Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts [1st ed. 2021] 3030557235, 9783030557232

Citation preview

THE NEW MIDDLE AGES

Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts Edited by Sharon M. Rowley

The New Middle Ages Series Editor Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA

The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14239

Sharon M. Rowley Editor

Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts

Editor Sharon M. Rowley Department of English Christopher Newport University Newport News, VA, USA

The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-030-55723-2    ISBN 978-3-030-55724-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Historical image collection by Bildagentur-online 2 / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

for Christina von Nolcken

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank our editors Allie Troyanos and Bonnie Wheeler, along with the Palgrave Macmillan production team, for their help and support throughout the publication process. I also thank my co-authors for their collegiality and dedication, and Elizabeth Solopova for help with some transatlantic details. Some contributing authors have included individual acknowledgments in their chapters. Collectively, we thank the libraries and archives in which we worked, as well as the librarians and archivists who facilitated our efforts in: the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Cambridge University Library. Also in Cambridge, we thank the Emmanuel College Library; the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College; and the Wren Library, Trinity College. In Oxford, we thank Balliol, Magdalen, Merton, New College, and Trinity College Libraries. In the US, we thank the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Scheide Collection at Princeton University Library; and the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. We thank the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Foundations at Christopher Newport University for funding the image of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 387. Finally, I thank John Morgan for being himself and for supporting me in all of my endeavors.

vii

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Sharon M. Rowley Part I Middle English Clerks, Texts and Readers  13 2 Reading Dreams, Casting the Future and Other Learned Mirths: The Harley Scribe as Proto-Chaucerian Clerk 15 Susanna Fein 3 Griselda as Mary: Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and Alanus de Rupe’s Marian Exemplum 43 Ann W. Astell and Anne Winston-Allen 4 On Chaucer’s Clerk, His Books and the Value of Education  79 Jenny Adams 5 Freedom and Choice: Postnuptial Negotiation, the Flitch of Bacon Custom, and the Woe of Marriage in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and The Book of Margery Kempe101 Rosemary O’Neill

ix

x 

Contents

Part II The Lollards, Their Saints and Their Texts 125 6 The Making of a Monumental Edition: The Holy Bible…The Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wyclif and His Followers127 Anne Hudson 7 Paratextual Frames for the Middle English Reader: The Additional Pauline Prologues in Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108, a Wycliffite New Testament151 Matti Peikola 8 Lollard Book Production and Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles185 Jill C. Havens 9 Blessed Hildegard: Another Kind of Lollard Saint211 Fiona Somerset Part III Old English and Its Afterlife 233 10 “In his heart he believed in God, but he could not speak like a man”: Martyrdom, Monstrosity, Speech and the Dog-Headed Saint Christopher235 Susan M. Kim 11 Hengist’s Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis251 Matthew W. Irvin 12 The Failed Masculinities of Tostig Godwinson281 Mary Dockray-Miller

 Contents 

xi

13 Elizabeth Elstob, Old English Law and the Origin of Anglo-Saxon Studies: A Critical Edition of Samuel Pegge’s “An Historical Account of … the Textus Roffensis” (1767)311 Andrew Rabin Index353

Contributors

Jenny  Adams Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA Ann  W.  Astell  Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Mary  Dockray-Miller Humanities Department, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, USA Susanna  Fein Department Kent, OH, USA

of

English,

Kent

State

University,

Jill C. Havens  Department of English, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA Anne Hudson  Faculty of English, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Matthew W. Irvin  Department of English, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA Susan  M.  Kim Department of English, Illinois State University, Bloomington-Normal, IL, USA Rosemary  O’Neill  Department Gambier, OH, USA

of

English,

Kenyon

College,

xiii

xiv 

CONTRIBUTORS

Matti Peikola  Department of English, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Andrew  Rabin Department of English, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA Sharon  M.  Rowley Department of English, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA Fiona  Somerset Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA Anne Winston-Allen  Department of Foreign Language and Literatures, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA

Abbreviations

ASC BL CUL EETS EV FM GP Go GW ISTC LV MED MGH ODNB OED PG PL RV1-2 USTC WB

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The British Library Cambridge University Library Early English Text Society Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible Forshall and Madden 1850 General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible Glossa Ordinaria Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Union Catalogue of Incunabula) Incunabula Short Title Catalogue Later Version of the Wycliffite Bible Middle English Dictionary Monumenta Germaniae Historica The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford English Dictionary Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles Universal Short Title Catalogue The Wycliffite Bible

xv

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 8.1

“The Clerk of Oxford,” f. 88r, the Ellesmere Manuscript, MS EL 26 C 9, Egerton family papers. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California CCCC MS 387, fol. 1v, by Permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

80 197

xvii

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 9.1

The Harley scribe’s library of booklets 19 Copies of Insurgent gentes in British and Bohemian manuscripts 225

xix

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Sharon M. Rowley

In her “Afterword” to The Medieval Manuscript Book, Kathryn Kerby-­ Fulton suggests that “[t]he Middle Ages may be over, but our work to understand its literary legacy has just begun” (2015, 244). Pointing out that “[i]n manuscript culture … authority, authenticity, textual stability, [and] posterity were sites of conflict  — and also opportunity,” Kerby-­ Fulton highlights some key ways in which the study of medieval texts and literature has been changing (2015, 252). Over the last few decades, studies of medieval manuscript books as objects and processes, along with examinations of textual performance(s), and increasing awareness of the roles of scribes as active agents of composition and compilation have changed modern scholarly conceptions of medieval texts and textuality, thereby also changing our understanding of medieval literature and culture (for example, see Nichols and Wenzel 1996; Johnston and Van Dussen 2015; Mooney and Stubbs 2013). Professor Christina von Nolcken’s studies of medieval English texts, especially her work on

S. M. Rowley (*) Department of English, Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_1

1

2 

S. M. ROWLEY

Wycliffite textuality, its ideological underpinnings, transmission and editorial history, have contributed significantly to the work of understanding the contested sites and opportunities that form the literary legacy of the Middle Ages. Starting in 1979, von Nolcken’s earlier publications, such as The Middle English Translation of the Rosarium Theologie: A Selection Edited from Cambridge Gonville and Caius MS 354/581 and “An Unremarked Group of Wycliffite Sermons in Latin,” made several Wycliffite texts available for the first time in a modern edition and sought to “allow” the lollards “fully to speak for themselves” (von Nolcken 1986, 233).1 Von Nolcken also endeavored to better understand John Wyclif and the reception of his thoughts in their cultural contexts, as demonstrated in her influential essay, “Another Kind of Saint: A Lollard Perception of John Wyclif.” According to von Nolcken, “our predecessors … had a Wyclif coated with many layers of varnish,” and that even in 1987 we still knew “more about the varnish than we [did] about the man” (von Nolcken 1987, 429). Despite the fact that scholars such as Anne Hudson had begun historicizing Wyclif, von Nolcken found that others still remained uncertain about what they saw. Her response, to clarify that uncertainty, helped to revitalize the study of Wyclif and the lollards. Through her careful examination of the “bottom layers of varnish, the ones that [told] us about Wyclif’s medieval English followers,” von Nolcken has helped to improve our understanding of Wycliffite discourse and textual culture, as well as to discover their impact on lay literacy and on major writers like Chaucer and Langland (von Nolcken 1987, 429; cf. von Nolcken 1998, 2009). From her early work on Wyclif to her current intellectual biography of John Manly and Edith Rickert, von Nolcken has explored the social contexts of literacy, interrogated how notions of sanctity have changed over time, and investigated how, when, and by whom books or texts were made available to readers or audiences. The chapters collected here honor von Nolcken’s scholarship and teaching by exploring writers, editors and exemplars of medieval English texts; the collection also contributes to the project of understanding the literary legacy of the Middle Ages by paying close attention to cultural perspectives, textual production, the material book and memorialization. While models of sanctity, gender roles and textual cultures change over 1  A similar return to the manuscripts was also starting to take place in Old English studies around the same time; cf. Robinson 1980.

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

time, the study of the activities of any given scribe, redactor or editor in the production and dissemination of texts has tended to be separated from scholarly discussions of the literary and cultural effects of those texts. Rather than treating the production of both devotional and non-­devotional texts—such as the Wycliffite Bible or The Canterbury Tales—separately from their reception and interpretation, the chapters in this collection recover and explore the activities and lives of writers and editors, combined with discussions of the social, theological, and cultural shifts and tensions that fostered literary and textual re-production, mediation, and editorial re-presentation. We explore what Jerome McGann calls the “complex network” of individuals, groups and institutions, as well as the “exchanges and investments both in and between the past and the present” that contribute to the production and meaning of medieval English texts (McGann 1985, viii–ix). We have chosen the term “writers” to describe a key node in this complex network in order to blur distinctions between authors and scribes. As many of the chapters collected here illustrate, medieval English scribes acted not only as scriveners, but also as redactors, translators, and authors. They sometimes added commentaries and prefaces, framing and mediating the texts they were copying; some also selected, corrected, and compiled texts. In such cases, the scribes also acted as “editors”—another node in our network. Increased awareness of the complexity and significance of these blended activities has blurred the lines of authority, troubled questions of authenticity, and highlighted questions concerning textual stability over the last few decades. All of this, in turn, alters the task(s) of the modern editor seeking to bring medieval texts to modern audiences, whether digitally or in print. Beyond the long-standing optimist/recensionist debate and questions of common errors or variation (Boyle 1976), the creative adaptation of the text being copied transforms the concept of the “exemplar,” the third node in our network, into a contested site, through which we can glimpse McGann’s “exchanges and investments … in and between the past and the present” in action (McGann 1985, viii). The first recorded use of the word “exemplar,” to mean “an individual copy of a text (esp. in manuscript); specifically one from which a new copy, version, or translation is or may be made,” dates to the 1382 Wycliffite Bible—the compiling, editing, and variations of which are key themes in Part II of this collection. More popularly, the term refers to “a person’s conduct, [or] practice … regarded as an object of imitation or an influence

4 

S. M. ROWLEY

on the behaviour of others” (“exemplar, n.” OED Online). Arguably, one of the many reasons that “authority, authenticity, [and] textual stability” (Kerby-Fulton 2015, 244) matter to readers and scholars of medieval English texts is because biblical and literary exempla also provide or reflect models of behavior, whether positive or negative, that influence human performances of identity, whether saintly, gendered, or heroic (among others). Medieval English writers were profoundly aware of both the didactic function of literature and the “treachery” of transcription (Cerquiglini 1999, 4), along with the ambivalences and ideologies inherently embedded in exemplars. Rather famously, “Lenvoy de Chaucer” [Chaucer’s Envoy], at the end of The Clerk’s Tale, explicitly tells his audience not to imitate either Walter or Griselda (IV 1177–88).2 And at the end of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer prays: “that non myswrite the” [that none miswrite you (i.e. his poem)] (Book V 1795, trans. Irvin). The chapters collected here engage and explore such questions and problems surrounding writers, editors and exemplars. Turning to the individual contributions, Part I, “Middle English Clerks, Books and Women,” begins with Susanna Fein’s “Reading Dreams, Casting the Future and Other Learned Mirths: The Harley Scribe as Proto-Chaucerian Clerk.” Fein’s study of the trilingual Harley scribe initiates many of the themes in this collection, from language, interpretation and writing, to biblical wisdom, sanctity, Old English saints’ lives (as remembered in Middle English), and exemplars—both textual and ideal. More specifically, Fein examines the record of the Harley scribe, including French and English texts he may have authored himself, to present a fuller picture of the man, his library and his interest in the arcane. Looking at the compilation of three specific manuscripts, Fein argues that the Harley scribe enacts an agency that is more than scribal. She also provides insight into the multiple interests of Chaucer’s clerks, both learned and comic, as well as into the complex internal dialectic of The Canterbury Tales project as a compilation. According to Fein, The Canterbury Tales come: in diverse parts that, taken together, project an internal dialectic and dynamic of extraordinary philosophic and psychological depth. Chaucer creates this 2  The Clerk’s Tale (Chaucer 1987, IV 1177–88). All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are to this edition. The Canterbury Tales are cited by fragment and line number; other works are cited by book and line number. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website.

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

world by means of remodeled generic expectations, recurring plot patterns, and subtle refocusings of linguistic terms—all features familiar to Chaucerians. (see below, 27)

Such “recurring plot patterns” and “remodeled generic expectations” resonate with Ann W. Astell’s “Griselda as Mary: Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and Alanus de Rupe’s Marian Exemplum,” which reexamines Chaucer’s Griselda as “a failed Pietà.” Astell reexamines Griselda in light of an exemplum she has identified as Alanus de Rupe’s Griselda analogue. A transcription of the German text is published here for the first time by Anne Winston-Allen, who also provides an introduction and translation. Together, Astell and Winston-Allen’s essays, transcription and translation allow readers to see more clearly the scope, depth and complexity of the Griselda tales, along with the debates concerning her character as an exemplar circulating in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Jenny Adams continues our clerical focus and exploration of Griselda with her essay “Chaucer’s Clerk(s) and the Value of Learning.” By looking at the way books were used as collateral by fourteenth-century scholars, Adams exposes the economic conditions that motivate Chaucer’s Clerk. She raises questions not only about the Clerk’s self-denial and devotion to learning, but also (potentially) our own. Combining a historical study of the value and use of books and medieval loan chests with a close analysis of the Clerk’s economic status (by referring to Avarice in Piers Plowman), Adams calls attention to the ambivalences surrounding both the Clerk and Griselda as exemplars of scholarly devotion and female piety; she puts the characters into dialogue with both the Miller and the Wife of Bath, and her own essay into dialogue with those of Astell, Winston-Allen and Rosemary O’Neill. In “Freedom and Choice: Postnuptial Negotiation, the Flitch of Bacon Custom, and the Woe of Marriage in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and The Book of Margery Kempe,” Rosemary O’Neill examines representations of marriage, consent and (changing) desires in relation to the texts of medieval marriage vows and the bacon flitch oaths practiced in parts of England. While Griselda’s promise never to disobey her husband “in werk ne thoght” [in deed nor thought] exceeds the marriage vow and renders her the subject of complete domination by her husband (Chaucer IV 363), O’Neill shows how the negotiations of Alison (the Wife of Bath) and Margery Kempe expose the ways in which the marriage contract is “inevitably implicated” in “structures of domination” (see below, 145).

6 

S. M. ROWLEY

Tracing the cultural effects of Middle English marriage texts and contracts in the Prologue, Tale and Book, O’Neill suggests that both Margery and the Wife manage to negotiate some autonomy for themselves, despite the problem that the marriage contract paradoxically yokes free consent with the surrender of choice. By showing the ways in which the language of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale echoes, engages and challenges the language of fourteenth-century marriage vows and the bacon flitch oath, O’Neill reminds readers of the extent to which Chaucer’s fictions not only draw on the works of influential Continental writers like Boccaccio and Petrarch, but also reflect and refract the more local cultural and textual milieux of late-fourteenth-century England. Wycliffite Bible translations also had a profound impact on and beyond Chaucer’s milieu. As von Nolcken points out in “Another ‘lollere in the wynd?’ The Miller, the Bible, and the Destruction of Doors,” Chaucer started to write The Canterbury Tales in the late 1380s and worked on them well into the 1390s. Although “we also lack precise dates for the Wycliffite Bible translations,” von Nolcken reminds us that “this first translation of the whole Bible into English must have been the subject of considerable discussion” and controversy by the early 1390s (von Nolcken 2009, 242). Not only do these discussions and controversies relate directly to the themes of writers, editors and exemplars that this collection focuses on, but they also provide crucial contexts for understanding writers such as Chaucer, Gower and Langland (von Nolcken 2009, 245). Despite the persecution of the lollards and legislation against translating the Bible in 1407, over 250 manuscripts containing versions of books of the Wycliffite Bible survive. The work of editing these texts, making them available, and understanding them—along with added prefaces and interpolated versions of the psalter—informs the essays in Part II of this collection, “The Lollards, Their Saints and Their Texts.” In “The Making of a Monumental Edition: The Holy Bible … the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wyclif and His Followers,” Anne Hudson traces the history of the editorial work performed by Frederic Madden and Josiah Forshall, as they produced the first major edition of the Wycliffite Bible in four volumes, published in 1850. Mining Madden’s 43-volume journal, Hudson reveals new information about the team: their research methods, their plan of editing, and their relationship with Oxford University Press. While Hudson makes it clear that “no modern edition has matched [Forshall and Madden’s] achievement even in part,” she also observes that “the British Museum

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

context of the editors’ work was dominant,” and shows how the layout of their edition somewhat obscures the “diversity of evidence that lies behind different sections of the whole” (see below, 140). Matti Peikola brings some of this “diversity of evidence” to light in his chapter, “Paratextual Frames for the Middle English Reader: The Additional Pauline Prologues in Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108, a Wycliffite New Testament.” Peikola’s detailed examination of the Emmanuel prologues in their textual and manuscript contexts allows us to see a “late medieval compiler at work” (see below, 175). Peikola also discusses the ways in which these prologues have been framed to shape their material according to “ideological tenets associated with Wycliffism,” and how they emphasize themes of comfort for “those who suffer persecution  / tribulations” (see below, 176). Like the Harley scribe’s compilations and compositions, the Emmanuel prefaces clearly demonstrate how scribes and redactors made active choices regarding the content of the manuscripts they were compiling. We see a similar dynamic in Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles, which also circulated in multiple copies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As Jill C. Havens demonstrates in “Lollard Book Production and Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles,” these manuscript texts and interpolations blur the boundaries between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. Looking closely at the evidence in seven manuscripts, Havens argues that the lollards played a role in the production and circulation of the original version of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. At the same time, she explores the complex questions surrounding issues of authority and orthodoxy in such vernacular texts. The “diversity of evidence” continues to multiply, as Fiona Somerset demonstrates in “Blessed Hildegard: Another Kind of Lollard Saint.” Presenting for the first time in print a previously overlooked copy of Insurgent gentes in Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50, Somerset reveals new evidence that suggests both “a lively exchange of information and texts between English and Bohemian copyists and translators of Insurgent gentes” and why the lollards commemorated Hildegard of Bingen as a saint (see below, 212). Somerset reiterates that since von Nolcken’s publication of “Another Kind of Saint,” scholars have been “thinking more subtly and more deeply about what lollards thought about sanctity,” as well as reconsidering different and changing forms of sanctity. Susan M. Kim takes up themes of difference and sanctity in her chapter, “‘In His Heart He Believed in God, but He Could Not Speak Like a

8 

S. M. ROWLEY

Man’: Martyrdom, Monstrosity, Speech and the Dog-Headed Saint Christopher,” which opens Part III of this collection, “Old English and Its Afterlife.” If the monstrous origins of Griselda have been lost in time, those of Christopher have not. Interrogating St. Christopher’s martyrdom and monstrosity as found in the Old English Martyrology and the Beowulf manuscript in the context of the writings of Victricius, Augustine of Hippo and Isidore of Seville, Kim argues that “[t]he martyr can identify himself, through his body’s pain and fragmentation, as a martyr, as his body’s fragmentation … because it means his sanctity” (see below, 247). Kim draws to the forefront the ways in which saints, their bodies, and their commemoration are contested sites in which questions of sanctity and authority intersect with linguistic (in)stability. Augustine of Hippo and Ælfric of Eynsham, as she points out, theorize language “fundamentally as a matter of difference” because the sign, like the saint and monster, points both at and beyond itself. The transformation of the dog-headed Christopher by the gift of speech “marks at once the monstrous lodging of meaning within the body, and the potential for divine transformation” (see below, 243). Christopher literally embodies the kind of ambivalences that Astell and Adams trace in The Clerk’s Tale. At the same time, Kim’s discussion of the martyr reveals the “treachery of language” itself as it moves away from the limitations of physical perception (see below, 247). While Kim discusses this dynamic specifically in relation to the martyrdom of Christopher, she also invokes a version of the crisis of the sign in medieval theory, which, in turn, links her chapter to questions of writing, exemplars, and editorial intervention. Matthew W. Irvin also draws on medieval theories of representation and memory. His chapter, “Hengist’s Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” explores Gower’s decision to use the English language in the Confessio Amantis in relation to Gower’s representations of the Old English past, especially the legacy of Alfred the Great. Irvin illuminates Gower’s understanding of language by engaging Chaucer’s idea that the form through which we know (vernacular) speech is its “variability.” Gower, too, was preoccupied with linguistic variability, and thought about how different forms of language “can be understood by the intellect and held by the memory” (see below, 260) According to Irvin, this leads Gower to recast “the relationship between English and Latin as a riddle,” which activates readers in their roles as interpreters, and which reveals Hengist’s language to be a language of craftiness and discontinuity. Irvin reminds us that in Chaucer and Gower’s day, “few use[d]

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

English for ‘literary’ purposes;” rather, English in the Confessio, as in fourteenth-­century England, “always exists between Latin and French,” neither first nor without need of translation or interpretation (see below, 275). Reading Hengist as a trickster and treating the English language— along with the (Old) English past and Englishness—as sites of conflict and negotiation segues to Mary Dockray-Miller’s analysis of “The Failed Masculinities of Tostig Godwinson.” Dockray-Miller continues the theme of ambivalent exemplars and extends our exploration of the intersections between literature, culture and memory. Tostig Godwinson may be the least familiar figure studied in this collection, but his story, which Dockray-­ Miller teases out of several different primary sources, illustrates how exemplars of masculinity “constrained and controlled aristocratic men” on the cusp of the Norman Conquest (see below, 282). By comparing Tostig’s behavior with the heroic code exemplified by The Battle of Brunanburh, Dockray-Miller reveals the unstable foundations of the heroic model of masculinity. Eventually putting his own ambitions before his service to his family and older brother, Tostig fails in almost every way possible, “as a flawed son, brother, husband, father, soldier, general and politician.” The point is not to memorialize Tostig as a treacherous failure; rather, tracing his biography against self-contradictory social expectations allows us to better understand how “competing claims of masculine performance and loyalty can undermine and even destroy each other” (see below, 283). In her recovery of the details concerning the life of Tostig Godwinson, Dockray-Miller also participates in the recovery and exploration of English biography and history, which also helps us to better understand and interpret the cultural and literary legacy of the Middle Ages. Similarly, the final chapter in this collection by Andrew Rabin recovers and represents the work of two eighteenth-century scholars and historians of Old English. Combining intellectual biography with textual editing, Rabin shares von Nolcken and Hudson’s interests in preserving and disseminating texts, this time, the Old English Textus Roffensis, in “Elizabeth Elstob, Old English law and the Origin of Anglo-Saxon Studies: A Critical Edition of Samuel Pegge’s ‘An Historical Account of … the Textus Roffensis (1767).’” Rabin presents Pegge’s essay, which is little known, and even less available, but which remains a valuable source for the post-Conquest transmission of Old English law, as well as an important record of the development of early English studies as a scholarly discipline. Like Hudson’s account of the work of Madden and Forshall, Rabin’s treatment of Pegge’s account

10 

S. M. ROWLEY

of the growth of Old English studies allows us trace the paths of people who contributed to the field of medieval English studies by making key texts available to modern readers through critical editions. From tales of Griselda, to scriveners, editions and compilations of biblical texts in Middle English, this collection explores aspects of the production, dissemination and reception of medieval texts, combined with investigations of the people whose hands and minds shaped, edited, altered, or presented those texts—and subsequently influenced the world around them. Our integrated approach allows us to consider the writings of major authors such as Chaucer, Gower, and Wyclif (among others) in the contexts of texts and social ideals less well known today, as well as in light of the translation and interpretive re-production of the Bible in Middle English. We make some texts available for the first time in print, and consider the crucial role of historical thinkers and scholars from Richard Rolle to Elizabeth Elstob, Samuel Pegge, Frederic Madden, and Josiah Forshall in the construction of our understanding of medieval literature and textual culture. This, in turn, allows us to consider what it means to recover, study, and present key medieval texts that continue to influence our own. The chapters collected here examine the literary legacy of the Middle Ages, seeking to better understand the human agency, creativity, and forms of sanctity found in the contested sites and interstices of medieval texts and culture to which Christina von Nolcken’s writings and teachings draw such keen attention.

References Boyle, L.E. 1976. Optimist and Recensionist: ‘Common Errors’ or ‘Common Variations’. In Latin Script and Letters A.D. 400–900: Festschrift Presented to Ludwig Bieler on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Ludwig Bieler, John J. O’Meara, and Bernd Naumann, 264–274. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Cerquiglini, B. 1999. In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology. Trans. Betsy Wing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Chaucer, G. 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.D.  Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 2019. The Canterbury Tales: Texts and Translations. [online] Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. Available at: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/ pages/text-­and-­translations “exemplar, n.” OED Online. 2020. Oxford University Press, March. https://0-­ www-­oed-­com.read.cnu.edu/view/Entry/66039?rskey=jxt3zR&result=1

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

Johnston, M., and M.  Van Dussen, eds. 2015. The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107588851 Kerby-Fulton, K. 2015. Afterword: Social History of the Book and Beyond. In The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, ed. Johnston and Van Dussen, 243–254. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107588851.013 McGann, J. 1985. Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mooney, L.R., and E. Stubbs. 2013. Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375–1425. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Nichols, S.G., and S. Wenzel. 1996. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi. org/10.3998/mpub.14148 Robinson, F.C. 1980. Old English Literature in Its Most Immediate Context. In Old English Literature in Context, ed. J.D. Niles, 11–29, 157–161. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. von Nolcken, C. 1979. The Middle English Translation of the Rosarium Theologie: A Selection ed. from Cambridge, Gonville and Caius MS 354/581. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. ———. 1986. An Unremarked Group of Wycliffite Sermons in Latin. Modern Philology 83: 233–249. https://doi.org/10.1086/391473. ———. 1987. Another Kind of Saint: A Lollard Perception of John Wyclif. Studies in Church History. Subsidia 5, 429–443. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0143045900001046 ———. 1998. Lay Literacy, the Democratization of God’s Law, and the Lollards. In The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. John Sharpe and Kimberly Van Kampen, 177–195. London/New Castle: The British Library/Oak Knoll Press. ———. 2009. Another ‘Lollere in the wynd’? Chaucer’s Miller, the Bible, and the Destruction of Doors. In Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. Robert F.  Yeager and Andrew Galloway, 239–266. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

PART I

Middle English Clerks, Texts and Readers

CHAPTER 2

Reading Dreams, Casting the Future and Other Learned Mirths: The Harley Scribe as Proto-Chaucerian Clerk Susanna Fein

2.1   Introduction Recent scholarship on late medieval English literary manuscripts has increasingly focused on the traceable labor of scriveners who preserved texts by copying exemplars and skillfully applying ink, over long hours, to vellum or paper. Wherever possible, we seek to identify the scribal makers of important literary books and even to track his (or her) agency across several. Such detections allow us to understand persons directly engaged with the literary culture of their day, and, insofar as we may discover circumstances of date and provenance, we might also uncover an important

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Meeting of the Early Book Society, St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in July 2015. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

S. Fein (*) Department of English, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_2

15

16 

S. FEIN

scribe’s wider career, social milieu and political affiliations. Consequently, scribes have begun to enter the domains of literary-historical importance formerly reserved mainly for authors. One can see this recent expansion of interest operating on many fronts: in the work of Linne R. Mooney and Estelle Stubbs on the London Guildhall clerks who may have combined civic office with literary scrivening (Mooney and Stubbs 2013);1 in the increasing attention paid to Thomas Hoccleve as author, scribe and perhaps editor (see Horobin 2015); in new work on the two massive compendiums made by Robert Thornton of Yorkshire (see Fein and Johnston 2014); in analyses of John Shirley’s range of influence as a prolific copyist and knowledgeable book collector (see Connolly 1998); in examinations of the hands in the Vernon manuscript, which seem now to be localizable to the vicinity of Lichfield (see Horobin 2013); in the discrimination of activities among the various Auchinleck scribes, especially Scribe 1, the apparent overseer of the project;2 and also in studies of the Ludlow-based scribe of London, British Library (BL) Harley 2253, upon whom I focus here.3 Wherever we can determine a sizeable portion of a scrivener’s personal library; make good surmises about his education and range of vocations; know the chronology of the texts he copied (following his oeuvre as we might that of an author); observe selections, arrangements, alterations, and redactions; and assess his dialectal and/or multilingual competencies, the information to be assessed can become voluminous. The abundant corpus of the well-known Harley scribe yields this kind of information. Here I discuss an aspect of his interests that has received little attention: his library of arcane clerkly lore, with the inclusion of various prognosticative sciences, especially dreamlore. While it may seem impossible that we should know anything about the scribe’s mental habits, it turns out that his inquisitive proclivities—and likely applications—in scientific speculation are much on display in an attested library of multiple booklets in three manuscripts: Harley 2253, the earlier London, BL MS Harley 273, and 1  For a reassessment of their conclusions, see Warner 2018. See also the cumulative database Late Medieval English Scribes (Mooney et al. 2011). 2  On the scribes of Auchinleck (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 19.2.1), see Pearsall and Cunningham 1979, ix; and the essays in Fein 2016a. The Auchinleck manuscript is online at https://auchinleck.nls.uk/ 3  The fullest discussion of the Harley scribe is Revard 2000. See also Fein 2013, 2015, 2016b; and Fisher 2012, esp. 100–145. Further recent attention given to important scribes (these and others) appears in Kerby-Fulton et al. 2012.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

17

MS Royal 12.C.xii (see Revard 2000, 65–72; for Harley 273, Fein 2016b. See also Busby 2015, 52–54). To date, little work has been done to analyze the surviving record of the Harley scribe in its entirety. The trilingual contents of Harley 2253 have only recently been published in toto and in a form accessible to modern readers (Fein 2014–15; hereafter cited as “Harley”). Until 2015, general knowledge of the contents was limited because most Latin and French items were inaccessible and/or untranslated. Meanwhile, the two manuscripts that predate Harley 2253 are still imperfectly understood because their densest contents—and particularly the most technical items—remain unedited.4 The entire set of texts associated with the scribe occupies twenty-two booklets (see Table 2.1), constituting the remains of a fascinating personal library that help to profile what the man was made of intellectually, creatively, and professionally as a scrivener-clerk in a certain place and time, namely, in Ludlow (north of Hereford near the Welsh border) from around 1315 to 1349. The booklets betray the types of arcane knowledge he valued as a collector and practitioner of learned lore. Beyond works of religion and literature—standard ones, like Edmund Rich’s Speculum Ecclesiae and King Horn, and extraordinarily rare ones, like the precious love lyrics—the Harley scribe owned a large body of clerkly science that leaned toward arts of prediction, medical charms, and means to insure good ends. The library contents reveal the Ludlow man’s polymath curiosity about scientific-religious effects, especially the manipulation of causality for beneficial purposes: good fortune, physical health, bodily safety, or spiritual salvation. His devotion to acquiring practical clerkly lore is clustered in nine booklets: Harley 273, booklets 3, 4, 7; Royal, booklets 1, 2, 7, 8; and Harley 2253, booklets 6, 7 (see Table 2.1). Moreover, it often permeates literature found elsewhere in his library, especially in texts written by his hand. After surveying these interests in general, I will focus on the scribe’s taste for dreamlore and the concomitant social and literary uses to which he applied that taste. In addition, close observation of the Harley scribe’s range of self-cultivated lore has the potential to lend insight into how 4  For Harley 2253, the print facsimile of fols. 49–140 is still useful: Ker 1965. For descriptive, whole-manuscript digital facsimiles, see http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?index=0&ref=Harley_MS_2253, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?index=0&ref=Harley_MS_273, and http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?index=0&ref=Royal_MS_12_C_XII

18 

S. FEIN

Chaucer conceived of the various “clerks” (a broad generic category) who inhabit The Canterbury Tales. In many ways, the library and oeuvre of the Harley scribe bring to life the multiskilled, polymorphous profession of those clerks that Chaucer chose so often to depict.

2.2   Clerkly Lore and the Sciences of Prognostication The Harley scribe successfully collected items on a variety of learned and scientific topics: the traits and properties of herbs; assorted chemical, culinary, and pharmaceutical recipes;5 medical charms; proverbs from sage elders; dreamlore; chiromancy (or palm-reading);6 lunar predictions and other kinds of astrological knowledge; mathematical puzzles; practical estate management;7 and intellectual sortes (i.e., diversions and games) based on species of birds or signs of the zodiac. When one adds to these encyclopedic curiosities and applied interests the other contents of Harley 2253—advice literature, fabliaux, poems of love-longing, pilgrimage texts—the Harley scribe may seem to be a sort of prototype for Chaucer’s many learned or quasi-learned clerks and squires: the desirous lovers Nicholas, Absolon, Aurelius and Damian; the clever squire in the Summoner’s Tale who solves the “ars-metrike” problem; the learned clerk in the Franklin’s Tale who uses lunar tables to make rocks disappear; and so on. As regards dreamlore, the Harley scribe equipped himself in a way analogous to Chaunticleer, who collects both technical knowledge and exempla to prove dreams’ capacity to predict events. Like the stories Chaunticleer tells Pertelote—all to defend the premise that dreams are predictive of an imminent, likely disastrous fate—several narratives in Harley embed the belief that dreams do predict outcomes and must not be ignored. Moreover, we sometimes can detect the scribe padding such narratives in order to highlight the godly arts of divination and dream-reading. 5  Suggesting that the scribe prepared food, practiced medicine, and made paints for manuscripts. 6  The chiromancy text with diagrams of the left and right hands appears in Royal, fols. 106r–107v. Diagrams of hands to chart a guide to nightly and daily meditations appear in Harley 273, fols. 110v–112v. 7  Robert Grosseteste’s Rules, written for the Countess of Lincoln, c. 1240, is found in Harley 273, fols. 81r–85r.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

19

Table 2.1: The Harley Scribe’s Library of Booklets This chart presents the entire known library of the Harley scribe: twenty-­ two booklets bound into three manuscripts. The scribe’s hand appears in all but one of them (Harley 273, booklet 6). Often, if his hand is not present as the main scribe, it turns up in marginal annotations, corrections, or decorative red ink applied for paraphs and capital initials. The texts inscribed by the Harley scribe—occasionally in collaboration with other scribes—are given below in boldface. Table 2.1  The Harley scribe’s library of booklets MS Harley 273 (7 booklets) fols. 1–7 1 Calendar, indulgences

1 quire (+ front/ back cover) fols. 8–69 2 Anglo-French Psalter, Hours of the Virgin, Hours 5 quires (ends of the Dead imperfectly) fols. 70–85 3 Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour, Robert 2 quires Grosseteste’s Rules, charms fols. 86–112 4 Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, nightly/daily 3 quires (last leaf meditations charted on palms, charms excised) fols. 113–198 5 William of Waddington’s Manuel des péchés, La 8 quires (blank Purgatoire de s. Patrice back cover) fols. 199–203 6 Nicholas Bozon’s La Pleinte d’Amour 1 quire (last leaf excised) fols. 204–217 7 Prayers, medical charms, and recipes for making 1 quire (+ 2 colors and dyeing textiles leaves) MS Royal 12.C.xii (8 booklets) fols. 1–7 1 The Harley Scribe’s Commonplace Book 1 quire (+ added (satirical verse, notes on herbs, Office for last leaf) Thomas of Lancaster, prophecies, proverbs, rules for sortes, etc.) fols. 8–16 2 Mathematical puzzles, prophecies, culinary 1 quire (+ added recipes first leaf) fols. 17–32 3 Edmund Rich’s Speculum Ecclesiae, French treatise 2 quires on the Mass fols. 33–61 4 Fouke le Fitz Waryn, hymn 3 quires (incl. back cover) fols. 62–68 5 Short English Metrical Chronicle 1 quire (last leaf excised) fols. 69–76 6 Ami et Amile, hymns 1 quire (first leaf excised) fols. 77–107 7 Lunar and other prognostications, Danielis 4 quires (last leaf somniale, medical charms, chiromancy with excised) diagrams, Secreta secretorum, avian and zodiacal sortes, medical recipes (continued)

20 

S. FEIN

Table 2.1  (continued) fols. 108–123 8 Liber experimentarius (astrological sortes) MS Harley 2253 (7 booklets) fols. 1–22 1 Vitas Patrum fols. 23–48 2 Passion, Gospel of Nicodemus, four apostolic saints’ lives fols. 49–52 3 ABC for Women, Debate between Winter and Summer, color recipes fols.53–62 4 Saint Ethelbert, moral and political works

2 quires

5 Lyrics, King Horn, Bible stories 6 Fabliaux, courtesy texts, A Bok of Swevenyng, Saint Etfrid 7 Book of Practical Religion (occasions for angels, occasions for psalms, properties of herbs, words to the dying), Saint Wistan

5 quires 3 quires

fols. 63–105 fols. 106–133 fols. 134–140

2 quires 2 quires 1 quire 1 quire

1 quire

In Royal, fols. 81v–86r, the scribe produced his own copy of the Latin prose Somniale Danielis, a dream manual popular in medieval Europe, frequently translated and widely disseminated. The incipit names an author, the biblical boy-prophet Daniel who was inspired by God and the Holy Spirit: Incipit vision exposicio Danielis prophetae quan vidit per reuelationem spiritu … dicens. hec omnia non a memetipso didici. set a deo patre omnipotente michi sunt interpretatines subscripte. [Here begins the vision and interpretation of the prophet Daniel which he saw through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, … saying, “I did not acquire knowledge of all these things from myself, but the interpretations written below were revealed to me by God the Father Almighty.”] (Harrington 2015, 331, 342. The translation is hers.)

The only extant version of Somniale in Middle English verse, A Bok of Swevenyng, appears also in the scribe’s hand in Harley 2253, fols. 119r–121r. Its beginning echoes the source: Her comenses a bok of swevenyng: That men meteth in slepyng. Thurth Da[niel] hit yfounden ys, That wes prophete of gret pris ...................... Ant undude huere swevenes ariht

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

21

Thurh the Holi Gostes myht. (Fol. 119ra; Harley, 3:174 [lines 1–4, 11–12])8 [Here commences a book of dreaming: What people encounter in sleep. It is composed by Da[niel], Who was a prophet of high renown ....................... And he correctly unraveled their dreams Through power of the Holy Ghost.]

Before the editing of the Royal Somniale by Majorie Harrington in 2015, comparisons between it and the Harley Bok were difficult to make, and remained quite imprecise. Carter Revard speculated that the scribe himself had composed the English translation, with Royal as his source, and I too leaned toward that assumption when I edited and translated the Harley Bok (Revard 2000, 73; Harley, 3:329; and Fein 2015, 67). But Harrington has now clarified their true relationship: the Royal Somniale is not a direct source for the Harley Bok (Harrington 2015, 324–25). Several recensions circulated within easy range. Another appears, for example, in the comparable, slightly earlier, neighboring book Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 86 (see Tschann and Parkes 1966, fols. 41r–46r [art. 14, described at xviii]; and Harrington 2015, 320 n. 17).9 What one sees in Harley 2253’s English version is a hybrid version built from more than one exemplar. Still, Harrington ultimately agrees with Revard that the English poem is likely a translation project undertaken by the scribe himself (Harrington 2015, 330).10 The scribe seems to have made a serious, “authorial” effort to expand his storehouse of dream interpretation, preserving it in two separate booklets, each with a different range and in a different language. As scholarship advances on the Harley scribe’s texts and owned booklets, the list of works thought to be not just copied but also created by him has been growing. Already on the list are two long works in Anglo-­ Norman prose: the romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn found in Royal, and the Old Testament Stories found in Harley 2253, a consensus opinion reached, in part, through important investigations by A.D.  Wilshere and John  The name found in line 3 is Dauid, a scribal error for Daniel. See Harley, 3:329.   MS Digby 86 is online: https://iiif.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/iiif/viewer/2d6dfc9f-2ab946bf-9b32-e52f0e6eabb3#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&r=0&xywh=-3427%2C-397%2C12165 %2C6316 10  It should also be noted that another item of Latin dreamlore appears in Royal, fols. 4v–5r, amid other items in its booklet 1, the scribe’s “commonplace book.” 8 9

22 

S. FEIN

J. Thompson (Wilshere 1988; Thompson 2000, 280–82; see also Busby 2015, 54–55). Both works are based on preexisting models (a lost AngloNorman verse romance and the Bible) but composed in the scribe’s own idiom, so they are essentially his own authorial creations. Now we may add, credibly, the English Bok of Swevenyng. Matthew Fisher has recently examined how the Royal Short Metrical Chronicle appears also to be a thoughtful English redaction by the Harley scribe, wherein he displays an avid interest in history and politics (Fisher 2012).11 So, two texts in French and two in English are now plausibly attributed to the scribe’s blended activities as redactor, translator and author. Turning to Latin texts, it is also possible that the scribe redacted one or more of the three abbreviated lives of early English saints, each one honored at a religious site near the scribe’s Ludlow home: Ethelbert of Hereford, Etfrid of Leominster and Wistan of Wistanstow. Each of these lives holds accounts of significant dreams or portents, as I will discuss later in this chapter. The prognosticative texts in the Harley scribe’s library are designed to either shape an unknown future or forecast an apparently inalterable fate. The texts that seem hopeful of good fortune tend to lean on religion and God’s goodwill. A French item in Harley 2253, for example, provides “Seven Masses To Be Said in Misfortune,” advising that “Quy est en tristour, prisone, poverté, ou chiet en maladie, face dire messes come desouz est escrit, e yl serra aydé” [One who is in sadness, prison, poverty, or falls in sickness, should say masses as is written below, and he will be helped] (Fol. 135r; Harley, 3:276–277). Other items provide prayers or indulgences, or list efficacious psalms to be said to obtain desired outcomes from a divine source—God, a saint, or a guardian angel: “Quant vous oyez toneyre, pensez de seint Gabriel, e ren serrez grevez” [When you hear thunder, think on Saint Gabriel, and nothing will harm you] (Fol. 134r; Harley, 3:268–269). Royal contains the Liber experimentarius (fols. 108r–123v), a Latin miscellany of prayers, poems, recipes for making colors, as well as medical recipes and charms for handling emergencies (like fever, nail in the eye, or childbirth) or healing ailments (like cancer, gout, or toothache). In Harley 273, at the end of more than one booklet by other hands, the Harley scribe scribbles in charms for staunching blood on blank parchment (Harley 273, booklets 3, 4).12 It is clear that he valued 11  Fisher also ascribes the unique Latin Office of Thomas of Lancaster found in Royal, fol. 1r–v, to the Harley scribe. On this Office, see C. Page 1984. 12  See Table 2.1. Compare his similar insertions at the ends of Harley 273, booklet 1, and Royal, booklet 6.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

23

works combining science, religion, and a degree of superstitious magic to secure good medical results. Such texts were meant to be used prudently by the devout to ensure good outcomes. Other items in the Harley’s scribe’s booklets utilize secular methods in delineating quasi-scientific ways to read fixed signs and omens. Texts (sometimes with charts) explain the art of fortune-telling not just through dream imagery, but also through palm-reading or cryptic portents grimly cast in political prophecies, as in the English Prophecy of Thomas of Erceldoune: “When Londyon ys forest, ant forest ys felde [field]. / When hares kendles [kindle] o the herston [hearthstone]. / When Wyt ant Wille werres [battle] togedere” (Fol. 127rb; Harley, 3:236). Or they propose the use of herbs to reveal inherent truths. The herb celandine has miraculous powers when applied in a specified way: Hanc herbam si quis cum corde talpe habuerit simuli, devinceret omnes hostes et omnes causas et lites removebit. Et si ponatur sub capite infirmi, si debeat in illa infirmitate mori, statim cantabit alta voce; si non, mox incipiet lacrimari. (Fol. 137r; Harley, 3:288–289) [If anyone should have this herb together with the heart of a mole, he would overcome all enemies and remove all quarrels and contentions. And if it should be put under the head of a sick man, if he is bound to die of that sickness, he will at once sing in a loud voice; if not, he will begin to weep.]

According to this formulation, extracted from Albertus Magnus, celandine has the power to foretell a sick man’s death or recovery by eliciting bizarre portents: his singing or his weeping, respectively. The scribe’s library contains a plethora of astrological calculations from the second section of the pseudo-Aristotelian Secreta secretorum (Royal, fols. 91v–94r). The Royal manuscript also provides lunar prognostications (fol. 77r–81v); soothsaying based on thunder, the sky, or the day of the week (fols. 86r–89v); and a dietary for several months (fols. 89v–90r). The clerk who would use all this stuff seems to aspire to a bit of wizardry (see S. Page 2013). Among the prophecies found in Royal, there is (alongside two ascribed to Saint Methodius) one ascribed to Merlin Silvestris (fol. 15r–v). In the scribe’s redaction of the Anglo-French dynastic romance Fouke le Fitz Waryn in Royal, adventures begin with a prophecy from the giant

24 

S. FEIN

Geomagog delivered to one of Fouke’s ancestors, and they conclude with one on the dynasty’s fate delivered by Merlin himself (Kelly 2005, 178–179, 240–241).13

2.3   Dreamlore and Chaucer’s Clerks In the Somniale Danielis tradition, dream analysis works by reading the meaning of a dominant dreamt image, like the red-and-black beast looming in Chaunticleer’s dream (Chaucer 1987, Nun’s Priest’s Tale, VII 2898–2906).14 The reader of Chaucer’s tale recognizes that Chaunticleer’s dream image is a fox, but to the rooster it is a terror he has never seen or imagined before; he can only describe it as “a beest / … lyk an hound” (VII 2899–2900) with a glaring look that petrifies him (“for feere almoost I deye” [VII 2906]). The apparition must portend something, for the prognostic formula, by the Somniale tradition, is: “if you dream of X, it means Y will happen to you.” In the Harley Bok, images matched to outcomes often bear a metaphorical logic: Ys face feyr whose syth: Joie ant menske that ilke byth. Ys face lodlych whose syth: Bytoknyng of sunne that byth. (Fol. 120va; Harley, 3:190, lines 247–250) [Whoever sees his face as fair: Joy and honor will that one have. Whoever sees his face as ugly: That is a sign of sin.]

Others would seem to bear little logic at all: Mon that thuncheth that he ded ys: Newe hous ant confort shal buen his. (Fol. 119vb; Harley, 3:184, lines 159–160) [One who thinks he is dead: A new house and comfort shall be his.]  For the scribe’s French text, see Hathaway et al. 1975.  All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are to this edition. The Canterbury Tales are cited by fragment and line number in the text; other Chaucerian works are cited by title and line number. Translations of The Canterbury Tales are from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/text-and-translations 13 14

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

25

Does this prediction mean that, having dreamt of one’s own death, one’s “newe hous ant confort” will be heaven, or does it mean that the experience of dying in a dream means, counterintuitively, that one is about to receive some very good luck? The order of items in the Harley Bok often seems entirely random because it is based on lists alphabetized in the original Latin. An alphabetical arrangement of signs in the Somniale provides a handy reference tool whenever a client asks a learned clerk to interpret a vivid dream. In an analysis of the dream forms that surface in different genres within Harley 2253, Helen Phillips distinguishes three conventional types of usage: first, the clerkly lore of the Somniale tradition, which seems designed for fortune-telling; second, the visionary mode of dream poems, such as is used as a framing device for a moral lesson in the Harley Debate between Body and Soul; and, third, the literary, thematically fraught dreams, such as are found in the Harley romance King Horn (Phillips 2000).15 Harrington compares the Harley scribe’s persistence in collecting prognostic texts of the Somniale type to Chaucer’s more mocking use of dreams. Seeing Chaucer’s stance as projecting skeptical, self-conscious ambivalence, she feels that his attitude toward dream prognostication sets it somewhere between “superstition” and “quackery,” while the Harley scribe represents, in a more straightforwardly credulous fashion, the “prevailing fourteenth-­ century dream ideology” (Harrington 2015, 330). Harrington’s assessment of the differences between Chaucer and the Harley scribe seems likely to be broadly accurate, and yet one may add more shading and ambiguous play to how we read the distance between these two literate men, who worked some forty to fifty years apart. With the Harley 2253 contents now fully available, scholarly critics are equipped to gain a fascinating new perspective on Chaucer, by which we may reconsider the intercalation of genre and theme in The Canterbury Tales, a strongly compilatory work with some general similarities to the work of a highly inquisitive clerk-scribe. We need, I think, to envision Chaucer (with his projected personas, both serious and self-mocking) as fully inhabiting (i.e., embodying in himself) the multivalent role of the well-trained lowly clerk, an educated yet modest servant employed to know many things enclosed in books, and thereby inheriting the capacity to use this 15  For Debate, see Harley, 2:78–87, 381–382; for King Horn, see Harley, 2:300–369, 448–454. Harley 273 contains the scribe’s copy of La Purgatoire de s. Patrice, another text couched (like Debate) as a vision.

26 

S. FEIN

knowledge in creative ways. However ambivalently, skeptically, and ironically Chaucer presents himself in this role, the generic clerkly profession is one of wide-ranging, literate knowledge acquisition, a stereotype that we may better grasp by profiling the Harley scribe. Chaucer does not simply project numerous identities through his storytelling pilgrims of The Canterbury Tales. He also portrays numerous clever clerks with a range of skills acquired from books—quite notably, the arts of love gained from romance, fabliaux, and lyrics. Such clerks belong naturally to the circles that make, perform, and read such literature. Chaucer’s Aurelius is a maker of love poems. Damian can compose and inscribe a love letter. Nicholas is a wily manipulator by virtue of his knowledge of arcane Bible-inflected astrology. The clerk of Orléans wizards a magical-scientific illusion by means of bookish lunar tables. Chaunticleer has absorbed exempla on dreams, and his barnyard view of the world values both herbs and prognostications as smart types of lore to have mastered.16 The portrait we have of the Harley scribe gives us, therefore, some interesting insights on Chaucer. Embedded in his library—much of it written in his own hand—are the multiple interests of a learned clerk who plies many book-based trades: religious counselor, parish functionary, provider of entertainments and games, reader and performer, doctor, lawyer, tutor on courtesy, advisor on what men need to know about women, trained scrivener, multilingual translator, sometime poet, sometime redactor of romances and fabliaux, possible advisor for an estate, and so on. Chaucer gives us a ridiculous parody of a polymath clerk in Absolon of the Miller’s Tale: “Wel koude he laten blood, and clippe and shave, / And maken a chartre of lond or acquitaunce” (Chaucer, I 3326–3327) [Well could he draw blood, and cut hair and shave, / And make a charter of land or a legal release]. Absolon lets blood, clips hair, and writes up legal charters. He also sings, dances, plays instruments, swings the censer at church, 16  The clerks being referenced here are from the following tales: Aurelius and the clerk of Orléans, the Franklin’s Tale; Damian, the Merchant’s Tale; Nicholas, the Miller’s Tale; and Chaunticleer, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. For a Chaucerian condemnation of clerks who conjure “by nigromancie, by dremes,” see the Parson’s views on magical practices (Parson’s Tale, X 603–607). Chaucer also describes clerks’ lore in the House of Fame: “clerkes eke, which konne wel / Al this magik naturel, / That craftely doon her ententes / To make, in certeyn ascendentes, / Ymages, lo, thrugh which magik, / To make a man ben hool or syk” (1265–1270).

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

27

plays Herod on the scaffold, and utters a poetic plea of love-longing. Absolon’s arts thus combine doctoring, lawyering, barbering, bombastic performing, semi-eloquent wooing, and assisting in parish functions. All ridicule aside, and in real life, the Harley clerk-scribe may have been attached to a local parish as well as to a private household. He could have had a rich patron or been employed by several patrons. It is evident, too, from the forty-odd writs in his hand, that he earned a portion of his living by proffering skilled legal scrivening to private clients (see Revard 2000, 21–64, 91–100). And what occurs in the scribe’s third manuscript, the mature scrivening project Harley 2253, can be worthily compared—at least as a native, clerkly prototype—to Chaucer’s later, much-more-sophisticated Canterbury Tales project, which is itself structured (as has often been noted) like a vast compilation (see Minnis 1988, 190–210; Horobin 2015, 240–242). It comes in diverse parts that, taken together, project an internal dialectic and dynamic of extraordinary philosophic and psychological depth. Chaucer creates this world by means of remodeled generic expectations, recurring plot patterns, and subtle refocusings of linguistic terms— all features familiar to Chaucerians. Fragment I, for example, is classically read as beginning in high-minded romance, the Knight’s Tale, which is then wildly inverted into vulgar fabliau. The shift involves numerous themes and motifs—fortune, providence, astrology, marriage, the nature of woman, male competitiveness—that cross over from one genre to another and thus are portrayed and debated from different sides. Although the Harley scribe is (as it most usually seems) more a compiler of materials than what we would term an “auctour newe” [new author] (Chaucer, IX 359), he too is engaged in a literary labor of generic variation and thematic recombination. In pursuing this labor, he often ventures into creative compilation—that is, he sets up intriguing juxtapositions and embeds powerful verbal links—and he even ventures, as I have already noted, into observable moments of creative authorship.17 As he does so, it seems clear that he cannot resist opportunities to expound and make broader connections among his own clerkly interests. 17  On the scribe’s compilatory flair, see, for example, Revard 2007; and Fein 2007; see also Table 2.1.

28 

S. FEIN

2.4   Interpreting Dreams Across Genres: Early English Saints’ Lives In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, Chaucer paints Chaunticleer’s devotion to dreamlore with both the credulous wonder of miracle and the parodic skepticism of spoof. Of the many story types holding significant dreams, Chaunticleer accords special respect to saints’ lives, and perhaps the most revered are the dreams that came to ancient English saints and martyrs, which were visionary miracles that God visited upon England. According to the learned cock, the Mercian Life of Saint Kenelm provides a keen exemplum of a dream to be heeded: Lo, in the lyf of Seint Kenelm I rede, That was Kenulphus sone, the noble kyng Of Mercenrike, how Kenelm mette a thyng. A lite er he was mordred, on a day, His mordre in his avysioun he say. (Chaucer, VII 3110–3114) [Lo, I read in the life of Saint Kenelm, That was son of Kenulphus, the noble king Of Mercia, how Kenelm dreamed a thing. A little before he was murdered, on a day, He saw his murder in his vision.]

As mentioned, the Harley scribe includes three similar legends in Harley 2253, each one about an ancient Mercian saint, and each perhaps his own cut-down version of a longer legend in circulation. They are The Life of Saint Ethelbert, an eighth-century East Anglian prince ambushed in the court of King Offa; The Legend of Saint Etfrid, a seventh-century Northumbrian missionary who converts King Merewald; and The Martyrdom of Saint Wistan, a ninth-century prince murdered by a political opponent.18 Two narrate the martyrdoms of Mercian royalty; the third tells of a Mercian king’s conversion by a missionary-saint. Each amply illustrates the proclivity in native saints’ lives to utilize visions and portents to predict divine-driven events. Here is that moment in the Harley Life of Saint Ethelbert:

18  Texts and translations of the three Latin lives are found in Harley, 2:50–59 (Ethelbert), 3:260–267 (Etfrid), and 3:306–307 (Wistan).

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

29

Eadem vero nocte rex Ethelbertus fatigatus ex itinere cum se sopori dedisset, cuncta que illi futura erant per sompnium videbat, vidit nanque per sompnium aule regie sue tectum decidisse; cornua eciam thalami sui in quo quiescere solebat tectum cum parietibus subito in terram comminui; vestem quam induebatur sanguine madefactam; trabem longam et latam in medio urbis in altum erectam, se ipsum in avem transfiguratum et levi volatu eam supervolitasse. Quam visionem Oswaldo comiti suo plane revelabat; et comes omnia consolandi et obsequendi gratia interpretari satagebat. Rex tamen de dissolutione sui corporis et regni sui desolatione hec cuncta considerans intrepide fiduciam habens in Domino, et quicquid accideret gratias reddens, viam vitamque suam Deo comendabat. (Fol. 53vb; Harley, 2:54–55) [When on the same night King Ethelbert, tired from the journey, had fallen asleep, he saw in a dream everything that was going to happen to him, for he saw in the dream that the roof of his royal hall and even the corners of his bedchamber in which he was accustomed to rest fell down; that the roof together with the walls at once broke into pieces; that the garment he was wearing was drenched in blood; and that he was metamorphosed into a bird and flew over the long and broad roofbeam that had been raised aloft in the middle of the city. He revealed this vision thoroughly to his companion, Oswald; and the companion took pains to interpret everything for the sake of providing solace and complaisance. The king, considering fearlessly all these things about the dissolution of his body and the desolation of his realm, having faith in the Lord, and rendering thanks no matter what should happen, commended his way and his life to God.]

And thus does the soon-to-be-martyred Saint Ethelbert stalwartly accept his foreshadowed death, as did the Mercian boy Kenelm, about whom Chaunticleer had read. The second saint’s life in Harley, the Legend of Saint Etfrid, tells the story of how Etfrid traveled as a missionary to Mercia. As he nears his destination, the holy man encounters a monstrous lion, which turns out to be a blessed vision sent by God: Denim ergo locum attigit. … Tecto carens nouus hospes, clyno nocte tegitur, vbi vero ne desolaretur ambiguo prouentu sue peregrinationis diuinitus visitatur presagio regie conuersionis. Cum enim assedisset cenulam, sub vesperta noctis, … adest leo inmanissimus, iubis per collum crispantibus. Cui visio vir sanctus vt deifer intrepidus nullatinus cesset, set tanquam celesti misso, fractum de pane suo porrexit. … Leo pastus disparuit. (Fol. 132v; Harley, 3:262–263)

30 

S. FEIN

[Therefore at last he [Etfrid] reached the place. … Lacking shelter, the new guest is sheltered by descending night, in which, truly, so that he should not be forsaken in the uncertain progress of his pilgrimage, he is visited by a heaven-sent omen of the king’s conversion. For when he had sat down to a little meal in the evening, … a most monstrous lion is near, its mane standing on end along its neck. When he had seen it, the saintly man as a fearless missionary yielded not a bit, but held out a piece of his bread as if to a heavenly emissary. … After being fed, the lion vanished.]

The lion accepting the bread in the gentle manner of a lamb portends King Merewald’s acceptance of Christianity—God’s Word, the bread of life—through Etfrid’s counsel. After Etfrid arrives at court, King Merewald himself has a nightmare of vicious dogs attacking him on one side, while on the other side a robed man with a cudgel-like key seems able to offer him assistance. He needs an interpreter: Quod mane facto suis prolatum solvere sibi, poterat nemo suorum. Regi tandem suggerit memoratus miles de suscepto eius hospite, velut suus pincerna Pharaoni de Iosep sompniorum coniectore. (Fol. 132v; Harley, 3:262–263, my emphasis) [When it [the dream] had been made known to his men after morning came, none of them was able to analyze it for him. Finally the knight, reminded of the guest he has taken in, makes a suggestion to the king, just as his butler did to Pharaoh about Joseph the dream interpreter.]

So, it falls to Etfrid—here compared to Joseph—to interpret the dream. According to Etfrid, the dogs signify the jaws of hell that will swallow Merewald’s soul unless he seeks God’s aid through Saint Peter and the Holy Church (the robed man and the cudgel-like key). Acting like the gentle lion, Merewald converts, and he subsequently founds Leominster Priory (i.e., the Monastery of the Lion) upon the very site of Etfrid’s vision, designating Etfrid its first priest. The comparison of Etfrid to Joseph is an original addition to the inherited legend, a detail that can be attributed to the Harley scribe (see Harley, 3:344–345). As Chaunticleer is eager to explain, there are two main biblical exemplars of dream interpretation, namely, the clairvoyant boys Daniel and Joseph: And forthermoore, I pray yow, looketh wel In the olde testament, of Daniel,

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

31

If he heeld dremes any vanitee. Reed eek of Joseph, and ther shul ye see Wher dremes be somtyme — I sey nat alle — Warnynge of thynges that shul after falle. Looke of Egipte the kyng, daun Pharao, His bakere and his butiller also, Wher they ne felte noon effect in dremes. (Chaucer, VII 3127–3135) [And furthermore, I pray you, look well In the Old Testament, concerning Daniel, If he held dreams (to be) any foolishness. Read also of Joseph, and there shall you see Whether dreams are sometimes — I say not all — Warnings of things that shall afterward befall Consider the king of Egypt, d[o]n Pharaoh, His baker and his butler also, Whether or not they felt any effect in dreams.]

These two biblical youths are also made to exemplify the prognosticative arts in Harley 2253: Daniel, to whom authorship of the Somniale Danielis is ascribed; and Joseph, a featured hero in the Harley scribe’s Old Testament Stories. Consequently, knowledge of what the Harley scribe was reading, studying, and collecting deepens one’s sense of his learned, “Chaunticleerian” regard for serious portents recorded in the fateful lives of saints still honored in localities familiar to him. Dreams of falling houses and frightening beasts thus acquire weight when they recur in both saints’ lives and the theological science ascribed to Daniel.19 In the Harley scribe, we can discern a man who seriously pondered modes of belief, scientific evidence, and signs from God. It is also possible that he saw the playful potential of such lore, if it were to be used in the social setting of a parlor game played by both genders, for which many of Royal’s sortes and Harley 2253’s entertainments seem designed. The Harley scribe could thus have been somewhat credulous of dreams as portents, like Chaunticleer, but still held the art of their interpretation as a potential font of convivial mirth, in the manner of the Nun’s Priest. For such mirth, the scribe was well equipped through his books to be the host of festivities. 19  Such dreams are listed in A Bok of Swevenyng; see Harley, 3:180–181 (lines 77–78), 186–187 (lines 179–180). Phillips 2000, 248, notes Arthur’s dream of a falling house in Layamon’s Brut.

32 

S. FEIN

2.5   Interpreting Dreams Across Genres: The Biblical Story of Joseph The texts of the Harley scribe also tell us something about how to regard a bright young clerk who, like the gifted Joseph or Daniel, knows how to read dreams. Like Chaunticleer, who has cultivated this skill, the Harley scribe heeds the biblical lesson to be gleaned from Joseph. The paradigm is multipronged: Joseph as divinely empowered interpreter; Joseph as attractive youth who is, like Daniel, favored by God; and Joseph as sexually virtuous by instinct even in the face of temptation from a seductive older woman. In Harley 2253, the Harley scribe’s Anglo-French Old Testament Stories draw principally from the Vulgate, with bits of Peter Comestor.20 A portion of it highlights Joseph, and, in the scribe’s version, it is not Potiphar’s wife but rather the Pharaoh’s queen who tries to seduce the boy Joseph: Avint que la reygne privément ly pria dormyr ov ly, e il la dit, “Dame,” fet il, “nostre seigneur le roy me ayme taunt que quanqu’il ad est en ma garde, par soun comandement. Estre vus, ma dame, la reyne, e te serroit grant tresoun si je mespreise en cele manere a monseignour le roy.” (Fol. 93r; Harley, 3:22–23) [It happened that the queen privately asked him to sleep with her. And he said to her, “Lady,” he said, “our lord the king loves me so much that whatever he has is in my keeping, by his command. You are, my lady, the queen, and it would do you great treason were I to wrong in this way my lord the king.”]

In short order, this refusal lands Joseph in prison, where he interprets the dreams of the baker and the butler (in the story noted by Chaunticleer). With the Pharaoh hearing of Joseph’s powers, the young man next foretells, correctly, Egypt’s seven years of famine, gaining thereby a new rank as governor and the Christological title “Savior of the world”: Le roy Pharaon vist que Josep fust sages e averti. E parmi soun consail, … fist Josep mestre de tot le realme de Egipte.... E comaunda que tous se agenoillassent a ly, e ly fist estre apelé par tot “Salveour du mounde.” (Fol. 93v; Harley, 3:24–25)

 For Old Testament Stories, see Harley, 3:18–79, lines 309–314.

20

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

33

[King Pharaoh saw that Joseph was wise and perceptive. And in accord with his advisers, … he made Joseph governor of all the realm of Egypt. … And he commanded that all kneel down before him, and had him called by everyone “Savior of the world.”]

Later on, in the account of the Harley scribe himself, who here both paraphrases and expands the biblical version, Joseph explains to his brothers that his success is due to God, and yet it has required his own good choice of virtue in the face of sexual temptation: Je su Josep vostre frere que vous vendistes a les marchauntz que me amenerent en Egipte. E pur vostre salu Dieu me ordyna si. E si ay tote la seignurie e la mestrie de tote Egipte, e tous sunt a mon comaundement. E si je avoy fet le consail la reyne, Dieu ne me ust soffert avoir enjoyee cest honour. (Fol. 94v; Harley, 3:28–29, my emphasis) [I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold to the merchants that brought me to Egypt. And for your safety, God thus appointed me. And thus have I all lordship and governance over all Egypt, and all is at my command. And had I followed the queen’s counsel, God would not have permitted me to enjoy this honor.]

This extrabiblical detail, inserted by the Harley scribe, underscores that the queen’s proposition was a test. New themes—male virtue, sexual desire, the female as a tempting Other—seep into the narrative, arising from a clerkly interest in didactic paradigms, dreamlore, and the ways of women. Just as the Harley scribe thinks about and so alludes to Joseph when he redacts a new version of the life of Etfrid (King Merewald’s dream-­ interpreter), so too does he seem to want to accentuate the part of Ethelbert’s story that explains how the tragic fulfillment of this boy’s dream came about because an older, lustful woman felt spurned. Here, in the lurid language of the Latin text, the temptress is again a queen, that is, Offa’s wife and the mother of the Mercian princess whom Ethelbert had planned to woo: Ac regina iuvenis formam conspiciens, hora captata, pudenda cordis, vocis expressione detexit. Ille ut erat Dei plenus gratia, sponsam regis Offe et coniugium maritale necnon animam propriam violare penitus necglexit. Set ad Dei legem et copulam maritalem filiam suam postulavit. Videns igitur

34 

S. FEIN

crux belua se contemptam in beati viri necem maturat consilia. (Fol. 54ra; Harley, 2:54–57) [And the queen, seeing the attractive appearance of the young man, seized a moment and uncovered the shameful impulses of her heart with an utterance of her voice. Inasmuch as he was filled with the grace of God, he [Ethelbert] refrained entirely from violating the spouse of King Offa, their marriage bond, and his own soul. Instead he requested her daughter in accord with the law of God and marriage bonds. Seeing herself spurned, therefore, the savage beast ripens plots to slaughter the blessed man.]

And so it is that a vengeful woman becomes the ultimate instrument behind Offa’s regrettable murder-by-proxy of the young and innocent Ethelbert—a martyrdom fully foretold by divine dream and portent. Like young Joseph, the handsome Ethelbert was entrapped and betrayed by a woman.

2.6   Interpreting Dreams Across Genres: The Romance of King Horn I now turn from dreamlore, saints’ lives and the biblical paradigms of Joseph and Daniel, where foretold outcomes derive from science grounded in God’s ways, to expressions of dream ideology in narrative fiction, where prediction mixes with metaphor and literary aesthetics. Aside from Fouke le Fitz Waryn in Royal (the scribe’s prose recasting of an older verse romance), the core romance in the Harley scribe’s corpus is King Horn, which immediately precedes the Bible stories in Harley 2253. Horn is a text inherited by the scribe, but he does doctor it here and there, and it uncannily fits the paradigms regarding dream interpretation and Joseph that the scribe reflexively develops elsewhere.21 The Joseph model of a blessed young man, soothsayer of dreams, is strongly evident in Horn himself. We may first see it in the hero’s extraordinary, luminous beauty, which saves him and his comrades from harm: Muche wes the feyrhade That Jesu Crist him made. Payenes him wolde slo, Ant summe him wolde flo; 21  On the Harley scribe’s knowledgeable, creative handling of King Horn, see Allen 1984, 62.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

35

Yyf Hornes feyrnesse nere, Yslawe this children were. (Fol. 83v; Harley, 2:304 [lines 89–94]) [Great was the beauty Jesus Christ bestowed on him. The pagans planned to kill him, And some wished to flog him; Had Horn not been beautiful, These children would’ve been slain.]

The romance sets up this likeness, which is also Christological: like Joseph and like Jesus (“Saviors of the world”), Horn is a youthful, vulnerable hero who will triumph. He has twelve companions, and one, Fikenild, eventually betrays him like Judas. By a literary gesture original to him, the Harley scribe stresses Horn’s resemblance to Christ by prefacing the poem with a macaronic prayer to Mary, linking it to the romance by reiterated rhyme-words of thematic substance (see Fein 2015, 68–70; and Harley, 2:447–449). In regard to the paradigms discussed here, Horn becomes another exemplum, like Joseph and Ethelbert, of an attractive young man innocent of women’s reputed sexual wiles. It is the rash Rimenild, daughter of King Aylmer of Westness, who causes Horn to visit her privately in her bower. Although Horn seems to love her instantly in return, he must practice, when alone with her, virtuous discipline. Yet, because he is discovered in her bower—a chaste, yet compromised position—Horn suffers exile, expelled by her angry father. Horn, who has now advanced in rank and maturity from Horn Child to Horn Knight, is forced to leave Rimenild behind for many years as he seeks restoration of his birthright as Horn King of Sudenne. Rimenild feels great foreboding and despair about Horn’s impending exile. In their parting scene, he finds her dissolved in tears over a frightening dream: Me thohte o my metyng That Ich rod o fysshyng. To see my net Y caste, Ant wel fer hit laste. A gret fysshe at the ferste My net made berste. That fysshe me so bycahte That Y nout ne lahte —

36 

S. FEIN

Y wene Y shal forleose The fysshe that Y wolde cheose! (Fol. 87r; Harley, 2:328 [lines 657–666]) [It seemed to me in my dream That I rode to go fishing. I cast my net to sea, And quite long it held. A big fish all of a sudden Made my net burst. That fish so got the better of me That I might not capture it — I think I shall lose The fish I want to choose!]

Her distress causes Horn to plight his troth to Rimenild, and so it becomes the central moment in their love story—the moment when we learn that somehow Horn will return to claim his bride in public, though the romance will make her suffer through two other nuptials from which Horn must rescue her. The dream predicts the drama and sorrow of these events, and it is Horn who knows this. He answers her as both lover and dream-interpreter: Thy sweven shal wende: Summon us wole shende. That fysshe that brac thy net — Ywis, it is sumwet That wol us do sum teone Ywis, hit worth ysene. (Fol. 87r; Harley, 2:330 [lines 681–686]) [Your dream will come about: Someone will injure us. That fish that broke your net — Indeed, it is something That will do us some harm. Indeed, it will come to pass.]

In asserting “ywis, hit worth ysene” [“indeed, it will come to pass”], Horn has foretold the future. Yet, the terms remain mysterious, riddle-like. What or who is the fish? And what does Rimenild’s broken net signify?

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

37

Because the interpretation leaves unclear how these predictions of suffering and trouble will come to pass, the dream whets the reader’s interest but does not give away the story. Its haunting imagery imbues the romance with a rich nexus of metaphor, a coded kind of sexual desire played out in a plot of sea wanderings, comic disguises, nick-of-time rescues and reunions. The cast net thus signifies not just Rimenild’s open desire for Horn and the fear that she is powerless to hold him; nor is it even Horn’s own maturing capacity to repair the net and return to her.22 The net metaphor comes to reflect, as well, the skillful narrative web of a master tale-teller.23 Given its manuscript context, the Harley romance of King Horn broadcasts what feats may be accomplished by a skilled dream-reader. Despite the doleful prediction of Rimenild’s dream, the protagonist Horn exhibits the strength, will, and wisdom to shape events toward fortunate outcomes. In the romance plot, a dream comes to be predictive but not determinative of a foreordained fate. The promise of its coming true leads to open-­ ended possibilities. It motivates the hero to act, while also asking the audience to unlock a riddle: what will it mean? how will it come about? what will Horn do to avert disaster? As in the Nun’s Priest’s happy ending, in which the rooster escapes despite his dream of capture, an ominous dream can be undone by prudent action and storytelling magic.24 King Horn’s plot exemplifies that, by alert foreknowledge, a quick-witted clerk can turn events to good outcomes. King Horn thus makes an exceptionally satisfying appearance among not just the love lyrics, fabliaux, and interludes of Harley 2253, but also among its saints’ lives, A Bok of Swevenyng, and the story of Joseph.

22  In the immediate context, the troublesome fish that breaks the net would seem to be Rimenild’s father King Aylmer, who exiles Horn, or Fikenild, who instigates the trouble. Later on, it could be King Mody, who tries to marry Rimenild. 23  A revealing moment that shows the poet’s skillful manipulation of the net metaphor comes when Horn, in disguise, sees Rimenild and makes a private connection with her, while they are both in the public eye: “Him thohte he wes ybounde” (Harley, 2:348, line 1116). See my commentary: Harley, 2:452. 24  The clerkly narrator of Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale raises philosophical questions about predestination precisely to underscore how the arts of prognostication, including those based on dreams, are an inexact science. But they also serve, productively, as sources for social mirth and spurs for acting with clever foresight. See Chaucer, VII 3234–3251.

38 

S. FEIN

2.7   Conclusions I conclude this study by reemphasizing my opening point that the Harley scribe must be assessed as a man expressing individualistic inclinations and literary sensibilities in his compilation of Harley 2253—a book that modern generations of readers and scholars have rightly acclaimed as one of the most valuable documents of poetry and prose from medieval England. By expanding our sense of this man to include his library of booklets on arcane and literary subjects—and to include, too, knowledge of which works he likely authored himself (in French, Latin, or English)—we gain a much truer portrait of this intelligent clerk than has been accessible to date. In drawing that portrait, it is imperative that we include the surviving data that shows how he determinedly collected an array of religious-­ scientific lore, much of it centered on arts of prognostication. When this man worked at length as a compiler of a literary manuscript, as he did in Harley 2253, fols. 49–140, he apparently followed his own tastes and consequently left traces of his own beliefs, practitioner’s skills, and intertextual bookishness. Reading him as a clerk of Chaunticleerian and proto-­ Chaucerian leanings exposes, for example, his deep reservoir of interest in dreamlore, which in Harley 2253 travels along a continuum from the applied (dream manuals) to the portentously divine (saints’ lives) to the poetically multivalent (King Horn). To fill in more details, we still await good scholarly tools by which to know the more obscure parts of his library, especially those texts of technical lore, puzzles, and games written in Latin and French. The remainder of the Harley scribe’s booklets need to be edited and translated. As twenty-first-century scholars, we should seek to understand not just the literature that appeals to our modern tastes but also those texts marked with foreign medieval tastes that filled the head of many a clerk. The Harley scribe’s library holds a treasure trove of lore and secrets once highly valued: the fruits of received auctoritee traded among clerks for generations. Some of it was copied by the Harley scribe, and some inherited from other scribes’ work. All of it was possessively retained by him for his own use. Now that we can read the entire Harley 2253, what we need to grasp next is the entire surviving library of the man who made it.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

39

References Manuscripts Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 19.2.1. London, BL MS Harley 273. London, BL MS Harley 2253. London, BL Royal MS 12.C.xii. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Digby 86.

Primary Sources Allen, R. Ed. 1984. King Horn: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 4. 27 (2). New York: Garland. Chaucer, G. 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.D.  Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Fein, S. Ed. and trans., with D. Raybin and J. Ziolkowski. 2014–15. The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, 3 vols. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Hathaway, E.J., P.T. Ricketts, C.A. Robson, and A.D. Wilshere, eds. 1975. Fouke le Fitz Waryn. Anglo-Norman Texts 26–28. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kelly, T.E. Trans. 2005. Fouke fitz Waryn. In Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, ed. T.H.  Ohlgram, 2nd ed., 165–247. West Lafayette: Parlor Press. Ker, N.R. 1965. Facsimile of British Museum Ms. Harley 2253. EETS o.s. 255. London: Oxford University Press. Pearsall, D., and I.C.  Cunningham, eds. 1979. The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS. 19.2.1. London: Scolar Press. Tschann, J., and M.B. Parkes, eds. 1966. Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86. EETS s.s. 16. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Sources Busby, K. 2015. Multilingualism, the Harley Scribe, and Johannes Jacobi. In Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, ed. M.  Connolly and R.  Radulescu, 49–60. Proceedings of the British Academy 201. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Connolly, M. 1998. John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England. Aldershot: Ashgate.

40 

S. FEIN

Fein, S. 2007. Compilation and Purpose in MS Harley 2253. In Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. W.  Scase, 67–94. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2013. The Four Scribes of MS Harley 2253. Journal of the Early Book Society 16: 27–49. ———. 2015. Literary Scribes: The Harley Scribe and Robert Thornton as Case Studies. In Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, ed. M. Connolly and R. Radulescu, 61–79. Proceedings of the British Academy 201. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———., ed. 2016a. The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press. ———. 2016b. The Harley Scribe’s Early Career: New Evidence of a Scribal Partnership in MS Harley 273. Journal of the Early Book Society 19: 1–30. Fein, S., and Michael Johnston, eds. 2014. Robert Thornton and His Books: Essays on the Lincoln and London Thornton Manuscripts. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press. Fisher, M. 2012. Scribal Authorship and the Writing of History in Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Harrington, M. 2015. “That swevene hath Daniel unloke”: Interpreting Dreams with Chaucer and the Harley Scribe. Chaucer Review 50: 315–367. Horobin, S. 2013. The Scribes of the Vernon Manuscript. In The Making of the Vernon Manuscript: The Production and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1, ed. W. Scase, 27–47. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2015. Thomas Hoccleve: Chaucer’s First Editor? Chaucer Review 50: 228–250. Kerby-Fulton, K., M.  Hilmo, and L.  Olson. 2012. Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Minnis, A.J. 1988. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mooney, L.R., and E. Stubbs. 2013. Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375–1425. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press. Mooney, L.R., S. Horobin, and E. Stubbs. 2011. Late Medieval English Scribes. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York. http://www.medievalscribes.com Page, C. 1984. The Rhymed Office for St Thomas of Lancaster: Poetry, Politics and Liturgy in Fourteenth-Century England. Leeds Studies in English 14: 134–151. Reprinted in: C. Page. 1997. Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Studies on Texts and Performance, No. XIV. Aldershot: Variorum. Page, S. 2013. Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Universe. University Park: Penn State University Press.

2  READING DREAMS, CASTING THE FUTURE AND OTHER LEARNED… 

41

Phillips, H. 2000. Dreams and Dream Lore. In Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. S. Fein, 241–259. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Revard, C. 2000. Scribe and Provenance. In Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. S. Fein, 21–109. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. ———. 2007. Oppositional Thematics and Metanarrative in MS Harley 2253, Quires 1–6. In Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. W. Scase, 95–112. Turnhout: Brepols. Thompson, J.J. 2000. “Frankis rimes here I redd, / Communlik in ilk[a] sted …”: The French Bible Stories in Harley 2253. In Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. S. Fein, 271–288. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Warner, L. 2018. Chaucer’s Scribes: London Textual Production, 1384–1432. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilshere, A.D. 1988. The Anglo-Norman Bible Stories in MS Harley 2253. Forum for Modern Language Studies 24: 78–89.

CHAPTER 3

Griselda as Mary: Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and Alanus de Rupe’s Marian Exemplum Ann W. Astell and Anne Winston-Allen

3.1   Griselda as Mary: Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale: Introduction Ann W. Astell Wel myghte a mooder thanne han cryd ‘allas!’ [Well might a mother then have cried “alas!”]1 1  The Clerks’s Tale (Chaucer 1987, IV 563). All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are to this edition. The Canterbury Tales are cited by fragment and line number; other works are cited by book and line number. Translations of Chaucer, unless otherwise noted, are from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ text-and-translations

A. W. Astell (*) Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] A. Winston-Allen Department of Foreign Language and Literatures, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_3

43

44 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

Commenting on the Clerk’s Tale’s “very considerable debt to hagiography,” Kathryn McKinley finds Chaucer’s apparent attitude in the Clerk’s tale of patient Grisildis/Griselde to be disturbing (McKinley 1998, 90).2 “It does not appear,” she writes, “that he was critiquing this model of piety, or that the Clerk’s Tale is ironic or satiric, or that he was exposing the weaknesses in this type of theology” (McKinley 1998, 109). Indeed, many Chaucerians have argued that Chaucer and his contemporaries found a heroic, imitable virtue embodied in the suffering, silent, saintly Griselda (Mann 1984; Morse 1985; Georgianna 1990; Robertson 1990; Nolan 1990). Hesitant to accept the tale’s sacrificial spirituality as Chaucer’s, however, others have pointed to a variety of other available Christian spiritualities and theologies, discernible in Chaucer’s own works and in those of his contemporaries—William Langland, for example, and the anchoress Julian of Norwich (Aers 1998; Aers and Staley 1996; Edden 1992). To the extent that contemporaneous, hagiographic exempla differ from the Clerk’s, they challenge an uncritical acceptance of Chaucer’s Grisildis as a positive model of sanctity. The recently discovered analogue to Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale discussed in this essay shows that at least some late-medieval Christians found it necessary to remove from Griselda’s story (most probably known to them through Petrarch) the features that most trouble our modern reception of her—namely, her acceptance of a premarital agreement entailing her absolute submission to her husband and, later in the tale, her compliant surrender of her two babies to his murderous henchman.3 If this Marian analogue does not shed definitive light on Chaucer’s stance toward his Petrarchan material, it nonetheless expands our exploration of what Aers has called “the web of interlocution within which [Chaucer] made his choices and within which those choices found the implications they had” (Aers 1998, 363). In 1997, Anne Winston-Allen published her translation of three exempla from the rosary handbook Von dem psalter und Rosenkranz unserer 2  In this chapter, I use “Griselda” to name the heroine in Chaucer’s sources and “Grisildis” or “Grisilde” (in accord with Chaucer’s own variant usage) to designate the character in the Clerk’s Tale. Not all the critics I cite and quote make that same distinction, however. 3  By “analogue” I mean a version of the Griselda story that stands parallel to Chaucer’s, without a relation of direct influence. Chaucer’s tale is not a source for Alanus’s, but the two tales derive from a common tradition and almost certainly from a common Petrarchan source.

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

45

lieben Frau, a compilation of stories by Alanus de Rupe (1428–1475), the Dominican founder of an early rosary confraternity.4 Published posthumously in 1492 in Augsburg,5 the collection includes twenty-seven personal anecdotes that bear witness to the benefits of praying the rosary and nineteen longer tales, which Winston-Allen describes as “more colorful, more flamboyant, and more exotic in their settings” (Winston-Allen 1997, 124). At least six of these are Alanus’s adaptations of older Marian legends dating back to the twelfth century; the rest may be his own inventions. The twelfth of these exempla is said to be taken from the Marial of Johannes de Monte, but Winston-Allen notes that that attribution appears to be fictitious (Winston-Allen 1997, 186, n. 2). No “Master of Holy Writ” by that name has been found. Although Winston-Allen does not identify it as such in her book Stories of the Rose, this exemplum is clearly a version of the Griselda story and thus an analogue to Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. The present essay, which is followed by an introduction and text and translation of Alanus’s exemplum by Winston-Allen, below, brings this newly discovered Marian analogue to the attention of Chaucerians and Petrarchan scholars (see Appendix).6 My particular purpose here is to assess the significance of Alanus’s exemplum for an anti-sacrificial reading of Chaucer’s tale. Comparing Chaucer’s Marian Grisildis to the Griselda-like Mary of Alanus de Rupe and contrasting both of these fictional Marys with the Mother of Sorrows 4  Winston-Allen 1997. The title has been modernized here in accordance with the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke; however, the title page of Alanus’s book as it was printed in 1492 reads in fifteenth-century German: “Von dem psalter vnnd Rosenkrancz vnser lieben frauen” (M 39193, the Munich, Staatsbibliothek, see https://www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de) 5  ISTC ir00362000 and USTC 748657; the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC) lists seven copies of this edition and nineteen early printed works of Alanus (Alain de la Roche). Some survive in multiple copies, but only a few of them contain the exemplum “Mary the Charcoaler’s Daughter.” None of Alanus’s writings are known to have been published during his lifetime. The German vernacular text is based on a Latin original, apparently no longer extant. According to Luigi Gambero, “the works of Alanus de Rupe are a collection of his preaching on the pious practice of the Rosary. The earliest witness to his preaching is offered by a work of his contemporary Michel François, who in 1479, published his Quodlibet de veritate Fraternitatis Rosarii, a lecture he had given in Cologne in 1476 (USTC 440953). In an appendix, he added a work of Alanus’: De Psalterius beatae Mariae Virginis: exempla valde motiva ad amorem illius.” Alanus’s writings were “widely published in adulterated form after his death” and “contributed to the propagation of various legends” (Gambero 2005, 316). 6  I thank Professor Winston-Allen for her warmly generous collaboration with me.

46 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

so prominent in late-medieval piety, this essay argues that Chaucer’s numerous allusions to Mary in the tale disturb an untroubled reception of Grisildis as Stoic heroine and Christian saint. They serve to characterize Grisildis as a failed Pietà, whose lack of expressed compassion for her two children repulses the pity her own sufferings within a sacrificial economy evoke. Locating Chaucer’s Marian tale of Grisildis at a midpoint within a Griselda tradition that spans from mythic, monstrous origins (no longer extant), at one extreme, to the fifteenth-century Dominican exemplum of Marian devotion, at the other, facilitates its characterization as a tale caught between two worlds, critical of its own sacrificial gestures. The overlaying of Chaucer’s Marian imagery upon a Petrarchan tale of Stoic patience that itself rests upon a mythic foundation (the Psyche-Cupid story) might be likened to the historical process, oft described in the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine (c.1230–1298), whereby pagan religious celebrations were supplanted by Christian feasts that partly discarded, but also partly retained, pre-Christian cultural expressions, ascribing new significance to them. According to Jacobus, for example, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin (also called Candlemas) repurposes the candles and torches formerly used to recall the search for Proserpina, after her abduction to the underworld by Pluto (also known as Februus) (Jacobus and Duffy 2012, 148). In Chaucer’s tale, the analogous process of mythic transformation is far from complete; indeed, the memory of Mary so little accords with the tale to which it is attached that remembering her arguably inspires the narrator’s vociferous, interjected objections to Walter’s cruelty, which, in turn, partially substitute for the Marian lamentations that Grisildis does not herself speak: “Wel myghte a mooder thanne han cryd ‘allas!’” [Well might a mother then have cried “alas!”] (IV 563). In Alanus’s hagiographic exemplum, by contrast, the memory of Mary so controls the narrative from start to finish that not only is Griselda renamed “Mary,” but also disturbing details of Griselda’s grisly tale are conveniently forgotten. Albeit subjected to suffering, Alanus’s heroine exemplifies not steely patience under torture, but the childlike faith and devotion that warrant miracles.

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

47

3.2   Mary, Present and Absent: Chaucer’s Marian Grisildis as Failed Pietà Alanus de Rupe’s exemplum is recognizably a version of the story of patient Griselda, but strikingly different from the tellings by Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Chaucer’s Clerk. What brings this fifteenth-century exemplum into a distinctive conversation with Chaucer’s tale is its Marian cast. As Elizabeth Salter first fully observed, Chaucer has systematically introduced references to the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Crucifixion into the story—religious allusions, absent in Boccaccio and Petrarch, which serve to liken Grisildis specifically to the Virgin Mary (Salter 1962).7 Francis Lee Utley subsequently focused attention on what he calls “the Annunciation passage in the Clerk’s Tale” (Utley 1972, 224), the scene where a kneeling Grisildis, having set down her “water pot” at the threshold of “an oxes stalle” [an ox’s stall], waits in silence to hear “what was the lordes wille” [what was the lord’s will] (IV 290–91, 294). Building upon the work of Salter and Utley and extending their analysis, James I. Wimsatt argues that “the Virgin’s coronation in Heaven is evoked in the two coronations of Griselda in the Clerk’s Tale”—so much so that “the Virgin’s life … is an integral and essential part of [Chaucer’s story]” (Wimsatt 1980, 193, 189). Mary’s life is arguably also a part of Chaucer’s personal life and poetic career. Pointing especially to the “central position” of the Hours of the Virgin in the prymers of the period, Carolyn P. Collette has emphasized: “the Virgin and a series of services in her honor were a common part of daily religious life during the later Middle Ages, for laypeople as well as clergy” (Collette 1994, 128–29; see also Duffy 2006; Littlehales 1895). An early portrait of the poet, the Seddon-Murray Chaucer, painted on wood and housed in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, famously shows the poet holding a chain of prayer beads, a Paternoster or perhaps a rosary. The Chaucer portrait at the University of California, Los Angeles, dating from 1490, similarly shows him praying with beads (see Condren 1999, 253–56, and frontispiece).

7  On Chaucer’s addition of scriptural allusions in general to the tale, see Severs 1942; Chaucer’s decision to portray Grisildis as Mary-like may have been suggested by Philippe de Mézières’s Le Livre de la Vertu du Sacrement de Mariage, which (as an anonymous reader of this essay noted) also makes the comparison.

