval England she was best known as St Sithe, from the Latin form ‘Citha’/‘Sitha’.

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Fig. 8.1  Santa Zita. Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540, fol. 148v.

(including material by the Englishmen Robert Grosseteste, Richard Rolle, and Stephen of Sawley). At the end of the Meditationes (fol. 122r) the scribe has written what appears to be a coded notice of his name (perhaps John Combe). The manuscript was not prepared for a female readership (its Latinate content precludes that),4 but there is a markedly affective and female bias, not only 4 The masculine gender is used in the set of prayers, fols. 129v–131v, e.g. ‘propiciare michi indigno precatori famulo tuo’ (fol. 130r); ‘propiciare michi indigno famulo tuo’ (fol. 130v).

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in prayers to the Virgin and the Stephen of Sawley treatise on her fifteen joys, but in the Revelations of St Mechthild and the Zita material. A prayer invoking the passion of Christ (fol. 123r) asks for the intercessions of the Virgin, her mother St Anne, and Sts Katherine, Margaret, Cecilia, Zita (‘Citha’) and Faith ‘cum omnibus sanctis et electis tuis’.5 It will be clear from the Lucca manuscript alone that Santa Zita was known in England in the Middle Ages. Caroline Barron has written on the means by which the cult came to England and has provided valuable information on its spread, perhaps from London in the fourteenth century, where the church of St Benet Sherehog was known as that of ‘St Sithe’ (1356) and the church of St Andrew, Holborn had a successful fraternity dedicated to her (1394).6 The establishment in England of the cult of Zita (although always referred to as a saint, she was not canonized until 1696) was most likely due to the dual influence of Italian merchants living in London (specifically, Luccan merchants, since Italian saints and cults were very localized)7 and clerics travelling to and from Rome via Lucca. There is perhaps particular reason to associate the cult with the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds, which had early (eleventhcentury) links with Lucca through the Duomo, San Martino, which housed the ‘Volto Santo’, the great wooden image of Christ. Baldwin, abbot of Bury 1065–98, had given relics of St Edmund to San Martino, and had attended a ceremony there when an altar to the English saint was consecrated.8 Reciprocally, by the end of the thirteenth century there was an altar dedicated to Santa Zita in the abbey church at Bury; in the fourteenth century (after 1377) the Vita of the saint was included in a Bury compilation; in the fifteenth century the Benedictine monk and prolific author John Lydgate wrote in praise of her.9 At about the same time as the poem, in 1446, there is evidence of devotion to Santa Zita in Eagle in Lincolnshire, where the Knights Hospitaller (formerly Knights Templar) preceptory was furnished with a relic of the saint acquired in a somewhat unorthodox manner by the preceptor William Langstrother.10 5 For a full description of the manuscript and its contents, with a discussion of its provenance, see Powell, ‘Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540’. 6 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 192–3, 197–8. 7 On this community see Bart Lambert, ‘“Nostri Fratelli da Londra”: The Lucchese Community in Late Medieval England’, in Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Helen Fulton and Michele Campopiano (York, 2018), pp. 87–102. 8 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 198–200; Diana M. Webb, ‘The Holy Face of Lucca’, Anglo-Norman Studies IX (1986), 227–41 (p. 236). For fuller details see P. Guidi, ‘Per la storia della Cattedrale e del Volto Santo’, Bollettino Storico Lucchese XI (Lucca, 1932). 9 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp.  191, 199–200; for the 1299 reference to an altar see p. 199, n. 68 and for a later reference (1393) see Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England’, pp. 85–6. For the Bury Vita and Lydgate poem see further below. 10 Turville-Petre, ‘A Middle English Life’, p.  104; Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, p.  193. For fuller details see Gino Arrighi, ‘Santa Zita e un Balì Gerosolimitano di Eagle in

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However, texts and religious objects and artefacts throughout England attest to the spread of the cult:11 in relics, such as the little toe once preserved at Eagle; in pilgrim badges;12 in rood screens, such as those at North Elmham, Litcham, and Stratton Strawless in Norfolk, and Westhall and Belstead in Suffolk;13 in images of varying aesthetic merit;14 in prayer-books, such as the Bolton Hours;15 in wills;16 and even in her own liturgy.17 Santa Zita According to her Vita, Zita was born in 1218 into a poor family in Monsagrati, in the hills outside Lucca, and moved to the city at around the age of twelve to work in a menial capacity in the house of an important textile family, the Fatinelli.18 Here she became noted for her charity and her piety. The former was demonstrated in several miracles, the best-known being when her master demanded to see what she was carrying in her apron as she was secretly taking Inghilterra’, Atti dell’Accademia Lucchese di Scienze, Lettere et Arti, n.s. 2, 10 (1959), 83–91. 11 For distribution maps see Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 194–5. 12 Brian Spencer, Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges (London, 1998), pp. 198–9; Caroline M. Barron, ‘Medieval Pilgrim Badges of St Sitha’, in Hidden Histories and Records of Antiquity: Essays on Saxon and Medieval London for John Clark, Curator Emeritus, Museum of London, ed. Jonathan Cotton et al. (London, 2014), pp. 91–6. 13 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 155, 171, Plate 60 (Barton Turf, Norfolk). 14 One must assume that the image of the saint in the nave of St Wilfrid’s Minster at Ripon or on North Bridge was of lesser craftsmanship than the sculpture in Henry VII’s chapel at the Benedictine abbey of Westminster: Diana Webb, Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London, 2000), p. 79; Philip Lindley, ‘“The singuler mediacions and praiers of al the holie companie of Heven”: Sculptural Functions and Forms in Henry VII’s Chapel’, in Westminster Abbey: The Lady Chapel of Henry VII, ed. Tim Tatton-Brown and Richard Mortimer (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 260–93 (Fig. 38, p. 281). 15 York Minster Library, MS Add. 2, where Zita’s feast day is in the calendar, and fol. 40v has a drawing of a female figure as a suppliant kneeling before the saint. 16 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 196–7. 17 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 194–7, notes the existence of approximately one hundred references in wills, fifty images in glass, screens, alabasters, vestments, and wall paintings, ten guilds dedicated to the saint, and thirty manuscripts which include her in some format. A processional of the liturgy of Santa Zita was recorded in Suffolk as early as 1404–5: ‘Item solutum fratri Thome de Heddenham pro illuminacione unius processionalis Sancte Sithe, viij d.’: J. Ridgard, ‘Mettingham, Suffolk: The Building of a Religious College with particular reference to the acquisition of books for its library’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 42 (2009), 21–31 (p. 28, n. 18). I am grateful to Julian Luxford for alerting me to this reference. 18 These details are taken from my reading of the Vita and of Sarti, Zita di Lucca, which presents the saint’s life from Lucca MS 3540 (the subject of this essay), with some additions from Lucca MS 3459 (also containing the Vita), augmented by Sarti’s own knowledge of Lucca and its environs. For the Acta Sanctorum edition of the Vita and an English translation see notes 21 and 20, respectively, below.

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left-over bread from the Fatinelli house to feed the poor: the bread was transformed into flowers.19 Her piety was demonstrated in her determination to attend, as often as she could (usually at night after her housework was finished) the services of the Austin canons in San Frediano, just at the end of the Fatinelli street (now Via Fontana), and to visit neighbouring shrines in pilgrimage (from one of which she was guided home by the Virgin Mary, and to another of which she was hurried by supernatural aid). Another miracle relating to the household bread tells how she had prayed so fervently all night in San Frediano that she realized only at dawn that she had not prepared the loaves for the day. Returning home in fear, she found that the bread was already baked (popular tradition credited the baking to angels). Her charity and piety are illustrated together in another miracle: one bitter Christmas Eve Zita was determined to attend the midnight vigil and mass at San Frediano. Reluctantly her master let her go, and lent her his own fur-lined cloak, with dire warnings not to give it to anyone. As soon as she entered the church she handed it to a man freezing with cold, asking him to be sure to return it when the service was over as it was not her own. At the end of the service the man was nowhere to be found, as Zita confessed to her master. However, at dawn there was a knock on the door and a beggar (popularly thought to be Christ himself) delivered the cloak, light shining from his eyes. Towards the end of her life Zita was held in more esteem by the Fatinelli and attained a higher position in the household. She died after a short illness at the age of sixty, on 27 April 1278. Her death was marked by signs such as a star in the sky, spontaneous bell-ringing throughout the countryside, and children rushing to San Frediano. Her cult was at once authorized, and she was buried in the cemetery attached to San Frediano. In 1321 a chapel was built and incorporated into the church itself as the Fatinelli family chapel; it is here that Santa Zita lies today under the altar. It will be plain that the interest for the city of Lucca in the acquisition in 1972 of Phillipps MS 8831 (now Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 3540) lay in its material on their indigenous saint, Zita. The latter part of the manuscript consists of her Life (fols. 148r–163r), followed by hymns and rhymed offices relating to the saint (fols. 163r–164v).

19 The miracle is not in fact noted in the Vita of the saint, but was and is current in popular Italian tradition. She is frequently depicted in Italy with a basket of flowers/bread, and her feast day is (now, at least) celebrated in Lucca with a flower festival: Sarti, Zita di Lucca, p. 40. My friend Peter Howell has pointed out to me the similarity to the miracle of the roses ascribed to Elizabeth of Hungary, short-lived contemporary of Zita, perhaps suggesting cross-contamination.

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The Latin Vita, fols. 148r–163r The prose life of Santa Zita survives in Latin in six manuscripts: four Italian, and two English (one of which is now in Italy).20 Two of the Italian manuscripts formed the basis of the Vita edited for the Acta Sanctorum in 1673. The base text was a fifteenth-century manuscript in the monastery founded by San Romualdo at Camaldoli in the Tuscan hills, which the Acta editor collated with a manuscript of after 1372 based on an original (lost) account of her life and miracles prepared for the Fatinelli family around 1286; at the time this manuscript was still in the possession of the Fatinelli family. The Acta Sanctorum Vita was thus ‘ex codice MS. Camaldulensi, collato cum Originali Lucensi’.21 The Camaldolese manuscript was admitted by its editor to be ‘much in need of correction’, but in practice the collation amounts largely to the addition at the end of the edited Camaldolese manuscript of numerous posthumous miracles of the saint from the Fatinelli manuscript.22 These manuscripts are now Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conventi Soppressi G.5.1212 (fols. 193r–200v) and Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 3459 (fols. 1r–19v). In addition, two further Latin Lives have been uncovered in Italy: Bologna, Biblioteca del Convento di San Domenico, serie VII cartella 10160, and Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, MS Gerli 26.23 The other two Latin lives are of English origin. One is in the manuscript studied in this essay, Lucca, Biblioteca Statale, MS 3540 (fols. 148r–163r); the other in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 240 (pp.  699–708), which is earlier. This is a large vellum manuscript (350x240mm), pricked and ruled, written in two columns, and rubricated with decorated initials.24 Its first item (pp. 1–582) carries a rubric with the date 1377 and the location Bury St Edmunds 20 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 190–2, acknowledging (notes 1, 20, 24) the manuscript research of Diana Webb. At the time Webb was preparing to edit the Vita, but she no longer intends such an edition (personal communication). However, for a concise introduction to the Vita and the manuscripts, including an English translation with useful annotations, see Diana Webb, Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy (Manchester, 2007), pp. 160–90. See also Webb, Patrons and Defenders: The Saints in the Italian City-States (London, 1996); Pilgrimage in Medieval England (London, 2000); Medieval European Pilgrimage, c. 700–c. 1500 (Basingstoke, 2002). 21 Acta Sanctorum (Antwerp, 1668–75; Brussels, 1863–1925), 27 April, pp.  502–32 (504); hereafter AS. 22 Webb, Saints and Cities, pp. 160–3. 23 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, p. 190 and notes 21–24. Gianni Bergamaschi informs me that the Fatinelli and Bologna manuscripts represent an earlier transmission than the Camaldolese and Gerli manuscripts. 24 Although there is some foliation, the manuscript is largely paginated; page references will be given here. The manuscript is discussed and itemised in Nova Legenda Anglie: As collected by John of Tynemouth, John Capgrave, and others, and first printed, with New Lives, by Wynkyn de Worde a.d. mdxui, ed. Carl Horstman [sic], I (Oxford, 1901), pp. lvii–lxvi.

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in Suffolk: ‘Liber monachorum Sancti Edmundi in quo continetur secunda pars Historie Auree quam scribi fecit dompnus Rogerus de Huntedoun sumptibus graciarum suarum anno domini MCCClxxvii.’ This is therefore the second part of John of Tynemouth’s three-part Historia aurea, a universal history of the world from the Creation to 1347, copied in Bury only a few decades after its completion. The rest of the manuscript (pp. 583–898) consists of miscellaneous items, including many saints’ lives (inevitably the Vita and miracles of St Edmund king and martyr), and was written to serve as ‘a depository of documents of that abbey, and not the work of one individual, but the joint work, the common concern of the monastery for a whole generation’.25 Much of this other material is explicitly said to be taken from two other works of John of Tynemouth, his Sanctilogium and his Martyrologium, e.g. ‘Iohannes Anglicus in Sanctilogio suo de sanctis Wallie et Scocie’ (p. 617a); ‘Iohannes in Martilogio’ (p. 620a). Among items which are not so designated is the life of Santa Zita (pp. 699a–708b). The Vita in the two English manuscripts (Lucca 3540 and Bodley 240) has substantially the same form as in the Italian manuscripts, except that each ends with the testimonial of a miracle not recorded in the Italian manuscripts.26 The Acta Sanctorum text of the Vita continues after the conclusion of the Vita itself with an Appendix (witnessed by all the Italian manuscripts) ‘de curato epileptico et quodam post suspendium liberato per B. Zitam’, the second miracle dated 1300 (p. 513b), followed by many pages of ‘Miracula’ recorded only in the Fatinelli manuscript and dated to various months of 1278, the year of the saint’s death (e.g. ‘Facta et notata post elevationem S. Zitae reliquo mense Aprilis’, p. 515b).27 Neither of these additions is in the two English manuscripts, but, as noted above, there occurs at the conclusion of the ‘English’ Vita a miracle of the recovery of a drowned child, legally attested before a notary, and in the presence of the prior and canons of San Frediano.28 25 Horstmann, p. lviii. 26 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 191–2, with additional information supplied by Gianni Bergamaschi. I have not personally examined any manuscripts other than the two which were written in England. The Lucca manuscript is fully rubricated (e.g. ‘Citha’/‘Sitha’ and rubrics all in red) and has section headings (e.g. the epilogue is headed ‘Predictorum graciosa conclusio’, fol. 162v) absent from the Bodley manuscript. 27 For the Appendix: AS, pp. 514–15 (§40–42); for the rest (‘Miracula a Notario Fatinello coram testibus excerpta. Ex MS. Perillustris familiæ Fatinellæ’), pp. 515–32. 28 An association with rescue from drowning may explain why bridge chapels were dedicated to Zita at Ripon in Yorkshire (note 14 above) and Bridgnorth in Shropshire: Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England’, pp. 83–4 (who suggests a plausible confusion with St Osyth). The miracle occurs before the epilogue (fols. 162v–163r) in Lucca MS 3540 but after the epilogue (p. 708a) in MS Bodley 240. It is therefore inserted after the miracle of Pietro Fatinelli’s cure when his life had been despaired of by three doctors (see further below) and either before or after the epilogue (AS, c. 5, §38–9). The addition after the epilogue in the Bodley manuscript suggests that it was copied from a text earlier than

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In her testimony before the notary and witnesses, Cara, the wife of Guido Bonvillani of Pietrasanta, near the coast north-west of Lucca, says that on a day of terrible heat her daughter and five-year-old son went to cool themselves in the river, where the boy was swept away. Guido and Cara found him dead at the bottom of the river and, although they hung him by his feet to expel the water from his mouth, they could not revive him, and carried him home, weeping. Tandem ipsa Cara recordata mirabilium meritorum Sancte Sithe cum lacrimis, flexis genibus & cum deuocione vouit et votum fecit beate Sithe quod si dictum Villancium eius filium sibi viuum redderet darent et offerent ei tantum panem et tantum vinum quantum puer ponderaret et quod duceret eum ad eius sanctissimum corpus. (At length the same Cara, having remembered the miraculous merits of Santa Zita, vowed with tears, on bended knees, and with devotion, and made a solemn promise to the blessed Zita that if she returned the said Villancius [elsewhere, Villanucius] her son to her alive, they would give and offer her as much bread and wine as the boy weighed, and that she would take him to her most holy body.)29

Then the water gushed from the boy’s mouth and he revived. And so on the feast day of Santa Zita (27 April) the child went to San Frediano and offered the bread and wine which Cara had vowed: Actum Luce in ecclesia Sancti Fridiani coram testibus suprascriptis MoCColxxxvj. Indiccione xiiija die Sabbati xxvio intrante [sic] mense Aprilis. Item dixit [dicta] Cara quod Mammia et Cara eius vxor et Corsuis Bellevaci de Petrasancta sciunt predicta vera quia sciunt et viderunt omnia suprascripta. (Executed at Lucca in the church of San Frediano in the presence of the above named witnesses in 1286, in the 14th indiction, on Saturday 26th at the start of April. And the said Cara said that Mammia and his wife Cara and Corsuis Bellevati of Pietrasanta know the aforesaid things to be true because they know and saw everything written above.)30

Despite the focus of this essay on Lucca MS 3540, the Latin excerpts above are taken from MS Bodley 240, here more accurate than the Lucca manuscript, the copy-text of the Lucca manuscript, where the miracle is incorporated into the Vita itself. 29 MS Bodley 240, p. 708b; cf. Lucca MS 3540, fol. 162v. 30 MS Bodley 240, p. 708b; cf. Lucca MS 3540, fol. 162v. I have emended ‘sancta’ to ‘dicta’ (from the Lucca MS). I have some doubt about the names ‘Mammia’ and ‘Villan(u)­ cius’ (the manuscripts vary in and between themselves, and the scribes may have been equally doubtful).

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which dates the testimony to 1236 (‘MoCCxxxvjto’): a clear error, for at least two reasons. Firstly, the miracle is posthumous (Zita has her own feast day), but in 1236 she was only eighteen. Secondly, in the system of fifteen-year cycles or indictions, 1236 would be the ninth, not the fourteenth year, whereas 1286 is the fourteenth year.31 However, the statement is not entirely unproblematic, even in the Bodley manuscript. The dating of 26 April (in both manuscripts) would appear to suggest that the testimony was taken on the eve of the feast of Santa Zita, which in 1286 was actually a Friday (but a Saturday in 1236).32 As Barron notes, ‘It is most unusual for an Italian saint to have both an Italian and an English manuscript tradition’,33 but the occurrence of this testimonial and miracle only in the English manuscripts does indeed suggest a separate manuscript transmission. Perhaps the single miracle was acquired from San Frediano by a visitor to or from Lucca, or from a now lost manuscript of the Vita, and inserted into what otherwise was the standard Latin Vita, either in England or on the Continent in a manuscript which travelled to England, and formed the basis for MSS Lucca 3540 and Bodley 240. The English Life It is clear that there was once an English translation of the Vita (as there have been, of course, Italian translations).34 However, the evidence is so slight that its affiliation with the English or Italian manuscripts cannot be known. Like Lucca MS 3540, it dates from the middle part of the fifteenth century (probably the third quarter), but it survives only in a single leaf preserved among the Middleton papers at the University of Nottingham (Nottingham University Library, MS WLC/LM/37, olim Mi LM 37).35 The extant passage records Santa Zita’s pilgrimage with a friend to the church of San Giacomo di Poggio, near Pisa (‘the churche of Seint James of Poyde nigh vnto Pysas þe cite’), where her companion left her and Zita herself continued to San Piero a Grado (‘the churche of thappostill Petyr att the gresys’), near what is now Pisa airport (‘whiche is towardes the see beyonde Pysas the citee v myles’). On her journey home through Bagni di Pisa, over Monte Pisano (‘the bathes of the mounte 31 See the table of indiction years at [accessed 17 May 2018]. 32 I am grateful to Gianni Bergamaschi for the suggestion that both witnesses have omitted a minim (‘i’) and that the date should be the saint’s feast day, 27 April, a Saturday in 1286. Both witnesses also have the problematic ‘intrante’ (abl. ‘entering’, i.e. at the start of). 33 Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, p. 190. 34 Raffaella Sarti, ‘Legenden von der Heiligen Zita und Dienstbotengeschichte’, in L’Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 18 (2007), 11–32 (20–6). 35 Turville-Petre, ‘A Middle English Life’; Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds, The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers (York, 2010), pp. 4, 104; Plate 14.

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Pysan’), she refused an offer of lodging and continued over the Colle di San Giuliano (‘that hyll of sherpe journey which is called of Seint Julyan’), where a hermit begged her to rest. Here the Nottingham fragment breaks off, but of course the day was to end happily, with Zita eventually escorted home by the Virgin Mary herself.36 The Vita in Verse, fol. 163r–v The Vita of Santa Zita is followed by a hymn of twenty-seven rhyming couplets (fol. 163r–v), a verse biography of the saint. Such hymns to saints were common, both in Latin and in the vernacular (and translated from one to the other). From the thirteenth century, vernacular sacred songs (laude) to the Virgin were composed and sung in Tuscany, largely in the context of Marian confraternities. In 1273 a particular name was coined for the participants in this phenomenon: laudesi.37 The Fatinelli manuscript of the Vita (Lucca MS 3459) contains after the Vita just such a vernacular Italian lauda: ‘Qui incomincia la lauda della gloriosa vergine sancta Zita.’38 The hymn in Lucca MS 3540 begins: Sancte Cithe merita laudet plebs fidelis, Vita cuius inclita redolet in celis. Olim de parentibus humilibus exiuit In Lucanis partibus, Deo deseruiuit. (May the faithful people praise the merits of Santa Zita, whose glorious life perfumes the heavens. Once she left her humble parents in the regions of Lucca; she served God zealously.)39

The hymn continues, chronicling her charity, celibacy, dedication to Christ, and mortification of the flesh (couplets 3–6); how she fed the poor, and went on pilgrimage (7). Particular miracles are cited: her turning of water into wine; her distributing her master’s stock of dried beans with no diminution in its quantity; the angel’s restoration of her master’s cloak (8–10); and, on pilgrimage, how the Virgin travelled with her and opened the locked gate of Lucca, 36 The details are noticeably specific, as befits the very local appeal of Italian saints. Before she meets the Virgin, Zita passes the castle of Massa, and after the meeting the barred gates to the bridge at Pontetto and to the city of Lucca itself open miraculously for the travellers. For the English: Turville-Petre, ‘A Middle English Life’, pp. 102–3, but with my own punctuation. Turville-Petre notes the closeness of the translation to the Latin Vita (AS 27 April, p. 507 (c. 2, §12–13)). 37 Augustine Thompson OP, Cities of God : The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (Pennsylvania, 2005), p. 91. 38 Sarti, Zita di Lucca, pp. 67–9 (no folio reference). 39 Punctuation added.

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and how Santa Zita, despite her slow pace, overtook a horseman who had galloped past her (11–12). Angels were with her as she prayed, and lights illuminated the darkness (13). The loaves she had not prepared were nevertheless cooked; her candle was lit for her in the rain and showed the church door open which had been shut; the errand she was sent on in the rain nevertheless left her dry (14–16). At her death a new star was seen while the sun shone, children shouted and offered her devotion, and her body gave out a healing liquor (17– 19).40 All of these are recorded in the Vita, but the next couplet (20) seems to describe in its second line the miracle found only in the English manuscripts (suggesting that the hymn is of English composition): ‘Defunctum vnigenitum patri viuum redidit. / Viuum me[r]sum filium ad votum matris tradidit.’ (‘She restored the dead only son alive to his father; she gave back the drowned son according to the vow of the mother.’)41 After this occurs a couplet (21) narrating the Vita miracle of the devotee of Santa Zita whose life was despaired of by three doctors but who, thanks to the saint’s intervention, survived them all: ‘Alumpnum suum visitans dum vita desperatur. / Eum magna luce veniens signat et mox sanatur.’ (‘Visiting her disciple while his life is despaired of, coming in a great light she signs him with the cross and he is soon healed.’)42 This miracle ends the Vita proper in the Italian manuscripts, but at this point the hymn returns to an earlier passage to provide a list (couplets 22–25) of the numerous diseases which the saint healed (only the first and last couplets are given here: the verb ‘curantur’ is delayed till the last couplet):43 Ceci, surdi, muti mansi, pluresque paralitici, Claudi, curvi, ponderosi, necnon et frenetici ... Desperati deprecantes ab ea nunc curantur, Et gravia pericula per eam propulsantur.

40 The AS equivalents of these nineteen couplets are: 2–9 AS c. 1, §1–5; 10–12 c. 2, §7–9, 12–15; 13–15 c. 3, §16, 19, 20; 16 c. 4, §24; 17–19 c. 5, §33, 34, 36. Had the detailed versification of the first part of the Vita been replicated throughout the hymn, it would have been much longer. 41 It occurs before §39 (the epilogue) in Lucca MS 3540, but after the epilogue in MS Bodley 240. The first line refers to the miracle mentioned briefly as witnessed by the author at the end of the Vita (AS, c. 5, §37, ‘Ego denique’). I am grateful to Gianni Bergamaschi for advice on this couplet, including the conjectural emendation for ‘mensum’ (recorded in both manuscripts). 42 Cf. AS c. 5, §38. 43 Cf. AS, c. 5, §35. At §37 Ugolino, professor of law at the University of Parma, verifies that fifty-three people have been cured by the saint of diseases of the limbs, sixteen of blindness, six of dumbness, four of deafness, twelve of madness, and even more of other unspecified afflictions.

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su san p ow ell (The blind, the deaf, those left dumb, and many paralytics; the lame, misshapen, the disabled, and also the insane ... those in despair praying for delivery are now cured by her, and grave dangers are driven away by her.)

Finally, the penultimate couplet records that there are 150 authenticated miracles of the saint, ‘sicut per autentica probatur documenta’ (‘as is proven by genuine records’).44 The hymn as a whole ends with a prayer: ‘Citha que tot miraculis et moribus ornaris, / Ora pro nobis seruulis que merito bearis.’ (‘Zita, adorned with so many miracles and customs, pray for us your servants, you who are deservedly blessed.’) On the same line, the instruction ‘Oremus. Oracio’ appears. This introduces a prayer to Christ as the bridegroom of virgins (‘O ineffabilis clemencie et bonitatis infinite domine Ihesu Christe qui es sponsus virginum’) and Zita as his bride, and begs pardon for all past sins, flight from all present ones, and protection from all future ones, so that, emptied of all our sins and filled with virtues, we may come to glory (fols. 163v–164r). Again without break, there follows a rubric recording the death and translation feasts of Santa Zita:45 Repositum est corpus gloriosissimum Sancte Cithe virginis in ecclesia Sancti Fridiani in ciuitate Lucanensi. Que obiit xxviio die Aprilis Anno domini MCClxxviijo. Cuius translacio est mense Octobris die secundo. (The most glorious body of Santa Zita, virgin, was laid to rest in the church of San Frediano in the city of Lucca. She died 27 April 1278. Her translation is 2 October.)

The First memoria, fol. 164r The manuscript concludes with two memoriae (‘commemorations’), supplications to a saint consisting of an anthem/antiphon, a versus with its response,46 and a prayer. The first memoria is as follows (fol. 164r): Salue, virgo sancta Sitha, iubar pudicicie, Nutrix vera egencium, norma penitencie. Claris fulgens miraculis, morum dulcedine, Nobis succurre miseris tuo nunc iuvamine. 44 Cf. AS c. 5, §38. 45 The saint was buried in the cemetery of Santa Caterina attached to San Frediano; the tomb was later incorporated into a newly constructed chapel in the body of the church: Sarti, Zita di Lucca, pp. 51–2. 46 The versus is noted in the manuscript by V, but there is no R for the corresponding response, which is indicated in the transcriptions above and below by a virgule after the versus.

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Santa Zita Versus. Ora pro nobis beata Citha / Vt digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.47 Oremus. Oracio. Deus, qui caritatis donis et miraculorum insignijs beatissimam Citham virginem multipliciter decorasti, da famulis tuis eius exemplis instrui et meritis adiuvari. Per Christum dominum nostrum. Amen. (Hail, holy virgin Zita, shining light of chastity, true nurse of the needy, model of penitence. Shining with bright miracles, with the sweetness of good habits, sustain us wretched ones now with your aid. Versus. Pray for us, blessed Zita, / that we may be made worthy of Christ’s assurances. Let us pray. Prayer. God, who hast abundantly adorned the most blessed virgin Zita with gifts of charity and the distinctions of miracles, grant your servants that they may be instructed by her examples and helped by her merits. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)

The Second memoria, fol. 164r–v The second memoria is longer and, unlike the first, is one for which other examples are known to me in English manuscripts.48 Its format is much the same: the antiphon of the first memoria consisted of two couplets, the first rhyming on ‑cie, the second on ‑ine, whereas this second antiphon consists of five couplets, all rhyming on ‑isti. It is followed again by a versus and response, and a prayer with verbal links to the prayer of the first memoria: Salue, sancta famula Citha Ihesu Christi, Que cum tota anima Deo placuisti. Egenos et flebiles de cibis pavisti. Claudos, mutos, debiles et cecos invisti.49 Semper elemosinam dare quesiuisti. Deum et ecclesiam virgo dilexisti. Multa bona perdita reddi tu fecisti, Et per tua merita stultos docuisti. [fol. 164v] 47 An adaptation of the versus and response to the Marian hymn ‘Salve regina’, as pointed out to me by Peter Howell. 48 I do not have the expertise to comment on the Italian manuscript tradition of any of this non-Vita material. 49 ‘Inuisti’ (from ‘innuere’, to beckon, point, or nod to) suggests that the saint called them to her to accept alms.

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su san p ow ell Fraudem et nequiciam tu nimis odisti. Para nobis gloriam quam tu meruisti. Versus. Ora pro nobis, beatissima virgo Citha / Vt mundemur ab omnibus malis in hac vita. Oremus. Deus, qui beatissimam virginem et famulam tuam Citham in ipsius vita multis decorasti miraculis, te suppliciter exoramus vt omnes qui auxilium ab ea in tuo nomine postulant id in effectu sentiant. Per Cristum dominum nostrum. Amen. (Hail Sitha, holy servant of Jesus Christ, who with your whole soul pleased God. You provided the needy and weak with food. You encouraged the lame, dumb, feeble, and blind. You always sought to give alms. As a virgin you loved God and the Church. You caused many lost goods to be returned, and through your merits you taught the foolish. You very much hated treachery and wickedness. Prepare for us the glory you have earned. Versus. Pray for us, most blessed virgin Zita, / that we may be cleansed of all evils in this life. Let us pray. God, who hast adorned that most blessed virgin, your servant Zita, with many miracles in her life, we humbly pray you that all who ask help from her in your name may experience it in effect. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.)

The large capitals of the rubricated AMEN are spread across the page below the prayer, each letter separated by red lines and dots of decoration, followed by a symbol most commonly associated with Birgittines: a circle with five red dots, symbolic of the Birgittine corona.50 There is therefore the faint possibility that the text was taken from a Birgittine manuscript, or that the Lucca manuscript itself has Birgittine connections.51

50 A printed primer with pasted-in Birgittine woodcuts and Birgittine additions to the calendar and text (London, British Library C.35.a.14) includes in the litany ‘a cross formed of five dots’ which marks the names of Saints Jerome, Mary Magdalene, Agatha, and Birgitta: Mary C. Erler, ‘Pasted-In Embellishments in English Manuscripts and Printed Books c. 1480–1533’, The Library 6th ser., 14 (1992), 185–206 (194, 196). It is the opinion of Nicholas Rogers, who has studied the Lucca manuscript, that the device is Birgittine. 51 See Powell, ‘Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540’. However, although the various catalogues affirm that the item ‘quedam notabilia excerpta de Reuelacionibus sancte Matildis’ (fol. 127v) is in fact the Revelations of St Birgitta, they are indeed those of St Mecht­ hild.

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The ‘Salve, sancta famula’ memoria This last memoria appears to have been common in England; it is presently known to me from four other manuscripts,52 and appears to be the original of John Lydgate’s vernacular hymn to Zita. The first occurrence, with very few variants, is in a fifteenth-century book of hours used by the Birgittines of Syon abbey, now housed in Exeter University Library (EUL MS 262/2, fols. 206v–207r).53 A second example appears with other memoriae in the customary position, at the end of the canonical hour of Lauds, in ‘Richard III’s prayerbook’, London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 474, a book of hours dated c. 1420 which was owned by Richard III and Lady Margaret Beaufort, among others.54 A third text of the memoria is in the Wollaton Library Collection, whose manuscripts were largely acquired by the Willoughby family between 1460 and the Reformation. MS WLC/LM/11 is a mid-fifteenth-century vellum manuscript of Latin prayers and memoriae, including (interestingly, in view of the seeming prominence of Bury in the devotion to Santa Zita) one to St Edmund king and martyr, as well as to other East Anglian saints.55 The fourth example known to me appears in a vellum manuscript of the same period, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson liturg. e.3, which contains the Hours of the Virgin and the Hours of the Cross, followed by the usual psalms, and various short Latin and English treatises. After Lauds the memoriae include one ‘de sancta Sytha’ (fol. 33r).56 Again of interest in relation to East Anglian connections is the fact that one of the English treatises is Richard Caistor’s prayer to Jesus: ‘This prayer made the gode vycary of Norwych mastre Richard Castre’ (fol. 123v).57 Richard was a native of Caistor, near Norwich, and vicar of St Stephen’s, Norwich. 52 Since the completion of this essay Caroline Barron has furnished me with her as yet unpublished research, which significantly increases the number of English manuscripts; for brief references to some of this material see Turville-Petre, ‘A Middle English Life’, p. 104 and note 8; Barron, ‘The Travelling Saint’, pp. 195–6 and note 48. 53 For a translation: Charity Scott-Stokes, Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England: Selected Texts Translated from Latin, Anglo-Norman French and Middle English with Introduction and Interpretive Essay (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 121–2 (17/6). 54 Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, The Hours of Richard III (Stroud, 1990, 1996), p. 47. 55 The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts, ed. Hanna and Turville-Petre, pp. 4, 102–3, Fig. 13. 56 Falconer Madan, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1895–1953), III, no. 15799. See further below for an explanation of Madan’s erroneous statement: ‘This saint can hardly be other than Osith (Seytha, or Sith) honoured at the monastery at Chich, near Colchester, in Essex.’ Madan’s further strange statement that ‘The Martiloge of Syon states that St. Sythe was another name for St. Dorothy’ can be explained only if this was erroneously deduced from the death entry for ‘Dorothea Slithe soror’ (London, British Library, MS Add. 22285, fol. 29r): The Martiloge of Syon Abbey, ed./trans. Claes Gejrot (Stockholm, 2015), p. 84. 57 Hymns to the Virgin and Christ and other Religious Poems, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS o.s. 24 (London, 1867), pp. 15–17.

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Lydgate and Santa Zita Some version of this memoria seems to have been known by John Lydgate in Bury St Edmunds, forty miles south-west of Norwich. The English poem which he created, seemingly from the elements of the Latin hymn, is a ballade with refrain (eight lines, rhyming ababbcbc) of three stanzas: Heyle, holy Sitha, maide of grete vertu, Wiche with hole herte and deuoute obseruance Were euyr besy to serue oure Lorde Ihesu Night and day for to do plesaunce To pore folke, refute of there greuaunce, Nakyd to clothe, the hongry for to fede, Alle disconsolate of fayȝthfulle attendaunce, Them to refressche and helpe them in there nede. In thi right honde thou helde a littil stone To bete thi brest of hole affeccion. Wakyng in prayer, abeyde euer in one With contrit teris makyng thyn oryson. Socour to sorowfulle in tribulacion, Oracions explete ther iurney for te spede That haue in the sete here deuocion Agayne alle myschyfe to helpe them in ther nede. O blessid Sitha, flouryng in chastyte, Wiche of clennysse hathe souereyne excellence, To suche as stondith in grete aduersite For los of gode by cause of necligence, In alle such casis [do] thi diligence Them to restore, to wysse hem and to rede. Agayne worldly troublill and fendis violence Supporte alle tho that calle the in there nede.58

I quote here the previously unpublished text in a small book of hours in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (S), which shows some minor variants from the standard edition. That text is taken from London, British Library, MS Harley 2255 (H), a manuscript containing only Lydgate material (forty-five minor poems) which bears the arms of Bury St Edmunds in a historiated initial (fol. 1r) and can be dated to soon after Lydgate’s death (c. 1460–70).59 58 Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 37, fol. 148r–v. 59 The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. H. N. MacCracken, EETS o.s. 107 (London and Oxford, 1911), p. 137 (no. 28), edited from BL Harley MS 2255, fol. 116v. Variants: 4 day]

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What is particularly interesting about this poem is that its attestation to Zita was made only in 1992, whereas previously (and still in, for example, the Digital Index of Middle English Verse) its addressee was assumed to be St Osyth (‘Incipit de sancta Ositha’).60 In light of the confusion (frequent, according to the Oxford Dictionary of Saints), it is disappointing that the ‘lectiones de sancta Ositha’ in Bodley MS 240, the Bury manuscript, are definitely for St Osyth: ‘ex illustri Anglorum prosapia orta’.61 Of the five manuscripts known to me which contain the ‘Salve, sancta famula’ memoria, the version in Lucca MS 3540 (Lu) corresponds most closely to those in the manuscripts held in Exeter (E), Lambeth (L), and Oxford (O). The version in the Nottingham manuscript (N) agrees only in the first and last lines of the antiphon, while the body is different; the versus and the beginning of the prayer agree, but the response and the rest of the prayer are different. The Oxford antiphon is closer to Nottingham’s than to the other versions, but the versus, response, and prayer are closer to the versions in the other manuscripts.62 Although Lydgate typically paraphrases material from Latin sources, expands it, and Latinizes it further with aureate diction, nevertheless it appears that his source text was closer to the version in the Nottingham and Oxford manuscripts (both with East Anglian connections) than to the other version. His opening three lines might arguably correspond to the first couplet of either version of the antiphon, but the next two couplets in NO and the first line of the final couplet correspond much more closely to Lydgate’s poem than do LuEL.63 In particular LuEL make no mention of the saint’s beating of her breast, as recorded in Lydgate and in the Vita;64 on the other hand, no manuscript other than Lu records Zita’s recovery of lost objects, which is not recorded in the Vita but is in Lydgate’s poem.

hym add. H. 7 of] rep. S. 11 Wakyng] wakir H. 18 hathe] hast H. 20 los] H, lost S; cause of] casuel H. 21 casis] caas H; do] H, om. S. 60 John Frankis, ‘St Zita, St Sythe and St Osyth’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 36 (1992), 148–50; DIMEV 1719 at < http://www.dimev.net/record.php?recID=1719> [accessed 17 May 2018]. 61 MS Bodley 240, pp. 588a–589a. The Anglo-Saxon saint Osyth was revived from drowning, vowed chastity in marriage, and was killed by heathen pirates; she is located in what is now called St Osyth (formerly Chich), Essex. 62 See the Appendix for collations of the manuscripts. Caroline Barron’s research confirms that the Nottingham/Oxford antiphon is rarer than the other. 63 ‘Nakyd ...in there nede’, cf. ‘Pauperes ...fuisti’; ‘In thi right honde ...brest’, cf. ‘Petram ...tundebas’; ‘Wakyng in prayer’, cf. ‘Peruigil in precibus’; ‘flouryng in chastyte’, cf. ‘casta ...floruisti’. 64 AS, c. 3, §17.

