Revisiting the Medieval North of England: Interdisciplinary Approaches 1786833948, 9781786833945

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RELIGION AND CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Revisiting the Medieval North of England

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Series Editors Denis Renevey (Université de Lausanne) Diane Watt (University of Surrey) Editorial Board Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London) Jean-­Claude Schmitt (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) Fiona Somerset (Duke University) Christiania Whitehead (University of Warwick)

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RELIGION AND CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Revisiting the Medieval North of England interdisciplinary Approaches edited by Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marshall and Tino Oudesluijs

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2019

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© The Contributors, 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS. www.uwp.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78683-394-5 e-­ISBN 978-1-78683-395-2

The right of the Contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Publié avec un subside de la Commission des publications de la Faculté des lettres de l’Université de Lausanne

Typeset by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Pentyrch, Cardiff Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksham.

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Contents

Series Editors’ Preface Acknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction: Setting the Scene: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Medieval North of England Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marshall and Tino Oudesluijs

1

vii ix xi xiii

1

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 Denis Renevey13

2 Mechtild of Hackeborn and Cecily Neville’s Devotional Reading: Images of the Heart in Fifteenth-Century England Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

25

3 Langage o northrin lede: Northern Middle English as a Written Medium Merja Stenroos

39

4

A Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende: A Translation of Walter Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem in a Northern Anthology, London, British Library, MS Additional 33971 Marleen Cré59

5 ‘So to interpose a little ease’: Northern Hermit-lit Ralph Hanna 73 6 The Children of the York Plays Richard Beadle 91

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viContents 

7 Linguistic Regionalism in the York Corpus Christi Plays Anita Auer 

111

8 The Hermit and the Sailor: Readings of Scandinavia in North-East English Hagiography Christiania Whitehead123

9 Towards a Nuanced History of Early English Spelling: Old Northumbrian Witnesses and Northern Orthography Marcelle Cole131 Bibliography149 Index167

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Series Editors’ Preface

Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages aims to explore the interface between medieval religion and culture, with as broad an understanding of those terms as possible. It puts to the forefront studies which engage with works that significantly contributed to the shaping of medieval culture. However, it also gives attention to studies dealing with works that reflect and highlight aspects of medieval culture that have been neglected in the past by scholars of the medieval disciplines. For example, devotional works and the practice they infer illuminate our understanding of the medieval subject and its culture in remarkable ways, while studies of the material space designed and inhabited by medieval subjects yield new evidence on the period and the people who shaped it and lived in it. In the larger field of religion and culture, we also want to explore further the roles played by women as authors, readers and owners of books, thereby defining them more precisely as actors in the cultural field. The series as a whole investigates the European Middle Ages, from c.500 to c.1500. Our aim is to explore medieval religion and culture with the tools belonging to such disciplines as, among others, art history, philosophy, theology, history, musicology, the history of medicine, and literature. In particular, we would like to promote interdisciplinary studies, as we believe strongly that our modern understanding of the term applies fascinatingly well to a cultural period marked by a less tight confinement and categorization of its disciplines than the modern period. However, our only criterion is academic excellence, with the belief that the use of a large diversity of critical tools and theoretical approaches enables a deeper understanding of medieval culture. We want the series to reflect this diversity, as we believe that, as a collection of outstanding contributions, it offers a more subtle representation of a period that is marked by paradoxes and contradictions and which necessarily reflects diversity and difference, however difficult it may sometimes have proved for medieval culture to accept these notions.

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Acknowledgements

The present volume originates from the international workshop ‘Interdisciplinary perspectives on the North of England in the later Middle Ages’, which took place on 7–8 September 2015 at the University of Lausanne. The aim of this event was to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines who all carried out seminal research on the North of England in the Middle Ages and to have them start a dialogue on this specific topic from their different angles of expertise. The workshop was financially supported by an Agora grant (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)). We would like to thank all colleagues who attended and contributed to the workshop in 2015 for the fruitful cross-disciplinary discussions. Our gratitude extends to Sarah Lewis (University of Wales Press) for her continued support throughout the production process of this volume. We would also like to thank the Commission des publications (Faculté des Lettres, UNIL) for their financial support in the production of this volume. Finally, we want to thank the authors for their invaluable contributions to this volume, as well as the reviewers. Without you and your expertise in the field, this volume would not exist. Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marshall and Tino Oudesluijs Université de Lausanne

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List of Figures

Figure 3.1

Northern texts in LALME: genre distribution

47

Figure 3.2

The chronological development of sal(l), -lk and q- in which, -and in the present participle and spellings of both

52

Figure 3.3

The chronological development of present 3 sg indicative -s, spellings of they and spellings of know and hold

52

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Notes on Contributors

Anita Auer is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is co-editor of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics. Anita Auer has published widely in the fields of language variation and change, and language standardisation and corpus linguistics. She has a keen interest in interdisciplinary research, notably the correlation between language variation and change, and socioeconomic history and textual history. In recent years, she has co-edited a number of books as for instance the volume Letter Writing and Language Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) with Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts; the volume Linguistics and Literary History: In Honour of Sylvia Adamson (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2016) with Victorina González-Díaz, Jane Hodson and Violeta Sotirova; and the volume Exploring Future Paths for Historical Sociolinguistics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2017) with Tanja Säily, Arja Nurmi and Minna Palander-Collin. Richard Beadle is Professor of Medieval English Language and Palaeography, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John’s College. He is the Early English Text Society editor of the York plays, The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, Vol. 1, The Text; Vol. 2, Introduction, Commentary, Glossary; Early English Text Society, Supplementary Series 23, 26 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009–13). He is co-editor of Manuscript Miscellanies c. 1450–1700, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, vol. 16 (London: The British Library, 2011), and The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Marcelle Cole is Assistant Professor in English Historical Linguistics at Utrecht University. She has participated in several research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology that focus on Old Northumbrian including ‘The Lindisfarne Gloss in its Dialectal Context: A Comparison between Lindisfarne and the Gloss to the Durham Collectar’ and ‘The Lindisfarne Gospels Gloss: New Perspectives on the Morphosyntax and Lexis of Old Northumbrian’. Selected important publications include ‘A native origin for present-day English they, their, them’, Diachronica 35:2 (2018); ‘Pronominal anaphoric strategies in the West Saxon dialect of Old English’, English Language and Linguistics, 21:2 (2017); and the monograph Old Northumbrian Verbal Morphosyntax and the (Northern) Subject Rule (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014).

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xivnotes on contributors

Marleen Cré teaches English at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels. Her research focuses on late medieval religious and contemplative writings in Middle English in their manuscript context, and on compilation and translation (from Latin, Dutch and French and into Middle English) as authorial activities. Her publications include Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse: A Study of London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) as well as various articles on the translations of the works of John Ruusbroec and Marguerite Porète in Middle English. More recently, she has been working on late medieval devotional compilations in England, in particular The Chastising of God’s Children. This Tretice, by me Compiled: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, a volume of essays co-edited with Diana Denissen and Denis Renevey, will be published by Brepols in the Medieval Church Studies Series. Ralph Hanna is Emeritus Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Keble College. His recent publications include Editing Medieval Texts, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015); Introducing English Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, Their Producers and Their Readers, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014); The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2010); and Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). He has been awarded the British Academy Sir Israel Gollancz Prize 2015 for his contribution to medieval book history and palaeography. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa is Professor of English in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shizuoka University. Her recent publications include Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015); Anchoritism in the Middle Ages: Texts and Traditions, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages Series (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013); Convergence/ Divergence: The Politics of Late Medieval English Devotional and Medical Discourses, Poetica 72, Special Issue (Tokyo: Yushudo Press, 2009); and Margery Kempe’s Meditations: The Context of Medieval Devotional Literature, Liturgy and Iconography, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages Series (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007). Camille Marshall is graduate assistant in medieval English literature at the University of Lausanne. She is currently pursuing doctoral research on the Towneley collection of scriptural drama, focusing on the plays’ relevance for the mid-sixteenth century, the period in which the single manuscript was produced, and seeking to highlight the artificiality of both period and confessional divides. Tino Oudesluijs is currently a PhD student in historical sociolinguistics in the English department at the University of Lausanne. His doctoral thesis focuses on the urban vernacular of Coventry in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, which is a subproject in the Emerging Standards project (www.emergingstandards.eu). For his PhD thesis, Tino Oudesluijs compiled a new corpus based on manuscripts and

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notes on contributors

xv

documents from Coventry’s local archives, through which he examines the effects of the local vernacular on the origin and spread of formal written English. Furthermore, he was part of the Power of Words in Medieval Ireland project at the University of Amsterdam; has published on illuminated and decorated medieval manuscripts in the Utrecht University Library (A supplement to Koert van der Horst, Illuminated and decorated medieval manuscripts in the Utrecht University Library, Utrecht (1989). Vol. 1: manuscripts acquired 1989–2011; loose manuscript fragments, Utrecht: Utrecht University Library, Special Collections, 2011); and he currently works as the assistant editor of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics. Denis Renevey is Professor of Medieval English Language and Literature at the University of Lausanne. He has published in the fields of vernacular theology, medieval translation, Anglo-French literary exchanges, lyric poetry, and the convergence of medieval and religious discourses. He is completing and co-editing a collection of essays based on a Swiss national foundation research project on late medieval devotional compilations, forthcoming with Brepols. He is currently directing a Swiss National Foundation research project on the persistence of devotion to Anglo-Saxon saints in late medieval England. He has co-edited The Doctrine of the Heart: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010); A Companion to the Doctrine of the Heart: The Middle English Translation and its Latin and European Contexts (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010), both with Christiania Whitehead; Convergence/Divergence: The Politics of Late Medieval English Devotional and Medical Discourses, Poetica 72, Special Issue (Tokyo: Yushudo Press, 2009), with Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa; and Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine (Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2013), with Rachel Falconer. Merja Stenroos is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Stavanger. Her research interests include the following areas: The history of English; Middle English dialectology; historical sociolinguistics and pragmatics; late medieval text production and literacy; writing systems and orthography; historical corpus compilation. She is the principal investigator of the project ‘The Middle English Scribal Texts Programme’, as part of which the following two corpora have been compiled: the Middle English Local Documents corpus (MELD), and the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C). Recent publications include ‘Fugitive voices: personal involvement in Middle English letters of defence’, in K. E. Haugland, K. McCafferty and K. A. Rusten (eds), ‘Ye whom the Charms of Grammar Please’: Studies in English Language History in Honour of Leiv Egil Breivik. Studies in Historical Linguistics 4 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014); ‘Identity and intelligibility in late Middle English scribal transmission: local dialect as an active choice in fifteenthcentury texts’, in E-M. Wagner, B. Outhwaite and B. Beinhoff (eds), Scribes as Agents of Language Change. Studies in Language Change 10 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); and – with Kjetil Thengs – ‘Two Staffordshires: real and linguistic space in the study of Late Middle English dialects’, in J. Tyrkkö, M. Kilpiö, T. Nevalainen and M. Rissanen (eds), Outposts of Historical Corpus Linguistics: From the Helsinki Corpus to a Proliferation of Resources, Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, 10 (Helsinki: VARIENG, 2012).

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notes on contributors

Christiania Whitehead is Professor of Middle English Literature at the University of Warwick, and is also currently seconded to the University of Lausanne for a three year Swiss National Foundation project investigating late medieval devotion to northern English saints. Her recent publications include Saints of North East England 600–1500, co-edited with Margaret Coombe and Anne Mouron (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017); The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010); and A Companion to The Doctrine of the Hert: The Middle English Translation and its Latin and European Contexts (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010), both co-edited with Denis Renevey. She has a book of essays on Middle English lyrics forthcoming: Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems, co-edited with Julia Boffey (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), and is currently completing a book on the textual afterlife of St Cuthbert.

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Setting the Scene: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Medieval North of England Anita Auer, Denis Renevey, Camille Marshall and Tino Oudesluijs

I

n his translation and ‘elaboration’ of Ranulph Higden of Chester’s Latin Polychronicon (1327),1 the Cornishman John Trevisa (1385) describes the linguistic and economic ‘north–south divide’ at the time. Discussions about this divide and associated stereotypes are still being encountered today:2 Alle the langages of the northumbres & specially at york is so sharp slitting frotyng & vnshappe / that we sothern men may vnneth vnderstande that langage / I suppose the cause be that they be nygh to the aliens that speke strangely / And also by cause that the kyngis of englond abyde and duelle more in the south contrey than in ye north contre / is by cause that ther is better corn londe more peple / moo noble Citees / & moo prouffytable hauenes in the south contrey than in the north.3

This early perception and construction of north–south differences, which was later repro­ duced by Caxton in his Description of England (1480), not only depicts the northern linguistic variety and the economy in rather negative terms, but it also clearly highlights the southern perspective of the author. In fact, while it is difficult to verify the contemporary account of the differences and the difficulties that southerners may have had with the language, ‘it is certainly a fact that many manuscripts in the Middle English period were “translated” from northern English into other dialects for ease of reading, and vice versa, although such reverse translation appears not to have been so common’ (Jewell 1994: 189), e.g. The Informacion of Richard the Ermyte, The Prick of Conscience and the Cursor Mundi (c.1300), as Katie Wales notes in her book Northern English: A Social and Cultural History (2006).4 Today, even as scholarly a book as Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, which aims to cover the whole of Britain, is biased towards the south and the Midlands in general, and London in particular, with reference to only 21 northern manuscripts out of a total of 918.5 The southern perspective on medieval history, language, literature and culture has for a long time permeated scholarship in the different disciplines. While this is not surprising considering that empirical sources which have survived from the Middle Ages were often

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revisiting the medieval north of england

produced in the south, by southerners or, as indicated above, translated for southerners; this may have led to an unconscious bias. Moreover, it has for a long time been assumed that what is still commonly referred to as ‘Standard written English’ has developed out of Midland/southern-based varieties and/or the so-called Chancery Standard, and from there it has spread to the rest of the country.6 While the south has undoubtedly played an important role in the uniformisation of written English, other geographical regions – and in particular the north – also need to be considered when trying to understand the processes involved in this uniformisation process, i.e. the levelling of different dialectal features. Similarly, despite the works of pioneers such as Carl Horstmann, Hope Emily Allen, and, more recently, Richard Beadle and Ralph Hanna, medieval literary studies as offered in the classroom over-represent southern texts in general, and London-based ones in particular, so much so that the importance given to the south as the most prominent area of textual production in the late medieval period is inflated.7 However, possibly under current interest of European regions in self-determination and the affirmation of their cultural specificities, we can observe a shift in perspective towards the importance of ‘region’ by scholars working in different disciplines concerned with medieval Europe in general, and England in particular. David Wallace’s A Literary History of Europe, 1348–1418 contributes a perspective that considers sequences between regions and the way in which literary and linguistic concepts, together with goods, people and disease, circulate between them.8 The north of England and its regions in the late medieval period is the focus of this volume. It brings together scholars with shared interests in language, literature, culture, history and manuscript studies, viewed from different disciplinary perspectives, such as English philology, historical linguistics and medieval literature. Most of the contributions grow out of recent and ongoing research projects that touch upon different aspects of the north of England in the medieval period. For instance, Marcelle Cole’s contribution is linked to the Seville Corpus of Northern English9 and the project ‘Aproximación a la Glosa de Lindisfarne: Nuevos Enfoques Sobre la Morfosintaxis y el Léxico del Dialecto Nortumbrio’ (led by Julia María Fernández Cuesta).10 The contributions by Christiania Whitehead and Denis Renevey present evidence gathered from the ongoing project ‘Region and Nation in Late Medieval Devotion to Northern English Saints’,11 while Marleen Cré’s contribution is linked to the project ‘Late Medieval Religiosity in England: The Evidence of Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Devotional Compilations’, whose corpus included northern texts. Merja Stenroos’s contribution is strongly associated with the Middle English scribal texts projects, and in particular with the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) and A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD).12 Anita Auer’s contribution is also situated in the context of a historical linguistic project, i.e. the project ‘Emerging Standards: Urbanisation and the Development of Standard English, c.1400–1700’.13 Both Ralph Hanna and Richard Beadle have long-standing research expertise in northern English manuscript and literary studies. Ralph Hanna’s recent book, Patient Reading/Reading Patience, offers several seminal chapters on texts and scribes from the north of England, attesting to his enduring interest in the north and regional productions.14 Richard Beadle’s focus on northern Middle English and the north of England is attested by his work on the York Plays, as well as by his interest (shared with Hanna and present in Cré, Renevey and Kukita’s contributions) in the circulation of Yorkshire productions outside of its locale, towards the south.15

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introduction

3

Considering the temporal focus of this volume, notably the Old and the Middle English period, the material basis for investigation is limited due to low literacy levels at the time, the existence of few writing centres as well as limited textual material in the vernacular. Moreover, not all manuscripts produced at the time survived until today, notably for reasons of different kinds of destruction or loss. As for the textual evidence that did sur­vive, it clearly reflects the cultural and religious contexts at the time in that religious and administrative texts clearly dominate the material basis to be investigated. It is thus not surprising that the majority of the contributions in this volume – whatever disciplinary perspective they take – are based on religious texts. The available textual material plays therefore a significant role in shaping our under­ standing of ‘the north’ in medieval England. While many scholars until today have been debating the dividing lines between north and south as well as north, Midlands and the south,16 the contributors to this volume are concerned with texts produced in the north whose providence has been determined by way of affiliation to religious and civic writing centres including the important monastic houses in the north, as for instance Durham, York and the Yorkshire Cistercian houses. While the focus of this volume is on the north as a centre of manuscript production, dissemination and reception, it also aims at illus­ trating the fluidity of boundaries and communication, and therewith the links to different geographical regions. The following case studies of British Library, MS Additional 37049 and the Thornton manuscripts, Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91, as well as British Library, MS Additional 31042 offer interesting evidence about production of textual material from a northern secular household and a monastic house. The material found in these manu­scripts is representative of reading interests in northern England, with circulation beyond its original northern locale for some of them at a later stage in the late medieval period. It provides valuable clues as to various modes of production and circulation for the material covered in our volume, as well as demonstrating further the vitality of textual composition and production in the north. British Library, MS Additional 37049 is a miscellany produced in the north of England in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. It contains poems, chronicles and treatises, some of them unrecorded anywhere else, others extant in many other manuscripts. Prod­ uced in the most rigorously enclosed order in the West, the Carthusian order, the vernacular material of the manuscript, in conjunction with extensive visual aids, may have primarily served the needs of monks, novices or lay brothers. As we shall see later, most of the texts and images are devotional in nature, even if some items push the boundary between the secular and the sacred. For instance, the Mappa Mundi (fol. 2v) and the synopsis of Mandeville’s Travels associate themselves with sacred characters (the division of the world in three parts, by the three sons of Noah) and a sacred place (Jerusalem); however, they also blur the secular/sacred divide and invite a perception of creation that is wideranging. Extracts from the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum by the thirteenth-century Dominican Martinus Polonus offer a glimpse of Martinus’s interests in the two most important powers of his time, the papacy and the empire.17 The four texts that follow the Chronicon deal with eschatology in the form of reve­ lations, prayers, prose notes and verses.18 Despite the inclusion of continental bestsellers, such as the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum and Suso’s Horologium sapientiae,19 the manuscript shows a predilection for texts, writers and devotional practices that flour­ ished in the north, more specifically in the diocese of York. The Prick of Conscience,

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revisiting the medieval north of england

included in the manuscript, is one among several instructional texts written in the north in the second quarter of the fourteenth century.20 The other texts include The Northern Homily Cycle, Cursor Mundi, The Surtees Psalter, and the Speculum Vitae, whose excerpts are found on folios 36r, 69r and 72r.21 The Desert of Religion, which is found complete in Additional 37039, is another northern production, formerly attributed to the Yorkshire hermit Richard Rolle.22 Although not exclusively made up of texts composed in the north of England (some extracts from The Pilgrimage of the Soul attributed to Thomas Hoccleve occur from folio 70v onwards), BL, MS Additional 37049 offers an interesting window into the religious culture of the north in late medieval England. This culture is characterized by the production of substantial works of an instructional nature, and by the development of Christocentric devotions, in particular the devotion to the Name of Jesus to which the name of Richard Rolle gives authority. The manuscripts of Robert Thornton (fl. 1418–56), Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91, and British Library, MS Additional 31042, offer additional information about the com­­ position, preservation and circulation of texts in the north of England.23 Robert Thornton, a landowner based at the manor of East Newton, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, com­­ piled works for his own use and that of his family. His collection of texts, as found in the manuscripts above, offer useful evidence of the bookish tastes and interests of educated laypeople from the north of England. Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91 contains three sections devoted to romance, religion, and medicine, respectively. The romance section contains the only copy of the alliterative Morte Arthure, next to a substantial group of alliterative romances. The religious section displays a large number of texts written by, or attributed to Richard Rolle.24 It also contains a text called The Previte off the Passioune, a translation of a text by Bonaventure. The medical section contains the Liber de diversis medicinis, a collection of medical recipes and advice borrowed from popular lore and learned traditions.25 The British Library manuscript, also called the London Thornton manuscript, contains exclusively religious and moral material (if we acquiesce that the Middle English romance Sege of Melayne fits the bill), including Wynnere and Wastoure, The Four Leaves of the Truelove, and The Virtues of the Mass, among others. This brief survey of the contents of Additional 37049 and the Thornton manuscripts offers a glimpse of scribal and literary activities taking place within religious and secular circles in the Yorkshire region.26 Thornton’s amateur scribal activities probably took place in his manor, in Stonegrave, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, while BL MS Additional 37049 was compiled in a northern charterhouse, either at Axholme, in north Lincolnshire, Mount Grace Charterhouse, north Yorkshire, or the Hull charterhouse in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.27 Further north, in the diocese of Durham, the majority of literary production in Latin and English focuses on the life and miracles of the Anglo-Saxon saint Cuthbert: monk, hermit of Inner Farne and Bishop of Lindisfarne in the seventh century. The compositions of the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti (late seventh century), the Metrical Vita S. Cuthberti and Prose Vita S. Cuthberti (early eighth century) by Bede, and the Life of St Cuthbert in English Verse, written in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, shows the vitality of the cult of this northern saint among northern aristocratic readers, possibly the Nevilles of Westmorland, from the historic county of Westmorland in the north-west of England.28 Interestingly, the Cursor mundi, a religious poem of almost 30,000 lines written in the north of Westmorland, in the Northumbrian Middle English dialect of the early fourteenth

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introduction

5

century, shows self-awareness of the opacity of the northern language, ‘that can nan other Inglis rede’.29 The dissemination of another northern text from c.1315, the Northern Homily Cycle, which is of Yorkshire provenance, is initially carried in the northern dialect, with the aim of reaching a larger public than Latin or French would allow: And bathe klerk and laued man Englis understand kan That was born in Ingeland, And lang haves ben tharin wonand. Bot al men can noht, i-wis, Understand Latin and Frankis. Forthi me think almous it isse To wirke sum god thing on Inglisshe,30

This text of northern origin circulated broadly in at least three different major recensions, in the north of England in the first instance, and in other parts of Britain in the later fourteenth century.31 The first major expansion, found in the Vernon (Bodleian Library, MS Engl. poet. a.1) and Simeon manuscripts (BL, MS Add. 22283), the two largest com­­ pilations of devotional works in English from the late fourteenth century, renders the collection in a midland dialect.32 Another text of northern origin, more precisely from Mount grace Charterhouse, Nicholas Love’s, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, sought official approval from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, in the south, with a dissemination that took place from the centre of England.33 As tellingly demonstrated by Wallace’s Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418, people, texts and ideas circulated between various regions of Europe, according to different routes and itineraries. In that light, and linguistic differences notwithstanding, a rigid north–south divide may be more of a mythical fabrication than a fourteenth-century reality, as is certainly reflected in the written dialect continuum at the time. For example, Hanna demonstrates the significant role that Lichfield may have played as a centre from which northern texts were ‘revamped for non-northern consumption’.34 This was the case with The Northern Homily Cycle, which was translated into the Midland dialect in the Simeon and Vernon devotional anthologies. Some of the chapters of Revisiting the Medieval North of England take into consider­ ation the possible links that contributed to linguistic and cultural exchanges between north and south. Renevey’s chapter, ‘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’, investigates two manuscript versions of Rolle’s Middle English Encomium Oleum Effusum Nomen Tuum. Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91, a manuscript compiled by the amateur scribe Robert Thornton, offers a version of the Encomium that preserves northern dialectal characteristics and vigorously presents the spirituality so characteristic of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 155, on the other hand, offers a version of the Encomium that erases the northern dialect, and presents a text with linguistic features characteristic of east-central Staffordshire. In addition, although the devotion to the Name of Jesus is central to the text, its association with Rolle, its most robust propagator in the north, is significantly toned down, thus suggesting that the popularity of Rolle in the south of England would

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not play as important a role in the spread of the devotion. The chapter suggests that the Dublin scribe has carefully adapted this text to meet the spiritual and reading tastes of a non-northern audience. More broadly, it suggests that the popularity of northern devotional texts went well beyond their initial place of origin. However, if texts from the north travel south, the reverse is also the case, as with the example of the unique copy of the alliterative Morte Arthure, preserved by Thornton in Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91, mentioned earlier on.35 Kukita Yoshikawa’s chapter, ‘Mechtild of Hackeborn and Cecily Neville’s Devotional Reading: Images of the Heart in Fifteenth-Century England’, also looks at south-to-north travel, examining one Middle English version of Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Booke of Gostlye Grace (1240–98), which was translated into a northern dialect, for the attention of a northern readership. This version is extant in British Library, MS Egerton 2006, possibly written in the Carthusian house in Axholme, on the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire border. This version of Mechtild could possibly be identified with the ‘boke of St Matilde’ that Cecily Neville (1415–95) owned along with a version of Bridget’s revelations, the life of Catherine of Siena, and the Legenda aurea. As in the case of several devotional texts, the Booke of Gostlye Grace was probably written for the attention of a (female) community, the nuns of Syon, before it moved beyond the enclosure, in this particular case to northern aristocratic readers, as attested by the names of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III) and his wife, Anne Neville of Warwick, written in the front flyleaf of the Egerton manuscript. Cecily Neville is among the most prominent owners and readers of The Booke. Although regularly on the move due to her role as mother of Edward IV and Richard III, she kept contact with northern nobility and cultivated a form of devotional life with an emphasis on Christ’s life, blood and wounds, as well as to his Sacred Heart, all very popular focii in the north. The relationship between north and south from a linguistic perspective is the focus of Stenroos’ contribution. In her chapter ‘Langage o northrin lede: Northern Middle English as a Written Medium’, she discusses the question of whether northern Middle English should be treated as a written variety that is distinctly different from contemporary varieties of southern English, as is indicated in contemporary sources such as the fourteenth-century poem Cursor Mundi and in John Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon in 1381. In order to investigate this question, Stenroos bases her study on a number of sources, notably A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English,36 the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) and the Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD). She systematically investigates previously identified texts that are written in the ‘northern’ variety in the late medieval period, and the dialect use of local – northern – documents, which allow her to shed some light on questions of regional and national identity. Stenroos concludes that the choice of dialect features – similar to a choice between vernacular or Latin language use – is determined by genre conventions, as well as the needs and expect­ ations of the readers at the time. The particular function of northern texts, which are largely restricted to administrative, private and religious uses, requires further investi­ gations from different disciplines, notably historians, manuscript scholars and historical linguists. The adaptation of texts (in some cases Latin ones) written in the south, but translated into Middle English for a northern audience is the concern of Cré’s chapter, ‘A Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende: A Translation of Walter Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem in a Northern Anthology (London, British Library, MS Additional

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33971)’. It looks at the inclusion of Hilton’s Epistola ad quemdams seculo renunciare volentem in a northern anthology, British Library, MS Additional 33971. This anthology collects texts such as an incomplete version of The Chastising of God’s Children, two eremitic epistolary texts, The Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit and The Epistle of Saint John the Hermit, and A Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende. The whole collection acts as a form of high-powered instructional anthology for those wanting to venture into the contemplative life. The inclusion of the lives of two desert fathers, St Makarios of Egypt and St John of Lycopolis, further corroborates northern interest in eremitism. In addition to presenting this eremitic theme that was particularly popular in the north, the Middle English versions found in Additional 33971 present northern dialectical character­ istics that suggest an initial readership, possibly Carthusian, from that area. Eremitism, which BL, MS Additional 37049 emphasizes so palpably through its num­er­ous images, is a hallmark of northern spirituality and textual production. Cuthbert (c.634–87), Godric of Finchale (c.1065–1170), Bartholomew of Farne (+1193) and the Monk of Farne (+1371), one of the many followers of Cuthbert on this remote island off the coast of Northumberland, show to what extent the remote spaces of the diocese of Durham lent themselves well to the solitary life. Similarly, some of the rugged areas of Yorkshire became home of several hermits, such as Robert of Knaresborough (c.1160– 1218) and Richard Rolle (c.1300–49). The eremitic movement thrived in the north, com­manding interest and support from the York clergy, as well as secular patrons including wealthy families such as the Scropes of Bolton and Masham, the FitzHughs of Tanfield, and the Percy dukes of Northumberland. John Thweng (1320–79), later to become St John of Bridlington, if not a hermit himself, supported the eremitic movement in his area.37 Although promoters of regional cultural and religious tastes, some of these families were also involved in national affairs, which led them beyond their local communities.38 Discussions of the hermits Cuthbert, Robert Flower of Knaresborough and John Lacy by Hanna support the strong appeal of eremitic role models in the north. His chapter, ‘“So to interpose a little ease”: Northern Hermit-lit’, questions the notion of seclusion and silence that is supposed to characterise eremiticism. And yet, in contrast to Rolle, who masters the art of self-presentation in his writings, how does one present holiness in the context of a spiritual life that is marked by solitude and silent humility? The way in which Cuthbert is being watched by a fellow monk when engaged in his nightly prayers in the North Sea discloses neatly the paradox figured by the display of superhuman religious activities that may enhance the prestige of the performer. Even in his island desert of Inner Farne, Cuthbert is kept under observation. If Cuthbert’s self-presentation is one that emphasises the uneasiness that may be generated by eremitical charisma, the case of St Robert Flower of Knaresborough exemplifies a more welcoming attitude towards the public esteem that the eremitic life can generate. One of the features of Robert’s life, also apparent in some other eremitic lives, is the paradoxical combination of seclusion with service to the community, in this case, his support of the local poor. In contrast to Cuthbert, Robert is often seen being interrupted in his devotional performances, and forced to interact with community so as to bring social and economic improvements. Hanna’s third case study focuses on the pictorial self-representation of the Dominican/ hermit John Lacy in Oxford, St John’s College, MS 94, fol. 16v. This image is unusual in the way in which it presents not a patron in the margin of the image praying to crucified Christ, but rather John Lacy who produced both the book and the image in which he

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represents himself not praying to Christ, but rather asking Him to have mercy. The overall impression left by the image and the book in which Lacy wrote down his own compositions is of a material and cultural space inhabited by social interactions experienced beyond that of the space of the reclusorium. Hence, the three case studies propose the importance of the metaphorical dimension of reclusion, but judge it impossible to achieve in practice. Beadle’s chapter on the ‘Children of the York Plays’ also includes the social dynamics of religious practice. It studies the possible involvement of children in the performance of the York mystery plays staged from the 1370s to the 1560s. Although the York Corpus Christi Plays contain more than 300 speaking parts, we possess no information about any single actor during the almost two centuries of performances which took place in the city of York. However, despite the scarcity of information, it is possible to know that quite a significant number of roles were not performed by adults. Indeed, several female roles were performed by prepubescent teenage boys whose voice had not yet broken, and who were attached as apprentices to some of the guilds responsible for putting on the plays. Boys performed other roles as well, for instance those of the angels, and took part in the choral singing required in some of the pageants. The number of boys involved in the performance of the York Corpus Christi Plays must have been about 100. This evidence of the role played by prepubescent boys in the performance of the cycle on an annual basis indicates vibrant civic involvement in the performance of medieval drama in the city of York. The York Corpus Christi Plays are also the focus of Anita Auer’s chapter ‘Linguistic Regionalism in the York Corpus Christi Plays’, and more precisely the variation of the linguistic variable third person singular present tense form in the York Plays. This contribution – and the project in the context of which this chapter has been written39 – takes an alternative approach to studying the beginnings of the standardisation processes of written English. While the traditional view of the emergence of a more uniform written Standard English attributes an important role to London as the national seat of government and justice,40 to date little attention has been paid to other major regional centres with high levels of literacy and text production. The systematic study of linguistic variation in regional urban vernaculars such as the current chapter on York allow for a better under­ standing of language standardisation processes. The linguistic variable under investigation, i.e. the third person singular present tense form, is a particularly good test case in that it distinguishes between the northern Middle English dialect variant (-s form) and a southern Middle English dialect variant (-th form), alongside a zero form. Apart from considering the specific text type under investigation and possible scribal variation, Auer’s findings show that the northern dialect form is still dominant in the plays as opposed to the southern variant, which starts to spread in northern manuscripts, notably civic manuscripts, at around the same time. If some of our initial chapters, for instance those by Cré, Kukita and Renevey, demon­ strate the porosity of the north–south divide and suggest an interface characterised by exchange and accommodation, the chapter by Whitehead, ‘The Hermit and the Sailor: Readings of Scandinavia in North-East English Hagiography’, moves the geographical focus to the dynamic interface between the north of England and Scandinavia. Her investi­ gation is carried on by a consideration of twelfth-century vitae associated with the cult of St Cuthbert, which was centred at Durham cathedral by this time. While Cuthbert is represented as a powerful force in combating the invading Vikings in pre-Conquest

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England, the twelfth-century Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthbert virtutibus (1150s– 1170s) represents Cuthbert as aware of the North Sea environment as a commercial platform, rather than a site of naval military warfare and piracy. At the same time as repudiating military attacks, Cuthbert’s acts of retaliation also leave open negotiation premised on commercial interests. In another miraculum found in the same collection, Cuthbert becomes the guardian of northern English and Norwegian sailors and traders who are guided to the Inner Farne island for protection against a storm. Bartholomew, another hermit from Inner Farne who embraced the eremitic ideal encapsulated by Cuthbert, also offers an interesting representation of Nordic/north of England tensions: his Vita contains a negative representation of Norway set against an ascetic and chaste northern English Cuthbertine spirituality. In line with Whitehead’s contribution, Cole’s ‘Towards a Nuanced History of Early English Spelling: Old Northumbrian Witnesses and Northern Orthography’ takes external influences into consideration, notably from a linguistic perspective. In her chapter, she sets out to revisit the early history of the orthography of the English language which highlights regional variation that characterised spelling in Middle English (following the gradual decline of the West Saxon orthographic tradition after the Norman Conquest), but which tends to marginalise orthographic interdialectal differences that are characteristic of Old English dialects. Cole therefore focuses on different aspects of Old Northumbrian orthography in order to rebalance the discussion on the topic. In order to do so, she investi­ gates data taken from the Old Northumbrian interlinear gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels. The orthographic features investigated are: final -n lenition; h-dropping in hl, hw and hr clusters; for palatalised /k/; and for OE ; and the marking of vowel quality. In terms of external influences, particular attention is paid to the Old Irish factor and the runic inheritance. The study shows that in the second half of the tenth century, Old Northumbrian texts are clearly characterised by northern orthographic features. Moreover, there was a difference between the latter and West Saxon scribal practices with regard to orthographical preferences. These last chapters therefore suggest more ways of moving beyond the north–south divide, looking at the ways in which the sea becomes also a site of empowerment and transformation. The north of England in the medieval period has been underexplored to date and this volume may only be seen as an invitation for further exploration. It leaves aside investi­ gation of the immensely powerful cultural productions of Benedictine, Augustinian and Cistercian houses in the north. It only makes passing references to secular literature, private texts and civic records written in the north and focuses instead on several religious texts and figures. As mentioned by Friedman, out of the 918 manuscripts discussed in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, only twenty-one are of northern origin, while most are London productions.41 And yet book production in the north was far more extensive than this implies. Further investigation of the religious literature and secular texts of different kinds produced in the north will make it possible to arrive at a more precise understanding of ‘northern regionalism’, but will also demonstrate the extent to which communities and individual readers participated in networks where the circulation and dissemination of texts, both northern and southern, took place across what is more a ‘metaphorical’ divide.

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Notes  1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

10 11 12

13 14

15

Higden’s discussion is in turn based on William of Malmesbury’s De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum (c.1125), as discussed in Wakelin, English Dialects: An Introduction (London: Athlone Press, 1972), p.34. For an account about this divide from a historical perspective, see Dave Russell, Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Another contribution with a broad historical perspective is R. H. Baker and Mark Billinge (eds), Geographies of England: The North–South Divide, Material and Imagined, Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); for research evidence focusing on the medieval period, see M. L. Holford, ‘Locality, Culture and Identity in Late Medieval Yorkshire, c.1270–c.1540’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of York, York, 2001); pp. 50–74, who investigates the different ways the north has been defined in the late medieval period. The journal Northern History, which provides information about the seven northern counties of England from Roman times up to now, offers a range of articles that deal with the north in the medieval period. John Trevisa (trans.), Here endeth the discripcion of Britayne (Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon) (Westminster: Printed by William Caxton, 1480). Quoted from Manfred Görlach, Introduction to Early Modern English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 216. Katie Wales, Northern English: A Social and Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 65. See Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). See Michael Benskin, ‘Chancery Standard’, in Christian Kay, Carole Hough, and Irené Wotherspoon (eds.), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), pp. 1–40 and Laura Wright’s Introduction in The Development of Standard English (1300–1800) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1–8 for critical discussions and a de­ construction of this common perception. For instance, although the gender bias (Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich) and the multi­ lingualism (Marie de France, Wace, Thomas of England) of medieval England have been addressed since its seventh edition, the Norton Anthology of English Literature offers very few texts from the north (the York play of the Crucifixion, the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play). For instance, the Prick of Conscience, with more than 130 manuscripts, was the most popular English poem of the medieval period. Similarly, the circulation of the writings of Richard Rolle in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century attest to their immense popularity, which editors of the anthology are disregarding; see Stephen Greenblatt (ed.), Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edn, vol. A, The Middle Ages (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), pp. vii–x. David Wallace (ed.), Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). See website for details: http://ingles3.us.es See also http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/ SCONE/ See website for details: https://investigacion.us.es/sisius/sis_proyecto.php?idproy=20201. See website for details: https://wp.unil.ch/regionandnation. See: http://www.uis.no/research/history-languages-and-literature/the-mest-programme/the-middleenglish-scribal-texts-programme/ongoing-work/. See website for details: www.emergingstandards.eu. See Ralph Hanna, Patient Reading / Reading Patience: Oxford Essays on Medieval English Literature (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), especially the chapters ‘Yorkshire Writers’ and ‘Some North Yorkshire Scribes and Their Context’, pp. 161–208. See Richard Beadle (ed.), The York Plays. A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library additional MS 35290, 2 vols, Early English Text Society (EETS) Supplementary Series (55), 23–24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009 and 2013); see also by Beadle, ‘Middle English Texts and their Transmission, 1350–1500: Some Geographical Criteria’,

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16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25 26

27 28

29 30

31 32

33

11

in Margaret Laing and Keith Williamson (eds), Speaking in Our Tongues: Proceedings of a Colloquium on Medieval Dialectology and Related Disciplines (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 69–91. See for instance Wales, Northern English, pp. 1–24 and Raymond Hickey, Researching Northern English (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015), pp. 1–26. See Wolfgang-Valentin Ikas, ‘Martinus Polonus’ Chronicle of the Popes and Emperors: A Medieval Best-Seller and its Neglected Influence on Medieval English Chroniclers’, English Historical Review, 116/466 (2001), 327–41. For a description of the table of contents of BL, MS Additional 37049, see Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 307–25; see also the online digitised manuscript, with a table of contents at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_ MS_37049. Chapter five of the Horologium is found on fols 39r–43v; extracts of chapter four are found on fols 43v–44v. See Ralph Hanna and Sarah Wood (eds), Richard Morris’s Prick of Conscience, Early English Text Society (EETS) Original Series (OS) 342 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. xxxiv–xxxvi. For a discussion of literary production in Yorkshire and York between 1348 and 1418, see Ralph Hanna, ‘Yorkshire and York’, in Wallace (ed.), Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418, vol. 1, pp. 256–78; for the instructional texts, see especially p. 269. The Desert of Religion is extant in two additional manuscripts, British Library MS Stowe 39, and MS Cotton Faustina B vi pars ii, also written in the north; see Anne McGovern-Mouron, ‘The Desert of Religion in British Library Cotton Faustina B VI, pars. II’, in James Hogg (ed.), The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. 9, Analecta Cartusiana 130 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1996), pp. 149–62. For a description of the Thornton manuscripts, see Susanna Fein, ‘The Contents of Robert Thornton’s Manuscripts’, in Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (eds), Robert Thornton and his Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Manuscripts (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 13–65. Several works written or attributed to Rolle in the Thornton manuscript are available in Carl Horstmann (ed.), Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle and his Followers (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999). See Fein, ‘The Contents of Robert Thornton’s Manuscripts’, pp. 13–65. One of the ways of defining the medieval north of England could be to look at the boundary of the York and Canterbury archdioceses, with York comprising the largest English diocese, that of York (its most southern tip being only about one hundred miles from London), together with the dioceses of Carlisle and Durham; see John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. xvi–xx; see also the map at: https://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20132%20church.htm. See ‘Ownership’ at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_37049. The Swiss National Science Foundation research project ‘Region and Nation in Late Medieval Devotion to Northern English Saints’ held at the University of Lausanne will explore these aspects further; for further information, see: https://wp.unil.ch/regionandnation/. Quoted in Friedman, Northern English Books, p. xi. See ‘The Northern Homily Cycle’, in J. Wogan-Browne, N. Watson, A. Taylor and R. Evans (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press: 1999), pp. 127–8. See ‘The Northern Homily Cycle’, p. 126. See Anne B. Thompson (ed.), The Northern Homily Cycle, at: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/ text/thompson-northern-homily-cycle-introduction, especially ‘Introduction: The Three Recensions of The Northern Homily Cycle’. See Hanna, ‘Yorkshire and York’, p. 261.

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12 34

35

36

37

38 39 40

41

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See Ralph Hanna, ‘Lichfield’, in Wallace (ed.), Europe: A Literary History 1348–1418, vol. 1, pp. 279–84. See Hanna, ‘Yorkshire and York’, pp. 272–3; among examples of other texts travelling south, Hanna mentions Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild. Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and M. Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986). See Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1988), pp. 64–126. See Hanna, ‘Yorkshire and York’, pp. 260–1. See www.emergingstandards.eu. See for instance Michael Louis Samuels, ‘Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology’, English Studies, 44 (1963), 81–94 and John H. Fisher, Malcolm Richardson and Jane L. Fisher (eds), An Anthology of Chancery English (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984) for the traditional view, and see Wright, ‘Introduction’, and Benskin, ‘Chancery Standard’, for studies that have convincingly challenged this traditional view. Friedman, Northern English Books, p. xiii; but see Griffiths and Pearsall (eds), Book Production.

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1 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 DENIS RENEVEY

T

he presence of Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole in BL, MS Additional 37049, discussed in the introduction, occurs both textually and visually. A Rollean lyric, ‘Jhu my luf my ioy my reste’ appears on folio 24 r, preceding an anonymous text on the wounds of Christ. Folio 30v offers excerpts from Rolle’s Middle English epistle, Ego Dormio, on a scroll that is tied to the left hand of a lying male figure, dressed as a hermit, and possibly representing Richard Rolle himself. Further on in the manuscript (fol. 37r), extracts in Middle English from Rolle’s Incendium Amoris are flanked by an image of a male hermit holding a book in which one can only read the first word, Ego, which suggests again the representation of Richard Rolle presenting his own textual production, the Ego Dormio epistle. Rolle bears a large red monogram, ‘ihc’, that stands for the name of Jesus and the devotion attached to it. Another Rollean lyric next to The Desert text and just below another portrait of a sitting hermit under a canopy bearing the Jesus monogram further confirms the strong presence of Rollean spirituality in the manuscript. Indeed, the short lyric which begins with ‘I syt and syng / Of luf langyng’ ends with ‘Richard hampole’ in red ink. Not only does the manuscript authorise Richard Rolle as the desert father of the north of England, it also associates closely his authority and spiritual achievements with the devotion to the Holy Name. The manuscript bears witness to Rolle and his devotion to the Name as central elements of northern religious textual culture. The devotion to the Name and the special visual prominence given to the monogram in the manuscript contributes to our understanding of its close relationship to the spirituality of Rolle and of its popularity in the north of England, more particularly Yorkshire. In addition to the monogram inscribed on the chest of Richard Rolle (fols. 37r, 52v), it appears on folio 36v as a complex visual representation, with the vertical stroke of letter ‘h’ in ‘ihc’ shaped in the form of cross on which a profusely bleeding Christ hangs. The monogram appears again on folio 46r, as part of a coat of arms held by an angel, with a kneeling hermit paying his devotion to it. Further in the manuscript (fol. 67r), it is framed by a scroll in the form

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of a lozenge, while its use as a communal religious devotion is highlighted on folio 81r, where it appears on a processional banner leading the twelve apostles in front of the cart of faith. While the saved souls are led literally upward on the manuscript page behind the Jesus monogram, the damned souls fall headfirst down to the right of the manuscript page into the mouth of hell. The image makes a strong proclamation about the power of the Name, which brings those who perform devotion to it to the door of the heavenly realm. The visual representation of ‘ihesus nazarecenus’ of folio 23v and the double ‘ihus mercy’ placed next to Jesus’s bleeding heart, displayed by a bleeding Jesus on folio 24r, remind us that the devotion to the Name is part of larger Christocentric devotions in which the instruments of the passion, the wounds and drops of blood of Christ play a significant role. MS Additional 37049 bears witness to the close association of the devotion to the Name of Jesus with Richard Rolle in the north.1 This chapter considers the way in which such an association was negotiated in two Middle English versions of his Latin treatise exclusively devoted to the Name, his commentary on the first verses of the Songs of Songs, which circulated on its own and as part of a compilation. The compilation Oleum Effusum Nomen Tuum attributed to Richard Rolle consists of his Latin commentary beginning with the ‘Oleum effusum’ verse of the Song of Songs, which is part of his Super Canticum Canticorum, compiled together with a section of a letter of St Anselm, as well as chapters twelve, fifteen and the opening paragraph of the eighth chapter of Rolle’s Incendium amoris. This compilation is found next to the short text of the Incendium amoris in at least twelve manuscripts. The commentary on the ‘Oleum effusum’ verse, called the Encomium Nominis Jesu by early editors, is also found independ­ ently from the rest of the compilation in fourteen manuscripts.2 This section was translated into Middle English and appears in one form or another in four manuscripts: a) Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91 (L); b) Dublin, Trinity College, MS 155 (D); c) London, British Library, MS Harley 1022 (H), fols 62–64; d) London, British Library, MS Stowe 38 (St), fol. 161rv.3 The text in the last manuscript is a fragment. In addition, another Middle English version of the Encomium is found as the ninth tract of the Pore Caitif. The version chosen by Ralph Hanna for his 2007 EETS (Early English Text Society) edition is that found in Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91 (L), known as the Thornton MS, and offered in parallel to Dublin (D). The edition of both versions facing one another makes it an interesting tool for an investigation of versions written in different dialects, with subtle but interesting differences in terms of content. Hanna indeed notes the para­phrasing tendencies of the D scribe, as well as his conscious effort at avoiding specifically northern lexis.4 As for the L manuscript, he considers Robert Thornton to be occasionally sloppy as a copyist, who makes serious editorial interventions.5 One of the points that Hanna highlights is the fact that Thornton considers Rolle’s concluding anecdote, that of his warding off the devil disguised in the form of a beautiful woman with the Name of Jesus, as if it were an exemplum. The information Hanna offers reveals the editorial engage­ment of the scribes translating, copying and transmitting an extract of a text whose life started as part of Rolle’s Super Canticum Canticorum. Hanna’s assessment of Thornton’s scribal activity is based on its Latin sources, for which he uses the 1536 print of Rolle’s Latin works, especially fols 142r–144v.6 His edition of Rolle’s Super Canticum, 4 provides further material for investi­ gating the way in which the Encomium circulated and was translated into Middle English.7 The aim of this chapter is to pursue a comparison of the versions of the Encomium in L and D. My assumption, following Hanna, is that these versions are both based on

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a Latin version similar to that found in the 1536 edition.8 This chapter analyses textual activity in both versions, with particular emphases placed on translation practice, lexis, the translation/omission of emotion words, the way in which the relationship between the ‘I-voice’ and the Name and character of Jesus is designed, and the extent to which Middle English ‘name’ is given prominence or not in these two Middle English versions. As we shall see, when studied together, these modifications offer interesting evidence as to northern features (spiritual, linguistic, etc.) that compiler/scribes feel the need to accommodate, modify or suppress to satisfy a non-northern, more particularly non- Yorkshire, audience. The hand responsible for the Middle English Oleum Effusum in D provides a text in the dialect of east central Staffordshire. The hand of L is that of Robert Thornton, who lived in East Newton, near Pickering, in North Yorkshire, and died c.1465. It provides a text in the northern dialect, close to Richard Rolle’s own idiolect.9 L offers a translation of the Latin Encomium that is fairly close to the original. The examples below demonstrate that faithfulness to the original marks the translation strategies of L, albeit with some occasional editorial interventions. This long extract, with the Latin original, provides useful evidence to contrast L’s translation practice with that of D: Oleum effusum nomen tuum, ideo adolescentulae dilexerunt te nimis. Nomen Iesu venit in mundum, et statim adoratur oleum effusum. Oleum capitur, quia aeterna saluatio speratur. Iesu vero, id est saluator vel salutare. Quid est ergo: Oleum effusum nomen tuum, nisi Iesus est nomen tuum? Hoc nomen est oleum effusum, quia Iesus est verbum dei incarnatum. Imples in opere, quod vocaris in nomine, vere saluas hominem quem vocamus saluatorem: ergo Iesus est nomen tuum. ‘Thy name is as oil poured out; therfore young maidens have loved thee excessively.’ The name of Jesus comes into the world, and immediately oil poured out is smelled. One seizes this oil because it offers the hope of eternal salvation. In truth, Jesus means ‘saviour’ or ‘salvation’. Then what is ‘thy name is as oil poured out’, if not ‘Jesus is thy name’? This name is oil poured out because Jesus is the word of God made flesh. You fulfil in work what you are called by name. Truly, you save man, you whom we call saviour; therefore Jesus is your name.10 L: ‘Oleum effusum nomen tuum’, in cantico etc. That es on Inglysce, ‘Oyle owtȝettede es thi name’. The name of Ihesu commys into the worlde, and als sone it smellys oyle outȝetted. Oyle it es takyn for aylastande saluacyone es hopede. Sothely Ihesu es als mekyll to bemene, als saueoure or helefull. Tharefore what menys it, ‘Oyle owtȝettide es thy nam’ bot ‘Ihesu es thy name’? This name es oyle owteȝettyd for Ihesu, the worde of God, has tane manes kynde. Ihesu, thow fulfillis in warke that thow es called in name. Sothely [man sauys þou] wham we calle saueoure. Tharefore Ihesu es thy name. D: ‘Olium efusum nomen tuum’. Þat is to sey, ‘Oyle owteȝette is þi name’. Þe name of Iesu, anone as it was comen into þis world, it smelled swetenes of grace. Þe kynde of oyle is to saufe a þing fro corupcyon. Soþely Ihesu is als muche to sey as a saueoure or aylastyng sauacion, for Ihesu þe sone of God haþ taken mankynde and fulfylleþ in werke þat he is cleput by name. For soþely Ihesu saueþ alle þat forþinggyng her synne touchen hym þurȝ holy lyfyng.11

The L passage offers a very close rendering of the Latin extract. The only noticeable addition to the Latin is ‘Ihesu’, before ‘thou fulfillis’ for the Latin ‘imples’. It adds perhaps

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more to the way in which the I-voice progressively builds a personal relationship with the Name.12 However, that modification is rather negligible and does not modify signifi­ cantly the tenor of the Latin version. It is also important to mention that the passage makes a clear attribution to ‘Ricardus herimita’ in its incipit. D in comparison operates according to a different agenda.13 Rather than opting for a faithful rendering, it often paraphrases and shortens the Latin version. The D passage (74 words) is indeed short of fourteen words in comparison to L (88), and this tendency is noticeable throughout the Encomium. The offer of the Name of Jesus to the world is qualified as ‘swetenes of grace’, while L speaks of ‘oyle outȝetted’, preserving therefore a physical quality to the image that the Latin passage conveys.14 Interestingly, both the Latin and L use the present tense, thus giving a sense of actuality to the devotion. D para­ phrases the Latin ‘oleum capitur, quia aeterna saluatio speratur’ with ‘Þe kynde of oyle is to saufe a þing fro corupcyon’, offering a piece of information that, after making specific reference to the salvation of the soul, moves to a more general, rational report about the properties of oil in its literal sense: Cocunque fuero, quocunque sedero, quicquid egero, memoria nominis Iesu a mente mea non recedit. Posui illud vt signaculum super cor meum, et vt signaculum super brachium meum quia fortis est vt mors dilectio. Anywhere I have been, wherever I have sat, whatever I have done, the memory of the name of Jesus does not withdraw from my mind. ‘I have put it as a seal upon my heart, and as a seal upon my arm, for love is strong as death’.15 L: Whareso I be, wharero I sytt, whatso I doo, the mynd + of the name Ihesu departis noghte fra my mynde. I haf sett my mynde, I haf sett it als takynnynge appone [my hert, als takynnynge apon] myn arme, for luf es strange als dede. D: Whereso I be, whereso I goo, what so I doo, þe mynde of Ihesu departes noȝt froo me. I haue sette it as a token vpon my hert þat hyt departe noȝt þerfroo, for luf is strong as deeþ.16