48 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

Chaucer’s own ABC, the alphabetical prayer to our Lady that may have inaugurated his career as a writer, arguably also dedicated it, letter by letter, word by word, to Mary. As Georgiana Donavin has shown, Chaucer’s An ABC not only explicitly likens its effectiveness to “an Ave-Marie or tweye” (line 104), but it also resembles a fourteenth-century rosary in multiple ways: its structure as a “poetical circlet dedicated to the Virgin Mary,” its “loose connection of apostrophes and epithets,” and its association not only with rudimentary language-learning, but also with “the entire curriculum for the Seven Liberal Arts” (Donavin 2004, 32–33). Both Chaucer’s Prioress and the Second Nun invoke Mary as poetic muse (see Frank 1978–9; Collette 1994; Spence 2004; Ferris 1981), and more than one character within the Canterbury Tales calls upon Mary’s powerful intercession (Astell 1991a and 1997). The Prioress’s Tale shows Chaucer’s familiarity with the popular genre of Marian miracle stories (see Frank 1982, 177–88, 290–97; Boyd 1964). The systematic incorporation of Marian allusions into the Clerk’s Tale cannot, then, be insignificant. The problem lies in assessing that significance. Mary Carruthers insists that the principal function of the allusions to Mary is to present Grisildis as someone possessed with a hidden gentilesse, “aristocratic in virtue,” and therefore a personal “demonstration that virtue and vice are not dependent upon birth or station in life” (Carruthers 1988, 225, 230). According to Carruthers, the allusions “suggest her Christ-likeness or her Virgin-­ likeness, but they do not thereby make her … into a figural fulfillment of Christ (or Job, the Virgin, etc.).” (Carruthers 1988, 233, n. 10). Valerie Edden argues similarly that “the religious references … do not make Griselda a saint” (Edden 1992, 375). Comparing Grisildis to Custance and “other heroines of pious tales” in the Canterbury collection, Edden notes that Grisildis “invokes God only twice”; she “is not presented as putting her trust in God; she does not have any sense of a providential pattern, no reassurance that all will be well in this life or the next” (Edden 1992, 371). Collette notes in passing that Grisilde’s silence, her lack of expression, her surrendering of “the right to speak,” sets her in sharp contrast to the Prioress and the Nun, devotees of the Virgin Mother of the Word Incarnate, whose patronage empowers them to tell their tales (and perhaps even, like the Nun’s Saint Cecilia, to preach boldly) (Collette 1994, 147).8 Employing a similar strategy for his 8  To extend Collette’s passing observation about Griseldis’s silent submission to Walter, I would add that the Mary who appears in many miracle stories is depicted as a merciful advo-

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

49

analysis, Aers calls attention to other absences in the Clerk’s Tale: “the absence of the mystical body of Christ, the Church, and the absence of the sacraments.” “These absences,” he continues, “should strikes commentators as extremely important, but they have not done so” (Aers 1998, 363). To the absences noted by Edden, Aers, and Collette, I would add another to which insufficient attention has been given: the absence of the lamenting Mater dolorosa. In the crucial scenes where Grisildis surrenders, first, her infant daughter and then her newborn son to the “privee man” [confidential servant] (IV 519) who comes to her chamber at Walter’s command, she makes no lament. She allows her child, whom she first kisses and blesses, to die, as she says, “for my sake” (IV 560). The passage includes her comparison of the innocent child to Christ, the Father’s child, “That for us deyde upon a croys of tree” [That for us died upon a cross of wood] (IV 558). Quoting these lines, Wimsatt calls the agony of Grisildis “strikingly like the sorrows of Mary” (Wimsatt 1980, 196). Whereas he sees only similarity, however, Salter finds also an element of contrast. Citing a fourteenth-­ century lullaby in which Mary comforts her crying baby, Salter notes that, even though Grisildis’s spare, wrung words are “very similar to Mary’s expression of grief over her doomed child,” they differ from it in that Grisildis expresses no faith in a divine purpose that will redeem the suffering, make it meaningful (Salter 1962, 52). Salter somewhat understates the difference between Grisildis and the Mary of late-medieval piety. Jacopone’s famous Stabat Mater, composed between 1303 and 1306, is but one expression of a rising, pan-European tide of meditation and theological reflection on Mary’s compassion (see Bestul 1996 and Fulton 2002). As Sandro Sticca notes, “Especially in England, in this period, the motif of the grieving Mother became the subject of vigorous sermons and touching lyrics” (Sticca 1988, 120; see also Keiser 1985, 167–93; McBain 2016, 309–33). In these Marian laments, “the lyrical drive … delineates the dimensions of a soul that has shared so fully in the sufferings of her Son that she wants to plumb the depths of the tragic violence to the point of sharing his death and burial” (Sticca 1988, cate who powerfully opposes her son’s initial decision in justice to condemn a sinner. Were Grisildis “Marian” in this way, she would not have been able to refrain from opposing vociferously a merciless Walter. On the topic of the theological problem of reconciling Mary’s power as merciful intercessor with her “perfect submission” to the will of God, see Flory 2000, 72–92; Graef 2009, 212.

50 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

84). Katharine Goodland argues that the inconsolable grief expressed in these planctus Mariae served historically to help to resolve tensions between the Christian understanding of death and the (potentially dangerous) “indigenous practice of female ritual lament for the dead” (Goodland 2005, 34). Medieval Christians turned to Mary’s imagined stance under the cross in their search to discover an appropriate model for their own grieving at the loss of loved ones. In Book 9 of Confessions, Augustine stifles sobs at his mother’s death and funeral, lest his tears too closely resemble those of pagans and scandalize his fellow Christians by implying a lack of faith in eternal life and in Christ’s heavenly reward of Monica’s own faith and virtue: “We did not think it right to celebrate the funeral with tearful dirges and lamentations” (Augustine 1991, 9.12.29). In the end, however, Monica’s own abundant tears shed in petition for his conversion— tears he likens elsewhere to the Mary-like weeping of the widowed mother at Naim, whose only son Jesus raised from the dead (Luke 7:12)—justify his filial weeping as a cry of nature compatible with faith. Echoing Psalm 115:6, but also Luke 1:38, Augustine repeatedly refers to his Mary-like mother as the “handmaid” of the Lord (Augustine 1991, 6.1.1; 2.3.7; 3.11.19; 5.10.18; 9.1.1; 9.7.15). Augustine’s weeping at Monica’s death is associated, significantly, with his memory not only of his mother’s tears, but also of the Ambrosian hymns sung in Milan—liturgical compositions that blend feeling with artistic form and adherence to the rule of faith. According to Hilda Graef’s account of the development of Marian doctrine and devotion, early depictions of Mary’s grief at Christ’s death were similarly dignified and tender, in keeping with the word of the evangelist that Mary “stood” at the cross (John 19:25); the appearance in the twelfth century of the popular Vita Beatae Virginis et Salvatoris Rhythmica and related works, especially the Marienleben (1172) of Wernher the Swiss and German vernacular “Laments of Mary” (Marienklagen), troubled that conception, however. The Marienklagen, in particular, often attribute to Mary a sorrow “bordering on despair and momentary insanity,” expressed in extravagant words and gestures hardly to be distinguished from pre-Christian “lamentations over the dead” (Graef 2009, 206; see also Lipphardt 1934). More restrained than the Germanic Marienklagen, the paraliturgical planctus Mariae and their Middle English counterparts endeavor to acknowledge the firmness of Mary’s faith, while simultaneously giving voice to her wrenching grief. The doctrine that in Mary alone (in sola Virgine) the

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

51

Church’s faith in Christ’s divinity remained alive during the days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday was widely accepted,9 even as devotion to the Sorrowful Mother grew.10 By comparison with the Mary of the mystery plays and of countless religious lyrics, lullabies, and prayers, Grisildis barely expresses her grief. Arguably the most characteristic speeches of the medieval Mary, the planctus Mariae, are eerily absent from Grisildis, who does not weep, does not lament, does not protest, and does not beg to die with her children. In the mystery plays of the Crucifixion, Mary cries out against the injustice of her son’s death, compassionates with Christ in his torment, and begs to be allowed to die with him on the cross. Grisildis, by contrast, preserves her life and keeps her premarital promise at the terrible cost of handing over her children, who (as far as she knows) die, one by one, “for [her] sake” (IV 560), that is, as a sacrificial substitute for herself and on account (so claims Walter) of widespread chafing about her lowborn status (IV 479–490, 624–637). A brief survey of the planctus Mariae in the Crucifixion plays of late-­ medieval England highlights the issue of filial substitution and suggests the significance of Chaucer’s pointed departure from the planctus in his portrayal of Grisildis. In the York Death of Christ, performed by the butchers’ guild, Maria loudly protests the injustice of her son’s execution (“Allas, he did neuer trespasse”) and refuses to be comforted by Jesus’s substitution of John for himself: “Womanne, instead of me, / Loo, John þi sone schall bee” [Woman, instead of me, / Lo, John shall be thy son]. Although Jesus explains to Mary that he dies “for thy goode,” she declares that she dies with him: “To dede I were done þis day” [To death I’d be done this day] (Beadle 1982, 326–27). In the Towneley Crucifixion, Mary cries out in long laments, begging death to come to take her life with her son’s: “That I might with hym dee” [that I might die with him] (Stevens and Cawley 1994, 1:301). The comfortless Mary of the Chester Passion similarly conjures death to kill her with Jesus: “Alas, death, I conjure thee! / The liffe, sonne, thou take from mee” [Allas, death, I conjure thee! / Son, you take the life from me] (Lumianski and Mills 1974, 318). The Maria 9  See, for example, the Legenda Aurea, “This is obvious from the fact that all except the Blessed Virgin lost their faith at the crucifixion but recovered it once the resurrection was known” (Jacobus and Duffy 2012, 219). 10  In 1239, the founders of the Servites of Mary took up the sorrows of Mary as their special devotion. From 1413, the feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary was observed in Cologne and spread from there (Rubin 2009, 243−255).

52 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

virgo of the N-Town Play runs and embraces the cross and wildly begs to be hung upon it: “I pray зow alle, lete me ben here, / And hang me up here on þis tre / Be my frend and sone þat me is so dere, / For þer he is, þer wold I be” [I beg you all, let me stay here / And hang me up on this tree / By my friend and son that is so dear to me, / For where he is, there would I be] (Spector 1991, I:331). Although Jesus tells his mother and others that he dies for the sake of mankind (“for þi sake”) (Spector 1991, I:332),11 she dies, as it were, with him through compassion, her maternal body and soul inseparable from his in his agony. Chaucer’s tale of Grisildis recalls the planctus Mariae—in Sticca’s words, “a lyrical, emotive form of singular significance, not only as a literary genre, but especially as an essential … testimonial of the Mariological thought of the Middle Ages” (Sticca 1988, 178). It does not, however, actually provide one. Grisildis’s steely fortitude at the apparent hour of her children’s deaths is at odds, Salter rightly observes, with the compassionate world of “the ‘Mother of Sorrows’” (Salter 1962, 61).12 The sharp contrast is all the more unsettling, because Grisildis, the humble handmaid raised to queenship, is portrayed elsewhere in the tale as Mary-like in her purity, humility, and willingness to serve others. Most readers struggle to hold within a single field of vision the horrific combination of Grisildis’s innocence (as Walter’s victim) with her guilt (as his accomplice). “The purity of Grisildis’s innocent, submissive words and gestures is contaminated,” Salter observes, “by nearness to [the] world of [Walter’s] sublunary passions” (Salter 1962, 60). Critics have tended, therefore, either to proclaim her heroic virtue in the endurance of torture or to condemn her as an abhorrent filicide. What is monstrous in Chaucer’s Marian Griselde is the pity she evokes but fails to extend to her own children, whom she allows to perish for her sake (for so it seems they do) as a final link in a sacrificial chain that begins with the king. Chaucer’s tale of Grisildis has, of course, long been associated with the monstrous. As James Sledd succinctly puts it, “Griselda and Walter are the

11  See also Christ’s earlier speech in which he reminds Mary that his death will deliver mankind from the devil’s prey (Spector 1991, I.330). 12  Partly in reaction against medieval depictions of the sorrowing mother that privileged her maternal emotion and compassion over her enduring faith, Catholic reformers such as Robert Bellarmine (1542−1621) championed the idea of a firm, priestly Mary, Christ’s constant companion at the cross, who, together with her son, stood, albeit sorrowing, to offer his life to the Father (see Graef 2009, 296−97).

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

53

grandchildren of monsters” (Sledd 1960, 165).13 Early in the twentieth century, the folklorists Wirt A. Cate and Dudley D. Griffith identified the story first told by Boccaccio in the Decameron (1353) as a late expression of the Psyche-Cupid legend, in which a human sacrifice to a monster-god is transformed into a marriage involving inhuman tests for the bride of the god (See Cate 1932; Griffith 1931; Lewis 1956). In the mythic relay exposed in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale (not so far removed from the legend of Psyche and Cupid, which masks in turn an untold tale of human sacrifice), the people’s original threat to the life of the unfruitful king figure is temporarily resolved by Walter’s marriage to Grisildis, a marriage that simultaneously figures his vulnerability and guilt and transfers it to his wife. Grisildis, the peasant outsider, is chosen (and assents) to die, as it were, in Walter’s place: “‘nevere willyngly, / I nyl yow disobeye, / For to be deed, thogh me were looth to deye’” [never willingly, / In deed nor thought, will I disobey you, / Even to be dead, though I would hate to die] (IV 362–64). She functions as a scapegoat, who is ultimately expelled from the court, but not before she has become complicit in the expulsion of other victims even more helpless than herself. Whereas the anti-sacrificial Mary of the planctus Mariae wants to die for Jesus’ sake—standing literally beneath his cross, vociferously resistant to his guiltless death, begging to die with him—the Grisildis of Chaucer’s tale allows first her newborn daughter and then her son to die for her sake, as a substitute for her.14 By describing an un-Marian Grisildis in explicitly Marian terms as a failed Pietà, Chaucer criticizes the sacrificial myth at the origin of the tale, distancing himself from it (see Astell 2005).

13  On the intersections between sanctity and monstrosity, see Chap. 10, by Susan M. Kim, below. 14  Mary’s maternal standing beneath the cross may be seen as the quintessential expression of what philosopher Emmanuel Levinas has termed an ethical “substitution,” an intersubjectivity entailing an infinite responsibility for the Other (Levinas 2002, 113–18, 196–97). Levinas uses specifically maternal imagery in his writings to illuminate what he means by “substitution.” See Katz 2003, especially Chapter Nine. “Sarah dies, one might say, in place of Isaac,” Katz writes, commenting on a Rabbinic tradition known to Levinas (Katz 2003, 148).

54 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

3.3   Setting the Stages for Comedy and Tragedy In his exemplum, Alanus de Rupe has rewritten the story of Griselda in a way that removes from her the stain of moral guilt. Johannes de Monte, the fictitious originator of the tale retold by Alanus, is an imaginative reader of Petrarch, distantly removed from him and (unlike Chaucer) uninvolved in any poetic competition with him. Alanus, like Chaucer, saw a Marian profile in the young Griselda celebrated by Petrarch in his widely circulated Epistolae Seniles. Unlike Chaucer, however, Alanus chose not to contaminate that Marian likeness with any complicity in murder. Rewriting Petrarch’s tale of Griselda as a Cinderella romance and renaming its heroine “Mary,” Alanus de Rupe goes beyond Chaucer in extricating a Marian altera Griselda from the violent social system within which her prototype had been ensnared. Alanus’s Mary is so set free from the sorrow of death that her joys—both at the beginning of her short tale and at its end—make it virtually impossible to associate her with the Mater dolorosa. She triumphs instead with Mary, the queen of peace and powerful, apocalyptic expeller of demons, in whom she places her constant trust. The beginning of Alanus’s exemplum is the most distant from that of Chaucer’s tale. Alanus’s heroine is named not Griselda, but Mary, after the Virgin to whom she and her pious mother are devoted. A poor charcoaler’s daughter, Mary goes frequently to the court to deliver coal. (The name “Griselda,” meaning “gray,” may have suggested Mary’s Cinderella-­ like closeness to coal.) Alanus emphasizes that her appearance is sooty and that of her parents is “black as a devil” and “Moorish” (perhaps with a side-glance to the Black Madonnas in many European shrines) (see below, 71). Despite her sootiness, the unmarried prince and future king, in accord with God’s will, takes an ardent interest in the pious girl, whom he observes at prayer; he speaks with her tenderly and reverently and even urges her to prolong her stay in order to “enjoy herself with his sisters” (see below, 71). Mary, however, remains diligent in her work and continually prays our Lady’s Psalter, using her beads. When the newly crowned king asks her, finally, about how to find her father’s dwelling place when he goes hunting in the forest, Mary gives him no directions, saying only “I have no lodging other than a charcoaler’s cottage,” to which the king replies, “That is just what I am seeking” (see below, 72). His is (to all initial appearances, at least) a peaceable kingdom, where impossible things are seemingly possible (cf. Lk. 1:37).

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

55

At the start of the Clerk’s Tale, by contrast, the dukedom is beset with obvious anxiety, and Walter, the young marquis, stands in implicit danger of being dethroned by death: “And deeth manaceth every age, and smyt / In ech estaat, for ther escapeth noon” [And death menaces every age, and smites / In each rank, for there escapes no one] (IV 122–23). The people warn him of the shortness of his life—indeed, of his fast approaching death—and of the risk that “‘a straunge successour sholde take [his] heritage’” [“that a foreign successor should take [his] heritage”] (IV 138–39), should he fail to produce an heir. In this tactful address to Walter, decorously delivered by a wise and polite spokesperson, the poem evokes the ancient motif of the sacred king, chosen as a sacrificial offering for the fertility of the land. Far removed from such a primitive sacrifice, Walter is nonetheless figured as a scapegoat, whose own fertility is necessary to preserve his life and secure the realm. To him the descriptive words of Girard apply: “The king is at first nothing more than a victim with a sort of suspended sentence … [E]nthronement makes the king a scapegoat” (Girard 1987, 53, 56). Unmarried and unfruitful, Walter is at risk at the hands of “his peple” [his people] who confront him “flokmeele” [in groups] (IV 85–86), to demand (however courteously) that he take a wife: “‘Boweth youre nekke under that blissful yok / Of soveraynetee, not of servyse, / Which that men clepe sousaille or wedlok’” [“Bow your neck under that blissful yoke / Of sovereignty, not of servitude, / Which men call marriage or wedlock”] (IV 113–15).15 Walter takes the people’s cultured plea (and the latent, mythic threat of sacrifice it distantly recalls) to heart and seeks to forestall his own victimage by securing an acceptable victim as a substitute for himself. Walter’s chosen bride, who symbolizes and effects his submission to the demands of the crowd, is at once his double as his ennobled spouse and co-regent and his social subordinate, a lowborn peasant woman whom his arbitrary choice elevates and his cruel demands enslave. More clearly than Walter does, Grisilde combines in herself the “exalted sovereignty and extreme subjugation” which, according to Girard, is distinctive of all royal scapegoats (Girard 1987, 56). Through Grisilde, Walter both submits to the will of the people by marrying and reasserts his lordship (however fragile and conditional) over them as a hereditary right. Grisilde is a subject, one of the “povre folk” [poor folk] (IV 205), who is effectively held hostage 15  See Chap. 5, below, by Rosemary O’Neill on the contradictory aspects of medieval marriage vows.

56 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

by Walter in order to maintain his control over the “peple” [people] and humiliate those under him whose social origins are superior to his wife’s. In the Clerk’s Tale, Grisilde’s victim status is evident from Walter’s first encounters with her. Mounted on horseback as the quintessential cavalier, hunting wild animals, Walter notices “this povre creature” [this poor creature] and marks her with “his ye” [his eye], casting “His eyen” [his eyes] upon her as one sights prey (IV 232–33, 237). Walter’s selection of Grisilde during a hunt suggests the truth of Girard’s observation that “hunting, at first, was actively linked to sacrifice. The object of the hunt is seen as a substitute for the original victim in its monstrous and sacred aspects” (Girard 1987, 73). Grisilde substitutes for the king-victim, for Walter, as the scapegoat of the people. Whereas Chaucer’s Walter first spies Grisildis while hunting, Alanus’s prince, who is already in love with her, having met her at court, uses a deer hunt “to catch Mary the charcoaler’s daughter for his bride” (156). The image pattern (found in Psalm 42:1, but also in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess) associates the heart (Herz) of the “sweetheart” (156) with the hart (Hirsch). When the deer the king is chasing finds a merciful sanctuary with Mary in the garden next to the charcoaler’s cottage, the hunting dogs remain barking outside. One of the hunters eventually finds Mary there, hiding from the men and praying in the visionary company of “mother Mary with her son Jesus” (see below, 72). Refashioning the Petrarchan hunt scene in this way, Alanus both evokes the biblical “garden enclosed” (hortus inclusus) of Song of Songs 4:12 (a passage often applied to the Virgin Mary; see Fulton 2002, 331; see also Astell 1990; Matter 1990) and adapts a famous scene from the legend of Saint Giles (see Jacobus and Duffy 2012, 533–35). In that legend, the king and his men, while out on a hunt with their dogs, chase a doe, who takes refuge at the hermitage of St. Giles, whom the doe has been nourishing with her milk. The dogs refuse to draw near, and the doe remains with the saint, who is finally wounded with an arrow when one of the hunters shoots blindly into the thicket surrounding the hermitage. Making their way through the thicket, the hunters find the holy hermit together with the doe, which lies at his feet. The king himself then comes to Giles by foot, humbly asking his pardon. In Alanus’s tale, the king enters the humble cottage of Mary’s parents before the daughter is discovered in the garden. The king has her brought to him in the cottage, where he calls her by name (“Mary!”) in the presence of her pious father and mother and all his entourage. The king’s

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

57

question, “Oh Mary, what have you done to us?” (see below, 72) echoes the question the Virgin Mary poses to the twelve-year-old Jesus when he is found in the Temple, the “house” of his Father, after a search of three days: “Son, why have you treated us so?” (Luke 2:48–49). The allusion pays tribute to the Christlike holiness of the charcoaler’s daughter, even as it suggests the king’s own Marian resemblance. Although Alanus’s narrator records the king’s intent to obtain the consent of Mary’s parents to their marriage, the text of the exemplum spells out neither the king’s proposal to Mary nor the parents’ agreement. The king speaks instead to the men in his company. His words reveal for the first time that they have previously urged him to choose a wife, in accord with his wish and desire, and that he has elected Mary: “I swear to you by my scepter and my crown that I shall wed no other woman than this Mary, the charcoaler’s daughter” (see below, 72). The exemplum thus softens the suggestion, so strong in Chaucer’s text, that the king’s election of a poor woman is motivated by a desire to humiliate his courtiers. Alanus’s crown prince simply gestures toward a positive agreement of king and court, declaring: “And certainly what the king and his men have spoken shall come to pass and not be changed” (see below, 72). In contrast to the Marian exemplum, which emphasizes the accord between the king and his men of high rank, Chaucer’s tale places that same accord within the larger context of the people of the land. On the day of Walter’s proposal of marriage to Grisilde (the day already set for the wedding), the “peple” [people] surround the poor “hous” [house] in which Grisilde’s father Janicula, Grisilde, and Walter hold their “collacioun” [discussion] (IV 332, 325)—a mobbing that is vaguely ominous and which establishes the “peple” as the background against which everything is to be understood. Upon Griselde’s consent to his demands, Walter immediately presents her, still in her peasant clothes, “to the peple” as his “wyf” [wife] (IV 368–369). The Marian exemplum removes entirely the monstrous demand of perfect submission from the peasant bride. Chaucer’s Walter, by contrast, demands of Grisilde as a term of their marriage that she will never oppose any wish of his “‘neither by word ne frownying contenance’” [“Neither by word nor frowning countenance”] (IV 356). Grisilde understands this marriage proposal to be a veritable death sentence, for only a dead instrument, without feeling or thought, could obey Walter as he demands: “‘And heere I swere that nevere willyngly, / In werk ne thoght, I nyl yow disobeye, / For to be deed, thogh me were looth to deye’” [“And here I

58 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

swear that never willingly, / In deed nor thought, will I disobey you, / Even to be dead, though I would hate to die”] (IV 362–64). Likening Walter’s “‘love’” to “‘deth’” [“death”] (IV 666), she describes herself and her children as Walter’s property, his “‘owene thyng’” [“own thing”] (IV 504), over which he has complete disposal. Like Chaucer’s Grisildis, Alanus’s Mary is immediately adorned at the hut of her father and taken to the capital—in this case, “the city of Paris”— to be crowned. In the exemplum, however, the wedding takes place on “a feast day of Our Lady” (see below, 73), whose Magnificat in the Gospel celebrates the raising up of the lowly, the casting down of the proud (cf. Luke 1:52). Mary’s father, like old Janicula, fears the worst, however, and keeps her old clothing, “saying to himself, ‘Well do I know that my daughter will need these again’” (see below, 73). Having “translated” (IV 385) Grisilde from the world of peasants into that of the court,16 Chaucer’s Walter so transforms his wife that she becomes in the eyes of rich and poor alike his noble double—so much so that his status becomes derivative from hers, instead of hers from his. The people, who were formerly critical of Walter, now begin to praise him for having the wisdom to choose such a virtuous wife: “the peple hym heeled / A prudent man” [the people considered him / A prudent man] (IV 426–27). In Walter’s occasional absence, Grisilde exercises rule, serving the “commune profit” [public good] (IV 431) so wisely and effectively that she reconciles adversaries of every sort. Thanks to Grisilde, “Ther nas discord, rancour, ne hevynesse / In al that land” [There was no discord, rancor, nor sadness / In all that land] (IV 432–33). Hailed by the people as a savior “from hevene sent” [sent from heaven] (IV 440), Grisilde acquires a divinized status as a peacemaker. When she becomes pregnant with Walter’s child, she seems to secure the prosperity and unity of the people for years to come. Like Chaucer’s Grisildis, Alanus’s Mary proves to be a marvelous queen, who “rid[s] the land of war and distress through her wisdom and goodness” (see below, 73). Unlike Grisilde’s, Mary’s virtue awakens no envy in her husband, but it does potentially arouse other powerful enemies. From the “clutches” of the “unjust nobles,” she rescues “the poor, … for truly she was a mother to the poor” (see below, 73); she removes from office “corrupt officials,” replacing them “with honest and pious ones” 16  The verb “translated” may also allude to Chaucer’s vernacular translation of Boccaccio’s Italian tale. See Wallace 1997, 287.

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

59

(see below, 73). Alanus’s theology, however, identifies the young queen’s ultimate enemy as “the devil [himself] and the evil ones who serve him” (see below, 73) and who incite rebellion. In this way Alanus’s Mary also resembles the Virgin Mary as the New Eve, at enmity with the serpent and predestined to crush his head (cf. Genesis 3:15).

3.4   Putting Virtue to the Test Alanus’s exemplum, unlike Chaucer’s tale, draws a logical connection between Mary’s advocacy of the poor and her cleansing of corruption, on the one hand, and her expulsion from the court, on the other. Walter’s political vulnerability in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale keeps his deposition and death ever present as remote possibilities, but the king’s danger in Alanus’s exemplum is overt. Intolerant of Mary’s policies, “the devil and the evil ones who serve him … incited the princes and lords to rise up against the king and they threatened to kill him if he did not depose this rough and crude charcoal woman and renounce her” (see below, 73). This real, life-­ threatening revolt—which is only an invented excuse for Walter’s cruelty in the Clerk’s Tale—drives Alanus’s king to summon before him Mary and “her three small sons,” all of whom he orders to “leave his house” (see below, 73). The exemplum never even mentions the existence of the three children until this point in the narrative. Their fate is completely entwined with their mother’s. They leave the palace together with her. This is, of course, a vast departure from the mainline Griselda tradition, where the manipulations of the cruel husband drive a wedge between the mother and her children, pressuring her to sacrifice them. In the exemplum, Mary is a sacrificial victim, a saving substitute for the threatened king, but she is not a complicit victimizer. In Chaucer’s tale, by contrast, the virtuous Grisilde, as Walter’s spouse and co-regent, becomes in Walter’s eyes his competitive double, a rival for the people’s high regard. The third part of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale opens with the sudden announcement that Walter is inexplicably seized by a “merveillous desir” [strange desire] to test his virtuous wife “and putten hire in angwyssh and in drede” [And put her in anguish and in dread] (IV 454, 462). Walter begins by reminding Grisilde of her status as a victim-­ substitute for himself. He rules, he says, at the pleasure of the people, especially the “gentils” [nobles], who, he claims, are offended at the thought of being subject to the lowborn Grisilde and her newborn daughter: “‘To hem it is greet shame and wo / For to be subgetz and been in

60 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

servage / To thee, that art born of a small village’” [To them it is great shame and woe / To be subjects and be in servitude / To thee, that art born in a humble village] (IV 480, 481–83). In order to live “‘with hem in reste and pees’” [“with them in rest and peace”], Walter feels forced to follow their will, which demands that something be done with Grisilde’s daughter, whom Walter fails to name or to defend as his own offspring (IV 487, 489). He seeks Grisilde’s consent to the sacrificial murder of the infant—a consent she gives by deferring in obedience to his will, as she had vowed she would: “‘My child and I, with hertely obeissaunce, / Been youres al, and ye mowe save or spille, / Youre owene thyng’” [My child and I, with heart-felt obedience, / Are entirely yours, and you may save or kill / Your own thing] (IV.502–04).17 Walter is monstrous, but now his monstrosity spreads via contagion to Grisilde herself, who is the victim of his threats but also the sacrificer of her child. The unfolding of the plot draws out the parallelism between Grisilde and the henchman who takes the child from her mother’s arms and then threatens to kill her before Grisilde’s eyes. The henchman claims to be acting purely in obedience, doing a thing that he is “‘constreyned’” [“constrained”] to do against his will (IV 527). He appeals to Grisilde’s wisdom, which knows “‘that lordes heestes mowe not been yfeyned’” [“That lords’ commands may not be evaded (by feigning)”] or disobeyed (IV 529). The villainous henchman and Grisilde, in short, disclaim responsibility for their action and inaction, respectively, on the grounds that they are subject to Walter’s will. For his part, Walter claims to be fulfilling reluctantly the collective wish of the people, who call for the child’s death. Thus, in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, this secret murder of an infant (for so it seems to be) in an inner room of a palace at night participates in the same victimage mechanism that animates a public lynching, the “all” against the “one” so vividly portrayed by Girard (Girard 1986, 73; 2001, 62–70, 94). What Chaucer has done is to delineate an entire array of potential victims of the people—Walter, Janicula, Grisilde, Grisilde’s children—each of whom calls another into jeopardy as a substitute for himself or herself, implicating the entire chain in murderous guilt. Only the two

17  Invoking Luce Irigaray’s “notion of mimesis,” which is in fact a subversive “mimicry” of masculine expectations by a too-perfect conformity with them, Gail Ashton has argued that Grisilde’s obedience to Walter operates “at both a surface level and a deeper, more subversive one” (Ashton 1998, 233, 236).

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

61

infants born to Grisilde (apparently) die, one after the other, without betraying someone else. Grisilde shares in the guilt for the (staged) murders of her children, but she is and remains at the same time a victim with them—a victim, ultimately, of the people, whose collective will Chaucer’s art represents in the form of a Satanic Walter (Staley Johnson 1975, 17–29; Wallace 1997, 289). Walter falsely names the voice of the people as the direct origin of his demands that Grisilde’s children—first a daughter and then a son—be taken from her. When the people come to hate Walter for his cruelty to his wife and his supposed murder of the children, Walter has a papal bull forged to license his divorce of Grisilde and his remarriage to another. Walter then divorces Grisilde publicly, forcing her to strip off in the sight of the people the royal garb in which he had clothed her (IV 894–96). Clad only in her smock, Grisilde returns to her father Janicula, who “with hire olde coote” [with her old coat] covers her (IV 913–14). Publicly disgraced by her husband, she is burdened (so we must imagine) with the added, terrible guilt of complicity in the murders of her own innocent children, the victims at the bottom of the sacrificial chain who have presumably been killed in her stead. Chaucer’s silent Grisilde does not, of course, express her inner torment, nor does she complain against Walter: “Ne shewed she that hire was doon offence” [nor showed that to her was done offence] (IV 922). Like Grisilde in the Clerk’s Tale, Alanus’s heroine is “stripped … of her dress down to her shift” (see below, 73) before she leaves the palace. She is “almost naked” when she arrives at the door of her father’s house, accompanied by her three sons. Her pious father runs out to meet her and dresses her again in her old clothes. “‘Oh, my dear daughter,’” he exclaims, “‘Because I foresaw that this would happen I kept your dress’” (see below, 73). Clothed again in her old habit, Alanus’s Mary resumes her former way of life, serving her father “as before without sadness or sorrow just as though she had never been queen” (see below, 73). In this too, of course, she corresponds to the humble Grisilde of Chaucer’s tale. Unlike Grisilde, however, Alanus’s Mary is not summoned back to the court to oversee the preparations for the king’s second marriage. Alanus’s king does not willfully test his wife, nor does he deceive her. Nothing in his characterization suggests the tyrant or the sadist. Whereas Chaucer’s Clerk uses language that aligns Walter with Satan, Alanus reserves the language of the diabolic for the nobles who, incited by the devil, first threaten the king’s death and demand Mary’s expulsion, before seizing

62 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

power and possessions for themselves. Not unlike Milton’s hell, the corrupt realm, wherein “all of the princes had gained back their goods and positions of power” (see below, 73), is soon torn by internal division, as they begin “to squabble, quarrel, and to make war amongst themselves in foolish strife and enmity” (see below, 73). Chaucer’s Walter, by contrast, tests Grisilde as Satan once tested Job. The narrator likens Grisildis in her patient endurance of the terrible loss of her status and possessions to the biblical Job, whom she surpasses in virtue: “Ther kan no man in humblesse hym acquite / As woman kan” [There can no man in humility acquit himself / As woman can] (IV 936–37). The complex Joban allusions in the tale have given rise to considerable study (Besserman 1979, 112; Astell 1991b, 1994, 1997a, b). The biblical Job is, of course, not only the hero of the so-called frame-story (Job 1–2, 42:7–17), an innocent victim, tested by Satan with God’s permission, who accepts terrible loss without complaint; Job is also the despairing, loudly protesting speaker of the Dialogues (Job 3:1–42:6). Chaucer’s tale recognizes and skillfully employs that duality, as Lawrence Besserman and others have argued, to fashion Grisildis as “a new, more perfect Job” (Besserman 1979, 112; Astell 1994). What might be added in the context of the present argument is that, as Girard has shown, the biblical Job presents himself explicitly as a king who has been scapegoated by the people (Girard 1991). Blamed by Walter as the cause of communal division, Chaucer’s Grisilde is cast out and humiliated as a scapegoat. Even as her first arrival as Walter’s wife once healed the division between the marquis and his people, now her cruel expulsion effects a restored peace. Indeed, the people are quick to approve Walter’s choice of a new wife, prompting the narrator’s apostrophe against the inconstancy of public opinion: “Youre doom is fals” [Your judgement is false] (IV 1000).

3.5   Happily Ever After? In Chaucer, the stage is so powerfully set for a tragedy—indeed, the quintessential tragic action, a scapegoating, has already been accomplished in Grisilde’s expulsion—that the happy ending of the tale (like the Joban epilogue) has a mythic quality. The supposed new wife and her younger brother are actually Grisilde’s own children, whom Walter’s married sister has secretly raised. Grisilde herself, at Walter’s request, oversees the wedding preparations, still clothed in a peasant’s rags. This last torture, patiently endured, ends when Grisilde finally speaks up, not in her own

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

63

defense, but in defense of the young bride-to-be, urging Walter to act contrary to his past practice and not “‘prikke’” [“distress”] the tender maiden “‘with no tormentynge’” [“with any tormenting”] (IV 1038). “‘To my supposynge [as I believe],’” Grisilde declares, “‘She koude nat adversitee endure / As koude a povre fostred creature’” [“She could not endure adversity / As could a poorly reared creature”] (IV 1042–43). This courageous impatience of Grisilde—a belated refusal to consent to the suffering of another—suddenly precipitates Walter’s conversion and the end of his cruelty: “‘This is ynogh, Grisilde myn [This is enough, Griselda mine],’” Walter says, repeating the exact words with which he had accepted Grisilde’s prenuptial vow (IV 1051, 365). That the young bride whom Grisilde defends is, in fact, the same daughter Grisilde had previously surrendered into the murderer’s hands allows Grisilde, in effect, to redeem her previous silence and to regain her own lost maternity in the tangible form of her two children, living and well. The marriage feast Grisilde had prepared for another woman becomes the celebratory renewal of her own to Walter—this time without the previous, inhuman conditions. For the first time, Walter welcomes Grisilde’s poor old father, Janicula, to take residence in the palace. Peace subsequently rules the relationship between Walter and Grisilde—a concord confirmed in the happy marriages of their two children, neither of whom imitate the scandalous example set by their parents at the start of their married life. Chaucer’s tale ends marvelously;18 so does Alanus’s exemplum. Unlike Chaucer’s Walter, who never prays, Alanus’s king, when confronted with civil war, “pray[s] to God for an end to the strife in his land” (see below, 73). In the exemplum, Mary the Mother of God appears to him and tells him that “there [will] never be peace in France” (see below, 73) until he restores Mary, the charcoaler’s daughter, to her rightful place as his wife and queen. Obedient to the heavenly command, the king calls for Mary’s return and receives her “with great honor” (see below, 73). The result is a miraculous and lasting restoration of peace to the land. Alanus’s Mary becomes a special patroness of “the clergy, of monasteries, hospitals, and churches, and a protector of the poor” (see below, 73). She 18  I omit discussion of the envoy that follows the tale proper. It places Chaucer’s retelling of Petrarch’s tale in the context of the rivalry between and among Chaucer, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—all of whom, I would argue, use the (somewhat tainted) crown of patient Griselda as a means to their own canonization as poets. For a study of a parallel case, see Astell 2003.

64 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

dispenses free rosaries to anyone who wishes to pray Mary’s Psalter. Like the Virgin Mary—the apocalyptic woman opposed to the dragon (cf. Rev. 12:1–6), the New Eve who crushes the serpent’s head (cf. Gn. 3:15), the great anti-diabolicum—Alanus’s heroine proves to be the Virgin’s instrument of peace, overcoming the forces of violent social division that Girard identifies with the Satanic. The ending of the exemplum far exceeds the finale of Chaucer’s tale in happiness. After a happy and blessed reign, the Virgin Mary comes in person to take Mary, the charcoaler’s daughter and queen of France, “into the joy of eternal blessedness” (see below, 73–4).

3.6   Three Marys Alanus’s tale is an exemplum to teach not the value of patient wifely submission but the benefits, personal and communal, of devotion to Mary the Mother of God, a devotion practiced through the continual praying of our Lady’s Psalter. Unlike Griselda, who becomes patient through testing, the Mary of the exemplum becomes another Mary. Alanus’s tale is thus also a saint’s legend. As an explicitly Marian hagiography, it suggests that the story of Griselda can only truly become the story of a saint’s life through a severe abridgement. By adding a Marian intertext to the mythic story he inherited from Petrarch, Chaucer was already moving the received story away from the sacrificial world in which it had its ancient, pre-Christian moorings. The Clerk’s Tale remains caught, however, between “two worlds” (Salter 1962, 61–62). Alanus de Rupe’s exemplum, by contrast, has safely come to rest in a hagiographic, Christian world, but only at the cost of deleting the occasions for maternal grief that make the traditional story of Griselda so arresting. In the end, Alanus’s Mary and Chaucer’s Marian Grisildis both stand strangely at a distance from the Mother of Sorrows, her pity and her piety. Alanus’s guiltless Mary is never separated from her children and thus never wounded either by compunction or by maternal compassion for their suffering and death. Chaucer’s Grisildis painfully undergoes such a separation, but without resistance, without the voiced wish to die with, or for, the daughter and the son who go to their (apparent) deaths for her sake. Only the Mary of the Passion plays, speaking in dialogue with the crucified Christ, models—albeit with excruciating difficulty—the combination of outcry against injustice, compassion for the innocent victim, undying

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

65

faith, and the “love … stronger than death” (cf. Sg. 8:6–7) that Julia Kristeva (in a wordplay on amor) hails as an “undeath (a-mort)” (Kristeva 1987, 234–63). Recalling these three “Marys”—Chaucer’s, Alanus’s, and the Mary of the planctus—underscores the variety of late-medieval Mariologies (the full range of which far exceeds this study), of the sacrificial economies within which the Virgin Mother played an imaginative part, and of the violence she suffered and served to remedy.19

Appendix: Alanus de Rupe’s Griselda Analogue: Annotation, Text, and Translation Anne Winston-Allen Introduction The rosary handbook Von dem psalter und Rosenkranz unserer lieben Frau, attributed to Alanus de Rupe but assembled from his writings by the Dominican brothers after his death in 1475, was published posthumously in Augsburg in 1492.20 The handbook includes stories compiled to promote the rosary as a means of Marian devotion. Among these tales, one exemplum appears to be Alanus’s own imaginative redaction of the Griselda story.21 Born in 1428, Alanus could have known the story of Griselda from multiple sources, since between 1432 and 1472 five versions of the Griseldis story had appeared in the German-speaking area. Four of them are based on Petrarch’s Latin novelle (1373) and one (Arigo’s) based directly on Boccaccio’s Decamerone (Bertelsmeier-Kierst 1988, 134). The third version, entitled Grisardis (1432), was a lengthy  After the death of her beloved husband, Kostas Kazazis (1934–2002), Christina von Nolcken related to me a dream she had had, in which a telephone operator named Mary appeared, ready to help her to make a call from this world to Kostas in the next. In memory of that consoling dream, the conversation in which she related it to me, and the earlier kindnesses of hospitality and encouragement, I dedicate this Marian study gratefully to Christina. 20  ISTC ir00362000, USTC 748657, Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (hereafter, GW) M39193 online. Another edition with a different title, “Vom Psalter unserer lieben Frau,” was published in Ulm by Konrad Dinckmut in 1483, ISTC ir00361600, GW, M39197. See note 4, above, on the title. 21  I first studied and translated this exemplum by Alanus de Rupe in Winston-Allen 1997. I thank Ann W. Astell for alerting me to the connection of the exemplum to the Griselda tradition. 19

66 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

exemplum by Nuremberg Carthusian monk Erhart Grosz (ca. 1400–1450), who incorporated the Griseldis story into a tract on the pros and cons of marriage. The work was directed at men as well as women (pious, married laypeople, monks, or nuns) who might be “tried by a spouse or [by a] spiritual father.” The exemplum puts forward the saintly example of Grisardis to readers so that they may learn “the perfection of patience” (Grosz and Strauch 2016, 39–40). Editor Philipp Strauch argued that the numerous differences, such as the name of the heroine, the number of her children, and the inclusion of the margrave’s sisters, indicate that the source must have been an orally transmitted version rather than a written text of Petrarch’s Griselda novelle (Grosz and Strauch 2016, xv). In the 1950s, literary historian Wolfgang Stammler discovered a different version within a collection of Middle Frankish texts dating from 1460, an anonymous two-page exemplum on the virtues of “Grisilla” (Stammler 1963, 35–38). This work, addressed to an audience of monks and nuns, focused on the tension between elevation to a divine calling and the testing to which Christ subjects those whom he loves. Another more traditional text of the Griselda story can be found in a manuscript composed by an anonymous fifteenth-century Augustinian monk of the monastery of St. Thomas in Leipzig (Schroeder 1873). This moralizing story, based closely on Petrarch, is cast as a lesson for wives that they might sustain “perfect faithfulness and constancy toward their dear husbands” (Bertelsmeier-Kierst 1988, 138). In 1472, Nuremberg patrician Heinrich Schlüsselfelder, writing under the pseudonym Arigo, published a translation of Boccaccio’s Decamerone, which includes both the Griselda story and Dioneo’s frame for it (Keller 1860). Despite its somewhat amateur style, the word-for-word translation of Boccaccio’s work was reprinted in twenty editions before 1646. Concerned mainly with a faithful translation of the original, Arigo does not venture a commentary on the story and, moreover, seems blind to the irony of Dioneo’s criticism of Count Walther (Bertelsmeier-Kierst 1988, 49; Hess 1975, 116). About the same time, there appeared in Augsburg the first printed edition of another translation of Petrarch’s Griseldis novelle, which had been circulating in manuscript form since about 1460. This translation, by Ulm physician Heinrich Steinhöwel (1412–1478), far exceeded in popularity and influence that of Arigo, appearing in fourteen editions before 1500.22 Its continued popularity has earned it the designation of a “bestseller”  ISTC: ip00402900, ip00402850; USTC: 748004, 748003; see Hess 1975.

22

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

67

among early printed books (Bertelsmeier-Kierst 1988, 139). A gifted translator, Steinhöwel employed a less slavish approach than many of his contemporaries and, instead, focused on rendering the sense in a clear and readable way. Successful and modern as his stylistic approach was, however, Steinhöwel failed to convey Petrarch’s moral-philosophical emphasis in portraying Griselda’s virtue. Rather, his interpretation remains within the traditional parameters of a didactic marriage tract used to admonish wives to practice patience. The deployment of the work as an exemplum of marriage all but guaranteed its continued popularity into the Reformation period (Bertelsmeier-Kierst 1988, 181; Hess 1975, 98, 115). To these renditions of the Griselda story in fifteenth-century Germany must now be added that of Alanus de Rupe, whose Marian treatment of the story, transformation of its heroine, and alteration of the plot show that the story was put to far different uses than those previously known to scholars. Rather than teaching philosophical submission or wifely obedience, Alanus’s exemplum, for a new, more diverse audience, foregrounds as virtues of his “Griselda” not only devotion to Mary and praying the rosary but also virtue, hard work, and competence. It does so, moreover, with the appeal of a Cinderella romance. The following is a transcription, accompanied by a complete translation into modern English, of Exemplum 12 in Alanus de Rupe, Von dem psalter und Rosenkranz unserer lieben Frau, printed in Augsburg by Anton Sorg in 1492.23 Ein exempel von einer kolerin Ain hochgelerter maister der heiligen geschrift mit namen meÿster Johannes von Berg offenbaret in seinem Marial von eines Kolerstochter genennt Maria• Dÿe het gar ein ersame frume můtter • vonn der ward dÿe tochter vnderwÿsen vnd gelert czů beten den psalter Marie von jugent auf • Die tochter wz fleissig• vnd allweg frů vnd spät die erst vnd die letste in der arbeit jres vaters / in versamlung des holczes / in bereÿtung der grůb• vnd in andern wercken wz sÿ vnuerdrossen • darzů hete sÿ auch die kolen offt vnd dick mit rossen gefürt auss dem wald in die stat Pariß Vnd die verkauft• vnnd allweg het sÿ den psalter hangen an jrer gürtel oder 23  ISTC: ir00362000; USTC 748657; GW M39193. Sig. H4b v  – H4f v. The English translation was previously published in Winston-Allen 1997, 155–58; it is reprinted here by permission of Pennsylvania State University Press.

68 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

trůg in in jren henden daran wz sÿ beten on vnderlaß• Vnnd nach einer jecklichen arbeit so wz sÿ beten ein pater noster vnd •x• ave maria• vnd kund jren psalter ordnen zů allen dingen• also waz sÿ vnderweißt vnd gelert von got durch die můtter gotes dz sÿ in allen dingen diser welte auch in allez bösen so fand sy dz ave maria / wenn nach dem als Anßhelmus schreibt so ist maria nit allein ein můter vnd ein künigin gůter ding / sunder sÿ ist ein arczneÿ vnd ein hilf wider alles böß vnd übel der welte • Als aber der jung künig oder der zůkünftige küng sahe mariam des kolers tochter die da wz schwarcz als ein teüfel all wochen ein mal oder zweÿ kommen an sein hoff mit kolen• vnd in jren henden den psalter marie vnd on vnderlaß beten / daredt er auff ein zeit mit ir nach dem vnd got durch sein liebe můter das würcken tät• vnd fraget sÿ jren namen / jr wesen / vnd jr gebet • Do antwurt jm die tochter auf alle seine wort mit züchten • Darnach wenn die tochter kam in des küngs hof / so ließ der küng alle ding fallen vnd redt mit grosser jnnikeit vnd andacht mit der tochter • darumb kauffet der junge küng kolen on zal des lons • vnd gepot Ir oft vnd dick das sÿ sich solt freüen vnd kürczweil haben vnd sein schwestern • dz wollte maria nie kein mal tůn • wenn sÿ besorgt zů verliern auf ein stund das sÿ nÿmermer fund • Zům letsten als der jung küng rechter küng worden ist vnd noch kein eelichen gemahel het • vnd maria auf ein zeit kam in des küniges hof nach jr gewonheit da sprach der küng czů jr • O maria liebe tochter sage mir wo ist deins vaters haus so will jch zů dir kommen wenn jch wil daselbs jagen Vnd wil das haus sůchen darumb so bereit vns die herberg • da sprach maria zům küng O wirdiger herr vnd küng jch hab kein ander herberg dann eines kolers haus • Der künig sprach • Des beger auch ich • Also ist der küng geriten in den wald zů jagen vnd ist kommen an ein hirchß der gab flücht vnd geleiche ein starcken laufs lief der hirchß zů des kolers haus • Do aber maria des kolers tochter sahe den hirchß in nöten da öffnet sÿ den hirchß den garten als ein tochter der gütikeit vnd beschloß darnach den garten wider vor den hunden • Also lieffent die hund allentthalb zů vnnd erfülten den wald mit jrem geschreÿ • aber der künig begert mer zů jagen vnd zů fahen mariam des kolers tochter zů eÿm gemahel mit willen gunst irs vaters vnd můter wenn den hirß • vnd darumb ließ er alle ding als er zů dem hauß kam vnnd gieng mit allen sein herrn in des kolers hause vnd wolt da essen da er aber in das haus kam da wz weder töpich noch sidel noch gestül noch silber geschirr noch nichs des dings im hauß • aber vil schwarczer kolseck lagen im hauß

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

69

zersträt • da kam der vater als ein schwarczer teüfel gegangen vnd die můter als ein mörin • vnd erschracken ab der zukůnft des küngs als ob sÿ wären des tods aber / maria verbarg sich als eÿn lyebhaberin / vnd freündin der scham / da sendet der künige bald nach der tochter • vnnd gepot das sÿ zů im käm • als man sÿ aber lang nit finden kund in dem haus da hůb ein jaghund an zů schrein fast vnd bellen vor dem garten • wann der hund empfand vnd schmecket mariam verborgen in dem garten hinder eÿm zaun da lief der jäger zů vnnd sahe da Mariam des kolers tochter steen hinder dem zaun vnnd beten / auch sahe er bej der tochter stan ein künigin die wz schön über alle maß • vnd die hete ein kleins kindlin auf irem arm dz wz do zemal vast schön vnd on zweifel es ist gewesen die hochgelopt küngin vnd můter maria mit jrem sun Jhesu vmb der sach willen kunden vnd mochten die hund nit in garten kommen / noch der tochter geschaden • allso ward die tochter funden vnd fuer den künige gepracht • da stůnd der küng gen jr auff vnd sprach zů jr • O maria wz hastu vns getan / also darnach sprach der küng zů allen sein herrn • Ir habt mich gezwungen vnnd dar zů getriben das jch mir sölt nemen ein haußfrauen welliche vnd wa oder wannen Ich wölt vnd aller maist begerte • Ist das nicht also jr all mein herrn • Do antwurten die herren vnd sprachen • Es wär also • Do sprach der küng so schwör jch eüch beÿ meÿm zepter vnd beÿ meiner kron das jch kein ander frauen nÿmmer nemen will zů der ee denn dÿse mariam des kolers tochter • vnd sprach es ist billich das die wort des küngs vnd seÿner herrn krefftige seind vnd vnwandelber • Als bald warent die diener hie vnd legten mentel vnder die füß marie • vnd zierten das haus nach dem als sÿ kunden vnd mochtent da haben die zweÿ der küng vnd des kolers tochter einander zů der ee genommen • vnd bald darnach saczt man die küngin auf ein künklichen wagen • vnd fůr t sÿ gen Pariß in die stat da ward sÿ gekrönt mit freüden wunn vnd glori der hochzeit • Do nam der vater die claider seiner tochter • vnd behielt die vnd sprache • Ich waiß wol daz die claider wider werden not meiner tochter • Allso hielt der küng hochzeit auf ein hochzeitlichen tag vnser frauen • Do aber maria des kolers tochter was worden ein küngin in Franckreich da erlösct sÿ mit ir weißheit vnd gütikeit dz reÿch von krieg vnd widerwertikeit vnd die armen von den henden der edlen vnd vngerechten wenn sÿ wz ein můter der armen • vnd dÿe vngerechten amptleüt seczt sÿ ab • vnd saczt ander frumm vnd gerecht auf • darumb ist geschehen durch die weißheit diser küngin vnd vmb des allerbesten regiments willen das das reich zu nam in reichtumb vnd in zeitlichen gütern über alle maß •

70 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

dz mocht der teüfel vnd die boßhaft welt nit leÿden darumb die fürsten vnd herrn des küngs erhůbend sich wider den küng • vnd wolten in getött haben es wär dann das er dise grobe vnd rauhe kolerin wär absetzen vnnd von ÿm tůn / da dz der küng sahe schickt er bald nach der küngin • vnd hieß mit iren drei clein sünen für in kommen vnd hieß sÿ da jre claider abziehen bis an ein hembd vnd gepot jr sÿ söltt auß seÿm haus geen vnd sollt wider in jres vaters haus geen von dannen sÿ kommen were • Do nun maria also ploß kam für die tür ires vaters mit den • iii • sünen da lieff ir der vater entgegen vnd sprach • O mein liebe tochter das hab jch vor als gewißt darumbe hab jch dir deine claider behalten • Do brachte der vater der tochter jre claider / die leget Maria wiederumb an • vnnd belib beÿ jrem vatter vnd dienet jm wie vor vnbetrübett on allen kummer vnd on alle bewegung alls ob sÿ nie kein küngin wär gesesen Vnnd auch jr vater wz so demůtig vnd gerechte das er sÿch nit wolt lassen erhöhen oder erheben in das Küngreich / noch weder haller noch pfening nemen • nach dem allen nament dÿe fursten die güter vnd daz regiment wider zů jren henden vnd wurden vneinß vnd entsprungen vnd erhůben sich vnder in unaussprächlich groß krieg / hader / vnd tötlich feintschaft • Do bat der küng auf ein zeit got vnd frid des reichs • Do erschin jm maria gotes můter vnd sprach zů jm • Es seÿ dann dz du mariam des kolers tochter wider zů dir nemst so wirt vnder dir nÿmmermer frid in Franckreich • da der küng das erhort da hieß er mariam des kolers tochter wider hollen vnd seczt sÿ wider in das reich mit grossen ern da das geschahe da ward aller krieg vnd wÿderwertikeit gestillet vnd ward in dem ganczen reÿch gůtter frid • Darnach ward dÿse künigin ein besundere liebhaberin der geistlichen vnd der clöster vnd der spital vnd kirchen vnd ein beschirmerin der armen • vnd eÿm jecklichen der da wolt beten den psalter marie den gab sÿ pater noster • vnd all ir knecht vnd mäget zwange sÿ zů beten den psalter marie • Nach dem aber vnd die künigin also ist erschinen in gnad vnd glori vor got vnnd den menschen • vnd die zeit des ends jrs lebens hie wz / da erschin jr maria die můter gotes an jrem end vnd hat sÿ gefůret mit jr in die freůd der ewigen sälikeit • Die weil aber dÿse küigin lebt vnd regiert ist nie kein betrüptnus noch nie kein vneinikeit gewesen In Franckreich / sunder der höchst best frid vnd dar zů der segen in allem gůten • “Mary, the Charcoaler’s Daughter” Translated by Anne Winston-Allen

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

71

A learned master of Holy Writ named Master Johannes von Berg tells in his Marial of a charcoaler’s daughter named Mary who had an exceedingly honorable and pious mother.24 From her earliest youth the girl had been instructed and taught by her mother to pray Mary’s Psalter.25 The daughter was a hard worker and early or late she was always the first one to start and the last one to finish collecting wood or preparing the pit for her father. At every task she worked tirelessly. Often she drove loads of charcoal with the horses from the forest into the city of Paris and sold them. And always she had her beads affixed to her belt or carried them in her hands and prayed her psalter constantly. After each task she would recite an Our Father and ten Ave Marias and thus could accommodate her prayer to all the things that she did. For she had been taught and instructed by God through the Mother of our Lord in all the circumstances in this world both good and evil to have recourse to the Ave Maria. As Anselm writes, in this way Mary is not only a mother and queen of good things, but also a healing salve and a help against all the evils and bad things of this world. Thus it happened that the prince, the future king, noticed Mary the charcoaler’s daughter—all black as a devil—when she came once or twice a week to the court with a load of charcoal. In her hands she held her psalter beads which she prayed continually. This one day, as God and His Dear Mother would have it, he was moved to speak with her and asked her name, her status, and what prayer she was saying. The girl answered all his questions in a proper manner. After that, whenever she came to court the king would stop whatever he was doing and converse with her piously and with tender affection. The king freely bought great quantities of charcoal with no regard for the cost and urged her often and intently that she should enjoy herself with his sisters. But Mary always refused the offer for she was loath to lose a single hour that she might never retrieve. Finally, one day after the still-unmarried prince had assumed full powers as king, Mary came to the court, as was her habit, and the king spoke to her saying, “Oh Mary, dear daughter, tell me where your father’s house is. For I plan to go hunting and wish to lodge there for the night.” Then 24  This is apparently a fictitious attribution; there is no evidence of such a collection of exempla by a Johannes von Berg, Iohannis de Monte, or anyone with a similar name. See Scheeben 1951; Quétif and Echard 1719–21. 25  “Mary’s Psalter” was Alanus’s preferred name for the rosary prayer. See Winston-Allen 1997, 81–81, 105–109.

72 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

Mary said to the king, “Oh most worthy Lord King I have no lodging other than a charcoaler’s cottage.” The king said, “Indeed, that is just what I am seeking.” Thus it was that the king rode into the forest to hunt and came upon a deer that took flight and ran hard, straight to the charcoaler’s cottage. When Mary the charcoaler’s daughter saw the deer in distress, she mercifully opened the gate of the garden for it and then shut it in front of the hunting dogs that were in pursuit. Thus, the dogs ran about, filling the forest with their baying. But the king intended to go on with the hunt and to catch Mary the charcoaler’s daughter for his bride, with the consent of her father and mother. And thus, when he came to the charcoaler’s cottage he left off hunting and went inside with all his men to have a meal. But in the cottage there was neither carpet nor bench, chair nor silverware, nor any thing in the house but sacks of black coal lying about. The father came at a run just like a black devil, and the mother like a mooress, and nearly frightened the king and his retinue to death. But Mary hid herself away like a shamefaced sweetheart. The king ordered her to be fetched, but she could not be found anywhere in the house. Presently, a hunting dog began to bark and bay in front of the garden, for the dog had scented her hidden there behind the fence. A hunter ran to the spot and saw Mary the charcoaler’s daughter standing behind the fence in prayer. And beside her he saw the most beautiful queen with a tiny child in her arms who was even more beautiful. There could be no doubt that they were the most blessed queen and mother Mary with her son Jesus. And because of that the dogs could not enter the garden nor harm the daughter. In this way Mary was found and brought before the king who stood up and said to her, “Oh Mary, what have you done to us?” And the king spoke thus to all his men, saying, “You have urged me that I should take to wife whomsoever I wish and most desire. Is that not true, my lords?” The men answered that it was so. Then said the king, “I swear to you by my scepter and my crown that I shall wed no other woman than this Mary, the charcoaler’s daughter. And certainly what the king and his men have spoken shall come to pass and not be changed.” Immediately, the servants arrived and laid cloaks under Mary’s feet and decorated the cottage as well as they could and made ready for the marriage of the king and the charcoaler’s daughter. They placed the queen in a royal wagon and drove her to the city of Paris. And there she was crowned

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

73

in a joyful and glorious ceremony. But the father kept his daughter’s old clothes, saying to himself, “Well do I know that my daughter will need these again.” And the king was wed on a feast day of Our Lady. And when Mary the charcoaler’s daughter had become the queen of France, she rid the land of war and distress through her wisdom and goodness. The poor she freed from the clutches of the unjust nobles, for truly she was a mother to the poor. And she removed the corrupt officials and replaced them with honest and pious ones. Thus through her wisdom and excellent guidance the land increased greatly in goods and prosperity. But the devil and the evil ones who serve him could not tolerate this and incited the princes and lords to rise up against the king and threatened to kill him if he did not depose this rough and crude charcoal woman and renounce her. And when the king saw this he sent for the queen and for her three small sons to come before him, and he stripped her of her dress down to her shift and commanded that she leave his house and return to her father’s house whence she had come. Thus Mary came almost naked to the door of her father’s house with her three sons. And the father ran to meet her saying, “Oh, my dear daughter. Because I foresaw that this would happen I kept your dress.” And he brought out her old clothes. Mary then put them back on and stayed with her father and served him as before without sadness or sorrow just as though she had never been queen. And her father too was humble and upright, not wishing to elevate himself or raise his station in the realm by taking so much as a heller or a penny. Now after all of the princes had gained back their goods and positions of power, they began to squabble, quarrel, and to make war amongst themselves in foolish strife and enmity. At last, the king prayed to God for an end to the strife in his land, and Mary the Mother of God appeared to him and told him that until he again took unto him Mary the charcoaler’s daughter, there would never be peace in France. When the king heard that, he sent for Mary and returned her to her former station with great honor. And when this had come to pass, the war ceased, strife throughout the realm was laid to rest, and peace returned to the land. And afterward, the queen became a special patroness to the clergy, of monasteries, hospitals, and churches, and a protector of the poor. To anyone who wished to pray Mary’s Psalter she gave a set of beads and instructed all her serving men and maids to pray it as well. Now, after the queen had attained great honor and glory in the eyes of both God and men, and her life had reached its end, Mary the Mother of God appeared unto her and conducted her into the joy of eternal

74 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

blessedness. Yet, all the time that the queen had lived and reigned, there was never sadness or discord in France but only the most profound peace and blessing in all good things.

References Alanus de Rupe. 1492. Von dem psalter vnnd Rosenkrancz vnser lieben frauen. Augsburg: A. Sorg. Augustine. 1991. Confessions. Trans. H. Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beadle, R., ed. 1982. The York Plays. London: Edward Arnold. Chaucer, G. 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.  D. Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Grosz, E., and P. Strauch, eds. 2016 [1931]. Die Grisardis des Erhart Grosz: Nach der Breslauer Handschrift. 1. Auflage. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek Online, 29. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110482973 Jacobus, and E. Duffy. 2012 [1995]. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. Trans. W.G. Ryan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Keller, A., ed. 1860. Decamerone von Heinrich Steinhöwel. Stuttgart: Bibliothek des Literarischen Vereins. Levinas, E. 2002. Otherwise Than Being, Or Beyond Essence. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Lewis, C.S. 1956. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Littlehales, H. 1895. The Prymer or Lay Folks’ Prayer Book. EETS o.s. 105, 109. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner. Lumianski, R.M., and D. Mills, eds. 1974. The Chester Mystery Cycle, Early English Text Society Supplemental Series 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spector, S. 1991. The N-Town Play: Cotton MS Vespasian D.8, 2 vols. EETS S.S. 11. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stevens, M.A., and C. Cawley, eds. 1994. The Towneley Plays, 2 vols. Early English Text Society Supplemental Series 13. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Sources Aers, D. 1998. Faith, Ethics, and Community: Reflections on Reading Late Medieval English Writing. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (2): 341–369. Aers, D., and L. Staley. 1996. The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press.

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

75

Ashton, G. 1998. Patient Mimesis: Griselda and the Clerk’s Tale. Chaucer Review 32 (3): 232–238. Astell, A.W. 1990. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 1991a. Apostrophe, Prayer, and the Structure of Satire in the Man of Law’s Tale. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13 (1): 81–97. https://doi. org/10.1353/sac.1991.0003. ———. 1991b. Job’s Wife, Walter’s Wife, and the Wife of Bath. In Old Testament Women in Western Literature, ed. Raymond–Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik, 92–107. Conway: University of Arkansas Press. ———. 1994. Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 13: 81–97. ———. 1997a. Chaucer’s ‘St. Anne Trinity’: Devotion, Dynasty, Dogma, and Debate. Studies in Philology 94 (4): 395–416. ———. 1997b. Translating Job as Female. In Translation Theory and in the Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval Culture 38, ed. Jeanette Beer, 59–69. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. ———. 2003. Joan of Arc and Sacrificial Authorship. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 2005. Nietzsche, Chaucer, and the Sacrifice of Art. Chaucer Review 39 (3): 323–340. Bertelsmeier-Kierst, C. 1988. Griselda. In Deutschland: Studien zu Steinhöwel und Arigo. Heidelberg: Winter. Besserman, L.L. 1979. The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bestul, T.H. 1996. Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Boyd, B. 1964. The Middle English Miracles of the Virgin. San Marino: The Huntington Library. Carruthers, M.J. 1988. The Lady, the Swineherd, and Chaucer’s Clerk. Chaucer Review 17: 221–234. Cate, W.A. 1932. The Problem of the Origin of the Griselda Story. Studies in Philology 29: 389–405. Collette, C.P. 1994. Chaucer’s Discourse of Mariology: Gaining the Right to Speak. In Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Frank Worth, Jr., ed. Robert R.  Edwards, 127–147. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. Condren, E.I. 1999. Chaucer and the Energy of Creation: The Design and the Organization of the Canterbury Tales. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Donavin, G. 2004. Alphabets and Rosary Beads in Chaucer’s An ABC. In Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook, ed. Scott D. Troyan, 25–40. New York: Routledge.

76 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

Duffy, E. 2006. Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570. New Haven: Yale University Press. Edden, V. 1992. Sacred and Secular in the Clerk’s Tale. Chaucer Review 26 (46): 369–375. Ferris, S. 1981. The Mariology of the Prioress’s Tale. The American Benedictine Review 32: 232–254. Flory, D. 2000. Marian Representations in the Miracle Tales of Thirteenth-Century Spain and France. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Frank, H.L. 1978–79. Chaucer’s Prioress and the Blessed Virgin. Chaucer Review 13: 346–362. Frank, R.W., Jr. 1982. Miracles of the Virgin, Medieval Anti-Semitism, and the Prioress’s Tale. In The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in Honor of Morton W.  Bloomfield, ed. L.D.  Benson and S.  Wenzel, 177–188, 290–297. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Fulton, R. 2002. From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200. New York: Columbia University Press. Gambero, L. 2005. Mary in the Middle Ages: The Blessed Virgin in the Thought of Medieval Latin Theologians. Trans. T. Buffer. San Francisco: Ignatius. Georgianna, L. 1990. The Protestant Chaucer. In Chaucer’s Religious Tales, ed. C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, 55–69. Woodbridge: Brewer. Girard, R. 1986. The Scapegoat. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1987. Things Hidden Since the Foundations of the World. Trans. S. Bann and M. Metteer. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1991. Job, Victim of His People. London: Athlone. ———. 2001. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Trans. J.G.  Williams. Maryknoll: Orbis. Goodland, K. 2005. Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance Drama: From the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear. Burlington: Ashgate. Graef, H. 2009 [1963, 1965]. Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press. Griffith, D.D. 1931. The Origin of the Griselda Story, University of Washington Publications in Language and Literature 8. Seattle: University of Washington. Hess, U. 1975. Heinrich Steinhöwels ‘Griseldis’: Studien zur Text- und Überlieferungsgeschichte einer frühmittelalterlichen Prosanovelle, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur Literatur des Mittelalters 43. Munich: Beck. Incunabula Short Title Catalogue: the International Database of 15th-Century European Printing. 2016. Consortium of European Research Libraries. https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/ Katz, C.E. 2003. Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

3  GRISELDA AS MARY: CHAUCER’S CLERK’S TALE AND ALANUS DE… 

77

Keiser, G.R. 1985. The Middle English Planctus Mariae and the Rhetoric of Pathos. In The Popular Literature of Medieval England, Tennessee Studies in Literature 28, ed. T.J.  Heffernan, 167–193. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Kristeva, J. 1987. Stabat Mater. In Kristeva, Tales of Love, 234–263. Trans. L.S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lipphardt, W. 1934. Studien zu den Marienklagen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literature 58: 390–444. Mann, J. 1984. Parents and Children in the Canterbury Tales. In Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature, The J.A.W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1982–83. Tübinger Beiträge zur Anglistik 6, ed. P.  Boitani and A.  Torti, 165–183. Tübingen/Cambridge: Gunter Narr and Brewer. Matter, E.A. 1990. The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. McBain, J. 2016. ‘Alle Out of His Self’: Mary, Effective Piety, and the N-Town Crucifixion. In Staging Scripture: Biblical Drama, 1350–1600, ed. P.  Happé and W.  Hüsken, 309–333. Leiden: Brill. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789004313958 McKinley, K.L. 1998. The Clerk’s Tale: Hagiography and the Problematics of Lay Sanctity. Chaucer Review 33 (1): 90–111. Morse, C. 1985. The Exemplary Griselda. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 7: 51–86. Nolan, B. 1990. Chaucer’s Tales of Transcendence: Rhyme Royal and Christian Prayer in the Canterbury Tales. In Chaucer’s Religious Tales, ed. C.D. Benson and E. Robertson, 21–38. Woodbridge: Brewer. Quétif, J., and J. Echard. 1719–21. Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, 2 vols. Paris: Lutetiae Parisiorum. 1: 851. Robertson, E. 1990. Aspects of Female Piety in the Prioress’s Tale. In Chaucer’s Religious Tales, ed. C.  David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, 145–160. Woodbridge: Brewer. Rubin, M. 2009. Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary. New Haven: Yale University Press. Salter, E. 1962. Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale and the Clerk’s Tale. Great Neck: Barron. Scheeben, H.C. 1951. Michael Francisci ab Insulis, O. P., ‘Quodlibet de veritate fraternitatis Rosarii. Archiv der deutschen Dominikaner 4: 97–62. Schroeder, C., ed. 1873. Griseldis. Apollonius von Tyrus. Aus den Handschriften. Mitteilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung vaterländischer Sprache und Alterthümer in Leipzig 3: 3–21. Severs, J.B. 1942. The Literary Relationships of Chaucer’s Clerkes Tale. New Haven: Yale University Press. Sledd, J.M. [1953] 1960. The Clerk’s Tale: The Monsters and the Critics. Modern Philology 51: 73–82. In Chaucer Criticism: The Canterbury Tales, ed. R. Schoeck and J. Taylor, 1: 160–174. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

78 

A. W. ASTELL AND A. WINSTON-ALLEN

Spence, T.L. 2004. The Prioress’s Oratio ad Mariam and Medieval Prayer Composition. In Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook, ed. Scott D. Troyan, 63–90. New York: Routledge. Staley Johnson, L. 1975. The Prince and His People: A Study of Two Covenants in the Clerk’s Tale. Chaucer Review 10: 17–29. Stammler, W. 1963. Griseldis. Eyn gut exempel von eyner togentlichen greffyn, die jre togenden edel machten. In Spätlese des Mittelalters I. Weltliches Schriftum aus den Handschriften, Texte des späten Mittelalters 16, ed. W.  Stammler, 35–38. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Sticca, S. 1988. The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages. Trans. Joseph R. Berrigan. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. Universal Short Title Catalogue. 2020. Dir. Andrew Pettegree. https://www. ustc.ac.uk/ Utley, F.L. 1972. Five Genres in the Clerk’s Tale. Chaucer Review 6: 198–228. Wallace, D. 1997. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wimsatt, J.I. 1980. The Virgin Mary and the Two Coronations of Griselda. Mediaevalia: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Medieval Studies Worldwide 8: 187–207. Winston-Allen, A. 1997. Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

CHAPTER 4

On Chaucer’s Clerk, His Books and the Value of Education Jenny Adams

4.1   Introduction Midway through Chaucer’s General Prologue, we meet the starving Clerk, whose bony horse and “nat right fat” body seem to attest to his love of learning (Chaucer 1987, I 288).1 The Clerk seems so committed to the life of the mind that the narrator claims that he would rather have “Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed / Of Aristotle and his philosophie / Than robes riche…” [Twenty books of Aristotle, bound in black or red, than expensive robes…] (I 294–6). The Clerk’s self-denying and studious habits appear further validated by his rake-thin horse whose bones, at least in the Ellesmere illustration, prominently jut out (see Fig. 4.1). Like many

1  All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are to this edition, unless otherwise noted. The Canterbury Tales are cited by fragment and line number. Translations of Chaucer, unless otherwise noted, are from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website: https://chaucer.fas.harvard. edu/pages/text-and-translations

J. Adams (*) Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_4

79

80 

J. ADAMS

Fig. 4.1  “The Clerk of Oxford,” f. 88r, the Ellesmere Manuscript, MS EL 26 C 9, Egerton family papers. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California

readers of Chaucer, this illustrator clearly sees the Clerk’s desire for knowledge as exceeding his desire to feed his mode of transportation. The Clerk’s corporeal repressions and apparent rejection of material goods often lead to an idealization of the Clerk as a model intellectual.2 A 2  Many readers of Chaucer have interpreted the Clerk’s thinness and love of books as emblematic of his desire for knowledge and his disinterest in wealth. These readers include: Jones 1912; Green 1951; Morse 1958; Bennett 1974; Mann 1973; Dinshaw 1989; Miller 2005; and Ashe 2006. Editors, too, have tended to link asceticism with intellectualism. The narrator states that the Clerk “unto logyk hadde longe ygo,” a fairly neutral wording that implies a scholarly move toward a certain field of study. Yet the Broadview’s editors describe a scholar “who had [committed himself] to logic,” a much less neutral interpretation (Chaucer 2012, I 286). The Riverside editors offer generally neutral marginal translations in this section of the General Prologue. Yet in this case the “Explanatory Notes” firmly direct us to read the Clerk’s bodily denials as intertwined with his scholarly credentials. Warren

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

81

fourteenth-century version of the contemporary graduate student, he has offered many readers (this one included) a nostalgic reminder of the difficult path “unto logyk” (I 286) along with a reaffirmation of our commitments to the life of the mind. Yet as I will argue, our collective tendency to affiliate with the Clerk, and specifically to read his self-denial as a contrast to Chaucer’s other academic characters—Nicholas from the Miller’s Tale comes to mind, as do John and Aleyn from the Reeve’s Tale—obscures the economic conditions that drive the Clerk’s active participation in intellectual life. It also occludes the ways the Clerk himself participates in a system of academic labor and production.3 In the end, the portrait of the Clerk does much more than show a university scholar who eschews material comforts for cerebral engagement. Instead, and as I hope to show, Chaucer uses the Clerk to highlight the ways formal education depends on, and also produces, economic exchange even as academics themselves often seek recast academic labor as detached from worldly interests.4 Central to my reading are the volumes that the Clerk fetishizes. As I will argue, these “twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed” expose the blurred boundaries between intellectual and economic spheres. Manuscripts that contained “Aristotle and his philosophie” simultaneously formed the heart of Oxford’s fourteenth-century curriculum and provided a vast economic infrastructure for the colleges. Oxford’s loan chests, of which there were at least sixteen by Chaucer’s day, operated as mini-pawnshops, and students and faculty members could hand over their possessions as collateral for interest-free loans (Aston and Faith 1984, 276–7). Although the chests accepted many things as collateral, books predominated, and the University appointed official stationers to appraise the value of the volumes placed on S. Ginsberg, the author of the “Explanatory Notes” about the Clerk, takes care to reassure readers that the Clerk is generally upstanding: “The Clerk certainly does not indulge in drinking, gambling, whoring, and similar vices, which satirists regularly accused students of making their primary objects of study.” And while I am inclined to agree with Ginsberg, our shared conjectures rely on a reverse engineering grounded in the premise that the Clerk’s “devotion to learning” makes him a generally upstanding character. Ginsberg, “The Clerk,” in “Explanatory Notes” (Chaucer 1987, 810). 3  In his own study of Chaucer’s clerks, Bennett uses the Clerk and Nicholas as appositional poles that represent two extremes of student life: “Unlike the ideal student of the Prologue, he [Nicholas] is squandering the money his family had collected to ‘put him through college’” (Bennett 1974, 31). 4  Jacques Le Goff has traced the ways earlier scholars discarded their identities as artisans, in order to refashion themselves as philosopher (Le Goff 1980, cited by Briggs 2014, 192).

82 

J. ADAMS

deposit. So large was this system of lending that by the end of the fourteenth century, pledged manuscripts, along with the ready cash that lay in the Oxford’s loan chests, formed an enormous asset for the University. In this way, academic manuscripts did not simply serve as vehicles for knowledge but also as objects of tangible economic value. Chaucer’s focus on economics should come as no surprise. Years ago Patricia Eberle noted that all of the Canterbury Tales are “conditioned, directly or indirectly, by the essentially commercial arrangement involved in Harry Bailey’s conditions for the tale-telling game” (Eberle 1983, 171).5 Chaucer’s Clerk is no exception to Eberle’s maxim, and this character represents the ways fourteenth-century academic life had become embedded in a market economy.6 To read the Clerk as involved in economic life rather than abstracted from it is not to deny his abstemious nature, but to see the ways it intersects with the economic configurations.7 By the fourteenth century, Oxford University had become its own financial industry, with diverse assets of land and cash that were managed by the university’s growing number of academics.8 Yet managing land and cash are qualitatively different than taking loans against the books that formed the foundation of Oxford’s intellectual life. When a volume went into a loan chest, its cash value was recorded on it. Thus, in using books as collateral for loans, Oxford’s late medieval academics could see visible appraisals of academic labor, and they then put the  Kathy Lavezzo cites Eberle, and further emphasizes Chaucer’s commercial interests: “Indeed, a logic of debt and repayment informs the game led by Bailey. Starting with his request for a tale from the Monk that will “quite with the Knyghtes tale” (I 3119) [“match the Knight’s tale”], the tale-telling competition becomes a game of “quitting,” in which pilgrims strive to “quite,” or match, one another’s stories and win the prize of a free meal. A primary meaning of quiten is to “repay a debt” (Lavezzo 2011, 371). 6  As Briggs aptly puts it, “even this ideal [of the Clerk] is not without its problems, as evidenced by Chaucer’s hints at, on the one hand, the limited career prospects faced by his contemporaries at the English universities and, on the other, the new kinds of learning and learnedness that were developing outside the universities” (Briggs 2014, 203). 7  As government increasingly relied on (and rewarded) an educated working class, the thirteenth century witnessed an exceptional expansion of its educational system, with students moving outside of monastic settings and halls and into the first officially recognized secular colleges. For a good overview of Oxford’s growth in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see Hackett 1984. 8  Joel Kaye traces the “impact of monetary and market consciousness on university thought,” and also the ways the rising role of academics in the financial management of their institutions had an impact on their curriculum (Kaye 1998, 19). 5

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

83

tools of their trade, namely their volumes, to work as financial instruments. It is this overlap between academics and economics that the Clerk’s books so crisply capture.

4.2   “Gladly wolde he teche”: Re-reading the Clerk Readers have almost universally interpreted Chaucer’s Clerk as a scholar whose physical emaciation evinces a pursuit of intellectual life at the expense of worldly interests. Although many critics base this reading on the General Prologue’s portrait, some buttress their understanding of the Clerk by contrasting him with Chaucer’s other academics. Nicholas in the Miller’s Tale, and John and Aleyn in the Reeve’s Tale, the unnamed Clerk in the Franklin’s Tale—for many Chaucerians, these characters throw into relief the Clerk’s seemingly worthy self-negation. One of Chaucer’s early twentieth-century editors, Walter Skeat, exemplifies this tendency: “In the Miller’s Tale, Chaucer describes a clerk of a very opposite character [of Chaucer’s Clerk], who loved dissipation and played upon a ‘sautrye’ or psaltery” (Chaucer 1900, 67, gloss to line 296).9 Skeat’s contrast between a serious scholar and a scholar “who loved dissipation” has become more or less standard.10 But as I have suggested, seeing the Clerk as isolated from and/or opposed to Chaucer’s other academics suppresses the ways this character relies on the financial infrastructures readers see him rejecting. The fragility of the Clerk’s alignment of asceticism with intellectual dedication quickly comes into focus when we consider some of his trademark features against other late medieval narratives and against the economic realities of fourteenth-century academia. As I have noted above, one of these features, his books, offers the most forthright complication of this notion of penurious intellectual life. But before I turn to those, I would like to

9  J. I. Catto gestures this same contrast when he observes Chaucer’s pursuit of “the twin themes of scholarly poverty and high spirits” (Catto 1984, 151). 10  This tendency to separate clerks into two categories—those who are good/intellectual versus those who are bad/worldly—also leads to omissions of characters that might complicate this binary. What do we make of the scholar in the Franklin’s Tale who uses his knowledge of astronomy for monetary gain but who also freely releases his debtor? What kind of clerk is the Physician, one of the most educated pilgrims yet also one whose work is done explicitly for profit? And here I thank Charlie Briggs for calling the Physician to my attention.

84 

J. ADAMS

suggest that other parts of the General Prologue’s description call attention to the Clerk’s material interests. Two of the Clerk’s signature markers, his “holwe” (I 289) physical form and thin “overeste courtepy” [upper overcoat] (I 290), can be read as signs of material overinvestment rather than self-denial. Here is the narrator describing these traits: Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy, For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice Ne was so worldly for to have office. (I 290–92) [His short overcoat was very threadbare For he had not yet obtained an ecclesiastical living, Nor was he worldly enough to take secular employment]

In these lines, the narrator links the Clerk’s tattered cloak and wasted form to his refusal to accept a non-beneficed job, namely a paid position outside the Church hierarchy. Yet just as a starving man whose inability to purchase food is easily interpreted as great willpower, so too might the Clerk’s inability to get a job become interpreted as a mark of intellectual dedication. Charles Briggs notes that fewer and fewer fourteenth-century students could parlay their degrees into a benefice, which meant that “for many university clerks, [precarious income] was destined to be their lot, whether they liked it or not” (Briggs 2014, 100).11 And as William J. Courtenay has shown, teaching at a university at this time “was rarely seen as a long-term career, or even as a career,” but as “part of a degree program, a degree requirement, and if it was continued over a period of years it was usually to finance one’s further education or to provide income and visibility while one waited for something better in that real world outside the university” (Courtenay 1987, 25). This tendency to linger at the University became so pronounced during the fourteenth century that the average age of Oxford’s masters dropped as more and more graduates sought teaching posts while awaiting a chance to secure a post outside of the colleges (Courtenay 1987, 25; see also Courtenay 1988). The possibility that the Clerk participates in a form of “officially sanctioned begging” offers yet another lens through which to view him (Kerby-Fulton 2014, 5; cf. Evans 1984, 511; and Salter 1932, ii, 40). In 11  Mann, too, notes the ambiguity that surrounds the Clerk’s lack of a benefit (Mann 1973, 83).

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

85

a study of late fourteenth-century academic unemployment, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton sheds light on the precarious nature of an academic career, in which the loss of income could provoke Oxford University’s authorities to “deliver sealed testimonial letters declaring the student legally ‘able to seek alms’ — an administrative category” (Kerby-Fulton 2014, 5). In this light, the Clerk’s poor robes and thin form mark him as a beggar by need rather than by choice. It is also notable that shabby clothing and an emaciated form are, in other literary contexts firmly tied to economic interests.12 In Piers Plowman, William Langland uses these same markers—thinness and a threadbare coat—to call out an overinvestment in material goods when he attaches them to Avarice: [Th]anne cam Coveitise; [I kan] hym naght discryve So hungrily and holwe sire hervy hym loked. He was bitelbrowed and baberlipped, with two blered eighen; And [lik] a letheren purs lolled hise chekes Wel sidder than his chyn; thei chyveled for elde; And as a bondeman[nes] bacon his berd was [yshave]. With an hood on his heed, a hat above, In a [torn] tabard of twelf wynter age; But if a lous couthe [lepe, I leve and I trowe], She sholde noght [wandre] on that wel[ch]e, so was it thredbare!(Langland 1988, Passus 5, lines 188–97)13 [Then came Covetousness; I can’t describe him, So hungrily and hollow Sir Harvey looked. He was beetle-browed and blubber-lipped with two bleary eyes; And like a leather purse lolled his cheeks Over his chops beneath his chin—they churned from age. And like a bondman’s bacon, his beard was shaved; 12  Interestingly, the General Prologue contains another moment that imagines scholars as having thin coats. This moment appears in Friar’s portrait. Unlike the Clerk, Huberd the Friar is “nat lyk a cloysterer / With a thredbare cope, as is a povre scoler” but is more “lyk a maister or a pope” (I 259-60). In a striking contrast to the Clerk, the narrator adds that “Of double worstede was his semycope / That rounded as a belle out of the presse” [Of doubled worsted was his short cloak / Which was rounded [because of his large stomach] like a bell out of a mold] (I 261-62). Again, we see the outermost article of clothing matching the body underneath it. Huberd’s bell-shaped body, made even thicker with expensive “double worsted” cloth, seems to offer evidence of his non-scholar status. 13  I have silently modernized Kane and Donaldson’s yogh and thorn by using “gh” and “th,” respectively, and have also changed the “u” to a “v.” The italics are my own.

86 

J. ADAMS

With a hood on his head, a hat on top, In a torn tabard twelve winters’ age. Unless a louse could really leap, believe you me, She wouldn’t go walking on that weave, it was so threadbare.](Langland 2006, Passus 5, lines 188–197)

Avarice is no Clerk: he is older and seems physically deformed. But like the Clerk, he is “hollow,” wears a “threadbare” coat, and has no visible source of income, and their similar appearance highlights the ways these particular external markers could produce conflicting meanings. Hollowness and tattered outwear in one instance confirm a character’s moral decay and in another denote scholarly virtue. That the narrator spends so much time dwelling on the Clerk’s dedication to knowledge suggests his own awareness of how easily one might interpret a thin body and torn robe as markers of covetousness rather than as a rejection of materiality. Even more often than looking at the Clerk’s physical form and unkempt cloak, readers turn to the Clerk’s books to make a link between the Clerk’s anti-materialist stance and his intellectual commitments. Again, the narrator’s description lends itself to that reading in its implicit contrast between books and other objects of status such as expensive clothes: For hym was levere have at his beddes heed Twenty bookes clad in blak or reed Of Aristotle and his philosophie Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. (I 293–6) [For he would rather have at the head of his bed Twenty books bound in black or red Of Aristotle and his philosophy Than rich robes, or a fiddle, or an elegant psaltery.]

This cause-and-effect structure seems to confirm the Clerk’s scholarly dedication—the Clerk repudiates robes “because” he would rather have knowledge, an abstraction made concrete by the books of Aristotle. For many, these books have become a signature marker of the Clerk’s dedication to the life of the mind over his love of worldly objects. Thus, Michael Raby, in a recent Chaucer Review piece, argues that the Clerk’s Tale takes as its focus “the formative power of habit,” a subject presumably informed by the Clerk’s own books (Raby 2013, 224). Raby’s connection of the Clerk to Aristotle echoes that of Jerome Taylor, who, turning to the General Prologue, refers to the Clerk as “a long-time

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

87

student of logic and a devotee of Aristotle and his philosophy” (Taylor 1975, 364).14 For Raby, Taylor, and other readers, the Clerk’s connection to his books (real or imagined) is one of engagement with the realist philosophy that lies in their pages. Yet at a time when a manuscript could fetch the same value as a year’s wages, volumes of Aristotle also functioned as material investments. Clad in red and black and never named—which books of Aristotle are they?— these desired volumes bear a striking resemblance to the “robes riche” that the Clerk rejects; they are beautiful objects that the Clerk either owns or covets. I stress “covets” here because we cannot prove that the Clerk’s desire for Aristotle translates into his ownership of twenty volumes.15 As other scholars have noted, the cost of these volumes would be prohibitive for a poor scholar (see Briggs 2014, 201). Alternately (and again to cite Briggs), these books could have been borrowed, as “fellows of colleges regularly borrowed books from their college library” (Briggs 2014, 199).16 Nevertheless, whatever the status of these particular books, the Clerk clearly owns some volumes, the narrator assuring us that “al that he myghte of his freendes hente, / On bookes and on lernynge he it spente” (I 299–300) [everything that he could get from his friends / he spent on books and learning]. Thus, ultimately, while the Clerk’s books might reflect of a mind hungry for knowledge, they also represent a vast amount of wealth. And books that contained commentaries on Aristotle were popular securities.17 Balliol MS 91, Walter Burley’s glossing of Aristotle’s writings about the natural world, found its way into a loan chest six times between 1358 and 1372,

14  Raby echoes Taylor when he claims: “As a reader of Aristotle, the Clerk would be familiar with how important the Aristotelian concept of hexis—translated by the medieval Latin habitus—was for medieval ethical theory” (Raby 2013, 225). For other readers who highlight his books, see footnote 2 above. 15  A desire for books does not definitively indicate ownership. Yet while we can’t prove that the Clerk actually has the twenty volumes he covets, the portrait insists that he has spent his money on manuscripts. 16  Briggs here is talking about books issued to students by their colleges. See Parkes 1992. These borrowed books were sometimes placed into loan chests by scholars who had them in their possession. See Lovatt 1993. 17  Other books that scholars frequently used for deposit were glossed copies of the Bible, Peter Lombard’s Sentences, legal books such as Gratian’s Decretum and Justinian’s Code, and medical manuals.

88 

J. ADAMS

and it was also appraised (on Folio 5) with a value of 26 shillings.18 Lawrence de Thornhill repeatedly used a commentary on Aristotle by Ibn Rushd (or Averroes), now Balliol MS 114, to secure several loans between 1324 and 1329.19 A scholar with a mostly indecipherable name (possibly “Snayton”) placed Merton MS 277, a commentary by Aquinas on Aristotle, into the Vaughn-Hussey Chest in 1423. 20 Merton MS 280, which contains several different commentaries on Aristotle, was used as collateral by a scholar whose name has been fully erased in the manuscript. And Merton MS 281, originally a two-volume collection of commentaries on Aristotle and Astronomy, was put repeatedly into the Lincoln Chest by a Master John Lok, a fellow from the late fourteenth century (Thomson 2009, 217–18). As Malcolm Parkes bluntly put it, books were “a portable form of capital, and many scholars made the investment when they could afford it” (Parkes 1984, 409). Most, if not all, of the texts I have examined—either directly or through catalog descriptions—are the types of texts owned by the town’s scholars and colleges. In the end, by presenting a Clerk who spends money on books and covets volumes of Aristotle, Chaucer imagines a character fully embedded in the economic life of Oxford. The cash value of books did not just support individual scholars but also played a central role in the infrastructure at Oxford University.21 By the fourteenth century, the University operated at least sixteen loan chests, which together represented “the largest of the university’s assets” (Aston and Faith 1984, 283).22 Kept together at the Oxford University’s congregation house, the chests likely had a collective value of about £1300, a sum that exceeded the value of university’s landholdings with the extra benefit of being in a highly liquid form (Aston and Faith 1984, 283).23 18  I have examined Balliol MS 91 and seen this caucio myself. For a full description of the manuscript, see Mynors 1963, 74–5. 19  Mynors describes the cauciones in his Catalogue (Mynors 1963). Thornhill became a fellow at Balliol sometime between 1327 and 1328 (see Emden 1866, vol. 3). 20  I have examined Merton MS 277 but not 280. For a full description of these manuscripts, see Thomson 2009, 215–17. 21  For an overview of the loan chest system, see Aston and Faith 1984, 265–310. 22  Before the construction of the Congregation House in the early thirteenth century, the chests were held at St. Frideswide’s Priory, which was on Jury Road and is now the site of Christ Church Cathedral (Aston and Faith 1984, 279). 23  Although calculating value in today’s terms proves difficult, it is fair to say that this sum is at least the equivalent of five million dollars, and in all likelihood (when measured for purchasing power) worth even more.