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Santa Zita and the Lost Keys One may assume that Lydgate had access to a version of the Latin antiphon which combined elements of the two versions known to me, or that he had access to both and amalgamated them, with his customary embellishment of lexis and syntax, or that he himself added the lines on the saint’s skill in finding lost objects. What is remarkable is that it is only, to my knowledge, in Lydgate’s poem and in the memoria in Lucca MS 3540, that Santa Zita is praised for this attribute.65 We are dependent on later critical comments for what must have been popular belief (which of its nature may not be recorded in rood screens, glass, and the many other material representations of the saint). In these allusions to the saint it is specifically her skill in finding lost keys that is stressed. Much quoted is the Lollard criticism of the woman who loses a key worth 3d.: ‘anon she wil hete to seke seynt Sithe and spende a noble or ten schilyngis in the iurney’, whereas not once in the year will she visit a bedridden fellow Christian to offer him a drink. ‘Allas! what avowe is this, to waste so myche good in veyn pilgrimage for a thing lost of so litil valewe?’66 Thomas More makes the same complaint when he refers to ‘some silly woman seeking Saint Zita when she sigheth for miscasting of her keys’.67 That Santa Zita should have been the patron of housewives and others who labour in the house, as she herself did, is not surprising. That she should have been invoked for finding lost objects is not perhaps strange, since her master’s lost cloak was found after she had given it to an absconding beggar. As for the keys, they do not occur anywhere in her Vita, as noted above, nor do they appear in the Italian tradition of the saint; they are not in the versified life in Lucca MS 3540, fol. 163r–v, nor are keys mentioned even in the reference to lost objects in the antiphon to the second memoria. One can only assume that the invariable images of the saint with a bunch of keys at her waist (as in fig. 8.1),68 emblematic of her role as chatelaine of the Fatinelli household, led to the association of the lost cloak with lost keys. In this way the divergence of the English tradition of the saint from the Italian tradition manifests itself not only in the manuscript texts, but even in the pictorial and folk traditions. Knowledge of Santa Zita in England today is minimal; even in the Middle Ages her legend must generally have been garbled and indistinct. It is to be hoped that the 65 ‘To suche ... in there nede’, cf. ‘Multa bona ...odisti’. 66 Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Anne Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 87– 8. 67 The Complete Works of Thomas More, Vol. 6. Dialogue concerning Heresies, ed. Thomas M. C. Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour and Richard C. Marius (New Haven, 1981), p. 77, ll. 17–18. 68 ‘Almost all of the depictions show her with keys and other generic household equipment, although some artists filled her lap with flowers, referring to a story from her Life’: Sutcliffe, ‘The Cult of St Sitha in England’, p. 86.

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present essay, in the footsteps of others, may serve to perpetuate her memory at least among medievalist scholars, who may be inspired to visit her shrine in the beautiful city of Lucca. Appendix Collation 1 Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, MS 3540, fol. 164r–v (Lu), collated with Exeter University Library, MS 262/2, fols. 206v–207r (E), London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 474, fol. 35r–v (L), and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson liturg. e.3, fol. 33r (O, ll. 13–15 only). Salue, sancta famula, Citha Ihesu Christi, Que cum tota anima Deo placuisti. Egenos et flebiles de cibis pavisti. Claudos, mutos, debiles et cecos inuisti. Semper elemosinam dare quesiuisti. Deum et ecclesiam virgo dilexisti. Multa bona perdita reddi tu fecisti, Et per tua merita stultos docuisti. Fraudem et nequiciam tu nimis odisti. Para nobis gloriam quam tu meruisti. Versus. Ora pro nobis, beatissima virgo Citha / Vt mundemur ab omnibus malis in hac vita. Oremus. Deus, qui beatissimam virginem et famulam tuam Citham in ipsius vita multis decorasti miraculis, te suppliciter exoramus vt omnes qui auxilium ab ea in tuo nomine postulant id in effectu sentiant. Per Cristum dominum nostrum. Amen.

1 Salue] Oracio de sancta Citha virgine Aue E; Memoria de sancta sitha antiphona Aue L. 3 cibis] cibo EL. 4 Claudos] cecos EL; cecos] claudos EL. 7–8 Multa ...docuisti] om. EL. 10 gloriam] gaudium E; quam] quod E. 11 beatissima] beata EL; virgo] om. E; Citha] Responsus add. EL. 12 Oremus] Oracio add. L. 13 beatissimam] beatam ELO; virginem ...tuam] om. ELO; Citham] famulam tuam add. EO; famulam et uirginem tuam add. L. 13 in ...multis] plurimis O. 13–14 vita ...miraculis] multis miraculis uita decorasti L. 14 decorasti miraculis] miraculis decorasti E; te suppliciter exoramus] tribue quesumus E; suppliciter] supplices O; auxilium ...postulant] in tuo amore (in tuo amore] om. O; amore] nomine L) ab ea postulant auxilium ELO. 15 id ...sentiant] eius optentu (id

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add. O) aput te (aput te] om. L) sibi (sibi] om. O) senciant (inuenisse add. O) oportunum ELO; dominum nostrum Amen] om. LO; nostrum Amen] om. E. Collation 2 Nottingham University Library, MS WLC/LM/11, fol. 42r (N), collated with Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson liturg. e.3, fol. 33r (O, ll. 1–11 only). De sancta Sitha. Salue, felix famula, Sitha Ihesu Christi, Que cum mente sedula Deo placuisti. Pauperes reficiens, nudos induisti, Et egenis omnibus ministra fuisti. Petram manu deferens qua pectus tundebas, Peruigil in precibus casta permanebas. Virgo que virtutibus ita floruisti, Fac nos frui gloria quam tu meruisti. Versus. Ora pro nobis beata Sitha. Responsus. Vt digni efficiamur eterna vita. Oracio. Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui beatam Sitham famulam tuam innumeris decorasti miraculis, presta suppliciter orationibus vt gaudia eterna, que peccando perdere meruimus, eius suffragantibus meritis iterum promereri valeamus. Per Christum dominum nostrum.

1 Sitha] Antiphona add. O. 9 gloria] gaudijs O; quam] que O. 10 eterna vita] promissionibus Christi Oremus O.

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• 9 • ‘Syre, we neuer yet tasted ne haue not dronke of our best wyne’: Late Medieval Popular Religion and the Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus* • denis renevey  • Souvent me souviens Lady Margaret’s motto speaks most powerfully to me when ‘souvent je me souviens’ of my many encounters with Vincent Gillespie, from my first supervision in his St Anne’s College’s office (quite a daunting experience for the very inexperienced Swiss doctoral student that I was then) to our recent participation in a joint plenary session which brought us back to St Anne’s several decades later. But Vincent’s professorial career is of course strongly linked to Lady Margaret Hall, so it is a great pleasure for me to honour him by exploring as part of this chapter aspects of the devotional life of Lady Margaret Beaufort, after whom Lady Margaret Hall is named. The devotion to the Name of Jesus has a long history in the West.1 Although one can trace significant moments before the beginning of the second millennium, textual witnesses testifying to the importance given to the Name gain in significance from the eleventh century onwards. The meditation Ad excitandum timorem by Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century, Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermon fifteen from his Sermons on the Song of Songs, as well as the twelfth-century sequence Dulcis Iesu Memoria, probably written by an English Cistercian, provide ample evidence for the practice of the devotion * I would like to thank Christiania Whitehead for her very detailed reading of a first version of this chapter. Her insights contributed greatly to improving it. 1 See Denis Renevey, ‘The Emergence of the Devotion to the Name of Jesus in the West’, in Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages, ed. Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis (Manchester, 2018), pp. 142–62; Irénée Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, trans. Charles Cummings (Kalamazoo, 1978); Peter Biasiotto, History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name (New York, 1943).

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to the Name within monastic circles. Thirteenth-century textual manifestations in the form of Latin sermons and meditations, and Anglo-Norman and Middle English lyrics, also participate in the growing corpus devoted to this religious tradition. While it is powerfully alive by that time, the way in which the Yorkshire hermit Richard Rolle places the devotion at the core of his own spiritual experience, and the care with which he encourages his followers or trainees to use it as part of their own spiritual progress, give an undisputable new lease of energy to the devotion. Walter Hilton also recognizes the need for material devoted to the Name of Jesus, and supplies it in a revised version of The Scale of Perfection, possibly following requests by his readership. Its inclusion in the writings of two of the most successful Middle English mystical writers of the fourteenth century gives the devotion a high degree of credibility as a significant tool within an ambitious spiritual practice. Materials linked to the devotion to the Name by Rolle, and to a lesser extent by Walter Hilton, find a new importance in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century devotional compilations such as Disce Mori, The Pore Caitif, and the Oleum Effusum compilation, which consists mainly of passages devoted to the Name by Rolle, with a few extracts from Anselm. The insertion of passages devoted to the Name of Jesus in a compilation of basic catechetical instruction like The Pore Caitif may have contributed to the democratization of its use among the laity in the late medieval period. Although an investigation of the presence and function of passages devoted to the Name in some of these compilations, many of them extant in manuscripts dating from the post-Chichelian period, would yield very useful information, this chapter offers tentative responses to late fifteenth-century evidence for the democratization of the devotion, by looking at three specific moments linked to the devotion to the Name. First, it explores the expression of piety towards the Name by Thomas of Rotherham, archbishop of York. Second, it considers evidence of the practice of the devotion in the household of Lady Margaret Beaufort. Third, it looks at the sermon for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus added to Caxton’s 1491 edition of John Mirk’s Festial.2

2 References to the Sermon for the Holy Name of Jesus are to the following edition: Susan Powell, ed., Three Sermons for Nova Festa, together with the Hamus Caritatis: Edited from Caxton’s 1491 Edition of John Mirk’s Festial (Heidelberg, 2007); the devotion appeared in English liturgical calendars long before the Caxton edition; see R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 62–83.

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Thomas of Rotherham Thomas of Rotherham received his initial education in his native town from a freelance teacher of grammar.3 He then entered at the age of twenty Henry VI’s new foundation of King’s College, Cambridge. His career in the church was successful and his rise was rapid, with the acquisition of several canonries, followed by a first bishopric at Rochester in 1468. He then took up the bishopric of Lincoln on 8 January 1471. As bishop of Lincoln he visited Lincoln College, Oxford in 1474, and found the college in a poor state. His support for the college both financially and legally resulted in the confirmation of its existence in perpetuity, and in the completion of the front quadrangle in 1479. He provided the college with statutes drawn up in 1480, which remained in use until 1854. In 1480 he succeeded Laurence Booth as archbishop of York (until 1500), and as Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He had already been chancellor of the university for a number of years, from the late 1460s to 1492.4 Rotherham seems to have been an astute politician, transferring his allegiance from Henry VI to Edward IV.5 The latter must have appreciated Rotherham’s diplomatic skills, since he was sent to Bruges in 1468, as part of a delegation that included William Caxton, to negotiate with the Burgundians and the Hanseatic League. Rotherham’s greatest political achievement was reached with his appointment as chancellor of England on 27 May 1474, a position he retained until the end of Edward IV’s reign. Thomas of Rotherham was also very active in the foundation of guilds and fraternities, which included the guild of the Holy Trinity (parish churches of St Mary, Luton, and St Andrew, Biggleswade), the fraternity of St Mary in St Andrew’s church, Hitchin, and the co-foundation (with the duke of Clarence) of the fraternity of St John the Baptist (parish church of Ashwell, Hertfordshire) between 1475 and 1476. More significant to the theme of this chapter were his later foundations in Rotherham, his home-town in South Yorkshire. In 1480 Thomas founded a ‘perpetual chantry of one chaplain at the altar of Jesus Christ newly built by him in the parish church of Rotherham, and ... grant[ed] it lands worth £20 p.a.’.6 He may also have funded the Chapel of Our Lady on Rotherham Bridge, built in 1483 and restored in the twentieth century. Apart from completing the building of Lincoln College, Oxford, and 3 I am paraphrasing and selecting from J. C. T. Oates, Cambridge University Library: A History. From the Beginnings to the Copyright Act of Queen Anne (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 37–47; and Rosemary Horrox, ‘Rotherham [Scot], Thomas (1423–1500)’, ODNB online [accessed 7 May 2018]. 4 He was chancellor in 1469–71, 1473–79, 1483–85, 1492, and probably in further years before his death in 1500; see Oates, Cambridge University Library, p. 38. 5 Oates, Cambridge University Library, p. 38. 6 Horrox, ‘Rotherham’.

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increasing its endowment, he pursued his religious building programme with the foundation of a College of the Name of Jesus in his native town, the details of which are attested in his will. Thomas began his will on 6 August 1498, the day of the Feast of the Translation/Transfiguration of Jesus, preceding the Feast of the Name of Jesus celebrated on 7 August.7 It was completed on 24 August of the same year, Thomas being seventy-five years old. The choice of a date matching that of two new feasts, regarded as functioning as a duo, attests to Thomas’s attachment to them. The prologue to the will poignantly emphasizes his responsibility in having established the Feast of the Name as an official one in his province, as if he considered it his most important legacy: In Dei nomine, Amen. Ego Thomas Rotherham, archiepiscopus Eboracensis, sanus mente, laus Deo, sexto die mensis Augusti, in festo Translationis Jhesu, et festo Ejusdem nominis, quae festa in provincia mea ex decreto meo, et cleri mei assensu, pro perpetuo statuuntur celebranda, anno Domini Millesimo ccccmo nonagesimo octavo, condo testamentum meum, prout inferius scribitur per capitula.8 (In the name of God, Amen. I, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, of sound mind, praise be to God, on the sixth day of the month of August, on the Feast of the Translation of Jesus, and at the Feast of His name, which Feasts in my Province, by my decree and by the assent of the Clergy I have appointed to be celebrated for ever, in the year of the Lord one thousand four hundred and ninety-eight, do make my Will as is written below by Chapters.)9

Nine years before making the will, on 27 February 1489, Archbishop Rotherham had expressed the desire that the Feast of the Name be celebrated throughout his province on 7 August.10 Such a prominent position in his will attests to an enduring commitment on his part to circulating and disseminating the 7 Testamenta eboracensia: A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, ed. James Raine. Surtees Society 53, vol. 4 (London, 1869), pp. 138–48; for an English translation, see John Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, Archbishop of York, and his College of Jesus at Rotherham: A Paper Read Before the Rotherham Literary and Scientific Society, 18 November, 1867 (Rotherham, 1869). A copy of the will is also available in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS 3; see Montague Rhodes James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1895), p. 9. 8 Testamenta, pp. 138–9. 9 Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, p. 23. 10 See John Block Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, 1995), p.  188; see also Rob Lutton, ‘The Name of Jesus, Nicholas Love’s Mirror, and Christocentric Devotion in Late Medieval England’, in The Pseudo-Bona­venturan Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Ian Johnson and A. F. Westphall (Turhout, 2013), pp. 19–53 (esp. p. 38).

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devotion by means of regular liturgical celebrations.11 Similarly, a reference in his will to the endowment of the College of Jesus in Rotherham, for which he obtained a licence on 1 February 1483, further supports his commitment to the veneration of the Name. The College was built in order to provide instruction to local boys. Thomas wishes for a provost, at least a bachelor of divinity, to preside over three fellows who will be responsible for teaching music and the arts of writing and reckoning, as well as six choirboys. Although he does not specify whether liturgy devoted to the Name of Jesus should be offered in the College, one or two moments in the will express in affective terms Thomas’s commitment to the devotion. He writes: Tertio, quia natus fui in villa de Rotherham, et baptizatus in ecclesia parochiali ejusdem villae, et ita ibidem natus in mundum, et etiam renatus per lavacrum sanctum effluens a latere Ihesu; Cujus nomen O si amarem ut deberem et vellem! ne tamen horum oblitor ingratus videar, volo quod unum collegium perpetuum de nomine Jhesu erigatur in villa praedicta, in eodem loco quo in festo Sancti Gregorii, anno vicesimo secundo regis Edwardi Quarti, ponebatur fundamentum; in quo etiam natus fueram.12 (Thirdly, because I was born in the town of Rotherham, and baptized in the Parish Church of the same town, and so at that same place I was born into the world, and also born again by the holy bath flowing from the side of Jesus, whose name, O, if I loved it as I ought and would wish to! Lest I should seem, notwithstanding, an ungrateful forgetter of these things, I Will that a perpetual College of the name of Jesus be raised in the foresaid town, in the same place in which the foundation was laid at the feast of St. Gregory, in the twenty-second year of King Edward the Fourth, [and] in which also I was born.)13

The affective tone used in the context of the name of Jesus is quite unusual in a legal document, and possibly suggests a personal practice of devotion to the Name on the part of the archbishop. The endowment provides extensive financial support for the College of Jesus from benefices accrued from the parish churches of Laxton and Almondry, as well as Rotherham’s manors of Barkewey, Sheepnes, Sibthrop, Hawkesworthe, and Westan. Other benefices from Rotherham’s lands, tenements, and dwelling houses with outhouses are granted to the College of Jesus in support of its buildings and educational programme.14 The care with which Rotherham details the distribution of his possessions, with particular attention to the 11 For the establishment of the devotion as a liturgical feast, see R. W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 62–83. 12 Testamenta, p. 139 (my emphasis). 13 Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, p. 24 (my emphasis). 14 Testamenta, pp. 140–1; Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, p. 27.

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College of Jesus, makes the will most unusual for an archbishop.15 Some of the first liturgical objects mentioned in the will offered ‘ut Divina in collegio meo honorificentius celebrentur’ (‘that divine service may be more honourably celebrated in my College’)16 include a large chalice with a paten gilt bearing the inscription Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, with ihs Christus on its base. One other chalice with paten gilt bears an inscription around its cup: Calicem Salutaris accipiam, et nomen Domini invocabo, while a pair of gilt cruets carry the Name ihs Christus.17 These Christocentric inscriptions make perfect sense in view of the objects’ liturgical function in the mass. However, they do suggest the particular significance of devotion to the Name in the College of Jesus. Liturgical books given to the college are also mentioned in the will, including two illuminated missals, one according to the use of York, the other the use of Sarum. Other liturgical books include two antiphonaries and two graduals, as well as a breviary, all according to the use of York. Apart from the breviary whose state is not qualified, each of the items is said to be ‘novum et pulchrum’, and the missals ‘sumptuose illuminatum’. No parish church, cathedral, or college for which Thomas of Rotherham had responsibility receives so much attention as his College of Jesus. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, MS 2 contains an account of the foundation of Thomas’s college, followed by its statutes, which regulate the appointments and the daily life of the provost, three fellows, six choristers, and five chantry priests.18 Among the various items covered by the statutes is included ‘De missa Jhesu et antiphona beate marie decantandis’ (fol. 6), which suggests the liturgical performance of the mass on the Name of Jesus within the college. In addition, MS 2 contains the fifteenth-century library catalogue of the College of Jesus, with a list of over 100 books donated by Thomas of Rotherham to the college, including the missals mentioned in his will.19 The inventory offers a fascinating window into the library holding of a relatively humble fifteenthcentury Yorkshire collegiate institution. Yet the sheer number of books and their theological range is also indicative of Rotherham’s ambitions for his college. Some of the first manuscripts listed include collections of dominical sermons for the entire year, extracted from the sermons of John of Abbeville (‘Johanns Abbatis de Villa’), as well as collections of sermons by ‘Odo’, ‘Rogerus de Salesbyry’, and ‘Leonardus de Utino’, among others.20 The inventory 15 Testamenta, p. 138; Raine calls it ‘the most noble and striking will of a medieval English bishop in existence’. 16 Testamenta, p. 141; Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, p. 28. 17 James, A Descriptive Catalogue, p. 4. 18 James, A Descriptive Catalogue, pp. 2–9. 19 See Oates, Cambridge University Library, p. 40. 20 See James, A Descriptive Catalogue, p. 5.

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lists several theological treatises, including Augustine’s De doctrina christiana and De trinitate, as well as a book of sentences on the former, a glossary on the acts of the Apostles, another on the Old Testament, and a penitential treatise accompanied by sermons. Secular books also form part of the collection, with Ovid’s De arte amandi and De remedio amoris, alongside other works. However, no entry in the inventory makes direct reference to the devotion to the Name of Jesus. The exception could possibly be the ‘Item Exposicio super cantica canticorum et apochalipsim’.21 Considering that Rolle wrote a commentary on the first verses on the Song of Songs, as well as a commentary on the Apocalypse, the entry could be a reference to Rolle’s writings. If that were the case, then the library of the College of Jesus would have owned Rolle’s most significant testimony to the importance of the devotion to the Name of Jesus.22 On the whole, however, the religious items listed in the inventory show an interest in preaching material, standard theological treatises, and biblical commentaries or glosses. Mystical treatises and devotional texts seem to be absent, presumably because the College of Jesus’s principal mission was educational rather than monastic or contemplative.23 The library of the College of Jesus was provided with scholastic and academic texts that may have been directly appealing to its scholars, rather than providing raw material for their educational and pastoral mission to the community of Rotherham and its vicinity. Yet Thomas of Rotherham’s will asserts the necessity for these activities to be conducted under the rule of one house, ‘to the praise of the Almighty God and the exaltation of the Name of Jesus Christ’, establishing the devotion to the Name of Jesus as an overarching framework for ecclesiastical charitable pedagogy.24

21 See James, A Descriptive Catalogue, p. 7. 22 See Elizabeth Marian Murray, ‘Richard Rolle’s Comment on the Canticles. Edited from MS. Trinity College, Dublin 153’, unpubl. diss. (Fordham University, 1958); for an excerpt with translation see Ralph Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts: An Introduction, Using Examplary Materials Derived from Richard Rolle, ‘Super Canticum’ 4 (Liverpool, 2015). The item listed as ‘fflores Bernardi’, probably excerpts from Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings, may have included passages devoted to the Name: see James, A Descriptive Catalogue, p. 8. 23 For an investigation of the circulation of material on the Name of Jesus within devotional compilations, see Denis Renevey, ‘Northern Spirituality Travels South: Rolle’s Middle English Encomium Oleum Effusum Nomen Tuum in Lincoln College Library, MS 91, and Dublin, Trinity College, MS 155’, in Revisiting the Medieval North of England: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marschall, and Tino Oudesluijs (Cardiff, forthcoming); see also Denis Renevey, ‘“Desyrable is thi Name”: Fashioning the Name of Jesus in Some Devotional Compilations’, in ‘This tretice, by me compiled’: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen and Denis Renevey (Turnhout, forthcoming). 24 Guest, Thomas de Rotherham, p. 42.

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These specific gifts and enjoined practices combine to provide sufficient evidence for a considerable interest in the devotion to the Name of Jesus on the part of a man working in the highest ecclesiastical and academic spheres in late fifteenth-century England. Thomas of Rotherham appears as an active propagator of the spread of the devotion from Yorkshire to the rest of England. Lady Margaret Beaufort (c. 1441–1509) Lady Margaret Beaufort (c. 1441–1509), Countess of Richmond and Derby, was the mother of King Henry VII, and therefore central to the establishing of the House of Tudor on the English throne.25 She shared with Thomas of Rotherham an interest in the devotion to the Holy Name as a private exercise, while wishing to give it a strong liturgical foundation. She hoped to elevate the occasion from a votive mass to a double feast, to be celebrated on 7 August, the day following the feast of the Transfiguration.26 Thanks to her impetus, the Canterbury convocations moved to establish the feast in 1488, while the York convocations followed a year later, in 1489.27 As in the case of Thomas of Rotherham, Lady Margaret was keen to found a college devoted to the Name, but in Cambridge. However, John Alcock, bishop of Ely, also a devotee to the Holy Name, had already received permission from King Henry VII and Pope Alexander VI in 1496 to found the College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, including the remodelling and extension of the priory church of St Radegund, consecrated as the Jesus Chapel. The college was completed by another bishop of Ely, Nicholas West, twenty years later.28 In 1505 Lady Margaret therefore substantially endowed the college called God’s House founded by William Byngham in 1437, which was then renamed Christ’s College. She subsequently provided a legacy 25 See Vincent Gillespie, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort: Sermon in LMH Chapel, 10 May 2009’, The Brown Book: A Commemorative Edition for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Lady Margaret Beaufort, ed. Carolyn Carr (Oxford, 2009), pp.  29–36, available at [accessed 11 June 2018]. 26 See Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), esp. pp. 137–201; Susan Powell,  ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort and her Books’, The Library 20 (1998), 197–240, revised as chapter 6 of The Birgittines of Syon Abbey: Preaching and Print (Turnhout, 2017), pp.  153–211; see also Susan Powell, ‘After Arundel but before Luther: The First HalfCentury of Print’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 523–41. 27 See Rob Lutton, ‘“Love this Name that is IHC”: Vernacular Prayers, Hymns and Lyrics to the Holy Name of Jesus in Pre-Reformation England’, in Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300–1550, ed. Elisabeth Salter and Helen Wicker (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 119–45 (esp. p. 124). 28 See [accessed 11 June 2018].

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for St John’s College, Cambridge, whose foundation began in 1511, two years after her death.29 In addition to these, her endowment of two chairs in divinity at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge testifies to her enduring commitment to religious education and scholarship. Her attachment to the devotion to Jesus and his name was recalled by her spiritual director and confessor John Fisher in his ‘month’s mind’ (a sermon delivered thirty days after her funeral): She that ordeyned 2 contynual reders in bothe the vniuersytes to teche the holy dyuynyte of Ihesu, she that ordeyned prechers perpetuall to publysshe the doctryne & fayth of cryste Ihesu, she that buylded a college royall to the honour of the name of crist Ihesu, & lefte tyll her executours another to be buylded to mayntayn his fayth & doctryne.30

Lady Margaret Beaufort’s public display of devotion to the Name of Jesus is well attested by her foundations. On the other hand, Westminster Abbey, MS 39, a manuscript that she commissioned, adds insights into her private devotions to the Name.31 Westminster Abbey MS 39 is a 220x150mm codex consisting mainly of texts focused on Christocentric devotions, including prayers to the Virgin Mary. Of particular interest are the large number of prayers (fols. 5v–43r) that focus on the Passion and the Holy Name. The prayers to the Holy Name are as follows: 1 2 3 4 5

Deuota oracio de sanctissimo nomine ihesu. Ihesu ihesu propter nomen tuum fac michi secundum hoc nomen tuum Ihesu Ihesu obliuiscere… (fols. 6v–8) Alia oracio de nomine ihesu. Domine ihesu criste fili dei uiui te deprecor per sacratissimam carnem tuam… (fols. 8–10v) Alia oracio de nomine ihesu. Domine ihesu criste fili dei uiui deus omnipotens rex glorie qui mundum proprio sanguine… (fols. 19–21) Deuota oracio de nominibus ihesu. Domine ihesu criste fili dei uiui miserere mei. Et defende me famulum tuum N hodie et cotidie… firmiter speramus. Versiculus. Adoramus… (fols. 21–22v) Alia oracio de nomine ihesu. Domine exaudi oracionem meam quia iam cognosco quod tempus meum… deprecacionem meam. Qui… (fols. 15–18v, 11r–v)

29 See Michael K. Jones and Malcolm G. Underwood, ‘Beaufort, Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby (1443–1509)’ and R. B. Dobson, ‘Bingham [Byngham], William (d. 1451)’, ODNB online. 30 J. E. B. Mayor, ed., The English Works of John Fischer, EETS e.s. 27 (London, 1876), I. 308 (my emphasis); see also Powell, The Birgittines of Syon Abbey, p. 155; Richard Rex, ‘Fisher, John [St John Fisher] (c. 1469–1535)’, ODNB online. 31 See Neil Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 411–15.

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6 Oracio de nomine ihesu. Domine ihesu criste qui in hunc mundum propter nos peccatores de sinu patris… nunc et in future. Amen. (fols. 11v–14v, 23–28) 7 Hic sequitur ualde deuota oracio de nomine ihesu. O ihesu Nazarene respice ad meas miserias… et ut me per Omnia adiuues quia tu es deus benedictus in secula amen. (fols. 28–29v) 8 Oracio de nomine ihesu. O ihesu criste qui de cello descendisti ad terram de sancta maria ancilla tua… per sanctum nomen tuum. Qui uiuis. (fols. 31v–33v) 9 Sequitur oracio sancti Bernardi deuota de nomine ihesu. O bone ihesu. O piissime ihesu… (fols. 38v–40v). The sheer range of prayers devoted to the Name in the manuscript indicates both the different uses made of the devotion and the importance given to variation within a set devotional theme. The next item after these prayers, while not specifically linked to the Name of Jesus, pays attention to repetition, an important characteristic of the devotion to the Name, as part of its devotional technique, by recommending the recitation of different holy names. The second invocation of a holy name within these recitative short prayers is in French, and said to be useful ‘pur sauer plaies et pour femines [sic] qui trauoillient denfant ou pour soit en peine ou de eawe ou de feu’ (‘in order to heal wounds and for women who are in labour or who suffer from water or fire’). The recitation of holy names takes a medical turn that is not uncommon in the use of the Name of Jesus in other manuscript contexts. The prayers in English, ‘O glorious ihesu. O meekest ihesu. O most sweetest ihesu’ and ‘O my souereyne lord Ihesu the verye sone of allmyghty god’ (fols. 83–6), contribute further to the manuscript’s strong focus on devotions to the Name. Finally The Jesus Psalter (fols 90–114v) stands as the culmination of the devotion to the Name of Jesus.32 Even if that may not yet be the case with the Westminster version, the 1571 edition of The Jesus Psalter contains 150 prayers, thus following the pattern of three series of fifty psalms in the case of The David Psalter, and three series of fifty Aves of The Psalter of our Lady. It is arranged around fifteen topics linked to the name ‘Jesu’, which is repeated three times within each invocation, which itself should be repeated ten times before moving on to the prayer on the topic in question. A Pater Noster and an Ave Maria are interspersed between each prayer. The fifteen vocative topics ask Jesus to aid in the effort, provide, or allow (1) mercy, (2) help, (3) strength, (4) 32 See Samuel Heydon Sole, Jesu’s Psalter: What It Was at its Origin and as Consecrated by the Use of many Martyrs and Confessors. With Chant for its More Solemn Recitation (London, 1888). Sole provides a text printed in 1571, to which I refer, although I am aware that the version found in Westminster MS 39 may be the shorter one, with eight rather then fifteen triple invocations of the name of Jesus.

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comfort, (5) constancy and stability, (6) light, (7) dread, (8) love, (9) remembrance of one’s own death, (10) the experience of purgatory, (11) avoidance of evil company, (12) Jesus’ help, (13) perseverance in virtue, (14) to fix one’s mind on Jesus, (15) to order one’s life to Jesus. Here is the sixth prayer, which may exemplify the repetitive pattern of the whole Jesus Psalter: 6. Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, light me.   X times. 1. Jesu, light me with gostlye wysdome for to knowe thy goodnes and those thinges which are most acceptable to the. 2. Grace to gyve good ensample to soules profitable that none be hurt by me. 3. To helpe those with good counsel which have offendyd the. 4. Make me prosede from vertue to vertue untill suche tyme that I shall clearlye se the in thy maiestie. 5. Let me not turn to those synnes whiche I have sorrowed for and by confession have accused me. 6. The horryble sentence of endles deathe, the terryble iudgement of dampnacion, thy wrathe, yre, and indignacion, mercifull Lord, let never fall upon me. 7. Thy mercy and thy merytes my Savyour ever be betwene them and me. 8. Have mercy on the soules in purgatory for thy bytter passion I beseche the and for thy gloryous name Jesu. 9. The holly trinitie one very God have mercy on me. Pater Noster : Ave Maria:33

All the prayers end with exactly the same last two petitions, contributing further to the repetitive pattern of The Jesus Psalter as a whole, and facilitating a meditative perspective on the Name.34 The arms of Lady Margaret (fol. 1), and the Stanley jamb’s appearance nine times in the decoration, strongly suggest that the manuscript was commissioned by Lady Margaret for her fourth husband, Thomas, Lord Stanley, whom she married in c. 1482 and who died in 1504.35 The manuscript thus reflects her own interest in private devotions, and one can assume that she herself would have used the devotional material she made available to her husband. At the age of forty-four, in 1485, Margaret was legally declared femme sole, that is, a single woman within marriage, with the amicable consent of her husband. Later, in 1498, now physically estranged from her husband,

33 Sole, Jesu’s Psalter, pp. 79–80. 34 The Jesus Psalter has been falsely attributed to the Birgittine monk Richard Whitford: see Sole, Jesu’s Psalter, pp. 55–70, who makes the case for Whitford’s authorship. Lutton, ‘The Name of Jesus’, p. 33, argues that Whitford may have expanded a shorter version already in circulation in the late fifteenth century; see also Lutton, ‘Love this Name’, pp. 140–3. 35 Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, pp.  414–15; see also Powell, The Birgittines of Syon Abbey, p. 154.

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Lady Margaret led a chaste lifestyle in her own household in Collyweston, Lincolnshire. Physical and psychological independence gave her the freedom to organize spiritual life within her household according to her own wishes, with the support of spiritual advisers, such as Henry Hornby.36 Hornby had attracted Lady Margaret’s attention following his contribution in drawing up an office for the Feast of the Name of Jesus; he became her secretary and dean of her chapel in 1499, thus certainly contributing to the liveliness of the devotions to the Name in her household. Around the same period John de Gigli, papal collector from 1485 to 1490 and then bishop of Worcester from 1497 to 1498, dedicated to Margaret an Italian manuscript, British Library, MS Add. 33772, containing the office and proper of the mass attached to the feast. In 1494 the pope recognized Lady Margaret as a patron of the feast. According to Jones and Underwood, ‘Payments to London printers for mass books and primers “in nomine Jesu”’ show that under Hornby’s deanship Lady Margaret’s Lincolnshire household had become a centre for the devotion, where both mass and office were in use.37 Margaret’s piety was not solely focused on the cult of the Holy Name: the cult of the five wounds of Christ, as well as other Christocentric devotions, generated interest from the king’s mother and the pious laity in general. However, interest within the queen’s household coterie contributed to the dissemination of this particular devotion, as well as generating a market for books, in which Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde both played an active part. Lady Margaret’s first commission to Caxton was an English version of a thirteenth-century French romance, Blanchardin and Eglantine. It was followed by The Fifteen Oes. In the same year that saw Lady Margaret officially recognized as a promoter of the Feast of the Name, she commissioned Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, whose 1494 Carthusian and Birgittine version integrated a long passage on the Name of Jesus, as well as interpolations that sometimes substitute ‘Jesus’ for ‘God’. Lady Margaret wore hearts of precious metal and collars of gold with the IHS monogram. Her chapel was furnished with printed books of the office for the Holy Name, used for liturgical celebrations.38 Performance of piety could hardly be completely private for the king’s mother, and the visibility of her devotional practices had an impact in defining her as a major disseminator

36 Powell, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’, p.  6; see also Malcolm G. Underwood, ‘Hornby [Horneby], Henry (c. 1457–1518)’, ODNB online; on Lady Margaret’s chastity see Mayor, ed., The English Works of John Fischer, p. 294. 37 Jones and Underwood, The King’s Mother, p. 169. 38 For more information about Lady Margaret’s involvement with the book trade, see Powell, The Birgittines of Syon, p. 156; for the archival material consulted by Powell, see the appendix in ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’, pp. 239–40.

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of the devotion.39 If evidence suggests that devotion to the Name was part of a broader late-medieval Christocentric devotional trend, the fact that an indulgence of equal importance to that attached to the feast of Corpus Christi was granted to it attests to its particular significance. Official ecclesiastical support led to the production of liturgical books to be used for celebrations of the mass and office of the Name of Jesus, in which Lady Margaret played a role. Her bookish, educational, and scholarly interests, her translation work, her interests in promoting the cult of the Holy Name, and her appointment by the pope as official promoter of the feast, went hand in hand with her personal practice and encouragement of private devotions to the Name as exemplified by Westminster MS 39, which, despite their medical, sometimes magical characteristics, were part of mainstream devotional practice, shared at all levels of society.40 As a result, one might well argue that both Thomas of Rotherham and Lady Margaret Beaufort, representatives of late medieval religious and secular elites, may have been involved in commissioning Caxton to print the sermon for the Holy Name of Jesus.41 Sermon for the Holy Name of Jesus The sermon for the Holy Name of Jesus is one of three sermons Caxton added to his 1491 edition of John Mirk’s Festial, which comprised sixty-four sermons for the major feast days of the church year.42 Through its numerous editions and prints up to 1532, the collection gained a prominence unmatched by any other Middle English sermon collection.43 The three additional sermons, linked to the most significant new feasts of the late medieval period, were the Visitation of the Virgin (2 July), the Transfiguration of the Lord (6 August), and the Holy Name of Jesus (7 August). Although, as we have seen, acceptance of the Holy Name as a regular liturgical feast was not initiated until 1488 for the Canterbury province, and 1489 for York, it had already achieved a high level of popularity.44 Powell argues for a Birgittine provenance for the three sermons, even if the third differs strongly from the first two in terms of structure

39 For a more detailed discussion about public manifestation of piety against private forms of devotion, see Powell, The Birgittines of Syon Abbey, pp. 154–5. 40 See Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, 1992), pp. 278–9. 41 Powell, The Birgittines, pp. 109–10, makes the suggestion for Lady Margaret’s most likely involvement. 42 See Powell, Three Sermons, p. ix ; on the feast and its acceptance, see Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts, pp. 62–83. 43 Powell, Three Sermons, p. x. 44 Powell, Three Sermons, p. xxiii.

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and complexity.45 Considering Lady Margaret’s close contact with the Birgittines at Syon, and her commissioning from Caxton of the Fifteen Oes, it is not unreasonable to infer an involvement on her part in the commissioning of this new edition with substantial additions from Caxton in the same year. In addition, taking into account Lady Margaret’s interest in hearing sermons, I would contend that, together with other aristocratic pious lay readers, she can be envisaged as a member of the audience to whom the sermon would have been preached, as someone who would have been moved by its content, and as someone who would have used its material for private devotion following public preaching.46 The sermon begins with a reference to the book of Genesis, and more particularly the passage about Adam and Eve being granted the right to name the created world. Another passage that receives particular attention is the episode of the Annunciation, where Gabriel informs Mary ‘Uocabis nomen eius Jesu’, translated as ‘Thou shall name and call hym Jhesus, Luce primo’.47 Other significant references to the Name include the command to bow to the Name found in St Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, followed by Pope John XXII’s offer of twenty days of pardon and remission of sins to whoever bows his knees, inclines his head or beats his breast when the name of Jesus is pronounced during divine service. The sermon offers a convincing rationale for the power of the Name against devils, interspersed with biblical quotations in Latin, followed by their translation into Middle English. It associates the Name with the life of Christ, with specific attention given to the Passion. Although the devotion to the Name is to be understood as part of a larger devotion to the person of Christ, it has characteristics that are quite distinct from other Christocentric devotions. For instance, most of the narraciones (nine in all) which are offered in the course of the sermon insist on the efficacy of the devotion to the name as a formulaic prayer.