The example above shows that L is occasionally careless, with the omission from the Latin of a passage from Cant. 8:6 (in parenthesis) and the addition of ‘I haf sett my mynde’, which does not add to the meaning of the passage. D instead offers a translation of the entire biblical verse, demonstrating therefore knowledge of the verse, and possibly a better understanding of the process of internalisation of the Name of Jesus that the passage suggests. As Hanna notes, L seems to have difficulties distinguishing the two meanings of ‘mynd’, translating both ‘memoria’ and ‘mens’, as evidenced in the first sentence of this extract.17 D in that respect simplifies by replacing ‘mynd’ with ‘me’, thus reducing possibly the reference to interiority, without distorting the meaning of the Latin text, however.18 The following extensive extract confirms further some of the tendencies noticed in both Middle English versions with regard to translation practices: Deficit caro mea et cor meum liquescit in amore, desiderando Iesum. Cor totum in desiderio Iesu defixum in igne amoris conuertitur, et dulcore diuinitatis funditus absorbetur. Hinc, o bone

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Iesu, miserere miseri, ostende te languenti, medere vulnerato. Si venis sanus sum: infirmum me non sentio, nisi languentem amore tuo. Respirat animus meus Iesum quaerens, quem diligit, cuius amore capitur, quem solum concupiscit. Anhelat nanque mens superno dulcore, tacta amore conditoris incalescit, dum nomen Iesu dulcissimum in se iugiter nititur retinere. Hinc quippe vehemens amor insurgit, et quodcunque vere tangit, penitus ad se rapit. Inflammat affectum, ligat cogitationem, sed et totum hominem ad suam seruitutem trahit. My flesh fails, and my heart melts in love, in desiring Jesus. My whole heart, planted firmly in the desire for Jesus, is turned into the fire of love, and it is soaked with the sweetness of the godhead to its core. Here, O good Jesus, have mercy upon the miserable one; reveal yourself to the languishing one; heal the wounded one. If you should come, I will be healthy. I do not feel that I am sick, except in my languishing for your love. My spirit breathes seeking Jesus, whom it loves; it is seized by his love, whom alone it desires. For my mind, touched by the highest sweetness, pants so that it may grow hot with love of its creator, so long as it strives to retain continuously the sweetest name of Jesus within it. Here indeed violent love rises up, and whatever it truly touches, it nearly seizes to itself. This love sets the emotions on fire, it binds thought, but in addition it draws the whole man to its service.19 L: My flesche has faylede, and my herte meltes in lufe, ȝarenande Ihesu. All þe herte festenede in þe ȝernynge of Ihesu es turned into þe fyre of lufe and with þe swettnes of þe godhead fullyly es it fillide. Tharefore, a gude Ihesu, hafe mercy of þis wreche; schewe þe to þis languessande; be þou leche vnto þis woundyde. If þou come, I am hale; I fele me noghte seke bot langwyssande for þi lufe. Late my saule tak ande sekande þe, Ihesu, whaym it lufes, with whas lufe it es takyn, whaym anely it couaytes. Sothely þe mynd touchedd with þe soueraynge swettnes andes for to waxe hate in the lufe of þe makare iwhyls it enforcis for to halde besyly in it the swetteste name of Ihesu. Sothely fra thythen inryses a gret lufe, and what thynge þat it trewely towches, it rauesches it vtterly to it. It inflawmes þe affecyone, it byndis þe thoghte. Ʒa! and all þe man it drawes to þe serves of it. D: My hert hath feyled to luf Ihesu trewly. But al þe hert ys fastened in þe ȝernyng of luf, Ihesu, and wiþ þe swetenes of þe godhede fully it is fylde. Ʒerfore, goode Ihesu, have mercy of þis wretche and schew þi conforde to þis languyssyng; be leche vnto þis wounded. Ʒif thou come, I am hole and feel me noȝt syke. Soþely þe mynde touched wiþ þe souereyne swetenes sechyng whom it loveþ breþes for to wax hote in þe loue of þe maker þe whyles hyt enforceþ for to holde bysyle in hyt the swetest of Ihesu. Soþely from þenes ryseþ a grete loue, and what þing þat it trewly toucheþ, hyt rauescheþ it into hyt vtterly. Hyt enflaummeþ þe affeccion; hyt byndeþ þe þouȝt. Ʒee! and all þe strengþes it drawȝes to þe seruice of hyt.20

Both the Latin text and L are comprised of utterances that are affectively loaded and demonstrate mystical characteristics associated with Rolle, such as the languishing for Jesus, sweetness, and the fire of love.21 The first sentence from this extract offers con­­ vincing evidence for the power of the Latin language to situate the reader in a mode that will make it possible for him/her to be moved affectively. L faithfully renders that sentence both structurally and in terms of its affective power, making a clear distinction between the two different clauses that it comprises, with ‘flesche’ and ‘herte’ in the subject position in each clause, thus following the Latin text. D instead contracts that sentence, with ‘flesche’

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as subject of ‘haþ feyled’ replaced with ‘hert’, which becomes subject of a heavily con­­ tracted clause, ‘my hert haþ feyled to luf Ihesu trewly’. The presentation of subjectivity comprised of the flesh and heart in tension with one another in L and the Latin original offer a miniature psychological drama that is situated within the larger battle of vices and virtues, which is mentioned in the following paragraph. This particular configuration offers a more complex representation of the self, one that would appeal powerfully to a reader who embraces a holistic approach to the self and the wish to disentangle carnal from spiritual desires.22 The long extract particularly reveals the modifications brought to the Latin original by D. Indeed, the change from ‘in desiderio Iesu’, translated ‘ȝernynge of luf, Ihesu’, against ‘ȝernynge of Ihesu’ in L, confirms the active engagement in D in significantly modifying the general tenor of the ‘original’ text. This seemingly benign change, when considered in the light of other emendations, reveals a well-thought-out design. In that particular case, the relationship of the ‘I-voice’ with Jesus, which is at the core of the exchange, is rendered in more diffuse and abstract terms, with love now as the concept which the I-voice must enter a relationship with, rather than Jesus. Further on in the passage, D disregards the surge of emotion ‘o’ in ‘o bone Iesu’, which L instead carefully renders as ‘a’ in ‘a gude Ihesu’, aligning itself with the tenor of the Latin text. Further significant changes in this passage deserve mention. The second sentence makes reference to the transformation of the ‘desiderio Iesu’ into ‘igne amoris’, that is into a fire of love. Again, L renders that term as ‘fyre of lufe’, while D interestingly suppresses it. The toning down by D of the theme of the fire of love, the heat it generates and the melting effect it has, could suggest a conscious effort to reduce the Rollean quality of this passage.23 Although it is not completely absent from the Dublin version, it is severely reduced and contextualised so that a carnal understanding is very unlikely, as indeed the reference in D is made to ‘þe mynde touched wiþ þe sovereyne swetenes sechyng whom it loveþ breþes for to wax hote in þe love of the maker’. Elsewhere, further above this passage, the ‘heat’ and the ‘melting’ effects of the fire have been completely deleted. L renders the Latin version faithfully with the following sentence: ‘If þou come, I am hale; I fele me noghte seke bot langwyssande for þi lufe. Late my saule tak ande sekande þe, Ihesu, whaym it lufes, with whas lufe it es takyn, whaym anely it couaytes.’ The only significant change is found in the way the imperative of ‘Late my saule’ encourages the soul to engage affectively with Jesus, while the Latin, with the use of the third person singular, present tense, makes a statement that is affectively less loaded.24 D reduces it to the following: ‘Ʒif þou come, I am hole and feel me noȝt syke.’ The omission of the material that follows has the effect of strongly reducing the affective impact of the passage, and diminishes the possible bond the ‘I-voice’ is elsewhere invited to develop with the person of Jesus. The omission of the languishing-for-love imagery, and other terms borrowed from the bridal imagery of the Song of Songs, denotes a desire to reduce significantly its affective impact.25 Despite its widespread use in the mystical tradition of the medieval West, it is the association with Rollean mysticism that immediately comes to mind in this particular context. The obliteration of spiritual postures and imagery deeply associated with Richard Rolle suggests a conscious desire by D to suppress the most Rollean characteristics associated with the devotion to the Name of Jesus.26 However odd that may be in the context of a text whose express purpose is to invite devotion to the Name of Jesus, its presumptive association with Rolle may nevertheless account for

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the occasional suppressions of ‘name’ in D. Although accidental scribal omission is not out of the question, it is nevertheless puzzling to see the following changes in D: ‘Ihesu es thy name’ (L,l. 9), which concludes the first paragraph in L, is absent in D; ‘name althirhegeste’ (L, l. 11) and ‘I luf þat name’ (L, l. 15) are also absent in D; ‘the mynd of the name Ihesu’ (L, l. 19) becomes ‘þe mynde of Ihesu’ (D, l. 16); ‘the swetteste name of Ihesu’ (L, l. 44) becomes ‘þe sweetest of Ihesu’ (D, l. 37); and ‘this name Ihesu’ (L, l. 61) becomes ‘hyt’ (D, l. 56); finally, ‘for þay luf þi name’ (L, l. 88–9) is absent in D. Elsewhere ‘name’ is preserved, but the rather numerous omissions of ‘name’ from D suggest a pos­­sible desire to foreground the devotion within the orbit of the person of Jesus, thus avoiding a devotion to the Name that would be only loosely linked to him.27 As pointed out by Hanna, the omission of the last fifth of the Oleum Effusum, which is a truncated version of the Latin, is certainly accidental, and due to a defective exemplar.28 So, unlike the evidence provided above, the absence of the final paragraph, with its four references to ‘nam(e)’, cannot be considered a deliberate intention on the part of D to diminish the importance of the signifier ‘name’ as part of the devotion. On the other hand, another change in D in the following extract may indicate, if not a deliberate intention to move away from characteristics of the devotion, at least a partial ignorance of the import­ ance of some of its elements: Vere Iesu, desiderabile est nomen tuum, amabile et confortabile. Non potest tuam dulce canticum audiri, tam suaue concipi, nec tam delectabile solatium meditari. Truly, Jesus, your name is desirable, loveable, and comforting. Such pleasant joy may not be conceived, so sweet a song may not be heard, nor may one meditate upon so delightful a solace.29 L: Sothely Ihesu, desederabill es thi name, lufabyll and comfortabyll. Nane swete ioye may be consayeuede; nane swa swete sange may be herde; nane swa swete and delytabyll solace may be hade in mynde. D: Soþely Ihesu, desyrabel is þi name, loueable and confortablee. Non soo delyteful a ioy may be conceyued; non so swete song mey be herde; non so delectable solace may be hade in mynde as is þe delyteful þouȝt on þe name of Ihesu.30

The Latin text uses the adjectives dulcis, suauis and delectabilis to express the feeling experienced when one thinks about the name, hears it or experiences it in the mind. L translates the Latin adjectives with a single word, ‘swete’, while D offers ‘delyteful’, ‘swete’ and ‘delectable’. Mary Carruthers has explored the enormous potential of the signifier dulcis and its synonym suauis in the rhetorical tradition of the medieval West, pointing to the way both affectus and ratio are brought into play when reading or hearing them.31 Dulcis is intimately associated with Iesu in the Western tradition of the devotion to the Name of Jesus, with the hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria as the best evidence for the strong, almost indivisible link between both terms.32 The ensuing Middle English tradition, inspired in part by this particular text probably written in the north of England, but also by adaptations of the hymn in Anglo-Norman and Middle English, almost systematically render dulcis and suauis as ‘douz’ in Anglo-Norman, and ‘swete’ in Middle English. Rolle partakes of course of both traditions, with significant passages devoted to the Name in

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both his Latin and Middle English writings, with a recurring use of the dulcis Iesu cluster and its Middle English equivalent ‘swete Ihesu’. The translation of Latin dulcis, suauis and delectabilis as ‘swete’ by L denote an awareness of the power of the cluster and a desire to disseminate it as part of the Encomium, in alignment with Rolle’s own practice, whereas the rendering by D as ‘delyteful’, ‘swete’ and ‘delectable’ does not show the same degree of intentionality. The omission in D of the last fifth of Rolle’s Latin version – which appears in a truncated form in L, although accidental, contributes further to the suppression of Rollean elements.33 Both the Latin version and L offer a conclusion to the Encomium with a narracio that bears the following title in L: ‘A tale þat Richerde hermet’. L therefore draws attention to Rolle, both by naming him author of the Encomium through a narrative that has the incipit ‘Of the vertuz to the haly name of Ihesu. Ricardus herimita super versiculo’ and through a narrative that has Rolle as its main character. The episode reports the use of the name ‘Ihesu’ by Rolle, or more precisely of the formula ‘A Ihesu, how precyous es thi blude’, in order to chase off the devil in the disguise of an alluring and sexually forth­ coming, fair young woman. A reading of D against L therefore immediately highlights the absence of direct references to Rolle as author and participant in this episode, and prevents any possibility of attributing the paternity or association of the devotion to Rolle. Ending midsentence, D was obviously copied from a defective exemplar, but one that otherwise did not differ in content from the exemplar used by L.34 Whether that exemplar offered a Middle English or Latin version of the Encomium, a comparison between L and D shows the latter to be written in a north-west Midland dialect, while L is written by Thornton who lived most of his life near Pickering, not far from where some of the events in Rolle’s life took place.35 As can be expected, L is replete with northernisms, visible in terms of inflexions, spelling, lexis and syntax.36 Among the most obvious, the third-person singular inflexion of regular verbs, present tense, is ‘-es’; the present participle is formed with the addition of the suffix ‘-and’. Old English ‘ā’ becomes ‘a’ in the north. D instead is completely devoid of northernisms and presents the text written in a dialect identified with the areas of east-central Staffordshire and south-west Derbyshire.37 Two general hypotheses remain with regard to the defective exemplar from which the D scribe produced the Middle English Encomium: he worked from a Latin exemplar, which he translated in a dialect that reflected his own linguistic competence, and possibly that of his future readership; or, although less likely, he worked from an existing Middle English translation, which, in consideration of the initial regional popularity of Rolle’s writings, may have been available in Rolle’s northern dialect. In the case of the latter, D suppresses radically all traces of northernism, but in both cases the version that is available in D is far removed from Rolle’s original idiolect.38 As stated by Hanna, the main scribe of D seems to be working on the production of a Rolle anthology.39 Indeed, Ego Dormio and The Form of Living appear in Booklet One and Two respectively, with other items attributed to Rolle.40 However, the evidence provided from an investigation of his treatment of the Encomium nominis Iesu suggests a particular care as to what aspects of Rollean spirituality should be conveyed to D’s readership. If not necessarily systematic in all his fascicles, the main scribe of D either is unaware of the association of the devotion to the Name with the person of Rolle, or consciously avoids it. While L frames the devotion around Rolle as author and performer of the devotion, D deletes all references to Rolle’s agency. The fire of love, and some of

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the most affective characteristics of the Latin passage, conveyed with the association of the lexical terms dulcis, suavis to Iesu are also occasionally removed or toned down in D. L instead conveys a text that retains all the marks of Rollean spirituality, couched in a northern dialect similar to Rolle’s own idiolect. Whether D worked from a Latin exemplar or pre-existent Middle English translation, its version provides interesting evidence of the changes that it deemed necessary for a text with strong northern and regional characteristics to travel south for the use of a new readership, possibly less interested and impressed by the deeds of a local northern hermit, but nevertheless keen to make use of a text that satisfied their desire to practice devotion to the Name of Jesus. Considering the attraction the name ‘Richard Rolle’ had as an imprimatur, one must be aware that the evidence provided in this chapter does not necessarily reflect an overall trend. Indeed, despite the many controversies linked to his awkward personality and his peculiar mysticism, his name generated a reverence equal to that of Bernard of Clairvaux and Augustine.41 As attested by the large number of texts falsely attributed to him, as well as by the extensive circulation of his writings from the late fourteenth century up to the reformation, there is no doubt that the form of spirituality that he and his followers practiced and conveyed in writing had an appeal beyond his Yorkshire area.42 Whether plausible spiritual features can be detected to define forms of religious life according to locale as being northern or, to be even more specific, Cumbrian, Northumbrian or from Yorkshire, needs further exploration. In the case of material written by Rolle, or attributed to him, it remains to be seen to what extent compilers, translators and scribes adopted authorial gestures aimed at fashioning texts that would adjust peculiar idio­ syncrasies to a level acceptable to readers less immediately fascinated by the persona of Rolle. This chapter only provides evidence that, in the case of one particular text found in one manu­script, efforts were made at the linguistic, lexical and spiritual levels to trans­ form a text for it to be read by an audience south of its original place of composition and initial circulation.

Notes  1

 2

 3

For a description of the table of contents of BL, MS Additional 37049, see Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 307–25; see also the online digitised manuscript, with a table of contents at: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_ MS_37049. I summarise here Valerie Lagorio and Michael Sargent (with Ritamary Bradley), ‘English Mystical Writings’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, vol. 9 (New Haven, Conn.: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), p. 3065; for a discussion of the Encomium Nominis Jesu, see Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole. And Material for His Biography (New York and London: D. C. Heath and Company, and Oxford University Press, 1927), pp. 63, 73–6. See Ralph Hanna, Richard Rolle. Uncollected Prose and Verse, EETS 329 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. xiv–liv; see also Lagorio and Sargent, ‘English Mystical Writings’, pp. 3424–5; however, see also BL Additional 11748, fols 140–3, described in Peter Brown and Elton J. Higgs, The Index of Middle English Prose. Handlist V: A Handlist of Manuscripts containing Middle English Prose in the Additional Collection (10001–14000), British Library,

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22revisiting the medieval north of england

 4  5  6  7

 8  9 10 11

12

13

14

15 16 17 18

19 20 21

London (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), p. 40. Hanna (private communication) has found additional and different excerpts than those listed by Allen. See Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. lvi. See Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. lv. See Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. lv, lxxiv. For an edition of Super Canticum, 4, which makes the Encomium, see Ralph Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts: An Introduction, using exemplary materials derived from Richard Rolle, ‘Super Canticum’ 4, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), pp. 107–39. For a discussion of manuscripts linked to Rolle’s writings, Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, despite necessary corrections, remains invaluable; but for three additional manuscript versions discovered by Hanna, see Editing Medieval Texts, pp. 23–6. The extract is found at lines 111 to 298; see Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, pp. 119–39. See Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. xxvii, xxxviii. Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, p. 118. See Richard Rolle, D. Ricardi Pampolitani . . . in Psalterium Dauididum atque alia quaedam sacrae scripturae monumenta (Cologne, 1536), fol. 142; Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 2–3; for passage in Super Canticum, see Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, p. 119. All quotes offer the Cologne edition Latin text, followed by Hanna’s translation of the Super Canticum, and the L and D versions. For an example of the relevance of this relationship in the writings of Rolle and other mystics, see Denis Renevey, ‘Mystical Texts or Mystical Bodies? Peculiar Modes of Performance in Late Medieval England’, in Peter Halter (ed.), Performance, SPELL 11 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998), pp. 89–104. For an even more drastic emendation of the Encomium nominis Iesu, see the Middle English versions found in the Middle English compilation, Pore Caitif; see Teresa Brady, ‘The Pore Caitif’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Fordham University, New York, 1954); see also Teresa Brady, ‘Rolle’s Form of Living and Pore Caitif’, Traditio, 36 (1980), 426–35; Teresa Brady, ‘Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in The Pore Caitif’, Traditio, 39 (1983), 456–65. Bernard of Clairvaux is among the first writers in the West to offer a taxonomy based on the oil in his sermon fifteen on the Song of Songs; see J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot and H. M. Rochais (eds), S. Bernardi Opera, vol. 1, Sermones super Cantica Canticorum 1–35 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), pp. 82–8; for an English translation, see Bernard of Clairvaux in K. Walsh (ed.), On the Song of Songs I: Sermons 1–20, vol. 2, (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1971), pp. 105–13. Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, p. 120. Rolle, D. Ricardi Pampolitani, fol. 142; Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 2–3. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. 165. For more information on interiority and the medieval self, see Masha Raskolnikov, ‘Confessional Literature, Vernacular Psychology, and the History of the Self in Middle English’, Literature Compass, 2 (2005), 1–20. Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, p. 122. Rolle, D. Ricardi Pampolitani, fol. 142v; Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 4–5. Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Denis Renevey, Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries of the Song of Songs (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001) and Claire Elizabeth McIlroy, The English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004) offer useful information on Rollean spiritual characteristics. For more information on canor, see Katherine Zieman, ‘The Perils of Canor: Mystical Authority, Alliteration and Extragrammatical Meaning in Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 22 (2008), 131–63; see also Katherine Zieman, Singing the New Song: Literacy and Liturgy in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); for a thorough and original investigation of canor in Melos Amoris, see Andrew Albin, ‘Listening for Canor in Richard Rolle’s

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northern spirituality travels south

22

23

24

25

26

27

28 29 30 31

32

33 34 35

36

37 38

39 40

23

Melos Amoris’, in Irit Ruth Kleiman (ed.) Voice and Voicelessness in Medieval Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 177–98. For a discussion of the role played by confessional literature in discussions of the self, see Raskolnikov, ‘Confessional Literature’, pp. 11–12. The ‘fire of love’ imagery pervades Rolle’s corpus, but is developed at length in the treatise Incendium Amoris; see Margaret Deanesly (ed.), The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1915); see also Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. Clifton Wolters (London: Penguin, 1995). L directly addresses the readership in the following passage: ‘Also witte all þat þe name of Ihesu es helefulf, fruytfull, and glorious.’; it closely reproduces the Latin text, ‘cognoscant utique’; see Rolle, D. Ricardi Pampolitani, fol. 142v; Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. 5. For a study of the use of imagery in mystical texts, see Wolfgang Riehle, The Middle English Mystics, trans. B. Standring (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). For a study of the devotion to the Name of Jesus, although outdated, see Peter Biasiotto, History of the Development of Devotion to the Holy Name (St Bonaventure, N.Y.: St Bonaventure College and Seminary, 1943); for Rolle, see Denis Renevey, ‘Name Above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection I’, in Marion Glasscoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland and Wales. Exeter Symposium VI (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 103–21. ‘Name’ occurs twenty times in D, in the following lines: 8 (three occurrences), 9, 10, 12, 14, 27, 42, 48, 52, 62, 64, 67, 72, 80, 87, 89, 92, 95. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. lvi. Hanna, Editing Medieval Texts, p. 122. Rolle, D. Ricardi Pampolitani, fol. 142v; Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 4–5. Mary Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, Speculum, 81 (2006), 999–1013; see also Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 116–70; Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 80–107. For an edition of the hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria, see André Wilmart, Le ‘Jubilus’ dit de Saint Bernard (Etude avec Textes) (Rome: Edizioni di ‘Storia e Letteratura’, 1944); see also Helen Deeming, ‘Music and Contemplation in the Twelfth-Century Dulcis Jesu Memoria’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 139 (2014), 1–39. For an account of its adaptation in Anglo-Norman and Middle English, see Denis Renevey, ‘Anglo-Norman and Middle-English Translations and Adaptations of the Hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria’, in Roger Ellis and René Tixier (eds), The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age, vol. 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), pp. 264–83. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. lvi. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. 8. See Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, pp. 36 and 68. For a recent assessment of the scribal and reading activities of Robert Thornton, see chapters in Susanna Fein and Michael Johnston (eds), Robert Thornton and his Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts (Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2014). For a more thorough investigation of northernisms, see the glossary in Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 211–33. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xxvii. My assumption is that, considering the provenance of L from Rolle’s own geographical area, the language features of L offer a close rendering of Rolle’s idiolect, and are therefore reversible. For further information on northernisms in L, see the glossary in Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. 211–33. Hanna, Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xxvii. For a critical edition of Ego Dormio and The Form of Living, see in S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson (ed.), Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse. Edited from MS Longleat 29 and Related Manuscripts, EETS 293 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 1–33.

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42

See C. Horstmann (ed.), Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, with a new preface by Anne Clark Bartlett (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), p. iv of preface. For an investigation of religion and spirituality in late medieval Yorkshire, see Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge: The Boyell Press, 1988).

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2 Mechtild of Hackeborn and Cecily Neville’s Devotional Reading: Images of the Heart in Fifteenth-Century England* NAOË KUKITA YOSHIKAWA

T

he Booke of Gostlye Grace (Booke) is the Middle English translation of Liber Specialis Gratiae (Liber), the revelations of Mechtild of Hackeborn (1240–98), a German mystic and chantress at the Benedictine/Cistercian convent of Helfta.1 The Liber is thought to have been compiled by Gertrude the Great (1256–1301/2) and another unknown nun at Helfta during the last decade of the thirteenth century, but it was soon abridged by an anonymous redactor and circulated widely in Europe. The Booke is the only text from Helfta to have been translated into Middle English in the early fifteenth century, probably at Syon, from the abridged version of the Latin text.2 During this same period Bridget of Sweden’s Liber Celestis and Catherine of Siena’s theological treatise, Il Dialogo, were also translated into English in a Carthusian or Birgittine milieu, responding to the monastic reform led by Henry V. The text was circulated at Syon and soon disseminated among the female aristocrats and wealthy laity. The Middle English translation of the Liber survives in two manuscripts: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 220, written in the London dialect, possibly copied by a Carthusian monk, John Wells, and London, British Library, MS Egerton 2006, written in a northern dialect. The original translation, however, is lost.3 Theresa Halligan, the editor of MS Egerton 2006, argues that the scribe was consciously tampering with the dialect of his master copy, eliminating southern forms of words as he got used to copying the text.4 For example, there are some northern characteristics in the end of Part I of the Booke, such as ‘hate’ for ‘hot’; ‘amange’ for ‘among’; ‘chase’ for ‘chose’.5 Halligan also cautiously suggests that MS Egerton 2006 was written in the Carthusian house in Axholme on the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire border.6 This indicates that the manuscript might have been tailored for the use of a northern readership.7 The ownership as well as readership of MS Egerton 2006 illuminates its close con­­ nection with a northern reading community, in particular, with that of the Yorkshire nobility and gentry linked to Richard III and his wife. The interest in Mechtild is also attested by the piety of Cecily Neville (1415–95), Duchess of York and mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Her daily devotional reading included the revelations of Bridget and Mechtild,

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and a life of Catherine of Siena. In 1495 she left her granddaughter, Brigitte, ‘a boke of St Matilde’, along with the Legenda Aurea and the life of Catherine of Siena. Centred on Cecily’s devotional reading, this essay explores Mechtild’s Middle English text as an example of the newly translated mystical texts circulated among northern readership. In particular, it examines cardiac and horticultural metaphors deployed by Mechtild, and compares them with those in Catherine of Siena’s writing. As we shall see, Cecily’s interest in Mechtild’s revelations suggests a developing devotion to the Heart within her reading community. Through close readings, this essay will reveal the textual relationship of the continental mystics that the late fifteenth-century, predominantly female, aristocratic reading communities, such as Cecily Neville’s, appreciated. At this point it may be useful to consider some of the politicoreligious spaces in which the visionary texts were translated for the nuns at Syon. The fifteenth-century monastic reform in England was stimulated by the reforming Church Council held at Constance (1414–18) by Sigismund, effective Holy Roman Emperor. Its mission was to restore papal unity and thus resolve the Great Schism, and to suppress heresy by condemning Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, for Hus’s alleged approval of Wycliffe’s views ‘had lent heresy the air of an internationally subversive conspiracy’.8 The Council also ‘described its mission as the reform of the church “in head and members” and recommended a return to the apostolic simplicity and missionary zeal of the early church’.9 It was the contacts and experiences gained by the Englishmen at the meetings that ‘allowed English church leaders to develop a plan for the reform and renovation of the national church’.10 Henry V made the decision to break with the monastic past by founding the untainted Birgittine order, which, like Carthusians, was characterised by ‘eremitical inclinations, contemplative aspirations, seclusion from the world, and high standards of spirituality’.11 The reformist agenda was embodied in the spiritual idealism of Syon Abbey. Behind the translation of the Liber also lies Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutiones of 1409, the decrees that banned the unlicensed translation or reading of the Bible in English. As Vincent Gillespie argues, ‘one of the unintended consequences of Arundel’s decrees may have been a new impetus to the translation into English of older texts with an im­­­peccably orthodox pedigree or an unimpeachable authorial reputation’.12 Syon Abbey, reflecting the reformist agenda of the English Church, flourished as a centre of ortho­dox translation into the vernacular during the episcopate of Arundel’s successor, Henry Chichele (1414–43). Unlike Bridget or Catherine, who lived not much beyond living memory, and therefore perhaps of more immediate interest to a vernacular reader­ ship, Mechtild belongs to a group of female mystics that also comprises Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Helfta nuns, who flourished from the late twelfth through thirteenth centuries. Yet, celebrated for their charisma, confidence and powerful voice, the continental mystics assumed spiritual authority in later medieval England. It is likely that Mechtild’s revelations were translated into English to enforce the spirit of reform and ensure a new religious beginning after the trouble with Wycliffe and his followers.13 Like other contemporary English translations of devotional texts, the Booke was origin­ ally prepared for a professional religious audience. However, like many of the textual productions by or for the nuns of Syon, it found its way, by accident or design, to readers outside the enclosure,14 although the readership was largely restricted to a limited group of wealthy, female aristocrats. By the second quarter of the fifteenth century, Mechtild’s

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revelations were circulating in English at Syon Abbey and among the female nobility. The ownership and readership of MS Egerton 2006 is of particular interest in that it has a strong connection with northern reading communities, linked to Richard III as Duke of Gloucester and his wife, Anne Neville of Warwick, whose names are written in the front flyleaf. A network of this northern reading community and its specific connections with the Syon monastery have been outlined by Rosalynn Voaden in her 2005 essay, which traces how Richard of Gloucester came to own a copy of the Booke by identifying Marget Thorpe, a child who in the late fifteenth century wrote (or rather scrawled) her name in the lower margin of folio 127v of MS Egerton 2006.15 Marget (Margaret) was the grand­ daughter of Sir John Constable of Halsham and Burton (d. 1472), who was a loyal supporter of Richard of Gloucester. In addition to MS Egerton 2006, there is a bequest in the will of Alianora Roos of York, who left Mechtild’s book to Dame Johanna Courtenay.16 Among numerous devotional compilations that contain Mechtildian passages, British Library, MS Harley 4012 was owned by Anne Harling, a Norfolk woman. In 1491, she married her third husband John, 5th Lord Scrope of Bolton, a member of a powerful Yorkshire family, loyal to Richard III.17 Ian Doyle points to the presence of the ‘northern forms’ in MS Harley 4012 and suggests that ‘it had something to do with her next husband, John 5th Lord Scrope of Bolton’.18 Importantly, Doyle also finds similarities in the ‘script and complexion’ between MS Harley 4012 and a copy of the Speculum devotorum, a fifteenth-century Middle English devotional work written for a Birgittine nun at Syon by an anonymous Carthusian at Sheen. This work exists in two manuscripts: Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.1.6 and Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame, MS 67.19 The manuscript in question is Notre Dame MS 67, a copy in northern English, written by a clear uneven mid-fifteenthcentury hand, which was owned by John, 4th Lord Scrope of Upshall and Masham and his wife, Elizabeth Chaworth.20 The couple were the grandparents of John, 5th Lord Scrope, who married Anne Harling, the owner of MS Harley 4012. In its prologue, a Carthusian author memorably calls Bridget of Sweden, Elizabeth of Töss, Catherine of Siena and Mechtild of Hackeborn ‘approuyd wymmen’, probably for the orthodox nature of their visions.21 As such, the readership of the Booke and of works connected to Mechtild was associated with the aristocracy and gentry (though not restrictedly) in the north, and, more specifically, to the supporters of Richard of Gloucester, joined by marriage, piety, politics and location. Moreover, the readers were often the members of the Guild of Corpus Christi in York, an organization of devotional activities which could have served ‘as a conduit for devotional reading’,22 and the Booke and other texts associated with Mechtild were owned and read by women. In this regard, the most prominent owner and reader of the Booke is Cecily Neville, Yorkist matriarch and mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Born in Raby Castle, Durham, she married Richard, duke of York. Widowed in 1460 when she was in her mid-forties, she lived in Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire, for the last twenty-six years of her life. During her life marked by several political vicissitudes, Cecily and her family moved about in England and across the Channel, as the variety of her children’s birth places attest towards.23 Although not always staying in the north of England after her marriage to Richard, Cecily seems to have maintained her connections with the northern nobility and exerted influence on them: for example, in 1470 she endeavored to reconcile Edward and George of Clarence at Baynard’s Castle, and, more relevant to the concern of this

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essay, she was keen to pass along the ‘regime of literate and ascetic piety’24 to her family and (most probably) those associated with them. Significantly, her household ordinance, dating from 1485–95, well documents her pious life and her collection of religious texts.25 Her daily devotional reading included the revelations of St Bridget and Mechtild of Hackeborn, and a life of St Catherine of Siena.26 One could speculate that Richard III and Anne Warwick, who was related to Cecily also through her father, the Earl of Warwick, might have obtained their copy of Mechtild’s Booke (MS Egerton 2006) at Cecily’s recommendation.27 In 1495 she left her grand­daughter Brigitte (a daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville), who was a nun at the Dominican house at Dartford, her ‘boke of St Matilde’, along with a copy of the Legenda Aurea in velum and a copy of the Life of Catherine of Siena.28 However, it is unlikely that this copy was MS Egerton 2006, which, in that case, might have come to her upon Anne Warwick’s death in 1485. As Voaden speculates, ‘if this were the case, there would probably be ownership marks, either of Brigitte or of the Dartford convent, neither of which appear in the manuscript’.29 In addition to this bequest, Cecily also be­­­ queathed a volume of Bridget’s revelations to her other granddaughter, Anne de la Pole, who became the abbess of Syon monastery.30 Cecily’s piety as well as her devotional reading has attracted scholars’ attention since C. A. J. Armstrong published a groundbreaking article on her devotional life. Importantly, Armstrong argues that the cult of the Sacred Heart, which was developed at the Helfta community, had a significant impact on Cecily’s devotional life.31 Indeed, late medieval devotion to Christ’s humanity shown by his sufferings during the Passion stimulated the related devotion to his blood, wounds, and to the Sacred Heart, with its focus on the materialisation of Christ’s heart. Furthermore, the image of the Sacred Heart with wound is one of the images of popular affective piety that seems ‘especially concentrated in the north’.32 Cecily’s interest in Mechtild’s revelations suggests that there may have been a developing devotion to the Heart within her reading community. Relatedly, con­sidering that Cecily owned the English life of Catherine of Siena, the intense devotion to the Sacred Heart represented in this work could well have attracted Cecily and her household.33 In addition, the Orcherd of Syon (a Middle English reworking of Il Dialogo)34 contains devotional images that illuminate the heart/soul nexus of late medieval culture. Jennifer Brown comments that ‘the Orcherd probably traced a very narrow orbit in and around its home in Syon Abbey’ even when in print.35 Yet, it did circulate within the elite society closely tied to Syon, and even if she did not own a copy, Cecily was probably familiar with the Orcherd.36 Indeed, translated in the Carthusian/Birgittine milieu along with Bridget’s revelations, Catherine’s Orcherd of Syon is probably the text most like Mechtild’s Booke in terms of their deployment of cardiac and horticultural metaphors: in particular, both Mechtild and Catherine elaborate the image of the vineyard in which Christ’s blood, shed from his heart, sustains the health of the soul and the health of the Church as a social body of Christ. Their visions seem to have provided devotional stimuli for Cecily’s reading group, comprised of her female companions, to cultivate their piety. Mechtild’s revelations contain orthodox and Christocentric theology. Her descriptions of mystical union frequently convey a strong sense of oneness with God envisioned as taking place in Christ’s heart. The trope of the physical and metaphorical hearts serves to generate devotional aspiration.37 A sophisticated array of allegories representing the heart demonstrates Mechtild’s conceptualisation of spiritual interiority and invites us to

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appreciate an intricate interplay between eucharistic symbolism, popular piety and the emergent discourse of medicine, a discourse that contributes to the progress of Mechtild’s understanding of mystical union in terms of spiritual health.38 In her revelations, Mechtild frequently envisions Christ’s heart as a space that transforms in a variety of ways – a roomy space, a house, a dining room, a bridal chamber, a medicine chest, an enclosed garden and a vineyard.39 For example, Mechtild envisions a fair house on the octave of Easter: she enters the fair house, salutes the Lord and kisses his fresh red wounds. When she comes to the wound of his heart, ‘sche sawe hitt opene & hitt gaffe owte a grete heete lyke to a brennynge flawme’ (I, 44, 201). The Lord takes her up and says: ‘Entre yn ande go alle abowte þe lenght ande the brede of the herte of my godhede’ (I, 44, 201). While the lenght signifies the eternity of divine goodness, the breadth signifies his love and desire for the ‘heyle’ of her soul (I, 44, 201). The inside of the divine heart is thereby described as a space facilitating spiritual health. This interaction between medical and devotional discourses is grounded on the in­­separ­ ability of body and soul in the late medieval period.40 The metaphor of Christ the Physician and related medical discourse frequently appear in late medieval devotional literature.41 There was an increasing interest in the therapeutic power of Christ’s body in late medieval devotion to Christ’s humanity shown by his sufferings during the Passion. This devotion stimulated the related devotion to his blood, heart and wounds, all of which symbolised the Eucharist.42 In the Booke, Christ confides in Mechtild that his fresh red wounds are ‘verrey medycine of heyle to mannys sawle’ (I, 38, 183). In view of this convergence of medicine and religion, Mechtild’s cardiocentric metaphors reflect a cultural milieu in which ‘physiological [and anatomical] subject matter was discussed in medical, natural philosophical, and theological works’,43 creating a discourse community that included theologians, philosophers, anatomists, physicians and visionaries. The medieval heart was conceived as a complex organ. Unlike today’s encephalo­centric concept of mind and body, the medieval idea of the heart was more nuanced and intricate, especially in its relation to the soul and spirit.44 With regard to ideas about the soul’s power in maintaining life and its inhabitation of the body, there were two primary doctrines on the soul in the Middle Ages – Aristotle’s idea that the heart’s principality in the body was absolute, and Galen’s contradictory, multipolar model that the liver produced blood and the brain was the source of movement and sensation.45 From the twelfth century onwards, however, cardiocentric Aristotelian natural philosophy was widely disseminated among physicians and theologians through the translations of Avicenna’s Canon. Albertus Magnus’s thirteenthcentury De animalibus cites Avicenna’s view on the organising principle of the body: Galen must have been mistaken . . . Now it is agreed that the soul, with respect to the act and power of life [actus vitæ et potestas], is in the heart. It is therefore necessary that the heart be the point of origin of all the nerves and the veins through which the soul accomplishes its operations in the members.46

The soul’s place in the heart was thus accepted: as the locale of the most important bodily functions, the heart was understood as the dwelling place of the soul.47 Containing the soul, the heart is a unique fount of blood for the body and ‘the conduits for powers dispersed from the soul and distributed to all the members’.48 Even Wycliffe’s writings bear witness to the dissemination of this idea among university intellectuals in late fourteenth-century

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England. In his exposition on the heart’s love of God, Wycliffe makes a reference to Aristotle’s De animalibus and explains that: secundum Aristotelem omnes condiciones hominis quantum ad habitudinem naturalem corporis capiunt a corde originem. Ut cor magnum habens paucum de sanguine constituit naturaliter timidum; econtra cor habundans in bono sanguine.49 according to Aristotle, every human condition, insofar as the natural habitudes of the body are concerned, takes the heart as the origin. Just as a large heart with paucity of blood makes one naturally fearful, on the other hand, a heart abundant with good blood . . . does the opposite.50

In the same way as medieval natural philosophy established this centralising structure of bodily and spiritual functions, cardiocentricity was integrated into medieval body politics, in which traditional Pauline metaphors of the church as a body, with Christ as its head, were ‘shifted to suit the contemporary focus on the powers of the heart’.51 As we shall see, this shift supports the idea that Christ’s heart reigns in the centre of the mystical body of the Church, nurturing all the members of the community. Both Mechtild and Catherine could very well have been aware of this concept through their Dominican links. Although Helfta was a Benedictine/Cistercian convent, there was a close connection in both pastoral and educational contexts between Dominicans and the Helfta community in the thirteenth century,52 evident in the fact that Mechtild’s book makes direct references to Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.53 In this context, there are striking similarities between Mechtild’s and Catherine’s deployment of cardiocentric metaphors, especially those relevant to the vineyard of the heart, a commonplace image in the lexis of the Church and its fifteenth-century reform (following Arundel’s decrees, in particular), as exemplified by such an image as ‘the infected vineyard and the damaged city wall’.54 Significantly, Mechtild’s vineyard metaphors resonate with the early fifteenth-century spirit of reform. When Mechtild asks the Lord where he will wash and cleanse her heart, he says ‘I schalle wasche þe in þe luffe of my deuyne herte’ and opens the gate of his heart, a treasure of the Godhead, which appears like a vineyard: Ande with þat he oppenede þe gate offe his deuyne herte, whiche es þe tresoure of þe swete godhede þat passis alle the swetnesse of any honye, into the whiche tresoure sche entrede als itt hadde bene into a vyneȝerde, ande thare sche sawe a flode off rennynge water fro þe este into þe weste. Ande abowte þe flowynge watere werene xij trees whiche bare xij manere of fruytis. Ande be þo xij manere of fruytis were betokenede þoo vertues. (II, 2, 329)

In the vineyard, she sees flowing water and twelve trees bearing the twelve fruits of virtues. The twelve fruits represent virtues that Paul lists in his epistle – ‘pees, ioye, charyte, pacienz, longanimite, goodnesse, benygnite, softnesse, feyth, temperanz, continenz, ande chastite’ (II, 2, 329, Galat 5.22–3).55 The water is called the flood of charity. In the water is a multitude of fish which betoken the souls who abandon all earthly delectation and cast themselves into Christ, the loving well. In the vineyard, some trees stand upright and some bow toward the earth; the upright trees represent those who despise the world and lift up their hearts to heavenly things, while the trees growing downward represent

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sinful creatures who lie in the dust of the earth on account of their sins (II, 2, 330). Then Christ delves the earth like a gardener and reveals to Mechtild that this vineyard is his ‘holye chirche’ in which he ‘swett with grete trauayle xxxiij ȝere’ (330) and tells her to work with him by watering the vineyard.56 As she immediately runs to fetch water on her shoulder, she realises that the Lord bears the burden with her. Christ says to her: þus þou mayste see þat whan y gyffe grace to men, alle þynges semen to þame ande be to þame lyght ande esye, whatesoeuere þay doo or suffre for me. Ande whan I withdrawe my grace, þan alle thynges semen to þame hevye ande greuous. (331)

Around the vines she sees a great multitude of angels standing like a wall: this signifies that the angels are standing around the nuns to defend the holy Church. In a spirit of mutual identification and reciprocity, Mechtild’s heart is also envisioned as a vine and a vineyard. A stunning image appears in a revelation at Mass. She says: ‘a lorde, ȝif hit plese the I walde [th]at y might ȝelde myne herte to þe as a chosene vyne aftere thyne herte ande thyne wille in alle tyme’. When she wishes to offer her heart as a chosen vine obedient to the will of God, ‘sche sawe gostelye oure lorde within here herte goynge abowte as in a fulle fayre vyneȝerde’ (I, 51, 219). Mechtild identifies her heart with a vine – a eucharistic wine producer similar to Christ – and also with a vineyard. Around the vineyard of her heart is, again, ‘a multitude of aungellys as thikke as ȝitt hadde bene a stone walle’, as if to make her heart an enclosed garden.57 In the middle of the vineyard is a well – a traditional element in the iconography of a medieval garden. The image of a healthy garden is enhanced by Christ, who stands beside the well and sprinkles the water (his blood) from his heart on those who desire ‘gostelye regeneracioun’ (I, 51, 219–20). This eucharistic image converges devotional and medical discourses, presenting Mechtild’s obedient, virtuous soul as a healthy enclosed vineyard for spiritual rejuvenation – a vehicle for administering spiritual medicine from Christ’s heart to her fellow Christians by virtue of her privileged relationship with Christ. In a similar vein, another vision illuminates how Mechtild sees herself as a nurturer or healer of others. When she desires divine love in her prayer, the Lord suddenly embraces her soul, presses it to his heart and fills it with his grace. She feels in her soul that rivers (of grace) are flowing through the limbs of her body into all the saints so that they are also filled with a new spiritual joy and gladness:58 Another tyme in here tyme of prayere whene sche desyrede here love sodeynlye, þe vertewe of the godhede drowe here sowle sodeynlye to hym insomoche that to here semynge sche sate att the toone syde of oure lorde. Oure lorde þan þrestede here sore to his herte with a lovynglye beclippynge & fulfyllede here soo plenteuoslye with his grace þat here thought that ryuers rennynge flowede ande ranne fro alle the lymes off here bodye into alle seyntys, þat all þay were fulfyllede with a newe gostelye ioye ande gladnesse. (II, 19, 354)

In the same way as a medieval venous system functioned like a network of rivers and irrigation canals, the ‘ryuers rennynge’ that ‘flowede ande ranne fro alle the lymes off here bodye’ (354) might be identified as the veins of Mechtild’s body through which nutritious blood is distributed to others’ bodies. Thus this vision again illuminates how Mechtild’s

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body becomes a vehicle for distributing Christ’s redemptive blood originating in the vineyard of his heart. Like Mechtild, Catherine of Siena (writing in the fourteenth century) deploys the meta­­­phor of the vineyard to describe proper relations between Christ and the faithful. In her letter penned to the ecclesiastical authorities, Christ’s heart features centrally within the individual human soul. Here, his heart is emblematically compared with the well of blood located in the centre of the vineyard: Nel mezzo della vigna ha posto il vassello del cuore, pieno di sangue, per inaffiare con esso le piante, acciocchè non si secchino. In the middle of the vineyard [of the soul] He [Christ] placed the vessel of his heart, full of blood, to water the plants with it, so that they don’t dry out.

And later: Di che s’inaffia? non d’acqua ma di sangue prezioso sparso con tanto fuoco d’amore, il quale sangue sta nel vasello del cuore, come detto è.59 What is [the vineyard] watered with? Not with water but with precious blood spilled with much fire of love. That blood is located in the vessel of the heart, as it is said.60

The vineyard of the soul houses Christ’s heart, the source of life, from which the soul takes nourishment. As Catherine and Mechtild envision the vessel of Christ’s heart placed in the middle of the vineyard, they implicitly work within the Aristotelian correlation between physical centrality and the centre of the power of life. If one wishes to attain eternal health of the soul, i.e. salvation, one must be united with Christ’s life-giving body. Moreover, in terms of the body politic that equates the vineyard with the community of Christian Church that is also analogous to the human body, Christ’s heart, located in the centre of the vineyard, reigns over the Church and ‘[compels] each Christian to join under the care of the leadership of the church’.61 Indeed, the image of a vineyard in the soul is prominent in the reformist Dialogo. As Catherine wonders how charity, meekness and discretion are united together in the image of a healthy tree, God tells her that the tree needs to be nourished in the soil within a circle traced on the ground: Vndirstande þanne first bi þis example þat [þe tre] is norischid in þe erþe, which erþe conteyneþ þe largenes of þe cercle; for if it were wiþout þe erþe, þe tre schulde be deed, and schulde brynge forþ no fruyt til it were plauntid in þe erþe.62

In the same way, the soul is likened to a tree that comes out of love, and it may not be nourished if it is not united to the love of God. Therefore the root of the tree (that is the love and desire of the soul) must be grounded in the soil of divine love: Riȝt so þinke þat a soule is a maner tre which comeþ out of loue; þerfore þe soule, þat is þe tre, may not be norischid but of a loue of þe soule ooned to þe loue of God. Sooþ it is þat if þe soule

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33

haue not þe dyuyne loue of parfyȝt charite, it bryngeþ not forþ liifly fruyt, but deedly. þerefore it is speedful þat þe roote of þe tre, þat is to seye, þe loue or desier of þe soule, abyde in þe erþe.63

Furthermore, the tree of charity is nourished in meekness and branches out in true dis­­ cretion.64 Like Mechtild’s upright trees, this tree, so delightfully planted, bears sweet, many-fragranced blossoms of virtues. It brings forth the fruit of many graces, and gives the profit of the fruit to its neighbours in proportion to their earnest wish to share in the fruits of God’s servants. At last the tree will reach God and achieve an everlasting life that cannot be taken away from the soul against its will. Ultimately, all the fruits produced by this tree are fastened with discretion and united together. The image of the vineyard is further elaborated in a pastoral context. God identifies men as the workers hired for the vineyard of the holy Church and explains that each creature has a vineyard within his soul in which his free will is the appointed worker. As the tiller of their soul, each person has been given such power that neither the devil nor any other creature can steal this power without the will’s consent, for in holy baptism the will was armed with a sword of love of virtue and hatred of sin due to the holy blood flowing from the Cross. Moreover, if one would receive the fruit of this blood, one must feel contrition, contempt for sin and love for virtue in order to be joined as branches to Christ, the vine, who said, ‘I am þe vyne; ȝe ben þe braunchis; and my fadir is þe land tilyer.’65 Thus, by deploying horticultural metaphors, Catherine reveals that Christ’s blood is the life-giving source for the tillers in the vineyard. Significantly, just as the medieval heart is the unique fount of blood for the body, Christ’s heart is envisioned as a loving source of nourishment, which image is ultimately linked to the maternal image of Christ.66 Combining medical and horticultural images, Catherine transforms the vineyard into an all-embracing nurturing source for the soul and the Church. Mechtild and Catherine integrate cardiac and horticultural metaphors to elaborate the image of the vineyard. Just as Mechtild envisions a healthy garden in which Christ sprinkles the water from the well of his heart on those who desire ‘gostelye regeneracioun’ (I, 51, 219–20), Catherine identifies Christ as the ‘“true sower”, pouring blood from his heart onto the garden of the soul’.67 Moreover, they both envisage the Church as a social body of Christ, within which the faithful plough and meditate. In view of the sociopolitical context of fifteenth-century England, Christ’s heart placed in the centre of the vineyard foregrounds the spirit of reform and revitalisation, the spirit which encourages each member of the Church to be a virtuous tiller of the vineyard, embracing the ideal of contemplation and prayer enforced by the reform. Christ’s blood brings new life to the soul, and it offers new life to the ailing Church, which, as Catherine observed, lost blood during the years of the Schism.68 Though not contemporaneously, Mechtild and Catherine deploy a heartcentred discourse to represent their concern for the health of the mystical body of Christ, a concern shared by the reform spirituality of the fifteenth-century English Church. The translation of their revelations thus implicitly responded to the need of those who partici­ pated in the rejuvenation of the Church, creating a cardiocentric textual community within early fifteenth-century England. We now come back to what the cardiocentric spirituality means for the late fifteenthcentury, predominantly female, aristocratic northern reading circles. Cecily Neville’s devotional reading, the subjects of which were frequently taken from the visions of the

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three Continental ‘approved’ women whom she revered, reveals her ‘deep and personal love of mysticism’69 as well as her fascination for the Carthusian and Bridgettine devotional life. Although the question of whether Cecily, her household and those associated with her had a shared interest in Mechtild and/or Catherine’s cardiocentric spirituality still remains a matter of conjecture, the thematic similarity between Mechtild and Catherine’s visions could have helped Cecily deepen her nuanced reading of their texts. As a devout aristocratic woman, who embodies the devotional predilection of the northern, devout aristocrats, Cecily Neville could have absorbed the spirituality invigorated by these exemplary mystical texts saturated with imagery of the Heart, texts which were ideally suited to post-Arundelian reform spirituality and devotional education. What can be con­­­ cluded without doubt is that the visionary texts of these two approved women were well received within the northern reading community that Cecily Neville and her associates represent, and played a significant role in edifying their devotional aspirations.