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

89

The types of books circulating through these chests were not fancy presentation volumes but collections of standard teaching materials that, with a few exceptions, matched Oxford’s educational curriculum. Although the loan chests started in the early thirteenth century, the practice of using books as collateral in the chests increased dramatically in the fourteenth century, and academics relied on them both for small-scale borrowing and for more substantial loans. These latter loans were often made by university officials, who could borrow funds to cover various expenses.24 By reading the Clerk’s love of books against his other tendencies, we can start to see the ways education was entangled in the practice and discourse of economic exchange. The closing lines of his General Prologue portrait highlight the monetized aspects of teaching: But al be that he was a philosophre, Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre; ............. And bisily gan for the soules preye Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye. Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede, Noght o word spak he moore than was neede, And that was seyd in forme and reverence, And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence; Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche. (I 297–8, 301–308) [But even though he was a philosopher, Nevertheless he had but little gold in his; strongbox; ............. And diligently did pray for the souls Of those that gave him the wherewithal to attend the schools. He took most care and paid most heed to study. He spoke not one word more than was needed. And that was said with due formality and respect, And short and lively and full of elevated content; His speech was consonant with moral virtue. And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.] 24  Balliol MS 42, which contains the second part of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologica, was deposited into a chest by a Fellow at Balliol in order to cover “pro communis quas expendebat [dicta?] communitas in septimana in qua fuit festum Ramis palmarum” [what it spent for the community in a week in which was the feast of Palm Sunday] (Mynors 1963, 30).

90 

J. ADAMS

Here, the economies of the educational process come to the fore. Friends and family members fund the Clerk in exchange for his prayers, and he in turn spends his “litel gold” on his books and his education.25 This idea of a one-for-one exchange extends to the Clerk’s measured use of his own knowledge. Just as he keeps his “litel golde” shut in his coffer, he will not speak one word more than is “neede.” From our contemporary vantage point, where electronic search engines make information seem cheap and universally available, we tend to read the final line of this passage as a marker of the Clerk’s modesty and reserve. “And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche,” [And gladly would he learn and gladly teach] becomes proof that the Clerk teaches and learns for love of knowledge. Yet in fourteenth-century Oxford, the price of knowledge dissemination was explicit. Upper level academics earned much of their livelihood from teaching, and they got paid for their services directly by their students. Thus, while the Clerk’s tendency to reserve his speech might be due to modesty, it is a modesty that also makes good business sense. I, myself, would gladly learn and teach, although like my colleagues I would not do the second of these without compensation. In this, both the Clerk and I offer a sharp contrast to the Parson, whose teaching truly comes without any idea of cash remuneration: He was also a lerned man, a clerk, That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche. (I 480–82) [He was also a learned man, a scholar, Who would preach Christ’s gospel truly; He would devoutly teach his parishioners.]

Here we meet another clerk, one clearly labeled as a scholar and yet one who also gives “of his offryng and eek of his substaunce” (I 489) [some of his offering and also some of his income] freely to those in his flock. As “a lerned man” and “a clerk,” this parson has seemingly followed the same educational trajectory as our “Clerk of Oxenford.” Yet in a divergence from the Clerk, the Parson provides an example of learning coupled with well-directed poverty. Moreover, unlike the Clerk’s starved and reedy thinness, an emaciation that calls attention to itself, the Parson seems to 25  Notably, prayers were also required for academics who secured loans from the loan chests. See the statutes for the Selton Chest (Gibson 1931, 164).

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

91

possess no body at all; the narrator either ignores it or fails to see the Parson’s body in favor of his good works. In the end, it is the Parson who seems (to repurpose Jill Mann) “remote alike from material concerns and worldly distractions” (Mann 1973, 13). Unlike the Clerk, he resides in the world yet does not seem of it.26

4.3   “Hire Olde Coote” Whereas the Clerk’s General Prologue portrait opens up the complicated educational economies of fourteenth-century Oxford University, a place where books were prized both for the knowledge they contained and, at the same time, for their cash value, the Clerk’s self-presentation in his own Prologue and Tale are less ambiguous and work to obfuscate the monetary exchanges that subtend intellectual labor.27 With his abject protagonist, Griselda, the Clerk takes any hints of his own self-denial to an absurd extreme and models an asceticism that the Clerk himself admits is unattainable. Like the Clerk, Griselda is marked by insufficient outerwear and by service to a tyrannical master—in Griselda’s case this is Walter, in the Clerk’s case, Petrarch.28 Yet unlike the Clerk, Griselda’s denial of material goods is complete, and her divorce from worldly objects seems to allow her to attain a higher moral/intellectual state of being. The Clerk, who cannot fully abandon his love of the material world, would rather have twenty books of Aristotle than “robes riche,” a trade that effectively swaps one set of expensive items for another. By contrast, Griselda thinks nothing of casting off her jewel-encrusted finery and returning with a simple “smok” to her father’s house. Thus, by aligning himself with Griselda, the Clerk attempts to further his own presentation as a self-abased intellectual.  Many thanks to Nancy Bradbury for calling the Parson to my attention.  Reevaluating any pilgrim through the lens of a tale can prove problematic as the Tales cannot be definitively matched with tellers. Such readings also run the risk of conjuring a psychological depth for the storyteller, a depth that may or may not be there. Nevertheless, the Clerk’s interruptions of his own story suggest a tighter link that is usual between pilgrim and narrative, and it also points toward an inner landscape that Chaucer imagines for the Clerk. 28  This Clerk/Griselda alignment in turn helps us read the story of Griselda as, again to quote Carolyn Dinshaw, a “story of translation” (Dinshaw 1989, 132). This connection to a textual tradition allows Griselda’s abject body to become a signifying field on which the messy battles of textual movement and interpretation can take place. For another reading of Griselda and a history of the Griselda story, see Chap. 3, by Ann W. Astell and Anne WinstonAllen, above. 26 27

92 

J. ADAMS

Yet as with the General Prologue, this link fails as the real world (and the Clerk’s self-confessed desire for it) inevitably intrudes. The Clerk’s affiliation with his heroine starts even before he begins to speak and comes as the Host begins to reiterate some of the same tropes found in the General Prologue portrait. This happens most clearly when Harry Bailey calls attention to the Clerk’s quietness: “Sire Clerk of Oxenford,” oure Hooste sayde, Ye ryde as coy and stille as dooth a mayde Were newe spoused, sittynge at the bord; This day ne herde I of youre tonge a word. (IV 1–4) [Sir Clerk of Oxford, our Host said, You ride as demure and quiet as does a maid Who is just married and sitting at the banquet table; This day I heard not one word from your tongue.]

Later in the tale, the Clerk’s tattered cloak will find its counterpart in Griselda’s filthy garments and small coat. But in this passage, Harry emphasizes the Clerk’s “bride-like reserve,” a description that doubles down on the General Prologue’s image of a scholar who speaks no more than required and anticipates the tale’s modest and espoused protagonist. By reframing the Clerk’s silence as bride-like, Harry casts it as a positive quality of polite reserve and not as a refusal by the Clerk to engage with the pilgrimage. Soon after this, Harry pivots from imagining the quiet Clerk as feminine to reading him as preoccupied with intellectual thoughts. Again, this reading firmly casts the Clerks as above worldly concerns. While the Clerk’s reserve might appear bride-like, its true source, it seems, lies in the Clerk’s proclivity for mental labor: I trowe ye studie aboute som sophyme .................. For Goddes sake, as beth of bettre cheere! It is no tyme for to studien here Telle us som myrie tale, by youre fey! (IV 5, 7–9). [I suppose you are thinking about some logical problem; .................. For God’s sake, cheer up! It is no time to study here. Tell us some merry tale, by your faith!]

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

93

Here the Host explains away the Clerk’s silence as a focus on a philosophical problem that absorbs him; this mental work has not only stopped him from speaking but also contributed to his seemingly poor physical state; he is not in good “cheere.” Harry also accuses the Clerk of studying “here” (i.e., on the pilgrimage), yet another means by which academic labor becomes detached from the material world and reassigned to the world of logical propositions, or “sophyme.” Because Harry’s presentation of clerical study depends entirely on intellect, it involves no books, paper, or other material tools and thus becomes something one might do while riding a horse far away from any specific location. Just as the Host’s request for the Clerk to step away from his academic labor opens up a distinction between the cerebral, academic world of clerks and a material world of other pilgrims, so too does the Clerk’s politely packaged refusal double down on this separation. Yes, he will gladly tell a tale, but not from any menial source: his story is from another clerk, namely Petrarch, whose . . . . . . rethorike sweete Enlumyned al Ytaille of poetrie, As Lynyan dide of philosophie, Or lawe, or oother art particuler. (IV 32–5) [. . . . . . sweet rhetoric Illuminated all Italy with poetry As Lynyan (Giovanni da Legnano) did with philosophy Or law, or another specialized field of study.]

In this short encomium, the Clerk goes beyond simple praise of Petrarch’s verses, in order to embed the older poet in a larger academic tradition. As David Wallace notes, some of Chaucer’s humor in this moment comes from the reassignment of Griselda’s story to a logician: “It seems, then, that in giving the Griselde story to an emaciated Aristotelian, Chaucer is enjoying an academic joke at Petrarch’s expense” (Wallace 1999, 292). Yet this joke itself functions to reinforce the initial boundaries laid out by the Host, boundaries that distinguish academic discourse and labor from life in the “real world.” On the one hand, the Clerk tells a tale in contest for a meal, something he clearly needs. On the other, by describing his engagement as one with Petrarch, the Clerk attempts to repackage his part of the tale-telling challenge as a game of intellectual investments, one in which he gets to engage the abstraction of Petrarch’s book-less rhetoric.

94 

J. ADAMS

The Clerk’s Prologue thus delivers a two-step punch. Harry opens by foregrounding the Clerk’s scholarly and academic preoccupations, his study of some “sophism” overriding his physical desires. The Clerk himself then reinscribes this tale within an Italian humanist tradition dominated by Petrarch. Together these rhetorical acts frame the Clerk’s seemingly reluctant participation in the tale-telling act as an ethically grounded choice rather than as part of a competition for supper. What follows is a tale that explores this body-intellect divide. Griselda is no scholarly Clerk, yet her ability to negate her own will and adopt an indifference to the material world garners the same moral praise often ascribed to her emaciated narrator. The Clerk himself repeatedly makes a connection between Griselda’s self-denial and her moral virtue: But for to speke of vertuous beautee, Thanne was she oon the faireste under sonne; For povreliche yfostred up was she, No likerous lust was thurgh hire herte yronne. (IV 211–14, italics added) [But to speak of virtuous beauty Then was she the fairest of all under sun; Because she was raised in poverty No sensual desire had run through her heart.]

The Clerk here credits Griselda’s virtue to her deprivation: she has no lust “for povreliche yfostred up was she.” Or, put slightly differently, sensual desire cannot exist when one lacks material objects. Even when elevated to a condition of material wealth, Griselda remains committed to her mental state and unmoved by the gain or loss of any worldly object or person. In the end, she is rewarded for disregarding all physical pains or pleasures, except for those that function as an extension of Walter’s will. But as Chaucer and the Clerk know all too well, embodied people cannot embrace intellectual life to this degree, and the tale ends with the Clerk more or less denying that a “Griselda” could exist outside of an imaginary space. The terms he uses for this are particularly telling, however, as they bring us back to the images of money and exchange that dominate the Clerk’s own General Prologue portrait: It were ful hard to fynde now-a-dayes In al a toun Grisildis thre or two; For if that they were put to swiche assayes,

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

95

The gold of them hath now so bad de alayes With bras, that though the coyne be fair at ye, It wolde rather breste a-two than plye. (IV 1164–69) [I would be very difficult to find now-a-days In all the town Griseldas three or two; For if they were put to such tests, Their gold of them has now been so badly debased With brass, that though the coin be fair to look at, It would rather break in two rather than bend.]

The Clerk’s skepticism of anyone’s ability to be a Griselda here takes the form of a fantasy/phobia of commodification. For the Clerk, the true gold of a Griselda is hard to find; instead, like fake coins, women break when they are tested. Tellingly, the Clerk deploys this metaphor just before he repudiates Griselda herself, uttering these closing words before he asks the Wife of Bath to sing a song, and also before a similar tale (one set in the same geographical location with many of the same narrative structures) is told by someone who openly trades in worldly goods, namely the Merchant.29 This returns me to my opening claims about Chaucer, who in this moment once again collapses the distinction between the life-of-the-mind and the economics that make this life possible. For while the fictional Griselda might offer a disembodied ideal, and while this idea might match the Clerk’s own philosophical investments, the Clerk can only value this ideal in economic terms. In this final moment, then, Griselda becomes a gold coin, a storehouse of value to be exchanged, traded, and used in a tale-telling contest with a tangible reward: a meal that promises to put some flesh on the Clerk’s own self-starved frame.

4.4   Conclusions (with a Heavy Dose of Editorial) If academics continue to overlook the Clerk’s worldly investments, we do so at the expense of a fuller picture of him and his tale. To follow this path also betrays our own resistance to thinking of higher education in economic terms. The financial burden of college has continued to shift to 29  This pairing of Clerk with Merchant is repeated in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue when the Wife, herself a merchant, marries her fifth husband Jankin, an Oxford clerk.

96 

J. ADAMS

students themselves, who have collateralized their bodies and their future earnings, in order to obtain a university degree. Yet academics often greet this phenomenon as either intrinsic to the present-day experience or distain the ways economic terms have crept into our institutions. Rising university costs have prompted a collective, national soul-searching about the value of a degree itself and the ways it might provide specific job training.30 Rather than hold on to our nostalgia for a dreamy (and imaginary) past in which students did not need to make clear connections between their university training and their post-college employment, we need to join this soul-searching and think collectively about the economics that structure our own profession. To recognize the economic pressures that shaped the medieval spaces of higher education and the bodies that inhabited such spaces does not need to take away from historical narratives that focus on the longue durée of academic thought. Instead, it allows us to view our own participation in economic life more fully, clearly and, above all, intellectually.

References Manuscripts

and

Manuscript Descriptions

Oxford, Balliol College, MS 42. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 91. Oxford, Balliol College, MS 114. Oxford, Merton College, MS 277. Oxford, Merton College, MS 280. Oxford, Merton College, MS 281. Mynors, R.A.B. 1963. Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College, Oxford. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Statuta Antiqua Universitatis Oxoniensis. 1931. Ed. S.  Gibson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Thomson, R.M. 2009. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts of Merton College, Oxford with a Description of the Greek Manuscripts by N. G. Wilson. Cambridge: D S. Brewer.

30  The appearance of UnCollege, an organization that promotes a “gap year” and also embraces the idea that one might not need a college degree, is only one product of this rising interest in cheaper alternatives to higher education. See https://www.uncollege.org/

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

97

Primary Sources Chaucer, G. 1900. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ed. W.W. Skeat, 3rd and revised ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1987. The Clerk’s Tale. In The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.D. Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 2012. The Clerk’s Tale. In The Canterbury Tales, eds. R.  Boenig and A. Taylor, 2nd ed. Peterborough: Broadview Press. ———. 2019. The Canterbury Tales: Texts and Translations. [online] Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. Available at: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/ pages/text-and-translations Langland, W. 1988. In Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best, ed. G. Kane and E.T. Donaldson. Berkeley: Athlone Press. ———. 2006. In Piers Plowman: The Donaldson Translation, ed. E.  Robertson and S.H.A. Shepherd. New York: W. W. Norton.

Secondary Sources Adams, J. 2016. The History of Student Loans Goes Back to the Middle Ages. The Conversation, March 23. https://theconversation.com/ the-history-of-student-loans-goes-back-to-the-middle-ages-56326 Ashe, L. 2006. Reading Like a Clerk in the Clerk’s Tale. Modern Language Review 101 (4): 935–944. https://doi.org/10.2307/20467019. Aston, T.H., and R.  Faith. 1984. University and College Endowments. In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1: The Early Schools, gen, ed. T.H. Aston, 265–310. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bennett, J.A.W. 1974. Chaucer at Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Briggs, C.F. 2014. The Clerk. In Historians on Chaucer: The ‘General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales, ed. S.H.  Rigby and A.J.  Minnis, 187–205. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof: oso/9780199689545.003.0011 Catto, J.I. 1984. Citizens, Scholars and Masters. In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. T.H.  Aston, 151–192. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Courtenay, W. 1987. Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1988. Teaching Careers at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Notre Dame: United States Subcommission for the History of Universities. Dinshaw, C. 1989. Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Eberle, Patricia. 1983. Commercial Language and the Commercial Outlook of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer Review 18 (2): 161–174.

98 

J. ADAMS

Emden, A.B. 1957–59. A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Evans, T.A.R. 1984. The Number, Origins, and Careers of Scholars. In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, gen, ed. T.H. Aston, 485–538. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Green, A.W. 1951. Chaucer’s Clerks and the Mediaeval Scholarly Tradition as Represented by Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon. ELH 18 (1): 1–6. https://doi. org/10.2307/2872043. Hackett, M.B. 1984. The University as a Corporate Body. In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1: The Early Oxford Schools, gen, ed. T.H.  Aston, 37–95. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Jones, H.S.V. 1912. The Clerk of Oxenford. PMLA 27 (1): 106–115. https:// doi.org/10.2307/456865. Kaye, J. 1998. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerby-Fulton, K. 2014. The Clerical Proletariat: The Underemployed Scribe and the Vocational Crisis. The Journal Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 17: 1–34. Lavezzo, K. 2011. The Minster and the Privy: Rereading The Prioress’s Tale. PMLA 126 (2): 363–382. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2011.126.2.363. Le Goff, J. 1980. Time, Work, and Culture. Trans. A. Goldhammer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lovatt, R. 1993. Two Collegiate Loan Chests. In Medieval Cambridge. Essays on the Pre-Reformation University, ed. P.  Zutshi, 129–165. Cambridge: Boydell Press. Mann, J. 1973. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, M. 2005. The Clerk’s Tale and the Scandal of the Unconditional. In Philosophical Chaucer, ed. Mark Miller, 216–248. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483363.007 Morse, J.M. 1958. The Philosophy of the Clerk of Oxenford. Modern Language Quarterly 19 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-19-1-3. Parkes, M.B. 1992. The Provision of Books. In The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 2: Late Medieval Oxford, gen, ed. T.H. Aston, 407–483. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Raby, M. 2013. The Clerk’s Tale and the Forces of Habit. Chaucer Review 47 (3): 223–246. https://doi.org/10.5325/chaucerrev.47.3.0223. Salter, H.E. ed. 1932. Registrum cancellarii Oxoniensis 1434–69, Oxford Historical Society, XCIII–IV. Oxford: Clarendon.

4  ON CHAUCER’S CLERK, HIS BOOKS AND THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 

99

Taylor, J. 1975. Frauncys Petrk and the Logyk of Chaucer’s Clerk. In Francis Petrarch Six Centuries Later: A Symposium, ed. A. Scaglione, 364–383. Chapel Hill: Department of Romance Languages. UnCollege Website. https://www.uncollege.org/ Wallace, D. 1999. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Freedom and Choice: Postnuptial Negotiation, the Flitch of Bacon Custom, and the Woe of Marriage in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and The Book of Margery Kempe Rosemary O’Neill 5.1   Introduction: The Road to Bridlington The Book of Margery Kempe (1436–8) narrates a number of extraordinary events, including its protagonist’s divine visions, her interrogation by powerful authority figures and her dramatic public expressions of emotion.1 Yet one of the Book’s most mundane events—the argument in which Margery and her husband John agree to change the terms of their marriage—might also be one of its most remarkable. We encounter the  This chapter is dedicated to Christina von Nolcken, my first teacher of Chaucer. Thanks to Jenny Adams, Megan Cook, Laurie Finke, Jennifer Jahner, and the Midwest Middle English Reading Group for invaluable feedback on various drafts of the essay, and to Sharon M. Rowley for her editorial encouragement and patience. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. 1

R. O’Neill (*) Department of English, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_5

101

102 

R. O’NEILL

couple walking on the road from York to Bridlington on a Friday in midsummer. John, unhappy with an eight-week sexual hiatus in their marriage, asks his wife to imagine the following scenario: Margery, yf her come a man wyth a swerd and wold smyte of myn hed les than I schulde comown kendly wyth yow as I have do befor, seyth me trewth of yowr consciens — for ye sey ye wyl not lye — whethyr wold ye suffyr myn hed to be smet of, er ellys suffyr me to medele wyth yow ayen as I ded sumtyme? (Windeatt 2000, Chapter 11, lines 712–6) [Margery, if there came a man with a sword and would smite off my head unless I should common naturally with you as I have done before, tell me the truth from your conscience — for you say you will not lie — whether would you suffer my head to be smote off or else suffer me to meddle with you again, as I did at one time?] (Staley 2001, 18)2

Margery’s answer—with great sorrow she tells him that she would rather see him dead than have sex with him again—simultaneously occupies the registers of tragedy and comedy, as does her husband’s laconic response: “Ye arn no good wyfe” [you are no good wife] (11.722). The discussion becomes even more fraught as John makes menacing sexual threats and Margery reveals that she has been praying for John’s death for years. Yet, a marriage counselor might be cheered by other elements of the exchange: both members of the couple freely offer their opinions to one another, and their frank expressions of fears and resentments do not seem to erode real affection, as revealed in John’s desire to continue to share meals with Margery (even after her confession of mariticidal ideation). Most impressively, both parties ultimately craft a mutually agreeable compromise by making a series of interlocking concessions. John agrees to allow Margery to take a vow of chastity, releasing her from her “marital debt”—the obligation to provide sex which had become odious to her. In exchange, she agrees to pay off his monetary debts before embarking on her pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She also gives up her practice of fasting on Fridays, so that he might enjoy her companionship at meals again; the bread and beer the couple carry at the outset of the episode serve to break their fast and effect their new agreement at its conclusion.

2  All future references to this text will be to these editions and will be given in the main text parenthetically by chapter and line number.

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

103

This last detail ensures that the events unfold with the elegant economy of a short story, reminding us of the self-consciousness of Kempe’s narrative as a literary representation, rather than an unmediated record of historical events (see Staley 1994 and Sidhu 2016). This representation nonetheless allows twenty-first-century readers a glimpse into the lived experience of marriage in fifteenth-century England. More specifically, it reveals the way that marriages struggled to contain the changing desires of their participants. While Kempe writes that she had once derived pleasure from sex with her husband (3.358), by the time of this argument, sex with him has become so loathsome to her “that sche had levar, hir thowt, etyn or drynkyn the wose, the mukke in the chanel, than to consentyn to any fleschly comownyng” [that she had rather, she thought, drink the ooze, the muck in the channel, than to consent to any fleshly commoning] (3.348–50). The problem is that the marriage contract does not accommodate these changes in her pleasure, desire and—ultimately—consent. Many brides in medieval England promised in their wedding vows to be “bonore and buxum in bedde and atte borde” [to be cheerful and obedient in bed and at the dinner table], and it is those specific obligations which she attempts to renegotiate here, withdrawing her obedience in bed but offering in its place cheerful companionship at meals.3 This chapter takes up the possibilities and limitations of such postnuptial negotiation of marital obligations in medieval England, as explored in The Book of Margery Kempe and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In these narratives, we find that texts associated with marriage, including the wedding vows and the oaths sworn in the bacon flitch custom, a popular wedding tradition, become cultural exemplars which both define the marriage contract and also provide partial, flawed scripts for the renegotiation of that contract. While these texts offer Margery the terms to revisit her marriage agreement, they inspire Chaucer to a more thoroughgoing critique of marriage as a form of contract. His imaginative renderings of marital renegotiations underscore the limitations that contracts impose on personal freedom, anticipating later feminist critiques of contract and choice.

3  See note 12, below, and the discussion of vows in the next section of this chapter. There is extensive textual variation in the form of the wedding vows in medieval England, but God’s vow to Margery, discussed below, gives a sense of a form of the ceremony familiar to her.

104 

R. O’NEILL

5.2   Marriage: Between Status and Contract It is through the hard-won mutual recognition of their divergent desires that Margery and John are able to open the terms of their marriage for renegotiation. Accordingly, the episode returns repeatedly to the vocabulary of desire to reconcile competing demands of what John wants, what Margery wants, and what God wills. “ … [G]rawnt me my desyr, and I schal grawnt yow yowr desyr” [ … Grant me my desire and I shall grant your desire] (11.746–7), John says, referring to his desire for companionship at the dinner table and Margery’s desire for a chaste marriage. In the eventual compromise, these desires become opportunities for choice. Each spouse surrenders one of their desires while maintaining another; he gets mealtime companionship but not sex, and she gets chastity but not fasting. She can go to Jerusalem, but she must pay him for the privilege. Within a legal and sacramental regime that sees the couple as one flesh in the eyes of God and one person in the eyes of the law, Margery and John struggle to establish these conditions of free contract. Indeed, in the opening scenario that John conjures, Margery’s bodily autonomy can only be imaginatively reclaimed in conjunction with his own death. Tellingly, Margery is able to revoke her agreement to offer sexual access to him by claiming what Carole Pateman has identified as a key element of the fiction of contract in liberal modernity: a notion of “property in the person” which enables individuals to alienate their labor and offer it for exchange (Pateman and Mills 2007). This concept allows her to cleave off elements of marital life, transforming her wifely labors (sex, companionship) into commodities that can be alienated and exchanged for other valued goods. In the liberal theory of contract, these exchanges constitute her as a free and autonomous person; no longer simply a wife who owes her husband the marital debt because of her gender and marital status, she is a free agent voluntarily contracting to negotiate and exchange goods as equals. In a sense, she rewrites the marital contract of gendered submission as a labor contract. In seizing the power of negotiation to assert her desires, Margery seems to have one foot firmly planted in the postmedieval world, in which liberal individualism is constituted, political theorists tell us, through the ability to make and keep contracts. The nineteenth-century legal scholar Henry Sumner Maine influentially theorized in English common law a transition “from status to contract,” by which he meant a transformation from feudal subjects whose identity is defined by submission to lord, king, and

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

105

God, to liberal subjects who freely choose their own more easily dissolved associations, retaining an identity distinct from them (Maine 1861, 170). Within this tradition of political thought, contracts both assume and create the autonomous liberal subject. As a legal contract, however, marriage presents a number of peculiar challenges: it cannot be renegotiated, its terms do not need to be specified, and neither party needs to understand its terms for it to be valid (Pateman 1988, 163–7). Indeed, marriage’s complex weaving together of individual choice and inviolable obligations make the institution an unstable binary of status and contract, according to feminist legal scholar Janet Halley (Halley 2010). Marriage becomes a wrinkle in time within the progress narrative of liberalism, a survival of feudal submission into the modern regime of voluntary contracts. This complexity emerges in the terms critics have used to describe Margery’s extraordinary renegotiation with John, as both a manumission and a marketplace negotiation (Delaney 1975, 112; Aers 1988, 96). Margery’s renegotiation of the marriage contract is nearly impossible to imagine within the medieval theory of marriage. Marriage was an irrevocable sacrament in medieval Christianity; while informal forms of separation were possible, divorce was unavailable (see Dunn 2013, 129, 138; and Elliott 1993). Margery’s gender makes the negotiation doubly unthinkable. She attempts to contract with her husband not only as a married person, but also as a married woman, bound by coverture, the legal principle which suspended the wife’s legal and economic rights during the duration of the marriage and conceptually assimilated the wife’s legal personhood to her husband’s.4 Among the rights the wife surrendered under coverture was the right to enter into contracts with her husband (Blackstone [1765] 1979, I:441). In other words, for men, marriage curtailed autonomy and the ability to make future contracts; they found themselves bound to their wives as a serf might be bound to a lord. For women under 4  William Blackstone defines coverture: “By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection and cover she performs everything; and is therefore called in our law-french a feme-covert; said to be covert-baron, under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called coverture” (Blackstone [1765] 1979, 1:430). Whether coverture actually existed in the Middle Ages as Blackstone describes is a matter of some debate (see Beard 1946, 77–95). Nonetheless, Elizabeth Fowler demonstrates that the concept of “unity of person” in marriage is clearly part of the conceptual imaginary of Middle English literature (Fowler 1995).

106 

R. O’NEILL

the legal regime of coverture, marriage limited legal agency more radically still. Yet, in this episode, Margery successfully asserts both bodily and economic autonomy, withdrawing her consent to some marital obligations (such as the marriage debt), while renewing her consent to others. In essence, she is able to reinstate conditions of contract even after the sacramental and legal restrictions of marriage have taken effect.

5.3   The Bacon Flitch Custom and Medieval Wedding Vows In a culture that figured marriage as an irrevocable lifelong commitment, and in which women’s marital subordination was written into their wedding vows, how does Kempe come to see her marriage as a contract with negotiable terms? Wedding customs in medieval England may have played a part, by foregrounding the issues of consent and individual choice through a process of temporally separated steps.5 Wedding vows like those used today—a series of elaborated promises spoken by the couple—first appear in the marriage liturgy of England in the mid-fourteenth century, furthering this development (Stevenson 1983, 82).6 The wedding ceremony in medieval England also often took place at the church door, a common location for commercial exchanges, and a liminal space emphasizing the hybrid nature of marriage as both a sacrament and a secular contract.7 One of the strongest pieces of evidence that marriage was seen by many as a contract subject to personal negotiation is the fact that individuals in later medieval England felt empowered to attach their own idiosyncratic conditions to marriage promises, as the rich field of scholarship on marriage disputes attests. Examples include a man who made his promise of marriage conditional on conceiving a child that night, and a woman

5  On the importance of consent to the medieval marriage ceremony, see McCarthy 2004, 19–50; and Farber 2006, 97–128. 6  Stevenson also introduces a helpful distinction between “active vows” (e.g. series of promises spoken by members of the couple in the present tense) and the “passive vows” preserved in the sponsalia portion of the ceremony, in which the vows are asked by the priest in the form of a question and the bride and groom simply affirm “I do” or “I will” (Stevenson 1983, 82). 7  The Wife of Bath’s five marriages took place at the church door (Chaucer 1987, III 6).

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

107

who made her promise contingent on her betrothed’s satisfactory sexual performance.8 The idea that marriage was a matter of personal choice was also promoted through the bacon flitch custom, a folk practice in which couples presented themselves a year and a day after their wedding to claim a side of bacon by  proving that they had not come to regret their choice of spouse. Records of the custom survive from two different locations in medieval England: Dunmowe in Essex and Wichenour in Staffordshire. These independent survivals suggest a still wider practice.9 The Dunmowe ceremony, in particular, captivated literary imaginations, as in Piers Plowman’s vivid description of marital disharmony: In ielousie ioyeless and iangelynge on bedde, Many a peire siþen þe pestilence han pliʒt hem togideres. The fruyt þat þei brynge forþ arn manye foule words; Haue þei no children but cheeste and choppes hem bitwene. Thouʒ þei do hem to Dunmowe, but if þe deuel helpe To folwen after þe flicche, fecche þei it neuere; But þei boþe be forswore, þat bacon þei tyne (Langland 1995, B.9.166–72). [In jealousy, joyless, and in jangling abed Many a pair since the pestilence have pledged their vows. The fruit that they bring forth are foul words; They have no children but chafing and exchanges of blows. Though they dare go to Dunmow, unless the Devil helps them, To vie for the flitch, they’ll never fetch it home; Unless they both lie under oath they’ll lose that bacon] (Langland et al. 2006).

Despite its widespread notoriety, little besides a basic outline is known about the original Dunmowe custom as practiced in the Middle Ages. Records indicate that it was awarded in 1445, 1467, 1510, 1701 and 1751, but it is only with the last event that a detailed record of the trial

 In neither case were the conditions met, but the first couple was deemed married anyway (Helmholz 1974, 51, 53). 9  On the general history of the bacon flitch custom, see Andrews 1877; Robertson-Scott 1909; and Steer 1951. 8

108 

R. O’NEILL

procedure, including the oath taken by the claimant, survives.10 Later discussions of the ceremony suggest a legalistic process involving testimony of neighbors and juries, but no medieval records of the Dunmowe procedure survive. Conflicting evidence makes it unclear whether the oath was sworn by both spouses or just the husband.11 More promising evidence survives from the bacon flitch ceremony as practiced in Wichenour. Claimants in this custom, instituted in the time of Edward III, recited a version of this oath, which remains carved over the fireplace in Wichenour Hall: Here ye, Sir Philip de Somervile, Lord of Wichenour, maynteyner and gyver of this Baconne, that I A. sythe I wedded B. my Wife, and sythe I had hyr in my kepyng, and at my wylle by a yere and a day after our mariage, I wold not have chaunged for none other, farer ne fowler; rycher ne powrer; ne for none other descended of gretter lynage; slepyng ne waking at noo tyme; and yf the seyd B. were sole and I sole, I wolde take her to be my wyfe before all the wymen of the worlde, of what condiciones soever they be, good or evylle, as help me God and hys Seyntys, and this flesh and all fleshes (Steer 1951, 6). [Hear ye, Sir Philip de Somervile, Lord of Wichenour, patron and giver of this bacon, that I, A., since I have wedded B. my wife, and since I have had her in my keeping, at my will by a year and a day after our marriage, I 10  The oath recorded on this occasion (sworn by both members of a couple who had been married seven years) reads as follows:

You shall swear by custom of confession, That you ne’er made nuptial transgression; Nor since you were married man and wife, By household brawls or contentious strife, Or otherwise in bed or at board, Offended each other in deed or in word; Or in a twelve months time and a day, Repented not in thought in any way; Or since the church clerk said “Amen,” Wish’t yourselves unmarried again, But continue true and desire, As when you joined hands in holy quire (Andrews 1877, 14). The custom’s revival and popularity in the twentieth century was furthered by William Ainsworth’s treatise-novel The Flitch of Bacon; or, The Custom of Dunmow (1899). 11  Andrews claims the oath was sworn only by the man (Andrews 1877, 13), and this is also suggested in the Wife of Bath’s reference to her husbands (but not herself) as potential claimants. Langland’s description suggests that it was sworn by both, however.

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

109

have not wished to exchange her for any other, prettier or uglier, richer or poorer, nor for any other descended of higher ancestry, at any time, asleep or awake. And if the said B. were single and I were single, I would take her for my wife over all the women of the world, of whatever condition they might be, good or evil, so help me God, his saints, and all living people.]

The sole surviving record of the ceremony, this oath suggests that the custom was linked intimately to the marriage vows, providing a chance to revisit the wedding ceremony and affirm consent. Twenty-first-century readers will quickly notice that the Wichenour oath echoes the language of the Sarum vows from the mid-fourteenth century, still familiar today: I N. take the N. to my wedded wyf to haue and to holde fro this day forwarde for bettere for wers for richere for pouerer: in sykenesse and in hele tyl dethe vs departe if holy chyrche it woll ordeyne and therto y plight the my trouthe [I N. take you N. to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part, if holy church ordains it, and thereto I plight you my troth].12 (Collins 1960, 47–48)

The Wichenour oath also echoes a phrase which commonly appeared in manuscripts of the medieval ceremony but has been lost in subsequent printed editions: the vow to take the spouse for “for farier or fowler,” that is, in beauty and ugliness. For example, in a fifteenth-century manuscript of the Sarum wedding service from Gloucestershire, the vows read: I N. take the N. to myn wedded wyf. To haue and to holde from þis day forward for beter for wers. For richere for porere. For fayrer for fowlere. In seknes and in helthe. til dethe us departe (London, BL Additional MS 30506, 27v). [I N. take thee, N., to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for fairer or fouler, in sickness and in health, until death parts us.]

12  The wife’s version, of course, has the additional vow of obedience: “I N. take the N. to my wedded housbonde to haue and to holde fro this day forwarde for better: for wors: for richer: for pouerer: in sykenesse and in hele: to be bonere and buxum in bedde and atte borde tyll dethe vs departhe if holy chyrche it wol ordeyne and therto I plight the my trouthe” (Collins 1960, 47–48).

110 

R. O’NEILL

The promise to take the spouse “fairer or fouler” also appears in records of the marriage ceremony from the York use.13 In The Book of Margery Kempe, when God the Father pledges his love to Margery on the occasion of their spiritual marriage in Rome, he does so using this additional wedding vow: “I take the, Margery, for my weddyd wife, for fayrar, for fowelar, for richar, for powerar, so that thu be buxom and bonyr to do what I byd the do” [I take you, Margery, for my wedded wife, for fairer, for fouler, for richer, for poorer, so that you be buxom and obedient to do what I bid you do] (35.2853–5).14 While surviving manuscripts attest a number of variations in the wedding vows, restating the tension between the vows as a received cultural form and an expression of individual volition, we can nonetheless see that the phrases “fairer or fouler” and “bonore and buxum” had widespread currency in medieval England and were closely associated with the marriage ceremony for Margery and her audience.15 The bacon flitch custom, in closely echoing the wedding vows, seems to suggest that consent can be revisited and the marriage vows can be renegotiated after the wedding has taken place. It obliquely acknowledges the possibility of changing spousal desire, but replaces the marriage vow’s commitment to accept inevitable vicissitudes of lived variation (sickness and health, fairer and fouler) with a series of choices for consideration (a fairer spouse or a fouler spouse). But while the custom may suggest the possibility of marital reconsideration, it provides limited guidance to couples looking to renegotiate their marriages. The bacon flitch ceremony does not provide an occasion for rewriting or dissolving the marriage contract. It does not even open a space for choice; in fact, it asks claimants to renounce choice. Indeed, the oath, unlike the wedding vow, takes place 13  See Henderson 1875, 27. The vow also appears in London, British Library (BL) Harley MS 873, 7v. 14  Windeatt’s edition glosses the phrase “for fayrar, for fowelar” as “for better, for worse” (Windeatt 2000, 192). I believe the phrase was interpreted more literally by medieval audiences, as will become clear in the course of this chapter: the Wichenoure flitch oath suggests the phrase applies to the spouse’s beauty, not fair fortune, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale also engages this phrase in terms of physical beauty. 15  For example, BL MSS Harley 2956, Royal 2.A.21, and Stowe 13 closely mirror the Sarum vows given above. But BL MS Royal 2.B.xi includes a strikingly different formulation of the vows. In this version, the husband promises “to loue, worshype holde and keep” his wife “in sekenes and in hele” only, and the wife takes this same vow and adds to it a vow to “be obedient and true,” as well as the traditional promise “to be boner and buksum yn bedde and att borde” (72v).

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

111

not in the semantic field of consent and choice but in the semantic field of desire and volition: “I wold” and “I wold not” are the actual elements that are sworn. The Wichenour oath rekindles in claimants a multiplicity of desires (for beauty, for nobility, for wealth) only to ask them to foreclose these possibilities by reducing their desires to a single unitary object in the spouse. The true function of the ceremony and its oath are thus the discipline and renunciation of desire. Margery and John’s negotiation, of course, attempts a much harder task: the ongoing accommodation of their evolving and diverging desires. As cultural exemplars, the wedding ceremony and bacon flitch custom offer mutually exclusive ideals of marriage. Both the wedding vows and the bacon flitch oath address themselves to the same tension: acknowledging the reality of change, while formally refusing the possibility of renegotiating the marriage contract. Yet, they offer opposing scripts for addressing the problem of changing individuals trapped in a static contract. The wedding vows demand continued performance of marital duties (such as cheerfulness and obedience) despite the vicissitudes of aging and the passage of time (sickness and health; richer or poorer). Conversely, the conditions that the bacon flitch oath demands—a spouse who does not regret the marriage or have second thoughts—imagines suspending the embodied experience of change which makes the vows necessary in the first place. By reducing the consent demanded by the wedding vows to a simple choice (you, above others), the bacon flitch ceremony ultimately forecloses the means by which the demands of the wedding vows might be met in the actual lived practice of marriage: through complaint, compromise, and renegotiation.

5.4   Negotiating Marriage in The Wife of Bath’s Tale The Wife of Bath’s Tale depicts the marriage negotiations of yet another unhappy couple: the loathly old woman and the sullen young rapist-knight who desperately hopes to escape his sworn obligation to marry her. In a situation closely parallel to Margery Kempe’s on the road to Bridlington, the rapist-knight experiences marital obligation as a physical constraint on his body, and pleads to renegotiate in terms that echo hers: “taak al my good and lat my body go” [take all my goods and let my body go]

112 

R. O’NEILL

(Chaucer 1987, III 1061).16 After this point, however, the two narratives part ways. While Margery is able to secure the escape she seeks, The Wife of Bath’s Tale ends with a portrait of union rather than dissolution, as the rapist-knight is delivered from this fate through his wife’s magical transformation into a beautiful woman who fulfills his desires. Emma Lipton has recently read the Tale’s interlocking contracts as allowing tactical feminist coalition-building (Lipton 2019). In the pages which follow, I argue that Chaucer, by means of imaginative engagement with the bacon flitch custom, also explores the limits of contracts to provide an escape from the gendered politics of domination. The Tale’s plot takes shape around elements from both wedding vows and the bacon flitch ceremony. The announced timeline for the rapist-­ knight’s initial penitential quest, a year and a day, evokes the temporal distance of the flitch custom from the wedding.17 After successfully completing the quest, the rapist-knight’s sullen complaints about his new wife—“Thou art so loothly, and so oold also,/ And therto comen of so lough a kynde” [Thou art so loathsome, and so old also, / And moreover descended from such low born lineage] (III 1100–1)—echo the elements of the Wichenour oath (fairer or fouler; richer or poorer; high lineage or low degree). Even more strikingly, the old woman invites him, as in the bacon flitch ceremony, to view marriage through the rhetoric of choice. While the old woman dispatches the rapist-knight’s final complaint about her lineage with a long disquisition on the arbitrary nature of social rank, she addresses his other objections to her physical appearance by offering him an opportunity to exchange her for another, fairer version of herself: “Chese now,” quod she, “oon of thise thynges tweye: To han me foul and old til that I deye, And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf, And nevere yow displese in al my lyf, Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair, 16  All subsequent references to Chaucer’s works are to this edition. The Canterbury Tales are cited by fragment and line number. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer website: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ text-and-translations 17  Additionally, a year and a day was a common time frame for changes in legal status, such as manumission, to take effect in medieval England; Emma Lipton has argued that the addition of a day to the expected time frame of one year moves the events of the Tale out of the realm of romance and into the realm of legal discourse (Lipton 2019, 340).

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

113

And take youre aventure of the repair That shal be to youre hous by cause of me, Or in som oother place, may wel be. Now chese yourselven, wheither that yow liketh.” (III 1219–1227) [“Choose now,” she said, “one of these two things: To have me ugly and old until I die, And be to you a true, humble wife, And never displease you in all my life, Or else you will have me young and fair, And take your chances of the crowd That shall be at your house because of me, Or in some other place, as it may well be. Now choose yourself, whichever you please.”]

In playfully addressing the rapist-knight’s complaints by turning them into opportunities for choice, the old woman turns her personal qualities of beauty and fidelity into commodities (e.g. property in the person) for exchange. The Tale’s rendition of the bacon flitch ceremony thus vividly embraces and literalizes the ceremony’s vocabulary of exchange, as the alternatives imagined by the bacon flitch oath become simple choices for the rapist-knight’s consideration. The choices she offers implicitly balance diverging spousal desires, trading off wins and concessions for both parties. Either he gets the gratification of her beauty and she gets sexual freedom, or he gets the satisfaction of her fidelity but she maintains freedom over her appearance. The Tale, surprisingly, uses this vocabulary of choice to turn away from negotiation, thus instituting an ideal of marital harmony as convergence rather than compromise. Using the most tender (loving) language in the whole Tale—“my lady and my love, and wyf so deere”—and calling her by the terms he had earlier rejected (III 1230), the rapist-knight returns the choice to her: I put me in youre wise governance; Cheseth youreself which may be moost plesance And moost honour to yow and me also. I do no fors the wheither of the two, For as yow liketh, it suffiseth me. (III 1231–1235) [I put me in your wise governance; Choose yourself which may be most pleasure And most honor to you and me also.

114 

R. O’NEILL

I do not care which of the two, For as it pleases you, is enough for me.]

In effect, by veering away from a moment of imagined exchange, he performs the bacon flitch oath. His agreement to not exchange her for a comelier version of herself also hearkens back to the wedding vow on which the oath is based: to accept her for fairer, for fouler, in both beauty and ugliness. As other critics have noted, this has the effect of demonstrating his previously absent consent to the marriage, essentially turning this exchange into a belated wedding ceremony (Burger 2019, 207). When the rapist-knight surrenders choice to her, their nagging marital problems magically disappear, at least momentarily, in the convergence of their desires: “For as yow liketh, it suffiseth me” [For as it pleases you, is enough for me] (III 1235). This moment can be read as successful fulfillment of his penitential quest, a repudiation of his earlier rape through the acknowledgment of women as desiring creatures whose choices he is prepared to respect.18 There is a sleight of hand at work here, however, which reveals how a rhetoric of choice can be used to manufacture consent. The choices the old woman offers the rapist-knight do not encompass all of the possibilities of his desire; notably, they address some of his complaints about his bride (she is loathly and old) but not others (her lineage). Nonetheless, by accepting the limitations of the choice set offered to him, all of which include the obligation to be married to her, he effects his consent to the union. In essence, he does not even need to make a choice here to accept his status as a married man; the mere fact of being presented with a choice is enough to secure his consent. Once some of his objections are made into choices, he accepts the limitations these choices impose on his desires. The rhetorical function of the choice offered to the rapist-knight is thus to structure his desire by persuading him to accept constraints on that desire. The ideal mutuality envisioned by the rapist-knight is quickly replaced with a darker vision of marital unity as coverture in which female autonomy becomes unthinkable. Upon finding control over her personal appearance returned to her, the old woman exclaims: “Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie […] / Syn I may chese and governe as me lest?” [Then have I gotten mastery of you … / Since I may choose and govern as I please?] (III 1236–7). Yet, the only mastery under discussion pertains to choices  For a discussion of the politics of rape in the Tale, see Harris 2017.

18

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

115

over her own body. The fact that such control becomes conflated with control over her husband in a thoroughgoing confusion of autonomy and domination suggests an intensely literal interpretation of coverture, as if the two spouses are in fact two souls in one body.19 When her body is imagined as coterminous with his, then mastery over her own body becomes by extension mastery over him. In this way the Tale subtly redefines autonomy as domination. In literalizing coverture in this way, Chaucer draws readers’ attention to its inadequacy as a model for an ongoing agreement between two people with separate bodies, wills, and desires. The marriage contract imposes still further constraints on the old woman, as the rapist-knight’s choices narrow, but the old woman’s evaporate, the moment he consents. Notably, the Tale does not reveal her choice after the rapist-knight’s offer—that is, which option, fair and faithless or foul and faithful, she would prefer. Instead, having become his wife and his love—the thing she had declared that she, specifically, wants more than all the ore in the ground (III 1064–6)—any trace of her contingent, shifting, and specific desires are replaced with the misogynistic conceit of an overarching desire for mastery shared by all women.20 This substitution sets up a further one: the reinscription of the rapist-knight’s desires as her own. The original accord that gives her sovereignty over her appearance is immediately replaced with a new deal: she will be the most beautiful woman in the world, or else the rapist-knight can kill her: And but I be to-morn as fair to seene As any lady, emperice, or queene, That is bitwixe the est and eke the west, Dooth with my lyf and deth right as yow lest (III 1245–8). [And unless I am tomorrow morning as fair to be seen As any lady, empress, or queen That is between the east and also the west Do with my life and death right as you please.]

He has nominally conceded choice to her, but her choices subtly become limited to what would be pleasing to him: “And she obeyed hym in every 19  For a rich discussion of the confusion of mastery and sovereignty in the Tale, and how this confusion generates desire, see Scala 2009. See also Thomas 2006, 89; and Crane 1994, 123–26. 20  I am indebted here to Suzanne Edwards’ powerful and subtle reading of the dynamics of desire of the Tale (Edwards 2016, 99–100).

116 

R. O’NEILL

thyng / That myghte doon hym plesance or likyng” [And she obeyed him in every thing / That might do him pleasure or enjoyment] (III 1255–6). With this fulfillment of the medieval wedding ceremony’s gender-specific vow of obedience (bonore and buxum) comes a definitive shift from the earlier focus on her pleasure (“for as yow liketh” III 1235) to his. Operating within the terms offered by the bacon flitch ceremony, the keying of her choices to his desires for beauty and fidelity becomes inevitable. In other words, beneath a superficial discourse of female mastery, the old woman has won only the right to submit, to maintain her beauty to a standard that pleases her husband rather than herself, and to restrain her sexuality. Moreover, she has been seduced by a hollow vocabulary of “choice” to consider the exercise of these prerogatives a form of power. The paradox of The Wife of Bath’s Tale’s ending—that the old woman secures power just to surrender it, capitulating to the traditional gender dynamics of marriage—troubles many feminist critics of the Tale.21 But I would like to suggest that such discomfort is by design, leading readers to recognize the conceptual limitations of choice as a vehicle for personal autonomy. Through narrative gaps and tonal incoherence, Chaucer calls attention to the fiction that exercising choice is coextensive with enjoying freedom or power (or in the Tale’s parlance, “maistrie”). The old woman’s power of choice does not liberate her from traditional gender politics because her apparent freedom of choice is in fact key to the patriarchal contract. As Carole Pateman puts it, “contractual patriarchy both denies and presupposes women’s freedom and could not operate without this supposition” (Pateman 1988, 231–232). Chaucer thus reveals to readers patriarchy’s darkest fantasy: that the choice to enter marriage is consent to the gendered domination that follows; that women will their own domination. Chaucer, in this way, brings to vivid life Pateman’s most subtle point: it is not just that the contract stands in an unstable binary with relationships of domination, it is that the contract is inevitably implicated in those very structures of domination. The Wife of Bath’s Tale reveals the ideological work of contracts—including the marriage “contract”—to disguise subordination under the semblance of freedom 21  As Elizabeth Robertson puts it: “the Tale ends with a utopian vision of companionate marriage that only incompletely resolves the questions of the role of hierarchy and subordination in marriage” (Robertson 2003, 176). Jill Mann’s more optimistic assessment of the Tale’s happy ending assumes it is achieved by mutually reinforcing acts of submission (Mann 2002, 74).

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

117

(Pateman  1988;  Pateman and Mills 2007). To reconcile marriage with liberal autonomy is to prop up the fiction that a one-time choice produces lasting consent, and that desires are fully accommodated by the choices offered.

5.5   The Limits of Imagination in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue In juxtaposing the magical events of the Tale with the more mundane marital struggles of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Chaucer suggests the limits of the bacon flitch custom to provide a meaningful model for marital negotiation. The newlyweds at the heart of the Wife of Bath’s Tale are able to avoid regret and fulfill the terms of the bacon flitch custom through the capacious affordances of romance, where the possibilities of literary genre allow magic to reverse the aging process and suspend the forces of time and change—the very things that make marriage so challenging. The bacon flitch custom, it seems, only works in fairy tales. In contrast, outside the world of romance, without the help of magical powers and a sympathetic feminist legal system, the Tale’s narrator finds negotiating her marriages to be a much messier process. The Wife of Bath emphatically rejects the bacon flitch ceremony as a route to a happy marriage, recognizing the gendered submission it would require. As she says of her husbands: “I sette hem so a-werke, by my fey / That many a nyght they songen ‘Weilawey!’ / The bacon was nat fet for hem, I trowe, / That som men han in Essex at Dunmowe” [I set them so to work, by my faith, / That many a night they sang ‘Woe is me!’ / The bacon was not fetched for them, I believe, / That some men have in Essex at Dunmow] (III 215–8). Luckily, she does not like bacon anyway: “And yet in bacon hadde I nevere delit” [And yet in bacon (old meat) I never had delight] (III 418).22 The Wife here suggests that any occasion for recasting the marriage contract in medieval England occurs not through the bacon flitch custom but through refusing to participate in it. For the many couples whose regrets make them ineligible for the flitch, marital discontents provide an impetus for a renegotiation of terms. The Wife accordingly embraces a vision of married life as a perpetual negotiation between sparring parties with diverging interests. She famously expounds a transactional model of personal 22  The Wife, of course, is making a sexual double entendre; but she also puns on her earlier comment about the Dunmowe flitch.

118 

R. O’NEILL

relationships—“for al is for to selle” [everything is for sale] (III 414), she remarks—in which she continually leverages her sexuality as a commodity to be exchanged for wealth and power (Delaney 1975; Finke 1996). Like Margery, her sexual desire waxes and wanes: at some moments she makes her husbands work all night in bed, at others she is repulsed by their old bacon (III 202, 418). Nonetheless, by her own account, she seems to have no trouble identifying (and getting her husbands to accommodate) her own varying desires within marriage, undeterred by scripts that might restrain her, such as the wedding vow of obedience. In her final marriage, however, she confronts the limits of these strategies of marital negotiation to overcome the fact of marriage as a contract of gendered domination. An aging Wife has apparently lost both sexual and financial leverage, including control of the property she had brought into the union.23 Instead, she endures her husband Janekyn’s misogynistic tirades and laments her inability to get what she wants: “He nolde suffre nothyng of my list” [he would not allow me anything of my desires] (III 633). Her efforts to rectify the situation reveal the difficulty of renegotiating marital agreements; indeed, she struggles even more than Margery Kempe in attempting to change her marriage. In a bid to regain control of the finances and end her husband’s emotional abuse, she resorts to the destruction of property (in tearing his book of wicked wives), physical abuse (by suffering and returning his blows), and eventually deception (in her feigned death). Even after these dramatic events, she endures “muchel care and wo” [much care and woe] (III 811) before reporting that “[w]e fille acorded by us selven two” [we made an agreement between our two selves] (III 812) as a more satisfying marital dynamic emerges in which she secures control (III 813–5). Critics variously read this ostensibly happy ending as either a successful renegotiation or the wishful thinking of a tragically abused unreliable narrator.24 Yet the sudden narrative jump between vicious struggle and apparently affectionate compromise (or is it capitulation?) at the Prologue’s conclusion offers us a revealing lacuna. As readers, we are left to our own resources to imagine how the transformation takes place. This textual gap signals the inadequacy of the existing cultural exemplars of negotiation 23  For a discussion of the complex and ambiguous evidence about the Wife’s property transactions, see Patterson 1996; for a contrasting view, see Carruthers 1979. 24  For Kathryn Jacobs and Mary Carruthers, the renegotiation is successful; Elaine Tuttle Hansen takes the darker view (Jacobs 2001, 59; Carruthers 1979; Hansen 1996, 279).

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

119

and the absence of truly productive scripts for Chaucer’s audience to renegotiate marital obligations without violence and manipulation. The literary texts we have been examining here thus reveal the gulf between marital ideals which demand or assume harmonious submission, and the reality of the difficult ongoing work of reconciling divergent wills and desires. In all three texts—the Book, the Tale, and the Prologue—renegotiation of marriage is associated with the imagined or feigned death of one of the parties (suggesting an imaginative constraint imposed by the wedding vows: till death do us part). In other words, for Kempe and Chaucer, it is easier to imagine escaping marriage through death than it is to imagine changing the marriage agreement. Perhaps surprisingly, the most radical act of imagination in the narratives we have examined belongs to the text with the most attenuated claims to fictiveness, namely, The Book of Margery Kempe. John first invites his wife to envision alternatives to the present (in the form of the imaginary assassin ready to smite his head off). But while he begins by presenting her with a set of unattractive choices, seemingly derived from the wedding vows (e.g. a marriage-ending death or her renewed sexual obedience), these choices do not circumscribe their negotiation but instead enable a new compromise that more fully considers her specific desires. In effect, they are able to renegotiate the wedding vow’s imposed expectation of obedience in bed and at the dinner table. In their negotiation, we glimpse something absent from The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale: a husband pressing a wife to articulate her desires and a subsequent compromise that takes both partners’ desires into account. In contrast, the closest The Wife of Bath’s Tale comes to imagining a man asking his wife what she wants (as an individual, at a particular moment) is in the universal and timeless version the rapist-knight asks on his quest: What do (all) women (always) want? Chaucer’s text imagines a multiplicity of alternatives to the status quo: female sovereignty and governance; successful reform of a felon through a rehabilitative model of justice; and a world without hereditary nobility. Yet, marital harmony in the happy endings of the Prologue and Tale comes only through spouses who have totally overlapping desires, or through one spouse’s complete capitulation. A conversation like the one John and Margery have remains less imaginable to the Wife of Bath than a shape-shifting sorceress. Through the paired texts of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Chaucer alerts us to the paucity of scripts for renegotiating marriage, a paucity largely occluded by the

120 

R. O’NEILL

discourses of contract and choice which attach to the rituals surrounding marriage.

5.6   Conclusion: A Timeless and Timely Paradox Magical women lying in beds distributing choices is no basis for a system of liberal autonomy. Yet over six hundred years on from Chaucer’s text, we continue to tell ourselves fairy tales about the ability of choice to bring liberation within marriage. The idea that marriage is not an impediment to freedom, but in fact the highest fulfillment of it, finds powerful restatement in contemporary US jurisprudence. In the 2015 Obergefell decision establishing the right to the federal recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States, the court cites “the abiding connection between marriage and liberty” to find that “the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.”25 In other words, marriage is a powerful civil right because it allows individuals to express their freedom through the exercise of choice.26 Yet, as queer activists have noted, marriage is a strange path to liberation (Ettelbrick 1989). The latter point, while overlooked by the majority decision, does not go unnoticed in the dissents. Justice Anton in Scalia, echoing both Alison of Bath and countless television sitcoms, observes that: “one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. … [A]nyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say.”27 In his identification of marriage with inhibition and constraint, he unwittingly echoes Michael Warner’s landmark argument against same-sex marriage in The Trouble with Normal (1999). Couples in medieval England were well aware of the difficulty of reconciling marriage with autonomy, as we have seen in accounts of the marital disagreements of both fictional and historical couples. Survivals of popular marriage practices—including textual variations within the wedding vows, repeated affirmations of consent and the postnuptial custom of the bacon  Obergefell, 576 U.S., 665.  Note that the court also claims that marriage “has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life” (Obergefell, 576 U.S., 656). By implication, marriage ennobles at the same time as it frees, simultaneously creating a hierarchy of citizenship and leveling the playing field with its ostensibly universalist obligations. This paradox vividly evokes the unstable binary of contract and status within marriage that Halley identifies. 27  Obergefell, 576 U.S., 719. 25 26

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

121

flitch ceremony—may have encouraged couples to see marriage as a contract which could be revisited and individually renegotiated. Yet texts including the wedding vows and the Wichenour flitch of bacon oath also seek to manufacture consent to marriage, encoding constraint under the sign of free contract. As such, they offer only partial and flawed exemplars of how to undertake marital renegotiation, as we see in the difficult and halting attempts to rewrite marriage agreements in The Book of Margery Kempe and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. A more optimistic vision of marriage as indefinitely open for continuing negotiation, preserving rather than curtailing the autonomy of both participants through the loving and respectful negotiation of diverging desires, nonetheless flickers into view in these literary texts, despite the limitations of the cultural scripts and imaginaries available to their authors.

References Manuscripts London, BL Manuscript Additional 30506. London, BL Manuscript Harley 873. London, BL Manuscript Harley 2956. London, BL Manuscript Royal 2.A.21. London, BL Manuscript Stowe 13. London, BL Manuscript Royal 2.B.xi.

Primary Sources Chaucer, G. 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.  Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ———. 2019. The Canterbury Tales: An Interlinear Translation. [online] Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ text-and-translations Collins, A.J. 1960. Manuale ad usum percelebris ecclesie Sarisburiensis; from the Edition Printed at Rouen in 1543, Compared with Those of 1506 (London), 1516 (Rouen), 1523 (Antwerp), 1526 (Paris). London: Henry Bradshaw Society. Henderson, W.G., ed. 1875. Manuale et processionale ad usum insignis ecclesiae Eboracensis. Leeds: Surtees Society.

122 

R. O’NEILL

Langland, W., et  al. 2006. Piers Plowman: The Donaldson Translation, Select Authoritative Middle English Text, Sources and Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: Norton. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015). Schmidt, A.V.C., ed. 2011. Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions. 2nd ed. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Staley, L. Trans. 2001. The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism. New York: Norton. Windeatt, B., ed. 2000. The Book of Margery Kempe. Harlow: Longman.

Secondary Sources Aers, D. 1988. Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430. London: Routledge. Ainsworth, W.H., and J.  Gilbert. 1899. The Flitch of Bacon; or, The Custom of Dunmow. G. Routledge and Sons. Andrews, W. 1877. The History of the Dunmowe Flitch of Bacon Custom. London: William Tegg. Beard, M.R. 1946. Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities. New York: Macmillan. Blackstone, W. 1979. Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765–1769. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burger, G. 2019. Becoming One Flesh, Inhabiting Two Genders: Ugly Feelings and Blocked Emotion in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion, ed. G.  Burger and H.  Crocker, 90–117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi. org/10.1017/9781108672474.005. Carruthers, M. 1979. The Wife of Bath and the Painting of Lions. PMLA 94: 209–222. https://doi.org/10.2307/461886. Crane, S. 1994. Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Delaney, S. 1975. Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, and The Book of Margery Kempe. Minnesota Review 5: 104–115. Dunn, C. 2013. Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction and Adultery, 1100–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi. org/10.1017/CBO9781139061919 Edwards, S. 2016. The Afterlives of Rape in Medieval English Literature. New York: Palgrave. Elliott, D. 1993. Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ettelbrick, P. 1989. Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation? OUT/LOOK (Autumn): 8–12.

5  FREEDOM AND CHOICE: POSTNUPTIAL NEGOTIATION, THE FLITCH… 

123

Farber, L. 2006. An Anatomy of Trade in Medieval Writing: Value, Consent, and Community. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Finke, L. 1996. ‘All Is for to Selle’: Breeding Capital in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Wife of Bath”: Complete Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives, ed. P.G.  Beidler, 171–188. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s. Fowler, E. 1995. Civil Death and the Maiden: Agency and the Conditions of Contract in Piers Plowman. Speculum 70 (4): 760–792. https://doi. org/10.2307/2865343. Halley, J. 2010. Behind the Law of Marriage (1): From Status/Contract to the Marriage System. Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left 6 (1): 1–58. Hansen, E.T. 1996. ‘Of His Love Daungerous to Me’: Liberation, Subversion, and Domestic Violence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Wife of Bath”: Complete Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives, ed. Peter G. Beidler, 273–289. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s. Harris, C. 2017. Rape and Justice in the Wife of Bath’s Tale. In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu. edu/wobt1/ Helmholz, R.H. 1974. Marriage Litigation in Medieval England. London: Cambridge University Press. Jacobs, K. 2001. Marriage Contracts from Chaucer to the Renaissance Stage. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Lipton, E. 2019. Contracts, Activist Feminism, and the Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Chaucer Review 54 (3): 335–351. https://doi.org/10.5325/ chaucerrev.54.3.0335. Maine, H.S. 1861. Ancient Law, Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. London: John Murray. Mann, J. 2002. Feminizing Chaucer. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. McCarthy, C. 2004. Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature, and Practice. Woodbridge: Boydell. Pateman, C. 1988. The Sexual Contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pateman, C., and C. Mills. 2007. Contract and Domination. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 1996. ‘Experience Woot Well It Is Noght So’: Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. In Geoffrey Chaucer: “The Wife of Bath”: Complete Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives, ed. P.G. Beidler, 133–154. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s. Robertson, E. 2003. Marriage, Mutual Consent, and the Affirmation of the Female Subject in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s

124 

R. O’NEILL

Tale, and The Franklin’s Tale. In Drama, Narrative and Poetry in the Canterbury Tales, ed. W. Harding, 175–195. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail. Robertson-Scott, J.W. 1909. The Strange Story of the Dunmow Flitch. Dunmow: D. Carter. Scala, E. 2009. Desire in the Canterbury Tales: Sovereignty and Mastery Between the Wife and Clerk. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (1): 81–108. https://doi. org/10.1353/sac.0.0062. Sidhu, N.N. 2016. Indecent Exposure: Gender, Politics, and Obscene Comedy in Middle English Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Staley, L. 1994. Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Steer, F.W. 1951. The History of the Dunmow Flitch Ceremony. Chelmsford: Essex Record Office. Stevenson, K. 1983. Nuptial Blessing: A Study of Christian Marriage Rites. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thomas, S.S. 2006. The Problem of Defining “Sovereynetee” in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”. The Chaucer Review 41 (1): 87–97. Warner, M. 1999. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. New York: Free Press.

PART II

The Lollards, Their Saints and Their Texts

CHAPTER 6

The Making of a Monumental Edition: The Holy Bible…The Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wyclif and His Followers Anne Hudson

Asked to name half a dozen British nineteenth-century editors of medieval English texts whose work is still regarded with respect, few would probably name Frederic Madden, let alone Josiah Forshall1: Walter Skeat, F. J. Furnivall, Richard Morris, Henry Bradley, Henry Sweet, and Israel Gollancz come to mind, along with further European and North American names.2 Arguably, however, Madden should certainly be among 1  Forshall and Madden 1850. Many matters mentioned here are discussed in Solopova 2017; see Hudson 2017. 2  For the named scholars, see the various entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB); the dates are in order Madden (1801–1873), Forshall (1795–1863), Skeat (1835–1912), Furnivall (1825–1910), Morris (1835–1894), Bradley (1845–1923), Sweet (1845–1912), Gollancz (1863–1930).

A. Hudson (*) Faculty of English, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_6

127

128 

A. HUDSON

these, even if not as a more remarkable scholar than most of them. Madden’s claim would partly be one of time: he comes from at least a generation before even the earliest born of these others (Furnivall 1825), and had published all his six major editions well before Gollancz, the youngest, was born in 1863 (Borrie 2004).3 Those six editions included works of major significance, one at least of which has so far not been superseded; it is that last, the text, or rather texts, entitled the Wycliffite Bible (hereafter, WB), which will form the main focus of this chapter, but the other five deserve brief mention first.4 The first was an edition of the Middle English Havelok (Madden 1828), followed by William of Palerne (Madden 1832), the Gesta Romanorum (Madden 1838), Syr Gawayne (Madden 1839) and Laȝamon’s Brut (Laȝamon and Madden 1847). The fourth of these started with the poem now known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but continued to a sequence of other medieval poems that Madden considered analogues to the masterpiece in Cotton Nero A.x. The last, Laȝamon’s Brut, was of these five the one that gave Madden most trouble: his notice had been attracted by the damaged state of the Otho copy of the poem when he was working to try to reconstruct the neglected materials damaged in the 1731 Cotton fire, a reconstruction that probably owes more to Madden’s determination than to any other single factor (see esp. Prescott 1997, 404–21; Tite 1994; and Tite 2003). But the language of the two copies, earlier in date and more irregular in orthography, vocabulary and grammar than any he had hitherto met, also held up the work especially in the self-imposed task of providing a glossary for the text. Madden’s relative obscurity as a scholar of Middle English is probably also, paradoxically, the result of an excess of information. As well as the detailed records of his activities in the Department of Manuscripts at the 3  See Ackerman 1972; Ackerman and Ackerman 1979; Bell 1974. See also Caygill 2001; I am indebted to Dr Nigel Ramsay for this reference and for other helpful suggestions when I was first consulting the materials here. 4  I use the following abbreviations in this chapter: Wycliffite Bible: WB; the WB as edited by Forshall and Madden: FM; for the more literal, earlier version of WB translation: EV; for the more idiomatic, later version of WB translation: LV; general prologue to WB (printed FM i.160): GP; Old Testament: OT; and New Testament: NT.

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

129

British Museum that remain in the (renamed and relocated) British Library department,5 much information relevant to the production and publication of WB emerges from study of Madden’s journal, a day-by-day commentary on his activities and emotional affairs; the 43 volumes, ­ extending from 1819 till 1872, were left in Madden’s will to the Bodleian Library, Oxford (now cataloged as MSS Eng.hist.c.140–82), on condition that access should not be allowed until 1920.6 Madden provided an index to the early volumes, but this ceases after 1826; the relevant volumes for WB are those from c. 1825–1850 (MSS Eng.hist.c.146–163). These comprise, on a rough estimate, some 7000 pages. Most of the information concerning WB consists of single sentences, surrounded with accounts of Madden’s British Museum activities and colleagues and his complicated social and family life. I have scanned the journals for 1825–1850 (MSS Eng.hist.c.146–163) but am sure that I have not noticed all relevant comments and that more can be found once the entire journal is in electronically searchable form. The editing of the WB was an immense task, whose instigation is by no means clear. Forshall and Madden were colleagues on the staff of the British Museum (which in their lifetime and well beyond included both library and museum); technically, despite several moves and retitlings, Forshall was the senior of the two throughout the relevant period of their collaborative work, but Madden’s part is the better documented and seems to have been the more dominant and energetic. Both had lodgings in the houses around the Museum site, from which access to the library 5  These are British Library (BL), Additional manuscripts (MSS) 62001–17 covering the years 1837–66, plus further handlists and papers in BL Additional MSS 62018–78, and some correspondence in British Library, Egerton MSS 2837–45. For an excellent view of the context of Madden’s professional activities, see Harris 1998, 67–310. 6  The volumes are listed in Clapinson and Rogers 1991 as nos. 39761–807; most volumes cover only a single year, but a few (notably manuscript [MS] Eng.hist.c.147) cover a longer period (but the Catalogue does not contain the details). Some volumes are paginated, others foliated, in each case with mistakes in numbering; I have replicated the details here. Since date is often important, I have provided this information in addition. A brief summary of each volume was produced for the Madden Society (1991) by Robin Alston, a copy of which Nigel Ramsay kindly loaned me; it is not, unfortunately, very helpful for Madden’s WB enterprise. The two sets of extracts that have been printed are not enormously useful (Brown 1970)—dealing with visits from December 1823–July 1925, they are thus too early; more valuable is Madden and Rogers 1980, which covers visits of 1831, 1838, 1841–1842, 1846, 1859, and 1863, but the Cambridge manuscripts were not of central importance to the WB edition.

130 

A. HUDSON

was direct; this facilitated the constant consultations between the two.7 The starting time of their work on WB is not, as will be seen, entirely clear; but the whole period 1820–1850 may be relevant. Of the two, Madden was the scholar engaged more obviously on editorial enterprises involving medieval English texts, as has been already outlined. Forshall’s textual interest seems not evident from the period before his work on WB, but he did, a year after the publication of this, produce an edition of the text known now as The Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards, whose author he tried to identify with the writer of the general prologue to the WB (GP); of this only two copies were known to him.8 Neither Forshall nor Madden seems antecedently likely to have initiated the edition of WB: Forshall was certainly in clerical orders; Madden was not, and his journal would lead the reader to suppose that he was at best an agnostic, even (especially in the paroxysms of grief following the tragic loss of his first wife and son) atheist in his outlook (see MS Eng.hist.c.147, fols. 146–166). The first concentration of references to WB in Madden’s journal comes in the year 1827. But those early references contain a quantity of detail about numerous manuscripts of the text which suggest either that Forshall and Madden themselves had started investigation some time previously, or that they had gathered this information from a third researcher (see MS Eng.hist.c.147, fols. 118r–v, 31 May 1829 and fols. 134v–135, 28 November 1829). For the second explanation, but not for the first, there seems to be some support. In 1810, a revised version of John Lewis’s 1731 print of the WB had appeared in London, made by the Rev. Henry Hervey Baber (Baber 1810); the text was preceded by a life of Wyclif and “An Historical Account of the Saxon and English Versions of the Scriptures previous to the opening of the xvth century,” again derived from work by Lewis (Lewis and Wyclif 1731).9 Alongside his clerical positions, Baber, 7  Details of their positions, along with an indication of the changing structures within the Museum’s staffing, can be found in Harris 1998, 751–61. 8  Forshall’s edition was published under the title Remonstrance Against Romish Corruptions (Purvey and Forshall 1851), and has also been referred to under the title Regimen ecclesie. Two medieval manuscripts are now known (only the first to Forshall), BL Cotton Titus D.1 and Norwich Castle Museum MS 158.926/4g.3 fols.1–64 (an account of this can be found in Ker 1983, 521–2), plus two sixteenth-century transcripts (Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 540 and Trinity College Dublin, MS 246); there is also a broadsheet version (again not known to Forshall) of the main conclusions only, now BL Additional MS 38510 section O (fol. 301), printed in Compston 1911. 9  For Baber and Lewis, see the ODNB. Only a small number of copies of the first edition of Lewis’s original WB text seem to have been issued; conversely the revision by Baber of

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

131

until 1837, was also employed in various positions in the British Museum, and evidently had come to know both Forshall and Madden; Baber’s linguistic abilities and his interest in textual matters are evident from his editing of the Old Testament (OT) part of the Codex Alexandrinus between 1816 and 1828.10 It is clear from Madden’s journal that at the start, the editorial team for WB consisted of a threesome. Before the end of 1827, Baber withdrew from the enterprise, but it is arguable that the effective disappearance of his name from the whole published work conceals a just reflection of his importance (MS Eng.hist.c.147, fol. 134v, 28 November 1829).11 It must be suspected that Baber effectively enrolled both Madden and Forshall, as well as supplying from his experiences of revising Lewis’s work a preliminary list of manuscripts that should be consulted. Madden came to disagree strongly with Baber’s support of Lewis’s claim that the later version of WB translation (LV) was antecedent to the earlier version (EV),12 but this does not entirely justify the effective elimination of Baber from the achievement represented by the 1850 edition.13 That the early involvement of Baber is not fully visible in Madden’s journal may also be partly explicable on the grounds that all three men would see each other in the Museum on a regular, almost daily, basis—preliminary conversation about WB might well escape notice even in a record as full as Madden’s. It becomes increasingly clear as Madden’s record enlarges references to WB that, comprehensibly, the British Museum context of the editors’ work was dominant. Baber disappeared from the Museum in 1837, but the other two remained there until the appearance of WB and, in the case of Madden, beyond (Forshall was affected by ill health and retired in 1850; see Harris 1998, 751–6, 759–61). All three were obviously most familiar with copies there; enquiries were needed, and were pursued by Forshall and Madden, into possible copies elsewhere and especially in 1810 was widely distributed. The extensive notes by Lewis in copies of his own publications (e.g. MSS Bodley 905, Rawlinson C.979 and the Bodleian copy of the 1731 edition, shelfmark N. 2.16 Th) would repay further study, and should throw light on Baber’s revisions. 10  For the manuscript, now BL Royal 1 D.v–viii, see Cross and Livingstone 1997, 370–1. 11  Baber’s resignation from the project is fol. 135v of 30 November 1829. 12  Madden briefly outlines his own position with EV before LV in MS Eng.hist.c.147, fols. 118v–119, 30 May 1829. 13  Apart from the mention of Baber as reprinter of Lewis’s edition (FM 1850, i. n. a) there appears to be no mention of Baber in the printed volumes; section 66 of the introduction to vol. 1 acknowledges in formal terms the help of numerous institutions and individuals but Baber’s name is not among them.

132 

A. HUDSON

Cambridge and Oxford. But, though both were energetic and persistent in their investigation, the greater difficulties of access outside London left traces on the edition which modern work has made obvious. Madden, by 1831, had come to the view that only two manuscripts in Cambridge libraries (at least as they stood in his time) were of importance though neither contained the GP (with current shelf marks Emmanuel 21 and one of the Cambridge University Library copies), and even then neither came to be highlighted in the printed edition (MS Eng.hist.c.148, 16, 2 March 1831).14 Oxford, perhaps surprisingly, given Madden’s early attempts to gain a degree from the university, contained more—but realization of their importance came later than was convenient. Two copies that now dominate the critical discussion of EV were only recognized after work had gone some way and the imperfect recognition of their evidence makes the EV edition unsatisfactory: Bodley 959, now accepted as a workshop copy of an early stage in EV, albeit only covering OT to Baruch 3:20, was identified as important by Madden in 1830 but never seems to have been considered as a possible base text (MS Eng.hist.c.147, fol. 169, 12 May 1830; cf. FM i.xlvii and Dove 2007, 255–6, 299).15 Christ Church 145, having a complete EV text of almost equal authority, was inadvertently misreported by Forshall: following a research foray covering 26 December to early January 1830, Forshall reported that Christ Church library contained no copy of WB. At some stage, but unfortunately without appending a date, Madden annotated his journal for that period with a note lamenting that error, and the fact that the evidence of that crucial copy had not been utilized in their work. A later entry reveals that the mistake was not Forshall’s responsibility: the librarian at the college apparently could not locate either of the copies in that collection.16 14  The identity of the second is not entirely clear, since Madden gives no shelf mark. Rogers conjectures Mm.2.15, but this contains the GP; more probable is Dd.1.27 (Rogers 1980, 5). At the date of Forshall and Madden’s work, the series of five manuscripts in CUL Add. 6680–6684 had not yet reached the library. 15  The problem in using the manuscript as a base text is demonstrated from Lindberg’s print of MS Bodley 959 up to its abrupt end at Bar.3:20: this provides a transcription of the whole, but its account of the multiplicity of corrections and alterations is hardly comprehensible or definitive (Lindberg 1959). 16  The first report is MS Eng.hist. c. 147, fol. 139r–v, 2 January 1830; the library’s responsibility for the confusion MS Eng.hist. c.157, fol. 186, 2 November 1844; Madden’s regrets for their ignorance of the manuscript are found against the first of these and also, for example, MS Eng.hist.c.158, 49, 16 February 1845.

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

133

In addition, their own searches in major libraries of the time, especially in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, but also (partly no doubt with the help of Bernard’s catalog) in cathedral and civic libraries and in the private libraries of men such as the Earl of Ashburnham (all of which eventually were included in the John Rylands Library in Manchester), added to their tally of manuscripts to be investigated (Bernard 1697).17 It is also clear that news of the project to edit the WB reached owners of manuscripts whose existence Forshall and Madden were unaware of when they started. The two which the editors most valued were the copy of LV complete together with GP belonging to Sir Peregrine Acland, Bart. (now Princeton Scheide 12), and the EV of the New Testament (NT) belonging to Thomas Banister Esq. of the Inner Temple (now New York Public Library 67); in both cases the editors commented that they wished that these had been available to them from the start, since they would have wished to prefer some of their readings to those they had actually used.18 Occasionally, the journal reveals Madden’s impatience with a manuscript owner with what Madden considered an unwarranted valuation of his possession: accustomed to guiding the Museum’s buying at book auctions (notably in London but also in Brussels and Paris), Madden was often skeptical after the first hasty inspection—even the Acland and Banister copies were only acknowledged after some time and work. The editors never seem to have resolved their view of the manuscript now BL Egerton 617/618: they first knew it in the ownership of Dr. Adam Clarke; indirectly it was sold to the BL in 1837 but Madden appears to have thought the price of £110 too high (a view with which no modern art historian would agree! See MS Eng.hist.c.148, 47, 6 August 1831; Eng.hist.c.151, fol. 66, 23 June 1836; Eng.hist. c.152, 61–2, 21 May 1838).19 17  Manuscripts in Durham, Hereford, Lincoln, Worcester, and York cathedral libraries are listed in FM i.lviii–lix; also Sion, St. Peter’s Westminster, Lambeth Palace, St. Mary’s College Winchester, Chetham’s Library Manchester, the Corporation Library Norwich, the Advocates’ Library Edinburgh, the Hunterian Museum Glasgow, and Trinity College Dublin, FM i.xlv–lxi. The Ashburnham manuscripts are listed in FM i.lxii–lxiii, now, in the order there given, respectively, Rylands MSS Eng.81, 80, 77, 79, 78, and 84. 18  Information about the Acland manuscript (now Princeton MS Scheide 12) came late: see MS Eng.hist.c.161, 220 of 3 August 1848, with further comment 316 of 11 November 1848. The manuscript belonging to Thomas Banister (now New York Public Library 67) was known from 1843; see MS Eng.hist.c.156, 14 of 16 January 1843 and especially Eng. hist.c.156, 62 of 15 March 1843. 19  Madden compiled the volume of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in 1836–1840, in which the manuscript appears (British Museum 1843, 55); see also Peikola 2011, 153–74.

134 

A. HUDSON

Before considering further their strictly editorial work, it may be convenient to look first at the publishing plans, since these affect our understanding of the more technical aspects. Madden’s journal highlights one point which is not immediately apparent from the final edition: at the start, and for many years of the work, the plan was to edit the OT only (MS Eng.hist.c.147, fol. 118; 31 May 1829, Eng.hist.c.148, 6; 28 January 1831). The reason for the decision to omit the section which, it might be thought, would interest readers most is never explicitly declared. The obvious explanation is that the limitation was intended to keep the editorial work to a manageable extent, and especially to remove the need to consult the large number of fifteenth-century copies that contained the whole or part(s) of NT only. But it is more probable that Lewis’s text of the NT, reissued by Baber, influenced the decision—the OT edition was seen as an appendix to that, especially welcome to Baber.20 Their first idea of a publisher, discussed before the withdrawal of Baber (28 November 1829), was the Royal Society of Literature; they envisaged 6 volumes, at 2 guineas per volume, limited to 500 copies and published by subscription. The objection to this plan was that the Society wanted only a single text, not the parallel edition of both the EV and LV that Forshall and Madden regarded as essential.21 In March 1831, a proposal for the publication of the WB was made to Oxford University Press (whether with the knowledge of the Society or not is not revealed) and was accepted, but it was not till January 1842 that Forshall wrote to propose that they should continue to the NT as soon as the OT was complete.22 That the complete Bible appeared together in four volumes in 1850 makes it clear that much work on the NT must have continued as manuscripts were scrutinized for the OT part—the number of copies of NT compensating for the brevity of the  See above 159ff.  For Forshall and Madden’s view, see MS Eng.hist.c.147, fol. 134v, 28 November 1829; fol. 198v, 17 December 1830, gives the letter from the Royal Society and Madden’s comments, ending “A set of shabby fellows.” 22  The proposal is mentioned in MS Eng.hist.c.148, 6, 28 January 1831; it is recorded in the Minute Book of the OUP delegates 1811–53 216, 25 March 1831, hereafter, Minute Book, the NT in MS Eng.hist.c.155, 5–6, 14 January 1842, and in the Minute Book 274 for 28 January 1843. I am indebted to the Archive officers of Oxford University Press for allowing me to consult the unpublished Minute Books for 1811–1853 and 1853–1881 and the printers’ accounts to be described below; it appears that no further archive material relating to WB is still held by OUP. A sample of the executive records of OUP can be viewed online: https://global.oup.com/uk/archives/records.html 20 21

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

135

text itself in comparison with OT. At first the delegates of Oxford University Press (hereafter, OUP) seem to have regarded the edition with some favor: all that remains of their communications with the editors are in the minutes of the delegates’ meetings. The wording in March 1831 that “it is highly proper to print this work at the University Press” (“proper” presumably because of the privileged copyright position of OUP in the production of the 1611 Bible) was matched by some financial arrangements. It was agreed at that stage that £500 was to be advanced to the editors in installments of £100 to cover costs of “transcripts, paper, collations, travelling, postage and carriage.” These payments seem to have been claimed regularly, and smaller payments seem to have been made later in 1835, 1843, and 1850, apparently for similar expenses.23 In 1851, following publication and precisely in accordance with the agreement set up in 1831 (MS Eng.hist.c.148, 21, 25 March 1831), the Press paid £500 to the editors together with a (single) copy of the whole to each of them.24 The edition, including both OT and NT, was in four volumes, with a lengthy introduction in the first, and an equally lengthy glossary in the last; it cost 5 guineas for the whole (and there seems no evidence that single volumes were allowed to be sold separately). All the negotiations with OUP seem to have been carried on by Forshall, at least nominally. Relations with OUP, after the welcoming opening in 1831, were not always so cordial: for the Press, the work went much too slowly. The editors, at one point, thought of producing as a first, independent, publication the Pentateuch text in its two versions, but they were advised that this was not likely to find favor with the delegates (MS Eng.hist.c.152, 57–8, 4 May 1838). The delegates for their part issued exhortations and even threats: by 1849, they were considering issuing the texts of OT and NT without either introduction or glossary—and the first of these as published has many signs of haste and of ideas not fully pursued or confirmed (MS Eng.hist.c.161, 303, 3 November 1848).25 The delegates were to a considerable extent urged to action by the printer in this: it is clear that (in common with early to mid-nineteenth-century printing practice) the OUP printer set up type for each sheet (or in medieval terms, quire) as soon as the editors released it; these sheets were proofread by the editors, and  The details of payment to Forshall are at the back of the Minute Book.  The accounts are in the Minute Book for 1831, 1833, 1835, 1843, and £500 to the editors (51); it was recalled by OUP on 15 November 1850 (Minute Book 312). 25  For the introduction, see further below 175ff. 23 24

136 

A. HUDSON

when approved, the 500 copies of that sheet were printed and the type broken up for reuse.26 Printing began in 1834 after the editors in May– June of that year considered and approved specimens (MS Eng.hist.c.149, fols. 123–130v).27 Almost the complete makeup of the four volumes of WB can be traced from the Press’s surviving record, and in almost all details are entirely clear.28 For the publisher and printer, this meant that until publication a considerable amount of money was tied up in bulky bundles of paper which had to be stored. For the editors, it meant that nothing could be changed, however crucial the new evidence might be— once the sheet had gone to the printer the text and its variants had to remain as it stood. I have been able to trace only one place where correction of a sheet, in the form of resetting, occurred: Madden comments in 1846 that he and Forshall belatedly realized that Cambridge University Library (CUL) Kk.1.8 contained a copy of GP, and its variants should have been collated in the first quires of the text (sig. B-I); those quires were set up in 1839 (Eng.hist.c.162, 230, 10 August 1849).29 But in the printer’s accounts for 1849–1850 appear sums for quires with those signatures, and the published text includes variants from the CUL copy,30 despite the comment of Madden in his journal on 27 February 1846 “We 26  For the basic procedures, see Gaskell 1972; the 1850 publication date of WB falls within the later historical section of Gaskell’s account, but some part of the earlier section covering 1500–1800 is relevant: Gaskell 1972, 116–17, 314–15 on standing type. 27  See also fol. 170, 6 December 1834, where the whole of the GP is reported as in print. 28  The evidence is in books held by OUP, the Press Bill Books (effectively the printer’s record of charges incurred), and, less helpfully, the Compositors Bill Books (which include records of proof revisions and are consequently less regular in their format). I set out the makeup of each volume of WB and then matched the sheet signatures against the accounts of these ledgers: the whole of vol. 2 was charged between February 1840 and April 1842, of vol. 3 between April 1842 and February 1944, and of vol. 4 between September 1845 and February 1850; these details accord with the evidence in Madden’s journal noting the arrival, checking, and approval of the sheets. Unfortunately, for the original production stage of vol. 1, 1834 to spring 1839, ledgers are not available. But in two batches, sheets B–I were charged between 7 December 1849 and 1 January 1850, quires which cover the GP, and, not in final order, sheets A–I between 11 October and 25 October 1850, quires which cover the Introduction. The volume for the batch B–I is not explicitly stated, but its agreement with the printed length of GP confirms that they belong to vol. 1. MS Eng.hist.c.163, 31, 20 January 1850, makes it clear that neither Forshall nor Madden could entirely recollect their coverage of the Cambridge manuscript. 29  The first sheet of vol. 2 was sent in 1834 c. 149, fol. 123, 21 May 1834. 30  See above, n. 26; variants from the Cambridge University Library (CUL) manuscript are found in the GP with the siglum i; see FM i.xxxvii where this story is not told.

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

137

did not discover this copy [of GP] until our edition of the Prologue was printed off and consequently have not collated it, which I regret” (MS Eng.hist.c.159, 73, 27 February 1846). By that time, Madden must have known the printer’s problems well: he comments that printing progress on the glossary was impeded by the printer’s shortage of certain letter forms (he does not specify which, but italic yogh could be in question, and thorn is suppressed in favor of “th” throughout the edition); the first sheet had to be printed and the type broken before the second could be set up.31 The purposes for which the editors could draw on the OUP installments throw more direct light than is traceable from the edition itself about the means by which the work was carried on, means typical of nineteenth-­century scholarship but quite different from those obtaining now. Madden’s journal mentions some of them occasionally, but not as frequently as might be expected. Certainly, the editors regarded themselves as responsible for the identification of the relevant manuscripts: both Forshall and Madden undertook visits to libraries both within and outside London, often on holidays or times when their services were not required at the Museum; they were also assiduous in pursuing possibly relevant information from colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and collectors.32 Surviving records are, it seems, far from complete about the extent to which they employed or relied on paid transcribers, how they identified such helpers, and where they worked. Accounts rendered to OUP at publication show that transcription, “Assistance with collation,” and travelling expenses for the editors were the expensive items (MS Eng.hist.c.163, 344–5, 18 October 1850).33 Some notes indicate that in many cases manuscripts were borrowed and were sent or carried to a place more convenient for their transcription and examination.34 For a time before cheap photography, it is entirely comprehensible that the editors should wish to borrow. Madden, for example, wanted to study the WB manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin Library: after some difficulty the loan of three of 31  Madden writes, “the printer has only type enough to allow him to print one full sheet at a time, which is unlucky” (MS Eng.hist.c.162, 230, 10 August 1849). 32  See the details about the Acland, Banister, and Clarke copies, above, n. 18. 33  The first amounted to £247.19.6, the second £95.18.2, and the third £116.16.4. 34  See the accounts in Bodleian MS Eng.bibl.c.1 for the period between November 1842 and October 1849. Borrowing appears to the modern reader to have been rather haphazard, not always dependent upon ease of access for the editors, but the variation doubtless depended on whether the institution was prepared to authorize the loan, and whether either editor had a contact who could exert pressure on them.

138 

A. HUDSON

them (now MSS 66, 67, and 75 but not at that stage MSS 70, 72, 73, or 76) was arranged, but a bond for £400 had to be deposited for their safe custody and return (MS Eng.hist.c.149, fols. 73v, 76, 1 and 3 November 1833).35 The previous year, a loan was negotiated with Mrs. Allanson for her copy of the WB (now CUL Additional 6681); it proved to be the EV from Genesis to 2 Maccabees but “written by a very careless scribe” (MS Eng.hist.c.148, 161, 6 October 1832). How far the work done on the loans, or on other manuscripts, involved helpers other than the two principal editors is most frequently not stated.36 At an early stage, prior to the involvement of OUP, Madden’s journal records a calculation he had made that 21,000 folios was the total of the two texts, EV and LV, to be transcribed for the OT; at that stage, he reckoned to pay 3d per folio, presumably for transcription, making a total of £262.10s (MS Eng.hist.c.147, fol. 138 of 18 December 1829). A small manuscript apart from the journal records a few other details for expenses actually incurred and reimbursed: in 1844 and 1846 for carriage from and to Trinity College Dublin, for postage and porterage from Oxford, of expenses to, at, and from Cambridge, for unspecified expenses at Manchester and Worcester, and for transcription of BL Royal 1 C.viii and of a Sion House manuscript (probably that now Sion ARC L40.2/E.1 on deposit at Lambeth Palace). The specified Royal manuscript was the base text used for the whole of LV and so the copying is entirely comprehensible, but Sion, an OT in LV, was only one of a number of copies that were, in whole or in part, collated. This would seem to indicate that transcription was used beyond simply the limits of text to be printed in full, but leaves obscure which manuscripts were chosen for transcription and why, and which were collated without such transcription. No indication seems to be recorded concerning the identity or qualifications of any of the transcribers, but later critics have admired the accuracy of their work. Mention is made of the editors’ checking of the texts, and, at least in part, of the variants derived from collation. Collation, a term habitually used by Madden in his journal of his work on WB, was evidently by preference 35  This, after some doubts, had been expressed about the feasibility of the loan, c.149, fol. 37 of 31 May 1839. 36  Thus I have found in the journal no mention of a named amanuensis, and only two of a named helper with collation: Mr. Mackenzie from London was involved in helping in Cambridge (Eng.hist.c.154 fol. 101v, 11 October 1841) and an earlier case, but with a name that appears to be Mr. Melanchez(?), who was due to accompany Madden to Oxford but was ill and so did not go (MS Eng.hist.c.149, fol. 145, 9 October 1834).