45 For a thorough analysis and comparison of the sermons, see Powell, Three Sermons, pp. xxi–xxvii. 46 As mentioned by Powell, The Birgittines of Syon, p. 169, Lady Margaret commissioned Pynson’s 1493 edition of the office and proper of the mass of the Holy Name. Other devotees to the Name include the York priest Robert Burton, and Richard Scrope, who established a chantry chapel with an altar to the Holy Name when he was bishop at Lich­ field in 1388: see Friedman, Northern English Books, pp. 187–8. For the practice of the devotion within a guild see Elizabeth Anne New, ‘The Cult of the Holy Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England, with Special Reference to the Fraternity in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, c. 1450–1558’, unpubl. PhD diss. (Royal Holloway, University of London, 1999); see also Elizabeth A. New, ‘The Jesus Chapel in St Paul’s Cathedral, London: A Reconstruction of its Appearance before the Reformation’, The Antiquaries Journal 85 (2005), 103–24. 47 Powell, Three Sermons, p. 10.

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The first narracio makes reference to the triple invocation of the name ‘Jesu’ by four children whom God abducted into far and strange countries, asking them to call upon the Name in response to whatever they saw; the torments of wicked spirits are immediately stopped as they invoke the name. A second narracio offers an account of St Nicholas reporting to St Patrick how he managed to avoid all perils by using the following formula: ‘Ihesu adiuva me Ihesu miserere mei’. Early saints are used to authorize and backdate this much more recent devotional practice. This is followed by another narracio in which St Bernard forces the devil out of a woman by invoking the Name of Jesus. The Name’s power seems to be primarily viewed as remedy against quasi-demonic possessions in these first examples. In that regard its formulaic quality and immediate effect link it to the realm of magical charms and medical recipes. The following statement attests the overwhelming effect of the Name: ‘For manifest it is that both of him and in his name thousandes haue be myraculously heled and saued.’48 Some of the following examples colour the use of the Name with homely qualities, such as the narracio of the friar minor writing the Name of Jesus and placing it in water which he then drinks: his fever immediately disappears. The narracio represents the Name’s power as if it were a contact relic. The narraciones serve to demonstrate that the Name is might, pity, and support to those who love it. The sermon then subdivides the first attribute, showing that demonstration of power occurs in the act of creation, in the subjections of devils, and in miraculous operations, thus enhancing some aspects linked to the Name which do not necessarily call those who use the Name to be conscious agents in the performance of miraculous deeds. The narracio of the despairing couple is a good case in point: It is red that a man lyued many yeres & dayes in peasible wyse wyth his wyf acordyng to theyr degree. Thenne thenmye of al vertuous life intyced theym, tempted and broughte theym bothe vnto a fowle and abhomynable temptacion to haue destroyed theymself, the husbonde not knowing of his wyues temptacyon ne the wyfe of the temptacion of her husbonde. This temptacyon trowbled theym bothe soo mykel that neyther of theym cowde wel ete, drinke ne slepe, but euer were sighynge and in heuy chere. In processe of tyme of vnwoned comforte between theym, thei demaunded and asked eche of other the cause of heuynes and sorow shewed. The man & husbonde, after many questyons made of the woman and not satysfyenge her, at last he answerde and sayd: ‘Certaynly, my trowble is that I am day and nyght, erly & late, etynge and drynkynge, or whatsoouer I doo or occupye, tempted for to hange myselfe. Telle me now, wyfe,’ sayd he, ‘what is the cause of your heuynesse & why ye nether ete, drynke 48 Powell, Three Sermons, p. 14.

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den is renevey nor slepe as ye haue ben accustomed?’ The wyff answerde and sayd: ‘Forsothe, syr, I am in the same temptacyon and wyll.’ Anone, thorugh instygacyon of the deuyll, they were bothe consented & agreed to performe this fals temptacyon, and anone made redy theyr halters & theymselfe wyth all that sholde be had to execute that cursed dede, to haue hanged theymselfe. But byfore that they sholde begynne this fowle & horrible dede, the wyff sayd to her husbonde: ‘Syre,’ sayd she, ‘we neuer yet tasted ne haue not dronke of our best wyne. Lete vs’, sayd she, ‘drynke ones therof or we deye.’ ‘I consente and graunte,’ sayd the husbonde. They fette of the desired wyne, and, whan it was byfore theym bothe, of a blessed custome that they had when they toke ony sustenaunce, they sayd that one to that other: ‘Drynke we’, or ‘Lete vs drinke’, or in like termes, as thus: ‘I drynke to the, wyfe, in the name of Ihesu’, wyth the comyn blessinge – in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen, bibamus in nomine Ihesu – and she receyuynge and drynkynge of the wyne in the name of Ihesu. And anone their temptacion voyded and was gon. Et fugit diabolus, and the deuyll fledde from theym. And they thenne, contryte, shewed this and confessed their sinne openly to the magnyfyeng of the gloryous & heuenly name Ihesus. Bernardus: Habes, anima mea, reconditum electuarium cum vasculo vocabuli quod est Ihesus, quod nulle vmquam pesti inefficax inuenitur.49

The narracio provides useful information about the Name’s transformative power, which operates miraculously on the couple by putting the devil to flight and annihilating their despair. As with all the other narraciones within the sermon, the pedagogical input that a member of the audience or a reader could gather from this story is an invitation to repeat the Name in similar circumstances or, more generally, to perform all thoughts and actions in the Name of Jesus. Although the narracio lacks the kind of theological sophistication that Lady Margaret, Thomas of Rotherham, or any of their elite circles would be familiar with, the sermon nevertheless encourages the practice of the repetition of the Name in ways that would appeal to pious, literate, and generally well-educated Christians. The narracio stands also as an interesting (fictional) window into the psyche of late-medieval selves. The representation of the despairing couple, as well as their reticence to confide in one another, is psychologically credible. The wife’s last-minute and haphazard suggestion that they drink their best wine triggers their recourse to the involuntary, repetitive, and strongly embedded ritual of blessing the wine in the Name of Jesus. Thus the narracio encourages a reliance on ritual, quasi-unconscious performances. As practitioners of the mixed life, Lady Margaret and Thomas of Rotherham would have approved, as users of the Name in their own daily activities. 49 Powell, Three Sermons, pp. 16–17.

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The way in which the Name gains agency and power irrespective of its users, and invites repetition as a powerful meditative tool, echoes the use of the prayer to the Name of Jesus as practised in the Orthodox church. It is therefore especially intriguing to find that one of the narraciones makes use of the Jesus prayer used in the East as its invocation: ‘Ihesu, fili Dei, propicius est michi peccatori – Ihesu, the Sone of God, be merciful to me, sinner.’50 In that narrative the devout young man is not asked continually to repeat the Jesus prayer in the way Hesychasts (contemplatives from the Orthodox church) would do. Instead, he is invited to eat the piece of paper on which an angel has written the prayer, dispelling devils and vexations, and opening the way to heaven. The ceaseless repetition of the Jesus prayer, which can be performed silently, underlines its characteristic as a prayer of the heart.51 The narracio’s depiction of the prayer’s physical consumption is a slightly facile literalization of something originally intended purely symbolically, and yet it invites reflection on the process of interiorization practised by contemplatives. Lady Margaret practised the mixed life, and was therefore a Martha rather than a Mary figure, leading a very active life with a strong sense of its spiritual dimension.52 For her, as in the case of the devout young man, the practice of the Jesus prayer would have served to intensify her love for Jesus, amongst the many activities which saw her increasingly engaged in the spread of the devotion and the Feast of the Name of Jesus, so that she could herself have advised that ‘euery man oughte to honour, sanctifye, and halow this day in the reuerence of this holy swete name Ihesu’.53

50 Powell, Three Sermons, p. 15. 51 See Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, The Power of the Name: The Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford, 1974; repr. 2013). 52 For the extensive use of the Martha figure to represent Lady Margaret’s spiritual life, see the ‘month’s mind’ of John Fisher, in Mayor, ed., English Works of John Fischer, pp. 289– 310; see Vincent Gillespie, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort: Sermon in LMH Chapel, 10 May 2009’, pp. 29–36. 53 Powell, Three Sermons, p. 18.

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• PART Iv • Reform or Renewal? The Sixteenth Century

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• 10 • ‘An hard bone for ye fleshly mynded to gnaw vppon’: Reading Habits in Contention • alexandra da c osta  • And yet they that seke them / do so vnfruetfully loke vpon them Adding their awne glosses and opinions that they seame rather to troble and defile these springes of liffe / then to drinke of them sweetly. (An exhortation to the diligent studye of scripture, STC 10493, fol. 3v)

These words have rather haunted the writing of this essay. Revisiting some of Gillespie’s essays on reading I have felt again the pleasure of encountering them for the first time and been refreshed by the extraordinary range and depth of his knowledge. I am afraid that the muddy steps I take here to explore the experience of reading in the early decades of the Reformation cannot do justice to the intellectual inspiration he has always offered. Nevertheless, this essay takes up the invitation of ‘Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’ to consider how the ‘horizon of expectation’ for English readers shifted in the earliest decades of the Reformation.1 As vernacular translations of the Bible found their way to more and more readers, some could be expected to possess ‘the conspectus and concordance-like knowledge of the Scriptures that came with the practice of the Divine Office in its fullest form’ that was missing among vernacular readers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.2 Indeed, the increasing use of tables of contents and brief summaries in evangelical printing supplied this knowledge even to readers less diligent in biblical studies.3 Gillespie observed that in the late 1 Vincent Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in Haly Bukes: Lectio in Some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’, in his Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 113–45, p. 113. Originally published in Analecta Cartusiana 106 (1984), 1–27. 2 Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in Haly Bukes’, p. 117. 3 For the use of navigational aids in evangelical printing specifically see Peter Stallybrass, ‘Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible’, in Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Anderson and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 42–76; and Alexandra da Costa, ‘“That ye mowe redely fynde ... what ye desyre”:

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medieval period, ‘as new modes of use and academic techniques for handling books were applied to vernacular texts, the process of “lukynge in haly bukes” became more sophisticated’. This chapter considers the tensions that this could create between long-established habits of lay reading that were ‘more random and less systematic [...] than lectio divina’ and the practices that humanist and evangelical writers now advocated for the reading of the Bible.4 As Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker remind us, an individual might belong to a ‘multiplicity of reading communities [...] at any time’ and have ‘shifting affiliations and associations formed and reformed by the book’, which in turn would exert ‘contending’ forces ‘in forming reading habits and hermeneutic principles’.5 Religious identity was unsettled and fluid in this period, with the majority of readers unlikely to see themselves as anything other than Catholic, regardless of their doctrinal adherence.6 I have argued elsewhere that a consequence of this was that early evangelical printing was designed to appeal to ‘a range of religious sensibilities from the radical to the wavering or curious traditionalist’.7 Readers might move easily from a devotional work of unexceptional and longstanding orthodoxy, to a biblical exposition heavily influenced by Luther, without necessarily marking the difference. Thomas More recognized this likelihood in The Confutacyon of Tyndale’s answere (STC 18079, 1532): many good symple folke byleuynge that these men [e.g. Frith and Tyndale] neyther saye nor meane so euyll as they be borne in hande / and longyng therfore to rede theyr bokes and se the thynge them selfe, be fyrste infecte wyth some heresyes that seme not at the fyrste intolerable / ere euer they come at the greatest / and then beynge before infecte wyth the lesse, they fall at laste to bere the greater.8

As More observed, diffuse reading habits were driven both by a longing for scriptural translation and by curiosity. Ryrie argues that it was essential for those who later came to identify as Protestant to have ‘for want of a better word, catholic tastes’, since ‘before 1600 there was relatively little in the way of



Early Printed Tabulae and Constrained Reading’, The Huntington Quarterly 81 (2018), 391–413. 4 Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in Haly Bukes’, pp. 133, 118. 5 Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, ‘Discovering the Renaissance Reader’, in Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge, 2003), p. 9. 6 Peter Marshall, ‘(Re)Defining the English Reformation’, Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 564–86, p. 574. 7 Alexandra da Costa, ‘Selling Forbidden Books: Profit and Ideology in Thomas Godfray’s Evangelical Printing’, Journal of the Early Book Society 19 (2017), 125–148, p. 142. 8 Louis A. Schuster, Richard C. Marius and James P. Lusardi, eds, The Complete Works of St Thomas More vol. 8: The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1973), I. 27.

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practical spiritual advice and exhortation’.9 But, by the same token, readers in the 1520s and 1530s who wished to read unmediated scripture in the vernacular had to turn to either evangelical or earlier, Wycliffite, translations, just as their counterparts had in the fifteenth century.10 Mary Erler has uncovered the histories of anchoress Katherine Manne and Abbess Elizabeth Throckmorton, for example, where ‘though the reading itself is sometimes challenging in content, the readers – one probably lay, one religious – are closely linked with the institutional church’: the anchoress with the Norwich Dominican friary, and the abbess with the Poor Clares in Cambridgeshire.11 In 1529 Katherine Manne received a copy of Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man and his New Testament from Thomas Bilney, and Elizabeth Throckmorton requested a copy of Erasmus’s Enchiridion, translated by Tyndale, from Humphrey Monmouth at some point prior to 1528. According to Erler, ‘a wish to share in the period’s re-examination of spiritual life and observances’ led these and other readers embedded within the traditional church into encounters with a wide range of books and religious positions.12 Equally, those who committed themselves to heterodoxy continued to engage with traditional works, such as the imprisoned Anne Askew, who (according to Bale) had with her a book with which her interrogator, Archdeacon John Wymesley, ‘coulde fynde no faulte therin’.13 Readers such as these would have received invitations to belong to multiple reading communities and to adopt their hermeneutic principles, regardless of their personal beliefs.14

9 Alec Ryrie, Being Protestant in Reformation Britain (Oxford, 2014), p. 284. 10 See Ralph Hanna’s explanation for the ‘huge success’ of the Lollard Bible in the fifteenth century: Hanna, ‘English Biblical Texts before Lollardy and Their Fate’, in Lollards and Their Influence in Late Medieval England, ed. Fiona Somerset, Jill Havens, and Derrick Pitard (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 141–54, at pp. 151–2. 11 Mary Erler, ‘Heterodoxy: Anchoress Katherine Manne and Abbess Elizabeth Throckmorton’, in Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 100–16, p. 100. 12 Ibid., p. 107. 13 Elaine Beilin, ed., The Examinations of Anne Askew (Oxford, 1996), pp. 42–43. Anthony Grafton gives similar examples of ‘Renaissance readers [who] bought and appreciated a very wide range of texts, some of them in no sense classical or humanist’: Grafton, ‘The Humanist as Reader’, in A History of Reading in the West, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier (Oxford, 1999), pp. 179–212, p. 206. 14 I focus here on print as the most likely means by which a large number of readers would have encountered different reading strategies. Of course, manuscript continued to be an important means of publication for most of the Reformation, and some readers will have become aware of tensions between interpretative principles through this means, or via a mix of print and manuscript texts. These tensions were not always between the orthodox and the heterodox. For example, the two men who bought Tyndale’s New Testament from Robert Barnes in 1526, because its English was better than their Wycliffite manuscript translation, would have found points of difference between them. See

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‘Delectable doctrine ... feadinge vs with milke’ In 1516 John Froben printed Erasmus’s Paraclesis as the preface to his New Testament in Greek and Latin (USTC 678727). Thirteen years later, Johannes Hoochstraten printed an English translation of the Paraclesis by William Roye, under the title ‘An exhortation to the diligent studye of scripture’, along with Luther’s exposition of 1 Corinthians 7 (STC 10493), albeit unattributed.15 It yoked together ‘for the first and last time [...] between the covers of the same book, Erasmus and Luther, thereby suggesting [...] a compatibility and harmony of thought and ideology that neither figure would have been prepared to credit’.16 There was, however, little connection between the two works, with one justifying biblical study and the other focused on the exegesis of an epistle on marriage. In 1534 Wyer created a much more coherent edition of the Paraclesis, pairing it with ‘An exhortacyon to the study of the Gospell’ (STC 10494), a translation of Erasmus’s preface to his Paraphrasis in Evangelium Matthaei (USTC 651159, 1522).17 Along with Tyndale’s A pathway into the holy scripture (STC 24463, 1536?), these texts offered early sixteenth-century readers the only stand-alone guidance on how to read the Bible. Erasmus was strikingly confident in the ability of the reader to understand the Bible. In the Studye of scripture, readers would have found reassurance that, unlike the ‘darke / craftye / and contentious’ books of men’s wits, scripture would adapt to them. They need only ‘bringe a godly and redy minde / cheflye endewed with plaine and pure faithe’ (STC 10493, 1529, fol. 4r) and there would be no risk of them misunderstanding, for: this delectable doctrine doth applye hersilf equalye to all men submittinge hersilf vnto vs / while we are childer / temperinge her tune after oure capacyte / feadinge vs with milke [...] vntill we may encreasse / wex greater in Christ. (fol. 4r)18

Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1997), p. 60. 15 Hereafter referred to as the Studye of scripture. 16 Douglas Parker, ed., William Roye’s an Exhortation to the Diligent Studye of Scripture and an Exposition in to the Seventh Chaptre of the Pistle to the Corinthians (Toronto, 2000), p. 4. 17 Hereafter referred to as the Study of the Gospell. 18 Rita Copeland observes that the division between literal and allegorical understanding was a medieval commonplace, ‘aided by its incorporation into theological imagery about spiritual infancy and adulthood, deriving especially from the scriptural topos of milk feeding for new converts to Christ and solid food for the spiritually advanced’: see Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 72–97 (p. 72).

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Indeed, the Studye of scripture offered encouragement that the Bible was not just for metaphorical children, but should be taught to all, ‘beinge yet tender infantes in oure parentes armes / and wanton children at oure nurses tete’ (sig. A5r).19 In this, Erasmus was in accord with the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, which also exhorted that ‘cristen men and wymmen, elde and ȝonge, shulden studie faste in ye newe testament’. But whereas the latter immediately acknowledged that the New Testament might only be ‘opene to vndurstonde of simple men as to þe poyntis þat ben moost needful to saluacioun’, and offered interpretative rules largely drawn from Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana and Nicholas of Lyra’s Postillae, Erasmus was more reticent in acknowledging the potential for interpretative difficulty.20 He hinted at this only by acknowledging that ‘to the childer she [scripture] is lowe and playne / and to greatter / she seameth above all capacite’ (fol. 4v) and by urging those ‘that cometh behinde’ in their understanding not to ‘envye the foremoste’ (fol. 5r). This position was modified a little in the Study of the Gospell, which recognized that support was needed to make men ‘somwhat more mete for the readynge of holy scrypture’ (sig. g4r). To this end it advocates that the ‘summe of the chrystyan faythe’ drawn from the Gospel, Epistles, and Creed should be preached annually, plainly, and clearly (sig. g4r), and that all the baptised should be examined to see ‘whether they vnderstode wel and remembred such thynges, which the preest had taughte theym’ (sig. g5r). In addition, the Study of the Gospell encourages ‘euery man [to] fede & norysshe his owne mynde with priuate redynge of the Gospell’ (sig. e8r), and if confused to ‘aske counsell of thy neyghbour’ (sig. f2v), or else come ‘redelye prepared’ by such preliminary reading to a sermon on the passage, which would help him ‘the more easely perceyue’ the meaning (sig. e3v), especially if struggling with the ‘the darkenes and obscurytie’ of the Old Testament (sig. e3r). In this way, a combination of solitary study, peer discussion, sermon exegesis, and (proposed) examination was intended to help the reader progress. Erasmus is famous for wishing that ‘the ploughman & husbandeman of the countrey shall reade scrypture, the carpenter, ye smyth, the mason, yea & harlottes also, and bawdes shall reade it’ (sig. e2v), but this should not obscure his emphasis on scholarly reading by all. As the Study of the Gospell advises: let hym reade soberly, let hym rede, and not rechelesly, as yf he wolde reade an hystory of any man, whiche dyd nothynge appertayne, or belonge to hym: but let hym rede here with great desyre, with good attencyon, & also contynually as a holy & deuout scoler of Christ [...] Let hym marke and take hede what he

19 The first quire lacks signatures and is referred to by folio number. 20 ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, in Mary Dove, ed., The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate (Exeter, 2010), pp. 3–86 (pp. 5, 63–86).

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Readers of the Study of the Gospell would have taken away a strong sense of the systematic labour required in attentively reading scripture. ‘The dayly bredde of the soule’ As we shall see, Tyndale emphasized this same message, but when he first (partially) published his New Testament in Cologne in 1525 (STC 2823), Erasmus’s views on scriptural study had yet to be published in English. Thus, it would have been Tyndale’s own preface that would have shaped the earliest encounters with his translation. This preface was loosely based on Luther’s Vorrhede to his 1522 New Testament.21 Among the many additions he made were three paragraphs explaining that he had made the translation for his readers’ ‘spirituall edyfyinge / consolacion / and solas’ (sig. A2r). While this tripartite formulation suggested to readers that scriptural reading would affect them emotionally, it prioritized the effect that it would have on their understanding. In keeping with this, Tyndale also added the advice that readers should learn the meanings of key words, lest they ‘fall from meke lernynge into ydle despiciouns / braulinge and scoldynge’ (sig. A2v). When he revised this preface to create A pathway into the holy scripture some years later, he made the point more forcefully still, promising that with this knowledge the reader ‘canste nat but vnderstande’, whereas ‘in these thinges to be ignorante / is to haue all the scripture locked vp’. Understanding these terms was the sole requirement for the ‘laye & vnlerned peple [to] rede the scripture and vnderstande and delyte therin’ (sig. D4r–v). In his concluding address ‘To the Reder’ in the Worms New Testament (STC 2824) in 1526, Tyndale made similar points. In what David Daniell calls ‘a miniature instruction-manual for reading the New Testament’,22 he required the reader to approach the text with ‘diligence’ and to undertake a studious comparison of the ‘playne and manyfest places of the scriptures’ with the ‘doutfull places’ in order better to understand the latter (sig. 2T1v). This made explicit what Erasmus may have meant by searching ‘for the perceyuyng of eche thynge’. Like Erasmus too, the practices which Tyndale required were drawn from the schoolroom – the reader was repeatedly exhorted to ‘marke’ and to ‘note’ (sig. 2T1v) – and the future improvements Tyndale hoped to make were as much to do with providing scholarly apparatus to assist the reader as with improving the translation. He planned to add ‘a table to expounde the wordes 21 David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (London, 1994), pp. 119–24. 22 Ibid., p. 148.

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which are nott commenly vsed / and shewe howe the scripture vseth many wordes / which are wother wyse vnderstonde of the commen people: and to helpe with a declaracion where one tonge taketh nott another’ (sig. 2T2v). He imagined a division between those readers (of ‘the commen people’) who would benefit from such tools and the ‘learned and able’ who could help with the improvements (sig. 2T2v), since the reading practices he wished to inculcate were exactly those of the learned: careful, systematic, and comparative. In Tyndale’s earliest works we can see a nascent example of how ‘Protestant humanism preached the need and fostered the skills for a new criticism – the capacity to hear and to read, to compare and conflate, to discern and apply meaning.’23 In A compendious introduccion / prologe or preface vnto the pistle off Paul to the Romayns (1526, STC 24438), Tyndale elucidated how those practices might become part of a daily habit. Following Luther’s Vorrhede auf die Epistel Sanct Paulus zu den Romern, he unpacked what both saw as the ‘most excellent part off the newe testament [...] a lyghte and a waye in vnto the whole scripture’ (sig. a2r). Tyndale translated Luther verbatim in advocating a reading strategy that emphasized rote learning and habitual consultation: I thinke it mete / that every christen man not only knowe it [the epistle] by roote and with oute the boke / but also exercice hymsylfe therin evermore continually / as with the dayly bredde of the soule. No man verely can reede it to ofte or studie it to well for the moar it ys studied the easier it is / the moare it is cheued the pleasander it is / and the moare grundely it is sherched the precioser thynges are found in it. (sig. a2r)

However, whereas Luther only made mention of habitual and continual study (‘gemeyn vnd stettig ynn vbungen seyn’ (sig. A6r)) Tyndale clarified that studying the epistle should occupy ‘every man withoute excepcion [...] nyghte and daye continually’ (sig. c1v).24 Tyndale gave little space in his Preface vnto the pistle off Paul to meditation and prayer in his readers’ daily practice. Only a trace of lectio divina remained in the labelling of Paul’s letter (following Luther) as ‘the dayly bredde of the soul’, with its allusion to meditation on its meaning as the chewing of the bread by which it might become ‘pleasander’ in the process, revealing God’s word. Similarly, while the idea of the reader exercising ‘hymsylfe therin’ hinted that understanding was only the first step towards inner reform – an allusion perhaps to Hugh of Saint-Victor’s schema in which operatio followed on from 23 Sharpe and Zwicker, ‘Discovering the Renaissance Reader’, pp. 5–6. 24 Das Newe Testament Deutzch [Septembertestament] Übersetzt von Martin Luther. Wittenberg, 1522, online in Deutsches Textarchiv [accessed 24 June 2018].

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lectio, meditatio and oratio, preceding contemplatio – Tyndale passed over this, focusing instead on the mechanics of gaining understanding, with reading, remembering by heart, studying, and searching central.25 As in the preface to his Cologne New Testament, he instructed the reader to ‘accoynte’ (sig. a4r) or ‘marke diligently the maner off speakynge of the Apostle’ and, adapting Luther a little, warned them that without that knowledge ‘rede thou it never so ofte / thou shalt but loose thy laboure’ (sig. a2r).26 The definitions in the preface to the New Testament had included some references to other books of scripture, but Tyndale included many more in this new work, helping the reader to gain a ‘concordance-like knowledge of the Scriptures’.27 These references were not intended merely to give his writing authority, but to guide the reader’s crossreferencing, and he clearly expected them to follow up, since at one point he referred explicitly to the reader’s wider study concerning the gift of ‘Fayth’: ‘as thou redest in the fyrste off Jhon’ (sig. a6v). For Tyndale, reading the New Testament had to be a studious process before all else, and he seems to have distrusted unfettered meditatio. He referred to reading without an understanding of key terms as ‘wodwyse’ (STC 24438, sig. a8r), and rebuked readers who might want to ponder complex matters such as predestination, calling them ‘vnquiett / busie and hye climyng sprites’, and warning ‘thou canst never meadle [...] withoute thine awne harme’ in that matter (sig. b7v). Departing from Luther, he went on to draw an implicit comparison between such matters that he described metaphorically as ‘stronge wyne’ and the ‘dayly bredde of the soule’ of Paul’s letter to the Romans. He warned the reader: Take hede therfore vnto thy silfe / that thou drinke not wyne / wile thou art yet but a sucklinge. For every lerninge hath hyr tyme measure and age / and in Christ is there a certayne childhod / in which a man must be content with milke for a ceason / vntill he wax strong / and growe vppe / vnto a perfecte man in christe / and be able to eate of moare stronge meate. (STC 24438, sig. b8r)

The trope of the laity being spiritual children requiring a careful diet was commonplace and more often used by opponents to biblical translation, so Tyndale’s use was in part a defence of the Bible as fit for lay consumption. However, by focusing on drink (milke / wyne) rather than food, Tyndale betrayed an 25 Jerome Taylor, trans., The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts (New York, 1991), pp. 132–3. 26 ‘On solchen verstand diser wortter/ wirstu dise Epistel sanct Pauli / noch keyn buch der heyligen schrifft nymer verstehen.’ (sig. A3r: ‘Without such a grasp of these words, you will never understand this letter of St Paul, nor any other book of Holy Scripture.’) Euan K. Cameron, ed., The Annotated Luther, Volume 6: The Interpretation of Scripture (Minneapolis, 2017), p. 471. 27 Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in Haly Bukes’, p. 117.

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anxiety shared with conservative opponents about the intoxicating effect of reading the Bible, and thinking without restriction about its implications. In this Tyndale was closer to More’s position than Erasmus’s on lay interpretation, since – as discussed above – the latter had faith that Scripture would adapt to the ability of the reader, offering the novice metaphorical milk until they ‘wex greater in Christ’, reducing the risk of unrestrained appetites. Tyndale largely favoured metaphors that portrayed scripture as providing light to see by, perhaps because of his worry about incautious readers, rather than those that depicted scripture as being ingested and transforming the reader from within. When he did use the latter, it was always with qualification. For instance, when he invoked the metaphor of ingestion in the prefatory material to The newe Testament, dylygently corrected (1534, STC 2826), he revealed an increased distrust of lay reading and a greater determination to steer it. He still encouraged a scholarly approach in his readers, insisting that ‘where the text semeth at the fyrst choppe harde to be vnderstonde / yet ye circumstances before and after / and often readinge together / maketh it playne ynough’ (sig. *2r). However, whereas he had previously relied upon the reader’s restraint and determination to ‘content’ himself with spiritual milk while yet a ‘sucklinge’, he now gave himself a guiding role in the reading process: (that I myght be founde faythfull to my father & lorde in distributinge vnto my brethren & felowes of one fayth / their due & necessarye fode: so dressinge it & ceasoninge it / that the weake stomackes maye receave it also / and be ye better for it) I thought it my dutye (most deare reader) to warne the before / & to shew the right waye in / & to geve the ye true keye to open it with all. (sig. *2r–2v)

He made his preparation of the text for their digestion – its ‘dressinge’ and ‘ceasoninge’ with prefatory material and explanatory terms – essential to its healthful reception. And, as if to further guard against readers approaching the New Testament in too free a fashion, he immediately used another metaphor that implied careful restriction, emphasizing one ‘right waye’ of approaching the Bible and his role as its gatekeeper, proffering ‘ye true keye to open it with all’. In a similar fashion, when Tyndale used the metaphor of ingestion in the preface to his translation of Genesis (1534, STC 2351), he mixed it with the metaphor of scriptural reading as medicine: It is not ynough therfore to reade and talke of it only, but we must also desire god daye and night instantly to open oure eyes, and to make vs vnderstond and feale wherfore the scripture was geuen that we maye applye the medicine of the scripture, euery man to his awne sores, inlesse then we entend to be ydle disputers, and braulers aboute vayne wordes, euer gnawenge vppon the bitter barcke without and neuer attayninge vnto the swete pith within. (sig. A2r)

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In this depiction, the object of reading is to release ‘the swete pith’ from the ‘bitter barcke without’, but for healing rather than nourishment. Both could be classified as the nurturing benefits of scriptural reading but, by emphasizing the medicinal, Tyndale shifted the reader’s imagination away from the sensual delight of tasting this ‘swete pith’ to the visceral image of applying it to their ‘awne sores’. Tyndale’s pessimistic vision of the kind of reading that might occur without both guidance and God’s grace – with the reader forever caught up in pointless ruminatio (‘euer gnawenge’) – drove him to be cautious in invoking the ‘familiar alimentary metaphors’ for scriptural reading.28 The idea of disordered taste is implicit in the image of a reader fixated on the ‘bitter barcke’, and some years later Tyndale developed this metaphor for perverse reading further. In An answere vnto Sir Thomas Mores dialoge (STC 24437, 1531), he approaches the question of how to read so as to ‘applye the medicine of the scripture’ by introducing the need for discernment, warning: the holye gost shall come and rebuke the worlde of iudgement. That is / he shall rebuke the worlde for lacke of true iudgement and discrecyon to iudge / and shall proue that the taste of their mouthes is corrupte / so that they iudge swete to be sowre and sowre to be swete / and their yies to be blinde. (fol. 1v)

He then gives examples of the slavish performance of devotional acts without attention to God’s intention, such as the Charterhouse monks who abstain from meat ‘but will powre in ale and bere of ye strongest without measure’ (fol. 3v). Having criticized the man who lets ‘ceremonyes & sacramentes [...] captiu[ate] his witte & vnderstondinge [...] without askinge what they meane’ (fol. 3v), Tyndale goes on to demand something different of his readers, continually comparing scriptural example with current practice: Iudge therefore reader [...] And agenst the m[is]t of their sophistrye take the ensamples that are past in the olde testament and autentike storyes and the present practise which thou seist before thyne yies. (fol. 4r)

‘Judge’, he repeatedly exhorts them. This method of reading scripture was about discerning meaning; it was emphatically a cognitive rather than affective response, one that required wit and understanding. It also gave a place to reading the Bible not just for salvation, but ‘as a source of historical evidence against the Catholic Church’.29

28 Duncan Robertson, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading (Trappist, KY, 2011), p. 205. 29 David Weil Baker, ‘The Historical Faith of William Tyndale: Non-Salvific Reading of Scripture at the Outset of the English Reformation’, Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009), 661–92, p. 661.

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‘Redynge ... as moste may norysshe and encrease deuocyon’ More recognized this threat in A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, arguing that heretical books directly affected devotional practices: And this fynde we more than to mych proued here amonge vs / that of .x. that vse to rede hys bokys / ye shall scantly fynd twayn / but that they [...] caste of prayer and fastynge and all such godly vertues as holy scrypture commendeth / and the chyrch commaundeth.30

It is clear that More perceived the threat as stemming not just from Tyndale’s polemical arguments but from the type of reading he advocated, for in his Confutacyon of Tyndales answere he threw Tyndale’s accusation back at him, suggesting that the way he and other evangelicals would have the laity read would confuse their taste and interfere with their ability to discern the truth. He lamented that ‘folke beginne now to delyte in fedyng theyr soules of the venemouse caryn of those poysened heresyses’ (p. 3); that purchasers of smuggled heretical books ‘kepe them in hukermoker, & secretely poysen them selfe wenynge the bokes were very good whyle they rede but them alone’ (p. 36); and that nothing ‘can hold [their] ycchynge fyngers frome theyre poysened bokes’ (p.  39). In this way, he characterized evangelical readers as gluttons, secretly eating, unable to refrain or discern the corrupt from the good. Finally, explicitly picking up on the idea of confused taste, More exhorted the reader tempted by evangelical books: not to fall sodenly so dronke in the new muste of theyre newefangled neweltyes, that the olde holsome wyne with whych good folke haue lyued now this fyften hundred yere, offend theyr dronken taste, bycause yt is not so walow swete but drynketh more of ye verder. (p. 39)

Thus, he contrasted the ‘nauseating’ sweetness (‘walow swete’) of heretical material with the ‘pleasing sharpness’ (‘verder’) of orthodox works, recalling Aquinas’s description of Christ’s way as initially bitter and hard (‘amara et dura’) but leading to greater sweetness (‘maiorem suavitatem’).31 Mary Carruthers has demonstrated that in theological discourse ‘“sweetness” was profoundly ambivalent and morally difficult’, and More may have had in mind Augustine’s advice on rhetoric in De Doctrina Christiana: ‘We often have to 30 Thomas Lawler, Germain Marc’hadour, and Richard C. Marius, eds, The Complete Works of St Thomas More vol. 6: A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1981), I. 348. 31 Middle English Dictionary, s.v. ‘walwe (adj.)’; ‘verdure (n.)’ [accessed 4 June 2018]. I am grateful to Laura Ashe for pointing out this analogue. Raphaelis Cai, ed., Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura S. Thomae Aquinatis (Marietti, 1972), p. 72: caput 2, lectio 1, 363.

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take bitter medicines, and we must always avoid sweet things that are dangerous, but what better than sweet things that give health, or medicines that are sweet.’32 In addition to the sickly sweet persuasion of ‘newefangled neweltyes’, More may have been alluding to the long-standing idea that scriptural reading could be dangerously sweet. Mishtooni Bose has drawn attention to how Pecock, for example, warned against ‘the unhealthy imbalance’ of a ‘hermeneutic diet’ in which scripture is ‘all that is eaten’.33 In contrast to the ‘walow swete’ of heretical works, More described his own work as ‘tryacle’, an emetic antidote to their ‘poysened draught[s]’ (p. 38).34 This is the context for an oft-quoted passage in which More recommends that the laity ‘occypy them selfe beside theyr other busynesse in prayour, good medytacyon, and redynge of such englysshe bookes as moste may norysshe and encrease deuocyon’ (Confutation, I. 37). As has frequently been noted, he gave three examples of texts which he thought would achieve that aim: Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Life of Christ, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and Thomas à Kempis’s Following of Christ (though attributed to Jean Gerson). John Thompson points out that by making these recommendations, ‘More repurposed older and completely orthodox religious reading materials [...] as an institutional bolster in the defence of an English church assailed by the threat of heresy’. In particular, ‘Love’s Mirror [...] offered More a comfortable and safe, inward-leaning and carefully regulated English biblical version’ with which to counteract the threat of Tyndale’s New Testament.35 However, in choosing these books, More was not just recommending what the laity should read but how they should read, for each had something to say about the matter. In the Scale of Perfection and the Following of Christ, readers would have found a sceptical attitude towards book learning and an emphasis on its limitations. As is well known, Hilton regarded ‘knowynge of god & ghostly thynges goten by reason / by techynge of man / & by study in holy wryte without ghostly 32 Mary Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, Speculum 81 (2006), 999–1013, p. 1003. Caruthers draws attention to this passage in Augustine on p. 1009. Translation from Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed./trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford, 1995), p. 205. 33 Mishtooni Bose, ‘Reversing the Life of Christ: Dissent, Orthodoxy, and Affectivity in Late Medieval England’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Ian Johnson and Alan Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 55–77, p. 70. 34 Although MED, s.v. ‘triacle (n.)’, gives only ‘an antidote for poison or venom’, Carruthers suggests that the word may have begun to gain its sweet associations by the midfourteenth century, noting the Harley lyric Annot and John’s juxtaposition ‘trewe triacle ... such licoris ... such sucre’: Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, 1010–11; but cf. OED, s.v. ‘treacle, n.’ distinguishing between the ‘original, obsolete’ meaning and the modern one. 35 John Thompson, ‘Love in the 1530s’, in Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Carol Meale and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 191–201, at pp. 196–8.

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affecyon’ (sig. a5v) as the lowest stage in the contemplative life. Specifically attributing this part to ‘lettred men & grete clerkes’ engaged in ‘longe study & trauayle in holy wryte’ (sig. a5v), he warned (following 1 Corinthians 8) that ‘knowlege alone lyfteth vp ye herte into pryde’ and that it required charity for it to turn ‘into edifycacyon’ (sig. a6r). In contrast, Hilton gave a higher value to the affective responses of ‘symple & vnlettred men’ felt in ‘meditacyon of god’, such as ‘by ye mynde of Chrystes passion / or ony of his werkes in his manhode’ (sig. a6v). Readers would have found a similar rejection of scholarly pride in the translations of Thomas à Kempis’s De Imitatione Christi. He elaborated on 1 Corinthians 13 to argue: I had leuer fele compunctyon of herte for my synnes / then oonly to knowe the dyffynycyon of compunctyon. Yf thou couldest al the Byble without the boke: and also the seyngs of all Phylosophers by herte what shulde it profyte the without grace & charytie. (STC 23961, sig. b1v)36

Rather than studying books, Thomas encouraged readers to ‘studye to conforme’ to the pattern Christ established: let al the study of our herte be therfore from hensforth to haue our medytacyon holy fyxed in the lyfe / and in the holy techyngs of Ihesu cryste [...] yf we wyll haue the trewe vnderstandyng of Crystes gospellys we muste studye to conforme our lyfe to his lyfe [...] Also haue this common prouerbe ofte in thy mynde / that the iye is not satysffyed ne fully pleasyd with the syght of any bodely thynge / ne the eare with herynge. And therfore studye to withdrawe the loue of thy soule from all thynges that ben vysyble / and tourne it to thynges that be inuysyble. (STC 23961, fols. 1r–2r)

In encouraging the reader to turn away from ‘all thynges that ben vysyble’ and emphasizing the illusory satisfaction of anything merely seen or heard, 36 The first English translation of the Imitatio Christi exists only in manuscript. The second was printed at the ‘specyall request and commaundemenent’ of Margaret Beaufort, and consisted of William Atkynson’s translation of the first three books and her own translation of the fourth (STC 23954.7, 1504; STC 23955, 1504?; STC 23956, 1519?; STC 23957, 1517; STC 23958, 1517; STC 23960, 1528?). The third (anonymous) translation was first printed around 1531 (STC 23961) and went through six further editions in Henry VIII’s reign alone (STC 23962, 1531?; STC 23963, 1531?; STC 23964, 1531?; STC 23964.3, 1531?; STC 23964.7, 1535?; STC 23965, 1545?). Robert Wyer also published an excerpted version (STC 23968.5). See B. J. H. Biggs, ed., The Imitation of Christ: The First English Translation of the ‘Imitatio Christi’, EETS 309 (Oxford, 1997), p. vii. I quote the anonymous translation here, which follows the Latin closely, unlike Atkynson’s looser version, and is clearer on this point than the text of the EETS edition (from Cambridge University Library, MS Gg. i. 16, which has ‘I desire more to knowe compunccioun then his diffinicion’ (p. 4).