Notes *

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6  7

I am grateful to Professor Christiania Whitehead, who read an early version of this essay and provided me with discerning comments and advice. Dom Ludwig Paquelin (ed.), Revelationes Gertrudianae ac Mechtildianae (hereafter Revelationes), 2 vols (Paris: H. Oudin, 1875–7), II, pp. 1–422; Theresa A. Halligan (ed.), The Booke of Gostlye Grace of Mechtild of Hackeborn (hereafter the Booke) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979). All references to Liber Specialis Gratiae and The Booke of Gostlye Grace are from these editions and will be followed by part and page number. For the spirituality of the Helfta community, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). The abridged version of the Liber consists of five parts, concentrating on visions connected with the Church’s liturgy and those associated with Mechtild’s affective piety. Part I contains her vision arranged around the seasons and holy days of the liturgical year; Part II lists the special graces bestowed on Mechtild; Part III gives guidance for ‘the helthe of manys sawle’, followed by Part IV offering instruction to religious men and women and Part V on prayers for the deceased. See Halligan (ed.), The Booke, ‘Introduction’, p. 38. Anne Mouron and I are currently editing a new edition of the Middle English text, based on Oxford, MS Bodley 220. Halligan (ed.), The Booke, ‘Introduction’, p. 23. For northern features, see J. A. Burrow and T. Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 5–8. A. I. Doyle speculates that the spelling of this scribe points chiefly to Lincolnshire: see his essay, ‘English Carthusian Books not yet linked with a Charterhouse’, in Toby Barnard, Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Katharine Simms (eds), ‘A Miracle of Learning’: Studies in Manuscripts and Irish Learning: Essays in Honour of William O’Sullivan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 122–36 (pp. 126–7). According to the Linguistic Atlas, Egerton 2006 is mixed with a SE Leicestershire component: see Angus McIntosh, et al., A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), I, p. 109. The same hand is responsible for Cambridge, St John’s College MS189 (g.21) and British Library, MS Additional 37790. I would like to thank Dr Anne Mouron for drawing my attention to these references. ‘The spyrites of þe ordere of seraphyne . . . were kyndlede moreouere in charyte of þe hate luffe’ (I, 58, 242); ‘Amange martyrs sche was moste pacyente’ (244); ‘a fulle bryght myrrour þat euerelastynge luffe wherewith he luffede me ande chase me before any creature’ (I, 59, 247). Halligan (ed.), The Booke, ‘Introduction’, p. 22. John B. Friedman’s study on the wills of northern book-owning men and women shows that ‘a large number of books were in circulation in the north at the close of the Middle Ages; that many

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 8

 9

10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17

18

19 20

21

22 23

24

35

were owned and appreciated by women of both the middle and the upper classes’; see Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 30. C. M. D. Crowder, Unity, Heresy and Reform, 1378–1460: The Conciliar Response to the Great Schism (London: Edward Arnold, 1977), p. 7. See also Vincent Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church: Vernacular Theology in England after Thomas Arundel’, in Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (eds), After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 3–42 (p. 17). Vincent Gillespie, ‘1412–1534: Culture and History’, in Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 163–93 (p. 166). Gillespie, ‘Culture and History’, p. 166. Gillespie, ‘Culture and History’, p. 170. Gillespie, ‘Culture and History’, p. 174. Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s Church’, especially pp. 4–5. The Liber was produced by the two nun scribes at Helfta to whom Mechtild confided in her visions, but the Middle English translator transformed it into a narrative in which Mechtild composed her text with the assistance of a male confessor. See Courtney E. Rydel, ‘Inventing a Male Writer in Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Booke of Gostlye Grace’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 40/2 (2014), 192–216. Gillespie, ‘Culture and History’, p. 173. Rosalynn Voaden, ‘Who was Marget Thorpe? Reading Mechtild of Hackeborn in Fifteenth-Century England’, Religion and Literature, 37/2 (2005), 9–25. Halligan (ed.), The Booke, ‘Introduction’, p. 53. Voaden, ‘Who was Marget Thorpe?’, pp. 12–13. See also Rosalynn Voaden, ‘The Company She Keeps: Mechtild of Hackeborn in Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations’, in Rosalynn Voaden (ed.), Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 51–69. A. I. Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings in English in the 14th, 15th, and Early 16th Centuries with Special Consideration of the Part of the Clergy Therein’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1953), vol. 2, n. XXII, p. 269. Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, 2, n. XXII, p. 268. Doyle, ‘Survey of the Origins and Circulation of Theological Writings’, 2, n. XXI, p. 267. Paul J. Patterson has recently argued that while there is a characteristically northern form and some other problematic forms that can be placed in the Lincolnshire/Rutland/Leicestershire border, ‘the predominant dialect of the text originates in the East Norfolk area’: see Patterson (ed.), A Mirror to devout people (speculum devotorum), EETS OS 346 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. xxxi–xxxii. Patterson (ed.), A Mirror to devout people, p. 6. A passage that relates Mechtild’s vision on the resurrection of Christ is incorporated in Chapter 29 of the Speculum devotorum: see further Paul J. Patterson, ‘Preaching with the Hands: Carthusian Book Production and the Speculum devotorum’, in Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan (eds), Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), pp. 134–51 (p. 146). Voaden, ‘Who was Marget Thorpe?’, p. 18. Between 1439 and 1452 Cecily gave birth to twelve children, half of whom survived infancy: the first, Anne, and the last, the future Richard III, were born at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, which appears to have been her favourite residence, while Edward of March (later Edward IV) and Edmund of Rutland were born in Rouen, and Elizabeth, who married John de la Pole, second duke of Suffolk, and George, future duke of Clarence, were born in Dublin. Christopher HarperBill, ‘Cecily, duchess of York (1415–1495)’, in ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 50231 (accessed 03 January 2017). Harper-Bill, ‘Cecily’. Harper-Bill states that ‘in 1461 the papal legate was advised to communicate quickly with her, because of her great influence over her son’.

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36revisiting the medieval north of england 25

26

27

28

29 30 31 32

33

34

35

36

37

A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (London: John Nichols for the Society of Antiquaries, 1790), pp. 37–9; C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York: A Study in Late Mediaeval Culture’, in England, France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hambledon, 1983), pp. 135–56 (pp. 140–2). A Latin vita of Catherine, written by Raymond of Capua in 1395, disseminated quickly throughout the continent. C. Annette Grisé states that ‘Syon is the only place in England where we know that a Latin vita of Catherine of Siena existed’: see, ‘Holy Women in Print: Continental Female Mystics and English Tradition’, in E. A. Jones (ed.), Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 83–95 (p. 89). The interest in Catherine’s life can be observed in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114, which contains the translation of a letter written by the Carthusian Stephen of Siena (Stefano Maconi, d. 1424) to support her canonisation (1411). Although the only extant text of its English translation remained in Beauvale Charterhouse, it was originally intended for lay audiences, and as Jennifer Brown speculates, it is possible that an identical version circulated among lay readers: see her essay, ‘From the Charterhouse to the Printing House: Catherine of Siena in Medieval England’, in Nicole R. Rice (ed.), Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 17–45 (pp. 21–8). Voaden speculates that Richard or Anne introduced Cecily to the Booke, or the other way round: see ‘Who was Marget Thorpe?’, pp. 15–16. John Gough Nichols and John Bruce (eds), Wills from Doctors’ Commons: A Selection from the Wills of Eminent Persons (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Sons for Camden Society, 1863), pp. 2–3. In 1492 Wynkyn de Worde published a Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis, based on Raymond of Capua’s Life, along with the Revelations of Saynt Elysabeth of Hungarye (STC 24766, rpt. in 1500, STC24766.3). Brown argues that ‘it may very well have had an implied audience of laity for its initial printing’: see ‘From the Charterhouse to the Printing House’, p. 30. We can speculate that Cecily might have had access to this printed version, although Cecily’s copy could be any of these texts – Maconi’s letter, a Latin vita or de Worde’s English printed version. I would like to thank Professor Jennifer Brown for sharing her idea with me. Voaden, ‘Who was Marget Thorpe?’, p. 16. Wills from Doctors’ Commons, p. 3. Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cicely’, p. 148. Friedman, Northern English Books, p. 150. Yet, he also recognises that it is not exclusively northern. For other popular images (the Holy Face, Arma Christi, Throne of Grace, etc.), see further Chapter 5. In one vision, ‘Christ appeared and took her heart, which she had frequently offered him during her childhood. The following day he reappeared and inserted his own heart in its place’; see Millard Meiss, Paintings in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 113–14; Raymond of Capua, Legenda maior, part II, chap. VI, in Acta santorum, April, III, p. 907. Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey (eds), The Orcherd of Syon, EETS OS 258 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966). Il Dialogo, produced during the Schism years, embodies Catherine’s reformist spirituality. Brown, ‘From the Charterhouse to the Printing House’, p. 34. Some scholars speculate that besides Bridget’s Liber celestis and Mechtild’s Booke of Gostlye Grace, ‘parts of [the Orcherd] were staple reading for devout aristocratic laywomen as well as nuns’: see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, et al. (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999), p. 235. Considering three extant manuscripts, excerpts in other English manuscripts and De Worde’s version, there was definitely interest and some dissemination of the text. My thanks to Professor Brown for discussing this with me. A variety of themes and images in the Booke are of interest from a devotional perspective. Some figurative tropes, such as kitchen imagery in part one, find affinity with those in approved devotional treatises: see, for example, Christiania Whitehead, Denis Renevey and Anne Mouron (eds), The Doctrine of the Hert: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010).

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images of the heart in fifteenth-century england 38

39

40 41

42

43

44

45 46

47 48 49

50

51 52 53

54 55

56

57

58 59

60 61 62 63 64

37

See further Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘Heavenly Vision and Psychosomatic Healing: Medical Discourse in Mechtild of Hackeborn’s the Booke of Gostlye Grace’, in Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (ed.), Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 67–84. Inspired by the structure of monastic community, spatial allegory was popular in the texts of interior religion in later medieval England. For an allegory of God’s heart as a great house, see the Booke I, 39,183–4. Yoshikawa (ed.), Medicine, Religion and Gender, ‘Introduction’. See, for example, Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), I, 3, p. 104. Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Heather Webb, The Medieval Heart (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), p. 5. See further Louise M. Bishop, ‘Reginald Pecock’s Reading Heart and the Health of Body and Soul’, in Yoshikawa (ed.), Medicine, Religion and Gender, pp. 139–58. In examining Reginald Pecock’s Middle English prose, Bishop asserts that Pecock conceived the healthy heart as the locus of healing for the body and soul. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 19. Albertus Magnus, On Animals: A Medieval ‘Summa Zoologica’, trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell and Irven Michael Resnick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), book 3.1.4, p. 363. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 21. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 21. Johann Loserth and F. D. Matthew (eds), Johannis Wyclif, Tractatus de Mandatis Divinis (London: C. K. Paul for the Wyclif Society, 1922), cap. xvi, p. 182. John Wycliffe, De Mandatis, 16, in J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Stephen E. Lahey and Fiona Somerset (eds and trans.), Wycliffite Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2013), pp. 120–1. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 34. For example, Mechthild of Magdeburg’s confessor was a Dominican priest, Henry of Halle. Revelationes, V, 9, 332–3. This revelation is not found in the Middle English translation. See also Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman, vol. II: The Early Humanist Reformation (Grand Rapid, MI and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 331–8 (pp. 332–3). Gillespie, ‘Chichele’s church’, p. 17. This allegory is grounded in the medieval view that the ‘mind grows naturally as a plant does from seeds of virtue and knowledge’; see Maryanne Cline Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 57. For the image of Christ as gardener appearing to Mary Magdalene on the morning of Easter and its broader context of God as a gardener who plants trees (people) in his garden (Church), see Barbara Baert and Liesbet Kusters, ‘The Tree as Narrative, Formal, and Allegorical Index in Representations of The Noli me tangere’, in Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm (eds), The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 159–86 (p. 179). See further Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘The Virgin in the Hortus conclusus: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 50/1 (2014), 11–32. The saints probably refer to the blessed souls whom Christ shows her in her visions. Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, Piero Misciattelli (ed.), 6 vols (Florence: Casa Editrice Marzocco, 1940), 5, Letter 313, pp. 16, 21. Translation in Webb, Medieval Heart, pp. 35–6. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 36. Orcherd of Syon, p. 39. Orcherd of Syon, p. 39. Orcherd of Syon, pp. 39–40. For the following section, I have consulted Susanne Noffke (trans.), Catherine of Siena: The Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 41–2.

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38revisiting the medieval north of england 65 66 67 68 69

Orcherd of Syon, p. 64. For this tradition, see Bynum, Jesus as Mother, among others. Webb, Medieval Heart, p. 137. See Le lettere di S. Caterina da Siena, 5, Letter 346, pp. 162–63. Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cicely’, p. 144.

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3 Langage o northrin lede: Northern Middle English as a Written Medium MERJA STENROOS

Introduction

T

he encyclopaedic fourteenth-century poem known as the Cursor Mundi contains a refer­ence to the author’s source on the Assumption of Mary, including a comment on language: In sotherin englis was it draun, And turnd it haue i till our aun Langage o northrin lede, þat can nan oiþer englis rede1 It was composed in southern English, and I have turned it into our own language, that of the northern people who can read no other English

This comment suggests that, by the mid-fourteenth century, there was a literate community in the north of England who had at least some experience of reading a northern variety of written English, but who were not used to reading other varieties. The passage itself, as it survives in this particular manuscript, shows several features generally associated with northern dialects: the -s for -sh in englis, for the reflex of Old English ā in aun (‘own’), nan (‘none’), and the preposition till (‘to’). In the late medieval period, there was no standard model for writing English, and geo­­ graphical (and other) variation was reflected both in writing and in speech. However, while this was the case everywhere, it is the characteristics of northern English that tend to attract contemporary comment: then as later, the distinction between north and south was felt to be the most salient dialectal division in England. While most contemporary comments refer to spoken variation, the writer of Cursor Mundi clearly refers to writing. The purpose of the present chapter is to enquire into the uses of such written ‘northern language’ in the late and post-medieval period (up to 1525), based on three resources: the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (LALME),2 the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C, 2011–) and A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD).

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revisiting the medieval north of england

The title of this chapter is intentionally ambiguous: the term ‘Northern Middle English’ may be understood in two different ways, reflecting different approaches to linguistic variation. Firstly, it may refer to varieties of Middle English that have linguistic char­ acteristics associated with the north. Secondly, it may refer to the English found in texts that were produced in the north, or by northern writers, in the Middle English period (usually defined as c.1100–1500). The first meaning may be associated with dialectology, where dialects are traditionally defined on the basis of their linguistic characteristics; LALME was based on this principle. The second one, on the other hand, may be associated with sociolinguistics, where we are interested in what goes on in real-life communities and how linguistic variation relates to other variables, including but not restricted to geography. It has been traditional in Middle English dialectology to focus entirely on the first meaning. This approach has reflected the fact that linguists have tended to focus on what we may call literary texts: romances, religious poems, parts of the literary canon. The problem with this material is that we for the most part lack information about the physical provenance of the manuscripts. In addition, the texts are often scribal copies at many removes from the authorial original, making their geographical placing a complex issue. The LALME approach was to localise these texts on the basis of their language, by com­­ paring them to each other and to local administrative documents; such localisations provide important evidence of the linguistic affiliations and groupings of Middle English texts, but do not (and are, of course, not meant to) provide evidence of physical provenance. Sociolinguistic studies of Middle English have so far been relatively few, and mainly focus on the correspondence of known people; a groundbreaking example is Bergs’ work on the Paston Letters.3 The central concern in such studies is to connect the linguistic forms of texts to historical contexts: geographical locations, institutions, networks and communities. It is taken as axiomatic that speech – and text – communities are linguistic­ ally heterogeneous and that linguistic variation may reflect a range of factors. From this point of view, northern Middle English includes all kinds of linguistic usage that may be connected to the north on extralinguistic grounds: the questions to be addressed include how such usages varied and developed, and how the distributions of individual forms and assemblages may be related to a changing social and historical framework. While the main interest of this study is sociolinguistic, it is felt that neither definition of ‘Northern Middle English’ is fully satisfactory on its own in order to make sense of the history of written English in the north. The texts for which we have information about provenance are for the most part administrative documents and letters. While these texts make up a large body of material, and enable us to connect directly to real people and places, on their own they give an incomplete picture of the text production that took place in the north. Manuscript scholars and historians such as Friedman have shown that northern patrons commissioned numerous large manuscripts, especially of legal and devotional texts:4 even though this type of material seldom provides specific information about proven­­ ance or date, it is a central part of the history and should therefore be considered as part of the enquiry. Accordingly, this chapter approaches northern Middle English from both points of view, asking two complementary questions: a) what kinds of text survive in a northern dialect from the late medieval period, and b) how ‘northern’ is the language of late medi­ eval documentary texts produced in the north of England. The enquiries make use of two

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different corpora, both organised geographically but according to different principles: while MEG-C is based on the LALME localisations, MELD contains documentary texts localised on the basis of external information only. The findings of both enquiries are then brought together to answer the main questions: to what extent can we speak of ‘North­ ­ern Middle English’ as a written medium, and what can we deduce about its use?

Northern Middle English: preliminaries The medieval north as a dialect area The north of England has had its own cultural and linguistic identity through history, even though its boundaries have been far from constant or clearly definable.5 The bestknown traditional dividing line between the north and the south has been the River Humber, the southern boundary of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Historical dialect­ ologists have often defined the north in terms of the ‘six northern counties’ (using the pre-1974 county division) north of this divide: Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire, as well as the Isle of Man.6 The present study will make use of this definition as a starting point, even though it is readily admitted that others could be perfectly plausible, such as including Lincolnshire or omitting Lancashire. In the late and post-medieval periods, it appears that the spoken varieties of the north and the south were different enough to cause problems of intelligibility. The best-known medieval commentator of these differences is John Trevisa (1342–1402), adding comments to his translation of Higden’s Polychronicon in 1381. He pointed out, famously, that the ‘men of the north and men of the south’ could hardly understand each other, while those in the middle, ‘as partitioners of both ends’ could generally understand both, a very early observation of a dialect continuum. He also commented specifically on the language of those who lived in the north: Al the longage of the North-humbres, and specialich at York, is so scharp, slytting, and frotyng and unschape that we Southeron men may that longage unnethe understand. Y trowe that that is bicause that a beth nigh to strange men and aliens, that speketh straungelich.7 All the language of the Northumbrians, and especially at York, is so sharp, tearing and grating and deformed that we Southern men are hardly able to understand that language. I think that it is because they live close to strange men and foreigners, who speak in a strange way.

Trevisa does not comment on the specific nature of the differences, even though his ad­­­ jectives seem to suggest differences of pronunciation. His contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), provided actual examples of forms that his audience was clearly expected to recognise as representative of northern speech. The most cited example is a play on dialect semantics in his portrayal of two students, John and Aleyn, the rather likeable anti-heroes of the Reeve’s Tale: Our manciple, I hope he will be deed So werkes ay the wonges in his heed8

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Our manciple, I expect that he will die, the molars in his head hurt so badly

As has often been noted, the comic effect here arises from the use of hope in its northern meaning ‘suppose, expect’, in a context where the usual non-northern meaning ‘wish for’ is highly inappropriate. The speech of John and Aleyn abounds with northern features, both grammatical and lexical - werkes (‘aches’), ille (‘bad’) - as well as indications of northern pronunciation - na (‘no’), ham (‘home’), gas (‘goes’), bathe (‘both’), sal (‘shall’).9 Trevisa’s comments and Chaucer’s imitations of northern speech both relate to the spoken mode. However, the general variability of written English in the late medieval period meant that local and regional varieties differed in the written mode as well. The multilingual situation after the Norman Conquest, when written English fell effectively out of use as an administrative language for several centuries, and education was carried out through the medium of French, was not conducive to the maintenance of a standard model of writing. As a result, the writing produced in English from the twelfth century onwards is highly variable.10 It is not, however, until the latter part of the fourteenth century that texts produced in the north, or written in a ‘northern’ dialect, appear in substantial numbers. The written evidence The earliest English writings were, it seems, produced in the north. They consist of short verse texts and glosses from the eighth century, produced in the ‘Golden Age’ of North­ umbrian culture before the Viking era. Three more substantial tenth-century texts are also regarded as Northumbrian: the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Rushworth Gospels and the Durham Ritual.11 Despite their early date, the Old Northumbrian texts already seem to show some of the features that are later associated with northern dialects. An infinitive without final -n appears in Cædmon’s hymn in the eighth century: Nū scilun herga hefenrīcæs uard, Metudæs mehti and his mōdgithanc,12 Now we must praise the Guardian of Heaven, the Lord’s power and his thought,

The tenth-century glosses show features such as verbal endings in -s, and it has also been suggested that the Lindisfarne glosses in particular show early stages of northern develop­ ments such as th- forms of ‘their’, ‘them’ and the Northern Subject Rule.13 Between the tenth and the late fourteenth centuries, there is very little surviving material that may be associated with the north. A thorough survey of the English texts surviving from this period is provided by A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME).14 Here, the material localised in the six northern counties (whether on linguistic or external grounds) consists of as few as twelve texts. Of these, eight are dated to the fourteenth century, while only four date to the thirteenth. Of the four thirteenth-century texts, three are localised at the southern edges of the northern area as defined here. They include a macaronic sermon contained in MS Bodley

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26 (LAEME 151)15 and a very short extract of the religious poem Candet Nudatum Pectus, found in MS Rawlinson C 317 (LAEME 16), both placed in Lancashire in LAEME. In addition, there is an English version of the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, found in MS Cleopatra B vi (LAEME 231), which is placed in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The remaining thirteenth-century text is a copy of an eleventh-century writ from Carlisle, Cumbria (LAEME 132),16 basically representing the West Saxon dialect of Old English. From the first half of the fourteenth century, the most substantial part of the material consists of the three scribal hands of a manuscript of the Cursor Mundi (The Edinburgh Royal College of Physicians manuscript) also containing the Northern Homily Collection (LAEME 296, 297 and 298), as well as, possibly, Hand A of another manuscript of Cursor Mundi, London, BL Cotton Vespasian A.iii (LAEME 295). In addition, there are a few short texts: a prophecy of the Scottish Wars in Cotton Julius A v (LAEME 188), Athelstan’s Charter (Cotton Charter iv 18, LAEME 230), as well as fragments and verses in English contained in a Latin sermon in London, BL Cotton Faustina A v (LAEME 256, 257). Accordingly, apart from the Cursor Mundi, the history of northern English is based on extremely patchy materials before the late fourteenth century. Between the Old English texts and the Cursor Mundi, there is a time gap of nearly four centuries, bridged only by a few short fragments from the southern margins of the area. The window within which we can study the medieval written varieties associated with the north is thus a narrow one. By the late fourteenth century, however, the number of surviving texts associated with the north increases rapidly, and constitutes a large body of material by the fifteenth century; it is to these materials that we will turn next. As the two definitions of ‘northernness’ represent localisations that proceed in opposite directions – localising the language, or studying the language of the locality – they belong to separate, if complementary, lines of enquiry. The first line to be followed takes the linguistic features themselves as a starting point: in which texts, and what contexts, do we find varieties of language that may be characterised as ‘northern’?

What kind of texts survive in a ‘northern dialect’? Defining ‘northern dialect’ Not all texts produced in the north show ‘northern’ dialect characteristics. Conversely, texts showing such characteristics may have been produced anywhere, as both scribes and schoolmasters travelled. From a dialectal point of view, a northern text is one that shows northern features; the question is, then, how these should be defined. It has frequently been pointed out that dialects and varieties, like languages, cannot be defined in an absolute way: they are not entities with an independent existence, but rather categories perceived by listeners making sense of a complex and fluid reality.17 The cat­­ egories are formed through experience, and vary both in terms of their boundaries and the salient features involved. It has been suggested that listeners, placing an unknown person on the basis of their speech, generally assign the speech sample to a category on the basis of a very small group of features, ignoring the rest and paying little attention to variation.18 Dialectologists working on modern data do, of course, have the advantage of being able to pick their samples from speakers with documented connections to specific areas:

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even though their sampling procedures may vary, and they may classify some speakers as more ‘authentic’ than others (as in the traditional focus on the ‘Non-mobile Older Rural Male’, or NORM), their dialect maps clearly represent some form of geographical reality. Such a connection cannot, however, be taken for granted in historical dialectology. The best-known Middle English texts, which are studied at universities and available in editions, include both religious writings (such as the Wycliffite Bible or the writings of Richard Rolle) and texts that we might classify as ‘literary’ or ‘imaginative’ (from Chaucer and Langland to anonymous romances and short poems). Such texts tend to survive in anonymous manuscripts that tell us little if anything about their geographical provenance. The only kind of texts that are generally both dated and localised consist of what has been termed ‘documentary texts’: administrative and business documents, private letters and the like, generally short texts that belong to specific historical contexts involving named people and places. The language of such texts has so far been relatively little studied, not least because few of them have been available in editions. Determining the localisation of an anonymous Middle English text is a similar procedure to that of placing an unknown speaker geographically, but having a very patchy knowledge of the overall extent of variation of which he or she forms part. Our ideas of ‘Northern Middle English’ as a linguistic entity will be based on the salient features that we connect with the northern area: features that we recognise from texts that we know or assume to be northern. A linguistic scholar may also make use of a range of supporting evidence, including evidence from later stages of English, as well as contemporary comments on and literary uses of regional dialect (for example, the dialogue of the northern students in the Reeve’s Tale). Just like the layman localising strangers, however, the scholar builds up a subjective category of ‘Northern Middle English’ on the basis of the evidence so far encountered; other texts that show similar forms may then also be assumed to be written in a ‘northern’ variety. An attempt to localise Middle English texts in a more systematic way, the so-called ‘fit-technique’, was developed by McIntosh and applied in the compilation of LALME.19 This model presupposes a regular dialect continuum, where texts are placed in relation to each other on the basis of linguistic similarities. The starting point was to identify a set of texts which could be connected to specific historical people and places. Other texts could, then, be localised in relation to these ‘anchor texts’ on the basis of their linguistic forms. The compilers of LALME claimed a high precision for the localisations; however, as they are based on linguistic similarities only, they do not provide evidence for the provenance of the texts. The analysis involved a questionnaire of 280 items, mostly individual words that could be expected to show geographical variation. A considerable number of these items show a marked north–south distribution of variant forms: taken together, their boundaries on the LALME maps form a pattern reminiscent of the bundles of isoglosses found in many older presentations of modern dialect data. Most of the boundaries run more or less diag­ onally, and some of the ‘northern’ distributions stretch down as far as Lincolnshire and parts of Norfolk to the southeast; these diagonal areas of distribution have been assumed to reflect the general shape of the area where Scandinavian influence was strongest during the late Anglo-Saxon period.20 The forms that show a marked northern distribution in the LALME Dot Maps, and that accordingly define northern varieties in LALME, may be listed as follows:21

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• ther and thir types of these • sho type of she • tham and thaim types of them • thar and thair types of their • -lk forms of such, which, each • slik such • q- spellings of Present Day English wh-words (quhilk, qwhat, qwer, etc) • mekel and mikel types of much • er are • es, hes is • s- spellings of shall, should (sal, sulde etc.) • wald type of wald • fra type of from • -f(f) spellings of though (yoff etc.) • g- spellings of if • ba type of both • kirk type of church • gud and guid types of good • na nor • twa two.

Using the LALME data as a basis, a text in a northern dialect may then be defined as one that contains at least some of these features in regular use, and that does not contain (in regular use) any features that point specifically anywhere else. Such a text need not have been produced in the north, but was most probably produced by a northern scribe (or copied from an exemplar produced by a northern scribe); however, for the most part we have no information about the scribes and their backgrounds, so that we could verify these assumptions. As LALME includes a large range of different kinds of text, it provides an excellent resource for studying the distribution of linguistic forms across genres and domains. The first question addressed in this paper makes use of this resource: what kinds of texts from the late medieval period contain linguistic forms defined as ‘northern’, and what does this material suggest about the use of northern English as a written medium? The northern materials in LALME and the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) The printed version of LALME, from 1986, contains linguistic data from more than a thousand localised texts, most of which are from the period 1350–1450. Later materials were also included if they were considered of particular interest, including a few texts from the sixteenth century. While the compilers did not study all extant Middle English texts, they did cover a vast amount of material; the texts identified as northern in LALME should therefore give a good (if not exhaustive) idea of the range of texts that survive in a northern dialect. Northern texts turned out to pattern linguistically in a different way from the southern ones. While the fit-technique was used to provide a dense network of localised texts in the Midlands and the south, texts in a ‘northern’ dialect resisted detailed localisation using

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this method. The southern margins of the area, including Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire – just north of the ‘isogloss bundle’ of the LALME maps – abound in texts localised with the fit-technique; however, there are no texts localised with the fit-technique north of this area. All the texts mapped in the four northernmost counties, as well as in the East and North Ridings, are ‘anchor texts’: texts that may be localised on extralinguistic grounds in a particular place. At the same time, a large number of texts could be defined as ‘northern’ in dialect, even though it was impossible to place them into a continuum; in the end, many of these were included in the Linguistic Profiles under headings such as ‘Northern’, ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘Northwest Yorkshire’, but were not entered on the maps. The printed version of LALME does not generally provide datings, except when the manuscript itself provides a date. The digital version (eLALME) has added approximate dates to a large part of the material; however, these dates are not searchable, nor are the texts categorised in any other way. LALME itself does not, therefore, provide any easy means of retrieving statistics about the texts included. However, all the texts for which LALME provides Linguistic Profiles (generally referred to as ‘mapped texts’ even though not all of them appear on the maps) have been catalogued as part of the work on A Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C, 2011–). This resource, the compilation of which is still in progress, contains transcriptions (entire texts if short, or 3,000-word samples of longer texts) of the texts for which LALME includes Linguistic Profiles. The latest version of the corpus, MEG-C 2014.0, contains 482 texts, or c.43 per cent of the LALME texts (232 texts, or 69 per cent for the north). However, even though the corpus itself does not contain all the LALME texts, the catalogue database compiled for it contains entries for all the texts included in the LALME Linguistic Profiles, including dating and genre labels provided by the MEG-C compilers.22 The figures presented in what follows are based on searches in this database unless noted otherwise. It should be noted that the number of texts in MEG-C is higher than the number of Linguistic Profiles in LALME. This is because LALME sometimes combines several texts, localised in the same place, into a single Linguistic Profile. Such combinations have been divided whenever practicable in MEG-C, so that each scribal text appears separately. In the LALME Catalogue of Sources, the complete inventory of texts listed for the northern counties (as defined here) consists of more than a thousand texts. Only 338 of these were, however, included in altogether 296 Linguistic Profiles, while the others were either defined as non-northern in dialect or deemed to add nothing of interest. Of the Linguistic Profiles, 244 are entered on maps, leaving fifty-two texts unmapped. These are not given a specific location, but are either placed in a county or simply labelled ‘northern’. The great majority of the LALME northern texts, 262 in all, have been dated to the fifteenth century; thirty texts are dated to the second half of the fourteenth and twelve to the early sixteenth, while thirty-four texts have no dating. The localisations of those texts that are included on maps are distributed relatively evenly across the northern area; however, the same is not true of the distribution of text types. Of the 338 texts included in the Linguistic Profiles, 214 (63 per cent) may be classified as documentary texts (see Figure 3.1). This is the only category of texts that is relatively evenly distributed through the area. These texts include letters and administrative docu­ ments of various kinds, including deeds or conveyances relating to the transfer of values or rights (such as leases or wills) as well as court and municipal records.

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250 214

Documentary

200 Religious verse/prose 150

100

Secular verse/prose 104

Medica Miscellanies

50 8 0

7

2

1

Drama

Figure 3.1. Northern texts in LALME: genre distribution (categorisation from MEG-C).

Of the remainder, the overwhelming majority (106 texts, or 31 per cent of the total) belong to the religious domain: this is here taken to include didactic or devotional works and theological treatises with a clerical background. Approximately two thirds of the texts are wholly or partly in verse, reflecting the popularity of verse as a medium of re­­­ ligious instruction. The verse texts include multiple copies of a few particularly popular works: there are seventeen manuscripts of the Prick of Conscience, ten of the Speculum Vitae and five of the Northern Homily Collection. Texts that appear in three manuscripts or fewer include the Cursor Mundi, the Desert of Religion, Handlyng Synne, the Lay Folks Mass Book, the Northern Verse Psalter, the Surtees Psalter, and the Life of St Cuthbert. Religious prose texts are likewise dominated by a few popular writers and works, most prominently Richard Rolle, to whom more than a quarter of the texts are ascribed; in addition, there are manuscripts of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, the Lay Folks Cathechism, as well as one copy each of Deonise hid Diuinite, Memoriale Credencium, Lavenham’s Treatise of the seven deadly sins, Chastising of God’s children, The holy boke gratia dei and Mirk’s Festial, as well as a range of texts associated with local religious houses, such as manuals and forms of confession. The overwhelming majority of these works, including all those which appear in multiple copies, have a northern origin. Almost half the texts classified as ‘religious’ are in fact copies of the three most popular verse texts, all (as far as we know) northern in origin (the Prick of Conscience, Speculum Vitae and the Northern Homily Collection) and of works by Richard Rolle (see also the contribution by Renevey, this volume). Altogether, few texts seem to have been ‘translated from southern language’ through scribal copying. These appear generally in single copies, and include the Memoriale Credentium, the Chastising of God’s children and Mirk’s Festial.

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The predominance of texts with a northern origin could suggest a specifically northern network of text production within the religious domain. According to Burton, there is both textual and artistic evidence in the earlier period that Yorkshire monks often obtained their exemplars from Durham.23 Burton has also suggested that the networks involved in manu­script production included houses of different orders, and had a regional identity;24 such an identity seems to have persisted even though much of book production was lai­­ cised during the later Middle Ages, even monastic texts being produced by professional scribes.25 There are extremely few secular non-documentary texts: only eighteen texts, or 5 per cent of the total, fall within this group. This may be compared to 229 texts, or 30 per cent of the non-northern materials in LALME. Even if it is taken into account that the northern materials are in general scantier, and that they include a much larger proportion of docu­ mentary texts compared to the non-northern ones in LALME, the difference remains considerable: even if the documentary texts are left out altogether, only 15 per cent of the northern texts may be classified as secular, while the proportion for the remainder of the country is in the region of 40 per cent. Moreover, fourteen of the eighteen secular texts are localised in the southern fringe of the area, in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, while one is placed simply in ‘Yorkshire’. The Lancashire texts include the Alliterative Destruction of Troy (Glasgow UL Hunterian 388), as well as the metrical romances in Princeton UL Taylor 9, a piece of political verse and a medical recipe. The West Riding texts include some collections of medica and recipes, the Chronicle of Thomas Castleford (Göttingen UL Cod.MS. Hist 740), another collection of romances (Edinburgh, Nat Library of Scotland, Advocates’ 19.3.1) as well as the Towneley Plays (Huntington Library, San Marino, HM 1). Only three texts are placed well within the northern area: two medical texts (the Liber Uricrisianum by Henry Daniel in London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library 225, localised in Northumberland, a treatise on plague and a collection of medical recipes in Oxford, Bodleian Rawlinson A 429, localised in the East Riding of Yorkshire) and one copy of Mandeville’s Travels (London, BL Egerton 1982, localised in the North Riding of Yorkshire). The dominance of the administrative and religious domains in the northern part of LALME might be taken to suggest that northern literacy practices during this period repre­­ sented the early stage described by Clanchy, during which literacy is mainly restricted to the domains of administration and religion. Of course, the texts localised in the north in LALME are not evidence for what was in fact produced in the north: instead, they indicate what kinds of text were produced in a distinctly northern dialect. The relative lack of secular literary texts – such as romances – in northern dialect does not, of course, imply that such texts were not read by northern aristocrats. However, it is notable that Friedman’s study of the collections of northern book owners seems to point in the same direction: he suggests that ‘the book-owning impulse was expressed somewhat differently in the north than in the south, as it led more to legal, pious and meditational books than to works of imaginative literature’.26 The lack of secular literature in northern language could also be connected to the ways in which texts were produced and procured. While religious texts were copied in monas­ teries and cathedral schools throughout the country, as well as by professional scribes,

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the production of secular literature was a largely commercial enterprise, and to a large extent centred in London, where texts written in a northern dialect would presumably have been much more difficult to sell. Arguments such as these remain speculative as long as we do not know where the texts were produced. The tradition of Middle English dialectology in the last decades has gener­­­ ally considered manuscript provenance unimportant, on the principle that scribes could travel. However, large codices were not produced in arbitrary places: an understanding of the choices of linguistic forms in a text, and of their sociolinguistic implications, clearly requires some idea of the historical context, both in terms of physical provenance and intended audience. While the text itself may contain at least some general information about the latter, for evidence of manuscript provenance we are generally dependent on the work of manuscript scholars and historians. At the same time, there are large numbers of texts that do provide explicit information about provenance. These consist mainly of what LALME terms documentary texts, that is legal-administrative texts and letters.27 It is to this kind of texts that we need to turn to ask the second question. How ‘northern’ is the language of texts actually produced in the north of England in the late and post-medieval period?

The language of local documents produced in the north The Corpus of Middle English Local Documents: the overall picture in the north In order to study Middle English variation in relation to actual geographical provenance we need a corpus of texts that are localised on non-linguistic grounds. Such a corpus, A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents, or MELD, was compiled at the University of Stavanger and partially published in 2017 (version 2017.1). The working version used for the present study is MELD 2016.1, which includes 1436 documents (602,434 words) in total; the material for the six northern counties and the Isle of Man consists of 370 texts (158,826 words). There is an overlap of 181 texts with the documents contained in LALME; however, the texts in MELD are not selected or localised on the basis of their language, but on the basis of external information only. Accordingly, the documentary texts in MELD represent northern Middle English in the second sense: texts that were actually produced in the north. The texts are localised according to two main principles. Some texts contain an explicit clause stating the place where the document was produced: Thys indentur maid att penreth the xxvj day of Auguste the ȝer & the Reigne of kynge henre the vijth the xvth (‘This in­­­ denture made at Penrith the 26 day of August, 15 Henry VII’) (Carlisle, Cumbria Archive Centre: DLONS/L/5/1/26/LO. 114; MELD D0364). Such localisations provide the most direct way of localising a document: while there is no guarantee that the text was produced by local scribes, or indeed that the localising clauses were always accurate, overall they provide the most direct and objective means of localisation. Alternatively, texts may be localised on the basis of the people or places involved. Such localisations vary greatly in reliability: the churchwarden’s accounts of a particular church are highly likely to be locally produced, while the final award of an arbitration may have been given at a place far from the localities described in the document. The principle in MELD has been to include only texts for which the localisation seems fairly

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reliable; however, as the localisations necessarily involve an element of interpretation, it is important to be aware of them when interpreting the data. It should be noted that letters form a category of their own: for the most part, they include localising clauses of the ‘written at X’ type; however, letters were often written by people on the move or staying away from home, or by high ranking officials or land­ owners at temporary residences, who are likely to have a very different relationship to the locality given that the local clerks producing administrative documents. As the MELD texts are included on the basis of their provenance, the corpus shows the actual variation present in the written language produced at a place, making it possible to trace the dissemination of linguistic and orthographic changes as well as the develop­ ment of regional and supralocal conventions. Unlike literary texts, documentary texts are as a rule not the product of numerous copyings, which means that they are unlikely to show dialectal complexity of the kind found in scribal copies of literary manuscripts: their linguistic forms may therefore be assumed to have been generated at the date of writing, and at the place stated or implied, whatever the actual background of the scribe.28 The corpus contains a broad range of document types, including municipal and ecclesi­ astical administrative texts as well as manorial documents, private and business letters and petitions, legal instruments and court documents. The chronological scope is 1399– 1525, that is, slightly later than that of MEG-C. For the present purpose, the material has been divided chronologically into three subperiods, following the royal dynasties: Lancaster (1399–1461, 212 texts), York (1461–85, seventy-five texts) and early Tudor (1485–1525, sixty texts). The Lancaster period is both the longest in time and the one for which most texts are included; however, as few texts are dated to the early part of the period, dividing it in two turned out to be impracticable. Documentary texts are generally relatively short (typically between 100 and 1,000 words). At the same time, certain lexical items tend to be extremely frequent, especially in particular kinds of texts: for example, words such as land and witness appear very fre­­ quently in conveyances (documents transferring values or rights, such as sales, leases, wills and grants), which make up by far the most common document category in the ma­­t­ erial. The selection of features to study therefore has to take into account their frequency in the material. For the present purpose, a search was carried out for ten items: both, hold, holy, know, lie, long, shall, they, which, as well as the present participle and third person present singular indicative endings in selected verbs, chosen for their frequency (come, follow, give, grant, hold, lie, live, stand, thank, touch, yield for the past participle, and bear, follow, give, grant, say for the third person present singular indicative). For all items, occurrences as part of compounds or names (halidais, holye eyland, longman) were excluded, and knowledge was not included in the search for know. The search returned the following forms that may be characterised as ‘northern’, according to the principles outlined above: • • • • •

forms of both, hold, holy, know and long with : bath(e), hald(-), haly, hali(e), knaw(-), lang(e) forms of lie of the lig type: lig(-), ligg(-) forms of shall with initial rather than or : sal(l) forms of they with or : thai, thay, þai, þay, yai, yay forms of which with initial : quech(e), quich, quilk(e), quych(e), quylk(e), qwech(e),

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• • •

51

qwelk, qwhech(e), qwhich(e), qwhilk, qwhylk, qwich(e), qwilk, qwycche, qwych(e), qwylk(e) forms of which with medial : quilk(e), quylk(e), qwelk, qwhilk, qwhylk, qwilk, qwylk(e), whilk, whylk(e) the present participle ending -and(e) the third-person present singular indicative ending -(V)s.

While the LALME maps show all of these forms (perhaps with the exception of thai/ thay) as clear dialect markers for the north, their relative frequency in the documentary material varies greatly. The overall frequencies of occurrence of each feature and of the main types of variant, as well as the number of texts in which they occur, are listed in Table 1. Many of the northern forms, if not nearly all, compete with relatively common non-northern variants already in the earliest period, suggesting that variants such as which and s(c)hall were becoming supralocal.

Table 1. Overview of the attestations of the items surveyed Item

Number of attestations

Number of texts where attested

Main variants with number of texts

both

152

84

16, 70

hold

288

123

75, 53

holy

37

25

12, 13

know

98

65

54, 12

long

146

43

32, 11

lie

122

55

lig 16, lie 39

shall

958

245

s- 138, s(c)h- 110

they

341

139

58, 64, 14, 15

which

566

236

-lk 132, -ch 106 q- 59, wh- 174, w- 9

pres. part

471

200

-and 55, -ing 173

3 pres. sg. ind.

258

130

-s 119, -th 12

As Figure 3.2 shows, the use of some of the most salient northern dialect markers plunges dramatically during the period covered by the corpus: sal(l) for shall, q- and -lk forms of which, past participles in -and(e) and bath type forms of bath end up as very minor forms by the Tudor period, the bath type being unattested in the Tudor texts. By the early sixteenth century, supralocal forms have largely taken over in this sample of features, with both(e), –ing(e)/–yng(e), which(e) and shall/schall dominant.

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revisiting the medieval north of england

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Lancaster sal(l) SHALL

Tudor

York lk in WHICH

q- in WHICH

pr.pt. -and

in BOTH

Figure 3.2. The chronological development of sal(l), -lk and q- in WHICH, -and in the present participle and spellings of both (% of texts in which attested).

Other northern forms, however, remain relatively stable (see Figure 3.3). The third person present singular -es remains the dominant form throughout the period, as do the variants of they spelt with . The –(e)s suffix, of course, ends up in Standard English; however, it is still clearly a northern form in this period. Also, unlike the spellings of bath, spellings of know and hold remain common throughout the survey period. 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Lancaster pr3sg-s

York in THEY

Tudor in KNOW

in HOLD

Figure 3.3. The chronological development of present 3 sg indicative -s, spellings of they and spellings of know and hold (% of texts in which attested).

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53

The figures thus show an overall reduction over time in the use of traditionally northern features. For some features, such as sal(l), the change is quite dramatic. At the same time, other similarly salient northern forms continue in regular use. It is worth noting that those features which were completely dominant in the Lancaster period are still highly frequent in the Tudor period; another noteworthy point is that the change from to spellings in words containing OE long a is highly lexically conditioned, spellings being by far most frequent in all periods in bath. The limitation of a survey such as this is, of course, that it is restricted to a few frequent items, chosen both because they are frequent enough to allow simple comparison and because their ‘northernness’ is fairly uncontroversial. Eventually, a study of the entire MELD corpus will make possible a more nuanced discussion of the geographical distrib­ ution of linguistic forms in administrative texts in this period. In the meantime, it is worth taking a closer look at some aspects of the distribution of the forms here collected, in particular when it comes to the patterning of the absence of traditionally northern forms. The distribution of northern forms: a closer look Moving to the individual texts, the first thing to be noted is that by far most texts contain several of the ‘northern’ form listed above, and that they seem to appear in all possible combinations. As may be expected, those documents that were also included in LALME are much more likely to show numerous northern forms. However, a control survey based on only non-LALME texts shows exactly the same general patterns as those presented in Figures 3.2 and 3.3, just with a somewhat lower overall proportion of the northern forms. It will be of some interest to enquire into what this ‘dilution’ consists of: can the lack of northern forms in texts produced in the northern area be connected to any specific non-linguistic contexts? Altogether, fifty-eight texts in the corpus, of which nine are LALME texts, contain none of the northern features listed above. Most of these texts group into three clear-cut categories. Firstly, eleven texts, when examined closer, turn out to contain several forms that are traditionally connected to the North, even though they do not happen to include any of the forms included in the present search. These include tuk (‘took’), gude (‘good’) (D0372), euerlastanly (‘everlastingly’) (D0349), awne (‘own’), er (‘are’) (D0363). Secondly, seventeen texts are localised in the southern and southwestern margins of the area, in the southern parts of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. The lack of northern forms in these texts is only to be expected given their localisations. Finally, eleven of the texts are letters written by various individuals, most of whom are historically known persons of a high social standing: the Bishop of Durham, the Earl of Northumberland, the Countess of Cambridge, Thomas, Lord of Clifford and Westmor­ land, the Archbishop of York, the Lieutenant of Carlisle, the King of Cumberland and Westmorland’s butler, and the Abbot and convent of Durham. In addition, two of the letters are addressed to the King. The lack of northern forms in these texts clearly reflects the special position of letters as geographical evidence: quite apart from the fact that letters are often written away from home, many of the surviving letters are produced by people of a high social standing, typically the kind of people who were highly mobile. While most of the letter writers listed above are known to have been at least partly resident

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revisiting the medieval north of england

in the areas where the letters were produced, their background and education were not necessarily northern. Given their mobility, the clerks they employed may also well have been non-northern.29 With letters, of course, the intended recipient also plays an important role in the linguistic choices, and letters to the king may be expected to show a maximal concern for intelligibility for southern readers. This leaves a residue of nineteen texts which either contain no northern forms or only occasional ones. Of these, only a single text, a Westmorland bond from Appleby, is from the late Lancastrian period, while five are from the York period and thirteen from the Tudor period, suggesting an increasing use of supralocal language in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. However, only four texts show a complete lack of forms traditionally connected with the north. These include an attestation of 1509, produced in Fountains Abbey (D5167); an exchange involving a very large number of participants from different geographical regions, of 1500 (Yorkshire East Riding, D3005); a lease from Topcliffe, of 1492 (D5162), and, finally, the output of one of the scribes of a field survey from Barmston in the East Riding of Yorkshire, of 1473. The last text, which has been studied in detail elsewhere, is of considerable interest for the present discussion.30 The Barmston field survey was produced by four main scribes, three of whom (A, B and D) wrote in a distinctly northern dialect. Scribe C, on the other hand, produced a half sheet in a non-northern, basically supralocal variety. This seems to have been found unsuitable as the entire text was rewritten on the following page by Scribe D in a northern variety, as the following sample shows: C. Jn primis to begyne at þe west sid of þe feld nexste þe leye clos euere manes as þey lye D. Jn primis to begyn at ye west syde of ye sayd feyld next ye ley Clos of euery mannys as thai lye to begin with, to begin at the West side of the (said) field nearest to the common grassland as they lie

A competence in northern usage was clearly required here, as scribe C seemed to be struggling with some of the references to local geography. Just like the remark in the Cursor Mundi, perhaps a century earlier, this rewriting suggests that northern dialect was preferred as a functionally based choice, not just as the result of local scribes not knowing any better. On the whole, this closer look at the materials shows that by far most of the texts that contain few or no northern forms turn out to relate to geographical areas, writers or recipi­ ents for which the use of such forms would not be expected in any case. No attempt is here made to account for every last text: in a corpus where localisations are based on provenance, we always have to expect a proportion of texts that do not pattern with the majority with regard to their linguistic forms. There is, however, little doubt that forms traditionally considered northern continue to be regularly used in the vast majority of texts produced in the six northern counties – with the exception of their southern margins – throughout the period here considered.

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55

Concluding remarks It is now generally recognised that the idea of a rapid distribution of a written ‘standard’ in the fifteenth century does not agree with the available data. There are several good reasons why variation in writing – at the levels of orthography, morphology, syntax and vocabulary – begins to be toned down in the sixteenth century; the printing press un­­­ doubtedly played a role. However, it does not disappear until much later. Writing in the late sixteenth century, Richard Carew (1555–1620) is clearly thinking of written com­­ position in his remarks on the diversity of English dialects in The Excellency of the English Tongue: Moreouer, the Copiousnes of our Languadge appeareth in the diuersitye of our dialectes, for wee haue court, and wee haue countrye Englishe, wee haue Northern and Southerne, grosse and ordinary, which differ ech from other, not only in the terminacions, but alsoe in many wordes, termes, and phrases, and expresse the same thinges in diuers sortes, yeat all right Englishe alike31

The material here studied suggests that, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the choice of written forms in the north of England may have to do with pragmatics and context at least as much as with competence; furthermore, as far as competence is con­­ cerned, that of readers may be as important as that of writers. The choice of northern dialectal forms would, for an educated scribe, have been governed by the same kind of considerations as those which made scribes choose the vernacular rather than Latin: partly genre conventions, partly the needs and expectations of the readers. As the example of the Barmston field survey shows, northern dialect could still be the expected choice of competent scribes in the late fifteenth century. On the other hand, the study of the texts included as northern in LALME suggests that such ‘langage o northrin lede’ may have been restricted in terms of function, being to a large extent limited to administrative, private and religious uses. Whether this limitation, if indeed it existed, might relate to the circumstances of production, commercial interests or general ideas of appropriateness, is a question for further study that requires the efforts of historians and manuscript scholars as well as linguists.

Notes  1

 2

 3

 4

 5

London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A iii, fol. 112v; cited from Richard Morris (ed.), The Cursor Mundi, vol. IV (London: Oxford University Press, 1877), lines 20, 61–4. Angus McIntosh, Michael L. Samuels and Michael Benskin, A linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986). Alexander Bergs, Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics: Studies in Morphosyntactic Variation in the Paston Letters (1421–1503) (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005). John Block Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 204. For discussions on the geographical extent of ‘the North’, see Katie Wales, Northern English: a social and cultural history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 9–23 and Chris Montgomery, ‘Borders and boundaries in the north of England’, in Raymond Hickey (ed.), Researching Northern English (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015), pp. 345–68.

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56  

6

 7

  8  9

10

11

12 13

14

15 16 17

18

19

20

21 22

23

24 25 26 27

28

29

revisiting the medieval north of england

For example, Gillis Kristensson, A Survey of Middle English Dialects: the Six Northern Counties and Lincolnshire (Lund: Berlingska boktryckeriet, 1967). John Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon, 1385; cited from http://www.people.fas. harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/rvt/dialect2.html Cited from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 80. See J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘Chaucer as a philologist: the Reeve’s Tale’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 33/1 (1934), 1–70, and Simon Horobin, ‘J. R. R. Tolkien as a philologist: a reconsideration of the northernisms in the Reeve’s Tale’, English Studies, 82/2 (2001), 97–105. See, for example, Simon Horobin and Jeremy J. Smith, An Introduction to Middle English (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), pp. 32–3. See, for example, Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 4–5. St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia MS Q. v. I. 18, fol. 107r, bottom margin. See Marcelle Cole, ‘The Old English origins of the Northern Subject Rule: evidence from the Lindisfarne gloss to the Gospels of John and Mark’, in Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen and Inge Særheim (eds), Language Contact and Development around the North Sea (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012), pp. 141–68, and in the present volume. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325 (LAEME). Version 3.2, 2013 [Version 2.1, 2008]. Compiled by Margaret Laing. University of Edinburgh. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/ laeme2.html. Oxford Bodleian Library, Bodley 26, fols 107r–108r. Carlisle, Cumbria RO, D/Lons/L Medieval Deeds C1: Gospatric’s Writ. See, for example, J. K. Chambers and Peter Trudgill, Dialectology, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 5. See William A. Kretzschmar Jr., The Linguistics of Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 4; 244–50. See Angus McIntosh, ‘The analysis of written Middle English’, Transactions of the Philological Society, 55/1 (1956), 26–55; Angus McIntosh, ‘A new approach to Middle English dialectology’, English Studies 44 (1963), 1–11; Michael Benskin, ‘The “Fit-technique” explained’, in Felicity Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 9–26. Michael L. Samuels, ‘The great Scandinavian belt’, in Roger Eaton, Olga Fischer, Willem F. Koopman and Frederike van der Leek (eds), Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam, 10–13 April, 1985 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1985), pp. 269–81. Only the Dot Maps showing data for the entire country were included in this survey. Except for documentary texts, which are usually dated, the datings are generally based on paleography and represent the most recent scholarly datings, usually from catalogues or editions that have been available to the compilers. The genre labels are based on a simple classification system devised for MEG-C. Janet Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire 1069–1215 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 282. Burton, The Monastic Order, p. 287. Friedman, Northern English books, pp. 31–2. Friedman, Northern English books, p. 204. It should be noted that there are also non-documentary texts that are explicitly linked with particular locations; not least the Cycle Plays linked with specific towns. The exception is register copies and other official copies of documents such as petitions, probate wills and the like. Such copies are included in the present corpus only if the original text was produced at the same place as the copy. The language of Bishop’s Registers, for example, often reflects the origins of the bishop himself, suggesting that he may have brought along or employed scribes from his area of origin; for an

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30

31

57

example see Merja Black, ‘Lollardy, language contact and the Great Vowel Shift: spellings in the defence papers of William Swinderby’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99 (1998), 53–69. Silje Nising Sandvold, ‘Scribal Variation in a Legal Document: A Study of the Bounding of Barmston (1473)’ (Unpublished MA thesis, University of Stavanger, 2010). http://brage.bibsys. no/xmlui/handle/11250/185360; see also Merja Stenroos, ‘Identity and Intelligibility in Late Middle English Scribal Transmission: Local Dialect as an Active Choice in Fifteenth-Century Texts’, in E. M. Wagner, B. Outhwaite and B. Beinhoff (eds), Scribes as Agents of Language Change (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2013), pp. 159–182 (pp. 164–166). Richard Carew (1555–1620) The Excellency of the English Tongue (printed 1614). https://tspace. library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/displayprose3a97.html?prosenum=5.

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4 A Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende: A Translation of Walter Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem in a Northern Anthology, London, British Library, MS Additional 33971* MARLEEN CRÉ Mastir Waltyr Hylton, in a pystille made to a cristene frende newly turnede to oure lorde Jesu whilk was trubulde in his consciens, wrytes one þis wyse. (Add f. 72v, A Pystille 1–3)

A

Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende, named after how it is referred to in the incipit quoted above, closes the northern anthology contained in London, British Library, MS Additional 33971 (Add). It is the only known copy of this text, which translates and reorganises the central section of Walter Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem.1 This Middle English letter responding to the Christian friend’s concerns over incomplete confession, is, as far as we know, the only known medieval translation of one of Walter Hilton’s Latin works. As we will see, it is also a work that aims to console rather than castigate the reader for these concerns. Add is a northern manuscript that collects The Chastising of God’s Children (Add ff. 1r–63v, incomplete at the beginning), followed by The Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit (Add ff. 64r–68r), The Epistle of Saint John the Hermit (Add ff. 68r–72v) and A Pystille (Add ff. 72v–81v).2 It is fitting to call this manuscript an anthology, because ‘some organising principles can be observed’ in the gathering of these texts within one manuscript, which, in Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu’s characterisation of multitext manuscripts, makes a volume an anthology rather than a miscellany.3 In Add, all four texts call themselves ‘pistle’, and, indeed, share the intimate tone of personal letters. In addition, they all focus on how contemplatives relatively new to the religious life face an ongoing choice between the world and God, a choice between giving in to the temptations of the world and the devil, and the joys of opening themselves completely to the presence of God’s grace. The Chastising centres on how temptations are inherent in the contemplative life, and teaches the ‘religious sister’ (Chastising 95/1) who is the addressee of the twenty-sevenchapter treatise on what these temptations can be, how they can be recognised and remedied:4

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60revisiting the medieval north of england

he is disceyued þat weneþ he be hooli for he is nat tempted, for soþ it is, goode men and wymmen þat trauelen to be parfite bien more tempted þanne oþer whiche bien recheles of lyuynge; and a skille whi, for þe hiȝer þat a mounteyn is, þere is the gretter wynd. In þe same maner, þe hiȝer a mannes lyuynge be, þe strengger is þe temptacioun of his goostli enemye. (Chastising 97/12–18)5

As Ralph Hanna points out, The Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit (Saint Machary) and the Epistle of Saint John the Hermit (Saint John) present ‘the opinions of the abo­­ riginal hermits, the Desert Fathers’ (St Makarios of Egypt and John of Lycopolis) and typically take ‘the form of instructions to and conversations with neophyte disciples’6 – a way in which they are similar to The Chastising and A Pystille, as these texts, too, are presented as offering instruction and advice to someone who needs and asked for help. Saint Machary teaches contemplatives about the temptations of the seven deadly sins. It presents itself as a guide to how these temptations can befall a contemplative ‘in þe fyrst begynyng’ (f. 65r, cf. Machary 1), stressing how the devil will come and tempt the con­­ templative to sin. The passage in this text on how the devil may tempt to pride, resonates especially with the themes of A Pystille, as this text deals with how the reflection on one’s own sinfulness can tip the balance the other way, and can lead the contemplative to doubt whether his sins have been forgiven at all: als tite þai come agayne in an oþer maner, sayand to hym in his thoghtes vnder colour of rightwisnes, ‘þus þou has synned bot þou has done þi penaunce and þi synes er forgifen þe. nowe art þou haly’. And þai gar hym þynk þan of oþer men þat he knowe for syners and did na penance þat he is better þan þai er, and sa þai sawe in his hert vayn ioy and pride of hym self. (Add f. 65r, cf. Machary 40–5)

Like all the texts in the anthology, Saint Machary stresses the rewards of choosing God over the body and the world: bot þan if grace viset hym and his hert is turned bi grace, and þat he may gete þe priue biddynges of þe haly gaste, þan sall þe defense of oure lorde be festned to hym. And þan sall a man fully knawe be experience þat þare is na thynge sa gode to a saule as for to be cleue to god and lene to hym withoutyn styntynge. (Add f. 67v, cf. Machary 137–42)

Saint John focuses on the vice of pride, and how it can cast people seeking perfection down. Again, there is a focus on those who are ‘in þe begynynge of þaire turnynge to god’ (Add f. 68r, cf. John 4), but the text addresses itself to all those in the contemplative life. In one particular passage, Saint John warns against pride through hypocrisy: þere er som men þat semes als þai had forsaken þe werld bot þai haue na cure ne besynes aboute þe clensyng of þair conscience ne þai haue na trauell to cut away vices and fleshly passions fra þair saule and for to aray þair saule in gode thewes and vertuse. Þai haue na eghe þar to, bot all þay study is aboutward for to seme haly to þe sight of þe werld. (Add f. 70r, John 67–73)

The reward of a continued choice for God against worldly reputation and honour is close­ ness and intimacy with God: ‘And þe clener þat þe saule is, þe ma thynges god shewes

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hym. For he telles hym þan his priuetees, for he is made Gods frende.’ (Add f. 71v, John 131–2) We will see that A Pystille builds on and complements these themes. Thus, Add can indeed be called an anthology.7 In addition, it can be called a northern anthology because all the texts it gathers have been written in a northern dialect.8 Most striking in A Pystille is the use of typically northern forms, such as sho for ‘she’, slik, slyke, swylk for ‘such’, whilk and whylk for ‘which’, ylk ane for ‘each one’, mekyll for ‘much’, als for ‘as’, qwen for ‘when’, abowne for ‘above’, haly for ‘holy’, knawe for ‘know’, saule/sawle for ‘soule’, nauther . . . ne for ‘neither . . . nor’, and -and forms (traystand and fyghtand) in the present participle. Other forms in A Pystille predominant in the Midlands and north are þai for ‘they’, þaime/þayme/þaym for ‘them’, þaire, þair and þer for ‘their’, þof for ‘though’, brothir for ‘brother’, fader for ‘father’, enoghe for ‘enough’, eghe for ‘eye’, frende for ‘friend’, frute for fruit’, lufe for ‘love’ and sum for ‘some’. Many other forms used in A Pystille are attested all over England, including in the north. These can be universal forms, or can occur in the north as a result of standardisation.9 Even though a northern dialect might also mean that a scribe born and raised in the north of England travelled and copied a text somewhere else, the idiosyncrasies of northern spellings and vocabulary makes it likely that it was also meant to be read in that region. As such, this paper investigates a sample of late fifteenth-century northern spirit­­ual culture in looking at the reception and contextualisation of A Pystille in Add, which hap­­ pened as a result of the exchange of texts between the north and the Midlands. Before I focus on A Pystille, I will discuss the other texts of this northern anthology in their manu­ script context. Add is one of twelve manuscripts in which The Chastising of God’s Children survives.10 In this text’s textual tradition, Add is closest to the version in Cambridge, St John’s College, MS E.25 (J), the only other extant northern dialect copy of The Chastising. As The Chastising was probably written after 1391 and before 1408, and both Add and J can be dated to the middle or the end of the fifteenth century, they constitute later, northern copies of a text written in the south-east Midlands.11 The reverse seems to be the case for The Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit and The Epistle of Saint John the Hermit: these texts were most likely written in the north, and later moved into Midland copies. Saint Machary is a translation into Middle English of the letter ‘Ad filios Dei’ attributed to and probably also written by Macarius of Egypt (c.300–91).12 Saint John translates a text by John of Lycopolis.13 Ralph Hanna refers to these texts as ‘The northern Vitae Patrum Translations’ and argues for the importance of texts like these to shape the lives of northern hermits from Cuthbert, the hermit of Farne, Godric of Finchale and St Robert Flower of Knaresborough, to Richard Rolle: texts like these are more generally relevant, since Rolle was only following in a widespread and ancient Northern tradition ultimately inspired by the Egyptian desert . . . Indeed, so far as published sources allow one to gauge, only Northern England produced such concerted efforts at reproducing English materials revealing the holy wisdom inherent in the eremitic life.14

Saint Machary and St John survive together in San Marino CA, Huntington Library, MS HM 148 and, in fragmentary form, in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 913. Huntington HM 148 is a manuscript of the first quarter of the fifteenth century,

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in two booklets, written by three scribes, in northern dialects. The dialect of the scribe who copied the epistles has been situated ‘adjacent northern Lancashire’ (A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English [LALME] Linguistic Profile [LP] 404, see also note 9).15 Fragments of both epistles also survive on fol. 61 of Rawlinson D. 913, ‘a composite, bound together in the second half of the nineteenth century at the Bodleian Library, and containing a random collection of otherwise loose leaves, unconnected gatherings, bifolia and fragments’.16 Fol. 61 is ‘the bottom version of a conjoint bifolium . . . owing to past use as a wrapper and pastedown often illegible’.17 Written in the language of south Bedford­­ shire, the bifolium is dated – not very specifically – to the fifteenth century. Saint Machary occurs without its companion text in Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 6. 30. The text was written by William Darker, a professed monk of Sheen Charterhouse, who was at the Charterhouse between 1471 and 1513, and who probably wrote the manuscript then.18 Saint John occurs on its own in Booklet 3 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 285, a late fourteenth- early fifteenth-century manuscript written in a northern dialect, ‘probably north-west Yorkshire’ (LALME assigns the unmapped LP 22 to the scribe of Saint John). As the Midland dialect versions of the epistles are later than the northern, it seems likely that they constitute later Midland dialect copies of texts written in the north. It is not just the epistle format and themes that make Saint Machary and Saint John a good fit with The Chastising. Their very attribution to Machary and John may have referred the readers of Add back to the holy fathers presented in The Chastising as saintly models. In Chapters 16 and 17 of The Chastising, we encounter Abbot Paul and Abbot Secundus, who are both punished disproportionately for an error, in spite of their holiness.19 The evidence of the manuscripts in which Saint Machary and Saint John survive fit into a northern context in that they present hermits as exemplary and as sources of wisdom. This reflects the popularity of hermits as models for both secular and regular clergy, as well as in popular religion in the north.20 As pointed out earlier, this is the region where saintly hermits such as Cuthbert and Richard Rolle lived, and where ‘contemplative hermits of the Desert Fathers type’ were repeatedly depicted in books for Carthusian and Benedictine, but also for lay readers.21 The exact northern provenance of Add is hard to define. It is indeed possible that Add has a Carthusian connection. Not only does the anthology have a clear eremitical strand, but it also has The Chastising as its opening text – a text of which surviving copies were owned by Carthusian houses.22 In addition, Add is linked to MS Huntington 148 through Saint Machary and Saint John. Huntington 148 also contains a copy of the devotional compilation The Holy Boke Gratia Dei, a text for which George Keiser has hypothesised Carthusian agency in its transmission,23 and a text with an exclusively northern distri­ bution.24 Yet The Chastising was most likely also read in Benedictine circles, as The Chastising of God’s Children is mentioned as a book familiar to the readers of The Cleansing of Man’s Soul, a text in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 923, which was owned by Sibylle Felton, Abbess of Benedictine Barking Abbey.25 An abbreviated version of The Holy Boke occurs in London, British Library, MS Arundel 507, the personal collection of the Durham monk Richard Segbrok (d. 1396 or 1397).26 As the manuscript evidence for Hilton’s Latin works show ownership by the Carthusians of Coventry and Sheen, Merton College, Oxford, and the monks of Durham Cathedral, both the Carthusian and Benedictine Orders are likely candidates for the transmission of

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the Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem from Cambridgeshire (Ely) or Nottinghamshire (Thurgarton) to northern readers, one of which was the translator of A Pystille. Thus, this is the textual and broad regional context in which A Pystille was copied into Add from ff. 72v to 81v. A Pystille is a translation of the second part of Walter Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem, one of Hilton’s six Latin works that survives in London, British Library, MS Royal 6 E III, a large collection of fifty-seven theological texts in Latin that contains four of Hilton’s Latin epistles,27 and in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee. vi. 7 – both manuscripts without ownership inscriptions.28 Walter Hilton wrote his Latin letters after he left Cambridge and his legal career, probably at Ely consistory court (c.1381–2), and before he entered the Augustinian Priory of Thur­ garton (c.1386). Michael Sargent has questioned the likelihood of Hilton’s presence in York at the time when Thomas Arundel was the Archbishop there, yet he has documented the existence of northern dialect versions of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection in north-west York­shire.29 Thus, even though Hilton himself did not travel north beyond Thurgarton, his texts did. The Epistola divides into four parts. The first (lines 2 to 330 in Clark and Taylor’s edition) is a long introduction in which Hilton addresses the ‘dilecto in Christo fratri’ (‘dear brother in Christ’,) (Epistola 2) and talks at length about the contrast of this lawyer’s previous life in the world with the path he has now chosen.30 As I pointed out earlier, the second part (selected and translated from lines 331 to 621) is the one translated and adapted in A Pystille, and it advises the addressee on his feelings of not being able to be properly confessed and absolved of his sins.31 The third part deals with the addressee’s ‘uotis et propositis minime seruatis’ (‘the vows and resolutions you only served minimally’) (622 to 846), and the fourth part deals with ‘mutacione tui status, an religionem ingredi debeas’ (‘the changing of your state, whether you should enter religion’) (847 to 1049). A Pystille is an intimate and caring letter written to a Christian friend struggling with the fear of falling short spiritually: of not saying one’s prayers well enough, of not fasting enough, and in the case of the ‘cristen frende’, of not being truly confessed and absolved; in other words, the fear of being as sinful after confession and penance as before because of the inadequacy of one’s confession and penance.32 The text seems to be introduced by a Latin couplet that already occurs at the end of The Chastising on f. 63v, and seems to be inserted – there and before the colophon of A Pystille (quoted at the start of this chapter) – by way of a motto urging the reader not to waste time on worldly pursuits: Qualibet ecce die vescendi tempus habetur Ac expendendi lucrandi nec retinetur. See, there is time to feast any day and to waste, but there is no time left to use profitably.

The red penwork around the blue initial M that marks the beginning of the title of this text visually includes the couplet with the text. Next to the couplet, the annotation ‘Medi­tacio pauperis’ (‘the poor person’s meditation’) has been written in the margin. It is this annotation that has been used as the title of the text in the British Library Online Catalogue.33 Rather than being a title, this annotation seems to be the scribe’s or a later

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annotator’s signposting of the couplet, and an indication of the couplet as the meditation of a ‘pauperis’, which could be a reference to a member of a mendicant order, but could also be a reference to a Carthusian.34 In addition to the similarity of themes in the anthology, the repetition of the couplet also strengthens the unity of the collection. It seems likely that the readers of Add came to the text without reference to the original Latin. For them, Walter Hilton’s letter would have been a unified text, and they would not have read it to see how its compiler translated or changed the Latin. Indeed, in this compil­ ation the ‘extracts from a source . . . are woven together into a text which is presented as a single, distinct work’ with, somewhat unusually, acknowledgement of its author.35 Nevertheless, it makes sense to see how the original work has been adapted to fit the translator’s aims. As has already been pointed out, A Pystille translates the second part of the Epistola, in which Hilton responds to the addressee’s doubts, questions and fears about the effective­ ness of his confession and penance. First, the translator outlines the friend’s questions, and then sets out to answer these questions one by one. As not all of the questions or answers have been numbered, the signposting of the seven articles and how they are answered is only partial, and potentially confusing. Yet on closer scrutiny each of the seven questions (some of which are called ‘articles’ – a term that does not occur in the Latin original)36 is matched by an answer (in some of which the questions are referred to as ‘dowtes’),37 as follows: 1. The Christian friend is unable to confess, which means that he cannot receive God’s grace. ‘þu writes to me’ (Add f. 72v, A Pystille 5–20). Answer: When you are truly contrite and go to confession, your sins are forgiven by God’s grace. (A Pystille 54–140). 2. The Christian friend believes in the sacrament of confession, and blames himself for this inability. ‘Alsso þou says’ (Add f. 73r, A Pystille 23–31). Answer: God responds to simple confessions made without too many words when they are made with true contrition, even when the sins committed are grave. (A Pystille 141–213) 3. The Christian friend fears he will never be forgiven for sins which he has committed a long time ago, does not remember and therefore cannot confess. ‘Alsso þou says’ (Add f. 73r, A Pystille 32–5). Answer: All sins spring from disregard for God’s love, and will be forgiven when the sinner turns back to God wholeheartedly. There is no such thing as being half forgiven. (A Pystille 214–42) 4. The Christian friend fears that neither his contrition nor confession have been effective, because he feels more pangs of conscience after than before his confession. ‘Alsso for the ferthe artikle’ (Add f. 73r, A Pystille 36–8). Answer: The pangs of conscience are useful, for they are a shorter version of the purifying pains of purgatory here on earth. ‘To þe ferthe dowte þat þou sayde’ (A Pystille 243–82). 5. The Christian friend suffers more for his inability to sin than for his sins. ‘Als for þe fyft artykle’ (Add f. 73v, A Pystille 39–40). Answer: Because the newly converted Christian friend has walked in darkness for so long, he has difficulty getting used to walking in the light, and the darkness lingers. He has to cleanse the eye of his soul, and to desire God more fervently. ‘þe fyft’ (A Pystille 283–320).

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6. The Christian friend fears that his prayers are useless. ‘Alsso þou says and writes’ (Add f. 73v, A Pystille 41–3). Answer: The first useful type of prayer is meditation on the Passion of the Lord. The second is devout prayer. (A Pystille 321–63)38 7. Because the Christian friend feels that confession is not effective, he goes to confession very often. ‘Alsso þou art taryed and temped as many newe turned are’ (Add, f. 73v, A Pystille 44–51). Answer: For some people repeated confession is useful, because they will be stirred to contrition and compunction. (A Pystille 364–79)

The list of ‘articles’ is the translator’s decision. In Hilton’s original, the friend’s problems are listed towards the end of part two of the Epistola, as the author recapitulates the main points he has been discussing in the text. In bringing them forwards, the translator imposes a new organisation on the text.39 The translation itself is a sincere effort to render the text in the selected passages as it stands. The choices of the translator are those common to many translations from Latin into Middle English: phrases and sentences are omitted, often to make a passage more concise, phrases and sentences are added, often to explain or put more flesh on the elliptical Latin. The decisions to condense or expand phrases do not follow a specific pattern, though the translator’s additions repeatedly evoke the intimate relationship between the believer and Jesus. A few examples should suffice. When the Latin text has ‘incommutabili bono, scilicet Deo’ (‘the unchangeable good, that is to say God’) (Epistola 350), A Pystille reads ‘God vnchaungeabyll’ (59), excising the notion of God’s goodness from the sentence. In a longer passage, the translator’s omissions from the Latin (in italics) decontextualise the scene the passage depicts, while his additions to the Middle English (in italics) show his more expansive retelling of the Latin as regards Mary Magdalene’s intimacy with Jesus – her kissing of Jesus’ feet is reciprocated in the kiss of perfect peace between Jesus and her: Exemplum uide in Euangelio. Mulier enim illa peccatrix Maria, scilicet Magdalena, quam fetida fuit quando accessit ad pedes Ihesu in domo Pharisei! Sed dum hec mulier in conuiuio pedes Domini lacrimis lauit, tersit et perunxit, reuera et ipsa spiritualiter lota ad Domino, tersa et peruncta est, et ipsi prefertur Phariseo, Domini testimonio. (Epistola 374–8) See the example in the Gospel. Indeed, that woman and sinner Maria, known as Magdalena, how foul-smelling she was when she threw herself at Jesus’ feet in the house of the Pharisee! But when this woman washed the feet of the Lord at the feast, wiped them dry and anointed them, truly she herself was spiritually clean to the Lord, and wiped dry and anointed, and she was given preference over the Pharisee Se ensampyll in the godspell. Mary Mawdelayne, howe stynkand sho was qwen sho come to oure lordes fete. Bot whyle sho washe his fete, wyped and anoynted and kyssed þam, hyrself was washen and wyped fro all synne, and sothely sho was anoynted be grace and kyssed be parfyte peese bitwene god and hyr. (A Pystille 91–4)

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That the translator indeed ‘shows some freedom in the handling of the material’40 can be seen especially in the passages that are inserts into the translation, for instance, A Pystille 269–82, 291–320 and 366–7. Here the translator elaborates on the function of the pains of purgatory, and on how difficult it is for someone newly converted from a life of sin to a life of virtue to shed the darkness that he has walked in for so long. The con­trasting darkness-and-light imagery the translator uses in A Pystille 291 to 367 cre­atively uses the darkness and light theme Hilton uses in Epistola 171–9, and the ‘worm of conscience’ (A Pystille 262–3), the reference that sets off the reflection of purgatory, also seems to have been inspired by this untranslated passage, which refers to the ‘vermem consciencie’ (Epistola 173). In an anthology that has commented at length on the temptations to be faced by con­­ templatives, A Pystille finds its place as a text that adds discussion of another point of possible tension: the lack of trust in God’s mercy and the danger of lingering on past sins to such an extent that the power of contrition and confession are questioned. This being ‘trubulde and taryde’ (A Pystille 5) is a state of mind that in the Christian friend has a grounding in reality, as it is suggested that he did indeed lead a life of vice. This may not have been the case for all subsequent readers of this text, be they Carthusian or Benedictine monks or religious women or laypeople, who may also have been the recipients of this manuscript. However, they could have run the risk of being ‘trubulde and taryde’ by too much reflection on their sins, and the sufficiency of their contrition and confession – a possible, negative result of the kind of soul-searching they are invited to do in The Chastising, Saint Machary and Saint John. Yet, A Pystille also has a very strong, comforting message, especially in its discussion of the two aspects of the sacrament of confession, which it describes as consisting in the private feeling of contrition felt in the soul and shared directly with God as its substance, and the public confession to the priest as its outward tokens. With Hilton’s original, A Pystille is confident that the Christian friend (and by extension, any reader) will feel God’s grace when he is truly sorry for his sins, and will feel compunction as God’s grace is infused: Bot amange þe tokens of grace a clere and euident token is conpunccion of hert as vggesomnes of synne and myslykynge and sorowe for þe doynge, plente of teres if þai come, and a deȝyre to plese god. þe whylk tokens if þou haue þayme, þou feles þayme so þat þai may not be hyd fro þe. By þese tokens þou sall trowe stedfastly þat grace is infundyd in þe, and by þe vertue þerof stedfastli trowe þat all þi synnes are forgyuen þe by grace. (Add f. 74r, A Pystille 68–73)41

The feeling of contrition is the crucial step in the process of confession: ‘þan qwen þi syn is done away by contriccion, whar to dowtes þou of shryft?’ (Add f. 74r, A Pystille 75–6)42 This feeling is internal, silent, and is enough for Jesus, as it is He himself who works this contrition and conversion in the heart. (The translator’s addition stresses the intimacy between the believer and Jesus): Se howe sone þe mercy of oure lorde Jhesu forgyfes. He abydes noght þe confession of þe voice, for he herd þe confession and þe conuersion of þe hert, and þat he desyres and abydes. And if I sall say þe trewthe, he allone wyrkes þat conuersion and contricion in þe hert, and þarfore he heres sone þat voyce of þe hert whylk hymself makes þare in. (Add f. 74v, A Pystill 94–9)43

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Though, with Hilton’s Latin, the translator resolutely asserts the power of contrition, he is quick also to confirm the sacrament of auricular confession: ‘Trayst wele þat be all þis I mene noght to hynder confessioun. þat god forbede! Bot I wyrship it and wyll kepe it and prays it enteerly and vse it.’ (Add ff. 74v–75r, A Pystille 100–2)44 He explains the first aspect of confession as its substance (contrition), the very important step in which forgive­ness may precede confession to a priest: Bot I mene to declare to þe a maner howe þou sall vnderstande it. In confession and in all oþer sacramentes are two thynges and are þise: þe thynge of þe sacrament and þe self sacrament; or elles þus: þe substance of þe sacrament and þe outeward token of þe sacrament. In þe sacrament of penance þe self forgyfnes, þe self recounselynge to oure lorde, þe self forgyfnes of grace: it makes þe of a maunsyple of helle þe son of grace and þe hele of blys. þat is þe substance or þe thynge of þat sacrament, and þis is gyfen of oure lorde by sodayne turnynge of his eghe of mercy, and in þe resayued by als sodayne turnynge of þi hert to compunccion and contricion. And þis turnynge is gyfen somtyme of þe sacrament, and somtyme before þe sacrament or þe takens of þe sacrament. (Add, f. 75r, A Pystille, 102–12)45

The second aspect, confession to a priest, is described as the necessary, humble response of the believer to the infusion of God’s grace in contrition: In shryft are þise two: knawynge of þi synne by þi tonge (or in a dome man by token of þi synne) and absolucion of þe same syn by preest. Þan qwen þou has þe substance of þe sacrament, þat is forgyfnes of syn be grace infused, þou art not fully syker bot in þe artykyll of nede of þi dedely synne, is my menynge. What sall þou do more þan þou take þe sacrament, with þe substance? Þi syn is forgyfen, bot þou nedes to meke þe by confession.46 By þe substance ert þou reconcyled to oure lorde Jhesu and to þe kyrk ouer command of heuen and made a lym þer of. By þe token of þe sacrament art þou reconcyled to haly kyrk fyghtand in erthe and made a lym þer of. (Add, f. 75r, A Pystille 113–21)47

Clark and Taylor point out the following: Hilton’s consoling advice is based on the con­­ servative, pre-Thomist theory of absolution as a declaration of the forgiveness already given by God in response to a repentance (‘perfect contrition’), which is itself a gift.48 As such, Epistola and A Pystille stress the importance of God giving the grace of penance, an exchange more intimate and interior than confession in the Thomist view in which ‘the sacrament of absolution’, administered by a priest, is really creative of what it signifies’.49 Though in A Pystille Hilton’s defense of confession to a priest is rendered it its entirety, it is – as Clark and Taylor observe – less ‘pointed’ than an equivalent passage in Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Book two, Chapter 7, where it adds the statement that to believe that confession to a priest is no longer necessary when one has received forgiveness in the ‘substance of the sacrament’ amounts to error: Thanne erreth he greteli that generali seith that confessioun of synne for to schewe to a priest is neither nedeful to a synnere ne bihoveful, and no man is bounden therto. For bi that that I have seid, it is bothe nedful and spedful . . . bi the sacrament of penaunce, that principali standeth in contricioun and sorow of herte, and secundarili in schrift of mouth folwande aftir, yif it may be had.50

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Indeed, as Clark and Taylor note, ‘one of the Wycliffite propositions condemned at the Blackfriars Synod of 1382 was that sacramental confession was superfluous if one was contrite’.51 In times in which a Thomist response to these Wycliffite views would have been easiest, Hilton insists on the precedence of contrition. Thus, rather than considering contrition less necessary than confession to a priest, Hilton argues for its prime importance, which is intriguing to say the least.52 Equally intriguingly, the translator of A Pystille thought it worthwhile to translate a Latin text that addressed the concerns of someone troubled by and struggling with the fear of incomplete confession, and the scribe or compiler of Add thought it worthwhile to present the text in conversation with The Chastising, Saint Machary and Saint John. In translating this Latin text and in particular the passages on the substance and signs of the sacrament of penance, the translator rendered into Middle English a consoling under­ standing of contrition. Though the Epistola and A Pystille stress the need for confession to a priest, they do so without reference to error. Whereas translations from Latin into English can usually be seen to ‘tone down’ the exuberance and confidence of the Latin – perhaps Hilton himself did just that in Scale 2, Chapter 7 – the confident consolation still stands in A Pystille. Somewhere in the north, the consolation of and confidence in God’s mercy that the Epistola offers was recognised by a discerning and skilled translator, who considered it important and relevant enough to be passed on in the vernacular.

Notes *

 1

 2

 3

  4

This chapter originated as a paper written as part of the Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘Late Medieval Religiosity in England: The Evidence of Late Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century Devotional Compilations’, carried out at the University of Lausanne under the supervision of Professor Denis Renevey from October 2013 to March 2017. Research on BL MS Add 33971 was made possible by a Cost-Action Short Term Scientific Mission Grant, awarded by Cost-Action IS-1301 ‘New Communities of Interpretation: Contexts, Strategies and Processes of religious Transformation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, coordinated by Professor Sabrina Corbellini at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. I am grateful to Michael G. Sargent for conversations about Walter Hilton while this paper was in progress. All quotations from the texts are from Add, with reference to the respective editions, unless stated otherwise. Translations are my own. Both the Epistola and A Pystille have been edited in John P. H. Clark and Cheryl Taylor (eds), Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings vol. 2 (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg 1987) pp. 245–98 and pp. 305–25 respectively. Hanna’s description of this text as ‘Meditacio pauperis’, ‘a unique and unpublished text’ is incorrect, but the error must have arisen from the use of ‘Meditacio pauperis’ as the title of the last text in the collection, common in most descriptions of Add, whereas this is a marginal annotation, as I discuss below. Ralph Hanna (ed.), Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse with related Northern Texts, Early English Text Society (EETS) 329 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. xvi. For the annotation, see Add, fol. 72v. I follow the foliation in the manuscript itself, which does not count the blank leaf between f. 63 and numbered folio 64. Ralph Hanna counts the blank folio as an extra folio, and thus numbers all folios from 64 onwards one up. Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xvi. See Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu (eds), Insular Books. Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 5. On The Chastising, see Annie Sutherland, ‘The Chastising of God’s Children: A Neglected Text’, in Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison (eds), Text and Controversy from Wycliff to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 353–73. Also see Marleen Cré, ‘Take a Walk on the Safe Side: Reading the Fragments from Ruusbroec’s Die geestelike brulocht in The

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13 14 15

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Chastising of God’s Children’, in R. Faesen, F. Hendrickx en K. Schepers (eds), De letter levend maken: Opstellen aangeboden aan Guido de Baere bij zijn zeventigste verjaardag Miscellanea Neerlandica 39 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), pp. 233–46 and ‘“ȝe han desired to knowe in comfort of ȝoure soule”: Female Agency in The Chastising of God’s Children’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures, 42/2 (2016), pp. 164–80. For the edition of the text see Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (eds), The Chastising of God’s Children and The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957). References to this edition are by page and line numbers. Note that a similar understanding of the contemplative life can be found in Ancrene Wisse, Part IV, opening paragraph; see Bella Millett (ed.), Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 with Variants from Other Manuscripts, EETS 325 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 68. Add starts imperfectly at Chastising 110/17, but the manuscript must have opened with the full text of The Chastising before the opening quire or quires were lost (the current binding of the manuscript dates from 1972). See Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, pp. xiii–xiv. Saint Machary and Saint John have been edited in this volume, on pp. 93–7 and 98–102. References to these editions are by line numbers. On the sources of both texts see below. Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu (eds), Insular Books, p. 5. Joyce Bazire, ‘The Dialects of the Manuscripts of The Chastising of God’s Children’, English and Germanic Studies, 6 (1957), 64–78 (65–7). Also see Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xvi, and Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, p. 305. This analysis of forms occurring in A Pystille was made using the online Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English [LALME]. See M. Benskin et al., An Electronic Version of a Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/elalme/elalme.html (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, © The authors and the university of Edinburgh, 2013) (accessed 5 April 2017). On standardisation, see also Marja Stenroos and Anita Auer’s chapters in this volume. The manuscripts in which The Chastising occurs are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 57 (given to Sheen Charterhouse by John Kingslow, the first Sheen recluse, early fifteenth century); Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.14.19 (early fifteenth century); Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 (first half fifteenth century); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 505 (first half fifteenth century); Yale, Beinecke Library, MS Osborn fa46 (olim Taunton, Somerset Record Office, MS Heneage 3084), and next, Oslo and London, The Schoyen Collection, MS 1701 (first half fifteenth century). All of these manuscripts have been written in Midland dialects. Liverpool, University Library, MS Ryl. F.40.10 (mid-fifteenth century) is written in a dialect that has northern traces. Cambridge, St John’s College, MS E.25 and London, British Library, MS Additional 33971 (both mid- to second half fifteenth century) have been written in a northern dialect. London, British Library, MS Harley 1288 (mid- to second half fifteenth-century) and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 41 and London, British Library, MS Harley 6615 (both second half fifteenth century), have also been written in a Midland dialect. See Bazire and Colledge, The Chastising, pp. 1–8, and Bazire, ‘The Dialects’. MS Osborn fa46 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don. e. 247 (early to mid-fifteenth century) were unknown at the time The Chastising was edited. Don. e. 247 is written in a Midland dialect with southern characteristics. Michael G. Sargent, ‘A New Manuscript of The Chastising of God’s Children with an Ascription to Walter Hilton’, Medium Aevum 46 (1977), 49–65 and Marleen Cré and Raphaela Rohrhofer, ‘An Introduction to Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Don. e. 247’, Journal of the Early Book Society 20 (2017), 137–208. Joyce Bazire, ‘The Dialects’, 65–7. The manuscript is not listed in LALME, and there are no linguistic profiles for the texts contained in it. See Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose’, p. 196. See also André Wilmart, ‘La Lettre Spirituelle de l’Abbé Macaire’, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique 1 (1920), 58–83. Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. 199. Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. lxx. See also Ralph Hanna, The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2010), p. 197.

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17 18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25 26 27

28

29

30

John C. Hirsch, ‘The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance’, in Simon Horobin and Linne Mooney (eds), Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday (York: York Medieval Press, 2014), pp. 104–15 (p. 106). Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xxiv. Vincent Gillespie, ‘Cura pastoralis in deserto’, in Vincent Gillespie, Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England, Brepols Collected Essays in European Culture 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 21–47 (p. 38). See M. B. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands 1250–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 8, as well as Anne Mouron (ed.), The Manere of Good Lyvyng: A Middle English Translation of Pseudo-Bernard’s Liber de modo bene vivendi ad sororem, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2014), pp. 8, 11. See Marleen Cré, ‘Miscellaneity, Compiling Strategies and The Transmission of The Chastising of God’s Children and The Holy Boke Gratia Dei’, in S. Corbellini, G. Murano and G. Signore (eds), ‘Collecting, Organizing and Transmitting Knowledge: Miscellanies in Late Medieval Europe’, Bibliologia 49 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 131–44 (137–8). See Chapter 2 of Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1988), though Hughes’s account is not without controversy. On Vitae Patrum texts in English see Constance L. Rosenthal, The Vitae Patrum in Old and Middle English (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1936). John B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995), p. 148. Also see Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Chastising MSS Rawlinson C57, Bodley 505, Trinity B.14.19 and Osborn fa46 were owned and/ or corrected within English Charterhouses. Michael G. Sargent, ‘A New Manuscript’, p. 65, and Anne Mouron, ‘The Desert of Religion: A Textual and Visual Compilation’, in Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen and Denis Renevey (eds), This tretice, by me compiled: Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). For the role the Carthusians may have played in the transmission of The Holy Boke Gratia Dei see George Keiser, ‘More Light on the Life and Milieu of Robert Thornton’, Studies in Bibliography, 36 (1983), 111–19 (114–18). Long excerpts of The Holy Boke Gratia Dei occur in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91 (The Thornton Manuscript), the collection of romances, religious texts and medical recipes copied and owned by the Yorkshire gentleman Robert Thornton. See Susanna Fein and Michael Johnstone (eds), Robert Thornton and His Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts (York: York Medieval Press, 2014). Annie Sutherland, ‘The Chastising of God’s Children’, pp. 356–7. Hanna, The English Manuscripts, pp. 85–9. See the British Library’s online manuscript catalogue and Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, pp. 12–14. The Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem is item thirty-five. The other Latin letters preserved in this volume are De Imagine Peccati (item 20), Epistola ad Quemdam Solitarium de Leccione, Intencione, Oracione, Meditacione et Aliis (item 36) and Epistola de Utilitate et Prerogativis Religionis (item 37). The manuscript has been dated to the third quarter of the fifteenth century. Hilton’s Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem and Epistola de Leccione make up Booklet 4 of this manuscript, which was bound in the seventeenth century. Booklet 4 can be dated to the middle of the fifteenth century. Sargent, ‘Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections’, in Horobin and Mooney (eds), Middle English Texts in Transition, pp. 159–76 (pp. 161, 165–7). That the addressee of the text was, like Hilton himself, a lawyer is clear from the text, which describes in some detail the possibilities of being corrupted by the lures of worldly honour in court interactions. See Epistola 263–77 and a translation of this passage in Sargent, ‘Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts’, pp. 161–2. On the hypothesis that this lawyer could have been John

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Epistola ad quemdam seculo renunciare volentem

31

32

33

34

35

36

37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49

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Thorpe, Canon of Lincoln in 1389 and Archdeacon of Suffolk from 1390 until his death in 1421, see Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, vol. 2, pp. 245–9. Note that in the Book of Margery Kempe, her ‘madness’ after the birth of her first child is also attributed to her inability to confess fully. See The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. by S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, EETS Old Series (OS) 212 (Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 7, lines 11 to 23. In Latin this fear was called ‘pusillanimitas’ (‘faintheartedness, cowardness, despondency’) and later came to be called ‘scrupulosity’. Hilton uses the term sparingly in the text (Epistola 249–51). At the opening of A Pystille ‘trubulde and taryde’ (A Pystille 5) translates Latin ‘anxiatus’ (Epistola 331). When the Latin reads ‘Miscere enim debis cum absintheo doloris mel deuote oracionis, ne pusillanimis efficiaris’ (‘You have to mix the honey of devout prayer with the absynth of grief, so that you do not prove scrupulous.’) (Epistola 579–80), this is rendered in English as ‘an euen hert is þat þat kepes hymself in a gode mene bitwene despayre and presumpcion, melled togyder wyth þe bytter wormode of sorowe of hys synnes, þe swete hony of deuote prayer’ (A Pystille 339–41). This concern with what came to be seen as a vice is a late medieval and early modern development, discussed at length by Jean Gerson in De remediis contra pusillanimitatem and the Syon Brigittine William Bonde in The directory of conscience (1527), later reprinted as A devote treatyse to them that ben tymorouse and fearefull in conscience (1534). Gerson describes the vice as follows: ‘Qui pusillanimis est et pavidus, cavere sibi debet a nimio timore. Si enim cor suum et naturalia sequitur, ad desperationem vel nimian mentis dejectionem perveniet.’ (‘Those who are fainthearted and fearful ought to beware of a too great fear. For when they follow their heart and their natural inclinations, they will come to despair or to a too great dejection of thought and spirit.’) See Palémon Glorieux (ed.), Jean Gerson: Œuvres Complètes, vol. 10 (Paris, Tournai: Desclée, 1960–73), p. 537. (English translation mine.) Bonde’s works can be found on eebo.chadwyck. com/home. See www.bl.uk (accessed 13 December 2016). Also see Hanna, Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose, p. xvi. In the Brepolis Database of Latin Dictionaries, Blaise Medieval lists ‘pauperes Christi, le premier nom des Chartreux’ (‘Christ’s poor, the first name of the Carthusians’) as the second meaning for the entry ‘pauper’. Elisabeth Dutton, Julian of Norwich: The Influence of Late Medieval Devotional Compilations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), p. 3. In her definition of what a compilation is, Dutton adds that source texts (apart from biblical and patristic quotations or allusions) usually remain un­ acknowledged. Middle English Dictionary (MED) entry ‘article’: 1. (a) a separate item (in a set of rules, doctrines, provisions etc.), 2. (a) a paragraph or passage (as in a document or book). See the electronic Middle English Dictionary online at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (© The Regents of the University of Michigan, 2001). MED entry ‘doute’: 1. (b) a question. This is the only instance in which the friend’s question is not explicitly addressed. For a table of how the translator’s selections compare to the Latin see Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Works, vol. 2, pp. 323–5. Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Works, vol. 2, p. 305. Epistola, 360–5. Epistola, 365–6. Epistola, 378–81. Epistola, 382–3. Epistola, 383–90. In Hilton’s Latin, this sentence is more explicit: ‘Dimissum est peccatum tuum per contricionem, et tamen teipse humiliare debes per confescionem’ (‘Your sin is taken away by contrition, and yet you have to humble yourself through confession.’) (Epistola, 395–6). Epistola, 390–6 and 399–401. Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Works, pp. 426–7. Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Works, p. 427.

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51 52

Thomas H. Bestul (ed.), Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, TEAMS Middle English Text Series (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2000), p. 146, 309–16. Clark and Taylor, Walter Hilton’s Latin Works, 428. As a detailed discussion of Hilton’s treatment confession, and of scruples about incomplete confession is outside the scope of this chapter, I will return to it elsewhere.

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5 ‘So to interpose a little ease’: Northern Hermit-lit RALPH HANNA

I

A

s Rotha M. Clay showed a century ago, a prodigious number of medieval English men and women sought not instruction but severely specialised devotions. These were typically associated, in keeping with St Benedict’s definitions at the head of his Rule, with a self-imposed way of life that required a greater rigour than even that normally expected of monks. Although such practices were scarcely unique within England, in the north the eremitic life seems to have particularly appealed as a form of religious expression, both biographically and imaginatively. Perhaps the ruggedness and poverty of the region made it appear a modern model of the ‘desert’ into which the first Egyptian hermits had exiled themselves.1 Of course, the most famous late medieval hermit-practitioner from the north, Richard Rolle, the ‘hermit of Hampole’, who died in 1349, was very well known in his own lifetime. This is perhaps particularly the case because of the sometimes strident self-presentation that marks his writings; his role as instructor, particularly to holy women; and depictions in the Office prepared for his possible canonisation.2 But behind and around Rolle depictions of this issue – how is exceptional holiness preserved, when the only way it achieves notice and influence would appear to challenge the ‘desert of solitude’ the hermit ostensibly seeks? – pervade accounts of the hermit life. I here offer three northern vignettes illustrative of the issues and the various forms of their negotiation. At least one constant underlying these widely dispersed accounts is the career of the patron of the north (and, in particular, of the haliwerfolc (‘the saint’s people’) of Durham), St Cuthbert (634–87). The great saint of southern England, Thomas Becket, vigorously defended the rights of the Church against monarchic incursion; his northern compeer sought withdrawal from all human (not just administrative) engagement to a stormy island in the North Sea. Yet, according to his biographers, well before he had settled on Farne, Cuthbert was engaged in an episode that, in many respects, defines the goals and difficulties of northern eremiticism. This is the extraordinary account that comprises chapter 10 of Bede’s Vita Cuthberti.3 In a variety of ways, the episode is proleptic, long preceding Cuthbert’s eventual retire­ ment. He is called by the influential St Ebbe to instruct the nuns and monks of her ‘double monastery’ at Coldingham (Berwickshire, then part of the kingdom of Northumbria), and

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offers them stimulating teaching. But at night, he leaves the monastery, walks into the frigid North Sea and spends the time until matins in prayer, the water lapping round his neck. On leaving the sea, he is greeted on the beach by a pair of otters, who seek to dry and warm his feet. The entire episode is witnessed by a ‘spy’, a monk who has followed Cuthbert, and whom, at the end, he pardons, in return for his promise to tell no one what he has seen. Bede concludes the episode by comparing Cuthbert to the transfigured Jesus, who extracts a similar vow of silence from his apostles at Matt. 17:9. This narrative obviously displays Cuthbert as a man accustomed to superhuman exer­ tions. In essence, he never sleeps and never ceases some spiritual exercise or another: ‘Qui cum more sibi solito, quiescentibus noctu caeteris, ad orationem solus exiret’ (‘Accord­ing to his accustomed practice, while others were asleep at night, he went out alone to pray’). He prays persistently through the night, does not stop when he returns to shore, and only leaves off private devotions so that he can attend matins with the rest of the house at Coldingham. A much later account may wish to imply that he has managed, in the course of the night, to say a full weekly office.4 Of course, Cuthbert’s literal enactment of Matt. 26:41 (‘vigilate et orate, ut non intres in temptationem’ (‘Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation’)) is scarcely the most compelling feature of the account, nor the most revelatory description of eremitic behaviour it offers. The visit to Coldingham engages Cuthbert in constant activity, teaching and preaching to the brothers and sisters throughout the day; his night-time orations are enforced by his busyness at other times. The passage describes an alternation between, on the one hand, a compelled social role – and Cuthbert’s sense, far from universally shared by all in his status, of graciousness in fulfilling it – and those private deeds that will answer his perceived personal needs. Thus, he is engaged in a peculiarly liminal set of procedures, an alternation of perhaps evanescent social responsibilities and deeply felt private ones, what I have elsewhere described, in a slightly different eremitical context, as an ‘interposition’ of tasks.5 In private, self-directed terms, one should see this narrative as proleptic, predicting the retirement to Farne some years hence. Here Cuthbert does not simply pray, but very literally en-island-s himself in the sea, uses what should be the rest time of darkness to construct a different space of withdrawn ‘rest’, an impromptu hermitage. His eremus ‘desert’ is a distinctly ad lib construction, a model of timely withdrawal to the cell of himself and of the waves (and yet not out of sight of Ebbe’s large foundation that demands his spiritual talents by day). This behaviour is not original, and it is possible to say where Cuthbert had been inspired in such devotions. Bede’s Dryhthelm, the man who returned from the dead with a vision of the otherworld, subsequently became a recluse at Melrose, the house where Cuthbert entered the life according to rule. Dryhthelm ‘accepit . . . locum mansionis secretiorem, ubi liberius continuis orationibus famulatui sui Conditoris uacaret’; . . . ‘super ripam fluminis erat situs’ (‘he received a more removed place in which to live, where he might very freely have opportunity for continuous prayers as a servant of his Creator . . . It was situated on the bank of a river’). Dryhthelm’s regular immersions at this site also offer an important gloss upon Cuthbert’s imitation: ‘ob magnam castigandi corporis affectum ingredi’; ‘infatigabili caelestium bonorum desiderio corpus senile . . . domabat’ (‘he entered ([the water] because of his great desire to discipline his body; he tamed his elderly body from an unceasing desire for heavenly benefits’).6 This Melrose practice is thus not

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simply benign prayer, but prayer of a rigorously self-chastening and penitential cast; in contrast to Cuthbert’s daytime occupations, it acknowledges the worshipper, not as the figure of perfected learning and practice, but as hapless sinner, adrift in the turbulence of the world, in need of the divine support his prayer enlists. So far as one can tell, Cuthbert remains divinely absorbed, in prayerful meditation, through the entire experience Bede describes. However, he is far from alone here, but remains, just as in daylight, an object of apparently ceaseless observation. On the one hand, built into the scene is some possibility of misinterpretation, reflective of a general querulousness about eremiticism. The monk who follows Cuthbert, and then observes him for the full night, must be doing so out of some suspicion that, having sought the security of night (and not the monastic church), the holy man must actually be engaged in something nefarious – bedding down with one of the nuns? Misusing some bit of com­­munal property? Only that suspiciousness motivates this figure’s subsequent fear and his pursuit of Cuthbert’s pardon. In any event, he must be copiously embarrassed to find that the only kisses and strokes the hermit receives fall upon his feet and come from his other observers. Balancing the spy’s suspicious reading of eremitic activities is the offering of tongues, pelts and the little webbed feet of the otters. Rather than quer­ ulous, they further testify to Cuthbert’s sanctity, commend his union with God’s creation. The otters accept Cuthbert, en-island-ed in the sea, as natural, as one among themselves, a creature/creation of God naturally engaged in its proper element. For the saint, this means immersion in the acknowledgement of his natural limitation and of his need for divine support. Of course, spy and otters mirror one another. The sea creatures follow Cuthbert out of the water they share, just as the spy followed him out of the communal space of the monas­ tery. Both, like the apostles, who prostrate themselves before the transfigured Jesus (evoked in Bede’s citation of Matt. 17), eventually cast themselves, in worshipful acknowledge­ ment, before the holy man, ‘strata in arena’/’strauit in terram’ (‘cast themselves down in the sand/he cast himself to the earth’)]. Yet the two prostrations, of love and of guilt, are also causally related. The otters at Cuthbert’s feet, after all, recall another gospel image of abnegation and worship, Mary Magdalene anointing the feet of the seated Jesus. Especially because that is a feminised image, they trope the indoor enthusiasm and adulation Cuthbert has been receiving from Ebbe and her community. Their furry gesture remains somehow doubly proleptic, sign of both divine approval and commendation, as well as of the undue (he would think) admiration the modestly contrite Cuthbert might receive as a result. Thus, the conclusion of Bede’s account comes to focus upon a doubled embarrassment. On the one hand, the sneaky observer of Cuthbert’s rites turns penitent. Because he (quite wrongly) ‘nil dubitans illum [Cuthbert] nosse quid ipse noctu egerit’ (‘didn’t doubt that Cuthbert knew what he had done in the night’), he is terrified at the likely response of an angered perfect man, whom he construes as necessarily omniscient, not totally absorbed in his devotions. He expects a response like those sometimes offered by the crusty masters in the ‘Verba seniorum’,7 not the sweetness everywhere associated with Cuthbert. At the chapter’s end, the observing monk seeks absolution from the saint, and Cuthbert extends his forgiveness in return for the penance of silence. The watcher may tell no one what he has seen while the hermit lives (and he follows through, but publicises the experience after Cuthbert is dead).

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This embarrassment is in some way mutual. The watcher has assumed that Cuthbert is ‘up to something’, sneaking about in the dark to engage in some vanity or sinfulness. Cuthbert is embarrassed because he has been observed in a flamboyant acknowledgement of his own sinfulness, and he knows that his social authority, which distracts him from the asceticism that he believes his soul requires, will be enhanced by the discovery of what he knows as his own imperfection. In this dramatic context, the specific penance he enjoins concerns the silence that is supposed to surround eremiticism. Insofar as he is an isolate or recluse, the hermit should be withdrawn from language altogether, just as Benedict places hermits outside his Rule. If truly isolate, the hermit’s longing for God cannot be spoken, and his experiences should remain beyond scrutiny. This enjoined silence is linked with Bede’s allusion to the Transfiguration: Cuthbert ‘secutus est exemplum [Christi]’ (‘followed the example of Christ’). Jesus commands the apostles who have seen him not to speak until after the resurrection. In providing this gloss, Bede expresses his actual alienation from being Cuthbert; while he extravagantly seeks to commend the saint, he entraps him in a textual nexus that misrepresents the particularity of his character’s experience. Bede subjects this vignette to a variety of ‘subl(im)ation’, which although apt, remains in play with a Cuthbertian parody, which at every point resists assimilation to that textualisation Bede asserts. In virtually every narrative detail one imagines within his control, Cuthbert asserts his distance from that textual model Bede’s account seeks to impose. Jesus walked on the waves and did not fall into them (as did the insufficiently faithful Peter and the immersed Cuthbert). He was revealed ‘in monte’, not along a low shore beneath the cliff where Coldingham is situated. He has chosen his companions (James his brother, the favourite disciple John and Peter the rock), not been spied upon. He is illuminated, and Cuthbert surely bedraggled.8 These deliberate variations underwrite very different self-representations. Jesus’s in­­­ junction to silence represents a demand that he be accepted as Son through faith alone, and in the absence of any sign of divinity. Hence, the Transfiguration runs smoothly into the ensuing gospel anecdote, where he charges a ‘generatio incredula et perversa’ (‘a faithless and perverse generation’) (Matt. 9:16). Jesus addresses the absence of faith in the world, just as he will do, when, resurrected, he allows Thomas to search his wounds. But if Jesus perceives a world lacking faith and in need of a new revelation, Cuthbert’s sense of his status is precisely the reverse, a penitential understanding of his own imper­ fection and dependence. Jesus wants to instil faith, while Cuthbert is oppressively aware of the excessive credulity inspired by others’ perception of his wisdom/virtue/guru-hood. He might be able to convince himself that the otters express only a natural affinity for another waterbound critter, but surely he must recognise it as a sign. This he is unwilling to accept as any permanent benediction; if an affirmation of his clearly extraordinary sanctity, it must be shrouded, preserved by silence, until God chooses to affirm and show forth his merit after death. Until that fulfilment, eremitical charisma can only appear as what is, for the hermit, distraction, his entry into a public world. Correspondingly, the valuable ‘interposed’ life, the paradoxically harsh meditative ‘ease’, must be cloaked, hidden from language.

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II If Cuthbert’s experience exposes the strains to which holiness might be exposed, for others eremiticism was both less problematic and considerably more charismatic. One might consider in this regard the case of St Robert Flower of Knaresborough (d. 1218). While Robert’s lives, Latin and English, repeatedly emphasise his exemplary and inspir­ ational piety, they also represent a figure of remarkable devotional single-mindedness.9 Robert, a figure more closely resembling modern expectations of the hermetic life, a later-day Desert Father, is seldom represented apart from his cave on the cliff overlooking the gorge of the river Nidd. Given such behaviour, it is probably predictable that his cult, enthusiastic as it may have been, never extended very far outside his locality.10 His vita presents Robert as a precociously devout youth. From the opening of the account, ‘cepit in perfeccione Dei perfectissimus esse’ (‘he began to be God’s most perfect in his perfection’) (ch. 1), and his status as a thorough ‘perfectus’ or ‘electus’ (‘perfect or God’s chosen’) is never queried. At the same time, this perfection remains unapproachable in any particular detail; the account is punctuated by such repeated authorial apologies as ‘Multa de tanto patre narrari possunt, sed tamen plurima preteribuntur, quia non contingit uni alicui scire cuncta que per illum Deus operatum est’ (‘Many things might be related of such a father, but most will nonetheless be omitted, because no one happened to know all the things that God wrought through him’) (ch. 9). Whatever model Robert provides, this has been enacted so privately as to escape even an exceedingly interested hagiographer. As a result, Robert’s devotions emerge only in their generality, ‘incredibili se ieiunio et abstinencia maceraret, die nocteque vigiliis et oracionibus insistendo’ (‘he would exhaust himself through an unbelievable fasting and abstinence’) (ch. 8), again a repeated phrasing. Chapter 5 provides a few instantiations of these practices, eating bread from meal mixed with 20 per cent ashes or wearing ‘una solummodo cuculla, que pocius nuditatem corporis cooperiret quam vitalem corporis calorem exhiberet’ (‘just a hood alone, that would only cover his bare body, rather than sustain its life-giving heat’). Robert’s spiritual life then comes to have its appeal, not as a form of practice for emulation – that is apparently unapproachable – but insofar as it displays Robert in the process of enacting generically recognisable topics. On the one hand, Robert is presented as fulfilling the most severe commands of the gospels. On the other, a considerable amount of detail connects Robert with eremitical perfection by alluding to episodes in recognised accounts. This latter portrayal extends so far, as Golding points out, as the most famous scene of the life (and that depicted in a Dale abbey window), ploughing with the deer who had trampled his corn; the episode combines elements from earlier accounts of Cuthbert and Giles.11 The life presents Robert engaged in a series of withdrawals from anything resembling human contact (or a scrutiny that would render him ‘narratable’). At the opening of his career, he leaves behind his prosperous Anglo-Scandinavian family in York, ‘parentibus inconsultis . . . confugit . . . Knaresburgo’ (‘without asking his parents’ permission, he fled to Knaresborough’) (ch. 3).12 Again, in chapter 11, he rejects the aid offered by his brother, who hopes to construct him a better refuge than a cave. Both these acts instantiate Jesus’s severe commandment that apostleship demands abandoning one’s family (Matt. 10:35–38, 19:29). Another early withdrawal (ch. 4) responds to a double attack, both forms perceived as equally insidious. On the one hand, attacked by thieves, Robert is

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equally unwilling to be the constant recourse of those admiring his sanctity and seeking his council (cf. the ‘plebis strepitu[s]’ (‘the mob’s noise’), ch. 9). Here the biographer cites a version of Matt. 10:23: ‘Si vos persecuti sunt homines in una civitate, fugite ad aliam’ (‘When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another’).13 Equally, Robert resists what Holdsworth identifies as ‘the slide of cenobitism’,14 the possible appropriation of his sanctity by a group, a religious order. The narrative account is framed by two rejections even of Cistercian practice, traditionally severe. At the opening of his career, Robert abandons Newminster (Northumberland) for the Knaresborough hermit ‘quendam vitam arciorem sub rupe ducentem’ (‘who was leading a more severe life in a cave’) (ch. 3), and just before his death, he prophetically warns against allowing the monks of Fountains to remove him, as they in fact attempt to do, from his chosen resting place to become a prominent relic benefitting their house (chs 22, 24). Early on, he commits himself fully to a retired role as hermit after briefly and ineffectually attempting to reform his hosts, the Benedictines of Hedley, ‘mallens in herimo cum feris in furoribus habitare quam cum fratribus malignis’ (‘wishing rather to live in a hermitage with ferocious wild beasts than with evil brothers’) (ch. 5). As the hagiographer obligingly points out, his decision follows the words of St Paul (2 Cor. 11:26).15 Indeed, the Cistercians of Fountains might be specifically seen as ‘anti-Roberts’, since the history of the house echoes the hermit’s personal history. Fountains was founded by dissidents from the great Benedictine monastery in Robert’s hometown, St Mary’s, York, a group who withdrew (to a site not so removed from Knaresborough) to practice an ‘arcior vita’ (‘a straiter life’) – but who then grew rich as sheepherders. Moreover, however resistant he was to the Cistercians, we ironically only know Robert through yet further appropriation; his site and cult were taken over, before 1250, by a Trinitarian house, presumably the persons responsible for London, British Library, MS Egerton 3143 (c.1470–90, Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English [LALME], Linguistic Profile [LP] 53), which provides what is virtually his sole textual trace. Yet, in the vita, Robert’s claim to attention is not limited to his perfect (and perfectly incomprehensible) private devotions. If the communal life is corrupt, Robert replaces it with an alternate community, a good deal more wide-ranging than simply his cave in the rock. This is comprised of those who should benefit from monastic hospitality, but who, in the Knaresborough area, remain unaccommodated. Robert is servant to the poor and destitute, and his requisite eremitic labours include supplying these disadvantaged people with food, from fields that he scratches out of the royal Forest of Knaresborough. This aspect of Robert’s ‘life’ is particularly explicit about a feature of all hermit lives, but one customarily occluded. Both that form of retirement in which Robert indulges and his service to the local poor require a support community. On the one hand, the only public actions visible in the life concern Robert’s pursuit of patronal support to underwrite his work as voluntary almoner – negotiating the donation of lands and a barn from a great lady, or the right to farm in a game preserve from the constable of Knaresborough, William de Stuteville. Moreover, leaving aside the episode of forcing unruly deer to plough peniten­ tially, Robert, busy in his devotions, appears to serve the poor only by proxy. At one point ‘his’ eleemosynary agricultural enterprises are carried out by four servants (ch. 6); in particular, he depends upon a steward, Yvo, called to his service in language echoic of Jesus calling the apostles to become ‘fishers of men’ (chs 12–13; cf. Matt. 4:18–19).16 In another famous scene (ch. 20), Robert so rudely and completely rejects the visiting King

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John that Yvo must remind him to ask the king for alms for his poor men; in the life, Robert’s spiritual purity is preserved and sustained through the offices of others.17 Thus, Robert’s power resides in his imagination of an appropriate service to a com­­ munity, not in either its execution or administration. This constructive imagining is closely associated with his forest locale, implicitly a vision of a pacified wild and a model of an extended civility that exceeds secular boundaries and norms every bit as much as monastic ones. Early on (ch. 8), Robert is accused, not of supporting the poor, but of harbouring thieves; social perceptions of wilderness are at odds with the actuality he has constructed. Robert, both publicly and privately, is invested in acts of ‘domesticity’; he not only tames wild beasts to human use, but instructs unduly aggressive men into an appropriate civility (most notably Stuteville, who repents in ch. 10 for his earlier persecution of the hermit). The text persistently extolls a wilderness imagined as tranquil, not feral, most notably in its constant evocation of Isaiah 65:25, Robert’s messianic transformation of wild wolves into meek lambs. In very nearly his last act (ch. 21), Robert rejects the appropriation of the new civil forest he has constructed into even established local institutions, the parochial system operative in the town of Knaresborough: ‘nequaquam se de novis assertis sive de novalibus et de eleemosinis pauperum deberet decimare’ (‘Knaresborough should never take tithe from new assarts or newly ploughed fields, nor from the alms given the poor’).18 Correspondingly, as a man of imagination, rather than public activity, Robert is best known through interruption. In the text, one is most apt to see his indescribable devotions only as they are disrupted, as they are by King John’s visit. Robert endures persistent intrusion, invasion and incursion, and only becomes known through his responses to these distractions. With men and beasts, he is prone to reveal to his adversaries the best selves that they have forgotten, to demonstrate to them that the behaviours they have practised are in essence disguises, ill-considered assumptions of wildness, to be surrendered for cooperative behaviours. (In dealing with the incorrigible devil, in contrast, Robert can only see through disguise, not redeem it.) The hermit has constructed a new world, rehabili­ tated waste to new organisations and purposes from which he is himself largely estranged.

III I introduce my third exhibit, the Newcastle hermit John Lacy, through an unusual painting – although one that comes from the commonest surviving genre of medieval books, known variously as ‘primer’, Horae beate virginis, or ‘book of hours’. This example of the basic book for private prayer is now Oxford, St John’s College, MS 94, the painting at fol. 16v.19 Perhaps its most immediately obvious feature is the modern distaste that it has stimulated, its expunged crucifix – which may have included some devotional material deemed unsuitable in the sixteenth century, e.g. a name of Jesus or a sacred heart. Certainly, from any medieval perspective, it is a standard depiction of the Crucifixion, with quite usual spatial proportions, the Cross flanked by the Blessed Virgin, here bearing a jar (with unguents for the interment), and St John with a book, his gospel. This much of the painting appeals to conventional and commonplace devotional im­­­ pulses. A viewer is supposed to stare at it, to see that all that pain – both Jesus’s physical suffering and the Virgin and apostle’s anguish – has come about for one’s own sin. The viewer should feel both intensely grateful and thoroughly terrified – how can one ever

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repay Jesus for all that pain on one’s behalf? Such an image is particularly common in non-pictorial form in a ubiquitous sacred space – as the plastic representation atop the rood screen in a parish church (as for example, the early twentieth-century reconstruction in All Saints, North Street, York). This contextualisation might suggest that the defacement here represents an act dating from the period of the enforced destruction of such church furniture, in the years after 1545. However, the painting doubles this devotional object of attention, since the reader/ viewer here coexists with the viewing man at the barred window to the left. This figure provides one customary form of personalising a private prayer book, its owner/patron as orant or worshipper. The expenditure the patron has undertaken already functions as a variety of alms or worship, a pious dedication of assets to his redeemer and the saints depicted. But the painting remains unusual, because it confounds the usual spatial conven­ tions of such depictions, both those in stained glass and in book illustration. Biblical images, like this one, are customarily framed, typically in the recessive distance, while the worship­per usually remains outside the frame. Such a viewer addresses something boxed and clearly imagelike. But here the relations are reversed, the watcher enclosed and the scene made immediate, indeed in a green and lush outdoors, not a barren Golgotha. Moreover, this presentation directs one’s eye to the juncture between the two pictorial spaces. This is the hand holding a scroll, like the crucifix defaced, that protrudes from the imprisoned watcher toward the crucified Lord. So far as it remains legible, the scroll says, ‘Christe, lacy fratris anime . . .’ one expects the subsequent statement to include a verb like ‘miserere’ or ‘propiciare’ (thus, ‘Christ, have mercy on the soul of Brother Lacy’) – which would effect a further transposition, emphatically so in the case of the latter verb. Rather than the worshipper watching the biblical image, the scroll would call upon the depicted lord to look upon the worshipper favourably. The scroll identifying Brother Lacy is further unusual since, as copious information in this book shows, John Lacy is not just the patron, but actually the person who produced both book and image. Only one other English example of a medieval bookartist depicted in his own work survives.20 It is thus important that Lacy presents the scroll, with his own flourished ‘X(riste)’, at the juncture of the two spaces and with the very hands that pro­­ duced both this image and the book. In the illustration, Lacy, through his black habit and tonsure, is identified as a Dominican friar, which he was – in Newcastle-on-Tyne, certainly between 1420 and 1434, and perhaps longer.21 But other references in this book, and in records, make it clear that he was even more strictly engaged. Dominicans are customarily outdoor folk, public preachers, but John Lacy describes himself elsewhere in St John’s MS 94 as ‘anachorita’ or ‘reclused’. He was a hermit, a man dedicated to particularly holy devotion, allowed retirement for a meditative life and struggle against Satan. He should have been enclosed, not dis­­ tracted by an outdoor scene, and, if his experience was like other recorded recluses, he should have known the image he here engages only through an image on the altar of his cell or through a squint, through which he might have seen the church interior from this enclosure.22 English hermits, at least, are expected to labour, and bookmaking and illustration seem to have been John Lacy’s particular devotional work. His vocation would thus appear modelled on that of Carthusian monk-hermits, who found in the physical exertion of

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writing an institutionally mandated spiritual pursuit.23 But at least one further surprise is that neither eremitical nor Dominican poverty impinged upon a lavish outlay on material for this book. Lacy had access to substantial, if not well-finished and slightly heavy vellum; he had a great deal of gold paint and gold leaf, as well as a multiple palette of pigments. The bookpatron hermit was himself patronised – as the seventeenth-century survival of another, probably illustrated, book in his hand would confirm.24 John Lacy’s activity in St John’s MS 94 was multiple and extensive. He did not just copy the expected devotional text here, in the main the Hours of the Virgin with adjoined Office of the Dead and Commendation of Souls. He also copied English texts, at least some of them apparently of his own authorship and intermixing a good deal of Latin, as well as Latin marginalia and notes. And of course, he illustrated what he had produced. Indeed, one of these original texts, inserted within excerpts from Walter Hilton, as if ‘a chapter’ analogous to those selections, provides a narrative relevant to the image I have been describing, and to its visual space. Lacy here translates from the unpublished exemplum book ‘Convertimini’, composed by another English Dominican, Robert Holcot, and retells a story here misascribed to the great hermit-text, the Vitae patrum. In this account, two brothers enter a monastery, one of them learned and arrogant, the other illiterate and meek/patient. The first is unpopular in the house, the second enthusiastically received. At last, the proud and learned brother asks his sibling how he had acquired his exemplary meekness. The other brother, who cannot read, says he learned from his book, which has only three letters in it – one black, one red, one gold – and that he simply has meditated on the implications of each colour. Black reminds him of the enormity of his sins, which merit damnation and require peniten­ tial prayer; red recalls to him the yet greater extent of God’s redemptive love, as expressed in the freely flowing blood of Jesus on the cross; and gold promises the joys of heaven to which this sorrow and love may bring him.25 If one turns from Lacy’s exemplum to the image Lacy painted, one can see how space is inflected by colour and by the significations assigned to colour in the anecdote. On the left, the black letter of the anecdote is immediately echoed in Lacy’s habit. His ‘imprison­ ment’ in the friary anchorhold constitutes that penitential suffering in this world that he hopes will partially obviate temptation and sin, avoid the eternal prison of hell and set him on the road to golden heaven. From his perspective, the central transaction in which he is engaged focuses on the hands escaping the boundaries of his enclosure – textproduction, book-copying, book illustration as an offering to God that simultaneously acknowledges its maker’s penitential need. Beyond Lacy, there is only colour, in contrast to his relative monochrome. Behind the three figures on the right is a decorative wall of deep red with elaborate gold ink patterning. The red of this background, of course, would have echoed the now-defaced image of the wounded Jesus. Outdoor freedom, honouring God’s love and mercy, recedes into allusion to something like a wall within the golden court of heaven. One should also notice that Lacy’s scroll-prayer, in the image the overt work of his hands, circles round the traditional late medieval focus of universally available mercy, the Blessed Virgin – and that indeed, most of Lacy’s efforts in this book are directed toward honouring her as a vehicle of mercy. Moreover, the book ceaselessly replays this coloured spatial image. Black Lacy is most universally visible in this book as a text-hand, a copyist. He of course writes mostly in the black ink appropriate for texts. And in the main, these texts are prayers, like the depicted

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Lacy’s, partly for intercession and partly (in the Office of the Dead) in acknowledgement of the eternal pain one’s life has merited, were it not for divine intervention. In contrast to the persistent black text-hand, the book includes a good deal more col­­ oured devotional material. It has a hyper-illustrated sequence of suffrages (fols 1–9v, 16rv), prayers that seek further intercession from selected (often somewhat unusual) saints.26 Moreover, Lacy regularly (and hyperbolically) decorates every major text opening – with full borders that enclose champe initials – those composed of blue and red grounds with gold leaf capital – and foliate and floral patterns in a greenish palette embracing gold bar borders. Lacy’s penitential script (and in the book’s liturgical portions, it is a laborious large clear textura) thus is enclosed by a visual signal of his hope. Black death opposes the green vegetative life of the border ornament, and that ornament holds in suspension two signs of redemptive promise: Jesus’s red blood, half the field on which floats the golden champe – just as in the exemplum, a letter – promising the joys of paradise. The decorative and rewarding outside, the border, ornaments and rewards the enclosed penitential acts. Indeed, probably the last thing Lacy wrote in his book (although it does not appear at the end, as the volume is bound, but at fols 101v–2) was a message to an audience, his readers. This English statement is entirely inscribed in letters of gold, the mark of the scribe-limner’s hope that, with further intercessory prayer, he might achieve his desired salvation.27 This concluding message also re-enforces the implications of the painting with which I began. In the painting, the viewer is displaced from Lacy’s perspective and sees more than the depicted hermit; at the centre of the image stands, not Jesus nor Lacy, but the scroll that enlists the viewer’s prayer. This golden subscription for the volume raises an issue that echoes one inherent in the illustration of the imprisoned orant. Lacy’s claustration there looks into something like a world (even extending to imagining the reddish-brown colour of the friary walls he spatially cannot see). Much of the external historical trappings of being John Lacy would imagine isolation, not thought for an extended public, nor social engagement. But the book invites one to imagine through it social relations, over and above what one would associate with the Newcastle reclusory or the penitential life of a hermit. Rather than barred cell, Lacy inhabited a space traversed by traces of a larger world. The subscription describes the St John’s manuscript as having two sets of users, one actual, one only potential: ‘Ion Lacy . . . þat wrooth þis book and lymned hit to his awne vse and aftur to othur, in exitynge hem to deuocion and preyers to God.’ Even as he performs the devotional act of writing and painting, Lacy remains aware of an expand­­­ing circle of devotion. His holy ‘exit[acion]’ would give a model for other Christians’ performance, and his selection of contents and illustration speak, not simply to his own devotional needs but to what he imagines as valuable to others. Moreover, the subscription requires that this imagined audience, considered a universal one, use the book whole: ‘neuer man ne woman lete departe þe Engeliche from þe Latyn, for diuers causes þat been good and lawful to my felynge.’28 Although this statement addresses all Christians, and thus persons who might be of limited Latinity, Lacy requires this potential audience to emulate his devotional experience whole. This injunction is consonant with the suggestions inscribed in Lacy’s reading of the commandment to keep the Sabbath,29 a passage better known for its lively invocation of the sins of the tavern.30 There Lacy requests that his lay instructional audience fill their

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entire Sunday with holy activity – the morning, with divine service; the afternoon, with works of mercy. The latter, as Lacy imagines them at this moment, do not involve common­ place almsgiving, for which he assumes his audience may not have the resources. Rather, they should perform spiritual works of mercy, offering consolation and comfort to those in spiritual need. This, once again, is vernacular ‘holy conversation’, here en­­­couraging others in hardship to persist in faith and hope in God’s comfort. In its texts, Latin for morning service and English for consoling others, the book provides materials for both occasions, and both are required of an apparently rather humble audience of limited means. Ultimately, however, Lacy developed a different strategy for the imagined social presence in Newcastle that this text implies. In 1434, fourteen years after he had limned the painting that inspires my discussion, someone wrote into the book instructions for its use after Lacy’s death. These are a good deal more conventional than the lending library imagined in the golden subscription, yet perhaps more effectual. Lacy bequeathed the volume to be the perpetual possession of a priest in the Newcastle parish, St Nicholas – first to the chaplain Roger Stonysdale, and then in turn to his successors.31 This bequest may involve a further trace through Lacy’s cell, that he may have known Roger and offered him direct, conversational instruction as his spiritual guide. Through the bequest, Lacy insures the book’s sustained use, as a devotional object, returned to for prayer and comforting instruction. But more importantly for the hermit, both subscription and bequest begin with a request for prayers. The book remains a memorial that enjoins that perpetual intercession that Lacy repeatedly indicates is required for the health of his soul. It constructs a community of devotion extending into eternity.32 A considerable part of the book, as I have already indicated, certainly has been selected to guide Lacy’s devotions. This includes, not simply the volume’s liturgical materials, but a substantial portion of the English texts that fill three of Lacy’s booklets. These English materials both differ from and resemble the book’s Latin. The pages here are text-packed and in a smaller, less formal script than the statuesque presentation of liturgical materials. However, St John’s MS 94 remains among the most opulent surviving manu­ scripts of Middle English instructional materials, since the decorative programme of borders and champes continues. Although Lacy probably composed much of the English here, supplementing and annotating it in Latin, one substantial block of material (fols 128v–44v) is comprised of received texts known elsewhere. Here Lacy copies selections from a translation of (ps.-) Jerome’s letter ‘ad Demetriadem’ and selected parts of Hilton’s ‘Eight chapters on per­­ fection’. (The exemplum discussed above is buried in this portion.) These received texts represent a single genre, and one purposively shaped, since the texts have been selectively excerpted. The selections are drawn from sophisticated guides to the life of perfection, generally as practised in a regular clerical context. They are strongly ‘professional’ texts and will have been intended for hortatory personal use, providing the sort of positive injunctions that would sustain Lacy in his penitential life. The remaining English materials, however, might imply that the Newcastle Dominican reclusory imitated more closely Lacy’s depicted image than any anchoritic cell one might choose to imagine. Lacy’s space might not at all have resembled the enclosed northeast corner of the parish church of adjacent Chester-le-Street, County Durham, ‘the anchor­ house’. Instead, it might have been a space open to the world and thus, to the possibility of incursion or traversal.

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Lacy’s original English texts differ in kind from those one imagines he copied for his own spiritual edification. In this case a part of Lacy’s penitential exertions, his original English compositions are designed to serve others. Without exception, these materials are catechetical – and catechetical in a manner rather retardataire at their date of com­­ position: an explanation of the Decalogue; a set of instructional lists (the seven deadly sins, etc.); materials, verse and prose, on confession. These would represent staple items in books produced perhaps fifty to seventy-five years previous. The texts he composed or translated provide materials for the most challenged and needy audience of parochial Christians, not those engaged in serious spiritual devotions. Lacy’s decalogue (fols 120ra–7va) forms a fully separable chunk from the remainder and may have remained portable until the book was finally bound. It mixes analysis with relatively impassioned direct address of a varied general audience.33 Further, it includes regular switches from English to untranslated Latin citations (a good deal of this as marginal addition, extra relevant materials that occurred to Lacy after initial composition). These Latin insertions do not simply provide biblical proof texts, but, like Speculum Christiani, patristic citations. Some include materials distinctly learned, at a couple of points citations from ‘glossa’. Once in English, Lacy bows to another Dominican, a not especially widely known academic, ‘a gret clerke Kylwarby’.34 Not only this citation, like that of Holcot, reaffirms Lacy’s ordinal identity; the decalogue tract appears as if it might have been prepared to prompt another friar’s oral public use. These various negotiations imply that at least one track through Lacy’s enclosure was left by imagining persons relatively ignorant, in spiritual terms, and taking selfless steps to insure their edification, and thus salvation. But rather than personal contacts, these may have been mediated through the actions of another friar. At least one moment in the decalogue tract implies that this text, in the main directed to instilling ‘good consciens’ in ordinary Christians, responds to a further trace traversing Lacy’s cell. Like the story derived from Holcot, Lacy’s decalogue includes a small number of narrative exempla, a form always associated with mendicant preaching. One of these is presented, not as literary anecdote but orally communicated event: ‘I þat wrot þis booke spake oones with a man of perfeccion and of credens þat tolde to me of a ȝenge man and of a ȝenge woman’.35 The story, concerning a slandered woman who refuses, on her deathbed, to forgive her traducer, and who is thereby damned, instantiates the need for that absolutely pure con­­ science the decalogue, in Lacy’s presentation, requires. The account comes from another man, in this case heralded as an adept, and implies that another experienced Dominican may have served as Lacy’s counsellor or confessor. Thus, the vignette further demonstrates the modest sociability of the black/sinful Dominican hermit, open to advice from others. His effort to respond to being instructed supports that of instructing and offering others spiritual counsel; it again invokes the self-abnegation associated with feelings of im­­­ perfection in the claustrated pursuit of perfection. Yet a further extraneous track across the cell is a bit more surprising. As I have men­­ tioned, St John’s MS 94 honours a number of saints. Some of these would occasion no surprise in Lacy’s northern context – Cuthbert or Oswald, for example. But like Lacy’s English, which is a hybrid language, only some of its elements the expected northern, Lacy’s devotions were mixed. His northern sponsors alternate with a set, most particularly repeated references to St Winifred, that points, as do aspects of Lacy’s language, to Lichfield diocese.36 Moreover, these devotions, extending beyond prayer to universally honoured

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or specifically northern saints, interface with more surprising details – a blazon, painted under Lacy’s gold leaf subscription to the book (fol. 101v) and names added to the calendar to memorialise the deaths of family members. In both cases, these details point toward Lacy as just that, a member of a line of people named Lacy who remained important to him. The blazon is a ‘differenced’ version of the arms of Lacy, a Norman noble family active in Herefordshire, their seat at Ewyas Lacy, and in the Ludlow area from the late eleventh century, and it is probably no coincidence that their arms, ‘gules et or’ (‘red and gold’), echo the colour pattern I have outlined. The arms may indicate the hermit’s descent from a Lacy cadet branch that originated in Kinlet, northern Shrophshire, within Lichfield diocese.37 This genealogical information is reenforced by the obits for John Lacy’s parents, John and Tilot, added to the calendar (8 March). Beyond a multiple interest in instruction, Lacy’s cell was traversed by, it would appear, a certain familial devotion. The hermit did not work just to illustrate and hopefully obliterate his own black sinfulness. He equally sought to insure his salvation through being instructed by and instructing others, and he looked forward to a gift of Jesus’s loving ‘gules’ blood that would grant a golden (‘or’) joy in heaven – yet not alone, as ostensibly in his cell, but surrounded by his earthly lineage. As the image with which I began would indicate, John Lacy anchorite inhabited a space variously fractured. All these ‘case studies’ enact what one might see as a double-bind in eremetic practice. This is, of course, predicated upon the definition of that ‘exceptional holiness’ eremiticism is alleged to embody, the pursuit of perfection. Yet from this perspective, for the hermit, perfection is always sought, never achieved. The prospect always necessarily recedes, and the hermit’s perception is ‘never quite enough’. He is burdened with the persistent self-awareness of failure and the consequent need for further exertion. This self-awareness, as Cuthbert and his otters shows, enacts a striking reversal. That is, reclusion, absence from the world and the world’s scrutiny, is only metaphorical. The actual hermitage or cell only functions as a sign indicative of desire (a fact lost on the Percies with their opulent chapel-hermitage at Warkworth). The ‘real’ hermitage is internal, the perfect spiritual cell – but one of inactualisation, of abnegation and not achievement. Simultaneously, engrossment in individual ‘self-improvement’ is equally perilous, potentially a temptation to pride. Something approaching perfect charity should imagine – as Jesus’s gospel mission did – not simply love of God but love of neighbour as well. (Consider one of St Robert’s ‘signature moments’, his crabby Vitae patrum type response to King John that forgets to seek aid for ‘his people’.) If the hermit remains imperfect, he differs only in degree from the less-than-perfect worldly folk who surround him. Thus, self-discipline, in the absence of contact with an imperfect Christian community and efforts to offer it succour, risks spiritual egocentrism. The hermit’s increasing self-discipline and self-knowledge only achieve fulfilment as spiritual counsel to others. Thus he is forced to abandon the ‘true’ cell-self and endure the concomitant danger of that self’s misappropriation.

Notes   1

No one has replaced Clay’s pioneering study, Hermits and Anchorites of Medieval England (London: Methuen, 1914); for the only protracted discussion, see Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and

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 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

10

Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); and, on the institution, Benedict’s comments, cited in Ralph Hanna, ‘Will’s Work’, in Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (eds), Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 23–66, at pp. 26, 55 n.13. Eddie Jones, the custodian of Clay’s notes, has been at work for some years on a global account. Here I have in mind, not so much the accounts of flamboyant biographical incidents as the image presented in leccio 6, where the hermit continues to write even as his cell is invaded by a touristlike company; see Reginald M. Wooley (ed.), The Officium and Miracula of Richard Rolle of Hampole (London: SPCK, 1919), pp. 32–3. See Bertram Colgrave (ed.), Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindisfarne and Bede’s Prose Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), pp. 188–91. Much the same account appears in the earlier (?) ‘Anonymous Life’ 2.3, pp. 79–82; see also Colgrave’s extensive notes on the Irish roots of the devotion described here, pp. 317–20. The episode is illustrated in the most famous manuscript of Bede’s work, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 26, a Durham production of the early twelfth century; see Dominic Marner, St Cuthbert: His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 69. A much later Durham account, an English verse life, J. T. Fowler (ed.), The Life of St Cuthbert in English Verse, Surtees Society 87 (Durham: Andrews, 1891) (IMEV [Index of Middle English Verse] 2879, LALME LP 13), repeats Bede’s narrative at lines 1639–714. This manuscript is probably also from Durham Cathedral Priory, since the manuscript, British Library, MS Egerton 3309, has the signature of John Richardson and later belonged to the recusant Howards of Naworth (Cumberland), both well-attested conduits for books from the institution; see further A. I. Doyle, ‘William Claxton and the Durham Chronicles’, in James P. Carley and Colin G. C. Tite (eds), Books and Collectors 1200–1700: Essays Presented to Andrew Watson (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 335–55. This appears as the text explaining one ‘cartoon’ on an illustrated panel, from the late fifteenth century, at Carlisle Cathedral: ‘Her stude he nakyd in þe se | To all Dauid psalter sayd had he’ (Life of St Cuthbert in English Verse, p. 11). The customary weekly office includes the full Psalter. These panels are modern confections; the images originally formed the backs of separate stools for the Carlisle chapter, and in them, the Cuthbert cycle appeared in distinguished company, with other sequences honouring Augustine and the hermit Antony. For the classic discussion of such hermit multitasking and alternation of duties, see Henry MayrHarting, ‘The Functions of a Twelfth-Century Recluse’, History, 60 (1975), 337–52. On this issue, and a variety of concerns associated with the eremitical life, cf. Hanna, ‘Will’s Work’, pp. 38–43, with abundant further references. See Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (eds), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 5.12, esp. pp. 496–9. Or from Dryhthelm, whose exertions are apparently well known and attract comment, to which he responds rather caustically. Cf. Matt. 17:2: ‘Transfiguratus est ante eos, et resplenduit facies eius sicut sol. Vestimenta autem eius facta sunt alba sicut nix’ (‘And he was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as snow’). Especially given that Jesus here appears with Moses and Elijah (the traditional forerunner of the Messiah), the episode represents Matthew’s customary effort at showing the fulfilment of prophecy, plagiary inspired by the ‘horned’ Moses of Exod. 34:29. In general, I follow Paul Grosjean, ‘Vitae S. Roberti Knaresburgensis’, Analecta Bollandiana, 57 (1939), 364–400 (at 375–400), partly reproduced, in a volume also including English and Latin verse versions, Joyce Bazire (ed.), The Metrical Life of St Robert of Knaresborough; Together with the Other Middle English Pieces in British Museum Ms. Egerton 3143, EETS 228 (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 113–28. A couple of removed survivals imply an interest in Robert, but again locally limited, a small area in the northeast Midlands: a stained glass window from Dale abbey (near Derby), described in H. M. Colvin, ‘Medieval Glass from Dale Abbey’, Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and

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11 12

13

14 15

16

17

18

19

20

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Natural History Society, 50 (NS 13) (1939), 129–41, at 138–41; and an apparent record of collections for the Knaresborough shrine from Wollaton (in Nottingham, at the southern extreme of York diocese), in the early sixteenth century, mentioned in Ralph Hanna and Thorlac TurvillePetre (eds), The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers, York Medieval Press (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), p. 106 (item 14). Predictably, Robert has attracted little critical attention. Clay, Hermits, pp. 40–8, discusses him, in conjunction with a much more opulent ‘cave’, the three-vault chapel the Percies had carved out of the stone for family-patronised hermits at Warkworth (Northumberland). Robert Golding, ‘The Hermit and the Hunter’, in John Blair and Brian Golding (eds), The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 95–117, provides an excellent introduction to a variety of salient issues, and there are provocative suggestions in Christopher Holdsworth, ‘Hermits and the Powers of the Frontier’, Reading Medieval Studies, 16 (1990), 55–76. The latter was the original dedicatee of Robert’s cave, a deserted chapel he takes over. His usual surname ‘Flower’ essentially Latinises the cognomen borne by his father, Tóki Flos, itself probably a clipped form of the patronymic Flossasunnr. Similarly, Rolle’s name may represent Scandinavian Hrólfsunnr (cf. modern ‘Rollason’); see Holdsworth, ‘Hermits’, pp. 58–9. The episode appears at much greater length and explicitness (‘duo . . . pericula’) in the ‘vita antiquior’, ch. 5 (‘Vitae’, pp. 369–70). This fragment, allegedly composed from reports offered by one of Robert’s servants, at the time of composition an ancient lay brother of Fountains (‘Vitae’, pp. 366–7), is clearly one source of the more extensive account I follow. On the gospel injunctions, see Rolle’s Office, p. 39, broadly derived from the hermit himself; see Margaret Deanesly (ed.), The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1915), p. 188, for example. Holdsworth, ‘Hermits’, p. 69. Antimonastic sentiment, also notable in Rolle, rather than representing a conflict over authority, is a persistent topic of hermit lives, part of an ongoing argument over the relative perfection of cenobitism and ancoriticism; see Hanna, ‘Will’s Work’, pp. 26–9. Warren, Anchorites is a mine of information about such support groups, utterly necessary for the claustrated women who interest her, incapable of supporting themselves by work, as hermits can. Rolle’s writings, of course, suppress any mention of what must have been an enormous patronal community that allowed him the time for contemplation and writing – virtually continuously, it would appear from the textual remains. Robert’s rudeness to John, an anecdote worthy of inclusion in the Vitae patrum, responds to a royal insolence in the king’s believing he deserves the same notice as a King of Kings. John takes Robert’s gesture, asking the king whether he could make an ear of corn (offer any legitimate food to the poor), as a sign of folly, but only condemns himself in his ignorance. See the uses of spica to which Robert ironically alludes, at Judges 12:6, Mark 4:28. His words interestingly blend contemporary legalese (an ‘assart’, a new field gained by cultivating land previously waste) with the language of classical husbandry (‘novalis’, a field first ploughed after having lain fallow). For a full description of the book, see Ralph Hanna, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Medieval Manuscripts of St John’s College, Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 125–30; the image on which my account focuses is reproduced in colour at Plate IV, following p. 188. As the description indicates, St John’s MS 94 represents a piecemeal construction, six chunks, likely made at different times, with some effort at building in smooth joins between them (e.g. blank pages filled with notes from Latin sources in a smaller hand). A number of idiosyncrasies remain. The personalised materials, rather than prominent, occur only at the ends of the constituent units (fols 16v, 101v–2); the second quire (fols 7–16) may have been filled out with inserted leaves so as to include a calendar (which usually in books of this genre forms a separate unit at the head), etc. In the lower border of fol. 17 (the first leaf of the Hours), ‘lacy scripsit et illuminauit’ (‘Lacy wrote and painted this’); the golden inscription on fol. 101v begins ‘Preyeth for þe saul of frere Ion Lacy . . . þe wiche þat wrooth þis book and lymned hit’; the colophon to the final text, fol. 153ra, asks,

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21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29 30

‘I pray . . . þat ȝe wolde prey for þe saule of him þat maad þis book saaf lacy’. On self-portraits, see Kathleen L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles 6 (London: Miller, 1996), esp. vol. 2, p. 62. There are problems distinguishing the hermit from his father, also John. Lacy’s editor, James F. Royster, found nearly all the relevant materials; see his edition, ‘A Middle English Treatise on the Ten Commandments: From St. John’s College, Oxford, MS. 94, 1420–1434’, Studies in Philology, 6 (1910), 1–39; 8 (1911), i–xxiii, at iv–v. Royster is, in the main, citing the documents later published by Arthur M. Oliver, Early Deeds Relating to Newcastle upon Tyne, Surtees Society 137 (Durham: Andrews, 1924), pp. 187–90. As was the other party in these transactions, his consanguineus Richard Clitheroe, this John Lacy was a customs official in the port of Newcastle; see also CPR [Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office] 1377–81, 51; CPR 1399–1401, 502. One might note, given the end of my discussion, that one of the Newcastle transactions (Oliver, Early Deeds, p. 189) involves, as agent, the dean of ‘Scarsdale’, in Lichfield diocese (Derbyshire?). As the reference to Clitheroe (who was, according to Kew, PRO [Domestic Records of the Public Record Office], E43/751, apparently in charge of victualling Henry V’s French activities) as consanguineus might suggest, customs work may have been a family profession; at any rate, a Richard Lacy, perhaps the hermit’s brother, was acting in this capacity in Hull in the 1440s (Kew, PRO, E122/57–9, 61–2). All Saints, North Street, mentioned above, housed a hermit or anchoress in some structure outside its southwest corner. A squint in the stonework there would have allowed this individual to see the image depicted in the St John’s illustration. (As part of the deliberate ‘remedievalisation’ of this parish church, this cell, too, has been reconstructed – and, at times, occupied.) See Guigo II, abbot of Grande Chartreuse’s injunctions for Carthusian devotional practice, which begin with ‘lectio’ and thus require producing books specific to the order’s purpose, ‘A Ladder of Foure Ronges’, Deonise Hid Diuinite and Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, EETS 231 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 100–17; and the discussion, by Vincent Gillespie, in ‘Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in Some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’, Analecta Cartusiana, 106 (1984), 1–27; also available in Vincent Gillespie, Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 113–44. On hermit-labours, with particular reference to the northern ‘Regulae tres’, see Hanna, ‘Will’s Work’, esp. pp. 38–40. See Andrew G. Watson, The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1969), p. 30 (no. 60). This volume probably included both The Pilgrimage of the Lyf of the Manhode and that of The Soule, as in a book produced for a Yorkshire owner, now in Melbourne. A substantial proportion of the surviving copies is illustrated (one idiosyncratic northern example is British Library, MS Additional 37049). Lacy also owned at least fols 1–86, the gospel portion, of a Wycliffite New Testament, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C.258 (where he identifies himself as a Newcastle Dominican, but not as a hermit). J. A. Herbert, Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. 3 (London: British Museum, 1910), pp. 125 (no. 57) and 232 (no. 30), summarises Holcot’s account; for a published analogue to this version, see Gesta Romanorum, ed. Hermann Oesterley (Berlin: Weidmann, 1872), p. 592. See Scott, Later Gothic, 2:32, citing a number of analogous contemporary introductory collections of devotional images, several of these Northern books (cf. 2:38, 91–2, 127–32). For this text and the note bequeathing the book to which I refer below, see Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, p. 9. This locution would seem to imply that the book remained unbound, perhaps after Lacy’s death; the current binding is the college’s nineteenth-century provision. See Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, pp. 21–2. See the discussions, G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters and of the English People, 2nd edn (New York: Barnes and Noble,

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31

32

33

34

35 36

37



89

1961), pp. 439–41; and Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1952), pp. 162–3. For a further example of this rather commonplace clerical behaviour, see Jo Ann H. Moran, ‘A “Common Profit” Library in Fifteenth-Century England and Other Books for Chaplains’, Manuscripta, 28 (1984), 17–25. See the respective openings, ‘Preyeth for þe saul of frere Ion Lacy’ (fol. 101v); ‘Orate pro anima fratris Iohannis Lacy’ (fol. 1). For instance, ‘Ȝe wemen, ȝe mow understand’ (Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, p. 14); ‘Now þou man or woman, weþer euer þou be, þenke’ (Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, p. 16). Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, p. 20. For Robert Kilwardby, see Richard Sharpe, A Handlist of Latin Writers of Great Britain and Ireland before 1540, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 560–4. Royster, ‘A Middle English Treatise’, p. 12. See LALME, 1:153. The feast of St Chad, the apostle to the Mercians and patron of Lichfield (2 March), is marked for special devotions in Lacy’s calendar (certainly, at this date, even leaving aside the marking, a sign of particular veneration, since Chad only began to appear in general use Sarum calendars from 1415). Winifred continues to be venerated in her homeplace, Holywell (Flintshire), but her relics had been taken and removed to Shrewsbury in 1138. Lacy refers to her in an illustrated suffrage, by marking her feast in the calendar (3 November) for special devotions, by a prayer to her in the suffrages after Lauds in the Horae, and by invoking her among holy virgins in the litany. The arms depicted are ‘or, on a fess gules, a fleur-de-lis of the field’; the original Lacy arms, lacking the fleur-de-lis, are described at Fouke le Fitz Waryn, ed. E. J. Hathaway et al., Anglo-Norman Text Society 26–8 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), 10/37–8. Lacy associations with Kinlet apparently date to the mid-fourteenth century. In 1327, a Gilbert Lacy was taken in ward by Robert Harley, lord of Brampton Brian, Kinlet, etc.; see R. W. Eyton, Antiquities of Shropshire, 12 vols (London: Smith, 1854–60), vol. 4, pp. 253–4; vol. 11, p. 329. In 1623 Robert Treswell, the Somerset Herald, reported that Gilbert was from Frome Castle (Herefs), married Harley’s daughter Johanna in 1344, and bore the arms of Lacy ‘differenced in chief’, not on the fess; see George Glazebrook and John P. Rylands (eds), The Visitation of Shropshire, taken in the year 1623, 2 vols, Harleian Society 28–9 (London: The Harleian Society, 1889), p. 305. But some later members of the Harley line bore arms with a fleur-de-lis of the field on the charge, resembling the differencing here. Treswell also describes (p. 50) the Blounts of Kinlet as including in their arms those of Lacy. Although I can find no overt connection between these representatives of the family and the two John Lacys, these Lacy/Shropshire connections are not unique, e.g. the village Stanton Lacy (near Ludlow), or the early fourteenth-century Roger de Lacy of [Much] Wenlock (e.g. Kew, PRO, C/241/80/138). Large portions of this essay were written during academic year 2011–12, when I was pleased and honoured to have an academic patron. I am very grateful to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, for a stimulating and productive year, and for abundant academic support. My fellow Fellow, Tayari Jones, is no hermit, but she was a constant support (and mutual kvetcher).

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6 The Children of the York Plays RICHARD BEADLE

T

he appearance on the medieval stage of quite numerous actors who were children or adolescents has not hitherto formed the subject of scholarly enquiry, and a thorough­ going study of the phenomenon would call for a wide-ranging comparative survey of a great many play texts and documentary sources from across Europe. The present chapter merely confines itself to what may be inferred of this aspect of theatrical practice in the northern English city of York, concentrating in particular on the surviving texts and documents relative to the plays on biblical subjects (commonly referred to as the York mystery plays) that are known to have been staged there from the 1370s to the 1560s. It is to be hoped that a preliminary investigation of this kind will open the way for others devoted to the appearance of children in all the other kinds of vernacular drama that flourished in Britain and across the European continent from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. Though much has been done in recent times towards establishing a reliable basis for our understanding of the York Plays (or, to give them their contemporary designation, the York Corpus Christi Play), there are still some striking gaps in our knowledge of the circumstances of their annual performance during the later fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.1 Conspicuous amongst these gaps is our almost complete ignorance of exactly who the actors were. A rough calculation based on the extant text, which for the most part represents the repertoire of the cycle as it existed in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, suggests that the script as a whole called for upwards of 300 speaking parts.2 Unfortunately, almost all the account books and inventories concerning the perform­ ance, which were maintained by the craft organisations that brought forth the individual pageants, and which would no doubt have told us (among other things) a great deal about who the performers were, have been lost.3 A few stray survivals indicate that the craft officials known as pageant masters, effectively the ‘producers’, made payments to persons whom they employed to stage or direct their plays, and it seems reasonable to assume that these ‘directors’ in turn remunerated the actors who appeared in them.4 But though the identities of a handful of those who directed the productions in this way are known, not a single name of any of the actors has survived, though their number must have run into several thousand over the 200-year lifetime of the cycle. One thing we do know about the actors at York, however, is that they were expected to be competent. As is well known, in 1476 the civic authorities went so far as to make formal provision for the auditioning

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of prospective actors during Lent, about two or three months before the annual performance on Corpus Christi day. Four of the most able and accomplished players in the city were given the task of hearing and examining the actors being put forward by the crafts to perform in their respective pageants, and, in the light of their findings: all suche as þay shall fynde sufficiant in personne (‘stage presence’) and connyng (‘skill’) to þe honour of þe Citie and worship (‘respect’) of the . . . Craftes for to admitte and able, and all oþer insufficiant personnes either in connyng, voice or personne to discharge, ammove and avoide (‘dismiss’).5

It is not possible to speak of acting as a profession in this period, but the apparent presence in the record of payments made to actors, and provision for them in kind (dinners and other refreshments), might be taken to suggest that some of the players at York may have been quasi-professional, or semi-professional; that is, though they normally pursued some form of conventional urban occupation, they were known for their acting skills, and were regularly and remuneratively called upon to exercise them. In 1554, for example, John Stamper, a moderately prosperous tiler, general builder and alehouse keeper, was paid the fairly substantial sum of 3s 4d (one mark) for taking the eponymous role in a play of St George, sponsored by the guild of that name.6 Though there is no record of his having acted in the Tilehatchers’ pageant, or any other in the Corpus Christi play, he is perhaps an example of the kind of person who might have been paid to do so.7 Study of the indi­ vidual pageants in the York cycle tends to indicate that they were scripted in such a way as to provide a small number of leading parts, often one or two, occasionally up to three or four, plus a larger number of minor roles usually amounting to no more than a few lines each. As Meg Twycross has remarked, one might infer from such a pattern that the plays were, in general, framed so as to provide parts for one or two actors of what we would now think of as a professional standard, backed up by a larger group of able and enthusiastic amateurs.8 Without more documentary evidence coming to light it seems we are unlikely to make more progress in this direction, towards identifying the actors who appeared in the plays at York. A different approach does however begin to suggest itself if we pause to consider the likely age distribution among the cast as a whole. For various reasons that will presently become apparent, it can be shown that a significant proportion of the actors who appeared in the pageants at York were not adults. So much is evident in part from the fact that, in common with all other kinds of formal theatrical activity in England prior to 1660, the numerous female roles in the York Plays were played not by women, but almost entirely by prepubescent boys dressed and made up to look like women.9 In order to pursue this line of enquiry, however, it is necessary to clarify what we mean by the word ‘boy’, both in this context and in relation to the late medieval and early modern periods in general. Until fairly recent times, through causes rooted in health and nutrition, the onset of puberty in adolescent males was often significantly later than it is now. In present-day western society the arrival of puberty is generally at around eleven or twelve years of age, and it is usually well advanced by the age of fourteen. In earlier times, the process usually began rather later, and a boy (or as we might now call him nowadays, a youth or a teenager) might be in his late teens – eighteen, nineteen or even twenty years old – before his voice broke, facial hair appeared, and other biological changes took place.10 The boys in the

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professional acting companies of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline periods, about whom we now know a good deal in biographical terms, typically performed female roles whilst they were between fourteen and nineteen years of age, though a few are known to have appeared on stage when they were as young as twelve, and one or two were still playing women when they were aged twenty or twenty-one.11 In the children’s companies of the time the age range was rather lower, all parts being played by boys aged between about ten and fourteen.12 The boys attached to the adult professional companies were styled apprentices, and were enrolled as such in whichever London livery company the adult actor who trained them was a freeman: a boy actor might thus nominally be (for example) an apprentice Goldsmith, Draper, Glazier or Tiler, the usual age for indentures of apprenticeship to be taken out being fourteen.13 When their voices broke they either retired from acting or went on to take adult male roles in the companies to which they belonged. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it seems legitimate to assume that the arrangements for playing female roles in the York Plays were along lines analogous to these, namely that such parts were acted by prepubescent teenage boys; and that some of them seem likely to have been apprentices in the various crafts that brought forth the individual pageants that made up the cycle, though as we shall see there were many other institutions in the city capable of furnishing boys capable of acting. In common with other Corpus Christi play actors at York, no names have survived of the boys who took the female roles, but this is not the case elsewhere: names of boys and youths associated with female parts in drama in the medieval tradition at Coventry, Chester, Norwich, New Romney (Kent) and at Perth in Scotland have come down to us.14 The participation of boys and youths in the plays at York was of course not confined to female roles. Children and adolescents of both sexes, and of none, if we include angels in the picture, were among the dramatis personae of a significant number of pageants. Boys would also have been required to sing the treble parts in the choral singing that features several of the pageants. A breakdown of the different categories in which the youngest actors could appear in the cycle as a whole might be as follows:15

Female roles, in order of appearance; some of these characters also sing: Eve (pageant nos 3, 4, 5, 6, 37); Noah’s Wife (no. 9);16 Noah’s three daughters (no. 9); Virgin Mary (nos 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 34, 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46); Elizabeth, the Virgin’s cousin (no. 12); the Virgin’s maids (nos 13 (two), 16 (one), 44 (two)); Anna the Prophetess (no. 17); Mothers of Holy Innocents, two (no. 19); Woman Taken in Adultery (no. 24); Mary and Martha, sisters of Lazarus (no. 24); Woman who accuses St Peter (no. 29); Procula, Pilate’s wife (no. 30); Procula’s maid (no. 30); Marys who accompany Virgin during Passion (no. 34 (two), no. 36 (one)); Marys at the Resurrection, three (no. 38); Mary Magdalene (no. 39). This category indicates that there was a total of around 45 female roles likely to have been played by boys, some of them of course being repeat appearances by one and the same character in different episodes: there were thus five Eves required; and, since the cycle effectively encapsulates a more or less standard life of the Virgin, no fewer than fifteen Virgin Marys. There were also notably demanding roles for youthful male actors

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in the shape of Procula (‘Dame Percula’), Pontius Pilate’s wife, and the Mary Magdalene of the Noli me tangere episode in the Resurrection sequence (no. 39).

Roles for male children and youths, in order of appearance, speaking parts only: Brewbarret, Cain’s lad (no. 7); two boys with Abraham and Isaac (no. 10); three ‘boy’ Israelites in Egypt (‘pueri’) (no. 11); Herod the Great’s son (no. 16); the boy Jesus with Doctors in Temple (no. 20); Marcellus (St Martial), servant at Last Supper (no. 27); Malcus, high priest’s servant at Passion (nos 28, 29);17 Pontius Pilate’s son (no. 30); the three sons of Herod Antipas (no. 31); the boy with the sponge at the Crucifixion (‘Garcio’) (no. 36). This category (consisting of sixteen roles in total) includes parts for characters described as ‘boy’ or ‘child’ in the dialogue or in the character designations and speech prefixes in the script, or known to have been so depicted in the traditional iconography of the scene concerned. The most significant role was that of the boy Jesus, who confronts the learned Jewish clergy in the Temple at Jerusalem in no. 20.

Roles for angels, in order of appearance; some also sing: Cherubim and Seraphim at the Creation (no. 1); Cherubim at the Fall of Man (no. 5); angel (Cherubim) at the expulsion of Adam and Eve (no. 6); angel who curses Cain (no. 7); angelic messenger to Abraham (no. 10); Gabriel, at the Annunciation (no. 12); angelic messenger to Joseph (no. 13); angelic messenger to the Shepherds (no. 15); angelic messen­ger to the Three Kings (no. 16); angelic messenger to Simeon (no. 17); angelic messenger to Joseph (no. 18); two angels at the Baptism (no. 21); two angels at the Temp­ tation (no. 22); angelic messenger to Jesus at the Agony in the Garden (no. 28); Michael, binds Satan at the Harrowing of Hell (no. 37); angel at the tomb, the Resurrection (no. 38); two angels at the Ascension (no. 42); Gabriel, and four angels at the Death of the Virgin (no. 44); twelve angels (a choir) at the Assumption of Virgin (no. 45); six angels at the Coronation of Virgin (no. 46); two angels at Doomsday (no. 47). The portrayal of angels on stage in late medieval drama is a much larger subject than can be dealt with in detail here, but it is fair to say that there is some degree of consensus that such parts were played by boys and youths.18 The York text yields little that is specific on this point, beyond the facts that the angel who is encountered by the three Marys at Jesus’s empty tomb in the Resurrection pageant is described as a young child in white clothing (38.225–8), and that both settings of the music sung by the choir of twelve angels during the Assumption of the Virgin (no. 45) are for the treble voice.19 Angels who appear in the late medieval visual arts were most often depicted as fine-featured, beardless youths, with small, feminine chins and luxuriant hair. The angels who manifest themselves in bodily form in the Old and New Testaments are referred to as male, and their depiction in art was perhaps influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the narrative of Genesis 19:1–11, where the two angels who visit Lot in Sodom hold greater sexual appeal to the Sodomites than Lot’s daughters.20 The medieval English stage seems generally to have

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observed a convention whereby supernatural figures (God, angels, devils) either had their faces concealed by masks or visors, or decorated with face paint, that for angels being either gold or red.21 The parts for angels in the York cycle seldom extend beyond a few lines each, but singing by angels was called for in a significant number of pageants in which angels appear, suggesting the involvement of many trained choirboys in this segment of the cast as a whole. The York script offers some forty-six speaking parts for angels, with ten pageants containing cues for the angelic singing that signified either heaven itself, or the intervention of the divine in human affairs (nos 1, 12, 15, 21, 38, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47). An unknown number of children, some of them singers, were also involved in no. 25, welcoming Jesus on Palm Sunday in the Entry into Jerusalem (see the dialogue at 25.260–66). Choral angelic singing also appears to be called for in the Creation (see 1.19ff., where it is unclear whether all the nine orders of angels created by God are im­­­ personated, or represented by some other means), and at the close of the cycle, at the end of Doomsday (47.380 + sd). As will be evident from the foregoing analysis, about 100 or so boys and youths would have been involved on stage, in one way or another, in the annual production of the York Corpus Christi Play. A few took quite large and demanding roles, but most had minor, or walk-on parts. Some were enlisted because they could both act and sing, whilst singing only was usually expected of those who were members of choirs. Boys thus occupied about one third of the 300 or so of speaking parts in the script of the cycle as a whole. Since each cohort of youngsters naturally grew up year by year there would have been considerable turnover in this section of the cast, whereas (one assumes) the actors engaged to take the remaining roles probably constituted a more stable section of the cast over time. Where did all these boys come from, and how were they trained to reach the standard of acting required by the civic authorities? These are questions to which we may return presently, because first we ought to notice that the phenomenon of children taking signifi­ cant roles in plays alongside adult actors would have been familiar enough to medieval audiences in general. Some of the scriptural and apocryphal narratives on which many early plays were based were of course centrally concerned with children. Plays depicting the story of Abraham and Isaac plainly held strong appeal to English audiences, there being no fewer than six surviving versions, in all but one of which the intense pathos of Isaac’s situation created an exceptionally demanding role for the boy who played the part.22 Another familiar biblical episode involving a child actor was the story of how the boy Jesus, aged twelve, came to be lost by his parents among the crowds visiting Jerusalem for the Passover, only to be found disputing learnedly with the doctors in the Temple. Several plays on the subject survive, and, where the gospels are unspecific as to the matters over which they disputed, portray the boy Jesus expounding not only the Ten Command­ ments, but also more abstruse theological concepts such as the Trinity and the Virgin birth. Perhaps the most remarkable of all the episodes of this kind occurs in the N-Town Plays, a cyclelike collection of plays probably assembled somewhere in south Norfolk in the latter half of the fifteenth century. It includes a substantial dramatisation of the apocryphal early life of the Virgin Mary, which centres on her presentation to the Temple in Jerusalem by her parents Joachim and Anna, dressed all in white, according to the stage directions, ‘as a child of three years of age’. Taking leave of her parents, this diminutive figure ascends unaided the fifteen steps of the Temple, reciting in Latin and expounding in English at each step verses from one of the Gradual Psalms. The fact that she is only

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three years of age is repeatedly emphasised in the speeches given to the astonished high priest who witnesses the event, describing it as a miracle.23 It is by any reckoning an unusually challenging role for a child, and one can only assume that a small, but able and confident choirboy was available to take the part. Boys in education at this time began, from about the age of seven, to acquire knowledge of Latin by rote learning of the Psalter, without understanding its meaning, so that they could participate in liturgical observances in parish churches, cathedrals and religious houses.24 Some children take naturally to acting and like to appear on stage, but as we shall see the historical records of medieval York give us very little help in establishing exactly where in the city theatrically talented boys might have been encouraged to pursue such inclinations. On the other hand, a closer look at the scripts of some of the York pageants suggests that the dramatists of the time were conscious of the need to give the very young­est members of the cast some kind of small scale stage experience, especially if they were later going to have to take on the more prominent female roles, such as Eve and the Virgin Mary. Here and there in the cycle as a whole one finds what seem to be small parts written in for beginners, minor roles with little or no warrant in the scriptural narratives that furnish the sources, designed to get young boys used to the stage environ­ ment. A very clear-cut example occurs in no. 16, the episode of Herod and the Three Kings, the central section of which came to be duplicated in the manuscript, as a result of the Masons’ craft having (in around 1432–3) taken over responsibility for the presen­ tation of Herod and his court from the Goldsmiths, who had previously brought forth the whole pageant.25 Whoever acquired the section of the Goldsmiths’ script for the Herod scenes on behalf of the Masons decided to revise it in such a way as to incorporate a part for a young boy, Herod’s son. As will be evident from a comparison of the original and the revised sections of the text printed below, the introduction of the new role was neatly and inconspicuously accomplished, simply by altering the pronouns in an existing speech of Herod’s. At this point in the action the Three Kings have appeared at Herod’s court, and are in the process of informing him of their errand, to seek out and worship a child, who the prophets say will be king of the Jews. Prior to 1432–3 the Goldsmiths presented the scene as follows: I Rex Sir, he shall be kyng Of Jewes, and of Judé. Herodes Kyng? In þe deuyl way, dogges, fy! Now I se wele ȝe roþe and raue. Be ony skymeryng of the skye When shulde ȝe knawe owthir kyng or knave? Nay, I am kyng and non but I, That shall ȝe kenne yff þat ȝe craue, And I am juge of all Jury, To speke or spille, to saie or saffe. Swilke gawdes may gretely greue, To wittenesse þat neuere was. II Rex Lorde, we aske noght but leue Be youre poure to passe.

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175

180

185

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After 1432–3 the Masons played the scene as follows, with Herod’s son taking over lines 181–4: II Rex

Forsoth, he sall be kynge Of Jewes, and of Judé.

Herodes Kyng? In þe deueles name, dogges, fye! Nowe se I wele ȝe roye and raue. Be any skemeryng of þe skye When shulde ye knawe outhir kyng or knave? Filius Naye, he is kyng and non but he, Þat sall ȝe kenne if þat ȝe craue, And he is jugge of all Jurie, To speke or spille, to saie or saffe. Herodes Swilke gawdes may gretely greue, To witnesse þat nere was. II Rex Nowe, lorde, we axe but leve Be youre poure to passe.

175

180

185

At the same time as he made these alterations the reviser also added a new scene at the beginning of the pageant in which Herod boasts of his power in typical bombastic allitera­ tive verse, and is flattered by his courtiers (16.1–56). The assertive young boy who is made to intervene at 16.181–4 is thus given a few lines to introduce him into the action and to establish his character from the outset: Herodes My sone þat is semely, howe semes þe ther sawes? Howe comely þer knyghtis þei carpe in þis case. Filius Fadir, if þai like noght to listyn youre lawes, As traytoures ontrewe ye sall teche þem a trace; For fadir, vnkyndnes ȝe kythe þem no cause. Herodes Faire falle þe, my faire sone, so fettis of face; And knyghtis, I comaunde, who to dule drawes, Þas churles as cheueleres ye chastise and chase, And drede ȝe no doute. Filius Fadir, I sall fell þam in fight, What renke þat reves you youre right. I Miles With dyntes to dede bes he dight, Þat liste not youre lawes for to lowte.

45

50

55

The invention of a fictitious son for Herod the Great in this revision of the Herod and the Three Kings pageant is one of a number of minor or walk-on parts for young actors, who are typically given a few lines of dialogue of the kind that is seldom essential to the action. A number of other examples may be seen in the lists given above: the maids who accompany the Virgin in events that surround the Nativity, two who speak up for her in the Pewterers and Founders’ Joseph’s Trouble about Mary (no. 13), one who greets the Three Kings when they visit the manger (no. 16), and two who are with the Virgin at the

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time of her death in the Drapers’ pageant (no. 44). In the Tapiters and Couchers’ pageant Dame Percula, Pontius Pilate’s wife, is accompanied both by a maid and by her son, another entirely unscriptural figure, who is given a brief comic intervention characterising him as lazy and disobedient, before he reappears later to heap abuse on Jesus (30.193–5, 389–97). Small parts for other cheeky, and sometimes nasty or sinister young boys are slipped in elsewhere in the cycle: Cain, the first murderer, is accompanied by a saucy ploughboy dubbed Brewbarret (‘troublemaker’, no. 7); and in the Passion sequence there is Malcus, the high priest’s servant, who appears first in his biblical role to have his ear smitten off by St Peter and restored by Jesus (whom he repays with abuse) in the Cord­wainers’ pageant (28.270–93), and then again, but unscripturally, in the Bowers and Fletchers’ pageant, attesting to Peter’s denial of Jesus (29.158–61). As Jesus nears his death in the Butchers’ pageant, the scriptural figure who offers him a sponge soaked in vinegar and gall, usually pictured as a Roman soldier, is presented as a malevolent young boy, who is given a short scene tinged with gallows humour (36.222–5, 235–47). While some of these short parts for young actors are more demanding than others they are seldom essential to the action of the pageants into which they are introduced. On the other hand, there is on occasion more to such minor episodes than meets the eye. The Parchmentmakers and Bookbinders’ pageant of Abraham and Isaac (no. 10) includes the following inconspicuous and seemingly inconsequential dialogue for two boys immedi­ ately after Abraham has received God’s command to go into the land of Vision and make his sacrifice: Isaac

Childir, lede forthe oure asse With wode þat we sall bryne. Euen as God ordand has, To wyrke we will begynne.

I Famulus Att youre biddyng we wille be bowne, What way in worlde þat ȝe wille wende. II Famulus Why, sall we trusse ought forthe a towne In any vncouthe lande to lende? I Famulus I hope tha haue in þis sessoune Fro God of heuyn sum solayce sende. II Famulus To fulfille yt is goode reasoune, And kyndely kepe þat he has kende. I Famulus Bott what þei mene, certayne, Haue I na knowlage clere. II Famulus It may noght gretely gayne To move of swilke matere. Abraham No, noye you noght in no degré, So for to deme here of oure dede, For als God comaunded so wirke will we, Vntill his tales vs bus take hede.

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110

115

120

125

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The two boys in this scene, styled Famul[i] (‘servants’) in the character designations in the manuscript, and addressed as ‘childir’ by Isaac, represent the duos iuvenes of the Vulgate who are said to accompany Abraham and his son on their mission (Genesis 22:3). Towards the end of the pageant Abraham addresses them with an affectionate Middle English expression, ‘my barnes’ (10.374), which again suggests that the dramatist thought of them as quite young boys. The York Abraham and Isaac is unique among the six surviving versions in devoting an independent scene to these figures in medieval English drama, though they appear to be present as mutes in the Northampton play. The two boys here also strike a contrast with another unique aspect of the York version, which features an Isaac who is not a child (the puer of Genesis 22:5) but a fully grown man, ‘Thyrty ȝer and mo sumdele’ (10.82). The dramatist here follows an alternative patristic interpretation of the story, initiated by Josephus and endorsed in some later medieval commentaries, whereby Isaac’s age was taken to be similar to that of Jesus at the time of his Passion (‘about thirty years of age’, according to St Luke 3:23).26 There are several observations to be made regarding the inclusion of the dialogue for the two boys at this point, since what they say to one another seems to be a matter of putting in time, and has no direct bearing on the main action. The episode does how­­ ever have a practical purpose in terms of the staging. In common with many of the York pageants, the action of Abraham and Isaac takes place partly in the street, and partly on the pageant wagon. At this point all of the characters, together (it seems) with a real ass, are in the street, before Abraham and Isaac ascend to the pageant wagon, where the sacrifice takes place.27 This moment is made explicit in the dialogue, where Abraham and Isaac take leave of the boys (10.145–50): Abraham Isaac

Childir, bide ȝe here still, No ferther sall ȝe goo, For ȝondir I se þe hill That we sall wende vntoo. Kepe wele oure asse and all oure gere, To tyme we come agayne you till.

145

150

The practical function of the dialogue for the boys is thus to cover the bringing forward of the ass and its symbolic burden of wood (often represented in the shape of a cross in the visual arts of the time), and their larger stage purpose is to mind the animal whilst Abraham and Isaac set about the sacrifice on the deck of the pageant wagon above their heads. It is also worth noticing that the boys’ dialogue itself is couched in a specially simplified form. They share between them a single twelve-line stanza (the predominant metre of the play as a whole), and they each speak two lines alternately throughout, so as to make it very easy for young actors to memorise. The substance of their conversation seems at first sight to be inconsequential: ‘Why are we going on this trip? – I’ve no idea – Oh well, we had better wait and see’. It does however also contain a subtext (see lines 119­–20) that reinforces the principal didactic theme of the play, the absolute necessity of obedience to God’s will, the point upon which the roles of the two principal characters hinges, emphasised by both Isaac and his father in their lines that introduce and conclude this interlude (see lines 111–12, 127–8). A further refinement of the episode’s significance

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may reside in the exegetical assertion (found for example in the Glossa Ordinaria), that the two boys who accompany Abraham and Isaac symbolise the two disciples who followed Jesus most closely at the time of his Passion, Peter and John; the first boy’s speech is similar in tenor to St Peter’s fateful expression of fidelity to Jesus during the Last Supper pageant (27.124–7).28 The introduction of these parts for two young boys thus serves a variety of purposes simultaneously: young actors acquire some stage experi­ ence and training; the ass is minded in the street whilst Abraham and Isaac go about their business on the pageant wagon; and some important didactic and symbolic aspects of the episode as a whole are subtly reinforced. It adds up to a skilled piece of dramaturgy, to which child actors are made essential. As we have seen, around a third of the entire cast of the York Corpus Christi play appears likely to have been made up of young boys and youths, and the dramatists were aware of this, adapting details of the dramaturgy of the pageants accordingly. Where did all these youngsters come from? One might justifiably assume that a fair number of them, and notably those called upon to sing, or who formed the choirs that appear in several pageants, were provided by the grammar schools in the city, or by other educational establishments that specialised in choral training. Both York Minster and St Leonard’s hospital are known to have supported choir and grammar schools, and a significant number of parish churches across the city had reading and ‘song schools’ attached to them, where, from about the age of seven, boys learned basic Latin, and were trained to participate in public liturgical observances. In addition, groups of boys were often educated along these lines in the private households of the Minster clergy, or in those of the rectors, parsons and chaplains attached to parish churches and other types of religious institution.29 The wills of many York citizens of this period contain provisions for the support of education in environments such as these, and it was possible to hire boys, ‘little clerks’ in surplices, to sing and read the lessons at funerals. Chaucer’s seven-year-old ‘litel clergeon’ in the Prioress’s Tale, studying his prymer (laymen’s prayer book) and learning to sing the anthem Alma redemptoris mater, portrays a typical boy at the younger end of the age spectrum in such parish schools.30 It is not until the sixteenth century that we hear of Latin drama based on classical models entering the curriculum at grammar schools, and featuring as an important activity in high status choral schools – the Children of the Chapel Royal, for example, went on to be celebrated as boy-actors as well as singers during the Elizabethan era. Evidence of earlier dramatic activity in medieval schools is harder to come by; it is traceable at ancient collegiate establishments such as Eton and Winchester, so it would not be surprising if we were one day to find record of it at the major schools attached to the cathedral and the hospital of St Leonard in York.31 Boys at the cathedral school were certainly familiar with the quasi-dramatic ceremonies associated with the annual election of the boy bishop during the Christmas season, which can be traced from the early thirteenth century, and are documented down to the sixteenth.32 Among the earliest indications we have of any kind concerning dramatic activity in York records a play staged before the master of St Leonard’s at Christmas 1370, and since the hospital was a semi-secular and rather worldly institution, such a performance was probably of wide appeal, and in the vernacular. Its school was large, the full complement providing for two schoolmasters and no fewer than thirty choristers, a remarkably large number in an age when most choirs (for example, that of York Minster) had around twelve.33

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Another possible source for a steady supply of boy actors may have been the system of apprenticeships fostered by the craft organisations that sponsored the pageants in the Corpus Christi play at York. Many of the crafts registered more or less elaborate ordin­ ances with the civic authorities, some of which deal in some detail with the arrangements for apprenticeships: boys normally became apprenticed for seven years at the age of fourteen, and went to live in the household of the master craftsman to whom they were indentured.34 The crafts kept registers of the apprentices whom they enrolled and the masters with whom they had engaged, but only one fragmentary and damaged example survives, that of the Weavers, the craft that brought forth pageant no. 45, the Assumption of the Virgin. It covers the period from 1450 to 1507, during which time around 375 boys in total were apprenticed to the trade, giving an average of between six and seven a year.35 Without more documentary information to hand it is impossible to know for sure whether the parts in the Corpus Christi plays designed for young actors were supplied from the ranks of apprentices such as these. Given their stake in the quality of the production of their individual pageants, it might be thought that the master craftsmen (and in particular those charged annually with the office of pageant master) would have been on the look­ out for intelligent and extrovert apprentices with an aptitude for acting. The medieval craft organisations continued to stage their biblical plays until well into the second half of the sixteenth century, and one is tempted to speculate as to whether there might have been some sort of submerged continuity between their practices and those of the newly emergent professional acting companies of the time, where, as we have seen, adult actors commonly took out the freedom of the London livery companies, and the boys who played the female parts in their productions were indentured as their apprentices. David Kathman has help­fully listed the London theatrical freemen and the boy actors whose identities are known, together with the livery companies to which they belonged: about twenty distinct trades are represented, all of them directly comparable, and most of them identical with crafts that brought forth pageants in the York Corpus Christi play.36 Ben Jonson had no scruples about identifying himself in his family’s trade as a freeman Bricklayer, James Burbage enjoyed the franchise as a Joiner, and the great comedians Richard Tarlton and Robert Armin belonged respectively to the Vintners and Goldsmiths companies; Edward Kynaston, a famous name among the professional boy performers of female roles, was apprenticed as a Draper. Before concluding it may be helpful to notice one more episode in the York Corpus Christi play where boy actors were given an unexpectedly prominent role, and one that may even be disturbing to some modern sensibilities. No. 31, the Litsters’ (Dyers’) pageant, depicts the appearance of Jesus before Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, to whom he has been sent by Pontius Pilate when the latter learns that he belongs to that jurisdiction. The play is unique in medieval English drama in elaborating imaginatively and at length on the laconic narrative of Luke 23:8–11, which reports merely that Herod was desirous to see Jesus, having heard of his miracles; that Jesus said nothing in response to Herod’s interrogations; and that the tetrarch and his soldiers then mocked him, arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him back to Pilate. Though the gospel yields scant narra­ tive and no dialogue, the York playwright turns Jesus’s silence into a powerful dramatic device, creating a virtuoso role for a raging Herod, as he tries (in a variety of languages) to wheedle, cajole, persuade and threaten Jesus into speaking, before having to be re­­­ strained by his courtiers from physically attacking his prisoner. The scriptural context

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recedes into the background, and Herod becomes a mordant portrayal of an unstable and irresponsible English provincial magnate of a type perhaps familiar to a fifteenth-century audience.37 The pageant is one of several in the Passion sequence written in a distinctive alliterative style, which has led to their attribution to a single dramatist, active in the 1420s–30s, and not altogether happily dubbed the ‘York Realist’ in most modern dis­­ cussions of the cycle.38 The role created for Herod in the Litsters’ play must have been exceptionally taxing for the actor who had to repeat it twelve or more times, as the pageant wagon wound its way around the processional route through the streets of York on Corpus Christi day. Partly in order to relieve him, it appears, the playwright exercised his imagin­ation so far as to invent roles for three boys, supposedly Herod’s sons, who take over from their tem­­ porarily exhausted father the task of attempting to make Jesus speak:



I Dux Nowe, goode lorde, and ye may, meue you no more, Itt is not faire to feght with a fonned foode; But gose to youre counsaille and comforte you þere. Rex Thou sais soth. We schall see yf so will be goode, For certis, oure sorowes are sadde. II Filius What a deuyll ayles hym? Mi lorde, I can garre you be gladde, For in tyme oure maistir is madde. He lurkis, loo, and lokis like a ladde, He is wode, lorde, or ellis his witte faylis hym.

295

300

III Filius Mi lorde, ȝe haue mefte you as mekill as ȝe may, For yhe myght menske hym no more were he Mahounde; And sen it semys to be soo, latte vs nowe assaie. 305 Rex Loke, bewscheris, ȝe be to oure bodis boune. I Dux Mi lorde, howe schulde he dowte vs? He dredis not youre dray. Rex Nowe do fourthe, þe deuyll myght hym droune! And sen he freyms falsed and makis foule fraye, Raris on hym rudely, and loke ȝe not roune. 310 I Filius

Mi lorde, I schall enforce myselffe, sen ȝe saie soo. Felawe, be noȝt afferde nor feyne not þerfore, But telle vs nowe some truffillis betwene vs twoo, And none of oure men schall medill þam more; And þerfore by resoune array þe, Do telle vs some poynte for thy prowe. Heris þou not what Y saie þe? Þou mummeland myghtyng, I may þe Helpe, and turne þe fro tene, as Y trowe.

II Filius Loke vppe, ladde, lightly, and loute to my lorde here, For fro bale vnto blisse he may nowe þe borowe. Carpe on, knave, kantely, and caste þe to corde here, And saie me nowe somwhat, þou sauterell, with sorowe.

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315

320

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Why standis þou as stille as a stone here? Spare not, but speke in þis place here, 325 Þou gedlyng, it may gayne þe some grace here. III Filius My lorde, þis faitour is so ferde in youre face here, None aunswere in þis nede he nevyns you with none here. Rex Do, bewsheris, for Beliall bloode and his bonys, Say somwhat, or it will waxe werre. 330 I Filius Nay, we gete nouȝt one worde in þis wonys. II Filius Do crie we all on hym at onys. Al Chylder Oȝes! Oȝes! Oȝes! Rex O, ȝe make a foule noyse for þe nonys. III Filius Nedlyng, my lorde, it is neuere þe nerre. As has been said, though the Herod of this pageant was a real historical figure, his three sons (designated ‘chylder’ in line 333) are entirely fictional characters, and it is of interest to speculate briefly as to why the dramatist decided to introduce them.39 The pageant as a whole has an uncomfortable atmosphere compounded of grim, edgy humour and suppressed violence. The scriptural assertion that Herod desired to meet Jesus because he had heard of his miracles undergoes a modulation, whereby the play-Herod at first assumes the man sent from Pilate is some kind of popular entertainer, a conjurer or illusionist (a tregetour in contemporary parlance): ‘We schalle haue gaudis full goode and games or we goo’ (31.287), he says. Jesus’s refusal to perform any tricks, or even to speak, frustrates Herod, and on hearing of miracles such as the feeding of the five thousand and the raising of Lazarus he becomes suspicious, supposing Jesus must be in league with the devil. As the action progresses, Jesus’s reported claim to be king of the Jews is repeatedly mocked; and, since he appears to Herod’s court to be dumb and mentally deficient, he is feted with the cruel and farcical ceremonies of the medieval king of fools (‘rex stultorum’).40 The three boys are introduced into this process towards its climax, when Herod himself (whose behaviour begins to verge upon the psychopathic) becomes overwrought. The emotional temperature of the scene is high, and in this context – and in contrast to the simpler parts written for boys described above – the roles that the dramatist creates for Herod’s sons are not for beginners. They are called upon to speak the more complex alliter­ ative verse that is one of the trademarks of the York Realist, and to use it to interact in naturalistic dialogue (including some stichomythia, unusual in medieval drama) with the adult actors.41 Beyond that it is difficult to be sure exactly how the scene in which the boys confront Jesus was played, but the effect is likely to be shocking to most members of a modern audience, at least. The pointed silences of Jesus that punctuate Herod’s earlier attempts to make him speak are evidently accompanied by a variety of different kinds of farcical stage business calculated to elicit laughter, and there is a series of similar cues for silence, and perhaps similar comic action, in the boys’ speeches (see lines 316, 321, 324, 330 etc.), which culminate in their clustering around him to shout in unison in his face. It is impossible to be sure what stage antics might have accompanied these moments, but the introduction of children into a situation that is already disturbing seems calculated to heighten its ambivalent atmosphere.

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The subject of child actors in the early drama is potentially a large one, and it calls for a much more comprehensive investigation of many play texts, both English and con­­ tinental, in several genres, together with a wide-ranging survey of other kinds of historical documentation. One might add at this point that the extensive employment of children as actors is also a matter that goes entirely unmentioned in widely cited standard histories of childhood in the Middle Ages.42 A few provisional conclusions can however now be drawn from this brief and preliminary consideration of the parts played by children in the annual production of the Corpus Christi play in York. As we have seen, about one third of the total cast of the cycle was made up of juvenile males, most of them probably youths in their early teens, but some perhaps younger. Many of these boys seem likely to have been drawn from various kinds of educational establishment in the city, particularly those that taught singing and some basic Latin, but some may have found their way into acting through the apprenticeship system promoted by the craft organisations that brought forth the individual pageants. The dramatists who scripted the plays were well aware of the need to create small parts for boy actors who were beginners to acquire some stage experience, but they also created major roles, both male and female, for young actors who were expected to perform in much more accomplished and sophisticated ways, some­times in plays whose subject matter was challenging to a degree. The presence of successive cohorts of growing boys in the casts of many of the York pageants must have played a large part in sustaining the competent acting traditions necessary to uphold the success of the cycle annually, as well as contributing to the city’s intergenerational cohesion in a larger but less tangible way that has hitherto gone unnoticed.

Notes  1

 2  3

 4

 5  6

Most of the documentary materials concerning early drama in York were authoritatively edited by Alexandra Johnston and Margaret Rogerson in Records of Early English Drama: York, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), hereafter cited as REED: York. Quotations from the text of the plays below are from Richard Beadle, The York Plays. A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, 2 vols, Early English Text Society (EETS), Supplementary Series (SS), 23, 26 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009–13). Overviews of the current state of knowledge concerning the plays are given by Peter Meredith, ‘The City of York and its “Play of Pageants”’, in Helen Ostovich (ed.), The York Cycle Then and Now, Early Theatre 3, Special Volume (Hamilton: McMaster University Press, 2000), pp. 23–47, and by Richard Beadle, ‘The York Corpus Christi Play’, in Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 99–124. Beadle, ‘The York Corpus Christi Play’, p. 102. See further Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, pp. xvii–xviii, and, for a more extensive discussion of this important document and its context in the development of the cycle, Richard Beadle, ‘Nicholas Lancaster, Richard of Gloucester and the York Corpus Christi Play’, in Margaret Rogerson (ed.), The York Mystery Plays: Performance in the City (York: York Medieval Press, 2011), pp. 31–52. For examples see Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, pp. 222, 442, 453, and further references there. Both clerics and laymen were employed as what we now call the ‘directors’ of the pageants. REED: York, p. 109, punctuation and glosses added. REED: York, p. 319. Stamper lived in the parish of St Martin, Micklegate, and is also known to have held minor parish and civic offices from time to time; for full details about him and his activities see Eileen White, ‘People and Places: The Social and Topographical Context of Drama

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THE CHILDREN OF THE YORK PLAYS

 7

 8

 9

10 11

12 13

14 15

16 17

18

19

20

21

105

in York, 1554–1609’, (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, Leeds, 1984), 374–95. His fee for taking the role of St George was roughly the equivalent of a week’s income for an artisan in the building trade during this period. Stamper evidently did have some kind of involvement with the Corpus Christi play, since the Mercers (sponsors of the Doomsday pageant) are recorded as having paid him 12d. for rental of a ‘pageant howsse’ (storage for a pageant wagon) in 1550; REED: York, p. 295. Meg Twycross, ‘The Theatricality of Medieval English Plays’, in Beadle and Fletcher (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 26–74, at p. 33. Though the cycle does of course contain a number of ensemble (large cast) pageants, a significant proportion of it consists of what are called, in modern theatrical parlance, ‘two-handers’, plays designed essentially for two actors in dialogue, with occasional walk-on roles for others: outstanding examples are no. 8, the Shipwrights’ Building of the Ark, no. 14, the Chandlers’ Nativity, and no. 39, the Winedrawers’ Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene. As far as the stage in the medieval period is concerned, this point was debated at some length during the 1980s, in the light of historical evidence and practical investigation, in the pages of the periodical Medieval English Theatre (METh). The principal contributions were: Peter Happé, et al., ‘Thoughts on “Transvestism” by Divers Hands’, METh, 5 (1983), 110–22; Meg Twycross, ‘“Transvestism” in the Mystery Plays’, METh, 5 (1983), 123–80; and Richard Rastall, ‘Female Roles in All-Male Casts’, METh, 7 (1985), 25–50. The only female role in the plays more likely to have been played by an adult male than a boy was Noah’s shrewish and recalcitrant wife, whose characterisation is generally thought to have something in common with the conventionally transvestite ‘pantomime dame’ of the modern theatre. On the subject, see Jane Tolmie, ‘Mrs Noah and Didactic Abuse’, Early Theatre, 5/1 (2002), 17–25. For detailed consideration of these matters see Rastall, ‘Female Roles in All-Male Casts’, 28–35. Evidence on these points has been carefully assembled and documented by David Kathman, ‘How Old Were Shakespeare’s Boy Actors?’, Shakespeare Survey, 58 (2005), 220–46. Kathman, ‘How Old Were Shakespeare’s Boy Actors?’, 222. David Kathman, ‘Grocers, Goldsmiths and Drapers: Freemen and Apprentices in the Elizabethan Theater’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 55 (2004), 1–49. Twycross, ‘“Transvestism” in the Mystery Plays’, 124–6. The names of the pageants that are referred to here by their numbers in the sequence, and the crafts that brought them forth, are listed in full in the Appendix at the end of this article. See however note 8 above. Malcus was often shown as a diminutive figure, sometimes clearly as a boy, in late Gothic art; cf. Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, tome II: Iconographie de la Bible: ii, Nouveau Testament (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), p. 437 (‘Malchus est souvent figuré avec la taille d’un enfant’(‘Malchus is often depicted as a child-sized figure.’)), and see the illustration in Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, 2 vols (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), vol. 2, Fig. 179. The character’s demeanour in the two episodes in which he appears at York (of which the second is uncanonical) aligns him with the assertive boys who are listed alongside him in this section. The treatment of the subject in David Keck’s otherwise interesting and informative Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 184–5, is disappointingly perfunctory and under-researched; he merely suggests that such parts were most likely played by boys. Richard Rastall, ‘The Music of the Weavers’ Pageant (No. 45)’, in Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 1, p. 467. For further details concerning the appearances of angels in scripture see Keck, Angels and Angelology, pp. 28–36. The faces of boys who featured in London pageants of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century were described as glittering and golden, creating the impression of a reflected divine radiance; see, on this subject in general, Sarah Carpenter and Meg Twycross, Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 222–3.

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106revisiting the medieval north of england 22

23

24

25

26

27

28 29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36 37

The exception happens to be the Parchmentmakers and Bookbinders’ pageant in the York cycle (no. 10), of which more below. As well as the versions of Abraham and Isaac incorporated into the Chester, Towneley and N-Town cycles, there are two independent plays on the subject, one from Northampton, and the other (the Brome version) from somewhere in East Anglia; for the latter see Norman Davis (ed.), Non-Cycle Plays and Fragments, EETS SS 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 32–42, 43–57. Stephen Spector (ed.), The N-Town Play, 2 vols, EETS SS 11–12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 85–8; see especially 9.94–8, 162–6. Boys of this age continue to be trained to sing in Latin (and other languages) to this day in English cathedral and college choirs, and likewise to dress up, process and generally ‘perform’ before an audience. For the section of the text concerned see Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 1, pp. 112–21, and, for an extended account of the complicated textual and documentary evidence for the pageant’s history, vol. 2, pp. 119–31. See Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, pp. 59–60, and further references there to the importance of typology in the York version. Real asses also appear in street scenes in nos 18 and 25, the Flight into Egypt and the Entry into Jerusalem. See further Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, p. 62 Much of the basic information on the schools associated with the York Minster is found in Arthur Francis Leach, Early Yorkshire Schools, vol. 1, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 27 (1898), and Angelo Raine, History of St Peter’s School: York (London: G. Bell, 1926), pp. 39–64­. For a valuable overview of the subject in general, and further details about the numerous and varied educational opportunities for boys in the medieval city see Joann H. Moran, Education and Learning in the City of York 1300–1560, Borthwick Papers No. 55 (York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1979), pp. 5–14, 18–20. Carleton F. Brown’s amply documented article ‘Chaucer’s “Litel Clergeoun”’, Modern Philology, 3 (1905–6), 467–91 gives a detailed picture of boys and schools of this kind. D. W. Blewitt, ‘Records of Drama at Winchester and Eton’, Theatre Notebook, 38 (1984), 88–95, 135–43. REED: York, p. 1. Later records of the York boy bishops (naming a number of them) are not given in REED: York; see Edward F. Rimbault, Two Sermons Preached by the Boy Bishop, Camden Miscellany, ns 14 (1875), xi–xvi, 31–4, and E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), vol. 1, pp. 356–7. REED: York, 3–4. Concerning the hospital and its school generally see William Page (ed.), Victoria County History: Yorkshire, vol. 3 (London: Archibald Constable, 1913), pp. 339–43. It was unique among the religious houses in York in supporting a pageant in the Corpus Christi cycle, and had other important connections with the civic face of the Corpus Christi celebrations in the city; see Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, pp. 136–8. Most of the York craft ordinances were recorded in the civic volumes of records known as the Memorandum Books: see Maud Sellers (ed.), York Memorandum Book A/Y, vols 1–2, Surtees Society, 120 (1912), 125 (1913), and Joyce W. Percy (ed.), York Memorandum Book B/Y, Surtees Society, 186 (1973). The figures are derived from Heather Swanson’s reading of the manuscript, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class is Late Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 36. Kathman, ‘Grocers, Goldsmiths and Drapers’, 47–9. Later in the century, in 1478, one of John Paston II’s correspondents was moved to compare the Duke of Suffolk in choleric mood at Norwich to the stage Herod of the time: ‘ther was neuer no man þat playd Herrod in Corpus Crysty play better and more agreable to hys pageaunt then he dud’; Norman Davis (ed.), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, vol. 2, EETS SS 21 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 426. It appears that the writer had the Christ before Herod episode in mind: ‘And þer ye [Paston] wer juged. Som sayd, “Sley”; som sayd, “Put hym in preson”. And forth com my lord, and he wold met you with a spere and haue non other mendes

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THE CHILDREN OF THE YORK PLAYS

38 39

40 41 42

107

(‘reparation’) for þat troble at ye have put hym to but your hart blod.’. The letter was written on the eve of Corpus Christi, 20 May in that year. See Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, p. 212, and further references there. No offspring of Herod Antipas are recorded in the scriptural narrative or in other historical sources for the period; see S. S. Hussey, ‘How Many Herods in the Middle English Drama?’, Neophililogus, 48 (1964), 252–9. See Beadle, The York Plays, vol. 2, pp. 274–5, and further references there. Hussey, ‘How Many Herods’, 254, also finds the boys to be subtly differentiated in character. For example, Philippe Ariès, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Plon, 1960), of which the most recent edition in English is Centuries of Childhood, trans. Robert Baldick (London: Pimlico, 1996), and Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1990).

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Appendix York Corpus Christi Play: repertoire and organisation, c.1476–7   1 Barkers (leather) Fall of the Angels   2 Plasterers (builders) Creation   3 Cardmakers (textiles) Creation of Adam and Eve   4 Fullers (textiles) Adam and Eve in Eden   5 Coopers (barrels) Fall of Man  6 Armourers Expulsion  7 Glovers Cain and Abel  8 Shipwrights Building of the Ark   9 Fishers & Mariners Flood 10 Parchmentmakers & Bookbinders Abraham and Isaac 11 Hosiers (textiles) Moses and Pharaoh 12 Spicers (apothecaries) Annunciation and Visitation 13 Pewterers & Founders (metal) Joseph’s Trouble about Mary 14 Tilethatchers (roofers) Nativity 15 Chandlers (wax objects) Shepherds 16 Masons / Goldsmiths Herod / Magi 17 [formerly St Leonard’s Hospital] Purification (being revived) 18 Marshals (horses) Flight into Egypt 19 Girdlers & Nailers (leather) Slaughter of the Innocents 20 Spurriers & Lorimers (harness) Christ and the Doctors 21 Barbers (also surgeons) Baptism 22 Smiths (horses) Temptation 22A Vintners Marriage at Cana (never registered) 23 Curriers (leather) Transfiguration 23A Ironmongers Jesus at Simon the Leper’s House (never registered) 24 Cappers (hats) Woman taken in Adultery / Raising of Lazarus 25 Skinners (furs) Entry into Jerusalem 26 Cutlers Conspiracy 27 Bakers Last Supper 28 Cordwainers (shoes) Agony in the Garden and Betrayal

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THE CHILDREN OF THE YORK PLAYS

29 30

Bowers & Fletchers (arrows) Tapiters & Couchers (bedding) 31 Litsters (dyers) 32 Cooks & Waterleaders (carriers) 33 Tilemakers (brickmakers) 34 Shearmen (textiles) 35 Pinners (metal) 36 Butchers 37 Saddlers 38 Carpenters 39 Winedrawers (importers) 40 Woolpackers & Woolbrokers 41 Scriveners (clerks & scribes) 42 Tailors 43 Potters (bellfounders) 44 Drapers 44A Linenweavers 45 Woollenweavers 46 Hostelers (innkeepers) 47 Mercers (merchants)

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109

Christ before Annas and Caiaphas Christ before Pilate 1: Dream of Pilate’s Wife Christ before Herod Remorse of Judas Christ before Pilate 2: Judgement Road to Calvary Crucifixion Death of Christ Harrowing of Hell Resurrection Christ’s appearance to Mary Magdalene Supper at Emmaus Incredulity of Thomas Ascension Pentecost Death of the Virgin Funeral of the Virgin (being revived, but never registered) Assumption of the Virgin Coronation of the Virgin Last Judgement

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7 Linguistic Regionalism in the York Corpus Christi Plays ANITA AUER

Introduction

T

he north of England and the texts produced there in the later Middle Ages are of great importance for historical linguists in order to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in the development of written Standard English. This is particularly the case when we consider that scholars have agreed for a long time that the written Standard English language, i.e. a uniform written language, developed from the Central Midland dialect and that this variety was distributed by the Chancery clerks.1 This led to the perception that written Standard English was based on the so-called Chancery Standard, which was closely associated with London as the metropolis with the national seat of government and justice. From there, the standard then supposedly spread all over England, as the following quote by Peter Burke also suggests: ‘The growth of London and the fact that the court was located nearby encouraged the adoption of the south-eastern dialect as the standard, first in the chancery and then more generally’.2 This view has in the meantime been successfully challenged by Benskin and Wright, who noted that a so-called singleancestor theory (i.e. the hitherto accepted view), which suggests that the written standard is based on a single dialect, text type, place or point in time, is highly unlikely.3 Never­ theless, while the eminent position of London in the standardisation of written English is indisputable, notably also concerning the influence that the printing press with movable type had on the uniformisation of written English, the precise processes that took place and the inclusion of regional dialect features such as the northern third person singular present tense form -s (he goes) into the written standard have not yet been fully explained.4 In order to do so, it is essential to consider written sources from other regional centres of text production, alongside London. Moreover, if we consider that the English language consisted of local/regional dialects in writing before the end of the fourteenth century and a linguistic norm for a supraregional variety developed in the fifteenth century, which led to the gradual disappearance of dialect in writing by the beginning of the sixteenth century,5 a better insight into the standardisation processes of written English can be gained by taking a closer look at texts produced in regional centres during the fifteenth century.6

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112revisiting the medieval north of england

In line with this approach, the current paper focuses on York as a centre of text pro­­ duction during the fifteenth century. After all, York (via Hull) was considered one of the primary ports in England in the later Middle Ages and was in terms of size or status comparable to large European towns like Antwerp, Bremen or Lyon.7 York, as the northern capital and thus an important centre for the military, church and administration, was very successful in regional and overseas trade, for instance, export in wool and cloth to the Baltic and the Low Countries, until the end of the fourteenth century, which is when the city became marginalised through competition.8 York, as well as other regional centres at the time, thus fulfilled many roles, for example, administrative and institutional func­ tions, manufacturing and marketing, domestic as well as international trade, which also indicates that literacy rates were significantly higher compared to small towns and rural areas.9 As regards fifteenth-century text production in York, one well-known work that is undoubtedly linked to the city is the York Corpus Christi Plays, i.e. the cycle of fortyeight mystery plays which have been preserved in one manuscript. The mystery plays, which are now available in a critical edition by Beadle, 10 will serve as the basis of linguistic investigation in this chapter. Considering Middle English dialect differences and therefore distinctly different lin­­ guistic features in the north as opposed to the south and other geographical areas, the selection of one of these variables will allow me to shed light on local scribal prac­ tices as well as to gain insight into the development of the above-mentioned supra­­­regional variety. In this chapter, the focus will be on the third person singular present tense forms because the southern dialect marker –th (London and surroundings) differs from the northern dialect marker –s (York and surroundings), while the latter is the variant found in written Standard English. A study of this linguistic variable may therefore provide some insight into processes that explain the implementation of a northern dialect feature into the written standard usually associated with dialects in the southern parts of England. This chapter is structured as follows: the next section will provide some background information on the York Corpus Christi Plays and particularly focus on linguistic aspects linked to the work. Section three is concerned with existing studies on the third person singular present tense variable, which provide the linguistic context for the current study, i.e. they explain the development of the forms in other text types and places. Based on that, in Section four, the findings of this empirical study will be presented and interpreted with regard to textual evidence and the bigger issue of standardisation processes. Finally, the conclusion will present the main findings and suggest some trajectories for further research on this topic.

A linguistic perspective on the York Corpus Christi plays The current study uses Beadle’s critical edition of the York Corpus Christi Plays as data for the linguistic investigation. The majority of Beadle’s edition is based on British Library, Additional MS 35290, with incidental references being made to the Sykes and Towneley manuscripts. Even though an official order for the compilation of the manuscript is un­­­ known, internal and external evidence suggests that the manuscript’s inception was around 1476–7.11 Beadle notes that:

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the york corpus christi plays

113

The purpose of the manuscript must be inferred to a large extent from the appearance and nature of the volume itself, and from later references [and that] it was intended to be the official record of the text of the Corpus Christi Play.12

As concerns editorial procedures, Beadle points out that he observed the orthography of the manuscript (and followed specific conventions), he silently expanded abbreviations, he regularised word division, and he introduced punctuation marks and capital letters in line with modern usage.13 As the preservation of orthography and therewith morphology is essential for a linguistic study of the third person singular present tense form, and these aspects are authentic, Beadle’s edition is a suitable source for the current study. In his critical edition of the York Corpus Christi Plays, Beadle makes some valuable comments about linguistic aspects related to the plays.14 Importantly, he notes that ‘[the majority] of the play is in the hand of the main scribe of the Register [i.e. Scribe B], and linguistically speaking it already consists of a partially ‘modernized’ version of the pageants’.15 More precisely, this means that ‘the more markedly northern language of the crafts’ originals’ has already been ‘translated’ ‘into a rather less dialectally distinct variety of late Middle English’.16 As regards the main scribe’s motives to ‘modernize’ the text, Beadle assumes that the scribe was either asked to do so or it was his own choice. The latter possibility is likely considering the following observation by Beadle: the main scribe’s procedures leave no doubt that he regarded the language of his exemplars as provincial and somewhat old-fashioned, as compared with that coming into administrative use at York in his time, and it appears that he made it his business to produce a text that would serve civic purposes for some time to come in the changing linguistic environment of the later fifteenth century. While the compiler of the Register shows no particular sign that he possessed any concept of a ‘standard’ form of the language with which his work was intended to conform, it would be fair to say that what he produced does belong to a less-defined trend, shared by other copyists of public documents in York at the time, which was to write a dilute or ‘levelled’ form of the local dialect.17

In addition, Beadle notes that the scribe was not consistent in his undertaking, which is reflected in the unsystematic occurrence of northern dialect features. Scribe B’s in­­­ consistency when copying was also observed in Holford’s 2002 study of orthographic variation in the York Corpus Christi Plays.18 As regards the involvement of Scribe A and B in the copying of the plays, Scribe A copied pageants 1 (The Barkers), 2 (The Plasterers) and 3A (The Cardmakers), while Scribe B made a duplicate copy of the Cardmakers’ pageant (3B) and copied the bulk of the pageants. A comparison of the copies of the Cardmakers’ pageant, i.e. 3A (Scribe A) and 3B (Scribe B), allows us to determine the scribes’ linguistic choices.19 While it is impossible to know what linguistic variants were contained in the original, Beadle assumes that Scribe A copied the given forms, while Scribe B eliminated northern forms.20 Here is a selection of Beadle’s findings where the first item (in italics) illustrates the northern forms as found in pageants copied by Scribe A and the second item (in roman) the non-local forms used by Scribe B, i.e. the main scribe: alane/alone, axke/aske, bane/bone, mony/ many, qwate/whatte, sall/shalle, skyl/skille, þai/they.21 These examples clearly illustrate the dialect differences and the fact that Scribe A was retaining northern features when copying from the original.

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114revisiting the medieval north of england

Based on the observations above, it will be interesting to determine what choices Scribe B made with regard to the third person singular present tense variants. After all, concerning this particular linguistic variable, the choice for a non-northern variant, that is, indicating the assimilation to or merging with other dialect forms, is also an option.

North and south: the variants of the third person singular present tense A favourite linguistic variable for historical linguists to investigate in the context of standardisation processes is the third person singular present tense form as there are clear regional indicators in the Middle English period that can then be traced over time. More precisely, the –s variant is associated with the north (and partly the midlands) while the –th variant (including different spelling variants) is associated with parts of the midlands and particularly the south and thus also London, the metropolis. As pointed out in the introduction, it is the overall aim of historical linguists to determine how the northern –s variant became part of the written standard. As concerns the reconstruction of the development of the third person singular present tense to date, many scholars have already carried out research on this topic.22 It is generally assumed that the linguistic variable has three variants (including spelling variations of the different forms): (a) –s:

(b) –th: (c) zero:

He goes He goeth He go

As pointed out above, the written language during the Middle English period was char­ acterised by local/regional dialects, which means that the northern variant of the third person singular present tense form was an –s (he goes) while the southern form was a –th (he goeth). It is noteworthy that the zero form, i.e. here illustrated with he go is associated both with the indicative and with the subjunctive, where the difference can often be deter­ mined through the meaning and the sentence type, e.g. conditional clauses. Lass notes that the –s variant is found in London texts in the fourteenth century and that it gradually increased from then onwards, becoming the dominant form around 1600.23 Nevertheless, after 1600, variation with –th was still found with respect to text types and verb types. More precisely, Merja Kytö, whose study is based on the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, observes a difference in development from –th to –s in relation to lexical verbs or the auxiliary verbs do and have.24 Lexical verbs shifted to –s faster as opposed to the specific auxiliary verbs. As regards text types, -th forms were still found around 1700, notably in biblical and liturgical works, as well as other highly formal contexts. In less formal contexts like ego-documents an earlier shift can be observed. In fact, based on letters, and more precisely the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC, 1460– 1681), Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg observe a decrease of the –s variant in letters written by northerners between 1460 and 1539.25 The local northern form did thus give way to the southern –th variant in letters from the north. Then again, from 1539 onwards, letter data from the north, London, the court and East Anglia reveal a gradual increase of the –s variant, notably less so in the north than in London. In fact, their findings show

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the york corpus christi plays

115

that London seems to have led the change concerning the use of the –s variant. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg’s study, as well as Moore’s study, which is based on the Plumpton letters, show that the northern –s variant did not spread all over England from the north, ultimately becoming the dominant variant in the written standard, but that the northern –s variant moved south first, and was distributed all over England from there, thereby also returning to the north.26 It is noteworthy that this development was observed with regard to a specific text type, namely letters, and studies related to other text types may therefore support this trajectory of the variants or not. In fact, in a study of the third person singular present tense in depositions (based on An Electronic Text Edition of Depositions 1560–1760), Auer confirmed the observed trajectory of variants that was found in the studies of letters.27 More precisely, her findings show that the –th variant was the domin­ ­ant form in depositions from Durham, Lancaster, London and Norwich until the period 1650–99. After that point, the use of –s in depositions of all cities increased. Considering these previous findings and the overall development of the third person singular present tense variants as determined so far, it will be interesting to see whether the York Corpus Christi Plays still consistently use the local form or whether the southern variant, which has been found in northern letters from 1460 onwards, is also present in the plays. As regards the approach taken in this study, the third person singular present tense variants, i.e. –s, –th and zero, have been determined by multiple close-readings of the York Corpus Christi Plays. The focus here is only on lexical verbs and the auxiliary verb have. The verb types and the different variants were then listed for all plays separately as this can potentially help in the determination of patterns. Moreover, when the –th variant was encountered in the plays, a note was made as to what character used the form, and whether it was consistently used by that character or whether the –s variant was also used. This would similarly allow for the determination of specific variant patterns and therefore give insight into scribal choices and/or the levelling process taking place.

The third person singular present tense forms in the York Corpus Christi plays Based on the previous discussion, it will be interesting to see what choices the scribes made when copying from the original, i.e. did they adhere to the northern form, which is represented by –s, or did they choose different variants, notably –th, which represents the southern form, or zero. Occurrences of the –th variant may be taken as a sign that levelling processes have started where other dialect features, the southern variant in this case, compete with the local form. Based on Beadle and Holford’s observations regarding orthography, Scribe B had a tendency to mix local forms with levelled, i.e. assimilated, forms in an inconsistent manner.28 In case of variation between the different forms, the question may also be raised whether the variation is structured, i.e. that certain variants are found within a certain play or are used consistently by specific speakers. These queries will be answered through the data provided in Table 1. The findings are presented according to play, and the scribe associated with the respective plays is indicated, i.e. 1–3 was copied by Scribe A and the other plays were copied by Scribe B. The percentages given in brackets at the bottom of each column are calculated for the lexical verbs and their variants as well as have and its variants has and hath respectively.

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116revisiting the medieval north of england

Table 1. Distribution of 3rd person singular present tense variants in the York Corpus Christi Plays. PLAY

lexical verbs

have

–s

–th

zero

–s

–th

zero

1. The Barkers (Scribe A)

4

0

0

3

0

0

2. The Plasterers (Scribe A)

3

0

0

0

0

0

3A. The Cardmakers Cardmakers (Scribe A)

1

0

1

3

0

0

3B. The Cardmakers (Scribe B)

1

0

1

3

0

0

4. The Fullers

1

1

0

3

0

0

5. The Coopers

4

1

2

2

0

0

6. The Armourers

5

0

1

4

0

0

7. The Glovers

4

1

3

8

0

0

8. The Shipwrights

2

0

3

2

0

0

9. The Fishers & Mariners

15

0

9

8

0

1

10. The Parchmentmakers & Bookbinders

12

0

4

21

0

3

11. The Hosiers

12

0

9

11

0

0

12. The Spicers

13

0

4

5

0

0

13. The Pewterers & Founders

7

0

11

7

0

0

14. The Tilethatchers

5

0

2

2

0

0

15. The Chandlers

5

0

2

0

0

0

16. The Masons

24

2

20

16

1

0

17. The Hatmakers, Masons & Labourers

11

3

9

11

1

1

18. The Marshals

7

1

8

4

0

0

19. The Girdlers & Nailers

3

1

0

1

0

1

20. The Spurriers & Lorimers

21

0

6

8

1

2

21. The Barbers

6

0

3

4

0

1

22. The Smiths

4

0

1

5

0

0

22A. The Vintners

0

0

0

0

0

0

23. The Curriers

16

0

4

6

0

0

23A. The Ironmongers

1

0

0

0

0

0

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the york corpus christi plays

24. The Capmakers

9

0

4

3

3

0

25. The Skinners

22

1

17

5

2

1

26. The Cutlers

27

0

10

5

4

1

27. The Bakers

6

0

2

5

0

0

28. The Cordwainers

11

0

4

6

0

0

29. The Bowers and Fletchers

28

2

8

13

2

1

30. The Tapiters and Couchers

44

2

17

15

1

1

31. The Litsters

42

1

13

4

0

0

32. The Cooks & Waterleaders

31

0

9

8

0

0

33. The Tilemakers

27

1

20

11

0

0

34. The Shearmen

7

1

6

6

1

0

35. The Pinners

11

2

3

2

0

0

36. The Butchers

8

0

10

3

0

0

37. The Saddlers

13

0

8

4

2

0

38. The Carpenters

6

1

12

2

0

0

39. The Winedrawers

4

0

3

0

0

0

40. The Woolpackers & Woolbrokers

1

0

2

4

0

0

41. The Scriveners

3

1

1

2

0

0

42. The Tailors

11

0

3

5

2

0

43. The Potters

12

0

6

4

0

0

44. The Drapers

8

0

0

6

0

0

44A. The Linenweavers

-

-

-

-

-

-

45. The Weavers

8

1

6

2

0

0

46. The Hostelers

0

0

1

2

0

0

47. The Mercers

5

0

0

12

2

0

TOTAL 1

117

531

(64.6%)

23

(2.8%)

268

(32.6%)

266

(88.4%)

22

(7.3%)

13

(4.3)

I excluded the copy of the Scrivener’s play from the Sykes manuscript here as it has been dated to a later period (see Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, p. xxxi, and A. C. Cawley, ‘The Sykes MS of the York Scriveners’ Play’, Leeds Studies in English, 7–8 (1952), 45–80.

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118revisiting the medieval north of england

The table considers the types of verbs separately in that they have an effect on the develop­ ment of the variable, as previous studies have shown. All in all, if we consider the totals of the lexical verbs, it is interesting to observe that the –s variant, and thus the local northern form, is the dominant choice by the scribes. The second most frequently used variant is the zero form. It is noteworthy here that every single occurrence of the zero form in the third person singular present tense context can be interpreted as a subjunctive form, in main clauses as well as subordinate clauses. This leaves us with the third variant, the –th form, which has been strongly associated with the south and is recognised as the southern Middle English dialect form. This variant also occurs in the York Corpus Christi Plays; however, neither consistently nor systematically. Moreover, if we consider that the zero forms represent subjunctive forms, and only the –s and the –th variants are representative of the indicative, the occurrence of the –th variants may be considered as very low, notably 4.2 per cent as opposed to 95.8 per cent for the local –s variant. As regards the lexical verbs which occur with the –th variant, they vary in the text, which implies that the –th inflection is not associated with particular verbs at this stage. Before drawing any general conclusions, have and its variants will be considered. Similar to the distribution of variants regarding the lexical verbs, in the case of have the –s variant is clearly the dominant form, but now followed by the –th variant and the zero form. As the zero forms can again be explained away as subjunctive forms, the indicative distribution would then be 92.4 per cent for the -s variant versus 7.6 per cent for the -th variant. Overall, the findings related to the lexical verbs and have in the indicative are thus not dissimilar in terms of distribution. It is however noteworthy that hath is found more frequently in the plays than lexical verbs ending in –th: 7.3 per cent hath versus 2.8 per cent of lexical verbs with –th inflection. A closer look at the findings of the different pageants shows that the distribution of lexical verbs and have varies to some extent. As regards the previously mentioned levelling processes, the findings in terms of distribution show that the local form is clearly the dominant variant. This suggests that the scribes were rather conservative overall. While the southern form does occur in the York Plays, which is testament to the fact that it was already used in the north at the time and the levelling process may have started, it is difficult to determine a distribution pattern. A closer look at the occurrence of the –th variant in different plays and in relation to specific speakers reveals that there is no clear pattern, but its use seems rather random. In fact, there are many examples where a speaker uses the –th variant in one line and the –s variant in the same line or in a line close by, which is illustrated below (the verbs with the variant endings have been highlighted in the examples):

(1)

For I ame wayke and all vnwelde, My welth ay wayns and passeth away, Whereso I fayre in fyrth or feylde I fall ay downe for febyll, in fay. (17. The Hatmakers, Masons, and Laborers, ll. 91–4, Symeon)



(2)

Allas þis is a cursed cas. He þat alle hele in his hande has Shall here be sakles slayne. A, lorde, beleue lete clense thy face—

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119

Behalde, howe he hath schewed his grace, Howe he is moste of mayne! (34. The Shermen, ll. 180–5, III Maria)

(3) Before vs plainly bese fourth brought þe dedis þat vs schall dame bedene; þat eres has herde, or harte has þoght, Sen any tyme þat we may mene, þat fote has gone or hande has wroght, That mouthe hath spoken or ey has sene, þis day full dere þanne bese it boght. Allas, vnborne and we hadde bene! (47. Merceres, ll. 161–8, II Anima Mala)

Example (1) shows the –s variant and the –th variant with lexical verbs in the same sentence. Examples (2) and (3) illustrate the variation between has and hath in close proximity in the text. The variation in example (2) may be explained through the rhyme of has with cas at the end of consecutive lines.29 One angle that still deserves attention is the distribution of forms according to scribe. After all, the first three plays in the manuscript, i.e. the Barkers, the Plasterers, and the Card­makers, were copied by Scribe A. He is the scribe that Beadle describes as the more conservative in that he adhered to older/traditional northern linguistic variants when copying from the original.30 This is also reflected with regard to the third person singular present tense variants where he consistently chooses the –s variant with lexical verbs and have over the –th variant. A comparison of the Cardmakers’ play (no. 3), of which versions by both Scribe A and B exist (see Table 1), reveals that they both made the same choices regarding the variants. The scribes consistently opt for the local/regional –s variant with the lexical verbs and have. According to Beadle, ‘There is no question but that the two copies were both made from the same Cardmakers’ original’.31 The findings suggest therefore that the main scribe, Scribe B, is the one who introduces the southern variant –th into the text, albeit not to a high degree and not in a systematic way. Nevertheless, the findings confirm to a certain extent Beadle’s observation that Scribe B’s tended to modernize the text and to opt for less dialectally distinct variants (see Section 2). While this tendency is more obvious with respect to orthographic variation, it was Scribe B after all who introduced the southern variant (-th) into the York Corpus Christi Plays.

Concluding remarks In the context of shedding light on processes involved in the development of written Standard English, this chapter aimed at investigating the use of the third person singular present tense forms in the York Corpus Christi Plays. As this particular variable contains different variants, some of which are also associated with regional (Middle English) dialects, notably –s in the north and –th in the south, the distribution of the variants in

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120revisiting the medieval north of england

the plays gives insight into scribal practices as well as ongoing developments concerning the emergence of a supralocal variety. The findings of the study show that the northern –s variant is clearly the dominant form in the plays, however, the southern –th form is also found, albeit at a much lower frequency. A closer look at scribal practices has revealed that Scribe A, who copied the first three plays, consistently uses the northern –s variant, while Scribe B appears to be the one who has introduced the southern –th variant into the text. An investigation of the variant distribution concerning plays and speakers does however not reveal any obvious patterns, which suggests that Scribe B did not use the –th variant in a systematic way. In the context of the long-term development of the third person singular present tense form, the findings of this study confirm previous studies based on letters, notably Moore and Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg,32 that observed the occurrence of the southern –th variant in northern letters. As a next step, in another study33 the current findings of the York Corpus Christi Plays will be compared to results from fifteenth-century York civic records, i.e. the York Memo­ randum Books, and letters written in York and surroundings during that period. This will allow us to fully understand the supralocalisation processes taking place in York during the fifteenth century, and to determine whether Scribe B was a linguistic innovator or whether he followed the model of some other scribe.

Notes  1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

Cf. Michael L. Samuels, ‘Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology’, English Studies, 44 (1963), 81–94. See also Eilert Ekwall, Studies on the Population of Medieval London (Stock­ holm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1956); John H. Fisher, ‘Chancery and the Emergence of Standard Written English in the Fifteenth Century’, Speculum. A Journal of Medieval Studies, 52 (1977), 870–99; and John H. Fisher, Malcolm Richardson and Jane L. Fisher (eds), An Anthology of Chancery English (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984). Peter Burke, Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 100. Michael Benskin, ‘Chancery Standard’, in C. J. Kay, C. Hough and I. Wotherspoon (eds), New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics, Volume 2 (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), pp. 1–40; Laura Wright, ‘Introduction’, in Laura Wright (ed.), The Development of Standard English (1300–1800) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1–8. For relevant studies see for instance Julia Fernández Cuesta and María Nieves Rodríguez Ledesma, ‘Northern Features in 15th–16th-Century Legal Documents from Yorkshire’, in Marina Dossena and Roger Lass (eds), Methods and Data in English Historical Dialectology (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 287–308; Merja Stenroos, ‘Regional language and culture: the geography of Middle English linguistic variation’, in T. W. Machan (ed.), Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 100–25; and Merja Stenroos’ chapter in this volume. Michael Benskin, ‘Some Perspectives on the Origins of Standard Written English’, in J. A. van Leuvensteijn and J. B. Berns (eds), Dialect and Standard Languages in the English, Dutch,German and Norwegian Language Areas (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1992), p. 71. This is the aim of the project Emerging Standards: Urbanisation and the Development of Standard English (c. 1400–1700), in the context of which the current paper has been written. More precisely, the project focuses on urban vernaculars of major regional centres that have high levels of literacy and text production. Texts produced in the vernacular in these centres, notably York (north), Bristol (southwest), Coventry (West Midlands), and Norwich (East Anglia), are being systematically investigated over the period 1400–1700 with respect to factors such as time, text type and migration patterns. Ultimately, a comparison of the results of these longitudinal studies will shed light on

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our understanding of the origin and spread of formal written English (see also A. Auer et al., ‘English urban vernaculars, 1400–1700: Digitizing text from manuscript’, in María José LópezCouso, et al. (eds), Corpus Linguistics on the Move. Exploring and Understanding English through Corpora (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 21–40.)  7 Jenny Kermode, ‘The Greater Towns 1300–1540’, in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Volume I: 600–1540 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 441, 448.  8 Jenny Kermode, Medieval Merchants. York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).  9 D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Volume I: 600–1540 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); See also the Emerging Standards project. 10 See Richard Beadle (ed.), The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Richard Beadle (ed.), The York Plays: A Critical Edition of the York Corpus Christi Play as Recorded in British Library Additional MS 35290, Volume 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 11 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, pp. xi–xiii. 12 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, p. xix. 13 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. 14 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, pp. xxxvi–xli. 15 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, p. xxxvi. 16 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 1, p. xxxvi. 17 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 2, p. xxxvi. 18 M. L. Holford, ‘Language and Regional Identity in the York Corpus Christi Cycle’, Leeds Studies in English, 33 (2002), 170–96. 19 Beadle observes that Scribes A and B, who were both fifteenth-century scribes, played significant roles in the compilation of the original manuscript while two other scribes (Scribes C and D) made important contributions to the manuscript during the sixteenth century (Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 2, p. xxvi). 20 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 2, p. xxxvii. 21 It is noteworthy that Beadle presents the variants as follows: ‘where A’s forms are given first in roman type, followed by B’s in italic’ (Volume 2, p. xxxvii), however, the examples given suggest that the first variant, which is in italics, are those by Scribe A, notably northern forms, while the roman type examples (2nd variant) appear to be the non-northern, and therefore levelled, dialect forms. 22 For example Dieter Stein, ‘At the Crossroads of Philology, Linguistics and Semiotics: Notes on the Replacement of th by s in the Third Person Singular in English’, English Studies, 68 (1987), 406–31; Roger Lass, ‘Phonology and Morphology’, in Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume 2: 1066–1476 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 23–155; Roger Lass, ‘Phonology and Morphology’, in Roger Lass (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume 3: 1476–1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 56–186; Merja Kytö, ‘Third-person Present Singular Verb Inflection in Early British and American English’, Language Variation and Change, 5 (1993), 113–39; Terttu Nevalainen, ‘Process of Supralocalisation and the Rise of Standard English in the Early Modern Period’, in Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg and C. B. McCully (eds), Generative Theory and Corpus Studies. A Dialogue from 10 ICEHL (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 329–371; Colette Moore, ‘Writing good Southerne: Local and Supralocal Norms in the Plumpton Letter Collection’, Language Variation and Change, 14 (2002), 1–17; Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics: Language Change in Tudor and Stuart England (London and New York: Pearson, 2003); Stefan T. Gries and Martin Hilpert, ‘Modelling Diachronic Change in the Third Person Singular: A Multifactorial, Verb- and Authorspecific Exploratory Approach’, English Language and Linguistics, 14/3 (2010), 293–320; Mel Evans, ‘“The vsuall speach of the Court”? Investigating Language Change in the Tudor Family

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Network (1544–1556)’, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 1/2 (2015), 153–88; Moragh Sanne Gordon, The Urban Vernacular of Late Medieval and Renaissance Bristol (Utrecht: Lot Dissertation Series. Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics, 2017); Anita Auer, ‘Urban Literacies and Processes of Supralocalization: A Historical Sociolinguistic Perspective’, in Natalie Braber and Sandra Jansen (eds), Sociolinguistics in England (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 13–34. 23 Lass, Phonology and Morphology (1999), p. 163. 24 Kytö, Third-person Present Singular Verb Inflection, p. 121. 25 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics. 26 Moore, Writing good Southerne; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics. 27 Auer, Urban Literacies and Processes of Supralocalization. 28 Beadle The York Plays, Volume 2; M. L. Holford, ‘Language and Regional Identity in the York Corpus Christi Cycle’, Leeds Studies in English, 33 (2002), 170–96. 29 Many thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this observation. 30 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 2, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. 31 Beadle, The York Plays, Volume 2, p. xxxvii, see also pp. 16–17. 32 Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg, Historical Sociolinguistics; Moore, Writing good Southerne. 33 Auer, ‘Die Stadtsprache Yorks im späten Mittelalter: eine linguistische Studie’ (in preparation).

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8 The Hermit and the Sailor: Readings of Scandinavia in North-East English Hagiography CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD

T

his chapter begins from the premise that hagiographical writing forms a rich, although often overlooked, textual resource for interrogating the identity of a region, and for charting regional attitudes towards other nationalities and ethnicities. It will focalise this premise by looking in particular at twelfth-century vitae and miracle collections associated with the monumental cult of Cuthbert, the great seventh-century Northumbrian saint, to see what information they can provide into the relationship of northern England with Scandinavia. By the twelfth century, after many well-charted dislocations over several centuries, Cuthbert’s cult was securely centred upon his tomb shrine at Durham cathedral, under the custodianship of an Anglo-Norman Benedictine priory that had replaced the previous community of secular clerks, and the bishop of Durham.1 Subsidiary cult centres were also in the process of being re-established off the coast of northern Northumbria: on Lindisfarne, where Cuthbert operated as a monk and bishop, and on Inner Farne island, where he withdrew to live as a hermit in the 670s and 680s. This cult was the dominant regional religious focus of the north of England in the twelfth century, and one of the three or four most important cults in England at the time. What attitudes does the northern English community of St Cuthbert take toward med­­ ieval Scandinavia? The story here obviously begins in 793, with the seemingly apocalyptic destruction of the monastery on Lindisfarne where Cuthbert’s body was housed, during the first Viking raids. Subsequent raids gave rise to an intermittent exilic movement around the north by Cuthbert’s community, transporting his coffin and associated saintly treasures to protect them from Nordic pillage. Although Cuthbert fails to retaliate at the time of the early raids, he is recorded as doing so later (and very vigorously), in the 870s and in 918, when various Danish kings, King Halfdan and King Ragnald, enter the mouths of north-eastern rivers, and try to seize his landed endowments and give them to their retainers. Cuthbert makes King Halfdan ‘reek and rave’, so we are told in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, and vanquishes him back out to sea.2 He is even more aggressive to Ragnald’s retainers, Scula and Onlafabal, who have had the temerity to question his spiritual potency and assert the superiority of their own gods, Thor and Odin, incapacitating them on the threshold of his church, and then striking them dead.3

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revisiting the medieval north of england

However, if this sounds like an unequivocal defiance of the Viking invasion and settle­ ment, we should also note that Cuthbert’s hagiographers provide him with a surprisingly pragmatic and conciliatory attitude towards the Danish army in 882. At the time, Cuthbert’s followers have been traversing the entire northern region with Cuthbert’s body for seven years, and are badly in need of land and a base. Usefully enough, Cuthbert appears in a vision and persuades the Danish army stationed at York to elect a young Danish slave named Guthred as their king. In return for the divine favour, Cuthbert then demands that King Guthred grant his community all the land between the Rivers Tyne and Wear, territory that later becomes the bishopric of Durham.4 Here, we see the presentation of a much more politically astute saint: one who is prepared to negotiate with the Danish invaders, and to shape and authorise their leadership, in return for the best possible landed deal for his own ecclesiastical community. These two narratives epitomise then how things stand vis-à-vis Cuthbert and the Scandinavians up until the Conquest, conveying on the one hand, aggres­ sion and rejection, and on the other, accommodation and realpolitik. In essence, we can observe a two-pronged approach by the northern church to the Scandi­navian outsider. After the Conquest, nothing much more can be found in Cuthbertine writing about Scandinavian relationships with northern England up until the mid-twelfth century. By this time, Cuthbert was securely established inside Durham Cathedral, largely completed by the 1130s,5 and the Anglo-Norman Benedictine custodians of his body were promoting his shrine as a pilgrimage destination and writing up his contemporary miracles. The island of Inner Farne, where Cuthbert originally lived as a hermit, had also started to be reinhabited by Durham Benedictine hermits re-enacting Cuthbert’s asceticism, one of whom, Bartholomew, was hailed as a saint and made the subject of a posthumous Vita. In these various miracle collections and saints’ lives, which will receive more detailed attention below, we begin to feel the press of a Scandinavian presence in the north of England again – but this time, primarily Norwegian, and frequently commercial. In the remainder of this essay, we will catalogue the principal ways in which Norway is en­­­countered. First, we encounter a late reprise of pre-Conquest raids. In 1153, King Eystein II, who has been co-king of Norway since 1142, along with his brothers Inge and Sigurd, sails over to Orkney where he captures the Earl of Orkney, and then works his way down the Scottish and English seaboard looting and plundering. Aberdeen, Hartlepool and Whitby are singled out for mention in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (c.1230), which recounts the expedition rather admiringly.6 The compendious Cuthbertine miracle collection known as the Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthbert virtutibus (1150s–1170s), by the monastic hagiographer Reginald of Durham, also reveals that Eystein’s ships draw up for the night on Inner Farne island, an emerging site for Cuthbertine thaumaturgy. While the Norwegian soldiers behave peaceably and refrain from violating the hermits’ property, all is well. But when they start roasting and eating the monastic sheep and pulling down timber from the hermitage to repair their ships, Cuthbert retaliates by drying up the drinking well, forcing the soldiers to leave.7 This does not prevent them, of course, from subsequently attack­ing Whitby and Hartlepool, but it does leave Cuthbert’s island properties intact. What is noticeable here is the relatively small-scale character of the response. Rather than grandly involving himself in the politics of kingmaking, or chasing away aggressive Danish kings, Reginald depicts Cuthbert opting for guerrilla tactics, cutting off a crucial water supply. In a mid-twelfth-century milieu, he is no longer quite so overt and freewheeling

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in the military arena as in his pre-Conquest manifestations, perhaps acknowledging his political subordination to the Norman centre. And in a North Sea environment, now much more marked by commercial transaction than by old-style piracy, he does what needs to be done to get the soldiers off his back, but also leaves the door ajar to more collaborative and friendly modes of relationship and exchange. These more collaborative possibilities materialise in the second mode of Norwegian encounter. In the same miracle collection and through the same decades of the 1150s and 1160s, Reginald records a number of miracles in which northern English traders, sailing to Frisia (the coastal region of the Netherlands), Flanders and Norway, and Norwegian traders travelling to England, get into difficulties in storms and are saved by an apparition of Cuthbert, dressed as a bishop, and led to a safe haven on Farne Island. Here, they recount their miraculous salvation to the resident hermits, and are provided with a Euchar­ istic meal.8 In these narratives, we see Cuthbert being explicitly styled as a maritime wonderworker along the lines of St Nicholas of Bari, Bishop of Myra, with power over the North Sea and its commercial traffic. There is nothing of that in his earlier vitae; this is new to the twelfth century. These stories act to confirm the continuing importance of trade between north-east England and Norway into the mid-twelfth century, maintaining links established by King Cnut over a century earlier, as well as making visible emerging markets to the south-east, in Frisia and Flanders.9 Cuthbert is constructed as the supernatural helpmate to the Norwegian, Frisian and English traders of the North Sea. We may interpret this as a northern ecclesiastical attempt to exert political dominance over the North Sea and the business of international trade by provisioning it with an English patron saint. It is an expansionist move whereby north­ ­ern English spiritual dominion and influence is extended east into international waters. The imperilled merchants are made the instruments of an expansionist agenda, yet at the same time, Reginald’s account does not hesitate to evaluate their professional activities negatively, terming them avaricious and worldly, and contrasting their motion and turbu­ lence upon the deep waters with the solidity and spiritual nourishment associated with Cuthbert’s island anchorhold.10 To summarise, in these nautical miracles we see the preeminent saint of northern England reoriented in relation to the North Sea, acknowledging the flux of trade, ministering to it, but also exercising moral judgement over it. Third, in the longest chapter in Reginald’s entire miracle collection, we are told a much more detailed story about Norwegian interaction with Cuthbert and the north.11 This chapter introduces an elite Norwegian youth, the son of a senior prelate, who has been highly educated at King Inge’s court and Stavanger monastery, and is plainly meant to stand as a paragon of Norwegian learning, manners and courtly refinement. This young man has the misfortune to get involved in a tradesman’s drinking contest in a tavern. Sleeping off his drunkenness, he is attacked in his dreams by a black woman who twists his head violently. He wakes to find that his head shakes continuously and uncontrollably, and that he has lost his sensory faculties: his hearing, sight and speech. His parents send him around the saints’ shrines of the North Sea world, which Reginald sets out as a list of countries and individual islands: Denmark, Scotland, Iceland, Gotland, Greenland, Uist, Lewis, Barra, Coll, Tiree, Colinsay, Rum, Sleat, Bute, Skye, Islay, Iona, Mull, the Orkney Islands, and Caithness.12 Essentially, Reginald includes every community around the North Sea and Atlantic under Norse possession or influence in the twelfth century. However, none of these places work to heal the youth. And why?

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Nempe omnes Sancti illi tam immensi opus officii, Beati Cuthberti potentiae virtuti et meritis reservarunt; eo forte dispensationis tenore, quod se impares et impotes eius pietatis clementiae cognoverunt. Assuredly, all those saints saved such an immense task for the virtues and strength of the powerful St Cuthbert, possibly because when he was in their stewardship they knew themselves unequal to and incapable of the clemency of Cuthbert’s piety.13

After the young man has returned to Bergen, the local Norwegian bishop recommends him to cast lots between three English saints: Cuthbert of Durham, Edmund of Bury in East Anglia, and the latest arrival within the saintly pantheon, Thomas of Canterbury, saying that he knows of no saints more powerful. Cuthbert’s name is drawn, and as a consequence the youth and his family travel to Durham in 1172 and spend three nights praying at the tomb of Cuthbert. Cuthbert appears in a vision in white bishop’s attire (an obvious contrast to the black woman of the diabolic dream), rebukes the youth for wander­ ­ing for so long without requesting his mercy, and pierces his brainpan curatively from right ear to left with his bishop’s staff. The youth’s shaking head is stilled, his sensory faculties return, and he uses his newly restored powers of speech to narrate his miraculous cure publicly, apparently in Norse: ‘et haec omnia nobis postmodum ipse lingua propria enarravit’ (‘and afterwards in his own tongue he narrated all these things to us’), although ‘lingua propria’ may also translate: ‘with his own tongue’.14 Reginald proffers a very rich narrative that can be approached from a number of different angles. From the viewpoint of Anglo-Scandinavian relationships, while this story certainly takes a much more friendly stance towards Norway, twenty years in the wake of King Eystein’s looting expedition, by the same count, it also seems concerned to press home northern English courtly, educational, spiritual and saintly pre-eminence. The paragon of youthful Norwegian courtliness and learning falls prey to the sin of inebriation, and needs to supplicate an English saint, a north of England saint, in order to be made whole again. All of the indigenous saints of the Norse maritime empire, from Greenland to the Outer Hebrides, lack the spiritual potentia to heal the young courtier, and are portrayed as openly acknowledging this lack, deferring to the superior power of north-eastern Cuthbert. Senior Norwegian clerics (the youth’s priestly father and the local bishop) add their voices to this acknowledgement of Cuthbert’s superiority. Cuthbert himself rebukes the youth for having spent so long in purposeless imperial trudging. There are two potential ways of thinking about geography in this miracle. On the one hand, it is possible to draw a line around the coasts of the lands bordering the North Sea, including the north-eastern English seaboard, and identify Cuthbert as the pre-eminent spiritual force within a North Sea maritime world, according to the Durham Benedictines at least.15 That is, rather than viewing Durham and Northumbria as counties at the margin of both the Norman south and the Scottish north, as they are often viewed as being in this period, we could re-view Durham and Northumbria as confidently facing east, and exer­ cising considerable spiritual sway in that direction. On the other hand, there is also the interesting detail of Cuthbert being paired with two other southern English saints, Edmund of Bury and Thomas Becket, in the business of casting lots.16 This is a very different configuration of spiritual geography, clearly aiming to identify Cuthbert as an unequivocally English saint. I would suggest that in the 1170s, Cuthbert can still be validly

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categorised in both of these ways – as part of a principally Nordic, North Sea maritime world, and as an English possession. His territorial allegiances are slippery, protean, flexible. Reginald manages to loop both of these possibilities into the same miracle narrative and to show Cuthbert exercising pre-eminence within both spiritual geographies. He outdoes the saints of the wide-ranging Norse empire on their own patch, and is simul­ taneously construed as an emphatically English wonderworker: a northern English saint, several times more powerful than his southern counterparts, who benevolently bestows healing upon a scion of the dumbed and disabled Norwegian court and church. Fourth and finally, it is necessary to turn from Cuthbertine miracles to the vitae of contemporary north-eastern hermits leading eremitic lives in the shadow of St Cuthbert, and explore what sort of a role Scandinavia plays in their lives. There are three major saintly hermits in the north-east of England in the twelfth century who generated hagio­ graphical vitae. Remarkably, in all three cases in these vitae, Scandinavia is evoked and placed in some kind of relation to their eremitic vocations. The earliest is St Henry of Coquet Island (d. 1127), an island around a mile offshore from Warkworth and Amble on the Northumbrian coast, under the control of the Benedictine community at Tynemouth Priory. Tynemouth Priory’s status as a dependency of St Albans Abbey is hotly contested by the Durham Benedictines, who have been entering into intermittent litigation on the subject since the eleventh century.17 Henry’s vita, which survives solely in the fourteenthcentury summary of the hagiographer John of Tynemouth, identifies him as a Danish nobleman who voyages over the North Sea to escape an arranged marriage, and establishes himself as a hermit on Coquet Island after having been shown his preordained destination in a divine vision.18 The next, much better known, is St Godric of Finchale (d. 1170), the subject of four vitae by the Durham Benedictines, who are also very keen to take control of his cult and hermitage.19 Godric, the son of a Norfolk peasant family, leads an early secular life as a sailor and trader with Scandinavia. He visits Inner Farne island in the course of his sea journeys around 1100, and is moved to tears by the architectural remnants of St Cuthbert’s seventh-century ascetic life. As a result, he eventually rejects his nautical life to become, not a sailor but a hermit, exchanging the movement of North Sea commerce for the stasis of the hermitage. Here we have two vitae where northern English eremitism is broached as a rejection of a nautical existence and of Scandinavia in some way. The third case is even more informative. St Bartholomew of Farne (c.1120–93), is known from the vita composed soon after death by the Durham Benedictine, Geoffrey of Durham.20 Geoffrey tells us that Bar­­ tholomew was born into an Anglo-Norse family in Whitby and initially named Tostig, a common Scandinavian name. He then gives an account of his early life which seems designed to illustrate him vacillating between Nordic and English identity. In the course of a typically worldly and dissolute youth, Bartholomew rejects the name Tostig because it angers his friends, and adopts a Norman one instead: William. However, following a subsequent vision in which the Virgin Mary invites him to embrace the footsteps of Christ, he departs for Norway, presented as a wild and savage country, where he is ordained as a priest, but also tempted on a number of fronts. A youth suggests that he mount his feet as a way of experiencing a perpetual vision of the devil, clearly an antithesis to embracing the footsteps of Christ, and a Norwegian citizen seeks to draw him into a marriage with his daughter.21 These temptations – the demonic and the feminine – correspond broadly to the problems encountered by the young Norwegian courtier in

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Reginald’s earlier miracle collection. Bravely withstanding these temptations to assume Nordic identity, Bartholomew flees back to northern England and works briefly as a parish priest in a Northumbrian church before recalling his adolescent vision and responding to it by entering Durham Benedictine Priory in c.1149, where he changes his name for a third time to the apostolic title, Bartholomew. At Durham Priory, he experiences a further vision of Cuthbert showing him round the topography of Farne Island and naming it as his future dwelling place, preordained by God: ‘Ecce locum istum a Deo tibi praeparatum scias, siquidem in eo usque in finem conversari te spondeas’ (‘Behold this place which you know has been prepared by God for you, if you promise to conduct your life there until death’).22 Bartholomew consequentially insists on being sent there to Farne to lead an eremitic life in Cuthbert’s footsteps, and spends the remainder of his life reprising Cuthbert’s avian miracles, and ministering to the North Sea sailors and traders who get into trouble in the waters adjacent to the island. Even more explicitly than Henry and Godric, it would seem that Bartholomew is shown to reject Nordic identity and Norwegian geography in favour of an emphatically northern English, monastic and eremitic vocation. Effectively, the two are set in opposition to one another throughout the early part of the Vita Bartholomaei: the chaste, English, Cuthbertine monastery versus the demonic and sexualised wilderness of Norway. Once Bartholomew has definitively opted for northern Englishness and the ascetic, he is then placed on Farne Island in an outreach position in which he can minister to North Sea mariners. That is, his repudiation of Scandinavia appears to qualify him to bring the right sort of mindset, from a Benedictine viewpoint at least, to those who travel the sea between England and Norway, since it means there is no danger of cross-cultural contamination. On his island in the North Sea, Bartholomew is simultaneously a mediator of Cuthbert’s guidance and protection, and an embodiment of a self-consciously constructed, northern English asceticism, bringing a distinctly nationalist and regionalist dimension to the otherwise transnational occupation of thaumaturgy at sea. We can conclude from this spread of hagiographical evidence that there is a strongly reciprocal relationship between north-eastern Cuthbertine hermits and sailors during the twelfth century. Sailors become hermits; hermits minister to sailors; they are vocational oppositions that need one another. In the same period, Cuthbert’s claims on northern territory, furthered by his eremitic successors, are extended far beyond dry land into the commercial waterways of the North Sea, enabling the spiritual geography of northern England to be oriented in a variety of different directions – either facing east towards Nordic possessions, or south towards rival shrines, yet always with the intention of assert­ing the spiritual supremacy of the region. Both these conclusions demonstrate a twelfth-century north increasingly aware of the sea as a commercial zone and the impress of Nordic maritime culture, and keen to assert its native spiritual heritage in reaction to that. That assertion can seem superficially open-handed and internationalist, as when Cuthbert and his hermits bring succour to imperilled merchant traders of different races. However, this generosity needs to be reviewed in the light of our final discussion of St Bartholomew, where we learn that the best exponent of English spiritual succour and authority over the North Sea in the eyes of Cuthbertine Durham, is the one who has ostentatiously rejected all Nordic contributions to his biography and identity.

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Notes  1

 2

 3  4

 5

 6

 7

 8

 9

10

11

The two most important recent collections of material on the twelfth-century cult are Gerald Bonner, David W. Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (eds), St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community to ad 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989), and David W. Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham, 1093–1193 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994). See also, Margaret Coombe, Anne Mouron, and Christiania Whitehead (eds), Saints of North-East England, 600–1500 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). The ejection of the secular clerks and their replacement with Benedictine monks was clearly controversial, and has given rise to differing contemporary interpretations. See William M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), and various essays in Rollason, Harvey and Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham. The story is first recounted in the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, a maverick production, possibly produced in stages between the mid-tenth and early eleventh centuries, which records the vicissi­ tudes and landholdings of Cuthbert’s community. Historia de Sancto Cuthberto: A History of Saint Cuthbert and a Record of his Patrimony, Ted Johnson South (ed.) (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), ch. 12. Historia, Johnson South (ed.), chs 22–3. Historia, Johnson South (ed.), ch. 13. In a second story later in the Historia, Cuthbert again favours Guthred in a defensive skirmish against the Scottish army who have crossed the River Tweed, opening the earth to swallow the Scottish soldiers, and granting Guthred victory. Ch. 33. Cuthbert’s body was translated with great ceremony to a new shrine behind the high altar of the cathedral in 1104, accompanied by various miracles. The most detailed account of the translation is given in the anonymous Liber de translationibus et miraculis Sancti Cuthberti, an early twelfthcentury Durham collection of miracle narratives, chs 18–21. For a more general account of the cult in its architectural setting, see David Brown (ed.), Durham Cathedral: History, Fabric and Culture (Yale: Yale University Press, 2015). Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (trans) (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011), chs 20–1. Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patratæ sunt temporibus, James Raine (ed.), Surtees Society, 1 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1835), ch. 29, pp. 65–6. Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, chs 23–34, pp. 50–77. These miracle narratives treating North Sea merchant traders are discussed in more detail in my essay, ‘Cuthbertine Hermits and North Sea Merchant Traders’, in Cynthia Turner Camp and Emily Kelley (eds), Mighty Protectors for the Merchant Class: Saints and Mercantile Devotion (Routledge, forthcoming, 2019). See also, Sally Crumplin, ‘Rewriting History in the Cult of St Cuthbert from the Ninth to the Twelfth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2004), ch. 5. As part of Anglo-Nordic maritime trade links, English merchants exported grain and cloth to Norway, and imported dried fish, timber, animal skins and oil in return. See Anne Pedersen, ‘Anglo-Danish Contact across the North Sea in the Eleventh Century: A Survey of the Danish Archaeological Evidence’, in Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman (eds), Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 43–69. Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 30, p. 67; ch. 23, p. 52; ch. 30, p. 67, respectively. Reginald’s moralistic and symbolic discourse about merchants is discussed in Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), pp. 142–3. Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 112, pp. 248–54. The following discussion is indebted to Haki Antonsson, Sally Crumplin and Aidan Conti, ‘A Norwegian in Durham: An Anatomy of a Miracle in Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti’, in Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams (eds), West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement before 1300 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 195–226, which includes a translation of the miracle in question by Aidan Conti as an appendix (pp. 216–24).

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130 12

13

14 15

16

17

18

19

20

21 22

revisiting the medieval north of england

The earliest and most important manuscript witness is Durham, Cathedral Chapter, MS Hunter 101, from the second half of the twelfth century and possibly Reginald’s autograph. The list in question names Denmark, Iceland, Frisia and Norway in the body of the text, but adds the remaining countries in the margin. The marginal hand is contemporary with that used for the body of the manuscript. Reginald, Libellus de admirandis, ch. 112, p. 251. Translation: Antonsson, Crumplin and Conti, ‘A Norwegian in Durham’, p. 220. Antonsson, Crumplin and Conti, ‘A Norwegian in Durham’, p. 223. For general discussion of the medieval North Sea world, see David Bates and Robert Liddiard (eds), East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), Robert Worth Frank Jr., ‘Shrine Rivalry in the North Sea World’, in Thomas R. Liszka and Lorna E. M. Walker (eds), The North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 230–42, Sebastian I. Sobecki (ed.), The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages: Maritime Narratives, Identity and Culture (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011). See Anthony Bale, St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), and Simon Yarrow, Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), for detailed treatments of these twelfthcentury cults. Reginald shows pilgrims applying fruitlessly to St Thomas of Canterbury before turning north (chs 114, 116, 126), or casting lots between southern saints and St Cuthbert, on several further occasions in the Libellus de admirandis. In ch. 19, a pilgrim burns three candles to Sts Cuthbert, Edmund of Bury and Aethelthryth of Ely to determine which shrine he should visit for healing. In ch. 115, a pilgrim casts lots between Sts Cuthbert, Edmund of Bury and Thomas of Canterbury. Antonsson, Crumplin and Conti comment that the practice of casting lots between saints also occurs in other Scandinavian miracle stories and sagas. See Antonsson, Crumplin and Conti, ‘A Norwegian in Durham’, pp. 197–8, 215. Disputes over the possession of Tynemouth Priory are already in evidence in the late eleventh century. A miracle story included in the early twelfth-century Liber de translationibus et miraculis Sancti Cuthberti (ch. 12), recounts how Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland (1080–95), deprived the Durham monks of the church at Tynemouth and gave it to the abbot of St Albans. The abbot died shortly afterwards while on a visit to his new dependency, and the earl was defeated and imprisoned by the king. A summary of this miracle collection is given in Bertram Colgrave, ‘The Post-Bedan Miracles and Translations of St Cuthbert’, in Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins (eds), The Early Cultures of North West Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 305–32. These disputes were renewed with particular vigour in the early 1170s, when Bishop Hugh de Puiset of Durham made several attempts to encroach on chapels belonging to the dependency, before a settlement was finally reached with St Albans in 1174. G. V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), pp. 114–16, 156–7, 199. John of Tynemouth, Sanctilogium Angliae. An amended version of the Sanctilogium, formerly thought to be by John Capgrave, was printed in the early sixteenth century, and is edited by Carl Horstmann, Nova legenda Anglie, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1901). The earliest, by Prior Germanus of Durham, is non-extant. Germanus’s vita was followed by the compendious Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, composed by Reginald of Durham in the 1160s–70s. This in turn, was succeeded by two shortened digests, by ‘Walter’, and Geoffrey of Durham. Only Reginald’s version exists in a modern edition: Reginald of Durham, Libellus de vita et miraculis S. Godrici, Joseph Stephenson (ed.), Surtees Society, 20 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1847). The contested possession of the Finchale hermitage and Godric’s cult is detailed in Tom Licence, ‘The Benedictines, the Cistercians and the Acquisition of a Hermitage in TwelfthCentury Durham’, Journal of Medieval History, 29 (2003), 315–29. Geoffrey of Coldingham, Vita Sancti Bartholomaei Farnensis, in Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, Thomas Arnold (ed.), Rolls Series 75, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1882–5), I, pp. 295–325. Geoffrey, Vita Bartholomaei, chs 3–5, pp. 296–8. Geoffrey, Vita Bartholomaei, ch. 7, pp. 299–300. My translation.

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9 Towards a Nuanced History of Early English Spelling: Old Northumbrian Witnesses and Northern Orthography MARCELLE COLE

Introduction

I

n recent years the history of the orthography of the English language has attracted a resurgence of interest with several new publications appearing in quick succession.1 These volumes trace the development of English spelling from its early seventh-century origins following the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons and the adoption of the Roman alphabet through to the impact of technology and social media on modern-day orthographic conventions. The attention paid in the literature to the earliest stages of English orthography focuses heavily on the southern Old English dialect of West Saxon. The emergence of the so-called West Saxon standard was to provide English spelling with an element of continuity in the years following the destabilising impact of the Norman Conquest on the Old English writing tradition.2 For much of the Old English period the spelling conventions of the Old English dialects – West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian – are different enough to be easily recognised, although only West Saxon is extensively recorded.3 The fluctuating political fortunes of the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are witnessed in the shifting influence one orthographical system had on another. Thus the political power of Mercia up until the ninth century is reflected in the early reliance of Kentish and West Saxon manuscript writing on Mercian orthographic conventions. As the political and cultural dominance of Wessex grew, a distinctive West Saxon spelling system emerged towards the end of the tenth century.4 According to Donald Scragg, the West Saxon writing system became ‘the universal standard, affecting the writings of Canterbury scribes, of those in the old Mercian kingdom, and even (in the eleventh century) of those working north of the Humber’.5 He goes on to assert that Writing throughout England conformed to the West Saxon standard, and the many books which survive from the period (their numbers run into three figures) give little internal clue about whether they were written in Exeter, Canterbury, Worcester or York.6

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Whatever might have been the case elsewhere, no such conclusion can be so confidently drawn with regards to northern scribal practice in the eleventh century. The only northern documents to survive from the period comprise short vernacular writs that are not devoid of northern norms. For instance, the use of to designate /w/ where West Saxon scribal practice favoured the runic graph ‘wynn’ reflects a typically northern orthographical convention widely attested in the tenth-century Old Northumbrian (ONbr) glosses.7 Scragg tempers the picture that he paints of the West Saxon scribal tradition enjoying countrywide dominance, as ‘a single stable orthography for English’, by recognising that the ONbr orthographic system ‘illustrate[s] the existence of at least one other quite distinct or­­­ thography in tenth-century England’.8 Barbara Strang also states that ‘Only in the north, notably in Northumberland, do writings of the late Old English period escape the influence of the West Saxon standard’.9 Yet discussions of ONbr spelling in the literature rarely go beyond a comparative analysis of the West Saxon and Northumbrian versions of Cædmon’s Hymn.10 The neglect that ONbr has suffered is partly motivated by the scarcity of northern material that survives from the Anglo-Saxon period, but it also reflects the general lack of attention paid in the literature to the language and writing of areas not considered to represent the mainstream of a given period.11 Histories of the English language highlight the regional variation that characterised spelling in Middle English following the gradual post-Conquest decline of the West Saxon orthographic tradition, but generally overlook the orthographic interdialectal differences that marked Old English dialects. In what follows, I explore certain aspects of ONbr orthography, starting with its innov­ ational nature. The northern orthographic system of Old English employed a range of representational strategies that were more nuanced than West Saxon in their attempt to reflect (morpho)phonemic change and phonological variables, such as loss of final /-n/, /h/-loss and palatalisation. As such, a study of ONbr orthographic practice also provides insight into the chronology and geographical distribution of such linguistic developments. It is often noted that the orthographic systems that emerged during the Middle English period more closely reflected pronunciation than the conservative West Saxon orthographic conventions,12 but many of the ‘innovative’ notational norms associated with post-Conquest Anglo-Norman influence, such as and , and the use of double vowels to mark length, were already employed by northern scribes. The present consideration of early northern spelling also explores the influences that possibly impacted and shaped the ONbr writing tradition.

Old Northumbrian textual evidence and northern orthography Early Northumbrian material from the eighth and ninth centuries is scarce and comprises the short poems Cædmon’s Hymn, Bede’s Death Song and the Leiden Riddle, and short runic inscriptions, the most substantial of which include those found on the Ruthwell Cross and the Franks Casket. In the tenth century, however, the interlinear glosses to the Latin manuscript of the Lindisfarne Gospels (London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero D.iv), the Durham Ritual glosses and additions (Durham, Durham Cathedral Library, MS A IV 19), as well as the Northumbrian part of the Rushworth Gospels gloss (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D.ii.19), known as Rushworth2, afford us with a better insight into the northern linguistic system.13 Extant eleventh-century northern material comprises only a

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handful of documents, including a thirteenth-century copy of the Cumbrian Gospatric’s Writ, and writs issued by the post-Conquest bishops of Durham, Ranulf Flambard and Walcher. Compared with the orthographical system of Modern English, the Old English spelling conventions developed in the West Saxon tradition approximated a one-to-one relationship with sounds more successfully. Nevertheless, in comparison with Old Northumbrian, the West Saxon system was conservative in nature, and often failed to reflect sound change and the actual phonetics of Old English. The case can be made by examination of several linguistic developments and their corresponding orthographical representations, including the loss of final /-n/, /h/-loss in the consonant clusters /hn, hr, hl/ and in prevocalic position, and the palatalisation and eventual assibilation of OE /k/. final /-n/ lenition In the transition from Old English to late Middle English verbal and weak adjectival inflectional /-n/ was lost from the language. Henry Sweet’s analysis of King Alfred’s translation of the Cura Pastoralis, written in Early West Saxon, notes the frequent omission of final in the infinitive, the weak adjective, and the subjunctive, particularly in the Hatton manuscript, so læra (‘to teach’) CP 41.303.3, forbera (‘to endure’) CP 40.295.8, his goda weorc (‘his good work’) CP 19.141.11, etc. where læran, forberan and his godan weorc would be expected.14 On frequent occasions is also inserted above the line by way of correction. The scribal tendency to omit led Sweet to suggest that the loss of final /-n/ was probably a widespread feature of spoken Early West Saxon, but the develop­ ment was to become obscured by the endeavours of the emerging West Saxon literary tradition to fix in writing.15 Thus the West Saxon version of the Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 38) circa 1200 employs an orthographic system that is unreservedly conservative in its retention of . Contrastively, the tenth-century ONbr orthographic system conveys the categorical loss of infinitival final /-n/, e.g. wyrca (‘to make’) JnGl (Li) 8.44 and gedoema (‘to judge’) JnGl (Li) 7.24, and the variable loss of /-n/ in other categories like the preterite, as in cerrde (‘returned’) as opposed to cerdon MtGl (Li) 2.12.16 The early West Saxon evidence suggests that loss of final /-n/ in late West Saxon was in all likelihood as advanced as in ONbr but was obscured by the West Saxon standard’s retention of archaic orthography. /h/-loss Despite the fact that the consonant clusters /hn, hr, hl/ had lost their initial /h-/ by late Old English, the West Saxon writing tradition retained the older spellings. For instance, Scragg notes how the West Saxon Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 38) continues to employ the form hlaf > ModE loaf.17 The orthographical loss of initial in consonant clusters is generally associated with early Middle English spelling practice in texts originating in the East Midlands,18 but such practice is already widely attested in the tenth-century ONbr texts where, for instance, laf with no initial fre­­ quently occurs beside hlaf, as in lafo L. panes MkGl (Li) 8.5, DurRitGl 1,99.5 and laf L. panem LkGl (Li) 24.30, JnGl (Li) 13.26 (2x), JnGl (Li) 21.9, JnGl (Li) 21.13, JnGl (Ru) 13.18. Further instances of omission in clusters include nesc (‘soft’) MkGl (Li) 13.28 and reof (‘scabby, leprous’) MkHeadGl (Li), 6 (cf. hnescum LkGl (Li) 7.25 and hreof MtGl (Ru) 8.2, respectively).19 Unetymological before is

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also widely attested, e.g. hlâf (‘widow’) L. uxorem MkGl (Li) 6.17, hlaf (‘remainder, the rest’) L. reliquia MkGl (Li) 4.19, etc. where laf is expected.20 ONbr has none of the conclusive indications of prevocalic /h/-loss that Nils-Lennart Johannesson’s analysis of Rushworth1 has identified for Mercian,21 but the ONbr texts do provide further insight into the chronology and diatopic distribution of /h/-loss in this context, a phenomenon also generally associated with Midlands Middle English.22 In line with West Saxon, /h/ before vowels is lost only in contractions, for instance, nabbas (ne habbas) (‘have not’), næfde (ne hæfde) (‘had not’). However, there are instances of un­­­ etymological before vowels, e.g. geharn (‘run’) MkGl (Li) 15.36 (cf. gearn MkGl (Li) 5.6) and hiurum (‘your’) MkGl (Li) 2.8 (cf. iurum MkGl (Li) 6.11). The occurrence of unetymological reflects hypercorrection on the speaker’s part that is triggered by the prevocalic loss of organic /h/ in similar linguistic environments (compare the intrusion of unetymological before , discussed above), and suggests that prevocalic /h/-loss might have been a feature of the spoken language.23 for reflexes of OE palatalised /k/ In OE designated both the velar stop /k/, as in OE cu (‘cow’) and a phonemically distinct palatalised form that was later to become the sibilant affricate /ʧ/, as in child (OE cild). An early change implemented by Anglo-Norman scribes was the use of instead of OE to represent /k/ before front vowel spellings, so OE cyng became ME kyng, reserving for back environments, e.g. cow, while was used to designate the reflex of the palatalised voiceless velar. According to Richard Venezky, was intro­duced by ‘at least as early as 1160’, and it occurs quite regularly in the twelfth-century East Midlands text the Ormulum.24 The earlier mid-twelfth-century manuscript Eadwine’s Canterbury Psalter, with trilingual text in Latin, Old English and Anglo-Norman, also employs , as in childra, childvm (‘children’), soðliche (‘truly’), wunderlich (‘wonderful’), riche (‘kingdom, ModE rich’), michel (‘great, ModE much’); alongside are also employed for [x] and/or [ç], for example, drichten, dryghtne (‘lord’), gerecht (‘reach’), astagh (‘ascended’) where drihten, gereht and astah are expected, and for /k/ also occurs, as in chun (‘cows’) and folches (‘folks’), instead of cun and folces. In ONbr beside was already being used to represent palatalised /k/ finally, intermedially and initially.25 The digraph appears to be largely confined to OE micel (‘great, ModE much’), e.g. michil MtGl (Li) 10.42, 15.33, MkGl (Li) 5.11, JnGl (Li) 15.5; michel MkGl (Li) 4.5; michelo MtGl (Li) 8.24, MkGl (Li) 4.37, 4.39: but also carchern (‘dish’)] L. carcere MkGl (Li) 6.27 (cf. carcern MkGl (Li) 6.17), channanesca [Cananean] L. cananaeum MkGl (Li) 3.18 and L. cananeae MtHeadGl (Li), 54. In mech (‘me’) MkGl (Li) 8.34 probably denotes [x] (see below). The digraph also occurs in proper names (Hericho, Zacharies, for instance), but here the Latin functions as a model. The use of to represent palatalised /k/ in ONbr provides insight into the polemic history and development of Germanic */k/ in the north.26 In the ancestor of Old English the velar stop */k/ developed a palatal allophone *[c] before and after front vowels. The palatal stop eventually developed into the postalveolar sibilant affricate [ʧ] in initial position and finally and medially after /i(:)/, though the exact chronology and the regional distribution of assibilation is highly controversial. Stephen Laker outlines the following derivation for the postalveolar affricate *[k] > * [cʲ] > *[tʲ] > [ʧ] whereby the palatal stop

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developed a palatal glide that induced dentalisation followed by assibilation.27 The Old English spelling convention of using to designate both the velar stop /k/ and the palatalised velar complicates dating assibilation with any precision. Northumbrian runic evidence from the eighth-century Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses indicates that the runic alphabet differentiated palatalised velars from unpalatalised velars, but that alone does not necessarily demonstrate assibilation.28 The main orthographical evidence for the ninth-century dating traditionally attributed to the emergence of assibilation lies in the appearance of cc spellings for [tj] from the late ninth century, as in the case of OE feċċan (‘fetch’) (from *fetian).29 The use of appears to indicate an attempt to record a complex (affricate) articulation. It is generally assumed that the palatal stop + /j/ glide passed through a dentalisation stage and must have coalesced into an affricate at the same time.30 The prevalence of velar stops found in northern Middle English, of the type kirk, steek, birk for church, stitch, birch, has led scholars to question whether the affrication and assibilation of palatalised Germanic */k/ (and */g/) actually took place in Old North­ umbrian.31 Given the absence of sibilant affricates in Old Norse, one widely upheld view in the literature ascribes lack of assibilation in the north to Scandinavian influence whereby Scandinavian speakers replaced the OE sibilant affricate with the velar stop /k/.32 The crux of the argument is that voiceless and voiced sibilant affricates were widespread in Old Northumbrian until Scandinavian influence disturbed the pattern, thus accounting for the northern Middle English stop forms.33 Although, as Laker points out, it is not immediately obvious why speakers would have identified a sibilant affricate with a velar stop.34 The presence of spellings in ONbr would seem to militate in favour of the view that a complex (affricate) articulation existed that was later interrupted. It is important to bear in mind, however, that while the use of (and in the ONbr texts) appears to indicate an attempt to record an affricate articulation, the innovative spelling conventions do not necessarily prove the presence of assibilation. It is also unclear which supposed stage of the development and actually represented, [cʲ], [tʲ] or [ʧ]?35 With regard to the development /sk/ > /ʃ/, for example, OE scort, sceort (‘short’), which is also conspicuously absent in northern Middle English, and which has also been attributed to Scandinavian influence, Ekwall has argued that it was unlikely that /sk/ had developed as far as /ʃ/ by the time of Scandinavian contact. Had this been the case, Old Norse speakers would probably have replaced /ʃ/ with /s/, leading Ekwall to suggest that an intermediate stage of palatalisation, e.g. [sҫ], would have lent itself better to Scandinavian replacement by /sk/.36 Similarly, the proposal that Scandinavian speakers replaced the reflex of the OE palatalised voiceless velar with a velar stop would be better sustained, had palatalised /k/ not reached the /ʧ/ stage by the time of Scandinavian contact, but had retained its velar properties and not assibilated.37 Marcelle Cole’s survey of ONbr verbal morphology suggests an intermediate stage of development that better sustains the Scandinavian hypothesis. Her findings demonstrate that dental and affricate stems behave similarly in favouring the present-indicative marker -s, as opposed to -ð. For instance, gebiddas (‘pray’) and wæccas (‘watch’) are more common than gebiddað and wæccað. Stems ending in the (unambiguous) sibilant /s/, however, favour -ð, e.g. arisað (‘rise’).38 The similarity in behaviour between dental and affricate stems suggests an intermediate stage between palatalisation and assibilation, possibly [cҫ] or [tʲ]. Had assibilation taken place, the affricate stem endings would be expected to

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behave similarly to sibilant /s/ stems and favour the -ð suffix. Palatalised [tʲ] possesses no velar qualities, but it is phonetically ambiguous with palatalised [kʲ], thus making it a not unlikely, and better suited, candidate for Scandinavian replacement by /k/.39 The use of in the northern pronominal forms ih (‘I’), meh (‘me’), usih (‘us’) beside ic, mec, usic, and sporadic final -lih instead of -lic, as in rehtlih (‘lawful’) MtGl (Li) 19.3, reflects the northern development of unstressed palatalised /k/ > [x] in final position.40 This change must have predated the affrication of the palatal velar in other environments.41 Beside usic, the first-person accusative/dative plural personal pronoun in ONbr is generally rendered usih, but usich L. nos MtGl (Li) 6.13 also occurs, together with iuch L. uobis JnGl (Li) 1.15 and instances of mech MkGl (Li) 8.34, JnGl (Li) 6.35, 13.8, LiEpis,1 beside meh. The ONbr realisation of /k/ as [x] in final position suggests a different pathway in this context for the Scandinavian substitution in /k/ of native ONbr patterns whereby /k/, which was retained in Old Norse, e.g. ON ek (ONbr ih), mik (ONbr meh, mech), replaced the phonetically similar [x] rather than a sibilant affricate. Given the ONbr ten­­ dency for lenition of /k/ in unstressed environments to occur in environments involving front vowels, especially /i(:)/ (e.g. ih, meh, usih) and the more commonplace use of for [x] in ONbr, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that in ONbr michil (northern ME mikil) also denoted [x]. and for OE In West Saxon was used to represent [x] finally and internally, as in seah (‘saw’) and siehþ (‘sees’), and denoted [xt] or [çt], as in aht (‘aught’), meaht (‘power’). In Middle English, OE was gradually replaced by , although also occurs. The runic alphabet was probably the model for the use of for both [h] and [x] in OE manuscripts. Originally, runic ‘h’ represented [x] and it remained the symbol for [x], but the rune masters continued to use it initially following the change [x] > [h] in initial position. Neither the Latin nor the Old Irish (OIr) spellings would have provided a model for using to represent [x].42 The Middle English digraph for [x] already occurs in the ONbr texts, although in late ONbr there is a tendency for to replace . In the early eighth-century ONbr version of Cædmon’s Hymn, found in the Moore manuscript of Bede’s Historia Ecclesi­ astica, is used finally. It is also used ‘extensively’ in the Liber Vitae Dunelmensis, both finally and ‘as the final symbol of first elements (e.g. Alchfrith, Ualchstod)’.43 The form gesech is also attested in Mercian at MtGl (Ru) 8.4. The early ONbr texts also use and , beside . In Moore Bede, is universal, e.g. allmectig (CædN, 5); maecti, dryctin (CædN,1); and and occur more frequently than in Liber Vitae Dunelmensis.444 Elizabeth Lea’s survey of the Gospel of Mark demonstrates that is used in line with West Saxon practice (e.g. gefehto etc.), but also occur, e.g. docter (‘daughter’) L. filiam MkHeadGl (Li), 21, lecht (‘light’) MkGl (Li) 13.24, so too inlichtet (‘illuminate’) JnHeadGl (Li), 25.45 The Middle English use of for [x(t)] and [ç(t)] is traditionally attributed to Anglo-Norman influence,46 but the spelling is already found in the late ONbr glosses: mæghte (‘power’) MkGl (Li) 9.1; mæghton (‘could not’) LkGl (Li) 20.26, 22.2; unmæghtiglic (‘weak’, ‘impossible’, lit. ‘unpowerfully’) LkGl (Li) 18.24; ænight (‘anything’) LkGl (Li) 20.40; JnGl (Li) 5.30, 9.33; gesægh (‘saw’) MtGl (Li) 2.16, Jn 7.52. The form gesægh is also attested in Mercian at MtGl (Ru) 4.21.

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Marking vowel quantity The ONbr orthographic system also distinguishes itself from the West Saxon system in its practice of marking vowel length by doubling the vowel grapheme, as in slaa (‘strike’) LkGl (Li) 12.45, gaas (‘go’) MkGl (Li) 6.10, gesiis (‘see’) MkGl (Li) 12.14, tree (‘tree’) MkGl (Li) 12.26, huu (‘how’) MkGl (Li) 2.26, etc.,47 so too gediides (‘suck’) LkGl (Li) 11.27, sgiiremonn (‘steward’) LkGl (Li) 12.42, ðriim (‘three’) JnGl (Li) 2.19 and tiid (‘time’) DurRitGl 1,11.10, etc.48 The use of doubled vowels to mark vowel quantity is an orthographic practice generally associated with the new notational forms of Middle English.49 Vowel length marking in ONbr is also indicated by the use of either an acute (´) or circumflex (^) accent, e.g. ðrím (‘three’) MkGl (Li) 6.21, hér (‘here’) MkGl (Li) 8.4 and gâstas (‘spirits’) MkGl (Li) 5.13, cildhâd (‘childhood’) MkGl (Li) 9.21, etc.50 The use of acute accents as graphic markers of vowel quantity was also a feature of West Saxon,51 but the use of vowel doubling to mark quantity is unique to ONbr. Lea notes that ‘as a rule long vowels are not marked but the number of instances where length is denoted either by an accent (^, rarely ´ and ¯) or by doubling of the vowel is by no means small’.52 Furthermore, gaa (‘go’) and slaa (‘strike’) occur categorically with a double vowel in the Gospel of Mark.53 The same conventions are also used to signal lengthening before consonant clusters: examples include sáld (‘given’) MkGl (Li) 8.12, bînde (‘band’) MkGl (Li) 1.6, suundorlice (‘apart’) MkGl (Li) 13.354 and sometimes occur simultaneously to indicate quantity, e.g. gâa (‘go’) MkGl (Li) 1.25, nêesto (‘nearby’) MkGl (Li) 1.38.55 The following section explores the potential impact that Irish and runic spelling con­­ ventions had on ONbr orthography.

Influences The Old Irish factor The Latin alphabetisation of the Anglo-Saxons is often depicted as a discrete event that took place following the arrival of Augustine and his team of missionaries in 597, and the subsequent conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings to Christianity. Christopher Upward and George Davidson suggest that the alphabetisation of the Anglo-Saxons was more likely to have been a gradual process that formed part of ‘a more general acculturation of the Anglo-Saxons to things Latin and Roman’.56 The Anglo-Saxons would already have been familiar with a tradition of Latin literacy via the Britons, and their wider Euro­ pean contacts, such as the Franks, would have provided a further point of contact with Latin learning.57 Under Roman dominion the Britons had experienced Roman culture for several cen­­ turies. The phonetic, phonological and morphosyntactic impact that Latin had on Brittonic, and vice versa, is suggestive of extensive bilingualism, and by the time the Anglo-Saxons started to settle Britain in the mid-fifth century, it is likely that a British form of Vulgar Latin, generally referred to as British Latin, was widespread in the Lowland region spread­­ ­ing from the modern-day Borders region of Scotland down the northeast of England to Lincolnshire and passing through the traditional counties of Leicestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset.58 Latin con­­ tinued to be used even after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century. Surviving Latin inscriptions and legal documents in Latin from this period attest to the

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continuing influence of Christianity and Latin.59 The Celtic monk Gildas wrote De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae in Latin c.540. The monastic centres that were founded following the Christianisation of Ireland in the mid-fifth century quickly produced a strong tradition of literacy. The proselytising missions of Irish monks, initially to the western coast of modern-day Scotland starting in the mid-sixth century and from there to the northeast of Anglo-Saxon England, played an instrumental role in the Christianisation and alphabet­ isation of the northern kingdom of Northumbria (see contribution by Whitehead, this volume). Upward and Davidson play down the influence of Irish orthographic conventions on Anglo-Saxon Latin literacy and refer to an ‘indirect thread of alphabetic continuity through Ireland’.60 Similarly, Venezky recognises the ‘undeniable’ influence of Irish trad­ itions on calligraphy but suggests that ‘in the deployment of the letters for Old English sounds, Irish influence is minimal’, especially as the Old Irish orthographical system itself was in a nascent state, and was not stable enough to function as a model for Old English scribes.61 Whatever the validity of these claims with respect to the West Saxon writing tradition, the direct ties between Irish monasticism and the northern centres of Christianity and learning are equally undeniable. Aidan, who was of Irish descent and had been trained at Iona, founded the monastery on Lindisfarne in the early seventh century. The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Ruthwell Cross are some of the finest examples of Hiberno-Saxon (insular) art that originates in Irish monasticism and includes the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow. The ties between Lindisfarne and the Hiberno-Scottish monasteries were so tight that a Northumbrian, rather than Irish, place of production has been posited for both the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow.62 The close religious, cultural and historical ties between the monastic communities of Northumbria and Ireland suggest that the possi­ bility of ONbr spelling conventions developing under the influence of Irish ortho­graphic practice cannot be readily discarded. The claim that the Old Irish orthographical system was still in a nascent state is also questionable; by 700–25 it was in fact fairly settled.63 Certainly, the presence in ONbr of the Gaelic loanword loch (‘body of water’, ‘lake’), which is adopted as luh and occurs 18x in Li and Ru2, militates in favour of the view that OIr might have had an influence in other domains. Peter Schrijver has argued that Lowlands Celtic may have been more similar to Irish than Brittonic leading to Old English developing on an Irish Celtic rather than British Celtic or British Latin substratum in the Lowlands.64 The Irish and the English were developing orthographical systems based on the Latin alphabet at about the same time. The orthography of the early Irish texts does indeed reflect scribes grappling to convey spelling-sound correspondences in a foreign writing system, so early OIr orthography naturally reflects a degree of experimentation, and a great deal of variation, which is to be expected in a system based on emerging conventions rather than codified rules. Venezky is right to note that neither OIr nor Latin orthography could offer solutions to certain inherently native English problems like how to represent front-rounded vowels in writing,65 but in other respects the emerging OIr spelling system employed notational practices that could usefully be employed by English scribes, and may have shaped ONbr spelling. The Latin sections of Early Old Irish sources indicate that Irish scribes did not habitually mark vowel quantity in Latin, and that interestingly, the acute accent is employed to mark vowel length in the vernacular rather than the Latin.66 Both Early and Classical Old Irish, however, marked vowel length variably using an acute accent (fada) that was derived in

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all likelihood from the Roman apex.67 The Early Old Irish texts also employed vowel doubling as an indication of quantity. Damian McManus notes that ‘the use of the length mark or the doubling of the vowel is far from consistent in the early MS tradition’, and even the later Old Irish sources use the fada only inconsistently.68 Nevertheless, the employ­ ment of double vowels and/or diacritics to mark length marks a major difference between manuscript Old Irish and the native Irish system of inscription known as Ogam. The Ogam orthographic system did not employ double vowels or diacritics to mark length,69 although vowel quantity could sometimes be indicated by other means: for instance, the orthographical practice of representing /-a:n/ as -AGNI and the use of doubled consonants to indicate a long preceding vowel, e.g. -ANN /-a:n/.70 Lian Blasse demonstrates that, as a general rule, vowel length is not marked in the early (pre-750) Old Irish texts, but that the Irish scribes attempted to develop a system of vowel doubling to mark length, though neither the Latin orthographical tradition, nor that of Ogam, provided a model for doing so.71 The practice of doubling consonants in Latin to indicate length was a well-established norm by 115 b.c. that can be traced to Greek practice.72 The use of double vowels to mark quantity, however, was a ‘short-lived practice’, traditionally ascribed to Accius (c.170–85 bc),73 which was replaced by the use of the apex.74 In the Cambrai Homily, out of a total of sixty-four long vowels, two are marked with a fada, and doubling occurs in seven unambiguous instances: ood, ee, duun, bees, baan, reet, and dee.75 The Würzburg prima manus only has one instance of a doubled vowel marking a long vowel out of a total of thirty: soos L. sursum. The Book of Armagh sometimes combines both the fada and doubling, as in níi, dóo and attáa.76 Rudolf Thurneysen also notes cuúrsagad in the Book of Armagh and fáas, dée, indocbáal, ríi, móor and rúun in the Würzburg prima manus.77 Blasse tackles the question of why the Irish scribes would attempt to mark vowel length, if neither the British Latin orthographical tradition, nor that of Ogam, provided a model for doing so.78 In line with other varieties of Continental Vulgar Latin, long vowels in British Latin only occurred in stressed open syllables, whereas no such restriction existed in OIr: cenél, tiscál are examples of long unstressed vowels in closed syllables.79 Blasse demonstrates that OIr scribes tended to mark vowels as long in those contexts in which the vowel was long in OIr, but could not have been in British Latin, and was thus at risk of being considered short by the conventions of Latin orthography. In the Early OIr sources, twelve long vowels are marked for length out of a total of thirty-two instances in which length marking under this hypothesis would be expected.80 Interestingly, most of the instances of double vowels noted by Thurneysen – cuúrsagad, fáas, indocbáal, móor, rúun, impuud and tintuúth – also fall into this category.81 Out of the fifty-two instances in which length marking would not be expected, only three vowels are marked as long.82 Blasse’s hypothesis also goes some way to explaining why vocalic length is frequently left unmarked; long vowels in stressed open syllables account for 51 per cent (N = 49/96) of the instances in which long vowels occur. The (non-categorical) practice of marking vowel quantity using diacritics and double vowels in ONbr, discussed above, is remarkably similar to the conventions employed in Early OIr. A reconsideration of Lea’s data83 taken from the Gospel of Mark in the Lindisfarne Gospels from the perspective of Blasse’s analysis yields interesting results. There appears to be a degree of lexical conditioning with gaa (‘go’), slaa (‘strike’) and rîc (‘kingdom’) showing high rates of length marking, but quantitative analysis suggests

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that the Northumbrian scribe followed the same criteria established by the Irish tradition with regard to marking vocalic length: 66 per cent (N = 179/273) of instances involving either a diacritic or double graph to mark vowel length, involve long vowels in contexts other than stressed open syllables. Old Irish orthography has also been indicated as a source for the ONbr use of to designate the voiceless velar (and palatal) fricative rather than West Saxon .84 OIr [x] is represented by in the Old Irish manuscripts, for example, deich (‘ten’), fichid (‘fights’), while and denote [xt]: act beside acht (‘but’).85 The Old Irish use of for [x] originated in Graeco-Latin practice. In Latin, occurred in Greek loanwords originally involving an aspirated stop [kh]. The stop probably continued to be somewhat aspirated in Latin, particularly in environments involving /r/ and /l/, for instance, carte L. charta, Crist L. Christus, ærce- L. archi-,86 but the digraph was also (originally) used as a Roman transliteration of Greek chi /x/ in writing from about 150 bc. The early Northumbrian scribes’ likely familiarity with both the Old Irish and GraecoRoman traditions suggests the possibility of the two sources reinforcing each other, and OIr orthography itself originated in Graeco-Latin writing. ONbr scribes drew directly from Classical Latin when the OIr system offered no solution to inherently English soundspelling correspondences: for instance, in their employment of for both /w/ and /u/, e.g. uundra (‘miracles’, ‘wonders’) in the ONbr Cædmon’s Hymn (cf. West Saxon ƿundra with wynn). Theoretically, the ONbr use of for [x] could also have been drawn directly from the Graeco-Latin tradition rather than indirectly via OIr influence, but given that early ONbr manuscript writing developed under the auspices of the Irish this seems unlikely. Furthermore, the native OIr innovation of using double vowels as graphic markers of vowel quantity cannot be traced to Latin orthographical practice. In the section that follows I explore a further possible source for the use of double graphs in ONbr, that of runic orthographic practice. The runic inheritance The use of double graphs in early runic orthography is rare, but not unattested. Richard Morris’s survey of early Germanic runic inscriptions (c.ad 0–500), including those of the so-called transitional period (c.ad 500–700), indicates that ‘as a rule, double letters are not written in the earlier runic inscriptions’.87 Double runes occur in contexts involving juncture, e.g. ‘unnāmz’ on the Reistad stone < PG */un-/ and */nǣm-z/, so too Skodborg ‘aujaalawin’ and Vetteland ‘minasstaina’.88 The personal name ‘iddan’ on the Charnay brooch has an etymologically long consonant, but Raymond Page accounts for the doubled rune by virtue of the fact that the inscription of the name is spread over different lines.89 There are three attestations of doubled runes that cannot be accounted for by invoking juncture, namely ‘laasauwija’ and ‘aadagast’ on the Vimose buckle and ‘wortaa’ on the Etelhem clasp. Morris considers all three to be errors, even though ‘laasauwija’ has an etymologically long vowel: lās- < PG */lǣs-a-/ OE lǣs (‘pastureland’).90 Page’s examin­ ation of the East and Continental West Germanic runic material is similarly inconclusive; extant inscriptions are so scarce and the interpretations so uncertain that they ‘tell us nothing about whether the engravers avoided the use of double runes or not’.91 Whatever might have been the case on the Continent, the Old English runic inscriptions made ample use of double runes. The insular inscriptions vacillated between using double and single runes to represent etymologically long vowels and (geminated) consonants,

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so ‘setto/n’ (Bewcastle Cross), ‘[.]biddaþ’ (Overchurch stone), ‘fèarran’ (Ruthwell Cross), etc., but also ‘gebidæs’, ‘setæ’ (Great Urswick), ‘gibidæþ’ (Lancaster Cross), ‘sete’ (Thorn­ hill III stone).92 Double runes also occur where for etymological reasons a single graph would be expected: ‘[æ]þþilæ’, ‘dominnæ’, ‘gistoddu[n]’ (Ruthwell Cross), ‘hilddigyþ’ (Hartlepool II stone). With regard to double vocalic runes, the double vowels in ‘riicnæ’ (Ruthwell Cross) and ‘liin’ (OE līn) (Brunswick Casket) mark vowel quantity.93 The use of double vowels to render short vowels, as in ‘good’ (OE god), ‘þiiosne ciismeel’ (Mortain Casket) and ‘þiis’ (Brunswick Casket), is also occasionally found in the non-runic texts.94 The use of double runes has been attributed to artistic rather than linguistic reasons. Anne King considers the doubled in ‘riicnæ’ on the Ruthwell Cross to be motivated by an aesthetic desire to fill available space.95 In the 1995 postscript to his original 1962 article on the use of double runes, Page also suggested that doubling in certain instances may have been the result of the carver wishing ‘to fit his word more elegantly into the space available, and needed another graph to do it’.96 Page himself was aware of the limitations of such purely aesthetic explanations given that on other occasions – the Ruthwell Cross being a case in point – using a single rather than double rune would have allowed the carver to finish his word at the end of the line.97 The alternation between single and double graphs in the Old English runic inscriptions finds a parallel in late ONbr manuscript writing. Just as both single and double vowels were used to denote long vowels in the late ONbr manuscripts, as discussed above, so vacillating single and double consonants also occur in both writing traditions. Page discusses the forms of OE gebiddan (‘ask’, ‘pray’) in the late ONbr texts.98 Etymologically, only the infinitive, present indicative plural, first singular, present participle, present subjunctive and imperative plural forms of OE gebiddan would be expected to have a geminated consonant, thus . The runic plural imperative forms alternate between employing double runes, like ‘gebid/daþ’ (Thornhill II stone) and ‘[.]biddaþ’ (Overchurch stone) and single runes, as in ‘gebidæs’ (Great Urswick), ‘gibidæþ’ (Lancaster cross) and ‘geb[id]æd’ (Falstone). A similar un­­­etymological distribution of graphs occurs in Lindisfarne, with 3rd sg. pres. ind. biddeþ, biddes; 2nd pl. pres. ind. bidas, inf. gebida; in Durham Ritual 1st sg. pres. ind. bido occurs twice. Rushworth2 has 1st sg. pres. ind. bido and pres. part. bidende (2x).99 A comparison of the runic and non-runic treatment of OE settan (‘set’, ‘place’) indicates a similar parallel. Non-runic texts use single consonant graphs where for etymological reasons double graphs to render geminated consonants would be expected: aseton, asetun, geseton (2x), seton, togeseton (Lindisfarne), gesetes, (gi)sete, (2x), setun (3x), giseton (Rushworth2) and GISETAE on the non-runic Yarm cross.100 Similarly, the runic inscriptions have ‘setæ’ (Great Urswick) and ‘sete’ (Thornhill III stone) (cf. ‘setto/n’ on the Bewcastle Cross). The commonalities between runic and non-runic orthography suggest that either Old English manuscript orthography influenced runic practice, or vice versa, that scribal spellings show the influence of runic conventions. Alistair Campbell warns that attrib­ uting runic influence on the OE Latin alphabet beyond the adoption of thorn and wynn is ‘hazardous’.101 Few runic inscriptions can be said with any certainty to be older than the first manuscript writings in Old English. At times, the innovative orthographic con­­ ventions found in both systems bear a striking resemblance to each other, which makes it unlikely that they constitute parallel independent developments, but establishing whether the Latin alphabet was the model for the runic development, or vice versa, is difficult.

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There is little doubt that the runic and Roman orthographical systems interacted and mutually influenced each other. As mentioned above, the runic alphabet was probably the model for the use of for both [h] and [x] in OE manuscripts. The runic symbol comprising ‘i’ inserted in the symbol for ‘u’ was no doubt the model for the earlier Old English spelling of for the high-front-rounded vowel instead of .102 On other occasions, it can be shown that runic spelling was influenced by ONbr writing practice. Page discusses the example of the Falstone memorial stone, which has an OE text in uncials and another in runes, and constitutes a clear case in point of non-runic influence on runic script.103 The runic text in this case is a transliteration of the Roman text. So, where the Roman text has HROETHBERHTÆ, the runic version has ‘roe[.]tæ’; is a frequent Northumbrian scribal spelling of i-mutated /o:/. The natural way of representing this sound in runes would be to use, not the two characters ‘oe’ but the single one ‘œ’. Furthermore, the Roman text reads ȜEBIDAED, the runic one geb[id]æd. The ending instead of is found in the Vespasian Psalter, Rushworth1 and the Lindisfarne Gospels, but in the runic alphabet, ‘d’ represented a stop, so such usage clearly must have originated in scribal practice.104 Given that the surviving continental inscriptions provide little evidence for the use of double graphs to mark quantity, a continental origin for the English runic practice of employing double consonants and vowels seems highly unlikely. It is far more probable that ONbr scribes adopted the convention of representing long consonants and vowels with double graphs from Latin and Old Irish, respectively, and that ONbr manuscript orthography influenced runic spelling in turn. There is every reason to believe that scribes and rune masters were well versed in both spelling systems. Runic symbols were employed frequently in ONbr manuscripts,105 and the most substantial runic inscriptions, such as the Franks Casket and the Ruthwell Cross, include text in the Roman alphabet, or the writing of Old English text in both uncials and runes, as on the Falstone memorial stone. The rendering of Latin using the runic alphabet, as attested on the Franks Casket, would also have compounded the mixing and transliteration of Latin spelling conventions. As the orthographic system of the Old English Roman orthographic system developed strategies to express the phonological specifics of Old English, and manuscript writing flourished, these conventions would have impacted upon the runic system. This direction of effect is to be expected given the marginal nature of runic writing in the face of the predominance of manuscript writing. The ‘confusion’ in ONbr writing between the use of double and single consonants, with scribes and rune-masters using both etymological and non-etymological double consonants and single consonant graphs where etymologically a geminate is expected, appears to reflect the collapse in late ONbr of the inherited Germanic phonological system that distinguished consonant quantity.106 An important distinction in the OE dialects is that whereas vacillation between single and double graphs to represent historically long consonants occurs across OE dialects, the use of double consonantal graphs where etymo­ logically a geminate is not expected is characteristic of ONbr.107 Karl Luick suggested that double consonant graphs had a twofold purpose; on the one hand they marked etymo­ logical geminates, but they were also employed to indicate that the preceding vowel was short, especially before /p, t, k, m/ and (less frequently) /s/ and /d/.108 See also Margaret Dutton Kellum, who attributes spellings like to the ‘double writing of a simple consonant after a short vowel’.109

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Once again, an interesting parallel with OIr orthography emerges. The fluctuation between single and double consonantal graphs is also attested in early OIr texts.110 As in Old English, the orthographical fluctuation appears to reflect the loss of contrast between short and long consonants.111 However, Thurneysen also notes that double con­­ sonants tended to follow short vowels and geminates were more commonly written single follow­ing stressed long vowels.112 The fluctuation is attested early in OIr (pre-750), which suggests a direction of effect involving OIr influence on ONbr. It cannot be ruled out that the vacillation between single and double consonant graphs in both orthographic systems to denote etymological geminates reflects a parallel but independent development, in that such orthographic variation would be a likely result of inherited phonological systems that distinguished consonant quantity collapsing in both OE and OIr. However, the ONbr use of double consonantal graphs to mark a preceding vowel as short reflects an innovative (and conscious) spelling convention that suggests ONbr dependence on OIr spelling.

Conclusion The view that West Saxon orthographic practice was accepted and applied country­wide outside of Wessex is an assumption that disregards the surviving textual evidence. This is not to say that the political and cultural dominance of Wessex in the mid- to late tenth century had no impact in the north. The late ONbr texts were written in the second half of the tenth century at the height of the Benedictine Reform in southern English churches. The perception that the language of the later Durham Ritual gloss has a less northern feel to it, compared with that of the Lindisfarne Gospels, has been attributed to West Saxon influence and a desire on the part of the Northumbrian glossator to engage with the spirit of the Benedictine Reform emanating from the south.113 The northern glossator of the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Durham Ritual might even have been trained in a southern scriptorium with the intention of carrying out the ideals of the reform in the north,114 although Rusche argues that ONbr glossing practice shows few similarities with southern methods of glossing and warns against too readily assuming that the glossing method in Lindisfarne was influenced by the intellectual efforts of the Benedictine Reform.115 The present study has demonstrated that even in the second half of the tenth century at the height of the Benedictine Reform, ONbr and West Saxon scribal practices differed with regard to their orthographical preferences and ONbr texts exhibited a distinctly northern character. In its attempt to reflect phonological and morphological change, the ONbr orthographic system was already moving in the direction of some of the spellingsound correspondences that were to characterise Middle English and were lacking to a greater extent in West Saxon. ONbr was also making use of notational forms that were not to become the norm outside of Northumbria until the Middle English period. ONbr orthography drew from Graeco-Roman traditions both directly, in its use of for both /w/ and /u/, and indirectly via an OIr line of transmission in its employment of for [x]. However, some ONbr sound-spellings correspondences may have involved the adoption of native OIr orthographical innovations, such as the use of double vowels as markers of vowel quantity and the tendency to employ double consonant graphs to mark a preceding short vowel.

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144revisiting the medieval north of england

ONbr orthography also contributes to our understanding of diachronic pronunciation. Inconsistencies in the ONbr employment of etymological and unetymological provide a fascinating insight into the chronology and geographical distribution of /h/-loss and suggest that prevocalic /h/-loss was diatopically more extensive than previously believed. The use of and (rather than West Saxon ) to represent the ONbr reflex of palatal /k/ in unstressed environments indicates lenition to [x]. Such orthographical practice provides a crucial insight into the historical development of OE palatalised /k/ in the north that has important implications for the hypothesis that Scandinavian inter­ ference explains the prevalence of unpalatalised forms in northern Middle English.

Notes See David Wolman, Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email. The Tangled Story of English Spelling (New York: Harper, 2008); Christopher Upward and George Davidson, The History of English Spelling (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); David Crystal, Spell it Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling (London: Profile, 2013); Simon Horobin, Does Spelling Matter? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).  2 Donald Scragg, A History of English Spelling (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974), pp. 7–8.  3 For a description of Old English grammar that details West Saxon and provides contrast with other Old English dialects, see Alistair Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959).  4 Scragg, A History of English Spelling, p. 6  5 Scragg, A History of English Spelling, pp. 6–7.  6 Scragg, A History of English Spelling, p. 7.  7 The notation in this paper uses angle brackets (< >) to represent graphemes and square ([ ]) brackets to represent phonetic symbols. Slant lines (/ /) represent phonemes. Phonetic and phonemic symbols are those of the International Phonetic Association. An asterisk * denotes a reconstructed form, > (= develops into) and < (= develops from).    For further examples of for /w/ in ONbr see Elizabeth Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss to the Gospel of St Mark’, Anglia NF, 16 (1894), 115–16. Craster notes that the absence of ONbr forms in the grant issued by Bishop Walcher suggests that the document was probably written by a southern clerk. Herbert Craster, ‘Some Anglo-Saxon Records of the See of Durham’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4/1 (1925), 194.  8 Scragg, A History of English Spelling, pp. 7, 11.  9 Barbara. Strang, A History of English (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1970), §180. 10 See, for instance, Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, pp. 20–3. 11 Veronika Knieza, ‘The Origins of Scots Orthography’, in Charles Jones (ed.), Edinburgh History of the Scots Language (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 24. 12 Knieza, ‘The Origins of Scots’, p. 27. See also Richard Venezky, The American Way of Spelling: The Structure and Origins of American English Orthography (New York and London: The Guildford Press, 1999), p. 96. 13 The ONbr gloss added to the Lindisfarne Gospels in the mid-tenth century and the gloss and additions added to the Durham Ritual a generation later have both traditionally been attributed to the same scribe, Aldred. To what extent Aldred wrote the Lindisfarne gloss singlehandedly, or was actually responsible for the Durham Ritual gloss and additions, are contentious issues that are by no means settled ones. For discussions see Karen Jolly, The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century. The Chester-le-Street Additions to Durham Cathedral Library A.IV.19 (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012); Marcelle Cole, ‘Identifying the Author(s) of the Lindisfarne Gloss: Linguistic Variation as a Diagnostic for Determining Authorship’, in Julia Fernández-Cuesta  1

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and Sara Pons Sanz (eds), The Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2016), pp. 169–88.   The gloss added to the Rushworth Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D.ii.19) was written by two glossators: a scribe by the name of Farman wrote the parts known as Rushworth1 (Mt, Mk 1.1–2.15, and Jn 18.1–3) in a Mercian dialect, and Owun glossed the remainder in Old Northumbrian (Rushworth2). Up until recently, commonalties between the interlinear glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and Rushworth2 were believed to be the result of Owun’s reliance on the Lindisfarne gloss as an exemplar. See Minnie Cate Morell, A Manual of Old English Biblical Materials (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1965), p. 177; Alan Ross, ‘A point of comparison between Aldred’s two glosses’, Notes & Queries, 223 (1978), 197–9. Recent research, however, challenges the traditional view on the direction of influence between the Gospels. See Tadashi Kotake, ‘Did Owun Really Copy from the Lindisfarne Gospels? Reconsideration of his Sources Manuscripts’, in Julia Fernández-Cuesta and Sara Pons Sanz (eds), The Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2016), pp. 377–95. 14 Henry Sweet (ed. and trans.), King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care (London: Trübner and Co., 1871), Part II, p. xxxv.    The line references and short titles of Old English texts employed in this paper are taken from Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. (eds), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2009) http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/pub/web-coprus.html    Translations are my own. 15 Sweet, King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version, pp. xxxii–iii. 16 Berndt demonstrates that final /-n/ in Old Northumbrian was not lost at an equal rate across paradigms, but exhibited notable categorial differentiation such that the following scale may be distinguished: infinitive > present subjunctive > preterite subjunctive > preterite indicative. Rolf Berndt, Form und Funktion des Verbums im nördlichen Spätaltenglischen: eine Untersuchung der grammatischen Formen und ihrer syntakischen Beziehungsbedeutungen in der groen sprech­ lichen Umbruchsperiode (Halle: Niemeyer, 1956), pp. 225–303. 17 Scragg, A History of English Spelling, p. 19. 18 James Milroy, ‘Middle English Dialectology’, in Norman Blake (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Language: 1066–1476 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 198–9; Nils-Lennart Johannesson, ‘On the time-depth of variability: Orm and Farmon as h-droppers’, in Magnus Ljung (ed), Language Structure and Variation (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell Inter­ national, 2000), pp. 107–19. 19 Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 101. 20 For further examples, see Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 101. For a quantitative analysis of /h/-loss in Ru2 and Li, see Thomas Toon, ‘Old English Dialects’, in Richard Hogg (ed.), The Cambridge History of the English: The Beginnings to 1066 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 438. 21 Johannesson, ‘On the time-depth of variability’, pp. 199–200. 22 Milroy, ‘Middle English Dialectology’, pp. 198–9. 23 Scragg’s (1970) survey of h-dropping came to my attention late in the process of writing this article. He identifies instances of h-dropping in initial position in all the Old English dialects. Donald Scragg, ‘Initial H in Old English’, Anglia, 88 (1970), 165–96. 24 Venezky, The American Way of Spelling, p. 117. 25 Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 128; Hans Füchsel, ‘Die Sprache der North­ umbrischen Interlinearversion zum Iohannes Evangelium’, Anglia NF, 12 (1901), 54. 26 The development of Germanic */g/ does not form part of my discussion. 27 Stephen Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence on English Phonology’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leiden, Leiden, 2010), p. 83. 28 Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, p. 98, with reference to Christopher Ball, ‘Inconsistencies in the main runic inscriptions of the Ruthwell Cross’, in Alfred Bammesberger (ed.), Old English Runes and their Continental Background (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1991), pp. 117–19.

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30 31

32 33

34 35

36

37 38

39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56

57 58

Campbell, Old English Grammar, §§434, 483; Richard Hogg, A Grammar of Old English. Volume I: Phonology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 270–1. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §§434, 486; Hogg, ‘A Grammar’, p. 270. See, for instance, T. Y. Pak, ‘Position and Affrication in Northumbrian Old English’, Neophilologus, 57 (1973), pp. 74–82. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §438; Hogg, ‘A Grammar’, pp. 274–6. The absence of assibilated forms in northern Middle English might, of course, be otherwise explained. See Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, pp. 92–109, for a discussion of the possible impact of Brittonic influence on the arrestation of palatalisation. Laker also notes that the absence of palatalised /k/ in final position after /i(:)/, e.g. swilik (‘such’), whilk (‘which’), ilk (‘each’), may also reflect a native development of Old English phonology, given that lack of assibilation is also found in Old Frisian in this position. Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, p. 98; see also Karl Luick, ‘Zur Palatalisierung’, Anglia NF, 59 (1935), 274. Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, p. 93. Donka Minkova, Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 133. Eilert Ekwall, ‘Some cases of Scandinavian sound substitution’, in Olof Arngart (ed.), Selected Papers (Lundi: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1963), p. 89. Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, pp. 93, 95. Marcelle Cole, Verbal Morphosyntax in Old Northumbrian and the (Northern) Subject Rule (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2014), pp. 124–33. The same phonetic ambiguity has been reported for modern dialects. The dialectologist Peé found that it was sometimes impossible to distinguish between palatalised /kʲ/ and palatalised /tʲ/ in the Dutch dialect of Louvain (Leuven) in Belgium. Willem Peé, Dialectgeographie der Nederlandsche diminutiva (Tongeren: G. Michiels-Broeders, 1936). Campbell, Old English Grammar, §452. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §452. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §68. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §57. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §57. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 128. Scragg, A History of English Spelling, p. 49. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 89. Raymond Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes in Old English Inscriptions’, Runes and Runic inscriptions: Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Runes (New York: The Boydell Press, 1995), p. 101. Scragg, A History of English Spelling, p. 50. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, pp. 88–9. For a recent consideration of the relationship between graphic markers and vowel quantity see Tomasz Mokrowiecki, ‘Acute accents as graphic markers of vowel quantity in two Late Old English manuscripts’, English Language and Linguistics, 19 (2015), 407–36. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 88. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 88. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 90. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, p. 90. Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, Companion material. http://www. historyofenglishspelling.info/. Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, ch. 4, p. 16. Peter Schrijver, ‘The rise and fall of British Latin: Evidence from English and Brittonic’, in Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen (eds), The Celtic Roots of English (Joensuu: Joensuu University Press, 2002), pp. 87–110; Peter Schrijver, ‘What Britons spoke around 400 ad’, in Nick Higham (ed,), Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007), pp. 165–71.

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early english spelling 59 60 61 62

63 64

65 66

67

68

69

70 71 72

73

74

75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91 92 93

147

Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, ch.4, pp. 2–3. Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, ch. 4, p. 3. Venezky, The American Way of Spelling, p. 105. François Masai, Essai sur les origines de la miniature dite irlandaise (Brussels and Anvers: Éditions Érasme Standaard-Boekhandel, 1947); David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Art: From The Seventh Century To The Norman Conquest (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984). Aaron Griffith, p.c. Peter Schrijver, ‘Celtic influence on Old English: phonological and phonetic evidence’, English Language and Linguistics, 13/2 (2009), 193–211. Venezky, The American Way of Spelling, p. 105. Lian Blasse, ‘Vowel length, schwa and the quality of consonants in the orthography of Early Old Irish’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, 2015), p. 23. Rudolf Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946), §26. Damian McManus, ‘Ogam: Archaizing, Orthography and the Authenticity of the Manuscript Key to the Alphabet’, Ériu, 37 (1986), 9. See also Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §26 who concurs. John MacNeill, ‘Notes on the distribution, history, grammar and import of the Irish Ogam inscriptions’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 27 (1908/1909), 337. McManus, ‘Ogam: Archaizing’, p. 8. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, pp. 22–37. Richard Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988), p. 97. W. Sidney Allen, Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 64. According to Morris, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions used single graphs to denote geminated consonants. The use of double graphs to mark quantity became common practice in Latin around 115 bc, although single consonantal graphs continued to occur in such contexts. With regard to Greek, Morris concludes that the use of double consonants in Greek inscriptions never became widespread and Greek orthographic practice vacillated between single and double consonants. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, pp. 128–9. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, pp. 24–5. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, p. 30. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §27. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, pp. 26–8. Kenneth Jackson’s view that British Latin adhered closely to Classical Latin standards (Language and History, 1953) has been widely criticised in recent scholarship. See, for instance, Paul Russell, ‘Recent Work on British Latin’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 9 (1985), 19–29; Schrijver, ‘The rise and fall of British Latin’, pp. 87–110. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, pp. 27–8. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §27. Blasse, ‘Vowel length’, pp. 27–8. Lea, ‘The Language of the Northumbrian Gloss’, pp. 88–9. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §57. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §28, pp. 30, 183. Allen, Vox Latina, pp. 26–7; James Clackson and Geoffrey Horrocks, The Blackwell History of the Latin Language (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), p. 96. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, p. 127. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, p. 127. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 97. Morris, Runic and Mediterranean Epigraphy, pp. 127–8. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 97. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 97. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 101.

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148revisiting the medieval north of england  94  95

 96  97  98  99 100 101 102 103 104 105

106

107 108 109

110 111 112 113

114

115

Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 102. Anne King, ‘The Ruthwell Cross: a linguistic monument (runes as evidence of Old English’, Folia Linguistica Historica, 7/1 (1986), 43–79. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 104. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, pp. 104, 333. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 99. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 99. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, p. 100. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §67. Campbell, Old English Grammar, §67. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, pp. 98–9. Page, ‘The Use of Double Runes’, pp. 98–9; Campbell, Old English Grammar, §70. The Durham Ritual uses the dæg and mann runes 42x and 10x, respectively. Jane Roberts, ‘Aldred: Glossator and Book Historian’, in Julia Fernández-Cuesta and Sara Pons Sanz (eds), The Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2016), p. 51. Karl Luick, ‘Über die Entwicklung von ae. ŭ-, ĭ- und die Dehnung in offener Silbe ü̈berhaupt’, Archiv, 102 (1899), 43–84. Luick, ‘Über die Entwicklung’, 58–71. Laker, ‘British Celtic Influence’, p. 101. Luick, ‘Über die Entwicklung’, 63–4, 68. Margaret Dutton Kellum, The Language of the North Gloss to the Gospel of St. Luke (New York: H. Holtan, 1906), §§74, 77. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §§142–6. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §142. Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish, §§144–5. Karen Jolly, The Community of St. Cuthbert in the Late Tenth Century (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012). William Boyd, Aldred’s Marginalia. Explanatory Comments in the Lindisfarne Gospels (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1975). Philip Rusche, ‘The Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Benedictine Reform: Was Aldred Trained in the Southumbrian Glossing Tradition?’, in Julia Fernández-Cuesta and Sara Pons Sanz (eds), The Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Language, Author and Context (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2016), pp. 61–78.

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Index

Aberdeen 124 Accius 139 administration 73, 112–13 document(s), text(s) 3, 6, 40, 44, 46, 49–50, 53, 55 domains 48 engagement 73 function(s), use 112–13 language 42 affect affective, affectus 17–19, 21, 74 affective piety 28, 34 Albert Magnus 30 De animalibus 29 Alfred, King 133 alliterations, alliterative 4, 97, 102, 103 Alliterative Destruction of Troy 48 alphabet, alphabetisation 137–8 Roman/Latin 131, 141–2 runic 135–6, 142 see also runes, runic angel(s) 8, 13, 31, 93, 94–5, 105 Anglo-Norman 19, 23, 123–4, 132, 134, 136 Anglo-Saxon 4, 44, 131–2, 137–8 Anne de la Pole 28 anthology 5, 7, 20, 59–62, 64, 66 Antwerp 112 Aquinas, Thomas 30 Thomism 67–8 Aristotle 29, 32 De animalibus 30 Armagh, The Book of 139 Arundel, Thomas 5, 26, 30, 34, 63 Atlantic 125 Augustine 21, 86, 137 Avicenna 29 Axholme 4, 6, 25

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Baltic 112 Barking Abbey 62 Barmston 54–5 Barra 125 Bartholomew, Saint of Farne 7, 9, 124, 127–8 Baynard’s Castle 27 Becket, Thomas of Canterbury, Saint 73, 126, 130 Bede Death Song 132 Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum 136 Vita Cuthberti 4, 73–6 Bedfordshire 62 Benedictine Reform 143 Bergen 126 Bewcastle Cross 135, 141 Bremen 112 Bridget of Sweden 6, 26–8 Liber Celestis 25, 36 Britons, Brittonic 137–8 Brome 106 Brunswick Casket 141 busyness 74 Bute 125 Cædmon’s Hymn 42, 132, 136, 140 Caithness 125 Cambrai Homily 139 Candet Nudatum Pectus 43 Canterbury 5, 11, 131 Carew, Richard 55 Carlisle 11, 43, 49, 53, 86 Castleford, Chronicle of Thomas 48

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168 INDEX

Catherine of Siena 6, 26–8, 30, 32–4 Il Dialogo 25, 28, 32, 36 Orcherd of Syon 28, 36 Celtic 138 Charnay brooch 140 Chastising of God’s Children 7, 47, 59–63, 66, 68 Chaucer, Geoffrey 44 Prioress’s Tale 100 Reeve’s Tale 41–2 Chester 93, 106 Chester-le-Street 83 Chichele, Henry 26 Christianisation 131, 137–8 Cleansing of Man’s Soul 62 Cnut, King 125 Coldingham 73–4, 76 Colinsay 125 Coll 125 Commendation of Souls 81 confession 47, 59, 63–8, 71–2, 84 Conquest, Norman 9, 42, 124, 131–3 Constance, Church Council 26 contemplation 7, 26, 33, 59–60, 62, 66, 69, 87 contrition 33, 64–8, 75 Coquet Island 127 corpus/atlas Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) 114 Corpus of Middle English Local Documents (MELD) 2, 6, 39, 41, 49–50, 53 Helsinki Corpus (HC) 114 linguistic 2, 23, 51, 53–4, 56 Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) 42–3, 56 Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, see LALME Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C) 2, 6, 39, 41, 45–7, 50, 56 Seville Corpus of Northern English 2 Coventry 62, 93, 120 Cumberland 41, 53, 86 Cumbria 21, 43, 49, 133 Cura Pastoralis 133 Cursor Mundi 1, 4, 6, 40, 43, 47, 54 Cuthbert, Saint 4, 7–9, 47, 61–2, 73–7, 84–6, 123–30 Dale Abbey 77, 86 Dartford 28 De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, see Gildas

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Denmark, Danish 123–5, 127, 130 Deonise hid Diuinite 47 Derbyshire 20, 86, 88 Desert Fathers 7, 13, 60, 62, 77 Desert of Religion 4, 11, 47 devil 14, 20, 33, 59–60, 79, 80, 94–5, 103, 127 dialect, Middle English 1–2, 6, 14, 40, 44, 55, 111–12, 114, 119 continuum 5, 41, 44 east central Staffordshire 15, 20 London 25 Midland 2, 5, 20, 62, 111, 134 northern 5–8, 15, 20–1, 25, 39–43, 45–6, 48–9, 51, 54–5, 61–3, 112–13 Northumbrian 4 south-eastern 111 southern 8, 111–12, 118 southwest Derbyshire 20 dialect, Old English 9, 131–2, 142, 144–5 Kentish 131 Mercian 131, 134, 136, 145 Northumbrian 9, 42, 131–3, 135, 145 West Saxon 9, 43, 131–4, 136–8, 140, 143–4 dialectology 40–1, 43, 44, 49 Dorset 137 Dryhthelm 74 Durham 3, 4, 7, 11, 27, 41, 48, 53, 62, 73, 83, 86, 115, 124, 126, 133 Benedictine priory 124, 126–8 cathedral 8, 62, 123–4 Durham Ritual 42, 132, 141, 143–4, 148 Durrow, Book of 138 Eadwine’s Canterbury Psalter 134 East Anglia 114, 126 East Midlands 133–4 Ebbe, Saint 73–5 Edmund of Bury, Saint 126, 130 education, school(s) 30, 34, 42, 54, 96, 100, 104, 106, 126 apprenticeship(s) 93, 101, 104 cathedral 48, 100 choir, choral, song 100 grammar 100 parish 100 Edward IV 6, 25, 27–8, 35 Elizabeth of Töss 27 Ely 63, 130 Epistle of Saint John the Hermit 7, 59–61, 66, 68–9 Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit 7, 59–62, 66, 68–9

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index

Etelhem clasp 140 Eton 100 Eucharist 29, 31, 125 exemplar(s) 19, 20–1, 45, 48, 113, 145 Exeter 131 Eystein II, King 124, 126 Falstone memorial stone 141–2 Farne, Island 7, 9, 73–4, 123–5, 127–8 see also Bartholomew, Saint of Farne; Cuthbert, Saint Flanders 125 fools, king of (‘rex stultorum’) 103 Fountains Abbey 54, 78, 87 Franks 137 Franks Casket 132, 142 French 5, 42 Frisia, Frisian 125, 130, 146 Gaelic 138 Galen 29 Geoffrey of Durham 127 George of Clarence 27 genre(s) 45, 79, 83, 87, 104 conventions 6, 55 distribution 47 labels 46, 56 Germanic 134–5, 140, 142, 145 Gildas 138 De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae 138 Glossa Ordinaria 100 Gloucestershire 137 Godric, Saint of Finchale 7, 61, 127–8, 130 Gospatric’s Writ 133 Gotland 125 Graeco-Latin/Roman 140, 143 Great Urswick 141 Greek 139–40, 147 Greenland 125–6 Guthred, King 124, 129 h-loss 132–4, 144–5 Halfdan, King 123 Handlyng Synne 47 Hartlepool 124, 141 Hebrides 126 Hedley 78 Helfta, convent of 25–6, 28, 30, 34–5 Henry V 25–6, 88 Henry, Saint of Coquet Island 127–8 Hereford 137 Herefordshire 85

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169

hermit(s), eremiticism 7, 9, 13, 21, 26, 61–2, 73–89, 123–8, 130 Egyptian hermits 73 see also Bartholomew, Saint of Farne; Cuthbert, Saint; Godric, Saint of Finchale; Lacy, John; Robert of Knaresborough, Saint; Rolle, Richard Hertfordshire 27 Higden, Ranulph Polychronicon 1, 6, 41 Hildegard of Bingen 26, 37 Hilton, Walter 81, 83 Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem 6–7, 59–72 Pystille Made to a Cristene Frende 6–7, 59–72 Scale of Perfection 47, 63, 67–8 Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, see Bede Holcot, Robert 81, 84, 88 Holy Boke Gratia Dei 47, 62 Horae beate virginis, Hours of the Virgin 79, 81 Hull 4, 88, 112 Humber 41, 131 Iceland 125, 130 identity 6, 41, 48, 84, 91, 101, 123, 127–8 idiolect 15, 20–1, 23 Inge, King 124–5 inscriptions continental 142 Irish, see Ogam Latin 137 ownership 63 runic 132, 140–2 interiority 16, 22, 28, 37, 67 Iona 125, 138 Ireland, Irish 86, 138, 140 monks 138 scribes 138–9 Islay 125 Isle of Man 41, 49 Jerusalem 3, 94–5, 109 Jesus Christ Monogram of 13–14 Name of 4–5, 13–23, 79 Passion, blood and wounds of 6, 14, 28–33, 81–2, 85 Sacred Heart of 6, 14, 25–6, 28–34, 36–7, 79 John of Lycopolis, Saint 7, 60–1

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John of Tynemouth 127 Jonson, Ben 101 Kells, Book of 138 Kent, Kentish 93, 131 Kinlet 85, 89 Knaresborough 77–9, 87 see also Robert of Knaresborough, Saint Lacy, John 7–8, 79–85, 87–9 LALME (Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English) 39–41, 44–6, 48–9, 51, 53, 55, 62, 78 Lancashire 41, 43, 46, 48, 53, 62 Lancaster 116 (dynastic) period 50, 52, 53 Lancaster Cross 141 Langland, William 44 Lavenham 47 Lay Folks Cathechism 47 Lay Folks Mass Book 47 Legenda Aurea 6, 26, 28 Leicestershire 34–5, 137 Leiden riddle 132 levelling, linguistic 2, 115, 118 Lewis 125 Liber Uricrisianum 48 Liber Vitae Dunelmensis 136 Lichfield 5, 84–5, 88–9 Lincolnshire 4, 6, 25, 34–5, 41, 44, 137 Lindisfarne 2, 4, 123, 138 Lindisfarne Gospels 9, 42, 56, 132, 138–9, 141–5 London 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 25, 48–9, 93, 101, 105, 111–12, 114–15 Love, Nicholas Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ 5 Lowlands 138 Ludlow 85, 89 Macarius of Egypt, Saint 7, 60–1 see also Epistle of Saint Machary the Hermit Mandeville, John 3, 48 Mary, Virgin 39, 79, 81, 93–7, 101, 109–10, 127 Mary Magdalene 37, 65, 75, 93–4 maps, dialectal 44, 46, 51, 56 Mechtild of Hackeborn Booke of Gostlye Grace 6, 25–38 Liber Specialis Gratiae 25–6, 34–5 Mechtild of Magdeburg 26, 37 Melrose 74

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Memoriale Credencium 47 Mercia(n) kingdom 131 orthography 131 see also dialect, Old English metaphor(s) 8, 9, 26, 28–30, 32–3, 85 Midlands 1–3, 45, 61, 114, 133 see also dialect, Middle English miracles 4, 9, 96, 101, 103, 124–30, 140 Mirk, John 47 monastic orders Augustinian 9, 63 Benedictine 9, 25, 30, 62, 66, 73, 76, 78, 123–4, 126–9, 143 Birgittine 25–8, 34 Carthusian 3, 6–7, 25, 26–8, 34, 36, 62, 64, 66, 70–1, 80, 88 Cistercian 3, 9, 25, 30, 78 Dominican 3, 7, 28, 30, 37, 80–1, 83–4, 88 morphology 55, 113, 135, 137, 143 Mortain Casket 141 Mull 125 mysticism 17–18, 21–3, 25–6, 28–30, 33–4 N-Town, plays 95, 106 Netherlands 125 Neville, Anne 6, 27 Neville, Cecily 6, 25–8, 33–6 New Romney 93 Newcastle 79, 82–3, 88 Newcastle-on-Tyne 80 Newminster 78 Nicholas, Saint 83 Nicholas, Saint of Bari, bishop of Myra 125 Nidd 77 Nordic pillage 123 maritime culture 127–8 identity 127–8 Norfolk 27, 35, 44, 95, 127 Norman Conquest, see conquest North Sea 73–4, 125–30 Northern Homily Collection 4, 5, 43, 47 Northern Verse Psalter 47 northernisms 20, 23, 56 Northumberland 7, 41, 48, 78, 87, 132 Northumbria(n) 126–7, 138, 143 kingdom 41, 73, 138 scribes 140 texts 42 see also Cuthbert, Saint; Old Northumbrian Norway, Norwegian 9, 124–30

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Norwich 93, 106, 115, 120 Nottinghamshire 63 Odin 123 Office of the Dead 81–2 Ogam 139, 147 Old English 20, 40, 133–4, 138, 142–3 orthography 132, 141–3 period 131–2 phonology 146 runes 140–1 scribes 138 spelling 133, 135, 142 texts 43, 142 writing tradition 131, 141 see also dialect, Old English Old Irish 9, 137–40, 142 orthography 138, 140 spelling 136 texts 138–40 Old Norse 135–6 Old Northumbria(n) 21 culture 42 glosses 132 orthography 9, 133 runes 135 texts 9, 132–3 see also dialect, Old English Oleum Effusum Nomen Tuum 5, 13–16, 19 Orkney Islands 124–5 Ormulum 134 orthography 9, 50, 55, 113, 115, 119, 131–3, 135, 137–44 Oswald 84 Overchurch stone 141 Oxford 62 pageant(s) 8, 91–106, 113, 118 see also texts types, drama; York, Corpus Christi Plays palatalisation 9, 132–6, 144, 146 paraphrase 14–16 Paston Letter 40, 106 Paul, Saint 30, 78 penance, penitential 60, 63–4, 67–8, 75–6, 78, 81–3 Penrith 49 perfection 60, 76–8, 83–5, 87 Perth, Scotland 93 phonology 132, 137, 142–3, 146 Pickering 15, 20 Plumpton Letters 115 Pore Caitif 14, 22 Prick of Conscience 1, 3, 10, 47

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Raby Castle 27 Ragnald, King 123 reform 25–6, 30, 33–4, 36, 143 Reformation 21 Reginald of Durham 124–30 Reistad Stone 140 Richard III, of Gloucester 6, 25, 27–8, 35 Robert of Knaresborough, Saint 7, 61, 77–9, 85–7 Rolle, Richard 4–5, 7, 13–24, 44, 47, 61–2, 73, 87 Ego Dormio 13, 20 Encomium Oleum Effusum Nomen Tuum 5, 13–24 Incendium Amoris 13–14 Super Canticum Canticorum 14 Rum 125 runes, runic 9, 132, 135–7, 140–2 Rushworth Gospels 42, 132, 134, 141–2, 145 Ruthwell Cross 132, 135, 138, 141–2 Satan, see devil Scandinavia(n) 8, 123–4, 127–8 linguistic influence 44, 135–6, 144 miracle stories and sagas 130 relations with northern England 124, 126 Schism 26, 33, 36 Scotland 43, 93, 124–6, 129, 137–8 scribe(s) and scribal activity 2, 5, 6, 14–15, 20–1, 25, 34–5, 43, 45, 48–50, 54–6, 61–3, 68, 110, 113–21, 131–2, 134–5, 138–40, 142, 144–5 Scrope, John (4th Lord Scope of Upshall and Masham) 7, 27 Scrope, John (5th Lord Scrope of Bolton) 7, 27 scrupulosity 71 sea, ocean, see Atlantic; North Sea seclusion 7, 26 Sheen 27, 62, 69 Shropshire 137 Skye 125 Sleat 125 Snorri Sturluson Heimskringla 124 sociolinguistics 40, 49 solitude 7, 73, 75, 77–9, 85 Somerset 137 Song of Songs 14, 18, 22 Speculum Christiani 84 Speculum devotorum 27 Speculum Vitae 4, 47 spelling 114, 131–44 St George, play of 92, 105

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St Albans Abbey 127, 130 Staffordshire 5, 15, 20, 137 Standard English 52 Chancery Standard 2, 111 West Saxon standard 131–3 written Standard English 2, 8, 55, 111–12, 114–15, 119 standardisation 8, 61, 111–12, 114 Stavanger monastery 125 subjunctive 114, 118, 133, 141, 145 supralocalisation 50–1, 54, 120 Surtees Psalter 4, 47 sweetness, delectabilis 15–21, 30, 33, 71 Sykes manuscript 112, 117 Syon Abbey 6, 25–8, 36, 71 text type(s) 8, 46, 111–12, 114–15, 120 depositions 115 documentary 40–1, 44, 46–51, 56, 91–2, 101, 104, 106 drama 8, 18, 47, 91, 93–4, 99, 100–1, 104 medical 4, 29, 48, 70 religious 9, 13, 28, 40, 43–4, 47–8, 55, 70 see also administration third person singular present tense, see verb(s), verbal Thor 123 Thornhill stones 141 Thornton, Robert 4–5, 14–15, 20 Thorpe, Marget 27 Thurgarton 63 Tiree 125 Topcliffe 54 Towneley plays 48, 106, 112 translation between Middle English dialects 1–2, 5–6, 47, 113 of Latin texts into English 4, 6, 14–21, 25–6, 28, 29, 33, 35–6, 41, 59–68, 81, 83–4, 133 Trevisa, John 1, 6, 41–2 Tudor period 50–4 Tynemouth Priory 127, 130 Uist 125 variation 76 geographical, regional 9, 39, 44, 132 linguistic 8, 40, 43–4, 49–50, 114–15, 119 orthographic 113–14, 119, 138, 143 scribal 8 spoken 39 (in) writing 55

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verb(s), verbal 50, 80, 114, 118, 133, 135 auxiliary (incl. have) 114–19 lexical 20, 42, 114–19 third person singular present tense 8, 18, 20, 42, 50–2, 111–15, 118–20 Vespasian Psalter 142 Viking 8, 42, 123–4 Vimose buckle 140 vineyard 28–33 Vita Bartholomaei 128 Warkworth 85, 87, 127 Wessex 131, 143 West Saxon dialect, see dialect, Old English West Saxon Gospels 133 Westmorland 4, 41, 53–4 Whitby 124, 127 William de Stuteville 78 Winchester 100 Winifred, Saint 84, 89 Worcester 131, 137 Würzburg prima manus 139 Wycliffe, John 26, 29, 30 Wycliffite doctrine 68 Wycliffite Bible 44, 88 Yarm cross 141 York Abraham and Isaac 99 All Saints 80 City of York 1, 3, 8, 11, 27, 41, 50, 52–3, 63, 77, 91–3, 95, 100–2, 104–6, 112–13, 124, 131 Clergy 7 Corpus Christi Plays 2, 8, 10, 91–5, 99–101, 104, 109, 111–13, 115–20 Diocese of York 3 Guild of Corpus Christi 27 Memorandum Books 106, 120 Minster 100, 106 Period 54 St Leonard’s hospital 100 St Mary’s 78 ‘York Realist’ 102–3 Yorkshire 2, 4–7, 10–11, 13, 15, 21, 25, 27, 41, 46, 48, 62, 88 East Riding 4, 48, 54 North Riding 4, 46, 48 West Riding 43, 46, 48, 53 Yorkshire hermit, see Rolle, Richard

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