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

139

done by two people, most usually the two editors. When one of these two was absent, his place could apparently be filled by another, usually unnamed, person. Failing that, when, for example, work had to be done direct from a manuscript in a library outside London, the editor had to complete the work alone—and Madden more than once complains about the difficulty and tedium of the process. Madden’s journal also makes it clear that he worked fairly regularly at the WB at weekends, and also sporadically during his (apparently fairly generous) holidays from the British Museum (BM); only at some points does he provide more than an indication of the manuscript involved on an individual occasion, but as early as 21 May 1831, noting that the collation of Genesis and Exodus were complete, he comments, “It is desperately tedious work” (MS Eng.hist.c.148, 32, 21 May 1831). Whether Forshall was as assiduous as Madden is, in the absence of a comparable journal, unclear. The modern scholar, with the benefit of digital images, photocopier, and computer, and thus used to the almost instant availability of multiple copies, finds it hard to grasp the practical constraints under which the nineteenth-century editors worked.37 A particularly revealing section of the journal covers a month from 9 August to 9 September 1832 which Madden spent in Oxford. In considerable detail he records the collation which he undertook during the four weeks of his stay, covering the early books of the OT up to and including Deuteronomy, and working from MSS Bodley 277, 296, and 959, Fairfax 2, Lincoln lat.119, New College 66 (MS Eng.hist.c.148, 146–154, 9 August–9 September 1832).38 The work he did is always described as “collation,” and it seems clear that he already had a transcription that provided him with an EV and an LV text: the manuscripts covered include both versions. Eventually, in the printed edition, the EV manuscript used varied between four copies, the dominant three from Oxford libraries (Bodleian Douce 369 in both parts, Douce 370, Corpus Christi College 4, and BL Royal 1 B.6), but BL Royal 1 C.8 for LV (see FM i.xxxiv–xxxv); there seems no reason to doubt that these were the bases for the collation. From 37  Thinking about the scale of the enterprise without these aids, various questions arise: presumably each editor had a copy (handmade, but by whom?) of the base text, but how was new information gathered by one editor conveyed (and by whom?) to the record in use of the other? There is no clear sign in the journal that each editor took sole responsibility for any biblical book, or for any individual manuscript; the assumption throughout is that the two editors had equal instant access to his own and the other’s workings. 38  At this stage work was on OT, and this is reflected in the amount of time taken on each manuscript.

140 

A. HUDSON

Madden’s description it seems to have been his aim to cover the same amount of the biblical text from each manuscript—most days, at least those where only WB seems to have been worked on, he notes at least one shift in exemplar studied. The speed with which he accomplished his aim is remarkable: to cover five biblical books in six manuscripts within a month seems an improbable achievement. How accurate, and perhaps most crucially, how complete a record did he make? I checked the published Forshall and Madden variants from Bodley 959 (FM’s EV E) and Bodley 277 (their LV I) for three chapters (Exodus 10, Numbers 17, Deuteronomy 4) against Lindberg’s prints (Lindberg 1959 and 1999–2004). The agreement between the two was almost complete: FM recorded even the most minor and insignificant variation (e.g. omission or addition of þe, variation between þat and whiche); the only area in which FM seemed to omit information that Lindberg provides concerns minor shifts in word order.39 Both manuscripts are described as “collated verbatim throughout” (FM i.xxxiv), and on the evidence of those three randomly chosen chapters their claim is not unjustified. The FM account of Bodley 959 is perhaps the least satisfactory: unrecorded word order variants are commoner, and little notice is taken of corrections made by the scribe or an early corrector. It is, of course, possible that one or both of FM rechecked the collations later, or that a paid assistant did so; but on balance neither seems likely—certainly the demand for accuracy seems to have come from the top. The uniformity of the four weighty WB volumes in layout and general coverage undoubtedly makes it hard for the modern user of the text provided by Forshall and Madden to realize the diversity of evidence that lies behind different sections of the whole. To some extent this diversity is the unavoidable reflection of the nature, number, date, and textual adequacy of surviving copies for each biblical book: only a minority of manuscript copies include all biblical books and their accompanying apparatus;40 whilst it is not surprising that copies of NT, or of simply the gospels, make up the large majority of surviving manuscripts, the modern reader finds it 39  Frequent are small reorderings in phrases such as þe lord oure god as against oure lord god: these are not fully reported by FM. 40  The manuscripts known to editors are listed in FM i.xxxix–lxiv with a very brief characterization of each; Dove gives a revised list, updated to include newly discovered copies and to provide the present locations of copies that have moved since FM’s edition appeared (Dove 2007, 281–306). A further revision and correction of this listing appears (Solopova 2017, 484–92).

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

141

more surprising that there is a number of copies of the Psalter independently of the OT.41 The evidence for EV was in quantity small compared with LV, but it was more complex though this is hard to perceive from the text and variants provided. The information is only stated once and the reader needs to know where to look (FM i.xxxiv–xxxxvii). Before the complete listing of manuscripts, a schedule is provided of the copies used in the text or variants anywhere in the Bible (FM, i.xxxvi–xxxvii).42 This allows some estimate of the proportion of copies known to FM that were actually recorded, at least to some extent, in the text or variants (FM i.xxxvi–xxxvii). For EV, one copy (CCCO 4) was used throughout, plus two more (Egerton 617/618 and Douce 369 part 2) for all that they contained; 10 copies of OT and 12 of NT were cited.43 The contrast with LV is striking: for that 12 copies were used throughout, plus 22 further copies in OT and 23 in NT; but 9 copies of OT were not used, and 80 of NT or parts of it. The similarity in appearance of many of the unused LV copies has suggested to critics that their texts are likewise closely similar, but this is an untested hypothesis that remains for subsequent investigation.44 What are the major problems of Forshall and Madden’s edition? To deal first with matters that affect all parts of the biblical text and variants, perhaps the most unfortunate feature is the lack of a clear and detailed account of their editorial procedures and typographical conventions: only pages xxxiv–xxxvii of vol. 1 can be said to relate to these matters, together with a few and apparently arbitrary comments in the account of the manuscript’s known pages xxxiv–lxiv. It is said that certain manuscripts are “collated verbatim throughout”: this may be clear enough, but “collated partially with various readings” and similar descriptions are—however 41  Manuscripts of the Psalter include Cambridge St. John’s E.14, Trinity College Dublin 70, 72, BL Additional 10046, 10047, 31044, 35284, Harley 1896, and so on; Dove 2007, 281–306; a fuller list is in Sutherland 2017. 42  The sigla for manuscripts cited are indicated in this listing, but this information is not repeated in the complete list of manuscripts that follows (FM i.xxxix–lxiv). 43  The record of copies then in private possession is for comprehensible reasons patchy; the Wolfenbüttel manuscript that came to Forshall’s attention in 1839 (Eng.hist.c.152, 280) is listed, but its readings are not given (see FM i.lxi); on 15 February 1850, Forshall drafted a letter of enquiry to the librarian asking for a description (Eng.hist.c.163, 51), and a reply came on 17 April (113); the details given were incorporated in the Introduction. 44  Even Conrad Lindberg’s numerous editorial publications do not include an NT book collated from all known LV manuscripts; in his editions of Judges and of Baruch (Lindberg 1989, 1985, respectively), he did collate all the much smaller number of OT manuscripts.

142 

A. HUDSON

comprehensible given the number of available copies—unspecific and uninformative. Other important matters are not explained: for instance, the meanings of certain symbols and abbreviations in the variants are not explained, nor the choice of spelling when a variant is witnessed by more than one manuscript. Variation in word order is difficult to indicate economically, and many instances (especially in EV copies) are either not noted at all or noted ambiguously. The extent to which correction in any individual manuscript is noted is only specified, if at all, in the opening list of manuscript descriptions. As has been observed briefly already, it is hard, if not impossible, to discover which manuscripts were consulted for each biblical book: if only a single change could be made to FM, it would, I think, be this—admittedly a simple list at the start of each book would have to be complicated by indications of losses of text in the relevant manuscripts, but this would be relatively straightforward. The editors seem to have intended from the start to print the EV and LV texts as closely in parallel as possible; the format of the wide pages made it feasible to print two columns on each leaf, with modern verse numbers supplied in the outer margins for each version. The variants are given across the whole width of the page, with the material from the two versions separated from each other by a blank space. All of this is admirably helpful for the reader. Less comparable with a modern edition is the use of superscript letters in the text within each chapter of each version, running a–z and sequence repeated as necessary, keyed to the variants in the appropriate set below. A modern edition, normally providing a lemma for each variant in the footnotes, would be slightly easier to use but would take substantially more space (almost twice as much), and consequently might well be rejected by a current editor for this over-witnessed text. It would, however, be easier to provide changes in word order in an unambiguous manner. Glosses, often alternative translations, within the text are shown in italics: this reasonably reflects the use of rubrication or underlining within the majority of copies. Longer glosses, often derived from and ascribed to Lire, are set in the margins (common in LV copies, unusual in EV ones), with the biblical words and attribution (if any) in italics; these are editorially keyed in to the text with a symbol. An indication of the manuscripts that include the glosses, insofar as they were known to FM, is appended to each passage, but it is not clear how far variants within the glosses were recorded. Again, the layout of the glosses mimics the manuscript conventions, but it is a tribute to the typesetters of FM that they, like their predecessors, the scribes of the relevant manuscripts, managed to fit

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

143

these often lengthy additions into the margins with minimal adjustment of the text block and to indicate location in ways that rarely give any difficulty to the user. This is the normal layout. But in a few places, the layout is modified, and without clear indication of the reason. Most commonly, prefaces are printed as a single, page-wide column at the head of the relevant book. The reason is plainly that these prefaces only occur (though with a few exceptions) in one version not in both; if the usual practice were followed, this would result in substantial blank column(s) on the relevant leaves. Reasonable though the practice adopted may be, it needs more explication than is provided. For the OT prefaces in EV copies, the source of the base text is only indicated at the end of each, and it is not made clear how many of the EV manuscripts include each preface (collecting sigla from the variants is a laborious task, and may not reveal a complete tally since only divergent readings will be shown).45 Again, a preliminary list of attesting copies at each preface is the obvious solution. The longest section of preliminary non-biblical texts comes at the start, with the GP followed by the prefatory epistles of Jerome. The first of these, reflecting the fact that GP always appears with LV text or independently of the biblical translation, is printed as a single column (though the variants oddly are in two).46 The second is printed in two to reflect the fact that, though the majority of copies including this material present EV, a modified text is found in a few LV manuscripts.47 But in neither case is it readily simple to discover the manuscripts or format in which the texts appear—in particular, the infrequency of the GP text does not emerge. At the end of vol. 4 is found (WB iv.681b–695b) a section of “Additional Prologues”: this assemblage is not explained, though the origin of the texts is provided. There follows (WB iv.683–98) a “Table of Lessons: Epistles and Gospels, throughout the year.” The presence of this, or a similar list, in many manuscripts of WB is noted in FM’s introduction, and they acknowledge that their coverage of this element is incomplete—this is a provisional part of the enterprise, and it is presumably for this reason that the calendar which normally is adjacent to the table of lessons in

45  For the layout of OT, see, for example, WB i.193 Exodus, i.293 Leviticus, i.364 Numbers, and so on; for confusing and incomplete information, see WB iii.621 Daniel. 46  WB i.1–60; for a modern edition, see Dove 2010, 3–85. 47  WB i.61–78; the complicated textual position is explained in Lindberg 1978.

144 

A. HUDSON

manuscripts is nowhere found in FM.48 Given the considerable variety in the appearance and content of this liturgical material, coupled with the possibility that both calendar and table of lessons might be of separate origin from the biblical text, FM’s trouble is readily explicable—an edition of these parts independent of WB seems the sensible answer. Also, at the end of vol. 4 is a glossary (FM iv.699–749), completed, it seems from the journal, at considerable speed by both editors; Madden comments at the start of the work “in my own judgement, it [sc. the glossary] is labor thrown away.”49 That comment was probably made in silent comparison with the glossary to Laȝamon, which had absorbed Madden’s energies for a long time and whose importance, despite his laments about the effort and time taken on it, Madden acknowledged. It is probably fair to conjecture that the glossary is the least used part of the WB edition—but this results in part from the availability of a continuous gloss in any later English Bible rendering. The Introduction was the last part of the editors’ work. It was done in a great hurry for the most part between 1848 and September 1850, though obviously drawing on their previous work and notes; OUP was becoming vociferous in attempts to get the editors to complete the enterprise.50 The work for the introduction was complicated for the editors by the only models they had, the publications of Lewis, revised and reprinted by Baber: following these they outline a history of biblical translation into English, consider the life and works of Wyclif to whom they assigned responsibility for the translation, if only in instigation rather than in active participation, and outline some of the late fourteenth-century context and writings in which that translation was undertaken. Madden’s journal for 1849 and 1850 fills out the constricted references of the published pages; they include evidence of acquaintance with, and investigation of, a remarkable number of the texts which modern critics have found to repay such

48  For the liturgical paratextual material found with surprising frequency in copies, whether complete or partial, of WB, see Matti Peikola’s contribution to this volume, and Peikola 2013, 351–78; cf. Solopova 2017. 49  For Forshall’s involvement, see MS Eng.hist.c.161, 359–60 of 20 and 22 December 1848; for Madden’s comment, the same volume 220–1 of 3 August 1848. 50  When “the whole Preface was nearly ready for the printer” (MS Eng.hist.c.163, 268, 3 September 1850); from August 1848, Madden was reading Lewis’s books and making notes from them (Eng.hist.c.161, 202).

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

145

study.51 The editors were also anxious to check and fill out the biography of Wyclif (see Eng.hist.c.161, 39, 2 February 1850, and the ensuing visits to Oxford in the months up to August). What neither the Preface nor Madden’s journal provides is any justification for the texts they printed: perhaps wisely, they made no attempt to provide a stemma of the manuscripts; more surprisingly, they never discuss the accuracy of their base text or the reasons behind the variants they recorded. I have not observed any marked indication of emendation within the texts, and few places where omissions have been remedied. As an edition, Forshall and Madden’s WB had no precursor: though the first footnote mentions the work of Lewis and Baber, and notes some limited editions that have appeared since their own labors began, none of these works attempted the coverage of the whole Bible in two versions, nor the collation of numerous copies of each. No comparable edition has replaced it for the WB, and some years had to pass after 1850 before a comparably comprehensive edition appeared for the works of other vernacular writers such as Chaucer (see Ruggiers 1984).52 No second edition was produced, and, apart from a few notes about manuscripts in an interleaved copy of vol. 1, Madden does not seem to have investigated further.53 No modern edition has matched FM’s achievement even in part: Conrad Lindberg has heroically produced singlehanded an edition of the whole Bible translation, first of EV using MS Bodley 959, supplemented after its halt at Baruch 3:20 by Christ Church 145, and then of the LV text found in MS Bodley 277 (Lindberg 1959–2004). But, although he knew of and consulted more manuscripts than FM, he did not in the first parts of these two editions attempt to record the variants from those other 51  For example, the Latin tract on biblical translation now ascribed to Ullerston in Vienna, noticed from the library catalog (MS Eng.hist.c.163, 166–7, 14 June 1850), which Madden associated with Latin material in BL Harley 635 and the vernacular set of 12 tracts in CUL MS Ii.6.26; these last are first printed by Dove 2010, 89–142, while the Ullerston tract remains unprinted though discussed by myself (Hudson [1975] 1985). 52  More specifically, see Baker 1984, 157–69 and Edwards 1984, 171–89; see also Skeat 1894. Though very different in its interests, the work of Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730–1786) on The Canterbury Tales (Tyrwhitt 1830) perhaps is closest to WB in its heroic scale (see Windeatt 1984). 53  The copy is in the Bodleian Library (at present on the open shelves of the Upper Reading Room in the Old Library A.4.1213/5): the notes mostly concern changes in the ownership of privately held copies, and information about newly discovered copies. It is not clear that the hand is Madden’s and, consequently, whether the new material was supplied by him; some corrections of typographical errors were probably done by Bodleian staff.

146 

A. HUDSON

copies. Only for the books of Judges and of Baruch did Lindberg attempt full coverage—the fact that both these two books are of the OT made the task a little less daunting, but his inclusion of linguistic as well as material variants adds to the difficulties of using them (see Lindberg 1985 and 1989). Forshall and Madden’s achievement was remarkable, and remains so. The existence of the journal means that Madden’s work is easier to chart and to assess—Forshall, in default of a comparable record, inevitably is undervalued. The two collaborators remained, it seems, on good terms almost throughout: Madden almost always refers to him as “Mr. Forshall” and acknowledges infrequent disagreements about the interpretation of individual pieces of evidence; Forshall, for his part, seems to have drafted all the correspondence with OUP but equally always showed his drafts to Madden for agreement before sending them.54 Their edition is now 165 years old, but it still remains a text on which the modern scholar can, for the material covered, depend with some confidence.

References Manuscripts Cambridge, CUL Additional MSS 6680–6684. Cambridge, CUL MS Dd.1.27. Cambridge, CUL MS Ii.6.26. Cambridge, CUL MS Mm.2.15. Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS E.14. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 246. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 70. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 72. London, BL Additional MS 10046. London, BL Additional MS 10047. London, BL Additional MS 31044. London, BL Additional MS 35284. London, BL Additional MS 38510. London, BL Additional MSS 62001–62078. London, BL Cotton MS Titus D.1. London, BL Egerton MSS 2837–45. London, BL Harley MS 1896.  For Forshall’s other edition of a Wycliffite text, see n. 8 above.

54

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

147

London, BL Harley MS 635. London, BL Royal 1 D.v–viii. London, BL Egerton MSS 617/618. Manchester, John Rylands University Library MSS Eng. 77, 79, 78, 80, 81, and 84. Norwich Castle Museum MS 158.926.4g.3. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 277. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 540. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 959. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Eng. Hist. c. 147–63.

Primary

and

Secondary Sources

Ackerman, R.W. 1972. Sir Frederic Madden and Medieval Scholarship. Neuphilologische Mitteillungen 73: 1–14. Ackerman, R.W., and G.P. Ackerman. 1979. Sir Frederic Madden: A Biographical Sketch and Bibliography. New York: Garland. Baber, H.H., and J. Wyclif. 1810. The New Testament. London: Printed by Richard Edwards, Crane Court, Fleet Street, and Sold by T. Hamilton, Paternoster Row. Baker, D.A. 1984. Frederick James Furnivall. In Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. P. Ruggiers, 157–169. Norman: Pilgrim Books. Bell, A. 1974. The Journal of Sir Frederic Madden, 1852. The Library, 5th Series 29: 405–421. https://doi.org/10.1093/library/s5-XXIX.4.405 Bernard, E., and H. Wanley. 1697. Catalogi librorum manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hiberniæ in unum collecti: cum indice alphabetico. Oxoniæ: E Theatro Sheldoniano. Bodleian Library, M. Clapinson, and T.D. Rogers. 1991. Summary Catalogue of Post-Medieval Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Borrie, M. 2004. Madden, Sir Frederic (1801–1873), Palaeographer and Librarian. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/36488 British Museum. 1843. List of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1836–1840. London: British Museum. Brown, C.K. 1970. Sir Frederic Madden at Oxford. Oxoniensia 35: 34–52. Caygill, M. 2001. Sir Frederic Madden: Museum Diarist. British Museum Magazine: 35–37. Compston, H.F.B. 1911. The Thirty-Seven Conclusions of the Lollards. English Historical Review 26: 738–749. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XXVI. CIV.738. Cross, F.L., and E.A. Livingstone. 1997. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press.

148 

A. HUDSON

Dove, M. 2007. The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edwards, A.S.G. 1984. W.W. Skeat. In Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. P. Ruggiers, 171–189. Norman: Pilgrim Books. Forshall, J., and F. Madden, eds. 1850. The Holy Bible containing the Old and the New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gaskell, P. 1972. A New Introduction to Bibliography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harris, P.R. 1998. A History of the British Museum Library, 1753–1973. London: British Library. Hudson, A. 1975. The Debate on Bible Translation, Oxford 1401. English Historical Review 90: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XC.CCCLIV.1. ———. 1985. Lollards and Their Books. London: Hambledon Press. ———. 2017. Editing the Wycliffite Bible. In The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. E. Solopova, 453–462. Leiden: Brill. Ker, N.R. 1983. Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon. Laȝamon, B., and F. Madden, eds. 1847. Laȝamons Brut, or Chronoicle of Britain; a Poetical Semi-Saxon Paraphrase of the Brut of Wace. Now First Published from the Cottonian Manuscripts in the British Museum; Accompanied by a Literal Translation, Notes, and a Grammatical Glossary. by Sir Frederic Madden, K.h., Keeper of the Mss. in the British Museum. London: Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London. Lewis, J., and J. Wyclif. 1731. The new Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Translated Out of the Latin Vulgat by John Wiclif: … By John Lewis, A.M. Chaplain to the Right Honourable Thomas Lord Malton, and Minister of Mergate. London: [Printed by John March], Thomas Page and William Mount on Tower-Hill. Lindberg, C. 1959. Ms. Bodley 959: Genesis-Baruch 3.20 in the Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible, 8 vols. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. ———. 1978. Prefatory Epistles of St. Jerome. Middle English Bible, Vol. 1. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. ———. 1985. The Book of Baruch. The Middle English Bible, Vol. 2. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. ———. 1989. The Book of Judges. Middle English Bible, Vol. 3. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. ———., ed. 1999. King Henry’s Bible Ms Bodley 277: The Revised Version of the Wyclif Bible, Genesis–Ruth. Stockholm Studies in English, 89. Vol. 1. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. ———., ed. 2001. King Henry’s Bible, Kings–Psalms. Stockholm Studies in English, 94. Vol. 2. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.

6  THE MAKING OF A MONUMENTAL EDITION: THE HOLY BIBLE… 

149

———., ed. 2002. King Henry’s Bible Ms Bodley 277: The Revised Version of the Wyclif Bible, Proverbs–II Maccabees. Stockholm Studies in English 93. Vol. 3. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. ———., ed. 2004. King Henry’s Bible: Ms Bodley 277: The Revised Version of the Wyclif Bible, The New Testament. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Stockholm Studies in English 100. Vol. 4. Almqvist: Stockholm. Madden, F. 1838. The Old English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum: Edited for the First Time from Manuscripts in the British Museum and University Library, Cambridge; with an Introduction and Notes. by Sir Frederic Madden … Printed for the Roxburghe Club. [Publications Presented to the Roxburghe Club], 1838. London: W. Nicol, Shakspeare Press. ———. 1839. Syr Gawayne: A Collection of Ancient Romance-Poems. Bannatyne Club. Publications, No. 61. London: Printed for Bannatyne Club by R. and J.E. Taylor. Madden, F., and Roxburghe Club, eds. 1828. The Ancient English Romance of Havelock the Dane: Accompanied by the French Text. London: W.  Nichol, Shakespeare Press for the Roxburghe Club. ———, eds. 1832. The Ancient English Romance of William and the Werwolf: Edited from an Unique Copy in King’s College Library, Cambridge; with an Introduction and Glossary, Roxburghe Club, 1832. London: W.  Nicol, Shakspeare-Press. Madden, F., and T.D. Rogers. 1980. Sir Frederic Madden at Cambridge: Extracts from Madden’s Diaries 1831, 1838, 1841–2, 1846, 1859 and 1863. Cambridge: Published for the Cambridge Bibliographical Society by Cambridge University Library. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Ed. Matthew, H.C.G., and B. Harrison. https://www.oxforddnb.com/ Peikola, M. 2011. The Sanctorale, Thomas of Woodstock’s English Bible, and the Orthodox Appropriation of Wycliffite Tables of Lessons. In Wycliffite Controversies, ed. M.  Bose and J.P.  Hornbeck, 153–174. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. ———. 2013. Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible. In Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. E. Poleg and L. Light, 351–378. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Prescott, A. 1997. “Their Present Miserable State of Cremation”: The Restoration of the Cotton Library. In Sir Robert Cotton as Collector: Essays on an Early Stuart Courtier and His Legacy, ed. C.J.  Wright, 391–454. London: British Library. Purvey, J., and J. Forshall. 1851. Remonstrance Against Romish Corruptions in the Church, Addressed to the People and Parliament of England in 1395, 18 Ric. II: Now for the First Time Published. London: Longman, Brown, Geren, and Longmans.

150 

A. HUDSON

Ruggiers, P.G. 1984. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition. Norman: Pilgrim Books. Skeat, W.W., ed. 1894. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Solopova, E. 2017. The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation. Leiden: Brill. Sutherland, A. 2017. The Wycliffite Psalms. In The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. E. Solopova, 183–201. Leiden: Brill. Tite, C.G.C. 1994. The Manuscript Library of Sir Robert Cotton. London: British Library. ———. 2003. The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use. London: British Library. Tyrwhitt, T. 1830. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer: To Which Are Added an Essay Upon His Language and Versification: An Introductory Discourse: And Notes. Vol. 4 [i.e. 5] vols. London: Pickering. Windeatt, B. 1984. Thomas Tyrwhitt. In Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. Paul Ruggiers, 117–143. Norman: Pilgrim Books.

CHAPTER 7

Paratextual Frames for the Middle English Reader: The Additional Pauline Prologues in Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108, a Wycliffite New Testament Matti Peikola

7.1   Introduction Focusing on a set of fifteenth-century Middle English (ME) prologues associated with the transmission of the Wycliffite Bible (WB), this chapter is inspired by Christina von Nolcken’s erudite and insightful research into forms of Wycliffite textuality and their ideological underpinnings. Her valuable contributions to the field include an article entitled “Lay Literacy, the Democratization of God’s Law, and the Lollards,” in which she explores the theory and practice of Wycliffite biblical scholarship, using The research for this chapter has been supported by the Academy of Finland, funding decisions 136404 and 141022. I am grateful to Emmanuel College for the opportunity to inspect their manuscript in situ. M. Peikola (*) Department of English, University of Turku, Turku, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_7

151

152 

M. PEIKOLA

WB manuscripts of the Van Kampen collection, now located in Orlando, FL, as her starting point (von Nolcken 1997). One of the Van Kampen manuscripts she discusses is VK MS 637—an NT in the Later Version (LV) of WB.1 This book has some noteworthy codicological and textual similarities with another NT now in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (MS 108). Both are pocket-sized volumes designed with a similar double-column layout for thirty-one text lines per column (Sotheby’s 1993, 83). The books are affiliated textually by the occurrence of two extra items that are occasionally found in WB manuscripts: the Epistle to the Laodiceans and an additional prologue to the Epistle to the Romans, a translation of one of the “standard” Latin prologues to that biblical book (see Stegmüller and Reinhardt 1950–80, vol. 1, 291, no. 674).2 These items occur together in fewer than ten WB New Testaments (out of the total of some one hundred surviving copies of such volumes). The Emmanuel manuscript, however, presents even further and more idiosyncratic departures from the usual textual line-up of Wycliffite NTs. In addition to Laodiceans and the extra prologue to Romans, it also contains an extra prologue for most other NT books, including several Catholic Epistles that never otherwise have individual prologues in WB. Excluding Laodiceans, which may be considered a special item in itself, only four books do not have an extra prologue of this kind: 2 Thessalonians has only the regular LV prologue, while 1 Peter, 2 John, and 3 John have no prologue at all (as they never do in WB). While the special status of these prologues is evident to scholars who have examined multiple copies of WB—including Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, who included them in their 1850 edition—there is nothing in the way the Emmanuel prologues are presented on the manuscript page that would suggest their peculiarity to the reader (FM, vol. 4, 681b–695b). In those biblical books that have two prologues, the additional prologue always follows the standard LV prologue (a translation of  For the Van Kampen collection, see their website at http://www.solagroup.org/vkc.html  Although the description of VK MS 637  in Sotheby’s sales catalog mentions neither Laodiceans nor the extra prologue to Romans, Forshall and Madden indicate that they collated them for their edition from this manuscript (as siglum q); they also give a short description of the manuscript that mentions both items. At the time, the manuscript was owned by Dr. Cardwell, Principal of St. Alban Hall, Oxford; see Forshall and Madden 1850, vol. 1 xxxvii, lxiii (hereafter, FM). For this edition of WB, see further the chapter by Anne Hudson in this book. 1 2

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

153

Jerome’s prologue or prefatory “argument”). The prologues are fully integrated into the design of the page by means of penwork initials placed at their start and text-internal subdivisions indicated with colored paraphs and litterae notabiliores. They vary a great deal in length, from the approximately 800 words of Mark to the 30 or so of Ephesians (excluding those that have major lacunae caused by excised initials or loss of leaves). In their editorial preface, Forshall and Madden note in passing that the additional prologues (with the possible exception of that to Matthew) all “belong to the same series” characterized by the style of a single author (John Purvey, they claim), and that they are largely based on a shared set of source texts: the Glossa ordinaria and the Postilla literalis of Nicholas of Lyra (FM 1850, vol. 1 xxx). Since these prologues have to my knowledge not previously been discussed in detail, the purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize them with regard to their textual sources, compositional principles and thematic concerns. To situate the findings within the broader framework of Wycliffite biblical scholarship in later medieval England, certain other related WB prologues and glosses are also examined. As Kantik Ghosh observes, “the textual history and interrelationship of the prologues to the WB is extremely complex and in need of careful study” (Ghosh 2017, 165). The scrutiny here shows that the textual affiliations of the Emmanuel prologues are somewhat more complex than Forshall and Madden’s preliminary description suggests, including both the specific sources employed by the prologue writer(s) and their methods of using these sources. This primarily textual exploration is followed by a discussion of the kind(s) of paratextual frames of interpretation constructed by means of these prologues for the reader of the Emmanuel manuscript and their stance toward some ideological tenets associated with Wycliffism. The structural and thematic differences that are observed between the Emmanuel prologues and certain other affiliated WB prologues, as well as their Latin source texts, show these prologue writers as textual professionals who shaped the material for their readers in the context of the material manuscript. Through these observations, the present chapter also contributes to research into forms of textual practice in vernacular Wycliffite biblical scholarship more generally—a field of study that has recently seen remarkable advances in the work of Mary Dove, Anne Hudson, Elizabeth Solopova, and other scholars (see, e.g., Dove 2007; Hudson 2015; Solopova 2017). The chapter may also be read in the context of the increasing scholarly interest in medieval paratextual

154 

M. PEIKOLA

communication and ME prologue writing (see Dearnley 2016; for topics and concerns of Middle English prologue writing more generally, see Wogan-­Browne et al. 1999). Since my method takes the form of close textual analysis, the Emmanuel texts scrutinized here (and the conclusions drawn from them) are strictly confined to a more limited subset of the material, the twelve additional prologues prefaced to Pauline Epistles (excluding Romans, whose pattern of transmission, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, is different from the others). I intend to extend the enquiry to Emmanuel’s other additional prologues in a later study; this applies particularly to the additional prologues to the gospels, which are not only considerably longer than the Pauline prologues which are the focus of the present chapter but whose character appears to differ from them in other ways as well.

7.2   The Glossa ordinaria as a Source 7.2.1  Citation Formulae Let us first examine the role played by the Glossa ordinaria (henceforth Go) in the additional Pauline prologues. The prologues contain just one explicit reference to this Latin compilation of marginal and interlinear biblical glosses, which is also the only reference to it in the whole Emmanuel material (see Smith 2009). Toward the end of the additional prologue to Philemon, the phrase “The glose here” [the gloss here] (my translation here and throughout) appears in the running text with the first letter of the reference tipped with red ink (see FM 1850, vol. 4, 692b; Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108, fol. 250r).3 While neither the Middle English Dictionary (MED) nor the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) recognizes “the glose” as a shorthand reference to Go, the usage is also attested, for example, in the early fifteenth-­century treatise Dives and Pauper.4 The specific citational formula in which it appears in Emmanuel (“The glose 3  My citations from the prologues are based on FM (including their modernized punctuation and capitalization, silently expanded abbreviations, and the replacement of the thorn with “th”), but I have checked their text against the manuscript and silently emended any mistakes. My folio references to Emmanuel 108 follow the pencil foliation added to the first page of each quire, although it is off by two from fol. 140 onwards. 4  Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. gloss, n.1, http://www.oed.com; Middle English Dictionary, s.v. glō se n., http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/. For “the glose” as a reference to the Glossa ordinaria in Dives and Pauper, see Barnum 1976–2004, 1.2: 155/73,

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

155

here”) is formed as the name of the cited authority followed by the adverb here, devoid of any accompanying reporting verb such as say or write, and always referring backward to the passage that immediately precedes it in the text. This formula appears to have had a limited currency in ME. The usage would seem to be indebted to the Latin commentary tradition, and it was so specialized that the prologue writers to the Wycliffite gospel commentaries (the so-called Glossed Gospels) felt a need to explain it in considerable detail to their readers. The prologue writers draw the readers’ attention to the practice of placing the referring element after a passage of text quoted from an authority; they also point out that this system enables the reader to ascertain how far the quotation extends: first a sentence of a doctour declarynge þe text is set aftir þe text, and in þe ende of þat sentence þe name of þe doctour seiynge it is set, þat men wite certeynli hou fer þat doctor goiþ. (Dove 2010, 173 line 25)5 [first an authoritative statement by a doctor expounding the text is placed after the text, and at the end of that statement is set the name of the doctor making it, so that it is known for certain how far that doctor’s statement extends.]

The Glossed Gospels prologue writers further explain that the adverb here means that the quotation is derived from a commentary by the specified authority on the same text that is currently being expounded: “Whanne Y alegge ‘Ambrose here’ eþer ‘Bede here,’ vndurstonde on þe same text expowned.” [when I cite “Ambrose here” or “Bede here,” understand that it refers to the same text being expounded by them] (Dove 2010, 184 lines 26–27).6 In addition to explaining their citational technique, the Glossed Gospels prologue writers provide the reader with further 156/31, 200–201/8–9, 212/11; see also the second volume for the editor’s notes on these citations. 5  See also “Prologue to Intermediate Matthew” (Dove 2010, 177, lines 117– 121); “Prologue to Short Luke” (Dove 2010, 184 lines 22–25); “Prologue to Short John” (Dove 2010, 186, lines 14–16). The conventions of citing auctoritates in the Speculum Christiani and other coeval Middle English theological texts explored by Elisabeth Dutton differ from those advocated by the compilers of the Glossed Gospels in placing the citation formula before the quotation and not marking the extent of the quotation (Dutton 2008, 52–55, 77). For a useful survey of methods of marking reported discourse in ME manuscripts, see Moore 2011, 21–42. 6  See also Dove 2010, 173, lines 29–34; 177, lines 116–125. For this type of citation in the Glossed Gospels, see Hudson 2015, xliv–xlv, lvi–lvii, lxi.

156 

M. PEIKOLA

information about some of the texts evoked by such shorthand references. In two of the prologues (to “Short Matthew” and “Short Luke”), these include a reference called a gloss, which is explained as referring to the gospel commentary of Thomas Aquinas (i.e., the Catena aurea): Whanne Y seie ‘a glos’ Y take þat glos of Alquyn, and he aleggiþ so whateuer sentence is takun of lesse doctours þan weren þe elde grete doctours whose names ben expressid at þe bigynnyng. (Dove 2010, 173 lines 45–47)7 [When I say “a gloss” I mean that gloss of Aquinas, and he cites in that way whatever authoritative statement is taken from lesser doctors other than those old great doctors whose names are expressed in the beginning.]

No mention of Go (or a shorthand reference to it as the gloss), however, is made in any of the Glossed Gospels’ prologues. The extracts from the otherwise unedited Glossed Gospels published by Anne Hudson show an instance in which Go is cited by name, though not in a reference back to a primary source but in a long passage translated from a sermon by Robert Grosseteste: “Þe comyn glose on þe same text seiþ þat” [The common gloss on the same text says that] (Hudson 2015, 74, line 5). It may be noted that on this occasion at least, the preferred English title for Go is the longer variant the common gloss.8 In a Wycliffite biblical summary in Oxford, Trinity College MS 93, discussed by Fiona Somerset, the writer seems to have felt that the gloss on its own was ambiguous, so he specified that it means the common gloss: “Lira shewes þe litteral sense and þe glose, þat is þe comyn glose…oþer senses” [Lyra shows the literal sense and the gloss, that is the common gloss…other senses] (Somerset 2014, 196). A shorthand reference to Go that is identical in form and function to that in Emmanuel’s additional prologue to Philemon is found with some frequency in a set of (at times) extensive marginal glosses on the NT books from Romans to Apocalypse that are partly shared by two manuscripts of WB: London, BL Harley MS 5017 (1 Maccabees–Apocalypse in LV; see Dove 2007, 248) and Oxford, New College MS 67 (NT in EV; see Hargreaves 1961; Hudson 1988, 236–237; Dove 2007, 165, 169–170; and Solopova 2016, 259–263). These glosses were printed by Forshall and Madden as marginal glosses in their 1850 edition (FM 1850, vol. 4, 7  See also Dove 2010, 185, lines 42–43. For the use of the Catena aurea in the Glossed Gospels, see Hudson 2015, xxiii, lx–lxxi. 8  Middle English Dictionary (MED), s.v. glō se n. mentions “commune glose” in the sense “the Glossa Ordinaria of the Bible.”

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

157

304ff); a few supplements/corrections to them are introduced by Mary Dove in her monograph on WB (Dove 2007, 221). On the basis of these sources, the shorthand reference “The Glos(e) here”—either on its own or combined with other authorities (e.g., “Lyre and Austyn and the Glos here” [Lyra and Augustine and the Gloss here]) or specifications of the sources used (e.g., “The glos here rehersinge Austyn in a sermoun of Seint Laurence” [The Gloss here recounting Augustine in a sermon on St. Lawrence]), appears in marginal glosses to at least eleven NT books in these manuscripts; the references are mostly shared by the two manuscripts but are also found independently in either of the two.9 Although the technical citation conventions in the marginal glosses of these two manuscripts are remarkably similar to those advocated in the prologues to the Glossed Gospels, even including the specific formula X here rehersing Y that identifies the source cited by the commentators’ immediate source (as illustrated in the previous paragraph), there is a stark contrast between them in the number of sources from which the citations are derived (for the citation formula, see Hudson 2015, lviii). As Anne Hudson shows, in the Glossed Gospels, the Wycliffite compilers used a large number of patristic authorities; even in those versions of the text where the commentary was primarily derived from the Catena aurea, the compilers often made a laborious effort to check and complete Aquinas’ citations from the primary texts he had employed (Hudson 2015, liii–xcv, passim).10 In marked contrast to the Glossed Gospels, the marginal glosses in Harley 5017 and New College 67, as printed by Forshall and Madden, only refer to Go and Lyra’s Postilla (usually in the form “Lire here”); the only exception are a few references to Augustine in the Epistle to the Romans, always in combination with Go and/or Lyra.11 Although the glosses occasionally identify the authorities used by Lyra or Go by employing the rehersing formula, there seems to be no evidence of their compilers’ return ad fontes to actually check these readings in a way comparable to the praxis of the Glossed Gospels. In general, the glosses taken from Lyra greatly exceed 9  Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, 1 John. Some of these NT glosses and their shorthand references also found their way into other WB manuscripts, such as Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 183, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 33 and Manchester, John Rylands University Library MS English 76 (see FM 1850, vol. 4, 381; Dove 2007, 221). 10  For the commentators’ going back to Aquinas’ sources, see Hudson 2015, lxii. 11  For example, “Lyre and Austyn and the Glos here,” FM 1850, vol. 4, 320.

158 

M. PEIKOLA

those from Go in both number and length. For the glosses of many NT books, only Lyra is cited—sometimes at considerable length and ­frequently, as shown, for example, by the Acts of the Apostles, with its approximately one hundred glosses from Lyra but apparently none from Go.12 This makes one wonder if Go was not within the ME glossators’ reach for these biblical books or whether they merely dismissed it as irrelevant for their purposes. Commenting on “[t]he relative lack of material from the Gloss” [=Go] in contrast to “the ubiquity of Lyra” in a set of WB OT glosses probably related to these NT glosses, Dove surmises that the compilers’ focus on Lyra reflects their emphasis on literal interpretation; she points out that “the emphasis of the Gloss is on spiritual rather than literal interpretation” (Dove 2007, 170; cf. the quote from the Wycliffite biblical summary in Oxford, Trinity College MS 93 cited above). Exploring the use of Go in the Emmanuel prologues to the Pauline Epistles suggests that its spiritual (nonliteral) exegesis was not utilized by their writers either. Instead, the prologue writers seem to have drawn material from the predominantly literal (historical/etymological/narrative) prefatory materials that Go typically presents as marginal glosses either to Jerome’s prologue or to the opening words of the epistle itself. Some of these prefatory glosses also seem to have circulated as prologues outside the context of Go, so it is not surprising that they were utilized for this purpose by the Emmanuel prologue writers as well.13 Let us examine their working methods more closely. 7.2.2  The Prologue Writers and Lombard’s magna glosatura In the absence of modern critical editions of Go for a great majority of the biblical books—including the whole NT—the 1480–1481 editio princeps by the Strassbourg printer Adolph Rusch is often employed for textual

12  In addition to Acts, Lyra only appears to be cited in the glosses to James, 1 and 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Apocalypse. All Pauline Epistles, however, that have marginal glosses in one or both of these manuscripts (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Hebrews) cite Go in addition to Lyra. None of the four gospels in these manuscripts contain marginal glosses. 13  See, for example, the entries for the following Pauline prefatory texts of Go in Stegmüller and Reinhardt, 1950–80, vol. 9, 539, no. 118371 (Philippians); vol. 9, 540, no. 118381 (Colossians); ibid. 9:542, nos. 118411 and 118412 (1 Timothy).

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

159

comparisons.14 A comparison of Emmanuel’s additional prologue to Philemon with Rusch’s text indicates that the passage of approximately 200 words that precedes the reference “The glose here” corresponds to the beginning of what Rusch prints as the Go marginal gloss on the opening word Philemoni in Jerome’s prologue to this epistle (FM 1850, vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fols. 249v–250r [with a few lacunae of 1–2 words caused by an excised initial]; Rusch, image 427). The only noticeable difference between them is the opening of the Emmanuel prologue, “The apostil writith this pistil to Filemon, a man of Colosis,” for which there is no corresponding text in Rusch. While this might seem to be an insignificant discrepancy, it alerts the researcher to potential difficulties involved in the use of Rusch’s edition as a yardstick of the text of Go used by our ME prologue writers.15 The problem emerges more distinctively in certain other additional prologues, such as that to 1 Timothy, whose comparison to Rusch would seem to suggest that the Emmanuel text has been compiled from what Rusch prints as two typographically separated, if adjacent, introductory glosses on the epistle (FM 1950, vol. 4, 690b–691b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 240r; Rusch, image 410). Stegmüller and Reinhardt’s Repertorium identifies these building blocks of the Emmanuel prologue as belonging to three different Go prologues to 1 Timothy (Stegmüller and Reinhardt 1950–80, vol. 9, 542).16 As in the additional prologue to Philemon, the opening phrase of the Emmanuel text (“Poul the apostil writith this epistil to Tymothe” [Paul the apostle writes this epistle to Timothy]) is, here, too absent from the Latin text of Go (as it is mediated by Rusch and the Repertorium); the same applies to what looks like the ME prologue writer’s gloss on the “mulieris fidelis” of the Go text at this point: “the which Tymothe was the sone of a feithful womman, outher cristen womman” 14  As Froehlich and Gibson observe, “all later editions, regardless of their additional materials and typographical features, derive their basic text from the editio princeps” (Froehlich and Gibson 1992, vol. 1, v). The edition (henceforth Rusch) is available as a digital facsimile on the Glossae.net – Gloses et commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Âge website at http://glossae.net/?q=fr/content/ressources-documentaires. My references to Rusch provide an image number of the cited page in the digital facsimile. 15  The findings by the critical editors of Go for the Song of Songs and Lamentations and by some of its other textual critics warn against taking the stability of its medieval text for granted; see Smith 2009, 73–76. 16  The Emmanuel prologue opens with nos. 118412 and 118413, both in their entirety, followed by almost all of no. 118411.

160 

M. PEIKOLA

[the which Timothy was the son of a faithful woman, or Christian woman (my emphasis)]. Working from Rusch and the Repertorium would thus suggest that in translating his Go source text, the writers of the additional prologue to 1 Timothy in Emmanuel also actively shaped it through the processes of rearrangement, addition, and selection. Yet it seems that at least in this case, the prologue writers may in fact have been using a source text in which the chunks of texts in question already followed the same order, and which also included the opening phrase. Christopher de Hamel argues that by 1275 or so, the so-called magna glosatura of Peter Lombard had come to form the standard gloss for the Psalter and the Pauline Epistles (de Hamel 1984, 9; see also Smalley 1978, 64–65). In Rusch’s edition of Go, however, the text for these sections of the Bible is that of the parva glosatura, usually attributed to Anselm of Laon; Karlfried Froehlich sees “little reason to believe” that the replacement of Anselm’s gloss by Lombard’s, as envisaged by de Hamel, actually took place (Froehlich 1992, vol. 1, ix n. 32).17 Whatever the case may be, Emmanuel’s additional prologue to 1 Timothy follows linearly and almost verbatim the text of the magna glosatura as printed in the PL, as well as two manuscripts of Lombard’s text I checked at the British Library for further corroboration, one of which has a recorded medieval English provenance.18 The close match between them includes the opening phrase that is missing from Rusch; no corresponding text for the explanatory phrase “outher cristen womman” [or Christian woman], however, is present in the examined copies of Lombard’s work either, which might suggest that it indeed was a gloss added by the ME prologue writers. The same pattern can also be detected in many other additional prologues to the Pauline Epistles, including Philemon, whose opening phrase in Emmanuel—missing from Rusch, as noted above—is present in 17  Smith surmises that Lombard’s text “did not completely supersede” the parva glosatura (Smith 2009, 78). The previously largely accepted assumption that Lombard’s text is an (enlarged) revision of the parva glosatura has been challenged by Michael Scott Woodward, who argues that the parva glosatura on the Pauline Epistles is, in fact, an abridged version of Lombard. The textual evidence he presents in support of the argument seems convincing (Woodward 2011, ix–xi, and xvii–xx). 18  See Lombard’s gloss on the opening word of 1 Timothy, PL 192:325–326; similarly, in London, British Library Royal MS 2 C. II, fol. 182r and London, British Library Harley MS 3249, fol. 178v. According to de Hamel, the latter manuscript was given to the Franciscans in Oxford by Ralph Maidstone (Bishop of Hereford etc., d. 1245) (de Hamel 1984, 33, 96).

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

161

Lombard’s text (see PL 192:305; similarly in Royal 2 C II, fols. 194v-195r and Harley 3249, fol 196v). The reference “The glose here” in this prologue, thus, seems to refer to the magna glosatura on the Pauline Epistles. Similarly, all that is left of the partly mutilated Colossians prologue can be traced to Lombard, while Rusch lacks not just the opening phrase but also a short passage in the middle.19 In the likewise partly mutilated prologue to 1 Thessalonians, in addition to the opening phrase, a passage of approximately forty words that Emmanuel shares with Lombard is not present in Rusch.20 The same tendency is also visible, to a varying degree, in the additional prologues to 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, and 2 Timothy. On the whole, it would thus seem that Lombard’s prefatory glosses provided a major textual source for the additional prologues to most of the Pauline Epistles in the Emmanuel manuscript. While systematic use of Lombard’s text can be demonstrated, the additional prologues using it do not always show a straightforward, linear translation of a single section from this source. This can be seen in several ways. Thus, in 1 Corinthians—after citing Lyra at the beginning of the prologue (see below)—Emmanuel first translates a passage corresponding to twelve lines from the beginning of Lombard’s gloss in the PL (omitting one clause in lines 6–7 of the gloss), but it then skips approximately twenty-five lines of text before again resuming the translation toward the end of the gloss; even there, it skips one more sentence (FM 1850, vol. 4, 686b; Emmanuel 108, fols. 189r–v; cf. PL 191:1533). The additional prologue to Galatians, for its part, first, appears to take a short sentence from what is the second line in the PL text of the first gloss of Lombard on this epistle, and then continues to translate fifteen lines from the end of the fifth line onwards, omitting a few individual clauses, phrases, and words (FM 1850, vol. 4, 687b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 215v; cf. PL 192:94). In fact, toward the end of the quoted passage, the Galatians prologue seems better characterized as a summary than as an attempt at faithful translation of the Lombard passage. Finally, the short (but evidently complete) 19  The passage missing from Rusch is “therfore bi Archippus prechinge and Epafras confermynge his techynge, thei hadden lerid the grace of Crist” [therefore by Archippus preaching and Epafras confirming his teaching they had learned the grace of Christ], FM 1850, vol. 4, 689b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 230v. This corresponds to Lombard: “Archippo ergo prædicante, et prædictationem ejus Epaphra confirmante, gratiam Christi didicerant” (PL 192:259). 20  “The apostle preisith hem … for the name of Jhesu” [The apostle praises them … for the name of Jesus] (FM 1850, vol. 4, 690b; Emmanuel 108, fols. 234v–235r; cf. Lombard, PL 192:289: “Hos collaudat Apostolus … pro nomine Christi sustinerant”).

162 

M. PEIKOLA

additional prologue to Ephesians, while apparently likewise based on Lombard, is a highly condensed and abstract summary of its introductory gloss, with little correspondence to the linguistic structure of the Latin source text (FM 1850, vol. 4, 689b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 221r; cf. PL 192:169–170). 7.2.3  Scheide MS 12 It may now be asked how these more extracted or nonlinear Pauline prologues in the Emmanuel manuscript came about. No definite answer can be provided, but there is fortunately external evidence that helps to shed more light on the textual status of one of them. It so happens that the prefatory material to Galatians in a complete Bible in LV, now in Princeton University Library (Scheide MS 12), contains three additional prologues to this epistle in addition to the standard LV prologue.21 All of these are codicologically and paleographically fully integrated into what appears to be the regular design of the manuscript. No other biblical book in the Scheide manuscript is furnished with such extra prefatory material, although it may not be accidental that it is also one of the few manuscripts that contains the complete text of the General Prologue to WB.22 On the manuscript page in Scheide, each extra prologue to Galatians is preceded by a rubricated heading “an oþere prologe” [another prologue]. The first additional prologue is clearly affiliated with Emmanuel’s additional prologue to Galatians (see FM 1850, vol. 1, xxx; Dove 2007, 206).23 The  Princeton University Library, William H. Scheide MS 12, fols. 371r–v. The manuscript is available in a digital facsimile at http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/vq27zn490. For a description of the manuscript, see Dove 2007, 264–266 (note that the location of the Galatians prologues given by Dove as “fols. 271r-v” contains a typo, Dove 2007, 265). The three additional prologues of Scheide MS 12 are also found in the same order in New Haven, The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Takamiya Deposit MS 31 (NT in LV), in a section of nineteen prologues placed after the Apocalypse on fols. 89r–90v. The other Pauline prologues copied in this section comprise the usual LV prologues to the Pauline Epistles from 1 Corinthians to Hebrews, none of which is found in its usual location before the epistle. I am grateful to Professor Takamiya for kindly allowing me to inspect the manuscript during a visit to Japan in 2002. See also Takamiya 2010, 428. The manuscript is available in a digital facsimile at https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4428070 22  Somerset provides a useful summary of the complete and abridged versions of the General Prologue, based on Dove (Somerset 2014, 173 n. 25; Dove 2007, 120 nn. 80–83). 23  All three additional prologues to Galatians in Scheide MS 12 were printed by Forshall and Madden 1850, vol. 4, 688b–689b. At the time, the manuscript belonged to Sir Peregrine Acland. 21

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

163

Scheide prologue, however, is considerably longer (a total of approximately 400 words) than the corresponding prologue in Emmanuel (around 140 words). A comparison of Scheide to the magna glosatura on Galatians indicates that it is a verbatim and linear translation of almost the entire Lombard’s prefatory gloss on this epistle. The only exceptions are the omission of the text corresponding to the first five lines of Lombard’s gloss in PL, describing Galatians as Greeks and giving historical/etymological information about their province, and, two lines below, the phrase “sicut et indociles Galli,” probably omitted because the negative reference to “Galli” might not be comprehensible without the information provided about them in the first omitted passage (PL 192:94–95).24 Moreover, there are two clauses introduced with “that is,” which are best interpreted as the ME prologue writer’s explanatory glosses on Lombard’s text; there is no evidence that either of them was part of the Latin text.25 A collation of the Scheide prologue with the corresponding prologue in Emmanuel not only confirms their textual affiliation beyond any doubt (i.e., that they are part of the same textual tradition, based on the same ME translation of the magna glosatura) but also shows that Emmanuel is an abridged version of a fuller translation of the kind represented by Scheide (although not necessarily one identical with Scheide, see below). The conspicuous difference in their length is explained above all by Emmanuel’s omission of all that follows in the text of the gloss in Scheide, from the eleventh line in FM onwards.26 The omitted passage includes, for example, explications of Paul’s intentions as the writer of the epistle (“the entent of the postle in his pistle is” [the purpose of the apostle in his epistle is] and the thematic structure of the text (“The maner is sich” [The 24  The auctoritates from which Lombard’s gloss is derived are indicated in some manuscripts of the text and also in the Patrologia Latina edition (in this case, Ambrose and Jerome); they are not supplied in the ME prologue of Scheide (or in Emmanuel). The corresponding parva glosatura text of this gloss is considerably shorter and cannot have served as the source for the Middle English (ME) version. 25  “to bicome Jewis, that is to holde bodili circumsicioun and fleishli ceremonyes, ether sacrifices of Moises lawe” [to become Jews, that is to hold bodily circumcision and fleshly ceremonies, or sacrifices of the law of Moses]; “holdun aftir Crist, that is, aftir Cristis deth and pupplisching of the gospel” [hold after Christ, that is, after Christ’s death and the revealing of the gospel] (my emphasis) (FM 1850, vol. 4, 688b; Scheide 12, fol. 371r). 26  From the line beginning “techyng, and writith to hem fro Effesus” [teaching, and writes to them from Ephesus] (FM 1850, vol. 4, 688b).

164 

M. PEIKOLA

manner is such]; FM 1850, vol. 4, 688b; Scheide 12, fol. 371r, cf. PL 192:95).27 What is left in Emmanuel essentially focuses on summarizing the events described in the epistle, at the level of literal narration. Even before the wholly omitted part of the gloss, however, the Emmanuel text shows signs of abridgement. The method can be illustrated by comparing Scheide and Emmanuel in two corresponding passages. The first passage shows the beginning of the prologue; the second occurs toward the end of their shared portion. In the examples, substantive variants are highlighted in the combination of boldface and underlining. To facilitate reference and comparison, each pair of variants (including the “zero variants” shown as [–]) is furnished with a Roman numeral (i–ix). Scheide: i[–] And thouʒ Grekis ben of sharp wit, iinetheles iii[–] Galathies weren foolis and ivful slow to vndurstonde. These Galathies token first of the postle the treuthe of feith and of techyng, but aftirward thei weren vi [–] temptid of falsse apostlis to bicome Jewis. (FM 1850, vol. 4, 688b; Scheide 12, fol. 371r) [And though Greeks are of sharp wit, nevertheless Galatians were fools and very slow to comprehend. These Galatians first took from the apostle the truth of faith and teaching, but afterwards they were tempted by false apostles to become Jews.] Emmanuel: iGalathies ben Grekis, and thouʒ Grekis ben of scharp witt, ii ʒit iiithe Galathies weren foolis and iv[–] slouʒ to vndirstonde; vfor thei weren viliʒtli temptid of false apostlis to bicome Jewis. (FM 1850, vol. 4, 687b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 215v) [Galatians are Greeks, and though Greeks are of sharp wit, yet the Galatians were fools and slow to comprehend; for they were easily tempted by false apostles to become Jews.] Scheide:viiBi these thingis viiiand othere siche, thei peruertiden Galathies, ixin so mych, that Galathies assentiden to hem, and passiden in to fleishli keping of the lawe. (FM vol. 4, 688b; Scheide 12, fol. 371r.) [By these things and other such, they perverted Galatians, in so much that Galatians assented to them and adopted fleshly keeping of the law.] Emmanuel: viiand with these thingis viii[–] thei peruertide Galathies ix[–] into fleischli kepinge of the lawe. (FM 1850, vol. 4, 687b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 215v.)

27  For these structural elements in scholastic prologues, with examples from Go on the Psalter, see Minnis 1984, 42–58.

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

165

[and with theses things they perverted Galatians into fleshly keeping of the law.]

Of the, nine numbered pairs of variants, (v) and (ix) illustrate the method of abridgement particularly well. They indicate that the person who carried it out must have analyzed the grammatical structure of the text in some detail to produce a smooth shortened version. In (v), a long main clause is omitted altogether, but the subordinate clause following it is largely retained and furnished with a different opening conjunction to join it seamlessly to the end of the previous sentence. Similarly, without knowledge of the Latin source text, the well-planned ellipsis shown in (ix) would be practically impossible to spot on the basis of the context. Other, less conspicuous variants, possibly reflecting the same editorial intention to shorten the source text in a meaningful way, are found in (iv) and (viii), in both of which an element with little new information is omitted, and in (ii), in which a long conjunction is replaced with a shorter synonymous variant. The other numbered variants here, however, do not seem to be working in the same direction, since their reading in Emmanuel is longer than in Scheide. Among them, (iii), in which a definite article is supplied for “Galathies” could undoubtedly have arisen more or less automatically, even if the scribal editor was generally striving for abridgement. Likewise (vii) might be associated with the overall reworking of the sentence in question (cf. viii and ix, discussed in the previous paragraph). The remaining two instances (i and vi), however, both show a variant in Emmanuel that seems difficult to associate with its apparent general tendency toward reduction. Of these, (vi) may be viewed, if anything, as a directly opposite case to (iv) and (viii), which now shows an element with little new informational content occurring in Emmanuel as opposed to a zero variant in Scheide. The collation of the two prologues in their entirety also turns up another similar instance (Scheide: “medliden kepyngis of the [–] lawe with the gospel” [mixed observances of the [–] law with the gospel] versus Emmanuel: “medliden kepingis of the olde lawe with the gospel” [mixed observances of the old law with the gospel]) (FM 1850, vol. 4, 688b; Scheide 12, fol. 371r; Emmanuel 108, fol. 215v.) Neither in (vi) nor in the variant cited here, however, is the reading of Emmanuel really any closer to the presumed Latin source text than the corresponding reading

166 

M. PEIKOLA

in Scheide; rather, it can be viewed as a specification of it (cf. PL 192:94).28 They were not necessarily present in the archetype of this ME prologue, but they could have been introduced into the exemplar of Emmanuel or one of its ancestors as later scribal specifications. The variant most difficult to explain in a satisfactory way is (i), in which there is nothing in Scheide to correspond to the opening clause of Emmanuel: “Galathies ben Grekis” [Galatians are Greeks]. I offer two possible explanations for the reader to consider. First, since this clause is a direct translation of the opening words of Jerome’s prologue to Galatians (“Galatæ sunt Græci”), it might have been adopted from that source to clarify the argument at the beginning of the gloss by the redactor of the Emmanuel prologue or one of its direct ancestors (see Stegmüller and Reinhardt 1950–80, vol. 1, 295, no. 707; cf. Stegmüller and Reinhardt 1950–80, vol. 9, 537, no. 11835).29 This prologue by Jerome is also the one that forms the text of the “standard” EV/LV prologue to Galatians, which is also present in both Scheide and Emmanuel, placed immediately before the additional prologue discussed here; the ME translation of its opening phrase (in both EV and LV) is identical with the beginning of the additional prologue in Emmanuel: “Galathies ben Grekis” (see FM 1850, vol. 4, 396; similarly in Scheide 12, fol. 171r and Emmanuel 108, fol. 215r). Another possible explanation starts from the assumption that the original (archetypal) version of the ME additional prologue to Galatians also included the translation of the beginning of Lombard’s gloss to this epistle, although it is not present in Scheide. This opening section includes the sentence “Galatæ autem sunt Græci,” which might have given rise to Emmanuel’s “Galathies ben Grekis” (PL 192:94). If this hypothetical interpretation is accepted, it would be logical to assume that Emmanuel’s version of the prologue was abridged from a text that contained the opening section as well. Since, however, this is the textually more complex of the two interpretations proposed here, it may also be the less plausible one.

28  Obviously, the reading in the specific source manuscript of Lombard’s text used for the archetype of the ME prologues cannot be known with certainty. 29  The prologue also occurs in the magna glosatura on this epistle, as in PL 192:93, under the heading “Argumentum.”

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

167

7.2.4  Additional MS 15521 There also exists another textually affiliated version of the same additional prologue to Galatians. The whereabouts of the medieval manuscript in which it occurs, however, have been unknown at least since the mid-­ nineteenth century, when Forshall and Madden published their edition of WB (see FM vol. 1, xxx).30 All that remains of the Galatians’ prologue and a substantive set of other additional NT prologues contained in the same manuscript is a transcription made by the antiquarian Joseph Ames, probably in 1731, on a set of additional leaves inserted at the beginning of his printed copy of the Reverend John Lewis’ edition of the Wycliffite NT (published 1731). This hybrid book is now BL Additional MS 15521.31 Not much is known about the manuscript used by Ames as the source for his transcription. In a note preceding the transcription of the prologues, he refers to it as “that Curious MS of Wickliff’s written 1424. in the possession of Thomas Granger Esqr by whose favour I have Transcribed it” (BL Additional 15521, fol. 2v).32 Slightly more information is provided by the antiquarian Daniel Waterland in a letter to John Lewis, dated 20 January 1729/30, in which Granger’s manuscript is said to be “Wickliff’s Testament, in 8vo. a fair copy, written in the year 1424;” the date, Waterland notes, is based on “the Almanack in the entrance, which begins that year” (Waterland 1823, 392). It is not at all clear what Waterland means by “the Almanack” in this context—possibly an Easter table, since the liturgical calendars appended at the beginning of some WB

 Dove notes that the present location of this manuscript is unknown (Dove 2007, 289).  The book was acquired by the British Museum in 1845; for a brief description of its contents, see The British Museum 1850, 15. See also the entry on the manuscript in the digital catalog of the British Library. The additional prologues are found on fols. 2v–3v. 32  After Granger’s death, a printed auction catalog of his substantial library was issued; see Ballard 1732. A separately paginated section at the end of the book, entitled “A Catalogue of the Remaining Part of the Manuscripts Of the Late Mr. Granger,” lists some medieval manuscripts, such as “The Boke clepyd the chastisyngys of goddys childryn” [The Book called the chastisings of God’s children] (Ballard 1732, 8), now probably British Library Harley MS 6615, but it contains nothing corresponding to a Wycliffite NT or any other WB manuscript. The wording in the title of the section referring to “the remaining part of the manuscripts” makes one wonder whether some of Granger’s manuscripts were acquired by others before the catalog was compiled. In The Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts, none of the manuscripts whose provenance is associated with a Thomas Granger corresponds to our manuscript. See http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/index.html. 30 31

168 

M. PEIKOLA

manuscripts do not to my knowledge specify years.33 In any event, there is no reason to assume that the manuscript was necessarily written in the year with which the table begins. A close reading of the additional prologues in Additional MS 15521 (henceforth, Additional) suggests that Ames’ transcription is generally of good quality, with just a few obvious (substantive) scribal blunders made by him. Some of these problematic readings in the manuscript are underlined there in pencil, possibly by Frederick Madden, keeper of the manuscripts at the British Museum, during the preparation of the 1850 edition of WB in which the additional prologues from this manuscript were printed. Evidently, depending on their own judgment as to the degree of textual proximity between the corresponding prologues of Emmanuel and Additional, Forshall and Madden either printed them separately or edited them using a single base text (the latter method was only applied to the additional prologues to Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians).34 In the Galatians prologue, the editors followed the first method and printed the prologues separately (FM vol. 4, 687b–688b). Even in this case, as in several other (though not all) such separately printed Pauline prologues, the versions in Emmanuel and Additional are nonetheless clearly affiliated, especially through their use of the same ME translation of Go.35 A collation of the Galatians prologue in Additional with those of Emmanuel and Scheide shows, to start with, that while Additional is only approximately thirty words longer than Emmanuel (in contrast to the considerably longer Scheide), only its first half seems to be based on the same source in magna glosatura as the whole of Emmanuel’s additional prologue to this epistle. Within this shared part, Additional and Emmanuel share many substantive readings against Scheide, in a way that seems best

33  I am aware of only one Easter table in WB manuscripts (in Manchester, John Rylands University Library, English MS 80, fol. 8r). The table begins with the year 1448 and runs to 1520 (Peikola 2009, 92–94). 34  See the section “Additional Prologues” in FM vol. 4, 681b–695b. Their rationale for editing the prologues with a single base text or separately is not spelled out by the editors. 35  To a varying degree, the separately printed additional prologues to Galatians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews would all seem to be affiliated textually. Despite their partly similar themes, the Emmanuel and Additional prologues to 1 and 2 Corinthians seem more like completely different texts. For 2 Thessalonians, an additional prologue occurs only in Additional.

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

169

interpreted as indicating their descent from a shared hyparchetype.36 In the same part, however, Additional also includes several readings against the shared testimony of Emmanuel and Scheide, suggesting that the text represents a further revision of the shared material.37 In the Galatians prologue, the direction of this revision in Additional seems to have been to abridge the Lombard material even further. Comparing certain other textually affiliated Pauline prologues in Emmanuel and Additional with the Latin text, however, indicates that this is not the overall tendency. On the contrary, in some prologues, Additional would rather appear to be inserting further specifications into the text, and, in Philippians, the end of the gloss even seems to continue the translation of the Lombard source from the point where Emmanuel leaves off, although the case is not absolutely clear due to lacunae in the last two lines of the Emmanuel prologue.38 Perhaps in connection with Additional’s further redaction of the Lombard material in the Galatians prologue (as discussed above), a passage of approximately the same length as the remaining section from Lombard was added at the end of the prologue, introduced with the sentence “And this epistil is departid into tweye principal partis” [And this epistle is divided into two principal parts] (FM vol. 4, 688b; Additional 15521, fol. 3r). The prologue then briefly explains what these parts are; the source for the division is not indicated. Such division of the biblical text into numbered “principal parts,” or usually just “parts,” is a major compositional feature in Additional’s prologues. As in Galatians, the division is typically introduced at the end of the prologue, and it often forms 36  For example, “Galathies ben Grekis” [Galatians are Greeks], (Emmanuel & Additional) versus “[–]” (Scheide); “ʒit” [yet] versus “netheles” [nevertheless]; “[–]” versus “ful” [very]; “for” versus “These Galathies token … but aftirward” [These Galatians took … but afterwards]; “liʒtli” [easily] versus “[–];” “fredom” [freedom] versus “treuthe” [truth] (FM vol. 4, 687b–688b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 215v; Additional 15521, fol. 3r.) For the context of some of these variants, see the preceding discussion comparing Emmanuel and Scheide. 37  For example, “thei” [they] (Additional) versus “Grekis” [Greeks] (Emmanuel & Scheide); “thei” [they] versus “(the) Galathies” [Galatians]; “[–]” versus “to bicome Jewis that is” [to become Jews, that is]; “[–]” versus “other sacrifices of” [or sacrifices of]; “seiden” [said] versus “affermyden” [affirmed] (FM vol. 4, 687b–688b; Emmanuel 108, fol 215v; Additional 15521, fol. 3r). 38  “that thei suffre alle aduersitees mekeli, for the loue of Crist, as Crist dide” [that they suffer all adversities meekly, for the love of Christ, as Christ did] (FM vol. 4, 689b; Additional 15521, fol. 3r; cf. PL 192:223, “ut omnia adversa pro Christo sustineant, et cum humilitate, sicut et Christus fecit”).

170 

M. PEIKOLA

a significant part of the text in terms of its total length. Since this feature is wholly absent from Emmanuel, it seems plausible to surmise that the making of the prologues in Additional reflects a systematic endeavor to amplify a series of preexisting ME prologues by furnishing them with a new section outlining a numbered structure of the biblical book. Although the Pauline prefatory glosses in both the magna and the parva glosatura tend to conclude with a description of the major thematic/structural elements of the epistle, typically introduced with the phrase “Modus talis,” or more fully “Modus tractandi talis est,” these divisions are as a rule not numbered, nor do they match Additional’s “(principal) parts” in content.39 The divisions of the biblical books into numbered parts introduced in Lyra’s Postilla do not seem to match Additional’s schemes either, so the question of their source at present remains open.40

7.3   Lyra and Other Textual Sources It will be recalled that in their brief discussion of Emmanuel’s additional prologues, Forshall and Madden also mention Lyra as their major source in addition to Go (FM 1850, vol. 1, xxx). Similarly to Go, however, explicit references to this source too are almost nonexistent in the prologues. Lyra’s authority is evoked by name only in the additional prologue to the gospel of John, in a conventionally formed citation: “But, as Lire seith, we cristen men moten be weel war of the origynals of Ebrew in summe poyntis” [But as Lyra says, we Christians must well beware of the Hebrew sources in some points] (FM vol. 4, 685b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 136v). In the additional prologue to 1 Corinthians, however, there is another, ostensibly somewhat vaguer reference that is worth closer scrutiny, “A postille here” [A postil here]—a citation comparable in form and backward-­ referring function to the single reference to Go in the additional prologue 39  “Modus talis,” see, for example, PL 192:395 (on Philemon); “Modus tractandi talis est,” for example, PL 192:259 (on Colossians). Minnis 1984, 22, notes that in scholastic prologue writing “[s]ometimes literary arrangement [i.e. ordo libri] was discussed as a facet of the modus tractandi; sometimes it was allotted a separate heading.” 40  In Lyra, the structural division of each Pauline Epistle is typically introduced at the beginning of the commentary addressing it. While Lyra primarily focuses on the rhetorical function of the parts (such as the salutation), Additional is structured according to their themes. For example, “In the first part he [Paul] techith how he [Titus] owith to haue him as to his bischops” [In the first part he [Paul] teaches how he [Titus] is required to conduct himself to his bishops] (FM vol. 4, 692b; Additional 15521, fol. 3v).

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

171

to Philemon discussed earlier. In an entry clearly influenced by the corresponding entry in MED, OED cites this occurrence of the word postil in Emmanuel under what is identified as its primary medieval sense, “A marginal note or comment, esp. on a biblical text”; neither source makes any mention of Lyra in its entries on the word.41 According to OED, using the word in the singular to refer to a book of such comments or expositions dates from the Early Modern period.42 The MED provides only two citations for this word, both of which are reproduced in OED without giving any further citations from the period before Caxton. Interestingly, both citations originate from the sphere of Wycliffite biblical scholarship. In addition to the single occurrence of the word in Emmanuel (as cited in the previous paragraph), the dictionaries cite the WB prologue to the Prophets, in which it also occurs once, in a backward-referring clause “This seith a postille on Jeroms prolog on Ysaie” [This says a postil on Jerome’s prologue on Isaiah].43 That the word seems to have been rare and perhaps also difficult to process is suggested by the fact that at least two scribes of the Prophets prologue, as recorded by Forshall and Madden, turned it into apostle, which does not make sense in the context (FM vol. 3, 225 [in their MSS F and K, i.e. Sion College MS Arc L40.2/E1 and Bodleian Library Fairfax MS 2 respectively]).44 Both here and in Emmanuel, however, the intended reference appears to be specifically to Lyra, not just to any “note or commentary on a Scriptural passage” (cf. the OED definition). As far as can be judged on the basis of these references, they function synonymously with the much more frequent “Lire here” used in the WB marginal glosses as discussed above. The variation might be due to the personal preferences of different prologue writers/glossators, or may perhaps indicate some difference in the textual form in which Lyra was accessed by them, but at present this must remain mere speculation. Let us nonetheless take a closer look at the use of Lyra in Emmanuel’s Pauline prologues. 41  Oxford English Dictionary (OED), s.v. postil; cf. MED, s.v. postille, “A note or commentary on a Scriptural passage.” 42  OED, s.v. postil. 43  OED, s.v. postil; MED, s.v. postille. For the occurrence in the prologue to the Prophets, see FM vol. 3, 225. For a detailed discussion of this prologue, see Dove 2007, 113–118. 44  The error apostle may have been prompted by the exemplar reading “apostille” that shows the indefinite article written together with its headword. Although their edition does not show it, this reading occurs also in FM’s base text British Library Royal MS 1 C. VIII, fol. 215r.

172 

M. PEIKOLA

In Emmanuel’s additional prologue to 1 Corinthians, the sentence immediately preceding the reference “A postille here” is a direct translation of Lyra’s prefatory gloss on 1 Corinthians (about what Paul is teaching in his two epistles to the Corinthians), and it would seem that the two sentences before it at the beginning of the prologue are likewise largely based on the same source, including Lyra’s comment about Paul’s use of Greek and Latin in his epistles.45 The first clause of the prologue, “As the apostil that cowde alle langagis” [As the apostle that knew all languages], however, does not appear to be based on what Lyra says in this locus. A possibility remains that it is an addition by the ME prologue writer (in his own voice?). Even if this were not the case and the clause was lifted from a Latin source, opening the prologue with such a remark may well have carried an ideological resonance, possibly intended as a veiled argument in support of making Scripture available in all languages (especially in English). It will be recalled that the rest of Emmanuel’s additional prologue to 1 Corinthians, from the “A postille here” reference onwards, is based on Go (Lombard). As also noted above, despite the systematic and prolific use of this source, only one of the Pauline prologues (Philemon) names it in the text (“The glose here”). While 1 Corinthians is similarly the only Pauline prologue citing Lyra’s work by name, his postil also seems to have been used elsewhere in them, although the degree of this textual legacy is in no way comparable to the extensive use of Go. A very probable use of Lyra can be detected in the additional prologue to Hebrews, where, similarly to 1 Corinthians, the ME prologue writer prefers to open his text with a language-related comment. Proceeding from the traditional assumption that Paul wrote the epistle in Hebrew (as described, for example, by Jerome in his prologue to the epistle), the prologue writer—perhaps in his own words—opens with the observation that “Poul wroot this epistil more cleerli or exelently than othere pistlis; for ech man is moost expert outhir moost redi in his owne langage” [Paul wrote this epistle more clearly or excellently than other epistles; for each person is most expert or most ready in his own language] (FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 45  My reference to “sentences” in the text corresponds to Forshall and Madden’s punctuation. See FM vol. 4, 686b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 189r. Cf. Biblia latina… 1497, vol. 4, fol. clxxixv, available online at the Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum, http://daten.digitalesammlungen.de/bsb00025974/image_363. For the use of Lyra in the WB prologue to the Prophets, see Dove 2007, 115.

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

173

251r). It is difficult not to see this opening strategy as a veiled argument in support of vernacular biblical translation. Citing Isidore, the prologue writer then moves on to draw an analogy between the primacy of Hebrew among languages and that of Hebrews among the Pauline Epistles: “Wherfore as Ebrew langage is formere than othere, as Isodre seith in the firste book of Ethimologies, so this pistil to Ebrewis, that was last writen, is the firste in ordre of techinge” [Wherefore as the Hebrew language is earlier than other languages, as Isidore says in the first book of Etymologies, so this epistle to Hebrews, which was written last, is the first in the order of teaching] (FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 251r). A closer examination of this sentence suggests, however, that it is probably not the prologue writer’s firsthand quotation from Isidore, but is adopted from Lyra’s long opening “Prohemium” on Hebrews, which includes the same argument and also an identical reference to Isidore in the same context (Biblia latina 1497, fol. ccxliiiiv). It also seems that at least the beginning of what follows in the ME prologue, claiming that “in this pistil is schewid the vnperfeccioun of Moises lawe and the perfeccioun of the gospel” [in this epistle is shown the unperfection of the law of Moses and the perfection of the gospel] is derived from a passage slightly later in the same “Prohemium” (FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 251r; cf. Biblia latina 1497, fol. ccxliiiiv ). In addition to the secondhand citation of Isidore, the only other reference to a named patristic authority in Emmanuel’s additional prologues to the Pauline Epistles is one to Chrysostom in the prologue to Philemon. It may not be accidental that it follows immediately after the citation of Go (“The glose here”) (FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 250r). By indicating the textual source of the passage that follows the Go citation, the prologue writer may have wanted to clarify to the reader its backward-­ referring force (which seems to have been uncommon in ME, as argued above). The colored paraph that appears in the manuscript in this location seems to have the same metatextual function of elucidating the juncture between the two citations (Emmanuel 108, fol. 250r).46 Consisting of the name of an authority and a reporting verb following it, the reference to Chrysostom itself follows a ubiquitous ME formula for citing an authority: “Crisostum seith, if Poul makith so greet bisynes for a seruaunt, for a 46  Only a few paraphs appear in all of Emmanuel’s additional prologues. In highlighting the ordinatio of these texts, they seem to be flagging the highest level of text-internal subdivision.

174 

M. PEIKOLA

theef, a fleer awei fro his maistir, it bicometh us to be bisi for siche” [Chrysostom says, if Paul makes so great effort for a servant, for a thief, for a runaway from his master, it is proper for us to make an effort for such people] (my emphasis; FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 250r). This passage is derived from Chrysostom’s prefatory “hypothesis” to his three homilies on Philemon, but it is impossible to tell whether the immediate source used by the prologue writer was a complete Latin translation of the commentary or a compendium of some kind.47 The latter option is perhaps suggested by the vagueness of the citation, which does not specify the text of Chrysostom used, unless the prologue writer considered the source too obvious to need mentioning.48 In any case, the quotation seems not to be included in the patristic glosses derived from Chrysostom in Lombard’s exposition of Philemon (nor is it present in the text of Lyra’s postil on this epistle); unlike the secondhand citation of Isidore, it was, therefore, evidently obtained from some other source. It is worth noting that the only other explicit reference to any textual source in all Emmanuel’s prologues to the Pauline Epistles (in addition to those already discussed) occurs immediately after the passage from Chrysostom, at the end of the prologue to Philemon. This quotation from the gospel of Matthew is joined to the text derived from Chrysostom by a causal conjunction: “for Crist seith in the gospel of Mathew, v. co. Bles[lost]” [for Christ says in the gospel of Matthew, Ch. 5. Bles[lost]] (FM vol. 4, 692b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 250r). Unfortunately, later mutilation of the manuscript leaf has resulted in a lacuna of two to three text lines at the end of the prologue, so it is impossible to be certain which of the eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12) was quoted by the writer. The corresponding prologue in Additional does not contain the material derived from Chrysostom and Matthew 5, so it does not help to solve the problem. The amount of space on the page, however, suggests that there was hardly room for more than one Beatitude with which to conclude the prologue. 47  See PG 62:703. For further discussion of these prefatory pieces to Chrysostom’s homilies on the Pauline Epistles, see Allen 2013, xv–xvi. 48  A Glossed Gospels prologue writer explains: “Whanne Y telle in what omeli of Gregor eþer of Bede, þanne Y mysilf se þat origynal of Gregor eþer of Bede, and, schortli, whateuer doctour Y alegge and telle not speciali where, Y take þat aleggaunce of Alquyn on Matheu” [When I mention in which homily of Gregory or of Bede, then I have seen that source by Gregory or Bede myself, and, briefly, whatever doctor I cite and do not tell specifically where, I take that citation from Aquinas on Matthew] (Hudson 2015, lxi).

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

175

7.4   Framing the Pauline Text The textual examples discussed in sections 7.2 and 7.3 illustrate how the prologue writer’s work was essentially founded on making choices. While our examination of Emmanuel’s additional prologues to the Pauline Epistles suggests that there is probably little “original” material in them that was not derived from Go (Lombard) and other sources (of which Lyra’s postil, Chrysostom on Philemon, and the gospel of Matthew were identified), the compilatory process of selecting, arranging, and syntactically joining specific passages from a larger textual mass, perhaps adding an occasional introductory clause or an explanatory gloss, is very much present in these prologues. A detailed textual scrutiny of the prologues thus effectively allows us to see a late medieval compiler at work and reconstruct some of his methods.49 From the way in which the additional prologues are presented in Emmanuel, it seems plausible to surmise that their primary purpose was to provide the reader with an interpretive paratextual frame within which to approach the individual Pauline Epistles, perhaps intended as a supplement to the frame offered by Jerome’s prologue to the epistle after which they are always placed in the manuscript.50 None of the additional prologues examined in this chapter ventures into the kind of explicit polemic witnessed in some other prologues associated with Wycliffite biblical scholarship, such as (parts of) the GP to Wycliffite Bible.51 It may yet be asked whether textual choices made in the compilation of the Emmanuel prologues foreground any such specific interpretive frames that could be considered sympathetic to the Wycliffite cause. Above, I have discussed the language-related foci at the beginning of the additional prologues to 1 Corinthians and Hebrews as possible examples of a (rather muted) form of framing that might make the reader appreciate the availability of the Bible in English, as concretely manifested in the biblical translations 49  For the medieval compiler’s craft and a scrutiny of the working methods of one thirteenth-century compiler, see Parkes 2012, Ch. XIII. 50  The foundational work on paratext is Genette 1997 (originally published in French in 1987). While the concept has predominantly been applied to the study of framing elements in early/late modern printed books, it also has potential to shed more light into communicative aspects of texts produced and disseminated in late medieval manuscript cultures; see, for example, del Lungo Camiciotti 2011; Peikola 2015; Liira 2020. 51  For a detailed, chapter-by-chapter discussion of the GP, see Dove 2007, 120–136. See also Ghosh 2017, 167–172.

176 

M. PEIKOLA

contained in the same manuscript. These two are the only additional Pauline prologues to exhibit this theme.52 There are, however, two other partly intertwined themes (frames) that are much more constantly present: (1) comforting those who suffer persecution/tribulations and (2) the perversion/subversion/temptation of the faithful by false apostles or false preachers. One or both topics come up in nine of the twelve additional Pauline prologues present in Emmanuel; the only exceptions are the last three prologues, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews (the count does not include the additional prologue to Romans, not discussed in the present chapter). As a rule, these topics are already highlighted in the corresponding prologue by Jerome that forms the first WB prologue to the epistle, so it is possible to see the additional prologues as reinforcing this interpretive frame. The Pauline themes of the faithful enduring persecution and being opposed by false preachers or priests are also present in Wycliffite discourse, repeated over and over again in a substantial number of polemical tracts, sermons, and dialogues that were perhaps largely composed between the early 1380s and the 1410s.53 What makes the treatment of these themes polemical is typically the way in which Wycliffite writers seek to apply them to the historical context in which they themselves are currently operating—even if they often do so, somewhat paradoxically, by employing what Christina von Nolcken calls “generalizing plurals,” tending to refer to both themselves (and their supporters) and their opponents with a seemingly atemporal collective terminology such as trewe cristen men and false prechoures (von Nolcken 1995).54 The treatment of the themes of persecution and false preachers in Emmanuel’s Pauline prologues differs markedly from that of Wycliffite discourse, however, in that there is no attempt to link them to the current 52  See, however, Emmanuel’s additional prologue to John: “Poul wroot the pistil to Romayns in Latyn, for the same skille; for it was the moder tunge of that cuntre. And whi therfore schulde not men now write truly the lawe of God to cristen men in her modir tunge, that thei writen to?” [Paul wrote the epistle to Romans in Latin for the same reason, for it was the mother tongue of that country. And why therefore should not people now write truly the law of God to Christians in the mother tongue of those to whom they write?] (FM vol. 4, 685b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 136v). 53  For an overview of these writings, see Somerset 2010. 54  An important precursor here is Hudson 1981. Linguistic (discursive) structures in which these collective terms tend to be presented in Wycliffite texts are analyzed by Peikola 2000; for their use in creating a persecutional framing, see Peikola 2000, 169–209.

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

177

historical situation or make them part of a discourse operating with the loaded use of generalizing plurals.55 Instead, these themes are presented strictly as part of the literal interpretation of the epistles: a historical narrative involving Paul and his communications to members of the early Christian congregations. Whatever relevance they might hold for the contemporary late medieval English reader is left unspecified. The prologue to 1 Thessalonians, for example, which is practically a verbatim translation from Lombard, praises those Thessalonians who “wolden not be moued fro truthe of feith, neither bi tribulacioun, ne bi fals prechouris” [who would not be moved from truth of faith, neither by tribulation nor by false preachers] (FM vol. 4, 690b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 234v).56 The prologue writer makes here no attempt to gloss Lombard by elaborating on the possible contemporary significance of these preachers. This is in striking contrast, for example, with the Wycliffite tract The Grete Sentence of Curs Expounded, in which the tractarian portrays the pope’s corrupt minions as false preachers: “Certis þis prest [of Rome] wiþ his fals prechours, þat ben princes of manquelleris and werris, ben openly contrarie to Crist and his postlis, and so open Anticristis, maistris of Sathanas” [Certainly, this priest (of Rome) with his false preachers, who are princes of murderers and wars, are openly contrary to Christ and his apostles, and so open Antichrists, masters of Satan] (Arnold 1869–1871, vol. 3, 330). In the Emmanuel prologue to 2 Corinthians, the prologue writer (translating directly from Lombard) similarly describes how Paul in this epistle “puttith awei fals apostlis, and schewith the disceit of her prechynge” [puts away false 55  It is important to note, however, that in Emmanuel’s long additional prologues to the gospels of Mark and John, the discussion of persecution takes on a potentially more Wycliffite slant. The prologue to Mark ends with the writer’s emphatic exhortation to the reader to “suffre not oonli pacientli, but also ioiefully, alle tribulaciouns in this world, and thus to be a trewe cristen man, truli suynge Crist” [suffer not only patiently, but also joyfully, all tribulations in this world, and thus to be a true Christian, truly following Christ (my emphasis)] (FM vol. 4, 683b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 62v). In the prologue to John, the writer argues that “thouȝ wickid men hadden brent alle oure bookis, God hath writen his lawe in cristen mennis soulis and consciencis” [though wicked people had burnt all our books, God has written his law in souls and consciences of Christians (my emphasis)] (FM vol. 4, 685b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 137r). The sources, textual affiliations and ideological outlook of Emmanuel’s additional prologues to the gospels require a study of their own; it should not be assumed that they necessarily share the same origins as the additional prologues to the Pauline Epistles discussed in this chapter. 56  Cf. Lombard, PL 192:289, “nec per tribulationes, nec per pseudoprædicatores potuerunt moveri a fidei veritate.”

178 

M. PEIKOLA

apostles, and shows the deceit of their preaching] (FM vol. 4, 687b).57 No contemporary interpretation of these events is offered. This may be contrasted with how the false apostles are viewed as precursors of the fraternal orders (“þes newe ordris” [these new orders]) in a Wycliffite sermon expounding 2 Corinthians 11–12. Like the Corinthian congregation who were deceived by such characters, the sermon writer argues, “it falluþ by men today þat ben disseyuede be þes newe ordris” [it happens to people today who are deceived by these new orders”] (Hudson 1983, 533). The only instance where the ideology of the false apostles that perverted the faithful in Paul’s time is explicated in a way that might imply a subdued comment on a contemporary controversy is found in the additional prologue to 1 Corinthians. In the latter part of the prologue, which is derived from Lombard’s magna glosatura, the reader learns that the subversive effect of the false apostles on the Corinthian congregation was such that “thei deniede the vertues and the valu of sacramentis, bi the meritis of mynystris” [they denied the virtues and the value of sacraments, by the merits of ministers] (FM vol. 4, 686b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 189v).58 This topic is not mentioned in the regular LV prologue to 1 Corinthians that immediately precedes the additional prologue in Emmanuel.59 A similar Donatist charge, that the validity of the sacraments depends on the moral status of the celebrating priest, was also a common element of accusations against Wycliffism from the early 1380s onwards; thus the passage might conceivably have deterred the reader of 1 Corinthians in the Emmanuel manuscript from entertaining this heretical idea.60 A little later on, the same prologue mentions that Paul instructed the misled Corinthians in “takynge of the sacrament of the auter, where thei erride ful miche” [taking of the sacrament of the altar, where they erred very much] (cf. 1 Cor. 11:17–33; FM vol. 4, 686b; Emmanuel 108, fol. 189v).61 In the light 57  Cf. Lombard, PL 192:9, “repellens pseudoapostolos ostendendo deceptionem prædicationibus eorum.” 58  Cf. PL 191:1533, “sed post per pseudoapostolos multifarie subversi sunt…et sacramentorum virtutem, et usum ex ministrorum meritis judicantes.” 59  For the text of the regular LV prologue to 1 Corinthians (i.e., Stegmüller and Reinhardt 1950–80, vol. 1, 292, no. 685), see FM vol. 4, 338. Lombard’s magna glosatura uses this prologue as the argumentum at the beginning of his commentary on 1 Corinthians (see PL 191:1533). 60  For Donatist’s charges against Wyclif and his followers and for their own views, see Hudson 1988, 316–318. 61  cf. PL 191:1534, “Postea instruit eos…de perceptione Eucharistiæ, ubi plurimum errabant.”

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

179

of the potential anti-Wycliffite interpretation available for the previous point about the validity of sacraments, this passage from Lombard could also be read within a similar frame.62 The question of exactly who “erride ful miche” in the sacrament of the altar would essentially depend on the theological standpoint of the reader, however, so those sympathetic to Wycliffite views about the Eucharist might also have found Lombard’s words favorable to their cause. According to the anonymous writer of the Wycliffite tract Fifty Heresies and Errors of Friars, for example, it was the friars who were responsible for subverting the Eucharist: “O Lord! what hardy devel durste teche þese freris to denye þus openly holy writt, and alle þese seyntis, and þo Court of Rome, and alle trew Cristen men, and to fynde þis heresie, þat þis sacrid oost is accident wiþouten sugett, or noght?” [Oh Lord! What hardy devil dares to teach these friars to deny thus openly Holy Writ and all these saints and the Court of Rome and all true Christians, and to set up this heresy that this sacred host is accident without subject, or nothing] (Arnold 1871, vol. 3, 379). Using Lombard for the framing of 1 Corinthians might thus have served as a subtle reminder to readers of the Emmanuel manuscript about the presence of erroneous interpretations of the Eucharist in England, without committing the prologue writer to an explicit theological position concerning the issue or to the identification of those who were in error about it. This would have been a wise precaution in the period following the promulgation of the Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel (1409) that in various ways sought to curtail theological debate in the vernacular (see Watson 1995). That Emmanuel 108 can be situated in this period is indicated by Lynda Dennison’s and Nigel Morgan’s recent chronology of illuminated WB manuscripts, which places the manuscript in a late group of six LV New Testaments dateable on the basis of their illuminated decoration to c.1430–40 (Dennison and Morgan 2017, 306).