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Thomas implicitly brought into question the value of focusing too closely on texts, either through oral or visual reception. He develops this idea more explicitly two chapters later, when he questions the value of book learning by reminding the reader that ‘at the daye of Iugemente it shall not be askyd of vs what we haue red / but what we haue done’ (fol. 5r) and argues that those whose ‘lyfe hadde accordyd well with theyr lernyng [...] then had they well studyed and redde’ (fol. 5v). He reiterated this idea throughout Book 1. The object of reading for Thomas was to learn how to conform to the example of Christ; anything else was vanity. In Nicholas Love’s Mirror the reader would have found the apotheosis of this approach to reading, since for Love, the profit in lay reading was to be found primarily in the meditation it prompted rather than the knowledge of the book itself. The purpose of reading was to develop readers’ ability to ‘bene more proprely in cristes body by deuoute meditacion of his blessed lif. þan in hir awne bodies’: þou þat coueytest to fele treuly þe fruyt of þis boke. þou most with all þi þought & alle þin entent, in þat manere make þe in þi soule present to þoo þinges þat bene here writen seyd or done of oure lord Jesu, & þat bisily, likyngly & abydyngly, as þei þou hardest hem with þi bodily eres, or sey þaim with þin eyen don. puttyng awey for þe tyme, & leuyng alle oþer occupacions & bisynesses.37

Love demands attention from readers (‘all thy thought and all thyn entent’), but the focus is to be on an immersive imaginative experience of Christ, rather than on the text itself. Indeed, the aim is for the real world, including the text, to drop away, so that the words read become the heard voice of Christ and the eyes see him rather than the page. As Gillespie memorably puts it, ‘this focusing on specific aspects of the suffering of Christ marks a shift from lectio divina to lectio Domini [...] a consciously willed alteration of approach away from rumination on a text towards rumination on an image’.38 A similar displacement was encouraged by John Fewterer in his translation of Ulrich Pinder’s Speculum Passionis, another text in the Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition.39 Like Love’s Mirror, The Myrrour or Glasse of Christes 37 Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter, 2004), pp. 12–13. 38 Vincent Gillespie, ‘Strange Images of Death: The Passion in Later Medieval English Devotional and Mystical Writing’, in Looking in Holy Books, pp. 209–242, p. 211. 39 For the relationship between Fewterer’s translation and the original see da Costa, ‘John Fewterer’s Myrrour or Glasse of Christes Passion and Ulrich Pinder’s Speculum Passionis’, Notes & Queries 56 (2009), 27–9; and ‘Defending Orthodoxy: Ulrich Pinder’s Speculum Passionis; and Fewterer’s Myrrour or Glasse of Christes Passion’, in Ian Johnson and Alan Westphall, eds, Geographies of Orthodoxy: Opening the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Middle English Lives of Christ (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 393–424.

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Passion (1534, STC 14553) attempted ‘to awake in English readers an enhanced affective awareness by focusing inwardly on the physical reality of Christ’s life and passion’.40 The aim of the text was to make the physical reality of Christ’s passion so vivid that the book would fade away, becoming merely the means by which the reader would learn to see Christ ‘nayled fast vnto the cross and spred abrode on ye same as a boke open wherin we myght rede and lerne howe to do penaunce’ (sig. +4r).41 In Ryan Perry’s words, ‘meditatio [...] becomes a matter for emotional and/or imitative response, as opposed to even the most basic hermeneutic cogitatio of scriptural material by the reader or hearer’.42 Moreover, as Gillespie argues, in contrast to Tyndale’s singular ‘right waye’ of reading, such meditations allowed ‘the book [of Christ] to be glossed and elaborated upon by the imaginative recreation of the sufferings and death of Christ in a freer [...] way’.43 Of course, the attitudes of these writers to learning were more complex than this brief sketch suggests. Mishtooni Bose astutely points out, for example, that: For all the rapture [of Love’s Mirror ...] and for all its reliance on miracles of the Sacrament, evocations of the marvellous, and of nourishment are accompanied here by rationes (arguments, including those about the limits of reason), causae (‘skilles’), quaestiones (‘whi may he not also by þe self miht turn brede in to his body?’).44

Nevertheless, these three texts seem to have been chosen by More because of their shared encouragement of lay reading directed to the production of affect and moral reform, rather than an intellectual response. By focusing attention on the ‘godly vertues’ of prayer, meditation, and conforming to Christ’s example rather than reading widely, they could be used to curtail the threat presented by Tyndale’s reading model.

40 John Thompson, ‘Love in the 1530s’, p. 194. 41 ‘Et quantum diligat genus humanum pro quo saluandum filium suum sic durissime passioni: sic amarissime morti exposiit: quam carum haberet celum quod nisi per mortem filii sui homibus voluit apire: quantum desiderat: & amat penitentiam hominum: ad quam docendam filium suum quasi quendam librum suum scriptum in cruce coram oculis omnium expandi voluit.’ (Speculum passionis domini nostri Jhesu Christi, USTC 694281, sig. A2r). 42 Ryan Perry, ‘“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 Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Ian Johnson and Alan Westphall (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 79–126, p. 88. 43 Gillespie, ‘Strange Images of Death’, p. 214. 44 Bose, ‘Reversing the Life of Christ’, p. 74.

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‘Grete frute withoute eny grete glose’ Throughout these works writers return repeatedly to ‘the familiar alimentary metaphors’ for reading scripture: ‘“mastication”, “rumination”, and “digestion,”’ are evoked in Erasmus’s delectable doctrine, in More’s nourishing reading, and in Tyndale’s daily bread of the soul.45 To repurpose Bose’s words, these writers vie for ‘ownership of a set of discursive positions established long before [...] that had long been common ground among scholastic theologians’.46 Frustratingly, we cannot recover whether contemporary readers would have been troubled by the tensions between the reading models they encountered. Would they have ignored those that pleased them least? The Cheese and the Worms has offered one example of how readers construed and remembered books in ways that suited their existing ways of thought, creating great gaps in their understanding and departing radically from the interpretative practices advocated by the authors they encountered.47 As Eugene Kintgen argues, ‘the very fact that an author recommends a particular strategy for reading indicates that someone was capable of reading that way; but the fact that he has to recommend it also suggests that many people, perhaps most, were not already reading that way’.48 Might readers have felt free to choose between strategies ‘contingent on situational constraints as well as such changing and often difficult to determine variables as [their] ability, inclination, and background’?49 Jesse Mann’s study of Juan de Segovia’s reading of the Bible in the fifteenth century suggests the latter. He argues, concerning the analogous issue of different ways of reading within devotio moderna, that while there is a ‘tension (some might say a conflict)’ between reading for devotion (what Thomas Kock calls ‘devoterbaulichen Texten’) and reading for philological understanding (‘wissenschaftlich-philologischen Texten’) that Juan ‘read Scripture both as a scholar and as one seeking spiritual solace and insight’.50 Anthony Grafton makes a similar point about Giannozzo Manetti, who in the fifteenth century ‘read the Hebrew Bible as a humanist, using the best tools of philology to restore 45 Robertson, Lectio Divina, p. 205. 46 Bose, ‘Reversing the Life of Christ’, p. 56. 47 Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (London, 1980). 48 Eugene Kintgen, ‘Reconstructing Elizabethan Reading’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 30 (1990), 1–18, p. 13. Quoted by Stephen Dobranski, Readers and Authorship in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2005), p. 34. 49 Dobranski, Readers and Authorship, p. 34. 50 Jesse Mann, ‘Reading the Bible in the Fifteenth Century: The Case of Juan de Segovia’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 43 (2017), 115–34, 125, 127. Mann quotes Thomas Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna: Handschriftenproduktion, Literaturversorgung und Bibliotheksaufbau im Zeitalter des Medienwechsels (Frankfurt, 1999), p. 139.

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the original sense’, but could ‘also read it in the utterly traditional way of the mendicant preacher [...] to predict a terrible fate for a dishonest businessman’. These examples make evident that ‘the very same reader may read the very same text in different ways with different aims and to differing effect’.51 George Joye certainly recognized that the laity might read differently from how either Erasmus or Tyndale desired. After Tyndale, Joye was the most significant translator of scripture into English. In addition to his famously controversial revision of Tyndale’s New Testament in 1526, he offered English readers Isaiah (STC 2777, 1531), Jeremiah (STC 2778, 1534), Proverbs (STC 2752, Pt.1, 1534), and Ecclesiastes (STC 2752, Pt.2, 1534).52 Unlike Tyndale, Joye was much more confident in his readers’ ability to profit from scriptural reading without assistance, and frequently invoked unqualified metaphors of nourishment. In the prologue to The Prophete Isaye he assured them that they could ‘reade him for the moste parte gatheringe grete frute withoute eny grete glose’, providing they read with a ‘pure harte purged from all carnall affects askynge vnderstandinge of god’ (sig. A5v). Similarly, in the preface to Ieremy the prophete, he promised that ‘whoso in reding the lawe & Prophets / directe his inwarde eye to beholde & knowe our hevenly father [...] readeth a right with grete frute’ (sig. A2r).53 Although he exhorted diligence in both his translation of Isaiah and Jeremiah,54 he did so without specifying how the reader should accomplish this, instead invoking God’s aid in a much more explicit fashion than Tyndale: to heare faithfully [Isaiah] / to reade frely & diligently / to vnderstande truly / graunte vs our mercyful father which wolde al his electe to be saued & come to the knowlege of ye truthe by his spirit of truthe. Amen. (Isaye, sig. A7v) [God] geue vs grace so to rede and hear this Prophete that he mought preache vnto vs with more frute thou [sic] he preched to the Iwes. Amen. (Ieremy, sig. A7v)

There was no need to fear scriptural misunderstanding, for: in the Prophetis sermons there is no siche hardnes & difficultye as some men complayneth of / except ye sloughisshe & sleapye reder nothinge excercysing 51 Grafton, ‘The Humanist as Reader’, p. 206; Mann, ‘Reading the Bible’, p. 127. 52 This was in addition to a psalter (STC 2370–74), two primers (STC 15986, revised as 15988, 15988a), and the Ortulus anime (STC 13828.4). 53 I am grateful to Laura Ashe for pointing out that this echoes Augustine’s reassurance in De Doctrina Christiana that ‘anyone who derives from [scripture] an idea which is useful for supporting … love [of God and neighbour], but fails to say what the writer demonstrably meant in the passage, has not made a fatal error, and is certainly not a liar’: trans. Green, p. 49. 54 ‘Let vs therefore with thankes heare & reade this godly Prophete diligently’ (Isaye, sig. A3v); ‘he [Peter] exhorteth vs diligently to attende’ (Ieremy, sig. A7r).

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alexan dr a da c osta himselfe in readinge diligently & reuerently the holy scriptures bringe it with him / and so himselfe be the very cause why he bringeth awaye so lytel frute in reding them. (sig. A6v; my emphasis)

In Joye’s view, only the most ‘sloghisshe’ and ‘sleapye’ of readers, who made no effort at all, would struggle to profit from reading Jeremiah; even then he seems to have allowed for some benefit, a ‘lytel frute’ to be borne away. In recognizing the need for such assurances, Joye seems to have been more realistic than either Erasmus or Tyndale in imagining how readers would approach the new translations. Ryrie points out that ‘Protestantism’s priority on learning for all Christians was a self-conscious point of separation with Catholicism’.55 That being broadly true, the earliest readers of evangelical translations would have been more used to the kind of reading More advocated than the rigorous private study of Erasmus and Tyndale. Joye makes few recommendations for approaching scripture other than the need for some understanding of historical context, such as ‘ye storye of these .iiii. kinges in whose dayes Isaye prophecyed’ (sig. A7v), which he offers in a single page. On those occasions when Joye emphasizes the labour required of readers, he does so while reassuring the reader of the limits of that challenge. Thus, in a letter to ‘a certayne frende’ that prefaced his translation of An epistle of the prophete Hieremie (STC 2792), he encourages him to ‘not onely rede it / but also exactely and thoroughly to ponder & marke euery poynt therof ’, but this follows the acknowledgement that the ten-folio, octavo pamphlet would require him to bestow just ‘a lytle [...] leasure in the reding of hit’ (sig. A2v). Joye explicitly acknowledges the limited attention span of potential readers in the envoy to his translation of Ecclesiastes, lamenting that ‘many prechers diuersely & to oft prechinge to the people / ar but tediouse vnto them & wery them’ (STC 2752, sig. C8v).56 He implicitly recognizes that such readers would have been attracted by the promise that ‘very chyldren at these Parables might fetche knowlege & counsell’ and that they should be wary of ‘many words mo’ since Solomon had ‘consydered & serched out euery thynge’ already. More­ over, they need exert no effort in understanding his wisdom, since Solomon has ‘studyed [...] dilygently to fynde out profytable and pure speche [...] & wrot the very worde of trewthe frely’.57 Solomon’s diligent labour substitutes 55 Ryrie, Being Protestant, p. 268. 56 For the sake of the truly weary reader he reduced the already succinct Ecclesiastes (consisting of just 24 folios) to a ‘brief conclusion ... Fere god & kepe his commandementes’ (sig. C8v). 57 Cf. Hugh of Saint-Victor: ‘Consider, but refuse to be preoccupied ... Give ear to Solomon, give ear to the Wise Man and learn prudence. “My son,” he says, “more than these require not. Of making many books there is no end: and much study is an affliction of the flesh.”’ The Didascalicon, p. 130.

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for diligent reading. In similar fashion, the anonymous translator of The fou[n] tayne or well of lyfe (1534?, STC 11211) promised the reader that he could find within his volume ‘compendiously gathered togyther / the thynges that parauenture thou mightest seke in the Bible a gret while’ and that it would allow him to ‘soone fynde’ the means to comfort himself and his neighbour. Moreover, the reader need exercise no restraint in doing so, but can resort to it ‘whan so euer’ is desired and drink with a ‘thursty stomake’ (sig. A2r). This is scriptural reading reduced to a convenient commonplace book. Alec Ryrie has argued that ‘Protestantism was a movement born and bred in universities and it aspired to turn Christendom into a giant university, in which Christians would spend their time in private study or in attending lectures and seminars which they called sermons, prophesyings, and conferences.’58 In Erasmus’s humanist exhortations to biblical study and in Tyndale’s writing, early sixteenth-century readers would have found much encouragement to engage with the Bible in a scholarly fashion, returning to the ‘memorization and recitation’ central to early concepts of meditatio, while utilizing definitions of key words, summaries of belief, and discussion to underpin their interpretative efforts.59 The example of Joye, however, points to a different way of reading the Bible, one that did not demand diligent study. In mirror fashion, a tract published in the early 1530s suggests that the kind of studious practices advocated by Erasmus and Tyndale might be brought to bear on more traditional material, in unexpected ways. A dyurnall for deuoute soules (1534?, STC 6928a) offered readers ‘a rule for the mixed life’ focused on the ‘recitation of vocal prayers’ structured around daybreak, mealtime, and bedtime.60 Providing what Thompson describes as ‘time-honoured meditative practices’, A dyurnall might be compared with texts such as Richard Whitford’s Work for Householders, which offered a ‘forme’ to help the reader ‘appoynt hymselfe vnto some customable course of good & profytable exercyse’ (STC 25421.8, 1530, sig. A2r).61 However, A dyurnall is distinctive in that it encouraged readers to develop not just a regular devotional practice, but a studious habit of regular reading. The author explained to the reader why such effort was necessary, remarking on the poor effect of reading without it: The great cause (as I do thynke) why we profyte lytell in the waye of perfeccyon is: that we do not with all our studye and dylygence / folowe by perseueraunt exercyse in our dayly conuersacyon / the good instruccyons and counceylles that be daylye gyuen vs of our lorde god [...] by outwarde techynges and 58 Ryrie, Being Protestant, p. 262. 59 Robertson, Lectio Divina, p. 208. 60 Alexandra Barratt, Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Piety in Early Tudor England (Turnhout, 2009), p. 79. 61 Thompson, ‘Love in the 1530s’, p. 198.

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alexan dr a da c osta ensamples: that oft tymes we rede & se. And this defaulte in vs ryseth partely of our neclygence / that we gyue no great forse of our owne profyte: partly of our frayle and oblyous memory / that soone forgetteth what is taught vs: but yf by often rehersynge it be depely wryten and grauen in oure stony hertes. (sig. a1v)

The writer emphasized the difference between merely ‘oft tymes’ reading and seeing a text, and approaching it with ‘studye and dylygence’ so that by frequent ‘rehersynge’ – both in the sense of repeating it aloud and performing its counsel – it would simultaneously be learnt by heart and transform the reader. While this writer appealed to readers without the stamina for lengthy works, much as Joye did, by offering ‘breuly in this lytel papyre thre exercyses’ (sig. a2r), he nevertheless demanded the same kind of daily care and attention to reading as Erasmus and Tyndale. Just as he admonished the reader when attending church to ‘do nothynge onely of custome / as it were a thynge that hath no reason or vnderstandynge’ (sig. b1r), he encouraged mindful reading above all else. It was not just to the advice of A dyurnall that the author wished the reader to pay close attention. He also encouraged them to engage in reading before meals, assigning a chapter of Nicholas Love’s Mirror for each day of the week.62 Thompson points out that the author assumes ‘daily unrestricted private access to a copy of Love’s Mirror’, and in recommending ‘such a habitual practice seems to accord precisely with one of the ideal reading models that Love had originally proposed more than a century earlier for more experienced Mirror readers’.63 Love wished the reader to select readings ‘as it semeþ moste confortable & stiryng to his deuocion’,64 and A dyurnall suggests that the chapters be read ‘eyther in part or hole as may be suffycent to styrre [... the] herte to compunccyon’ (sig. b2v). The author calls each a ‘refeccyon of our lorde Ihesu’ and expresses the hope that through them the reader ‘may be accustomed to fede with hym’, that is, Christ (sig. b2v). Although this language plays on ideas of devotional reading as spiritual nourishment and the nursing Christ, it was also employed with a literal sense: since each of the assigned chapters of the Mirror centres on a meal that Christ attended or refreshment that he received, the reader of A dyurnall is implicitly encouraged to imagine themselves present at the biblical event when they go to dine, just as Love recommended. However, the author of A dyurnall wrote about reading with an emphasis on textual focus and understanding lacking in the Mirror. The prayer to be made before reading emphasized this, with its focus on the labour of reading and the longed-for wisdom that it would produce with God’s grace: 62 Thompson, p. 199. 63 Ibid., pp. 199–200. 64 Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, p. 220.

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Reading Habits in Contention Emitte domine sapientiam tuam de sede magnitudinis tue vt mecum sit et mecum laboret / vt sciam quid acceptum sit coram te in omni tempore. Amen. Good lorde sende oute thy wysdom from the seet of thy magnyfycence that it maye be with me and laboure with me / so that I may knowe what is acceptable afore the at all tymes. (sig. b2v–b3r)65

While the author allows partial readings, he reminds his readers that they will profit more swiftly (‘fynde shortly the fruyte of your redynge’) if they read ‘euery thynge reuerently / depely merkynge eche worde’ (sig. b3r). This echoed commands by Tyndale to ‘think that euery sillable pertayneth to thyne awne silf ’ (Genesis, STC 2351, sig. A5r) and to ‘note and marke’ the text (sigs A6r, A6v, A7r) or the exhortation by Joye ‘exactely and throughly to ponder & marke euery poynt therof ’ (sig. A2v). In contrast, Love openly passed over material or potential meanings in the Mirror, and explicitly encouraged the reader not to be too preoccupied with the specifics of the text.66 A dyurnall illustrates how different reading strategies might be demanded by the same text. The reader was invited to adopt the studious habits and diligent attention to texts encouraged by Erasmus and Tyndale, a return to a reinvigorated practice of meditatio, but with the focus on the daily regimen and the reading of Love’s Mirror rather than the Bible. They were also to engage in a continuous process of self-examination prompted by physical reminders, such as the transition to and from the bedchamber, or seeing the ‘ymage of our lorde’ (sig. a3v). This recalled the tradition of the ‘book of the conscience’, which Gillespie notes was ‘meant to be self sufficient’. Texts that use the metaphor argue ‘that there is no need of many books or of extensive reading for a true lover of God to meditate or to achieve progress in the spiritual life’.67 Finally, they were to enter imaginatively into the life and Passion of Christ at mealtimes, much as Love had encouraged, engaging in a version of monastic lectio Domini. By bringing into close contact very different ways of reading, A dyurnall illustrates in small scale the experience of readers with ‘Catholic tastes’ negotiating the demands of multiple interpretative communities. It suggests that readers more widely would have been able to meet these demands with flexibility, treating different modes of reading as complementary, and using them to draw sustenance from a varied diet of scriptural reading, compilation, paraphrase, and meditation. 65 Barratt notes that this antiphon is recommended in Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Liber specialis gratiae: Anne Bulkeley and her Book, p. 85. 66 For instance: ‘Anoþere vnderstandyng is in þees wordes þe which doctours comunly tellen, & þerfore we passe ouer þat, at þis tyme.’ (Ch. 17, p. 81); ‘whoso desireþ to knowe more fully. he sal fynde it in þe boke of seynt Austym vpon the gospel of Jon, where he makeþ of þe processe of þis gospel a longe processe & clergiale’ (Ch. 23, p. 95). 67 Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in haly bukes’, p. 127.

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• 11 • Reading Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England • tamara atkin  • Writing in the preface to his A dayly exercise and experience of dethe (1537, STC 25414), Richard Whitford, the early sixteenth-century English Bridgettine Father and prolific author of orthodox devotional literature, explains that This lytle tretie, or draght of deth, dyd I wryte more than .xx. yeres ago / at the request of the reuerende Mother Dame Elizabeth Gybs / whome Iesu perdon / then Abbes of Syon. And by the oft callyng vpon / and remembraunce of certeyen of her deuout systers. And nowe of late I haue been compelled […] to wryte it agayne & agayne. And bycause that wrytynge vnto me is very tedyouse: I thought better to put it in print. (sig. aiv–aiir)

Meditating on this passage in his introduction to A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, Vincent Gillespie has shown that the active engagement by Syon and other religious houses ‘with printers as part of a sustained campaign of defence of orthodox catholic teaching’ is at least as important for the early history of print as was access to the press by Protestant reformers and polemicists.1 For authors across the confessional spectrum, printed books offered unique material prospects for the dissemination of religious ideas, and the physical and financial opportunities afforded by printed books surely explain the central role of religious printing of all kinds in the development of the trade in English printed books. The special role of Syon in cultivating interests in print has been central to Gillespie’s work, shaping a field that importantly corrects the historical overemphasis on reformed writing in histories of the book in Britain and illustrates the role of late medieval piety in the pre-Reformation print tradition.2 Indeed, 1 Vincent Gillespie, ‘Introduction’, in A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476–1558, ed. Vincent Gillespe and Susan Powell (Cambridge, 2014), p. 7. 2 See, for instance, ‘Sacerdotis predicacio operibus confirmanda est: The Martiloge of the Syon Brethren’, in Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England, ed. Martha W. Driver and Veronica O’Mara (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 133–60; ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, in Syon Abbey and its Books, ed. E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104–28; ‘The

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as J. T. Rhodes has shown, the number of printed books either originating from or associated with Syon before 1540 was ‘far higher than for any other religious house or order in England’, a fact that she attributes to the Cambridge education of many of the brethren, and the particular regard accorded to books within the double community.3 But the production of so many books would seem also to reflect the successful consolidation of markets beyond the abbey’s walls. As Alexandra da Costa has written of Syon’s use of print in the defence of orthodoxy, ‘neither the spread of Lutheran ideas, nor the illicit importation of evangelical books into England, nor the criticisms levelled at the Church by the frustrated Henry VIII, nor the growing volume of anticlerical literature […], seem to have deterred people from buying the Syon books. Over two-thirds went through multiple editions, and those that did not were either intended for a restricted monastic audience or were far more expensive because of their length or size.’4 In the 1520s and 1530s, then, it was not just that there were writers keen to promote and defend orthodox thinking through the publication of works of vernacular theology, but there also existed a healthy market for such publications. The evidence of multiple editions as a sign of this buoyant market for writings on a range of traditional topics seems irrefutable. But the issue of a new edition did not always indicate that the last had been a sell-out, even while it remains the case that its publication must have reflected confidence on the part of the publisher that potential buyers existed in sufficient numbers to justify the risk. This uncertainty, coupled with the fact that once published a new edition was likely to render earlier editions obsolete, means that a work could both run to numerous editions and exist in a large number of remainder copies. In this chapter, I present an inventory of a printer’s stock from 1553, which sheds new light on the post-Reformation market for printed books of conservative vernacular theology. Featuring over forty-one separate entries for batches of religious books first published before 1533 – including no fewer than thirteen with Syon associations – it suggests that works of late medieval piety were openly and readily available to purchase even during the reign of Edward VI.5 Haunted Text: Reflections in The Mirrour to Deuote Peple’, in Medieval Texts in Context, ed. Denis Renevey and Graham D. Caie (London, 2008), pp. 136–66; and ‘Syon and the New Learning’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. James G. Clark (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 75–95. 3 J. T. Rhodes, ‘Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44 (1993), 11–25 (p. 14). 4 Alexandra da Costa, Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy, 1525–1534 (Oxford, 2012), p. 5. 5 The list also contains a Latin-English dictionary that seems to have had Syon connections. See item 39 on the list, below.

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In an article dated 1915, Henry Plomer announced his discovery of a suit brought in Common Pleas against William and Humphrey Powell by ‘a certain William Towley’, in Michaelmas 1553, which lists the contents of a London house, and includes the entire stock of a bookseller.6 Noting that ‘the bulk of the books which formed the stock [...] were books that had been printed by Wynkyn de Worde’, Plomer believed the stock listed was that of Edward Whitchurch, the Edwardian occupant of de Worde’s former house at The Sun in Fleet Street.7 But as Barbara Kreps and Peter Blayney have subsequently independently proved, the stock cannot be Whitchurch’s, but is, rather, that of The George, put up by its owner William Powell as collateral against a loan.8 For while the list does include some batches of books printed by de Worde, many more were printed at The George, either by Powell or one by of his predecessors, Richard Pynson, Robert Redman, Redman’s widow Elizabeth Pickering, or William Middleton. Values for individual items are not given, but the total value of the household’s inventory was reckoned at £280, or around £160,000 in today’s money. In his work on the library of Richard Stonley, one of the four Tellers of the Exchequer of Receipt from 1554 until his death in 1600, Jason Scott-Warren has celebrated the joining of books with diverse household items in the 1597 inventory of Stonley’s goods. Histories of reading, he has suggested, rely on documents that intermingle the textual and material, even while the ‘traditional response of scholarship to documents such as the Stonley inventory […] is to carve them up, leaving the material culture in them to historians of dress, food and domestic life whilst requisitioning the books for bibliographical and literary studies’.9 As a case in point, the textual materials from 6 H. R. Plomer, ‘An Inventory of Wynkyn de Worde’s House, “The Sun in Fleet Street”’, The Library 3rd ser., 6.23 (1915), 228–34 (p. 228). The lawsuit is recorded in TNA, CPR 40/1156 part 1, m. 525. It has been photographed by The O’Quinn Law Library of House Law Center, and digital images are available through the Anglo-American Legal Tradition website [accessed 23 April 2018]. The plea begins here: [accessed 23 April 2018]. 7 Plomer, ‘An Inventory’, p. 229. 8 Peter W. M. Blayney, ‘The Site of the Sign of the Sun’, in The London Book Trade: Topographies of Print in the Metropolis from the Sixteenth Century, ed. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (London, 2003), pp. 1–20; Barbara Kreps, ‘Elizabeth Pickering: The First Woman to Print Law Books in England and Relations within the Community of Tudor London’s Printers and Lawyers’, Renaissance Quarterly 56.4 (2003), 1053–88 (pp. 1073­–4). The plea is also discussed by Sir John Baker in ‘The Books of Common Law’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume III, 1400–1557, ed. Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 411–32 (pp. 427–8), and The Oxford History of the Laws of England: Volume IV, 1483–1558 (Oxford, 2003), pp. 496–7. 9 Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Books in the Bedchamber: Religion, Accounting, and the Library of Richard Stonley’, in Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of

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Stonley’s inventory have all been extracted, published first by Leslie Hotson in Studies in Bibliography and more recently included in Private Libraries in Renaissance England. But the inventory of his other material goods – from salt cellars to tablecloths – has not been transcribed, and remains accessible only in an unpaginated Exchequer memoranda roll at The National Archives, subject to little scholarly discussion beyond Scott-Warren’s own work on them.10 Reading lists of books in their often richer and more complex contexts among other household items affords insights not obvious when they are separated and treated as stand-alone items. In the instance of the Powell inventory, while the overall impression is one of disorganization, with books and bindings appearing alongside bedsteads and chests, the account in fact follows a clear logic, itemizing goods on a room-by-room basis, with the resulting list representing a kind of itinerary or way of journeying through the rooms that made up the house at the sign of The George. Though not announced as such, the inventory clearly begins with the batches of books comprising the stock available for sale, to which I will return shortly. These entries are followed by a record of household goods, among which are listed a number of books, mostly single copies, but some smaller batches too.11 These items were presumably distinct from the stock, and may have formed part of the library of the dwelling house. They include in their number a ‘Byble with notes’ and other religious texts, but also works of classical learning and other more recent literary texts.12 The next section of the inventory concerns the contents of the printing shop (partially transcribed by Plomer), which also includes some larger batches of books.13 Many of these are generic – ‘quinquagint[a] & quatuor libros of dyuerse sorte of lawe bookes’,14 Meaning, ed. John N. King (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 232–52 (p. 237). 10 Leslie Hotson, ‘The Library of Elizabeth’s Embezzling Teller’, Studies in Bibliography 2 (1949–50), 49–62; PLRE.Folger: Private Libraries in Renaissance England, Ad4 [accessed 24 April 2018]. See also Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Early Modern Bookkeeping and Life-Writing Revisited: Accounting for Richard Stonley’, Past & Present 230 (2016), 151–70. 11 The batches that do appear in this section never number more than two or three, e.g. ‘duos libros missal herdforden’ [Anno incarnationis dominice [...] hoc nouum opus sacri missalis ad vsum famose ac percelebris eccl’ie Helfordensis (Rouen: Jean Mauditier and Pierre Olivier, 1502, STC 16163)]. 12 TNA, CPR 40/1156 part 1, m. 525b. The works listed here include Cicero’s De Officiis and Epistulae ad Familiares, the works of Plutarch as well as those of Pico della Mirandola, and the third book of John Bourchier (Lord Berners)’s translation of Froissart’s Chronicles, among others. 13 Writing of this section Plomer observed that ‘no such detailed account of the furniture of a London printing house of the sixteenth century has ever come to light’: Plomer, ‘An Inventory’, p. 230. 14 On the conventions adopted in the transcription of the inventory, see the head note on p. 15.

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‘octogint[a] & quatuor bownd bookes’, or even just ‘quadragint[a] & nono libros’15 – but there are some identifiable works too.16 The inventory concludes by listing further domestic items, among which are found ‘diuers Instrument cum Tolis to bynde Wyth’, various ‘bounde bookes Wyth dyuers sortes of olde bookes in quayers’ and ‘quinquagint[a] libros of the preparacyon of the | dethe of Erasmus’.17 So, while Blayney is right that the inventory includes 193 batches of printed books, only the first 171 – 31 batches of yearbooks followed by 140 other entries – appear to have made up the stock available for sale,18 and even these include among their number three batches of sheets of waste paper.19 There is order, in other words, but since it does not obviously declare itself, it is not always easy to discern. While there is clearly further work to be done on the plea as a whole, particularly its account of the furniture and other materials in the print shop itself, I here limit myself to a transcription of the bulk of the material that appears to have made up the stock available for sale at the sign of The George in 1553, when the inventory was made. I provide this list in full because the materials are not widely available and the inventory has as yet received little scholarly attention.20 What discussion it has sustained has tended to focus on the law 15 These items are all located at TNA, CPR 40/1156 part 1, m. 525b d. 16 These can be transcribed as follows: ‘decem & octo libros of the gouernance of vertue’ [eighteen copies of Thomas Becon, The gouernans of vertue (first edition: [John Nicholson, 1538], STC 1724.5); these seem to supplement the thirty copies listed as item 74 in the inventory, below] (m. 525b d); ‘sep[page torn] | libros of Tyndales testament’ [?seven copies of an untraced edition of Tyndale’s Bible] (m. 525b d); ‘quinquagint[a] libros of the kynges Cronacles in [page torn]’ [fifty copies of ?The cronycle of all the kyngz names that haue ben in Englande (first edition: Pynson, [(B) 1523], STC 9983.3)] (m. 525b d); and ‘sex libros of | de septem Sacramentis’ [six copies of an untraced work on the seven sacraments] (m. 525b d–m. 525c). 17 Fifty copies of Erasmus, Preparation to deathe (first edition: Berthelet, 1538, STC 10505). All these items can be found at TNA, CPR 40/1156 part 1, m. 525c. 18 Blayney, ‘Sign of the Sun’, p. 14. 19 These entries presumably designate printed material no longer deemed saleable, but following later practice as adopted by Oxford University Press, may indicate blank reams of paper that proved surplus to requirements and needed to be accounted for separately. In the eighteenth century, the Press adopted the practice of buying in sufficient stocks of paper before commencing printing, often purchasing as much as an extra 20 per cent to allow for wastage via cassie quires, register sheets, proofs, revises, and cancels. When this surplus remained unused, it was subsequently used for other jobs, but in the meantime for the purposes of stock taking was referred to by the title of the work for which it was originally intended. Items 99 and 138 can perhaps be explained in this way. I am grateful to Geoffrey Day for sharing this idea. See also the individual entries for items 99, 135, and 138 for other possibilities. 20 Stock inventories and account books that have been published include: E. G. Duff, ‘A Bookseller’s Accounts, circa 1510’, The Library n.s. 8 (1907), 256–66; W. A. Jackson, ‘A London Bookseller’s Ledger of 1535’, The Colophon n.s. 1 (1936), 498–509; Leslie Mahin Oliver, ‘A Bookseller’s Account Book, 1545’, Harvard Library Bulletin 16 (1968), 139–55;

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books listed among the remaining stock, for as John Baker has noted, ‘law is strongly represented, more so than might be expected of a general bookshop’.21 By the middle of the sixteenth century, there was in England a well-established trade in printed law books, and the printers who occupied The George played a central role. From the early 1490s, Pynson had succeeded John Lettou and William de Machlinia as the main law printer, and Redman, Pickering, Middleton, and Powell all continued to print law books at the sign of The George. It this therefore unsurprising that there are so many law books in the inventory, among them forty copies of the Natura Brevium in English and fifty in French, plus ‘centum & quinquaginta alios libros de natura breuium’, a hundred copies of Britton, and a hundred copies of Diuersite de courtz et lour iurisdictions, a work often attributed to Anthony Fitzherbert, the judge and legal writer (d. 1538).22 In fact, the only parts of the inventory to have been listed and traced with any thoroughness are the yearbooks that make up the first thirty-one entries.23 But the stock also contains many non-legal books, and here the types of text best represented are works of conservative orthodox theology. I shall return to these items in due course, but want first to describe two other important features of the stock list. Although the inventory begins with the entries of yearbooks, law is not limited to this section of the list, and legal works appear throughout. This suggests that if there was some order to the way the stock was arranged, it was not according to subject matter. Since many of the items were printed on multiple occasions it is often not possible to isolate the specific edition, but it nonetheless seems likely that the items were arranged – albeit rather loosely – in chronological order, with more recent publications by Middleton, Pickering, and Powell appearing towards the end of the list, and de Worde and Pynson publications occurring nearer the beginning. This arrangement perhaps explains why books remaining in larger numbers (of a hundred or more), appear with greater frequency towards the end. The stock includes just two older works remaining in a large number of copies – Anthony Fitzherbert’s Diuersite de courtz (1526) and Lucian’s dialogue Necromantia ([1530?]); all other books remaining in similar numbers were printed after 1530.

R. J. Roberts, ‘John Rastell’s Inventory of 1538’, The Library 6th ser., 1.1 (1979), 34–42; and John N. King, ‘The Account of a Marian Bookseller, 1553–54’, British Library Journal 13 (1987), 33–57. 21 Baker, Oxford History of the Laws IV, p. 496. 22 These are items 85, 86, 91, 111, and 132 in the list below. Kreps incorrectly records 400 copies of the Natura Brevium in English, and 500 in French. See Kreps, ‘Elizabeth Pickering’, p. 1073. 23 Kreps, ‘Elizabeth Pickering’, p. 1073, n. 77. For this reason, my own transcription omits these entries.

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The second point of note is the number of batches that appear to have been entered twice. While in two cases the wording of the inventory suggests an additional batch of the same book – ‘ducent[os] alios libros of the | epystelles & Gospelles’ (item 80), ‘centum & quinquaginta alios libros de natura breuium’ (item 91) – in as many as ten further instances it is unclear whether the second entry supplements or repeats the first. Are the ‘centum libros of syr lamwell knyght’ listed as item 61 the same as the ‘centum libros of | syr lamwell’ entered as item 49, or another batch altogether? Does the stock contain 200 copies of Sir Lamwell in two separate batches, or has someone by error or design entered a single batch of one hundred books twice? If the former, this suggests that copies of the same book were not necessarily stored in the same place in the stockroom, thereby contributing to the sense that the inventory maps – in that it shows the spatial distribution of property – a journey through the rooms that made up the building at the sign of The George. But if the same batch was entered twice, then the inventory offers a cautionary reminder; the values accorded by a stationer to his own stock might differ considerably from those determined in more hostile circumstances such as a lawsuit or other legal action.24 In substantiating his argument that the stock listed in the inventory is that of The George, Blayney has said that there are forty-eight titles that ‘are known to have been printed or published at least once by de Worde and his successors – but 105 (more than twice as many) were once printed by Pynson and his successors at The George’.25 My own figures are somewhat different – fifty-one titles issued by The Sun, against ninety-seven by The George – the discrepancy presumably arising because I have discounted entries for books that do not seem to have been available for purchase – but the basic point remains the same: the stockroom contained some batches of books printed by de Worde, but the inventory clearly lists the contents of the sign of The George.26 How did Powell come to own so much of de Worde’s remaining stock? One answer might lie in the kind of work represented by the books inherited from The Sun. Of the list’s forty-one works of conservative theology, nineteen were printed by de Worde and twenty-two by Pynson or one of his successors at The George.27 24 Here it perhaps bears noting that in one instance (item 105) a gap has been left for later insertion of the number of copies, suggesting that these figures may have been compiled after the inventory was drawn up. 25 These figures are slightly misleading since a number of the items are works of which each printing house produced at least one edition. 26 My figures are derived from all 171 items that made up the stock list, including the thirty-one yearbooks that I have not included in my transcription, below. Of these, twentyseven were printed by stationers associated with The George, and just one by de Worde. 27 Eight are works of which each house printed at least one edition, four cannot be tracked with any precision, and four were printed by an entirely separate house.

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Conservative religious works therefore account for just under half of all de Worde publications in the inventory, while around half of all the list’s works of conservative devotion were printed by de Worde. In 1535 de Worde’s lease at The Sun was taken over by John Bydell, who continued to work there until early in 1545, when Edward Whitchurch moved in, bringing his own equipment with him. As Blayney has shown, he probably sold off much of his predecessors’ stock, particularly those books which he considered ‘superstitious, obsolete, or unacceptable in other ways’.28 Whitchurch, it should be remembered, was a staunch Protestant. Blayney has not suggested who the buyer or buyers might have been, but, given the central role played by Redman in the publication of religious texts – he is, according to one critic, to be rivalled only by de Worde in the printing of Syon materials29 – combined with what is known about his successor Middleton, a man imprisoned in 1543 ‘for printing off such bokes as wer thowght to be vnlawfull’, it seems plausible that de Worde’s remaining stock found its way to The George some time shortly after 1545.30 Unlike many of the inventory’s later published items, the books of conservative religious interest are not necessarily to be found in large numbers of copies. Focusing on items with a link to Syon, the list contains just two copies of the Ars Moriendi, ten of The Golden Pystel, fifteen of The Rote or Myrour of Consolacyon & Conforte, and sixteen of the Martiloge (though that number rises to twenty-eight if the twelve copies of ‘de stō [i.e. sanctorum] Booke’ that appear as item 3 also refer to this work). But others are listed in greater quantities. There are fifty copies of The Lyf of Saint Katherin, sixty of The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection, sixty-two of one or more translations of the Imitatio Christi (spread across two entries), and a staggering 300 copies of something entered as ‘the passyon | of Whytford’ that probably refers to The Pomander of Prayer. The only other items listed in greater numbers are ‘the Epystelles & Gospelles (800 copies in batches of 600 and 200), and a ‘Catechesmus for chyldren’ (650 copies), and it is probably safe to assume that the initial print run for these titles is likely to have been significantly greater than a work like The Pomander of Prayer.31 The remaining 300 copies of The 28 Blayney, ‘Sign of the Sun’, p. 13. 29 Joseph Gwara, ‘Four Fragments in the Folger Shakespeare Library’, Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014), 119–79 (p.  122), who notes that Redman issued at least eleven Syon-related editions. As many as five of these editions appear in the inventory. 30 TNA, PC 2/1, 469, cited in Peter W. M. Blayney, The Stationers’ Company and the Printers of London, 1501–1557, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2013), I. 548. 31 Tessa Watt has estimated that the official prayer book, psalter, and catechism, which ran though enormous numbers of repeat editions, had ‘print runs twice the normal size’: Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 259. See also H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1558–1603 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 102–4, and David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), p. 47.

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Pomander therefore probably represent a significant proportion of the initial run. The Pomander was published four times: twice by Robert Copland (in 1528 and 1530), once by Redman (in 1531), and once by de Worde (in 1532). It is unlikely that the copies listed are of either of the first two editions, but they could be from either the third or fourth. If the former, then their existence would certainly demonstrate that in some circumstances a new edition might be printed even when an earlier edition had not sold out. This seems to have been the case with The Golden Pystle, which was printed five times between 1530 and 1535. Since the ten copies listed in the inventory are most likely to be of one of the first two editions, printed by de Worde in 1530 and 1531, Robert Wyer (who brought out a further edition in 1531) and Thomas Godfray (who brought out two, in 1531 and c. 1535) must have been satisfied that there was sufficient evidence beyond the performance of the first two editions to justify the costs associated with publishing further editions. In other words, here and elsewhere the inventory suggests that printers may have been willing to take risks on new editions even when earlier editions had not sold that well; multiple editions in and of themselves need not prove the strength of the market. While the list features other Syon books that ran to multiple editions – between 1496 and 1530 de Worde issued four editions of The Myrour of Consolacyon; between 1503 and 1546 translations of the Imitatio Christi by both William Atkinson and Margaret Beaufort, and Richard Whitford, appeared in no fewer than twelve editions; and English translations of the Ars Moriendi were printed six times between 1491 and 1532 – others did not extend beyond a single edition. The Martiloge, The Lyf of Saynt Werburge, and The Pype of Perfection were all issued just once, and the fact that copies were available for sale as many as thirty years after their publication may indicate that these titles never turned a profit. On the evidence of the Powell inventory at least, books with links to Syon abbey were not necessarily a noteworthy success. But, in many ways, this point is unsurprising. As is now well established, the abbey’s publishing programme seems to have been at its height between 1525 and 1533, grinding to an inevitable halt with Syon’s suppression in 1539. The inventory therefore offers a rare glimpse of the fate of Syon books in a post-Reformation context. Work on books associated with Syon has shown not only the extent of the abbey’s ‘enormous literary orbit’, but also the importance of community itself as a primary market for its printed publications.32 Long ago, Arthur Reed noted a lawsuit which gives an account of the sale of sixty copies of John Rickes’s The ymage of loue (1525, STC 21471.5) by its printer, de Worde, to the nuns at Syon: ‘he confessed that […] he had printed a certain work in the vulgar tongue 32 Gwara, ‘Four Fragments’, p. 123.

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called The Image of Love, alleged to contain heresy, of which he sent sixty to the Nuns of Syon, and as many more he sold’.33 More recently, Mary Erler has suggested that the presence of Syon signatures in two issues of the same edition of a Paris-printed primer (STC 15978 and STC 15979) may indicate ‘a Syon purchase en bloc’, with ‘at least part of this primer edition […] intended for the Bridgettine monastery’.34 With the expulsion of the abbey’s community in the wake of the Dissolution, this market would have immediately disappeared. But these changes would also have consequences for the wider appeal of Syon books, many of which would have now seemed old fashioned or even heretical. In short, the suppression of Syon and the other great monastic houses would have spelt a drastic reduction in the market for works of traditional religion. In the end, what is perhaps less surprising than the number of remaining copies is the fact that copies of these titles are listed among stock available for purchase at all. Of course, this may simply be a matter of timing. The case was heard in Michaelmas term 1553, shortly after the accession of Mary I, and therefore at a time when works of conservative religion were once again acceptable. Conversely, the inventory names very few works with explicit Reform credentials: just two works by Thomas Becon (items 74 and 110), a Protestant collection of biblical quotations (item 139), and a prayer book (item 3).35 As is well known, Protestant propaganda dominated the Edwardian book trade, but such works were banned under a proclamation of 18 August 1553, which forbade the ‘printing of false fond books, ballads, rhymes, and other lewd treatises in the English tongue concerning doctrine in matters now in question and controversy touching the high points and mysteries of the Christian religion’.36 While Mary’s 1553 proclamation makes no mention of the sale of religious books printed during the previous reign, it is nonetheless striking that works of Protestant propaganda are largely absent from the inventory and overall, the contents seem to support the idea that the list represents works available to purchase at the beginning of Mary’s reign. However, it perhaps bears noting that the entire inventory of moveable property is dated 8 June 1553, a full month before Mary came to the throne, so it remains possible that

33 Arthur W. Reed, ‘The Regulation of the Book Trade before the Proclamation of 1538’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15 (1917–19), 157–84 (p. 163). 34 Mary C. Erler, ‘Pasted-In Embellishments in English Manuscripts and Printed Books, c. 1480–1533’, The Library, 6th ser., 14.3 (1992), 185–206 (p. 201). 35 See also items 79, 80, 88, 94, 114, and 120, where the entries are too generic to isolate a confessional position. 36 Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1964–69), no. 390. See also John N. King, ‘The Book Trade Under Edward VI and Mary I’, in The Cambridge History of the Book, vol. III, ed. Hellinga and Trapp, pp. 164–78.

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the books listed are those that would have been available for sale at the end of the reign of the staunchly Protestant Edward VI.37 While Edwardian printers enjoyed freedom from the censorship and licensing regulations imposed by Henry VIII, Somerset’s protectorate ‘did not grant complete freedom of the press’.38 As Blayney has shown, the first act of Edward’s 1547 government (1 Edw. VI, c. 1) made it a punishable offence to revile certain aspects of Reform doctrine, and section VI of the much-discussed Act of Appeals (1 Edw. VI, c. 12) declared denying Edward’s status as supreme head of the Church of England an act of high treason. Under these restrictions at least one author, Richard Smith, was forced to recant at Paul’s Cross, where two of his books were burned.39 It is striking, then, that one of these proscribed books, A defence of the blessed masse, and the sacrifice thereof (1546) appears as item 100 in the Powell inventory, listed as remaining in a hundred copies. While not outlawed, the sale of such titles surely carried certain risks, and it may be that the strong representation of works of recusant interest in the stock list not only reflects their continued demand, but perhaps too the sympathies of The George’s owner at the time the inventory was drawn up.40 In his 2007 discussion of vernacular theology, Gillespie observed that ‘the socio-political tension between continued clerical agency and growing lay self-determination remains a key issue in exploring the contested rise of vernacular theology’.41 The inventory presented here testifies to the persistence of a self-determined lay market for books of vernacular theology, even in the wake of the Reformation.

37 The plea states that Towley had delivered the goods in question on 8 June 1553, complaining that they had been unjustly detained by the Powells. As Blayney has explained, ‘the Powells used their moveable property as collateral for a loan from Towley, “disguising” the transaction as a sale that would become void if they paid him £280 before 8 June 1553’: Blayney, ‘Sign of the Sun’, p. 15. 38 John N. King, ‘Freedom of the Press, Protestant Propaganda and Protector Somerset’, Huntington Library Quarterly 40 (1976), 1–9 (p. 1). 39 Blayney, The Stationers’ Company, I. 603. 40 Very little is known about Powell. He came to The George after marrying Middleton’s widow, Elizabeth, in 1547, and worked the press until his retirement in 1566. He is best known as a law printer, but his output during the reigns of three Tudor monarchs at the very least shows a readiness to adapt to changing circumstances. While he may have been willing to sell Syon books in 1553, under Elizabeth his output includes editions of works by the Marian martyrs John Bradford and Nicholas Ridley. 41 Vincent Gillespie, ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford, 2008), pp. 401–20 (p. 407).

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Appendix CPR 40/1156, part 1, m. 525 In the transcription that follows, italics are used for the expansion of all contractions indicated by abbreviation marks. However, the inventory also contains abbreviated forms without obvious contraction signs, and in such instances square brackets indicate endings that I have supplied. Angled brackets enclose text that is either illegible or difficult to read (typically due to paper damage); dots indicate illegible characters.42 Vertical bars indicate a line break. For traced books, I use the form of the title given in the STC (2nd edn). For undated early English printed material printed, I routinely adopt the dates suggested by the STC; these are given in square brackets. Square brackets are also used for the names of printers and publishers supplied by the STC. Occasionally I have used alternative sources for conjectured dates and stationers: (B) indicates one of many revisions offered by Peter W. M. Blayney in his recent account of the early history of the Stationers’ Company; and (T) indicates the revised chronology for Wyer’s output as suggested by P. B. Tracy.43 For Continental works I follow the bibliographic details provided by the USTC, where available. For all early printed works, the place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. The list begins with thirty-one separate batches of yearbooks. These are followed by 140 batches of books of which 137 are printed books (the remaining three items, nos. 99, 135, and 138 are books of waste paper). Of these, thirty-one can be identified down to the precise edition. Of the remaining 106, a further fifty-three can be positively identified but exist in more than one edition, issue, or variant. For these, I give the publication details for the first and all subsequent editions up to and including 1553, the date of the inventory. In cases where there are more than ten editions before 1553, I give the first edition, and then the details of all editions and their variants associated with either de Worde or The George. A further thirty items can be only doubtfully identified; these are indicated by a question mark that precedes the name of the author/ title of the work. The remaining twenty-four entries can be accounted for as follows: seven are too generic to allow positive identification; fourteen are not listed in the STC; and two are partially illegible due to damage to the original document. Books with links to Syon, spurious or otherwise, are marked with an asterisk; for these entries I also provide a brief account of the evidence for a Syon connection. Other works of conservative theology are marked with a 42 I am grateful to Julia Boffey, Jenni Nuttall, Aaron Pratt, and Andrew Zurcher for their comments and suggestions about some of the items in the stock inventory. 43 Blayney, ‘Appendix K’, in The Stationers’ Company, II. 1027–71; P. B. Tracy, ‘Robert Wyer: A Brief Analysis of His Types and a Suggested Chronology for the Output of His Press’, The Library 6th ser., 2.3 (1980), 293–303.

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cross. In total, works of conservative theology number no fewer than fortyone; nearly 35 per cent of all entries. [1] testent libros de merytales [m. 525a] An unspecified number of copies of A, C, mery talys ([John Rastell, 1526?], STC 23663). Subsequent editions (2): [Southwark: J. Rastell, Peter Treveris] (1526, STC 23664); and [Robert Copland?] ([(B) 1542?], STC 23664.5). It is unclear whether testent (‘these [books] are the testimony’) refers to the preceding 31 yearbooks, or if the formula implies the rest of the stock as transcribed here.

[2] sexaginta & quatuor libros de hawkyng huntyng & fysshyng 64 copies of The boke of hawkynge, and huntynge, and fysshynge (Wynkyn de Worde, [1518?], STC 3309.5). This is earliest edition to mention ‘fishing’ in the title. Subsequent editions (3): [(B) Printer of Smyth’s Envoy for] Henry Tab [and John Waley] ([1547?], STC 3310 and STC 3310.3) and William Powell ([c. 1550], STC 3310.5).

[3] centum septuaginta & quinque | libros of the ordynary of good lyvyng 175 copies of A boke of prayers called the ordynary fasshyon of good lyuynge (William Middleton, [1546?], STC 3326.5).

[4] quinquaginta libros of the lady Constaunce of Rome 50 copies of Thomas Alsoppe, The breuyate and shorte tragycall hystorie, of fayre Custance, the emperours doughter of Rome (Richard Pynson, [c. 1525], STC 538.5).

[5] quinquaginta libros de le newe Accydens 50 copies of John Stanbridge, Accidence. First edition: Accedence (de Worde, [1495], STC 23153.4). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), following three separate traditions: the ‘full’ or ‘regular’ Accidence (STC 23139.5–STC 23153); the ‘long’ Accidence (STC 23153.5–23154.3); and the ‘short’ Accidence (STC 23154.5–STC 32155.2). Only one edition (of the ‘long’ Accidence) contains ‘new’ in the title/colophon: The longe accydence/ newly correcte (de Worde, [1518?], STC 23154).

[*6] duodem [sic] libros de stō [i.e. sanctorum] Booke44 12 copies of ?The martiloge in englysshe after the vse of salisbury, trans. by Richard Whitford (de Worde, 1526, STC 17532).

44 Elsewhere the contractions ‘sto’, ‘ste’, and ‘sti’ are used for ‘sancto’, ‘sanctae’, and ‘sancti’, respectively; in two instances these forms cause a disagreement of gender (cf. items 9 and 37).

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tamar a atki n A Middle English translation of a Latin monastic book used at Syon, the publication of this work was a Syon commission. The link is compounded by the use of Hodnett no. 457, a woodcut of St Bridget of Sweden, which Martha Driver has suggested should be taken as a mark of origin.45

[+7] quatuor libros de libero ooo46 | arbitrio contra melanctonem 4 copies of Alphonsus de Villa Sancta, De libero arbitrio aduersus Melanchtonem (Pynson, 1523, STC 24728).

[*8] sexaginta libros de pipe of perfection 60 copies of Richard Whitford, The boke called the Pype, or tonne, of the lyfe of perfection (Robert Redman, 1532, STC 25421). A lengthy treatise on the religious life, which in places responds directly to Protestant attacks, this publication of this work by the abbey’s most prolific author was most likely a Syon commission. A copy (Bodleian Library, 4o W.2.Th.Seld) was owned by a Syon nun, Eleanor Fettyplace.

[*9] triginta libros de stō [i.e. sancto] | Wyrbryge 30 copies of Henry Bradshaw, The holy lyfe and history of saynt Werburge (Pynson, 1521, STC 3506). This work was not written for the nuns at Syon, but Alexandra da Costa has posited tentative links between Syon and the Benedictine Abbey of Chester, where Bradshaw was based: STC 3506 makes use of a woodcut of St Bridget wearing the distinctive Bridgettine headdress (Hodnett no. 1349), and it may be that ‘Whitford encouraged the printing of Bradshaw’s Life’.47 Like item 37, the abbreviated form suggests confusion over this saint’s gender.

[10] sex libros de pyers of plowman 6 copies of William Langland, The vision of Pierce Plowman ((B) Robert Crowley, 1550, STC 19906, STC 19907, and STC 19907a).

[*11] quindecem libros of the rote of the consolacion | of Comforte

45 Martha W. Driver, ‘Nuns as Patrons, Artists, Readers: Brigettine Woodcuts in Printed Books Produced for the English Market’, in Art into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia, ed. Carol Garrett Fisher and Kathleen L. Scott (East Lansing, 1995), 237–67 (p. 252). 46 This pen flourish seems to have been used to fill space at the end of the line. Cf. item 17. 47 De Costa, p. 39. The same woodcut prefaces the ‘lyfe of seynt Birgette’ appended to The kalendre of the newe legend of Englande (Pynson, 1516, STC 2602), and William Bonde’s Pylgrimage of perfection (Pynson, 1526, STC 3277).

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England 15 copies of The rote or myrour of consolacyon & conforte ([Westminster: de Worde, 1496], STC 21334). Subsequent editions (3) also by de Worde: [Westminster, after 1499] (STC 21335); 1511 (STC 21336); and 1530 (STC 21337). This work is not typically included in accounts of Syon publications, but Joseph Gwara has described it as a ‘Bridgettine “standard”’, and suggests its 1530 reissue may have been part of the abbey’s 1525–33 publishing programme.48 STC 21334 and STC 21335 also make use of a woodcut illustration of the Crucifixion (Hodnett no. 374) that derives from the Flemish Fifteen Oes series, which Driver suggests may indicate a Syon connection.49

[12] quadraginta libros of the Iudycyall of urynes in fol 40 copies of The iudycyall of vryns ([Southwark: Treveris, 1527?], STC 14836 and STC 14836.5). Both editions in folio.

[+13] vigint[i] & quinque libros of howlyng | of deuocion Not in STC. 25 copies of an unknown devotional work.

[14] dodecem libros of Caunterburye tales 12 copies of Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales ([Westminster: William Caxton, 1477], STC 5082). Subsequent editions (4): Caxton ([Westminster, 1483], STC 5083); Pynson ([1492?], STC 5084, and 1526, STC 5086); and de Worde (1498, STC 5085).

[15] quadraginta & quinque libros de podologia | mossellani 45 copies of Petrus Schade, Paedologia Petri Mosellani protegensis, in puerorum vsum conscripta & aucta (de Worde, 1532, STC 21810).

[16] quatuor libros testi de lynacre Not in STC. 4 copies of an untraced work by Thomas Linacre. An unprinted ‘Testament of Thomas Lynacre, Doctor in Medicine’, dated 19 June 1525 can be found in the Registry of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. MS Bodfield 21, fol. 36r.

[17] sexdecem libros de Cronicul of seuen age oo 16 copies of A lytell shorte cronycle, begynnynge at the .vij. ages with all the kynges (de Worde, 1530, STC 9983.7), containing Lydgate’s ‘King’s of England’ (IMEV 3632). Subsequent editions (2) by Robert Wyer: [(T) 1531?] (STC 9984), and [c. 1545] (STC 9984.5). Two earlier editions (STC 9983 and STC 9983.3) make no reference to ‘seven ages’ in their titles. 48 Gwara, ‘Four Fragments’, p. 123. 49 Driver, ‘Nuns as Patrons’, pp. 258–60.

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[+18] quinquaginta libros de vita stē [i.e. sanctae] Maryarette

50 copies of ?Seint margarete ([Pynson, 1493], STC 17325). Subsequent editions (2): Redman ([1530?], STC 17326); and John Mitchell ([1548?], STC 17327). Could also be [Life of St. Margaret] ([J. Rastell?, c. 1530], STC 17324.5).

[19] vigint[i] & quinque libros of the scholers of Cambredge | & the Corsar of london 25 copies of ?A mery iest of the mylner of Abyngton with his wyfe and his doughter, and two poore scholers of Cambridge ([de Worde, 1532–34?], STC 78).

[+20] duodecem libros of the lyfe of seynt George 12 copies of Baptista Spagnuoli, The lyfe of the gloryous martyr saynt George, trans. by Alexander Barclay ([Pynson, 1515?], STC 22992.1).

[21] octo libros of the | complaynt of them that be to soone maryed 8 copies of Pierre Gringore, A complaynt of them that be to soone maryed, trans. by Robert Copland (de Worde, 1535, STC 5729).

[+22] vigint[i] & quinque libros of the dyeng Creature | plus inde in dorso 25 copies of A lytell treatyse of the dyenge creature enfected with sykenes vncurable (de Worde, 1506, STC 6033.5). Subsequent editions (4): de Worde (1507, STC 6034, and [1532?], STC 6035a); de Worde [(B) for Robert Copland] (1514, STC 6035 and STC 6035.5). The inventory then continues on the dorse of the membrane.

[23] vigint[i] libros of the seage of Constantyne the Noble [m. 525a d] Not in STC. 20 copies of an unknown work.

[24] quatuor libros of the Castell of labour 4 copies of Pierre Gringore, [The castle of labour], trans. by Alexander Barclay ([Paris: Antoine Verard, c. 1503], STC 12379). Subsequent editions (4): Pynson ([1505?], STC 12380); de Worde (1506, STC 12381); [de Worde] ([1512?], STC 12381.4); and [Pynson] ([1528?], STC 12382).

[25] quinqaginta libros of Codrus & menalcas 50 copies of Alexander Barclay, The boke of Codrus and Mynalcas (Pynson, [1521?], STC 1384b).

[*26] quinquaginta libros de vita stē [i.e. sanctae] Katerine 50 copies of ?The lif of saincte katheryne ([Pynson, 1505?], STC 4813.6). Subsequent editions (2): [(B) Pynson] ([(B) 1510?], (B) STC 4813.6+1) and [(B) de Worde] ([(B) 1517?], (B) STC 4813.6+2). Could also be either of de Worde’s two

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England editions of Raimundus de Vineis, The lyfe of saint katherin of senis ([Westminster, 1492?], STC 24766, and [1500?], STC 24766.3). Though not typically included in lists of Syon books, C. Annette Grise has shown that there is some circumstantial evidence supporting a Syon source for de Vineis’s life. ‘Catherine of Siena was well known at Syon and the Lyf is a lengthy volume concerned with detailing her life and showing Catherine as exemplary – and example of hagiography as instruction for a community of religious women’.50

[27] quatuor libros de Clamadas & Cleremonus

Not in STC. 4 copies of an unknown Arthurian work; Cleremus and Cleremond are both Knights of the Round Table.

[28] quinquaginta libros of the conuercyon of swer 50 copies of Stephen Hawes, The conuercyon of swerers (de Worde, 1509, STC 12943). Subsequent editions (2): [de Worde] ([1509?], STC 12943.5); and [John Skot for] John Butler ([1531?], STC 12944).

[+29] quinquaginta libros of the lyffe of seynt Gregory mother 50 copies of The trental is wryten in [...] latyn frenche and englysshe [Life of St. Gregory’s mother] (Pynson, [1501?], STC 12351.5). Subsequent editions (2): de Worde (1515, STC 12352); and Mitchell ([1536?], STC 12353).

[30] vigint[i] libros de Bodye of | polycye 20 copies of Christine de Pisan, The booke whiche is called the body of polycye (John Skot, 1521, STC 7270).

[31] quinquaginta libros de retorna breuium 50 copies of the Retorna brevium. First printed by Pynson (1516, STC 20894.4). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), of which the following 10 are the most likely: de Worde (1519, STC 20894.7); Pynson ([1523–24?], STC 20896); Redman (1532, STC 20898, [1533?], STC 20899, and [1538?], STC 20900; [(B) Elizabeth Pickering] (1541, STC 20901); Middleton (1543, STC 20902, and 1545, STC 20902.5); and Powell ([(B) 1550], STC 20904).

[+32] vigint[i] & quinque libros de vita stī [i.e. sancti] Goorge

50 C. Annette Grise, ‘“Moche profitable unto religious persones, gathered by a brother of Syon’: Syon Abbey and English Books’, in Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion, c. 1400–1700, ed. E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), p. 142. This work also appears in Joseph Gwara’s table of ‘Wynkyn de Worde Books with Syon Abbey Associations’. See Gwara, ‘Four Fragments’, p. 125.

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tamar a atki n 25 copies of Baptista Spagnuoli, The lyfe of the gloryous martyr saynt George, trans. by Alexander Barclay ([Pynson, 1515?], STC 22992.1). Double entry; see item 20, above.

[+33] vigint[i] libros of the lyffe of seynt Barbara 20 copies of ?The lyfe of saynt Barbara (Julian Notary, 1518, STC 1375). Perhaps more likely to be: seynt Barbara ([Pynson?, c. 1520], STC 1375.5); a different work to STC 1375, translated from the Latin of Jean de Wackerzeele.

[+34] vigint[i] & quinque libros of the insampl | euell tonges 25 copies of ?The example of euyll tongues ([de Worde, 1525?], STC 10608). Could also be the earlier [c. 1510] edition published by Notary (STC 24115.5) under the title Of euyll tonges, though de Worde’s is the only one to include the word ‘example’ in its title.

[35] quatuor libros of hormans vulgars 4 copies of William Horman, Vulgaria (Pynson, 1519, STC 13811). Subsequent edition: de Worde (1530, STC 13812).

[+36] quatuor libros de miraclis of our | lady 4 copies of The myracles of oure blessyd lady (de Worde, [1496], STC 17539). Subsequent editions (2) also by de Worde: 1514 (STC 17540) and 1530 (STC 17541). Not the product of a specific house but designed to appeal to a wider readership; the text refers to laymen, nuns, both Cistercian and Carthusian monks, and friars. The work appears in an early sixteenth-century list of books belonging to Dame Margaret Nicollson, identified by T. A. Birrell as a nun in the Benedictine convent at Elstow, Bedfordshire, suggesting its appeal to women religious.51

[+37] quatuor libros de vita stī [i.e. sancti] Alborow Not in STC. 4 copies of a lost Pynson edition of the life of St Alborough. Recorded in Ames; Blayney gives a suggested date 1520? ((B) STC 275+). The contracted form ‘stī’ suggests some confusion about the gender of this saint, who was clearly already obscure by the time the inventory was drawn up. See also item 9, above.

[38] vigint[i] libros de Ouidius de Tristibus 51 T. A. Birrill, ‘The Printed Books of Dame Margaret Nicollson: A Pre-Reformation Collection’, in Essays on English and American Literature and a Sheaf of Poems Presented to David Wilkinson, ed. J. Bakker, J. A. Verleun, and J. v.d. Vriesenaerde (Amsterdam, 1987), pp. 27–34. Her list of fifteen books includes others found here: see items 22, 24, 36, 53, and 55.

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England Not in STC. 20 copies of an untraced edition of Ovid, De tristibus. The earliest extant ([1572], STC 18977a) is too late, but it could be one of numerous Continental editions printed from 1505.

[*39] tres libros | ortus vocabulorum 3 copies of the Ortus Vocabulorum. First edition: de Worde (Westminster, 1500, STC 13829). Numerous subsequent editions (10+) of which the most likely are the following 9: Pynson (1509, STC 13830 and STC 13830.3); and de Worde (1509, STC 13830.7, 1511, STC 13831, 1514, STC 13832, 1516, STC 13833, 1518, STC 13834, 1528, STC 13836, and 1532, STC 13837). The registrum of the library of the brethren of Syon contains a copy of STC 13829 and names de Worde as its donor.52

[40.] quatuor libros de Era linacri Untraced.

[41] tresdecem libros dialogi Barlandi 13 copies of Adriaan van Baarland, Dialogi XLII (Cologne: Eucharius Cerviconus, 1527, USTC 635896). Also published: Paris (Chrestien Wechel, 1529, USTC 184833, 1530, USTC 184949, 1535, USTC 146890); and Cologne (Cervicornus, 1530, USTC 635897). No English edition traced.

[42] decem & septem libros of Tully de Senectute Englyshe & latyn 17 copies of Cicero, Tullius de senectute both in latyn and Englysshe tonge, trans. by Robert Whitington (John Bydell, [1535?], STC 5292).

[+43] tres libros de | liturgia Erasmi 3 copies of ?Erasmus, A sermon made: by the famous doctor Erasmus, trans. from Liturgia Virginis Laurentanae (Wyer, [1533?], STC 10508). Could equally be a Continental edition of Erasmus’s liturgy for the nuns of Loreto. See Obsecratio ad Virginem Matrem Mariam in rebus adversis ([Rome, Francesco Minizio Calvo, c. 1524], USTC 828268).

[+44] triginta libros de vita of seynt Dorothe Not in STC. 30 copies of an unknown hagiography.

[+45] vndecem libros of the | storye of the holye Crosse

52 Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, vol. 9, Syon Abbey, ed. Vincent Gillespie, with The Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. A. I. Doyle (London, 2011), p. 24 (no. 75).

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tamar a atki n 11 copies of ?an indulgence associated with the Monastery of the Holy Cross ([Pynson, 1491], STC 14077c.51). Subsequent editions (4): [Pynson?] ([1515], STC 14077c.52); [de Worde] ([1519], STC 14077c.53); and Pynson ([1528], STC 14077c.54 and STC 14077c.55). Printed as a single sheet, it is perhaps unlikely that this work would be entered as a liber, so this item may in fact refer to another, untraced work associated with the monastery.

[+46] quinque libros of seynt ffrauncys lyfe 5 copies of St Bonaventura, The lyfe of the gloryous confessoure of criste seynt Frauncis (Pynson, [c. 1515], STC 3270).

[+47] sex libros of seynt | Iohn of Beuerley 6 copies of ?These folowynge be the the priuyleges pardon and indulgence graunted to the bretherne and susters, & benefactours of the college churche of seynt John of Beuerley ([Pynson, c. 1520], STC 14077c.26). Printed as a single sheet, it is unlikely this work would be entered as a liber, so this item may in fact refer to another, untraced work either about the Anglo-Saxon bishop St John of Beverley or associated with Beverley Minster.

[48] quinquaginta libros of hundered courtes 50 copies of the ?Modus tenendi. First edition: de Worde ([(B) 1520?], STC 7725.9). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), of which the most likely are the following 7: Pynson ([1523?], STC 7726); Redman ([(B) 1527], (B) STC 7727+, [1530?], STC 7728, 1538, STC 7729, and 1539, STC 7730); and Middleton (1544, STC 7731, and 1547, STC 7734a).

[49] centum libros of | syr lamwell 100 copies of The treaty[se of Sir Lamwell] ([Mitchell, 1530–32?], STC 15187).

[50] quinquaginta libros of the enterlude of youthe 50 copies of Thenterlude of youth ([de Worde, c. 1530], STC 14111).

[51] quatuor libros | of the prouerbes of lidgate 4 copies of John Lydgate, The prouerbes of Lydgate (de Worde, [1510?], STC 17026). One subsequent edition: de Worde ([1520?], STC 17027).

[*52] sexdecem libros of the martiloge in Englyshe 16 copies of The martiloge in englyssge after the vse of salisbury, trans. by Richard Whitford (de Worde, 1526, STC 17532). Possible double entry: see item 6.

[+53] sex | libros of the complaynt of the soule

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England 6 copies of Complaynt of the soule (de Worde, [1519?], STC 5609 and STC 5609.5). Subsequent edition: de Worde (1532, STC 5610). Not a complaint, but in fact a debate between the body and soul.

[54] duodecem libros of Bathe tale — Not in STC. 12 copies of an unknown work.

[*55] quatuordecem libros of the remedyes ayenst all trobles & temptacions 14 copies of [The remedy against the troubles of temptations] (de Worde, 1508, STC 20875.5). Subsequent editions (2): de Worde (1519, STC 20876, and [c. 1525], STC 20876.5). This work is not typically included in accounts of Syon books, but is regarded by Gwara as a Bridgettine ‘“standard”’.53 The earliest edition includes a woodcut – reused in each of the subsequent editions – of the badge of Margaret Beaufort. Given Lady Margaret’s likely role in de Worde’s involvement with the Bridgettine house of Syon, a connection with the abbey seems possible.54 At any rate, the work seems intended for female religious (‘And therefore | syster flee to hym that all mercy is/and aske mercy | & ye shall haue it’: sig. Aiv v).55

[+56] sex | libros of remorse of Concyense 6 copies of William Lichfield, The remors of conscycence ([de Worde, c. 1510], STC 20881.3). Subsequent editions (2): de Worde ([(B) 1517?], STC 20881.7, and [1534?], STC 20882).

[57] sexaginta libros ^of Caryryus 60 copies of ?Ludovico Carerio, Practica nova causarum criminalium. Not in STC, but numerous Continental editions before 1553.

[58] quinquagint[a] libros of | the enterlude of youthe 50 copies of Thenterlude of youth ([de Worde, c. 1530], STC 14111). NB double entry; see item 50, above. 53 Gwara, ‘Four Fragments’, p. 123. 54 See further, George Keiser, ‘Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon Wynter and Beinecke MS 317’, Yale University Library Gazette 50 (1985), 32–46, esp. 44–46; A. S. G. Edwards and Carol Meale, ‘The Marketing of Early Printed Books in Late Medieval England’, The Library 6th ser., 15.2 (1993), 96–124; Sue Powell, ‘Syon, Caxton and the Festial’, Birgittiana 2 (1996), 187–207; and her ‘Margaret Beaufort and Her Books’, The Library 6th ser., 20.3 (1998), 197–240. 55 The work is bundled with a short extract from The Form of Living by ‘the dyscrete & vertuous Richard hampole’ and an English translation of Alanus de Rupe’s Tractatus Mirabilis de Ortu atque Progressu Psalterii Christi et Marie, which may in fact suggest Dominican origins.

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[59] duodecem libros of the demandes of loue 12 copies of The demaundes joyous (de Worde, 1511, STC 6573).

[60] duodecem libros of | them that be to late maryed 12 copies of Pierre Gringore, [The compaint of them that be too late married], trans. by Robert Copland (de Worde, [1505?], STC 5728). Subsequent edition: de Worde ([1518?], STC 5728.5).

[61] centum libros of syr lamwell knyght 100 copies of The treaty[se of Sir Lamwell] ([Mitchell, 1530–32?], STC 15187). NB Double entry; see item 49, above.

[62] duodem [sic] libros of | Stanbredge accydence 12 copies of an untraced edition of John Stanbridge, Accidence. Multiple editions (10+) from 1505. NB Possible double entry; see item 5, above.

[*63] duodecem libros libros [sic] of the Tretes of master Iohn Erson parson | of parys 12 copies of ?A ful deuout and gostely treatyse of the Imytacyon [...] compiled in Laten by J. Gerson, trans. William Atkinson and Margaret Beaufort (Pynson, [1504], STC 23954.7). Subsequent editions (6): Pynson ([1504?], STC 23955 and (B) STC 23955+, and [1517], STC 23957 and STC 23958); and de Worde ([1519?], STC 23956, and [1528?], STC 23960). Blayney identifies this item as Thomas Betson, A ryght profytable treatyse compendiously drawen out of many & dyuers wrytynges of holy men ([de Worde, 1500], STC 1978). ‘The famous doctour Johan gerson Chaunceler | of Parys/’ is mentioned on sig. aij r. Equally possible is a A boke newley translated out of Laten in to Englysshe, called the folowynge of Cryste (Wyer, [(T) 1532?], STC 23961), another translation of the Imitatio Christi, traditionally ascribed to Richard Whitford, although that ascription is now disputed.56 Subsequent editions of that work associated with The George (4): [Redman] ([1531?], STC 23964 and STC 23964.3, and [1535?], STC 23964.7); and Middleton ([(B) 1546?], STC 23965). NB STC 23964, STC 23964.7, and STC 23965 were all issued with The golden pystle; see item 64, below.

[*64] decem libros of the goldeyn Epystele of seynt Barnarde

56 Whitford’s authorship has been seriously doubted since the publication of P. G. Caraman’s essay, ‘An English Monastic Reformer of the Sixteenth Century’, Clergy Review 28.1 (1947), 1–16. See also Glanmore Williams, ‘Two Neglected London–Welsh Clerics: Richard Whitford and Richard Gwent’, Transactions of the Honorable Society of Cymmrodorion 1 (1961), 25–32. For a recent overview of the debate, see da Costa, p. 12.

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England 10 copies of St Bernard, A goodly treatyse, and it is called, a notable lesson, otherwyse [...] the golden pystle, trans. by Richard Whitford (de Worde, 1530, STC 1912). Subsequent editions (4): de Worde ([1531?], STC 1913); Wyer (1531, STC 1914); Thomas Godfray ([1531?], STC 1915, and [c. 1535], STC 1915.5). A likely Syon commission.

[*65] quinquagint[a] libros | of seynt Nicholas of Tolentyne 50 copies of Saynt Nycholas of tollentyne (de Worde, [1525?], STC 18528). One subsequent edition: [de Worde] ([1525?], STC 18528.5). Nicholas of Tolentino was an Augustinian monk who was canonized in 1446, but remained virtually unknown in England outside Augustinian circles. Joseph Gwara has suggested that there is enough circumstantial evidence to think ‘de Worde’s target audience was Syon Abbey’, which nominally followed the Augustinian rule. Certainly, the book’s commercial and religious contexts make a Syon connection possible.57

[+66] quadragint[a] & quatuor libros of the Rosarye of | Christ 44 copies of ?The mystik sweet rosary of the faythful soule (Antwerp: Martyne Emprowers, 1533, STC 21318). This text opens with a set of prayers on Christ’s wounds, which begin by ‘saluting the wounde of the right fote of our Lorde’ (sig. Ai v). As Alexandra Barrett has noted, ‘among the English Carthusians and Birgittines there can be no doubt of the popularity of devotion to the Wounds and Holy Blood’.58

[+67] quatuor libros of the commendacion of matrimony 4 copies of William Harrington, [The commendations of matrimony with the impediments] (J. Rastell, [1515?], STC 12798.5). Subsequent editions (3): J. Rastell ([1517?], STC 12798.7); Skot (1528, STC 12799); and [Skot for] Redman (1528, STC 12800).

[68] duos libros of the cognisaunce | of Amoues 2 copies of ?Guillaume d’Amours, [A pronostication] (de Worde, [1523], STC 389.3).

[+69] septem libros of the lyfe of seynt Armyll 7 copies of The lyfe of the moost holy hieremyte [...] saynt Armele ([Pynson, c. 1502], STC 772). 57 Gwara, ‘Four Fragments’, p. 121. 58 Alexandra Barrett, Anne Bulkeley and her Book: Fashioning Female Piety in Early Tudor England, Texts and Transitions 2 (Turnhout, 2009), p. 152.

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[70] quatuor libros de Whytten | of the contentes of sillables 4 copies of Robert Whittington’s De Syllabarum Quantitate. First edition: de Worde ([1512?], STC 25509.3). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), of which the following 14 are the most likely: de Worde (1513, STC 25509.5, 1516, STC 25510, 1517, STC 25511.5, 1519, STC 25512 and STC 25514, 1521, STC 25515 and STC 25515a, 1524, STC 25518, 1526, STC 25520, and 1528, STC 25521 and STC 255215); and Pynson (1515, STC 25509.7, 1522, STC 25517, and 1523, STC 25516).