7.5   Conclusions The presence of a set of textually affiliated, partly identical, prologues in the NT owned by Thomas Granger, as well as the longer version of the Galatians prologue in Scheide MS 12 (and Takamiya Deposit MS 31) offer  For Wycliffite’s views concerning the Eucharist, see, for example, Hudson 1988, 281–290; Hornbeck 2010, 68–103. 62

180 

M. PEIKOLA

concrete evidence for the complexity of the textual tradition underlying Emmanuel’s additional Pauline prologues. This material also alerts us to the possibility that similar long prologues in ME, derived from Lombard’s magna glosatura, might once have existed for other Pauline Epistles too in addition to Galatians. The complex textual tradition may mean that the paratextual frames identified in the Emmanuel prologues are the result of more than one subsequent and independent instance of (re-)editing, by more than one person. It is thus not viable to presume automatically that they represent a single paratextual voice (such as that of Purvey, as proposed by Forshall and Madden). Before anything conclusive can be said about the genesis of this material, however, more work is needed on the relationships between the various glosses, prologues, and commentaries found in WB manuscripts and other works of Wycliffite biblical scholarship, as well as on the minutiae of the working methods of their compilers and redactors. It will also be crucial to subject Emmanuel’s additional prologues to the gospels to a similar scrutiny as has, here, been applied to the prologues to the Pauline Epistles. Another pending issue concerns the role played by the scribe of the Emmanuel manuscript as a possible redactor of the additional prologues. The prologues were written by a single professional scribe, in what appears to have been a carefully designed copy of a Middle English NT, as integral elements of that particular book. Work by Kathleen E. Kennedy has brought to light marked scribal similarities between some late LV New Testaments that also include Emmanuel 108 (Kennedy 2014, 147–152). Kennedy also pays attention to the similarities of illumination in this group (Kennedy 2014, 127–147),63 and it would appear that there are some distinctive textual affiliations between some of its members too, like the presence of the epistle to the Laodiceans and the extra prologue to Romans mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Such cumulative evidence may point toward a production network of Wycliffite NTs in the 1430s–1440s. More paleographical work is required to ascertain whether the hand of the Emmanuel scribe is also attested in some other manuscripts of this group written in similar Textualis. Further textual scrutiny of the working methods of this scribe (or group of scribes) in other manuscripts of the group will hopefully help us gauge whether the act of writing the prologues in the Emmanuel manuscript consisted 63  These manuscripts also feature in the group of six illuminated WB manuscripts that Dennison and Morgan date to c.1430–1440 (Dennison and Morgan 2017, 306).

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

181

mainly of faithful reproduction or whether within the constraints imposed, for example, by the distinctively small size of the manuscript the scribe also made active textual choices regarding their content.

References Manuscripts Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108. London, BL Additional MS 15521. London, BL Harley MS 3249. London, BL Harley MS 5017. London, BL Harley MS 6615. London, BL Royal MS 1 C. VIII. London, BL Royal MS 2 C. II. London, Lambeth Palace, Sion College MS Arc L40.2/E1. Manchester, John Rylands University Library English MS 76. New Haven, The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Takamiya Deposit MS 31. https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4428070 Orlando, Grace Sola Foundation, VK MS 637. Oxford, Bodleian Library Fairfax MS 2. Oxford, Bodleian Libary Bodley MS 183. Oxford, Bodleian Library Laud Misc. MS 33. Oxford, New College MS 67. Oxford, Trinity College MS 93. Princeton, University Library, Scheide MS 12. http://arks.princeton.edu/ ark:/88435/vq27zn490

Editions

and

Translations

Allen, P. Trans. 2013. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Anon. ed. 1497. Biblia latina (cum postillis Nicolai de Lyra et expositionibus Guillelmi Britonis in omnes prologos S. Hieronymi et additionibus Pauli Burgensis replicisque Matthiae Doering). Vol. 4. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger. ISTC ib00619000. http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/ bsb00025974/images// Arnold, T., ed. 1871. Select English Works of John Wyclif. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

182 

M. PEIKOLA

Barnum, P.H., ed. 1976–2004. Dives and Pauper, 2 vols. (vol. 1 in 2 parts). EETS, O.S. 275, 280, 323. London/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dove, M., ed. 2010. The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Forshall, J., and F. Madden, eds. 1850. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and the New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Froehlich, K., and M.T. Gibson. 1992. Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, 4 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. Hudson, A., ed. 1983. English Wycliffite Sermons. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Migne, J.P., ed. 1841–55. Patrologia Cursus Completus. Series Latina. 191, 192. Paris: Garnier. ———., ed. 1857–1866. Patrologia Cursus Completus. Series Graeca. Vol. 62. Paris: Migne. Woodward, M.S.  Trans. 2011. The Glossa Ordinaria on Romans. Teams Commentary Series. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.

Secondary Sources (Including Dictionaries

and

Databases)

Ballard, T. 1732. Bibliotheca Grangeriana: or, a Compleat Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Granger. London: s. n. de Hamel, C.F.R. 1984. Glossed Books of the Bible and the Origins of the Paris Booktrade. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. Dearnley, E. 2016. Translators and Their Prologues in Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. del Lungo Camiciotti, G. 2011. Textuality in Late Medieval England: Two Case Studies. In Communicating Early English Manuscripts, ed. P.  Pahta and A. Jucker, 25–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dennison, L., and N. Morgan. 2017. The Decoration of Wycliffite Bibles. In The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 16, ed. E. Solopova, 266–306. Leiden: Brill. Dove, M. 2007. The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dutton, E. 2008. Julian of Norwich: The Influence of Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Froehlich, K. 1992. The Printed Gloss. In Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, ed. K. Froehlich and M.T. Gibson, vol. 1, xii–xxvi. Turnhout: Brepols. Genette, G. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Trans. J.E.  Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7  PARATEXTUAL FRAMES FOR THE MIDDLE ENGLISH READER… 

183

Ghosh, K. 2017. The Prologues. In The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 16, ed. E. Solopova, 162–182. Leiden: Brill. Hargreaves, H. 1961. The marginal glosses to the Wycliffite New Testament. Studia neophilologica 33: 285–300. Hornbeck, J.P., III. 2010. What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hudson, A. 1981. A Lollard sect vocabulary? In So Meny People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, 15–30. Edinburgh: s. n. ———. 1988. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2015. Doctors in English: A Study of the Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Kennedy, K.E. 2014. The Courtly and Commercial Art of the Wycliffite Bible, Medieval Church Studies 35. Turnhout: Brepols. Liira, Aino. 2020. Paratextuality in Manuscript and Print: Verbal and Visual Presentation of the Middle English Polychronicon. Turku: University of Turku. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-8058-1 Middle English Dictionary. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ Minnis, A.J. 1984. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. London: Scolar Press. Moore, C. 2011. Quoting Speech in Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oxford English Dictionary Online. http://www.oed.com Parkes, M.B. 2012. The Compilation of the Dominican Lectionary. In Pages from the Past: Medieval Writing Skills and Manuscript Books, ed. P.R. Robinson, Ch. XIII. Ashgate: Farnham and Burlington. Peikola, M. 2000. Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-Fashioning in English Lollard Writings, Anglicana Turkuensia 21. Turku: University of Turku. ———. 2009. Instructional Aspects of the Calendar in Later Medieval England, with Special Reference to the John Rylands University Library MS English 80. In Instructional Writing in English: Studies in Honour of Risto Hiltunen, Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 189, ed. M.  Peikola, J.  Skaffari, and S.K. Tanskanen, 83–104. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ———. 2015. Manuscript Paratexts in the Making: British Library MS Harley 6333 as a Liturgical Compilation. In Discovering the Riches of the Word: Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Intersections 38, ed. S. Corbellini, M. Hoogvliet, and B. Ramakers, 44–67. Leiden: Brill. Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts. http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/schoenberg/index.html

184 

M. PEIKOLA

Smalley, B. 1978 [1952]. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Smith, L. 2009. Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Solopova, E. 2016. Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Solopova, E., ed. 2017. The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 16. Leiden: Brill. Somerset, F. 2010 [2004]. Wycliffite Prose. In A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A.S.G. Edwards, 195–214. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014. Feeling like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sotheby’s. 1993. Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, London, Tuesday 22nd June 1993. London: Sotheby’s. Stegmüller, F., and N. Reinhardt. 1950–1980. Repertorium biblicum medii aevi, 11 vols. Madrid: Instituto Francisco Suárez. Takamiya, T. 2010. A Handlist of the Western Medieval Manuscripts in the Takamiya Collection. In The Medieval Book: Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. J.H.  Marrow, R.A.  Linenthal, and W.  Noel, 421–440. ‘t GoyHouten: Hes & De Graaf. The British Museum. 1850. Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCXLI—MDCCCXLV. London: Georg Woodfall and Son. von Nolcken, C. 1995. A ‘Certain Sameness’ and Our Response to It in English Wycliffite Texts. In Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages. Philological Studies in Honor of Siegfried Wenzel, ed. R.G.  Newhauser and J.A.  Alford, 191–208. Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies. ———. 1997. Lay Literacy, the Democratization of God’s Law, and the Lollards. In The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. J.L.  Sharpe and K. Van Kampen, 177–195. London/New Castle: British Library/The Oak Knoll Press. Waterland, D. 1823. The Works of the Rev. Daniel Waterland, D.  D. Vol. 10. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watson, N. 1995. Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409. Speculum 70: 822–864. https://doi. org/10.2307/2865345. Wogan-Browne, J., N.  Watson, A.  Taylor, and R.  Evans. 1999. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

CHAPTER 8

Lollard Book Production and Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles Jill C. Havens

8.1   Introduction The unique metrical prologue to Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles in Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 286 has been noted before because of its unintended irony: while it condemns the lollard interpolated versions of the English Psalter, its prologue and first seventeen psalms are actually from a lollard “Revised Version,” RV2 (printed in Bramley 1884, 1–2; Everett 1922a, 223; Hudson 1989, 135).1 Critical discussion of this This chapter was first delivered at a Lollard Society sponsored session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2009. I am grateful to the audience for their very helpful suggestions, especially Michael Kuczynski, Fiona Somerset, and Michael van Dussen; any errors that remain are my own.  “Revised Version” here refers to one of three versions of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles that were considerably revised to incorporate a variety of heretical beliefs held by the lollards. The first attempt to untangle these three different lollard revised versions was 1

J. C. Havens (*) Department of English, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_8

185

186 

J. C. HAVENS

prologue is usually limited to this irony, but I believe the poem also provides information about the production of Rolle’s English Psalter. In the metrical prologue, the poet reveals a deep need to reclaim Rolle’s original text for: Copyed has this Sauter ben of yuel men of lollardry, And afturward hit has bene sene ympyd in with eresy. They seyden then to leuede foles that it shuld be all enter, A blessyd boke of hur scoles of Rychard Hampole the Sauter. Thus thei seyd to make theim leue on her scole thoro sotelte, To bryng hem in so hem to greue ageyn the feyth in grete fole, And slaundird foule this holy man with her wykkyd waryed wyles, Hur fantom hath made mony a fon thoro the fend that fele begiles. (Bramley 1884, 2, lines 49–56, punctuation mine)2 [This psalter has been copied by evil lollard men, and afterward it has appeared interpolated with heresy. They said then to ignorant fools that it was complete, the Psalter by Richard Hampole, a blessed book for their schools. Thus [the lollards] said this to make [ignorant fools] believe in their teaching through subtlety, to lure them in to injure the faith with great folly, and foully they slandered this holy man with their wicked, vile tricks; their deceit has made many a fool through the fiend that often beguiles.]

The past tense used here suggests that the lollard version of Rolle’s psalter has been around for some time, used as a way to lure people into the lollard fold based on the orthodox reputation of “this holy man,” Richard Rolle. But the poet offers an interesting chronology: he speaks first of the text being “copyed” by the “yuel men of lollardry,” and then “afturward” it has been seen “ymped in with eresy.” The poet seems to claim that the lollards were responsible first for copying and circulating the text and then only later did they actually interpolate their heretical views into the text. Earlier in the prologue, the poet explains how Rolle came to translate and comment upon the psalms in English at the behest of Margaret Kirkby, and he tells us exactly where the text, probably Rolle’s holograph, is kept:

made by Dorothy Everett (see Everett 1922a, b and 1923). The definitive study and edition of Revised Version 1 (RV1) and RV2 is now Hudson 2012–2014. 2  Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

187

This same sauter in all degre is the self in sothnes That lyȝt at hampole in surte at Richard own berynes, That he wrote with his hondes to dame Merget kyrkby, And thar it lyȝt in cheyn bondes in the same nonery. In Ʒork shyre this nvnry ys who so desires it to know, Hym thar no way go omys thes ben the places all on row, Hampole the nonry hyȝt betwene dancastir and poumefreyt. (Bramley 1884, 1–2 lines 25–32.) [This same psalter is truly in every way the same one that lies securely at Hampole at Richard’s own tomb, the one he wrote with his own hands for Dame Margaret Kirkby, and there it remains attached by a chain in the same convent. This nunnery, whoever desires to know it, is in Yorkshire, between Doncaster and Pomfret, and these places are all in a line, so whoever seeks the nunnery, which is called Hampole, will not go astray.]

The poet clearly desires to legitimize his version with these details about where the original manuscript is housed: “in cheyn bondes” at Hampole, presumably in the nunnery’s library. He also encourages his reader or anyone “who so desires it to know” to seek out the nunnery “betwene dancastir and poumefreyt,” and go there to copy the text, for “whos wol it write, I rede hym rygth wryte on warly lyne be lyne, and make no more then here is dygth or ellys I rede hym hit ne ryne” (Bramley 1884, 2 lines 47–48) [Whoever will write it, I advise him to write carefully, line by line, and include no more than is written here. Otherwise, I advise him not to touch it.] In an attempt to ensure the circulation of the authoritative version of Rolle’s English Psalter, the poet threatens that anyone compelled to copy the holograph must add nothing more to the text. Though some of the prologue’s biographical content is suspect, especially its claims that Rolle performed many miracles (“the blynd to se, the halt to go, and tho were slayne he saued eke” [the blind to see, the lame to go, and those who were slain, he also saved]), the details about the English Psalter’s textual history and accessibility for anyone who wishes to copy it appear more reliable (Bramley 1884, 2 line 35). I find the poet’s claim that the lollards copied and circulated Rolle’s English Psalter first, before they added their heretical polemic to create the Revised Versions compelling. In the following chapter, I argue that the lollards also played a role in the production and circulation of the original version of Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. The lollards knew about Rolle’s text and used it as an example of a vernacular scriptural translation that already

188 

J. C. HAVENS

existed and, according to the author of the tract in Trinity College B.14.50, “by wiche many Englice men han ben gretli edified” [by which many English men have been greatly edified] (Buhler 1938, 175). Because of this argument used by the lollards to advance their own agenda of biblical translation, scholars have assumed that Rolle’s text was already circulating and popular before the lollards appropriated it for their own purposes. What I propose here is the possibility that the lollards were also responsible for producing copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles, helping to promote and circulate in the Midlands and south of England what might otherwise have remained a relatively obscure Northern text.3

8.2   The Orthodox-Heterodox Divide In a recent essay, Anne Hudson discusses the constant difficulty for modern scholars to distinguish between orthodox and heterodox texts from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries because, “orthodoxy and heterodoxy even at this time are not easily defined or separated” (Hudson 2011, 90). She goes on to demonstrate persuasively how it was often difficult for both lollards and Church authorities to make these distinctions themselves.4 Contributing to this difficulty for modern scholars, and perhaps for the lollards’ contemporaries, was that much orthodox literature was equally acceptable and useful in the eyes of the lollards. Likewise, heterodox material sometimes escaped notice when intermingled with the orthodox. Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles is an example of such an appropriation of orthodox material for heterodox purposes. Kevin Gustafson has already argued that it should not seem at all surprising that the lollards took up Rolle’s original English Psalter and Canticles because it is “deeply ambiguous and thus ripe for appropriation” on issues such as 3  Hanna, however, in the introduction to his catalog points out that “the Psalter shows a quite extensive Northern circulation” in The English Manuscripts, xxx. Based on dialect, nine of the surviving 23 copies of the English Psalter are from the Yorkshire area: Aberdeen University Library MS 243; Windsor, Eton College MS 10; British Library MS Add. 40769; Newcastle, Public Library MS TH. 1678; Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 12; Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 286, Oxford, University College MS 64; San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 148; and the Rosebery Rolle in the Green Collection. 4  Hudson explains how the Bishop of Norwich, William Alnwick, had Robert Bert, a chaplain of Bury St. Edmunds, arrested for owning a copy of Dives and Pauper while at the same time John Wethamstede, Abbot of the Benedictine abbey at St. Albans, commissioned a copy of the same text for his abbey (Hudson 2011, 84–90).

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

189

clerical authority and penance that “even an uninterpolated copy of the English Psalter could have had a charge of [l]ollardy thrust upon it” (Gustafson 2002, 306–7).5 And Gustafson concludes that once Rolle’s text was “no longer chained to a desk in a monastery, it may be all but impossible to control the ways in which it is read and used” (Gustafson 2002, 299). The evidence in the metrical prologue and the common lollard practice of using orthodox texts for heterodox purposes make feasible the idea that the lollards took an active role in the production and circulation of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. There is additional manuscript evidence that advances this possibility. Of the twenty-three known surviving manuscript copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles, nine incorporate parts of text from the Revised Versions. Seven of these nine manuscripts specifically add five canticles from the Revised Versions to the six Old Testament canticles and the Magnificat included in Rolle’s original English Psalter.6 It is clear from this evidence that scribes who had access to exemplars of Rolle’s English Psalter also had access to exemplars of the Revised Versions. I have argued elsewhere about a group of anonymous vernacular prose tracts that “was available to circles of both heterodox and orthodox scribes” (Havens 2005, 351). And I believe that Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles and the Revised Versions provide yet another example of this overlap in the production of copies of both of these texts.7 Furthermore, it is important to note that though the surviving copies of Rolle’s English Psalter include sections from the Revised Versions, none of the Revised Versions include sections of Rolle’s unrevised English Psalter. Hudson’s argument in her edition of the Revised Versions that “a northern exemplar, whether the hyparchetype or a northern copy of it, lies not far behind each of the extant manuscripts” might indicate that the exemplar used for the Revised Versions was a copy in a Northern dialect because no Midland or Southern version was yet available (Hudson 2014, vol. 1, lxxviii). All of this evidence suggests that the Revised Versions were produced and circulating at the same time as the copies of Rolle’s English Psalter, if not before these copies were made.  On the treatment of clerical authority in Rolle, see Gustafson 2002, 301–306.  The other two manuscripts, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 286 and 321, include only small portions of the Revised Versions. In Laud Misc. 286 (the MS which contains the metrical prologue), the Prologue and Psalms 1–17.50 are from RV2, and in Laud Misc. 321, Psalms 7.1–9.29 are from RV1. 7  This overlap was first noted by Everett 1922a, 224. 5 6

190 

J. C. HAVENS

Hudson has already discussed some of these “mixed” manuscripts, especially the beautifully illuminated copy of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 953 probably commissioned by Thomas, Lord Berkeley before his death in 1417.8 Because Hudson uses Bodley 953 to set forth her argument that “exact boundaries” between orthodox and heterodox remain “undefined,” she does not discuss the manuscript’s circulation further. But these seven manuscripts can tell us much more about their production and circulation, and I want here to examine them more thoroughly to find out how their scribes and later readers responded to these additional canticles from the Revised Versions.

8.3   The Canticles From what is known so far of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles written around 1340, Rolle concluded his commentary on the 150 Psalms with a series of six Old Testament Canticles and the Magnificat.9 The six Old Testament Canticles are: Confitebor tibi (Isaiah 12:1–6), Ego dixi (Isaiah 38: 10–20), Exultavit cor meum (1 Samuel 1:1–10), Cantemus Domino (Exodus 15:1–19), Domine audivi (Habakkuk 3:2–19), and Audite celi (Deuteronomy 32:1–43). When the lollards interpolated their heretical views into the original Rolle text to create the Revised Versions, the interpolators added five canticles to Rolle’s original seven: the Te Deum, the Benedictus (Luke 1.68–79), Nunc dimittis (Luke 2.29–32), Benedicite (Daniel 3.57–88), and the Quicunque vult (or Athanasian Creed).10 Most of the manuscripts of Rolle’s uninterpolated English Psalter and Canticles include only his original set. The seven manuscripts of Rolle’s uninterpolated text that add the five canticles from the Revised Version are: Aberdeen, University Library, MS 243; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 387; London, BL, MS Harley 1806; Oxford, Bodleian 8  The canticles from the Revised Versions in Bodley 953 has drawn the attention of other scholars, especially in light of Lord Berkeley’s patronage of the translator, John Trevisa; see Hanna 1989. 9  The only edition of Rolle’s psalter, at present, is Bramley 1884. The author is currently working on an edition of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles with Kevin Gustafson for the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. 10  These are edited from RVI in Cambridge, Trinity College Library B.5.25 in Hudson 2014, vol. 3, 1153–1194; and from RVI in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 288 in Arnold 1871, vol. 3, 52–81.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

191

Library, MS Bodley 953; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 448; Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 52; and Oxford, University College, MS 56. Hudson argues that “the desire for complete coverage of comparable material has outweighed doctrinal considerations, “and that the five Revised Canticles “were then taken over into unrevised Psalters without regard to their controversial content” (Hudson 1988, 424 and 2014, vol. 1, clviii).11 Ralph Hanna, in his recent descriptive catalog of The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle, echoes Hudson: “[The Revised Canticles] have probably been included in uninterpolated copies by book-producers seeking the fullest representation of the text, without any especial regard to their possible sectarian content” (Hanna 2010, xxxiii). This conclusion makes sense when we consider that traditionally Latin Psalters and other early translations of the Psalms into Old and Middle English included the full twelve Canticles (Morey 2000, 195–196).12 It would not be surprising for a scribe to expect a set of Psalms to be followed by a full set of twelve Canticles; when he didn’t find the full complement in his exemplar, he found another text to hand that could complete the set. Clearly, there was overlap in the production of copies of both Rolle’s unrevised English Psalter and the Revised Versions: the scribes of these manuscripts knew that the additional canticles existed, they knew where they could find exemplars for them, and they seemed to have had no qualms about adding the revised versions to their copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. The revised canticles added to these seven manuscripts seem relatively orthodox in their content, leaving little hint of their possible source, and would support Hudson and Hanna’s claim that often a scribe’s desire for comprehensive coverage was more important. The second revised canticle, the Benedictus, however, leaves no doubt about its heretical origins. The canticle tells of how John the Baptist lived a pure and simple life alone in the desert, whereas oure religious … gederen hem in couentes and lyuen contrarye liif; for in þe stede of oonnesse þei haue chosen flockes, in stede of deserte places þei han chosen citees, in stede of grete penaunce after þe state of innocence, þei han chosen lustful liif to fede her flessche; and where þei schulden forsake crafty 11  Hudson includes six of these manuscripts (she does not include University College MS 56) in her edition of the five lollard canticles (Hudson 2014, vol. 3, 1153–1194). 12  That Rolle only intended to include these seven canticles is suggested by their inclusion in his Latin Psalter and Commentary (Everett 1922a, 226).

192 

J. C. HAVENS

bildynges þei chesen houses and cloistres to hide her ritchesses….so þise religiouns ben contrary to Baptist. (Hudson 2014, vol. 3, 1175 lines 91–99) [Our regular clergy…gather themselves in convents and live a life opposed [to that of John the Baptist]; for instead of unity, they have chosen flocks; instead of the wilderness, they have chosen cities; instead of great penance following the state of innocence, they have chosen the lustful life to feed their flesh; and where they should forsake elaborate buildings, they have chosen houses and cloisters to hide their riches….so these regular clergy live contrary to John the Baptist.]

The canticle continues, explaining how the Antichrist leads such evil friars and teaches them his tricks so they are then marked by their hypocrisy. It is thus: …lesse harme to men of Cristes scool to deele wiþ a legioun of fendes of helle þan wiþ a litel couent of suche quicke deueles. For summe men þei robben and summe þei maken wode, and bi her feyned ypocrisye and cauteles of þe feend þei bigilen mo men þan don oþere feendes. Lord, delyuere his folc fro periles of fals freres! (Hudson 2014, vol. 3, 1176 lines 123–128; Arnold 1871, vol. 3, 59–60)13 [less harmful to men of Christ’s teaching to deal with a legion of fiends from Hell than with a little convent of such living devils. For they rob some men and some they make insane, and by their false hypocrisy and the tricks of the fiend, they beguile more men than do other fiends. Lord, deliver his people from the perils of false friars.]

Many of the manuscript witnesses, including those to be discussed below, add a few more lines at the end of this passage: For if þis laste be passid þe seuene bifore ben liȝtir and ceertis þese religiouse þus bounden to þe fend passen wickide women whos tracis þei folowen for liknes of holy men disseyueþ mych folk. (Hudson 2014, vol. 3, 1176, see variant for line 128) [For if this last be surpassed, the seven [evil spirits] before are insignificant, and surely these regular clergy who are bound to the fiend surpass wicked 13  The last part of this quote echoes the sentiment in a text called “Lincolniensis” found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 647 and also in the “Dialogue between Jon and Richard” (see Somerset 2009, 3 and 69 n. 9–12). I am grateful to Fiona Somerset for this reference.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

193

women whose paths they follow, for the guise of holy men deceives many people.]

This lengthy commentary, with its reference to false friars who seduce the people with their feigning piety, the Antichrist, and, in some of the copies, to Robert Grosseteste, make obvious its heterodox authorship, and it is the fate of these incriminating passages I would like to explore in the rest of this chapter. The range of treatment of these passages by either scribe or later reader can provide additional information about the lollards’ role in the production and circulation of these copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles.

8.4   The Manuscripts In four of the seven “mixed” manuscripts, the polemical passages in the Benedictus canticle are preserved intact. London, BL, MS Harley 1806 is a large, professional manuscript (see Hanna 2020, 100–101; and The British Museum 1808, vol. II, 244–45). Though the opening folio is missing, the text beginning in the first verse of the first psalm, the quality of the text and its large size indicate that this opening page might have contained the same sort of illumination and decoration found in manuscripts of the Revised Versions (Hanna 2010, 100). Harley is clearly a professional production: the text is presented in double columns with visible catchwords and quire signatures (though the manuscript was cropped, so many of these are now lost). The marginal notation in the hand of the original scribe leaves little question as to the sectarian leanings of the scribe who produced the text and the manuscript’s later owners; in fact, the marginalia has been viewed as so radical, that the nineteenth-century Harleian cataloger suggests the author of the text “seemeth to have been John Wycliffe in his younger Years.”14 The margins of the text are littered with 14  “So far concerning the Psalter, Cantica Sacra, and the Postills upon them. The author of these same Postills seemeth to have been John Wycliffe in his younger Years. In the Work he generally followeth the Doctrine of the Roman Church then received; but yet with some dislike of particular Matters or Persons. Thus, for example he speaketh against Fasts, & Wakes, fol. 1, col. 2. Against the Monks & Friers, fol. 166. Against the Couvetouesness of Priests & Prelats, fol. 86. col. 2 & fol. 87, col. 2 and also concludeth the whole work with a touch upon the superior Clergy, fol. 170 b. This may shew that he was then somewhat disgusted at the Clergy in general, and at their Proceedings. What Opinion he had of himself at the same time, may be gathered from this hint, fol. 86 b. col. 1: ‘Et mandavit nubibus desu-

194 

J. C. HAVENS

simple words like “anticrist” (f. 10v) and “maumetre” [idolatry] (f. 106v), phrases such as “breed sacrament” [eucharist] (f. 86v), “fals mon” [false man] (f. 81r), “fals lawe” [false lawe] (f. 10v), and “pore men” [poor men] (f. 25r); even more telling are comments such as “bewar fals prechyng” [beware false preaching] (f. 125r). Anyone familiar with the distinctive discourse of the lollards will hear the alarm bells go off as she reads these words.15 A later hand writes additional comments in a similar vein. We do not know the identity of the scribe or the original owner; the later hand’s identity, however, could be one of two people whose Latin wills appear on folio 172v of the manuscript: John Hixon of Elyngton in Huntingdonshire, who died in 1462, and John Colynd, who died in 1493. What we do know, based on the abundant sectarian commentary throughout the manuscript, is that the scribe and later readers sympathized with the polemical contents of the Benedictus Canticle, reading the rest of Rolle’s unrevised English Psalter “through the eyes of a new theology” (Gustafson 2002, 297). The next three manuscripts offer more information about their owners. Aberdeen, University Library MS 243 is a medium-sized, illuminated, and decorated manuscript, though based on the scribal hand and style of the border decoration, it appears to be a somewhat later manuscript.16 The scribe, Walter Day, names himself near the beginning of the text on folio 18r where he writes “Amen quod Day” [Amen says Day], and on folios 153v and 160r at the end of each text he has copied, writing “Deo gracias quod yaD” [Thanks be to God says Yad], and punning on his name, Walter: “Ecce dies murus hiis binis iungito terus” [Look how these two, ‘wall’ and ‘day,’ are united by a ‘third’]. Further research will, it may be hoped, enable us to identity this Walter Day more precisely. There is a John Dey and a William Dey listed in the Directory of London Stationers and Book Artisans, but neither are identified as scribes (Christianson 1990, 200). Another hint at ownership is the placement of a muster role as a per, et januas celi aperuit. þat is: He bad to Holy Prechours þat has of Him þat þei Preche. And þoo zatis of Heven, þat is, Holy Writ he opynde to þoo þat Preches or Writes; not to othre þat are redier to chalange oþre Mennys Dedys þen to do homself oght þat goode is” (The British Museum 1808, vol. II, 244). 15  The best discussion of this lollard discourse is still Hudson 1985. For a more recent study, see the statistical analysis of the collocation trewe men in over one hundred lollard and orthodox texts in Peikola 2000. 16  Hanna dates it to the second quarter of the fifteenth century (Hanna 2007, xiv–xv); cf. James 1932, 112–113.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

195

flyleaf at the beginning of the manuscript which Hanna dates to the end of the fourteenth century (Hanna 2010, 4). The muster lists among other names now illegible on microfilm, John de la Pole and Robert Derby, all men serving under Sir Thomas Morieux. Morieux was the husband of John of Gaunt’s illegitimate daughter Blanche and a staunch and well-maintained Lancastrian supporter. He played an interesting role in the Ricardian court. Originally a de Bohun retainer brought into the Lancastrian fold upon the marriage of Mary de Bohun to Henry Bolingbroke, Morieux was retained for many years, especially during the years he also served as a Knight of the Chamber for Richard II (Walker 1990, 104). Simon Walker suggests that Morieux would have been a spy of sorts, “keeping [Gaunt] informed … employed to communicate to the duke the deliberations of the king and council” (Walker 1990, 106). Relevant to the current discussion here is the fact that Morieux was a Knight of the Chamber at the same time as several “Lollard Knights,” specifically Sir John Clanvowe, Sir Lewis Clifford, and Sir Richard Sturry.17 The question here is whether the scribe, Day, or the original or later owner, perhaps someone like Morieux or a member of his family, ever noticed the strong lollard polemic of the second interpolated canticle. Like Harley 1806, the Aberdeen manuscript is a professional production with visible catchwords, quire signatures; the text is presented in double columns and is well corrected throughout. It differs from other manuscripts discussed here, however, in its dialect; while the others are Southern or Midland, Hanna places the dialect of the Aberdeen copy somewhere near Wakefield in the south of the West Riding in Yorkshire (Hanna 2010, 4). The northern dialect of the text suggests that Morieux, from Thorp Morieux in Suffolk, was probably not the originally intended reader. While it was certainly possible for a Midlands reader to understand a Middle English text in a Northern dialect, it would not have been easy.18 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 387 (see Fig. 8.1) is another large, decorated, and illuminated copy of Rolle’s English Psalter and  For a list of Chamber Knights for Richard II, see Given-Wilson 1986, 282–283.  One of the interesting things to emerge from a collation of the surviving Southern and Midland copies of the English Psalter is the tendency of scribes to “translate” the Northern dialect into more southerly forms. For example, Midlands and Southern copies all use “church” for “kirk,” “to” for “til,” and “-ing” for “-and,” and so on. Hudson also notes this in her edition where she argues for a Northern exemplar for RV1 and RV2 (see Hudson 2014, lxix–lxxviii). 17 18

196 

J. C. HAVENS

Canticles and the additional lollard canticles (see James 1912, vol. II, 237–238).19 The scribe and limner are not known, but the scribal hand, a distinctive one, appears to be the same hand that copied the later version (LV) of the Wycliffite Bible in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS Parker 347.20 The illuminator is perhaps part of a group of London artists who also decorated several Wycliffite Bibles and RV1 in London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 34, and London, BL, MS Royal 18 C. xxvi (Kennedy 2014, 109–117).21 Hanna, based on the London dialect of the scribe, also proposes that the manuscript is “arguably metropolitan work” (Hanna 2010, 6). We also know an early owner, possibly the original owner of the Corpus Christi manuscript: on folios 2r and 82v appear large, neat ownership notes naming John Colman, abbot of the Augustinian abbey of St Thomas the Martyr at Lesnes (Westwood) in Kent (the ruins of which are in Abbey Wood in Bexley).22 Colman was recorded as Abbot in 1472 and was before that prior at the Priory of Bicknacre (Woodham Ferrers) in Essex elected in 1436 and still there in 1449 (Page 1926, vol. II, 165–167; Page and Round 1907, vol. II, 144–146). So sometime between 1449 and 1472, he was elected Abbot of Lesnes and either commissioned or acquired the manuscript during this time. N.R. Ker includes this manuscript in his list of books known to be part of the library at Lesnes, though he clearly points out that such a personal ownership note “may only connect the book with the house under which it appears because the individual is known from other sources to belong to that house”; such a book “need not ever have formed part of the monastic library, and in some cases may not ever have been kept at the house to which the owner belonged” (Ker 1964, x, 114). Considering the predominance of twelfth- and thirteenth-­ century Latin texts associated with the abbey, Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles stands out. Though the Augustinian order had earlier 19  A digital facsimile of this manuscript is available at https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/ catalog/xx017ss3119 20  My thanks to Michael Kuczynski for drawing this manuscript to my attention; it is also available online at the Parker website cited above. 21  Kennedy’s discussion of copies of the English Psalter manuscripts is marred by her lack of distinction between manuscripts of the Revised Versions and Rolle’s original English Psalter and Canticles. 22  “Iste liber constat dompno Johanni Colman Abbati Monasterij de Lesnes” on f. 2r and “Iste liber constat dompno Johanni Colman Abbatis Monasterij de Lesnes in Com. Kanc.,” f. 82v (Knowles and Hadcock 1953, 143).

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

197

Fig. 8.1  CCCC MS 387, fol. 1v, by Permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

198 

J. C. HAVENS

associations with the lollard movement, through prominent figures like Philip Repingdon, the order seems not to have been sympathetic with the later lollards (Hudson 1988, 43–44). So it is surprising that a passage which so strongly condemns “fals freres” and convents of “quicke deueles” who live profligate lifestyles is found in a manuscript owned by a prior and abbot of houses who were both notoriously mismanaged and in debt to the point, as in the case of Bicknacre, that five of its priors after Colman had to be appointed by the bishop. Earlier in the century, King Henry V sequestrated the Abbey of Lesnes and put it into custody of the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to get it sorted out (Page 1926, vol. II, 166; Page and Round 1907, vol. II, 145). The last manuscript in this group of four is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 953. We know more about this manuscript’s provenance because it was commissioned by Thomas, Lord Berkeley (born 1352 and made Lord Berkeley in 1368) and later bequeathed in his will to the sisters of the hospital of St. Mary Magdalen near Bristol at his death in 1417 (Hanna 1989, 883 and n.13).23 Lord Berkeley is already well established as the patron of John Trevisa, the translator of the Polychronicon, De Proprietatibus Rerum, and more relevant to my current discussion, translator of Richard Fitzralph’s Defensio Curatorum, the Dialogus inter Militem et Clericum, and possibly the Wycliffite Bible.24 Of the copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles I have examined, not including the lollard Revised Versions, this is the largest (15 x 11.5 inches) and most beautifully decorated (see Scott 1996, vol. II, 118, 124, 378).25 It is illuminated throughout, illustrated with historiated initials, and contains a variety of heraldic decoration that associates it directly with Berkeley, including on the first folio an intricate interlacing of the words “Liber domini thome seignour de Berkeley” [The book of Thomas, Lord Berkeley] in the border decoration at the top and bottom of the page 23  Hanna later confirms that there is no evidence the manuscript ever went to the hospital. Given obits in the calendar to later family members, he concludes that “the manuscript remained in the family” (Hanna 2010, 146). 24  For a full treatment of Trevisa, see Fowler 1995, 84–117. On his relationship with Berkeley, and on his role as a possible translator for the Wycliffite Bible, see Fowler 1995, 213–34. 25  Multiple images from Bodley 953 are available online at Digital Bodleian: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/Discover/Search/#/?p=c+0,t+,rsrs+0,rsps+10,fa+,so+ox%3 Asort%5Easc,scids+,pid+1d4beb36-2096-40de-9cc8-f03e5163f9fb,vi+f2f2ad00-96b84b4b-a475-ac2384e7b2a0

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

199

(Hanna 1989, 885). Hanna, in his study of Berkeley’s literary patronage, refers to this manuscript as an example of “elegant restraint” and “tasteful magnificence” (Hanna 1989, 884). More recently, Hanna has been able to associate the style of illumination in this manuscript with the equally beautiful, illuminated Dublin, Trinity College MS 71 (A.2.1), a copy of RV2, and other manuscripts of Trevisa’s work. Hanna concludes that “given these connections, the illumination at least is presumptively Bristol work” (Hanna 2010, 46). This location makes sense when also considering the dialect of the scribe, somewhere between southern Gloucestershire and northern Somerset, and its proximity to Berkeley’s main estate and castle in Gloucestershire (Hanna 1989, 885).26 Considering his patronage of Trevisa, I do not think that the anticlerical rant in the Benedictus canticle would have offended Berkeley very much, though he was personally involved in several commissions charged with eradicating lollardy in his manor of Redcliffe in Somerset in 1414, after the Bodley manuscript was commissioned (Hanna 1989, 896; Hudson 2011, 80–82). The more interesting evidence that the Berkeley copy of the Rolle’s English Psalter offers is the possibility of a source for the exemplar used. Though Hanna suggests Bristol as the possible locale for the production of this manuscript (which seems likely given Bristol’s reputation as a hotbed for heresy), his discussion of London, though in conjunction with the “publication” of Trevisa’s texts, brings other scenarios to mind. From evidence Hanna garnered from the manuscripts of Trevisa’s translations, it appears that Berkeley was himself responsible for popularizing Trevisa’s work, providing “a reasonably direct route from author and patron to London scribes” (Hanna 1989, 910). If Bodley 953 was not produced in Bristol, London is another possibility. Another location might also be one that Hudson has suggested for several years, Sir William Beauchamp’s manor of Kemerton, not far from Berkeley Castle in the same county, Gloucestershire (Hanna 1989, 896 n. 44; Hudson 1988, 90–91). Further comparison of its artwork and scribal hands with the copies of the Revised Versions and Wycliffite Bibles could shed more light on the production of these manuscripts. While these four manuscripts leave the polemical material of the revised canticles intact, two others reveal early readers’ reactions to that material. 26  This suggestion is taken up by Scott in her discussion of a related manuscript, Digby 233, a copy of Trevisa’s translation of the De Regimine Principum (See Scott 1996, vol II, 124).

200 

J. C. HAVENS

The provenance of Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 52 is difficult to determine because it contains no ownership notes—contemporary or otherwise.27 The Magdalen College manuscript is a middle-sized, neat, and professional production, with the text in two standard columns, visible quire signatures, and catchwords throughout; it is also extensively corrected by a contemporary hand, decorated and rubricated with red and blue ink, and several pages are illuminated with flourishing border decoration—all of this suggesting its production involved collaboration.28 According to Hanna, because of its small format, the book appears to have “been modelled on lollard Bibles” (Hanna 2010, 181). Hanna’s observation suggests that whoever produced the manuscript was aware of and influenced by the very standard, organized format found in most of the surviving Wycliffite Bibles.29 The scribal hand of the manuscript may also be the hand that wrote a copy of a Psalm commentary using a translation of the Psalms from the LV Wycliffite Bible in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 554.30 This evidence suggests that the scribe or compiler was involved in the production of lollard texts and had access to various Psalter commentaries, including Rolle’s English Psalter and the Revised Versions. The Magdalen copy, however, differs from the others because the passages from the Benedictus canticle on folios 267r to 268r have been erased or scraped, though poorly, hinting perhaps at a quick, spontaneous reaction of a later reader whose half-hearted attempt at erasure still leaves some of the text legible (see Hudson 1988, 424 and Hudson 2011, 82–83; see also Hanna 2010, 180–181). Because the manuscript gives us few clues about medieval ownership or who might have erased the passage, it is difficult to answer questions about whether the original owner of the 27  For other descriptions of Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 52, see Coxe 1852, vol. 2, 30–31; Bramley 1884, xxii; Ogilvie-Thomson 1991, 43–45. Ogilvie-Thomson’s listing of other manuscripts of the canticles contains some incorrect information: the Ego Dixi is not missing in Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College MS 89, but appears on folios 177r–178v; the Domine audivi and Audite celi are not missing in Aberdeen, University Library MS 243, but appear on folios 139r and 141r respectively (Ogilvie-Thomson 1991, 44). 28  For a description of the illumination and borderwork in Magdalen College, MS lat. 52, see Alexander and Temple 1985, 381. 29  For a discussion of this uniform layout in lollard Bibles, see Hudson 1989, 125–142; Havens 2003, 114–115. 30  I am grateful to Michael Kuczynski for this information. He has suggested that this scribe in the Magdalen and Bodley manuscripts is also the scribe for CUL MS Ll.1.13, a copy of the LV of the NT, and the scribe for Trinity College Dublin MS M.70, another commentary of the Psalms from the LV Wycliffite Bible. See Kuczynski 2019.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

201

manuscript was sympathetic to or even aware of the views expressed in the Benedictus canticle. This commentary was probably not offensive to the original scribe or readers, though a later reader of the Magdalen copy did notice the offending passages and acted upon them. The force of that action seems to me, as I mentioned before, half-hearted and uncommitted, and Hudson reminds us that even though the “erasure presumably indicates dislike  — it does not … necessarily imply that the material removed was classed by the removers as [l]ollard” (Hudson 2011, 83). Another manuscript witness to the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of later readers is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 448. Laud Misc. 448 is a medium-sized, illuminated copy of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles (see Coxe and Hunt 1973 cols. 321–322; Bramley 1884, xxii; Ogilvie-­ Thomson 2000, 45–47). Like the Magdalen College manuscript, it is also an expensive and professional production.31 Catchwords and quire signatures are found throughout, the psalms are numbered, and the text is written in two columns and well corrected by a contemporary hand. Unfortunately, the only ownership mark is the note of when the manuscript was added to the Laudian collection in 1635. The incriminating passages of the Benedictus canticle are neatly erased in the Laud manuscript, though here this erasure has been executed with much more success (see Ogilvie-Thomson 2000, 46; and Hudson 2011, 83). What is remarkable about the Laudian manuscript, however, is that a later reader in a late sixteenth-century hand has rewritten the expunged text in full; Hudson shows in her edition that the text added later to fill in the erasure “was evidently done from A [RV1 in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 288], or a very close congener” (Hudson 2014, vol. I, clvii). Whoever added this material back into the manuscript was concerned with the completeness of the text and had access to the revised version to complete it. Also, this manuscript illustrates that exemplars passed back and forth between orthodox and heterodox scribes, readers, and/or owners over several centuries. All of the manuscripts discussed thus far provide evidence that the scribes of these manuscripts purposely included the heterodox canticles in their copies and did not attempt to edit the more polemical material, though clearly later readers of the Magdalen and Laudian manuscripts did. 31  For a description of the illumination and borderwork in Laud Misc. 448, see Pacht and Alexander 1973, vol. III, 831; the folio 1v and 41r can be viewed at: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/f1995e89-7a13-4e86-9347-156f963d7e26

202 

J. C. HAVENS

Only one manuscript, Oxford, University College MS 56, offers an instance where the scribe edited to remove the more controversial material (Ogilvie-Thomson 1991, 107; Hanna 2010, 182–183). The University College manuscript suggests that while the scribe desired a complete text, he was able to identify the heterodox material and simply edit it out. This evidence suggests that the twelve canticles were seen as a complete set and were preserved as such in the exemplars being copied by these scribes. The University College manuscript also contains several obits hinting at ownership, mainly one dated 23 September 1413 for “Katerine,” a member of the Hampton family. Hanna, based on the earlier identification by Ian Doyle in his 1953 thesis, suggests that this is Katherine Hampton, the wife of John Hampton, a squire to Henry VI (Hanna 2010, 183). This appears to be a misattribution, as the only known wife of John Hampton, a “body squire” to Henry VI, was Agnes, who died in 1444 (See Wedgewood 1908, 281–282 and 285). Katherine, who died in 1413, was perhaps the wife of the senior John Hampton of Dunstall, lord of Stourton under Richard II and Henry IV, and the mother of John Hampton of Stourton Castle, the squire, and another son, Bevis. Like the Morieux family possibly associated with the Aberdeen copy of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles, the Hamptons were also staunch Lancastrian supporters (Wedgewood 1908, 282; Great Britain 1907, 285). What their ties might have been, if any, to the heretical sect is unknown, though the omission of the commentary to the added Revised Version of the Canticles suggests that the views in the commentary were not shared by the scribe or these early owners.

8.5   “Packaging” the Canticles In all seven of these manuscripts, the canticles, Rolle’s original seven and the five from the Revised Version, are copied as one continuous text; there is no separation of quires, no change in hands, no spaces or gaps, or any other indication that these additional canticles from the Revised Versions were not already a part of the exemplar being copied. They were seen as part of the complete text of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. In considering the order of the canticles, these seven manuscripts fall into two groups: Magdalen College MS lat. 52, Bodleian, Laud Misc. MS 448, and Corpus Christi College MS 387 place the Magnificat, the last canticle of Rolle’s original seven, after the five Revised Version canticles. BL, Harley MS 1806, Aberdeen Library MS 243, University College 56, and Bodleian,

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

203

Bodley MS 953 keep the first six Rolle canticles in order, then follow with the Te Deum, Benedicite, Benedictus, the Rolle Magnificat, Nunc dimittis, and then Quicunque vult. This ordering of the canticles, placing Rolle’s Magnificat either at the end of the lollard ones or in the middle of them, also suggests that these two groups of canticles, Rolle’s original seven and the Revised five, were fully integrated, and again, seen as a complete set when they were circulated. While the order of the Canticles indicates two separate groups among these seven manuscripts, the collation of the revised canticles in Hudson’s edition of RVI and RV2 and a preliminary collation of the manuscripts of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles reinforces these two groupings. Hudson argues that “for the most part textual relationships in this section are notably difficult to discern” and concludes that “no extant manuscript, however many of the texts exemplified, derives from any other extant copy” (Hudson 2014, vol. 1, clvii). She does suggest there is a possible connection between Corpus Christi College MS 387 (Hudson’s G) and Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 448 (Hudson’s K), these two manuscripts sharing three errors (Hudson 2014, vol. 1, clvii). Two others manuscripts—Aberdeen, University Library MS 243 (Hudson’s Z) and BL, MS Harley 1806 (Hudson’s E)—Hudson shows share two readings in error. Hudson concludes, however, that “whether any of these … pairings … is significant seems doubtful” (Hudson 2014, vol. 1, clvii–clviii). Based on sample collations of these manuscripts for Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles, I would argue that these pairings are significant and reinforce pairs that have emerged in test collations of every tenth psalm in Rolle’s English Psalter.32 It seems likely then that there were complete copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles “packaged” with the five Canticles from the Revised Versions at the end. This evidence also suggests that the “package” was around long enough for two distinct and textually related traditions to evolve. Apart from the case of Oxford, University College MS 56, scribes copied all of the texts regardless of the views expressed. Some readers who took offense, expunged the offending material, but most did not, either not noticing that the material was potentially problematic or sympathizing with the views expressed.

32  We have completed sample full collations of Psalms 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, and 150.

204 

J. C. HAVENS

Of the remaining sixteen manuscripts of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles that do not include the Revised Version canticles, eleven do not appear to have ever contained these additional canticles. In these eleven copies, the final folio of the Magnificat is either followed immediately by another unrelated text or by blank space, finishing the volume of the Psalter itself.33 Three manuscripts are incomplete at the end, so it is not possible to determine what else they might have included.34 Two manuscripts do not include the canticles at all and this appears deliberate, the psalter ending with blank folios.35 What is most remarkable about these seven “mixed” manuscripts in comparison with the other copies of Rolle’s original text is that all appear to be fairly early productions of the text and all are illuminated, decorated, and professionally produced manuscripts. Of the manuscripts I have seen, only one of the fully orthodox manuscripts is illuminated, and that minimally—only a few initials, but no border decoration: San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 148 (see Hanna 2010, 196–198; Dutschke et al. 1989, vol. 1, 205–207). In their presentation and professional quality, these seven manuscripts seem to have more in common with the manuscripts Hudson edited for the Revised Versions, such as her base text Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.5.25 for RVI or the copy of RVI in Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Richardson 36, than with the other copies of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles.36 From the evidence in these manuscripts, it appears that the complete set of twelve canticles, the seven from Rolle’s English Psalter and five from 33  These manuscripts are London, British Library, MS Additional 40769; Berks. Windsor, Eton College MS 10; Herts. Hatfield House, Cecil Papers MS 328 (this also omits the “Magnificat”); San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 148; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 12; Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 286; Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College MS 89; Oxford, University College MS 64; Worcester, Worcester Cathedral Library MS F. 158; The Rosebery Rolle, olim South Queensferry, Dalmeny House, the Earl of Rosebery, now part of the Green Collection. Newcastle upon Tyne, Public Library, MS TH. 1678 contains the six Rolle canticles and the Magnificat with a later hand adding another version of the Benedictus (IPMEP 112) on the remaining blank leaves (Hanna 2010, 119). 34  London, British Library, MS Arundel 158 ends at Psalm 134, verse 12 on f. 231ra; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 321 ends at Psalm 108 on f. 276v; and Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 1 ends in the Audite celi on 556. 35  These manuscripts are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 467 and Rome, Vatican Library MS Reg. 320. 36  Hudson refers elsewhere to these decorated and illuminated manuscript, for example, Hudson 1988, 204 and Hudson 1989, 136.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

205

the Revised Versions, had some textual authority and the twelve were preserved as a set in the exemplars that circulated. The Revised Versions, where complete manuscripts still exist, include all 12 canticles too, though all are lollard interpolated.37 Eventually, once an earlier authorial and orthodox version of Rolle’s English Psalter was found, and it was discovered that Rolle had only written seven, the five heterodox canticles from the Revised Version were discarded, hence copies of the English Psalter with only Rolle’s seven canticles. In the case of the seven “mixed” witnesses examined here, the lollard preference for twelve canticles was still seen as the “authoritative” version even among orthodox scribes and readers. Clearly, exemplars for the five canticles from the Revised Versions were available to a variety of scribes to copy into their manuscripts, and orthodox scribes had seemingly unhindered access to heterodox material and used it (see Havens 2005). While these scribes and compilers were more concerned with completeness, the evidence in each manuscript shows how some of these scribes and compilers had links to lollard book-production networks and that lollards had a hand in the early production and circulation of Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles. Further work needs to be done on scribal hands, the dating of the manuscripts, their page layout and decoration, their dialect, and the textual relationships between them, but I believe that the evidence presented here strongly suggests the lollards not only created the Revised Versions but also produced, promoted and circulated Rolle’s English Psalter and Canticles in the Midlands and south of England.

References Manuscripts Aberdeen University Library MS 243. Berkshire, Windsor, Eton College MS 10. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 387. Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College MS 89 (Δ.5.3). Hertfordshire, Hatfield House, Cecil Papers MS 328. London, BL, MS Additional 40769. London, BL, MS Arundel 158. 37  These manuscripts are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 288 and MS Bodley 877 and Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.5.25 (see Everett 1922a, 224).

206 

J. C. HAVENS

London, BL, MS Harley 1806. Newcastle, Public Library MS TH 1678 (Newcastle Cathedral). Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 467. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 953. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 12. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 286. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 321. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 448. Oxford, Magdalen College MS lat. 52. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 1. Oxford, University College MS 56. Oxford, University College MS 64. Rome, Vatican Library, Vatican MS Reg 320. San Marino, Huntington Library MS HM 148. Washington D.C., Museum of the Bible, Green Collection MS 148 (olim West Lothian, Dalmeny House, Earl of Rosebery). Worcester, Worcester Cathedral MS F.158.

Primary Sources and Editions Arnold, T. 1871. Select English Works of John Wyclif. Oxford: Bodleian Library. Bramley, H.R. 1884. The Psalter, or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles, with a Translation and Exposition by Richard Rolle of Hampole. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bühler, C.F. 1938. A Lollard Tract: On Translating the Bible into English. Medium Aevum 7 (3): 167–183. Great Britain. 1907. Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VI, vol. 3, 1436–1441. London. Hanna, R., ed. 2007. Richard Rolle: Uncollected Prose and Verse with Related Northern Texts, EETS O.S. 329. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hudson, A., ed. 2014. Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles: 3 vols. EETS O.S. 340, 341, 343. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuczynski, M.P., ed. 2019. A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter: Oxford, Bodleian Library Ms Bodley 554. EETS O.S. 352, 353. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Somerset, F. 2009. Four Wycliffite Dialogues. EETS O.S. 333. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

207

Secondary Sources Alexander, J.J.G., and E.  Temple. 1985. Illuminated Manuscripts in Oxford College Libraries, The University Archives and the Taylor Institute. Oxford: University of Oxford. Christianson, C.P. 1990. A Directory of London Stationers and Book Artisans, 1300–1500. New York: The Bibliographical Society of America. Coxe, H.O. 1852. Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Oxford Colleges, Vol. 2. Oxford: University of Oxford. Coxe, H.O., and R.W.  Hunt. 1973. Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues II. Laudian Manuscripts. Oxford: Bodleian Library. Dutschke, C.W., R.H.  Rouse, et  al. 1989. Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. San Marino: Huntington Library. Everett, D. 1922a. The Middle English Prose Psalter of Richard Rolle of Hampole. The Modern Language Review 17 (3): 217–227. https://doi. org/10.2307/3714275. ———. 1922b. The Middle English Prose Psalter of Richard Rolle of Hampole. II. The Connexion Between Rolle’s Version of the Psalter and Earlier English Versions. The Modern Language Review 17 (4): 337–350. https://doi. org/10.2307/3714275. ———. 1923. The Middle English Prose Psalter of Richard Rolle of Hampole. III.  Manuscripts of Rolle’s Psalter Containing Lollard Interpolations in the Commentary. The Modern Language Review 18 (4): 381–393. https://doi. org/10.2307/3714275. Fowler, D. 1995. The Life and Times of John Trevisa, Medieval Scholar. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Given-Wilson, C. 1986. The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gustafson, K. 2002. Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and the Making of a Lollard Text. Viator 33: 294–309. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.300548. Hanna, R. 1989. Sir Thomas Berkeley and His Patronage. Speculum 64 (4): 878–916. https://doi.org/10.2307/2852871. ———. 2010. The English Manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A Descriptive Catalogue. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Havens, J.C. 2003. ‘As Englishe is comoun langage to oure puple’: The Lollards and Their Imagined ‘English’ Community. In Imagining a Medieval English Community, ed. K. Lavezzo, 96–128. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2005. Shading the Grey Area: Determining Heresy in Middle English Texts. In Text ad Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, Medieval Church Studies 4, ed. H. Barr and A. Hutchinson, 337–352. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

208 

J. C. HAVENS

Hudson, A. 1985. A Lollard Sect Vocabulary? In Lollards and Their Books, 165–179. London: Hambledon Press. ———. 1988. The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1989. Lollard Book Production. In Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. J.  Griffiths and D.  Pearsall, 125–142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2011. ‘Who Is My Neighbor?’: Some Problems of Definition on the Borders of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. In Wycliffite Controversies, Medieval Church Studies 23, ed. M.  Bose and J.P.  Hornbeck II, 79–96. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. James, M.R. 1912. Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1932. Catalogue of the Medieval Manuscripts in the University Library, Aberdeen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, K. 2014. The Courtly and Commercial Art of the Wycliffite Bible. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. Ker, N.R. 1964. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. 2nd ed. London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society. ———. 1977. Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, II.  Oxford: Clarendon Press. Knowles, D., and R.N. Hadcock. 1953. Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales. London: Longman. Morey, J.H. 2000. Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Ogilvie-Thomson, S.J. 1991. Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist VIII: Manuscripts Containing Middle English Prose in Oxford College Libraries. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. ———. 2000. Index of Middle English Prose: Handlist XVI: Manuscripts in the Laudian Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Pacht, O., and J.J.G. Alexander. 1973. Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford, 1973. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Page, W.Ed. 1926. A History of the County of Kent: Volume II. London: Victoria County History. Page, W., and J.H.  Round. 1907. A History of the County of Essex: Volume II. London: Victoria County History. Peikola, M. 2000. Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-Fashioning in English Lollard Writings, Anglicana Turkuensia 21, 6–22. Turku: University of Turku. Scott, K.L. 1996. Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490. Volume II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8  LOLLARD BOOK PRODUCTION AND RICHARD ROLLE’S ENGLISH… 

209

The British Museum. 1808. A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, Vol. II. London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan. Walker, S. 1990. The Lancastrian Affinity: 1361–1399, Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wedgewood, J. 1908. Review of The Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry VI, 1436–1441. In Collections for a History of Staffordshire, The William Salt Archaeological Society, vol. XI. London: Staffordshire Record Society.

CHAPTER 9

Blessed Hildegard: Another Kind of Lollard Saint Fiona Somerset

Since Christina von Nolcken’s much-cited article “Another Kind of Saint,” we have been thinking more subtly and more deeply about what lollards thought about sanctity (von Nolcken 1987). Other scholars of Wycliffism, most notably Anne Hudson, Robyn Malo, and Jonathan Stavsky, have followed von Nolcken’s lead (see, e.g., Hudson 2002; Malo 2013; Stavsky 2015). We have found that lollards certainly had reservations about the mainstream cult of saints, and they were critical of luxury expenditure on church furnishings while the poor languished without basic necessities. But this did not mean that they were hostile to the idea of holiness, or that they denied that saints might be venerated. Rather, they were inclined to describe as saints only the holy figures they approved, an alternative canon that seemingly overlapped with that of mainstream religion but also included their own favorite critics of ecclesiastical corruption and martyrs for the truth. Saints denied official canonization but described or reportedly venerated as saints by lollards included, for example, Richard Fitzralph,

F. Somerset (*) Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_9

211

212 

F. SOMERSET

Robert Grosseteste, Richard Wyche, and John Wyclif himself. In this chapter, I introduce another lollard saint of a rather different kind, in that her popularity with lollards and Hussites overlaps with mainstream piety rather than sharply departing from it: Hildegard of Bingen, who was widely venerated across Europe, but somehow too controversial to be officially canonized and named as a doctor of the church until October of 2012 (see Ferzoco 2014, 305–16). Wyclif and lollards have been described as distrustful or nervous of revelatory theology in general and Hildegard’s writings in particular (Kerby-Fulton 2000, 328, 330–32).1 This may be so, but they were certainly enthusiastic about the brief anti-mendicant polemical tract known as Insurgent gentes, which condemns the abuses of the friars and predicts their sharply reduced fortunes as the people recognize their corruption and turn against them. This tract’s widespread attribution to Hildegard granted it the authority of prophecy, since she had died before the mendicant orders were founded, but the work was probably written in the 1260s at the height of the anti-mendicant controversies in Paris.2 José Carlos Santos Paz has argued that a longer and less well-known version of the text, extant in only three copies and a fragment in contrast to the fifty or so known copies of the more famous version, is a first recension probably authored by William of St. Amour himself (Santos Paz 2016).3 More copies of the text surely await discovery, but research thus far reveals early copying in France, England, Bohemia, and, perhaps, Germany; later distribution through Spain, Italy, and France; and translation into Middle English, French, Castilian, Catalan, German, and Dutch (see Santos Paz 1997; see also Embach 2003, 228–37; and Gouguenheim 1996, 198–200).4 1  For a broader investigation of late medieval attitudes to revelatory writings, see KerbyFulton 2006; on Wyclif and his successors’ shifting views on Hildegard, and for the suggestion that Wyclif changed his mind about her after reading Insurgent gentes, see Kerby-Fulton 2006, 192–204; see also Kerby-Fulton 2010, 2015. I thank Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Magda Hayton for their helpful comments on this chapter. 2  The most comprehensive study of the textual tradition of Insurgent gentes is Santos Paz 1997, 523–624. I am grateful to Santos Paz for his extraordinary generosity in sending me both a copy of his entire dissertation and a draft of the article cited in n. 3. 3  Santos Paz 2016 includes an edition of the first recension based on Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 59 alongside a transcription of one of the earliest copies of the second recension, from Angers, Bibliothèque municipale MS 56. 4  Embach includes a German translation, and Gouguenheim a French translation. For an edition of the copies in England that does not discuss the version transcribed and discussed

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

213

A previously overlooked, heavily interpolated copy of Insurgent gentes in the early fifteenth-century Wycliffite manuscript Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50, provides key evidence about what kind of saint Wyclif and lollard writers thought Hildegard was.5 The alterations to this text made in this copy mesh with other altered texts in the same manuscript, and with the manuscript’s other contents, to present a united stance on what constitutes holiness (and what, in contrast, undermines it). The evidence provided by this copy also helps us to uncover overlooked links between the English copies of Insurgent gentes and those produced in Bohemia. Kerby-Fulton et  al.’s edition and study of the manuscripts of what they call the “Insular text” of Insurgent gentes are useful and widely cited. However, once we view the copies they consulted in a wider comparative frame, we see that these copies produced in England were anything but “insular” in the sense of being restricted in circulation. What is more, the Middle English translations provide significant evidence that corroborates more general similarities between the extant Latin copies made in England and Bohemia (see Kerby-Fulton et al. 2004, 187 and n. 30).6 In particular, a recently discovered Bohemian copy in the State Regional Archives in Třeboň is close in its content to the Middle English version in Columbia, Plimpton Add. MS 3. Furthermore, the Třeboň copy follows Trinity B.14.50, along with seven other fifteenth-century English copies and the Middle English translations, in that a note explaining that Hildegard flourished before the coming of the friars is placed at the beginning of the text, rather than at the end, as in other extant in this chapter, see Kerby-Fulton et al. 2004, 160–94 (Olsen describes the copies used in their 2004 edition on 170–86). Transcriptions of individual manuscripts available in print include: Little and Easterling 1927, 60–61; Embach 2003, 233–34 (Embach reproduces, noting probable errors in transcription, the version in Fabricius 1858, vol. 3, 243–44: I use Embach rather than Fabricius as a witness to the lost manuscript copy transcribed in both); Kaderová 2012, 91–92; and Cegna 1970, 26–27. 5  A digital facsimile of this manuscript is available online: https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/ manuscripts/uv/view.php?n=B.14.50&n=B.14.50#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&x ywh=-824%2C-111%2C3129%2C2183 6  Kerby-Fulton et al. date the versions in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawl. C. 411 and London, British Library Add. MS 5901 to the eighteenth century and disregard them. That is certainly when they were copied, but their language reveals that both were translated no later than the fifteenth century. An additional fifteenth-century copy of the translation in Add. MS 5901 has been found in New York, Columbia University Plimpton Add. MS 3; see the transcription in Acker 2013, 261–68; for further information on the manuscript, see Peikola 2006.

214 

F. SOMERSET

Bohemian copies. This new evidence reveals a lively exchange of information and texts between English and Bohemian copyists and translators of Insurgent gentes who also shared an interest in Wyclif’s and Hus’ writings. Perhaps the most distinctive conviction that these copyists and translators share is their view that Hildegard was a saint.7 A selection of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Bohemian copies, Trinity B.14.50, and the Middle English translations are unique in the larger textual tradition of copies of Insurgent gentes in that they call Hildegard “sancta hildegaris” or “Seynt Hildegarde” rather than her usual epithet “beata.”8 Mainstream writings come closest to asserting Hildegard’s sanctity in the common but somewhat mendacious claim that Hildegard’s books were canonized by Pope Eugenius in the presence of Bernard of Clairvaux at a council he held in Trier: “libri … canonizati sunt” (Newman 1999, 198, n. 32).9 Laurence Moulinier has referred to this authenticating claim as a kind of canonization by metonymy (Moulinier 2000, 190).10 But only the 7  Referring to Hildegard as “sancta” is by no means unusual in the larger tradition of writings on Hildegard, even if it is not found in copies of Insurgent gentes described by KerbyFulton et al. or by Santos Paz. See, for example, the studies by Hayton and Santos Paz cited in n. 9. However, the specific claim that she (rather than her books) was canonized by pope Eugene appears to be unique to Trinity B.14.50; the references to her as “sancta” in the English and Bohemian copies form a kind of penumbra to this claim. All may reflect the influence of Gebeno of Eberbach: see nn. 8 and 9. 8  Thus, Prague, Nárondní knihovna Č eské republiky, MS III.G.25, Prague, Nárondní knihovna Č eské republiky, MS XIII.G.10, and Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4954 call Hildegard “sancta” in a title assigned to the text at its beginning or end; Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna MK 108 does so in an introductory sentence; and Prague, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly pražské MS D.12 does so in a statement of papal approval appended to an authentic prophecy of Hildegard’s excerpted from Gebeno of Eberbach’s Pentachronon; this prophecy directly follows Insurgent gentes. On Hildegard’s early biographers, see Newman 1999. I am grateful to Magda Hayton for this reference and for many helpful suggestions as I have investigated Hildegard’s reception. On Hildegard’s reputation more broadly, see Gouguenheim 1996. On the reception of her writings, see Embach 2003, 2014. On early attempts to canonize Hildegard, and the source of the claim that her books were canonized, see Moulinier 2000, Santos Paz 2001. 9  For fuller quotation of the original source of this claim in the Pentachronon of Gebeno of Eberbach, and the variant claim in the Vita S Gerlaci that Hildegard’s “volumina...canonizata et inter sacras scripturas sunt connumerata” (a corruption of which might have led to the tradition of ascribing sanctity to Hildegard herself in Trinity B.14.50), see Newman 1999, 198–99 n. 32 and n. 33. On Gebeno and his redactors’ representation of Hildegard and her prophecies (including several references to Hildegard as ‘sancta’), see Santos Paz 2017; Hayton 2017, 2019. 10  Moulinier also quotes Gebeno and Gerlach (Moulinier 2000, 189, 192).

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

215

expanded preface to Trinity B.14.50 (see below, Appendix 1) removes the metonymy in this statement of papal approval in order to claim explicitly that Hildegard herself was canonized: “et fuit canonizata ab Eugenio papa tempore beati Bernardi, et istam reuelacionem subscriptam prophetauit” [and she was canonized by pope Eugene in the time of the blessed Bernard, and she wrote the prophecy written below] (lines 3–5). Far from being distrustful of Hildegard because she was a prophet, followers of Wyclif and Hus seem to have felt a special fervor toward her. I will save fuller investigation of the textual network within which these copies of Insurgent gentes circulated for a later paper. Here, I investigate what the unique extended preface, the conclusion, and several unique variants in the body of the text of Insurgent gentes in Trinity B.14.50 can tell us about why lollards and Hussites wanted to think of Hildegard as a saint. What, in their minds, did Hildegard share with Grosseteste, Fitzralph, Wyclif, and Richard Wyche, and how can this help us to better understand lollard sainthood? Differences from the known textual tradition are foregrounded visually in the transcription of Trinity B.14.50’s version of Insurgent gentes found in Appendix 1, which should be consulted in reading what follows. Words set in bold are unique variants, not found elsewhere among the extant copies and translations and later witnesses in England, or in the Bohemian copies, or in other European copies that have been described or collated. Underlined words, on the other hand, differ from the edition of the insular versions but do appear in other English or continental copies. Even for what Santos Paz describes as a “living text” (“un texto vivo,” Santos Paz 1997, 569) whose manuscript tradition presents considerable creative variation as well as every kind of copying error we might expect, for an individual copy to present this much unique variation is unusual. Let us begin with the unique claim in the extended preface to this text that not just Hildegard’s books, but Hildegard herself, was “canonizata” (line 4)—a claim echoed in a more muted form by the English and Bohemian copies that refer to Hildegard as “sancta” or “seynt.” Why would lollard writers want to concur with widespread veneration of Hildegard, but magnify her reputation yet further by referring to her explicitly as a saint? We can begin to answer this question by considering what Hildegard has in common with other lollard saints. As von Nolcken has already noted, the most obvious characteristic that the writers lollards described as saints share, even if it was imputed to them through pseudonymous attribution in the case of Hildegard and Grosseteste, is their

216 

F. SOMERSET

opposition to the mendicant orders (von Nolcken 1987, 432).11 Fitzralph wrote the Defensio Curatorum, a lengthy denunciation of the orders of friars and all their works, and was summoned to Avignon to defend his position (see Walsh 1981). Wyclif was mostly silent about friars while in Oxford, perhaps as Anne Hudson has suggested because they were supplying him with books (Hudson 2011), but he wrote a series of scathing polemical tracts against them after his retirement to Lutterworth. 12 Richard Wyche was asked to renounce antifraternal views both in his own account of his trial around 1404–1406 and in his later heresy trial in 1440 (see Hudson 2002). Antifraternal views are by no means a defining characteristic of lollardy, of course; rather, they were widespread. Nor were they shared by all lollard writers. Some friars may have been early supporters of Wyclif, and many aspects of lollard reform seem to have appealed to readers who were not hostile to friars, for there are copies of lollard works from which all antifraternal content has been removed (see Hudson 1971). Regardless of this wider variation, Trinity B.14.50 as a whole is consistent in its antifraternalism. Both of the originally separate booklets in Trinity B.14.50 are strongly hostile to friars, and both booklets contain texts modified so that their criticism refers to friars rather than to the clergy more generally. Booklet 1 contains the only extant copy in England of Wyclif’s short Descripcio fratris, which describes pseudofriars as devils incarnate, and follows it with a modified quotation of Grosseteste’s Dictum 135, that a monk out of the cloister is like a dead body out of the grave, adjusted to refer to friars.13 The same modified quotation from Grosseteste appears at the opening of the Dialogue between Jon and Richard in booklet 2: this is the only known copy of this lengthy polemical dialogue against the friars (see Somerset 2009, 1, lines 9–12 and n). Booklet 2 also contains several 11  Von Nolcken refers to opposition to the religious orders more generally rather than friars specifically. 12  On the chronology of Wyclif’s writings, see the overview in Lahey 2008; on the difficulty of dating Wyclif’s works precisely because of his repeated revisions, see Hudson 1999, 2001. 13  The Wyclif text and the Grosseteste quotation appear on fol. 20v, Jon and Richard on fols. 35r–55v, and the modified Rosarium quotations on fols. 60v–66r; see Somerset 2009, xx–xxii. See also “Contents,” https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/viewpage.php?index=198&hi story=1&index=198&history=1

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

217

articles drawn from the Wycliffite Rosarium: those on mendicancy, labor, building, alms, and preaching are modified so that they refer explicitly to friars.14 Some of the alterations to Insurgent gentes in Trinity B.14.50 fit with this general ideological tenor. The longer recension of Insurgent gentes— which in the view of Santos Paz is an earlier recension, probably written by William of St. Amour himself—resembles William’s De periculis in that it never specifies that its target is friars (see Santos Paz 2016). Trinity B.14.50 contains the shorter and probably later second recension; no copy of the first recension has yet been found in England. Trinity B.14.50’s unique preface is an extended, conflated version of prefatory or concluding material on when Hildegard lived and on the papal approval of her books found only in the English and Bohemian copies (see Table 9.1). Wherever it is placed, this material specifies that the text’s target is friars, and underscores the prophetic nature of the text (though often inaccurately, for roman numerals are a notorious source of confusion in copying, as they are here) by asserting that Hildegard lived and prophesied before the founding of the fraternal orders. The title given in Trinity B.14.50, “Hora de destruccione fratrum per propheciam” [The hour of destruction of the friars, through prophecy], also suggests that the text’s hostility to friars impelled its inclusion in this compilation. Notably the title, like the prefatory material, does not seem distrustful of prophecy but receptive to it. Other unique alterations in the body of the text in Trinity B.14.50 update it to conform with fourteenth- rather than thirteenth-century antifraternal discourse, and with what are in some ways specifically lollard preoccupations. For example, “sine labore” emphasizes the mendicant refusal to engage in manual labor. As Sharon Farmer has pointed out, distinguishing false from true beggars was a lively concern in thirteenthcentury Europe reflected in penitential manuals, legal summae and glosses, legislation, and chronicles (Farmer 2005, 62–67). However, a heated debate over whether friars are false beggars of just this kind is a characteristic of fourteenth-century controversy, sparked by Richard Fitzralph in the mid-­ fourteenth century, and perpetuated by conflicts between Geoffrey Hardeby and John Wyclif, and later, Richard Maidstone and John Ashwardby (see Dawson 1983; Walsh 1972; Williams 1958; and Edden 1987). The interpolations of “villas” alongside of “domos” and of 14  See booklet 2 items 6–11 and 13. Item 12 is Insurgent gentes, described in Somerset 2009, xxi–xxii.

218 

F. SOMERSET

“omissis ecclesiis” to the friars’ begging itinerary, emphasizing the tendency of friars to hang around cities and avoid churches, also fit with the fourteenth-­century characterization of friars as lazy vagabonds, a satirical tradition that has been described by Wendy Scase (Scase 1989, 71–2, 127–9, 144).15 Similarly, while friars are commonly linked with the seduction of women, this version of Insurgent gentes shows evidence of the high value Wycliffites place on virginity and their preoccupations with sexual sin and female purity.16 The preface to this copy is the only one to describe Hildegard approvingly as “virgo,” a virgin (line 1); here uniquely friars are called sellers of widows, “venditores viduarum,” and say they are chaste, but are sodomites (“casti, sodomite”). The insertion of “[c]aro vestra putrida vos seduxit et mundum vos seduxistis” [your rotting flesh has seduced you and you have seduced the world], may be in part a creative response to a copying error that displaced “caro vestra impudica” from between “ora vestra” and “corda vestra” in the next line, or else dropped it entirely in other copies. Nonetheless, it nicely encapsulates a lollard abhorrence of fleshly desires, of the susceptibility of friars in particular to those desires, and of their perilous tendency to seduce the world in turn. The added concluding paragraph in Trinity B.14.50 places this copy of Insurgent gentes in a lollard interpretative frame in at least two obvious ways. It tells us that the friars are disciples of antichrist; that anyone who does not want to live contrary to Christ and his saints should depart from this perverse and cursed order; and that the head who supports them and allows them to be in orders of this kind and gives them the power of seducing the people is antichrist. Similar claims that living contrary to Christ and his saints aligns someone with antichrist, that the pope is antichrist, that friars are his disciples, and that friars should leave their orders and follow Christ instead, can be found in profusion in Wyclif’s and in lollard writings. All of them appear, for example, in the lengthy Dialogue between Jon and Richard in Trinity B.14.50 (Somerset 2009, 1–31; see the notes for comparisons with other texts). But another feature of this passage that is characteristic of vernacular lollard writings, and reflected

15  See also the Dialogue between Jon and Richard in Four Wycliffite Dialogues (Somerset 2009, 4 line 51 and n). 16  This aspect of Wyclif’s and lollard writing has not received much attention, but is noted in Somerset 2014, 266.

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

219

earlier in the text as well, is its emphasis on discernment of truth from falsehood by means of the senses. Unlike disputation or biblical exegesis, discernment by means of the senses is a skill available to all, rather than only to the educated. “Qui esset tam insensatus quin poterit plane intelligere quod isti et alij sunt antichristi discipuli?” [Who is so insensate, so blind, that they cannot plainly understand that the head of the friars is antichrist, and that the friars and others living contrary to Christ are antichrist’s disciples?] Nobody, we are meant to conclude. Efforts to educate the lay capacity for discernment, and to ask lay people to respond to what is plain before their faces, are not found only in lollard writings, but in a range of texts with reformist aims, and we know that some of those texts appealed to lollards as well—even to the point of considering their authors saints. Consider for example Richard Fitzralph’s Defensio Curatorum, whose theme text, “Nolite judicare secundum faciem, sed justum judicium judicate” [do not judge at face value, but judge a just judgment], foregrounds its concern with educating its audiences in proper discernment (see Somerset 2001, 1999 for more examples). This emphasis on lay discernment is also visible in Insurgent gentes, even without the alterations in the Trinity B.14.50 version, although those alterations do add some extra emphasis. I think that it was this aspect of the text’s prophecy that most appealed to lollards and Hussites alike, for both movements stressed the importance of lay participation in any attempt at reform. Notice that the “populus” abruptly switch roles at the beginning of the final paragraph, from victims to accusers, and that this switch is accompanied by extensive textual variance that suggests heightened interest in what is being copied. The lengthy catalog of wretches who were hapless prey to the friars’ predations concludes with “Populus vero omnis de die in diem per eos erit nequior et durior” [The whole people will be more wicked and hardened, day by day, because of them]. However, at a certain point, the tide will turn and the friars’ influence will wane. When the friar’s seductions become apparent to all, then the people will stop giving them anything, “cum fuerint seducciones eorum aperte, tunc cessabit populus eis dare,” forcing the friars to beg for bread humbly from house to house. Then the people will cry out against them. The prophecy concludes by voicing the people’s denunciation of the friars, a lengthy catalog of what they seemed to be and what the people now realize they really were, and the people’s wish to know nothing more of them.

220 

F. SOMERSET

In the Trinity B.14.50 version, there is even more emphasis on lay discernment of truth. While this may in part be an ingenious effort to repair the miscopying of “mendicis” in an earlier copy, Trinity B.14.50 is unique in inserting an opposition between “fideles” and “mendaces” into the people’s catalog. This opposition between true men and liars is pervasive in lollard discourse, as Anne Hudson and Matti Peikola have shown (Hudson 1981; Peikola 2000). The Trinity B.14.50 version is also unique in introducing the catalog of contrasts between seeming and reality with “quando dixistis simus X, eratis Y” [when you said “we are X,” you were Y], so that the whole of the friars’ past behavior becomes a series of explicit verbal lies. All other versions of the text known to me introduce the catalog with “cum eratis” [when you were] or with “quod eratis non” [that you were not]. Each of these expressions contrasts seeming with reality based only on the friars’ actions, not their own description of them. Even without the final added paragraph and these changes, but all the more so with them, the section of Insurgent gentes that presents the people’s voice prophesies a universal realization that it hopes to help come true, encouraging lay people to see the contrast between the friar’s way of life and that of Christ. In this way its aims are similar to the Dialogue between Jon and Richard, which cites Hildegard in its conclusion: “siþen þei [friars] ben þeues and robben commoon puple, and traituris to God, as seint Poule seiþ and Hildagar expowneþ oponly inow, it semeþ þat lordes schuld distroie þes traitours, boþe for loue of God and loue of þer suggetis” (Somerset 2009, 30, lines 1003–6). This citation of Hildegard alongside Paul aptly exemplifies what is distinctive about the lollard and Hussite reception of Hildegard, even while interest in her spurious prophecy Insurgent gentes is widespread among later medieval opponents of the friars. Lollards and Hussites saw Hildegard as a saint on the basis of her prophetic truth-telling, and they were happy to call her one in defiance of the church’s refusal to canonize her. Especially as Insurgent gentes is framed and reworked in Trinity B.14.50, it hands over to the people the authority of discerning whether the friars are in need of reform even more decisively than other versions. Where Hildegard is cited elsewhere in lollard writings, as here in the Dialogue between Jon and Richard, this transfer of authority is fashioned into a specifically articulated program for reform: lords should destroy friars out of love for God and their subjects. Even if prophetic discourse is rarely clear and straightforward, the lollard writers who put together Trinity B.14.50 seem to think that it provides

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

221

clear enough guidance on what lay people should do, of a kind that makes Hildegard a speaker of truth like Fitzralph or like Wyclif himself, and like them, a kind of lollard saint.

Appendix 1: Transcription of Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50, Fols. 67v–68r This transcription of the copy of Insurgent gentes in Trinity B.14.50 subsumes the textual apparatus in order to give a simpler visual representation of how this copy differs from other known copies.17 In this transcription modern punctuation, word division, and capitalization are imposed; manuscript spellings are retained; abbreviations are silently expanded; and corrections in the manuscript are silently applied. The text in Trinity B.14.50 has some obvious problems that suggest inexpert copying of Latin: “Teutonice” is misspelled and the dates are wrong. I have not corrected these, since some of the errors are shared by other copies, but I do smooth some of them over in the translation that follows the transcription. [fol. 67r] Hora de destruccione fratrum per propheciam. Beata virgo Hildegaris, Turonice nacionis, viuebat super terram anno domini m c xxvi, ante inceptionem quatuor ordinum fratrum quinquaginta et duobus annis. Quia ordo mendicancium et predicancium incepit sub anno domini m c lxxviii, vt habetur in cronicis martini, et fuit canonizata ab Eugenio papa tempore beati Bernardi, et istam reuelacionem subscriptam prophetauit. Insurge[n]t gentes que comedent peccata populi; tenentes ordinem mendicancium, ambulantes sine labore et rubore, invenientes mala et noua. A sapientibus et Christi fidelibus ordo ille peruersus maledicetur. 17  Words printed in bold are unique modifications to this copy only, not found elsewhere in the textual tradition. Underlined words do not appear in Kerby-Fulton et al.’s edition of the insular version, but do appear in one or more manuscripts. According to Kerby-Fulton et al., some of these underlined words are however found in what they label as a “subgroup” of later manuscripts, including Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 158, Oxford Bodleian Library MS Lat. misc. c. 75, London, Lambeth Palace MS 357, Dublin, Trinity College MS 775, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 427, and the transcription of an unknown, lost manuscript printed in Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina (Kerby-Fulton et al. 2004, 191). At present, I have consulted this edition and its variants, comparing with Santos Paz 1997 and its variants, with Kerby-Fulton et al.’s descriptions of titles and headnotes to the text in the manuscripts they consulted, with the five other published transcriptions of individual copies listed above, n. 4, and with my own transcription of the two Middle English translations (see n. 6).

222 

F. SOMERSET

Fortes et sani cessabunt a laboribus et vacabunt ocio assumentes pocius exemplum mendicandi. Studebunt nimium qualiter doctoribus veritatis peruerse resistant et cum potentibus et innocentes destruent, potentes et peccatores seducent propter vite necessaria et mundi dileccionem. Radicabit in eis diabolus quattuor vicia, videlicet adulacionem, inuidiam, ypocrisim, et detraccionem. Adulacionem vt eis largius detur. Inuidiam quando dabitur aliis et non eis. Ipocrisim vt placeant per similaciones. [fol. 67v] Detraccionem vt seipsos commendent et  alios vituperent. Propter laudes hominum et seducciones simplicium, sine deuocione et exemplo martirii predicabunt incessanter principibus secularibus, abstrahentes sacramenta ecclesie a veris pastoribus, rapientes elemonsinas pauperum infirmorum et miserorum, trahentes seipsos in multitudinem sui populi, contrahentes ad familiaritates mulierum, instruentes eas qualiter maritos suos et amicos blande decipient et eis res proprias furtiue distribuant. Tollentes etiam res infinitas et male adquisitas, dicentes ‘Date nobis et nos orabimus pro vobis,’ vt aliorum vicia tegant et suorum obliuiscentur. Heu eciam a miseris res tollent, videlicet a raptoribus, spoliatoribus, furibus, predonibus, latronibus, sacrilegis, vsurarijs, feneratoribus, adulteris, hereticis, scismaticis, apostaticis, a mulieribus luxuriosis, a periuris mercatoribus, falsis iudicibus, a militibus tirannicis, a principibus contra legem viuentibus, et a multis peruersis. Propter oracionem et persuacionem diaboli et dulcedinem peccati et vitam delicatam in breuem transitoriam et satietatem et in dampnacionem eternam, omnia eis erunt apta. Populus vero omnis de die in diem per eos erit nequior et durior. Sed cum fuerint seducciones eorum aperte, tunc cessabit populus eis dare et tunc circum[i]bunt circa villas et domos vt famelici et sicut canes rapidi omissis ecclesiis submissis oculis contrahentes ceruices sicut turtures vt pane sacientur. [f. 68r] Tunc clamabit populus super eos, dicens ‘Ve vobis, filij meroris. Caro vestra putrida vos seduxit et mundum vos seduxistis. Diabolus confirmauit ora vestra et corda vestra sine sapore. Mens vestra fuit vaga, oculi vestri delicabantur in vanitatibus, venter vester fuit delicatus et immo dulcia fercula petiuistis. Pedes veloces fuerunt ad currendum in malum. Mementote: quando dixistis simus beati, eratis emulatores; pauperes, diuites; symplices, potentes; deuoti, adulatores; sancti, ypocrite; casti, sodomite; fideles, mendaces; superbi effrenes petitores instabiles, martires delicati confessores; humiles, elati; mites dulces, calumpniatores; pacifici, persecutores; amatores mundi, venditores indulgenciarum et suffragiorum; ordinatores comodi, conspiratores crapulei; desideratores honoris, marcatores matrimoniarum; venditores viduarum, seminatores discordiarum, edificatores in altum. Et cum ascendere alicuius

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

223

non poteritis tunc cadetis sicut Symon Magus, cuius ossa per oracionem apostolorum dominus contriuit et plaga crudeli percussit. Sic ordo vester et corda vestra conterentur propter sediciones et iniquitates vestras. Ite, doctores prauitatis, patres peruersitates, filij iniquitatis. Scienciam viarum vestrarum de cetero scire nolimus. Qui esset tam insensatus quin poterit plane intelligere quod isti et  alij sunt antichristi discipuli? Qui sic contra christum et suorum sanctorum dicta tenent [f. 68v] peruersum ordinem et maledictum? Et quis esset tam cecus quin poterit plane inteligere qui est antichristus? Omnino ipse est antichristus qui est capud eorum et qui supportat eos, et qui dat eis talem potestatem seducendi populum, et qui permittit eos et alios tales esse in tali ordine.

Appendix 2: Translation of Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50, Fols. 67v–68r The blessed virgin Hildegard, of German nationality, lived on earth in the year 1126, fifty-two years before the beginning of the four orders of friars. For the preaching and begging order began in the year 1178, as Martin’s chronicle has it, and she was canonized by pope Eugene in the time of the blessed Bernard, and she wrote the prophecy written below. A people will arise who will eat the sins of the people; belonging to the order of preaching, wandering about without labor and without shame, discovering new ways to be bad. That perverse order will be cursed by the wise and the faithful of Christ. The strong and healthy will cease their labors and be idle in leisure, following instead the model of begging. They will be extremely zealous perversely to resist teachers of truth and destroy the innocent with all their powers; they will seduce the powerful and sinners for the necessities of life and pleasure of the world. The devil will plant four vices in them, namely flattery, envy, hypocrisy, and detraction. Flattery so that people will give to them more generously. Envy when things are given to others and not them. Hypocrisy so that they might be pleasing by false appearances. Detraction that they might commend themselves and condemn others. For the praise of men and seduction of the simple, they will preach incessantly to the secular princes, but without devotion and the example of martyrdom, withdrawing the sacraments of the church from true pastors, seizing the alms of the poor, sick, and wretched, dragging themselves into the multitude of their own people, resorting to familiarity with women, instructing them in how they may pleasantly deceive their husbands and relatives and furtively give their own property to them.

224 

F. SOMERSET

Taking away an infinity of ill-gotten things, saying “Give to us and we will pray for you” so that they can conceal the vices of others and forget their own. Alas, they will also take from the wretched, namely from snatchers, despoilers, thieves, takers, thieves, sacrilegious, usurers, lechers, adulterers, heretics, schismatics, apostates, lustful women, perjuring merchants, false judges, tyrannical knights, princes living against the law, and many turned from the right path. Because of the prayer and persuasion of the devil and the sweetness of sin and pleasurable life, into brief transitory satisfaction and eternal damnation, all these things will be ready for them. The whole people, truly, day by day through them will become more wretched and hardened. But when their seductions become manifest, then the people will stop giving to them. And then they will go circle around towns and houses as if starving and like fierce dogs, staying out of churches, with their eyes cast down, drawing in their necks like turtledoves, so that they might be sated with bread. Then the people will cry out upon them, saying “Woe to you, sons of sorrow. Your rotting flesh has seduced you, and you have seduced the world. The devil has hardened your mouths and your hearts in lacking taste. Your mind wanders, your eyes delight in vanities, your stomach is delicate and you seek sweet dishes. Your feet are swift in running toward evil. Remember: when you said ‘We are blessed,’ you were fakers; poor, rich; simple, powerful; devout worshippers, holy hypocrites; chaste, sodomites; faithful/true, liars; proud unrestrained unstable petitioners, fastidious martyr confessors; humble, proud; meek and sweet, slanderers; peaceful, persecutors; lovers of the world, sellers of indulgences and suffrages, arrangers of convenience, conspirators in drunkenness, desirers of honor, merchants of matrimony, sellers of widows, sowers of discords, builders on high. And when you can ascend no higher, you will fall, like Simon Magus, whose bones at the prayer of the apostles the Lord crushed and struck with a cruel injury. In this way your order and your hearts will be crushed on account of your seditions and iniquities. Go, doctors of depravity, fathers of perversity, sons of iniquity: we don’t want to know any more about the lore of your ways. Who could be so insensate that they could not understand clearly that these and others are the disciples of antichrist? Who in this way upholds this perverse and cursed order, opposed to the word of Christ and his saints? And who could be so blind that they cannot plainly understand who is antichrist? He is, utterly, antichrist, who is their head and who supports them, and who gives them such power to seduce the people, and who permits them and others like them to be in such an order.