[*71] duos libros of disce mori quia morieris 2 copies of ?A lytell treatyse called ars moriendi ([Westminster: Caxton, 1491], STC 786). Subsequent editions (3): de Worde ([1497], STC 787, and 1506, STC 788); and [Wyer] ([1532?], STC 788.5). Could also be A litell treatise spekynge of the arte & crafte to knowe well to dye ([Westminster, Caxton, 1490], STC 789). Subsequent edition (1): Pynson, ([1495?], STC 790). In STC 1978 (see item 63, above), Thomas Betson, Syon abbey’s librarian, quotes from this work, though it is unclear whether STC 786 or STC 787 is his source. STC 787 makes use of Hodnett no. 374, further emphasizing the Syon link.59

[72] sex libros of | carmen Iuuenile 6 copies of Joannes Sulpitius, Carmen iuuenile. Earliest edition: Pynson (1494, STC 23425). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), of which the following 12 are most likely: Pynson (1498, STC 23426, 1505, STC 23427a, and 1516, STC 23248a.5); and de Worde (1499, STC 23427, 1504, STC 23427.7, 1511, STC 23427a.3, [1514?], STC 23247a.7, 1515, STC 23428, 1516, STC 23248a, 1518, STC 23249, 1520, STC 23429.5, and 1524, STC 23429a).

[73] centum libros of lytle Crownacles of mayers 100 copies of ?Richard Arnold, The names of the baylifs custos mairs and sherefs of London ([Antwerp: Anthony van Berghen, 1503?], STC 782). Subsequent edition: [Treveris] ([Southwark, 1525?], STC 783). Could also be an edition of the Chronicle of years, printed in numerous editions (10+) including the following 5 associated with The George: Middleton (1543, STC 9987.5, 1544, STC 9988); and Powell (1549, STC 9988.3, 1550, STC 9988.5, and 1552, STC 9989).

[74] trigint[a] libros of the | gouernaunce of vertue 30 copies of Thomas Becon, The gouernans of vertue ([Southwark: John Nicholson, 1538], STC 1724.5). Subsequent editions (4): Thomas Raynald ([1548?], STC 1724.7); unknown publisher ([1549?], STC 1725); [Nicholas Hill for] Waley ([1549?], STC 1725.3); and [John Day?] ([c. 1550], STC 1725.7). 59 See item 11, above.

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[75] ducent[os] libros of the epytheme the whiche the throweth dothe | tell Not in STC. 200 copies of an unknown philosophical work. Possibly an early Continental edition of Aristotle’s Priora Analytica, printed numerous times from 1475 both with and without commentary.

[76] ducent[os] libros of the expostulacion of the Scottes 200 copies of James Harrison, An exhortacion to the Scottes (Richard Grafton, 1547, STC 12857).

[77] centum libros of the Abyrdgement | de anno tricesimo primo henri octavi 100 copies of The abredgement of the statues made in the .xxxi. Henry the eyght (Redman, [1539?], STC 9542).

[78] quinquagint[a] & quinque libros of Iosyppes ffables in | Englyshe 55 copies of Aesop’s Fables. First English edition: Caxton (Westminster, 1484, STC 175). Subsequent editions (5): Pynson ([1497?], STC 176, [1500?], STC 177 and STC 177.3); [Pynson?] ([1525?], STC 177.7); and Powell (1551, STC 178).

[79] sexcent[os] libros of the Epystelles & Gospelles 600 copies of the Liturgical Epistles and Gospels, presumably in English. Early editions were frequently issued with primers, so the edition referred to here is hard to trace.

[80] ducent[os] alios libros of the | epystelles & Gospelles 200 further copies of the Epistles and Gospels. See item 79, above.

[81] trigint[a] & duos libros of lyttelton Tenures in frenche 32 copies of Thomas Littleton, Tenures, in Law French. Earliest edition: John Lettou and William de Machlinia ([1482], STC 15719). The editions printed between [1483?] (STC 15720) and 1553 (STC 15736) are too numerous to list here, but many have an association with The George. Most are by Pynson and Redman; Middleton produced an edition (1545, STC 15733), as did Powell (1553, STC 15736), though this is probably too late.

[82] ducent[os] | libros of herballes 200 copies of one of many Herbals printed in the first half of the sixteenth century. Those associated with The George include those by: Redman ([1539?], STC 13175.5); Pickering ([1541?], STC 13175.7); Middleton (1546, STC 13175.10); and Powell (1550, STC 13175.13).

[83] ducent[os] libros of the treasure of poore men

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tamar a atki n 200 copies of The treasure of pore men ((B) Richard Bankes, [1526?], STC 24199). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 4 associated with The George: Redman (1539, STC 24200, and 1540, STC 24202.5); Middleton (1544, STC 24203); and Powell (1551, STC 24204).

[84] centum libros of the glasse of health 100 copies of Thomas Moulton, This is the myrour or glasse of helthe, necessary and nedefull (Wyer, [(T) 1529?], STC 18214a). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 3 associated with The George: Redman ([1540?], STC 18216); Pickering ([1541?], STC 18219); and Middleton ([1545?], STC 18220).

[85] quadragint[a] libros of natura breuium in Englyshe 40 copies of the Natura Brevium in English, trans. by Thomas Phaer. First edition: Redman ([1530?], STC 18402.5). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 5 associated with The George: Redman (1532, STC 18403, 1535, STC 18404, and 1540, STC 18405); Middleton (1544, STC 18407); and Powell (1553, STC 18408.5), though this is probably too late.

[86] quinquagint[a] | libros de natura breuium in frenche 50 copies of the Natura Brevium in French. First edition: Pynson ([1494], STC 18385). Numerous other Pynson editions between 1500 (STC 18386) and 1528 (STC 18390). Subsequent other editions also associated with The George include those by: [(B) Redman] ([B) 1525], (B) STC 18389+, [1530], STC 18391, and [1534?], STC 18395.5); Middleton ([1545?], STC 18396); and Powell (1551, STC 18397.5).

[87] quinquaginta libros of fortune 50 copies of ?Seneca, Lucii Annei Senecæ ad Gallioni de remediis fortuitorum, trans. by Richard Whittington (Middleton, 1547, STC 22216). This could also be Thomas More, The boke of the fayre gentylwoman that no man shulde put his truste, or confydence in that is to say, Lady Fortune (Wyer, [(T) 1555?]), STC 18078.5).

[88] ducent[os] & quinquagi | libros of Saulters 250 copies of an untraced Psalter.

[89] duodecem libros of ffitzherberes Iustyce of the pease 12 copies of Anthony Fitzherbert, The newe boke of iustices of peas (Redman, 1538, STC 10969). Subsequent editions (5): Pickering (1540, STC 10970); Thomas Petit (1541, STC 10971); Middleton (1543, STC 10972); and Powell (1547, STC 10973, and 1551, STC 10974). Could also be an earlier French edition: Redman (1538, STC 10968). The boke of Iustices of peas (Pynson, [1505?], STC 14862) is also possible, though this version is not ascribed to Fitzherbert; it survives in numerous subsequent editions (10+), including 3 by de Worde: (1506, STC

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[90] duodecem | libros of lucius aurenus 12 copies of ?A frutefull worke of Lucius Anneus Seneca named the forme and rule of honest lyuynge, trans. by Richard Whittington (Middleton, 1546, STC 17501). A translation of ‘Formula vitae honestae’ by the pseudo-Senecan author Martin of Braga. Other earlier editions do not attribute the work to Seneca. Could also be A frutefull worke of Lucius Anneus Senecæ Called the myrrour or glasse of maners, trans. by Richard Whittington (Middleton, 1547, STC 17502), a work by Martin of Braga but wrongly attributed to Seneca in this edition. The only other work by Seneca published before 1554 is De remediis fortuitorum, trans. by Robert Whittington (Middleton, 1547, STC 22216). See item 87, above.

[91] centum & quinquaginta alios libros de natura breuium 150 copies of the Natura Brevium. See items 85 and 86 above.

[92] sexd | libros of lytteltons tenures in Englyshe 6 copies of Thomas Littleton’s Tenures in English. Earliest edition: [J. Rastell] ([1523–25], STC 15759.5). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 4 associated with The George: Redman ([(B) 1537], STC 15761.2, [1539?], STC 15761.4, and [1540?], STC 15761.8); and Middleton (1544, STC 15763).

[93] triginta & quatuor libros of presydentes 34 copies of the Book of precedents. Earliest edition: Edward Whitchurch [(B) and John Herford] to be sold by William Telotson ([1543], STC 3327). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 3 associated with The George: Middleton (1545, STC 3327.9); Powell ([1548?], STC 3330, and [1550?], STC 3330.5).

[94] sexcent[os] | & quinquagint[a] libros of Catechesmus for Chyldren 650 copies of ?A fruteful and a very christen instruction for children (William Copland [for Richard Kele], 1547, STC 14106). Also possible are: Thys lytle treatyse of the instruction of chyldren (Jean Le Roux, 1543, STC 14106.2); or Thomas Cranmer, Cathechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into christian religion ([N. Hill for] Gualterus Lynne, 1548, STC 5992.5, STC 5993, and STC 5994).

[95] quinquaginta libros of the lybertyes | of shreues 50 copies of ?Anthony Fitzherbert, The offices of sheryffes, bailliffes of liberties, escheatours constables and coroners (Redman, [1538?], STC 10984). Subsequent

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tamar a atki n editions (4): Pickering ([(B) 1540], STC 10985); [Petit for] Thomas Marshe (1543, STC 10986); Middleton (1545, STC 10987); and [N. Hill for] Kele (1552, STC 10989a).

[96] vigint[i] & quinque libros of husbandrye 25 copies of John Fitzherbert, [Book of husbandry] (Pynson, [1523?], STC 10994). Numerous subsequent editions (10+), including the following 3 associated with The George: Middleton ([1543?], STC 10997, [(B) 1546?], STC 10997.7); and Powell ([1549?], STC 10999.3). This work is also sometimes attributed to Anthony Fitzherbert.

[97] quinquagint[a] libros of lytelton tenures | in frenche 50 copies of Littleton’s Tenures in French. NB Double entry; see item 81 above.

[98] quinquaginta libros of Wollor sermon at Paules crosse Untraced.

[99] quatuordecem | libros of Remes of Waste paper of ffrasaudes 14 books made up of sheets of waste paper extracted from ?The first volum of sir Johan Froyssart: of the cronycles of Englande (Pynson, 1523, STC 11396). The headnote for STC 11396 suggests a number of sheets were damaged or ran out of stock c. 1535. They were reprinted by Redman in sufficient quantity to be regularly issued in 1542? as STC 11396.5 with Middleton’s reprint of the remaining sheets. This entry perhaps refers to surplus reams of the Redman-printed sheets. For other possibilities, see footnote 19.

[+100] centum libros of the sacryfyce of | the masse 100 copies of ?Richard Smith, A defence of the blessed masse, and the sacrifice thereof (Herford, 1546, STC 22820 and STC 22820a). Subsequent edition: Middleton (1546, STC 22821).

[101] octogint[a] libros of the fyrst part of the statutes 80 copies of ?the first part (E. III–H. VIII) of The great boke of statutes, trans. and ed. largely from STC 9264 by George Ferrers? (Redman, [1533?], STC 9286). Subsequent edition: Middleton ([1542?], STC 9287).

[102] quinquagint[a] libros of the | statute de anno vndecimo h octavi Not in STC. 50 copies of an untraced statute book for 1519–20.

[103] octogint[a] libros of the standerdes ayenst Barons Not in STC. 80 copies of an untraced Courts Baron book. Possibly ?The maner of kepynge a courte baron (Redman, [1538?], STC 7714). 10 subsequent editions

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England including the following 5 associated with The George: Pickering ([(B) 1540], STC 7716); [Middleton] (1543, STC 7716.5); Middleton (1544, STC 7717, and 1547, STC 7720.4); and Powell (1552, STC 7721).

[104] quinquaginta libros of the deuysyon of the spiritualty & temporalty 50 copies of A treatise concernynge the diuision betwene the spirytualtie and temporalite (Redman, [1532?], STC 21586). Subsequent editions (4): Berthelet ([1532?], STC 21587, STC 2187.3, STC 2187.5, and STC 2187.7).

[105] [space] libros | of the prouerbes & adagyes [?] copies of Erasmus, Prouerbes or adagies (Bankes, 1539, STC 10437). Subsequent editions (2): [(B) Herford] for Whitchurch to be sold by Telotson (1545, STC 10438); and Powell (1550, STC 10439). NB space left in roll for number of copies.

[106] vigint[i] & quinque libros mayna Carta in Englyshe 25 copies of the Magna Carta. Earliest English edition: Wyer ([1531?], STC 9270.5). Subsequent translation associated with The George: The boke of Magna Carta, trans. by George Ferrers (Redman, 1534, STC 9272). One further edition of this version: Pickering ([1541?], STC 9275).

[107] ducent[os] libros of | the storye of the deathe of Iohn diatius Not in STC. Perhaps 200 copies of an unknown life of the Spanish martyr Juan Diaz or Ionnes Diasius (d. 1546).

[+108] ducent[os] libros of the myseres of mankynde 200 copies of ?Erasmus, De contemptu mundi, trans. by Thomas Paynell (Berthelet, [1532?], STC 10470.8). One subsequent edition: Berthelet (1533, STC 10471).

[109] duodecem libros of thenterlude of magnificence 12 copies of John Skelton, Magnyficence ([Southwark: Treveris for J. Rastell], [(B) 1531], STC 22607).

[110] centum octogint[a] & decem libros of the | dyalogue betwene sathan & the synner of uyton [m. 525b] 190 copies of ?Urbanus Regius, The shelde of saluacion, trans. by Thomas Becon (Wyer, [(T) 1546?], STC 20851.5). The caption title on sig. A8 r runs ‘The dialogue betwene the penytent synner and satan’.

[111] centum libros of Brytton in ffrenche 100 copies of Britton. [A treatise on the laws of England] (Robert Redman, [1533?], STC 3803).

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[112] quinquagint[a] libros of the enterlude of Nature 50 copies of Henry Medwall, Nature ([William Rastell, 1530–34], STC 17779).

[113] quinquagint[a] libros of Terenetius Wy 50 copies of ?Terence, Comœdiæ sex ([Pynson, 1495–97, STC 23885). Subsequent editions (2): de Worde (1504, STC 23885.3, and [c. 1510], STC 23885.5).

[114] quadragint[a] libros of the Testament of moyses 40 copies of ?The fyrste parte of the Bible called the .v. bookes of Moses (Day, 1551, STC 2087). It is also possible that this entry could refer to an early edition of The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: de Worde ([1510?], STC 14323 and STC 14323.3); Pynson ([c. 1520], STC 14323.5); and Skot ([1522–23], STC 14324).

[+115] quinquagint[a] libros of the cherche | of euell men & Women 50 copies of St Bernardinus, The chirche of the euyll men and women, trans. by Henry Watson ([Paris?: for de Worde?], 1511, STC 1966). Subsequent edition: Pynson ([1525?], STC 1967).

[116] sex libros of songe bookes of fower partes 6 copies of an untraced song book.

[+117] centum libros of the | lyfe of our lady 100 copies of John Lydgate, The book of the lyf of our lady ([Westminster]: Caxton, [1483], STC 17023 and STC 17024). Subsequent edition: Redman (1531 (STC 17025).

[118] decem libros of the hellon of Burdeux 10 copies of The boke of duke Huon of burdeuxe, trans. by John Bourchier ([Notary, c. 1515], STC 13998.5).

[*119] trecent[os] libros of the passyon | of Whytford 300 copies of ?Richard Whitford, The pomander of prayer (R. Copland, 1528, STC 25421.2). Subsequent editions (3): R. Copland (1530, STC 25421.3); Redman (1531, STC 25421.5); and de Worde (1532, STC 25421.6). This work is ascribed to Whitford by the STC, but the attribution is not now generally accepted.60 Both Copland editions make use of Hodnett no. 457, however, thereby confirming the Syon link. 60 See Rev. Robert A Horsfield, ‘The Pomader 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. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge,

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[120] ducent[os] libros of the donacion of Constantyne 200 copies of Lorenzo Valla, A treatyse of the donation gyuen vnto Syluester pope of Rhome, by Constantyne emperour of Rome, trans. by William Marshall? (Godfray [for William Marshall, 1534], STC 5641).

[+121] ducent[os] libros of the exposyci | of the common crede of Erasmus 200 copies of Erasmus, A playne and godly exposytion or declaration of the commune crede, trans. by William Marshall, from Catechismus (Redman, [for Marshall, 1534], STC 10504 and STC 10504a).

[122] ducent[os] libros of the prymeres in Eynglyshe & latyn 200 copies of ?This prymer of Salysbery vse bothe in Englyshe & in Laten (Redman, [1535], STC 15986.3), though there are numerous other examples, including two further Redman editions: [1537?] (STC 15997); and 1538 (STC 16008). And two by Bydell: for William Marshall, 1535 (STC 15988); and [1537?] (STC 15997.5).

[123] vigint[i] & quinque libros of the breuearye of hol 25 copies of ?Andrew Borde, The breuiary of helthe (Middleton, 1547, STC 3373.5). One subsequent edition: Powell (1552, STC 3374), but this is probably too late.

[*124] quinquagint[a] libros of the Immytacion of | Chyrst 50 copies of the Imitatio Christi in English. Could be either Atkinson and Beaufort’s or Whitford’s translation, both of which were printed in numerous editions. NB Possible double entry; see 63, above.

[125] quinquagint[a] libros of lucyans dyologes 50 copies of Lucian, Dialogi (de Worde, 1528, STC 16891). One subsequent edition: Redman (1531, STC 16892). Could also be Necromantia. A dialog of the poete Lucyan (J. Rastell, [1530?], STC 16895). Berthelet’s [1532?] edition of a dialogue between Lucian and Diogenes is also possible (STC 16894).

[126] vigint[i] & quinque libros vulgarya | Terentii in Englysshe & latyn 25 copies of Terence, Vulgaria quedam abs Terencio in Anglicam linguam traducta ([Oxford: Theodoric Rood and Thomas Hunte, 1483], STC 23904). Subsequent editions (6): [de Machlinia] ([1483?], STC 23905, and [1485?], STC 23906); Gerard Leeu (Antwerp, 1486, STC 23907); William Faques ([c. 1505], STC 23907.3); and de Worde ([c. 1510], STC 23907.7, and 1529, STC 23908).

[+127] quatuor libros portiferium 1989), pp. 205–13 (p. 207), where he notes that although the text includes a preface written by a Syon brother, it says of itself that it was written by a Sheen Carthusian.

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tamar a atki n 4 copies of an untraced breviary.

[+128] unum librum de epistola | liro A single copy of ?Nicholas of Lyre’s Postillae. No editions are recorded in the STC, but Giacomo Penzio issued an edition under the title Postilla seu expositio literalis & moralis Nicolai de Lira Ordinis minorum super Epistolas & Evangelia quadragesimalia (Venice, 1516, USTC 844538), and a subsequent edition by Lorenzo Lorio for Alessandro Bindoni followed in 1519 (USTC 844537).

[129] centum libros statutorum de anno primo & anno duodecemo h octavi Not in STC. 100 copies of an untraced statute book for 1 and 12 Henry VIII.

[130] centum | libros of the artycles wyth the newe narracyons 100 copies of Articuli ad narrationes nouas pertinentes formati (Pynson, [1525?], STC 812). Subsequent editions (6): Redman (1528, STC 814, and 1539, STC 818); Berthelet (1530, STC 815, and 1538, STC 817); Henry Smith (1545, STC 820); and Powell (1547, STC 821).

[131] quinquagint[a] libros of the | olde Tenoures 50 copies of the Old Tenures. First edition: Pynson ([1494?], STC 23877.7). Subsequent Pynson editions (5): [1496] (STC 23878); [1513?] ((B) STC 23878+); [c. 1515] (STC 23879); [c. 1520] (STC 23879.5); and 1525 (STC 23880). First English edition: J. Rastell ([c. 1523], STC 23879.7).

[132] centum libros of the dyuersyte of courtes 100 copies of Anthony Fitzherbert, Diuersite de courtz et lour iurisdictions (Pynson, 1526, STC 10946).

[133] vigint[i] & quinque libros of | mayna carta in frenche 25 copies of Magna Carta in F. (Redman, 1539, STC 9273).

[134] quinquagint[a] libros of the offyce of Iustyce of pece in ffrenche 50 copies of Loffice et auctoryte des iustyces de peas nouelment imprime (Redman, 1538, STC 10968). NB Possible double entry; see item 89, above.

[135] duodecem libros of reme Waste paper 12 books of wasted sheets.

[136] centum libros of the play of good order Not in STC. 100 copies of an unknown play.

[137] centu | libros of Necromantia

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Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England 100 copies of Necromantia, a dialog of the poete Lucyan ([Southwark: Treveris? for] Rastell, [1530?], STC 16895). NB possible double entry; see item 125, above.

[138] sex Remes of wast bookes of interest 6 reams of wasted sheets that were perhaps once books of interest (i.e. now obsolete guides to interest rates). Peter Beal notes that in commercial or business usage, a waste book, ‘is a manuscript account book in which financial transactions, chiefly payments and receipts, are recorded in a rough or cursory manner just as they occur, with the intention of their being copied or posted more neatly in a more formal account afterwards’.61 It might be that this entry refers to Powell’s own day books rather than stock.

[139] centum libros of the | Welle of lyffe . 100 copies of The fountayne or well of lyfe (Thomas Godfray, [1534?], STC 11211). Subsequent edition: William Hill ([1548–49, STC 11211.2).

[140] quinquagint[a] libros of Tonstallus de arte supputandi 50 copies of Cuthbert Tunstall, De arte supputandi (Pynson, 1522, STC 24319).

This concludes the stock list, but the inventory goes on: unum le Iakke | for a watchman unum le trusse bedsted duos libros of perce plowmans unum le | chest wyth pyctures duos le doseon fforelles vnum le yoyned bedsted [etc.] 2 copies of Piers Plowman. NB possible double entry; see item 10 above. However, these may belong to the subsequent list of mostly single items that presumably formed part of the library of the dwelling house.

61 Peter Beal, A Dictional of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450–2000 (Oxford, 2008), p. 437. See also footnote 19.

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• 12 • John Leland on William, Lord Mountjoy’s Lost Manuscript of the Annals of the Mysterious John, Abbot of B. • james p. carley  • Equipped with some sort of letter from King Henry VIII (‘principis diploma’ as he called it), John Leland (c. 1503–52) travelled extensively throughout England from 1533 to approximately 1536 examining the libraries of the universities, the monasteries, and other religious houses, making lists of what he saw.1 In the heated atmosphere of the 1530s, when Henry VIII was making a definitive break with Rome and establishing himself as the supreme head of the church in England, Leland’s patrons no doubt saw the polemical value in the treatises hidden away in the monastic and other libraries. For himself, Leland had other plans. In particular, he envisaged a comprehensive study ‘De uiris illustribus’, that is, a history of men ‘who hathe beene lernid, and who hath writen from tyme to tyme in this reaulme’.2 Although never fully completed, this work was compiled in two stages; the first (labelled Stage I in my edition)3 was begun in 1535 and put aside around 1537, after Leland had abandoned his trawls through libraries and turned to a wider set of itineraries, the notes of which were made

1 As a result of the suppressions that were to follow, beginning in 1536, he is often our last, and even only, witness to the books contained in these institutions. 2 This description is found in his so-called New Year’s Gift to Henry VIII (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. c. 3, p. 283). The letter, the equivalent of a progress report and implicit request for further funding, was printed with commentary by John Bale as The laboryouse journey & serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes antiquitees, geven of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to Kynge Henry the VIII in the xxxvii yeare of his reygne, with declaracyons enlarged by Johan Bale (London, 1549). When quoting from a printed Latin source in what follows I follow the author’s conventions on i/j and u/v distinctions; for my own transcriptions from manuscripts V/u represent both vowel and consonant; j is not employed. 3 John Leland, De uiris illustribus/On Famous Men, ed./trans. James P. Carley, with the assistance of Caroline Brett (Toronto and Oxford, 2010).

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in English.4 When Leland returned to De uiris illustribus seriously c. 1543 (Stage II) the monasteries had all been dissolved, and many of the manuscripts containing the works he recorded had been lost or destroyed.5 Leland’s booklists were recorded in a folio notebook, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. c. 3, pp.  253–74; pp.  5–66, and were published by Thomas Hearne (1678–1735) as part of what he described as Leland’s De rebus Britannicis Collectanea. The first edition appeared in 1715 and was succeeded by a second edition (from which I quote) published posthumously in 1770; this was reprinted in 1774. The booklists, which are found in the fourth volume of the 1770 edition, are in the process of being re-edited in the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues to which our honorand has been a distinguished contributor. Surprisingly, however, there is no evidence that Leland examined the impressive collections at Syon abbey, and so he does not appear in that volume of the series. Even before he began his library trawls as such, Leland took an interest in medieval manuscripts and what they had to reveal: this can be dated at least as far back as his days in Oxford in the mid-1520s, when he came across a fragment of the Bellum Troianum by Joseph of Exeter in the library at Magdalen College. More significant in the context of his intended history of English authors, however, was a manuscript lent to him by William Blount, fourth baron Mountjoy (c. 1478–1534) at some point before 1533.6 It is this manuscript, associated with one John, abbot of B., that is the focus of my chapter. Leland’s extracts from Mountjoy’s codex constitute the first leaf and a third of a quire of four in the second of his folio notebooks.7 They begin on the recto 4 On reasons why Leland gave up his examination of monastic and other libraries after 1536 see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. xxvii–xxviii. 5 On Stage I and Stage II see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. c–cv; clvii–clviii. 6 Soon after he was admitted BA at Christ’s College in 1522, Leland took a position as tutor to Lord Thomas Howard (d. 1537) at the Lambeth residence of his father, Thomas Howard, second duke of Norfolk (1443–1524). It was here that he may have first met Charles Blount, Lord Mounjoy’s son, to whom he would later write encomiastic verse. He had certainly made the acquaintance of Lord Mountjoy himself before he left for Paris around 1526, whence he sent him at least one verse epistle. After his return from Paris in 1529 Leland, who had been fostered by Thomas Wolsey (1470/71–1530), would have been in search of new patrons, and it is possible that Mountjoy acted as a mediator. By 1533, when he wrote verses for Anne Boleyn’s coronation and was given his letter by the king, he was a client of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540) and very likely Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk (1473–1554), half-brother of his former pupil. 7 Printed by Hearne in Collectanea, III. 329–­31. Although the folio notebooks are considerably less mutilated than the quarto notebooks that constitute the later itineraries, there are lacunae, and the manner in which they were later bound does not necessarily reflect their original order. As a result the apparent narrative structure can at times be misleading, and an examination of the individual booklets that make up the volumes is often revealing. It is a task that has never been undertaken.

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of the first leaf: ‘Ex annalibus Jo: abbatis de B. quem a domino Monjoio mutuo sumpsi’ (‘From the annals of Jo[hn] abbot of B. which I borrowed from Lord Mountjoy’) (Bodley MS Top. gen. c. 2, p. 283). This is followed on the same page by a second set of annals, which carries over to the verso of the leaf (p. 284). The bottom third of this page was then left blank. Beginning at the upper recto of the second leaf is a further excerpt from Mountjoy’s manuscript: ‘Ex libellulo incerti autoris de recentioribus aliquot archiepiscopis Cantuar: quem a Monioio mutuo accepi’ (‘From a booklet by an unknown author concerning a few more recent archbishops of Canterbury which I received from Mountjoy’, p. 285). That this libellulus did not derive from a different manuscript, that is, that Mountjoy did not lend Leland more than one manuscript, is made clear in Leland’s entry in the De uiris illustribus for Simon Meopham (archbishop of Canterbury 1328–33), where he explains that the information on Meopham’s death was contained in the booklet appended (italics mine) to John’s annals.8 The bottom two-thirds of the page and the following verso were left blank, as were the final two leaves of the quire. As was typical of his practice, Leland later returned to the blank spaces and added unrelated material. On the remainder of the first folio verso are inserted in a significantly later hand excerpts ‘Ex libello incerti autoris de uita Ethelberti’ (Bodley MS Top. gen. c. 2, p. 284). These are taken from an anonymous Life of St Æthelbert contained in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 308 (s.xiiin): the manuscript has manicules in Leland’s hand.9 In the bottom section of the second folio recto is added information ‘Ex tabula annalium Osniensis coenobii’ (p. 285).10 This set of extracts continued over to the verso, which it filled (p.  286). Leland visited the Augustinian abbey at Osney (dissolved in 1539) in 1535 and listed six titles from the library.11 No doubt it was at this time that he took his notes from the tabula. The following recto (p. 287) is blank and the verso (p. 288) contains excerpts from Roger Bacon which fill the next page as well (p. 289a). The final verso (p. 289b) is blank. Abbot John’s first set of annals, so Leland stated at their close, concerned bishops and learned men, ‘episcopis & uiris eruditis’. The second was made up of an account of British kings: ‘Ex /annalibus\ Joannis, abbatis de B. de 8 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 556–7. 9 Ed. M. R. James, ‘Two Lives of St Ethelbert, King and Martyr’, English Historical Review 32 (1917), 214­–44, at 236–44. James did not recognize the hand of the manicules (219–20). 10 The principal source for the later section of the tabula was the fourteenth-century Chroniculum by Geoffrey le Baker, completed at Osney in 1347 (ed. Edward Maunde Thompson [Oxford, 1889]). On tabulae in general, see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), p. 495: she does not include this example. 11 See The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, ed. Teresa Webber and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1998), A26; for the dating see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. lxii, xcii.

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regibus’ (‘From the annals of John abbot of B. concerning kings’).12 With a few exceptions, which tend to be pointed out by Leland (and presumably Abbot John), the material derives, either as direct quotations or as paraphrases, from the widely circulating Flores historiarum, which was arranged chronologically beginning at Creation. Abbot John’s annals therefore represent not an original work as such, but for the most part a reorganization of his principal source into two separate categories. The author of the Flores historiarum did not name himself in his text, but the work later came to be associated with one Matthew of Westminster, based on the rubric of BL Cotton MS Claudius E. VIII (Norwich, s.xiv/xv): ‘Incipit prologus in librum qui Flores historiarum intitulatur secundum Mattheum monachum Westmonasteriensem’ (‘Here begins the prologue to the book called the Flowers of History by Matthew, a monk of Westminster’ (fol. 23v)).13 In his edition Luard put forth a hypothesis of how this attribution came about: It was, of course, obvious that the bulk of the earlier portion was taken from the greater chronicle of Matthew Paris, and as there are numerous introductions relating to Westminster, and the earliest MS. [Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 6712] belonged at that time to Westminster Abbey [...] the two names were combined and the imaginary ‘Matthew of Westminster’ spoken of as the author.14

Thanks to John Bale, the identification became more or less canonical. When Bale was examining the library at Norwich cathedral priory in the 1530s he saw Claudius E. VIII and listed it as ‘Flores historiarum Mathei Westmonasteriensis’.15 He later included Matthew of Westminster in his Catalogus, and in the letter he wrote to Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504–75) on 30 July 1560 concerning ‘bokes of Antiquite, not printed’.16 This led to the publication of the 12 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 329, 330. 13 See Flores historiarum, ed. Henry Richards Luard, 3 vols., RS 95 (London, 1890), I. xi–xii, xxiv–xxvi. 14 Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. xi. There is a problem with this argument, however, since for it to be tenable the author of the rubric, presumably a Norwich monk, would have had to work out that Matthew Paris was the author of the earlier portions and to be aware that Chetham MS 6712 was at Westminster, or at least to assume that the ‘numerous introductions relating to Westminster’ established the author to be a Westminster monk. 15 See English Benedictine Libraries: The Shorter Catalogues, ed. Richard Sharpe et al. (London, 1996), B61. 6. Bale also recorded it in a list of British authors and their works which he began around 1548, and in which he gave his sources: Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole and Mary Bateson (Oxford, 1902; repr. with introduction by Caroline Brett and James P. Carley, Cambridge, 1990), p. 289. At this time Claudius E. VIII was owned by George Gilpin (1514?–1602), on whom see ibid., p. xxiv. 16 Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae, quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant, catalogus, 2 vols. (Basel, 1557­–59), I. 472; Timothy Graham and Andrew G. Watson, The

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Flores, edited under Matthew Parker’s name, in 1567. Luard was the first fully to debunk the attribution, although it had been questioned earlier.17 When Leland visited Norwich in 1534 he listed a copy of ‘Flores historiarum’, but it is highly unlikely that he was referring to Claudius E. VIII.18 The following year he was at Oxford and examined the University Library; the libraries of the Carmelites, Dominicans, and Franciscans; Merton College, Balliol College, and New College.19 At some later point, whose precise date cannot be determined, he visited other college libraries and took extracts from manuscripts held at Exeter, Queen’s, Magdalen, and Lincoln.20 The two Magdalen manuscripts contained (1) a ‘Chronicle of England, 1327–1417’, taken from Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon with continuations, later owned by John Foxe (Oxford, Magdalen College, MS 69); and (2) a now lost copy of the Flores historiarum (‘E libro cui titulus Flores historiarum’).21 Beside the heading of the latter Leland subsequently added: ‘Matthaeus frater scripsit opus, cui titulus Flores historiarum, teste Joanne abbate de Byri’ (‘According to John, abbot of Bury, Brother Matthew wrote the work entitled Flowers of History’). His source for this note was the second extract from Abbot John’s annals: ‘Chronicon, cui titulus Flores historiarum, autore fratre Matthaeo’.22 Presumably Abbot John was referring to Matthew Paris, whose writings, as Luard established, form the basis of the text up to 1258.23 If so, Abbot John’s annals perhaps contain the earliest attested identification of Matthew Paris’s authorship for the first part of the Flores historiarum. Leland himself never made the association, however, and among the authorities he lists in his Assertio inclytissimi Arturii regis Britannia (London, 1544) are both Matthaeus Parisius and Matthaeus Florilegus; likewise Ioannes Burgensis.24 When he came to write the first stage of De uiris illustribus Leland made good use of the authority of Abbot John, citing him in chapters 269 (Robert Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England: Documents by John Bale and John Joscelyn from the Circle of Matthew Parker (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 17, 24, 43; notes 111, 112. 17 See Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. xliii–xlviii; x–xii. 18 English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., B60.1. 19 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. xcii–xcv. 20 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 368–95. 21 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 380–4; 385–95. See also Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Poole and Bateson, p. 288, where Bale gives the author of this copy as ‘Matthaeus Florilegus, Westmonasteriensis’. 22 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 329. 23 See Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. xxxiv–xl; also above, p. 000. 24 See The Famous Historie of Chinon of England by Christopher Middleton, to Which is Added the Assertion of King Arthure, Translated by Richard Robinson from Leland’s Assertio inclytissimi Arturii, ed. William Edward Mead, EETS o.s. 165 (London, 1925), p. 96. Matthaeus Florilegus is cited as an authority for Arthur’s return to the port of Richborough (‘ad Rutupinum littus’) after Mordred’s betrayal: Assertio, ed. Mead, p. 116. See also Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. 268.

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Grosseteste), 333 (Ralph Baldock), and 343 (Simon Meopham). Elsewhere, however, he did not give credit to the Mountjoy manuscript even though it was his source. Take, for example, the chapter on Alcuin (ch. 88; Stage I), under whose works he included ‘Orationum, quas missales uocant, librum unum’ (‘Mass Prayers in one book’).25 As in the chapter on Meopham, this information comes from the anonymous booklet on recent archbishops of Canterbury: Irrepserunt etiam in hunc de pontificibus libellulum haec, quae de Flacco Albino sequuntur. ‘Orationes missales composuit, et feria 1a de Trinitate, secunda de sapientia, 3a de Spiritu Sancto, 4a de charitate, 5a de apostolis, 6a de cruce, sabbato de S. Maria celebrare instituit.’ (Likewise, what follows about Flaccus Albinus was inserted into this booklet concerning the bishops. ‘He composed mass prayers and instituted their observance; on Sunday in honour of the Trinity, on Monday in honour of Wisdom, on Tuesday in honour of the Holy Spirit, on Wednesday in honour of Charity, on Thursday in honour of the Apostles, on Friday in honour of the Holy Cross, and Saturday in honour of St Mary.’)26

Leland must also have taken notes not found in the surviving excerpts, as can be seen in his chapter on Geoffrey of Monmouth (ch. 161; Stage I) where he cites Abbot John for the following: Aliud tamen, idque memoria non indignum, cognitum habeo ex annalibus Ioannis abbatis Burgensis, nempe Gallofridum designatum fuisse episcopum Eluiensem \anno domini MCL/ (I have, however, gleaned some other information worth recording from the annals of John, abbot of Bury: namely, that Geoffrey was appointed bishop of Llanelwy in 1150.)27

In the Assertio Arturii Abbot John is given as one of the authorities concerning Arthur ‘qui mystarum chorum eruditum in Legionum vrbe, si vera referunt Galfredus, Ioannes Burgensis, & Rossus Verouicensis, aut restaurauit, aut instituit’ (‘who either restored or established a learned company of priests at 25 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 202–3. 26 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 331. A critical edition of the Alcuin masses without ferial assignment is found in Jean Deshusses, ‘Les Messes d’Alcuin’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 14 (1972), 7–41. I thank Jonathan Black for his elucidation of this passage. 27 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 320–1. The equivalent passage in the Flores historiarum, which would have been Abbot John’s source, reads ‘Eodem etiam anno [1151] Galfridus Arthurus factus est episcopus sancti Asaph in Norwallia, qui historiam Britonum de lingua Britannica transtulit in Latinum’ (‘In the same year Geoffrey Arthur, who translated the History of the Britons from the British language into Latin, was made bishop of St Asaph in North Wales’): Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, II. 70. Leland’s reading ‘Eluiensem’ (Llanelwy) was no doubt based on his own studies of place names.

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Caerleon if Geoffrey, John of Bury, and Rouse of Warwick report correctly’).28 This information is found neither in the excerpts from John nor in the Flores historiarum. Perhaps the most significant indication concerning Leland’s lost notes from Mountjoy’s manuscript, however, comes in his statement under 1292. Abbot John cited the chronicles of Ralph Baldock (d. 1313), dean of St Paul’s and then bishop of London: ‘facit mentionem de chronicis Radulphi de Baldoke’.29 As a result, Baldock was given a place (ch. 333; Stage I) among England’s illustrious writers: ‘Historiam igitur inchoauit quam postea, ut erat in hac parte instructissimus, magna cum felicitate absoluit’ (‘He therefore began a history which he later finished with great success, since he was very well prepared for this task’).30 Leland pointed out that he himself had never seen the history and that his information came from the ‘annales de rebus Anglicis’ composed by John which he had recently (‘nuper’) been reading. On a visit to St Paul’s cathedral soon afterwards Leland took a number of notes.31 There is some confusion in the way the pages are ordered in this section of the Collectanea, but Leland makes clear that Baldock’s chronicle, whose components he describes, was found in tabulae: In tabulis sive Chronicis Radulphi de Baldoc est abbreviatio historiae Galfredi Monemutensis. Tum praeterea Epitome historiae regum Saxonicorum. Postremo etiam a tempore Gul: Conquestoris ad sua tempora. (In tabulae or the chronicles of Ralph Baldock is the abridgement of the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth; also the epitome of the history of the Saxon kings; and finally a history from the time of William the Conqueror to his own times.)

The tabulae no longer survive, but James Ussher (1581–1656), archbishop of Armagh, saw them and observed: Ibidem etiam [in vestibulo domus capitularis Ecclesiae S. Pauli] in chronico Radulphi de Baldoc Londinensis episcopi ita legimus: ‘Anno Domini CLXXIX. Lucius rex fundavit primam ecclesiam Lundoniae, scilicet ecclesiam S. Petri de Cornhulle, et ibi fuit sedes metropolitana per quadringentos annos et amplius, usque ad adventum S. Augustini Anglorum apostoli.’ (Also in that place [the vestibule of the chapter house of St Paul’s cathedral] we read in the chronicle of Ralph of Baldock, bishop of London as follows: ‘In the 28 Assertio Arturii, ed. Mead, p. 107. 29 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 330. In Flores historiarum there is no mention of Ralph at this juncture, although it states that he was made bishop of London in 1303 (Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, III. 115). 30 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 550–1. 31 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, II. 353­–62.

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james p. carley year of the Lord 179 King Lucius founded the first church in London, that is St Peter’s of Cornhill, and the metropolitan see was there for four hundred years and more, up to the arrival of St Augustine, apostle of the English.’)32

After his new discovery, Leland emended the entry for Baldock, deleting the sentence stating that he had not read the history, and replacing it with the observation that he had found it at St Paul’s, and that he had read it in its entirety. Likewise, he returned to his extracts from Abbot John’s annals, and put a note of explanation in the margin of the entry for 1292: ‘Radulphus Baldochius, cujus Chronicon extat in Fano Pauli Londini’ (‘Ralph Baldock whose chronicle is found in St Paul’s in London’).33 When Leland first read the manuscript lent him by Mountjoy, all he could determine was that John was ‘abba[s] de B.’.34 He later put a trefoil in the margin and added the comment that ‘Joannes abbas forsan de Burgo’. This clarification must have come relatively soon after he borrowed the manuscript: when he wrote his chapter on Baldock around 1536 he listed John as ‘abba[s] Burgensis’, as he did in his chapter on Simon Meopham (ch. 343) composed at approximately the same time. ‘Burgo/Burgensis’ is slightly ambiguous, however, and could well be translated as Peterborough, as Leland himself intended, for example, in his entry for William of Peterborough (ch. 241; Stage II): ‘Gulielmus a Petriburgo loco natali, decurtato nomine, Burgensis dictus est’ (‘William was called de Burgh, an abbreviated form of his birthplace, Peterborough’).35 In this instance he must, nevertheless, have meant Bury St Edmunds, since he describes the annalist as ‘Ioannes, Edmundoburgensis coenobii abbas’ in his 32 The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., ed. Charles Richard Elrington et al., 17 vols. (Dublin, 1847–64), V. 87–8. Also in the vestibule Ussher saw another ‘magnam tabulam affixam … in qua ita scriptum fuit. “Tempore Britonum in urbe Lundoniae multi floruerunt archiepiscopi: sed tempore Anglorum dignitate apud Doroberniam translata, primus sedit Mellitus episcopus in ecclesia S. Pauli London, quam Ethelbertus rex Cantiae fundavit”’ (‘magna tabula affixed in which it was written as follows: “Many archbishops flourished in London in the time of the Britons. But in the time of the English when the high office was moved to Canterbury, which Æthelberht, king of Kent, founded, Mellitus was the first bishop in the church of St Paul in London”’). Leland took extracts from a related tabula of bishops of London and deans of St Paul’s beginning ‘Mellitus consecratus est ann: D. 604’, under the heading ‘Istas tabulas cum suprascriptis dedit huic ecclesiae Radulphus de Baldoc bonae memoriae quondam episcopus London’ (‘Ralph of Baldock of happy memory, formerly bishop of London, gave these tabulae with the above mentioned to this church’): Collectanea, ed. Hearne, II. 353. See more generally John Clark, ‘The King Lucius Tabula in St Peter Upon Cornhill Church, London’, available online [accessed 4 June 2018]. 33 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 330. 34 It seems peculiar that only the initial for the monastery was given, but perhaps the name had been deleted when Mountjoy took possession of the manuscript. 35 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 444–5.

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chapter on Robert Grosseteste (ch. 269; Stage I).36 As a rule, Leland, unlike Bale, did not indulge in unfounded speculation, and he must have had a reason for concluding that B. signalled Bury St Edmunds. He had visited the library in 1533/34, not long after he had been lent the manuscript by Mountjoy, and he no doubt saw or heard something that convinced him of the identification. In this he was correct. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. hist. d. 4 is made up of two previously independent manuscripts bound together at Bury St Edmunds before the mid-fourteenth century 37 The first (fols. 1­–48v: Italy, s. xiiiex­–xivin) is a copy of Martinus Polonus’s Chronicon summorum pontificum et imperatorum. The second (fols. 50r–219r: England, s.xivin [with additions]) contains historical collections, including an abbreviated version of the Flores historiarum not known to Luard. Henry of Kirkstead (d. after 1378), prior of Bury St Edmunds, and compiler of the Catalogus de libris autenticis et apocrifis, used the originally blank folios at the end of the manuscript for annals of his own, beginning in 1341 (fols. 219r­–224v).38 Closely related to the version in Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1106 (St Paul’s Cathedral, s.xiv1), but with its own variants, the text of the Flores historiarum (to 1306) occupies fols. 76r–202v.39 It is followed without a break (fols. 202v–205v) by the continuation of the Flores historiarum found in the Annales Paulini, but only for the years 1307–8.40 Next come extracts (1309–mid-1334) from the Continuatio Chronicarum of Adam Murimuth (1274x5–1347), followed by another chronicle fragment (1335–40). After the death in 1290 of Princess Margaret, heir to the throne of Scotland, Edward I was called upon to adjudicate on the succession question. In 1291 and again in 1300 letters were sent out to the English monasteries, instructing the monks to search their archives for documents and chronicles containing 36 Ibid., pp. 476–8. 37 On fol viv, there is a mark of ownership (‘Liber monachorum sancti Edmundi de empcione fratris Willelmi de Colcestrie’) followed by a list of contents. 38 Henry of Kirkestede, Catalogus de libris autenticis et apocrifis, ed. Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse (London, 2004). On Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4, see p. xxxiv. 39 Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 was not the copy used by Abbot John, since he includes at least one statement found in three copies of the Flores historiarum, but which does not occur in Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 (nor Lambeth 1106): ‘Anno Domini CLXXXVo. subversum est templum Apollinis apud Westmonasterium, quod tunc Thorney vocabatur, et coepit aedificari ecclesia S. Petri’ (‘In AD 185 the temple of Apollo at Westminster, which is now called Thorney [Island], was destroyed and construction was begun on the church of St Peter’): Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 329; Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. 146. 40 Ed. William Stubbs from Lambeth 1106 in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, RS 76, 2 vols. (London, 1882–83), I. 255–66. According to H. G. Richardson the Annales Paulini 1307–8 is a separate entity: ‘The Annales Paulini’, Speculum 23 (1948), 630–40, at 631–8. See also Gransden, Historical Writing in England II, pp.  25–9, who suggests that ‘the author (or possibly authors) may well have been connected with the sacrist’s office at St Paul’s’ (26).

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information about the relative status of the two realms.41 Under 1292 the Flores historiarum states that at Berwick Edward I chose John Balliol as king of Scotland, with Edward his feudal overlord. Lambeth Palace Library MS 1106 has an added sentence elaborating on this: Dominus Edwardus, rex Angliae illustris, secundum formam praescriptae submissionis vendicantium regnum Scotiae, habito diligenti examine in parliamento suo apud Berewik, adjudicavit regnum Scotiae domino Johanni de Balliol, et, recepto ipsius homagio, possessionem regni sibi tradi fecit per dominum Antonium episcopum Dunelmensem (After diligent examination according to the form of the prescribed submission of the claimants to the kingdom of Scotland in his parliament at Berwick, Lord Edward, illustrious king of England, granted the kingdom of Scotland to John Balliol and, having received his homage, caused possession of the kingdom to be delivered to him by Antony [Bek], lord bishop of Durham). 42

In Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 there is a further addition (fols. 187v–188r) after ‘Dunelmensem’, giving materials ‘de diuersis cronicis [...] extracta’, to provide historical evidence establishing the sovereignty of the English king over the king of Scotland. Closely related to a section in Avesbury’s De gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi III,43 its first main episode recounts how in AD 75 the Pictish king Rodricus (Lodricus in Avesbury), who had come from Scythia, began to devastate the region of Northern Britain and was slain by Marius [son of Arviragus], who then gave Rodricus’s defeated followers the region of Caithness to inhabit.44 The account in Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 continues to the reign of Henry III.45 At the end of the copy of the Annales Paulini 1307–8 in Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4, fol. 205v, a later hand has inserted between the lines (the text flows continuously from the Annales Paulini to Adam Murimuth): ‘Explicit cronica Radulphi Baldok.’ The table of contents, moreover, has ‘Radulphi de Baldok’ added after 41 See James P. Carley and Julia Crick, ‘Constructing Albion’s Past: An Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James P. Carley (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 347–418, at pp. 361–3, and the sources there cited. 42 Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, III. 85. This is also found with slight variations in the De gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi III of Robert of Avesbury (d. after 1359): see Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum. Robertus de Avesbury. De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson, RS 93 (London, 1889), pp. 294–5. 43 ‘Extracta de antiquis chronicis notanda pro rege Anglorum contra reges Scotorum, nolentes sibi facere homagium’, De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii, ed. Thompson, pp. 286–90. 44 Ibid., p. 286. This episode, on which see below, ultimately derives from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae: it is found in Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. 127. 45 Robert of Avesbury’s text ends with the eleventh year of King John’s reign (‘Extracta’, ed. Thompson, p. 290).

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‘cronica que uocant flores historiarum’. Antonia Gransden has identified Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 as no. cxxv among the ‘libri scolastici’ left to St Paul’s by Baldock (‘Cronica plenar’ ab origine mundi’) and no. xxiv in the list of his books at Stepney Manor in 1313 (‘Cronice’).46 It is more likely that fols. 76–205v come from a lost manuscript owned by Baldock, which the later hand described as Baldock’s chronicle.47 Whatever else, the insertions of Baldock’s name would have occurred before the manuscript got to Bury, and no doubt Abbot John’s reading of Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4 led him to assume that the Scottish material under AD 1292 (which was not in his own copy of the Flores) derived from Baldock, and so to point this out in his annals.48 Elsewhere in the Collectanea, on the verso of a leaf which is otherwise blank, Leland has taken an extract of one sentence: ‘Ex libellulo quodam incerti autoris, quem mutuo sumpsi a Domino Monioio, et erat de origine Scottorum.’ (‘From a booklet by an unknown author concerning the origin of the Scots, which I borrowed from Lord Mountjoy.’)49 This little booklet was almost certainly part of the same Mountjoy manuscript which contained the other texts. The extract reads: ‘Berengus, interfecto Rodrico domino suo, obtinuit locum habitandi in Britannia a Mario et postea aedifacauit uillam de Berwic.’ (‘After Roderick his lord had been slain, Berengus obtained from Marius a place to live in Britain and afterwards built the city of Berwick.’) The same information can be found in the Flores historiarum (and in Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4, as well as De gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi III) but, as Leland must have realized, there was one addition, seemingly unique, which named Berengus as the eponymous founder of Berwick.50 Although we do not know who was responsible, this addition was an ingenious one: based on the fact that the 1292 Parliament took place at Berwick, it provided an eponym for Berwick that emphasized English overlordship.

46 See her Historical Writing in England I: c. 550–c.1307 (London, 1974), pp. 522–23; also N. R. Ker, Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. Andrew G. Watson (London, 1985), p. 236. In The Recovery of the Past in Early Elizabethan England, Graham and Watson complicate matters when they query whether or not the copy of Baldock’s chronicle that Leland saw and recorded in his chapter on Baldock might be ‘Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1106, which has a St Paul’s provenance, although in its present state it includes no attribution to Baldock’ (pp. 94–5). 47 Otherwise one must explain why one of the manuscripts bequeathed by Baldock to St Paul’s found its way to Bury St Edmunds relatively soon after his death. 48 Leland was mistaken, of course, when he thought that Abbot John’s reference was to the lost tabulae. It is possible, however, that the tabulae contained the Scottish material. 49 Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 73, from Bodley MS Top gen. c. 2, p. 73. 50 I thank James Goldstein and Dauvit Broun for confirming that Berengus does not appear to be found in any other medieval texts.

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When Leland first saw Mountjoy’s manuscript he was of the opinion that a quire was missing.51 As a result he was not certain when John of Bury flourished – ‘quo tempore floruerit non dum percognitum habeo’ – and in the De uiris illustribus he placed him in the early fourteenth century, between his accounts of Nicholas de Gorran (d. c. 1295) and Thomas of Castleford (early fourteenth century).52 This is too early, since Abbot John made use of Bodl. Lat. hist. d. 4, which probably did not arrive at Bury until around 1340. The candidates for authorship must therefore be John of Brinkley (abbot 1361–79) or John of Timworth (1379–89). Of these two probably the earlier, John of Brinkley, who had studied law at Oxford and who spent at least £150 on the abbey’s book collections, is the more plausible.53 Soon after his return to England around 1548, John Bale borrowed the autograph manuscript of De uiris illustribus from Sir John Cheke (1514–57), who had been granted possession of Leland’s papers after he became insane in 1547, and made a personalized transcript which survives in a slightly later copy as Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 7. 15 (753).54 Bale’s method was to quote or paraphrase Leland, sometimes inaccurately, incorporating his own comments, and then to add new information signalled ‘Joannes Baleus’ or ‘JB’. He often rearranged authors according to his own views of when they might have lived. On occasion he inserted new authors, or made two individuals out of Leland’s one. At approximately the same period as he was transcribing De uiris illustribus Bale also began compiling his Index Britanniae Scriptorum.55 In Trinity MS R. 7. 15 there is an entry for ‘Ioannes, Buriensis abbas cenobii, quem in Roberto Capitone Ioannes Lelandus et in Chronicis Ioannes Euersden allegant annales scripsit, li. 1’ (‘John, abbot of the monastery of Bury, whom John Leland in [his account of] Robert Capito and John of Eversden in his chronicles allege to have written annals in one book’). The equivalent entry in the Index is for ‘Joannes, Buriensis abbas cenobii, quem in Roberto Capitone allegat Ioannes Lelandus / Annales scripsit, lib. I. / Pro sua confirmatione Romam ibat, A.D. 1279’. Below this Bale gives his sources: ‘Ex Lelando et Ioanne Euersden’.56

51 ‘Non possum certo adfirmare, mihi tamen per suspitionem visus est codex historiae Joannis, abbatis de B., uno mancus quaternione’ (‘I cannot affirm this for certain, but I suspect that the codex containing the history of John, abbot of B., is defective by a gathering’): Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 331. 52 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 552–5. If Leland’s dating had been correct the chronicler would have been John of Northwold (d. 1301). 53 English Benedictine Libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., pp. 46, 91. Brinkley may well have been the scribe of the first section of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 216, a copy of the Distinctiones theologiae of Simon Borastone OP (d. after 1338). 54 On the transcript see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. cxxxv–clv. 55 See Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Poole and Bateson, pp. xiii–xiv. 56 Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Poole and Bateson, p. 187.

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The first of Bale’s authorities is Leland’s chapter on Robert Grosseteste, in which Leland attributed to John’s annals the statement that in 1254 Innocent IV planned to have Grosseteste’s body exhumed.57 The second is slightly more complex. According to the Index, Bale saw ‘apud magistrum Bacon prope Carthusianos’ a manuscript which contained a history from Creation to 1336, written by John of Eversden, monk of Bury St Edmunds (d. after 1316).58 Here Bale is citing the chronicle to 1265 written by John Taxter, monk of Bury St Edmunds (d. after 1265), with continuations to 1296 and 1301 (now London, College of Arms, MS Arundel 30 [Bury St Edmunds, s.xiii/xiv]).59 John of Eversden is mentioned in the last of the continuations, under 1300, and as a result Bale inferred his authorship for the whole chronicle. In the earlier part of the text there is a description of the journey to Rome in 1279 by John, abbot elect of Bury St Edmunds (i.e. John of Northwold [d. 1301]).60 Bale linked this episode to the threat of exhumation of Robert Grosseteste’s remains by Innocent IV, assuming incorrectly that the two men – the chronicler and abbot cited by Leland and the abbot who went to Rome for his confirmation in 1279 – were one and the same. Bale elaborated more discursively on the topic in the Catalogus, though without having obtained any new information, giving John a floruit of 1280: IOANNES BVRIENSIS ABBAS Ioannes Buriensis, celeberrimi illius apud Sudouolcas coenobii, ad Eadmundi fanum abbas, inter suae aetatis philosophos ac theologos, non infoeliciter eruditus habebatur: id quod ex multis argumentis apparet, tum ex hoc praecipue, quod Ioannes Euerisdenus in serie temporum, & Ioannes Lelandus in Roberto 57 ‘Ille [Robert] domum reuersus, de nocente Innocente eandem, quam Lugduni, cantabat cantilenam, et ulcus acre subinde per literas refricauit, id quod tam egre tulit Romanus, si uera refert Ioannes, Edmundoburgensis coenobii abbas, in suis annalibus, ut, mortuo Lincolniensi, cogitauerit de exhumando eius cadauere’ (‘On returning home, Robert resumed the same refrain concerning the guilty Innocent as he had sung at Lyon, and afterwards rubbed the wound raw by means of his letters. The Roman took such exception to this, if Abbot John of Bury St Edmunds records the truth in his annals, that when Robert had died Innocent considered having his corpse exhumed’): De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. 476–8. The extract from Abbot John’s annals reads ‘Anno MCCLIIIIo cogitauit papa Innocentius quartus in vita sua (ut generaliter fertur) ossa Roberti Lincoln: episcopi extumulasse et extra ecclesiam projecisse’ (‘In the year 1254 Pope Innocent IV considered in his life [as it is generally reported] having the bones of Robert, bishop of Lincoln exhumed and cast out of the church’): Collectanea, ed. Hearne, III. 329. The story derives from Matthew Paris’s Chronica maiora. 58 Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Poole and Bateson, p. 200. ‘Magister Bacon’ is probably Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510–79), son of the sheep-reeve of Bury St Edmunds (see p. xix). 59 Ed./trans. Antonia Gransden, The Chronicle of Bury St Edmunds, 1212–1301 (London, 1964). Bale later owned the manuscript. 60 Gransden, Chronicle of Bury, pp. xli, 68, 70.

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james p. carley Capitone, honestam de ipso mentionem fecerint. Quorum Euerisdenus refert, illum Romam anno Domini 1279, pro sua per Nicolaum tertium confirmatione, petiisse: Lelandus uero, quod aliis chronographis locupletius rem gestam inter ipsum Capitonem seu Grossetestum, & Innocentium quartum Rom. pontificem, explicuerit. Etsi aliis nullis, quanquam & alia non desint, uel his tantorum uirorum testimoniis, dignus est qui in numero nostrorum scriptorum poneretur. Nunquam certe me poenitebit, illum inter authores numerare, quem tam probi authores suis scriptis celebrauerint. Iste inter caetera composuit, Suae gentis annales, Lib. 1. Et alia nonnulla. Sed quantum ad illa, hoc scias, ea quorundam monachorum desidia periisse. Claruit anno a nostri Seruatoris natiuitate 1280, sub Edvuardo post conquaestum primo Anglorum rege, in suo coenobio tandem post fata sepultus.61 (John of Bury, abbot of St Edmund’s, that most famous monastery in Suffolk, was considered to be well educated among the philosophers and theologians of his age, as appears from much evidence, chiefly from the fact that John Eversden in his chronology and Leland in [his chapter on] Robert Grosseteste made honourable mention of him. Eversden relates that he went to Rome in AD 1279 for his confirmation by Nicholas III. Leland, to be sure, explained more fully than other chroniclers what happened between this Capito or Grosseteste and Innocent IV, the Roman pontiff. Even if there were no others, although others are not lacking, he is worthy to be placed among the number of my writers through the witness of these great men. I shall certainly never regret having included that man among my authors, whom such excellent writers celebrated in their writings. Among other things he composed annals of his nation in one book, as well as several other works. Concerning these you should know that they perished through the idleness of certain monks. He flourished in AD 1280 under Edward, the first king of the English after the Conquest, and was at last buried in his monastery after his death.)

Elsewhere in Trinity MS R. 7. 15, Bale had an entry for Ioannes Burgensis, taken from Leland, but giving a floruit of 1340. This is the basis for another entry in the Catalogus in which Bale tellingly assumes that Burgensis stands for Peterborough: IOANNES BVRGENSIS Ioannes Burgensis, ex honesta familia natus, ac politioribus literis a teneris annis imbutus, ut laute deinceps ex alienis sudoribus in ocio uiueret, in Benedictinorum barathrum se immersit. Et iuxta spem, ab hac professione conceptam, fit demum abbas in Petroburgensi monasterio: quod tam ab aedificiorum splendore, quam a turgido inhabitantium monachorum fastu, superbiae 61 Catalogus, I. 340.

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William, Lord Mountjoy’s Lost Manuscript cognomentum accepit. Chronographus erat pro sua aetate eruditus & eloquens: si non tam crebro pedem (ut loquuntur), immisisset communis illa monachorum nutrix superstitio, quae omnia fabulis & mendaciis implet. Res (inquit Lelandus) a prioribus in Brytannia nobiliter gestas perdiscebat. Hoc tamen interim consilio, ut quae sparsa legerat, in ordinem reducta, posteritati non inutile munus relinqueret. Bono ordine ergo digessit multa, spectatu certe ac lectione digna: lectoribusque contulit opus quod uocabat, Anglorum annales, Lib 1. Homelias quoque, Lib. 1. Et alia quaedam scripsit. In praefatis uero annalibus de literis ac literatis uiris nonnulla traditur quod eruditum mystarum chorum, Arthurus Brytannorum rex in Legionum urbe posuerit, ac similia. Claruit anno Domini 1340, sub Edvuardo praedicto, in suo coenobio sepultus demum.62 (Born of a distinguished family, and instructed in polite letters from a tender age, John Bury afterwards plunged into a pit of Benedictines in order that he might live sumptuously in leisure far from disagreeable labours. And according to his wish, conceived from this profession, he was at length made abbot of Peterborough abbey, which received the epithet of haughtiness both on account of the grandeur of its buildings and of the inflated arrogance of the monks who inhabited it. For his time he was a learned and eloquent chronicler, if only superstition, that common nurse of monks, had not so often, as they say, inserted its foot: it fills everything with fables and lies. He acquired, so Leland states, a wide knowledge of the noble deeds of our ancestors in Britain, planning to reduce to order what he had read in scattered sources, and thus leaving a useful gift to posterity. He therefore arranged in good order many things truly worthy of being seen and read, and gave to his readers a work in one book which he called the annals of the English. He also wrote sermons in one book, and certain other things. In the aforesaid annals concerning letters and learned men it is related that Arthur, king of the Britons, established a learned company of priests in Caerleon and other similar things. He flourished in AD 1340, under the aforesaid Edward, and was at last buried in his monastery.)

The basic information comes from Leland, but, as was common in the Catalogus, it was elaborated and extended to include attacks on the medieval church and religious orders.63 Leland’s speculation, not included in Bale’s text, that ‘Coelesti theologiae cultor assiduus adhaesit’ led Bale to assume that he wrote sermons. His statement concerning John and Arthurian matters is quoted from the Assertio Arturii.64 Bale knew the full range of Leland’s writings well.

62 Catalogus, I. 423. I have underlined the two sentences quoted directly from De uiris illustribus. 63 For other examples see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, pp. cxlv–cxlvii. 64 See above, pp. 248–9.

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Bale’s reading of Burgensis as Peterborough has led to further confusion (and proliferation of authorship). The Peterborough chronicle from 654 to 1369 survives uniquely in BL Cotton MS Claudius A. v, fols. 2–45 (s. xiv2).65 There is a note at the top of fol. 2r by Sir Robert Cotton which reads ‘Iohannem abbatem Burgi Sancti Petri’, and the table of contents (by a Cottonian scribe) also names John abbot of Peterborough as author. Cotton no doubt came to this conclusion through his reading of the Catalogus. On the basis of the Cottonian attribution Simon Patrick (1626–1707) would later suggest that the author of the principal part of the Peterborough chronicle was John de Caux (abbot 1250–63).66 John de Caux is not, however, the last individual to be identified as ‘Joannes abbas de B’. In the introduction to the Flores historiarum Luard mentioned Leland’s extracts from the unidentified copy of the Flores at Magdalen College, and observed that Leland attributed them to ‘“Matthaeus frater” (no doubt he means Matthew Paris), “teste Joanne abbate de Byri”. This is probably John Melford, the last abbat [sic] of St Edmundsbury, from 1514 to 1539. It is Wendover’s work to which he most likely is referring’.67 The extracts from Mountjoy’s manuscript reflect Leland’s early thoughts on his intended writings. The De uiris illustribus, for which this codex would prove to be an invaluable source, was to be followed by the Ciuilis historia or De antiquitate Britannica, to be divided shire by shire for a total of fifty books, ‘wherof eche one severally shaul conteyne the beginninges, encreaces, and memorable actes of the chief tounes and castelles of the province allottid to hit’.68 Third, there was to be a Liber de topographia Britanniae primae, which would give the ancient names of places and peoples of the kingdom. Although he may not have been contemplating this volume in the early 1530s, he was already showing a fascination with ancient names and the ways in which they reflected the successive invasions of Britain. Other extracts from John of Bury’s annals indicate his interest in the history of the church in England that would eventually lead, so he hoped, to an ecclesiastical history, De pontificibus Britanniae. The manner in which Leland made use of Abbot John’s annals thus foreshadows the directions in which his ‘assiduus reading’ of an ‘infinite variete of bookes’ would lead. 65 Printed by J. A. Giles, Chronicon Angliae Petroburgense, from an earlier edition by John Sparke (London, 1723) in Caxton Society 2 (London, 1845). 66 See the notes to the entry for Joannes Burgensis, taken from De uiris illustribus, in Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, ed. D. Wilkins (London, 1748), p. 431. 67 Flores historiarum, ed. Luard, I. xlviii. John Reeve, alias Melford, was abbot 1513–39. How Luard came to the tentative and inaccurate conclusion that it was Roger of Wendover’s Flores historiarum [Creation–1235] that Leland had seen is not at all clear. 68 Quoted in De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, p. xxxi, from the New Year’s Gift, Bodley MS Top. gen. c. 3, p. 286.

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It is not surprising that Leland would have found John of Bury’s manuscript revealing, and would have wished to take extracts from it, especially at this early stage of his studies of medieval English chronicles, so many texts not yet seen. Why and how Mountjoy took possession of it is more of a mystery. Apart from Leland’s statement that Mountjoy was well versed in antiquities (‘in omni antiquitate plane exercitatissimo’),69 we have no real evidence that he was a student of English history, nor that he collected monastic manuscripts. There were others in this period, such as Leland’s putative patron, the third Duke of Norfolk, who gathered up material relating to Henry’s divorce and the status of England as an empire, but Abbot John’s manuscript does not fit into this pattern.70 Nor is there any indication that Mountjoy had any particular connections with Bury St Edmunds. One must assume that it was Abbot Reeve who gave him the manuscript, but it is difficult to imagine the context. Are there other monastic manuscripts that found their way into Mountjoy’s collection? And if so, what use did he make of them? And what happened to them after his death?

69 De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, p. 554. 70 Norfolk presented Henry with a copy of Guillaume de Nangis’ world chronicle, now BL Royal MS 13 E. IV, that the king himself annotated on questions of consanguinity in marriage and the superiority of imperial over papal authority, amongst other matters: see De uiris illustribus, ed. Carley, p. lii.

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Vincent Gillespie • ralph hanna  • Like most of our academic biographies, Vincent Gillespie’s is pretty spare, were one to ignore his academic achievements. The ‘just the facts, ma’am’ summary would run: Born in Liverpool, 11 February 1954. Product of local Catholic schools. Came up to Keble in 1972. Attained a First Class degree, remained as a graduate research student. In midst of D.Phil. research, exiled for seasoning as Lecturer at Reading in 1977. Married the long-suffering Peg (exposed to his atrocious puns on a daily basis); two fine boys, now in their thirties. Returned as CUF Lecturer (one of Oxford’s permanent combined posts, shared between college and university) at St Anne’s College in 1980, an appointment succeeded by the then usual slow advancement through a Readership to a Professorship in 2004. Elected Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature (and Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall), thus nominal leader of English faculty medievalists, in the same year. Among subsequent honours, elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2013. Now obviously enough, at the golden age of sixty-five, presented this birthday gift. Of course, English dons are given to the telling nuance, and a good deal, both edifying and amusing, lurks beneath the surface of these bare bones. Vincent’s career has been indelibly marked by his two undergraduate tutors, the late Stephen Wall and Malcolm Parkes. Indeed, recognisably Parkesian inflections still leopard-spot Vincent’s conversation (e.g. ‘Hello, sunshine’, ‘the bleeding obvious’). Between them, Wall and Parkes instilled a rare combination of tenacious textual attentiveness (Wall was a founding and long-time editor of the explication-given Essays in Criticism) with linguistic rigour and scrutiny of the manuscript record. As occurred frequently in those days, at the end of this instructional bath, Vincent was recalled to Oxford for a B.A. viva to confirm his First; an irritating interruption of summer job and potentially terrifying experience ended in his examiners, the rival philologists Eric Dobson and Norman Davis, sniping at one another, rather than at the abashed (and relieved) candidate. While 1970s Keble was well on its way to shedding its traditional ‘rowers and ruggers’ (and buckets of Thirds) image, it remained something other than a bastion of unrelieved intellectual endeavour. Among Vincent’s closest confrères down the years is David Owen Norris (who has managed to convert

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being College Organ Scholar into a career). Between them, they arranged and directed a gala production of Richard II, its venue Keble’s own monument to resuscitating the past, Butterfield’s College chapel. The highlight of the performance was the appearance of the gardeners in III.iv: the late long-time Tractarian chaplain (and later bishop) Geoffrey Rowell, trundling Parkes (who proclaimed his lines in his beloved ‘west Kentish’) seated in a wheelbarrow. Like Norris’s organship, Vincent has never (nor has Keble) quite shaken undergraduate thespie roots. A privileged audience will not forget his severe star-turn as an inquisitorial Thomas Arundel in a dramatization of the 1407 ‘Testimony of William Thorpe’. Quite against the grain of the original, the archbishop proved more powerful and sympathetic than the heretic examined, on this occasion enacted by the then Tolkien Professor, Paul Strohm. This closetdrama provided welcome entertainment in the seminal ‘After Arundel’ conference which Vincent organised in 2009, ironically enough designed to lay the lingering shade of the contentious archbishop to rest and to direct attention to more constructive Chichele-an efforts. Vincent has retained his dramatic interests in other ways; not just a compulsive theatre patron, he has directed doctoral research and written on modern drama (particularly Harold Pinter). And he remains vexed that, unlike his long-time colleague Michael Sargent, he is unable at a scholarly podium to display tearful emotion in his explications of moving moments in medieval mystical writing. Vincent’s graduate study presages both the scope and ambition of the ensuing scholarly career. He was supervised by the wonderfully self-effacing Kiwi Douglas Gray, shortly to become Vincent’s predecessor as first holder (1980– 96) of his current chair. But, as the title ‘The Literary Form of the Middle English Pastoral Manual’ indicates, the research equally bears the marks of his undergraduate mentors Parkes and Wall. Vincent conceived a broadly based project of sheer bravado. He would expand upon a single chapter, that concerning ‘instructional literature’, from the magisterial 1953 Cambridge thesis of Parkes’s most productive collaborator, the late A. I. Doyle. But where Doyle’s pioneering effort concerned itself with clerical authorship and manuscript transmission, Vincent’s title draws attention to ‘literary form’, an inheritance from Stephen Wall. Rather unusually among his cohort, Vincent’s devotional and bibliographic commitments have been leavened with more traditional literary scholarship. As his later researches in Julian of Norwich bear out, he is an adept at ‘hearing the text’ – and at accurately communicating that spectral voice that it may be heard by others. The first half of Vincent’s completed study fulfils the programme announced in his title (e.g. a reference to ‘devotional pools’ in Somme le roi derivatives). However, his thesis is probably more noteworthy for having been side-tracked into a Parkesian project. Among the works Vincent could not avoid addressing – there are nearly sixty manuscript copies (many of which he unearthed in his

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researches) – is the bilingual Speculum Christiani. Vincent set about untangling the vexed history of the text (Holmstet’s 1933 EETS edition is a morass of confusion) and, in the process, discovered the underlying Latin Cibus anime – and with it, the broad compilational transmission of native ‘mystical’ writers, particularly Richard Rolle. Both the specific text and pondering the appeal of authors like Rolle were to feed Vincent’s scholarly production in a sequence of seminal essays over the next fifteen years, many now fortunately reprinted in Looking on Holy Books. One of these, to my mind Vincent’s real breakout piece, deserves particular mention. Having been asked to author a chapter on vernacular religious writing for a preliminary (but now the standard) survey of late medieval manuscript culture, Anne Hudson suggested that she might write a full chapter on Lollard books, and that, given the scope of his thesis, Vincent would be an excellent candidate to cover everything else. The chapter Vincent composed for Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall set the standard for any discussion of late medieval religious miscellanies, largely through its insistence on literaryspiritual patterning of contents (e.g. the extensive Worcestershire anthology Laud misc. 210 identified as offering ‘a form of living’). Wall’s critical acuity wedded with Parkes’s codicological scrutiny, once more. Indeed, as Vincent has been observed crabbily to note, his contribution to this volume has routinely been plagiarised by a number of later researchers, with no acknowledgement of their inspirational source. While graduate research indubitably ‘smells of the lamp’ (Ben Jonson could have been describing a winter day in the murk of ill-lit Duke Humfrey), it was not without joys. In his membership of Keble’s MCR, Vincent made long-­lasting friendships and acquaintances, principally among supervisees and visitors drawing, as he himself did, upon Parkes’s expertise. Among such figures were Alastair Minnis (on secondment from Queen’s, Belfast), Ian Johnson, Pamela Robinson, and, most especially, the late, brilliant Jeremy Griffiths. The rest, as they say, is history, and chronicled in the appended bibliography. But two contributions particularly stand out. As is typical of Vincent’s oeuvre, one is rigorously bibliographical, the second (for his old MCR mates Minnis and Johnson) literary-historical. Richard Sharpe, editor of The Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, could have found no one better prepared to produce a definitive account of one of the largest surviving records, that of the library amassed by the Syon brothers. Meticulously annotated (including not just their books, but the recoverable careers of the brother-donors), the volume obviously draws its strength from its author’s wide experience in late medieval spiritual culture, Latin and English. Moreover, unlike most of the ‘pure bibliophiles’ responsible for volumes in the series, Vincent has clearly found inspiration in an extensive book list. His bibliography is filled with essays that mine, or perhaps better, (re)vivify Syon’s library both spiritually and

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historically. Indeed, heading the list of Vincent’s projects en traine is the booklength Reverend History: The Brethren of Syon and the Religious Culture of Later Medieval England, a continuation of his ground-breaking efforts at rewriting the spiritual history of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England. As I have indicated, such skills at enlivening the manuscript record coexist with Vincent’s refined literary interests. These are evident not simply in the nearly thirty D.Phil. projects he has supervised over the years (everything from Pinter to Hoccleve), but in his formal lectures to graduates and undergraduates alike. Perhaps most notable is the often-repeated ‘Chaucer’s Ars Poetical’ (a further word about the awful puns in a moment). His persistent interest in the literary (and in literary theory, at least medieval style) is enshrined in a (short?) monograph in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. In this sweeping discussion of late medieval literary thought, Vincent displays, inter alia, his particular fascination with the Averroean Aristotle and the ‘imaginative syllogism’. Obviously, the print-Vincent distances and masks the engaging personal presence. I recall quite vividly my first real meeting with Vincent, at one of those grand old York Manuscripts Conferences just over thirty years ago. I’d just concluded a paper on Chaucer’s use of/reliance on ‘compilations’, when a very large (and extremely animated) young man rushed at me in full voice, drawing critical implications from my paper which I had not seen. We met two weeks later at St Anne’s for lunch, have been friends ever since – and at the next York Conference, honouring the inspirational Doyle, shared a panel, in which his contribution on Piers Plowman far outstripped what I had to say on the occasion. At least two things about our meeting are noteworthy. The impression of size (although Vincent’s brother, the monsignor, is even larger and better clothed) and the intellectual conviviality associated with conversation at table, and good eating. When appointed Tolkien Professor, Vincent’s often-stated regret was leaving behind the superior table at St Anne’s for the mediocre Lady Margaret Hall. (He once loudly informed an LMH high table that the proffered entree appeared to be ‘road-kill’ – but obligingly ate it all.) Although, always the optimist, he has insisted to me for more than a decade that LMH’s culinary offerings are ‘improving’, such a development is not evident to less discerning palates. And as I have indicated on several occasions, conversations with Vincent come laden with a persistent wit. Indeed, it is a feature of his titles (‘Dial M for...’, ‘Chapter and Worse’, etc.). This sometimes engaging penchant must go back to childhood, since one of Gillespie’s classics concerns a pillar of Liverpool Catholic culture, the Everton keeper; in Vincent’s account, he resembles Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, ‘who stoppeth one of three’. With Vincent in the chair, Oxford medieval seminars are laden with a particular suspense:

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with what bon mot will Vincent respond to what we are hearing and open the discussion? Such a public display of bonhomie is entirely consonant with Vincent’s role as both College Fellow and Professor and leader of Oxford’s medieval English faculty. In this he follows his supervisor and predecessor, Douglas Gray; Vincent once remarked to me on Douglas’s skill at negotiation and ensuring faculty unity, even in contentious moments. But the sweep and scope of his service to College and University is both admirable and awesome (and one wonders where he tucks in the research). In many ways, Vincent’s lectureship at St Anne’s was excellent training for broader responsibilities. In some circles derided as ‘St Anne’s University’, during Vincent’s tenure there the College housed more fellow-tutors (four), all but one believing in their individual veto-power, and had an annual intake about twice the size of any other college (nearly twenty). Simply keeping admissions afloat (every tutor interviewing every candidate) was a major undertaking. Yet the attendant multi-tasking (since, among other things, Vincent was an engaged member of Governing Body, involved in improvement of the physical plant, for example) would serve him well in future. The service to Faculty and University have been immense. Certainly, it is no small feat to congregate spoiled priests AKA recalcitrant felines AKA Oxford dons into a properly directed herd, or to ensure that everyone makes, and is recognized for, an appropriate contribution. But the scope of Vincent’s good citizenship is considerably more extensive, all the way to representing Oxford at European-wide gatherings of English teachers and judging speaking contests for East Asian students. He has been instrumental in pitching Oxford as a centre of research into medieval religious life, as well as (as secretary and subsequently director of the Early English Text Society) a centre of textual studies. He has functioned as major domo in the organization of important international scholarly conferences. And when the University’s Development Office completely ignored them, he has retained a constant convivial relationship with Jeremy’s parents, John and Jeanne Griffiths, and has been instrumental in their sustaining gifts of studentships and a Professorship to the English faculty. Although he has, of late, battled serious illness, his fellowship and wide engagement show no sign of abating. It is difficult to think of anyone more richly deserving of the tribute gathered here. So we hope you enjoy it, Vincent.