Recounts papal approval

At beginning

At beginning

early C15

At beginning Of “these sayings”; at end At beginning E canonized H; at beginning At beginning

At beginning Of “these sayings”; at end

At beginning

Includes “floruit” note

Mid C15

turn of C15

In papal approval

In floruit note

C18 copy of C15

early C15

In floruit note

early C15

Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50 Dublin, Trinity College MS 516 Dublin, Trinity College MS 517 Exeter, Cathedral Library MS 3625

In floruit note

C18 copy of C15

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.411 New York, Columbia Plimpton Add. MS 3 London, BL MS Add. 5901

Calls Hildegard a saint

Date

Location and shelf mark

Some

Heavily

Interpolated text

Table 9.1  Copies of Insurgent gentes in British and Bohemian manuscripts

Exhorts participation

Verse about friars

Exhorts discernment

Describes friars

Describes friars

Describes friars

Interpolated conclusion

Hand like Dom A ix

T

Copy of Plimpton

Textual similarities

(continued)

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Middle English

Middle English

Middle English

Language

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

225

attributed to Joachim

C12–C15 misc.

1440–60

At beginning; shorter variant

C15

C15

In introductory sentence

At beginning; shorter variant at beginning

C15

C15 Irish?

At beginning

turn of C15

Includes “floruit” note

London, BL MS Cotton Domitian A ix London, Lambeth Palace MS 357 Northampton, PRO MS Finch-­Hatton 2995 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 158 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 507 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. Misc. C.75 Brno MK 108

Calls Hildegard a saint

Date

Location and shelf mark

Table 9.1  (continued) Recounts papal approval

Interpolated text

Interpolated conclusion

L

B

Textual similarities

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Language

226  F. SOMERSET

mid C15

In title

At end

C15

early C15

At beginning

At end

At end

Includes “floruit” note

C15 first half

In title

1428–9

C15

Prague NK X.H.17 Prague NK III.G.25 Prague NK XIII.G.10 SOA Trebon A3 Vienna ONB 4500 Vienna ONB 4941 (fragment of text) Vienna ONB 4954

in papal approval

At end

early C15

Prague, KMK D.12

Calls Hildegard a saint

end of C14

Date

Location and shelf mark Follows Gebeno’s excerpt

Recounts papal approval

Interpolated text

Interpolated conclusion

Similar to Prague copies

Yes

Textual similarities

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Latin

Language

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

227

228 

F. SOMERSET

References Manuscripts Angers, Bibliothèque municipale MS 56. Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna MK 108. Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 427. Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.50. Dublin, Trinity College MS 775. London, BL Add. MS 5901. London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 357. Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 59. New York, Columbia University Plimpton Add. MS 3. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 158. Oxford Bodleian Library MS Lat. misc. c.75. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawl. C.411. Prague, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly pražské MS D.12. Prague, Nárondní knihovna Č eské republiky, MS III.G.25. Prague, Nárondní knihovna Č eské republiky, MS XIII.G.10. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4954.

Editions Somerset, F. 2009. Four Wycliffite Dialogues. EETS, 333. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Sources Acker, P. 2013. Pseudo-Hildegard’s Anti-Mendicant Prophecy in Columbia University Plimpton Add. MS 3. Journal of the Early Book Society 16: 261–268. Dawson, J.D. 1983. Richard Fitzralph and the Fourteenth-Century Poverty Controversies. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 34: 315–344. https://doi. org/10.1017/S002204690003788X. Edden, V. 1987. The Debate Between Richard Maidstone and the Lollard Ashwardby (ca. 1390). Carmelus 34: 113–134. Embach, M. 2003. Die Schriften Hildegards von Bingen: Studien zu ihrer Überlieferung und Rezeption im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, Erudiri Sapientia 4. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1524/9783050050058 ———. 2014. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179): A History of Reception. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. B.M.  Kienzle, D.  Stoudt, and G. Ferzoco, 273–304. Leiden: Brill.

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

229

Fabricius, J. 1858. Bibliotheca latina mediae et infimae aetatis. Vol. 3, 243–244. Florence: Thomas Baracchi. Farmer, Sharon. 2005. Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ferzoco, G. 2014. The Canonization and Doctorization of Hildegard of Bingen. In A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen, ed. B.M.  Kienzle, D.  Stoudt, and G. Ferzoco, 305–316. Leiden: Brill. Gouguenheim, S. 1996. La Sibylle du Rhin: Hildegarde de Bingen, abbesse et prophetiesse rhenane. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Hayton, M. 2014. Inflections of Prophetic Vision: The Reshaping of Hildegard of Bingen’s Apocalypticism as Represented by Abridgments of the Pentachronon. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto. ———. 2017. Hildegardian Prophecy and French Prophecy Collections, 1378–1455: A Study and Critical Edition of the “Schism Extracts”. Traditio 72: 453–491. ———. 2019. Prophets, Prophecy, and Cistercians: A Study of the Most Popular Version of the Hildegardian Pentachronon. Journal of Medieval Latin 29: 123–162. Hudson, A. 1971. The Expurgation of a Lollard Sermon Cycle. Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 22: 435–442. Repr. in Lollards and Their Books, 201–215. ———. 1981. A Lollard Sect Vocabulary? In So Meny People, Longages, and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. M. Benskin and M.L. Samuels, 15–30. Edinburgh. Repr. in Lollards and Their Books, 165–180. ———. 1985. Lollards and Their Books. London: Hambledon. ———. 1999. Cross-References in Wyclif’s Latin Works. In The Medieval Church: Universities, Heresy, and the Religious Life: Essays in Honour of Gordon Leff, Studies in Church History, Subsidia, ed. P.  Biller and B.  Dobson, vol. 11, 193–215. Woodbridge: Boydell. ———. 2001. Wyclif’s Latin Sermons: Questions of Form, Date and Audience. Archives D’histoire Doctrinale Et Littéraire Du Moyen Âge 68 (1): 223–223. https://doi.org/10.3917/ahdlm.068.0223. ———. 2002. Which Wyche? The framing of the Lollard heretic and/or saint. In Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, York Studies in Medieval Theology 4, ed. C. Bruschi and P. Biller, 221–237. Woodbridge: Boydell. ———. 2008. Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings. Aldershot: Ashgate. ———. 2011. Five Problems in Wycliffite Texts and a Suggestion. Medium Aevum 80: 301–324. https://doi.org/10.2307/43632875. Kaderová, J. 2012. Pseudohildegardino Proroctví Insurgent Gentes v Č eském Kontextu. Srovnání Textu Prophecia Beate Hildegardis de Fratribus Minoribus

230 

F. SOMERSET

z Třeboň ského Rukopisu a Apologie Konráda Waldhausera. Graeco-Latina Brunensia 17: 79–94. Kerby-Fulton, K. 2000. Prophecy and Suspicion: Closet Radicalism, Reformist Politics, and the Vogue for Hildegardiana in Ricardian England. Speculum 75 (2): 318–341. https://doi.org/10.2307/2887581. ———. 2006. Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 2010. Hildegard of Bingen. In Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. A. Minnis and R. Voaden, 343–365. Turnhout: Brepols. ———. 2015. Oxford. In Regeneration: A Literary History of Europe: 1348–1418, ed. David Wallace, vol. 1, 208–226. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kerby-Fulton, K., M. Hayton, and K. Olsen. 2004. Pseudo-Hildegardian Prophecy and Antimendicant Propaganda in Late Medieval England: An Edition of the Most Popular Insular Text of ‘Insurgent Gentes’. In Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 12, ed. N. Morgan, 160–194. Donington: Harlaxton. Lahey, S.E. 2008. John Wyclif. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Little, A.G., and R.C. Easterling. 1927. The Franciscans and Dominicans of Exeter. Exeter, A. Wheaton. Malo, R. 2013. Relics and Writing in Late Medieval England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Moulinier, L. 2000. Et Papa Libros Eius Canonizavit: Réflexions sur l’Orthodoxie des Ecrits de Hildegarde de Bingen. In Orthodoxie, Christianisme, Histoire, Collection de l’école française de Rome, 270, ed. S.  Elm, E.  Rebillard, and A. Romano, 177–198. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome. Newman, B. 1999. Hildegard and Her Hagiographers: The Remaking of Female Sainthood. In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, The Middle Ages Series, ed. C.M.  Mooney, 16–34 and 195–202. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512821154. Peikola, M. 2000. Congregation of the Elect: Patterns of Self-Fashioning in English Lollard Writings, Anglicana Turkuensia 21. Turku: University of Turku. ———. 2006. Lollard (?) Production under the Looking Glass: The Case of Columbia University, Plimpton Add. MS 3. Journal of the Early Book Society 9: 1–23. Santos Paz, J.C. 1997. La Recepción de Hildegarde de Bingen en los Siglos XIII y XIV. PhD dissertation, Santiago de Compostela. ———. 2001. La «santificació» de Hildegarde en la Edad Media. In “Im Angesicht Gottes suche der Mensch sich selbst”: Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179), Erudiri Sapientia: Studien zum Mittelalter und zu seiner Rezeptionsgeschichte, 2, ed. R. Berndt, 561–576. Berlin: Akademie.

9  BLESSED HILDEGARD: ANOTHER KIND OF LOLLARD SAINT 

231

———. 2016. Guillermo de Saint-Amour y la Versión Original de la Profecía. Insurgent Gentes. Studi Medievali 57 (2): 649–687. ———. 2017. Hildegarde profetisa: la interpretación de Gebenón de Eberbach. In “Speculum futurorum temporum”. Ildegarda di Bingen tra agiografia e memoria, Atti del Convegno di Studio (Roma, 5–6- aprile 2017), ed. S. Boesch Gajano and A.  Bartolomei, 117–148. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo. Scase, W. 1989. “Piers Plowman” and the New Anti-Clericalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Somerset, F. 1999. As Just as Is a Squyre’: The Politics of ‘Lewed Translacion’ in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 187–207. https://doi.org/10.1353/sac.1991.0050. ———. 2001. ‘Mark Him Wel for He Is on of þo’: Training the ‘Lewed’ Gaze to Discern Hypocrisy. English Literary History 68: 315–334. https://doi. org/10.1353/elh.2001.0019. ———. 2014. Feeling Like Saints; Lollard Writings after Wyclif. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Stavsky, J. 2015. As the Lily Among Thorns: Daniel 13 in the Writings of John Wyclif and His Followers. Viator 46 (1): 249–276. https://doi.org/10.1484/J. VIATOR.5.103509. von Nolcken, C. 1987. Another Kind of Saint: A Lollard Perception of John Wyclif. In From Ockham to Wyclif. Studies in Church History, Subsidia, ed. A. Hudson and M. Wilks, vol. 5, 429–443. Oxford: Blackwell. Walsh, K. 1972. The “De Vita Evangelica” of Geoffrey Hardeby, O.E.S.A. (c. 1320– c. 1385): A Study in the Mendicant Controversies of the Fourteenth Century. Rome: Instituto Historicum Augustinianum. ———. 1981. Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon, and Armagh: A Fourteenth Century Scholar and Primate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, A. 1958. Protectorium Pauperis, a Defense of the Begging Friars by Richard Maidstone, O. Carm. (d. 1396). Carmelus 5: 132–180.

PART III

Old English and Its Afterlife

CHAPTER 10

“In his heart he believed in God, but he could not speak like a man”: Martyrdom, Monstrosity, Speech and the Dog-Headed Saint Christopher Susan M. Kim

The Old English Saint Christopher has monstrous embodiment as a defining characteristic: Saint Christopher is a giant with the head of a dog.1 Yet the fragmentary Life of Saint Christopher, as it appears in London, BL Cotton Vitellius A.xv (the Beowulf manuscript) does not mark that  On the figure of the dog-head and the broader history of the dog-headed Saint Christopher, see White 1991, esp. 22–46; On the legend of Saint Christopher in early England generally, see Lionarons 2002. 1

Much of the work for this chapter was initiated as part of my 1996 University of Chicago dissertation, Monstrous and Bloody Signs: The Beowulf Manuscript, directed by Christina von Nolcken, with Jay Schleusener and Karma Lochrie. It is a special pleasure to have the opportunity to develop that thinking in the context of this festschrift for Professor von Nocken, whose rigor, guidance, patience, and kindness I will always be grateful for. I also wish to express my gratitude to Sharon M. Rowley for her willingness to take on the compiling of this collection and for the last twenty-five or so years of intellectual companionship and friendship. © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_10

235

236 

S. M. KIM

monstrosity as a clear point of difference from the extraordinary embodiment of other martyrs. Rather, in the conjoining of the monstrous body and the martyred body, the Life exaggerates the shared connection of both monster and martyr to Medieval understandings of how language and signification function. The Life in its concluding gestures also extends its concern with both its own language and the monstrous embodiment of the saint to the responses of its readers. Unlike most Old English Saints’ Lives, the Life of Saint Christopher ends with a promise to the “reader with tears,” the reader whose apprehension of the power of the saint is grounded in affect, manifested in tears. The Life thus perhaps reflects but also shapes the responses of its readers and the practices associated with the veneration of this saint; in doing so, it challenges perception of the dissociation of language from embodiment, name from body, and textual meaning from materiality. According to the Old English Martyrology, Christopher: “hæfde hundes heafod, ond his loccas wæron ofer gemet side, ond his eagan scinon swa leohte swa morgensteorra, ond his teþ wæron swa scearpe swa eofores tuxas” [he had a dog’s head, and his locks were exceedingly thick, and his eyes shone as brightly as the morning star, and his teeth were as sharp as the tusks of a boar] (Rauer 2013, 90).2 The Martyrology description is not casual or incidental. It not only presents Christopher’s dog-head in some detail; it also identifies Christopher as from an entire people with dog’s heads, and it provides as motivation for his persecution of Dagnus’ initial desire to see Christopher’s monstrous head.3 In marked contrast, the Old English Life of Saint Christopher is curiously flat in its reference to Christopher’s unusual height, and it suggests his cynocephalism only in  Translations here and below are my own.  “Se com on Decies dagum þæs caseres on ða ceastre þe Samo is nemned, of þære þeode þær men habbað hunda heafod, ond of þære eorðan on ðære æton men hi selfe” [He came in the days of the emperor Decius into the town that is called Samo, from the nation where men have the heads of dogs, and from the land where men eat each other]. And “þonne sænde se casere twa hund cæmpena þæt þa hine gelæddan to him, gif he þonne nolde to him cuman, þæt hi hine ofslogon ond him brohtan þæt heafod to, þæt he gesege hulic þæt wære” [Then the emperor sent forth two hundred soldiers there so that they would lead him to him, (and) if he did not wish to come to him, so that they would slay him and bring the head to him, so that he could see what sort of head it was] (Rauer 2013, 90). 2 3

S. M. Kim (*) Department of English, Illinois State University, Bloomington-Normal, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected]

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

237

Dagnus’ invective, “ðu wyrresta wilddeor” [“you, worst wild beast”] (Rypins 1924, 70). And this apparent understatement occurs despite what Kenneth Sisam has called a “special interest” in monsters characterizing the texts of the manuscript with which it is bound (Sisam 1998, 67). As Sisam notes, and as Andy Orchard has more recently detailed, both of the prose texts, which follow the Life in its manuscript context, the Wonders of the East, and the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, number dog-headed men explicitly among the monstrosities they catalog: Alexander describes a hostile encounter with “healfhundinga micle mængeo” [a great multitude of half-dogs], and the Wonders of the East includes an illustration of a cynocephalus beside the textual depiction of “healf hundingas þa syndon hatene conopenas” [half-dogs, that are called cynocephali].4 Of course, the text of the Life has sustained damage and the loss of whatever constituted the first part of the narrative. It is certainly possible that those parts of the Life that dealt with Christopher’s cynocephalism have simply been lost: Orchard writes: That the extant (and acephalous) Passion of St. Christopher in the Beowulf manuscript does not mention explicitly that he was one of the cynocephali is scarcely surprising, since the fact is usually mentioned at the beginning of parallel accounts, but even in the mutilated text in the Beowulf-manuscript, he is described as “twelf fæðma lang” [twelve fathoms tall] and “wyrresta wildeor” [the worst of wild beasts], and there seems little doubt that the same dog-headed saint is depicted. (Orchard 2003, 14)

Even without positing a now lost head for the text, however, we can engage a reading of the monstrosity in the Life of Saint Christopher, by posing the possibility that the representations of monstrosity and martyrdom intersect in the representation of the signifying power of the 4  Sisam argues, “It cannot be an accident that the three Anglo-Saxon pieces which certainly mention the Healfhundingas are all together in one manuscript; and once it is established that the codex has been planned with some regard to subject-matter, Beowulf, the one Old English poem that deals with imagined monsters, may reasonably be associated with the same design” (Sisam1953, 66–7). Orchard notes of the “striking description of Saint Christopher” that “in the Wonders of the East and the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle we find other descriptions of creatures who share many of the same physical features” (Orchard 2003, 14). Orchard provides texts for the Letter as well as the Wonders. Passages cited here are Alexander §29 and Wonders §7. A full color facsimile of the Wonders is found in Mittman and Kim 2013. Katheryn Powell argues, following Sisam, that Christopher and Judith are later additions to the manuscript, but they complexify the notion of thematic unity around ideas of the monstrous; see Powell 2008.

238 

S. M. KIM

extraordinary body of the martyr. Medieval theorists return again and again to the etymological link between monsters and signs: monsters function, like all signs, to point away from their materiality to what they signify, God’s ability to do what he will with the bodies of the dead, God’s control over all creation. And yet, the monstrous also figures the disruption of such signifying, the body, like that of the cynocephalus, that disallows speech, and cannot or will not point away from itself to meaning elsewhere. The martyr, similarly, witnesses the truth of the resurrection: he points away from his own experience, his own instantiation and to the truth beyond it. At the same time, in this witnessing, the martyr also authorizes by virtue of his bodily experience: he means with and in his fragmented body. The Life of Saint Christopher, while it perhaps curiously omits explicit mention of Christopher’s monstrosity, also underscores the resonance between the representations of monstrosity and martyrdom, as it emphasizes the processes through which every particle of the saint’s body at once comes to signify and to resist the turn away from the body that signifying demands otherwise: the saint’s body both signifies, points away from its materiality to meaning elsewhere and lodges full presence within every particle of that body. Perhaps most obviously, both martyrdom accounts and the catalogs of monsters that seem to have had considerable popularity in the Middle Ages stage a number of concerns with embodiment, spectacle and the processes of differentiation fundamental to signification, interpretation and language. Eusebius, in his account of the martyrdom of Agapius, explains that it was an ancient practice when the emperors were present, to exhibit splendid shows then, if at any time, and for the greater amusement of the spectators, to collect new and strange sights, in place of those customary; either animals from some parts of India, Ethiopia, or elsewhere; sometimes, also, men who, by artificial dexterities of the body, exhibited singular spectacles of adroitness, and to complete the whole, … it was necessary to have something more than common and singular, in the preparation of these games; (and what then should this be?) one of our martyrs was led forth into the arena to endure the contest for the one and only true religion. (Eusebius 1981, 358)

Eusebius’ description of martyrdom as the culmination of a spectacle of extraordinary bodies suggests that Christopher’s monstrosity is perhaps,

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

239

more than anything else, redundant: in this context, Christopher, as a martyr, is already a kind of monster. Bruno Roy has argued that the monster catalog, in its detailing of what can happen to the body—what can come off and what can be added on— stages anxieties about what makes a normal body and what constitutes a normal relationship to that body: “Les monstres montrent ce qui portrait arriver au corps de l’homme. La question angoissante á laquelle respondent les monstres est celle-ci: comment serion-nous, si nous n’étions pas ce que nous sommes?” [Monsters demonstrate what can happen to the human body. The harrowing question to which monsters respond is this: what would we be, if we were not what we are?] (Roy 1974, 75). The martyrdom of Agapius is taken in this passage as “more than common and singular,” as more than the show of acrobatics or wonders of the East, but it is also taken as fulfilling the same function as these common and singular spectacles for its pagan audience. The seduction of the spectacle is in the viewer’s simultaneous recognition of and identification with the abnormal body, and the reassurance that the same body is abnormal, safely dissociated from him. Aspects of martyrdom intensify this attraction: the martyr himself is at once a body being mutilated, and completely dissociated from that body, a voice unreachable through that body, already secure in his crown of martyrdom. In the Life of Saint Christopher, however, the torture which transforms the martyr into relics posits meaning—the truth of the resurrection—outside the body of the martyr, as that which his martyrdom witnesses. But martyrdom also lodges infinite meaning within the mutilated body and renders the martyr, even as his body is fragmented, uniquely whole. Christopher’s prayer, affirmed by God, is first that, “on swa hwyclre stowe swa mines lichaman ænig dæl sy ne sy þær ne wædl ne fyres broga” [“in whichever place any part of my body might be may there be neither poverty nor the terror of fire”] (Rypins 1924, 73, lines 11–12). Christopher prays first for the potency of every fragment of his body, “lichaman ænig dæl,” that any place where any part of his body might be will be protected. And God responds, explicitly, “cristoforus min þeow, þin gebed ys / gehyred” [“Christopher, my servant, your prayer is heard”] (Rypins 1924, 73, line 20– 74, line 1). The fragmentation of Christopher’s body in no way diminishes the fullness of its potency. As Victricius reminds us, for the

240 

S. M. KIM

saints, “ubi est aliquid ibi totum est” [“where there is anything there is the whole”] (Victricius 1966, 137).5 In the Life of Saint Christopher, however, the martyr is fully present in every drop of his spilled blood, but also in language, in his name. Christopher prays for the potency of any part of his body but also for the power of his name: & gif þær neah syn untrume men & hig cumon to þinum þam halgan temple hig þær gebiddon to þe of ealre heortan & for þinum namman hi ciggen mine naman ge hæl þu þone drihten fran swa hwylcere un trumnesse swa hie forhæfde. (Rypins 1924, 73, lines 13–18) [and if sick men are near and they come to your holy temple and pray there to you wholeheartedly and for your name they call my name, heal them, lord, from whatever illness constrained them.]

And God’s response emphasizes that Christopher’s name will have the same power to heal as the relics of his body will, “þeah þin lichama ne sy on þære stowe,” even if his body might not be present (Rypins 1924, 74, line 1). In this construction of the martyr’s true and potent speech, the Life perhaps most powerfully represents its intersection with the literature of the monstrous. Medieval etymologies emphasize the signifying function of the monster: the monster as sign functions by pointing away from itself to a meaning, the infinite power of God. As Augustine, for example, famously argues in City of God:

5  “Unde queri jam de exiguitate non possumus nam cum dixerimus ad instar generis nihil sacrosanctis perire corporibus, certe illud adsignavimus non posse minui quod divinum est quia totum in toto est et ubi est aliquid ibi totum est” (Victricius 1966, 137). Caroline Walker Bynum argues, “Crystal or gold reliquaries that associate body bits with permanence, paintings in which body parts are assimilated to reliquaries or statues, stories in which torture does not divide and body cannot ever be lost — such images hide the process of putrefaction, equate bones with body and part with whole, and treat body as the permanent locus of the person.” That is, for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and later, “enthusiastic recourse to” as well as “prurient fascination with” bodily partition, in a religion and culture that, at the same time, oppose that partition, suggests “a deep conviction that the person is his or her body” (Bynum 1991, 295–6).

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

241

Monstra sane dicta perhibent a monstrando, quod aliquid significando demonstrent; et ostenta ab ostendendo; et portent a portendendo, id est, praeostendendo; et prodigia, quod porro dicant, id est, futura praedicant. [The name monster, we are told, evidently comes from monstrare, “to show,” because they show by signifying something; “sign” (ostentum) comes from ostendere, “to point out,” “portent” from portendere, “to portend,” that is “to show beforehand” (praeostendere), and “prodigy” from porro dicere, “to foretell the future.”] (Augustine 1984, XXI.8, 982–3; cf. PL 41, 722–3)6

He continues, explaining that while they are “contrary to nature” such signs “have a message”: Nobis tamen ista quae velut contra naturam fiunt, et contra naturam fieri dicutur … et monstra, ostenta, portenta, prodigia nuncupantur, hoc monstrare debent, hoc ostendere vel praeostendere, hoc praedicere, quod facturus sit Deus, quae de corporibus hominum se praenuntiavit esse facturum, nulla impediente difficultate, nulla praescribente lege naturae. [These “monsters,” “signs,” “portents,” and “prodigies,” as they are called, ought to “show” us, to “point out” to us, to “portend” and “foretell,” that God is to do what he prophesied he would do with the bodies of the dead, with no difficulty to hinder him, no law of nature to debar him from so doing.] (Augustine 1984, XXI.8, 982–3; cf. PL 41, 722–3)

But the terrifying body of the monster also arrests meaning, disrupts the processes of differentiation on which its signifying power relies. Hence, for example, in Beowulf, both the speechlessness of Grendel and Beowulf’s fear that an undifferentiated “one of many” he will be incorporated into Grendel’s gigantic dragon skin glove (see Lerer 1994 and Kim 2005). Hence, too, the fact that the Wonders of the East, with which the Life is bound, unlike the related bestiaries, provides no guidance as to how to read the monsters it catalogs, or what they signify (Mittman and Kim 2013, 9–12). And more immediately, in the Saint Christopher material, the form of this monster itself embodies resistance to language. The dog’s 6  Isidore, similarly, writes, “Prodigies (prodigium) are so called, because they speak hereafter’ (porro dicere), that is, they predict the future. But omens (monstrum) derive their name from admonition (monitus), because in giving a sign they indicate (demonstrare) something, or else because they instantly show (monstrare) what may appear; and this is its proper meaning, even though it has frequently been corrupted by the improper use of writers” (Isidore 2006, XI iii, 3, 244).

242 

S. M. KIM

head cannot speak.7 The context of the Martyrology itself emphasizes the association of the dog’s head with the lack of speech; it describes Christopher first as having the head of a dog, and immediately afterwards, as unable to speak like a man, despite his belief in God: “he wæs Gode geleaffull on his heortan, ac he ne mihte sprecan swa mon” [he believed in God in his heart, but he could not speak like a man] (Rauer 2013, 90).8 Like the monster, the martyr points away from his particular body to the corporate function of all martyrs to demonstrate God’s power. Augustine argues: Dicendo enim vera, passi sunt, ut possent facere mira. In eis veris est praecipuum, quod Christus resurrexit a mortuis, et immortalitatem resurrectionis in sua carne primus ostendit, quam nobis adfuturam, vel in principio novi saeculi, vel in hujus fine promisit. [In fact, it was for speaking the truth that they suffered; and because of this they have the power to perform miracles. And among all the truths that they speak this is the most important: that Christ rose from the dead and first displayed the immortality of the resurrection in his body, and promised that it would come to us at the beginning of the new age or (which is the same) at the end of this world.] (Augustine 1984, XX.11, 1049; cf. PL 41, 772)

The martyr, through his body, speaks the truth of the resurrection. The suffering of the martyr and the fragmentation of his body point away from that particular suffering and to “the immortality of the resurrection” displayed in yet another extraordinary body. But, like the monster, the martyr 7  Ælfric provides additional context for the association of the dog with that which lacks human speech in his exemplifying of “mixed” and therefore meaningless sound with the barking of dogs, in contrast to the meaningful sounds of language: “Andgytfullic stemn is, þe mid andgyte bið geclypod, swaswa ys arma uirumque cano ic herige þa wæpnu and ðone wer. Gemenged stemn is, þe bið butan andgyte, swylc swa is hryðera gehlow and horsa hnægung, hunda gebeorc, treowa brastlung ET CETERA” [Meaningful sound is that which is articulated with meaning, as is arma uirumque cano, I praise arms and the man. Mixed sound is that which is without understanding, as is the lowing of cattle and the neighing of horses, the barking of dogs and the rustling of trees, etc.] (Ælfric 1966, 4). 8  Lionarons notes, “Moreover, although Christopher’s canine inability to communicate except by barking…may be less horrifying than his society’s cannibalism, it indicates yet another problem of category distinction, in this case between meaningful and non-meaningful sounds. As the word’s etymological meaning indicates, a monster may signify, ‘show forth’ (L. monstrare), but only a human being can create linguistic signs or distinguish among them” (Lionarons 2002, 177).

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

243

also disrupts this very signifying function. His extraordinary body signifies. It points away from itself and toward meaning elsewhere. But at the same time, in the infinite reproduction of its full presence, the martyr’s body insists—dramatically—on its materiality, even when, as in Christopher’s prayer, the body itself may be absent, even when the martyr is present only in his name. In the Life of Saint Christopher, God’s answer to Christopher’s prayer emphasizes the absence of the body and the substitution of the name for the body: þeah þin lichama ne sy on þære stowe swa hwyllce geleaffulle men swa þines naman on heora gebedum beoð gehælede from hyr[a synnym & swa hwæs swa hie rihtlice biddaþ for þinum naman & for þinum geearningum hig hyt onfoð. (Rypins 1924, 74, lines 1–6) [Although your body may not be in that place, devout men who call your name in their prayers will be healed from their sins, and whatever they rightly ask, on account of your name and your merit, they will receive.]

Even in the absence of the body’s relics, God promises, a man who calls Christopher’s name will be healed, and healed for the sake of his name. But the Life itself returns to the infinitely full presence of both the name and the fragments of the body. The miracle of Dagnus’s cure, for example, requires both the name and the body: Dagnus mixes Christopher’s blood and the earth on which he was martyred, applies it to his wounded eyes, and calls out “on naman cristoforus godes ic þis do” [“I do this in the name of the God of Christopher”], doubly invoking the name of the martyr, and the name of God, as he takes up the residue of the body of Christopher, and sets it on his own body.9 In the Martyrology, Christopher’s dog-head marks at once the monstrous lodging of meaning within the body and the potential for divine transformation. But even in the transformation, as Christopher receives the gift of speech, as he moves from animal inarticulateness to the realm ̵ þær þæs cristes martyr wæs / on þrowigende & medmicel 9  “& he genam / dæl þære eoðan þæs blodes & mengde to / somne & sette on his eagan & he cwð on naman / cristoforus godes ic þis dem...” [“and he took a share of the earth on which the martyr of Christ suffered and a bit of the blood and mixed it together and set it on his eyes, and he said, ‘In the name of the God of Christopher I do this…”] (Rypins 1924, 74 line 20 – 75 line 4).

244 

S. M. KIM

of “monnes gesprec” [the speech of man], Christopher remains physically unchanged (Rauer 2013, 90). Christopher, in the Martyrology, on account of his dog’s head, “wæs Gode geleaffull on his heortan, ac he ne mihte sprecan swa mon” [believed in God in his heart, but could not speak like a man] (Rauer 2013, 90). His prayer to God is not for a human head, an “unmixed” body but “ðæt he him sealde monnes gesprec” [that he would give him the speech of man] (Rauer 2013, 90). In response to his prayer, and a miraculous breath breathed into his mouth, Christopher is ultimately able to speak like a man: “ða mihte he siððan sprecan swa mon” (Rauer 2013, 90). But, nonetheless, the Martyrology emphasizes the retention of the dog’s head even after Christopher is given the gift of speech: in fact later Dagnus is so shocked by the sight of it that he falls off his throne. The Martyrology thus emphasizes not difference from the inarticulate animal body, but continuity with it even in the transformation from dog-headed man to articulate saint. I would like to argue that the Life amplifies rather than diminishes this representation of continuity, even without the explicit mention of the dog’s head, as it emphasizes full presence in every fragment of the saint’s body but also makes equivalent those fragments and the saint’s name: as the saint is, fully, in every drop of his blood, he is, fully, in his name. That is, the extraordinary body of the saint both signifies, points away from itself to the truth of the resurrection, and also absolutely resists the differentiation fundamental to language: the saint is fully present in his name. In an early English context, as in our own, language is presented as fundamentally a matter of difference, of a separation from, and pointing away from materiality in the construction of linguistic function. Ælfric, in his Grammar, for example, begins with the description of language at its most fundamental, and at its most fundamental, language requires difference: Ælfric begins with the separation of articulate (vox articulata) and inarticulate (confusa) sounds, sounds that can be differentiated, and hence combined in language—meaningful (andgytfullic) sounds, and mixed (gemenged) sounds that cannot, “swylc swa is…hunda gebeorc” [like bark of dogs] (Ælfric 1966, 4).10 Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine, similarly affirms that all language requires difference, that “Signum est enim res, praeter speciem quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem venire…” [a sign is a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses]  See above, note 7.

10

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

245

(Augustine 1958, II.1, 34; cf. PL 34, 19), and that to read the materiality of the sign as meaning is a failure to transcend the body proper, that “Ea demum est miserabilis animae servitus, signa pro rebus accipere, et supra creaturam corpoream oculum mentis ad hauriendum aeternum lumen levare non posse” [there is a miserable servitude of the spirit in … taking signs for things, so that one is not able to raise the eye of the mind above things that are corporal] (Augustine 1958, III.5, 84; cf. PL 34, 68–69). But the lives of the saints also voice a powerful resistance to that model of language. On the one hand, such resistance is evident in early medieval theorizing of the martyr’s relationship to his own body and to language. Victricius, for example, considers the pleasure voiced by the martyr in the scene of torture as the martyr’s recognition, through the experience of bodily pain, of his impending immortality. He insists: Tortor horruit: risit, subditus quaestioni; percussor tremuit et tremantis dexteram moriturus adjuvit. Fera noluit: irritavit objectus non quia poenam corpoream natura perdiderat sed quia Salvator, tanti presul certaminis, palmam vibrans, immortalitatis victoriam praetendebat. [The torturer was afraid: having been set under questioning, (the martyr) laughed; the murderer trembled, and the one about to die assisted the right hand of the trembling one. The wild animal was unwilling; having been exposed, he incited (it) not because his nature had lost bodily pain, but because the Savior, the leader of so great a struggle, brandishing the palms, stretched forth the victory of immortality.] (Victricius 1966, 123, emphasis added)

Victricius offers, as a solution to the problem of the martyr’s apparent denial of the force of the body’s pain, the argument that the martyr does in fact feel pain, but responds instead, as if in pleasure, to the greater stimulus of “the victory of immortality.” Victricius maintains the martyrs’ ability to perceive bodily pain; having been humiliated in the body on earth, the martyr can, as a version of Christ, bridge Heaven and earth for man.11 But in doing so, Victricius both separates the identity of the martyr 11  Peter Brown follows Augustine’s Book 10 discussion in City of God to make the point that in the early cult of the saints, “men who had shown themselves, as martyrs, to be true servants of God, could bind their fellow men even closer to God than could the angels. For the belief in the ministrations of angels, even of those most obedient to God’s will, had tended to place a cliff face of beings of a different order from themselves between the human race and God. This ancient sense of difference was the corollary, in the chain of mediation between God and man, of the fault that ran through the universe, separating the stars from

246 

S. M. KIM

from his body, and lodges meaning (and with it the structure of language), within that body. He continues, “Haec quanquam ita sint, tamen in illa passione membrorum vobiscum certamen corporal pertulerunt” [However these things should be, still, in that passion of the members, the bodies with you, suffered/announced the combat] (Victricius 1966, 123).12 The martyrs’ bodies suffer pain with the martyrs; the bodies are understood as already separated from the identity of the martyrs. But at the same time, it is the “passion of the members,” the body’s pain, that finally makes the martyr a martyr; both the sign and the meaning of the martyrdom are lodged in the martyr’s tortured body. Gregory of Tours provides a clear illustration of this lodging of sign and meaning in the martyr’s tortured body with his description of the martyrdom of Cassianus. He explains: During a time of persecution Cassianus, a martyr in Italy and a distinguished teacher of young boys, was handed over to a class of young boys by the judgment of the persecutors. In their thirst for the blood of their teacher the boys struck his head with their wax tablets, lacerated him with the blades of their pens, and tattooed the skin of their teacher with tiny pricks; they made him a martyr worthy of God. (Gregory 1988, 65)

In the example of Cassianus, the transformation, during the martyrdom, of the body of the martyr into both sign and meaning is explicit: Cassianus is made “a martyr worthy of God” when his body is literally written to death. For Victricius all language is bound to the body, to physical perception. In his discussion justifying the existence of the whole in the part for the relics of the martyr, he argues: Cur igitur reliquias appellamus? Quia rerum imagines et signa sunt verba. Subjicitur oculis cruor et limus. Id nos reliquiarum nomine quia aliter non possumus velut vividi sermonis impressione signamus. Sed nos nunc totum in parte dicendo non corporalium luminum obices sed cordis oculos aperimus? [Why then do we call (relics) relics? Because words are the images and signs of things. Blood and dirt is cast under the eyes. We designate that with the name of relics because we cannot otherwise with the impression of living the earth. Only the martyrs, heavy with the humiliation of human death, could bridge that fault” (Brown 1981, 60–1). 12  Herval translates, “vos corps ont avec vous soutenu le combat” (122).

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

247

language. But do we now, in speaking of the whole in the part, open not the barriers of the corporal eyes, but the eyes of the heart? (Victricius 1966, 135–7)

The structure of language, for Victricius, is determined by physical perception; it is the human perception of the thing that determines the sign. Because we see blood and dirt, we can only call the martyr’s remains “relics.” In order to see the whole in the part, or the true nature of the relic, we must move beyond perception, and with it the “treachery of language.” In Victricius’ terms, moving beyond the “treachery of language” means moving beyond the “barriers of the corporal eyes,” and moving away from the limitations of physical perception. One difficulty in his argument is the problem that the goal of this movement is not escaping from presence or from the confines of the body. Victricius is arguing not for the dismissing of the body, in the case of the martyr, but for the lodging of infinitely full meaning in even the smallest part of the martyr’s body, so that “where there is anything there is the whole” (Victricius 1966, 137).13 Victricius’ model thus explains both the particularity and the wholeness of the martyr’s identity. The martyr can identify himself, through his body’s pain and fragmentation, as a martyr, as his body’s fragmentation, and thus can express wholeness and pleasure in his relationship to his tortured body because it means his sanctity. The martyr signifies, then, and we, as readers, can gain access to him not simply by “raising the eye of the mind above things that are corporal” but also by grounding that eye within the body. On perhaps a more obvious level, resistance to the model of necessary and essential difference in language—difference within language between the sign and its meaning, inheres in the many representations in which the animal or the unformed human speaks: as here, in the Martyrology, the retention of Christopher’s dog-head but also, as Hippolyte Delehaye has noted, in the legends of eloquent infants like Saint Rumwold who at three days old professed his faith and delivered a sermon, or the speaking animals, “a big dog which talked with St. Peter and was entrusted by him with a message for Simon,” or the “lion which spoke up in support of St Paul’s teachings” (Delehaye 1998, 35). For Delehaye, such legends arise 13  “Unde queri jam de exiguitate non possumus nam cum dixerimus ad instar generis nihil sacrosanctis perire corporibus, certe illud adsignavimus non posse minui quod divinum est quia totum in toto est et ubi est aliquid ibi totum est” (Victricius 1966, 137).

248 

S. M. KIM

when “feverish imagination thirsts for wonders, it is itching with ambition to outstrip extraordinary stories by others yet more extraordinary” and reflect “mental insufficiency” among the people at large, and thus a necessary “translation into concrete effects” in order to convey “the soul’s mysterious commerce with God” (Delehaye 1998, 33–35). But such resistance—or perhaps supplementation—is also evident in narrative moments less overtly concerned with these “concrete effects.” The Life of Saint Christopher, in addition to its insistence on the equivalent potency of Christopher’s fragmented body and his name, extends its effects to one kind of reader: as the Life narrates a refiguration of language into the full presence of the martyr’s name, it also extends that promise to the “reader with tears.” The Life concludes with Christopher’s prayer focused on the agency and transmission of the text itself: …drihten min god syle gode mede þam þe mine þrowunge awrite & þa ecean edlean þam þe hie mid tear[um ræde. (Rypins 1924, 76, lines 14–17) [Lord, my God, give a good reward to him who writes my passion, and the eternal reward to him who reads it with tears.]

In the difference between “a good reward” and “the eternal reward,” the prayer privileges, and rather unusually in the early English context, not the writer or the owner of the book, but the reader, and specifically the reader with tears.14 Of course, the reader is easy to construe as a witness, through reading, to the martyrdom, and thus, then, like the martyr (with consciousness of the etymology of “martyr” from the Greek “martyrein,” to witness), a witness to the truth of the resurrection (Elliott 1982).15 Presenting “the eternal reward” not to any reader, but to the reader with tears, however, also requires that the reader respond not only by transcending the corporeal but also, like the martyr, by locating meaning within the body, here in the body’s response of tears. 14  To my knowledge, only the Life of Saint Christopher and the Passion of Saint Margaret, and the related Marina in the Old English Martyrology include this privileging of the reader with tears in the Old English context. 15  Elliott explains, “The martyr is one who witnesses (Gk. MARTYREIN ‘to witness’), but Christian witnessing is active not passive. The Christian confession of faith is an act which the speaker must be willing to back up with deeds” (Elliott 1982, 46).

10  “IN HIS HEART HE BELIEVED IN GOD, BUT HE COULD NOT SPEAK… 

249

As I noted earlier, Delehaye argues that the appearance of the marvelous in the lives of the saints reflects limitation, the problem that “among the people at large, the senses govern the understanding, that there is a certain sluggishness of mind that stops short at what can be touched, seen, heard, unable to rise to a higher level” (Delehaye 1998, 33). It has been my argument here, however, that the power of the saint’s life, perhaps even more palpably without the potentially sensational and explicit intersection with the monstrous, comes from its simultaneous iterations of the signifying function (the martyr’s body pointing away from itself to a different truth), and the resistance to such signification, to such ways of knowing through difference, the lodging of meaning also and at once in the presence of the martyr’s body, and the affect of the reader’s. This is not “limitation” in the genre of the monstrous or in the martyrdoms, but an insistence that even as we, naming ourselves, in language, turn away from the material, we remain, we are, in our bodies and in that materiality. That is, in the Life of Saint Christopher, the monstrous martyr offers us a glimpse at the possibility of meaning that inheres within embodiment, the possibility that we might both believe in our hearts and speak like men.

References Primary Sources

and

Editions

Ælfric. 1966 [1880]. Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar. Ed. J.  Zupitza. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Augustine. 1958. On Christian Doctrine. Trans. D.W. Robertson, Jr. New York: Macmillan. ———. 1984. City of God. Trans. H. Bettenson. London: Penguin. Eusebius. 1981. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphilus. Trans. C.F.Cruse. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Gregory of Tours. 1988. Glory of the Martyrs. Trans. R.  Van Dam. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Isidore. 2006. The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville. Trans. S.A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https:// doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482113 Migne, J.P., ed. 1841–55. Patrologia Cursus Completus. Series Latina. Paris: Garnier. Rypins, S. 1924. Life of Saint Christopher. In Three Old English Prose Texts in MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv. EETS O.S. 161. London: Oxford.

250 

S. M. KIM

Victricius. 1966. De Laude Sanctorum. In Origines Chrétiennes de la IIe Lyonnaise Gallo-Romaine à la Normandie Ducale. (Ive  – Xie Siècles). Avec Le Texte Complet Et La Traduction Intégrale Du De Laude Sanctorum De Saint Victrice. Trans. R. Herval. Paris: Picard.

Secondary Sources Brown, P. 1981. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Haskell Lectures on History of Religions, New Ser., No. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bynum, C.W. 1991. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone. Delehaye, H. 1998 [1955]. The Legends of the Saints. Dublin: Four Courts. Dictionary of the Old English Corpus. 2009. Ed. A. di Paolo Healey, J.P. Wilkin and X. Xiang. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project. Elliott, A.G. 1982. The Power of Discourse: Martyr’s Passion and Old French Epic. Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. (1): 39–60. Lerer, S. 1994. Grendel’s Glove. ELH 61 (4): 721–751. https://doi. org/10.1353/elh.1994.0038. Lionarons, J.T. 2002. From Monster to Martyr: The Old English Legend of Saint Christopher. In Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. Mittman, A.S., and S.M. Kim. 2013. Inconceivable Beats: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Orchard, A. 2003 [1995]. Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Reprinted Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Powell, K. 2008. Meditating on Men and Monsters: A Reconsideration of the Thematic Unity of the Beowulf-Manuscript. Review of English Studies 57: 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgl019. Rauer, C., ed. 2013. The Old English Martyrology: Edition Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Roy, B. 1974. En marge du monde connu; les races de monstres. In Aspects de la marinalité au Moyen Age, ed. Guy-H. Allard, 71–81. Montreal: Aurore. Sisam, K. 1998 [1953]. The Compilation of the Beowulf Manuscript. In Studies in the History of Old English Literature, 65–96. Oxford: Clarendon Press. White, D.G. 1991. Myths of the Dog-Man. Chicago.

CHAPTER 11

Hengist’s Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Matthew W. Irvin

11.1   Introduction Gower was a man interested in memory (especially his own). John Hines, Nathalie Cohen and Simon Roffey argue that the memorials that Gower left behind “show us the man constructing an image and a role for himself, and attempting to control the posterity both of his mortal heritage and of his immortal soul” (Hines et al. 2004, 23).1 In his will, he not 1  In her insightful examination of Bruce Mitchell’s On Old English, Christina von Nolcken notes that such collections of essays “invite us to pause and think about the nature of a scholar’s particular contributions to the field” (von Nolcken 1991, 26). Festschrifts invite us to pause and think about a scholar’s contribution to her students. I became a medievalist because of Christina von Nolcken’s course in Old English, in which Bruce Mitchell’s A Guide to Old English was among our texts. My memories of that course, especially of Christina’s enthusiasm, generosity, intellectual rigor, and wit, still provide me with models for my own teaching. While I primarily work on late medieval poetry, and not Old English, I hope that this chapter on John Gower’s memory of Old English can be some tribute to the work of my lareow. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for help with some of the Aristotelian material.

M. W. Irvin (*) Department of English, The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_11

251

252 

M. W. IRVIN

only provides much money and many gifts for remembrances, including a chantry in the chapel of St. John the Baptist within the priory of St. Mary Overie (where he lived for many of his later years) but also a brand new Martilogium to the St. Mary’s Prior and canons, “sic quod in eodem specialem memoriam scriptam secundum eorum promissa cotidie habere debeo” [so that I ought to have by promise of them in the same book every day a special remembrance written down] (Gough 1786–1796, 25–26).2 St. Mary Overie is now Southwark Cathedral (properly, the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St. Saviour and St. Mary Overie), and Gower’s tomb, while still there, is heavily restored. Its restoration suggests the power of the original to prompt memory: despite the transformation of the priory into St. Saviour parish and the end of Gower’s chantry and devotional remembrances in 1539, despite the washing out of decoration and the defacement of Gower’s face and hands late in the sixteenth century, despite the loss of the almost every medieval part of the church by the nineteenth century (including the chapel of St. John, where the tomb originally lay), despite the damage to the church from fire and German bombs, despite even the loss of Gower’s actual human remains, Gower’s bid for remembrance has in part succeeded (cf. Carlin 1996; Dollman 1881). John Leland, Thomas Berthelette and John Stow furnished careful descriptions of his tomb, which allowed reconstruction in the early eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century; the most recent restoration, which is still carefully preserved, was in 1958. In 2008, the first Congress of the International John Gower Society sponsored an “Evensong in Commemoration of John Gower” at Gower’s tomb in the Cathedral, with the reading of his works in English, AngloFrench and Latin. Once again, a small coterie of those for whom Gower’s legacy is personal commemorated him with prayer. The remarkable survival of his tomb, and the elevation of the priory into a cathedral, has meant that his tomb has been seen by more of the public than he might have ever imagined.3

2  Gough prints the Latin text of Gower’s will; unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Hines et al. point out that bequests were made at St. Mary’s, the attached parochial chapel of St. Mary Magdalene (where Gower and his wife, Agnes Groundolf, were parishioners), and at Southwark’s three other parish churches (Hines et al. 2004, 27). 3  Mary Catherine Davidson also notes the potentially surprising reach of his English works in particular amid his multilingual oeuvre (Davidson 2010, 46).

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

253

Gower’s grave offers a unique model of how Gower sought to be both read and remembered, and the transformations of that reading and memory that have occurred over time. Supporting (both figuratively and literally) the memory of “Gower’s adopted identity as a writer” (Hines et al. 2004, 39) are his three chief works, in English, Latin, and Anglo-French (though their titles all in Latin), which are placed as pillows below his resting head. Behind him are three figures, Charity, Mercy and Pity, each bearing a devotional emblem written in Anglo-French; his epitaph, reported by Berthelette, was in Latin (see Gower 1899–1902 vol IV. xxi– xxiii).4 His monument was located in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, which was “highly visible and accessible to the most public areas of the nave,” and the “masse dayly songe” [sang mass daily] in his memory for at least 125 years (Berthelette 1532, iii ) was perhaps regularly witnessed by the laity (Hines et al. 2004, 34).5 He further enticed St. Mary’s visitors and canons alike to remember him by offering 1500 days of pardon for praying devoutly for his soul, in the chapel of St. John the Baptist, supplying a “table” directly before the monument where they might offer up their prayers (Berthelette 1532, iii). As Ardis Butterfield argues, “the fact that all three books were placed on his tombstone, impl[ies] that Gower did not seek, and certainly did not achieve, a single linguistic identity as far as his contemporaries saw it” (Butterfield 2009, 240). Gower expected his memorial to be “read” by multilingual readers, both the “public” (most likely the well-to-do merchants and guildsmen and guildswomen who lived nearby on the south bank of the Thames) and the canons, the coterie of remembrancers, among whom he had lived, whom he had supported financially (before and after death) and for whom he prepared the (Latin) Martilogium, and for whom he may have written the Mirour de l’Omme (MO).6 However, his new public, and (for the most part) his new coterie, the majority of whom are housed in English departments, engage with him in and as English. He is primarily known for the English Confessio Amantis (CA),  Gough’s illustration includes a Latin prayer on Gower’s chaplet (Gough 1786–96, II.ii.25). 5  Berthelette also reports a yearly obit on the Friday before the Feast of Pope Gregory (March 12). 6  See Chap. 2 above, by Susanna Fein, for discussion of another trilingual fourteenth-century writer, the Harley scribe. 4

254 

M. W. IRVIN

and, until recently, even the Cathedral recognized him (anachronistically) through English nationalism, as “Poet Laureate to King Richard II and King Henry IV.”7 Thus, while Hines, Cohen and Roffey describe the tomb as expressing Gower’s “desire to address all constituencies of the reading public he knew: clerical and lay, Francophone and Anglophone” (Hines et al. 2004, 41), I would point out that there is no English on his tomb at all, that no record of English inscriptions or writing on the tomb has come down to us, and that his will and the now lost Martilogium were not in English. This absence of what was probably Gower’s native tongue (or one of his native tongues) is not surprising in a setting such as the chapel of St. John, where those interacting with the tomb would have been Francophone or Latinate. However, the absence of English raises questions about how Gower saw the relationship between language, memory and time. If Latin and French were languages for memory, then what is the status of the poem for which he is now best remembered and which he nonetheless includes below his head, supportive of his memory? How does one remember (in) English? This chapter begins on some well-trodden ground: the relationship of Latin and vernacular, specifically, English. By examining one of Gower’s Latin verses from the Confessio Amantis, a verse that deals, through a riddle, with the relationship between English and Latin, I shall argue that the difference in tongues articulates differences between memory and history and stands in a central place in Gower’s understanding of poetic form and intention. Moreover, I suggest that Gower’s use of English in the CA is itself a linguistic riddle to be solved, one hidden by how we remember Gower in the history of specifically “English” letters.

11.2   The Riddle Gower opens his vernacular CA with a Latin verse about language, which links the weakness of sense to the failure of a “malus interpres” [a bad interpreter or translator], and directly connects this to the historical relationship of Latin and vernacular: 7  Southwark Cathedral, http://Cathedral.Southwark.Anglican.Org/Visit/Area-1 (accessed August 2, 2016). The new webpage, https://cathedral.southwark.anglican.org/ about/our-history/famous-people/, eliminates this reference, and calls him only a “court poet.”

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

255

Torpor, ebes sensus, scola parua labor minimusque Causant quo minimus ipse minora canam: Qua tamen Engisti lingua canit Insula Bruti Anglica Carmente metra iuuante loquar Ossibus ergo carens que conterit ossa loquelis Absit, et interpres stet procul oro malus. (Gower 1899–1902, CA, Prologue i, lines 1–6)8 [Torpor, dull sense, little schooling and less labor Are the cause by which I, the least, sing the lesser; Still, in Hengist’s tongue, by which Brutus’ island sings, English meters (Carmentis helping) I will speak: Therefore, let the one who breaks bones (lacking bones) be Gone, and, I pray, the bad translator stay far off.]

After explaining that he will write in “Engisti lingua” [Hengist’s tongue], “Carmentis … iuuante” [Carmentis helping], that is, in English and in Latin, Gower ends the initial Latin verse of the CA with a riddle attributed to Alfred: “Ossibus ergo carens que conterir ossa loquelis / Absit, et interpres stet procul oro malus” [Therefore, let the one who breaks bones (lacking bones) be / Gone, and, I pray, the bad translator stay far off] (CA Pr. i.3–4). The one lacking bones but which breaks bones with speech is the tongue, and critics have rightly seen this as a petition against misreading. This verse provides an antonomasia for the clever reader to solve that demands knowledge about tongues, both moral and historical. The riddle of the tongue is a riddle of language but also a riddle of history; only by examining that history can the relationship between tongues be articulated. Gower had already thought through the elements of this riddle in the Vox Clamantis (VC), where he uses a clear Latin warning against bad interpretation/translation: Nulla Susurro queat imponere scandala, per que Auris in auditu negilgat ora libri: Non malus interpres aliquam michi concitet iram Quid nisi transgressis dum loquar ipse reis. (VC III. 59–62) [May no whisperer impose obstructions through which Listening ears might neglect the speech of books;  All subsequent references to Gower’s works in the text will be to this edition, cited by book and/or line number; the works are abbreviated as CA (Confessio Amantis), VC (Vox Clamantis), and MO (Mirour de l’Omme). 8

256 

M. W. IRVIN

Let no wicked translator stir wrath against me While I speak of any but the guilty.]

Later, he also uses another version of the Alfred proverb: Res mala lingua loquax, res peior, pessima res Que quamvis careat ossibus, ossa terit. (VC V.921–2)9 [A prattling tongue is a thing bad, and worse, and worst; As much as it lacks bones, bones it can break.]

He uses an even more straightforward English version of the proverb in the CA itself: “a wicke tunge, wo thee be!” For men sein that the harde bon, Althogh himselven have non, A tunge brekth it al to pieces. (CA III.462–5) [Ah, wicked tongue, woe to you! For men say that a tongue, though it has none itself, breaks hard bone all to pieces.]

The proverb is a popular one; it is attested in several languages, including French and German (see Walz 1907, 12 n.35; Singer 2000, 7.8; Walther 1963–1969, nos. 20462, 20464–20467). In English, the proverb is found among the apocryphal Proverbs of Alfred, placed in the context of gossip: Þus queþ Alured: “Ne gabbe þu ne schotte, ne chid þu wyþ none sotte ne myd manyes cunnes tales ne chid þu wiþ nenne dwales. Ne neuer þu bi-gynne to telle þine tyþinges at nones fremannes borde: ne haue þu to vale worde. Mid fewe worde wis mon fele biluken wel con; and sottes bolt is sone i-schote; for-þi ich holde hine for dote 9  Translation from the VC (with the modification of interpres as “translator”) are my own and Stephanie L. Batkie’s, from Gower Forthcoming).

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

257

þat sayþ al his wille þane he scholde beon stille. For ofte tunge brekeþ bon, Þeyh heo seolf nabbe non.” (Skeat 1907, A.22, lines 410–426) [Thus says Alfred: “Neither should you mock, consort, nor argue with a fool, nor argue using many sorts of talk with a stupid person. Nor never start to tell your news at any freeman’s table, nor should you have too many words. With few words a wise man can much well contain — but a fool’s bolt is soon shot. Accordingly, I hold him for an idiot who says all his will when he should be silent. For often a tongue breaks bone, though it itself has none.”]

In Hendyng, the context is quite similar, as is the diction: “Tonge brekeþ bon, & naþ hire-selue non” [Tongue breaks bone, and itself has none] (Fein 2015, Art. 89, lines 159–160; Morris and Skeat 1872, 39, l.144). While Gower adapts the English into a longer meter, his preservation of the rhyme suggests that he does know the English version of “what ‘men sein’” [what men say] about tongues. Similarly, his Latin versions use the same diction as Latin versions found elsewhere. In fact, he might have even seen the English and the Latin together: in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.45, “Ossa terit lingua, careat licet ossibus illa” is among a series of Latin proverbs, with the very early Middle English (“Tunge bregþ bon, þeȝh heo nabbe hire silf non” [Tongue breaks bone, though it does not have one itself]) written above it (Trinity College MS O.2.45, 351).10 Likewise, in Balliol College MS 354, “Tong breketh bon, wher bon he hath non” is written immediately atop “Ossa terit glossa tamen in se non habet ossa” (Oxford, Balliol College MS 354, 420).11 Both of these manuscripts contain a number of proverbs in aphoristic Latin and English. As Nicholas Orme has argued, the translation of proverbs between the vernacular and Latin were “by the middle of the fourteenth century…a

 This manuscript is from Cerne Abbey. Online at https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manus c r i p t s / u v / v i e w. p h p ? n = O . 2 . 4 5 & n = O . 2 . 4 5 # ? c = 0 & m = 0 & s = 0 & c v = 1 2 7 & x ywh=-533%2C-207%2C4996%2C3098. For a discussion of similar proverb collections, cf. Bellis and Bridges 2015. 11  This is Richard Hill’s commonplace book, and is quite late; in fact, it includes selections from CA. Online at https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/e0d10554-db39-4b58a944-45da5e66248e 10

258 

M. W. IRVIN

standard feature of Latin grammar teaching,” and students would have been expected to memorize them (Orme 1985, 47).12 Gower had this proverb committed to memory in both English and Latin verses, and probably thought of it in a fully bilingual way (and perhaps, if he knew one of the French versions, tri-lingually). This seems to have been common, as the Cerne Abbey and the Balliol College manuscripts do not seem to be offering translations for comprehension (both contain significant and untranslated or glossed texts in Latin), but rather for reinforcing mnemonic connections between equivalent statements. As Joanna Bellis and Venetia Bridges have argued, this process of translation, sometimes from Latin into English, and sometimes from English into Latin, “made students ponder the form and content of the adage in detail, deconstructing its elements in one language and reassembling them in another, replacing unconscious parroted reiteration with slow scrutiny” (Bellis and Bridges 2015, 79). It is precisely the form and content of Gower’s riddle that I wish to ponder here, and draw out the ways in which the formal choice of Latin verse to speak about the “matter of England” (that is, Hengist and his new language) requires a theory of “tongues”: what does the interpres do when they move between languages? What is it to move between rote memory and conceptual understanding? (Carruthers 2008, 21–22).13

11.3   Language and History If one is concerned about an interpres, especially in terms of language, the first place one might turn is Aristotle’s On Interpretation. While Gower may not have had a university education, he probably knew a version of the beginning of Aristotle’s On Interpretation via Boethius: “Sunt ergo ea quae sunt in voce earum quae sunt in anima passionum notae, et ea quae scribuntur eorum quae sunt in voce” [Therefore, those things (nouns and verbs) which are spoken are signs of the passions of the soul, and those which are written are signs of those that are spoken] (Boethius 1847, PL 12  A.G.  Rigg notes that Hengist’s use of English against his British opponents was also commonly memorized in the late medieval schoolroom (Rigg 2000, 4 and 44–45; cf. Davidson 2010, 73). 13  But: cf. Carruthers’ Preface to the Second Edition, in which she revises her arguments about rote memory in ways that I believe work better with the Aristotelian approach I have taken here.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

259

64, 297A).14 For Boethius (whose translation of the Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας into Latin I use here, and who also comments upon the text), voces (and thus litterae) do not directly signify res, but rather signify the passions of the soul, for in the process of perceiving and learning, the intellectus “suffers” (patitor) a similitude of the thing, which is then given a name by convention. Boethius stands at the head of a medieval tradition which understood languages to be conventional signs of a natural, and therefore common, mental language (PL 64, 297B–299B). While at the close of the fourteenth century there were many (often opposing) ways of considering how representation worked, the notion of the mental language persisted, even among nominalists like William of Ockham and John Buridan, who were far removed from Boethius’ Neoplatonic account of Aristotle.15 As Mary Carruthers argues, “Most pre-modern writers thought of knowledge as a collection of truths awaiting expression in human languages, and fitted, as appropriate, to various occasions,” and thus individual memorized sayings (dicta) were part of the practice of copia, in which no single dictum was fully adaequum to the concept (species or forma, in medieval Latin translations of Aristotle) it expressed (Carruthers 2008, 29–30). Despite the failure of any and all languages to be fully adequate to mental concepts, Latin was the preferred choice for theoretical work, in part because (as Dante explains most famously in De vulgari eloquentia) while vernacular speech variatur [is varied], over time and geographically, Latin grammatica retains “inalterabilis locutionis ydemptitas disversibus temporibus atque locis” [the inalterable identity of locution in diverse times and places] (Dante 1996, 1.9.11). For Gower as well, Latin remains at the linguistic center; as Siân Echard and Claire Fanger claim, “Gower saw the Latin language itself as in some way necessary to the act of writing” (Echard and Fanger 1991, xxviii). Latin’s unchanging grammar could express most adequately unchanging truth. But, as Rita Copeland argues, Latin and the vernacular are not simply opposed; they are in a dialectical, historical relationship. In her argument, vernacular interpretatio (which  Hereafter cited as PL with volume and column(s).  For the consistency of memory across Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophies, cf. Carruthers 2008, 15. It is also easy to perceive the relationship between this mental language and memorial practice, as the inscription of texts in the mind are also the matter of similitudes, but not exactly the same kind; cf. Carruthers 2008, 17–20, 26–9. The major issue here will be the remembrance of texts in particular languages; this must be an artificial, rather than a natural memory (Carruthers 2008, 23). 14 15

260 

M. W. IRVIN

we can understand as either interpretation or translation) participates in the continuity of translatio studii, but “its language poses a disjunction in the linguistic continuity between antiqui and moderni” (Copeland 1991, 106). This disjunction allows for rhetorical invention, and thus the vernacular translation of Gower and Chaucer, Copeland argues, makes a rhetorical move, not “through continuity with the antiqui, but rather by calling attention to their own status as vernacular productions and thus underscoring the fact of cultural and historical difference that vernacularity exposes” (Copeland 1991, 180). While Latin’s supposedly unchanging grammar made it appropriate for ahistorical truth, the vernacular expressed history in its very essence (cf. Davidson 2010, 73). It is at this moment that I wish to come back to the form and matter of Gower’s riddle, the object of the work of the interpres. While Copeland examines Chaucer and Gower in terms of the relation between materia and intentio, in which the “translator” (interpres) appropriates the Latin poeta’s authority over material (cf. Davidson 2010, 187ff.),16 I want to explore how Gower forms a concept of language itself, a forma linguae. Certainly, Gower is not the only one in his coterie thinking about the form of language, as Chaucer famously remarks that “in forme of speche is chaunge” [the forms of (vernacular) speech change], thinking about vernacular’s diachronic change in Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer 1987, Troilus II.22).17 At the end of the same poem, in a moment strikingly similar in its worry about erroneous tongues, Chaucer also thinks about its synchronic variance: “for ther is so gret diversite / In Englissh and in writing of oure tonge, / So prey I God that non myswrite the, / ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge” [because there is so great a variation / in English, and in its writing, / I pray to God that none miswrite you, / nor mis-meter you on account of an error of speaking] (Troilus V.1792–1796). The concept or “forme” of Latin is its grammatical structure, which does not change, but the concept of “speche” [vernacular language] is a form that is always changing and diverse, which lacks a consistent grammar, and is known by its variability. Therefore, when Gower thinks about language, he is considering these different forms and how those forms can be understood by the intellect and held by the memory. While universal mental language offers a clear 16  For another argument, more specifically about these same lines of Gower’s, which centers authority, cf. Davidson 2010, 45–75, es 48 and 75. 17  All further references are to this edition, cited by book and line number.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

261

way to conceive of the intellectual comprehension and memory of abstract ideas despite the language in which they are received, singulars (that is, unabstracted objects of sensual experience) pose challenges—and here is where Gower’s concern with language involves philosophical questions about the reading processes he requires. I find that an Aristotelian approach (consistent with his Aristotelian approach to ethics) articulates the importance of Gower’s choice of English for the Confessio, and the relationship to Latin into which he places English. Gower did not only know, remember and value the concept of the tongue that the riddle describes; he knew, remembered and valued the specific words of the riddle in (at least) two languages and used them to articulate the very process of moving between languages. These particular linguistic expressions are not left behind in the upward movement to Neoplatonic concept, though certainly the expressions lead to the same concept; instead, they exist too as singular expressions, known, remembered and valued as they are heard by the ear or seen by the eye. When one asks what it is to remember in English, one is asking about the memory of singulars (i.e., phantasmata of individual experiences rather than of conceptual formae or species). As Mary Carruthers explains, medieval theories of memory needed to account for both the memory of singulars (sensual objects) and abstract concepts (drawing on the accounts of Aristotle in De anima and in the Parva naturalia). Intentio is the term used to express the sensual reception of an object, (which can also mean the “point of view” associated with a particular sensing subject); forma is used to discuss the conceptual object in the memory (Carruthers 2008, 57–72). There is a considerable degree of variation among theorists, and for the sake of this argument, there is no need to sort out the nuances of these differences.18 With both intentio and forma, the memory achieves retention without the continued presence of materia; the two differ in terms of their sensate quality. While Carruthers’ account focuses on the theorists of the thirteenth century (especially Thomas Aquinas), in the fourteenth century, nominalists like William of 18  Carruthers argues strenuously and convincingly against a unitary theory of memory in the Middle Ages (2008, 57); she emphasizes that the Aristotelian “tradition,” while it generally agrees that human beings cannot generally conceive of anything without images, exhibits considerable variation in terms of the philosophical explanation of the mechanism (Carruthers 2008, 62).

262 

M. W. IRVIN

Ockham and John Buridan asked significant questions about how singulars could not only be retained in the memory but also be understood as singular in the intellect: how, for instance, does one understand Socrates as a singular human being (rather than just knowing him as a member of a species or forma)?19 The nominalist account offers an interesting solution for thinking about the relationship between affective, sensual intentio, and intellectual forma: the intellectual comprehension of the causal history of singulars. One is able to know the difference between Socrates and another man who shares accidental resemblance to him because one knows the causal chain which connects one to the experience of Socrates by the senses (Klima 2009, 115–19).20 Thus, one can think of the species or forma as an abstraction not only from accidents, but also from causal history, and understand that conversely, accidents (such as in which language a concept is expressed) supply real knowledge (of causes) to the mind. Thus, in an act of reading, one can (through an act of abstraction) come to know and remember the concept (species or forma) expressed in whatever language, while at the same time come to know and remember the singular expression in its own language (by knowing and recalling its causal history, such as one’s hearing or reading it). Therefore, the memory operates in two ways at once; it retains the abstract forma, while also recalling the intentiones through which the expression of that forma was learned. Memorized expressions like parables or riddles construct reading practices that move between registers, pointing to the multiple forms in which language engages history. In general, both Gower and Chaucer work to make that reading practice obvious, especially when abstract formae of scientia are at stake, as they are in the Prologue to Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe: This tretyse … wil I showe thee undyr lighte reules and nakyd wordes in englissh — for latyn ne canste thou not but smal, my litel sone. But never19  The problem, briefly put, for nominalists like Ockham and Buridan, was retaining a reduced ontology (i.e., one without really existing universals) without creating the problem of knowledge (in which universals were equivocal between individuals). Their solutions, rooted in the naturally abstractive power of the human intellect and its mental language, created a complementary problem: how a naturally abstractive power could comprehend nonabstracted singulars. 20  The text of Buridan he is referencing is Questiones in Porphyrii Isogogen, q. 11.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

263

theless suffyseth to thee these trewe conclusions in englissh as wel as suffyseth to the noble clerkys grekes these same conclusions in greke; and to the arabiens in arabike, and to jewes in hebrew, and to latyn folk in latyn: which latyn folk hadde hem first out of other diverse langages, and wring hem in ther own tonge, that is to saein, in latyn. And God wote that in alle these langages and in many mo have these conclusions ben sufficiently lerned and taught and yit by divers reules, right as dyverse pathes leden dyvers folk the right weye to Rome. (Chaucer, Astrolabe, Prologue, 25–40) [This treatise I will show you through simple instructions and clear (naked) words in English – for you can only understand a little Latin, my son. But nonetheless, the true conclusions in English mean the same as those same conclusions meant in Greek to the great Greek scholars; and to the Arabians in Arabic, to the Jews in Hebrew, and to Latin-speakers in Latin; and Latin-speakers translated these first out of many different languages, and write them in their own tongue, that is to say, in Latin. And God knows that in all these languages and many more, these same conclusions have been fully learned and taught, and yet by many different forms of instruction, just as many different paths lead different people the right way to Rome.]

This passage bears comparison with Gower’s only use of the English word “translate” in terms of language: And after that out of Hebreu Jerom, which the langage kneu, The Bible, in which the Lawe is closed, Into Latin he hath transposed; And many an other writere ek Out of Caldee, Arabe, and Grek With gret labour the bokes wise Translateden. And otherwise The Latins of hemself also Here studie at thilke time so With gret travaile of scole toke In sondri forme for to boke, That we mai take here evidences Upon the lore of the sciences, Of craftes bothe and of clergie. (CA IV.2653–2667)

264 

M. W. IRVIN

[And after that time, Jerome, who knew the language, translated the Bible, in which the Law is contained, out of Hebrew and into Latin; and also many another writer with great labor has translated wise books out of Chaldean, Arabic, and Greek. And as well, the Latins took upon themselves their studies at that time, with great labor of learning to make into books in many forms, that we may find here information about scientific lore, both concerning crafts and advanced learning.]

In these passages, Chaucer and Gower both state how the Latins draw upon Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew sources in order to translate certain kinds of knowledge: specifically, the Bible and what we might call “scientific” information: the principle of the astrolabe in Chaucer’s text and the principles of alchemy in Gower’s. As Andrew Cole has argued concerning the Prologue to Treatise on the Astrolabe and the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, “essential truths … are symmetrically expressed in all languages” (Cole 2002, 1132),21 and it seems here that Gower’s brief discussion of translation suggests a similar process. Gower opposes the “sondri forme” of the translated writing with the matter (“lore”) that survives as “evidence.” As well, in Gower’s reference to the Bible, the “transposition” of languages does not affect its interior sense “in which the Lawe is closed.” The truth of such a text is, as Walter Benjamin calls it, in “The Task of the Translator,” “unconditionally translatable” (Benjamin 2007, 82). I mention Benjamin because it may at first appear that these texts (astronomical or alchemical) are primarily occupied with the transmission of information, and that is the source of their translatability from one language to another. Benjamin begins his essay by dismissing information as “inessential” to translation, and turns from the synchronic equivalences of translation to translation’s diachronic history (Benjamin 2007, 69), in ways that chime with Buridan’s theories of causal history. Benjamin begins from the fact that “a translation comes later than the original,” and from the relationship of the “life” and “afterlife” of texts, he identifies the “philosopher’s task [which] consists in comprehending all of natural life through the more encompassing life of history” (Benjamin 2007, 71).  Cole sees this as a specifically English theory of translation, one in which “Chaucer…reconfigures the conventions of translation studii in ways parallel to the Wycliffite translators,” but I would argue that this is probably more broad (Cole 2002, 1150). 21

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

265

And an examination of the surrounding passages in Gower’s text shows that history is essential for understanding translation’s power. This passage comes at the end of Genius’ history of alchemy, in which he links the transformation of matter to “transformational textual labour” (Batkie 2010, 158). There, despite the promise of virtue (natural and moral) to produce value “[b]othe in substance and in figure” [both in substance and in form] (CA IV. 2563), and the fact that the “science…is trewe / Upon the forme as it was founded” [science is true, / in the mode in which it was founded] (CA IV. 2598–2599), the experience of alchemy ends only in failure. The translation that he describes does not work: “In forme of words thei it trete, / Bot yit they failen of begete” [they explain it in the form of words, / but they fail to produce the results] (CA IV. 2619–20). Genius’ account of translation is an account not of the perfect translation of information but a “cronique” [chronicle] (CA IV. 2631), a historical object that communicates the degradation of human intellectual power over time. The “pris” [value] of reading alchemical texts, Gower suggests here through Genius, stands in their evidence for a particular theory of history, not their ostensible conceptual content. Gower differentiates between the “forme” of scientific truth and the “forme of words;” in this, we can see how the problem is not simply the commonality of the conceptual mental language underlying all natural languages but the understanding of the historical—an understanding that requires, in Aristotelian philosophy, knowledge of a form (Aristotle 1960, II.4 [999b]).22 Thus Copeland’s dialectic of Latin and vernacular interpretatio has a formal element: Chaucer and Gower see the relation between Latin and vernacular as being a way to produce a discourse on the form of history. Therefore, these kinds of aphoristic statements are exactly the sort that Gower and Chaucer suggest are thoroughly translatable in terms of their “trewe conclusions,” but they also are an excellent example of how such conclusions have considerably different literary forms because of their differing histories, despite the same “intention” (cf. Benjamin 2007, 74). For Gower, the proverb’s translatable knowledge about the lingua is complicated by his attention to the history of tongues that make the translation itself possible. 22  For William of Moerbeke’s translation of Aristotle (from which the Ann Arbor edition draws key words and consults in the translation), cf. Aquinas 1935.

266 

M. W. IRVIN

11.4   Memories of Carmentis The modesty trope with which Gower opens his Latin verses suggests the kind of interpretative ability one can possess only if one does not fall victim to torpor or dull sense, and if one has a Latin tutor who does not spare the rod.23 The complex and allusive verses proceed to play on themes of exile and history, as Carmentis, Hengist, and Brutus are all driven to their new lands to start a new kingdoms and new eras. The interpretatio requires knowledge of history just to make sense of the verses, and a literal translation must reckon with the historical process of translatio imperii. In terms of memory, Gower’s Latin verse is very different from the tales of the Confessio. The narratives of the CA are presented as remembered stories, and the translation or interpretatio that Gower employs does not suggest word-for-word translation of sources. In fact, even when Gower is closely following a Latin text, he rarely models his grammatical constructions after the Latin or translates with English cognates. Gower’s Latin work, especially the VC, also depends upon memory, but is filled with word-for-word remembered lines. Gower’s Latin memories come with grammar—while he might adapt them to fit a new semantic scenario, he remembers them in their original syntactical order. The replication of their syntax is an essential part of Gower’s recollection of these lines. I would suggest that this is what Carmentis brought in her memory to Italy: Latin letters, not Latin speech (which would belong to the native Latins). Gower had two potential classical sources for Carmentis, the Aeneid and Ovid’s Fasti I. In the Aeneid, Carmentis is already dead and her son Evander is an old man, the founder of Pallenteum, the site upon which Rome would be built; Vergil calls him Romanae conditor arcis [founder of the Roman citadel] (Vergil 1969, 8, l. 313). The potential source in the Fasti is Ovid’s account of the Carmentalia (January 11), in which Carmentis is given the central role, and her young son Evander plays only a minor one (Ovid 1997, I.461ff). Both of these texts, by describing the landmarks of Pallenteum, turn the Rome of Augustus’ architectural and religious revival into a mnemonic of Roman history; Vergil redoubles this mnemonic effect on the Shield of Achilles (Vergil 1969, 8.626–670). However, Gower is not interested in the dynastic and imperial history that Evander represents in the Aeneid and instead follows Fasti I, focusing on Carmentis. Steven Green, in his commentary on Fasti I, remarks that while Ovid, like Vergil,  I have discussed the modesty trope elsewhere, see Irvin 2013, 50–54.

23

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

267

makes Evander a founder of Rome (while Aeneas is a bringer of cult practice), in the Fasti, Evander’s role is minimized by his youth and it is Carmentis’ wisdom and prophecy that organizes the passage; he further suggests that Ovid revised this section as a consolation in his own exile (Green 2004, 216–218). Gower certainly read this section of the Fasti in terms of exile and alienation, for it is the consolatio offered by Carmentis to the young and exiled Evander to which Gower turns in his terror in the exilic section of Visio Anglie: Sophia, the figure of wisdom, comforts him with modified words of Carmentis. Gower’s text draws upon the Fasti directly, in which Gower stands in the place of Evander: siste, precor, lacrimas et pacienter age. sic tibi fata volunt non crimina, crede sed illud quo deus offensus te reparando vocat. non merito penam pateris set numinis iram: Ne timeas, finem nam dolor omnis habet… conscia mensque michi fuerat, culpe licet expers Spes tamen ambigue nulla salutis adest. (Visio Anglie, 1546–50, 1553–4)24 [“Stop weeping, I implore you; suffer patiently. The fates, not crimes, will it thus for you; but believe That God, offended, calls you to reparation: You do not suffer just penance, but divine wrath. Do not fear, for every pain must come to an end…” For me remained a troubled mind, though free from guilt Nonetheless, no hope remained of fickle safety.]

It is a beautifully “interpreted” passage of Gower’s, which has received much critical attention already (see Echard 1998; Kobayashi 2009; Nolan 2011). I wish to suggest that with this passage, Gower, like Ovid and Vergil, seeks to produce a mnemonic relationship that emphasizes the translatability of history, whether from Pallenteum to Rome, or from  The corresponding passage in the Fasti shows the shared elements: siste, precor, lacrimas ista ferenda tibi est. sic erat in fatis, nec te tua culpa fugavit, sed deus: offenso pulsus es urbe deo. non meriti poenam pateris, sed numinis iram: est aliquid magnis crimen abesse malis. conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo. (Ovid 1997, I, lines 480–87) 24

268 

M. W. IRVIN

Rome to London, and that, Gower, like Ovid, seeks to add to that translatability the potential for irretrievable exile from the past but also the political possibility of continuity and consolation. This is possible only if Gower’s memory of Carmentis is a grammatical one, which allows a pagan consolatio to be (potentially) translated into a Christian one, and pagan soothsaying to be translated into Christian Sophia. It is a forma of history that is fundamentally translatable from one locus to another.

11.5   Memories of Hengist While I suggest that Gower draws upon the kind of mnemonics of place found in both Vergil’s and Ovid’s accounts of Rome, he does not fully take up their discourse of translatio imperii. Though he refers to Britain as Insula Bruti, he does not use Brutus to explicitly mark a movement of Roman power. Instead, on Brutus’ island, the Engisti lingua canit [the tongue of Hengist sings] in the present tense. The era is Hengist’s while the space belongs to Brutus; they do not exclude one another but offer different genealogies. Gower also pairs Hengist with Carmentis and not with Evander (who could have similarly stood for the arrival of Latin letters), thus avoiding a parallel of masculine founders, one in Latin, one in English. Such a parallel seems an obvious one to make: both Evander and Hengist are exiles who end up fighting to obtain a kingdom in a foreign land, and being involved as allies in larger conflicts. Both are male warriors who found new nations. Evander (according to Vergil) has Mercury as a parent (thus making him, effectively, the son of Mercury and Latin Philology), and Hengist comes to Britain, “duce Mercurio” [led forth by Mercury] (Geoffrey 2007, lib. VI.98, l. 274).25 Instead of English having a similar historical form to Latin, Carmentis’ translatio litterarum and Hengist’s translatio linguae express historically different intentions. Ardis Butterfield, discussing the tradition of writing about Hengist and Horsa in England, suggests that “English history begins with linguistic rupture, and this is an experience of which writers in the multilingual environment of later medieval England were acutely conscious” (Butterfield 25  In Wace, Hengist states that “Mercurius nus governa / Uns Deus ki nus ad conduit ça” [We were guided by Mercury, a god who led us here] (Wace 2002, lines 6769–6770). Davidson notes, “Minor adaptations of Geoffrey’s Hengist episode throughout the latemedieval period in vernacular versions of his history typically preserve [the] multilingual fixation on the earliest English” (Davidson 2010, 57).

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

269

2009, 41). That rupture, observable in the linguistic form of the various accounts of Hengist’s conquest of Britain, opposes the historical continuity that translatio studii (and translatio imperii) implies, and instead particularizes its causal history. The Insula Bruti on which Hengist arrives is degenerate, a Romanized island which the Romans have abandoned and whose king, Vortigern, is an illegitimate usurper (and Welshman), who came to power through deceit and the use of foreigners. This does not glorify Hengist or his language; the Hengista lingua is, as Mary Davidson argues, associated with treachery in the various histories of the Saxon conquest of Britain, a fact that is unrevised even by those writing in English (Davidson 2010, 54–63). However, such treachery is understood in the context of British weakness. It is a weakness strategic, religious, sexual and linguistic (Davidson 2010, 53). Vortigern, his claim on the throne already tenuous, needs Hengist’s forces for the defense of Britain from hostile Picts (whom he had previously used to gain the throne). Vortigern’s settling of Hengist’s pagan forces in a Christian Britain exposes the compromised quality of the island’s religious as well as tactical defenses. Geoffrey of Monmouth gives a particularly ideological account of the place of English in the defeat of the Britons, breaking up his Latin narrative with key English words; Wace, in his Roman de Brut, makes the “linguistic abrasions” even more central to his Anglo-French history (Butterfield 2009, 38; cf. Wace 2002). It is Hengist’s daughter, Ronwein, who seduces Vortigern through English and ale: as Geoffrey reports, she welcomes Vortigern with “Lauerd King Waesseil!” and he is taught by his “interpretem” (or what Wace calls a “latimer” or “latinier,” a “Latiner” or translator) to respond with “Drincheil!” (Geoffrey 2007, lib. IV.100, l. 346; Wace 2002, lines 6953–6972). Vortigern’s curiosity about her beauty seems paralleled by his curiosity about her language, a curiosity that leads him into marriage with a pagan. As Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace report, the subsequent mixing of pagan and Christian, Saxon and British, sets the stage for the great betrayal of Amesbury, where Hengist, having had his men hide knives in their boots, calls out to them, “nimet oure saxas” [draw your knives], and kills en masse the nobility of Britain, who are ignorant of the Saxon language (Geoffrey 2007, lib IV.104, l. 462; Wace 2002, lines 7237–7238). Butterfield argues that the episode of the slaughter “depends on the shock of linguistic incomprehension … by the deliberate exploitation of the Britons’ ignorance of Saxon” (Butterfield 2009, 38). That

270 

M. W. IRVIN

incomprehension is a necessary part of the historical form of the narratives, and the “symbolic divergence of Latin and English even though their shared textual space belies this divergence at least in practical terms” (Davidson 2010, 49); as Butterfield claims, concerning the massive variations in spelling among writers and even within manuscript traditions, Latin and French writers providing the Saxon “is precisely not a moment of code switching, in the normal sense. This harsh Saxon cry is meant to break up its linguistic surround, not flow easily in and out from it, and it is remarkable to see how it continues to have the power to do this well after its contemporary moment” (Butterfield 2009, 40). In the accounts of Hengist in both Latin and French, the Hengisti lingua is a marker of discontinuity, a tongue that cannot be broken, though it can fracture the long lines of continuity that organize histories like Geoffrey’s and Wace’s. Hengist’s language is also a language of craftiness rather than wisdom; in Geoffrey, he is “uir doctus atque astutus” [a man educated and crafty] (Geoffrey 2007, lib.IV.99. l. 301–302). Astutus is a word that with a particular relationship to wisdom; as Aristotle argues, craftiness and prudential wisdom differ specifically in their intention.26 The moral difference in intention shows how language can fail to be translatable and how failure to read or recognize intention can be morally and politically dangerous. In a fashion similar to Dido, the crafty founder of Rome’s great opponent, Carthage, Hengist gains a stronghold by asking for only as much as can be encompassed by a thong of leather and by using a thong made from an entire bull’s hide. Geoffrey marks this moment as one of multiple languages: the new place is called Kaercarrei by the British, but Thaccestre by the Saxons, but quod Latino sermone Castrum Corrigie appellamus [that in Latin speech we call “Camp of the Thong”] (Geoffrey 2007, lib. IV.99. l. 334–337). In Geoffrey, the “Latin speech” exists to show the translatability of the concept (and the association with Carthage further suggests its 26  In the Ethics, Aristotle argues that there is an ability (dinotica) that is neither good nor evil in itself: “Haec autem est talis ut ad suppositam intentionem contendentia possit haec operari, et sortiri ipsis. Siquidem igitur intentio sit bona, laudibilis est. Si autem prava, astutia: propter quod et prudentes dinoticos, et astutos aimus esse” [moreover, this is such that this aiming is able to choose and to strike a particular intended mark. If the intention is good, the ability is laudable; if however it is depraved, it is but craftiness. On this account, we call both the prudent and the crafty “clever”] (Aristotle 1984, VI.12.24–27); cf. Aquinas 1949, VI.13.903. Aquinas’ commentary includes William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Aristotle. Aquinas brings this discussion to bear on his treatment of craftiness in the Summa II–II.Q.55 A.3 (Aquinas 1895); cf. note 30, below.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

271

historical translatability), and its use for exemplification. However, in several versions of the Brut this is the origin of “Lancastre” [Lancaster], and English ignorance suggests that the historical lesson has been lost: “Premierment ot non Wancastre / Or l’apélent plusior Lancastre / Qui ne savoient l’aqoison / Dont Vancastre ot premier cest non” [It was first called Thwangcaster; / now many call it Lancaster. / They don’t know the reason for it first acquiring that name] (Wace 2002, lines 6923–6926).27 Geoffrey and Wace both valorize historical continuity but accept the permanent rupture effected by Hengist’s tongue. But Hengist also threatens not only a rupture but a replacement of intentio [intention, but also goal or mark] in the grand narrative of history. Just as in the Aeneid, where Dido’s Carthage arrests Aeneas, and almost becomes a new goal for his wanderings, where Aeneas builds up the towers of Carthage, gowned in Tyrian purple (Vergil 1969, IV.259–267), the Hengista lingua is a pagan tongue, which suggests the possibility of a historical movement that inverts the intentio of translatio from pagan to Christian—the very translation that Gower accomplishes in his translation of Carmentis to Sophia (wisdom, not craftiness). Although Geoffrey and Wace emphasize Vortigern’s disregard for Christian virtues and ceremony, and suggest that his laxity in matters religious allow an opening for the pagan Saxons, it is Hengist’s language that inserts pagan difference into England so powerfully that its traces still remain: when he arrives in England under the guidance of Mercury, he explains that they refer to Mercury as “Woden” in “lingua nostra/en nostre language” [in our language]. Their worship of Woden and Frea (who is not given a Latin equivalent) includes honoring each with a day of the week, Wednesday and Friday (Geoffrey 2007 lib. IV.98, l. 278; Wace 2002, lines 6935–6950). This detail, and the (false) etymology of Lancaster, indicates how English carries with it markers of paganism without “marking” them, and that Hengist does, in a sense, still sing in the present.28 Hengist intervenes in Christian history in a way that Evander and Carmentis (or even Brutus) do not; while Carmentis’ letters can be easily translated into Christian wisdom, Hengist’s tongue has the power to resist linguistic conversion. 27  Weiss notes that this is most likely an interpolation as Wace seems to know that Wancastre was in Lindsey, but the interpolation is present in a number of manuscripts. 28  Cf. Davidson, where she suggests that “the medieval representation of the earliest English was itself only incidentally a history, the survival of a preconquest narrative into postconquest England” (Davidson 2010, 74); I would argue that such a survival is exactly the kind of repetition of singularity that organizes a causal history in Buridan’s theory.

272 

M. W. IRVIN

Hengist’s English thus encompasses eroticism, political betrayal and paganism. This tongue seduces Vortigern, it kills the British nobles, and brings the Christian community of Britain back to paganism. There is a failure, in all of these, of interpretatio, and this is a historical moment, an exemplum. What Gower remembers from Hengist is a historical moment of loss, when Roman culture and Christianity retreat before paganism. Rather than the historical translatability of Carmentis, the English words of Hengist (and Ronwein) must stand untranslated, literally and historically, for them to have their meaning. They are remembered as singular and understood only in their causal history.

11.6   The Work of the Riddle While it is possible that Gower knew the proverb that concludes the Latin verses only from compilations like the manuscripts cited above, Alfred’s authorship offers a number of correctives to the contrasts of language that the prior verses have established. While Hengist is a mnemonic marker of the danger of linguistic difference, and language’s capacity to produce division, Alfred was remembered as a healer of such divisions. While in the accounts in the Brut and the Polychronicon, Alfred is certainly celebrated for his military victories, it is his wisdom, and especially his English learning, that is particularly emphasized. The Proverbs of Alfred pair his rule with his wisdom: he is “king” and “clerk,” and his “worde” and “werke” are equally the object of this “wyuste” [wisest] man in England. In the accounts in the Polychronicon, Alfred inverts the deadly legacy of Hengist and Vortigern and is a redeemer of the Saxon language for Christianity and wisdom. Despite his meager education, at the age of twelve, “he helde Saxoun poesy in mynde” [he kept Saxon poetry in his mind] even compiling these Saxon verses in “an hand book,” that “he hadde … wiþ hym alwey” [he had with him always]. “He kouþe his gramer but symplliche” (i.e., “he could understand his grammar only in a simple way;” here, grammar seems to mean Latin grammar) because there was “nouʒt oon techer of gramer in al his kingdom” [not one teacher of grammar in all his kingdom]; however, he soon remedies this, according to the Polychronicon, by founding the first “comyn scole at Oxenforde of dyverse artes and sciens” [common school of various arts and sciences at Oxford] (Higden and Trevisa 1876, VI. p 355). Alfred also engages in a lifelong translation project, translating laws, the psalter, and the dialogues of Gregory, and encourages his nobles to educate their children and even their bondsmen. Alfred

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

273

bows to the church and protects the rights of the clergy, but is wise in a specifically English way.29 Rather than suffer the integration of pagan and Christian, his battles against the pagan Danes end in the conversion of Guthrum and the simultaneous Saxonification and Christianification of Guthrum’s name as Æþelstan. In the Brut, Alfred even defeats the brothers, Hunguar and Hubba (that is, Ivar the Boneless and Ubba, commanders of the Great Heathen Army), which the writer makes to sound like lesser substitutes for Hengist and Horsa (Brie 1906, chaps. CV, CVIII). Alfred serves as a mnemonic marker of when English became properly a Christian language, despite survivals such as the days of the week or place names; his English wisdom stands over against the craftiness of Hengist in its virtuous intentio. Alfred’s translation projects also suggest how wisdom and craft function in the production of the proverb as a form of writing. The parabola is a mode of language that must be interpreted: the Book of Proverbs itself beings by stating that the sapiens, the wise man “animadvertet parabolam et interpretationem verba sapientium et enigmata eorum” [shall understand a proverb and its interpretation, the words of the wise and their riddles] (Prov. 1:6). The proverbial form demands interpretatio (i.e., translation), and wisdom is constituted not only by the remembrance of the concepts of wise sayings but the ability to interpret/translate them with the right intention. This is the wisdom Alfred is described as possessing. Over against this is the craftiness of Hengist, who can use the form of speech to obscure intention; this uir astutus represents the skill with which one can be a malus interpres.30 The proverb, that is, language directed toward understanding prudence (ad intelligenda verba prudentia; Prov. 1:3), is in Benjamin’s terms “unconditionally translatable” (Benjamin 29  His narrative would present Gower with a number of happy contrasts: like Evander in the Aeneid, he is a king virtuous in poverty, and as opposed to Vortigern, who is seduced by English language, ale, and women, when “the leccherie of hys fleshe greved” Alfred [when the lechery of his flesh grieved Alfred], he prays to God to give him affliction, which comes in the form of piles, and he is healed either by a visit to the shrine of St. Neots (in Cornwall) or St. Modwenna (at Burton-on-Trent), British and Irish saints folded into the English tradition (Higden and Trevisa VI. p 357.). 30  Cf. Aquinas 1895, 8, II–II.Q.55 A.53. Aquinas explores craftiness (astutia) as a sin of the prudence of the flesh, and finds it specially condemned in 2. Cor. 4:2. While it resembles prudentia, it gains its ends “non veris viis, sed simulatis et apparentibus” [not by true, but by fictitious or false ways]. Aquinas does note that astutia can be taken in a positive sense, as in Prov. 1:4. He is drawing upon Aristotle’s Ethics VI.13; Ethicorum. This edition of Aquinas’ commentary also provides William of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of Aristotle.

274 

M. W. IRVIN

2007, 82): its intention is virtue, right reason applied to action, and therefore universal.31 Alfred’s proverb, in both the explicated form found in the Proverbs of Alfred and the bilingual arrangements in Trinity College, Cambridge and Balliol manuscripts, “ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages” (Benjamin 2007, 72). For Benjamin, good translation produces a harmony between the intention of the original and the interpretation, and thus, points to the “pure language” of intention that exists only in “God’s remembrance” (Benjamin 2007, 70–80). This is, however, where I tend to see Gower as less Neoplatonic and more Aristotelian. When Gower remembers Carmentis in the words of Ovid, those words are translatable from time to time, place to place, religio to religio, but not into English (For what then would Carmentis signify historically?). When he remembers the words of Hengist, they form an absolute moment of historical change and cannot be translated into Latin (For what then would Hengist signify historically?). The proverb is universally translatable, but it is the intentio as sensual memory that must be understood in its causal history. The proverb is a (literary) form, but Gower places it in singular historical circumstances. Moreover, in these Latin verses in the CA, Gower also turns Alfred’s proverb into a riddle; he does not disguise its object (the tongue) in the Latin or English versions that he uses elsewhere. The reader is thus forced to be an interpres, to explore the connection between the ostensible moral intention of the proverb (advising against gossip or detraction) and the “tongue” of Hengist. As Andrew Galloway has argued about the riddles in the Secretum philosophorum, the riddle form instructs the reader in “the principle of deception”; in the text Galloway examines, riddles are an initial form of linguistic trick in a treatise dealing with fictionalizing in all the liberal arts, from dialectic to optical illusions (Galloway 1995, 72).32 31  Aquinas 1895, 8, II–II.Q.47.A.45. Aquinas is drawing upon Aristotle’s definition in the Ethics II.6: “est igitur virtus habitus electivus in medietate existens quoad nos, determinata ratione et ut utique sapiens determinabit” [virtue is therefore an elective habit existing in the mean as relates to us, determined by reason, even as a wise man will determine it]. Cf. Ethics VI.13: “Adhuc opus perficitur secundum prudentiam et moralem virtutem. Virtus quidem enim intentionem facit rectam. Prudentia autem, quae ad hanc.” [Thus, the work is completed according to prudence and moral virtue; for virtue makes the intention just, while prudence assigns the intention to it] (Ethicorum). 32  These riddles, Galloway notes, not only straddle the relationship between grammatica and rhetorica, but often the borders between Latin and vernacular themselves.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

275

The riddle form directs the reader to interpret and translate purposefully obfuscating and deceptive language in order to discover its prudential intention. The solving of riddles involves the relationship of craft, astutia, with prudentia, which can make it virtuous. The content of Gower’s riddle also focuses on false speech. While the version in the Proverbs of Alfred advises against speaking too much (“Mid fewe worde wis mon / fele biluken wel con” [With few words a wise man / can much well contain]), Gower’s is more closely directed against intentionally false speech. In the MO, Gower discourses on the “langue trop vileine” [very vile language] of Malebouche, whose detraccioun undermines social concord (MO 2618–3024, 2738). It is this tongue that Gower seeks to banish, the tongue that interprets against the prudential intention of the text; he seeks instead “generosus amor linguam conseruat” [the generous love (who) holds back his tongue] (CA II.ii.7). Gower, in translating his mostly Latin and French sources into the tongue of Hengist, risks being seen as fixing for each its interpretatio. While Rita Copeland argues that “the exegetical procedure of compilatio allows [Gower] to reorganize his inherited material in accordance with his own intentio” (Copeland 1991 207), the malus interpres might misread intentionally, that is, detract from Gower by assigning him an intention other than that of prudence. Gower forms the relationship between Latin and English as a riddle, in which craftiness must yield to a prudential intention, by requiring the reader acknowledge (and remember) the causal history of interpretatio. So, finally, what does Gower’s riddle mean? Galloway suggests that the complex unglossed enigmatic verses of the later Middle Ages suggest “at once a game, a strenuous lexical exercise, and a principle of intellectual and hence social exclusion” (Galloway 1995, 84). This might urge us to think of the choice of English for the CA as itself a riddle. As Ardis Butterfield claims, “Gower, as no other English writer of the fourteenth century, makes us question Englishness” (Butterfield 2009, 241). The English text, for its English readers, offers perhaps at first sight no need for an interpres: into what language would it be translated? However, the English of the Confessio always exists between Latin and French: it tears the French music from love poetry, and it deprives Latin of its grammar. It is not a language to be remembered but a language in which the memory of the “original” languages always lurk, a literary language that “comes after” in history. While English is a language in which “fewe men endite” [few men write] (CA Prol.22), that is, few use English for “literary” purposes, it is for that reason a perfect language for a critical approach to law

276 

M. W. IRVIN

and love: it involves the game of remembering source texts, the strenuous lexical exercise of considering what Latin and French terms certain English words represent—and it is for a coterie:33 not Latinate monks, like those at St. Mary’s, but a specifically English readership, the “fewe” who can use the craft of English to interpret the discourses of erotics and politics.

References Manuscripts Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.2.45. Online at: https://mss-cat.trin.cam. ac.uk/viewpage.php?index=668&history=1&index=668&history=1 Oxford, Balliol College MS 354. Online at: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ inquire/p/e0d10554-db39-4b58-a944-45da5e66248e

Primary Sources

and

Edition

Aquinas, T. 1895. Opera omnia iussu impensaque Leonis XIII M. edita, t. 8–10: Secunda secundae Summae theologiae. Vol. 8. Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S.C. de Propaganda Fide. ———. 1935. Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria, ed. M.R.  Cathala. Turin: Marietti. ———. 1949. decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum expositio, ed. R. Spiazzi. Turin: Marietti. Aristotle. 1960. Metaphysics. Trans. R. Hope. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. ———. 1984. Nicomachean Ethics. In The Complete Works of Aristotle. Trans. J. Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boethius. 1847. De Signis. In Anicii Severini Boethii opera omnia. Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Latina. Vol. 64, ed. J.P. Migne. Paris: Garnier Frères. Online at: http://patristica.net/latina/ Brie, Friedrich W.D. 1906. The Brut or The Chronicles of England, Edited from Ms. Rawl. B 171, Bodleian Library, &c. II vols. Vol. I, EETS, vol. O.S. 131. London: Published for EETS by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner. Chaucer, G. 1987. The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L.D.  Benson, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

33  Cf. Rory Critten’s argument for Gower’s works being for a “small primary audiences typically comprising … personal acquiantences” (Critten 2018, 6).

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

277

Dante. 1996. De vulgari eloquentia. Trans. Steven Botterill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9780511519444. Fein, S. ed. 2015. The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript, Volume 3. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute. Online at: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/fein-harley2253-volume-3 Geoffrey of Monmouth. 2007. Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britanniae), ed. M.D.  Reeve, Trans. N.  Wright. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Gower, J. 1532. Jo. Gower de Confessione Amantis. London: Thomas Berthelette. USTC 502459. ———. 1899–1902. The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols., ed. G.C. Macaulay. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. Forthcoming. Vox Clamantis: A New Edition and Translation. Trans. S.L. Batkie and M.W. Irvin. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute. Higden, R., and J.  Trevisa. 1876. Polychronicon. In Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrenis, Together with the English Translation of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, ed. J.R. Lumby. London: Longman. Ovid. 1997. Fasti. In Ovidi Nasonis Fastorum Libri Sex, ed. E.H.  Alton, D.E.W. Wormell, and E. Courtney. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner. Skeat, W.W.Ed. 1907. The Proverbs of Alfred. In The Proverbs of Alfred. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vergil. 1969. Aeneid. In Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. R.A.B.  Mynors. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wace. 2002. In Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British, ed. J. Weiss. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

Secondary Sources Batkie, S.L. 2010. “Of the Parfite Medicine”: Merita Perpetuata in Gower’s Vernacular Alchemy. In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation and Tradition, ed. E. Dutton, J. Hines, and R.F. Yeager, 157–168. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Bellis, J., and V.  Bridges. 2015. “What Shalt Thou Do When Thou Hast an English to Make into Latin?”: The Proverb Collection of Cambridge, St John College, MS F.26. Studies in Philology 112 (1): 68–92. https://doi. org/10.1353/si2015.0008. Benjamin, W. [1970] 2007. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Trans. H. Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.

278 

M. W. IRVIN

Berthelette, T. 1532. To the Reader. In Jo. Gower de Confessione Amantis, III. London: Thomas Berthelette. USTC 502459. Bowers, R. 1998. Frame Is the Thing: Gower and Chaucer and Narrative Entente. Geardagum 19: 31–39. Butterfield, A. 2009. The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlin, M. 1996. Medieval Southwark. London: Hambleton Press. Carruthers, M.J. 2008 [1990]. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cole, A. 2002. Chaucer’s English Lesson. Speculum 77 (4): 1128–1167. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3301215. Copeland, R. 1991. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Critten, R.G. 2018. Author, Scribe and Book in Late Medieval England. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer. Davidson, M.C. 2010. Medievalism, Multilingualism, and Chaucer. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dollman, F.T. 1881. The Priory of St Mary Overie, Southwark. London: Dryden Press. Echard, S. 1998. With Carmen’s Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis. Studies in Philology 95 (1): 1–40. Echard, S., and C.  Fanger. 1991. The Latin Verses of the Confessio Amantis: An Annotated Translation. East Lansing: Colleagues Press. Galloway, A. 1995. The Rhetoric of Riddling in Late-Medieval England: The “Oxford” Riddles, the Secretum philosophorum, and the Riddles in Piers Plowman. Speculum 70 (1): 68–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/2864706. Gough, R. 1786–1796. Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, II vols. London: J. Nichols. Green, S.J. 2004. Ovid, Fasti I: A Commentary. Leiden: Brill. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789047414179_004 Hines, J., N. Cohen, and S. Roffey. 2004. Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta: Records and Memorials of his Life and Death. In A Companion to Gower, ed. S. Echard, 23–41. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer. Irvin, M.W. 2013. The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Klima, G. 2009. John Buridan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kobayashi, Y. 2009. The Voice of an Exile: From Ovidian Lament to Prophecy in Book I of John Gower’s Vox Clamantis. In Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. A.  Galloway and R.F.  Yeager, 343–380. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

11  HENGIST’S TONGUE: REMEMBERING (OLD) ENGLISH IN JOHN GOWER’S… 

279

Morris, R., and W.W.  Skeat, eds. 1872. Specimens of Early English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nolan, M. 2011. The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower’s Vox Clamantis. In Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann, ed. C. Cannon and M. Nolan, 113–133. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Orme, N. 1985. Latin and English Sentences in Fifteenth-Century Schoolbooks. The Yale University Library Gazette 60: 47–57. Rigg, A.G., ed. 2000. A Book of British Kings 1200–1399 AD. Edited from British Library MSS Harley 3860, Cotton Claudius D. vii, and Harley 1808. Toronto: Published for the Centre for Medieval Studies by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Roberston, K. 2010. Medieval Materialism: A Manifesto. Exemplaria 22 (2): 112–113. https://doi.org/10.1179/104125710X12670926011996. Simpson, J. 1995. Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511518782 Singer, S. 2000. Lexikon der Sprichwörter des romanisch-germanischen Mittelalters. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110808940 von Nolcken, C. 1991. Bruce Mitchell and Old English Studies: A “Despairing Voice”? Modern Philology 89 (1): 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1086/391923. Walther, H. 1963–69. Proverbia sententiaeque latinitatis medii aevi. Lateinische Sprichwörter und Sentenzen des Mittelalters in alphabetischer Anordnung, 6 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Walz, G. 1907. Das Sprichwort bei Gower: mit besonderem Hinweis auf Quellen und Parallelen. Nördlingen: C.H. Beck.

CHAPTER 12

The Failed Masculinities of Tostig Godwinson Mary Dockray-Miller

12.1   Introduction It is a privilege to pay tribute to Christina von Nolcken, whose inter-­ university seminars on Beowulf at the Newberry Library have achieved a legendary status all their own. Her University of Chicago website notes one of her many scholarly interests as “Anglo-Scandinavian relations towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon period,” so I offer here an analysis of Tostig Godwinson; with an English father and a Danish mother, Tostig embodies von Nolcken’s interests in the intersections between early medieval England and its Scandinavian neighbors in the eleventh century. To draw on a theme of this collection in von Nolcken’s honor, Tostig also functions as a negative exemplar of aristocratic, masculine performance. While some essays in this collection use the term “exemplar” in its textual or manuscript sense, I invoke it here in its sense of archetypal conduct (un) worthy of imitation (“exemplar,” n. OED Online), and in dialogue with Astell and Adams’ re-examinations of Griselda and Chaucer’s Clerk (see

M. Dockray-Miller (*) Humanities Department, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_12

281

282 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

Chaps. 3 and 4, respectively). An exemplary saint models virtue and piety, but Tostig ignominiously models failure in a wide variety of masculine roles: warrior, leader, earl, son, brother, father and husband. One of the middle sons of Earl Godwin of Wessex, he squandered the enormous opportunities that his family provided for him. In 1051, he was a favored son of a powerful earl, newly married to a cultured, sophisticated woman from the continental nobility, and well on his way to political power and military glory in the service of King Edward his brother-in-law; he became the Earl of Northumbria in 1055. By 1066, destitute and exiled, he had allied himself with a foreign power in an invasion and died fighting against his own brothers on the battlefield at Stamford Bridge. Tostig thus exemplifies the challenges inherent in the life of an aristocratic middle son ambitious for himself rather than for his older brother. While in his twenties and early thirties, Tostig seems to have been content with his role as a younger brother, prioritizing his loyalty to his brother Harold and to his brother-in-law King Edward over any individual ambitions he may have had. Especially after Edward’s death, however, Tostig was unable to reconcile his independent goals with his designated role as a younger brother. As his purposes shifted, Tostig revealed himself as a flawed son, brother, husband, father, soldier, general and politician; within the conventions of early English manhood, he failed at almost every possible role. His failures thus also allow us to see how those conventions constrained and controlled aristocratic men who challenged the status quo of established hierarchies.

12.2   Masculinity Studies and Old English Masculinity studies is still a nascent field for scholars of early England.1 The discipline’s traditional focus has largely been on male historical figures, male literary characters, and male-driven events and processes. A traditional focus on men, however, has not meant broad interrogation of various constructions of masculinity; in fact, the relatively few available studies of early English masculinity tend to be narrowly focused on topics like swords (Hadley 2012), religion and sainthood (Christie 2003), or Beowulf (Lees 1994). Verity Fisher examines potential conflicts between secular and monastic masculinities in her readings of Bede, Aldhelm, and 1  Masculinity studies more generally tends to focus on contemporary rather than historical cultures; see, for example, Kaja Silverman’s study of “deviant masculinity” (Silverman 1992; Edwards 2006).

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

283

Eddius Stephanus; like other scholars, Fisher works with a model of “Germanic warrior culture—which is plausibly assumed to have provided the dominant masculine standard” for artistocratic men in early England. Fisher is focused on the monastic performance of masculinity, however, and refers to secular or royal masculinity primarily as a contrast needing resolution with the monastic (Fisher 2009, 22). David Clark’s Between Medieval Men analyzes a variety of early English texts to expand critics’ definitions of masculinity in them; Clark focuses on homoeroticism in men’s same-sex relationships, both secular and religious (Clark 2009). Gillian Overing uses a variety of postmodern theories to wrest the critical focus from the normative masculine to the feminine in Beowulf. In doing so, she refers to Beowulf as a “profoundly masculine poem” and a “chronicle of male desire,” but her focus is feminine presence and agency in the poem as a form of challenge to normative masculinity, not masculinity itself (Overing 1990, xxiii, 69). Much of this scholarship relies on “models of heroic kingship depicted in poems like Beowulf” even as it hesitates to suggest broad contextualizations of understandings of masculinity, both literary and historical, in early England (Christie 2003, 144). Analysis of Tostig’s life and choices reveals the unstable foundation of that heroic model as competing claims of masculine performance and loyalty can undermine and even destroy each other. What Fisher terms the “dominant masculine standard” (Fisher 2009, 22) presents snares and challenges to any man not in the position of most powerful dominance. That generally accepted model of heroic kingship is enacted and described in a number of texts; I will take as my exemplar The Battle of Brunanburh, the poetic entry for the year 937  in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (hereafter, ASC), because it is literary in its form and historical in its content. The poem provides an example of ideal early English masculinity for a younger brother. King Æþelstan and his younger brother Edmund lead their army against a coalition of various Vikings to a glorious military victory. While Edmund was actually Æþelstan’s half brother, they were both sons of Edward the Elder and the ASC simply refers to them as “þa gebroþer begen ætsamne” [the brothers both together] (Treharne 2009, line 66). Throughout, the poet uses plural pronouns and verbs to show the joint nature of the venture: Æþelstan and Edmund together obtain eternal glory, fight in battle, split the shield wall, and then seek their native

284 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

land, exultant in victory.2 Æþelstan is cyning while Edmund is æþeling, and their teamwork brings them military glory while it provides safety for the kingdom. When Æþelstan dies three years later, he is succeeded by his younger brother Edmund.3 The text makes clear that the role of the younger brother is to support the older, and the numerous examples throughout early English history of fraternal succession show that younger brothers often get their turn to be the dominant male of the family (the serial kingships of the sons of Æþelwulf from 856–899 is the most prominent of these).

12.3   Tostig Godwinson: The Early Years Tostig Godwinson may or may not have known the poem we now call The Battle of Brunanburh. He was probably illiterate, or semi-literate at best; it is highly unlikely that he read a copied text of Brunanburh, but he may have experienced its performance at an aristocratic or royal court. Whether or not he knew the specific text, he certainly knew its ethos of heroic masculine hierarchy even as he eventually defied its lessons of patience and support by younger brothers for older brothers. Like Edmund, Tostig was a younger son in a noble (albeit not quite royal) family; his father was Earl Godwin of Wessex, the richest and most powerful man in England, after the king. Robin Fleming has argued persuasively that the Godwins, as a group, were actually much wealthier than Edward, thus exacerbating the tensions between the king and his most powerful subject (Fleming 2004, 71). Earl Godwin had risen from the minor aristocracy under King Cnut in the 1020s and 1030s to become the Earl of Wessex, even marrying into Cnut’s extended family to seal his loyalty to the Danish King of England. After Cnut’s death, Godwin was something of a kingmaker, and Edward needed Godwin’s support as he solidified his kingship in 1042 and afterwards. Godwin had been at least partly responsible for the murder of Edward’s brother Alfred in 1036, however, so the relationship was always fraught with tension and suspicion on both sides. In 1045, Edward married Godwin’s daughter Edith; also by 1045, Godwin’s oldest son Sweyn 2  For full Old English text and Modern English translation of The Battle of Brunanburh, see Treharne 2009. Online at: http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/ 3  Sarah Foot discusses the possible reasons for and ramifications of Æþelstan’s childlessness (Foot 2011, 56–61); she carefully discusses questions of Æþelstan’s sexuality and possibly deliberate celibacy in the “masculine environment” of the pre-Conquest English royal court (Foot 2011, 60).

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

285

was Earl of the Southwest Midlands, his son Harold was Earl of East Anglia, and his nephew Beorn was Earl of the Southeast Midlands. King Edward was thus surrounded, geographically, socially, and politically, by his powerful in-laws (Fleming 2004, 1983). 4 Adam of Bremen, writing some 30 years later, remarks that “et tenuerunt Angliam in ditione sua, Eduardo tantum vita et inani regis nomine contento” [Godwin’s sons held England in their power, for Edward was contented with life alone and the empty title of king] (Adam 1959, III.14, 125).5 Throughout the 1050s, Tostig’s loyalties were appropriately with his family, led by his older brother Harold, who became the Earl of Wessex on their father’s death in 1053 (Sweyn, the oldest of Godwin’s sons, had died in 1052 returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem6). As such, he was an exemplary younger, aristocratic brother who benefited from his loyalty to his family in general and his older brother in particular. In 1051, Tostig secured an important continental alliance for his family when he married Judith, the half-sister of Count Baldwin V of Flanders; the marriage also enhanced his own status with its connection to the highest level of European nobility. The Flemish connection extends to one of the important primary sources for this period, the Vita Ædwardi, a text written by a Fleming and commissioned by Edith, who was Tostig’s sister and Edward’s queen. Barlow has argued that the Vita is more of an encomium to the Godwins than a work of hagiography about Edward—the first part is a “historical essay” (Barlow’s term) that presents a pro-Godwin narrative of English history from the early eleventh century to the Conquest, while the second book conforms more closely to the conventions of hagiography (Barlow 1962, xix).7 Barlow notes that the author of the Vita Ædwardi knew Edith and Tostig (and probably Judith) quite well; the author seems to prefer Tostig over Harold, perhaps because that was also Edith’s preference (Barlow 1962, xlv and lxv). Because of the Vita author’s firsthand knowledge of the Godwins, the text is a reliable source of factual information about the family, but its interpretations of events are unreliable and lacking in historical objectivity. 4  See also Barlow 2013, esp. ch. 3. For maps of the earldoms under Edward the Confessor, see Mortimer 2009. 5  For the Latin, see Adam of Bremen 1917; note that the chapters are numbered differently in the Latin texts and the translation. 6  Barlow discusses Sweyn’s status in the family (Barlow 2013, 52–59). 7  For a more recent analysis of Edith’s patronage of this text, see C.  A. Clarke 2012, 135–143.

286 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

Throughout the 1050s, Tostig reaped the rewards of supporting his family’s overall goals. When his father died in 1053, and Earl Siward of Northumbria in 1055, Tostig became Earl of Northumbria in the subsequent reshuffling of lands and titles.8 As a member of the aristocracy, Tostig must have controlled income-generating lands before 1055, but the earldom brought with it much more substantial income as well as a formal title. In one of King Edward’s charters of 1049, for example, Tostig is termed only nobilis in the witness list, while his father and older brother Harold are termed dux (S 1019); by 1061, Tostig had become dux (S 1034) and also eorl (Sawyer 1426).9 In the early years of his tenure as Earl of Northumbria, Tostig fulfilled an important part of his noble obligation by engaging in religious patronage appropriate for secular aristocrats; for example, in the late 1050s, he and his wife Judith made donations to Durham Cathedral, described in book three of Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de Exordio; the description shows their taste for ostentatious display and also provides some enigmatic information about their marriage (Symeon 2019). Durham was the site of the shrine of St Cuthbert, the most important local saint throughout the early English period. The Libellus includes this episode immediately after a reference to Æþelwine’s installment as Bishop of Durham, which occurred in 1056, so it is reasonable if not definitive to date the episode to the early part of Tostig’s tenure as Earl of Northumbria. One of the new Earl’s first stops in the inaugural tour of his new holdings must have been the home of the internationally revered saint, and precious gifts and donations would have been a sensible way to start his relationship with this important power base. Symeon begins the episode’s narrative by separately crediting Tostig and Judith with impressive largesse to the church of St Cuthbert. Tostig “in ueneratione semper ecclesiam sancti Cuthberti habuit, et donariis non paucis que inibi adhuc habentur ornaui” [held the church of St Cuthbert always in veneration, and embellished it with several gifts, which it still has today], while Judith, who “multo plus sanctum Cuthbertum diligens, diversa illius ecclesie ornamenta contulerat” [loved St Cuthbert even more than did her husband, also gave various ornaments 8  Siward’s death and Tostig’s acquisition of the earldom are noted in MSS D and E of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC) in the 1055 entry. MS C notes Siward’s death but does not include any reference to Tostig. For editions of all the ASC manuscripts, see Jebson 1996–2006, online at: http://asc.jebbo.co.uk; see also Dumville, Keynes, and Taylor 1983–. 9  Records for these charters can be found online at http://www.esawyer.org.uk

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

287

to the saint’s church] (Symeon 2019, 174–5). Tostig was thus engaging with the church in a generous and appropriate manner; the unusual separation of the spouses and their gifts in the rhetoric of the text could be interpreted as a separation in their goals for the marriage (about which more below). Symeon’s Libellus, while perhaps inadvertently indicating a lack of cohesion in Tostig’s marriage, shows Tostig to be successfully playing the part of pious and generous aristocrat in his relationship with the church. Similarly, Tostig performed good service for Edward in his journey to Rome in 1061, recorded in the Vita, the ASC, and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum and Vita Wulfstani. These texts concentrate on the party’s official business in Rome and on the assault on the party at their initial departure from Rome. Most prominently, Ealdred had come to claim his pallium for the archbishopric of York, but he did not want to give up the lucrative and powerful bishopric of Worcester that he already held. Barlow suggests that Ealdred, in a separate matter, was as well seeking papal privileges for King Edward’s new project at Westminster. The Pope initially denied Ealdred’s request for the pallium, stating he could not hold both York and Worcester simultaneously. In addition to providing military protection and secular prestige to the group, Tostig may have been delivering to the Pope the English tribute known as “Peter’s Pence” (see Barlow 1962, 52–57, esp. nn. 128–139). The Vita Wulfstani states that when Pope Nicholas first denied Ealdred’s request, “Tostino comite qui cum eo uenerat magnas efflante minas quod nummi quos Anglia quotannis Romano papae pensitat hac occasione ulterius non inferrentur” (William 2019, i.10.1) [Tostig was breathing dire threats that for this there should be no further annual payments from England to the Roman pope] (Swanton 1984, 103).10 As Earl of Northumbria, of course, Tostig had a vested interest in having his ally Ealdred confirmed as Archbishop of York; his threat to the Pope recorded by William of Malmesbury seems not to accord with the portrait of the deeply religious and respectful Tostig provided in the Vita Ædwardi. Despite this challenge to the Vita’s depiction of him, Tostig was superb in his role of strong, loyal follower of King Edward throughout the Roman sojourn. Tostig and Ealdred’s initial departure from the Vatican was 10   Barlow synthesizes the information provided in William of Malmesbury 2007, iii.115.13–17 and 2019, i.10.1–2. Both of William’s texts are focused on the dispute over the archbishopric.

288 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

complicated by an assault and robbery right outside Rome; the party was “stripped of everything to the last penny” (according to the Gesta Pontificum) by a group led by Count Gerard of Galeria as part of Gerard’s ongoing local political dispute with the Pope.11 When they returned to Rome after the assault, the Pope (full of “sorrowful compassion,” according to the Vita Ædwardi) reversed his decision and granted the pallium of York to Ealdred; Pope Nicholas also “ducem autem consolatus est caritatiua allocutione, ablatis insuper magnis xeniis ex beati Petri largitate” [soothed the earl (Tostig) with loving words and, especially, with great gifts taken from the bounty of St Peter] (Barlow 1962, 57). Even after the robbery, then, Tostig may have come home with more treasure than he had initially taken on the journey. The Gesta Pontificum provides Tostig’s script that inspired the Pope’s “sorrowful compassion” and gifts: Tostinus quoque, gruibus uerborum contumeliis Apostolicum aggressus, in sententiam sibi placitam reduxit. Parum metuendam a longinquis gentibus eius excommunicationem, quam propinqui latrunculi deriderent. In suplices eum furere, in rebelles parum ualere. Aut sue sibi per eius auctoritatem reddenda, aut per eius fraudulentiam constaret amissa. Futurum ut haec rex anglorum audiens tributum sancti Petri merito Nicholai subtraheret; se non defuturum rerum ueritati exaggerandae. [Tostig, for his part, after using sharp words to the Pope, brought him round to a favourable view. He told Nicholas that his excommunication could hold no terror for distant peoples, considering that local footpads [like Gerard] made light of it. Powerless to deal with rebels, the pope was taking out his bad temper on suppliants. Either Nicholas must use his authority to get Tostig his property back, or it would be obvious to all that it was his lack of good faith that had caused the loss. When the king of the English heard the story, he would withdraw the tribute he paid to St Peter — all thanks to Nicholas; and Tostig would not fail to play his part by putting the facts of the case in the worst light possible.] (William of Malmesbury 2007, iii.115.15–16)

Tostig’s speech here, even in the indirect form provided by William of Malmesbury, demonstrates an impressive ability to bring strong diplomatic and political pressures to negotiations. His overt and covert threats must have seemed legitimate to the Pope and his advisors, even from a 11  Both Barlow 1962 and William of Malmesbury 2019 have thorough discussions of the political and religious nuances of this incident in their notes.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

289

man who had just been “stripped” of everything by bandits. Tostig, in this episode, demonstrates his loyalty to his king and the strength of his political skills as he manages to get everything he wanted from the Pope, for his king, for his bishop, and for himself. In this way, he successfully enacts the masculine role of retainer to his lord, furthering Edward’s interests as well as his own, since those interests overlap. In the episode with the Pope, Tostig threatens military force but does not actually use it; his political and diplomatic skills are sufficient. Tostig’s military service to Edward and to his brother Harold can also be seen in this light, as an enactment of appropriate and respected loyalty in masculine performance, although not as firmly. Most notably, in 1063, Tostig and Harold attacked and defeated Gruffydd of Wales, a longtime enemy of the English. MS E of the ASC, in a somewhat abbreviated version, shows them working together to trap Gruffydd’s forces between a land and a sea attack: Her for Harold eorl 7 his broðor Tostig eorl. ægðer ge mid landfyrde ge mid sciphere into Brytlande. 7 þet land geeodon. 7 þæt folc heom gislodon 7 to bugon. 7 foron syððan to 7 ofslogon heora cyng Griffin. 7 brohton Harolde his heafod. [In this year Earl Harold went, and his brother Earl Tostig, together and with a land-force and with a ship-army into Wales and they came into that land. And that people gave hostages to them and yielded to them, and went afterwards and killed their king Gruffydd and brought his head to Harold.] (Jebson 1996–2006, MS E annal for 1063)

While ægðer is somewhat ambiguous (it can be translated as “either,” “each,” or “together”12), the brothers here are executing a pre-­orchestrated military maneuver, and the Welsh give hostages heom, “to them” in the plural. However, the Welsh surrender Gruffydd’s head only to Harold, not to Tostig, whose participation fades away in the rest of MS E’s description of this episode in the Welsh/English border wars. In the longer version of this episode in MS D, the separation between the brothers in this joint venture is even more apparent in the grammar of the annal: On þissum geare for Harold eorl æfter middanwintre of Gleaweceastre to Rudelan, þe Griffines wæs, 7 þone ham forbærnde, 7 his scipa 7 alle þa gewæda þe þærto gebyrede, 7 hine on fleame gebrohte, 7 þa to þam gong “ægðer,” Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (http://www.bosworthtoller.com/).

12

290 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

dagan for Harold mid scipum of Brycgstowe abutan Brytland, 7 þæt folc griþede 7 gisledon, 7 Tostig for mid landferde ongean, 7 þæt land geeodon. Ac her on ðissan ilcan geare on herfeste wearþ Griffin kync ofslangen on Nonas Agusti fram his agenum mannum, þurh þæt gewinn þe he won wiþ Harold eorl. [In this year Earl Harold went after mid-winter from Gloucester to Rhyddlan, which was Gruffydd’s, and he burned that settlement and his [Gruffydd’s] ships and all the gear that belonged to them. And Harold forced him into flight. Then at Rogationtide Harold went with ships from Bristol around (the coast of) Wales. And he made peace with that people and they gave him hostages. And Tostig went against them with a land-army and they went over that land. But then in this same year at the harvest King Gruffydd was killed on the nones of August by his own men, over that war that he made with Earl Harold.] (Jebson 1996–2006, MS D annal for 1063)

The only plural verb in the section is geeodon; it could refer to Harold and Tostig, both “going” over the land (i.e. harrying and plundering), but it is more likely to refer to Tostig and his landferde harrying the Welsh, not referencing Harold at all.13 Other than the one sentence, the episode is focused almost entirely on Harold, with even the Welsh defining the war to be against Harold rather than against King Edward or the brothers together. The manuscript D version manages to show the brothers working together but separately, with Harold garnering most of the narrative, attention, and glory. The substance of these entries shows Tostig working militarily with his brother for their king; however, their grammar indicates a separation between the brothers’ actions, and thus perhaps their motives as well.The separation between the brothers implied by the ASC makes the Vita’s perplexing references to the 1063 Welsh wars seem purposefully cryptic. It would seem logical that the brothers’ joint military victory would have been an emphasized event in this text celebrating the Godwin family’s triumphs; however, the Vita mentions only Harold in connection to the Welsh conflict and provides an extensive excuse for not providing details about the Welsh or the Scottish border conflicts:14

13  I am indebted to Dr. Courtnay Konshuh for advice on connotation and nuance in this section of the ASC. 14  Barlow notes that the “following passage, full or verbal conceits, is involved and corrupt, and the reconstruction attempted here is not wholly satisfactory” (Barlow 1962, 65, n. 161).

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

291

rex occidentalium Britonum Griphinus … agente Haraldo duce Anglorum exercitum frequenter uictus, postremo autem est interfectus. Sed hanc ­historiam, quoniam prolior est et uarie multiplex et longis euoluenda relationisbus, ad certiorem notitiam ex industria reseruamus [… with Earl Harold directing the English army, (The Welsh King Gruffydd) was often defeated, and in the end was killed. But we deliberately reserve this story for a more faithful treatment in the future. It is rather protracted and complicated, and can be explained better in a longer report.] (Barlow 1962, 64–65)

Tostig is thus not credited with any part of the Welsh victory in the Vita version; he is not even mentioned in connection to it. The Vita author tends to gloss over or avoid events unpleasant to Edith, the text’s patron; the evasion here adds credence to the above analysis of the Chronicle texts that shows a growing divide between the brothers. By November of 1065, that separation was complete, no longer implied in grammatical structures but widely acknowledged in the primary sources.

12.4   Tostig’s 1065–1066 Collapse Tostig’s final break from his brother and the conventions of early medieval heroic masculinity came in 1065 in the aftermath of the northern rebellion, a series of events that showed his lack of ability in intersecting political and military roles. The Vita, the ASC, and the Chronicle of John of Worcester all provide evidence for the shift in Tostig’s priorities from his brother and family to himself, with ultimately disastrous consequences for all of them. The events are somewhat straightforward: the Northumbrian thegns revolted against Tostig’s rule in early October of 1065. Tostig had been a disliked absentee landlord for much of his ten years as Earl of Northumbria; not only was he away in Rome in 1061, he also spent much of his time fighting in Edward’s campaigns and attending his sister the queen at the royal court. He failed to subdue the Scots, who routinely raided his borders, and he imposed heavy taxes on his earldom, the poorest region of the country. After the rebellion, Harold, as the king’s deputy, was unable to make peace between Tostig and the Northumbrian nobles; Tostig and Judith departed for Flanders in November as exiles. Ironically, Tostig emulated the performance of Edmund in Brunanburh as he supported his brother and his king through the 1050s and the early 1060s, yet he still failed in the most basic and crucial of masculine roles in early

292 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

England: he proved to be a poor military and political leader to the Northumbrian aristocrats who were supposed to be his followers and members of his comitatus. This failure points to a tension in expectations for masculine performance in English culture on the eve of the Norman Conquest, in that Tostig was unable to simultaneously fulfill the roles of supportive younger brother and independent, regional leader. Paradoxically, his attention to his obligations as thane and younger brother contributed to his inadequate execution of his role as eorl. Contemporary and near-contemporary sources provide a wide range of interpretations of the events of the Northern Rebellion. The version most in Tostig’s favor is, unsurprisingly, the Vita Ædwardi, which depicts violent Northumbrian outlaws resisting Tostig’s assertive and fair rule.15 The Vita does not accuse him of absentee leadership but lauds him for his “love of the king” and his dedication to “palace business” which kept him at court and out of Northumbria. The Northumbrian lords are guilty of “savage rashness,” a “mad conspiracy,” and “wickedness.” As the villains of the narrative, they killed his followers before they “with fire and sword laid waste all his possessions.” The Vita author credits Tostig with having established peace and justice throughout the previously lawless earldom and describes the rebels as resisting his fair and righteous governance (Barlow 1962, 77–9). The Vita author does acknowledge that “Culpabant nonnulli eundem gloriosum ducem nimie feritatis, et magis quam amore iustitie inquietos punisse arguebatur cupiditate inuadende eorum facultatis” [Not a few charged that glorious earl with being too cruel; and he was accused of punishing disturbers more for desire of their property which would be confiscated than for love of justice] (Barlow 1962, 78). While the Vita dismisses these charges (as well as the more insidious argument that Harold supported the rebellion against his brother16), they resonate with 15  Quotation in this paragraph and the next is from Barlow: the Latin reads: “…cum eo eius detentus amore et iussis in disponendis regalis palatii negotiis…postremo omnia que eius erant igne et ferro in devastationem redigunt. Vtque effere temeritatis haberent auctoritatem, caput sibi et dominum faciunt ducis Algrai filium iuniorem, eiusque fratrem natu maiorem ad hanc socetatem dementie sue inuitant…paucorum nobilium malitia” (Barlow 1962, 77–9). 16  Kelly DeVries makes the interesting point that Harold had nothing to gain from Tostig losing the earldom; indeed, he would have benefited in his plans to become king with a brother controlling the northern part of the kingdom (DeVries 1999, 183). Henry Summerson has published previously unknown early modern translations of parts of the Vita

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

293

other accounts of the rebellion that focus on Tostig’s unnecessarily heavy taxes and legal injustices. Tostig’s general unpopularity—and that of his extended family—in the north is indicated by their treatment in the Durham Liber Vitae, which lists (among other things), the names of those for whom the community should pray. Some scholars have erroneously stated that Tostig’s wife Judith of Flanders is listed in the Durham Liber Vitae, but the “Judiths” there are all post-Conquest entries that refer to different women of the same name. Tostig and his father Godwin were both listed on folio 15 verso, but their names were erased at some point in the second half of the eleventh century, indicating that the monks no longer desired or felt obligated to pray for them (Rollason et al. 2007). The erasing monk may have felt substantial satisfaction as he ensured that Tostig and Godwin would not get to heaven on the strength of any Durham prayers; Tostig’s earlier generosity to Durham (discussed above) was not substantial enough to keep him in the Liber Vitae once he was no longer the Earl. That animosity is also apparent in the events of the Northern Rebellion as related in the Chronicle of John of Worcester, which provides much more detail (presumably locally acquired) than any of the versions of the ASC. John’s Chronicle ends in 1140, and was compiled and composed c.1120–1140.17 An extended quotation demonstrates the intensity of the hatred against Tostig at the local level in Northumbria; on 3 October 1065: Dein post festiuitatem sancti Michaelis archangeli .v. non. Octobris. feria.ii, Northymbrenses ministri Gamelbearn, Dunstanus, filius Athelnethes, Glonieorn, filius Heardulfi, cum .cc. militibus Eboracum uenerunt, et pro execranda nece nobilium Northymbrensium ministrorum Gospatrici, quem regina Edgitha, germani sui Tostii causa, in curia regis .iii. nocte dominice Natiuitatis per insidias occidi iussit, et Gamelis, filii Orm, ac Vlfi, filii Dolfini, quos anno precedenti Eboraci in caerma sua sub pacis federe per insidias comes Tostius occidere precepit, necnon pro immensitate tributi quod de tota Northymbria iniuste acceperat, eodem die primitus illius Danicos huscarlas Amundum et Reuensuartum de fuga retractos extra ciuitatis muros ac and proved that the early modern translator(s) had access to a text different from the only one now extant. In Summerson’s text two, the translator has omitted the sentences denying Tostig’s guilt and Harold’s duplicity (Summerson 2009, 175). 17  For details about the Chronicle’s creation, including modern scholars’ original attribution of the Chronicle to Florence rather than John of Worcester, see Darlington and McGurk 1995, “Introduction”).

294 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

die sequenti plusquam .cc. uiros ex curialibus illius in boreali parte Humbre fluminis peremerunt. Erarium quoque ipsius fregerunt ac omnibus que illius fuerant ablatis, recesserunt. [The Northumbrian thegns Gamelbearn, Dunstan, son of Æþelnoth, and Glonieorn, son of Heardwulf, came with 200 soldiers to York, and on account of the disgraceful death of the noble Northumbrian thegns Gospatric (whom Queen Edith, on account of her brother Tostig, had ordered to be killed in the king’s court on the fourth night of Christmas by treachery), Gamel, son of Orm, and Ulf, son of Dolfin (whose murders Earl Tostig had treacherously ordered the preceding year at York in his own chamber, under cover of a peace treaty), and also of the huge tribute which Tostig had unjustly levied on the whole of Northumbria, they, on that same day, slew first his Danish housecarls, Amund and Reavenswart, hauled back from flight beyond the city walls, and on the following day more than 200 men from his court, on the north side of the River Humber. They also broke open his treasury, and, having taken away all his goods, they withdrew. (John of Worcester 2007, vol. 2, 596–599)

Similarly, William of Malmesbury sides with the rebels, accusing Tostig of “habitual ferocity” and allowing the northerners to declare their status to be “se homines libere natos … a maioribus didicisse aut libertatem aut mortem” [born and bred as free men … (so that) freedom or death was their tradition] (William 1998–9, vol. 1, 200). MS C of the ASC remarks that during these events, “Tostig wæs þa æt Brytfordan mid þam kinge” [Tostig was then at Britford with the king], so at this crucial moment, he was in Wiltshire, 250 miles from York, trapped in the impossible position of trying to balance conflicting obligations of his roles as younger brother (-in-law) and as eorl (Jebson 1996–2006, MS C annal for 1065). He seems not to have attended Harold’s negotiations with the rebels at Oxford and Northampton—none of the sources, at least, directly mentions his presence there. Most importantly, Tostig was outlawed from Northumbria, not from all of Edward’s kingdom: theoretically, he had the option to remain conceptually in his role as supportive younger brother and physically in the southern part of the country, where he held extensive estates.18 Instead, he and his household probably continued their stay with his sister and the king, and then left England in November without returning to the 18   Tostig controlled extensive lands in the south-central counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Hampshire. For lists of Domesday properties sorted and valued by owner, see Clarke 1994, Appendix 1; for property descriptions and indices, see Williams 2003.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

295

north at all. This departure thus finalized Tostig’s prioritizing of his individual ambitions over those of his family; he never again supported his older brother (and by extension, the rest of his family) in any endeavors. Perhaps only through the benefit of hindsight can we see the risk inherent in Tostig’s challenge to the masculine status quo; when he decided to focus on his own objectives rather than his older brother’s, he alienated his familial, political, and financial networks, isolating himself from the social and political systems that had allowed him to flourish. That isolation became apparent as soon as Tostig arrived in Flanders in November of 1065. John of Worcester explicitly states that the northerners had “outlawed” (exlegauerunt) Tostig and any of his supporters and then “de Anglia Tostium expulerunt” [drove Tostig out of England] (John of Worcester 2007, vol. 2, 598–99). The Vita Ædwardi, in contrast, presents a somewhat rosy picture of Tostig and Judith’s arrival in Flanders; rather than as disempowered refugees, Baldwin welcomes them as honored guests. The Vita celebrates Baldwin’s largesse: Susceptum ergo sororis sue maritum honorifice et gratanter more suo, iussit morari et quiescere a tot laboribus in castro quod ex nomine beati Audomari inibi principaliter quiescentis nuncupatur, Brittanieque occeanum permensis primum occurrat. Hic ergo ei et domum et mansionem dedit, redditus eiusdem castri ad uictus necessaria ei in manus posuit, suoque loco et uice presidentis seruituti quosque militares eidem oppido adiacentes adesse precepit. [He received the husband of his sister honourably and graciously, as was his wont, and bade him dwell and rest from his labors in a town which is named after the famous St Omer who lies honourably within … he gave him there both a house and an estate, and put in his hands the revenues of the town for his maintenance; and he ordered all the knights who were attached to that place to be at the service of Tostig, his deputy commander.] (Barlow 1962, 83)

We must remember that the author of the Vita was providing a definitively pro-Godwin version of events in order to please his patron, Tostig’s sister Queen Edith. While Baldwin’s welcome of and grants to Tostig were indeed noble and generous, he was also simply providing money and a home to his semi-destitute brother-in-law (and that home was, notably, 115  km away from Baldwin’s court in Bruges). Since leaving England, Tostig and Judith had no income, no title, and no money other than what they had managed to bring with them (which was a substantial but still finite supply); on arrival in Flanders, Tostig thus had no means to support

296 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

himself and his household, let alone lay plans for a return to England. Baldwin’s designation of Tostig as castellan of St Omer provided an income and allowed him to begin to lay those plans from a position of respectability. The castellan, always a nobleman, was responsible for defending his post as part of Baldwin’s territory; he also collected taxes and maintained the designated hall or fortified buildings.19 Tostig’s probably unexpected appearance in Flanders may also have solved an internal problem for Baldwin, since it is likely he was having trouble with his appointed castellan in St Omer. Tostig’s appointment at castellan fit handily with Baldwin’s opposition to Count Eustace of Boulogne; Renée Nip points out that “In the light of this power struggle between the count of Flanders and Eustace II of Boulogne and his allies, it is also understandable that Baldwin V, given the chance in 1065, should have put in charge Tostig as his deputy commander in Saint Omer,” since later events make it clear that the castellan Wulfric sided with Boulogne against Flanders (Nip 1999, 150). As a refugee in Flanders, Tostig owed his brother-in-law substantial favors that he was probably more than willing to repay in a way that helped his own purposes as well. While Tostig’s initial goal on arrival in Flanders in November 1065 probably was return and reinstatement, once Edward had died (5 January 1066) and Harold almost immediately crowned king, Tostig’s plans most likely expanded to include the crown. Like Harold, he was the brother of the former queen, a son of the legendary Earl Godwin, and a veteran of numerous campaigns in Edward’s service. Harold’s coronation effectively dismissed as unimportant any concerns about keeping the crown in the much-diminished royal line.20 Tostig must have seen himself as an equally valid candidate to the throne—with the important caveat that he was out of the country, having been declared an outlaw. Since Harold was childless (as far as we know), history implies that Tostig’s best strategy would have been to support his brother and bide his time as the ostensible heir (a strategy that had worked for Edmund, the younger brother of the king in 19  For an overview of the position of the castellan, see the introduction to volume one of Warlop 1975; for specific information about the first Flemish castellans of St Omer, see Warlop’s discussion of the tensions between the St Omer castellans and the Counts of Flanders, wherein Warlop does not mention Tostig at all (Warlop 1975, 117–118). Similarly, Giry does not clarify the break in his narrative from the end of the castellanship of Lambert (1063) and the beginning of that of Wulfricus Kabel (1072) (Girly 1875, 10). 20  For a very pro-Harold discussion of the arguments for and against the various potential claimants to the throne at Edward’s death, see Walker 1997, 115–117.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

297

Brunanburh). The rift between the brothers and the northern rebellion, however, had eliminated that option, and Tostig pursued his ambitions from the isolation created by defying those conventions of aristocratic masculinity. To become king, of course, would be the ultimate expression of masculine power; in the last nine months of his life, Tostig worked toward this goal from the position of temporary Flemish castellan rather than as aetheling to his brother the king. As the spring of 1066 began, Tostig left St Omer to begin his campaign, both diplomatic and military. While the events of the summer of 1066 have been described and analyzed in great detail in the historiography of the past 950 years, a brief summary is useful here; the series of events largely follows that laid out in the Chronicle of John of Worcester, who seems to have had access to various versions of the ASC as well as to independent information specific to Yorkshire (just as he did for the events of the Northern Rebellion, discussed above).21Initially, Tostig tested the level of his support throughout the southern parts of England, ultimately realizing that he would need to seek foreign aid if he wanted to succeed in regaining any power. What began as a quest to gain a military and political toehold in England quickly deteriorated into merely a series of chaotic raids on the English coast. Through the course of the spring and early summer of 1066, Tostig managed to alienate a wide variety of potential English allies and peacemakers as well as eliminate any popular English support he may once have claimed. John of Worcester’s Chronicle notes that Tostig: insulanos sibi tributum et stipendium soluere coegerat … circa ripas maris donec ad Sandicum portum ueniret, predas exercuit … et cursum ad Lindesegiam direxit, in qua uillas quamplures incendit, multosque homines neci tradidit [forced islanders (of Wight) to pay tribute and maintenance … raided the coast as far as the Port of Sandwich … (and) steered his course towards 21  For a thorough analysis of the battles of Fulford and Stamford Bridge, including detailed descriptions of tactics, weapons, and topography of the sites, see DeVries 1999. Freeman 1870 is considered the classic study, although it is marred by Freeman’s pro-English bias and his Victorian sensibility and editorializing. Among the vast literature available on the Conquest more generally, see recently Huscroft 2009, with excellent maps, genealogical charts, and suggestions for further reading. The important primary source texts are the various versions of the ASC, the Chronicle of John of Worcester, and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, all noted above, as well as Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (1969–1980).

298 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

Lindsey, where he burnt many townships and did to death many men]. (John of Worcester, vol. 2, 600–601; under the year 1066)

William of Malmesbury references the events in Lindsey when he notes that Tostig had extended his pillaging into the north and “ea quae circa oram fluminis erant piraticis excursionibus infestabat” [despoiled everything near the mouth of the river (Humber) with piratical raids] (William of Malmesbury 2007, ii.228.9). When Morcar, the new Earl of Northumbria, and his brother Edwin, Earl of Mercia, moved their forces toward him, he retreated further north into Scotland. Realizing that he would find no allies in England, he began to look further afield. These activities do no credit to Tostig’s political, military, or leadership skills; they also indicate that he felt no loyalty whatsoever to his family or to any of the English aristocracy as he focused only on his own desire for victory over his brother and the lords who had rebelled against him. Tostig’s first attempt to secure a foreign ally may have been a visit to William of Normandy. Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History is a relatively late source with “no independent value” for the events of 1066 (according to its most recent editor), but it is the only text that relates a diplomatic visit from Tostig to William of Normandy either late in 1065 or early in 1066. Orderic’s decisively pro-William and anti-Harold position is clear as he states that: Deinde festinus Normanniam adiit, et Willelmum ducem cur periurum suum regnare sineret fortiter redarguit, seque fideliter si ipse cum Normannicis uiribus in Angliam transfretaret regni decus optenturum illi spopondit. Ipsi nempe iamdudum se inuicem multum anuerant, duasque sorores per quas amicicia saepe recalescebat in coniugio habebant. [(Tostig) hurried to Normandy, boldly rebuked Duke William for allowing his perjured vassal [Harold] to rule, and swore that he would faithfully secure the crown for him if he would cross to England with a Norman army. For some time they had been close friends and by marrying two sisters had strengthened the bonds between them.] (Orderic Vitalis 1969–80, vol. 2, 141)

William’s reaction to this offer, according to Orderic, is to call a conference of the Norman nobles to discuss it, thus providing Orderic with an opportunity to catalog the mid-eleventh-century Norman aristocracy. Orderic then relates how Tostig attempted to get to England from Normandy on William’s behalf but was thwarted by weather, with the

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

299

wind pushing him to Norway to ally instead with Harald of Norway. Orderic’s reliance on the relationship between Tostig and William’s wives makes the suggestion of this initial diplomatic visit somewhat plausible: although they were aunt and niece rather than sisters, they were close in age and had been raised as sisters. It is completely implausible to claim that Tostig and William were “close friends,” although Tostig could easily have travelled to William’s court at Rouen from St Omer. It is much more likely that Tostig travelled to Norway to bargain directly with Harald Hardrada in his search for foreign allies in the early summer of 1066. The English sources either do not mention a pre-­ invasion meeting at all (MS C of the ASC, John of Worcester) or state that the meeting took place in Scotland (MSS D and E of the ASC). While Walker says that such a visit to Norway is “unlikely,” the detail provided in the Scandinavian sources adds substance to the claim (Walker 1997, 154; see also Finlay 2004, ch. 60; Andersson and Gade 2018, ch. 49; Snorri Sturluson 1991, ch. 79). Whether the meeting took place in Scotland or Norway, Tostig and Harald certainly met to plan the invasion; at that meeting, Tostig swore an oath of loyalty to Harald.22 To gain the military strength he needed to invade his brother’s kingdom, Tostig performed this act of enormous disloyalty not only to his brother Harold but to the rest of his family and the country of his birth. Because of the oath Tostig had sworn at the meeting before their fleets joined at the mouth of the Humber on 18 September 1066, Tostig was “very much the subordinate” in their alliance (Walker 1997, 155). Not only did Tostig contribute only one-sixth of the force (60 ships to Harold’s 300),23 but the oath meant that Tostig had agreed that Harald would rule England after the invasion’s success. Tostig’s goal of the English throne seems to have been ceded to that of simply bringing down his brother’s kingship by any possible means. Perhaps Tostig thought he could simply pay off Harald once they had defeated Harold; perhaps he thought Harald would be an English king in absentia while Tostig stayed in England as the actual ruler. In any case, the alliance made military but not political sense for Tostig: he had secured a strong ally with a fierce reputation, but he had 22  Manuscripts E and D of the ASC state that “Tostig him to beah” (Jebson 1996–2006); Fagrskinna (Finley 2004, ch. 60) and Morkinskinna also are very clear that Tostig submitted himself to Harald (Andersson and Gade 2018, ch. 49). 23  “þa wile com Tostig eorl into Humbran mid sixtigum scipum…hine gemette þær Harold cyng of Norwegon mid þreom hund scypum” (Jebson 1996–2006, MSS D and E annal for 1066).

300 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

given up any chance he may have had to a quasi-legitimate claim to the throne. The oath merely put him in the same position of subordinate masculinity to Harald of Norway that he had been in before, with Harold of England—with the important distinction that he had violated bonds of kinship. With the oath to Harald of Norway, Tostig becomes the antithesis of the masculine, heroic ideal of supportive younger brother; he reveals himself as merely a deplorable, craven opportunist. That Norwegian alliance was initially successful, as Harald and Tostig defeated the forces of Edwin and Morcar outside York at Fulford on 20 September. York surrendered to them, and Tostig perhaps helped select the hostages that they took along with provisions and plunder.24 The period from 20–24 September was the high point of Tostig’s campaign to claim the English throne, or at least some semblance of it. He and his foreign ally had won a battle and taken a major city; they were theoretically prepared to move south and continue the invasion. However, Tostig’s brother Harold, King of England, marched to Yorkshire at an incredible pace from the south and arrived to surprise the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge on 25 September.25 Historians often discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge primarily as the event that exhausted Harold’s army and ruined his careful planning for William’s invasion that we now call the Norman Conquest. It also ended Tostig’s campaign and his life. The Scandinavian sources provide detail about the battle from the Norwegian point of view: they state that the day was very hot, that the Norwegians had left their armor and a third of their force with their ships, and that they chose to engage rather than to bargain, even in their relatively unarmed and diminished state. Much of this detail is probably heroic accretion in a thirteenth-century source. Similarly, the C version of the ASC provides a possibly apocryphal anecdote (repeated by William of Malmesbury, who embellishes it) about a single Norwegian who defended the bridge before the battle was fully engaged.26 24  Walker suggests that Tostig probably chose the hostages (1997, 158); Tostig’s knowledge of York and its inhabitants was probably very useful in this stage of the campaign. For a detailed discussion of the tactics used at Fulford, see DeVries 1999, 255–259. 25  For a discussion of the logistics of Harold’s arrival in Yorkshire, see Walker 1997, 158–161. 26  DeVries accepts the core historical authenticity of the episode of the Norwegian defending the bridge, arguing that this one man gave Harald and Tostig the time they needed to form a circular shield wall with which to meet Harold’s advance (DeVries 1999, 280). For the primary texts, see Andersson and Gade 2018, ch. 50; Finlay 2004, chs. 68–71; the ASC,

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

301

Harald of Norway and Tostig were both killed during the fierce fighting that lasted throughout the battle. Orderic Vitalis adds the element that: Locus etiam belli pertranseuntibus euidenter patet, ubi magna congeries ossuum mortuorum usque hodie iacet et indicium ruinae multiplicis utriusque gentis exhibet. [Travellers cannot fail to recognize the field, for a great mountain of dead men's bones still lies there and bears witness to the terrible slaughter on both sides]. (Orderic Vitalis 1969–80, vol. 2, 169)

Only The Carmen De Hastingae Proelio provides the gruesome detail that Harold killed and beheaded his brother: Rex Heraldus enim sceleratus ad ultima terre Fratris ad exicium perfida tela parat; Non modicam regni partem nam frater adeptus, Tecta dabat flammis et gladiis populum. Marte sub opposito currens Heraldus in hostes, Non timuit fratris tradere membra neci. Alter in alterutrum plus quam ciuile peregit Bellum, set uictor (proh dolor!) ipse fuit. Inuidus ille Cain fratris caput amputat ense, Et caput et corpus sic sepeliuit humo. [For the wicked king Harold was preparing his treacherous weapons for the destruction of his brother in the remotest reaches of the realm. This brother, having occupied no small part of the land, was setting houses on fire and putting people to the sword; and Harold, hastening with an army to meet the foe, did not shrink from delivering his brother’s limbs to death. Each waged against the other a worse than civil war. But the victor, alas, was Harold. This envious Cain cut off his brother’s head with his sword and then buried head and trunk in the earth.] (Wido 1999, 8–11 lines 129–138)

While the Carmen is of course pro-Norman and viciously anti-Harold, its early date makes it a somewhat legitimate source. The Carmen’s earlier editors advise a metaphorical reading of the accusation that Harold beheaded and buried his brother (Barlow, the most recent editor, does not comment upon the supposed decapitation at all; Wido 1972, 11, n.5). William of Malmesbury states more elliptically that Tostig’s body was MS C (Jebson 1996–2006); William of Malmesbury 1998–9, ii.228.11 (William incorrectly calls Harald Hardrada “Fairhair” throughout his narrative).

302 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

identified on the battlefield only “Cadauer eius, inditio uerrucae inter duas scapulas agnitum” [by the evidence of a wart between the shoulder blades], upon which he “sepulturam Eboraci meruit” [received the honour of burial at York] (William of Malmesbury 1998–9, iii.252.2). The implication is that Tostig’s head was indeed missing or that it had been so completely mutilated as to be unrecognizable. The Scandinavian sources, focused on Harald of Norway, do not state who killed Tostig or how he died. The Norman Conquest was successful just a few weeks later at Hastings, and it remains only one of the interesting might-have-beens of English history to wonder what would have happened at Hastings if Tostig, like Edmund before him, had prioritized support for his older brother over his own ambitions. Tostig died on the battlefield, thus enacting one of the classic tropes of early English masculinity, but he died on the wrong side, opposing his brothers in an invasion of the lands of his former earldom, defeated by his inappropriate ambitions and bad choices. Tostig’s 1065–1066 collapse as he followed his own ambitions produced failures in the conventional early English masculine roles of warrior, follower and leader, which were largely public; John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, the ASC, and other texts record, occasionally gleefully, Tostig’s humiliations and defeat. His masculine failures were domestic and private, as well, however; extant texts and artifacts imply that he was a flawed father and husband. “Domestic masculinity” may seem like an oxymoron, especially for aristocratic figures who lived much of their supposedly private lives in a public sphere, but Tostig’s most intimate failures were domestic. His two sons successfully disassociated themselves from him and their paternal lineage after 1066; his widow likewise disassociated herself from him, making apparent the separation between them that Symeon of Durham implied in his account of their donations to Durham Cathedral in the late 1050s. After Stamford Bridge and Hastings, there were no advantages to identification with the Godwin family line, especially Tostig’s branch. While Tostig was always defined as “Godwinson,” his sons Skuli and Ketel were able to redefine themselves through fosterage and military relationships after Tostig’s loss at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where they actually fought on the Norwegian side. While Frank Barlow briefly discusses Skuli and Ketel as if they were Tostig’s sons with Judith of Flanders, Skuli and Ketel were much more likely to have been born before Tostig’s high-status marriage to Judith in 1051; Emma Mason and other scholars have suggested that their Scandinavian names show that they were born to an

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

303

Anglo-Danish woman who did not have enough power to assert her own or her sons’ claims to any Godwinson patrimony between 1051 and 1066 (Mason 2004, 103). After Tostig’s death in 1066, his sons Skuli and Ketel established themselves in Scandinavia without reference to their biological paternal genealogy. Skuli and Ketel are mentioned only in three Scandinavian sources, Morkinskinna, Fagrskinna, and the Heimskringla, all composed within a few years of each other in the early thirteenth century. All three of the texts agree that Skuli and Ketel accompanied King Olaf, the son of the dead King Harald, back to Norway after Stamford Bridge. Olaf granted them lands and titles and arranged good marriages as well. They are praised for their wisdom and both are noted as having many notable descendants. Most importantly, Skuli, the more prominent of the two brothers, was known by the title of “koningsfostri,” showing that Skuli was considered foster-kin to the king, who was probably about the same age.27 The term suggests that Tostig had fostered his sons with distant Norwegian relatives when he married Judith. Fagrskinna and Heimskringla also provide the specific detail that Skuli married one of the king’s kin, so that Olaf and Skuli were eventually related by marriage as well as by foster ties (Finlay 2004, ch. 78; Snorri Sturluson 1991, ch. 98). Both of Tostig’s sons thus managed to define themselves through foster-relationship with King Olaf III, successfully establishing their noble lineage in Scandinavia. Their relationship to their biological father becomes so inconsequential that Heimskringla does not even mention Tostig by name, simply noting that they were “of noble English extraction” (Snorri Sturluson 1991, ch. 98). As a father, then, Tostig failed to pass on an illustrious name, social position of any sort, or any property at all to his sons. Similarly, Tostig’s widow Judith of Flanders quickly disassociated herself from her first husband after his death. A number of continental documents focused on her second marriage, to Welf IV, Duke of Bavaria, refer to Judith as the former regina anglie (Baumann 1888, 3:109–15; Weiland 1869, 21:454–72). Elisebeth van Houts has suggested that Judith may have encouraged, or at least not discouraged, these continental assumptions that she had been the queen of England before the death of her first husband; Judith may even have been deliberately unclear about which of Godwin’s sons she had married (see van Houts 1995, 838–839 and Mason 2004, 184). Judith and Tostig’s 15-year marriage may have been childless;  See Finlay’s discussion of the term “koningsfostri” (Finlay 2004, 236 n. 692).

27

304 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

we can say with certainty that no child of theirs lived to be identified in the historical record, so she had no incentive to perpetuate any Godwin connection. Judith is remembered in both English and continental sources as a very devout woman (Dockray-Miller 2015); notably, Tostig is not associated with her devotional or patronage practices, except in the brief reference by Symeon of Durham noted earlier. Four extant Gospel Books that she commissioned for her household, as well as lists and descriptions of other treasure objects she gave to the Church at various points during her life, indicate the deluxe nature of her tastes and her generosity.28 Unusually, Judith left donor portraits in the frontispieces of two of the Gospel books; in a discussion of Tostig’s masculinity, especially his role as husband, the focus needs to be on the more famous portrait, that from the Pierpont Morgan Library’s MS M.709, where Judith is inserted as a small figure at the foot of the cross.29 We know that this image was made when Tostig was alive, because the entire book was produced in England before the Northern Rebellion drove Tostig and Judith out of England and into Flanders. This portrait is highly unusual for a number of reasons; for many years, scholars even argued about whether it was an original part of the manuscript.30 It is also one of only a few extant portraits of a married aristocratic woman in the eleventh century that does not include her husband. Widows were portrayed without their husbands, of course, as in famous image of Judith’s great-aunt, Emma of Normandy, receiving her copy of the Encomium Emmae (see Karkov 2011, fig. 76 and 269–71). Married women were almost always portrayed with their husbands, as Emma was in the often-published image showing her during her marriage to her second husband Cnut, presenting a cross to the New Minster (see Karkov 2011, plate 12, and 116–117, 264–269). Tostig’s absence from the later frontispiece portrait of Judith is not unusual as it was probably made after

28  The manuscripts are: New  York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.708; New  York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.709; Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, Cod. 437; Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aa.21. The last of these includes on an endleaf a list of gifts from Judith to Weingarten Abbey, cataloging relics, shrines, precious service items, embroidered fabrics, and many other treasures (see Dockray-Miller 2015, Appendix Two). 29  Image searchable through Morgan Library website, http://ica.themorgan.org 30  For description and analysis of all four manuscripts, see McGurk and Rosenthal 1994.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

305

his death (Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aa.21, f.2v),31 but his absence from the frontispiece produced in England is striking. This image confirms that she and Tostig did not share the social, devotional, and ­cultural goals of the aristocratic married couples in conventional donor portraits. The image suggests that Judith was largely acting alone in her religious patronage and practice during her marriage to Tostig, thus strengthening an understanding of Symeon of Durham’s narrative (mentioned earlier) that implies separate rather than joint patronage programs and goals in the marriage. This separation suggests that Tostig had missed a crucial opportunity in the important masculine role of husband, to work in partnership with his wife to engage in public display of piety and generosity to the church. Like his sons, Judith disassociated herself from him as quickly as possible after his death, establishing a new identity within new social, cultural, and political networks.

12.5   Conclusions Tostig thus fails in almost every role available to a secular male, public and private: follower, leader, soldier, earl, brother, husband, father. All of these failures stem from his overwhelming personal ambition, his unwillingness to play the part exemplified by Edmund in Brunanburh and support his older brother at the expense of his own desire for the role of primary leader, of eorl. Rather than wait for his turn to become the alpha male in the line of fraternal succession, Tostig pursued his own objectives. His failure was so spectacular that it even formed part of a now-lost early modern history play, showing that the cataclysmic fall of the Godwins was still an absorbing narrative more than five hundred years later. Theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe’s “Diary,” as his record books are called, notes in 1598 a series of payments and expenses to a group of playwrights for parts one and two of a play called “Earl Godwin and His Three Sons” (Foakes and Rickert 1961, 88–90, 92). As Tostig is an unequivocally nefarious murderer in Holinshed’s Chronicles (Snow 1976, 1.8, ch. 7–9), the main historical source for Shakespeare’s and other plays of the time, this play must have featured the rise and fall of the family, including Tostig as villainous betrayer of his brother.

31  This image is reproduced on the cover and as plate 22 in Dockray-Miller 2015; see also Keene 2018.

306 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

That continuing historical perception of Tostig as disloyal younger brother makes the end of Tostig’s life into an object lesson in the perils of defying social and cultural convention for younger sons; the early English masculine heroic code, ironically, emasculates him by removing the possibility of agency from his individual ambitions. Tostig exemplified a disloyal younger brother who betrayed his extended family and failed his wife and children; more crucially, his decisions and ambitions reveal how the conventions of the heroic code constrained and controlled aristocratic men who rebelled against those conventions.

References Manuscripts Fulda, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Aa.21. Monte Cassino, Archivio della Badia, Cod. 437. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.708. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M.709.

Editions

and

Primary Sources

Adam of Bremen. 1917. Hamburgische kirchengeschichte. Ed. B.  Schmeidler. Hannover/Leipzig: Hahnsche buchhandlung. ———. 1959. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. Trans. F.J. Tschan. New York: Columbia University Press. Ælfric, Wulfstan, and Abbo. 1972. Three Lives of English saints. Ed. M. Winterbottom. Toronto: Published for the Centre for Medieval Studies by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Andersson, T.M., and K.E.  Gade. 2018 [2000]. Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030–1157). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501720611 Baumann, F.L. 1888. Dioeceses Augustensis, Constantiensis, Curiensis. MGH: Necrologia Germaniae, T. 1. Berolini: Apud Weidmannos. Dumville, D.N., S.  Keynes, and S.  Taylor. 1983. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. Finlay, A. ed. 2004. Fargrskinna, a Catalogue of the Kings of Norway. Leiden: Brill. Foakes, R.A., and R.T. Rickert, eds. 1961. Henslowe’s Diary. Cambridge. Jebson, T. 1996–2006. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. http://asc.jebbo.co.uk John of Worcester. 2007 [1995]. The Chronicle of John of Worcester, 3 vols., Ed. and Trans. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

307

Keynes, S., and S. Kelly, et al. eds. 2011. The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters. http://www.esawyer.org.uk/ Monk of St. Bertin. 1962. The Life of King Edward: Who Rests at Westminster, Ed. and Trans. F. Barlow. London: Nelson. Ordericus Vitalis. 1969–1980. The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols. Ed. and Trans. M. Chibnall. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rollason, D.W., L.  Rollason, and E.  Briggs. 2007. The Durham Liber Vitae: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A.  VII: Edition and Digital Facsimile with Introduction, Codicological, Prosopographical and Linguistic Commentary, and Indexes, 3 vols. London: British Library. Snorri Sturluson. 1991 [1964]. Heimskringla; History of the Kings of Norway. Trans. L.M.  Hollander. Austin: Published for the American-Scandinavian Foundation by the University of Texas Press. Symeon of Durham. 2019 [2000]. Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie. Ed. and Trans. D. Rollason. Oxford: Clarendon Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198202073.book.1 Weiland, L. 1869. Monumenta Welforum Antiqua. Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum Ex Monumentis Germaniae Historicis Recusi, 43. Hannoverae: Hahn. Wido. 1972. The Carmen de Hastingae proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Ed. C. Morton and H. Muntz. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1999. The Carmen de Hastingae proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens. Ed. and Trans. F. Barlow. Oxford: Clarendon Press. William of Malmesbury. 1984. Three Lives of the Last Englishmen. Trans. M. Swanton. New York: Garland Pub. ———. 1998–9. Gesta regum Anglorum, 2 vols. Ed. and Trans. R.A.B. Mynors, Completed by R.M. Thompson and M. Winterbottom. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2003. Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. London: Penguin Books. ———. 2007. Gesta pontificum Anglorum, 2 vols. Ed. and Trans. M. Winterbottom with R.M. Thomson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 2019 [2002]. William of Malmesbury Saints’ Lives: Lives of Ss. Wulfstan, Dunstan, Patrick, Benignus and Indract. Ed. and Trans. R. M Thomson and Mi. Winterbottom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi. org/10.1093/actrade/9780198207092.book.1

Secondary Sources Barlow, F. 2013 [2003]. The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty. The Medieval World. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315835518 Christie, E. 2003. Self-Mastery and Submission: Holiness and Masculinity in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Martyr Kings. In Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle

308 

M. DOCKRAY-MILLER

Ages, ed. P.H.  Cullum and K.J.  Lewis, 143–157. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Clark, D. 2009. Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clarke, Peter A. 1994. The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clarke, C.A.M. 2012. Writing Power in Anglo-Saxon England: Texts, Hierarchies, Economies. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. DeVries, K. 1999. The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Dockray-Miller, M. 2015. The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders. Surrey: Ashgate. Edwards, T. 2006. Cultures of Masculinity. London: Routledge. Fisher, V. 2009. Muscular Sanctity? Masculine Christian Ideals in Anglo-Saxon Latin Texts. Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 5: 21–34. Fleming, R. 1983. Domesday Estates of the King and the Godwins. Speculum 58 (4): 987–1007. https://doi.org/10.2307/2853792. ———. [1991] 2004. Kings and Lords in Conquest England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foot, Sh. 2011. Æthelstan: The First King of England. New Haven: Yale University Press. Freeman, E.A. 1873. The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and its Results. Oxford: Clarendon Press for Macmillan and Co., New York. Giry, A., and W. Kabel. 1875. Les chatelains de Saint-Omer, 1042–1386. Paris: [s.n.]. Hadley, D.M. 2012. Masculinity. In A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Studies, ed. J. Stodnick and R. Trilling, 115–132. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Huscroft, R. 2009. The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction. Harlow: Pearson/ Longman. Karkov, C. 2011. The Art of Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Keene, C. 2018. Read Her Like a Book: Female Patronage as Imitatio Mariae. Magistra 24: 8–38. Lees, C.A. 1994. Men and Beowulf. In Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Thelma S. Fenster Lees and Ann McNamara Jo, 129–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mason, E. 2004. The House of Godwine: The History of a Dynasty. London: Hambledon and London. McGurk, P., and J.  Rosenthal. 1994. The Anglo-Saxon Gospelbooks of Judith, Countess of Flanders: Their Text, Make-Up, and Function. Anglo-Saxon England 24: 251–308. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675100004713. Mortimer, R. 2009. Edward the Confessor: the Man and the Legend. In Edward the Confessor: the Man and the Legend, ed. R. Mortimer, 1–40. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

12  THE FAILED MASCULINITIES OF TOSTIG GODWINSON 

309

Nip, R. 1999. Political Relations Between England and Flanders (1066–1128). Anglo-Norman Studies 21: 145–169. Overing, G.R. 1990. Language, Sign, and Gender in Beowulf. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Proffitt, M., et al., eds. 2018. Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/. Silverman, K. 1992. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York: Routledge. Snow, V., ed. 1976. Holinshed’s Chronicles: England, Scotland, and Ireland. New York: AMS Press. Summerson, H. 2009. Tudor Antiquaries and the Vita Ædwardi Regis. Anglo-­ Saxon England 38: 157–184. Treharne, E.M. Ed. and Trans. 2009 [2004]. The Reign of Æðelstan and ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’. In Old and Middle English c, 890–1450: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell. Online at: http://projects.oucs.ox.ac.uk/woruldhord/ Van Houts, E. 1995. The Norman Conquest Through European Eyes. English Historical Review 110: 832–853. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/CX.438.832. Walker, I.W. 1997. Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King. Gloucestershire: The History Press. Warlop, E. 1975. The Flemish Nobility Before 1300. Kortrijk: G. Desmet-Huysman.

CHAPTER 13

Elizabeth Elstob, Old English Law and the Origin of Anglo-Saxon Studies: A Critical Edition of Samuel Pegge’s “An Historical Account of … the Textus Roffensis” (1767) Andrew Rabin

13.1   Introduction “The eighteenth century,” Timothy Graham has observed, “was largely barren for Anglo-Saxon studies” (Graham 2001, 430; see also Fairer 1986, Sweet 2004, 192; Terry 2001, 113–4). Although it began promisingly with the publication of George Hickes’s monumental Thesaurus (Oxford, 1703–5), Hickes’s death in 1715 as well as diminishing interest among the faculties of Oxford and Cambridge left the study of Old English largely stagnant for much of the next 80 years. The neglect of Old English

A. Rabin (*) Department of English, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9_13

311

312 

A. RABIN

studies during this period is particularly striking when compared with the renewed interest in other aspects of England’s medieval past, particularly through the labors of the newly founded Society of Antiquaries. Dedicated to the preservation of England’s archeological and textual heritage, the Society oversaw a number of substantial editorial projects in its first years, including the publication of the Rotuli Parliamentorum (1767–1777) and Domesday Book (1783) (see Condon and Hallam 1984). The efforts to publish the latter, beginning with a lecture by Phillip Carteret Webb at a meeting of the Society in 1756, encouraged those seeking a greater emphasis on early English materials. As Society member Daines Barrington, first editor of the Old English Orosius, urged his fellows, “I must own I cannot but think that every Saxon treatise be it of what kind it may should be published as the language can only be thoroughly understood from several such publications” (qtd. in Sweet 2004, 205). The influence of Webb and the Domesday project likewise led Barrington’s friend Samuel Pegge to deliver his “Historical Account … of the Textus Roffensis” to a meeting of the Society in June of 1767. Although the lecture did not bring about the desired resurrection of early English studies, it nonetheless stands as a major early contribution to Old English scholarship: not only does Pegge’s essay provide the first detailed history of the Textus Roffensis, the most important surviving manuscript of pre-Conquest English law, but it also includes the earliest biography of the noted antiquary and linguist, Elizabeth Elstob. Samuel Pegge was born in 1704 into a prosperous merchant family in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (see O’Sullivan 2004). He received his BA and MA from St. John’s College, Oxford, and, in 1730, was ordained a priest in the Church of England. His initial appointment was as a curate in Sundridge, Kent, where he first began to develop an interest in early English archeology and numismatics. His increasing engagement with these subjects led to his election to the Society of Antiquaries in 1751. Over the next 45 years, he contributed more than 50 articles to the Society’s journal, Archaeologia. So prolific was he that between 1770 and 1796, Pegge and his friend Samuel Denne together accounted for just over one-sixth of all the articles published in Archaeologia (Sweet 2004, 49). Pegge’s articles ranged in topic from early English coinage and early medieval viticulture to the excavation of Roman and British ruins in Kent and Derbyshire. Although his uncritical approach to his sources frequently led him to erroneous conclusions, he nonetheless served as an enthusiastic advocate for the study of early medieval culture. This enthusiasm led him

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

313

both to assist Barrington with the latter’s 1773 edition of the Old English Orosius and to publish a series of articles in Archaeologia highlighting early medieval English advancements in literacy and agriculture (see Barrington 1773, xix–xx). While few of Pegge’s claims on such matters ultimately stood the test of scholarly scrutiny, his broader arguments concerning the importance of Old English studies exercised a profound influence on the next generation of scholars, most notably a young Sharon Turner. Yet Pegge’s dedication to his scholarship masked his considerable frustration that, as a country clergyman, he was able to attend the London meetings of the Society only rarely (Sweet 2004, 54, 370n. 104). As a result, Pegge became a vocal advocate for the increased study of county history, leading eventually to the publication of the Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, to which he contributed seven articles (including a revised version of his lecture on Textus Roffensis). Pegge died at the age of 91 on February 14, 1796, and was buried in his Derbyshire parish. Given Pegge’s interests, the Textus Roffensis was a natural object for his attention. Compiled by Bishop Ernulf of Rochester (1040–1124) between 1122 and 1124, the manuscript consists of two parts: an anthology of early English royal legislation and a collection of charters documenting the landholdings of Rochester Cathedral.1 As the most comprehensive surviving manuscript of early English law, it captures the range and diversity of pre-Conquest legal composition while also illustrating the ways in which Old English legal records came to be appropriated and transformed by England’s new Norman overlords. No less importantly, Textus Roffensis is the unique manuscript witness for a number of otherwise lost legal texts, most famously the laws of the early kings of Kent (Oliver 2002, 20–5). The contents of Textus thus bring together Pegge’s interest in early English culture with his enthusiasm for county (particularly Kentish) history. Tracing the manuscript’s use and readership allowed Pegge to dwell on some of the more dramatic moments in its history—its theft in the seventeenth century by “one Leonard, a doctor of physic,” and its submersion in either the Thames or Medway after a boating accident in the early eighteenth century (see below, 321)—while also providing an account of the growth of Old English studies and brief portraits of many of the major contributors to the early modern antiquarian revival. Perhaps 1  The Textus Roffensis is currently held by the Medway Archive and Local Studies Centre in Strood, Kent, as MS DRc/R1. On the manuscript and its history, Liebermann 1898; Richards 1988, 43–60; 2015; Sawyer 1957, 20–1.

314 

A. RABIN

more importantly for Pegge, the lecture explicitly links his discussion of Textus with “what has been lately done by Mr Webb in his pamphlet concerning the record of Domesday,” thereby allowing him to equate the study of early medieval England’s most important surviving legal manuscript with the project that had become the focus of the Society of Antiquaries’ editorial activities (see below, 316). In so doing, Pegge hoped to spur a renewed interest in pre-Conquest culture in much the same way Webb had for the post-Conquest era. Yet rehearsing the history of Textus Roffensis was only part of Pegge’s purpose: equally important was the opportunity afforded by his discussion of English antiquarianism to compose the earliest complete biography of Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756), the first prominent female scholar of Old English (on Elizabeth Elstob’s life and career, see especially Collins 1982; see also Hughes 2005; Smol 1997; Sutherland 1998). Along with her brother William (ca. 1674–1715), whose life is also included in the “Historical Account,” Elizabeth Elstob had been an influential member of the circle of Old English scholars that had grown up around George Hickes in the early eighteenth century. Although most famous for her Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, the first modern grammar of Old English, she also published an extensively annotated edition of Ælfric’s homily on St. Gregory the Great and, along with her brother, embarked upon an unfinished edition of early medieval English royal legislation (see Graham 2014; Morton 1990; Sutherland 1994). Following William’s death, Elstob found herself largely without support and her scholarly career faded. She was partially supported in her later years by her friend George Ballard, who petitioned the government to grant her a pension in recognition of her scholarly achievements. Ballard’s advocacy for female scholarship led him to produce his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, though his decision to exclude women still alive at the time of his writing resulted in Elstob’s omission from the volume.2 She had drafted a brief account of her life for his use, though, and it was this document that ultimately served as Pegge’s source. Pegge dedicates roughly half of the “Historical Account” to recounting the lives of Elizabeth and, to a lesser extent William. In part, as Pegge himself writes, he sought to supplement Ballard’s work, which he greatly admired, by adding Elizabeth Elstob’s biography to those included in the Memoirs (see 2  Ballard included no living women in the Memoirs. He concludes the collection with a biography of the poet and linguist Elizabeth Jane Weston, who had died in 1612.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

315

below, 329ff). Yet, highlighting Elstobs’ accomplishments also enabled Pegge to suggest a degree of continuity between his own work and that of the Hickes’s circle, which remained highly respected among the Society of Antiquaries’ membership. Recounting the lives of the Elstob siblings thus also contributed to Pegge’s attempts to emphasize the significance of Old English scholarship (not to mention his own importance to that enterprise). Although Pegge’s account of Textus has long since been superseded, its value as a record of eighteenth-century intellectual culture should not be dismissed. Pegge’s approach to his topic sheds light on the priorities and debates that shaped the Society of Antiquaries in its first years, while his informal, almost gossipy, tone vividly evokes the language of the earliest gentlemen’s clubs. Of no less significance is his discussion of Hickes and his circle, which documents the emergence of early English studies as a professional scholarly enterprise. Perhaps most importantly, though, his biography of Elizabeth Elstob makes a substantial contribution to the oft-­ neglected history of women’s scholarship during this period. As the earliest attempt to fully record the details of Elstob’s life, Pegge’s account serves as an invaluable source for the particulars of her biography and the contemporary reception of her work. Emphasizing both the seriousness of her scholarship and his admiration for her accomplishments, Pegge’s lecture thus ensured that Elstob’s achievements would be enshrined in the records of a society that would never have admitted her as a member.

13.2   Editorial Conventions Pegge initially delivered the “Historical Account” at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on June 18, 1767, though he continued to revise it for another 17 years. This text is based on the version published in the Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, no. 25, in 1784. The inconsistencies in Pegge’s spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, typical of eighteenth-­ century prose, have all been regularized. Pegge’s footnotes are indicated by superscript Arabic numerals, while editorial notes and comments are signaled by superscript roman numerals (i.e. lxxxi). Latin passages have been translated in the notes or, when they occur in Pegge’s footnotes, in brackets following the text. Pegge’s citations pose a special problem: although he drew on a wide range of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, he does not have a consistent program of citation. He uses widely varying abbreviations—and sometimes even varying titles—when referring to individual texts; he sometimes cites the same text by its English title in one

316 

A. RABIN

note and Latin title in another, and when citing individual essays or book chapters, he often fails to identify the full work from which the section has been taken. As the nature of the sources themselves was deemed more important than the peculiarities of Pegge’s citational practices, all references have been silently expanded and regularized.

13.3   An Historical Account of That Venerable Monument of Antiquity the Textus Roffensis; Including Memoirs of the Learned Saxonists Mr. William Elstob and His Sister By Samuel Pegge, M.A. An Historical Account of the Venerable Monument of Antiquity The TEXTUS ROFFENSIS. [Read at the Society of Antiquaries, London, June 18, 1767.]

Though the history of a single book may seem at first sight to be both uncommon and trivial, yet when one considers the antiquity, and the great importance of the monument, commonly known by the name of Textus Roffensis;3 the practice of our editors who are so careful and industrious, as to give us an exact account of every single edition of the author they publish; and, lastly, what has been lately done by Mr. Webb in his pamphlet concerning the record of Domesday,i the following narrative of the compilement, the contents, the fate, history, transcripts, and publications of this august and most valuable remain, may not be altogether insignificant or displeasing; especially as some things will arise that are very remarkable and interesting. I suppose we may safely depend on Mr. Wharton,ii who, by the favour of the then dean and chapter of Rochester, had the book in his custody for some time, for the author of it. He observes, that Ernulf,4 bishop of Rochester, sat in that see from A.D. 1114, to A.D. 1124, in the reign of King Henry I and compiled the book, which is written in a very elegant 3  In Dugdale’s Monasticon anglicanum, 3 vols. (London, 1655–73), it is called Chronicon Claustri Roffensis; and bishop Godwin, in his Life of Ernulfus, in the De praesulibus Angliae (London, 1616), speaks of an History of the Church of Rochester, left by Ernulfus, which I suppose is nothing but the Textus. 4  He is otherwise written Arnulf, Arnulph, Earnulph.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

317

hand.iii The bishop was very old at the time, not less than 80, or 82; for he was 84 when he died, A.D. 1124,5iv and yet the collection seems to have been made about 1120, according to Dr. Harris,v in his History of Kent,6 or 1122 according to Mr. Hearne,7 and this latter I take to be the truer account;vi but as to Ernulf’s being the author, an inscription in a very ancient hand, in the front of the book, supposed by Mr. Wanley8 to be no less than 400 years old,vii attests the same, Textus de ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulfum episcopum;9 and it is observable, that there is nothing in the book of a later date than the time of the prelate here mentioned; for as to the 13 later archbishops of Canterbury, and the 15 later bishops of Rochester, these have all been added by a more modern hand, as appears from the form of the letter, and the difference of the ink; one person added the 6 bishops that followed Ernulf in succession, and another, more recent, has added the 9 following them. To these may be added, says Mr. Wharton, some matters relative to the time of the bishops, John and Ascelin,viii inserted after the leaf 203; but all the rest of the book is written in a hand coeval with bishop Ernulf.10 In respect of the contents of this famous MS. the book consists of two parts;ix the first containing the laws and constitutions of the Anglo-Saxon kings, in Latin and Saxon, transcribed from ancient copies; and the second giving us a register or chartulary of the church of Rochester, from the autographs, with some other matters relating to that cathedral, written in the times of Ernulf and his successors; but these last in a later hand. Bishop Ernulf was a Norman;11 and, in regard to the first part of the work, Mr. Hearne applauds him extremely for his great diligence and application, in 5  Hearne in the Præfatio to his edition of Textus Roffensis (Oxford, 1720), Henry Wharton, Anglia Sacra, 2 vols. (London, 1691), and Gul. Malmsb. p. 234. 6  John Harris, History of Kent (London, 1719), p. 32. Dr. Harris though varies from himself in this respect, for in a note inserted by him in the original at Rochester, on the reverse of the second leaf, he conjectures the text might be compiled AD 1115, which is not so credible. 7  See Hearne, Textus Roffensis, p. xxxv. 8  Humphrey Wanley, Catalogus librorum septentrionalium, published as vol. 3 of George Hickes, Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1703–1705). See p. 273. 9  Text’ de ec c̄ e Roff n̄ per Ernulfū Ep m . Humphrey Wanley, Catalogus, p. 273. 10  Wharton, Anglia Sacra, vol. 1, pp. xxx and following. 11  Whoever desires a further account of him may consult Malmsbury; Hearne, Textus Roffensis, p. xiv and Appendix Nos. I, II, III, and IV; Wharton, Anglia Sacra, vol. 1, p. 33; Bishop Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (London, 1748); Simon Gunton,

318 

A. RABIN

making himself master of the Saxon language then growing into disuse, and his commendable care in preserving and perpetuating this momentous code. The above short account of the contents is taken from Mr. Wanley, in whom may be seen, by those who are desirous of it, a very exact list of all the articles that compose the first part, with a general representation superadded of what is to be found in the second. I shall content myself with giving the following abbreviation from Mr. Wharton; “The laws of Ethelbert, Alfred, Guthrum, Edward the Elder, Edmund, and Ethelred, in Saxon.12 The exorcism of the Ordeal, the laws of King Cnut, the constitutions of William I. Extracts from the decrees of the Popes, the institutions of King Henry I. A.D. 1101, the succession of the Popes and Emperors, of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, and the other four patriarchal sees,13 the names of the archbishops and bishops of England, from the time of Augustin the monk, distributed according to their sees, in Latin, Judicia civitatis London,14x the genealogy of King Edward the Confessor from Adam, the genealogies of all of the kings of the Heptarchy from Adam, in Saxon.15 The privileges, charters, and ordinances of the church of Rochester, in Latin and Saxon.” Bishop Nicolson’s account of this matter is still shorter; but, as he mentions some things nevertheless, omitted by Wharton, I shall insert it. “It furnishes us,” says he, “with the laws of four Kentish kings (Ethelbert, Hlothere, Eadred16, and Wihtred) omitted by Lambarde,17xi together with the Saxon form of oaths of fealty, and wager of law; the old form of cursing by bell, book, and candle; of Ordale,xii &c.”18 I enter now upon the fate, history, transcripts, and impressions of this book, and its parts.

History of the Church of Peterburgh (London, 1686); William Cave, Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Historia Literaria, 2 vols. (London, 1688–98), &c. 12  These are far from being all. 13  Rather the other three, for there were but five in all, and those of Rome and Jerusalem are mentioned before. However, there are only two in the original, Alexandria and Antioch. 14  These are laws of King Athelstan; they are extant in the Chronicon Johannis Brompton, ed. in Roger Twysden et  al. Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem (London, 1652), col. 852, and in David Wilkins, Leges Anglo-Saxonicae Ecclesiasticae et Civiles (London, 1721); see also Bishop William Nicolson’s English Historical Library (London, 1696), p. 134. 15  That is, they are carried up to Woden, who in the former is carried up to Adam. 16  Eadric, as I suppose. 17  Meaning in the Archæonomia [William Lambarde, Archæonomia (London, 1568)]. 18  Nicolson, English Historical Library, p. 134.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

319

The first person that made any use of our MS. since the restoration of learning, was that great reviver of Saxon literature, Lawrence Nowell archdeacon of Derby, and dean of Lichfield.xiii The famous Kentish antiquary William Lambarde was a disciple of his in the Saxon tongue, of which he is reckoned the second restorer;19 and the dean having made certain transcripts from the Textus, imparted them to him, giving him withal other assistance, and the use of his notes, towards completing his Archæonomia;20 he also gave him his Vocabularium Saxonicum,21 and died A.D. 1577.22 The abovementioned Mr. Lambarde published his Archæonomia, A.D. 1568, in quarto, wherein are various transcripts from this MS. But these, as Dr. Hickesxiv has clearly shewn,23 were not copied by him from the original book, which he did not see till the year 1573, when his name occurs in the margin of it, as it does in various places, but they were put into his hands by his preceptor the dean of Lichfield, and he published them in this volume with his own English translation. Archbishop Matthew Parker, and his Assistant John Josceline,24xv appear next to have used our MS. for the De antiquitate Britannicæ ecclesiae, being printed anno 1572.xvi Lib. Roff. is often cited in the margin. Afterwards, A.D. 1576, Mr. Lambarde’s first edition of the Perambulation of Kent appeared; and there we have an extract from our MS. concerning the maintenance and support of Rochester Bridge, in Saxon and Latin; the Saxon being also translated by him into modern English.25 It occurs also in Elstob’s transcript to be mentioned below, and in Mr. Hearne’s Appendix, p.  379. Archdeacon Dennexvii has also 19  Anthony Wood, Historia, et antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1674), vol. 2, p. 216. 20  Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford, 2 vols. (London, 1691–2), vol. 1, col. 186. 21  Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 554. 22  Bishop Tanner says, 1576; but see Dr. Browne Willis, A Survey of the Cathedrals of York, Durham, Carlisle, Chester, Man, Litchfield, Hereford, Worcester, Gloucester, Bristol, Lincoln, Ely, Oxford, Peterborough, Canterbury, Rochester, London, Winchester, Chichester, Norwich, Salisbury, Wells, Exeter, St. Davids, Landaff, Bangor, and St. Asaph, 2 vols. (London, 1730–2), vol. 1, p. 400. Mr. Wood is doubtful where he is buried, unless at Lichfield; but Dr. Willis rather thinks it was at Weston in Derbyshire. 23  Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 88. 24  Of whom, see the History of Lambeth Palace. 25  William Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent (London, 1576), p. 307. The Author’s 2d Edition of this book was published anno 1596, which is an enlarged, and the best edition.

320 

A. RABIN

t­ ranscribed the Latin part into his copy of Hearne’s edition; and you have the Latin, Saxon, and English, in Dr. Harris’s History of Kent, p. 260. Mr. Lambarde cites the MS. again, p. 271, 317, and 343 of this first edition. He has also there printed Brihtric’s will, p. 357, from it, though he has not noted that, and has given us an English translation of it.xviii This curious monument has likewise appeared in Dr. Hickes’s Thesaurus,26 both in Saxon and Latin; in Hearne’s Textus Roffensis, p. 110, you have the Saxon part, and in the preface, p. xxv the Saxon with Mr. Lambarde’s English version; as likewise in Dr. Harris’s History of Kent, p. 201. A.D. 1623, Mr. Seldenxix published the Monkish Historian Eadmer; and in the Spicilegium, 197, has printed from this MS. the famous pleading at Pinnenden Heath, near Maidstone in Kent (now called Pickenden Heath), between archbishop Lanfranc and Odo bishop of Bayeux, in Latin.xx This hath been many times reprinted since, as by Sir William Dugdalexxi in his Origine Juridicales; Mr. Wharton, in Anglia Sacra, tom. I. p. 334; and lastly, by Dr. Harris, in his History of Kent, p. 50. A.D. 1626, came out the first part of Sir Henry Spelman’s Glossary;xxii and therein he inserted from this MS. the old form of excommunication, or cursing by bell, book, and candle.27 This appears also in Mr. Hearne’s edition of the Textus, p. 55. The book, after this, was in the utmost danger of being secreted, and finally estranged from the church, before half of it had been either printed or transcribed; one Leonard, a doctor of physic,xxiii had got it into his hands, and kept it two years; but the dean, Walter Balcanqual,xxiv and the chapter, getting scent of the purloiner, bestirred themselves, and at last recovered their MS. but not without a bill in chancery.xxv Concerning this transaction, the following note is now entered on the 2d leaf: “Venerandum hoc antiquitatis monumentum per integrum biennium desideratum, surreptore tandem detecto, ac restitutionem strenue negante, decreto supremæ curiæ, quam cancellariam vocant, non exiguis hujus ecclesiæ sumptibus, recuperavit, reddique pristinis dominis curavit Gualterus Balcanqual hujus ecclesiæ decanus anno post natum incarnatum 1633.”xxvi This memorandum, which is also copied by Mr. Wanley in Dr. Hickes’s  Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 51. See also vol. 3, p. 276.  We read there, In dentibus mordacibus, in labris, sive molibus [“in his foreteeth, in his grinders, in his lips or dams”]; and so Mr. Hearne gives it also, p. 58. but certainly we ought to read, in glabris sive molaribus [“in his lips, in his throat”]. It is the fault of the original scribe, for Dr. Denne has not corrected it in his book to be mentioned below. 26 27

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

321

Thesaurus, tom. III, p. 273,xxvii is now pasted on the 2d folio, and is probably the hand-writing of Dean Balanqual; it is also anew transcribed with the following note, this is written on the wooden cover of this book, and thence copied by J.H.D.D.P.R. that is, John Harris, D.D.  Prebendary of Rochester. It appears clearly from Hearne’s Preface, p. vi. that Dr. Leonard was the pilferer, for he had the book in his keeping, A.D. 1632. Whilst the book was in Dr. Leonard’s custody,28 Sir Edward Dering,xxviii the first baronet of the family, a gentleman of great parts and learning, and of immense application, made a transcript with his own hand29 of the whole of this book, that had not already been printed, or was not expected to be printed,30 which will again be mentioned below; and this he did with a public-spirited design of having it pass the press. Sir Edward’s hand is seen often in the margin of the original book; and from one place it appears, that he had recourse to the book, A.D. 1644, the very year he died, and after the MS. had been recovered into the hands of dean and chapter. The first volume of Sir Henry Spelman’s Councils came out A.D. 1639; wherein he has inserted several transcripts from this MS. but it is a question whether he ever saw the original; for hear what Mr. Johnson says, “By this inspection (of the MS. in relation to King Wihtred’s laws) I further learned, that Sir H. Spelman did most probably never view the MS. itself. For there are some mistakes so gross, that none used to the reading of Saxon monuments could possibly be guilty of them. The transcript from which he published them seems to have been made by some one that was a stranger to the Saxonic letters.”31 A.D. 1640, John de Laet,xxix a celebrated scholar of Antwerp, translated the laws of Ethelbert, Hlothere and Eadric, into Latin. He never saw the original, but had a transcript sent him by Sir Henry Spelman; and the original Saxon, with its version, may be seen in Dr. Hickes’s Thesaurus.32 Abraham Whelock,xxx Arabic Professor and public Librarian at Cambridge, reprinted Mr. Lambarde’s Archæonomia, anno 1644, in folio.

 Hearne, Textus Roffensis, p. v.  So I understand Mr. Hearne. 30  However, there were many things in this transcript that had been already published, as appears from Hearne’s edition of it. 31  John Johnson, A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England (Oxford, 1720), p. iii. 32  Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, pp. 88 f. 28 29

322 

A. RABIN

He had the use of a copy of Mr. Lambarde’s edition, amended in various places by the editor,33 and moreover made several additions to the work. I suppose it might be about the time that Mr. Somnerxxxi collated Sir Henry Spelman’s first volume of Councils, in the articles taken from the Textus, with the original; for that he compared the printed book therewith, we learn from Mr. Johnson34 and Bishop Kennet’s Life of Mr. Somner.35xxxii The volume so emended by him is now in the library of the church of Canterbury, and has been made use of by Dr. Wilkins.xxxiii During the time of the grand rebellion,xxxiv Bishop Nicolson supposes, this book was wisely committed to the care of Sir Roger Twysden, one of the learned editors of the X Scriptores;xxxv for in his custody, he says, he found it often referred to by Sir William Dugdale, in a work which he composed during these troubles.36 A.D. 1655, the first volume of Sir William Dugdale’s Monasticon came out, wherein Mr. Dodsworthxxxvi and he have made good use of our MS.xxxvii A.D. 1664, the second edition of Mr. Spelman’s Glossary was published; this contained the entire work, of which the former part had been corrected and enlarged by the author; and in the new, or second part, are inserted the forms of the ordeal trials, from our MS. which were also in Sir Edward Dering’s transcript, and have since appeared both in Mr. Hearne’s edition of that transcript, and in Mr. Browne’s Fasciculus to be mentioned below.xxxviii It ought to be here noted, that though this second part of the Glossary did not appear till anno 1664, yet it was compiled at the time the first part was, as we are informed in the preface to the last and best edition, printed A.D. 1687. A.D. 1666, Sir William Dugdale’s Origines Juridicales appeared, into which he copied from our MS. as mentioned above, the famous pleading at Pinnennden Heath, having made use of the MS. while it was lodged in the hand of Sir Roger Twysden. Mr. Edward Browne, the worthy and learned rector of Sundrich in Kent, reprinted the Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum, anno  Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 87.  Johnson, A Collection of the Laws, p. iii. 35  Bishop Kennet’s Life of Mr. Somner, prefixed to William Somner, A Treatise of the Roman Ports and Forts in Kent (Oxford, 1693), p. 89. 36  He means Sir William Dugdale’s Origines Juridicales (London, 1666). See Nicolson, English Historical Library, p. 134. 33 34

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

323

1689, in folio; and in the Appendix, or vol. II. p. 903, the Officium Ordalii is printed, as transcribed by him from the original MS.37 A.D. 1691, Mr. Wharton published his Anglia Sacra in two tomes, folio. The dean and chapter of Rochester entrusted him with their MS. to Lambeth, where Mr. Wharton then resided as chaplain to Archbishop Sancroft,xxxix and from thence he has transmitted into his first volume, p. 329, seq. whatever was suitable to his present design; and this was the first publication of this part of the MS. In the same year, came out Dr. Gale’s Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae Scriptores XV;xl and p. 792 he has inserted from our own MS. Genealogias per partes in Britannia regum regnari,xli which he styles a rare monument, formerly transcribed by him from this very ancient book. Charles Bertram, of Copenhagen,xlii has since reprinted these Genealogies from Dr. Gale’s edition, in his Britannicarum Gentium Historia Antiques Scriptores Tres, printed at Copenhagen, anno 1757.38 A part of these genealogies appear also in Hearne’s edition of Sir Edward Dering’s Transcript, p. 60, and the whole of them in that Transcript which was made by the Elstobs. See below. Dr. Hickes, in the second tome of his Thesaurus published anno 1703, obliged the world with his famous Dissertatio Epistolaris ad Bartholomæum Showere. The doctor was a person of great accuracy, and had recourse to the original MS. not only for the pieces already mentioned, but likewise for several others, which he has given us in that excellent epistle. In 1705, Mr. Humphrey Wanley’s large Catalogue of the northern books, both printed and MS. came out, making the third volume of Dr. Hickes’s Thesaurus; and here, p. 273. seq. we have a list of all the articles contained in our MS. as mentioned above, from his own ocular inspection. A.D. 1712 the MS. was at London, and, I imagine, for the use of Dr. Harris, who was prebendary of Rochester, and was then upon his History of Kent; for though this work did not appear till anno 1719, yet he had begun it, as he tells us, eight years before. Mr. Johnson was desirous of collating Sir H. Spelman’s edition of King Wihtred’s laws, with the original, but in a complaining strain tells us; “That noble MS. was not at home in its proper repository, during the whole time that I was composing this work.”39 The work came out A.D. 1720, being his Collection of Laws, &c.  See above, A.D. 1664.  See the Preface prefixed there to Nennius. 39  Mr. Johnson’s general preface to A Collection of the Laws. 37 38

324 

A. RABIN

However, the MS. was now in London; for the rev. Mr. William Elstob, and his sister Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob, employed one James Smith, a boy of ten years old, to make a transcript for them, in folio, of such parts of the MS. as had not been before published.40 This transcript the brother and sister collated and examined together, and it was finished x kal. June, or 23 May, 1712, being very fairly written in three months’ time; and a very extraordinary performance it is for such a boy.xliii Every page of it answers to the pages of the original book: and as what it contains more than the Dering transcript printed by Mr. Hearne will be noted hereafter; I shall only observe here, that this transcript, on the death of Mr. Elstob, came into the hands of his uncle, Dr. Charles Elstob, prebendary of Canterbury; and when he died, it was purchased with the rest of Mr. William Elstob’s Saxon transcripts by Mr. Joseph Ames, secretary to the Society of Antiquaries at London;xliv and I bought it at his auction, anno 1760. But this Mr. William Elstob, and his learned sister, being persons not generally known, though both of them exceedingly eminent in their way, I shall here insert a short account of them, from the papers of the sister, who, about the year 1738, compiled a brief Narrative of her own and her brother’s Life, and gave it in her own hand-writing to Mr. George Ballard, whom we shall have occasion to mention hereafter, and at whose request she drew it up.xlv Dr. Nathanael Wetherall,xlvi the worthy master of University College, was so fortunate as to find the narrative among Mr. Ballard’s MSS. in the Bodleian Library, and sent a transcript of it to the honourable and right reverend the Lord Bishop of Carlisle,xlvii who was pleased to communicate it to me, in order to enable me to give the following authentic, though contracted, account. William Elstob was born January the first, sixteen hundred and seventy-­ three, at Newcastle upon Tyne.xlviii He was the son of Ralph Elstob,41 merchant in that place, who was descended from a very ancient family in the bishoprick of Durham;42 as appears not only from their pedigree in the Heralds Office, but from several writings now in the family, one of which is a grant from William de la More, master of the Knights Templars,xlix to Adam de Elnestob, in the year thirteen hundred and four, on condition of 40  There are some things nevertheless in this transcript that had been printed before, as is noted above in several places. 41  By Jane his wife; Mrs. Elstob’s own Life. S.P. 42  See the notes on the English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-Day of St. Gregory (London, 1709), p. 17. The name is also there accounted for, p. 16. S.P.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

325

their paying twenty-four shillings to their house at Shotton et faciendo duos conventus ad curiam suam de Foxdene.43l William had the earliest part of his education at Newcastle,44 from thence about eleven years of age he removed to Eaton, where he continued five years. From Eaton, by the advice of an uncle, who was his guardian,45 he was placed at Catherine Hall in Cambridge, in a station below his birth and fortune. This, and the air not agreeing with his constitution, which was consumptive, was the occasion of his removal to Queen’s College, Oxford, under the tuition of Dr. Maugh, where he was a commoner, and continued till he was elected fellow of University College, by the friendship of Dr. Charlett,li master of the college, Dr. Hudson,lii &c.46 In seventeen hundred and two, he was by the dean and chapter of Canterbury presented to the united parishes of St. Swithin and St. Mary Bothaw, in London,47 where, after he had discharged the duty of a faithful and orthodox pastor, with great patience and resignation, after a long and lingering illness, he exchanged this life for a better, on Saturday, March the third, seventeen hundred and fourteen-fifteen.48 Mrs. Elstob informed Mr. Ballard by letter, that her brother was chaplain to William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle.49 Nicolson was consecrated 14 June, 1702, and it was probably soon after that, that he was appointed chaplain, but I imagine he was only titularly, and not domestically so. However, in February 1713, upon a prospect of a vacancy at Lincoln’s Inn, on the promotion of Dr. Francis Gastrel to the see of Chester,liii he solicited Lord Chief Justice Parkerliv for his interest, that he might be  I should suppose from hence that the grant ran to Adam de Elnestob and his heirs. S.P.  Where his father was the sheriff, anno 1685. Henry Bourne, The History of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1736), p. 243. S.P. 45  Charles Elstob, D.D. who was installed prebendary of Canterbury, anno 1685, and there died, anno 1721. S.P. 46  He removed to University College, 23 July, 1696, and was elected Fellow the same year, being then Bachelor of Arts. June 8, 1697, he took the degree of Master. Catalogue of Graduates at Oxford, (Oxford, 1727). S.P. 47  By the procurement, no doubt, of his uncle the prebendary. St. Mary Bothaw, after the fire of London, was united to St. Swithin; and as the dean and chapter of Canterbury were patrons of the former, and the Salters Company of the latter, the two incorporations have an alternate patronage, and the turn at this time was in the dean and chapter; the livings together are reputed at 140 l. per annum. S.P. 48  And was buried in the chancel of St. Swithin’s Church, London, under the communion table. S.P. 49  Ballard’s addition to Mrs. Elstob’s account of her brother. 43 44

326 

A. RABIN

appointed preacher there. He intimates in his letter,50 that he had not met with success in the world answerable to his merits; and it is certain he had not, nor was he more fortunate in the present application. The character which the lady gives of her brother, and which the reader would probably like best to receive in her own words, runs thus: To his parents, while they lived, he was a most dutiful son, affectionate to his relations, a most sincere friend, very charitable to the poor, a kind master to his servants, and generous to all, which was his greatest fault. He was of so sweet a temper, that hardly anything could make him shew his resentment, but when anything was said or done to the prejudice of religion, or disadvantage of his country. He had what might justly be called an universal genius, no arts or sciences being despised by him: he had a particular genius for languages, and was a master of the Greek and Latin; of the latter he was esteemed a good judge, and to write it with great purity; nor was he ignorant of the Oriental languages, as well as the Septentrional. He was a great lover of the antiquities of other countries, but more especially those of our own, having been at the pains and expenses of visiting most of the places in this nation that are remarkable either for natural or ancient curiosities, architecture, paintings, sculpture, &c. What time he could spare from the study of divinity, was spent chiefly in the Saxon learning, in which he was a great proficient.

Mrs. Elstob, after this, proceeds to give a detail of her brother’s Works; but as she is very short on this subject, and indeed has not mentioned them all, I shall here exhibit an enlarged description of them, partly from my own observations, and the information of Dr. Wetherell, but principally from Mr. Ballard’s MS. Preface to his own transcript of King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius, communicated to me by the most benevolent and public-spirited bishop of Carlisle.lv Mr. Elstob was a person extremely versed in the Saxon tongue,51 and being then resident in college, the very learned Dr. Hickes solicited him to 50  In the letter he wrote to the chief justice on the occasion, which is now in the hands of my most obliging friend Thomas Astle, esq; he observes, “he had been a preacher in the city eleven years, and diligent in his profession, as well as laborious in other matters, without seeking or finding such assistances as are both useful and necessary to such as converse with books.” 51  “In Litteratura et Antiquitate Septentrionali præclare eruditus Willelmus Elstob Collegii Universitatis apud Oxoniensis Socius dignissimus” [“The most excellent William Estob, fellow

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

327

give a Latin translation of the Saxon Homily of Lupus, and prevailed. The original, with the Latin version, is inserted by the doctor in his Epistolary Dissertation abovementioned, p.  99 seq. The Epistle Dedicatory to Dr. Hickes, thereunto prefixed, is dated University College, v Id. or 9 August, 1701; Mr. Elstob being then joint tutor in the College with Dr. Clavering, late bishop of Peterborough,lvi and in possession of a transcription of the original Saxon made by Junius,lvii to which he hath not only added the Latin version beforementioned, but also many excellent notes. He styles it “the first fruits of his labours in the Saxon tongue.” Mr. Elstob was author of “An Essay on the great affinity and mutual agreement of the two professions of Divinity and Law, and on the joint interest of Church and State , in vindication of the Clergy’s concerning themselves in Political Matters,” London, 92 pages octavo. To this, his friend Dr. Hickes wrote a Preface of two pages,52 on which occasion I may be allowed to observe, that he maintained an intimacy and correspondence also with the learned Mr. Humphrey Wanley,53 was well known to Dr. John Batteley, archdeacon of Canterbury,lviii and to Sir Andrew Fountaine,lix who, reciting the names of those that had furnished him with Saxon coins for his tables, speaks of Mr. Elstob in the following terms: “Nec non reverendus magister Elstob, qui pro eximia sua humanitate mihi communicavit Iconas nummorum, quos ipse habet Saxonicorum et quidem rarissimorum; atque etiam copiam mihi fecit nummorum, quos possidet reverendus C. (lege J.) Batteley archdiaconus Cantuarensis; sed dolendum est, hosce omnes ad me haud prius delatos esse, quam exculptæ fuerint tabulæ; nec interim licere eosdem commode tabulis inferere; cum fuerint omnes nummi regis Ethelredi, modo unum excipias qui erat Ethestani, et quator qui erant Edmundi.”54lx To the above learned authors of University College, Oxford, eminently knowledgeable in the literature and antiquities of the north”]. Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 98. 52  Ralph Thoresby, Ducatus Leodiensis (London, 1715), p. 129, and the MS. Life by Mrs. Elstob. Hence he says to lord chief justice Parker in the letter above mentioned: “Your lordship’s kind opinion of the respect I have for the English laws will, I hope, make this address at least not impertinent.” Indeed his sentiments on this head are most evident from his design hereafter to be mentioned, of publishing a new edition of the Saxon Laws. 53  He calls Mr. Wanley in the MS. Orosius mentioned below, Amicus noster perhumanus doctissimusque [Our most learned and courteous friend]. This is extremely natural, as Wanley had been a student in University College. See Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 90. 54  Sir Andrew Fountaine, in Dissertatio epistolaris præmiss tabulis numismata Saxonica, in Hickes, Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 166.

328 

A. RABIN

and antiquaries, I may add the great lawyers, John Fortescue Aland, Esq.;lxi and lord chief justice Parker.55 As to Mr. Strype, Mr. Elstob seems to have cultivated an early acquaintance with him: He communicated to Mr. Elstob a copy of an inedited epistle of Roger Ascham’s,56 and Elstob in return translated for him the mutilated Discourse of Sir John Cheke on Superstition,57 printed with Mr. Elstob’s letter to Mr. Strype, prefixed to Strype’s Life of Cheke.lxii Before Mr. Elstob left Oxford, he printed a neat edition of the celebrated Roger Ascham’s Epistles; to which he subjoined the letters of John Sturmius, Hieronymus Osorius,lxiii and others, to Ascham and other English gentlemen, Oxford, 1703, octavo. He dedicates it to Robert Heath, Esq; his familiar friend, to whom he had been assistant in his studies.58 Soon after he had settled in his benefice at London, he published A Sermon upon the Thanksgiving for the Victory obtained by her Majesty’s forces, and those of her allies, over the French and Bavarians near Hochstet, under the conduct of his Grace the Duke of Marlborough. London, 1704. The text was Ps. ciii.10. Also, A Sermon on the Anniversary Thanksgiving for her Majesty’s happy Accession to the Throne. London, 1704.” The text i Tim. ii.i, 2. Sir John Cheke translated Plutarch’s book on Superstition into Latin, and premised a discourse of his own upon that subject in the Latin tongue. A castrated copy of this discourse, after it had lain long in obscurity, was discovered by Mr. Elstob in the Library of University College; and he, as Mr. Strype tells us, not only courteously transcribed it for his use, but also voluntarily took the pains of translating it into English.59 The version is accordingly printed at the end of Strype’s Life of Sir John Cheke, London, 1705, octavo. There is a particular concerning this piece of Cheke’s, which is well worth noting; several pages, believed to contain the arguments of the author against the various superstitions of the Church of Rome, are 55  He begins the letter to lord chief justice Parker thus: “Your lordship was pleased to do me a great deal of honour when I was permitted to wait upon you with Mr. Fortescue; the learned conversation, and kind treatment, and generous promises of favour, by which you then made me your lordship’s debtor, call for my largest acknowledgements, &c.” 56   Elstob’s edition of Ascham’s Epistles, Rogeri Aschami Epistolarum, libri quatuor (Oxford, 1703), p. 379. 57  See below. 58  See the Dedication. 59  Advertisement prefixed to John Strype, Life of the Learned Sir John Cheke, with his Treatise on Superstition (Oxford, 1705).

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

329

wanting in the original; and Mr. Elstob, who always entertained a thorough detestation of the Popish innovations in religion, supposes, with reason, that those sheets were surreptitiously taken out of the work by the famous Obadaiah Walker,lxiv when he was master of University College, and had power over the MS. in the reign of King James II. The papists, as he observes, being remarkable for their clean conveyances that way.60 In 1709, his Latin version of the Saxon Homily on St. Gregory’s Day, which he presented to his learned sister in a short Latin epistle, was printed at the end of her fine edition of the Saxon original. “Mr. Elstob has published,”61 they are the words of Mr. Ballard, “the larger devotions which the Saxons made use of at that time in their own language, which from probable conjectures he fancies was the performance either of Ælfric archbishop of Canterbury,lxv or of Wulfstan archbishop of York.62 And to shew the world that they did not contain any thing but what is pure and orthodox, he has obliged the public with a faithful translation of them.”63

We are informed by his accomplished sister, that Mr. Elstob had made a collection of materials towards a history of his native place; that he had collected a vast number of proper names of men and women formerly used in northern countries; and that he likewise wrote an Essay concerning the Latin tongue, with a short account of its history and use, for the encouragement of such adult persons to set upon the learning of it, who have either neglected, or been frightened from receiving the benefit of that kind of education from their infancy; to which is added, some advice for the most easy and speedy attainment of it.lxvi What is become of the two collections abovementioned, is uncertain, and not very material; but as Mr. Elstob was a most excellent Latinist, his observations on that language must have been highly acceptable to the public, and one has reason to regret the loss of them. But the most considerable of Mr. Elstob’s designs, was an edition of the Saxon Laws, of which Mr. Ballard writes thus: “Mr. Elstob had spent 60  Elstob’s Letter to Strype, in Strype, Life of Cheke, where by Ob. is meant Obadiah Walker, as is evident from p. 275. 61  At the end of the first volume of Hickes, Several Letters which passed between Dr. Hickes and a Popish Priest, (London, 1705). 62  See Mr. Elstob’s Letter to Dr. Hickes, prefixed to Devotions in the Ancient Way, Reformed by a Person of Quality (London, 1700). 63  Mr. Ballard’s MS. Preface to Orosius, mentioned above.

330 

A. RABIN

much time and pains in preparing for the press a very valuable edition of all the Saxon Laws, both in print and manuscripts, of which learned performance, there is a great character given both by Dr. Hickes in his dedication prefixed to his first volume of Sermons, and by John Fortescue Aland, esq; in his preface to the book of Absolute and Unlimited64 Monarchy. But as the proposals for that work are fallen into my hands; and as they will give a more perfect idea of the performance, I will here add a transcript of them. Proposals in order to a new edition of the Saxon Laws. That those Laws which Mr. Lambarde and Mr. Whelock published, be published again more correctly. That the Laws of King Ethelberht, with those of Eadric and Hlothhere, and whatever else of that kind is to be met with, either in the Textus Roffensis, or in any other ancient MSS. judged proper to be inserted, be also added. That that of J.  Brompton,lxvii and the most ancient Translations, be considered and compared, and, if thought convenient, be likewise printed. That an entire new Latin translation be added of Mr. Somner’s. That such various readings, references, and annotations of learned men, viz. Spelman, Selden, Junius, D’Ewes,lxviii Laet, Hickes, &c. be adjoined, as shall serve to illustrate the work; with what other observations occur to the editor, untouched by these learned men. A general preface, giving an account of the origin and progress of the English Laws to the Norman Conquest, and thence to Magna Charta. That there be particular prefaces, giving so far an account of the several kings, as concerned their making laws. An addition of proper glossaries and indexes.”65 The death of Mr. Elstob prevented, as Mr. Ballard says, the publication of this useful performance, concerning which, see Mr. Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis, p.  129.lxix and Dr. Wilkins’s Praefatio ad Leges Saxonicæ. But this is the less to be lamented, as the learned Dr. David Wilkins, prebendary of Canterbury, has since obliged the world with a work of the same kind, as will be mentioned hereafter; and yet I think Mr. Elstob’s design promised to be more copious and large than the Doctor’s, especially in respect of annotation and elucidation.

 Read Limited.  Mr. Ballard’s MS. Preface cited above.

64 65

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

331

He was prevented also by death in another project, which was to give us King Alfred’s paraphrastical Saxon version of the Latin Historian Orosius. Notice of this intention we have from Dr. Hickes, who, speaking of Mr. Elstob, says, “Alfredi R. qui collegium fundarit, versionem Orosii libri historiarum, qui et Ormesta66lxx dicitur, Deo sospitante, literario orbi aliquando etiam daturus67.”lxxi Our author had proceeded so far in this work as to make a fair copy of it with his own hand in the Bodleian Library, anno 1698, when he was very young, from a transcript of Junius’s taken from a MS. in the Cotton Library, Tiberius B.i. Dr. Marshallxxii afterwards collated Junius’s transcript with the MS. in the Lauderdale Library, which had formerly belonged to Dr. Dee;lxxiii and Mr. Elstob’s copy is collated with the MS. in the Cotton Library, and there is also mention in the said copy of the Hatton MS. But this work, though it had been so long and so well prepared,68 was never put to the press, but came into the hands of Mr. Joseph Ames, at whose auction I bought it. Here it may be pertinent to note, that Mr. George Ballard, of Campden, in Gloucestershire, made another copy from Junius’s MS. A.D. 1751, in quarto and prefixed a large preface, shewing the use and advantages of the Anglo-Saxon literature. This volume, which is very fairly written, Mr. Ballard bequeathed by will to Dr. Charles Lyttelton, Bishop of Carlisle, then Dean of Exeter, to whom the copy is addressed, and his lordship was so condescending as to favor me with the perusal of it, and I have drawn considerable helps from the preface relative to Mr. Elstob and his learned sister, as appears above, 66  This word is thought to be a corruption of de miseria mundi. See Professor Havercamp’s Preface to his edition; but rather perhaps of orbis miseria, written abbreviatively in the old exemplar, whence the MSS. in being were taken. Or. misia, and misread by the copiers Ormesta. 67  Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris, in the Thesaurus, vol. 2, p. 98. 68  Mr. Elstob, speaking of the method he had used in translating the Saxon Homily abovementioned, says he had done it, “iisdem fere verbis repositis quæ in Saxonica olim transfusa, vel ex Turonensi Gregorio, vel tuo, vel ex Beda nostrate, vel utroque Diacono, et Johanne et Paulo. Eadem plane ratione, qua jam pridem Orosium a nobis elucrubratum scis.” [“in roughly the same restored words which were translated once in the Saxon, either from Gregory of Tours, or you, or our very own Bede, or the two deacons, John and Paul. In just the same way in which formerly you know that Orosius was brought to light by us.”] Letter to his sister appended to his Latin version of the Saxon Homily on St. Gregory’s Day, whence it should seem he had added a body of notes upon Orosius in a volume separate from the copy he had made of the Saxon version, for nothing of this kind appears in the copy. Perhaps they were intended to be transcribed into the blank leaves at the end of the copy, which are numerous.

332 

A. RABIN

and will be further evident in the sequel. Both Dr. Marshal and Mr. Ballard69 seem to have had it in their intention to publish the Saxon version of Orosius;70 but, however that was the case is clear in regard to Mr. Elstob, concerning whom Mr. Ballard writes, “It is very certain that the reverend and learned Mr. Elstob transcribed it with that view, and accordingly printed a specimen of it, which I have seen; it bore the following title. Hormesta Pauli Orosii quam olim patrio sermone donavit Ælfredus magnus, anglo-saxonum Rex doctissimus, ad exemplar Junianum descriptam edidit Willelmus Elstob, A.M. et Coll Univ. Socius. Oxoniæ, e Theatro Sheldoniano A.D. mdcic.” Mr. Elstob was particularly useful to his sister, in the great advances she made in literature, as likewise in her publications. This she testifies, both in her preface to the edition of the Saxon Homily, and in the MS. life of her brother. But concerning her, I must now subjoin a few memoirs, and the rather, because, as she was living when Mr. Ballard published his Memoirs of the Learned Ladies of Great Britain, anno 1752, there is no account of her in that work. Mr. Ballard otherwise was well acquainted with her, and had the highest esteem for her on account of her uncommon learning and accomplishments, and doubtless would have done all proper honour to her memory on that occasion. She was born in the parish of St. Nicholas, in Newcastle upon Tyne, September 29, 1683, so that she was ten years younger than her brother. Her mother, who was a great admirer of learning, especially in her own sex, observed the particular fondness which her daughter had for books, and omitted nothing that might tend to her improvement so long as she lived; but alas! She was so unfortunate as to lose her mother when she was about eight years of age, and had but just gone through her Accidence and Grammar. A stop was now put to her progress for a time, through a vulgar mistaken notion of her guardian, that one Tongue was enough for a woman. However, the force of natural inclination still carried her to improve her mind in the best manner she could, and as her propensity was strong towards languages, she with much difficulty obtained leave to learn the French tongue. But her situation in this respect was happily much altered  See Mr. Ballard’s MS Preface, p. 47.  With which the learned world were favoured in 1773, by the Hon. Daines Barrington [The Anglo-Saxon Version from the Historian Orosius, by Ælfred the Great (London, 1773)]. See Ballard’s Preface, and also Wanley’s Catalogus, p. 85, and Mrs. Elstob’s Preface to the Homily on the Birth-Day of St. Gregory, p. 6. 69 70

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

333

when she went to live with her brother, who, being impressed with more liberal sentiments concerning the education of women, very joyfully assisted and encouraged her in her studies for the whole time he lived. Under his eye, she translated and published an Essay on Glory, written in French by the celebrated Mademoiselle de Scudery.lxxiv But what characterizes Mrs. Elstob most, she, as she intimates in her dedication to the Saxon Homily, was the first English woman that had ever attempted that ancient and obsolete language, and I suppose is also the last.lxxv But she was an excellent linguist in other respects, being not only mistress of her own and the Latin tongue,71 but also of seven other languages. And she owed all her skill in learned tongues, except what may be ascribed to her own diligence and application, to her brother. She was withal a good antiquary and divine, as appears evidently from her works, which I must now recite. She published an English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-day, that is, the Death-day, of St. Gregory, anciently used in the English-Saxon church, giving an account of the conversion of the English from Paganism to Christianity, translated into modern English, with notes, &c. London 1709. It is a pompous book, in large octavo, with a fine frontispiece, headpieces, tailpieces, and blooming letters. She dedicates her work, which was printed by subscription, to Queen Anne. Mr. Thoresby, in the Ducatus Leodiensis, p. 129, gives notice of this intended publication,72 and there styles her the justly celebrated Saxon Nymph. Her preface, which is indeed an excellent and learned performance, was particularly serviceable to Mr. Ballard, who has made good use of it, in evincing the advantages of the Anglo-Saxon literature, and ingenuously acknowledges it.73 A.D. 1715, she printed The Rudiments of Grammar for the English Saxon tongue, first given in English;74 with an Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities, quarto. It was intended to be presented to the Princess Sophia; but as she died before it made its appearance, it is dedicated to the late Queen Caroline, then princess of Wales. The Apology is addressed to the most learned Dr. Hickes.  Epist. Fratris ad eam citat. suprà. [Letter to her brother cited above]  Her work was published before Mr. Thoresby’s, his Dedication bearing the date 1714; but, I presume, he had written this passage, before her book, to which he was a subscriber, was published. 73  See his MS. Preface to Orosius. 74  Dr. Hickes’s labours on the subject being in Latin. 71 72

334 

A. RABIN

The life of her brother and of herself, written at the request of Mr. Ballard, have been noticed above; wherefore I omit them here, only remarking that it appears from a note of Mr. Ballard’s, on the former piece, that she had drawn up the pedigree of her family, very curiously, on vellum; shewing, that, by the maternal side, the Elstobs were descended from the old kings or princes of Wales; in the middle there was a column, on the top of which stood King Brockmail,lxxvi on one side the paternal, and on the other maternal descents. It was in the earl of Oxford’s library.lxxvii Moreover, she tells us in her own life, that she had taken an exact copy of the Textus Roffensis upon vellum, “now in the library of that great and generous encourager of learning, the late right honourable the earl of Oxford.” My friend Mr. Astlelxxviii has now a MS. volume in his collection, chiefly in her hand-writing, but partly in that of her brother, intituled, Collectanea quædam Anglo-Saxonica, e Codd. MSS. hinc inde congesta. And in this original Textus Roffensis there is the Saxon alphabet on the reverse of the second folio signed E.E. which I presume must be her name.lxxix It appears also from a word of her brother’s, that she had joined with him in preparing and adorning an edition of Gregory’s Pastoral;75 a work which, I imagine, was intended to include both the original, and the Saxon version of it. And she informs us herself, in her Life, that “she had transcribed all the Hymns from an ancient MS. belonging to the church of Sarum.” In the Preface to the Saxon Grammar, p. 11, she speaks of a work of a larger extent, in which she was engaged, and which had amply experienced Dr. Hickes’s encouragement. This was a Saxon Homilarium, or a collection of the English Saxon Homilies of Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury. It was a noble though unsuccessful enterprise, and indeed her most capital undertaking. Mr. Ballard gives the following account of it. “Dr. Hickes, well knowing the great use which those Homilies had been of, and still might be, to the church of England, designed to publish, among other Saxon tracts, a volume of Saxon Homilies. But then he tells us,76 that though for want of further encouragement he could not carry on any one of those designs, yet it was no small pleasure to him, to see one of the most considerable of them attempted, with so much success, by Mrs. Elizabeth Elstob, ‘who,’ adds he, “with incredible industry hath furnished a Saxon Homilarium, or a Collection of the English-Saxon Homilies of  Epist. Fratris ad eam suprà laudata. [Letter to her brother mentioned above]  Hickes’s dedication to the first volume of his Sermons on Several Subjects, 2 vols. (London 1713). 75 76

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

335

Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury,lxxx which she hath translated, and adorned with learned and useful notes,77 and for the printing of which she hath published proposals; and I cannot but wish that for her own sake, as well as for the advancement of the Septentrional learning, and for the honour of our English-Saxon ancestors, the service of the Church of England, the credit of our country, and the honour of her sex, that learned and most studious gentlewoman may find such encouragement as she and her great undertaking deserve.’ This work was begun printing in a very pompous folio at the theatre in Oxford (and five or more of the Homilies were wrought off in a very beautiful manner), and was to have born the following title. The English Saxon Homilies of Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury, who flourished in the latter end of the tenth century, and the beginning of the eleventh. Being a Course of Sermons collected out of the Writings of the ancient Latin Fathers, containing the Doctrine &c. of the Church of England before the Norman Conquest, and shewing its purity from many of the Popish innovations and corruptions which were afterwards introduced into the Church. Now first printed and translated into the language of the present times, by Elizabeth Elstob.”78 This elogium of Mrs. Elstob, and her undertaking, by so great a man, and a person so well versed in the subject as Dr. Hickes, redounds infinitely to the lady’s honour; the design, however, though so prosperously begun, and even so far advanced, proved abortive for the work was never published, for want, I imagine, of encouragement; what is become of the MS. I have not at present learned. But this excellent woman, her profound learning, and masculine abilities notwithstanding, was very unfortunate in life. After the death of her brother, and the ill success of her studies, she was obliged to depend upon her friends for subsistence, but did not meet with the generosity she might reasonably expect; Bishop Smalridge being the only person from whom she received any relief. After being supported by his friendly hand for a while, she at last could not bear the thoughts of continuing a burden to one who was not very opulent himself; and being shocked with the cold respect of some, and the haughty scorn of others, she determined to retire to a place unknown, and to try to get her bread by teaching children to

 And, as she mentions in her own Life, had added the various readings.  Ballard’s MS.  Preface to Orosius, penes Episc. Cadcol. [belonging to the Bishop of Carlisle]. 77 78

336 

A. RABIN

read and work, and she settled for that purpose at Evesham in Worcestershire. At Evesham she led at first but an uncomfortable and penurious life; but growing acquainted afterwards with the gentry of the town, her affairs mended, but still she had scarce time to eat, much less for study.79 She became known after this to Mr. Ballard,80 whom I have so often mentioned; and about the year 1733, one Mrs. Capon, the wife of a clergyman of French extraction, who kept a private boarding school at Stanton, in Gloucestershire, and was herself a person of literature, enquired of him after her, and being informed of the place of her abode, made her a visit. Mrs. Capon, not being in circumstances to assist her herself, wrote a circular letter to her friends, in order to promote a subscription in her behalf. This letter, which was extremely well written, describing her merit, her extensive learning, her printed works, her ease and affluence till her brother’s death, her multiplied distresses afterwards, and the meekness and patience with which she bore them, had the desired effect, and an annuity of twenty guineas was raised for her. This enable her to keep an assistant, by which means she could again taste of that food of the mind, from which she had been so long obliged to fast. A lady, soon after, shewed Mrs. Capon’s letter to Queen Caroline, who, recollecting her name,81 and delighted with the opportunity of taking such eminent merit into her protection, said, she would allow her twenty pounds per annum; but, adds she, as she is so proper to be mistress of a boarding school for young ladies 79  Her own account of her situation at Evesham goes thus: “I had several other designs, but was unhappily hindered by a necessity of getting my bread, which, with much difficulty, labour, and ill-health, I have endeavoured to do for many years, with very indifferent success. If it had not been that Almighty God was graciously pleased to raise me up lately some gracious and good friends, I could not have subsisted; to whom I always was, and will, by the grace of God, be most grateful.” MS. Life. 80  Ballard, Memoirs, p. 249. This Mr. Ballard was a most extraordinary person: he was bred in low life, a woman’s taylor, at Campden, in Gloucestershire, but having a turn for letters, and in particular toward Saxon learning, he became acquainted, from a similarity of study, with Mrs. Elstob, after she was settled at Evesham. By the assistance of the Rev. Mr. Talbot, vicar of Kineton, in Warwickshire, and a recommendation to the President of Magdelen College, Oxon, he removed to that University. The President appointed him one of the eight clerks of his college, which furnished him with chambers and commons; and thus being a Gremial, he was afterwards elected, by the procurement of the President, one of the Beadles of the University. See more of him in John Nichols, Anecdotes of William Bowyer and his Literary Friends (London, 1782), pp. 10, 500. 81  On account of the Dedication beforementioned.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

337

of higher rank, I will, instead of an annual allowance, send her one hundred pounds now, and repeat the same at the end of every five years. On the death of queen Caroline, anno 1737, a most unlucky event in appearance for poor Mrs. Elstob, she was seasonably recommended to the present duchess dowager of Portland;lxxxi and her grace, to whose father, the earl of Oxford, she had been well known, was pleased of her goodness to appoint her governess to her own children; this was in the year 1739; and from this period, the letters she wrote to Mr. Ballard, which are now in the Bodleian Library, are observed to have a more sprightly turn, and she seems to have been exceedingly happy in her situation. To be short, she died in an advanced age, in her Grace’s service, May 30, 1756, and was buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. I am obliged to my much esteemed friend, Mr. Thomas Seward, residentiary of Lichfield,lxxxii for the above very particular account of Mrs. Elstob’s life; and as this gentleman knew both her and Mrs. Capon personally, and was one of the subscribers above-­ mentioned, the narrative may be depended upon.82 I proceed now to speak of the remaining publications of the Textus Roffensis: Dr. Harris’s History of Kent was published, anno 1719, as was mentioned. He has printed several extracts from the Textus, as has been already noted, but always gives the Saxon in the common type; I think nothing appears here, but what had been already published, except that p. 32 he gives us the Arabic numeral characters from it, as they appear on the top of each leaf, or each other page, which he supposes to be of the same age with the book itself, which might be finished, as he conjectures, about anno 1120.83 This I think to be a point very doubtful, since the numerals that appear in the book, where they are often applied, are always Roman, a strong presumption, that these characters on the top of the leaves have been added since. However, the Doctor has added these numeral characters to Mrs. Elstob’s alphabet on the reverse of the second folio in the original, in his own hand-writing, with this note: This shews these Arabic characters to have been used here about the year 1115, when Ernulfus was consecrated.84

82  Some farther particulars both of Mrs. Elstob and her brother may be seen in Nichols, Anecdotes of Bowyer, pp. 11, 48, 110, 316, 498, 502, 528. 83  See what has been said above on this subject. 84  See what has been said upon this.

338 

A. RABIN

I have heard that a bad accident happened to our MS. at this time, which endangered the entire loss of it. Being carried by water from Rochester to London, and back again, the book by some means or other fell in its return into the water, but was happily recovered, and without much damage;85 for when I saw it, about the year 1742, by the favour of the late Archbishop Herring,lxxxiii who was then bishop of Bangor and dean of Rochester, it was in a very good condition, being a small quarto on vellum, bound in red.86 The book has been in perils both by land and water, and I presume this last escape will prove a sufficient warning to the dean and chapter, not to suffer it to go any more out of their custody. Upon the return of the book to its abode in Rochester, the learned Mr. John Johnson,87 rector of Cranbrook, in Kent, had recourse to it; these are his words: “Since my translation of those Laws (of Wihtred, king of Kent) was printed off, I was informed that this Textus was restored to its place of residence, and I had the favour of perusing it; but I found no variation of moment, but what Mr. Somner had taken notice of in his written notes; yet, by inspecting the original, I was able to distinguish between Mr. Somner’s conjectural emendations, and those which he made from the text itself.”88 Mr. Johnson’s Collection of Laws, &c. came out, anno 1720, in 2 volumes octavo.lxxxiv A. D. 1720, Mr. Hearne, the famous Oxford antiquary, published Sir Edward Dering’s transcript in octavo by subscription, at 5 s. for the small, and 10  s. for the large paper. The transcript had lain in the library at Surenden-Dering, from A.D. 1632, and from thence the late John Anstis, Esq. Garter King at Arms,lxxxv my very worthy friend, borrowed it for Mr. Hearne of the late Sir Edward Dering, a gentleman for whom I shall always profess the highest esteem. The MS. does not now appear in the library, having never been returned by these gentlemen;lxxxvi this, however, is not a thing of much consequence; since the first Baronet had always intended his MS. for publication, and as it is now printed, and we can perfectly rely upon the editor for the accuracy of his performance89. Mr. Hearne had 85  “The MS. itself,” says Mr. Johnson, who saw it after this disaster, “is in a very fair hand, and well preserved, save where it is tarnished by the salt-water it took in its late travels.” Johnson, A Collection of the Laws, p. iv. 86  It has been new bound since Dr. Harris used it, probably after its recovery from the deep. 87  Of whom a particular account will be annexed to this Dissertation. 88  Johnson, A Collection of the Laws, p. iii. 89  The instrument which the accurate Sir William Blackstone has given us, p. iv. of his Introduction to his superb edition of Magna Charta, &c. is copied from Hearne’s edition.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

339

both Sir Edward Dering’s leave for the publication, and that of the late Bishop Atterbury,lxxxvii which last was procured for him by Mr. Anstis. The editor has not printed the whole of Sir Edward Dering’s transcript, for he has omitted some things, either already published, or that might be published by others, confining himself chiefly to such matters as might relate ad rem diplomaticam.90lxxxviii Thus, for example, he has omitted the Judicia Civitatis Lundoniæ, because they are almost all extant in Brompton, and were intended to be inserted by Dr. Wilkins in his edition of the Leges Anglo-Saxonicæ. It is a mistake, therefore, in Bishop Tanner, to say, that the whole Textus Roffensis was printed by Mr. Hearne.91 There were some additions made by Sir Edward in the margin of his transcript; concerning these, the editor tells us, lest they should be thought an objection to the authority of the copy, “Exscriptorem fuisse virum eruditissimum, ipsique nulla privati emolumenti spe fuisse decretum annotationes paullo prolixiores ac uberiores in registrum hoc scribere.”92lxxxix But we do not find that Sir Edward made any great advances in the design of a commentary; Mr. Hearne goes on, “Adeo ut notulæ marginales (e quarum sane numero sunt clypei cum crucibus decussatis), lineæque sub aliquibus vocibus in textu ductæ, sunt exscriptoris; quas omnes ideo adjungendas censuimus, ne eruditorum quisquam fidem nostram suspectam haberet, &c.”xc As to these shields cum crucibus decussatis, they are the arms of Sir Edward Dering, which Mr. Hearne seems not to be aware of; for the coat of this family is O. a saltire S.xci and the shields are always put against those places where mention is made of the name of Dering, or of persons that might probably belong to his family, and in order to insinuate the same: see pp. 184, 185, 192, 200, 218, 235. I would further note, that the transcript, procured by the Elstobs, contains something more than this of Sir Edward. There you have the genealogies printed by Dr. Gale; the names of the popes and emperors, the bishops of Jerusalem, the bishops of Alexandria, the bishops of Antioch, the archbishops of Canterbury, the bishops of Rochester, printed by Mr. Wharton, and the bishops of the several sees in England. That chasm in Hearne, p. 127, is supplied, as likewise are all the other chasms; a large William Blackstone, The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest, with other authentic instruments (Oxford, 1759). 90  Hearne, Textus Roffensis, p. vii. 91  Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 265. 92  Hearne, Textus Roffensis, p. xiii.

340 

A. RABIN

Saxon instrument beginning “þa ða se biscop gaðwine,” &c. occurs also in Elstob’s transcript;xcii and the catalogue of books, which is so short in Hearne, p. 234, extends here to many pages. My late good friend the very worthy and learned Dr. John Denne, archdeacon of Rochester, has been at the pains of collating his copy of Mr. Hearne’s edition with the original MS. throughout. He has noted where every leaf of the original begins, the true readings of the MS. in several places, an omission here and there, and has transcribed the marginal additions that appear in the original by several later hands, as Mr. Lambarde, Sir Edward Dering, &c. The Doctor has moreover noted with the utmost care and diligence in what other MSS. the several instruments treasured up in this chartulary are also to be found, as in the Registrum Temp. Roff.xciii and the Cotton Library, which makes his book of greatly more value than the naked edition of Mr. Hearne. The Doctor was afterwards pleased to give me leave to transcribe into my copy all the annotations here mentioned, together with the references above, which I got done by a very careful hand, the Rev. Mr. Richard Husband, minor canon of Rochester, my respectable friend. A. D. 1721, Dr. Wilkins’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws came out in folio. He has compared the Laws of Ethelbert, Holthere, and Eadric, with our MS. and supplied the defects and chasms in De Laet’s version; what other use he has made of the original, may be seen in his Preface. A.D. 1737. This gentleman published Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ, &c. in 4 volumes, folio; and in the first volume are many articles from Spelman’s former edition, compared with the Textus, and chiefly as I think, by Mr. Somner, as may be collected from the Doctor’s Preface, p. iii. compared with Bishop Kennet’s Life of Somner, p. 89. COROLLARY The Textus Roffensis is doubtless in very safe and good hands; but if, by any accident, an unexpected misfortune should now happen to it, sufficient care has been taken to perpetuate it, by the several publications above-mentioned; the transcripts93 made by the Elstobs, and the collation made by Dr. Denne, of which last there are at present two copies. However, whereas Dr. Wilkins says, “Maxime venerandum hoc monumentum antiquitatis in summum reipublicæ literariæ commodum typis expressum

93  I express it plurally, on account of Mrs. Elstob’s own transcript on vellum, mentioned above.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

341

extat94;”xciv this is not strictly true, some parts of the MS. having not been yet printed; but they are nevertheless secured by the transcripts. Samuel Pegge.

13.4   Editorial Notes and Commentary







i. Philip Carteret Webb (1702–1770), whose Short Account of Domesday Book, with a view to its Publication (London, 1756) led to the first effort to publish the complete record of the Domesday survey (see Condon and Hallam 1984). ii. Henry Wharton (1664–1695), author of the Anglia Sacra (London, 1691), a collection of ecclesiastical biographies which furnished Pegge with much of the source material for his account. iii. On Ernulf’s career and his involvement with the production of the Textus Roffensis, see Cramer (1989) and Richards (2015). iv. Pegge’s citation of William of Malmesbury is unclear here. William lists Ernulf’s age in cap. i.72.17 of the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum. This section of the Gesta had only been edited once prior to the publication of Pegge’s lecture, in 1596 by Sir Henry Savile, an edition later reprinted in 1601. Unfortunately, the relevant passage from the Gesta does not occur on p. 234 in either of these printings. It is possible Pegge is citing some other unidentified text or, more likely, that he miscopied the page number from the edition he had at hand. For early editions of the Gesta, see Winterbottom (2007, pp. xxv–xxvi). v. John Harris (1666–1719), prebendary of Rochester and author of the unfinished History of Kent (London, 1719). vi. Thomas Hearne (1678–1735), antiquarian and editor of the first, albeit incomplete, edition of Textus Roffensis (Oxford, 1720). vii. Humphrey Wanley (1672–1726), antiquarian and author of the first major catalogue of Old English manuscripts, published as the second volume of George Hickes’ Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus (Oxford, 1703–1705).

 David Wilkins, Praefatio to Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica. p. xliv.

94

342 









A. RABIN

viii. Rochester had two bishops named John who served consecutively, 1125–1137 and 1139–1142. Bishop Ascelin held the see from 1142 to 1148. ix. For a more complete catalogue of the manuscript’s contents, see Sawyer, Textus Roffensis, 15–18. x. “Ordinances of the City of London,” likely the set of laws now known as VI Æthelstan. xi. William Lambarde (1536–1601), editor of the Archaionomia (London, 1568), the editio princeps of Old English law. xii. A brief set of regulations concerning the ordeals of hot iron and water, Ordal occurs on fols. 32r–v of Textus. xiii. There are several inaccuracies in this section of Pegge’s lecture. First, Pegge here confuses the Laurence Nowell who served as dean of Lichfield from 1570 to 1576 with his cousin of the same name. The latter Laurence Nowell (ca. 1515–ca. 1571) was an antiquarian and friend of William Lambarde. This error, which did not originate with Pegge, would persist into the twentieth century (see Berkhout 1998). Second, Pegge is incorrect in claiming that Nowell had seen Textus and that his transcripts formed the basis of Lambarde’s Archaionomia. See Brackmann 2012, 199. xiv. George Hickes (1642–1715), author of the Institutiones Grammaticae Anglo-Saxonicae et Moeso-Gothicae (Oxford, 1689), and the celebrated Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus (Oxford, 1703–1705). xv. It is unclear which History of Lambeth Palace Pegge refers to here. The most likely candidate is Andrew Ducarel’s History and Antiquities of Lambeth Palace, published in Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, no. 27 (London, 1785). Although published a year later than Pegge’s lecture, Ducarel’s is the earliest published history of the palace, and his friendship with Pegge makes it likely that the latter had access to a pre-­ publication draft. xvi. Archbishop Matthew Parker of Canterbury (1504–1575) and his secretary John Joscelyn (1529–1603) were at the center of a circle of antiquaries based at the archbishop’s London residence, Lambeth Palace. Among their most significant publications—referenced here by Pegge—was the De antiquitate

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 







343

Britanniae ecclesiae (London, 1572), a history of the English Church along Protestant lines notable for including the earliest printed reference to the Sermo lupi ad Anglos of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (see Brackmann 2012, 1–28; see also Graham 2000, 2006). xvii. Archdeacon John Denne of Rochester (1693–1767). xviii. S 1511 (see Whitelock 1930, 128–32). xix. John Selden (1584–1654), a jurist, antiquarian, and editor of Eadmer’s Historia novarum, which he published under the title Spicilegium ad Eadmerum (London, 1623) and the appendix to which included the earliest printed extracts of Domesday Book. xx. A land dispute proceeding from Lanfranc’s inquiry into accusations that Odo (half-brother to William I) had defrauded the Church (see Cooper 2001). Pegge is incorrect in attributing Selden’s account of the Pennenden Heath trial to Textus. Selden had no access to Textus, and instead relied on the account in London, BL, Cotton Vespasian A.xxii (see Flight 2004, 21). xxi. Sir William Dugdale (1605–86), antiquarian and scholar of heraldry. xxii. Sir Henry Spelman (ca. 1562–1641), antiquarian and editor of the Archaeologus in modum glossarii (London, 1626) and the Concilia Ecclesiastica Orbis Britannici (London, 1639). xxiii. Thomas Leonard, a Canterbury physician. xxiv. Walter Balcanqual (ca. 1586–1645) a Scottish clergyman and royalist who served as dean of Rochester Cathedral from 1624 to 1639. xxv. A full account of the manuscript’s theft and recovery can be found in Arnold (1914). xxvi. “This venerable monument of antiquity [which was] sought for an entire two years, the thief finally having been found but strenuously refusing its return: Walter Balcanqual, Dean of this Church, recovered [it] by Decree of the Highest Curia, which they call the Chancellery, at no small expense to this Church, [and] took care that [it] be returned to its previous owners. In the year 1633 after the Incarnate Birth” (trans. Oliver 2002, 24).

344 

A. RABIN

xxvii. The Thesaurus is a capacious work and, as a number of scholars have observed, its contents are difficult to anatomize. It consists of five parts distributed over three volumes, though the first two of these are bound together so that it has been described variously as either a two-volume or a three-volume work. Although the former description is more common in modern scholarship, Pegge uses the latter, which is therefore used for the notes here as well. For an outline of the Thesaurus’ contents, see Harris (1992, 435–6). xxviii. Sir Edward Dering (1598–1644), antiquarian and royalist politician. Dering’s transcript of Textus formed the basis of Hearne’s edition, though it disappeared in the early eighteenth century. xxix. Johannes De Laet (1581–1649), Dutch historian, antiquary, and directory of the Dutch West India Company (see Bremmer 2008). xxx. Abraham Whelock (1593–1653), linguist, historian, and the first Abrams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge. Editor of the editio princeps of the Old English version of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica. xxxi. William Somner (1598–1569), author of the first dictionary of Old English, the Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum (London, 1659). xxxii. Pegge here refers to John Johnson (1662–1725), theologian and author of A Collection of the Laws and Canons of the Church of England (Oxford, 1720), and Bishop White Kennet of Peterborough (1660–1728). xxxiii. David Wilkins (1685–1745), editor of the Leges Anglo-­ Saxonicae Ecclesiasticae et Civiles (London, 1721). xxxiv. That is, the English Civil War. xxxv. Bishop William Nicolson of Carlisle (1655–1727) was an English ecclesiastic and antiquary. Sir Roger Twysden (1597–1672) was an antiquary, royalist partisan, and contributor to the Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem (London, 1652), which Pegge refers to here as X Scriptores. xxxvi. Roger Dodsworth (1585–1654), antiquary. xxxvii. Pegge here has misread both Nicolson and Dugdale. It is unlikely that Dugdale used Textus in either the Monasticon or the Origines Juridicales (see Flight 2014, 23–4).

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

345

xxxviii. Edward Browne, rector of Sundridge, Kent (fl. 1690s), editor of the Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum (London, 1690 [Pegge incorrectly dates it to 1689]), a collection of sixteenth-century ecclesiastical treatises. xxxix. Archbishop William Sancroft of Canterbury (1617–1693). xl. Thomas Gale (ca. 1636–1702), antiquary and ecclesiastic. The Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae Scriptores XV (Oxford, 1691) is an anthology of sources bearing on the early history of Britain. xli. “Genealogy of the kings who ruled the parts of Britain”. xlii. Charles Bertram (1723–65), English historian living in Denmark notable for “discovering” a lost medieval tract entitled De Situ Britanniae, which was not recognized as a forgery until 1846. Pegge here cites his Britannicarum Gentium Historia Antiques Scriptores Tres (Copenhagen, 1757). xliii. The manuscript is now London, BL, Stowe 940. On the transcription, see Graham (2014, 273–4). xliv. Joseph Ames (1689–1759), antiquary and historian of typography. xlv. This letter is preserved as Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ballard 43 (see Sutherland 1994, 62–3). George Ballard (1706–1755) was an antiquary most famous for his Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, Who Have Been Celebrated for their Writings, or Skill in the Learned Languages, Arts and Sciences (Oxford, 1752). xlvi. Nathan Wetherall (1726–1808), Dean of Hereford, Master of University College, Oxford, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. xlvii. Almost certainly Bishop Charles Lyttelton (1714–1768), an avid historian and president of the Society of Antiquaries from 1765–1768. xlviii. This section follows Elizabeth Elstob’s own account of her life in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ballard 43. Pegge has added the initials S.P. to the end of the next several footnotes, apparently to clarify that the notes are his rather than Elstob’s. xlix. William de la More served as Master of the Temple, London, from 1298–1307. l. “attending two assemblies at his court at Foxdene.” Pegge had not seen the grant directly, but instead quoted this phrase

346 

A. RABIN

from a letter of Elizabeth Elstob to Humphrey Wanley in which she recounts her family history. The text is reprinted in Richardson 1843–9, 65. li. Arthur Charlett (1655–1722), master of University College, Oxford. lii. John Hudson (1662–1719), fellow of University College and Bodley’s Librarian from 1701 to 1719. liii. Francis Gastrel (1662–1725), bishop of Chester and friend to Jonathan Swift. liv. Thomas Parker, First Earl of Macclesfield (1666–1732). lv. The manuscript is now London, Society of Antiquaries 64. On Ballard’s transcript, see Campbell (1953, 24). lvi. Bishop Robert Clavering of Peterborough (1676–1747), who was also a Fellow of University College from 1701 to 1714. lvii. Francis Junius (1591–1677), antiquary and philologist. Published the first edition of the so-called “Junius Book” of Old English poetry, Oxford, Bodleian, Junius 11. lviii. John Batteley (1646–1708), archdeacon of Canterbury from 1688 to 1708. lix. Andrew Fountaine (1676–1753), antiquary and amateur architect. lx. “Also we have the reverend Magister Elstob, who, out of great generosity, has given to me many of the rarest coins of the Saxons which he had; and even passed along many coins which had been owned by C. (read J.) Batteley, archdeacon of Canterbury; but sad to say, they were not delivered earlier before the tables were inscribed; it is not in the interim permitted to reinscribe them appropriately on the tables; since they were all coins of King Æthelred, except one which was of Æthelstan, and four which were of Edmund.” lxi. Sir John Fortescue Aland, First Baron Fortescue of Credan (1670–1746), legal theorist and constitutional historian. Author of The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy (London, 1714). lxii. Roger Ascham (1515–1568) was a scholar and tutor to Elizabeth I. Sir John Cheke (1514–1517) was the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University. John Strype (1643–1737) was a cleric and author of Life of the learned Sir John Cheke, with his Treatise on Superstition (Oxford, 1705).

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

347

lxiii. Johannes Sturm (1507–89) and Hieronymus Osorius (1506–1580), prominent Humanist authors. lxiv. Obadiah Walker (1616–1699), master of University College, Oxford. lxv. It was believed during this period that the homilies now ascribed to Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham had instead been composed by Archbishop Ælfric of Canterbury. This error can be found in Elstob’s edition as well as in the account of it by George Ballard, quoted here by Pegge. lxvi. Now Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ballard 63. lxvii. John Brompton (fl 1436), abbot of Jervaulx and possible author of an early medieval chronicle attributed to him by Sir Roger Twysden in the Decem Scriptores (See above, n. x). lxviii. Sir Simonds d’Ewes (1602–1650), antiquary and member of the Long Parliament. lxix. Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), antiquary and author of the Ducatus Leodiensis; or the Topography of the antient and populous Town and Parish of Leedes and parts adjacent in the West Riding of the County of York (London, 1715). lxx. Pegge’s source in this note is Siwert Haverkamp, Pauli Orosii Presbyteri Hispani Adversus Paganos Historiarum Libri Septem (Leyden, 1767). lxxi. “Indeed, with God’s help, he is about to give to the literary world King Alfred’s version of the books of history of Orosius, who wrote of the miseries of the world.” lxxii. Thomas Marshall (1621–1685), rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Friend of Francis Junius. lxxiii. John Dee (1527–1609), mathematician and astrologer at the court of Elizabeth I. lxxiv. Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), French novelist and essayist. lxxv. It is tempting to wonder what Mr. Pegge would have made of this volume’s honoree. lxxvi. Brochwel ap Cyngen (d. ca. 560), king of Powys, an early kingdom in eastern Wales. lxxvii. Aubrey de Vere (1627–1703), twentieth Earl of Oxford. lxxviii. Thomas Astle (1735–1803), antiquary and paleographer. lxxix. Now London, BL Egerton 813. lxxx. See above, n. x.

348 

A. RABIN

lxxxi. Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785), notable for her patronage of scholars and extensive natural history collection. lxxxii. Thomas Seward (1708–1790), clergyman and associate of Samuel Johnson and Erasmus Darwin. lxxxiii. Archbishop Thomas Herring of Canterbury (1693–1757). lxxxiv. See above, n. x. lxxxv. John Anstis (1669–1744), antiquary and parliamentarian. lxxxvi. Dering’s transcript eventually found its way into the hands of the antiquary Richard Gough (1735–1809), who willed it— along with the rest of his library—to the British Museum. It is now London, BL, Gough Kent 1. lxxxvii. Francis Atterbury (1663–1732), Bishop of Rochester. lxxxviii. “to documentary issues.” lxxxix. “The copyist was a most learned man and was determined, without hope of personal reward, to write a bit more detailed and richer annotations on this register.” xc. “in such a way that the marginal notes (clearly among which number are shields marked with a cross) and lines drawn under some words in the text belong to the copyist; all of which we think ought thus to be adjoined, lest an erudite person might hold our accuracy suspect.” xci. Armorial abbreviation for “or a saltire sable,” that is, a black St. Andrew’s Cross on a shield of gold. xcii. The “large Saxon instrument” referred to is the charter S 1456, which occurs on fols 155r–156v of Textus. xciii. John Thorpe, Registrum Roffense (London, 1769). xciv. “This most venerable monument of antiquity stands expressed in type for the greatest benefit of the republic of letters.”

References Manuscripts Strood, Medway Archive and Local Studies Centre, MS DRc/R1 (Textus Roffensis).

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

349

Editions Ballard, G. 1752. Memoirs of Several Learned Ladies of Great Britain. Oxford: W. Jackson. Barrington, D. 1773. The Anglo-Saxon Version from the Historian Orosius, by Alfred the Great. London: W. Bowyer. Campbell, A. 1953. The Tollemache Orosius (British Museum Additional Ms 47967). In Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Hickes, G., and H. Wanley. 1703–5. Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus Grammatico-Criticus et Archaeologicus. Oxford: Sheldonian Theatre. Pegge, S. 1784. An Historical Account of that Venerable Monument of Antiquity the Textus Roffensis; Including Memoirs of the Learned Saxonists Mr. William Elstob and His Sister. Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica XXV. London. Sawyer, P.H. 1957. Textus Roffensis: Rochester Cathedral Library manuscript A. 3. 5, v. 1. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Whitelock, D. 1930. Anglo-Saxon Wills. Cambridge: University Press. Winterbottom, M., ed. 2007. William of Malmesbury: Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, Vol. 1: Text and Translation, Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Texts Arnold, A.A. 1914. The Textus Roffensis in Chancery, A.D. 1633. Archaeologia Cantiana 30: 225–232. Berkhout, C.T. 1998. Laurence Nowell (1530–ca. 1570). In Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, 2: Literature and Philology, ed. H. Damico, D. Fennema, and K. Lenz, 3–16. New York: Taylor and Francis. Brackmann, R. 2012. The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England: Lawrence Nowell, William Lambarde and the Study of Old English. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. Bremmer, R.R., Jr. 2008. “Mine Is Bigger than Yours”: The Anglo-Saxon Collections of Johannes de Laet (1581–1649) and Sir Symonds D’Ewes. In Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers, ed. T.N. Hall and D. Scragg, 136–174. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Press. Collins, S.H. 1982. The Elstobs and the End of the Saxon Revival. In Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries, ed. C.T.  Berkhout and M.M.  Gatch, 107–118. Boston: G.K. Hall. Condon, M.M., and E. Hallam. 1984. Government Printing of the Public Records in the Eighteenth Century. Journal of the Society of Archivists 7 (6): 348–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/00379818409514252.

350 

A. RABIN

Cooper, A. 2001. Extraordinary Privilege: The Trial of Penenden Heath and the Domesday Inquest. English Historical Review 116 (469): 1167–1192. https:// doi.org/10.1093/ehr/116.469.1167. Cramer, P. 1989. Ernulf of Rocher and Early Anglo-Norman Canon Law. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40: 483–510. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S002204690005898X. Fairer, D. 1986. Anglo-Saxon Studies. In The Eighteenth Century, ed. L.G. Mitchell and L.S. Sutherland, 807–828. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flight, C. 2014. The Making of Textus Roffensis. http://www.durobrivis.net/ rochester/cathedral/textus/bmr-textus.pdf Graham, T. 2000. John Joscelyn, Pioneer of Old English Lexicography. In The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. T. Graham 83–140. Kalamazoo, Medieval Institute Publications. ———. 2001. Anglo-Saxon Studies: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. In A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, ed. P.  Pulsiano and E.  Treharne, 415–433. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2006. Matthew Parker’s Manuscripts: An Elizabethan Library and its Use. In Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland, ed. P.  Hoare, 322–342. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2014. William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection. In Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on His 70th Birthday, ed. S. Horobin and L.R. Mooney, 269–296. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press. Harris, R.I. 1992. A Chorus of Grammars: The Correspondence of George Hickes and his Collaborators on the Thesaurus Linguarum Septentrionalium. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Hughes, S.F.D. 2005. Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) and the Limits of Women’s Agency in Early-Eighteenth-Century England. In Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. J. Chance, 3–24. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Liebermann, F. 1898. Notes on the Textus Roffensis. Archaeologia Cantiana 23: 101–112. Morton, R. 1990. Elizabeth Elstob’s Rudiments of Grammar (1715): Germanic Philology for Women. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 20: 267–287. https://doi.org/10.1353/sec.2010.0264. O’Sullivan, M. 2004. Pegge, Samuel (1704–1796). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/21779 Oliver, L. 2002. The Beginnings of English Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Richards, M.P. 1988. Texts and Their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.

13  ELIZABETH ELSTOB, OLD ENGLISH LAW AND THE ORIGIN… 

351

———. 2015. The Textus Roffensis: Keystone of the Medieval Library at Rochester. In Textus Roffensis: Law, Language, and Libraries in Early Medieval England, ed. B. O’Brien and B. Bombi, 19–48. Turnhout: Brepols. Smol, A. 1997. Pleasure, Progress, and the Profession: Elizabeth Elstob and Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Studies. Studies in Medievalism 9: 80–97. Sutherland, K. 1994. Editing for a New Century: Elizabeth Elstob’s Anglo-Saxon Manifesto and Ælfric’s St Gregory Homily. In The Editing of Old English: Papers from the 1990 Manchester Conference, ed. D. Scragg and P.E. Szarmach, 213–237. Woodbridge: Boydell. ———. 1998. Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756). In Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of the Discipline, ed. H. Damico, 59–74. New York: Routledge. Sweet, R. 2004. Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth Century Britain. London: Hambledon. Terry, R. 2001. Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past: 1660–1781. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Index1

A Abbey of St Thomas the Martyr, Lesnes, 196, 198 Ælfric of Eynsham, 8, 244, 314 Æþelstan, King of England, 283, 284, 284n3 Alanus de Rupe, 45, 45n5, 54, 56, 59, 61, 64, 65, 65n21, 67, 71n25 Exemplum, “Mary the Charcoaler’s Daughter”, 45, 45n5, 46, 54, 56, 57, 59, 63, 64, 67 Von dem psalter und Rosenkranz unserer lieben Frau, 44–45, 65, 67 Albertus Magnus, 23 Alfred, King (the Great), 8, 255, 257, 272–274, 273n30, 347 Ames, J., 167, 168, 324, 331 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), 283, 286n8, 287, 289–291, 290n13, 293, 294, 297, 297n21, 299, 299n22, 300, 300n26, 302

Aquinas, T., 88, 89n24, 156, 157, 157n10, 174n48, 261, 265n23, 270n27, 273n31, 274n32 Arigo, 65, 66 Aristotle, 79, 81, 86–88, 87n14, 91, 237n4, 258, 259, 261, 265n23, 270, 270n27, 273n31, 274n32 Augsburg, Germany, 45, 65–67 Augustine of Hippo, 8, 50, 157, 240–242, 244, 245n11 B Baber, Rev. H.H., 130, 130–131n9, 131, 131n11, 131n13, 134, 144, 145 Bacon flitch custom, 5, 107, 108, 110–114, 117, 121 Baldwin V, Duke of Flanders, 285, 295, 296 Ballard, G., 314, 324, 325, 329–334, 336

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2021 S. M. Rowley (ed.), Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55724-9

353

354 

INDEX

Barrington, D., 312, 313 Battle of Brunanburh, 9, 283, 284, 284n2, 291 Battle of Stamford Bridge, 282, 297n21, 300, 302, 303 Beauchamp, Sir William, 199 Beowulf, 235, 237, 237n4, 241, 281–283 Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, 199 Berkeley, Lord Thomas, 190, 190n8, 198 Bible, 6, 10, 22, 34, 87n17, 134, 160, 175, 263, 264 Bible, 1611, 135 Biblia latina, 1497, 173 New Testament (NT), 130, 133–135, 134n22, 140, 141, 141n44, 152, 156–158, 157n9, 162n21, 167, 167n32, 179, 180, 200n30 Old Testament (OT), 132, 134, 135, 138, 139, 139n38, 141, 141n44, 143, 143n45, 146, 158 See also Wycliffite Bible Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, 313, 315, 342 Boccaccio, G., 6, 47, 53, 58n16, 63n18, 65, 66 Decamerone, 53, 65, 66 Boethius, 259 Bohemia, 212, 213 A Bok of Swevenyng, 20–22, 24, 25, 31n19, 37 Bradley, H., 127, 127n2 Bristol, England, 198, 199, 290 British Museum, 6, 129, 131, 167n31, 168, 348 Brutus, 255, 266, 268, 271 Buridan, J., 259, 262, 262n20, 262n21, 264, 271n29

C Cambridge, England, 132, 133, 138 Cambridge University, 132, 311 Canticles, 191 Audite celi, 190, 200n27, 204n34 Benedictus, 190, 191, 193, 194, 199–201, 203, 204n33 Cantemus Domino, 190 Confitebor tibi, 190 Ego dixi, 190 Exultavit cor meum, 190 Magnificat, 189, 190, 202–204, 204n33 Nunc dimittis, 190, 203 Te Deum, 190, 203 Catena aurea, 156, 156n7, 157 Chaucer, G., 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 18, 24–28, 26n16, 44–48, 44n2, 47n7, 51–54, 57, 58n16, 60–62, 63n18, 64, 80–83, 80n2, 81n3, 82n5, 82n6, 83n9, 88, 91n27, 93–95, 103, 115, 116, 119, 120, 145, 260, 262–265, 264n22, 281 ABC, 48 Book of the Duchess, 56 Canterbury Tales, 3, 4, 6, 18, 25–27, 48, 82, 145n52 Clerk’s Tale, 4, 8, 44–49, 44n2, 44n3, 52–57, 59–64, 86 Franklin’s Tale, 18, 26n16, 83, 83n10 General Prologue, 79, 80n2, 83, 84, 85n12, 86, 89, 91, 92, 94, 162, 162n22, 264 House of Fame, 26n16 Knight’s Tale, 27 Merchant’s Tale, 26n16 Miller’s Tale, 26, 26n16, 81, 83 Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 26n16, 28, 37n24 Parson’s Tale, 26n16

 INDEX 

portraits of, 47 Prioress’s Tale, 48 Reeve’s Tale, 81, 83 Summoner’s Tale, 18 Treatise on the Astrolabe, 262, 264 Troilus and Criseyde, 4, 260 Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, 6, 103, 110n14, 111–113, 115–119, 121 Christ, 35, 48–51, 52n11, 52n12, 64, 66, 90, 161n19, 163n25, 169n38, 174, 177, 177n55, 192, 218–220, 223, 224, 242, 243n9, 245 Christopher, St, 8, 235–244, 235n1, 237n4, 242n8, 243n9, 247, 248 Chrysostom, John, St, 173–175, 174n47 Cnut, King of England, 284, 304 Colman, J., 196, 196n22, 198 Colynd, J., 194 Crucifixion play(s), 51 Chester Passion, 51 Death of Christ, York, 51 N-Town Play, 52 Towneley Crucifixion, 51 Cuthbert, St, 286 D Daniel, 20, 21n8, 30–32, 34 Dante, A., 259 Day, Walter, 194 Debate between Body and Soul, 25 Denne, S., 312, 319, 320n27, 340, 343 Derbyshire, England, 312, 319n22 Domesday Book, 312, 341, 343 Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, 187 Dunmowe, Essex, England, 107, 108, 117, 117n22 Durham Liber Vitae, 293

355

E Edith, Queen of England, 284, 285, 285n7, 291, 294, 295 Edmund, King of England, 19, 283, 284, 291, 296, 302, 305, 346 Edward (the Confessor), King of England, 282–287, 285n4, 289–291, 294, 296, 296n20, 344, 345 Edward III, King of England, 108 Elstob, E., 10, 312, 314, 315, 319, 324–326, 324n41, 325n49, 327n52, 329, 331–337, 332n70, 336n80, 337n82, 340, 340n93, 345–347 Elstob, W., 314, 324–332, 334, 335 Ernulf, Bishop of Rochester, 313, 316, 317, 341 Etfrid, St, 20, 22, 28–30, 28n18, 33 Ethelbert, St, 20, 22, 28, 28n18, 29, 33–35 F Fitzralph, R., 198, 211, 215–217, 219, 221 Defensio Curatorum, 198, 216, 219 Forshall, J., 6, 9, 10, 127, 127n2, 129–137, 130n8, 135n23, 136n28, 139–141, 141n43, 144n49, 145, 146, 146n54, 152, 152n2, 153, 156, 157, 162n23, 167, 168, 170, 171, 180 Fouke le Fitz Waryn, 19, 21, 23, 34 Friars, 179, 192, 193, 212, 213, 216–220, 216n11, 223 Furnivall, F.J., 127, 127n2, 128 G Glossa ordinaria, 153–170, 154n4, 158n12, 158n13, 159n15, 164n27, 172, 173, 175

356 

INDEX

Glossed Gospels, 155–157, 155n5, 155n6, 156n7, 174n48 Godwin, Earl of Wessex, 282, 284, 293, 296, 305 Gollancz, I., 127, 127n2, 128 Gower, J., 6, 8, 10, 251–255, 251n1, 252n2, 253n4, 255n8, 256n9, 257–268, 260n16, 271, 272, 273n30, 274, 275, 276n34 Confessio Amantis (CA), 8, 9, 253–256, 257n11, 266, 274, 275 Mirour de l’Omme (MO), 253, 275 Vox Clamantis (VC), 266 Granger, T., 167n32, 179 Grosseteste, R., 18n7, 19, 156, 193, 212, 215, 216, 216n13 Grosz, E., 66 H Hampole, Yorkshire, England, 187 Hampton, J., 202 Hampton, K., 202 Harald, King of Norway, 299–302 Harley scribe, 4, 7, 16–19, 16n3, 21, 22, 22n11, 25–28, 30–35, 34n21, 38 Harold Godwinson/King Harold of England, 282, 285, 286, 289–292, 292–293n16, 294, 296, 296n20, 298–301, 299n23, 300n25, 300n26 Havelok, 128 Hengist, 9, 255, 258, 258n12, 266, 268–274, 268n26 Henslowe, P., 305 Hereford, England, 17, 22, 160n18 Hickes, G., 311, 314, 315, 319, 323, 326, 327, 330, 331, 333–335, 341, 342 Hildegard of Bingen, 7, 212–215, 214n8, 214n9, 217, 218, 220, 221, 223, 225

Hixon, J., 194 Holinshed’s Chronicles, 305 I Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 88 Insurgent gentes, 7, 212–215, 212n2, 214n8, 217–221, 217n14, 225–227 Isidore of Seville, 8, 173, 174, 241n6 J Jacobus de Voragine, 46 Legenda Aurea, 46, 51n9 Jerome, St, 143, 153, 158, 159, 163n24, 166, 171, 172, 175, 176, 264 Job, 48, 62 John the Baptist, 191, 192, 252, 253 Joseph, 30–35, 37 Judith of Flanders, 285, 286, 291, 293, 295, 302–305, 304n28 K Kemerton, Gloucestershire, 199 Kempe, M., 5, 6, 101–106, 103n3, 110–112, 118, 119 The Book of Margery Kempe, 101, 103, 110, 119, 121 Kenelm, St, 28, 29 Kent, England, 312 Ketel, son of Tostig Godwinson, 302, 303 King Horn, 17, 20, 25, 25n15, 34, 34n21, 37, 38 L Laȝamon, 144 Brut, 31n19, 128, 272 Langland, W., 2, 6, 44, 85, 108n11 Piers Plowman, 5, 85, 107

 INDEX 

Leominster Priory, Herefordshire, England, 22, 30 Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, 237 Lewis, J., 53, 130, 130–131n9, 131, 131n13, 134, 144, 144n50, 145, 167, 195 Liber experimentarius, 20, 22 Lichfield, England, 16, 337 Life of Saint Christopher, 235–240, 243, 244, 248, 248n14, 249 Loan chest(s), 5, 81, 82, 87–89, 87n16, 88n21, 90n25 Lollard(s), 2, 6, 7, 130, 185–190, 185n1, 191n11, 193–196, 194n15, 198, 200, 200n29, 203, 205, 211–213, 215–221, 218n16 Lombard, P., 87n17, 160–163, 160n17, 160n18, 161n19, 161n20, 163n24, 166, 166n28, 169, 174, 175, 177–180, 177n56, 178n57, 178n59 London, England, 130, 132, 133, 137, 139, 196, 199, 268, 313 Ludlow, England, 16, 17, 22 Lyra, Nicholas of, 153, 156–158, 158n12, 161, 170–175, 170n40, 172n45 M Madden, F., 6, 9, 10, 127–134, 127n2, 129n5, 129n6, 131n12, 132n14, 132n16, 133n19, 134n21, 136–141, 136n28, 137n31, 138n36, 144–146, 144n49, 144n50, 145n51, 145n53, 152, 152n2, 153, 156, 157, 162n23, 167, 168, 170, 171, 180 Manchester, England, 138 Manuscripts, selected Aberdeen, University Library 243, 190, 194, 195, 202, 203

357

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 387, 190, 195, 197, 202, 203 Cambridge, Emmanuel College 108, 7, 152–154, 154n3, 156, 158–166, 161n19, 168–180 Cambridge, Trinity College B.14.50, 7, 188, 213–221, 214n9, 225 Cambridge, Trinity College O.2.45, 257 London, BL Additional 15521, 167–170, 174 London, BL Harley 1806, 190, 193, 195, 203 London, BL Harley 273, 16, 17, 18n6, 18n7, 19, 22, 22n12 London, BL Harley 2253, 16–18, 17n4, 20–22, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38 London, BL Royal 12.C.xii, 17, 18n6, 19–21, 21n10, 22n12, 23 Oxford, Balliol College 91, 87, 88n18 Oxford, Balliol College 354, 257 Oxford, Bodleian Library Digby 86, 21, 21n9 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. hist.c.146–163, 129 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 448, 191, 201, 201n31, 203 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 953, 190, 190n8, 191, 198, 198n25, 199 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 959, 132, 132n15, 139, 140, 145 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 52, 191, 200, 200n27, 200n28, 202 Oxford, Merton College, MS 277, 88, 88n20, 88n22

358 

INDEX

Manuscripts, selected  (Cont.) Oxford, University College, MS 56, 191, 191n11, 202, 203 Princeton, University Library, Scheide 12, 133, 133n18, 162–166, 162n21, 162n23, 163n24, 168, 169, 179 Marian devotion, 46, 65 Marienklagen, 50 Marienleben, 50 Martyr(s), 8, 28, 211, 224, 236, 238–240, 242, 243, 243n9, 245–249, 245–246n11, 248n15 Martyrdom, 8, 28, 34, 223, 237–239, 246, 248 Mary (mother of Jesus), 35, 46–50, 49n8, 56–59, 63, 64, 67, 71–73 Medway River, 313 Monster(s), 8, 53, 236, 239–242, 242n8 Morieux, Sir Thomas, 195, 202 Morris, R., 127, 127n2 N Norman Conquest, 9, 285, 292, 300, 302 O Obergefell v. Hodges, 120, 120n25, 120n26, 120n27 Office for Thomas of Lancaster, 19 Old English Martyrology, 8, 236, 242–244, 247, 248n14 Old English Orosius, 312, 313, 326, 331 Old Testament Stories, 21, 31, 32, 32n20 Ovid, 267, 268, 274 Fasti, 266, 267, 267n25 Oxford, England, 88, 90, 132, 133, 138, 139

Oxford University, 82, 84, 85, 88, 89, 91, 311, 312, 325 Bodleian Library, 129, 331, 337 Oxford University Press, 6, 134, 134n22, 135, 135n24, 136n28, 137, 138, 144, 146 P Pauline Epistles, 154, 158, 158n12, 160, 160n17, 161, 162n21, 173–175, 174n47, 177n55, 180 Pegge, S., 9, 312–316, 341–345, 347 Petrarch, F., 6, 44, 47, 54, 63n18, 64–67, 91, 93, 94 Planctus Mariae, 50–53 Pomfret, Yorkshire, England, 187 Postilla literalis, 153 Priory of Bicknacre, Woodham Ferrers, Essex, 196 Prophecy of Thomas of Erceldoune, 23 Proverbs of Alfred, 256, 272, 275 Psyche-Cupid legend, 46, 53 Purvey, J., 153, 180 R Revised Version(s), 185, 185n1, 190, 191, 193, 202, 204, 205 RV1, 186n1, 189n6, 195n18, 196, 201 RV2, 185, 186n1, 189n6, 195n18, 199, 203 Rich, E., 17, 19 Rochester Cathedral, 313, 343 Rolle, R., 10, 185–205, 188n3, 189n5, 190n9, 191n12, 196n21, 204n33 English Psalter and Canticles, 7, 185–191, 185n1, 188n3, 190n9, 193, 195–196, 196n21, 198–205 unrevised English Psalter, 189, 191, 194

 INDEX 

Rome, Italy, 110, 204n35, 263, 266–268, 270, 287, 288, 291 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 312 S Saint(s), 7, 8, 22, 28, 29, 31, 34, 37, 38, 46, 48, 56, 64, 109, 179, 211–215, 218–221, 224, 236–238, 240, 244, 245, 245n11, 249, 273n30, 282, 286, 287 Sanctity, 2, 7, 8, 10, 44, 211, 214, 214n9, 247 Scalia, A., 120 Schlüsselfelder, H., 66 Secreta secretorum, 19, 23 Shirley, J., 16 Short Metrical Chronicle, 22 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, see Syr Gawayne Skeat, W., 83, 127, 127n2, 145n52 Skuli, son of Tostig Godwinson, 302, 303 Society of Antiquaries, 312, 314, 315, 324, 345, 346 Archaeologia, 312, 313 Somniale Danielis, 19–21, 24, 25, 31 Sorg, A., 67 Southwark Cathedral, 252, 254n7 St Mary Overie, 252 Speculum Ecclesiae, 17, 19 Stabat Mater, 49 Stammler, W., 66 Stationers, 81 Steinhöwel, H., 66, 67 Strauch, P., 66 Sweet, H., 127, 127n2 Syr Gawayne, 128 T Textus Roffensis, 9, 312–314, 313n1, 316, 317, 320, 334, 337, 340–342

359

Thames River, 313 Thornton, R., 16 Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumbria, 9, 281–306, 286n8, 292–293n16, 294n18, 296n19, 299n22, 299n23, 300n24, 300n26 Trevisa, John, 190n8, 198, 198n24, 199, 199n26, 272, 273n30 Trinity College Dublin, 138 Turner, S., 313 V Vergil, 266–268, 271 Aeneid, 266, 271, 273n30 Victricius, 8, 239, 240n5, 245–247, 247n13 Vita Ædwardi, 285, 287, 288, 290–292, 295 von Berg, J., 67, 71, 71n24 von Nolcken, C., 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 65n19, 151, 152, 176, 211, 215, 216, 216n11, 251n1, 281 Vortigern, 269, 271, 272, 273n30 W Wace Roman de Brut, 269, 271 Waterland, D., 167 Webb, P. C., 312, 314, 316, 341 Wedding vows, 103, 103n3, 106, 110–112, 119–121 Wichenour, Staffordshire, England, 107–109, 111, 112, 121 William of Ockham, 259, 261–262, 262n20 William of Palerne, 128 Wistan, St, 20, 22, 28, 28n18 Wonders of the East, 237, 237n4, 241 Worcester, England, 138 Wyche, R., 212, 215, 216

360 

INDEX

Wyclif, J., 2, 6, 10, 130, 144, 145, 178n60, 193, 193n14, 212–218, 216n12, 216n13, 218n16, 221 Wycliffite Bible, 3, 6, 128–134, 129n6, 130n9, 134n22, 136–140, 136n26, 136n28, 143–145, 143n45, 145n52, 151–153, 152n2, 156, 157n9, 158, 162, 167, 167n32, 168, 168n33, 171, 172n45, 176, 179, 180, 180n63, 196, 198–200, 198n24, 200n30, 264 EV, 131–134, 131n12, 138–143, 145, 156, 166

FM, 133n17, 136n30, 139–145, 140n39, 140n40, 152–154, 154n3, 156, 157n9, 157n11, 159, 163, 167, 168, 168n34, 171n44 GP, 130, 132, 132n14, 133, 136, 136n27, 136n28, 136n30, 137, 143, 175, 175n51 LV, 131, 131n12, 133, 134, 138–143, 141n44, 145, 152, 156, 162, 162n21, 166, 178–180, 178n59, 196, 200, 200n30 See also Bible