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Vincent Gillespie: A Bibliography

1980 (for 1979) ‘Doctrina and Predicacio: The Design and Function of Some Pastoral Manuals’, Leeds Studies in English n.s. 11, 36–50. reprinted in Looking (2011, below), pp. 3–20.

1981 ‘Justification by Good Works: Skelton’s The Garland of Laurel’, Reading Medieval Studies 7, 19–31. ‘The Literary Form of the Middle English Pastoral Manual, with particular reference to the Speculum Christiani and some related texts’, Oxford University D.Phil. thesis [Bodleian Library, MS D.Phil. c.3674–75]. 2 vols. Pp. xii + 501.

1982 ‘Mystic’s Foot: Rolle and Affectivity’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England [II], ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter), pp. 199–230. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 243–76.

1983 ‘A Syon Manuscript Reconsidered’, Notes and Queries n.s. 30, 203–5. (with Michael Sargent) ‘Was Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Booke of Gostlye Grace translated from Middle Dutch? Some Observations’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 54, 343–54. ‘The Cibus Anime Book 3: A Guide for Contemplatives?’, Analecta Cartusiana 35, 90–119.

1984 ‘Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in Some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’, Analecta Cartusiana 106, 1–27. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 113–44.

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1987 ‘Strange Images of Death: The Passion in Later Medieval English Devotional and Mystical Writing’, Analecta Cartusiana 117, 110–59. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 209–39. ‘Cura Pastoralis in Deserto’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge), pp. 161–81. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 21–47.

1989 ‘The Evolution of the Speculum Christiani’, in Latin and Vernacular: Studies in LateMedieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis (Cambridge), pp. 39–62. ‘Vernacular Books of Religion’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge), pp. 317–44. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 145–73.

1990 ‘Idols and Images: Pastoral Adaptations of The Scale of Perfection’, in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition: Essays in Honour of S. S. Hussey, ed. Helen Phillips (Cambridge), pp. 97–123. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 49–78.

1992 (with Maggie Ross) ‘The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England... V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge), pp. 53–77. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 277–305.

1993 ‘Postcards from the Edge: Interpreting the Ineffable in the Middle English Mystics’, in Interpretation Medieval and Modern: The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures: Perugia 1992, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge), pp. 137–65. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 307–37.

1994 ‘Thy Will Be Done: Piers Plowman and the Pater Noster’, in Middle English Religious Texts and Their Transmission: Essays in Honour of Ian Doyle, ed. A. J. Minnis (Cambridge), pp. 95–119. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 79–110.

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1995 ‘Never Look a Gift Horace in the Mouth: Affective Poetics in the Middle Ages’, Litteraria Pragensia 10, 59–82.

1997 ‘Medieval Hypertext: Image and Text from York Minster’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. Pamela Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot), pp. 206–29. ‘Justification by Faith: Skelton’s Replycacion’, in The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray, ed. Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford), pp. 273–311. ‘Malcolm Parkes: an Appreciation’, The Record [Keble College, Oxford 1997], 10–13. (with Rick Rylance and Judy Simons) The English Curriculum: Diversity and Standards (n.p.; Council for College and University English). Pp. 24.

1999 ‘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... VI, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge), pp. 241–68. reprinted in Looking (2011 below), pp. 175–207.

2000 Ed. (with A. S. G. Edwards and Ralph Hanna) The English Medieval Book: Essays in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, The British Library Studies in the History of the Book (London). Pp. xii + 264. ‘Jeremy Griffiths’, in The English Medieval Book, pp. 1–7. ‘The Book and the Brotherhood: Reflections on the Lost Library of Syon Abbey’, in The English Medieval Book, pp. 185–208. (Revision and expansion of) ‘The Twentieth Century. Introduction: Drama’, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th edn, ed. M. H. Abrams, Stephen Greenblatt et al., 2 vols. (New York and London), II. 1910–13.

2001 Syon Abbey, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues 9 (London). Pp. lxxiii + 819. [published with The Libraries of the Carthusians, ed. A. I. Doyle.] ‘Harold Pinter’, in Literature in Context, ed. Rick Rylance and Judy Simons (Basingstoke), pp. 187–207.

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2002 ‘Syon and the New Learning’, in The Religious Orders in Pre-Reformation England, ed. James G. Clark. Studies in the History of Medieval Religion 18 (Woodbridge), pp. 75–95. ‘Walter Hilton at Syon Abbey’, in ‘Stand up to Godwards’: Essays in Mystical and Monastic Theology in Honour of the Reverend John Clark on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. James Hogg. Analecta Cartusiana 204 (Salzburg), pp. 9–61. ‘Preface’, in Selfhood and Gostly Menyng in Some Middle English Mystics: Semiotic Approaches to Contemplative Theology, ed. Tarjei Park. Toronto Studies in Theology 84 (Lewiston, NY), pp. ix–xiii.

2003 ‘We Shall Be Changed’, The Way (May), 90–101.

2004 ‘Hid Diuinite: The Spirituality of the English Syon Brethren’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England... VII, ed. E. A. Jones (Cambridge), pp. 189–206. ‘Anonymous Devotional Writings’, in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge), pp. 127–49. (with Maggie Ross) ‘“With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly...”: On Reading Julian of Norwich’, Mystics Quarterly 30 (2004), 125–40.

2005 ‘The Study of Classical and Secular Authors from the Twelfth Century to c. 1450’, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, II: The Medieval Period, ed. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Cambridge), pp. 145–235. ‘The Mole in the Vineyard: Wyclif at Syon in the Fifteenth Century’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison. Medieval Church Studies 4 (Turnhout), pp. 131–62. ‘Syon and the English Market for Continental Printed Books: The Incunable Phase’, Religion and Literature 37.2, 1–23. reprinted, updated, and expanded, in Syon Abbey and its Books: Reading, Writing and Religion in England, c.1400–1700, ed. E. A. Jones and Alexandra Walsham (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 104–28. ‘Moral and Penitential Lyrics’, in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge), pp. 68–95.

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2006 ‘The Haunted Text: Reflections in The Mirrour to Deuote Peple’, in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors and Readers, ed. Jill Mann and Maura Nolan (Notre Dame), pp. 129–72. reprinted in Medieval Texts in Context, ed. Denis Renevey and Graham D. Caie (London, 2008), pp. 136–66.

2007 ‘Vernacular Theology’, in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford), pp. 401–20.

2008 ‘Religious Writing’, in The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Vol. 1: 700–1550, ed. Roger Ellis (Oxford), pp. 234–83. ‘Chapter and Worse: An Episode in the Regional Transmission of the Speculum Christiani’, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 14, 86–111. ‘‘‘[S]he Do the Police in Different Voices”: Pastiche, Ventriloquism and Parody in Julian of Norwich’, in A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. Liz H. McAvoy (Cambridge), pp. 192–207. ‘On Allegory, Allegoresis and the Erotics of Reading’, in On Allegory: Some Medieval Aspects and Approaches, ed. Mary Carr, K. P. Clarke, and Marco Nievergelt (Newcastle), pp. 231–56. ‘Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Some Compact Imaginations in Chaucer and Medieval Literary Theory’, in Shakespeare Modernism Translation: From Translator’s Art to Academic Discourse. A Tribute to Martin Hilsky MBE, ed. Martin Procházka and Jan Čermák (Prague), pp. 11–39.

2009 ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort’, in The Brown Book: A Commemorative Edition for the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Lady Margaret Beaufort, ed. Carolyn Carr (Oxford), pp. 29–35.

2010 ‘Meat, Metaphor and Mysticism: Cooking the Books in The Doctrine of the Heart’, in A Companion to the Doctrine of the Heart: the Middle English Translation and its Latin and European contexts, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Exeter), pp. 131–58. ‘Monasticism’, in Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History, ed. Brian Cummings and James Simpson (Oxford), pp. 480–501.

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2011 Ed. (with Samuel Fanous) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism (Cambridge). Pp. xxviii + 309. ‘Preface’, in Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, pp. ix–xiv. ‘Chronology’, in Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, pp. xv–xxvii. ‘1412–1534: Culture and History’, in Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, pp. 163–93. ‘Glossary of Theological Terms’, in Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, pp. 291–7. Ed. (with Kantik Ghosh) After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, (Turnhout). Pp. xx + 657. ‘Chichele’s Church: Vernacular Theology after Thomas Arundel’, in After Arundel, pp. 3–42. Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout). Pp. xviii + 348. [reprinted essays, as noted above] ‘Dead Still/Still Dead’, The Mediaeval Journal 1, 53–78.

2012 ‘Preface’, in The Middle English Version of De viribus herbarum, ed. Javier Calle-Martin and Antonio Miranda-Garcia (Berlin), pp. 13–20. ‘“Venus in Sackcloth”: the Digby Mary Magdalene and Wisdom fragment’, in The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Drama, ed. Tom Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford), pp. 72–92.

2013 Ed. (with Anne Hudson) Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century (Turnhout). Pp. xiv + 549. ‘The Colours of Contemplation: Less Light on Julian of Norwich’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England... VIII, ed. E. A. Jones (Cambridge), pp. 7–28. Ed. (with Susan Powell) A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476–1558 (Cambridge). Pp. xviii + 385. ‘Authorship’, in A Handbook of Middle English Studies, ed. Marion Turner (Oxford), pp. 137–54. ‘Sacerdotis predicacio operibus confirmanda est: The Martiloge of the Syon Brethren’, in Preaching the Word in Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval England, ed. Martha W. Driver and Veronica O’Mara (Turnhout), pp. 133–60. ‘Fatherless Books: Authorship, Attribution and Orthodoxy in Later Medieval England’, in The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. Ian Johnson and Allan Westphall (Turnhout), pp. 151–96.

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2014 ‘The Senses in Literature: The Textures of Perception’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard G. Newhauser (London), pp. 153–73. ‘Dame Study’s Anatomical Curse: A Scatological Parody?’, in ‘Truthe is the beste’: A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt, ed. Gerald Morgan and Nicolas Jacobs, Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance 1 (Oxford), pp. 95–107.

2017 ‘The Songs of the Threshold: Enargeia and the Psalter’, in The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation, ed. Francis Leneghan and Tamara Atkin (Cambridge), pp. 271–97. ‘The Nearly Man: “Saint” Richard Rolle and His Textual Cult’, in Saints and Cults in Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2015 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Susan Powell. Harlaxton Medieval Studies 27 (Donington), pp. 156–71. ‘Seek, Suffer and Trust: Ese and Disese in Julian of Norwich’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39, 129–58.

2018 ‘Ralph Hanna’, in Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts: Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna, ed. Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde (Turnhout), pp. xi–xviii. ‘Ethice subponitur: The Imaginative Syllogism and the Idea of the Poetic’, in Medieval Thought Experiments: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages, ed. Philip Knox, Jonathan Morton, and Daniel Reeve. DISPUT 31 (Turnhout), pp. 223–45. ‘Visionary Women and their Books in the Library of the Brethren of Syon’, in Books and Bookmen in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of James Carley, ed. James Willoughby and Jeremy Catto (Toronto), pp. 40–63.

In press/forthcoming ‘Building a Bestseller: The Priest and the Peartree’, in ‘This tretice, by me compiled’: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout). ‘“Privy Tuchyngs of Swete Gostly Syghts”: Reciprocal Longing in Julian of Norwich’, in Id quod volo: The Dynamics of Desire in the Spiritual Exercises and Postmodernity, ed. James Hanvey and Travis LaCouter (Leiden). ‘The Permeable Cloister? Charterhouses, Contemplation, and Urban Piety in Later Medieval England: The Case of London’, in Church and Society, ed. Christian Steer and David Harry (Donington). ‘Chaucer and the Classics’, in Geoffrey Chaucer in Context, ed. Ian Johnson (Cambridge).

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Index Manuscripts (printed books in inventory 221–41) see also Hilton sigla 97–99, books in Aitkin inventory

Bologna, Biblioteca del Convento di San Domenico VII.10160  152 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 308 245 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum 48  108 figure Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College 2 172–73 3  170 n7 37 162 99 65 Cambridge, St John’s College K.21  115 figure Cambridge, Trinity College R.7.15  254, 256 Cambridge University Library Ff.5.36  23 n7 Gg.1.16  199 n36 Gg.4.27 (II)  104 Additional 6686  85 n10 Dublin, Trinity College 75  65 Edinburgh, The National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ 19.2.1 (‘The Auchinleck MS’)  104 et seq. Exeter University Library 262/2 161–63 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Coventi Suppressi G.5.1212 152 London, The British Library, Additional 11858  70 Additional 22285 161 n56

Additional 29704 (‘the reconstructed Carmelite missal’)  103 figure Additional 33772  178 Cotton Claudius A.v  258 Cotton Claudius E.viii  246 Cotton Nero A.xiv  4 n5 Cotton Titus D.xviii  4 n5, 6 n12 Egerton 618  72–82 Harley 2249  70 Harley 2255  162 Harley 3903  65 n8 Harley 5017  66 Harley 5541  23 n7 Royal 5 C.iii  23 n7 Royal 13 E.iv  259 n70 Royal 17 A.xxvii  4 n5 Royal 18 C.ix  66 pb C.35.a.14  160 n50 London, College of Arms, Arundel 30  255 London, Lambeth Palace Library 25  65 474 161–63 487  4 n5 1106 251 London Metropolitan Archives 31692  105 figure London, Westminster Abbey 39 175–77 Lucca, Biblioteca Statale 3459  152 3540  147–66 with figure Manchester, Chetham’s Library 8009  104 Milan, Biblioteca Braidense, Gerli 26  152 Nottingham University Library WLC/ LM/11 161–63

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Index WLC/LM/37 155–56 Oxford, The Bodleian Library, Bodley 54  22 n5 Bodley 110  23 n7 Bodley 183  65 Bodley 216  254 n53 Bodley 240  152–53, and passim Bodley 392  41 n33 Digby 96  39–40 Fairfax 2  65, 69 n21, 72–82 passim Hatton 26  22, 27 n18, 33

Lat. hist. d.4  251–53 Laud misc. 210  263 Rawlinson C.72  22 n5 Rawlinson C.752  65 n8 Rawlinson liturg. e.3  161–63 Top. gen. c.53  243 n2, 244-, 258 n68 Oxford, New College 67  64–82 San Marino CA, The Huntington Library, HM 129  104 Uppsala, Universitetsbibliothek C.159  94 York Minster, Add. 2  150 n15

General index

(Ignored here are editors of editions and of collaborative volumes; medieval authors appear under the most usual form of reference, e.g. Abelard, not Peter; Aquinas, not Thomas) Abelard, Peter  10 Abingdon, St Mary’s (Benedictines)  39 n46 Adam Horsley  83 Aelred of Rievaulx  10 affect and the affective  6–7, 51–54, 56–57, 84–85, 89, 95–96, 97, 107, 128–29, 131, 136–44 passim, 171, 192, 196, 199–201 Alan of Lille  4 n6 Alanus de Rupe  225 n55 Albert the Great  50, 51 Albertino Musato  58 Alcock, John, bishop of Ely and founder of Jesus College, Cambridge  174 Alexander of Hales  52 Alexander Neckam  47 al-Farabi  51, 55 Ancrene Wisse  4–6, 8–9, 11, 17–18, 24 Anselm of Canterbury  3–4, 37 n41, 87, 167 the apophatic  3–4, 18–19 Aquinas, Thomas  50, 51–52, 197 Aristotle and thirteenth-century Aristotelianism  45, 46–47, 48 and passim, 264 Arrighi, Gino  149–50 n10 Ashe, Laura  11 n22, 26 n17

Ashwell (Herts.)  169 Askew, Anne  189 the Assumption of the Virgin  101–23 Atkynson, William  199 n36, 217 Augustine of Hippo  3, 9–10; De agone Christiano 128; De doctrina Christiana  191, 197–98, 203 n53 ps.-Augustine  102, 119 Averroes  45, 46, 51 n42, 55, 264 Avicenna 55 Bachelard, Gaston  19 and n43 Bacon, Sir Nicholas  255 n58 Bacon, Robert 22 n4 Bacon, Roger  44–59, 245 Baker, David W.  196 n29 Baker, John  211 n8, 214 and n21 Bale, John  189, 243 n2, 246 and n15, 254–58 Barnes, Robert, printer  189 n14 Barratt, Alexandra  205 n60, 207 n65, 231 n58 Barron, Caroline M. 147 n3, 149 nn, 150 nn, 152 nn20 and 23, 153 n26, 154 and n, 161 n52 Barrow, Julia  37 n42 Barton Turf (Norf.)  150 n13

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Index Baswich (Staffs.) (Augustinian canons)  22, 33 Becket, Thomas  24 n10 Bell, David N.  34 n32 Belstead (Suff.)  150 Benedictines 84 Benet, Robert, procurator of Sheen (Carthusians) 92 Bennett, H. S.  217 n31 Bernard of Clairvaux  10, 38 n43, 41, 119, 167 Bergamaschi, Gianni  147 n3, 152 n23, 153 n26, 155 n32, 157 n41 Bestul, Thomas H.  95 and n38 Biasiatto, Peter  167 n1 Biggleswade (Beds.), St Andrew  169 de la Bigne, Marguerine  22 Bilney, Thomas  189 Binkley, Peter  48 n26 Binski, Paul  36 n36 Birgittines (and Syon Abbey)  91–92, 160, 161, 178, 179–80, 209–10, 216–18, 220–21, 244, 263–64 Birrill, T. A.  226 n51 Black, Jonathan  248 n26 Black, Robert  43 n3 Blayney, Peter W. M.  211 and n8, 213, 216 and n30, 219nn, 220 and n43 Bliss, A. J.  90–94 Blount, William, 4th baron Mountjoy  244–59 passim Boffey, Julia  220 n42 Bonaventura  52, 95, 127 Bose, Mishtooni  198 and n33, 201 and n44, 202 and n46 Bradford, John  219 n40 Bridget of Sweden  97, 122–23 Bridgnorth (Salop.)  153 n28 Brockwell, Charles W. jr  137 n7 Broun, Dauvit  253 n50 Burton, Robert, York priest  180 n46 Bury St Edmunds (Benedictines)  149, 152–53, 162, 250–51; see also John abbot Bydell, John  216

Caistor, Richard, vicar of St Stephen’s, Norwich 161 Cambridge and Pembroke College  169; Jesus, Christ’s, and St John’s Colleges 174–75 Campbell, Kirsty  137 n7 Caraman, P. J.  230 n56 Carruthers, Mary  197 and 198 nn Carthusians  84, 91–92, 97, 178, 196; London Charterhouse  92; Sheen  92; Coventry  92; Hinton (Somt.) 92 Caxton, William  169, 178, 179–83 Chalgrove (Oxon.), St Mary’s  103 n9 Chartres 47 Cheney, C. R.  36 n37 Cistercians  97, 167 Clark, John P. H.  84 nn5–6, 88 n17 Clayton, Mary  102 n3 Clerk, John of Hinton  92 The Cloud of Unknowing  84, 88 n17, 96 n39, 97 Cobban, Alan  50 n33 Colledge, Eric  24 n10, 40 n48 Collyweston (Lincs.)  178 Combe, John, (?) scribe of Lucca 3540 148 ‘common profit book’  93 contemplation 24, 25, 29, 32, 36, 41, 84–87, 95–97; see also meditation Copeland, Rita  190 n18 Copland, Robert  217 da Costa, Alexandra  187–88 n3, 188 n7, 200 n39, 210 and n4, 222 n47 Cox, J. C.  48 n26 Cressy, David  217 n31 Cromwell, Thomas  244 n6 Cursor Mundi 104 Curtius, Ernst R.  43 n1, 51 n39 Daniell, David  192 n21 Dante 58 Davis, Norman  261 Day, Geoffrey  213 n19 Dean, Ruth  21 n2

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Index Defensor of Ligugé, Liber scintillarum 40 Deshusses, Jean  248 n26 Disce mori 168 Dobranski, Stephen  202 nn48–49 Dobson, Eric  261 Dobson, R. B., 175 n29 Dominican order  50 Dominicus Gundissalinus  55 n62 the ‘dormition’ of the Virgin  102, 110–11, 116–18 Dorward, Rosemary  90–94 Dove, Mary 63 n3, 64–65, 66 n10, 70 n24, 71 n26 Doyle, A. I.  262, 264 dramatic cycles  106 Driver, Martha W.  222 n45, 223 n49 Duff, E. G.  213 n20 Duffy, Eamon  150 n13, 179 n40 ‘Dulcis Jesu Memoria’  167 Dunstable, Richard, colleague of Edmund Rich  38 A dyurnall for deuoute soules 205–6 Eagle (Lincs., Knights Hospitaller)  149, 150 Ecclesiastes (and Solomon)  204–5 Edmund king and martyr  149, 153, 161 Edmund Rich of Abingdon/Pontigny and his Speculum/Mirour/Mirror 11–16, 21–42 Eisermann, Falk  95 n38 Elisabeth of Schönau  118 Elizabeth of Hungary  151 n19 Erasmus  189, 190–92, and passim Erler, Mary C.  160 n50, 189 nn11–12, 218 and n34 Eusebius Gallicanus  26 n17, 28, 41 Eustace of Faversham  22 n4 Fewterer, John  200–1 Fisher, John, bishop of Rochester  175, 181 n53 Fishlake, Thomas  83–99 Fitzgerald, Brian  59 n78

Flete, William  87 Flores historiarum  246, 251 Forshaw, Helen P.  22 n5, 23 n6, 25, 40 n48, 41 n52 The Fountayne or Well of Lyfe 205 Franciscans 128 Frankis, John  161 n60 Friedman, John B.  170 n10 Frith, John  188 Froben, John, Basel printer  190 Frost, Christian  36 n35 Gardner, Helen  90 and n21 the ‘General Prologue’ to The Wycliffite Bible  64, 65, 66–71, 191 Gerald of Wales  47 Gerson, Jean  198 Gervase of Tilbury  104 Ghosh, Kantik  64 n4, 127 n1 de Gigli, John, bishop of Worcester  178 Gillespie, Vincent  viii-xi and nn, 3 and nn, 17 n39, 18 and n41, 19 n42, 24 and n11, 25 and n15, 41, 43 and n3, 44 n8, 47 n20, 51 n42, 57 n73, 101, 127, 137 n7, 147, 167, 174 n25, 181 n53, 187 and nn, 188 n4, 194 n27, 200–1 and nn, 207 and n67, 209–10 and nn, 219 and n41, 244, 261–73 Gillhammer, Cosima  63 Gilpin, George  246 n15 Ginzburg, Carlo  202 n47 Godfray, Thomas  217 Godwin of Sarum, Meditationes 39–40 Goldstein, James  253 n50 Grafton, Anthony 189 n13, 203 n51 Graham, Timothy  246–47 n16, 253 n46 Gransden, Antonia  245 n10, 251 n40, 253 n46 Gray, Douglas  262–65 passim Green, V. H. H.  137 n7 Greenfield, Concetta  43 n3 Greenway, D. E.  36 n34 Gregory the Great  120 Grenehalgh, James, Carthusian bookannotator 92

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Index Griffiths, Jeremy (and his parents John and Jeanne)  263 Grise, C. Annette  225 n50 Grosseteste, Robert  148 Guidi, P.  149 n8 Guigo II of the Grande Chartreuse  84 Guigo of Ponte  84 Gunn, Cate  11 nn22 and 25, 13 n30, 28–29 n24 Gwara, Joseph  216 n29, 217 n32, 223 n48, 225 n50, 229 n53, 231 n57 Hackett, Jeremiah  53 n49 Haigh, Christopher  190 n14 Hanna, Ralph  4 n5, 89 n19, 91 n27, 155 n35, 161 n55, 173 n22, 189 n10 Hardison, O. B.  45 n10 Hargreaves, H.  71 n27 Hausherr, Irénée  167 n1 Hearne, Thomas 244 Henri d’Andeli  47 Henry of Avranches  47–49 Hilton, Walter  83–99, 168, 178, 198–99 Hitchin (Herts.), St Andrew  169 the Holy Name (Jesus)  90–91, 93–94, 167–83 Honorius ‘of Autun’  4 n6 Hoochstraten, Johannes, printer  190 Horace 45 Hornby, Henry, Lady Margaret’s spiritual director 178 Horrox, Rosemary  169 nn3–4 Horsfield, Robert A.  238 n60 Horwood, Elizabeth, prioress of London Franciscan nuns  93 Hotson, Leslie 212 and n10 Howard dukes of Norfolk  244 n6, 259 and n70 Howell, Peter  151 n19, 159 n47 Hudson, Anne  63 n1, 71 n25, 93 n31, 263 Hugh of Balma  84 Hugh of Saint-Victor  41, 84, 193–94, 204 n57 Hussey, S. S.  94 n33, 95

Innes-Parker, Catherine  7 n14 Innocent III  18 n40 Jackson, W. A.  213 n20 Jacobus de Voragine  102 James, Montague R.  170 n7, 172–73 nn, 245 n9 ps.-Jerome  18 n40; (Paschasius Radbertus) 102, 118, 120, 122 Jesus, see Holy Name the Jews (in narratives of the Assumption) 112–13; see also Judas ‘John, abbot of Bury’, John of Brinkley or John of Timworth  243–59 John Cassian  10 John of Garland  47 John of Salisbury  45 n9 John of Tynemouth, Historia aurea 153 Johnson, Ian  127–28 nn1–3, 132 n5, 263 Jones, Michael K.  174 n26, 175 n29, 178 n36 Jordan of Saxony  50 Joseph of Arimathea  102 Joseph of Exeter, Bellum Troianum 244 Joye, George  202–5 Juan de Segovia  202 Judas (and the Pharisees)  133–35 Julian of Norwich  97, 262 Kallistos of Diokleia  181 n51 Karnes, Michelle  85 n8 Keiser, George  229 n54 Kempe, Margery  97, 101 Kempter, Tobias A.  95 n38 kenosis 16 Ker, Neil  175 n31, 177 n35, 253 n46 Killum, John, London grocer  93 King, D.  113 n27 King, John N.  214 n20, 218 n36, 219 n38 Kintgen, Eugene  202 n48 Kipling, Gordon  106 n21 Koch, Thomas  202 n50 Kreps, Barbara  211 and n8, 214 nn22–23 Kristeller, Paul O.  43 n3

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Index laicization (of regular clergy practice)  24–26, 37–38, 41 Lambert, Bart  149 n7 Langford, Henry, London organmaker 93 Langstrother, William, preceptor of Eagle 149 Langton, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury 37 Lateran IV  36 laude 156 Lawrence, C. H.  22 nn3–4, 25 and n14, 33, 38 n42 Leclercq, Jean  86 n14 Legge, Dominica  40 n48 Leicester, College of the Annunciation of St Mary  23 Leland, John  243–59 Lepine, David  37 n42, 38 n44 Lester, Anne E.  55 n60 Lettou, John  214 Lewis, Anna  24 n8 Lindberg, Conrad  63 n3, 64–65 and nn Lindley, Phillip  150 n14 Litcham (Norf.)  150 the liturgy  36, 102, 145–46; of the Holy Name 170–72, 174, 175–78; of St Zita  156–60, 165–66 Loewen, Peter V.  55 n62 Lollards and Lollardy, see Wycliffism London, St Benet Sherehoge; and St Andrew, Holborn  149 Love, Nicholas  95, 97, 127–37, 198, 200–1, 206–7 Lucca and its locales  147–66 passim Luscombe, David  50 n33 Luther, Martin  190, 192, 193, 194 Luton (Bucks.), St Mary  169 Lutton, Rob  170 n10, 174 n27, 177 n34 Luxford, Julian  150 n17 Lydgate, John  149, 161, 162 Lyme Regis (Dorset)  93 Maidstone, Clement, monk of Syon  94 Mann, Jesse  202 and n50

Manne, Katherine, anchoress  189 Manetti, Giannozzo  202–3 Lady Margaret Beaufort  92, 97, 161, 167, 174–80, 199 n36, 217 Marshall, Peter  188 n6 Matthew of Westminster  246 Matthew Paris  22 n4, 24, 33, 246–47 McGinn, Bernard  84 n5, 85 n7 McNamer, Sarah  85 n8 Meale, Carol  229 n54 Mechthild of Hackeborn  148, 160 n51, 207 n65 meditatio, meditation and specific textual examples  7–9, 11–12, 16, 29, 36, 84–87, 95, 130, 136, 143, 177, 193–94, 198–201, 205, 207; see also contemplation, Nicholas Love, Richard Rolle Meditationes vitae Christi  95, 147–49 ps.-Melito of Sardis, Transitus Mariae 102 Memoriale credencium 23 Meopham, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury 245 Merton (Surrey) (Augustinian canons)  25, 27, 33, 35 The Metrical Life of Christ 104–6 Michael of Cornwall  46, 47–49, 58 Middleton, William  211, 214, 216 Millett, Bella  4 n5, 5 n9, 10 n18, 15–16 and nn Mimouni, S. C.  102 n5 Minnis, Alastair  43 n3, 51 n38, 53 n48, 101, 263 Mirk, John, Festial  108, 179 Monmouth, Humphrey  189 Montague, John  36 n34 More, Thomas  164, 188, 197–201 Morey, James H.  12 n25 mouvance  21, 24 Mulchahey, Marian M.  50 n33 music and language  55–57 Mustanoja, Tauno F.  68 n19 name, see Holy Name

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Index narrative, biblical and apocryphal  7, 9–15, 101–23, 129–37 New, Elizabeth A.  180 n46 Nicholas of Lyra  66, 145 n11, 191 Nicholls, A. E.  113 n26 Norris, David O.  261–62 North Elmham (Norf.)  150 The Northern Homily Cycle 104 Norwich, the cathedral  246–47; St Peter Mancroft  113; St Stephen’s  161; Dominicans 189 Nuttall, Jenni  220 n42 Oates, C. T.  169 nn3–5 Oliver, Leslie M.  213 n20 Orléans 47 Orthodox church  183 Osney (Oxon.) (Augustinian canons)  245 Ovid  55, 173 Oxford  21, 44, 247; Keble College  261– 63; Lincoln College  169; Magdalen College 244 Pantin, W. A.  24 n10 Parkes, Malcolm  261–65 passim Paris  21, 37, 44, 46–47, 49 Pachet, Rose, nun of Syon  92 Pecham, John and ‘Ignorantia sacerdotum’ 26 Pecock, Reginald  viii, 137–46, 198 Pensax, Margery, recluse  92 Perry, Ryan  201 n42 Peter Comestor  12–14 Pfaff, Richard W. 36 n38, 168 n2, 171 n11 Pickering, Elizabeth  211, 214 Pinder, Ulrich  200–1 Plomer, Henry  211 and n6, 212 n15 poetics  43–59; poetry and music 55–56 Pontigny Cistercians  22, 27 Poore, Herbert, bishop of Salisbury  36 Poore, Richard, bishop of Salisbury  28, 36–37 and n39 The Pore Caitif 168 Potts, Jennifer  4 n7

Powell, Susan  147 n2, 149 n5, 150 n10, 174 n26, 175 n30, 177 n35, 178–79 nn, 229 n54 Powell, William and Humphrey  211–47 Pratt, Aaron  220 n42 prayer(s)  37, 86, 142–46, 175–78, 183, 193–94, 198, 205–6 Pynson, Richard  180 n46, 211, 214 and passim Rand, Edward  47 n24 Rashdall, Hastings  47 n23 reading/ruminatio  16, 53–57, 86, 129–46, 187–207 reason, see affect Redman, Robert  211, 214 and passim Reed, Arthur W.  218 and n33 Reeve, Matthew M.  36 n36, 37 nn40–41, 41 n35 Reeves, Andrew  37 n40 Renevey, Denis  7 n14, 167 n1, 173 n23 Rex, Richard  175 n30 Reynolds, Leighton  43 n2 Rhodes, J. T.  210 n3 Rich, Richard 22 n4 Richard III  161 Richard of Saint-Victor  57, 84 Richardson, H. G.  251 n40 Ridgard, J.  150 n17 Ridley, Nicholas  219 n40 Ripon, Minster of St Wilfrid  150 n14; bridge chapel  153 n28 Robbins, Harry W.  23 n6, 24 n10 Roberts, P. D.  131 n21 Roberts, R. J.  214 n20 Robertson, Duncan  196 n28, 202 n45, 205 n59 Robinson, Pamela  263 Roest, Bert  50 n33 Rogers, Nicholas  160 n50 Rolle, Richard  24, 84–85, 86, 89, 95–96, 148, 168, 173, 225 n55, 263 Ross, Maggie  ix n2, 3 n2, 17 n39, 18, 19 n42 Rotherham (Yks.) and the College of the Name of Jesus  169–74

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Index Rowell, Geoffrey  262 Roye, William  190 ruminatio, see reading Ryrie, Alec  189 n9, 204 and n55, 205 and n58 St Paul’s cathedral (and Ralph Baldock’s tabulae)  249–50, 252–53 Salisbury Cathedral and its chapter  21–22, 25–26, 35–42 Salter, Elizabeth  127 n1 Samuels, M. L.  93 n31 Sargent, Michael G.  4 n4, 85 n9, 90 n22, 96 n41, 107 n24, 262 Sarti, Natale  147 n2, 150 n18, 151 n19 Sarti, Raffaella  155 n34 Sawyer, Daniel  63 Scala virtutum 40–41 Scase, Wendy  137 n7 Schiller, Gertrud  14 n32 Schwarz, M.  102 n13 Scott, A. B.  43 n3 Scott-Warren, Jason  211–12 and nn Scrope, Richard, bishop of Lichfield  180 n46 Shaftesbury (Benedictine nuns)  93 Sharpe, Kevin  188 and n5, 193 n23 Sharpe, Richard  263 Smith, Richard  219 Solopova, Elizabeth  63 and n3, 66 n9 The South English Legendary 104 Speculum Christiani 262–63 Spencer, Brian  150 n12 Þe Spore of Loue 23 Stallybrass, Peter  187 n3 Stephen of Sawley  148–49 Stevenson, Lorna  4 n7 Stimulus amoris 95 Stonley, Richard  211 Stratton Strawless (Norf.)  150 Strohm, Paul  262 Sutcliffe, Sebastian  147 n3, 149 n9, 164 n38 Sutton, Anne  161 n54 Syon Abbey, see Birgittines

A Talkyng of þe Loue of God  6–7 n12 Tanner, Thomas  258 n66 Thomas à Kempis  198–200 Thomas Gallus  84 Thomas, Hugh M.  39 nn46–47 Thomas (of) C(h)obham  14–16, 37 Thomas of Hales  16 n28 Thomas of Rotherham  169–74 Thomas, R. S.  3 Thompson, Augustine  156 n37 Thompson, John  198 and n35, 201 and n48, 205 n61, 206 and nn62–63 Thorpe, John  83 Throckmorton, Elizabeth, abbess of Denny (Camb.) (Franciscan nuns) 189 Towley, William  211 Tracy, P. B.  220 n43 translation (and its techniques)  21–24, 63–82, 127–37 Turville-Petre, Thorlac  147 n3, 149 n10, 155 n35, 156 n36, 164 nn52 and 55 Tyndale, William  188, 189 and n14, 190, 192–96 and passim Underwood, Malcolm G.  174 n26, 175 n29, 178 nn36–37 Ureisun of God Almihti  7 n13 Ussher, James  249–50 and 250 n32 Victorines  97; see also Hugh, Richard Vincent of Beauvais  102 n7 Visser-Fuchs, Livia  161 n54 the virtues  128–30, 138–39 voices and intertextuality  127–46 Wace 104 Wall, Stephen  261–65 passim Warner, Marina  106 n21 Watson, Andrew G.  245 n11, 246–47 n16, 253 n46 Watson, Nicholas  11 and nn, 23 n8 Watt, Tessa  216 n31 Webb, Diana M.  149 n8, 150 n14, 152 nn20 and 22

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Index Webber, Theresa  36 n34, 39 n46, 40 nn49–50, 41 nn33–34, 42 n36, 245 n11 Wei, Ian P.  50 n33 West, Nicholas, bishop of Ely  174 Westhall (Suff.)  150 Westminster Abbey (Benedictine)  150 n14 Whitchurch, Edmund  216 Whitehead, Christiania  167 Whitford, Richard  viii, 177 n34, 209, 216–17, 230 and n56 William de Machlinia  214 William of Saint-Thierry  84 Williams, Glanmore  230 n56 Wilshere, A.  23 n6, 25 Wilson, Nigel  43 n2

Witt, Roland  43 n2 Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn  4 n7 Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd 4–19 Wolsey, Thomas  244 n6 Woolf, Rosemary  106 n20 de Worde, Wynkyn  23, 92, 97, 178, 211, 214 and passim Wycliffism  97, 128, 133–35, 140, 164 Wycliffite Bible  63–82, 141–42 Wyer, Robert, printer  190, 199 n36, 217 Wymesley, John  189 Yonekura, Hiroshi  66 n11 St Zita of Lucca  147–66 Zumthor, Paul  21 and n1 Zwicker, Stephen  187 and n5, 193 n23

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Tabula Gratulatoria Laura Ashe Tamara Atkin Anthony Bale Richard Beadle Julia Boffey Mishtooni Bose Ardis Butterfield James P. Carley K. P. Clarke Andrew Cole Helen Cooper Rita Copeland Alexandra da Costa Orietta Da Rold Jeremy Dimmick Samuel Fanous John Flood Kantik Ghosh Jane Griffiths

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Ralph Hanna Alfred Hiatt Simon Horobin Anne Hudson Ian Johnson Philip Knox David Lawton Ayoush Lazikani Francis Leneghan Jill Mann Sally Mapstone Daniel McCann Alastair Minnis Kylie Murray Bernard O’Donoghue Heather O’Donoghue Andy Orchard Daniel Orton Caroline Palmer

Nicholas Perkins Susan Powell Denis Renevey Michael G. Sargent Daniel Sawyer James Simpson Jeremy Smith Elizabeth Solopova Helen Leith Spencer Annie Sutherland John J. Thompson Daniel Wakelin David Wallace Nicholas Watson Barry Windeatt Sarah Wood Nicolette Zeeman Keble College Library

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LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford. RALPH HANNA is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus), Keble College, Oxford. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, James P. Carley, Alexandra da Costa, Anne Hudson, Ian Johnson, Daniel Orton, Susan Powell, Denis Renevey, Michael G. Sargent, Annie Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Barry Windeatt.

Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures

The essays presented in this volume respond to and build upon the hugely influential work of Vincent Gillespie in these fields, offering a variety of approaches, spiritual and literary, bibliographical and critical, across the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation and beyond. Topics addressed include the Wycliffite Bible; the Assumption of the Virgin as represented in medieval English culture; Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock; and the survival of late medieval piety in early modern England.

Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday

From the great age of pastoral expansion in the thirteenth century, to the revolutionary paroxysms of the English Reformation, England’s religious writings, cultures, and practices defy easy analysis. The diverse currents of practice and belief which interact and conflict across the period – orthodox and heterodox, popular and learned, mystical and pragmatic, conservative and reforming – are defined on the one hand by differences as nuanced as the apophatic and cataphatic approaches to understanding the divine, and on the other by developments as profound and concrete as the persecution of declared heretics, the banning and destruction of books, and the emergence of printing.

Cover image: The Annunciation, from the ‘De Grey’ Hours, National Library of Wales MS 15537C, fol. 38r.

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN RELIGIOUS CULTURES Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday Edited by Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna

Edited by Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna