title

:

The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland, and Wales : Exeter Symposium VI : Papers Read At Charney Manor, July 1999

author

:

Glasscoe, Marion.

publisher

:

Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

isbn10 | asin

:

0859915581

print isbn13

:

9780859915588

ebook isbn13

:

9780585182186

language

:

English

subject

Mysticism--Great Britain--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500--Congresses.

publication date

:

1999

lcc

:

BV5077.G7E94 1998eb

ddc

:

291.4/22/09410902

subject

:

Mysticism--Great Britain--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500--Congresses.

Page i

The Medieval Mystical Tradition

England, Ireland and Wales

Contemplative life in the middle ages has been the focus of much recent critical attention. The Symposium papers collected in this volume illuminate the mystical tradition through examination of the written texts and material culture in the medieval period. A particular focus is on Celtic modes of witnessing to contemplative vision from Ireland and Wales; an eighth-century account of voyages to wonders beyond the known world of Irish monasticism, and the work of Christian bards in medieval Wales. Distinctions within the mystical tradition in England are also explored both within differing Religious Orders and between individuals engaged with the contemplative life.

Page iii

The Medieval Mystical Tradition:

England, Ireland and Wales

Exeter Symposium VI

Papers read at

Charney Manor, July 1999

Edited by Marion Glasscoe

D. S. BREWER

Page iv

© Contributors 1998, 1999

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 1999

D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 558 7

ISSN 0950-7299

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK

and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.

PO Box 41026, Rochester NY 14604-4126, USA

website: http://www.boydell.co.uk

A catalogue record for this title is available

from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Printed in Great Britain by

St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Page v

Contents

Foreword

vii

Distant Islands: The Topography of Holiness in the Nauigatio Sancti Brendani

Thomas O'Loughlin (University of Wales, Lampeter)

1

Rhetoric of the Gift: Inspiration, Pneumatology and Poetic Craft in Medieval Wales

Oliver Davies (University of Wales, Lampeter)

21

Medieval Mysticism: An Example from Wales

R. Iestyn Daniel (The University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies)

33

Cistercian and Victorine Approaches to Contemplation: Understandings of Self in A Rule of Life for a Recluse and The Twelve Patriarchs

Ruth Smith (University of Wales, Cardiff)

47

The Mantle of Elijah: Carmelite Spirituality in England in the Fourteenth Century

Valerie Edden (University of Birmingham)

67

The Active and Contemplative Lives in Rolle, The Cloud-Author and Hilton

Denise N. Baker (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)

85

Name Above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection I

Denis Renevey (University of Fribourg)

103

A New Look into the Speculum Inclusorum

E. A. Jones (University of Oxford)

123

The Madness of Margery Kempe

Richard Lawes (University of Oxford)

147

The Role of the Virgin Mary and the Structure of Meditation in the Book of Margery Kempe

Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (University of Hokkaido)

169

'In the Blessid Vyne3erd * of Oure Holy Saueour': Female Religious Readers and Textual Reception in the Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Orcherd of Syon

C. Annette Grise (University of Western Ontario)

193

Adam Easton's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae

James Hogg (University of Salzburg)

213

Page vi

Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren

Vincent Gillespie (University of Oxford)

241

Page vii

Foreword

The Exeter Symposia are designed to provide windows on to current research on the medieval mystical tradition hitherto specifically in England. I would particularly like to thank Dr Oliver Davies for his suggestion that work done on the medieval Celtic mystical traditions be included on this occasion. The modification of the former title Medieval Mystical Tradition in England in favour of acknowledging a more inclusive approach to medieval religious experience in Britain and Ireland is, to say the very least, timely.

Papers relating to the Celtic traditions point to imaginative ways of witnessing to the vision which informs the disciplines of religious life. They illuminate importantly the distinctions as well as the continuities which created the religious culture of these islands. Indeed, senses of difference inform many of the papers in this collection: the distinctive apprehension of what is involved in contemplative experience in differing religious orders Carmelite friars, Cistercian monks, Augustinian Canons, Bridgettine sisters; the varieties of understanding of the terms 'active' and 'contemplative' within significant texts in the period, or of the ways in which specific devotional practices key into spiritual awareness. Two papers furnish evidence to liberate the idiosyncratic witness of Margery Kempe from her detractors. One, with full awareness of the difficulties of cross-cultural analysis, brings to bear the scientific knowledge and diagnostic skills of modern psychiatric medicine; the other, looking at the contemporary liturgical and iconographical context of the imagery used in Margery's meditations, suggests a matrix of theological understanding that disturbs and questions the dismissal of her literal approach to spiritual matters. New study of a later fourteenth-century book of instruction for recluses reveals both its distinctive contribution to the genre and the material culture it served.

As usual, I owe thanks to the contributors for submitting copy sufficiently early to enable prompt publication and for entrusting me with editing and proofreading; any deficiencies are my responsibility. I am grateful to Dr Mike Dobson of Exeter University for his support through the technological problems that beset my work for this volume.

MARION GLASSCOE

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Page 1

Distant Islands:

The Topography of Holiness in the Nauigatio Sancti Brendani*

Thomas O'Loughlin

1 The Nauigatio

The anonymous Nauigatio Sancti Brendani^1 is probably the most elaborate fiction in Latin from the early Middle Ages. Written in Ireland sometime in the latter half of the eighth century,2 it has captured the imagination of generations down to our own day. The story seems a simple one: it is the narrative of the adventures of the sixth-century Abbot Brendan and some of his monks on a seven-year journey out on the wide ocean and of the marvellous islands, sea creatures and other wonders they meet. Its popularity seems to have been immediate: for sometime early in the ninth century it was the inspiration for a secularised derivative tale in Irish, The Voyage of Máel Dúin,3 and there are other writings in a similar vein.4 By the tenth century it was being steadily copied on the continent and this interest continued throughout the Middle Ages, so that

* I would like to express my gratitude to my colleague, Dr Jonathan Wooding, who made so much of his research on the Nauigatio available to me when writing this paper; likewise, my thanks to Dr Elva Johnson for many discussions of The Voyage of Máel Dúin. The usual disclaimer applies.

1 C. Selmer, ed., Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1959), hereafter Selmer. This edition will be used throughout this paper, and all translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. There is an English translation by J.J. O'Meara, The Voyage of St Brendan: Journey to the Promised Land (Dublin, 1976), hereafter O'Meara.

2 The date of its composition has been a matter of controversy; however, this is the most widely accepted date. Cf. J. Carney's review of Selmer's edition of the Nauigatio in Medium Aevum xxxii (1963), pp. 3744 at p. 40 which dated it about AD 800; the precision of dating to the final decades of the eighth century is due to the work of D.N. Dumville, 'Two approaches to the dating of "Nauigatio Sancti Brendani" ', Studi Medievali xxix (1988), pp. 87102.

3The Voyage of Máel Dúin: A Study in Early Irish Voyage Literature, ed. and trans. H.P.A. Oskamp (Groningen, 1970). The relationship between these texts has been disputed; in holding for the priority of the Nauigatio I am following the most generally held position, cf. Carney, Medium Aevum xxxii, p. 41, and Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955), ch. 8, pp. 276323.

4 Cf. J.M. Wooding, 'St Brendan's Boat Dead Hides and the Living Sea in Columban and Related Hagiography', in M. Herbert, ed., Papers from the International Conference on Hagiography, University College Cork (forthcoming), which examines many of the literary aspects of this tradition.

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today it survives in more than a hundred manuscripts. Moreover, it was translated into the vernaculars and appears as an element in many other works.5 Despite the early recognition by hagiographers that it had no place in the dossier of St Brendan,6 and by geographers that it was of no value to them,7 people are still drawn to it with the desire to find in it some basis in history: in only the last few years it inspired an attempt to build 'St Brendan's boat' to see 'if he could have discovered America'.8 The story, though little read, is still widely known in rough outline and it continues to inspire artists and musicians: a tribute to the yarn's great imaginative force.

Parallel with the popular interest, there has been no shortage of scholarship on the Nauigatio.9 It has been the subject of numerous literary studies seeking to relate it to early Irish literature in Latin and Irish especially a special category of the Irish literature known as the immrana ('sea voyages'), and it has prompted several historical studies: even if it tells us nothing of the real Brendan or 'America', it does provide much incidental information on sea-faring, and other aspects of material culture in the eighth century.10 However, despite the fact that one of the first modern commentators on the text was Ernest Renan,11 it has traditionally not attracted much attention from those interested in the theology or spirituality of early Christian Ireland, presumably as the 'fabulous' had little place in their weighty concerns and its references to lighting the paschal fire on a sea-monster's back seemed to play into the hands of those who saw early medieval religion as so much superstition and foolishness.12

Although as early as 1920 it was suggested that it was an allegory of the monastic life, 13 until recently those students of religion in the insular world who referred to it did so mainly for incidental information on larger religious questions.14 This lack of interest from historians of theology can be explained by the

5 The details are given by Selmer, pp. xxvixxxii.

6 Cf. M. Esposito, 'An Apocryphal "Book of Enoch and Elias" as a possible source of the Navigatio sancti Brendani', Celtica v (1960), pp. 192206 at p. 205.

7 This was the opinion of Alexander von Humboldt in 1837 just after the appearance of the editio princeps in 1836 (cf. Esposito, 'Apocryphal "Book of Enoch" ', op. cit., p. 192).

8 There is an account of these various reconstructions and of the rationality underlying them in Wooding, op. cit., in n. 4.

9 There is a large bibliography in Selmer, and this is brought up to date by J.M. Wooding and K. Jankulak in J.M. Wooding ed., The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Literature and History: An Anthology of Criticism (Dublin, 1998).

10 Summarised in Wooding, 'St Brendan's Boat', op. cit., in n. 4.

11 An account of Renan's views on the text can be found in Esposito, op. cit., in n. 6.

12 Cf. L. Gougard, Les saints irlandais hors d'Irlande (Louvain, 1936), pp. 910 and 18991.

13 J.F. Kenney, 'The Legend of St Brendan', Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada xiv (1920), pp. 5167, and taken up by him in his Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (New York, 1929), pp. 41417.

14 For example K. Hughes looked at it as providing information on attitudes to pilgrimage. 'On an Old Irish Litany of Pilgrim Saints Compiled c.800', Analecta Bollandiana

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 3

fact that the work is not a formal treatise and comes from a period between the late fathers and the early scholastics. Similarly, but less explicably, despite its numerous liturgical references it has attracted almost no interest from liturgists.15 Yet it has many details about the practice of eucharistic celebration, the celebration of the Hours,16 and attitudes to the liturgical year. Indeed, to someone unfamiliar with the Office, the pattern and rhythm of the Nauigatio are invisible. However, since James Carney worked on the text in the 1950s, one point has been made in almost everything written about it: it is not only a tale about monks, it was also written in a monastic setting and has to be seen as a monastic document.17 In this he was picking up a theme already expressed by J.F. Kenney thus:

[its] purpose was not solely, nor indeed primarily, to describe the wonders of the ocean. As we note the meticulous care with which he elaborates the precepts of Brendan, and the rules of life, the devotions, the methods of observing the canonical hours, the psalms sung, the prayers said, the penances observed among the inhabitants, human and superhuman, of the oceanic islands, we come to realise that the author is painting a picture of the ideal monastic life. The Navigatio Brendani is the epic shall we say the Odyssey? of the old Irish Church.18

In recent years several scholars have developed this line viewing it as a religious allegory with an inherent theological message;19 and one writer has seen it as providing an insight into monastic writing in this century.20 More recently it has been suggested that even some of the nautical details so prized by those who view hagiography as essentially an unselfconscious record of social and economic information may be primarily symbolic rather than incidental glimpses at the author's naval technology.21 This paper seeks to build upon this recent trend in scholarship, arguing that the tale was intended as a presentation of the central dynamic of the monastic life, and that the author, somewhat in the manner of John Bunyan or C.S. Lewis, deliberately chose a fictional form as this was ideally appropriate to the nature of the subject matter.22

(footnote continued from previous page)

lxxvii (1959), pp. 30531 at pp. 31516; and 'The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage', Journal of Ecclesiastical History xi (1960), pp. 14351 at p. 148.

15 F.E. Warren in his classic, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (Oxford, 1881, new edn Woodbridge, 1987), referred to it once (p. 123) for a detail on vestments.

16 Kenney, Sources, p. 415, n. 151, noted that it might be a valuable source for liturgists working on the Office and other topics.

17 Cf. those works already cited.

18 This is part of passage quoted by Kenney in Sources, p. 415, from his 1920 paper, both cited in n. 13.

19 For example: C. Bourgeault, 'The Monastic Archetype in the Navigatio of St Brendan', Monastic Studies xiv (1983), pp. 10922; D.A. Bray, 'A Note on the Life of St Brendan', Cistercian Studies xx (1985), pp. 1420, and 'Allegory in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani', Viator xxvi (1995), pp. 110; B. Hillers, 'Voyages Between Heaven and Hell: Navigating the Early Irish Immran Tales', B. Hillers, P. Hopkins, and J. Hunter eds, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium xiii (Harvard, 1995), pp. 6681.

20 Cf. P.M. Pearson, 'Merton and the Celtic Monastic Tradition', Merton Annual v (1992), pp. 26377.

21 Cf. Wooding, 'St Brendan's Boat', op. cit., in n. 4.

22 Moreover, the form gave his larger picture a coherent structure without having to adapt

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 4

2 The Problem of Allegory

However, reading the Nauigatio as allegory raises a fundamental question of method: how can we have any certitude that such a reading is anything more than our imposition on the text? Given the nature of allegory, it is the task of the interpreter to find an 'additional' sense for the text. So the fact that one can be found does not indicate that it was intended to be read as an allegory by its author. Moreover, that every tale can be, and every old tale has been, read allegorically actually weakens the case that it was the author's intention to write an allegory, for this traditionally has been the refuge for making sense of the senseless, the obscure, and material that was otherwise offensive to accepted sensibilities.23 In short, to invoke allegory may be no more than to declare obliquely that we find we cannot accept the tale at first sight within our world-view. An additional difficulty is that the most common means of testing an interpretative hypothesis, namely that reading the text with a specific set of assumptions produces a more consistent understanding or removes more exegetical cruces, is of no value in establishing whether or not a text was intended as an allegory. One invokes allegory precisely because it can remove such cruces; and if the interpretation is well done, then it should produce a more consistent reading. But this is primarily evidence of the interpreter's skill, rather than of the art of the author.

So can we show that this tale was not just a yarn where the characters wear monastic habits as part of the local colour to justify the string of wonders, but that the monastic details are central to its structure? I believe we can by noting how the author presents his stories on two 'levels': one which is contiguous in time, space, and activity with his audience, and another which is radically distinct and superior to those listening to the tale. The first level does not call for anything other than historical understanding (sensus): i.e. our normal interpretative sense by which we understand the significance of what is happening in our world; while the second calls for an understanding that jumps from the things described to their spiritual and eternal significance. Thus the Nauigatio is to be read with the two basic senses familiar to the audience from many areas of religious discourse, principally scriptural exegesis: that truth which God communicates regarding this life and which is accessed through the historical sense, and that truth about higher realities which is communicated indirectly and accessed using a spiritual sense. In addition, to deal with certain matters such as the correction of vices affecting people on earth, and the dangers posed to them by evil in the

(footnote continued from previous page)

an abstract theoretical systematic such as that found in several authors such as Eucherius of Lyons or Isidore of Seville.

23 The classic case is that of the Song of Songs: it must be wholly allegorical, for if it were not so it would mean that there was a place for the praise of sexual love in the Holy Book; but this proposition must be false, hence there can be no place for a non-allegorical reading. I have explored this in 'Seeking the Medieval View of the Song of Songs', Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association xviii (1995), pp. 94116.

Page 5

form of the demons, there was still another sense, the moral, which, unlike the spiritual, did not need a code which allowed one to jump from this world to a higher level, nor did it need study and reflection, but which simply drew out lessons from the events as perceived by the physical senses.24 Both historical and moral senses can be seen as related to the power of the text to communicate and teach by direct observation and experience, while the other sense enabled an indirect message, given through a series of signs/codes, to be known. Examining this process of interpretation in any text, be it a work of exegesis or the Nauigatio, not only presents us with its textual hermeneutic, but in so far as that hermeneutic was perceived as dovetailed to the structure of the creation (the hierarchical relation of the spiritual message to the historical message of the text was seen to parallel the relation of the superior spiritual world of heaven to the inferior material world of the earth) we have an insight into its views of the nature of the human spiritual situation.

That the author of the Nauigatio wrote with an audience in mind who read texts in this way can be seen in the way he distinguished in his descriptions of the places met on the voyage between (a) those which are encountered as part of a normal journey on the ocean, and (b) those which are beyond normal experience. It is these latter passages which are to be read allegorically. So the narrative recounts events on two inter-connected, but distinct, levels of reality: (a) those which are part of the 'normal' course of the monastic life which are narrated as being part of 'ordinary' everyday life, and (b) the 'wondrous times/events of the tale which are presented as exceptions or departures from the ordinary life of the monks. The exceptions are visits to the more real, more permanent, and superior realm of spiritual realities, and visions into the world to come. One is to read the 'normal' parts as an historical narrative pointing directly to the life of the audience and setting forth an ideal of praxis; while one reads the 'wondrous' parts using another sense (the allegorical) which mediates a vision of a higher world which is apprehended in contemplation (theoria).25

24 The definition of these senses and their relationship to one another varied from author to author in the patristic and early medieval period (cf. H. Caplan, 'The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation and the Medieval Theory of Preaching', Speculum iv (1929), pp. 28290) hence we must not try to define them rigidly a priori of an actual author's use; however, there are similarities in the way different authors used them and hence my distinction between direct and indirect communication. On the use of the senses in the late eighth century, see my Deciphering the Code: the Interpretation of Genesis in the Period before Charlemagne (Turnhout, forthcoming), ch. 5.

25 The binary opposition of theoria / praxis was a commonplace in early medieval spirituality, arising in the Greek east, it became ubiquitous in the Latin west in the period before Charlemagne through the manuals of Eucherius of Lyons; on its origins and diffusion, see my 'The Symbol gives Life: Eucherius of Lyons Formula for Exegesis', in 1. Finan and V. Twomey, eds, Scriptural Interpretation in the Fathers: Letter and Spirit (Dublin, 1995), pp. 22152; several writers, following the lead of B. Bischoff, have seen this as a characteristically Irish distinction, but while this cannot be maintained (cf. C. Stancliffe, 'Early ''Irish" Biblical Exegesis', Studia Patristica xii (1975), pp.

(footnote continued on next page)

Page 6

The evidence to support this contention is cumulative. First, there is the constant presence of the liturgy, and in particular of the Office with its basic purpose of sanctifying ordinary time and activity. But the liturgy is described in two ways: on the one hand the details of the regular liturgy and prayers of those in the boat are precise and present a model of how monks should live in constant prayer and prompt obedience; on the other hand, they also share in a fabulous liturgy where time is not uniform and space is experienced as different from that which the audience is expected to know from its experience. However, the liturgy, which is always at once heavenly and human, is the great link between these two worlds: in each, liturgy, qua tale, remains a constant. At the great moments of the liturgical year the worlds are joined for a period in their celebrations on the wondrous islands. These liturgical unions are presented as if the veil separating the earthly and heavenly liturgy is temporarily removed. Second, there are the contrasting ways that the ordinary and wondrous parts of the tale describes. In some places we get accurate directions and lengths of time and little happening that is out of the ordinary; in the fabulous places one has to penetrate through veils of fog, one loses direction, travels in circles, and ordinary time is suspended. Third, while biblical allusions occur throughout the work, they are not evenly distributed.26 In the fabulous places where one is to invoke the allegorical sense there are frequent appeals to the language and imagery of visions from the Old and New Testament: i.e. those parts of the scriptures such as the visions of Ezekiel, and of John in the Apocalypse.27 There was agreement among exegetes that these passages were intended by God to be understood solely through allegory. Fourth, in those parts of the tale where evil is mentioned, there is no room for allegory for the moral lesson is delivered directly by the author following the exact method of moral exegesis. Individually, these points would not be sufficient to prove that the Nauigatio was intended to be read as an allegory in parts, nor to form a structure for identifying those parts; however, when we take these points together and see them in relation to commonplace assumptions about the nature of the spiritual life and/or nature of exegesis from the period, these points are cumulatively conclusive.

(footnote continued from previous page)

36170), we can assert that it was a distinction with which an Irish writer, such as the author of the Nauigatio, was doubtless very familiar and an assumption which he could presume in his audience.

26 One of the criticisms of Selmer's edition was that he did not identify all the scriptural passages in fact he only identified explicit quotations and ignored embedded quotations, biblical phrases used en passant, and biblical allusions and echoes (moreover he did not see those he did identify as directly relevant to the text for he placed them in a general section of notes rather than, as is the norm in editing religious texts, either in the margin or as a separate apparatus biblicus at the foot of the page. An analysis of the biblical material which I have prepared shall, I hope, appear shortly.

27 See nn. 7, 10, 47, 48, 59, and 85 in Selmer; this use of the Apocalypse of John has been pointed out by Bray, 'Allegory', op. cit., in n. 19, p. 7.

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3 Barrind's Islands

An obvious place to observe the method of the whole Nauigatio in miniature is to study the voyage which forms its paradigm: the voyage of Barrind at the beginning of the tale (chapter 1). The tale begins in 'real' time and space (i.e. time/space as we experience it in our 'earthly' life^28) for we are given the location and family of all the characters: they are presented as sharing the same world as the audience. The audience knows both where the places mentioned are located and who these noble families are. They are directly related to them not only in this knowledge, but in that they inhabit places contiguous with those mentioned in Munster or somewhere in Ireland, and they belong to families that have at one time or another inter-married with, fought with, were allied with, controlled or were controlled by, those families that are named. So the starting point is here in this world not in some fabulous or distant world, in fact it is just 'down the road' among people like themselves. I stress that the starting point is close by, for the destination in the tale, as in the Christian life, is far away and in another dimension of reality. It is instructive at this point to contrast Brendan with Job both of whom have adventures in the midst of following a regular God-fearing way of life.29 Brendan was a man of great austerity and famous for his wonderful powers ('erat uir magne abstinencie et in uirtutibus clarus'), while Job was 'a man honest . . . and upright who feared God and avoided what was evil' ('erat uir . . . simplex et rectus ac timens Deum et recedens a malo' (Job: 1:1): in holiness they are alike. However, while Job's adventures are located in the distant land of Uz and he was not seen as related to the Israelites who read his story,30 Brendan lives in Clowfert^31 and many of his readers must have been able to claim kinship with him.

We know the 'surnames' of both Brendan and Barrind, we know where they are and what they do: they are monks like those everyone can see and are described as engaged in the daily round of the monastic life, doing penance,

28 References to the text, unless otherwise specified, are to chapter one. We must bear in mind continually in this text that the notions of time and space of Christian authors in the early medieval period are radically different from those which we normally use some variant on Aristotle's receptacle notion so while I use phrases such as 'in time and space' and 'our ordinary time' this is to be seen as a convenient shorthand rather than an ascription of a single understanding of time and space to us in the twentieth century and the author of the Nauigatio. On appropriate ways to view time and space in early medieval texts where these are simply functions generated as a consequence of the creativity of the Logos, see T.F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford, 1969, repr. Edinburgh, 1997).

29 The life of Brendan in Clonfert is described as a certamen, in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, vi, 2, 1314, the trials of Job are described as his certamina.

30 For the awarness of Christians in the early medieval period that Job was a non-Jew, see Augustine's De Ciuitate Dei, xviii, 47 (cf. F. Chatillon, ' "Tria genera hominum": Noe, Daniel, et Job', Revue du Moyen Age x (1954), pp. 16976).

31 On this identification, followed by all recent translators and commentators, see Selmer, n. 5.

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praying, and 'fighting the good fight' of the Christian.32 This activity is part of this life and all we are to imagine is that, unlike so many monks whom one actually has met where there is corruption of monastic life, these monks are living that life as it should be lived. The correct monastic life is not an unattainable ideal, but only something that is not frequently encountered in practice. It is from a location in this earthly monastery that the first movement takes place, and this is explicitly flagged as taking one to new places and other dimensions for Brendan asks not only to hear of the ocean simply an unfamiliar part of this world but of the various wonders ('diuersis miraculis') to be seen there, and as wonders these do not belong to the earthly world. Moreover, we are given explicitly the reasons why these wonders are to be narrated: first, these wonders will show up for the monks the word of God ('Indica nobis uerburn Dei') and so become a means of divine communication; and second, they should be narrated so that their souls might be nourished ('refice animas nostras'). The fruits of the tale are not to be found at the carnal and material level, and so the enjoyment it will bring ('Magis leticiam tu debes fratribus preparare') is not to be seen as entertainment such as a good yarn might bring to the listeners, but a joy at the spiritual level. As food is prepared to sustain the body, so this tale is prepared to feed the soul: this is its key purpose and one suspects that this is the author commenting through one of his characters as to the purpose of his own story-telling. In any case, it is the assumption of the tale that the events which follow are going to interact with the audience on the level of spirit.

Barrind now begins to recount his journey. He goes first to an island monastery all the audience would have known of many such monasteries: e.g. Lérins, Inisbofin, lona^33 named the Island of Delights, but which is located firmly in the material world of the audience. It is near Slieve League ('iuxta montem lapidis') in Co. Donegal^34 and its exact distance from Ireland can be measured in time: it is three-days distant by boat. The measurement is given as a fixed amount to which the audience is expected to relate directly. While this, like Brendan's, is a perfect monastery, it is also another earthly monastery like those the audience knows and perhaps lives in. Its perfection consists in living according to the theological virtues,35 it has a correct Liturgy of the Hours, propriety in coming together for meals, and an ascetic vegetarian lifestyle. What sets this monastery

32 In the Latin we read of Brendan in suo certamine which O'Meara correctly picks up as 'fighting the good fight' as it is an echo of the concept of the trial of the Christian found in several places in the New Testament, but see especially 1 Timothy 6:12 and 2 Timothy 4:7.

33 Despite the massive amounts being written at the moment on insular monasticism, there is, to my knowledge, no competent survey of the underlying monastic theory of monasteries on islands, interim see J. Chapman, Notes on the Early History of the Vulgate Gospels (Oxford, 1908), pp. 9798.

34 Again I follow a common identification of Mons lapidis, see O'Meara, p. xix.

35 They live with their 'conuersacio in fide, spe et caritate' (Selmer, p. 4). The reference to 'conuersaclo' is an echo of Philippians 3:20 ('nostra autem conuersatio in caelis est'); while the rest of the phrase is to the locus classicus of the theme of faith, hope,

(footnote continued on next page)

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apart is that it keeps to the rule of what every monastery should be, but it is in no way outside the ordinary world of monasteries. On this island time is the same as time in the monasteries of Ireland for Barrind stayed there overnight and we are to consult our experience of the last twenty-four hours to know what this means. Likewise, space is like the space we know for Barrind could walk around this island in the time he was there. The audience can imagine what size of island it is from its experience of walking around fields and the like. What size is Mernóc's island? It is the area one can walk around in less than a day!

How is the audience to draw benefit from this account? They are to draw direct inspiration from it for now they see clearly how their life should be lived and that it is possible to live in this way. These monks show them the criteria by which all monks must live and they demonstrate to visitors what are the aims of their lives. This part of the story does not need to be read as a set of codes where each item stands for something else: the Office is the same there and in the monastery of the audience, so too is the discipline, so too the virtues which must inspire and unite the company. Just as exegetes said that the decalogue and the events of the gospels are to be understood historically as speaking directly to Christians,36 so the life of this island is to be seen as speaking directly to the situation of monks in their everyday life. It is the word of God directed to us here through an actual picture of how to live and of the fruits of such a life; the monastic audience is to draw its spiritual nourishment historialiter, i.e. using the historical sense.

Barrind now sets off again in his boat and goes westwards. However, while there is directly meaningful space (i.e. such as we know with the senses) on the western edge of Mernóc's island in that one can set off in a known direction now that one is in the liminal region of this world^37 one can find oneself in a space that cannot be directly understood. Just beyond the known island one enters a veil of fog that marks the boundary between two dimensions of reality. Once in the fog both time and space are beyond direct measure: one sails around blindly and time is no longer 'ticking' at a fixed rate since the journey's duration is 'like that of an hour' ('quasi unius hora'), rather than as an exact amount of time. When they emerge from this veil they are in a land unlike any in the experience of the audience: this is the Promised Land of the scriptures, not the earthly land of the Old Testament but the eschatological destiny of which, for Christians, it was

(footnote continued from previous page)

and love as the Christian virtues: I Corinthians 13:13 ('nunc autem manet fides spes caritas tria haec maior autem his est caritas').

36 This notion is first found in Junilius Africanus (De Partibus Diuinae Legis, i, 3, Patrologia Latina, lxviii, 1617), but became a commonplace partly through the praise of Junilius by Cassiodorus in pre-Carolingian exegesis; I have examined the notion in detail in my forthcoming book, Deciphering the Code, op. cit., in n. 24, chs 4 and 5.

37 On the liminality of the ocean in the insular monastic context, see J. Borsje, From Chaos to Enemy: Encounters with Monsters in Early Irish Texts (Turnhout, 1996), ch. 2, pp. 93172; and my 'Living in the Ocean', in C. Bourke, ed., Studies in the Cult of Saint Columba (Dublin, 1997), pp. 1123.

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an antetype.38 Not only is this 'land' beyond the experience of the audience, but it is a contrast to all that they know immediately, while the scriptural echoes in the text show it to be like those places described in the special visions granted to the saints. First and foremost, this is an island where there is a brightness unlike any other in that it shines right around the island. In the ordinary material world the luminaria of that creation (Genesis 1:1416) cannot shine all around, they always leave places in shadow due to the density of matter and their own limited material natures: the sun and moon can only shine in outwards and their light can be easily blocked out. But this island has light exactly like that of the city in the Apocalypse which needs neither sun nor moon for God himself and not a material creature shines on its inhabitants (Revelation 22:45). Now we have left our world and entered into a place where the divine is closer and less veiled, and whatever it is we encounter in this 'other' place must be interpreted, using a code, 'downwards' into our world. It is only through this decoding, i.e. understanding it as an allegory and then translating its symbols, that we can understand what this word of God means for us, and so be nourished by its message. Here the allegorical process is to be used in the manner of the scriptural exegete dealing with a vision, decoding something 'downwards' from the sublime level of a vision into meanings that belong to theological discourse, rather than allegory as it was practised in literature, or where scripture was seen as simply figurative where it could involve either lateral shift of meaning as in metaphor, or reading a higher 'spiritual' message in a story set in our world or a mythical world. In these cases the allegorical story is understood as the servant of abstract message; but with visions, the vision is sui generis and on a higher plane of reality and a special grace from God, the abstract terms into which it must be decoded for communication between us on earth are secondary and of lesser worth.39

The island of the Promised Land is next described. However, when we examine the details of the description we see that it is indistinguishable from 'the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven' in the final vision in the Apocalypse (21:922:5).40 We have already been told how the island is illumined, and noted that it happens in the same way as in this final city; now that Barrind has landed we are given more details. First, the island's flora are always in flower and fruit; this is similar to 'the tree that gives life' which is not affected by the seasons and gives fruit each month of the year (Revelation 22:2). Second, the stones of the island are precious, just as the new Jerusalem shines like a precious stone (Revelation 21:11) and its foundations are precious stones (Revelation 21:1921).

38 The phrase terra repromissionis occurs only once in the Vulgate at Hebrews 11:5. The familiar Old Testament phrase 'the promised land' is only found in English versions; on those occasions the Vulgate uses phrases such as this: 'et eduxit nos inde ut introductis daret terram super qua iurauit patribus nostris' (Deuteronomy 6:23)

39 We see this notion of allegory as decoding 'downwards' from the forms chosen for the divine communication in the way that the decoding of symbols is approached in Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana.

40 Bray, 'Allegory', op. cit., in n. 19, pp. 78, drew attention to this point.

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Third, the island has a river running through its middle from east to west; so too the heavenly city has a river flowing through its middle (Revelation 22: 1). Fourth, on the island there is no physical need, neither hunger nor thirst, nor need of clothing: all such needs are indicative of the imperfection and corruption of sin.41 In the heavenly city there are no such signs of imperfection for sin has no place there whatsoever (Revelation 21:27). Fifth, on the island Barrind is approached by an angelic figure a man with great splendour who recognises him, greets him, and gives him information about the place. Similarly in the Apocalypse (e.g. at 21:9) an angel appears to John, knows his name, and gives him details about the vision he sees. A sixth detailed point of comparison between the island and the heavenly city concerns day and night. The island, since it is not illumined by a material light, knows no night ('Dies namque est semper'); this is exactly as in the Apocalypse: 'And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever' (22:5). Likewise, on the island the Lord Jesus Christ is himself the light. This identification with Christ is directly based on Revelation 21:23 where the lamp of the city is the Lamb.

A less obvious link between the Promised Land and the Apocalypse concerns the number 'fifteen' which is mentioned twice in the account. That these numbers may have a symbolic meaning within the narrative has been pointed out by several who have written on the Nauigatio,42 but trying to establish what such numbers actually are intended to convey in medieval texts is always problematic.43 However, it is possible that this use of 'fifteen' is taken from Eucherius of Lyons' Formulae Spiritalis Intellegentiae, one of the most widely used certainly used frequently in Ireland handbooks of exegesis in the period. In the chapter on numbers he says this about 'fifteen': 'this refers to the fifteen steps of Solomon's temple for there are fifteen Psalms which are called "step [gradual] psalms": [he supplies the opening line of the first (Psalm 119) and last (Psalm 133) of these psalms].'44 That this may be in the author's mind is also suggested by his own reference to these psalms in Nauigatio, chapter 17. If this interpretation of 'fifteen' is accepted then the island itself, which takes fifteen days to walk around without meeting its end, is to be seen as being itself equivalent to a temple. However, it does not need a temple, and Barrind makes no mention of a

41 These material needs were perceived as being part of the punishment of Adam's sin: clothing is mentioned in Genesis 3:7 and 21; the need to labour in order to have food in Genesis 3:1819.

42 Cf. O'Meara, p. xvii; and Bray, 'Allegory', op. cit., in n. 19, pp. 34.

43 Cf. V.F. Hopper, Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, meaning, and Influence on Thought and Expression (New York, 1938), passim; and J. MacQueen, Numerology: Theory and Outline History of a Literary Mode (Edinburgh, 1985), passim.

44 The critical edition of this work is in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum XXXI (and part of the passage quoted is on p. 60); however, there are times, as here, when the older edition printed in Migne, Patrologia Latina is to be preferred: there this quotation can be found in Patrologia Latina L, 771; for the reasons for using this older edition, see my 'The Symbol gives Life', op. cit., in n. 25, pp. 25051.

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temple, as the Christ himself is present and is its temple. Similarly, John does not see a temple in the heavenly city: it does not need one 'as its temple is the Lamb' (Revelation 21:22).

Barrind's mystical island picks up another related eschatological image from the scriptures. The angelic figure begins speaking to him thus: 'Well done good brothers, the Lord has revealed this land to you which he will give to the saints'45 and invites them to enter the island more fully. A little later he says that the island has been there 'since the foundation of the world'.46 This echoes the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 which is understood as the Lord rewarding those who have used their earthly lives well. To the one who did all that was required of him the master [God] says: 'Well done, good servant' (Matthew 25:21)47 and invites him to enter his reward. Matthew then interprets the parable in terms of the final judgement when the Son of Man comes in glory and divides the sheep from the goats. To those rewarded he extends an invitation to 'take possession of the kingdom which has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world' (Matthew 25:34).48 Clearly the island visited by Barrind is this kingdom: it is the eschatological reward promised to those who accept the gospel and make it bear fruit in their lives. It lies waiting there now for all those, the just, the saints, who will be judged deserving of it. And as for the just who merit this reward as those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty and so forth (Matthew 25:3536), so for those on the island promised to the saints all these things are provided.

The most general characteristic of the Promised Land of the Saints is that it is without limitation of any kind: there is no limit to light and day, no hunger or thirst, no lack of fruit or beauty or clothing. More significantly the limitations of material space and time i.e. space and time that came into existence in the creation of the material world as recounted historialiter in Genesis are removed for neither space nor time there relate directly to space and time here, which is equivalent to saying they do not share the same universe. Unlike islands which can be quickly perambulated, on the island that is the Promised Land one can walk for fifteen days and still there is no end to it. Likewise with time, Barrind and his companions think, by earthly reckoning, that they have been there only fifteen days altogether, but this earthly perception means nothing. They are simply informed that the time they have spent there which they could not perceive is the equivalent of an earthly year. The whole discussion about time on the island has an unearthly feel to it: it is always day so there is not alternation of light and dark to act as a daily clock (a fact that is pointed out at the beginning and end of the account and then repeated when they arrive back on Mernóc's island) yet they measure their exploration in terms of days, only to be told that in this period when they are freed from all material limitations (such as the body

45 'Euge, boni fratres. Dominus enim reuelauit uobis istam terram, quam daturus est suis sanctis' (Selmer, p. 6).

46 'Sicut illam uides modo, ita ab inicio mundi permansit' (Selmer, p. 8).

47 'Euge serue bone'.

48 'Uenite benedicti Patris mei possidete paratum uobis regnum a constitutione mundi'.

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clock of hunger and thirst) their visit actually amounts to a year on earth.49 This is not a place that can be known with our ordinary physical senses, but only through a higher mystical sense; hence its features can only make sense in the ordinary world through being decoded. In terms of knowing it is a realm of allegory rather than direct knowledge.

Once they leave the Promised Land they again have to pass through the barrier of fog that separates the two dimensions. That this return involves returning to earthly space and time is made clear in the text by the comments of those who meet them. They are now back in the perfect monastery, but know that it is close to the gate of paradise ('porta paradisi').50 In the perfect monastery they can pass from this world to the next and back again with ease for the angelic sentinel does not use his swift and fiery sword and they can even retain some of its fragrance when they return. But even if they can pass between these places, lest they think that these are sharing the same dimension of reality, the text points out that these islands are not contiguous in a single plane of reality or understanding: 'O Abbot, we know that you were in God's paradise, but where it is we do not know.' These islands are separated as they belong to different levels of understanding: one island can be known with the human senses, but the other which is heavenly can only be known and understood through a special grace granted to the saints. To those with just the ordinary senses the higher realm can be known to exist, but everything about it is incomprehensible.51 The remainder of Barrind's tale takes place in our world, and we are told explicitly that his narration of his experience is a gift to Brendan's monks. The knowledge is nourishment to them and inspires them to take up again the imitation of Christ and to seek to follow his 'new commandment', so they wash each other's feet (John 13:415) and resolve to love one another as Christ loves them (John 13:34).52

The Nauigatio tale is presented as occurring in two realms each of which is known through a specific mode of understanding. Parts of it are described as taking place in finite space and time such as when we get definite directions and distances and fixed durations; while in other parts, when Barrind or Brendan and their companions are visiting marvellous places, this time/space framework

49 The discussion has a similar feel to the use of the phrase 'the first three seconds after the big bang' as used in modern cosmology: what does a 'second' mean before there was an earth and sun and night and day to the ordinary lay-person (who has not the special sense of the physicist).

50 The island can also be interpreted, as it has been by Bray, in terms of its Eden imagery; I have not done so as I believe that imagery is secondary and used to fill out the picture drawn from the Apocalypse. However, here is a clear echo of Eden and the angel placed at the gate to bar the return of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:24). There is also a recollection of the vision of Jacob when he reached the awesome place which he declared to be the porta caeli (Genesis 28:17).

51 This is a parallel to the knowledge about God which Paul in Romans I and 2 says is given to all mankind: they can know that he exists, but as to his nature that is beyond them and they become more and more confused.

52 John 13:34: 'Mandatum nouum do uobis ut diligatis inuicem sicut dilexi uos ut et uos diligatis inuicem'.

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breaks down. In these places, having passed through a veil, neither time nor space are as we experience them. The monastic lessons intended by the author take place in ordinary places and can be learned through historical understanding; the knowledge of higher and future mysteries which he wishes to convey are described in places that are other to our experience and can only be apprehended through additional spiritual and mystical senses. While the whole tale is didactic in that it sees itself as spiritual food conveying God's word, it is in the latter, spiritual sections that we are expected to decode through allegory what is being presented through images. Thus the fabulous places are within this narrative exact functional equivalents of the parables-allegories in the gospels.53

4 Meetings with Evil

A confirmation that the author of the Nauigatio probably intended his tale to be read as an interplay of two dimensions each accessed using their appropriate modes of understanding comes from the way he treats those parts of the tale which are not portrayals of holiness. In these encounters with sin and evil we find he has left no room for the audience to decode the meaning for themselves. Instead he teaches the lessons directly using the events as exempla (as in the monk thief in chapter 7) or directly visible consequences of evil (the gates of hell in chapters 23 and 24); all the material is presented as knowable through the moral sense of what we should or should not do.

It is noticeable that all six chapters which deal with evil present their action as part of our world in space and time. The incident of the monk thief (chapter 7) and the meeting with Judas (chapter 25) take place in space that is contiguous with the ocean and islands off the coast of Ireland. Likewise the chapters (23 and 24) which deal with the entrances to hell are presented as part of the material world. This seems strange to us who view hell as a spiritual punishment, but it was a commonplace at the time that evil was punished materially, for hell was the very opposite of a spiritual place. In the ontological hierarchy, spiritual realities were inherently better than material things, and as hell was to be the abode of evil and punishment, it must be worst of all and so essentially the lowest material reality. Again the twin encounters with evil beasts one aquatic (chapter 16) and one aerial (chapter 19) are recounted as part of the journey in this world, and we have a parallel for such beasts as part of this world in the description of other attacks by such beasts off the coast of Iona in Adomnán's Uita Columbae.54 In each case we are told directly the nature of the evil that is involved: an actual

53 There is, to my knowledge, no study which compares the treatment of the parables with that of the rest of the gospels in the early medieval period; however, since the parables were decoded allegorically within the New Testament period, they became models of such exegesis for later writers, cf. J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus (London, 1972, rev. edn), pp. 6689.

54Uita Columbae, i, 19 and ii, 34 (cf. my 'Living in the Ocean', op. cit., in n. 37, p. 22).

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thief, a physically present evil, dangerous beasts, and we hear of the real heat which is close to the entrance of hell. Then the divine judgement is spelled out, and exactly what we are to avoid if we wish to escape the clutches of the demons. And, as in scriptural exegesis, the moral explanation offered in these chapters becomes a series of 'thou shalt not . . .' statements.

The trip to the entrance of hell is particularly instructive as we must not imagine some direct symmetry between there and the 'porta paradisi' which Brendan seeks.55 Heaven is just beneath the throne of God who is beyond the creation, and the liturgy of its inhabitants reaches beyond the creation; whereas hell is locked into the least worthy place in the creation and wholly dominated by it in that it is a place where a created material element, fire, holds spiritual substances captive. That this is the understanding of the author is clear from his repetition of the standard problem about the interaction of a corporeal and incorporeal substance (chapter 12) which can be traced back to a debate about hell in the Dialogi of Gregory the Great.56 The descriptions of what is seen and what happens there, from the fiery mountain,57 to the place of the smiths, to the account of the evil one carried off, are all images that were known in Ireland at the time: they are taken from Gregory (the principal source), Isidore and Adomnán, and call for no special comment.58 What is significant, however, is that just as heaven and hell are not to be seen as simply opposite otherworldly destinations, so they are both opposite and distinct perceptually. The sort of symmetry we often imagine of hell and heaven as each at the end of a fork in a road, one up, one down, one good, one bad, one happy, one sad, and so on, was not part of the early medieval picture. They were opposed in that heaven was the summit of the heavenly realm, hell the nadir of the material, and these two realms were ontologically distinct as superior to inferior. The upper realm was unlimited and eternal, the lower bound in every way and subject to time, pain, and death. The joys and nature of the higher realm were beyond human powers of understanding and could only be seen through the special grace of God who gave the saints

55 Although it does not deal specifically with the Nauigatio, this is the key weakness of Hillers, 'Voyages', op. cit., in n. 19, in that she imagines that the author thought of the two 'last things' (heaven and hell) as opposite destinations on one plane of reality.

56 O'Meara, p. xvii, notes how this problem surfaced in the ninth century in the work of Eriugena. However, it should be noted it is found in many places and is discussed at length in the Dialogi, iv, 31, [see A. de Vogue, ed., Dialogues, iii (Livre iv), SC 265 (Paris 1980)] with reference to a spiritual substance suffering corporeally in hell; I have commented on this passage in detail in my ' ''The Gates of Hell": From Metaphor to Fact', Milltown Studies xxxviii (1996), pp. 98114 at pp. 100102. This article offered an emendation of this text from that found in all modern editions; upon reading the emendation Dom de Vogue in a personal commumication expressed his agreement with it.

57 This is usually rendered as 'volcano'; but as in the translation of Gregory's Dialogi there are problems with the term, but this is not the place to enter into them; see my ' "The Gates of Hell" ', p. 114.

58 How the description of the entrance to hell was transmitted from Gregory to Isidore to Adomnán is examined in my ' "The Gates of Hell" '.

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vision, and then these had to be understood through a special set of codes. The vision was an allegory of still higher things, but in itself it was above our world and needed to be further translated. But only in this manner of shadows and images could one see the rewards awaiting the saints. The consequences of hell on the other hand can be seen with the crude material senses, and the moral lesson is a simple inference. Just as the child feels something hot and infers not to put his/her hand there in future, so with hell: one sees the horror and one is to avoid actions that lead there. Heaven is a gracious gift in response to a holy life, hell an automatic consequence. The author of the Nauigatio expresses these beliefs in the way he presents the voyagers seeing the gates of heaven through mystical visions, but the gates of hell through material sense observation.

5 Hermeneutics and Spirituality

It is the contention of this paper that Nauigatio was written in such a way that its parts were to be read using the three major senses which theologians at the time held to be those by which humans come to knowledge of reality in its totality, and which are most commonly seen in the way they carried out scriptural exegesis: the highest level of reality using a spiritual mode, the ordinary demands of the holy life through the historical sense, its most basic structures through an even simpler process of learning to avoid punishment known as the moral sense. We should not see the Nauigatio as 'borrowing' a hermeneutic from scriptural exegesis, for this was presented in Evagrius, Cassian, Eucherius, and Isidore as primarily the structure of human understanding in general, and its use in scriptural exegesis was simply a specific, if also its paradigmatic, application.59 However, when we examine the nature of that hermeneutic we see that it is based on a highly specific view of the creation, and when we examine that view we come to the core of their spirituality.

The universe is divided into the two levels of heaven and earth. Taken together these are opposites and they are understood in terms of binary opposition. The lower is material, temporal, transitory, and but a poor reflection of the higher realm. It points upwards to the higher as that which is truly important, more real, and the place of goodness and holiness. This is not a dualism as the lower cannot be put on the same level of existence as the higher, and it is the purpose of the lower to cede to the higher, to act as its ante-chamber, and its proving ground. This is a theme which has been studied in detail in the theology of the Fathers, and can be seen in their interpretation of the oppositions found in the New Testament between flesh and spirit in John, the perishable things and the things of heaven in Paul, or between gaining the world and saving one's soul in the synop-

59 Cf. my Deciphering the Code, op. cit., in n. 24, chs 5 and 9; and on Isidore in particular, my 'Christ as the focus of the Genesis Exegesis in Isidore of Seville', in T. Finan and V. Twomey, eds, Proceedings of the Third Maynooth Patristic Conference, forthcoming.

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tic gospels. However, from this vast theme one aspect is of special importance in the Nauigatio, namely that these two realms were capable of being linked in this life in two ways in particular: the liturgy and the religious life. The liturgy was simultaneously the praise of the angelic choirs and the saints in heaven, and that of the faithful on earth. Thus a common element that runs throughout the Nauigatio in whatever realm the voyagers are located is the constant song of the opus Dei. Wherever they are, whatever they are doing, the Psalms are sung, the eucharist is celebrated, and the sequence of the annual mystery adhered to. Likewise, the monastic life was a foretaste in its community and discipline of the next higher life, for it sought to live life now as it would be in heaven. The monk had abandoned the world and sought to populate heaven not earth. A key to this was monastic celibacy: the Hieronomian maxim that marriage populated the earth, but virginity heaven, was a central plank of the monastic understanding, and its consequent rejection of the earthly as carnal and inferior provided a model by which many other aspects of the monastic life were understood.60 This too is a constant theme in the Nauigatio: the ideal monastery is not just a place like any other, but it is a place that is a foretaste of heaven and so it is fitting that it is close to the gate of paradise. The fundamental lesson is that monks should acknowledge what they are about and know that they are in the middle ground: daily sharing in the heavenly liturgy in their round of prayer, and standing close to heaven in their lifestyle.

6 Conclusion: Why Allegory?

I have argued that the Nauigatio is a rich and complex lesson on the monastic life. A story written to recall its audience to the presence of another dimension constantly pressing in on the horizons of life here in the world of things and actions, of a wholly other existence beyond the span of this life. The terra repromissionis exists now as Christ said, it can be known in the life of holiness, and will be entered permanently in the future as the divine reward. If this is so, then there is still the question as to why write using this allegorical form which has within it even more allegories and symbol systems. It is one thing to allegorise an existing text which is a 'given', such as the Song of Songs, in order to find some acceptable religious meaning within it,61 quite another to deliberately seek to convey a specifically Christian view of the spiritual life using this coded form. While no

60 See Jerome, Aduersus Iouinianum, i.16, Patrologia Latina, XXIII, 246. For a study of the importance of this notion in the discipline of the Irish monasteries in the period immediately prior to the composition of Nauigatio see my 'Marriage and Sexuality in the Hibernensis', Peritia xi (1997), pp. 188206.

61 On the rationale of using allegory in the interpretation of the Song at this time, see E.A. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, 1990), ch. 3, pp. 4985; and my 'Seeking the Medieval View' op. cit., in n. 23.

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simple answer can be given, considering the question does bring out for us some other aspects of the author's spirituality.

The author's universe is a sacramental one: the lower points to the higher, the shadow to the reality, and even the highest created level of being points beyond itself into the real infinity of the Trinity. This set of relationships of material to spiritual, created to uncreated, is conceived liturgically: what happens below is an image of what happens above, what is effected at the level of sign (sacramentum) is effected at the level of reality (res), the activities of holiness on earth have a correspondence in the life of heaven. Just so is the author's tale to the reality of Christian life. In this sacramental universe the genre of story-vision is both the most appropriate vehicle of knowing, and that with the best credentials within the tradition. As such the Nauigatio does not primarily belong to the tradition of apocalyptique^62 where other insular writings unquestionably belong^63 even if it does use the Apocalypse of John or other apocalyptic works among its sources,64 but to the larger category of Christian allegory: this includes the images and parables from the gospels, the imagery of the liturgy, and stories from the fathers such as Augustine questioning the elements as to their maker.65

For the ideal audience of the Nauigatio this world is but an image of the real world, and the world itself is a tale to be read like a book about its origins and destiny. In this world what is important cannot be seen with 'flesh and blood' but has to be 'revealed' by the 'Father . . . in heaven' (Matthew 16:17) and what we really are cannot yet be seen, except in visions: 'Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is' (1 John 3:2). The Nauigatio as a tale, with other tales within it, and visions within them, is morphologically related to the rest of the Christian learning and the reality in which its audience live.

The form also allows the author to communicate to several levels of his society at once. This must not be confused with some trite notions about communications and catechetics such as that 'people learn best through strong images', 'one picture is worth a thousand words', or that 'the parables are ideal for children and the simple'! Whatever constraints the author felt in writing, 'user-friendly' communications were certainly not among them. First, there was an accepted catechetical format in the period of questions and answers and he chose not to employ it; and second, his complex images are no more the business of the beginner than the gospel parables are the materials for children's catechesis. Rather, whether one is a lay-person, a novice, or a monk, the lessons can be

62 See M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia, 1983); and J.J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to the Jewish Matric of Christianity (New York, 1987).

63 See M. McNamara, The Apocrypha in the Irish Church (Dublin, 1975).

64 Cf. Esposito, 'Apocryphal "Book of Enoch" ', op. cit., in n. 6, who argued that a 'Book of Enoch and Ellas' was amongst its sources.

65Confessiones, x, 6.

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applied directly to one's individual situation. The final destiny of all the saints is the Promised Land, the new and eternal Jerusalem: this is the beacon to everything below it. Closest to it in state is the ideal monastery: it seeks to imitate what is above it (and it is shown in the tale), and it is a beacon to all below it (and they are shown as such in the tale). Next there are the actual monasteries where the tale was to be read: they must seek to imitate the ideal monks, and in turn are a beacon to those who are not monks. Then there are the non-monks who can see the real structure of the universe in the life-style of the monks: if not those next door to them, they can hear of the ideal monks, and they must seek to follow that beacon and share in its life-style as best they can. This sharing is in liturgy, in material goods by making gifts to the monastery, and in seeking to await resurrection in the company of the monks by being buried with them.66 Moreover, all concerned from the holiest monk to the most lowly lay-person must avoid evil. This is a basic demand which applies wholly to each of them, and so basic that its implications are not hidden in images but spelled out clearly in crude factual language. A tract or series of quaestiones could only be addressed to one level of the ecclesial society at a time, or else would have to go through the levels seriatim in the way that the legal obligations of those various levels were set out.67 The Nauigatio, on the other hand, with its structure of images and imitators communicates with each stratum/state simultaneously.

We should recall that while this is a monastic tale, and was read in monasteries, it would have had a much broader audience than what we would consider a monastic community today. We must view the early Irish monastery as something more like a small town with a group of monks at its core than a modern 'religious house'. Many others, men, women, and children, belonged to the monastic unit: those who lived on and worked its lands, those who were its craftsmen, those who were under its protection. It was a community in which temporal power in the monastery, and even the abbacy itself, was often hereditary within a particular family.68 It is in such a varied community we should imagine the Nauigatio being read, and in such a community it presents a single coherent message about the 'the higher gifts' and more excellent ways (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:31).

Lastly, there is the question of taste: allegory does not find much favour with us as a vehicle for theological writing and often when it is used in writing on the

66 See my 'The Tombs of the Saints: Their Significance for Adomnán', in M. Herbert, ed., Papers from the International Conference on Hagiography, University College Cork (forthcoming).

67 We should bear in mind that one of the earliest systematic collections of canon law, the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis, was created a couple of generations earlier in the same society as the Nauigatio: it proceeds through all the levels of the clergy, those in monasteries, and all the other groups and levels in the society from kings to widows and sets out the rights and demands of each state.

68 The best introduction is still K. Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society (London, 1966); and for an account which gives more stress to the material culture, L. and M. de Paor, Early Christian Ireland (London, 1958), is still useful.

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spiritual life it is a part of specific, declared, agenda.69 By contrast, in the patristic and early medieval periods to write in a symbolic register was seen as more charming and interesting: Clement of Alexandria found truth more charming when veiled in symbols, and Augustine found that there was more pleasure in contemplating the effects of baptism through the words of the Song of Songs: 'Thy teeth are as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing' (Song 6:6).70 Certainly for pleasure and charm in learning of the Last Things and the demands of the Christian life there can be few works comparable to the Nauigatio: as is witnessed by its many manuscripts, numerous translations, and a still steady stream of interest.

69 I would not want to suggest that we are less fond as people of allegory: we use it all the time but tend to label it 'science-fiction' and consider it of less dignity than academic theology. Yet while the suggestion that the Nauigatio related to its society as Star Trek relates to ours is not often considered by medievalists, it finds immediate resonance when the text is used in class: as students can see Star Trek exploring the ideals of 1960s and 1970s society, so they view the Nauigatio exploring the best hopes and desires of its audience.

70 I take both examples from the very convenient discussion of this question of shifting tastes by J. Daniélou, 'The Fathers and the Scripture', Theology lvii (1954), pp. 8389.

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Rhetoric of the Gift:

Inspiration, Pneumatology and Poetic Craft in Medieval Wales

Oliver Davies

In a Welsh poem entitled 'Warning to the Poets', Siôn Tudur, who lived during the second half of the sixteenth century, lamented the decline of bardism in Wales. 'First,' he says 'we praised God; for mostways/ Melts away unworthy praise./ Praised then a breed of strong men,/ Princes, and rapid horsemen;/ Lords redolent of learning,/ Bishops in our midst we'd sing . . . Right was respect for learning,/ Honouring God, learning's spring./ Right too for a bard to pour/ His praise upon a warrior'.1 This passage gives us an insight into the multiple tasks of the classical Welsh poet, which can be brought together under the heading of praise, of both God and men. It was the former, however, to which Siôn Tudur gave pride of place and the passing of which he laments.

There are evident signs of tension with respect to the issue of bardic praise in an earlier period, however, in the form of a discussion regarding the provenance of poetic inspiration. This takes formal expression in two bardic debates of the fifteenth century. The first is between Rhys Goch Eryri and Llywelyn ap Moel and can be dated to around the period from 142530.2 The ostensible occasion of this dispute was the composition of a eulogy by Rhys on the death of his former bardic teacher Gruffudd Llwyd. This was criticised in a response by Llywelyn ap Moel on account of an insult to the men of Powys which he alleged this poem to contain. This same response also contains the assertion, however, that the true inheritor of Gruffudd Llwyd's muse, or awen, was Rhys ap Dafydd, who was Llywelyn's own bardic teacher, and not Rhys Goch Eryri at all.3 In this competitive atmosphere where the professional authority of individual bards appeared to be in question, the dispute quickly came to focus on the question of the true provenance of the poet's awen: 'If you are a "chief poet", and you are greatly knowledgeable, then tell me the measure of the muse and where its origin lies.'4

1 Translation by Anthony Conran, Welsh Verse (Bridgend, 1992), pp. 22021.

2 Henry Lewis, Thomas Roberts, Ifor Williams, eds, Cywyddau Iolo Goch ac Eraill (Cardiff, 1937), lxv. Hereafter Cywyddau Iolo Goch.

3 'Yr awenydd aur wiwnoeth/ A roes y gwr i Rys goeth/ Fab Dafydd, saer cywydd certh,/ Falch hael eurwalch, hil Iorwerth' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 162, lines 14). On Rhys ap Dafydd ap Iorwerth, whom I. Williams identifies with Rhys ap Dafydd Llwyd, see ibid., lvii and p. 361.

4 'Od wyd ti brifardd, hardd hawl,/ Y byd (trysor) a thra gwybodawl,/ Dywed pa fesur

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The strangeness of this question is perhaps explained if we draw a parallel with protestations of bardic authority based on esoteric knowledge of the origin of the muse which we find repeatedly in the Book of Taliesin. This manuscript, compiled in the first half of the fourteenth century, is a 'colourful mosaic', as Marged Haycock has observed, which is intended 'to show the wisdom of the seer in its brilliance'.5 Taliesin is 'a magician, a craftsman, a prophet';6 he is 'a glided gem in a golden setting',7 and 'the dwelling place of song'.8 Here we find distinct traces of competition both between different bardic voices and between a bardic (oral) tradition of knowledge on the one hand and a monastic (literate) tradition on the other. In 'The Song of Taliesin' (Cadair Taliesin) the poet proclaims his own virtue with respect to other bards and asks them rhetorically if they know 'Where the muse (awen) withdraws to in the middle of the night and middle of the day?'9 In 'Works of Taliesin's Youth' (Mab gyfreu Taliesin) it is the monks whom the bard taunts, asking; 'Who bore the muse before Ceridwen: the first in the world to be a seer?'10 And in 'Great Song of the World' (Canu'r Byd Mawr) the origin of the muse is given both a Christian gloss and is linked with motifs of poetic inspiration drawn from native Welsh tradition: '[God] made my muse ('awen') so that I should praise the Lord. I am Taliesin, with the eloquent speech of a wise man^11 who will last until the end in the praise of Elffin.'12

This same insouciant mix of Christian and native tradition appears in Llywelyn's answer to Rhys however. Llywelyn points in his reply to the role of the Holy Spirit in poetic inspiration, in accordance with Welsh poetic tradition: 'The radiant and masterly muse was given to me, long-lasting blessings, by the Spirit, true harmony of craft, cleanly it was received, the light of song, and he gave it, worthy melody, in the light of the example of angels, the path of speech, perfect and pure fate, on Pentecost, fine reward of song.'13 But Llywelyn goes on specifically to invoke the native Taliesin tradition: 'And in the prophecy of Taliesin, in Maelgwn's court the battle was fierce, when Elffin was released, from his

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dwywaith/ Y sydd ar awen o saith,/ Fflaw cerdd, a pha le y'i cad,/ Diochr yw, ei dechreuad' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 164, lines 2328).

5 Marged Haycock, 'Rhai Agweddau ar Lyfr Taliesin', PhD thesis, University of Wales, 1982, p. 91. Hereafter Haycock.

6 'wyf dryw, wyf saer, wyf syw'. Buarth Beirdd, Llyfr Taliesin, fols 78; Haycock, p. 71.

7 'eurem yn euryll'. Cat Coed, Llyfr Taliesin, fols 2327; Haycock, p. 127.

8 'wyf llogell kerd'. Buarth Beirdd, Llyfr Taliesin, fols 78; Haycock, p. 71.

9 'Awen cwdechuyd/ Ar veinyoeth veinyd'. Llyfr Taliesin, fols 3132, Haycock, p. 177.

10 py dyduc aghen/ Kyn no cherituen/ kyssefin ym byt/ auu. eissywyt.' Llyfr Taliesin, fols 2728; Haycock, p. 167.

11 The term 'wise man' here translates dewin, which has the meaning also of 'magician'.

12 'Ry goruc vy awen/ yfoli vy ren./ Mydwy taliessin/ areith lif dewin/ parahawt hyt fin./ yg kynnelw elphin.' Llyfr Taliesin, fols 7980; Haycock, p. 418.

13 'Yr awen befr oreuwaith,/ A roed i mi, radau maith,/ O'r ysbryd, iawngyd angerdd,/ Glân y'i cad, goleuni cerdd,/ Ac a'i rhoes, deilyngfoes dôn,/ Yng ngolau siampl angylion,/ Lwybr araith, berffalth purffawd,/ Ar y Sul Gwyn, eursal gwawd' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 167). My own translation, but I am indebted to Dr lestyn Daniel for his assistance.

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golden chain.'14 It is interesting to note that Rhys in his reply makes no comment on the Taliesin material but does take issue with Llywelyn on when the awen was first given, claiming that this was not at Pentecost, as Llywelyn maintained, but rather when God taught Adam a song in the Hebron valley, 5,200. years before Pentecost.15 Rhys then goes on to draw a parallel between the three letters of ave, that is Gabriel's greeting to Mary, which, in medieval tradition, coincided with the conception of Jesus in her womb, and the word awen, meaning muse, pointing out that the latter incorporates the three letters of the former.16 The fourth letter, 'n', he reads as signifying nef or 'heaven'.17 Finally he states: 'Thus the muse came to us, mighty grace, mother of the poem's power. There is no triumph of letters, nor golden mark of literature, nor life of Christ without the muse.'18 Rhys' drawing of the Welsh muse as awen into the Christian narrative through conjoining it with the ave (in imitation of the conventional permutation of Eva and ave), shows how deeply the notion of poetic inspiration and thus by implication the poet's craft has entered into the Christian consciousness of the age.19

The second bardic debate, that between Rhys Goch Eryri and Siôn Cent takes place probably only a few weeks or months after that between Rhys and Llywelyn.20 Siôn Cent is a noted fifteenth-century bard from the Welsh borders who may have received an education at Oxford.21 In his poem entitled 'Siôn Cent's Satire on the Deceitful Muse' (Dychan Siôn Cent i'r Awen Gelwyddog), the poet makes explicit reference to the earlier debate and then goes on to state his view that there are two kinds of inspiration abroad in the world: 'Two kinds of inspiration/ In the world's bright path are known./ One to the true way will bring/ You, is of Christ's inspiring,/ Full of grace, given always/ To prophets, masters of praise,/ Holy angels of Hebron / There was faultless verse begun.'22 This he contrasts with the second kind of inspiration, that based on flattery and lies: 'the other

14 'Ac yn armes Taliesin,/ Drud yn Ilys Faelgwn fu'r drin,/ Pan ollyngawdd, medrawdd mwy,/ Elffin o eurin aerwy' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 167). On the Taliesin tradition and its exploration of the theme of poetic inspiration, see in particular Patrick K. Ford, ed., Ystoria Taliesin (Cardiff, 1992).

15Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 170. For a discussion of this and its origins in the Gospel of Nicodemus, see Ifor Williams, 'Cywydd Cyfrinach Rhys Goch Eryri', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies i (1923), pp. 4350, at p. 46.

16Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 171.

17 Williams, 'Cywydd Cyfrinach', op. cit., p. 47.

18 'Felly doeth awen gennym,/ Gwrdd ras, yn fam y gerdd rym./ nid camp Ilythyr eursiamp llên,/ Na bywyd Crist heb awen.//' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 171).

19 For other instances of the identification of the muse, or awen, with the Holy Spirit, see Williams, 'Cywydd Cyfrinach', op. cit., pp. 4950, and Y Chwaer Bosco, 'Awen y Cynfeirdd a'r Gogynfeirdd', in B.F. Roberts and Morfydd E. Owen, eds, Beirdd a Thywysogion (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 1438 (especially pp. 3437). For a more general overview of the theme, see also A.T.E. Matonis, 'Later Medieval Poetic and Some Welsh Bardic Debates', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies xxix (1982), pp. 63565.

20Cywyddau Iolo Goch, lxv.

21 This disputed view was first advanced by Saunders Lewis in his Braslun o Hanes Lenyddiaeth Gymraeg (Cardiff, 1932), pp. 10405.

22 Conran, Welsh Verse, op. cit., in n. 1, p. 195. 'Awen gan Grist . . . Hon a gafas yn

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inspires an outcry,/ Many trusting its foul lie,/ This Muse of impudent wits,/ The false pomp of Welsh poets.//'23 This is a muse 'of poor claim, from the furnace of infernal nature.'24 But in his response to Siôn Cent's poem, Rhys Goch Eryri contests the existence of two different kinds of awen, reaffirming his earlier position that there is only a single muse: 'Know, there is no Muse but one./ This to the tongue not seldom/ From the Holy Ghost has come,/ And then is sent from heaven,/ Home of all gifts, to us men/ So that God's praise we may sing/ As bond for her obtaining./'25

The existence of a sustained debate among Welsh bards regarding the source of the muse should alert us to the archaic character of the Welsh tradition on the one hand and to its remoteness from the mainstream of Christian thought on poetry at least in respect of inspiration on the other. It is not the case that the continental poets have no interest in inspiration; far from it. But the issue is debated in the mainstream in terms not of provenance but of content, and debates such as that between Albertino Mussato (12611329) and Giovannino di Mantua, turn on the status of allegory and the relation between the content of pagan classics and the Christian gospel. To this extent they point back to second-century apologetics and the attempt to find a place for the pagan classics in a new and Christian construction of history.26 The Middle Ages does retain from ancient sources something of the poetic mania or Platonic view of poetic inspiration as enthusiasm, but it remains marginal and markedly against the prevailing understanding of artistic composition as a combination of labour and skill.27

The centrality of the question of the provenance of the muse in the Welsh tradition leads to what we might call the existential parameters of the bardic vocation. These come into view in those poetological texts where the poet reflects upon the nature of his vocation, generally, though not necessarily, in the marwysgafn or 'death-bed poem', where the poetic persona is confronted with the immediacy of his own demise. The particular poem with which we wish to begin here is one by Meilyr, who as one of the three sons of Gwalchmai belonged to a bardic family associated with Anglesey.28 He lived during the second half of the twelfth

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rasawl/ Proffwydi a melsteri mawl,/ Angylion saint yng nglyn Seth/ Ar dyfiad y mydr difeth.// (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 181).

23 Conran, Welsh Verse, op. cit., in n. 1, p. 195.

24 'Awen yw hon, wan ei hawl,/ O ffwrn natur uffernawl' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 182; my translation).

25 Conran, Welsh Verse, p. 197. 'Nid oes chwaith awen ond un./ O'r Ysbryd Glân, gwiwgan gwawd,/ Y tyf honno i'r tafawd./ Ac o'r nef, cartref pob ced,/ Yn fynych a ddanfoned/ I foli Duw o fawl da/ Dan amond ei dwyn yma//' (Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 186).

26 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. William R. Trask (London and Henley, 1953), pp. 21421.

27Ibid., pp. 47475.

28 For a brief discussion of Meilyr and the problems surrounding the attribution of this poem, see Catherine A. McKenna, The Medieval Welsh Religious Lyric (Belmont,

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century. The very first stanza of his poem A'm bo i gan Dduw ('May God grant me') establishes an association between an eschatological petition for mercy, Christian faith and poetic craft: 'May God grant me, may I be granted mercy,/ May no evil lack defeat me,/ May being righteous on account of my gift cleanse me/ And the world, which I know well, be shaken./ May I deserve God's favour, the Lord glorify me,/ And give me entrance to the home of Heaven.'29 The key phrase to be noted here is 'May being righteous on account of my gift cleanse me', where 'gift' translates the Welsh dawn. This word denotes a multiplicity of meanings, including 'innate ability' or 'talent', 'grace' or 'moral virtue', as well as 'gift' or 'blessing'. It is also the word used to describe the 'gifts' of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 11:810.30 Moreover, the Holy Spirit itself is commonly referred to as the 'Dei donum' in medieval theology.31 We should note that it is not the usual word for Christian 'grace' however, and its use here, supported by configurations in other poems (one of which we shall analyse below), suggests that that poet may intend a fertile polyvalence in respect of the meanings of dawn, in order to draw together the notion of faith and poetic skill. The proper praise of God, which is the poet's vocation, requires both these things, as skill without truth is empty and faith without skill is indecorous and blameworthy.

The second stanza repeats the petition of the first, but in the third stanza the poet returns to the association of poetic skill, as techne, or the right use of words, and faith or right belief. In this case however it is the words synio and celfydd and their cognates that he uses. The former implies 'reflection' and 'attentiveness' as well as 'to sound' in the sense of 'making a sound',32 while the latter means both 'skillful' and 'artful', celfyddyd being the usual word for 'craft' or 'art'.33 Here we read: 'With fulness of wisdom (synnwyr) may my spirit reflect (synio)/ On the wise fusion of skills (celfyddyd) that shall make me skilful (celfyddo)./ A skilled man (celfydd) does not approach him who speaks/ The glib and lying word, for all he may preach it./ I believe in Christ, blessed teacher,/ No skilled (celfydd) believer it is who does not believe in him.//'34 The thematic of gift and faith is sustained also in the fourth stanza where the poet asks 'A Christian am I with unshakeable right to a gift (dawn);/ Christ, may I be granted gifts (dawnus) when he gives (donio)/'35 so that ultimately he may be brought to freedom. The word

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Mass., 1991), p. 225. Hereafter McKenna. My translation is based on the original text given in McKenna, pp. 17073.

29 'A'm bo i gan Dduw, a'm bo trugaredd;/ Ni bo drwg neuedd a'm gorfeddo;/ Bod ar iawn o'm dawn a'm diheinio./ Byd a wn i gyd gryd a welo;/ Bodd Duw a haeddwyf, Rhwyf a'm rhifo;/ Boed ef yn addef nef y'm goddefo.//' (McKenna, p. 170, lines 16).

30Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, s.v. Dawn.

31 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, i. 1, q.38.

32Y Geiriadur Mawr, s.v. Synio.

33Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, s.v. Celfyddyd.

34 'O briflwyr synnwyr y synio fy mryd/ Brudd gyd celfyddyd a'm celfyddo./ Celfydd ni ddygred a ddywedo/ Celwyddawg gair ffraeth, er a'i traetho./ Coelaf fi Grist diathrist athro;/ Nid celfydd coelydd ar ni'w coelo.//' (McKenna, p. 170, lines 1318).

35 'Cristiawn wyf gan iawn dawn digyffro;/ Cristus, bwyf dawnus yn y donio.//' (McKenna, p. 170, lines 2122).

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dawnus here also carries the sense of 'talented' or 'skilled'.36 In the fifth stanza a further poetological complex of words is added, in this case those surrounding the term gwall (and its negation: diwall), which means 'fault', 'error', 'mistake', 'lack' as well as 'wrong' and 'evil'.37 This stanza attributes flawlessness to God, and in it the poet beseeches freedom from error: 'And may Heaven's King protect me from error (gwall);/ May his gift (dawn) and his understanding cure my faults (diwallo)./ May God, who is flawless (diwallus), not destroy me;/ Undarkened is the mind that praises him,38/ Undeceived is the love that loves him,/ Unblemished glory for all who believe in him.//'39 The poem concludes with a further petition that God will grant the poet 'bright gifts' (dawn) to purify him and the 'gifts of counsel' (dawn): 'May love and his concern for me not fail/ . . . May I have the friendship of the Lord for ever.//'40

The occurrence of so many poetological terms in this poem raises the question as to what extent the dawn or 'gift' repeatedly referred to includes the author's own vocation as poet. This may indeed be the force of the line: 'May being righteous on account of my gift cleanse me'. Terms such as gwall, synio, dawnus and celfyddyd may then subtly maintain the notion that the poet is implicitly appealing to his craft, and to the moral and technical obligations that is obligations of both will and knowledge which flow from that vocation, and which we may assume he regards himself as having carried out well. Alternatively, the use of such a vocabulary may simply indicate that he is implicitly employing poetics as a metaphor for faith, rather than as an embodiment of faith. Perhaps then he is telling us that Christian faith is like composing poetry, requiring discernment, counsel and grace, rather than pleading to God for the divine gift of discernment and techne by which alone he can carry out his Christian obligations to praise God well which for him, as a professional poet, is coterminous with exercising his Christian faith. Although we may well incline towards the former view in the case of Meilyr ap Gwalchmai's poem, it is the latter which seems more reasonable in the case of Cynddelw's 'Death-Bed Song'.

Cynddelw himself flourished between 1155 and 1200, and is remembered as being perhaps the greatest of the Gogynfeirdd or poets of the princes.41 He is associated chiefly with the area of Powys in mid-Wales. His Marwysgafn or 'death-bed song' is putatively the last of his poems.42 This work begins with

36Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, s.v. Dawnus.

37Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, s.v. Gwall.

38 An alternative reading to this is 'the mind of God is clear to those who praise him'. Henry Lewis, ed., Hen Gerddi Crefyddol (Cardiff, 1974), p. 205.

39 'Ac ef frenin nef a'm noddo rhag gwall;/ Ei ddawn a'i ddeall a'm diwallo./ Diwallus Deus ni'm difanwo;/ Didywyll ei bwyll a'i cyrbwyllo,/ Difrad ei gariad yn yd garo,/ Dinam ogoned i a'i credo.//' (McKenna, pp. 17072, lines 2530).

40 'Cariad a'i bwylliad im ni ballo/ . . . Carennydd Dofydd beunydd a'm bo.//' (McKenna, p. 172, lines 40, 42).

41 On the 'poets of the princes', see J.E.C. Williams, The Poets of the Welsh Princes (Cardiff, 1978).

42 Text in McKenna, pp. 16469 and Lewis, Hen Gerddi, pp. 4043.

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reference again to the 'gift', but this time the reference to the gift of poetry is unambiguously made: 'From God I beseech guardianship of the gift (dawn)/ Of praising my generous and gracious Lord.//'43 Interestingly, this plea for divine inspiration is immediately followed by praise of Christ's creativity in the cosmos, forming 'grass and trees, heather on the hills', who 'made one person blessed for just judgement/ And another flawed (gwall), bereft of gifts (dawn)'//, as if to place poetic creativity in the context of a divine creatio.44 As in the case of the previous poem, Cynddelw specifically petitions God to be protected from error: 'I would wish, my Lord, by your leave,/ (I believe in you for your love,/ I shall sing you a song of praise,/ Dispenser of gifts) may I make no error (gwall)./'45 In contrast with Meilyr however, Cynddelw expresses a real sense of existential angst in the lines that follow where he speaks of the horror of sin and of his faith in the redemptive power of God: 'There was more than was needed of greatest grace,/ Ruler of the strong, guarding the farthest limit./ The thought terrifies me/ Of the sinfulness of Adam's sin./ I am a foolish exile wandering in your blessed land,/ With your fair hosts about me,/ Brightest bards of the church,/ Their sustenance has been shared with me./ Lovely is the path to the place I seek./'46 The reference to the 'brightest bards of the church' and their sustenance (perhaps the divine 'gift') which Cynddelw too has enjoyed, is a reminder of the central importance of the bard, as one who praises God, in the medieval Welsh Church.47 This passage of reflection on the power of sin is followed by a meditation on the Incarnation: 'Greatest Lord, when you were born/ Love came to us, there came salvation./' This passage continues: 'He rises for us and offers his merits,/ He is the Lord who shall not impede our welfare,/ And as a gift has been given,/ Entirely mortal, infinite his rights.'48

43 'Cyfarchaf i Dduw cyfarchwel ddawn/ I foli fy rhi rhwydd rhadlawn//' (McKenna, p. 164, lines 12). We prefer Lewis' reading of cyfarchwel ddawn (Lewis, Hen Gerddi, op. cit., in n. 38, p. 40) to McKenna's cyfarchwel iawn at this point. McKenna renders this line: 'I beseech of God true dedication/ To praising my generous, gracious King'.

44 'A wnaeth dedwydd er dedfryd iawn/ Ac ar wall ar wall ar wellyg dawn./' (McKenna, p. 164, lines 89).

45 'Neud mi a fynnwn, fy naf, o'th ganiad/ O'th gariad y'th gredaf,/ Neud cennyd cerddglyd cynhelwaf/ Cedwallaw, na ad wall arnaf./' (McKenna, p. 164, lines 1922).

46 'Neud oedd fwy na rhaid rhad mwyaf,/ Rhwyf cedyrn yn cadw or eithaf;/ Neu'm dychryn meddwl a feddyliaf/ O bechu a bechws Addaf./ Neud wyf alltud drud a dreigl Dy wendud/ A'th wendorf amdanaf./ Neud beirdd yr eglwys egluraf;/ Neud eu porth a barthwyd ataf./ Neud hyfryd fy llwrw i'r lle a gyrchaf;/' (McKenna, p. 164, lines 2331).

47 Compare a line from the Black Book poem 'The Dispute between Body and Soul' (Dadl y Corff a'r Enaid) where the soul accuses the body of failing to perform a number of conventional devotions, but adds: 'You did not listen to the songs of clear-speaking poets' ('Nid endeuiste kiwrev beirt gouec higlev'); A.O.H. Jarman, ed., Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin (Cardiff, 1982), p. 9.

48 'Gwledig arbennig, pan yth aned,/ Dyfu waredd in, dyfu wared;/_Ac Ef dwyre in ac Ef daered Ei fudd/ Ac Ef udd ni'n lludd ein llesaed,/ Ac ef yn oseb yr osoded/ Yn hollawl meidrawl hawl huanred./' (McKenna, p. 167, lines 4142, 5760). For this final line McKenna reads 'Full mightily He claims the sun's Course'.

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As the poem draws to a dramatic and powerful conclusion, the poet returns to his own subjective state, as he contemplates his own death. Immediately following the passage on the Incarnation, Cynddelw continues: 'Those who give God his tithe with their hand/ Deny him not his due./ I am a bard who has been made flawless/ In my Creator's protection, Lord of hosts,/ I am Cynddelw, singer of verse, grace has been given me,/ May Michael, who knows me, give me welcome.'49 Now specifically the poet points to his own verbal skill as the sign that he too has not failed to deny God his due: 'Greatest Lord, when I sang of you,/ Not without worth were my words,/ Nor bereft of fair features,/ Not wanting the gift wherever I received it./'50 This verbal artistry, founded upon God's inspiration, he equates with his own moral rectitude: 'Unshakeable God did not make me/ To pursue folly, deceit or violence./ Such a one, I considered, shall not be woken,51/ Nor be given Heaven, who seeks it not./ I did not serve too keenly,/ Nor profit too greatly,/ Nor let arrogance grow in my breast,/ Nor did I pursue too much penance,52/ But to be in my Lord's dwelling was my desire,/ And freedom for the soul, the need for which I prayed.'53 In what may originally have been the final stanza of the poem, Cynddelw pleads before God and in the light of eternal judgement to consider the richness of his verse and thus the quality of his praise: 'Greatest Lord, take to yourself/ This tribute of praise and well-formed poetry./ Perfect is the speech-skill and shape/ Of my extolling song, candle of a hundred lands,/ For you are master and great monarch,/ You are counsellor and light's lord,54/ You are the heart of the prophet, and judge,/ You are my generous ruler, the giver,/ You are teacher to me; drive me not from your heights,/ In your wrath, or from your lovely land,/ Nor deny me your favour, my Lord creator,/ Nor refuse

49 'A roddo i Dduw ei ddegfed o'i law/ Heb luddiaw iddaw Ei ddÿled;/ Mi wyf fardd digardd y'm digoned/ Ar helw fy nghreawdr, llywiawdr lliwed;/ Mi Gynddelw geiniad, rhad a'm rhodded:/ Mihangel, a'm gwyr, a'm gwrthfynned.//' (McKenna, pp. 16668, lines 6166).

50 'Gwledig arbennig, ban genais honawd,/ Nid ofer draethawd a rydraethais;/ Nid eisiau fy ngherdd yng nghain efrais,/ Nid eisiwed ced men y cefais./' (McKenna, p. 168, lines 6770).

51 Following another reading McKenna has 'Not with awakening have I been concerned' (McKenna, p. 169).

52 Again, following another reading McKenna has 'Inappropriate the presumption I have nurtured in my spirit:/ Not of enduring penance have I thought' (Mckenna, p. 169).

53 'Nid ef y'm crëws Dëws difflais/ Er gwneuthur amwyll na thwyll na thrais;/ Nid ef dihunaw rhyhanddenais:/ Nid ef rhoddir nef i'r neb ni'w cais./ Nid rhwy o awydd a weinyddais:/ Nid rhwy o obrwy a obrynais./ Nid perthyn rhyfyg rhyfegais i'm bryd:/ Nid porthi penyd rhyfeddylais./ Yn addawd fry rhên rhyddymunais/ Rhyddid i'm enaid rhaid rhyiolais.//' (McKenna, p. 168, lines 7180).

54 These last two stanzas occur also in the Black Book, although in a different order, and I am following Jarman at this point (Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, op. cit., in n. 47, p. 146). Mckenna has 'dawn of light'.

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my submission and lowly plea.55 / Nor deliver me by your hand to a wretched home,/ Nor let me run with the black host of the rejected.'56

The combination of petition, eschatology and awareness of the poet's own vocation which we find in this poem lends force to the suggestion that the presupposition that the Holy Spirit functions as inspirer of the bard leads the poet, or Cynddelw at least, to identify his own poetic craft with moral virtue: the gift of poetry with the gift of salvation. The common ground of these two lies not only in the gracious excess of divine creativity but also in the poet's own ability to discern what is appropriate and correct, in terms both of the myriad felicitous verbal choices which define fine poetry and the right choices which determine the moral life. This fusion of the Aristotelian techne and prohairesis presents a paradigm which, to my knowledge, is unique within the medieval Christian tradition. The medieval Church had every reason to mistrust the vernacular poetic traditions of Europe, with their evident pagan associations. Thomas Aquinas was clear that true creation as a creatio ex nihilo is not possible in nature or art, and too great an emphasis upon the poet's creative powers might seem to align him with God himself (an aspect which proved to be of great interest of course to the Romantics).57 Nor do we find any significant parallels in Irish sources, where a pagan account of poetic inspiration predominates.58 The very existence of Christian bards in Wales claiming direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit, is a testament to the archaic and unconventional character of Welsh church life in the Middle Ages, where the relative absence of a regulative and informed structure of ecclesiastical authority allowed the emergence of a form of Christian existence which would have provoked disapproval in other places where communications were more effective. After all, to claim the same inspiration as that which filled the 'prophets, masters of praise' was implicitly to bid for the very highest Christian authority. Charismatics, from the Montanists to the present day, are the first to run foul of ecclesiastical authority. The fact that there is no evidence for a fundamental questioning of our Welsh bards' theory of inspiration might reflect the extent to which their charismatic tendencies were thoroughly institutionallsed, grounded in the ancient and tenacious bardic orders with their legal and social privileges. Even the standard bardic grammars, the Gramadegau'r Penceirddiaid, include a reference to the Holy Spirit as inspirer of poets: 'poetry is a share in

55 McKenna has 'Do not leave me implicated in the graceless coup'. See also Jarman's comments on this in Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin, op. cit., in n. 47, pp. 161 and 111.

56 'Gwledig arbennig, erbyn atad/ Erbarch o cyfarch o cyfaenad,/ Fy nigabl barabl ar ei barad,/ Fy ngherdd i'th cyrbwyll, cannwyll cangwlad./ Can wyd priodawr, can wyd meidrad mawr,/ Can wyd cynghorawr, gwawr goleuad,/ Can wyd bron proffwyd, can wyd ynad,/ Can wyd rhiau hael, can wyd rboddiad,/ Can wyd athro im, na'm ethrïad o'th fan,/ O'th faran o'th firain gwlad;/ Na'm diddawl o'th fudd, udd echeinad,/ Na'm gwellyg ym mhlyg ym mhlaid dirad,/ Na'm gwollwng o'th law gwallus trefad,/ Na'm ellwng gan llu du digarad.//' (McKenna, p. 168, lines 8194).

57 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, i. 1, q. 45, ad 8.

58 See for instance, L. Breatnach, ed., 'The Caldron of Poesy', Ériu xxxii (1981), pp. 4573.

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natural wisdom, and derives from the Holy Spirit, and its muse comes from the practice of invention and art'.59 Secondly, although connections with the pagan world are evident in the Taliesin motifs, there is little sense of paganism as an active religious force in conflict with Christianity, which might have jeopardised the position of the poets, as inheritors of an ancient and pagan tradition. It is interesting to note for instance that the mantic soothsayers described by Gerald of Wales as the exotic awenyddion, who are likewise inspired by the awen, also call upon 'the true and living God, and the Holy Trinity' when they enter their ecstatic state.60

But whatever the reasons for the emergence and survival of a kind of Christian bardism in Wales during these centuries, which looked back remotely perhaps to a kind of quasi-shamanism of divine inspiration on the one hand and claimed the patronage of the Holy Spirit on the other, this configuration does raise some interesting questions regarding the category of the mystical. We would not normally regard bards as 'mystics' in any of the technical senses which that word has come to take on. We can discount any influence of Pseudo-Dionysius here, or indeed, of Augustine's vision at Ostia, or any other of the topoi of the classical mystical tradition.61 And yet the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is one of the great themes of mystical literature, marking not only the integration of the individual into the body of the Church but also into the very life of the Trinity. The extreme theological sensitivity surrounding the agency of the Holy Spirit as an unmediated form of divine presence is borne out by the scholastic disputes over Peter Lombard's view presented in the Sentences that divine love and human love are both coterminous with the Holy Spirit. Against this, scholastic theologians argued for an intervening stage of divine self-communication as created grace.62 Too great a stress upon the presence of the Spirit, as God, within the human self can seem to call into question the distinction between human and divine. In the case of our Welsh bards it is tempting to argue that just such an identification may have taken place with the development of the concept of the Holy Spirit as author of poetic inspiration. Here, however, it is not the language of Pentecost with its associations of prophecy and proclamation which proves the governing idea, but rather earlier notions of the poet's own mediation of a divine agency of

59 'Kanys kyffran o doethineb anianawl yw prydyddyaeth, ac o'r Yspryt Glan y pan henyw, a'e hawen a geffir o ethrylith a cheluydyd aruer' (G.J. Williams and E.J. Jones, eds, Gramadegau'r Penceirddiaid (Cardiff, 1934), p. 35. I am indebted to Dr Iestyn Daniel for his assistance in the translation of this line.

60 Gerald of Wales, The Description of Wales (Harmondsworth, 1978), (Book I, chapter 16) p. 247.

61 Interestingly, however, S.A. Mousalimas has recently argued that the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius was influential in the conversion of Alaska from shamanism to Russian Orthodoxy. See his study The Transition from Shamanism to Russian Orthodoxy in Alaska (Oxford, 1995).

62Sententiae, i, dist. 17d. See also Gérard Philips, L'Union personelle avec le Dieu vivant (Gembloux, 1974), and P. Rousselot, Pour l'histoire du problème de l'amour au moyen âge (Münster, 1908).

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inspiration, in the persona perhaps of a goddess such as Ogyrfen or Ceridwen. Rhys Goch Eryri's description of the Holy Spirit as being not the saviour of the poets but rather their very soul is particularly interesting in this respect.63 This would explain why the emphasis lies upon the poet's craft and not upon the authority of his inspired proclamation. It would also explain why there is no attempt to use the language of deification, which we would otherwise expect where the Holy Spirit is believed to be powerfully present in the individual. Rather, it is the poet's work, and his right moral behaviour, which marks the presence of the Holy Spirit in him, and not any exceptional mystical phenomena. In the final analysis it probably makes sense then to see this appropriation of the Holy Spirit as source of poetic inspiration as an effective strategy for maintaining the presence and privilege of the poets at the centre of medieval Welsh society on the one hand and as an explanation for the enchantments of poetic language as such on the other. But we should remember too that the fusion of these themes with the poet's own sense of the miracle of Christian election, as in the case of Cynddelw, ensured that what might otherwise seem a purely formal, if not institutional, form of charisma took on an existential character and became part of the lived experience of a concrete individual.

63 'Enaid y beirdd', Cywyddau Iolo Goch, p. 171.

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Medieval Mysticism:

An Example from Wales

R. Iestyn Daniel

It will no doubt surprise some that, just as England has its spiritual classics such as the Ancrene Riwle, The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection, and so on, so too does Wales have a sister work, albeit the only one of its kind in medieval Welsh literature. It is a religious prose text on mysticism called Ymborth yr Enaid ('Food of the Soul'), the third and final book of a larger work called Cysegrlan Fuchedd ('The Holy Life') whose other books are no longer extant. Unfortunately, Ymborth yr Enaid remained in obscurity for a long time for a number of reasons, the main ones being the nonconformist nature of traditional Welsh society with its in-built anti-Roman Catholic bias; and, secondly, the vexed question whether the work is an original product or a translation of some hitherto undiscovered source, a fact which has had the inhibiting effect of making it difficult for some to know with what kind of composition exactly they are dealing. Happily, Ymborth yr Enaid has by now been edited^1 and is, as a result, slowly becoming better known outside Wales; this will enable it to find its rightful place in the spiritual literature of the Middle Ages.

In view of the general unfamiliarity of Ymborth yr Enaid to readers, the best procedure will be first to give a brief description of its content, accompanied where necessary by explanatory comments. Other aspects of the work can then be discussed accordingly.

Ymborth yr Enaid is a treatise divided into three parts which are described thus in the opening paragraph:

Y rann gyntaf a draetha am y gwydyeu gocheladwy a'r kampeu arueradwy; yr eil rann am dwywawl garyat, drwy yr hwnn y kyssylldir Duw a dyn. Y dryded rann a draetha am berlewycuaeu a delont o'r kareat hwnnw ac am weledigaetheu a rodo yr Yspryt Glan yn y perlewycuacu, ac am nawrad yr engylyon.2

(The first part treats of the vices to be avoided and the virtues to be practised; the second part of divine love by which God and man are joined. The third part treats of ecstasies which may come from that love and of visions which the Holy Spirit may give in the ecstasies, and of the nine orders of angels.)

1 For an edition of the treatise, see R.I. Daniel, ed., Ymborth yr Enaid (Caerdydd, 1995). Hereafter Ymborth yr Enaid. Readers without an acquaintance of Welsh may wish to consult R. Iestyn Daniel, A Medieval Welsh Mystical Treatise (Aberystwyth, 1997) for a more detailed account of the following.

2Ymborth yr Enaid, p. 2, lines 18.

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It is, therefore, primarily a treatise on mysticism in three logically progressive parts. It will emerge later, however, that it is predominantly practical rather than speculative in character a guide, in fact, to the attainment of mystical experience.

The first part is a mechanical, catalogue-like treatment characteristic of the Middle Ages of the seven deadly sins and the seven corresponding virtues needed to counteract their effect. The sins are given as: 'balchder, anghawrder, kynghoruynt, aniweirdeb, glythineb, irlloned, llesged' ('pride, covetousness, envy, lust, gluttony, anger, sloth'). Each one is first defined and then divided into numerous 'ceinclau' ('branches'), i.e. specific instances of the general sin, each of which is given a name. There then follow the seven corresponding virtues given as 'karyat, uvuddawt, cymhedrolder, haelioni, anmyned, diweirdeb, ehutrwyd' ('love, the opposite of envy, humility of pride, temperance of gluttony, liberality of covetousness, meekness of anger, chastity of lust and diligence of sloth'). Unlike the sins, however, these are neither defined nor divided. For a modern reader, this is perhaps the least interesting part of the content of Ymborth yr Enaid, but it is nonetheless a prerequisite to what follows.

The sins having been shunned and the virtues practised, it is now possible, in part two, for the virtuous to advance to the love of God. This love ('cariad') is divided into two kinds 'cariad serchawl' ('affective love') and 'cariad ellyllaidd' ('demonic love'), but the term most commonly used by the author for the former is 'anwylserch' ('affectionate love') and 'ynfytserch' ('foolish love') for the latter. 'Anwylserch' has its origin in the love of God the Father for God the Son which is the Holy Spirit and descends from the Holy Spirit in the form of sparks into the Church, described as the bride of Christ, and from there into the hearts of men. There are two kinds of 'anwylserch', love of God and love of neighbour, and the reader is urged to love God with all his might and his neighbour as himself. Every other kind of love is 'ynfytserch' because it is misdirected, and eternal damnation awaits its practitioners.

Part three of Ymborth yr Enaid is concerned with the ecstasies and visions considered as natural concomitants of a life devoted to sanctity. This is by far the longest and most varied part of the treatise and it falls naturally into four different sections.

In section one, the reader, having avoided sin and practised virtue, is now enjoined to devote himself to the divine love of the blessed Trinity, bearing in mind Jesus in particular who, by virtue of his incarnation, is more easily apprehensible to man than the Father and the Holy Spirit. In order to illustrate his point, the author now relates in third person narrative form and at some length the experiences of 'neb vn Vrawt o greuyd Brodyr Pregethwyr' ('a certain friar of the Order of Friars Preachers') whom he does not name and who, by following the steps prescribed, beheld a vision of the blessed Trinity, described in detail, which then culminated in a brilliant vision of Jesus when a boy of twelve teaching in the temple. This account also marks a major change in the author's approach to his work, a change from the intellectual, impersonal theologising of the preceding parts of Ymborth yr Enaid to a passionate spiritual fervour, accompanied by an increasingly coloured style, which adds great variety and richness to the work.

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Some scholars seem to believe that the change to the third person at this juncture signifies that the author is now relating the experiences of someone else,3 and it is possible that the change of style has added strength to their belief. There are, however, certain correspondences which link this passage with part two of Ymborth yr Enaid.4 This is even truer of the subsequent section, an amplification of the Dominican's experiences, which shows specific affinities in word, style and content with every part and section of the treatise.5 It is highly unlikely that the author has here transplanted bodily someone else's account attempting to assimilate it to his own style, nor is it even necessary to suppose that he might have done so. One could also add that, since Ymborth yr Enaid is a guide to the attainment of mystical experience, the most likely kind of person to write such a work would be one who had had such experiences himself (this is not in any way to deny that a description of someone else's mystical experience could not be used for the purpose of edification, but such is not the aim of the author of Ymborth yr Enaid.) To account, therefore, for the author's change to the third person, I suggest that far from recycling someone else's spiritual autobiography, he simply chose to conceal his identity under the veil of a distanced third person, a not uncommon technique^6 and one entirely in keeping with what Sir Idris Foster called the 'inspired anonymity' of the overwhelming part of medieval Welsh prose.7 As for the change in style, it is evident throughout Ymborth yr Enaid that, just as the author can change naturally from prose to verse, so, too, is he able to command several prose registers according to his literary purpose, and the more elevated and rhetorical character of this passage can be seen to grow naturally out of the intensity of the author's experiences and his desire to find a fitting style for their expression. There is also evidence in the content of the passage which links it with part two.

Section two of part three, by far the longest one, is a lengthy, detailed, highly coloured and heavily rhetorical description of the friar's vision of Jesus when twelve years of age, touched upon in the previous section but fully described

3 E.g. Idris Foster, 'The Book of the Anchorite', Proceedings of the British Academy xxvi (1949), p. 208; J.E. Caerwyn Williams, 'Medieval Welsh Religious Prose', in Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Celtic Studies 1963 (Cardiff, 1966), p. 94; 'Rhyddiaith Grefyddol Cymraeg Canol', in Y Traddodiad Rhyddiaith yn yr Oesau Canol, ed., Geraint Bowen (Caerdydd, 1970), p. 400; D. Simon Evans, Medieval Religious Literature (Cardiff, 1986), p. 67; T.O. Clancy in a review of Ymborth yr Enaid in New Blackfriars lxxvii (1996), p. 474.

4 Note in particular Ymborth yr Enaid, pp. 1516, lines 6769. 'Ac velle heuyt y gellir ac y dylyir ysgythru y kylch hwnnw yma ar y mod y dywetpwyt vchot'. This refers to ibid., p. 10, lines 5766.

5 For an exhaustive treatment of the various links between Pryd y Mab and the rest of Ymborth yr Enaid, see R. I. Daniel, 'Ymborth yr Enaid' Clytwaith, Cyfieithiad neu Waith Gwreiddiol?', Llen Cymru xvii, rhifyn 1 a 2 (199293), pp. 1922.

6 See Foster, 'The Book of the Anchorite', op. cit., p. 221. The locus classicus of this convention, of course, is the famous words of St Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians, 12:2.

7 'The Book of the Anchorite, p. 221.

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here. In some manuscripts this description is called Pryd y Mab ('The Beauty of the Son'), which is a convenient title for this passage of Ymborth yr Enaid. The whole of the boy's physique, raiment, and presence are systematically described and at one point the medium of expression turns from prose to verse when the author includes a song which the friar heard sung by the Holy Innocents in his vision. At the end of the piece the friar is told by the Son to love Him as much as he possibly can but also very interestingly to tell the poets to praise Him rather than the passing follies of the world.

In section three a series of specific instructions are given by the author to the reader as to how to achieve the full ecstasies and visions mentioned in the previous sections. Nowhere is the true purpose of Ymborth yr Enaid as a guide to practical mysticism more evident than here, and the reader is to induce the desired state by using the detailed descriptions of Pryd y Mab as an aid. There occurs also, as in the previous section, a passage of verse which is a translation of the famous Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus ('Come Holy Spirit'), to be recited in the process of approaching union with Christ.

Section four is a description of the nine orders of angels, listed as 'engylyon, archegylyon, kadeiryev, arglwydiaetheu, tywyssogaetheu, mediannev, nerthoed, cherubin, seraphin' ('angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, virtues, cherubim, seraphim'), with which men will be placed on entering heaven according to their type of sanctity. This section serves the double function of concluding both the third part of Ymborth yr Enaid and Ymborth yr Enaid itself; hence the apparent lack of cohesion between it and the preceding sections.

Finally, it should be noted that the treatise is preceded by a stanza of praise to the blessed Trinity, and it is reasonable to suppose that it was intended as an aid to induce a contemplative frame of mind in the reader before he proceeded to peruse the prose text. Likewise its conclusion is followed by three beautiful 'englyn' stanzas, describing a mystical experience which verbal correspondences with passages of Ymborth yr Enaid give every reason to suppose are the work of one and the same author.

So much for the content and form of Ymborth yr Enaid, but what are we to make of this work, with its mixture of prose and verse, its extremes of style ranging from the bald, mechanical definitions of sin to the richesse baroque of the heavenly visions, and the seemingly disproportionate amount of space devoted to the latter? Is it an ingenious patchwork of heterogeneous sources, or some kind of translation or adaptation of a lost original once in common currency, or quite simply an original composition?

Against the patchwork theory is the fact that Ymborth yr Enaid, for all its striking variety of style and content, exhibits a strict underlying logic and cohesion. Such features are not characteristic of patchworks and entitle the work to be considered a unified whole.

Against the translation theory is the fact that no direct source for Ymborth yr Enaid has as yet been discovered, a point which cannot be ignored, especially when one recalls that the treatise was originally part of a much larger work. The

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heart of the treatise too, namely the lengthy Pryd y Mab section, is highly unlikely to be a translation of anything because of the essentially native character of the kind of cumulative rhetoric employed in it known as 'araith'.

There are certain good reasons, on the other hand, for considering Ymborth yr Enaid to be an original composition. Firstly, assuming (as I have argued) that sections one and two of part three of the treatise represent the experience of the author, section three being but his application of them for the benefit of others, then, since mystical experience is something which arises from the depths of the individual soul's unique and exclusive encounter with God, there is no need to look further than the author himself for the essential source whatever echoes there may be of other sources of what is the greater portion of by far the longest part of this work. Secondly, parts one and two and the final section of part three of Ymborth yr Enaid show an affinity with certain works by Hugo of St Victor or his school of a kind which suggests that the author used these works not as a basis so much as an occasional source of ideas and material which he utilised in a strongly independent and unfettered fashion as the need arose. Altogether, therefore, it would appear that the element of originality in Ymborth yr Enaid is considerably greater than the element of derivation and sufficient reason for regarding it as an original composition, although I am aware of the limitations of that word in relation to medieval works.

The process by which Ymborth yr Enaid was formed having been thus established, it becomes possible to study the work on a reasonably sound basis. Let us begin by briefly addressing some basic questions such as date and authorship.

Regarding the date of Ymborth yr Enaid, since it is now fair to assume that it is the work of the anonymous Dominican mentioned in part three in its entirety, it cannot be earlier than 1221 when the Dominicans reached England before proceeding to Wales, where they were well established by the middle of the century. Nor can it be later than 1346, the date of the earliest extant text. Closer dating, however, depends mainly on a number of circumstantial factors. Chief among these is, firstly, the fundamentally Augustinian theology of Ymborth yr Enaid which is reminiscent of the earlier rather than later thirteenth century. To quote Pierre Mandonnet, 'The first Dominican doctors, who came from the universities into the order, or who taught in the universities, adhered for a long time to the Augustinian doctrine'.8 Secondly, section one of part three of Ymborth yr Enaid, where the author recounts his visions and ecstasies, is strongly reminiscent in expression and ethos of many of the experiences recorded in the Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum ('Lives of the Friars of the Order of Preachers') of Gerardus de Fracheto, covering the years 120354,9 as though they stemmed from the same world of Pentecostal-like fervour (although, of course, the kind of experiences described are not in essence restricted to any particular period). Thirdly, Ymborth yr Enaid bears certain strong similarities stylistically and philosophi-

8 P. Mandonnet in The Catholic Encyclopaedia xv vols (London, 190712), XII, 366b.

9 Foster, 'The Book of the Anchorite', op. cit., in n. 3, pp. 2089; Daniel, Ymborth yr Enaid, pp. lviiiix.

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cally to the Bardic Grammar usually associated with the names of the fourteenth-century figures of Einion Offeiriad and Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug but which I have argued elsewhere^10 was originally a thirteenth-century composition that underwent certain modifications in the following century in response to the altered circumstances of the Welsh bardic order in the aftermath of the Edwardian conquest. Personally, I would date Ymborth yr Enaid around the middle of the thirteenth century though fully acknowledging that this is not the last word on the matter.

As regards the authorship of Ymborth yr Enaid, although its Dominican author does not name himself, I think it likely that he is to be identified with the author of the Bardic Grammar mentioned above who in turn is possibly to be identified with a thirteenth-century professional poet and grammarian called Cnepyn Gwerthrynion.

It is impossible to know with any certainty in which of the five Dominican houses in Wales the work was composed, but the fact that the author wrote an important work for Welsh readers seems to me to suggest a friary whose membership was strongly Welsh rather than linguistically mixed. If so, one should look to the friaries of pura Wallia, i.e. Bangor or Rhuddlan, rather than the south Walian ones of Haverford West, Brecon and Cardiff. Personally, I think the most likely candidate is Bangor Dominican friary for the further reason that the princes of Gwynedd Uwch Conwy were celebrated for the welcome they extended to the mendicant orders and for the close links which frequently existed between the two.

There is internal evidence that Ymborth yr Enaid was composed for a cloistered male community, probably a Dominican one. It could, indeed, be argued that such a work would be a matter of necessity since St Dominic bequeathed no body of spiritual doctrine, written or oral, to his followers, and if my dating of the treatise is correct, it possesses the further importance of being a very rare example from that period of a Dominican work, in Latin or the vernacular, on spirituality.11 The fact that the author wrote it in Welsh, not Latin, could signify that he was writing for novices whose knowledge of Latin and theology would be scant or non-existent.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that Ymborth yr Enaid is only the third book of a larger work Cysegrlan Fuchedd ('The Holy Life') whose other books have been lost, and it is natural to wonder what the content of those books must have been. They were clearly religious, as the title of the whole work shows. Moreover, it is unlikely that any further books followed Ymborth yr Enaid since the latter clearly marks the culmination of the religious life. What, therefore, was the content of the first two books? I believe that they were treatises on the internal

10 R.I. Daniel, 'Awduriaeth y Gramadeg a Briodolir i Einion Offeiriad a Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug', in Ysgrifau Beirniadol xiii, ed. J.E. Caerwyn Williams (Dinbych, 1985), pp. 178208; Ymborth yr Enaid, lilv.

11 Bella Millett has argued the case for Dominican authorship for the early thirteenth-century Ancrene Wisse, see her 'The Origins of Ancrene Wisse: New Answers, New Questions', Medium Aevum lxi (1992), pp. 20628.

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and external aspects respectively of the Dominican Order. For besides being out-and-about preachers and missionaries (as most of us perhaps tend to think of them), the Dominicans were also, in their convents, virtual monks, a duality which caused their constitutions to be divided into two parts, the prima distinctio laying down how the friars were to conduct themselves in their houses, and the secunda distinctio describing the overall organisation of the Order. The subject matter of the lost books could therefore have been the contemplative and active aspects of the Dominican Order, and it should be noted that Humbert de Romans, head of the Order 125463, wrote two works on precisely these two themes towards the end of his life.12 Books one and two of Ymborth yr Enaid probably disappeared because of their lack of appeal to a more extended readership.

I should now like to look at some of the wider aspects of Ymborth yr Enaid beginning with its European roots. The four most obvious influences on the treatise are the work of St Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hugo of St Victor three wholly standard influences, if you like and the devotion to the Holy Childhood. The influence of St Augustine can be seen in particular in the second part of the treatise, for instance in the discussion of the blessed Trinity which is, to quote Oliver Davies, 'almost a summary of the doctrine contained in the first two books of Augustine's On the Trinity'.13 The influence of Pseudo-Dionysius can be seen, for instance, in the division of Ymborth yr Enaid into three logically progressive parts corresponding to the classical division of the spiritual life, associated chiefly with Dionysius, into the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways, and in the invocations of the various names of Jesus in section three of part three of Ymborth yr Enaid which reflect the cult of devotion to the Holy Name and which stemmed originally from Dionysius' work On the Divine Names. The influence of Hugo of St Victor can be seen in slight but significant correspondences between Ymborth yr Enaid and the works De Fructibus Carnis et Spiritus^14 ('The Fruits of the Flesh and the Spirit'), attributed to Hugo, and chapters five and six of the second tractate entitled De Creatione et Statu Angelicae Naturae ('The Creation and Rank of the Angels') of the Victorinian Summa Sententiarum ('Compendium of Opinions')15 of uncertain authorship. Finally, the influence of devotion to the Holy Childhood, an aspect of the devotion to the humanity of Jesus which gained momentum from the eleventh century onwards, is to be seen above all in section two of part three of Ymborth yr Enaid, otherwise known as Pryd y Mab, where Jesus is described at length when twelve years of age teaching in the temple.

12 The Expositio super Constitutiones Fratrum Praedicatorum corresponding to the prima distinctio, and De Officialibus Ordinis Praedicatorum corresponding to the secunda distinctio. Texts in J.J. Berthier, ed., Humbert de Romans: Opera de Vita Regulari, ii vols (Romae, 1889), II, pp. 1178 and 179371 respectively.

13 Oliver Davies, Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales: The Origins of the Welsh Spiritual Tradition (Cardiff, 1996), p. 125.

14 Text in J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina (Paris, 184464), CLXXVI, 9971006.

15 Text of the chapters in ibid., 85C88D. Their respective titles are De Ordinum Distinctione and De Missione Angelorum.

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As regards the design of the work, it was possibly influenced by the highly influential Merure de Seinte Eglise ('Mirror of the Holy Church') or the Speculum Ecclesiae^16 as it is most frequently known in its Latin attire of St Edmund of Abingdon (c. 11801240), archbishop of Canterbury, composed c. 1233.17 This work exhibits some general similarities to Ymborth yr Enaid.18 First, both are practical in nature, of roughly similar length, the work of mystics for members of a cloister, and written in the vernacular (the original language of the Merure probably being French). Second, the threefold scheme of the Merure, namely the contemplation of God in his creatures, in Holy Scripture, and in Himself, is reminiscent of the division of Ymborth yr Enaid into three progressive parts, and, in both, use is made of descriptions of Jesus or part of his life as a basis for contemplation and prayer. Thirdly, both are heavily influenced by the thought of Hugo of St Victor although this point should not be overstresesd as Hugo's influence was widespread in the thirteenth century. Finally, there are some verbal resemblances between the Merure and Ymborth yr Enaid.19

Points such as these show Ymborth yr Enaid to be a mainstream work of theology by the standards of the age. It does at the same time, however, exhibit some less obvious, untypical features which could be related to certain aspects of the author's Welsh heritage, more specifically his bardic heritage.

The first feature is the identification, in part two of the treatise, of human with divine love noted by Oliver Davies. This view of love was first expressed by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century and later defended, around 1245 in Oxford, by the Dominican Richard Fishacre, the only medieval theologian of substance to do so. The contrast between the Augustinian position and that of the author of Ymborth yr Enaid is thus stated by Davies:

Love is not so much a supernatural force that enters into us, with its origins in the Trinity, but rather a staged reflex of the human mind or soul responding to divine love. Love is a re-enacting of the structures of the Trinity within the human self by a gradual approximation of the self to God through infused grace; thus the pantheistic problem of using love univocally of human love and the essence or being of God is avoided. Love bridges and unites, but it does not eliminate difference. The thrust of our Welsh text however is subtly different. By explicitly identifying human love (that is love of our neighbour as well as love of God) with the love that is the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, our author is suggesting that there is an identity rather than a continuity between God, as love, and the self as loving act.20

It is possible, as Davies has ingeniously suggested,21 that the author of Ymborth yr Enaid was attracted to this notion because he found it more congenial with the

16 H. R. Forshaw, ed., Speculum Religiosorum and Speculum Ecclesia (London, 1973).

17 M.D. Legge, Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters (Edinburgh, 1950), p. 96.

18 For a brief but useful account of the Merure, see W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 22223.

19 See Ymborth yr Enaid, p. 81.

20 Davies, Celtic Christianity, op. cit., in n. 13, pp. 12526.

21 Oliver Davies, ' ''On Divine Love" from The Food of the Soul: A Celtic Mystical Paradigm?', Mystics Quarterly xx, no. 3 (1994), pp. 9293; Celtic Christianity, p. 91.

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well-attested belief held by the Welsh poets that the inspiration for their song was a grace which came to them directly from God. If God's grace could thus enter them so directly, why not also his love of which his inspiring grace was, after all, but one manifestation?

The second feature is to be seen in the final sentence of the Pryd y Mab section. It is spoken by Christ:

A manac y'r prydydyon y rodeis i vdunt gyfurann o yspryt vy nigrifuwch i y mae yawnach oed vdunt ymchwelut y'r yspryt hwnnw y'm diwyll i noc y ganmol ynvytserch gorwagyon betheu tranghedigyon yn amsserawl.22

(And tell the poets, to whom I have given a share of the spirit of my delightfulness, that it were righter for them to return to that spirit to adore me than to praise the foolish love of the empty, perishable things of time.)

The truly remarkable part of this passage is the words 'r prydydyon y rodeis i vdunt gyfurann o yspryt vy nigrifuwch i' ('the poets to whom I have given a share of the spirit of my delightfulness') since in them there is apparently expressed, and vindicated by Christ himself, the belief of the Welsh poets that God was the direct source of poetic inspiration. When one recalls the ambivalence or even hostility of the medieval Church towards poetry, especially vernacular poetry, this utterance,23 divinely enunciated, is all the more striking. Without any known parallel in medieval European literature, it is 'a delightful reminder of the extent to which our visionary Christ is a Welsh one'.24

Thirdly, there is the final section of part three of the treatise where a long and detailed series of instructions are given as to how the would-be mystic, lying on his bed at night, is to attain mystical union. The inclusion of such instructions to such an end is something very difficult to parallel in medieval mystical literature, and the explanation could once again lie in the author's bardic background. It is known that Irish and Scottish poets, both master and pupil, when composing their verse, followed an esoteric procedure which consisted of retiring into the privacy of a room devoid of light where they lay on a bed moulding their work in their minds until completed,25 and although the evidence for Wales is highly tenuous,26 there can be little doubt that the methods of the Welsh poets, whatever variations might have existed, were fundamentally the same. Now if these methods could perhaps be accompanied by an influx of the Muse, could not the same methods also, at least to some extent, be applied to the quest for an influx of the Holy Spirit? In this instructional part of Ymborth yr Enaid, we may have an example of a mystic directing those under his spiritual care in a way analogous to how a master-poet would have taught his pupils.27

22Ymborth yr Enaid, pp. 22, 2037.

23 Davies, Celtic Christianity, p. 116.

24Ibid., p. 141.

25 J.E. Caerwyn Williams, The Irish Literary Tradition, trans. P.K. Ford, (Cardiff and Massachusetts, 1992), pp. 16163.

26 See, e.g. R.I. Daniel, 'Rhaglith i Awdl gan Sypyn Cyfeiliog: Dogfen Hanesyddol?', Dwned i (1995), pp. 6365.

27 In the case of Ireland, it is known that pupils were assigned their tasks at night-time to

(footnote continued on next page)

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It says much for the author of Ymborth yr Enaid and his attachment to his native tradition that he succeeded in conforming his work to the scholasticism of his day while at the same time steering a subtly independent course.

Before concluding, I would like to devote some space to Ymborth yr Enaid viewed as a literary product, for it is undoubtedly as such that it has most claim to distinction and universality. Perhaps its single most consistent and striking feature throughout is the unfailing adequacy of the author's language to express whatever matter be in hand. When one bears in mind that the author might have had few, if any, Welsh precedents for his treatise, this is no small achievement. At the same time, though, it must be added that he was heir to a highly developed and diverse vernacular tradition of prose and verse which equipped him admirably for the execution of his task. Thus, in part one, the most technical part of all, the definitions never lack clarity and there is never any shortage of terms for the multifarious branches of the seven deadly sins. In this part of the work one could say that the author already had a pattern in the clear, concise definitions and analyses of the Welsh laws, to which passages of part one bear a distinct resemblance.

In part two of Ymborth yr Enaid the author is at ease in reproducing in his native tongue the formal methods and style of scholastic discourse with its ordered arguments and fine distinctions. He also, as Oliver Davies has rightly observed, 'shows great originality in the construction of an appropriate Welsh theological idiom'.28 This is seen, for instance, in his use of compound adjectives, some of which have no obvious Latin equivalents and 'something of the colour of the bold terminology of contemporary German Dominican writers who were themselves attempting to render scholastic metaphysics in the language of the Nibelungenlied'.29 In this part of Ymborth yr Enaid too one sees a certain natural indebtedness in the author to his native heritage, particularly the rigorous logic frequently seen in the Welsh laws and the great facility of the bardic diction of the period for forming new compound words according to need.

It is, however, in part three of Ymborth yr Enaid, and above all in Pryd y Mab the description of Jesus when a boy of twelve that we see the literary high point of Ymborth yr Enaid. In this passage the author employs his powers to the utmost not merely to describe his vision fully and accurately but, so far as possible, to re-enact it for the reader's benefit. The author, as Oliver Davies points out in his sensitive and perceptive analysis of Pryd y Mab,30 resorts to three main strategies in order to achieve his end. The first is the employment of a series of adjectives, mainly compound ones, to embellish the sentences (these have been italicised for the reader's convenience):

(footnote continued from previous page)

be completed after a day's work by the following night; Williams, The Irish Literary Tradition, op. cit., pp. 16162.

28 Davies, Celtic Christianity, op. cit., in n. 13, p. 127.

29Ibid., p. 127.

30Ibid., pp. 13739.

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Mab melynnwynn adueindwf oed val yn oet deudegmlwyd; ac yn gymedrawl y dwf; a dyat y gorff o hyt a phraffter vrth y oet. Penn gogyngrwnn gwedeid idaw; a gwallt penngrychlathyr pefyrloyw eureit velynnlliw arnaw . . . A gwynndal gwastatlyfyn ehanglathyr mereridliw idaw ...31

(The Son was light-haired and slenderly built like a boy of twelve years of age; and of well-proportioned build; and in bodily stature tall and robust for his age. His head was oval and comely; and his hair was gleamingly curly, brilliantly bright, golden, and light-hued . . . And he had a pale forehead which was even and smooth, expansively radiant, and pearl-coloured . . .)

Such use of adjectives is typical of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Poets of the Princes, and their cumulative, ornamental use in prose constituted a type of rhetoric common to both Welsh and Irish literature and known in Welsh as 'araith'. Their effect here is to add weight and dignity gravitas to the author's description, but there is a further point. Adjectives such as these, here and elsewhere in Pryd y Mab, are frequently expressive of light or colour and therefore 'serve powerfully to reinforce the radiance of the child's appearance in the mind of the reader through the multiplication of images of light'.32

Secondly, the author makes extensive use of simile, for instance:

A'r gwynnvydic wyneb hwnnw a oed kynn decket a chynn egluret ac na ellit kyffelybu idaw neb ryw greadur corfforawl na nefawl na dayarawl: megys gwynn eiry Ystwyll, nev wynn vlodeu rosys, nev lilys, nev auallulawt, nev wawn goruynyd, nev ysgewyll, nev heul ysplennyd nefawl; megys lloer yn y dyd, neu seren y morwyr, neu Venus pann vei deckaf yn y nefuawl gylch, neu heul hafdyd pann vei egluraf ynn tywynnv disgleirloyw eglurder am hanner dyd vis Meheuin yn haf. 33

(And that blessed face was so fair and clear that no bodily creature, heavenly or earthly, could be likened to it: like white snow at Epiphany, or the white bloom of roses, or lilies, or apple blossom, or the gossamer on the heath, or shoots, or the brilliant celestial sun; like the moon in daytime, or the sailors' star, or Venus at her fairest in the celestial sphere, or the sun on a summer's day when brightest and radiating brilliant, shining brightness at mid-day in June in summertime.)

This likening of the boy Jesus' face to the many and diverse marvels of the natural world serves to convey powerfully the beauty beheld by the author of Ymborth yr Enaid.

His third main strategy is the inclusion of gems in describing the physical features of the Son, but especially his attire, for instance:

A llinnynn o eurllin o'r ysgwyd y gilyd idaw, a maen karbwnkulus ar bop ysgwyd yn kynnal deupenn y llynynn. A restyr o eur kyfulet a llaw yn gogylch yr ysgin yn gyfulawn o rudemmeu a gwynnemmev yn rwymedigyon yn yr eur. Ac ymdanaw yr oed wregys o gywreinweith wedy ry wehu o van adafed eur yn gyfulawn o werthuawrussyon emmev, a maen karbwnkulus liewychlathyr yn waec arnaw; a gwaell o rudeur yn kayu arnei, a maen mererit disgleirwynn yn benn ar y gwregys.34

31Ymborth yr Enaid, p. 17, lines 14, 1314.

32 Davies, Celtic Christianity, op. cit., p. 137.

33Ymborth yr Enaid, p. 18, lines 3847.

34Ibid., p. 21, lines 14957.

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(And there was a cord of golden flax from one shoulder to the other, and a carbuncle stone on each shoulder supporting both ends of the cord. And a border of gold as wide as a hand encircling the cloak and full of red gems and white gems inset in the gold. And around Him there was a skilfully wrought girdle woven from fine threads of gold and full of precious gems, and with a brilliantly shining carbuncle stone for a clasp; and a pin of reddish gold to fasten it, and a brilliantly white pearl stone at the end of the girdle.)

The purpose of this was probably to keep the Son within the context of the blessed Trinity which, prior to the full emergence of the Son, had appeared to the author in images of light and radiance, one of the most obvious properties of jewels and precious stones. It is possible, however, that it also served the further function of allaying any homoerotic feelings which might be aroused by the close physical description of the boy.

In thus attempting to re-enact his vision rather than simply recount it, the author of Ymborth yr Enaid was, according to Davies, engaging in a form of poetic discourse, 'where the poetic function of language is understood to be one in which language not so much reflects reality as itself becomes the reality which is the object of our attention',35 and although the medium of expression of Pryd y Mab is mainly prose, it is undoubtedly prose used with poetic and rhetorical effect. It should also be remembered that verse actually occurs in the middle of the passage when the author attempts to reproduce the words which he heard sung by the Holy Innocents. This poetological approach is exceedingly rare in the mystical literature of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe and paralleled in only a handful of visionary texts, outstanding of their kind, by Meister Eckhart, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant, and Jan van Ruusbroec where an attempt is made to encapsulate mystical experience in literary form.36

The rest of Ymborth yr Enaid is straightforward enough, but we may note the novel terms 'hun dwyvrwyt' ('twofold trance'), 'hun dribrwyt' ('threefold trance'), and 'hun uudugawl' ('victorious trance')37 used in the instructional section following Pryd y Mab.

A word must finally be said about the instances of verse in Ymborth yr Enaid viz. the stanza to the blessed Trinity immediately preceding the beginning of the treatise, the song of the Holy Innocents in Pryd y Mab, the translation of the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus in the following section and a repetition of the stanza to the blessed Trinity at its close, and the three stanzas immediately following the end of the treatise. These in the 'toddaid', 'rhupunt hir', 'rhupunt' (toddaid'), and 'englyn' metres respectively are all the work of a master of the strict metres in use by the professional poets of the day. The translation of the Veni Creator Spiritus is particularly noteworthy for the fine balance that the author maintains between the meaning of the original and the difficult requirements of the 'rhupunt'

35 Davies, Celtic Christianity, op. cit., p. 140.

36Ibid., pp. 136, 140.

37Ibid., pp. 26, 109.

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metre; but by far the most poetic of the verse compositions are the 'englynion', arresting in their beauty of imagery and perfection of art:

Gwanecneit kanneit kynnar-val kannwyll,

Kynn no'r dyd na'e darpar,

Gwiwne gwawr vore gwawnar,

Gweleis luchadenn wenn war;

Gwar lauar hygar hoywgein-y'm gwely,

Gweleis wybr, am blygein,

Gwir dwyre mal gwawr dwyrein,

Gwiw leufer kanneitber kein;

Kein virein ysgein ysgawn chwec-gwiwlwys,

Gweleis wybrenn divrec,

Garueid, deyrneid, dec,

Gwiwne morewyn gwanec.38

(As a brilliant, early wave-leap, like a candle,

Before the day and its preparations,

With the fair hue of morning at daybreak when there is gossamer on the tilth,

Was the white, gentle flash which I saw;

Gentle, vocal, dear, lively and beautiful in my bed

Was the cloud which I saw at daybreak,

Truly uplifting like an eastern dawn,

A fair light, brilliant and pure, beautiful;

As a beautiful, splendid effusion, light, sweet, excellent and pure

Was the flawless cloud which I saw,

Loving, majestic, fair,

With the fair hue of the foam of a sea-wave.)

Although their effect virtually evaporates in translation, the original reads like a distillation of the entire experience of the vision which the author of Ymborth yr Enaid tried so hard to communicate in Pryd y Mab. Paradoxically also, they are the more effective for the absence of any reference to the divine.

There is much more that could be said about Ymborth yr Enaid some of the possible further activities of its author and even the resemblance of the work in parts to those classic medieval Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion and the implications thereof but I hope nonetheless that this brief and imperfect outline will have given some idea of its nature and significance. It is a many-faceted work which grew out of an unusual combination of circumstances and exhibits a curious mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Theologically, although for the most part sound, it is flawed from part three onwards by the dominance of the emotions over the intellect and the attempt to induce mystical experience, something strictured by the great spiritual masters, although in this case it was probably the result of misguided zeal. From a literary point of view, it is striking testimony to the maturity and versatility of the Welsh prose of the thirteenth century, a prime indicator (whose importance has not as yet been fully recognised) in addressing the vexed questions of the authorship, provenance, and date

38Ibid., p. 30.

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of much of medieval Welsh prose, both religious and secular, and as a sustained effort to recreate, rather than merely narrate or describe, the single event of a burning vision of Christ, the Pryd y Mab section, is possibly unique in the vision literature of the age. In deference to the author, though, it is above all the soul experience of an artist of genius and mystic who responded to the divine call within the context and milieu of the ancient, noble and cherished tradition of Welsh poetry, which was itself steeped in Christian thought and sentiment.

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Cistercian and Victorine Approaches to Contemplation:

Understandings of Self in A Rule of Life for a Recluse and The Twelve Patriarchs

Ruth Smith

1

The twelfth century in Europe constituted a formative historical moment in the development of what was to become the mysticism of the high Middle Ages. Well-documented historical factors, among them the rise of a new urban way of living and the availability of translations of the classical authors, combined to create a unique cultural climate. The dissemination of the Aristotelian corpus of logical writings affected every area of learning, inspiring a passion for classifying knowledge which led to the rise of scholasticism. The classical revival also helped to breed a kind of humanism, a fascination with what it means to be human, with the different faculties of the soul, and with how the soul relates to the body. An emphasis on self-knowledge and on interior states of mind can be detected in devotional and secular writing of the period, as can a focus on love. New religious Orders and groupings proliferated, concerned to combat abuse and laxity and to return to the vita apostolica. Within this specific cultural context, twelfth-century writing on contemplation evolved in particular ways. As Bestul has pointed out, the intense interest in this period in exploring the personal experience of God, as well as the affective style of much of the writing, finds its mature expression in the mysticism of later centuries.1

Contemplative experience was the subject of much of the devotional writing of two influential twelfth-century movements, the Cistercian monks and the Victorine canons. Both Cistercian and Victorine writers naturally used scripture heavily and also focused on the same patristic sources, especially Gregory and Augustine.2 The understanding that human reason was a God-given faculty, and that it played a part in the apprehension of the divine, was shared by both groups, as was the belief that reason alone was not sufficient for the task. Cistercians and Victorines were clearly writing within the same cultural milieu and influenced by the same sources. Were there, then, significant differences in the material they

1 Thomas H. Bestul, 'Antecedents: The Anselmian and Cistercian Contributions', in Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, ed. William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 12.

2Ibid., p. 3. See also Sidney R. Packard, Twelfth-Century Europe: An Interpretive Essay (Amherst, 1973), p. 191.

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produced? It is generally accepted that it is difficult to make clear distinctions between monks and canons in terms of role. Some monks were engaged in preaching and pastoral service, though this would typically be the role of the canon and other clerics.3 In terms of theology, Jean Leclercq's comments on the difficulty of distinguishing a unique canonical spirituality, have been seminal.4 More recently, however, Caroline Walker Bynum has argued persuasively that significant differences can be detected in the devotional treatises of monks and canons. They are not, however, differences located in role or theology, but differences of attitude.

In order to explore the topic further, I propose to examine and compare two twelfth-century treatises, A Rule of Life for a Recluse (De Institutione Inclusarum), written by the Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx, and The Twelve Patriarchs (De Duodecim Patriarchis) also known as Benjamin Minor, by Richard of St Victor. Both writers were significantly to affect the development of what came to be known, in later centuries, as mysticism.5 The texts named above were both of sufficient interest in England in the later Middle Ages to be translated into the vernacular: an abridged paraphrase of The Twelve Patriarchs was made in the late fourteenth century^6 and the Vernon manuscript contains a Middle English version of part of Aelred's treatise, dating from the same period.7

Both the Cistercian and the Victorine texts are concerned with advocating contemplation. The Twelve Patriarchs is a logically structured investigation, formulated in the style of nascent scholasticism, of the process by which the intellectual soul can rise to an apprehension of God. The method used, as in Richard's The Mystical Ark (Benjamin Major), is tropological interpretation of Old Testament figures and events. In The Twelve Patriarchs, written between 1153 and

3 Grover Zinn, 'The Regular Canons', in Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff (London, 1968), p. 219. See also a useful review of scholarly opinion on the differences between monks and canons by Christopher Brooke, 'Monk and Canon: Some Patterns in the Religious Life of the Twelfth Century', in Monks, Hermits and the Ascetic Tradition, Studies in Church History XXII, ed. W.J. Shiels (Oxford, 1985).

4 'La Spiritualite des chanoines reguliers', in La Vita Comune del Clero nei i Seculi XI e XII: Attidela Settimana di Studio: Mendola, Settembre 1959, vol. I (Milan, 1962), p. 134.

5 Richard of St Victor was hailed as a major authority on contemplation by both Bonaventure and Dante. See Grover Zinn, trans., Richard of St Victor: The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of The Trinity (New York, 1979), pp. 13. All quotations from The Twelve Patriarchs will be from this translation, and identified in the text by TP and page no. The Cistercian influence on affective spirituality is generally accepted. The influence of Aelred of Rievaulx on Bonaventure and Ignatius has recently been highlighted in Marsha Dutton, 'The Cistercian Source: Aelred, Bonaventure, and Ignatius', in Goad and Nail, Cistercian Studies Series LXXXIV, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, 1985).

6 Zinn, Richard of St Victor, p. 5.

7 See introduction to Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum: Two English Versions, ed. John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, Early English Text Society O.S. 287 (London, 1984), p. xiii.

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1162, Richard focuses on Jacob, his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and his sons and daughter. Through an extended personification allegory, he describes the way in which the rational soul (Jacob), by means of the twin powers of reason (Rachel) and affection (Leah) and their offspring, can eventually progress to the ecstasy of contemplation represented by Benjamin. In contrast, Aelred's teaching on contemplation forms part of his work of practical and spiritual advice, written for his anchoress sister in 116062. The earlier part of A Rule is concerned with the external observances of the anchoress. Aelred then moves on to address what he calls the 'inner man'. Finally, a threefold meditation is presented, schematised in terms of the past, the present and the future. The reader is encouraged imaginatively to enter into incidents from Jesus' life on earth, then to meditate on the circumstances of her present life, and finally to meditate on the heavenly future, all in order 'to stir up the love of God in yourself, feed it and keep it burning'.8 In keeping with his specific project, Aelred's style is much more personal. The atmosphere created by the text, in contrast to the Victorine treatise, is one of immediate experiential involvement on the part of the reader.

The pool of patristic theological ideas and cultural influences from which the two texts draw is, as mentioned above, broadly the same. The difference of emphasis found in the two texts cannot be wholly explained by reference to the intended readership or to authorial temperament, but can be traced to differences between the immediate Cistercian or Victorine cultures in which the writers worked. As we shall see, an important factor in the determination of those cultures was the Rule by which the Order lived, in this case the Benedictine and Augustinian Rule, respectively. Bynum has pointed to a more focused sense, in canonical writing, of the necessity to teach and admonish other brothers. She sees, in monastic treatises, a greater concentration on individual salvation.9 In this context, I propose to examine the two texts on contemplation for what they reveal of differing Cistercian and Victorine conceptions of 'self'. Section 2 will constitute an exploration of the broad understandings of the human 'self' inscribed in The Twelve Patriarchs and A Rule of Life for a Recluse. In the third section I will consider the different ways in which the self is seen to apprehend God in contemplation, and then, in the last section, explore how the contemplating self is seen to relate to others.

8A Rule of Life for a Recluse (De Institutione Inclusarum), trans. Mary Paul Macpherson, The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx (Vol. I): Treatises, The Pastoral Prayer, Cistercian Fathers Series II (Spencer, Mass., 1971), p. 102. All subsequent quotations will be from this translation and identified in the text by A Rule and page no.

9 Professor Bynum's argument, based on analysis of treatises of spiritual advice by both monks and canons, primarily for members of their own Orders, is set out in Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality, Harvard Theological Studies XXXI (Missoula, Montana, 1979). See also 'The Spirituality of Regular Canons', in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, LA, 1982).

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2

Self as Image of God

The primary self-conception available to twelfth-century devotional writers finds its basis in the biblical account of creation, with God's declaration: 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness' (Genesis 1:26). This concept, repeatedly used by St Paul, was expanded upon further by the patristic writers, notably by Augustine,10 so that 'for the Christian Fathers, ''image theology" became a primary way to describe man's relation to God'.11 After the Fall, the sacrifice of Christ was required to restore the soul to its God-likeness. At best, the restoration could only be partial in this earthly life, the process reaching full completion in heaven. Its presence in the patristic tradition combined very happily with the atmosphere of twelfth-century humanism to make the concept of man as the image of God an important theme in the theology of the period.12 Amongst others, both Cistercian and Victorine writers pushed the terms of image theology further, extrapolating from the Genesis statement, for example, that man corresponds to the image of God in terms of reason, and to the likeness of God in terms of affect.13 Image theology forms part of the framework of thought in both The Twelve Patriarchs and A Rule. A close comparison of the texts, however, reveals that the theology is used in a different way.

In Richard's treatise, the attainment of self-knowledge and finally of true contemplation is figured by the birth of Joseph and then of Benjamin to Jacob and Rachel. The metaphor of the soul as a mirror, reflecting the image of God is utilised.

We read and we believe that regarding the soul, humans have been made in the likeness of God and therefore as long as we walk by faith and not by sight, as long as we still see by a mirror and in an enigma, we cannot find, as I have said, a mirror more apt for imaginative vision of Him than the rational spirit.

(TP, pp. 129130)

What is interesting to note here is the preoccupation with the notion of sight. For Richard, the contemplative's project is clearly one of coming to see, initially by looking in the mirror of his own soul, the things of God. The Christian's life on earth is characterised by the very limited vision of reality afforded him/her.

10 In the last eight books of De Trinitate, Augustine expounds upon the individual soul being an image of the Trinity, in its triune faculties of memory, intellect and will.

11 Bernard McGinn, ed., Three Treatises on Man: A Cistercian Anthropology, Cistercian Fathers Series XXIV (Kalamazoo, 1977), pp. 45.

12 In the literature of the time, Morris, amongst others, sees a new delight in humanity. See Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual (Toronto, 1987), pp. 910. The period also produced a large body of literature aimed at investigating the nature and properties of man.

13 Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Allysticism, vol. II, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York, 1994), p. 399.

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Richard goes on to describe how, concentrating on the image of God in the soul, 'a kind of splendour of divine light begins to shine in it and a great beam of unexpected vision appears to his eyes.' (TP, p. 130). In this emphasis on vision, the text stands firmly within what has been called Augustine's 'epistemology of illumination'.14

In A Rule of Life for a Recluse, Aelred uses the language of image theology rather differently, to describe his own spiritual experience. In the middle section of meditations, the writer compares his own fall from chastity with his sister's virginal purity. Brought up in the same family, Aelred, unlike his sister, has tarnished the image of God in himself, here closely identified with chastity. Their relative positions before God are then compared. 'So you exult in these riches which God's grace has preserved for you, while I have the utmost difficulty in repairing what has been broken, recovering what has been lost, mending what has been torn' (Rule, p. 95). Though the writer then goes on to warn that the virgin can still fall in other ways, it is difficult to escape the sense that, in Aelred's mind, the image of God in the human being is closely associated with chastity. The association of ideas is spelt out in one of Aelred's sermons: 'thus in the summit of the virginal soul, that is in the mind or intellect, the image and likeness of God shine out'.15 Aelred's most explicit presentation of the image theology which underpins A Rule is to be found in his treatise The Mirror of Charity (Speculum Caritatis). Here, the human made in God's image is primarily designed to experience happiness, which can only be found in a relationship of love with the Creator. As in Richard's text, Augustinian elements are incorporated: the human cleaves to God through the three faculties of intellect, memory, and will.16 But, as Charles Dumont has noted, 'it is significant that all Aelred's attention is devoted to the last, the will or the faculty of loving'.17 The 'image of God in man is ruined, even though it is not completely destroyed' when humans withdraw from God and reach out in love to a less worthy object. In contrast to the Victorine text, knowledge of God is not figured as sight. Here, instead, we are presented with the language of relationship. Knowledge of God is equated with loving him and the error which ruins the image is one of misdirected love.

Adam was endowed with free will and helped by God's grace, and he could have delighted always in the thought and knowledge of God by loving Him for ever . . . But he was also capable of concentrating his love on less worthy objects, with the result that by turning from the love of God, his heart grew cold and he was doomed to misery.18

14 Ewert Cousins, 'A Theology of Interpersonal Relations', Thought xlv (1970), p. 64.

15 'Sermo Beate Virginis', Sermones Inediti B. Aelredi Abbatis Rievallensis, ed. C.H. Talbot (Rome, 1952), p. 137. I owe this translation to Roger Ellis.

16The Mirror of Charity: The Speculum Caritatis of St Aelred of Rievaulx, trans. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker (London, 1962), pp. 47. Hereafter Mirror.

17 'Seeking God in Community According to St Aelred', Cistercian Studies vi (1971), p. 292.

18Mirror, p. 6.

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Within this theology of love relationship, Aelred's emphasis on chastity finds its context. Sexual sin represents the ultimate cleaving to a substitute object of the soul's affection. Love, the primary one of the three faculties of the soul designed for the knowledge of God, is thereby 'narrowed down to selfish lust'.19

Another common way of figuring the self as sinner in the process of restoration is to make use of the imagery of territory. Issachar, the fifth son of Jacob and Leah, is interpreted in The Twelve Patriarchs as true joy. The biblical narrative describes Issachar as 'a strong ass, living between boundaries' (Genesis 49:14), and Richard equates this with the Christian's experience of living in a kind of no-man's land. Glimpses of divine joy have spoilt the soul for the pleasures of this world, but the fullness of God's presence is not within reach, this side of heaven. A sense of frustrated yearning, resulting from the Christian's liminal position, permeates this passage.

Because he did not cast off the goods of this life that are necessary, he did not abandon completely this land. Because he was able to grasp only a kind of extremity of future life, he did not grasp that land at all. And for that reason he lived between the boundaries. (TP, p. 94)

Immediately following the above passage, the speaking voice of the text moves into the first person singular. Here, as on another rare occasion where Richard appears to speak of his own experience,20 the self-conception presented is that of restless sinner.

O, I pity myself, I who until today live a wanderer and a fugitive upon the earth . . . That which I crave is always lacking. That which I flee I find everywhere. Certainly it is an evil land in which I live in such a manner. (TP, p. 95)

The Cistercians also used the picture of the Christian as wanderer in an alien land. Articulating the link between this and man as the imago Dei William of St Thierry writes of the soul, 'created in the image and for the vision of God', which, turning away from God like Cain, 'dwells in a region of unlikeness'.21 When Aelred contrasts his sin with his sister's virtue, like Richard, he speaks of himself as a 'wanderer and a fugitive'. The allegorical figure, that of Cain sent into the land of Nod, is the same but the emphasis here is interestingly different.

For he separated you from me, as light from darkness, keeping you for himself, leaving me to myself. My God, where did I go off to, where did I fly to, where did I abscond to? Indeed cast forth from your face like Cain I dwelt in the land of Nod, a wanderer and a fugitive, and whoever came across me killed me. For what could a pitiable creature do once abandoned by its Creator? Where could a stray sheep go, where could it hide when it had lost its shepherd? (A Rule, p. 93)

Again, the Cistercian text uses the language of relationship, where the Victorine

19Ibid., p. 7.

20 'For I never approve evil, never give consent to evil, never accomplish evil, except I myself shall have willed it' (TP, p. 73).

21 'The Nature of the Body and the Soul', McGinn, Three Treatises, op. cit., in n. 11, p. 151.

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one uses the impersonal language of ownership. Richard's wanderer is one dispossessed of the goods of this life and not yet possessed of the goods of heaven. Aelred, too, is dispossessed through sin, not primarily of heavenly experiences, but of relationship with God himself. He addresses God directly in the text and speaks of the pain of being left unprotected, while his sister has enjoyed intimacy with God.

The Ordering of Self

The human soul, as the tarnished image of God, cannot aspire immediately to divine contemplation, but must first undergo a cleansing process. This preliminary process is described in both The Twelve Patriarchs and A Rule, where both treatises utilise the notion of order, though in rather different ways. Richard of St Victor's model follows closely that of St Augustine. Butler saw two aspects to Augustine's teaching: 'the remote preparation' which 'lies in the purification of the soul' and the 'proximate preparation' which 'lies in the processes called "recollection" and "introversion" '.22 Richard translates these two phases into the language of image theology and asserts that it is not until the 'mirror' of the rational spirit has been both 'wiped and gazed into for a long time' that 'a kind of splendour of divine light begins to shine in it' (TP, p. 129). What Richard adds to the Augustinian model is a characteristically twelfth-century concern with order.23 The treatise itself is presented in the ordered, logical form which became associated with scholasticism. In addition, it is clear that, for Richard, 'disordered' actions and even disordered thoughts constitute a moral issue (TP, pp. 7273). Disorder is associated with sin and with the absence of God. From the passage discussed earlier, it is interesting to note what Richard regards as the ultimate indictment of this earthly exile: 'certainly it is an evil land . . . a land of misery and of darkness, where the shadow of death is, where there is no order at all' (TP, p. 95).

It is hardly surprising, then, that in Richard's treatise, the purification process is principally one of bringing order to the soul's emotions. Augustine had used Leah and Rachel to represent the two 'lives' of the Christian, the 'active' life of moral effort and the 'contemplative' life of beholding God.24 In The Twelve Patriarchs this theme is developed further in accordance with contemporary interest in defining the human psyche. Here, Leah and Rachel are also made to represent different aspects of the soul: Leah becomes affection, with her handmaid sensation, while Rachel signifies reason and her servant Bala, imagination. The first step towards contemplation is the rational taming of the emotions, which when controlled and directed aright, become virtues.

22 Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life (London, 1967, first publ. 1922), pp. 27, 29.

23 See McGinn, Growth of Mysticism, op. cit., in n. 13, pp. 15355.

24Contra Faustum, xxii.52, Patrologia Latina XLII, 432.

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And so, the seven offspring of Leah are seven virtues since a virtue is nothing other than an ordered and moderated affection of the soul . . . Thus there are seven principal affections that rise by turns from the one affective disposition of the soul: hope and fear; joy and grief, hatred, love and shame . . . But only when they have been Ordered are they then to be counted among the sons of Jacob. (TP, p. 60)

It is only after the children of Leah (affection) have been born, that Rachel (reason) begins to give birth. Her first child is Joseph, who is interpreted by Richard as discretion, and whose function echoes Augustine's proximate preparation, that of introversion and recollection. Joseph's role is to look within and it is described in terms redolent of contemporary concerns with order and self-knowledge.

This Joseph of ours ought to know fully insofar as it is possible the total state and quality of the inner and outer person and to seek out skilfully and to investigate carefully not only what sort he is but also even what sort he ought to be.

(TP, p. 128)

Self-knowledge is posited by Richard as the last vital stage of preparation before the soul is ready for contemplation of God. It is likened to the mount of transfiguration which must be climbed before true contemplation can occur: 'do you wish to see Christ transfigured? Ascend this mountain: learn to know yourself' (TP, p. 136).

The process of preparation outlined in A Rule of Life is like its Victorine counterpart in that it has two phases and is concerned with the ordering of the Christian's life. The Cistercian text, however, has a different emphasis. Here, too, the mind must have been 'cleansed by the practice of the virtues from all the thoughts which clogged it' (A Rule, p. 80), but the method is significantly different. The first area to be addressed is outward behaviour. In 'The outer man' Aelred deals with how the recluse's day is to be ordered; what she is to wear and eat, when she is to pray, read and speak with others. The second part, 'The inner man', addresses issues of chastity, humility and love. Clearly, the nature of Aelred's project requires him to concentrate more on outer behaviour than Richard does. However, there is another factor at work here. In initially stressing outward behaviour, Aelred is influenced by the Rule of St Benedict, whose 'method . . . is always to indicate the practical, external steps leading towards an unseen goal'.25 The emphasis in the Benedictine Rule is on the outward structure of the monk's life, adherence to which will eventually foster inward virtue. Richard lived, as a canon, according to St Augustine's Rule which lays more stress on inner attitude, and his first concern is not with the behaviour but with the emotions of the novice contemplative.

A close study of Aelred's treatise reveals that the notion of order realised in the text is not, like Richard's, heavily influenced by contemporary concerns. The order which Aelred advocates is the traditional 'spirit of order' fostered by the Benedictine Rule, with its emphasis on 'simplicity . . . enclosure, silence,

25 David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1963), p. 11.

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stability, regularity'.26 Following the Benedictine pattern, Aelred makes much of the need for ordered silence and asserts that 'before all else the recluse must jealously preserve her peace of heart and tranquillity of spirit' (A Rule, p. 53). Aelred complains of the ephemeral nature of human mood: 'In this wretched life nothing is stable, nothing eternal, and man never remains in the same state' (A Rule, p. 92). By contrast, in heaven there will be 'perfect balance in all things and complete tranquillity of mind and body' (p. 101).

The outward to inward movement which characterises Aelred's process of preparation can be described as a movement from law under Moses to grace in Jesus.27 The same shift of motivation from fear to love is presented in Benedict's Rule as the ultimate purpose of the outward regulations.

The monk will presently arrive at that love of God which, being perfect, casteth out fear: whereby he shall begin to keep, without labour, and as it were naturally and by custom, all those precepts which he had hitherto observed through fear.28

The preparation of the soul is ultimately, then, to be described in terms of relationship, the contemplative moving from fear to love of God, as the personal 'other'. When the recluse examines her conscience before sleep, sin is seen as 'offending the eyes of [her] Lord' and the main focus is on repairing the relationship, being 'reconciled to your Bridegroom' (A Rule, p. 65). The outward regulations and inner disciplines are designed to foster one thing only: 'from all of them you must ascend to unity, for only one thing is necessary . . . this union is charity, as it were the edge and border of the spiritual vesture' (p. 74). In the Cistercian text, the impulse to order, first the outer then the inner life, is clearing the way for true intimacy. The essence of the contrast with Richard's text is captured in this statement by Charles Dumont. 'Aelred is homesick for unity. He feels a need to put everything in its proper order, not so much intellectually as affectively, and to gather everything together in the peace and tranquillity of a loving heart'.29

3

Reason and Affection

Assuming that adequate preparation has been made, how is the human 'self' to go about contemplating the divine 'other'? Both the discussions of contemplation under scrutiny realise twelfth-century humanism, with its interest in faculty psychology and its increasing concern with Christ's humanity. By means of which human faculty, then, is the presence of God to be apprehended, and how is union with the divine to be achieved? It appears that there is more than one way.

26Ibid., pp. 14, 12.

27 See 'In Festo Sancti Benedicti', Sermones Inediti, op. cit., in n. 15, p. 63.

28 D. Oswald Hunter Blair, ed. and trans., The Rule of St Benedict, 4th edn (Fort Augustus, 1934), p. 55.

29 Dumont, 'Seeking God', op. cit., in n. 17, p. 291.

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Bernard of Clairvaux makes a distinction between contemplation of the intellect and of the heart:

There are two kinds of transport (excessus) in holy contemplation: the one in the intellect, the other in the heart (affectus); the one in the light, the other in fervour; the one in discernment, the other in devotion.30

Bernard, and Aelred, concentrated on the latter, a contemplation of God rooted primarily in the affections. Richard of St Victor's treatise, however, describes a contemplation primarily of the intellect. This is not to say that the opposition is between sterile, mental knowledge about contemplation and the experience itself (TP, p. 53). The two kinds of contemplation exemplified in our two treatises are both experiential, but are rooted in different aspects of the person and conceived of in different terms.

The rational nature of humankind is the foundation of The Twelve Patriarchs: reason being both the modus operandi of the treatise, and the primary faculty used in the contemplation of God. As observed above, the material is presented as an orderly, rational exercise. For example, having introduced Jacob's wives as representative figures, the project is laid out in the language of scholastic debate: 'but it is pleasing just now to inquire more carefully concerning these two wives of Jacob, and to explain more openly whatever the mind suggests' (TP, p. 55).31 In fact, both reason and affection have their place in the contemplation of God.

Reason is one thing. Affection is another thing. Reason, by which we distinguish things; affection, by which we love . . . Right counsels are born from reason; holy longings, from affection. From the former, spiritual senses; from the latter, ordered affections. (TP, p. 55)

Though the emotions play a part, affection is ultimately subordinated to reason: it is Rachel, not Leah, who finally gives birth to Benjamin (contemplation). Love, as an emotion felt towards God, is important, but more as a step along the way to a knowledge of him based in reason. In Richard's allegorical scheme, the birth of Judah (love) to Leah serves only to increase Rachel's desire to have children of her own. Athough, as we shall see, it does have its limits, in The Twelve Patriarchs human reason is seen to be of crucial importance.

Aelred of Rievaulx's treatise, like all his writing, is, in Hallier's words, 'completely influenced by affectus' and 'in no way comparable . . . with the orderly precision and deliberately abstract language of a scholastic treatise'.32 The style of presentation is not a logical one, and neither is intellectual reasoning fore-grounded as the approach to contemplation. While Martha, figuring the active life, is busy with virtuous works, it is interesting to notice how Mary (contemplation) goes about her task: 'the one was anxious to serve, the other nourished her

30Sermones in Cantica, xlix.4, Patrologia Latina CLVXXXIII, 1018, trans. Butler, Western Mysticism, op. cit., p. 102.

31 Here, as elsewhere, the use of italics in quotations is my own.

32 Amédéé Hallier, The Monastic Theology of Aelred of Rievaulx: An Experiential Theology, Cistercian Studies Series II, trans. Columban Heaney (Shannon, 1969), p. 121.

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affections' (A Rule, p. 75). For Aelred, the principal way to God's presence is love, love as a felt emotion, rather than a theological doctrine. The material provided for the recluse is to this end: 'that sweet love of Jesus is to grow in your affections' (A Rule, p. 79). Within the structure of each meditation, movement is consistently encouraged from a rational grasp of the theology to an emotional identification with the imagined figures. When the recluse visualises the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, she is first enjoined to remember the theological significance of what she witnesses: 'blessed the wombs in which the salvation of the whole world takes its origin, gloomy sadness is driven far away and everlasting joy foretold.' She is then told to enter into the scene herself on an emotional level: 'run, I beg, run and take part in such joy, prostrate yourself at the feet of both' (A Rule, p. 81). The progression from rational to experiential emotional involvement is condensed by Aelred into a kind of meditative fomula: 'Consider that this was done for you and in your stead; and meditate on the way in which it was done and imitate what was done.'(A Rule, p. 83).

Scripture and Imagination

In both The Twelve Patriarchs and A Rule of Life there are indications not only of the faculties to be used in contemplation reason and emotion but also of the method to be employed. In both treatises, though in very different ways, scripture is used imaginatively as a tool in apprehending the presence of God. In the Victorine treatise, scripture is used allegorically. The details of the biblical events are freed from their strictly historical moorings, to become instructive aids to contemplation. Early on, the imagination is used to begin to grasp spiritual reality: 'no one is ignorant that this is the first way for all those who enter into contemplation of invisible things'. Scripture provides pictures of things which echo and whet the appetite for the hidden things of God (TP, pp. 6667). Bala's son, Naphtali, described as a hind (Genesis 49:21), is taken to mean imagination mixed with understanding, which can carry the soul so far on the contemplative journey, but has its limits.

So certainly Naphtali, when he seeks the nature of invisible things by means of the form of visible things, is accustomed to make a sort of leap . . . to the degree that he raises himself to the heights he never entirely leaves the depths, carrying with him the shadow of corporeal things. (TP, p. 76)

In The Twelve Patriarchs the desired movement is always from the visible to the invisible, from the bodily to the spiritual. Echoes can be seen here of Augustine where 'all images and thoughts of external things, all sense perceptions and thoughts of creatures' must be banished from the mind.33

Aelred's use of scripture is quite different. The bible is central to the treatise but there is less concentration on 'allegorical flights' and more on the applying of

33 Butler, Western Mysticism, op. cit., p. 29.

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biblical events directly to the Christian's life, in the 'development of virtue'.34 As we have seen, the incidents of Christ's earthly life also furnish an arena for active spiritual involvement: 'his bodily progress is our spiritual progress, and what we are told he did at each stage of his life is reproduced in us spiritually'.35 Where the imagination, in The Twelve Patriarchs, is a tool for beginners, in Aelred's meditations it can usher the recluse into personal interaction with God. In a development of Anselm's technique,36 Aelred encourages the recluse to recreate imaginatively events from Christ's life. The process is taken a step further in that the would-be contemplative is to participate in them imaginatively. She is to 'embrace that sweet crib' in the manger at Bethlehem, and 'support the hands and arms' of Christ's body as it is carried away for burial (A Rule, pp. 81, 91). The interaction encouraged between the contemplative and Christ is very much rooted in the flesh. It is the human body of Christ, positively described 'his most beautiful face', 'that most sweet breast' [pp. 89, 90]), which the recluse is to minister to, and the language of the physical senses 'tasting', 'embracing', 'kissing' is used to describe her union with him.

The Final Goal

Both the Victorine and the Cistercian treatises discuss the faculties and the methods to be used in contemplation. What, though, of the final goal? How is an apprehension of God's presence, and union with him, finally imagined in each text? Richard of St Victor's understanding of contemplation is 'solidly based on Augustine.'37 In The Twelve Patriarchs, contemplation is described in terms of illumination, a recurrent Augustinian theme inherited, in turn, from the Platonists.38 The illumination described here is beyond corporeal sense just as on the mount of transfiguration, Christ is seen to undergo a fundamental change. During the arduous ascent, he has acted as guide to the disciples: 'only those arrive without impediment, who follow Christ, who are led by Truth' (TP, p. 135). Christ has also been their teacher, of 'earthly truth in the valley, heavenly truth on the mountain' (TP, p. 138). At the summit, however, pictures drawn from earthly relationships are no longer adequate, as the humanity of Christ is subsumed in a divine light.

As soon as Christ your leader has established you on the highest point, he appears to you in another condition. In your presence He puts on light as clothing, and just as the Evangelist bears witness, afterwards His garments become as white as snow

34 Hallier, Monastic Theology, op. cit., p. 95.

35Jesus at the Age of Twelve, trans. Theodore Berkeley, in The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx: Treatises, The Pastoral Prayer, op. cit., in n. 8, p. 15.

36 In the Prayer to Christ: The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm, trans. Benedicta Ward (Harmondsworth, 1973), pp. 9399.

37 Sidney R. Packard, Twelfth-Century Europe: An Interpretive Essay (Amherst, Mass., 1973), p. 191.

38 Etienne Gilson (trans. L.E.M. Lynch), The Christian Philosophy of St Augustine (London, 1961), p. 77.

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and of such a sort as no fuller on the earth is able to make, since that splendour of divine wisdom which is seen from afar off from the high peak of speculation is not able to be defined at all by the prudence of human sense. (TP, p. 137)

The contemplative, too, must rise above her/his own human limitations. Even reason, which itself is 'illumined by divine showing' (TP, p. 57), must finally be superseded in order to comprehend the divine light itself, a fact illustrated in the disciples' falling to the ground. As in the Augustinian ecstasy, where 'the soul passes through itself . . . only to go beyond',39 Richard writes that he who 'wishes to know these things which are above human sense' must 'ascend above himself through himself' (TP, p. 141). Thus, for Richard, contemplation involves an ultimate transcending of the human when man meets God, himself figured as formless light. In this, ripples can be felt from the collision in Augustinian writing between Greek and Hebraic concepts of soul and body, a tension caused by his failure 'to systematise the two understandings of man to which he was heir'.40

Union with God, in Aelred's treatise, is described in terms of the most intimate of human relationships. Christ is described throughout as the contemplative's spouse, who can also be like a mother to her: pouring 'out for you from his naked breasts the milk of sweetness by which you may be comforted' (A Rule, p. 25).41 Throughout, the language is that of intense emotional involvement. The recluse is urged to join Mary in anointing Jesus: 'break then the alabaster of your heart and whatever devotion you have, whatever desire, whatever affection, pour it all out on your Bridegroom's head, while you adore the man in God and God in the man.' (A Rule, p. 85). In accordance with Bernard's teaching, 42 the contemplative must prove her devotion to God. At the pharisee's house, the reader is encouraged to approach Jesus, to wash his feet with her tears and not to take 'no' for an answer.

If he still will not let you approach his feet, be insistent, beseech him . . . extort from him with deep sighs and unutterable groanings what you seek. Strive with God as Jacob did, so that he may rejoice in being overcome. (A Rule, pp. 834)

The erotic overtones in this passage may be seen in the context of Aelred's belief that desire must somehow be re-channelled into devotion to Christ's humanity. In his Mirror of Charity Aelred writes: 'in order that we be not overcome by these pleasures [of the flesh], the remedy is to turn all our love of the flesh to the flesh of our Blessed Lord.'43

In the meditation on the Last Supper John is seen to be contemplating Christ's

39Ibid., p. 76.

40 McGinn, Three Treatises, op. cit., in n. 11, Introduction, p. 9.

41 For a discussion of the theme of Christ's motherhood, see Marsha Dutton, 'Christ our Mother: Aelred's Iconography for Contemplative Union', in Goad and Nail, op. cit., in n. 5.

42 'The grace of contemplation is granted only in response to a longing and importunate desire': Sermones in Cantica, xxxii.3, Patrologia Latina CLXXXIII, 946, trans. Butler, Western Mysticism, op. cit., p. 100.

43Mirror, p. 91.

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divinity: 'cheering himself with the wine of gladness in the knowledge of the Godhead' while the recluse, if 'not capable of greater things' must 'feed on the milk which flows from Christ's humanity' (A Rule, 87). Here, the treatise reproduces the standard Bernardine view that God draws the Christian to 'the salutary love of his own humanity' only in order to 'then gradually raise them to a spiritual love'.44 But whereas Bernard is anxious to progress from the humanity of Christ to his divinity, as it were from his feet to his face, Aelred is in much less of a hurry.45 The incidents chosen for meditation are notable for their concentration on Christ's physical and emotional nature. Rather than the miracle-working or transfigured Christ, we are presented with Jesus as a baby, Jesus dispensing forgiveness, being anointed, tried and crucified. Or perhaps, for Aelred, there is less difficulty in grasping the concept of a Christ who is simultaneously human and divine. In a sermon, he describes the incarnated Christ in this way: 'God sleeps, God thirsts, God saddens and dies; man commands the winds . . . man multiplies loaves, man raises the dead: God in man, man in God.'46 Not only is the human Christ fully divine, there is also evidence that Aelred is anxious to see the glorified Christ as still human. After the resurrection Mary asks: 'may I not touch you, may I not kiss those lovable feet? . . . Are you less gentle than usual because you are glorious?' Jesus replies reassuringly that 'this boon is not refused you but kept until later' (A Rule, p. 92). Even when the recluse imagines Christ as judge in heaven, he is still presented as approacbably human: 'Jesus' face shines upon them, not terrible but lovable, not bitter but sweet, not frightening but attractive' (A Rule, p. 99). Neither, in heaven, is the language of relationship to be relinquished. The purpose of the meditations will be fulfilled when the contemplative will 'appear in his sight and say to him what is written in the Song of Songs: ''My beloved is mine and I am his" (A Rule, p. 102).

44Sermones in Cantica, xl, 4, Patrologia Latina CLXXXIII, 870, trans. Killian Walsh, Song of Songs I, Cistercian Fathers Series IV (Kalamazoo, 1971), p. 152.

45 It might be tempting to produce a gendered reading here, connecting the reader's focus on Christ's humanity with her female status. This would be misleading. A study of Aelred's writing for monks reveals similar encouragement to contemplation of the humanity of Christ. For example, in Aelred's meditation on Jesus at the Age of Twelve, written for a monk named Yvo, and likening the three days in which Jesus was absent from his parents, to the process of contemplation, he writes: 'doubtless if you prefer to contemplate him in the deeds he performed in his human nature you will have no difficulty in discerning the same splendour of these three days', The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, op. cit., in n. 8, p. 33.

46 From Sermo in Annuntiatione Beate Marie de tribus tunicis Ioseph, trans. and quoted by Dutton in 'The Face and Feet of God: The Humanity of Christ in Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx', in Bernardus Magister, Cistercian Studies Series CXXXV, ed. John R. Sommerfeldt (Kalamazoo, 1992), p. 216.

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4

Individual and Community

Is the process of contemplation simply a mystical dialogue, involving only two players, self and God? How, if at all, does the 'self' relate to 'others' in this context? The question finds a different answer in the Cistercian and Victorine texts, the key lying in the differing self-conceptions fostered by the Orders. A feature of canonical writing is the greater emphasis laid on others, within the community and outside, than is usual in the monastic milieu. The evidence concerning location of canonical houses 'supports a familiar pattern of canons as folk nearer to the city centres, to the ordinary lives of the community, to pastoral care, at least in origin and in principle'.47 The theology which implicitly under-pins The Twelve Patriarchs is set out explicitly in Richard's On the Trinity. Here, the interpersonal, the communal, is always positively connoted in preference to the individual, the private.48 As Cousins states, Richard's 'concept of the human person is not that of an isolated autonomous self that stands apart from other persons'.49 In attempting to locate a specifically canonical self-concept, it is necessary, as earlier implied, to consider the Rule of St Augustine. This Rule places great emphasis on communal life, on the horizontal relationships between brothers, as well as the vertical relationship between man and God. In fact, 'the orientation to one's own self and individualism' is seen, by Augustine, to form the greatest obstacle to the communal ideal of the early Church.50

The monastic sense of self is orientated more to the individual, to the pursuit of personal godliness. In studying the writing of the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux, 'it is impossible to avoid the impression that the individual is the true beginning and the end of his system of thought'.51 Aelred's meditation on the Last Supper, where the institution of the eucharist usually concentrates thought on the communal body of Christ, produces no sense of a shared meal. The recluse is shown John individually feeding on Christ, and is encouraged to do the same herself. Again, the sites chosen for Cistercian foundations, 'located with an eye to the preservation of seclusion and strict enclosure',52 say something about an inward-looking orientation. So too does the Cistercian ban on child oblates: from 1134, monks were admitted only on the basis of a personal decision.53 The Rule

47 Brooke, 'Monk and Canon', op. cit., in n. 3, p. 125.

48 E.g. Zinn, Richard of St Victor, op. cit., in n. 5, p. 375: 'however, as long as anyone loves no one else as much as he loves himself, that private love which he has for himself shows clearly that he has not yet reached the supreme level of charity.'

49 Cousins, 'A Theology', op. cit., in n. 14, p. 69.

50 Tarsicius J. Van Bavel, The Rule of St Augustine (Masculine and Feminine Versions) (London, 1984), Introduction, p. 7.

51 Morris, The Discovery, op. cit., in n. 12, p. 157.

52 C.H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London, 1989), p. 56.

53Ibid., p. 57.

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of St Benedict consistently prizes solitude and silence in a way that St Augustine's Rule does not. Aelred's treatise reflects this. The recluse is told that 'she must sit alone, imposing silence on her tongue that her spirit may speak.. . . for then she is with Christ, and he would not care to be with her in a crowd' (A Rule, p. 50). The presence of others is consistently seen as a distraction, even a danger, to the contemplative: her cell must not be 'besieged' by the poor and she must 'guard against the obligations of hospitality even toward her sisters in religion' (A Rule, p. 48). For Aelred, as for Bernard, to whom contemplation necessitates a withdrawal from others 'in mind, in intention, in devotion, in spirit',54 the joys of divine mystical union are very much private ones. The recluse, in her contemplation, is to 'consider those gifts of God's goodness which are known only to yourself' (A Rule, p. 96).

The Active/Contemplative Lives

The idea of the religious life as a double-faceted one is traditional, occurring frequently in the patristic literature. The active life was traditionally seen as the pursuit of virtue, usually by means of ascetic regimes, whereas the contemplative life fostered direct contact with God. Gradually, the active life also came to encompass works of service to others. In keeping with the differing self-conceptions explored above, the treatises of Richard and Aelred indicate different understandings of the relative importance of the active and contemplative lives.

According to a contemporary document, canons were seen as being primarily orientated to the clerical occupations of teaching and pastoral work, though contemplation still played a part in their lives. The writer of the Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus maintains that, even where canons do live in isolated areas, their main task is still 'to teach the people, take tithes, collect offerings in church, remonstrate with delinquents.55 Thus Richard brings an 'others'-orientated stance, even to a discussion of contemplation. As Zinn remarks, in his use of Rachel and Leah, Richard 'takes this two-fold scheme of active and contemplative, which emerged in the context of the pursuit of individual perfection, and makes it a scheme for the pursuit of a perfection which integrates themes of individuality and community at a profound level'.56 Leah's son Zabulon is made to represent 'zeal for souls' and 'hatred of vices' and his role centres on responsibility for others, both in confronting evil doing and also in protecting the weak. Richard praises the one who 'exerts himself to rescue others from the snares of sin'. He even goes on to say of this function that 'I do not know if a man is able to receive in this life anything greater from God' (TP, p. 101).

In contrast to Aelred's treatise, the soul's rapture with God, in The Twelve

54Sermones in Cantica, xl.4, Patrolgia Latina CLXXXIII, 983, trans. Butler, Western Mysticism, op. cit., p. 192.

55Libellus de Diversis Ordinibus et Professionibus qui sunt in Aecclesia, ed. and trans. G. Constable and B. Smith (Oxford, 1972), p. 57.

56 Zinn, Richard of St Victor, Introduction, op. cit., p. 13.

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Patriarchs, is not a strictly private affair, nor are others so obviously a distraction. The contemplation Richard describes is reminiscent of Augustine's ecstatic experiences, at least one of which he sought and shared jointly with his mother.57 In The Twelve Patriarchs, the disciples are together when they see Christ transfigured; once again, The Trinity provides the theological rationale here. As part of his argument for the triune nature of God, Richard suggests that a two-way love relationship is not complete without a third person who can share in it:

As long as only the first is loved by the second, he alone seems to possess the delights of his excellent sweetness. Similarly, as long as the second does not have someone who shares in love for a third, he lacks the sharing of excellent joy. In order that both may be able to share delights of that kind, it is necessary for them to have someone who shares in love for a third.58

As might be expected, Cistercian writing reflects a greater orientation to the contemplative life, and this was popularly understood. In the Libellus, a parallel is drawn between the Cistercian life, and Christ spending the night alone in prayer, 'leaving corporeal things . . . snatched up to the highest and most celestial'.59 Merton notes that, unlike the canons, Cistercians were reluctant to undertake spiritual direction of nuns, parish work, or hearing confessions.60 As Bernard of Clairvaux stated, quoting Jerome: 'a monk's business is not to teach, but to lament'.61 Clearly, prayer and contemplation of God could not completely eclipse other responsibilities: the needs of the community and the demands of hospitality towards guests were seen as important. However, both Bernard and Aelred (in his Mirror of Charity) speak of attending to the needs of others as a temporary turning away from Christ, which, though necessary, is not accomplished without pain.62 In Aelred's A Rule of Life, the recluse is told that she is not to pursue an active ministry of giving to the poor. Rather, her way of reaching out is that of prayer, of emotional identification with others.

What is more useful than prayer? Let this be your largesse. What is more humane than pity? Let this be your alms. So embrace the whole world with your arms of love . . . take them all to your heart, weep over them, offer your prayers for them.

(A Rule, pp. 778)

It is significant that even here, where the needs of others appear to be fore-grounded, the primary end in view is still the spiritual progress of the contemplative herself.

57 See Confessions, x.23, Patrologia Latina XXXII, 774.

58 Zinn, Richard of St Victor, op. cit., in n. 5, p. 389.

59Libellus, op. cit., p. 55.

60 Thomas Merton, The Waters of Silence (London, 1950), p. 22.

61 Jerome, Contra Vigilantium, xv, Patrologia Latina XXIII, 351, cited by Bernard, Epistola, lxxxix, 2, Patrologia Latina CLXXXII, 221; Sermones in Cantica, lxiv.3, Patrologia Latina CLXXXIII, 1085.

62 Caroline Walker Bynum, 'The Cistercian Conception of Community', in Jesus as Mother, pp. 6970.

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The performance of such good works as these help you to live out your profession instead of upsetting you; they increase the love you have for your neighbour instead of diminishing it; they are a safeguard, not an obstacle to tranquillity of mind.

(A Rule, p. 78)

What conclusions can be drawn from the comparison of these two treatises, written in exactly the same period and, two hundred years later, both abridged and translated into English at the same time? The differences explored above, can be contextualised in terms of the impact of twelfth-century humanism on two different strands of religious thought; the monastic strand, informed by the rule of St Benedict and the canonical strand, expressed in St Augustine's Rule. New twelfth-century concerns met with and were incorporated into existing systems of thought in different ways. Thus, the Victorine writer is more drawn to the logical approach of scholasticism than the Cistercian, who is accustomed to stressing personal relationship with God. A renewed delight in humanity, on the other hand, resonates positively with Aelred's incarnational theology. As Bynum suggests, a growing sense of the need to reach out to others, which later found a focus in the evangelical mendicant movements, was also felt by all groups. While it was likely to be expressd by the Victorines in terms of service to the community, it was incorporated, by the Cistercians, into their own emphasis on prayer and individual spiritual development.63

Both texts on contemplation, with their different emphases, were widely circulated and used, albeit, in Aelred's case, often attributed to other authors.64 It is interesting to note, too, that the characteristically Cistercian or Victorine elements of each treatise did not restrict the readership. Cistercian material was read by Benedictines and Victorines, and copies of The Twelve Patriarchs were owned in Britain, for example, by Cistercians, Benedictines, Carthusians and even Franciscans.65 The alternative ways of understanding contemplation exemplified by the two texts, the way of intellect and the way of affect, were both to find a place in the mysticism of the later Middle Ages. The one strand was to evolve into what became known as negative mysticism, the other into the via positiva. Thus, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing was to find inspiration from Richard of St Victor,66 while the influence of Aelred's affective approach is clear in texts such as that of Margery Kempe. In fact, it is possible to see the two strands as interweaving to make one rope, like the seemingly incompatible judgement and mercy of God, each finally implicit in and dependent on the other. While Aelred's work is fundamentally oriented to the individual, it is also true that he was convinced of the importance of community.67 Even in the midst of Richard's discourse on

63Ibid., pp. 6970.

64 Ayto and Barratt, Institutione Inclusarum, op. cit., in n. 7, p. xi.

65 Roger Ellis, 'An Edition of Richard de Sedgebrook's Reworking of The Twelve Patriarchs by Richard of St Victor', in Medieval Studies (forthcoming).

66 Giles Constable, 'Twelfth-Century Spirituality and the Late Middle Ages', in Religious Life and Thought (11th12th Centuries) (London, 1979), p. 33.

67 For example: 'Each one's gift belongs to the community and each one shares in all that the community offers . . . the truth of the matter is that each one contributes to the good

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the apprehension of God as divine light, the language of affect finds a place: 'from this vision the soul conceives the flame of longing for the sight of God' (TP, p. 130). Clearly, later medieval spirituality was to utilise both elements: the seminal fifteenth-century Imitatio Christi was heavily influenced both by the writings of the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux, and by those of Richard of St Victor.68

(footnote continued from previous page)

of all and each one benefits by all the good done', from Sermones de Tempore vii, Patrologia Latina CXCV, 249, trans. Hallier, Monastic Theology, op. cit., in n. 32, p. 139.

68 Constable, 'Twelfth-Century Spiritual Writers in the Late Middle Ages', op. cit., p. 19.

English translations of Latin texts have been quoted throughout this paper, but in all cases the original Latin has been consulted.

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The Mantle of Elijah:

Carmelite Spirituality in England in the Fourteenth Century.

Valerie Edden

Who would doubt that what the prophet [Elijah] preached on Mount Carmel referred specifically to Mary? For when the fire (which is the love of God) descended on Mary about which it says 'I have come to send fire on earth' [Luke 12:49] it utterly consumed with fire the errors of idols and afterwards through Mary showers of pity and grace fell on what had been dried up and in this way restored it all. And so the fire of Divine Love came upon Mary and in this way her womb was on fire. And just as Elijah was swept up in a fiery chariot, so the Son of God was taken up in the Virgin's womb as in a fiery chariot. In this way the House of God is on fire, as the prophet says: 'The house of Jacob is a fire and the house of Joseph is a flame' [Obadiah 18]. Therefore behold on the mountain the feet of one who brings good tidings and announces peace (that is Elijah); that is to say, through Mary, through whom the showers of grace fell from heaven.1

In this commentary on the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal, John Baconthorpe^2 goes to the heart of Carmelite spirituality: a special relationship to the Virgin and a strong sense of the heritage of Elijah. An appreciation of the Elian heritage and of the Order's sense of its own history is essential for any understanding of the nature of Carmelite spirituality. In one of the earliest accounts of the Carmelites, Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acres, describes a group of hermits living in simplicity and contemplation on Mount Carmel.3 In the thirteenth century, when Saracen incursions into the Holy Land forced these men

1 'Quis enim dubitet in hoc monte Carmeli prophetam praedictum Mariam specialiter designasse? Dum enim ignis, qui est amor Dei, descendit in Mariam, secundum idem ait: "Ignem veni mittere in terram", errores idolorum penitus combussit atque postmodum per Mariam pluvia miserationis et gratiae descendit exsiccatis, et sic restaurat omnia. Ignis igitur amoris divini in Mariam venit; unde venter eius igneus erat. Et sicut Elias in curru igneo rapiebatur, sic in ventre Virginis velut in curru igneo rapiebatur filius Dei. Sic domus dei igneus fuit, unde propheta: "Domus, inqui, Iacob ignis, et domus Ioseph flamma". Ecce ergo super montem pedes, id est Eliae, evangelizantis et annunciantis pacem, id est, per Mariam, per quam pluvia gratiae de caelo venit.' Medieval Carmelite Heritage, ed. Adrianus Staring, O. Carm. (Rome, 1989), p. 228, hereafter Staring.

2 John Baconthorpe (d. 1348), Carmelite friar and possibly Prior Provincial of England.

3 Jacobus de Vitriaco, Libri Duo: Quorum Prior Orientalis, siue Hierosolomitanae: Alter, Occidentalis (Douai, 1597), p. 86. For the history of these early hermits see Elias Friedman, The Latin Hermits of Mount Carmel: A Study in Carmelite Origins (Rome, 1979).

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into migration to the West, they established settlements in Cyprus, Sicily, Italy, France, and England.4 Very quickly these establishments were given official recognition as religious houses; this as well as the change in climate prompted changes within the Rule which necessitated a search for identity and led to their distinguishing themselves from other religious orders by an appeal to their roots. These changes included the fundamental change from an eremitic to a cenobitic life-style, a number of mitigations of the Rule, the establishment of houses in and near urban areas and the involvement of Carmelite friars in an active apostolate, theological controversy and public life, not just as bishops but also as confessors to the House of Lancaster, for example. The fourteenth-century Carmelite friar had a very different life-style from his forebears in their desert cells.

This paper analyses the two linked strands in Carmelite spirituality in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their reflection on their origins with Elijah on Mount Carmel and secondly their claim that Mary was their patron. The Elian heritage with its emphasis on silence and solitude as a prerequisite for God's revelation of himself reinforced the Carmelites' sense of being different from other religious Orders. Similarly, their devotion to Mary was distinctive; whilst much late medieval Marian devotion is affective and focuses on her humanity, the Carmelites venerated Mary as one whose obedience, silence and solitude provided the means by which the Word was made flesh and revealed to mankind; her divine motherhood made her a powerful intercessor and mediatrix for her faithful servants. These two emphases within Carmelite spirituality are further linked because Carmel is Mary's mountain as it is also Elijah's mountain. In this way the Order found its roots and gained its sense of identity, an identity which is embodied in the name of the Order: Fratres Beatae Mariae de Monte Carmeli (Brothers of the Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel), a title first used officially by Pope Innocent IV in a papal bull of 1252, though its usage among the brothers may well predate this.5 Unlike the other fraternal orders, this name defines the Carmelites with reference not to their founder but to their patron (the Virgin) and to the place of their origin. These emphases are not explicitly present in the primitive Carmelite Rule, the Rule of Saint Albert,6 which was written between 1206 and 1214, but give a clear indication of the direction taken by the Order shortly afterwards.

The Albertine Rule prescribes an eremetic life of silence, solitude, poverty and obedience. It is distinctive in a number of ways: by enjoining daily celebration of the eucharist, in the prescription that each brother lives in a separate cell and in

4 For the history of the arrival of Carmelites in England, see Keith J. Egan, 'An Essay towards a Historiography of the Origin of the Carmelite Province in England', Carmelus xix (1972), pp. 67100.

5 Some writers confuse the two elements of the title; if the grammatical rules of Golden Latin are strictly adhered to, a prepositional phrase refers to the subject of the sentence, hence 'de Monte Carmelo' must refer to the place of origin of the brothers, but the phrase was soon taken to refer to Mary, 'Mary of Mount Carmel'.

6The Rule of Saint Albert, ed. and trans. Bede Edwards (Aylesford and Kensington, 1973), hereafter Rule.

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the long silence (from Vespers until Tierce). Whilst the Rule subsequently underwent a number of modifications, these features did not lose their centrality but provided the seeds from which grew the devotion to Elijah and to the Virgin. Later the separate cells (individual hermitages) were replaced by separate rooms, but not by dormitories. Similarly, though the length of the long silence was modified, silence remained one of the distinctive features of the Order, and was considered to include an attitude of mind (quietness) as well as control of the tongue. As Rudolf Hendriks remarks,7 the key to the Rule is obedience: 'Hold your prior in humble reverence, your minds not on him but on Christ who has placed him over you; . . . if you remain so minded you will not be found guilty of contempt but will merit life eternal as fit reward for your obedience.'8 As later Carmelite writers are quick to point out, the supreme model of human obedience to the will of God is the 'ecce ancilla dei' ('Behold the handmaid of the Lord') of Mary at the Annunciation.9 Indeed, as we will see, Mary came to exemplify other aspects of the eremetic life. It is clear too from Albert's description of the hermits 'sub eius obedientia iuxta fontem in Monte Carmelo morantur' ('who live in obedience to him near the spring on Mount Carmel'),10 that they quite literally imitated Christ's sojourn in the wilderness, a point well understood by their later medieval successors with their particular devotion to that other voice crying in the wilderness, John the Baptist.

The changes and mitigations did not go unopposed. In 1270/1, Nicholas of Narbonne wrote his Flaming Arrow, a polemic designed to call a halt to the changes taking place within the Order, changes with which he felt so uncomfortable that he resigned as prior general in 1271. However, as so often in disputes, later readers can learn as much from the assumptions shared by those in dispute as from their differences. Whilst clearly Nicholas differed from his peers in thinking that urban living and any involvement in an active apostolate were completely incompatible with the Carmelite ideal, there is a shared acknowledgement that contemplation and solitude are the essence of the Carmelite way. It is in the solitude of the mountain that God reveals himself to those who 'receive his consolation'. Nicholas reminds the brothers of Abraham's obedience 'on the heights', where he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, of Lot's escape to the solitude of the mountain, of Moses' receiving the Law on Mount Sinai, of God coming to Mary in the solitude of her chamber, of God's revelation of himself on the mount of the Transfiguration and of Christ himself ascending the mountain and entering the solitude of the desert to pray.11 Carmelite identity and spirituality are forged

7 Rudolf Hendriks, 'The Original Inspiration of the Carmelite Order as expressed in the Rule of S. Albert', Rule, p. 70.

8 'Vos quoque, caeteri fratres, Priorem vestrum honorate humiliter, Christum potius cogitantes quam ipsum, qui posuit illum super capita vestra . . . ut non veniatis in iudicium de contemptu, sed de obedientia mereamini aeterne vitae mercedem.' Rule, p. 92.

9 Baconthorpe, Tractatus, Staring, p. 193.

10Rule, p. 78.

11 Nicholas of Narbonne, The Flaming Arrow, trans. Michael Edwards (Dartington,

(footnote continued on next page)

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somewhere between their consciousness of a new fraternal role (which included preaching) and a constant reference to a history symbolised by Mount Carmel.12

Snippets of information about the early history of the Order are included in its earliest documents. The first real narrative history is Jean de Chemineto's Speculum (1337).13 John Baconthorpe, with whom we began, combines history with a commentary on the Order in his four tractates: Speculum de Institutione Ordinis, Tractatus super Regulam, Compendium Historiarum et Iurium, Laus Religionis Carmelitarum.14 A more recent history of the Order is written by William of Coventry (fl. 1360) who, writing from an English perspective, also includes an account of the arrival of the first Carmelites in England in his Chronica Brevis, De Duplici Fuga, and De Adventu Carmelitarum in Angliam.15 A French Chronicle is that of Jean de Venette (1307/8c.1369).16 From the 1370s the histories covered the same material, but with a change in emphasis, for as the Order grew, it became increasingly involved in controversy; John of Hildesheim (Dialogus, 1374)17 and John Hornby wrote primarily in defence of the ancient origins of the Order.18

As this history is gradually formulated, the emphasis shifts from the eremetic life in the Holy Land to a more distant past found in the scriptures. Biblical texts both attest the origins of the Order and prophesy its future. The crucial claim is that the Order originated at the time of Elijah, but there are attempts to go back even further. Baconthorpe writes of the band of prophets mentioned in 1 Kings 10 and cites Vincent of Beauvais as the source of the idea that Samuel was the first to establish an assembly of religious ('conventus religiosorum').19 The Vulgate has 'grex prophetarum' ('company of prophets'; 1 Kings 10:5) and does not suggest that Samuel was their founder or leader. When, later, the Dominican Stokes argues that the early origins of the Carmelites may be equalled by the claim that Samuel founded the Dominicans, the Carmelite Hornby counters this by arguing that what Samuel founded was an Order of cenobites and that what

(footnote continued from previous page)

1985), chapter vi. This translates: A. Staring, 'Nicolai Prioris Generalis Ordinis Carmelitarum Ignea Sagitti', Carmelus ix (1962), pp. 237307.

12 By the 'history' of the order I mean the history written by medieval Carmelites about their own past. For modern history of the order see Joachim Smet, The Carmelites: A History of the Brothers of our Lady of Mount Carmel, 2nd edn, vol. I (Rome, 1975).

13Speculum Fratrum Ordinis, Staring, pp. 11546.

14 Staring, pp. 184253.

15Chronica Brevis, De Duplici Fuga, De Adventu Carmelitarum, Staring, pp. 27278, 27882, 28286.

16Speculum Status Ordinis, Staring, pp. 15475. (This text is always referred to by modern scholars as his 'Chronicle'.)

17Dialogus, Staring, pp. 33688.

18 J.P.H. Clark, 'A Defence of the Carmelite Order by John Hornby, O. Carm.', Carmelus xxxii (1985), pp. 73106.

19Laus Religionis Carmelitarum (hereafter Laus), book i, ch. vi, Staring, p. 223. The claim is repeated by Peter Comestor: 'Nota quod Samuel primo instituit conventus religiosorum iugiter psallentium Domino, et dicabantur conventus eorum cuneus.' Patrologia Latina CXCVIII, 1304.

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Elijah and Elisha founded was the first Order of hermits.20 If initially the claim was only that there were hermits living on Carmel in Old Testament times, by the fourteenth century the claim is the larger one, that of a continuous succession of hermits on Mount Carmel:

We declare, bearing testimony to the truth, that from the time when the prophets Elijah and Elisha dwelt devoutly on Mount Carmel, holy Fathers both of the Old and New Testament, whom the contemplation of heavenly things drew to the soltitude of the same mountain, have without doubt led praiseworthy lives there by the fountain of Elijah in holy penitence unceasingly and successfully maintained.21

The opening sentence of De Duplici Fuga makes the continuity unequivocal: 'Religious brothers remained on Carmel from the time of the prophets Elijah and Elisha right up to the incarnation of Christ and from the year of his death up until the year 1099 AD'.22 In the Chronica Brevis Elijah is called the father and founder of brothers of Mount Carmel. Interestingly, FitzRalph, bishop of Armagh, accepts the Carmelite claim to derive from Elijah, writing in the early part of his career when he was still very much a friend of the Carmelites.23

Medieval Carmelite texts repeatedly recount the details of Elijah's life and ascent into heaven as recorded in 3 Kings 1719 and 4 Kings 2. Elijah's little cloud of rain (3 Kings 18:44), which restored the dry land to fruitfulness carries with it both literal and spiritual significance. It signifies the streams of divine mercy, 'in joy you draw water from the wells of the Saviour' (Isaiah 12:3). In his account of the hermits on Carmel, Jacques de Vitry speaks also of a fountain which has flowed continuously since the time of Elijah.24 Both fountain and cloud signify the fountain of divine grace, foretold by Joel: 'A fountain shall come forth from the house of the Lord' (Joel 3: 18) and be given to all who thirst (John 7:37).25 In 4 Kings 2:2122 Elisha purifies a fountain of water. William of Coventry tells how the fountain on Carmel dried up when the Carmelite brothers were forced by the Saracens to leave, fulfilling the prophecies 'I looked and behold Carmel has become deserted and all its cities destroyed in the presence of

20 Clark, 'A Defence', op. cit., p. 86.

21Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum xv, p. 208. Translated by Smet, The Carmelites, op. cit., in n. 12, p. 19. Baconthorpe also writes about the Order's origins in antiquity from the time of the prophets of Elijah and Elisha and about how contemplative men succeeded them on Mount Carmel. Compendium, Secunda Particula, Staring, p. 202. As Staring points out, it is only in the Laus that Baconthorpe claimed that Elijah and Elisha actually founded the Order.

22 'A tempore Eliae et Elisei prophetarum usque ad incarnationem Christi et ab anno passionis eius ad annum Domini 1099 manserunt fratres in Carmelo', Staring, p. 279. For an account of the evolution of the belief in the Elian succession, see Rudolf Hendriks, 'La succession hereditaire', Etudes Carmelitaines xxxv (1956), pp. 3481.

23 Benedict Zimmerman, ed., 'Ricardi Archiepiscopi Armacani Bini Sermones de Immaculata Conceptione . . .', Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum Discalceatorum iii (1931), pp. 15889.

24 Jacobus de Vitriaco, Libri Duo, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 86.

25Laus, book I, ch. ix, Staring, p. 226.

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the Lord and in the presence of his fierce anger' (Jeremiah 4:26),26 and 'the spoiler has made his attack; joy and gladness are taken from Carmel' (Isaiah 16: 10). When the brothers were allowed to return, the fountain was restored, as foretold by Jeremiah: 'I will restore Israel to his dwelling place and Carmel will be grazed' (Jeremiah 50:19). The destruction of Jerusalem by the Saracens, its restitution and its renewed fertility were thus foretold by Old Testament prophets.27

The history of the period between Elisha and the birth of Christ is rather scant in the histories. The life of contemplation and of poverty was maintained by the Rechabites (see Jeremiah 35) who abstained from wine and lived a monastic life, with no settled possessions. FitzRalph spoke of the continuity of the communal life on Carmel and is followed by many Carmelite writers. All speak of a communal contemplative life on Carmel at the time of the apostles and as a response to their preaching and of the building nearby of a chapel in honour of the Virgin. That these early hermits were solitaries is shown by the prophet Micah: 'O graze your flock, the flock of your inheritance, who dwell alone in a forest pasture on Mount Carmel' (Micah 7:14); Hornby glosses solos ('alone') as 'i.e. solitarios'.28 The Laus speaks of Christ himself teaching his apostles on Mount Carmel and gathering them together there 'just like a religious community'.

Baconthorpe draws parallels between the lives of Elijah and Elisha and the life of Christ. Significantly these parallels occur in a passage arguing for the importance of Mary to the Order and are designed not so much to link the Old Testament prophets with Christ as with his mother, since they are designed to prove that Elijah and Elisha deserve to be called 'Carmelites of blessed Mary'. Christ fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness just as Elijah fasted forty days and forty nights on Mount Horeb; Christ raised the widow's son just as Elijah raised the widow's son at Zarephath; Christ ascended bodily into heaven just as Elijah was taken up bodily into heaven; Christ sanctified the waters of the river Jordan just as Elisha cleansed the waters of Jericho; Christ multiplied the loaves when he fed the five thousand just as Elisha multiplied the widow's oil; Christ raised the dead to life as Elisha did at Shunem. And so the list goes on.29

These parallels reveal a habit of mind which, whilst doubtless nurtured by the practice of reading the scriptures typologically, is not itself strictly typological. The two prophets are not presented here as prefiguring Christ; if incidents in their lives foreshadow incidents in the life of Christ, the significance of that fore-

26 In dealing with the various interpretations of scripture which will be discussed, it is important to understand that the Vulgate makes no attempt to distinguish between the Hebrew proper noun Carmel and the common noun meaning 'garden, plantation'; so in the Vulgate the number of texts apparently featuring Carmel is somewhat larger than in the Hebrew scriptures or in a modern translation. In this case it is important to retain the Vulgate Carmelus and not to translate as 'fertile ground' as in almost all modern translations of this passage.

27De Adventu Carmelitarum, Staring, pp. 2845.

28 Clark, 'A Defence', op. cit., in n. 18, p. 101.

29Speculum de Institutione Ordinis, ch. ii, Staring, pp. 18789.

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shadowing seems to be that in performing these Christ-like deeds they are honouring Carmel and in honouring Carmel they are honouring Mary. It is the sense of continuity which is strong; generations upon generations of the followers of Elijah have honoured Mary. Indeed far from reflecting a notion of Old and New Testament scripture in one seamless, eternal present, constantly telling and retelling the story of salvation, these parallels are being put to the service of what would be called 'history' even by twentieth-century historians, that is the establishment of a chronology of events, a sequence of cause and effect, along with an understanding of their significance. It is precisely this use of historical evidence which arouses the hostility of the Dominican Robert Holcot, a contemporary of Baconthorpe's. He points out that if the Carmelites had originated in Old Testament times, then they must have belonged to the sect of the Pharisees, Sadducees or Essenes, according to Josephus, and that since these were the chief conspirators against Christ, then such an ancestry was hardly one of which to boast!30

Another link between Elijah and the Carmelites comes through the story of Elijah's mantle and its connection with the Carmelite Order. The story in 4 Kings 2 which relates how this mantle is handed down to Elisha is a key text for the Order. The mantle was a sensitive issue since it came to assume great importance both symbolically and in Carmelite history. From the earliest records it is clear that the brothers wore a distinctive black and white striped mantle. In 1287, under licence from Honorius IV, this mantle was replaced by a white one. It is suggested that the vivid stripes of the mantle had excited derision. This change of habit was a fact used by the opponents of the Order to argue against the continuity of Carmelite history; in response it was argued that the distinctive habit of the Order was not the mantle but the scapular^31 but that nonetheless the mantle, a rough outer garment, indicated that Elijah and his followers chose poverty from the very beginning of the Order's foundation. It was a 'vestis stragulata', a coverlet or blanket, and indeed it was referred to as a 'carpeta'.

The habit links devotion to Elijah with devotion to Mary. It is, as it were, a livery, a daily reminder of Mary's purity and of the fact that Mary's chastity provides the model for the celibate life. The striped cloak was seen to symbolise the Order's devotion to Mary, though it seems likely that this symbolism was attached retrospectively, after the change of habit. Baconthorpe moves from discussing the Elian origins of the mantle to an exposition of the three-fold symbolism of the garment. Firstly he says that it is the household of Mary (we are to understand the Carmelite brothers) which is spoken of in Proverbs 31:212, where 'domestici eius vestiti sunt duplicibus; stragulatam vestem fecit sibi' ('her household is clothed in a two-fold garment; she made for them a coverlet as a garment'). Secondly, the black and white stripes signify law and grace. Those who serve Mary must obey the commandments in order to come to grace, since the fruit of her womb 'came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it'. Thirdly, the

30 Beryl Smalley, English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1960), pp. 187 and 330.

31 Clark, 'A Defence', op. cit., p. 87.

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two-fold cape signifies the two-fold nature of Mary's son, who was both human and divine.32

The symbolism of the white mantle was widely recognised. When Richard FitzRalph preached a sermon at the Carmelite church in Avignon in celebration of the feast of the Conception of the Virgin, he remarked that the whiteness of their habit itself commemorated the feast.33 A similar claim is made by Baconthorpe in his Quaestiones Quodlibetales dealing with the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, where he speaks of the choice of cape 'in honore beatae Mariae' ('in honour of blessed Mary'). William of Coventry comments in the Chronica Brevis: 'In 1287 the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel changed their striped garment, that is the mantle of Elijah, for a white cape in honour of the mother of Christ.'34

The brown scapular was also associated with devotion to the Virgin. It is linked by legend at least to Simon the Englishman, Simon Stock, prior general, elected at Aylesford c.1256, who became a model of the Carmelite life, combining the contemplative life with devotion to the Virgin. From at least the late fourteenth century, there was a widespread belief that the Virgin appeared to him in a vision, commending the wearing of the brown scapular and promising eternal salvation to all who died wearing it.35 His feast, known as the Solemn Commemoration of our Lady of Mount Carmel (16 July) celebrated this 'Scapular Vision'. The name Stock derives from the legend that he lived for many years as a hermit in a tree trunk. What is of interest here is not the historicity of the stories but what they tell us about late medieval Carmelite spirituality.

The Elian heritage and Marian devotion were brought together also by reflections on the etymology of the word Carmelus.36 Firstly, Carmelus is said to derive from car (sponse) and melos (laus), 'praise of the bride' (from Latin carae melos, literally 'song of the beloved'). Carmelus thus embodies in its very name a celebration of the Virgin, whose beauty as the bride of Christ is extolled in the Song of Songs.37 The beauty of the mountain and the beauty of the Virgin parallel and reinforce each other.

32Laus, book VI, ch. ii, Staring, p. 250.

33 'Hic sanctus ac peculiaris et antiquus ordo suus Carmelitarum praetendit in habitu, qui hoc festum ipsius solemnizat, candorem habitus sui ut aestimo, prudenter et devote referens ad hoc festum.' ['This holy, ancient and peculiar order of Carmelites (who accord this feast a special celebration) assert [this] by means of their habit, wisely and prudently relating the whiteness of the habit (as I reckon) to this feast.'] Analecta Ordinis Carmelitarum Discalceatorum, op. cit., in n. 23, p. 166.

34 'Anno Domini 1287 fratres beatae Mariae de Carmelo commutaverunt vestem stragulatam, scilicet pallium Eliae, in cappam albam in honorem matris Christi.' Staring, p. 277.

35 B.M. Xiberta, De Visione Sancti Simonis Stock (Rome, 1950); Christian P. Ceroke, 'The Credibility of the Scapular Promise', Carmelus xi (1964), pp. 81123.

36 Particularly in Baconthorpe's Laus, book I, Staring, pp. 21833, and Hornby's Defence.

37 Song of Songs 7:5, 'Caput tuum ut Carmelus' ('your head is like Carmel') is central to this association.

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Secondly, Carmelus is derived from carios mellis which is said to mean donacio mellis ('a gift of honey'). Latin mel, mellis presents no problems; carios as donacio is obscure, but may possibly come from New Testament Greek charisma, 'grace, gift, or favour'. Here too the etymology links the mountain with Mary; here too there are key texts. Bees abound on Mount Carmel; Mary is a fount of honey-sweet virtues. The prophet Joel is quoted, anticipating the time when the mountain will run with wine and the hills flow with milk and honey (Joel 3:18). The Vulgate has milk but no honey though the association of milk with honey is of course proverbial. In a text which was taken to refer to the Virgin, the apocryphal Ecclesiasticus writes (24:27): 'My spirit is sweeter than honey, my inheritance sweeter than the honeycomb'. In the earliest description of the Carmelite brothers on Mount Carmel, Jacques de Vitry speaks of them as living 'in little comb-like cells, those bees of the Lord laid up spiritual honey'.38

The third and fourth etymologies draw upon Elijah's associations with Carmel. Carmelus is derived from carma oleos, that is ebullire misericordiam, 'to pour forth (lit. to bubble forth) pity'. If, as seems likely, oleos is related to Latin oleum, 'oil', then we move from history to scripture and from text to text via metaphor and figure. As we have already seen the fountain of Elijah was taken to signify the streams of divine grace. It also prefigures Mary through whom the springs of grace flowed to mankind and who is herself the fount of pity: 'Fons iste Carmeli Maria est.'39 All this is also prefigured in the Book of Esther in Mordecai's dream in which a little fountain which becomes a great river is interpreted as representing Esther; Esther, who gained the love of a king and thus helped to save her people in her turn signifies Mary (as she is commonly said to do). The little cloud of rain of 1 Kings 18 also prefigures Mary, at whose fount of pity all may drink who thirst.40

Fourthly Carmelus is carm ylys, which is said to mean creatoris cognicio, 'knowledge of the creator'. This is the most obscure of the four etymologies, though it appears to be indebted to Jerome's statement that Carmelus means cognicio circumcisionis, 'knowledge of circumcision'.41 This refers to the knowledge or acknowledgement of God in his revelation of himself given to Elijah in the presence of the priests of Baal. The fire signifies the love of God, the same fire blessing Elijah by consuming his sacrifice and also Mary at the

38 Jacobus de Vitricao, Libri Duo, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 86.

39Laus, book I, ch. x, Staring, p. 227.

40 For the Marian interpretation of the little cloud of rain, see Eamon Carroll, 'Carmelite Marian Legends', The Sword xviii (1955), pp. 35965.

41 Jerome, In Amos, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXVI, p. 216. A possible explanation for Jerome's etymology is that Hebrew mul is 'to circumcise' and that car ('knowledge') may derive from Hebrew qr' and the related Syriac qr' ('proclaim, read'). However our author has split the word not as car + mul but as carm + ylys, possibly influenced by Greek 'ulh ('matter, material'), hence 'creator', maybe through 'creation'. In attempting to make sense of these etymologies, I have been helped by Paul Joyce, Ruth Taylor and lain Torrance, all formerly colleagues at the University of Birmingham.

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Annunciation. Nicholas of Narbonne also speaks of 'spiritual circumcision',42 which suggests the mental and physical chastity of those who make a religious profession. Hornby quotes Jerome who says that there is a Greek word Carmelus which means domina in Latin and also argues that the name Mary means lady in Syriac.43

Modern scholars derive the Hebrew Carmel from its root in kerem (vineyard). This association is not of interest to these fourteenth-century writers, though it would seem they are not ignorant of it. De Duplici Fuga speaks of the effects of the Saracen occupation of the Holy Land thus:

The vineyard of the Carmelites of the mother of Christ would have been utterly eradicated, had the Lord God not left seed for them in Cyprus and Sicily, seed which had earlier been uprooted.44

But the etymologies that matter to these writers are those that authenticate the Order's associations with Elijah and the Virgin.

Mary's special relationship with the Order is well attested by the early histories. Pierre de Millau (prior general, 127794), in a letter written to Edward I in 1282, claimed that it was founded in her honour: 'Glorious virgin . . . to whose praise and glory especially this order was instituted in lands beyond the seas.'45 William of Coventry calls the brothers 'Carmelites of the Mother of Christ'.46 Whilst the Carmelite brothers had a special devotion to her, she had a unique relationship with them as the patron of their Order, a patronage which could be said to be implicit in their very title: Fratres Beatae Mariae and in the dedication of their first chapel, said by Hornby to have been built in a place where she once lived.47 Arnold Bostius, the fifteenth-century Carmelite of Ghent, entitled his book De Patronatu et Patrocinio Beatissimae Virginis Mariae in Dicatum Sibi Carmeli Ordinum.48 Mary is described as 'patrona' in the earliest Carmelite documents and indeed the earliest recorded constitutions speak of her as 'beata virgo patrona nostra'.49 Baconthorpe writes of Mary's patronage, distinguishing the Carmelites from the other fraternal Orders who are named after their found-

42 Nicholas of Narbonne, The Flaming Arrow, op. cit., in n. 11, ch. i.

43 Clark, 'A Defence'; Jerome, Liber Interpretatione Hebr. Nom. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina LXXII, p. 137.

44 'Et vinea Carmelitarum matris Christi radicitus omnino fuisset evulsa, nisi Dominus Deus reliquisset illis semen in Cypro et Sicilia per antea radicatum.' De Duplici Fuga, Staring, p. 280.

45 'virg[o] glorios[a] . . . ad cuius laudem et gloriam ordo ipse transmarinis partibus exstitit specialiter institutus.' Staring, p. 47.

46 'Carmelitae matris Christi', De Duplici Fuga, Staring, p. 279.

47 Clark, 'A Defence', p. 100.

48 The precise meaning of the two phrases patronatu and patrocinio is discussed by Eamonn Carroll, 'The Marian Theology of Arnold Bostius, O. Carm. (14451499)', Carmelus ix (1962), p. 212.

49 'Ordinamus quod in omni confessione beata virgo patrona nostra specialiter invocetur si dicendo', 1294 Constitutions, Paschalis Kallenberg, Fontes Liturgiae Carmelitanae

(footnote continued on next page)

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ers, whereas the Carmelites were founded by Old Testament prophets but named after their patron, who was honoured 'mystically' on Carmel in ancient times.

'Patronage' suggests a feudal relationship; Jesus is 'dominus' ('master, lord'); by analogy, Mary is 'domina' ('mistress, lady'); as he is king, she is queen of heaven. Baconthorpe is the first to have described her not just as 'domina' but as 'domina loci' ('mistress of the place Carmel'). There is in patronage also a legal sense; it suggests rights of domain. It also suggests a relationship of mutual obligation and ties of protection and honour. Mary has the right of dominion over Carmel in exchange for which she offers protection, help and counsel. The heavenly court is envisaged as a feudal court or household, with the queen of heaven interceding to her sovereign son on behalf of suppliants who are her loyal followers.

The Carmelite brothers honoured Mary also in their life-style and in their worship. The earliest Carmelite rite (based on the Rite of the Holy Sepulchre) does not survive. What we do have is Sibert de Beka's Ordinale, from c.1312, which shows a liturgical usage similar to that of the Dominicans, but which contains traces of the earlier eastern rite.50 The Constitutions of the Order, which date from 1281 only, chart the introduction of a large number of Marian feasts during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and we learn details about how these new feasts were celebrated in England from English missals, brevianies, and calendars. The 1294 Constitutions refer to the celebration of a number of Marian feasts, including the octave of the feast of the Assumption and enforces the inclusion of the phrase 'Ideo precor beatissimam virginem Mariam' ('and so I beseech the most blessed Virgin Mary') at the beginning of the confession. The feast of the Conception (i.e. of Mary: 8 December) was introduced in 1306; the three Maries (the Virgin, Mary the mother of James, and Mary Salome: 25 May) in 1342; the octaves of the Annunciation and the Purification in 1362; the Solemn Commemoration (16/17 July) in c. 1376; and by 1393 the Visitation (2 July), the Presentation of Mary (21 November) and Mary of the Snows, the dedication feast of S Maria Maggiore, celebrating the miracle in which the Virgin indicated the location of her church by a fall of snow in August (5 August). With several of the feasts, the Carmelites followed hard on the heels of the Franciscans or Dominicans; generally it was a century or so before these feasts were adopted by the whole church. The Solemn Commemoration and the feast of the three Maries were uniquely Carmelite celebrations. The Order also promoted the cult of St Anne, the mother of Mary; the first Constitutions mention her feast (on 26 July) which is thus already being celebrated in 1281.

Two of these Marian feasts excited some controversy. What the Church celebrated in honouring Mary's conception was a matter of much dispute in the fourteenth century; this dispute is reflected in the heading in Sibert's Ordinale,

(footnote continued from previous page)

(Rome, 1962), p. 24; see also L. Saggi, ed., Santo del Carmelo: Biografie da vari dizionari (Rome, 1972), pp. 11012.

50Ordinaire de l'Ordre de Notre Dame du Mont-Carmel par Sibert de Beka, ed. Benedict Zimmerman (Paris, 1910).

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'Concepcio sancte marie uel pocius ueneracio sanctificacionis sancte marie' ('the conception of saint Mary or rather the veneration of her sanctification').51 Controversy of a different sort surrounded the feast of the Solemn Commemoration of the Virgin, sometimes known as the feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel, celebrated variously on 16 and 17 July. By the fifteenth century, this feast became the principal Marian celebration of the year, in which Mary was honoured above all as the patron and protectress of the Order. The date at which this feast was introduced is still a matter of scholarly dispute, as is the date at which the feast was linked with the scapular vision.

The Carmelite liturgy reveals the Order's devotion to Mary, systematically commemorating the events of her life, from her miraculous conception to her assumption into heaven. The lives of mother and son are paralleled here in the liturgy, just as medieval lives of Mary are clearly modelled on the life of Christ, particularly in the infancy sections. The Carmelite Missal (British Library Additional MS 29704-5) highlights devotion to Mary pictorially; the six historiated initials all illustrate Marian feasts: the Conception, Annunciation, Nativity, Purification, Assumption, and Coronation.52 Several of these miniatures are elaborate and between them they give pictorial representations of a wide variety of Marian stories and legends. For example, the initial for the assumption of the Virgin illustrates six separate narratives: the angels gathering at her deathbed, then the disciples gathering, the funeral (four disciples carry the bier), the disciples gathering round the closed tomb, her coronation, and the final story in which she drops her girdle to convince a still doubting Thomas. This last narrative illustrates well the way in which Mary's life was modelled on Christ's, for the narrative core here is a familiar enough one incorporating Thomas' absence at the crucial moment, his incredulity and the proof which is offered him. Four medallions surrounding the initial illustrate miracles of the Virgin. The feast of All Saints is illustrated with a representation of the coronation of the Virgin.

We can gain a real insight into Carmelite devotion to Mary from the record of liturgical practice in the English breviary in MS Oxford University College 9, which gives full details of the Offices, including those of a number of feasts which had been introduced since Sibert's Ordinale was compiled. In the daily round Mary is celebrated as queen of heaven, unique amongst women and her aid is sought for sinners both in the daily fight against the powers of darkness but also at the final judgement, when she will intercede on behalf of her followers at the Last Day. Through Marian songs, antiphons and proses, many of which were in daily use, we catch a glimpse of the nature of the devotion felt by the Carmelite friar for Mary, the patron of his Order, source of his strength and model of his life as a religious. Some of the texts are distinctively Carmelite; others, like the Salve regina and the hymn Quem terra, pontus are found elsewhere.

51 Which is retained even in the late BL Add. MS 29704-5, fol. x; see Margaret Rickert, The Reconstructed Carmelite Missal: An English Manuscript of the Late XIV Century in the British Musem (Additional 29704-5, 44892) (London, 1952), p. 29.

52Ibid., p. 29

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The Office to commemorate the Virgin, which was in use on most days, is based on the Little Office of our Lady. Much of it is material found in the Dominican Office (for example, the choice of psalms and the hymn Quem terra, pontus) though the sequence of the items is different from the Dominican Office and some of the lessons are distinctive. The antiphonal readings are drawn from the Song of Songs and from the words of Wisdom in Ecclesiasticus 24:13. These words are all words of love, traditionally interpreted as speaking of the love of God for his bride (here the Virgin, though other interpretations have the bride as the soul). Woven together in this Office they could be said to create a love-song to Mary; they celebrate her beauty and abound in images of sweet smelling odours and sweet food: 'Your lips drop sweetness like honeycomb, my bride, and the fragrance of your garments is like the smell of incense.' Several of the prayers are litanies and these too emphasise her fertility ('fecundia virginitas'), combining images of fruitfulness with images of her as an abundant fountain of grace. Her help is sought in leading sinners from vice and in planting sacred virtues in their souls. She is a fountain, a well of living water. Other titles speak of her role in the redemptive process; they present her as a willing agent, a tool of the almighty rather than as a co-redemptrix. She is a temple of the living God, court of the eternal king, ladder of the world, throne of God, doorway into paradise, shrine of the Holy Spirit, marked out for a unique priviledge all these in addition to the usual titles: rose of Jericho, root of Jesse, rod of Aaron, star of the sea. Whilst there may be love language, it is not this which is dominant; she is presented rather as a distant and powerful feudal lady, 'o regina et domina' ('O queen and lady'), interceding on behalf of her followers to the all-powerful judge.

These liturgical emphases are repeated in theological and devotional texts. Over the centuries the Flos Carmeli acquired a special status as the central Carmelite hymn to Mary, perhaps because tradition ascribed it to Simon Stock. There is, however, no clear evidence of its use before the late fourteenth century. The earliest references are in Additional MS 29704-5, which must be before 1393, since it fails to introduce feasts introduced in that year and is dated by Margaret Rickert in the late 1380s,53 and in a German manuscript of Sibert's Ordinale, written some time after 1369.54

Flos Carmeli,

Vitis florigera,

Splendor Caeli,

Virgo puerpera

Singularis;

Mater mitis,

Sed viri nescia

Carmelitis

Da privilegia,

Stella Maris.

53Ibid., p. 44.

54 Bamberg, Staatliche Bibliothek, msc.lit. 120 (Ed.11 13. See Kallenberg, Fontes, op. cit., p. 114.

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(Flower of Carmel, flowering vine, splendour of heaven, childbearing virgin, peerless [art thou]; gentle mother yet chaste virgin, bestow thy favours on the [brothers of] Carmel, o star of the sea!).55

Here Mary is celebrated as the flower of Carmel, an image which as well as having all the more usual floral connotations of female beauty, naturalness, and fidelity, echoes a number of biblical texts, including Isaiah 35:12 'The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice, even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon', where the beauty of Lebanon, Carmel and Sharon signify nature's joyful response to Israel's return to Zion but also the Shulamite woman, whose head is like Carmel (Song of Songs 7:2). She is celebrated for her uniqueness as the Virgin mother of God, whose maternal love extends to all who call upon her, mediating sweetly and gently with her son on their behalf. She is 'mater mitis', 'gentle mother'; mitis, 'mild, soft, gentle', carries with it also associations of ripeness and maturity; Mary's maternal role is one of loving nurture, providing spiritual sustenance for her followers. 'Vitis florigera', 'flowering vine', is rich in biblical allusion. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel are presented time and time again as a vine, planted in God's vineyard but faithless and bearing bitter fruit; in the New Covenant, it is Christ who is the vine and his followers who are the branches. The fruits of the vine include eucharistic wine, the redeeming blood of Mary's son. Mary's divine fecundity is foreshadowed by the Shulamite woman whose beauty is like that of the budding vine (Song of Songs 7:12) and by Aaron's budding rod.

Flos Carmeli simultaneously praises Mary's virginity, her fertility and her splendour (i.e. her brilliance and radiance). Mary's fertile radiant purity is discussed in other Carmelite texts. It is not a negative quality, not merely freedom from sin, actual or original, not simply freedom from the taint of sexuality. The whiteness associated with her is not only that of album, 'whiteness' but also that of candor, 'radiance'. We move here into a culture which associated whiteness not only with absence of colour (and dirt) but with light and radiance, symbols of virtue and spiritual worth. Mary's candor is the radiance of the sun and the stars and links her with the angels; it speaks of her unique place amongst humans: 'splendor caeli, virgo puerpera singularis'.

Mary's relationship with Carmel is most fully explored by Baconthorpe in the Laus Religionis Carmelitarum. This relationship is both literal and figurative. Baconthorpe writes of Mary's visits to Mount Carmel in her girlhood, relating a legend supposedly drawn from an account by Matthew of the infancy of the Virgin.56 In this story an angel takes Mary to Carmel whilst she is still a child and prophesies that she will become the bride of Christ. The angel disappears but Mary remains on the mountain and dedicates her life to God and to becoming the

55 This is a literal translation; the one commonly in use is a much freer translation.

56 As Staring points out, this particular story is not in any of the standard infancy narratives; Staring, p. 220.

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bride of God, making a vow of virginity. The angel returns and makes a second prophecy: that Mary will be known as 'Domina', 'Lady'.

Figuratively, Carmel signifies Mary because of its beauty, its fertility, its silence and its historical associations. As trees and flowers flourish on Carmel, where they are watered by fountains and streams of living water, so Mary's beauty is watered by the fountain of her virtues; like the Shulamite woman, she is 'a lily among thorns' (Song of Songs 2:2). In contrast to the desert places, Carmel is green and fruitful. Both Carmel and Mary are 'viridis', 'green, youthful, vigorous'. Baconthorpe says that greenness is believed a halfway colour between black and white and that, in their greenness, Mary and Carmel both provide meeting places for the radiance of the deity and the blackness of sinful humanity, since God revealed himself to man on Carmel and in Mary's womb God was made man. Isaiah prophecies a time when 'Righteousness will remain in solitude and justice will abide on Carmel' (Isaiah 32:16) and a time of grace when 'radiance will overcome the darkness'.57

Carmel gives off the sweet odour of fertility; it is the place which is free from the Genesis curse, 'thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you' (Genesis 18) and produces its fruits freely. Mary too is like a new Paradise, free from thorns and thistles (vices); her flowers and fruits are honour and honesty. Baconthorpe praises Mary's fertility in a number of different ways. As the Virgin mother of God, she is like Carmel, literally fertile. The essential paradox of her fecund virginity is a theme fully explored by Carmelite writers. Figuratively she is fertile, producing fruits of virtue herself as well as being a fertile source of virtue in others. She refreshes her followers with the sweetness of her devotion and they in their turn pray to her: 'O most beautiful of women, follow in the tracks of your flock and pasture your kids' (Song of Songs 1:7).58 She is the fountain of Carmel, flowing in an enclosed garden. This he interprets not only in the traditional way as signifying her virginity but to indicate that she is shut up against worldliness through her renunciation of temporal goodness; her garden is watered by a superabundance of temperance. From her fountain of pity, sinners may be refreshed; living water flows from her womb, gladdening the city of God and fulfilling the prophecy: 'With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation' (Isaiah 12:3), bringing water to the thirsty (Isaiah 21:14). Her absence from Carmel causes a withering and a drying up: 'The shepherds' pastures mourn and the summit of Carmel is dried up' (Amos 1:2).

Whilst Mary's beauty is suggested by the physical beauty of Mount Carmel and she is closely identified with the Shulamite woman, her beauty (unlike theirs) is spiritual. Indeed Mary's beauty evokes asceticism and abstinence rather than sensual delight. God's choice of Mount Carmel, that is his choice of Mary as the divine bride, is foretold by the words of the bridegroom, who says 'I will go to the mountain of Myrrh' (Song of Songs 4:6), one of the most frequently used

57Laus, book I, ch. viii, Staring p. 225.

58Laus, book I, ch. viii, Staring p. 225.

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lections for Marian feasts. Baconthorpe expounded the text, citing Gregory the Great 'Since myrrh signifies burial, Mary/myrrh signifies the burial of the flesh.'59 Devotion to Mary provides the means of overcoming the temptations of the flesh.

Carmelite devotion to Mary sees her as a powerful patron, nurturing and supporting her followers, mediating on their behalf with her son and as the model of the Carmelite ideal. She exemplifies obedience in her assent at the Annunciation; poverty, since she is included amongst the earliest group of apostles recorded as meeting for prayer in Acts 1:14 and is thus not excluded from the rule to have all things in common (Acts 2:44); and chastity, since she is fulfilling the prophecy 'Ecce virgo concipiet et pariet filium' (a virigin shall conceive and bring forth a son', Isaiah 7:14). Mary had her own individual chamber (like the brothers) since the angel is recorded at finding her alone in a separate room at the Annnciation.60

I have written elsewhere of the Carmelite sermon cycle in Bodleian Library MS Auct. F. inf. 1.3.61 These sermons also offer Mary as a model of the religious life. She is presented as a feudal lady, a powerful patron and mediatrix; a loving mother, effective in intercession on behalf of her children; a mother, like all mothers, caring, nurturing, but unique amongst mothers in her perpetual virginity. Her power is more important than her humility.

It is often said that the later medieval Carmelites lost sight of their contemplative origins; I have argued that this is not strictly true. Moreover, whilst it is true that there is no surviving record of mystical experience within the Order before the Teresian reforms, there is evidence of the Order promoting mysticism. It was the Carmelite Richard Misyn who translated Rolle's Incendium Amoris and Emendatio Vitae into English^62 and Thomas Fishlake who translated Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection from English into Latin.63 Carmelite sympathy for mysticism is seen in the rather odd case of the sermons in British Library Royal 7.B.I, a manuscript written by a Carmelite scribe purporting to be the sermons of the Carmelite bishop, John Paschal. I have commented elewhere on the explicitly mystical content of some of these texts.64

In many ways the urban friars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were unable to follow the life-style of their forebears in their desert cells.

59Laus, book I, ch. iii, Staring, p. 220. The Gregory quotation is XL Homeliae in Evangelia, Patrologia Latina LXXVI, 1112.

60Tractatus, Staring, pp. 19394.

61 Valerie Edden, 'Marian Devotion in a Carmelite Sermon Cycle of the Late Middle Ages', Medieval Studies lvii (1995), pp. 10129.

62 Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love and Mending of Life, ed. R. Harvey, Early English Text Society O.S. 106 (1896).

63 S.S. Hussey, 'Latin and English in the Scale of Perfection', Medieval Studies xxxv (1973), pp. 45676.

64 Valerie Edden, 'A Carmelite Sermon Cycle: British Library Royal 7.B.I', Carmelus xliii (1996), p. 112. Patrick Nold has subsequently pointed out that these sermons are in fact by the Franciscan Bertrand de la Tour and appear to have been 'borrowed' by the Carmelites. His article is forthcoming in Carmelus.

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Some Carmelite writing of the period reflects this new life. This would include for example Carmelite sermons and texts such as Maidstone's Penitential Psalms.65 Nonetheless, the body of writing in which Carmelite friars reflected on their own history and identity suggests a spirituality much indebted to the memory of those hermits. It is a spirituality which combined the traditional elements of the religious life, poverty, chastity and obedience, with a strong emphasis on solitude and silence, which saw Mary both as a model for the religious life but also as a powerful patron and mediatrix, mother of Carmel. It is a spirituality of separation and detachment, which allowed space for contemplation even within a life which included some aspects of an active apostolate. The aims of such a life are summarised quite clearly by Philip of Ribot (prior provincial of Catalonia, d. 1391):

In regard to that life we may distinguish two aims, the one of which we may attain to, with the help of God's grace, by our own efforts and virtuous living. This is to offer God a heart holy, pure and free from all actual stain of sin . . . the other is something that can be bestowed upon us only by God's bounty: namely to taste in our hearts and experience in our minds not only after death but even in this mortal life something of the power of the divine presence, and the bliss of the heavenly glory.66

65 Valerie Edden, ed., Richard Maidstone's Penitential Psalms, ed. from Bodl. MS Rawlinson A 389, Middle English Texts XXII (Heidelberg, 1990).

66The Book of the Institution of the First Monks, trans. Bede Edwards (Oxford, 1969), pp. 34.

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The Active and Contemplative Lives in Rolle, The Cloud-Author and Hilton

Denise N. Baker

The literate laity of the fifteenth century exhibited a remarkable interest in religious texts. Not only did those in the active life own prayer books, saints lives, and instructional manuals, but some possessed works on meditation and contemplation that had originally been composed for ex professo contemplatives.1 As Gillespie observes, 'The fifteenth century witnessed an extensive and consistent process of assimilation by the laity of techniques and materials of spiritual advancement which had historically been the preserve of clerical and monastic orders.'2 Among the contemplative texts which gained a wider readership with later generations are those of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and, to a lesser extent, the Cloud-author.

That readers in active life show interest in specialised contemplative literature is often regarded as evidence for a change in the conception of the states of life in the late Middle Ages and the emergence of the mixed life as the dominant paradigm. In his exhaustive survey of medieval interpretations of the story of Martha and Mary, Giles Constable, for example, not only provides evidence of the variety of meanings these two sisters accrued from the early Christian to the early. modern periods, but he also documents a new preference in the late Middle Ages for the life which combined action in the world with contemplation.3 Among the writers contributing to this new perception and growing prestige of the mixed life

1 For evidence from wills about clerical and lay ownership of such books, see Margaret Deanesly, 'Vernacular Books in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries', Modern Language Review xv (1920), pp. 34958; Hilary M. Carey, 'Devout Literate Lay People and the Pursuit of the Mixed Life in Later Medieval England', Journal of Religious History xiv (198687), pp. 36181; and Hugh Kempster, 'A Question of Audience: The Westminster Text and Fifteenth-Century Reception of Julian of Norwich', Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra J. McEntire (New York, 1998), pp. 25769.

2 Vincent Gillespie, 'Vernacular Books of Religion', Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 13751475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), p. 317.

3 Giles Constable, 'The Interpretation of Mary and Martha', Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 3141. See also Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridge, 1988), ch. 5; Walter Beale, 'Walter Hilton and the Concept of ''Medled Lyf" ', American Benedictine Review xxvi (1975), pp. 38194; Carey, 'Devout Literate Lay People', and Kempster, 'A Question of Audience'.

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Constable identifies Rolle, the Cloud-author, and Hilton.4 Despite the value of Constable's study, his contention that these English authors endorse the mixed life of the laity and secular clergy over the contemplative life of monastics or solitaries needs to be scrutinised. What impetus do Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton give to the interest of the next century's lay and clerical readers in texts originally addressed to cenobites or recluses?5 Do their discussions of action and contemplation and the states of life associated with each promulgate this conception of the mixed life as the ideal? Although there are certainly differences of opinion among Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton, my survey of their definitions of the active and contemplative lives will demonstrate that these three authors subscribe to the monastic paradigm which regards contemplation as the prerogative of those in the contemplative state.

Investigation of the various meanings of active and contemplative in the Middle Ages is rendered difficult by the fact that there are so many different interpretations. In fact, the ideas that Martha and Mary are used to represent seem to depend on the audience addressed and the genre employed by the writers. In general, though, Constable identifies three main paradigms:

First was the traditional stress on the combination and interaction of contemplation and action in this life; second was the tendency to separate the two types of life and to identify each with different groups of people and social functions on earth; third was the emerging view . . . which exalted Martha's role of action in the world and deprecated Mary's part of withdrawal and contemplation.6

I will refer to these three paradigms as the traditional or complementary, the monastic or oppositional, and the alternating or mixed models.7 Although the third paradigm may seem to be a reiteration of the first, it introduces a significant change.

According to the patristic thinkers who developed the traditional complementary interpretation of Martha and Mary, every Christian should strive to move from action to contemplation because the latter is clearly superior to the former; however, contemplation can only be fully realised in eternity. As Constable describes this paradigm, the two activities are complementary: 'Action and contemplation were mixed in the present life and related by a temporal progression. Martha's part is good, but it is imposed by necessity, which will pass, whereas

4 Constable, Three Studies, pp. 11819.

5 Although Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton addressed particular recipients, their letters also took into account a wider readership as shown by S.S. Hussey, 'The Audience for the Middle English Mystics', De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 10922.

6 Constable, Three Studies, pp. 44, 93100; see also Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 915.

7 I borrow the first two terms from Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993), pp. 1820.

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Mary's part is better because it flows from love, which is eternal.'8 Augustine, for example, contrasts action and contemplation as a progressive sequence:

the one by which we travel, the other by which we arrive; the one by which we labour so that the heart is cleansed in order to see God, the other in which we are at rest and God is seen; the one consisting of the precepts to be exercised in this temporal life, the other of the doctrine of the eternal life.9

According to the traditional complementary paradigm advanced by the church fathers, every Christian should engage in action and progress toward contemplation, if only intermittently in this life, as preparation for eternity.

The second or oppositional paradigm developed in monastic discourse. According to this model, profession or social function distinguishes the two lives. Contemplation is the exclusive prerogative of those in the contemplative state: professed religious and solitaries. The laity and the clergy who minister to them are in the active state. Unlike the traditional complementary view which regards contemplation as only intermittent on earth, the oppositional paradigm assumes that persons in religious orders devote themselves to contemplation. While there is some debate among monastic writers about whether the communal or eremitic mode is most conducive to contemplation, they agree that the two ways of life, active and contemplative, represent distinct alternatives determined by external state or professional status.10 Although the monastic paradigm regards contemplation as the privilege of a few rather than of all Christians, it concurs with the traditional complementary model in considering contemplation superior to action in the world.

The third or alternating paradigm was proposed in the early Middle Ages, but it became more influential during the eleventh century and, with significant modification, gained preeminence in the early modern period.11 In contrast to the other two, the alternating model involves three stages: action leads to contemplation and then alternates with and informs action, which is considered paramount and achieved by prelates. As Constable puts it, 'While eternal contemplation is superior to action in the world, Martha represents the highest ideal of mixed life of action and contemplation, and Christ's praise for the best part which shall not be taken away applies to prelates rather than to monks.'12 Although it seems to reiterate the notion that action and contemplation are complementary as the traditional model claims, the alternating paradigm, at least in its original formulation derived from Gregory the Great, places a second higher stage of action over contemplation and excludes most Christians from achieving it.13 Like the opposi-

8 Constable, Three Studies, op. cit., in n. 1, p. 18.

9 Augustine, De consensu Evangelistarum, i.v.8, Patrologia Latina XXXIV, 104546, translated by Constable, Three Studies, p. 19.

10 Constable, Three Studies, pp. 7286.

11Ibid., pp. 6172.

12Ibid., p. 90.

13 The interrelationships among these paradigms are discussed by R.A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 18197; the complexity of Gregory the

(footnote continued on next page)

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tional paradigm, this alternating model equates the two lives with different professions or states; although it continues to identify the laity and secular clergy with the active life and professed religious with the contemplative life, it adds a third member, the prelate or pastor, to displace cenobites and solitaries as the epitome of perfection.14

In taking up the issue of the active and contemplative lives in the fourteenth century, Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton thus engage a complex and nuanced tradition. Although these three paradigms prevailed, authors could combine their elements in diverse ways for different emphasis; in some cases they might even bring together contrasting features in ambiguous or contradictory associations. It is necessary, therefore, to consider all of an author's pronouncements on the two lives rather than drawing conclusions from a few passages cited in isolation. By surveying this evidence, I demonstrate that despite some differences in their focuses and implications, Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton subscribe to the oppositional paradigm that regards contemplation as primarily within the purview of professional contemplatives. Although each acknowledges that those in the active life can make some progress toward perfection, none embraces the alternating paradigm which places the mixed life either of pastors or of the laity, as it came to be defined in the fifteenth century, above the contemplative life of cenobites and solitaries.

Not only is Richard Rolle the most prolific of the three authors, but his canon is also the most varied, with Latin and English texts in a number of different genres, ranging from the apologetic to didactic modes. In his definitive study of Rolle, Nicholas Watson argues that the hermit of Hampole begins to conceive of himself as a practitioner of the 'mixed' life of the eremitic preacher in the Melos Amoris and that it marks a turning point in his career. As Watson describes it, Rolle's idea of the 'mixed' life (Watson's quotation marks) is unique: 'the contemplative (friar or monk) who is allowed to preach,' not actively and in person, but rather by 'teaching, exhortation and the writing of biblical commentaries and other works'.15 While Watson demonstrates how Rolle's own writings develop as he attempts to provide instruction for his disciples rather than a defence of himself, it would be a mistake to conclude that he proposes the mixed life, either in its traditional Gregorian version or in his own modification of it, for others. Although Rolle's epistles increasingly acknowledge the needs of his readers, including those in the active life, he maintains the oppositional paradigm and the preeminence of the solitary throughout his career.

In his Latin texts, particularly the Incendium Amoris, Rolle emphasises the differences between the active and contemplative lives and the impossibility of combining them. In chapter twenty-one, for example, he writes:

(footnote continued from previous page)

Great's views, which support both the complementary and the alternating paradigms, are demonstrated by R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1733.

14 Constable, Three Studies, pp. 30512, shows how the tripartite division of society into virgins, continent, and married was combined with the pair active and contemplative.

15 Watson, Richard Rolle, op. cit., p. 185.

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Dubitatur autem a quibusdam que uita sit magis meritoria et nobilior, scilicit, contemplatiua uita an actiua. Nonnullis uidetur quod actiua sit magis meritoria propter plura opera et predicacionem que exercet. Set hii errant nescientes, quia uirtutem contemplatiue uite ignorant. Sunt tamen multi actiui meliores aliquibus contemplatiuis. Sed optimi contemplatiui superiores sunt optimis actiuis. Dicimus ergo quod uita contemplatiua simpliciter suauior est, nobilior et dignior, et magis meritoria quantum ad premium essenciale, quod est gaudium de bono increato.16

(Moreover it is doubted by certain people that this life the contemplative life, of course may be more meritorious and more noble than the active life. To some it seems that the active life may be more meritorious on account of its more numerous works and the preaching which keeps it busy. But these people, not knowing, err, because they are ignorant of the power of the contemplative life. Nevertheless, there are many living the active life who are better people than some contemplatives. But the best contemplatives are superior to the best of those leading the active life. Therefore we say that the contemplative life is more meritorious as far as concerns the essential reward, for this is the joy from Uncreated Good.17)

Rolle's account of the debate reveals some of the fissure lines in the oppositional model. He begins by summarising the argument for the superiority of the active life, especially that of the preaching clergy. Whether he is simply setting up a straw opponent or actually acknowledging the increased prestige of the active life cannot be determined, but his admission that 'there are many living the active life who are better people than some contemplatives' indicates one of the tensions in Rolle's view: although he endorses the oppositional paradigm based on external social distinctions, he also contends that the criterion for judgement is not outer works but inner love. Therefore, Rolle concludes, adding an important qualification to his initial assertion:

Quia ardencius diligit Deum, et major gracia requiritur, si contemplatiua uita recte ducatur, quam actiua.

(For, if the contemplative life is properly led, the contemplative loves God more ardently and is rewarded by greater grace.)

The Cloud-author and Hilton also distinguish between the ideal of the contemplative life and the shortcomings of the ex professo contemplatives who are its practitioners, but such admissions should not be construed as repudiations of the oppositional paradigm but rather as acknowledgments that the ideal is difficult to achieve.18 Rolle thus contends that the contemplative state presents the proper ideal even if individuals in that social group do not always attain it.

In denying that the preacher is superior to the contemplative, Rolle repudiates

16 Margaret Deanesly, ed., The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole (Manchester, 1915), p. 204.

17 M.L. del Mastro, trans., The Fire of Love and the Mending of Life (Garden City, New York, 1981), p. 168.

18 Rolle's eagerness to defend the high status of the contemplative state sometimes even incites him to attack its critics in the active state. In his Comment on the First Verses of the Canticle of Canticles, for example, he reiterates the same debate about the relative

(footnote continued on next page)

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the alternating paradigm which distinguishes three social categories or states of life: the active for the laity, the contemplative for vowed religious, and the combination of the two lives by preachers and prelates. Rolle doubts that such a mixed life can be sustained.

Si quis autem utramque uitam possit adquirere, scilicet, contemplatiuam et actiuam, et ipsas retinere et implere, magnus esset ille, ut uidelicet corporale impleat ministerium et nihilominus in se sonorum celicum senciat, et in gaudium eterni amoris canens liquefiat. Nescio si unquam aliquis mortalis hoc habuit: mihi impossibile uidetur quod utrumque simul fiat. Christus uero inter homines non est numerandus in hac parte, neque beata Mater eius inter mulieres.19

(If, moreover, a man were able to acquire each of these two lives that is, the contemplative life and the active life to keep them both and to fulfill them both, great would he be, so that it is easy to see that he might fulfill a bodily ministry, and experience within himself nothing less of the heavenly harmonies, and that he might melt singing in the joy of eternal love. I do not know if any such mortal has lived here on earth; to me it seems impossible that both could be done at the same time. But Christ is not to be included among men in this category, nor is His Blessed Mother to be included among women.20)

The idea that the Virgin and her Son combined the active and contemplative lives and thus serve as models for preachers and prelates who should do the same was introduced by Gregory the Great and continued to be cited throughout the Middle Ages to endorse the alternating paradigm.21 In keeping with the oppositional model, however, Rolle regards any return to the action after embarking on contemplation as a descent from perfection.

Qui ergo actiuam uitam nobiliter administrat, ad contemplatiuam uitam ascendere conetur. Qui uero dono superne contemplacionis predicto modo sublimatur, ad actiuam non descendat, nisi forte compellatur regimen accipere christianorum: quod tamen raro uel numquam estimo contigisse.22

(footnote continued from previous page)

merits of the two lives, but he expresses sarcastic vituperation against his opponents, accusing them of ignorance and malice. Indeed, these detractors are identified with the reprobate as Rolle alleges, 'you do not love Christ, if indeed you are eager to attack him in his saints'; see Richard Rolle, Biblical Commentaries, trans. Robert Boenig, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies XCII:13 (Salzburg, 1984), p. 64.

19 Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, ch. 21, p. 206. Constable's claim in Three Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 118, that Rolle endorses the alternating paradigm of the mixed life is based on a mistaken attribution of Hilton's Mixed Life in the Thornton manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91) to Rolle in English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. George G. Perry, Early English Text Society O.S. 20 (London, 1866), pp. 1942.

20 Mastro, Fire of Love, p. 170.

21 Constable, Three Studies, p. 20, n. 86, cites Gregory's Moralia, xxviii.13, 33, as the source of this idea and provides examples from the later Middle Ages on pp. 4551; J.P.H. Clark, 'Action and Contemplation in Walter Hilton', Downside Review xcvii (1979), pp. 26667, cites additional passages in the Moralia as the source for Hilton's use of Christ as an example of the mixed life in his treatise of that title.

22 Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, ch. 21, p. 207.

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(Therefore the man who serves the active life nobly should try to ascend to the contemplative life. He who is raised up by the true gift of heavenly contemplation in the manner described above does not descend to the active life, unless, as it happens, he is compelled to accept the governing of Christians, which, nevertheless, I judge happens rarely or never.23)

In chapter thirteen of the Incendium Amoris Rolle uses the examples of Saints Maglorious and Cuthbert to make the same point; both relinquished bishoprics in favor of the eremitic life. As Rolle concludes:

Si ergo ad maius meritum assequendum tales uiri sic fecerunt, quis sane mentis audebit aliquem statum in ecclesia uite solitarie preferre?24

(If, therefore, such men, pursuing greater merit, behave in this fashion, who of sane mind would dare to place any other state in the church ahead of the solitary life?25)

Promoting the oppositional paradigm, Rolle's Latin texts maintain the preeminence of contemplation over action and the superiority of ex professo contemplatives over the laity as well as prelates or preachers. As he puts it, 'contemplatiui aliis superiores sunt, et in excellencia operis et in feruore amoris';26 (contemplatives are superior to others both in the excellence of their work and in the fervor of their love.27)

Even those who espouse the oppositional paradigm, however, disagree about which mode of religious life is the most perfect, the communal or the eremitic?28 Rolle vehemently argues for the superiority of hermits over monks. As Deanesly observes, 'The main purpose of the Incendium is the vindication of the life of the hermit or solitary, not merely from the charge of laziness and vagabondage, but of inferiority to the busy and active prelate, or the devout monk.'29 Rolle contends that the eremitic life surpasses its cenobitic and pastoral rivals because solitude is essential for contemplative union with God. Alluding to his own experience as evidence, he describes this transcendent state in his characteristic terms of fervor, dulcor and canor, sensations which can only be fully achieved and appreciated in solitude. In attributing this supremacy to hermits, Rolle not only harks back to the ascetic ideal of the desert fathers, but also defends himself against his monastic detractors.30 And by identifying the eremitic as the most perfect life for contemplation, he puts its achievement well beyond the reach of those in active life, either lay or clerical.

In his late epistles, however, Rolle moves, as Watson demonstrates, from the apologetic to the didactic mode, composing works of spiritual guidance ranging from the Latin Emendatio Vitae through the three English letters to his female

23 Mastro, The Fire of Love, ch. 21, p. 171.

24 Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, p. 181; see also the last paragraph of ch. 14, pp. 18687.

25 Mastro, The Fire of Love, ch. 14, p. 138.

26 Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, ch. 14, p. 184.

27 Mastro, The Fire of Love, ch. 14, p. 142.

28 Constable, Three Studies, pp. 3539.

29 Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, p. 46.

30 Watson, Richard Rolle, op. cit., in n. 6, pp. 4053.

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disciples: Ego Dormio, The Commandment and The Form of Living. The popularity of these texts with late-medieval readers suggests that Rolle had achieved a level of generalisation that appealed to an audience comprised of all social groups, active and contemplative, secular and religious. Indeed, in contrast to his previous Latin writings, Rolle relinquishes his defensive posture and acknowledges the value of the active life and the progress those in it can make toward the contemplative ideal. He also replaces his dyadic model with a triadic scheme and, it might be assumed, moves from the oppositional to the alternating or mixed model.31 Despite the increased respect he expresses for the active life in these late epistles, however, Rolle continues to support the oppositional model and to insist that the highest form of contemplation is the exclusive privilege of solitaries.

Rolle's letters address more explicitly the tension between the two standards for judgement that he admits as early as Incendium Amoris: the social criterion of states of life in contrast to the spiritual criterion of love, or, to put it more succinctly, external profession versus internal affection. In his epistles Rolle seems to move toward the latter criterion, apparently implying that all Christians can achieve the contemplative ideal with his introduction of the three degrees of love in these texts. Borrowing the terms insuperable, inseparable and singular from Richard of St Victor, Rolle identifies three stages of love that constitute a progression toward perfection. Often he discusses these three degrees without referring to external vocations.

Despite his lack of consistency and clarity, however, Rolle links the stages of this love triad with three states of life: active, monastic, and solitary. After defining insuperable, inseparable and singular love in The Form of Living, for example, he concludes, 'In pe * first degre ben many; in pe toper* degre ben ful fewe; bot in pe prid* degre vnnethes ben any, for euer pe more pat* pe perfeccioun is, pe fewer folwers hit hath.'32 In Ego Dormio Rolle clarifies the correlation between degrees of love and states of life. Insuperable love characterises the faithful in the active life; it is necessary and sufficient for salvation.

The first degre of loue is when a man holdeth pe ten commandmentz*, and kepeth hym fro pe vij deedly synns, and is stabil in pe trouth of holy chirch; and when a man wil nat for any erthly pynge* wreth God, bot trewely standith in his seruice, and lesteth perin* til his lyres end. This degre of loue behoueth euery man haue pat wil be saued, for no man may cum to heuyn bot he loue God and his neghbore, withouten [sin].33

Rolle links the second degree, inseparable love, to professed religious by alluding to the counsels of perfection and Christ's injunction to sell all and abandon the world if one would become perfect. After fulfilling the goals of the active life, he exhorts his reader:

31 For this argument see Ibid., pp. 20856.

32Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, ed. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson, Early English Text Society 293 (Oxford, 1988), p. 17, lines 58890.

33Ibid., p. 27, lines 6875.

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And pan * entres pou* in to pe* toper* degre of loue, pat* is to forsake al pe world, and pi* fadyre and pi modyre and al pi kyn, and folow Crist in pouert. In pis* degre pou shalt study how clene pou may be in herte, and how chaste in body, and gyf pe to mekenesse, suffrynge and buxumnesse. And loke how faire pou may make pi soule in vertuz*, and hate al vices, so pat pi lif be gostly, nat fleishly.34

Although monastics can cultivate virtue and attain the second degree of love, Rolle reserves the perfection of singular love and contemplation for the solitary.

This [third] degre of loue is cald contemplatif lif, pat loueth to be [onely] withouten ryngen or dyn and syngynge and criynge. At pe begynnynge, when pou comest thereto, pi goostly egh is taken vp in to pe light of heuyn, and pare* enlumyned in grace and kyndlet of pe fyre of Cristes loue, so pat pou shal feel verraily pe brennynge of loue in pi herte, euermore lyftynge pi thoght to God, and fillynge pe ful of joy and swetnesse.35

Even when he seems to displace it with the triadic paradigm of the degrees of love, Rolle continues to endorse the oppositional model based on states of life: insuperable love is attributed to the laity; inseparable, to religious; and singular, to the solitary. Though he concedes more in his epistles, especially Emendatio Vitae, to those in the active life, Rolle still regards the solitary life as supreme.

Rolle's continued commitment to the monastic, oppositional model is clear in what are probably the last words he wrote, the final chapter of The Form of Living. After asserting at the end of chapter eleven that withdrawal from the world to a life of physical and spiritual repose best enables people to love God, Rolle reiterates the oppositional model of the active and contemplative lives, but combines this dichotomy with a tripartite progression of activities associated with each. 'Two lifes ben pat Cristen men lyuen in. On is cald actif lif, for hit is in more werke bodily. Anoper*, contemplatif, for hit is in more swetnesse gostly.'36 As in the Incendium Amoris, Rolle associates the active life with works of mercy. The contemplative life, however, is divided into two parts. The lower grade consists of meditation and prayer; the higher, in the desire and joy expressed through silent thinking of God. As in Ego Dormio, contemplation is reserved for those in a contemplative state: 'A man or a womman pat is ordeynet to contemplatif lif, first God inspireth ham to forsaake pis world, and al pe vanyte and pe couaitise and pe vile luste perof*.'37 This combination of the dyadic and triadic paradigms in the conclusion of The Form of Living epitomises the complexity of Rolle's conception of action and contemplation. On the one hand, he remains consistent throughout his career in endorsing the oppositional model which distinguishes between the active and contemplative states as social vocations. On the other hand, he recognises that the true criterion for perfection is not external works but

34Ibid., p. 28, lines 95101. Watson, Richard Rolle, op. cit., pp. 21415, discusses Rolle's metaphoric interpretation of poverty in chapter three of Emendatio Vitae. Rolle emphasises that such attempts to attain poverty of spirit without relinquishing material goods are more precarious and less perfect than literal poverty voluntarily embraced.

35 Ogilvie-Thomson, Richard Rolle, p. 31.

36Ibid., p. 24.

37Ibid., p. 25.

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internal affections. In introducing the concept of the three degrees of love in his late epistles, Rolle seems to be abandoning the oppositional model; in some cases he is silent or ambiguous about the relationship between these degrees of love and the states of life. However, in Ego Dormio and the last chapter of The Form of Living, he explicitly correlates the two states of life with the three degrees of love by dividing the contemplative life into two parts, a lower and a higher, and thus indicating a progression from communal to eremitic mode. While Rolle's ambiguity about the spiritual progress that every Christian can make toward perfection explains the popularity of those late epistles, especially Emendatio Vitae, for fifteenth-century readers in the active life, he nevertheless contends that contemplation itself is the exclusive privilege of solitaries.

Even though the author of The Cloud of Unknowing also subscribes to the oppositional paradigm, he acknowledges that those in active life can engage in the meditation that Rolle assigns to the lower part of the contemplative life and, on rare occasions, even achieve the more abstract experience of the higher part. Such a concession to those in the active life may seem surprising given the Cloud-author's interest in the most advanced stage of spirituality. Nonetheless, while still maintaining the oppositional paradigm and the supremacy of the solitary, he grants more to those in the secular states, either lay or clerical, than Rolle does.

In the prologue to the Cloud, for example, the author combines two different schema. He invokes the oppositional model when he implies an irreversible hierarchy between the two states of life: the most fit reader of his book is one who has:

in a trewe wille & by an hole entent, purposed him to be a parfite folower of Criste, not only in actyue leuyng, bot in pe * souereinnest pointe of contemplatife leuing pe whiche is possible by grace for to be comen to in pis* present liif of a parfite soule zit* abiding in pis deedly body.38

He warns that his book must not be given to 'Fleschely ianglers . . . pouz* al pat* pei* be ful good men of actiue leuyng, zit pis mater acordep* noping* to hem.'39 The Cloud-author thus implies that the two states of life, active and contemplative, are essentially different. He immediately qualifies this statement, however, by acknowledging:

bot zif* it be to poo* men pe whiche, pou* al pei stonde in actyucte bi outward forme of leuyng, neuerpeles* zit bi inward stering after pe priue sperit of God, whos domes ben hid, pei ben ful graciously disposid, not contynowely as it is propre to verrey contemplatyues, bot pan* & pan to be parceners in pe heipst* pointe of pis contemplatiue acte.40

In contrast to Rolle, the Cloud-author emphasises the progress that some in the

38The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling, ed. Phyllis Hodgson, Early English Text Society O.S. 218 (London, 1944), p. 2, lines 15.

39Ibid., pp. 23, lines 19-1.

40Ibid., p. 3, lines 16.

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active state make from the lower to the higher part of contemplation, in accord with the complementary model which expects such growth in all Christians. What he had initially presented as a difference in kind between two opposing but related states of life becomes in some rare cases only a difference of degree or duration. The Cloud-author thus distinguishes between 'verrey contemplatyues' in the contemplative state of life and the 'contemplatiue acte' which some in the active state can perform. While true contemplatives devote themselves wholeheartedly to the contemplative act, some actives can engage in it with the same intensity, though not for the same duration. By the end of the prologue, the Cloud-author even seems to open his text to all readers when he says that the last chapter 'techep * som certeyn tokens by pe* whiche a soule may verrely preue wheper* he be clepid to God to be a worcher in pis* werk or none.'41 The prologue to The Cloud of Unknowing thus combines the oppositional model based on social role with the complementary model which calls all Christians to contemplation and makes inward spiritual condition rather than outward profession the ultimate criterion for perfection.

The Cloud-author seems to abandon this synthesis of the oppositional and complementary paradigms and concentrate on the former in chapter one as he informs his young disciple about the four degrees of the Christian life: ordinary, special, singular and perfect. The first three begin and end in this life; the fourth is initiated by grace in this life, but it is fully attained only in heaven. In accord with the oppositional paradigm, the outer state of life signified by the first three marks the inner stage of spiritual development and the list identifies the necessary sequence of progressive improvement. The disciple began 'in pe comoun degree of Cristen mens leuyng in companie of pi* wordely freendes'. Then he was drawn by 'a lyame of longing' into 'a more special state & forme of leuyng, to be a seruaunt of pe special scruauntes of [God]'. Finally, he was pulled up 'to pe prid* degre & maner of leuing, pe whiche hizt* Synguleer',42 from whence he can proceed toward the ultimate perfection of the fourth degree. Even though the Cloud-author names four degrees, he is invoking the same tripartite oppositional paradigm of states of life that Rolle does at the end of The Form of Living. Richard Methley's annotation in the Latin translation of the Cloud identifies the first three degrees of Christian life with vocations:

Hoc loco attende, lector, quod communis status est laycorum, specialis clericorum, vel religiosorum, singularis solitariorum, scilicet, heremitarum anachoritarum vel precipue cartusiensium'.43

(Attend to this place, reader, because the common state is of the laity, the special of the clergy or religious, the singular of solitaries, namely of hermits, anchorites, or especially of Carthusians.)

41Ibid., p. 3, lines 1012.

42Ibid., ch. 1, p. 13, lines 1819, p. 14, lines 45, 1112.

43 Pembroke College, Cambridge, MS 221, quoted by Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing, p. 183, n. 14; see also J.P.H. Clark, The Cloud of Unknowing: An Introduction, vol. I, Introduction, Analecta Cartusiana CXIX.4 (Salzburg, 1995), pp. 2021.

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The Cloud-author's fourth degree, which transcends this life, is contemplation itself; in accord with the early church fathers, he believes that it can only be perfectly attained after death.44 The Cloud-author thus concurs with Rolle; both divide the contemplative life into two states, monastic and eremitic. In using the word singular to identify the highest state of life, that of the solitary, and in claiming that solitude is the prerequisite for contemplation, the Cloud-author further echoes Rolle and implies the oppositional model which links spiritual development to state of life. However, like Rolle, he also acknowledges the discrepancy that often exists between vocation and spiritual condition. He admonishes his young disciple:

holde pee * neuer pe* holier ne pe beter for pe worznes* of pis* cleping & for pe singuler fourme of leuyng pat* pou* arte in; bot pe more wrechid & [werid], bot zif* pou do pat in pee is goodly, bi grace & bi counsel, to lyue after pi* cleping.45

Although the Cloud-author does not mention these four states of life subsequently, he later 'speaks of a threefold order of interior perfection which corresponds with the three outward degrees of christian living delineated in the first chapter.'46

In chapter eight the Cloud-author seems to endorse all three paradigms simultaneously. He begins by invoking the monastic or oppositional model: 'per* ben two maner of liues in Holy Chirche. Pe* tone is the actiue liif, & pe toper* is contemplatiue liif. Actyue is pe lower, & contemplatiue is pe hier.' Next he divides each state of life into two parts. 'Actiue liif hap* two degrees, a hier & a lower; & also contemplatiue liif hap two degrees, a lower & a hizer*.' However, what initially appears to be a fourfold division is actually a tripartite one and the apparent distinction between the two social groups is dissipated as the author explains that they share a medial member. 'Also peese* two liues ben so couplid to-geders, pat pof* al pei* ben diuers in som party, zit* neiper* of hem may be had fully wip-outen* som party of pe oper*.' In elaborating on this common ground between the two states of life, the Cloud-author seems to invoke first the traditional, complementary model that calls on all Christians to engage in contemplation and then to allude to the alternating or mixed model which encourages professed contemplatives to return to the active ministry:

for whi pat party pat is pe heizer party of actyue liif, pat same party is pe lower party of comtemplatiue liif. So pat a man may not be fully actiue, bot zif* he be in party contemplatiue; ne zit fully contemplatiue (as it may be here), bot zif he be in partie actyue.47

As the Cloud-author proceeds to identify the acts associated with each of the

44 Constable, Three Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, pp. 1819.

45 Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing, ch. 2, pp. 1415, lines 2023.

46 Kent Emery Jnr., 'The Cloud of Unknowing and Mystica Theologia', in The Roots of the Modern Christian Tradition, vol. II of The Spirituality of Western Christendom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, 1984), p. 52.

47 Hodgson, Cloud of Unknowing, p. 31, lines 414.

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three stages, however, he reiterates Rolle's triad at the end of The Form of Living with a significant difference; the hierarchy consists of works of mercy, meditation on humankind's sins and Christ's passion, and contemplation itself. However, in contrast to Rolle, who regards the second and third levels, meditation and contemplation respectively, as the exclusive domain of contemplatives, the Cloud-author asserts that those in both lives engage in the medial activity, meditation.

The highest stage, contemplation itself, remains, with only rare exceptions, the prerogative of those in contemplative life, especially solitaries. As the Cloud-author instructs his disciple, the exercise presented in his book is only for those professed religious.

zif * pou* aske me who schuld worche pus*, I answere pee*: alle plat* han forsaken pe* worild in a trewe wille, & per-to* pat* zeuen* hem not to actyue liif, bot to pat liif pat is clepid contemplatyue liif.48

Despite his concession in the prologue that some in the active life may be able to engage in contemplation, the Cloud-author claims in chapters eighteen and nineteen that most in the secular state cannot understand the mission of true contemplatives and complain about them out of ignorance. Like Martha, whose works were 'good & profitable to pe helpe* of hir soule', those in the active life must recognise that they cannot serve God perfectly in both body and spirit.49 For that reason Christ said Mary's part, that of the true contemplative, was best: 'For whi pat parfite steryng of loue pat byginnep* here is euen in noumbre wip* pat pt* schal last wip-outen* ende in pe blis of heuen; for al is bot one.'50 Thus, although the Cloud-author enlarges the scope of the active life by inviting the laity and the clergy who minister to them to meditate on their sins and the manhood of Christ, he maintains that contemplation of the Godhead, 'bot zif* it be ful seeldom & by a specyal grace',51 is beyond the ken of most actives. Acknowledging the spiritual progress of all Christians toward contemplation as the traditional, complementary model does, he nonetheless emphasises the oppositional paradigm by insisting that only those in the contemplative state, and especially solitaries, can achieve the third stage and enter the cloud of unknowing.

In the two books of The Scale of Perfection as well as The Mixed Life Walter Hilton provides the most complex and comprehensive analysis of active and contemplative lives in Middle English. Indeed, because he offers several different schema of the two lives over the course of these texts, it is sometimes difficult to sort out his position about their relationship to professional states. He begins the first book of The Scale, for example, with a distinction between the active and contemplative lives and an analysis of the three parts of contemplation. The Mixed Life, probably written in the ten-year interval between The Scale's two

48Ibid., ch. 27, p. 63, lines 36.

49Ibid., ch. 20, p. 52, lines 9 ff.

50Ibid., ch. 20, p. 52, lines 2123.

51Ibid., ch. 21, p. 53, line 23.

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books, introduces a different triadic model that appears similar to the alternating paradigm, but is actually more in accord with the oppositional one. In his final work, Book Two of The Scale, Hilton substitutes the two stages of 'reform in faith and reform in faith and feeling' for the tripartite divisions he uses in the two prior treatises, leading some critics to believe that he reasserts the traditional complementary paradigm. An examination of Hilton's discussions of the active and contemplative lives in these three texts shows that, like his predecessors, he emphasises the oppositional paradigm and the preeminence of the solitary life; he also agrees with the Cloud-author in acknowledging the exceptions to the norm initiated by special grace.

Hilton begins Book One of The Scale of Perfection by contrasting the life of action with that of contemplation. He attributes to the active life the same duties as Rolle and the Cloud-author do fulfilling the commandments and performing works of mercy. He also agrees in assigning the active life to those in the active state, the laity and the clergy who minister to them, asserting that 'all secular people are bound to fulfil this obligation according to their power and ability', especially wealthy laymen and those in positions of authority, either temporal or spiritual.52 Thus Hilton places bishops in the active rather than the Gregorian mixed life. Those in contemplative life, on the other hand, strive for 'a true knowledge and sight of God' by 'forsak[ing] all worldly riches, honors and outward business and giv[ing] themselves, body and soul, to the service of God through spiritual occupation'.53 In contrast to Rolle, who in the Emendatio Vitae offers the possibility of a metaphoric withdrawal from the world, Hilton has in mind a literal detachment because he immediately says that the anchorite's 'state requires you to be contemplative for that is the purpose and intention of your enclosure'. In accord with the oppositional paradigm, then, Hilton attributes the active life to the laity or secular clergy and the contemplative life to vowed religious or solitaries.

In developing his triadic hierarchy of contemplation, however, Hilton introduces some new terms. Nonetheless, in principle he agrees with the Cloud-author, allowing those in active state to participate in the lower part of contemplation and maintaining that the highest level is reserved for solitaries unless God grants a special grace to someone in active life. According to Hilton, the first part of contemplation involves the knowledge of God achieved through reason; the second, in contrast, an affection for God without understanding of spiritual matters; and the third, a synthesis of cognition and affection that culminates in temporary rapture, union with God, and conformity to the Trinity. He differs from Rolle and the Cloud-author in offering a hierarchical division of contemplation rather than the two lives and in defining these stages by the faculty each engages rather than by their practices. The first member of this triad, knowledge acquired by reason, does not correspond to any division made by his

52 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. J.P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward (New York, 1991), I, ch. 2, p. 78. Hereafter Scale.

53Scale I, ch. 3, p. 78.

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predecessors; in fact, both of them dismiss cognitive knowledge as a distraction from contemplation. Hilton, on the other hand, emphasises the roles of both understanding and affection in true contemplation, but he does little to develop this first part or rational knowledge, admitting that it 'is common to good and bad, because it may be had without charity'.54 Hilton's other two parts of contemplation correlate with the distinctions that Rolle and the Cloud-author make between the lower and higher parts of contemplation: the affective spirituality of meditation contrasted with contemplation proper, however distinctly each author defines it. Hilton, like the Cloud-author, admits those in active life to the second part of contemplati on, but he subdivides this medial stage according to state of life or profession rather than regarding it as a similar experience for both actives and contemplatives. While both degrees of the second part of contemplation consist of affection, those in active life experience this devotion with the intensity but not the duration that those in contemplative life achieve. Finally, like the Cloud-author, Hilton concedes that the highest part, true contemplation, can be attained in exceptional cases by a person in active life, but it is most fully realised by solitaries.

This [third] part of contemplation God gives wherever he wills, to clergy or laity, to men and women occupied in prelacy and to the solitary as well; but it is a special gift and not a common one. Moreover, though a person in active life may have it by a special grace, I consider that no one can have the full use of it unless he is solitary and contemplative in life.55

As Clark observes, Hilton's teaching about the two lives generally corresponds to the Cloud-author's, though he is more sympathetic to the active life and more comprehensive in his discussion of the process of spiritual development than his contemporary.56

In The Mixed Life Hilton reinforces the notion that the second stage of contemplation, 'burning love in devotion',57 is for most individuals in the active state the highest degree they can hope to attain. Although he borrows much of his explanation of the mixed life from Gregory the Great, Hilton's conception resembles the complementary more than the alternating paradigm. He is not referring to the prelate or pastor whose alternations between contemplative intensity and active ministry place him at the top of the tripartite hierarchy. Rather, for Hilton a life combining action and devotion is necessary because the layman's secular responsibilities prevent him from pursuing his desire to achieve the apex of contemplation in the religious profession. He must therefore defer such perfection until later in life, when his duties diminish, or until after death, in the bliss of heaven. As much as Hilton approves of this 'medled lyf' under the constraining circumstances of secular duties, he nonetheless continues to maintain that the

54Scale I, ch. 4, p. 79.

55Scale I, ch. 9, p. 83.

56 Clark, 'Action and Contemplation', op. cit., in n. 21, p. 263.

57Scale I, ch. 9, p. 82.

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condition of withdrawal from the world in a religious profession is necessary to progress toward the highest stage of contemplation.

Contemplatif liyf aloone longep * to siche men and women pat*, for pe* loue of God, forsaken alle open synnes of pe world and of here flesch, and alle bisynesse, charges and gouernaunces of wordli goodes, and maken hem self pore and naked to pe bare nede of pe bodili kynde, and fleen fro souereynte of alle opere* men to pe seruice of God.58

Although the mixed life is most expedient for those with secular or pastoral responsibilities, Hilton contends, as he does in Book One of The Scale, that the contemplative life of a professed religious or solitary is the best. Focused on the lower degree of the second part of contemplation in The Mixed Life, he nonetheless continues to subscribe to the oppositional paradigm.

In Book Two of The Scale of Perfection, completed just before his death, Hilton replaces the triadic divisions of contemplation or states of life with the two stages of reform, in faith and in feeling. This change persuades Russell-Smith that Scale II, 'even more than Mixed Life . . . contains Hilton's teaching on contemplation for active men and women with secular responsibilities', because 'there is no theoretical restriction of people in an active ''state" to the antechamber of "devotion".'59 Agreeing with this assessment, Clark argues that Book Two of The Scale implies 'that contemplation is, in principle at least, the proper and full development of the life of grace, that it is the way par excellence to conformity to Christ, and that therefore it can and should be sought by all men and women', and not just by those vowed to the religious life.60 He claims that in this second book Hilton reverts to the older tradition in which all Christians are called to contemplation, regardless of state of life. Certainly Clark correctly observes that the dualistic schema of reform in faith and reform in faith and feeling seems to resemble the traditional, complementary paradigm rather than the monastic, oppositional one. Hilton's repetition of the first member, reform in faith, in the second member, reform in faith and feeling, emphasises the sequential and progressive relationship between the two spiritual states; the first is the basis for the second. Nor does this two-part schema correspond very neatly with the three lives of The Mixed Life, the threefold division of contemplation in the first book of The Scale, or the categories of beginners, proficients, and perfect souls introduced elsewhere in the second book.

Clark's interpretation, however, dismisses a crucial piece of evidence. In distinguishing between these two kinds of reform, both partial since perfect reformation can only occur in heaven, Hilton states:

58 Walter Hilton, Mixed Life, ed. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies XCII, 15 (Salzburg, 1986), pp. 1213, lines 13237.

59 Joy Russell-Smith, 'Walter Hilton', Pre-Reformation English Spirituality, ed. James Walsh (New York, n.d.), pp. 194, 195.

60 Clark, 'Action and Contemplation', p. 258.

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The first, which is reforming in faith alone, is sufficient for salvation; the second is worthy of surpassing reward in the bliss of heaven. The first may be gained easily and in a short time; the second not so, but through length of time and great spiritual labor.. . . The first reforming is only for souls beginning and proficient, and for people in active life; the second is for perfect souls and contemplatives.61

Commenting on this passage, Clark contends, 'In this context "active" and "contemplative" must refer to stages of progress rather than to states of life.'62 Based on this passage alone, such an interpretation is certainly plausible, since Hilton does not mention particular vocations. However, he clarifies this ambiguity in chapter ten:

In this reforming that is only in faith the greater part of chosen souls lead their life, who steadfastly set their will to flee every kind of mortal sin, to hold themselves in love and charity toward their fellow Christians, and to keep the commandments of God as far as they know.63

Hilton thus clearly associates the first stage of reform with the duties of the seculars, both lay and clerical, in the active state as identified in the second chapter of Book One. Moreover, these activities avoiding sin, keeping the commandments, and performing works of charity are sufficient for salvation. Hilton continues:

Indeed I consider that all these souls living so are reformed in faith to the image of God; and if they live in this reforming and are found in it at the hour of their death, they shall be saved and come to full reforming in the bliss of heaven, even though they could never have spiritual feeling or inward savor or special grace of devotion in all their lifetime.

Hilton does not believe that most Christians will progress from the first stage, reform in faith, to the second, reform in faith and feeling, nor does he believe that attainment of the second stage is necessary for salvation. Contrary to Clark's assertion, he does not see contemplation 'as the proper, and in principle the normal and full, working out of the Baptismal life'. Rather, Hilton acknowledges that only a very few achieve even the devotion of affection, the second stage of contemplation identified in Scale I, let alone the highest spiritual state of reform in faith and feeling, and that neither is required for salvation. He reasons:

For otherwise, if you say that no soul shall be saved without being reformed into spiritual feeling, so that it could feel devotion and spiritual savor in God (as some souls do through special grace), then few souls should be saved in comparison with the multitude of the damned.

Thus Hilton does not consider the progress from reform in faith to reform in faith and feeling as a normal or typical development for most Christians. Rather the first reform 'is common to all chosen souls, though they are only in the lowest degree of charity; but reforming in feeling pertains especially to such souls as

61Scale II, ch. 5, pp. 199200.

62 Clark, 'Action and Contemplation', p. 269, n. 39.

63Scale II, ch. 10, p. 205.

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can come to the state of perfection'.64 Rather than embracing the traditional, complementary paradigm that presents the highest degree of contemplation as the goal for all Christians, Hilton, in Book Two of The Scale, continues to endorse the view that he articulated in Book One: some in the active state may, through a special gift of God's grace, achieve this perfection, but it is attained most often and most fully by solitaries.

In their actual pronouncements about the active and contemplative lives, Rolle, the Cloud-author and Hilton are proponents of the oppositional paradigm that links spiritual development to professional state. Each author regards the conditions of the solitary state withdrawal from the world, quiet, dedication to a spiritual occupation as most conducive to the higher form of contemplation. Rolle insists that such an eremitic existence is necessary to achieve the gifts of 'fervor', 'dulcor', and 'canor' that characterise, for him, the apex of contemplative life. And even though the Cloud-author and Hilton admit that those in the active state can, on rare occasions, engage in the contemplative act, they both distinguish this sporadic achievement from the true contemplation of those committed to a religious or eremitic vocation.

64Scale II, ch. 17, p. 219.

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Name Above Names:

The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection I

Denis Renevey

It is no accident that the devotion to the Name of Jesus received new impetus when Corpus Christi, the eucharistic feast, was born and eventually firmly established in the thirteenth century.1 In 1274, the second council of Lyon adopted the Pope Gregory X constitution, Decet Domum Dei Sanctitudo, which encouraged kneeling and bowing of the head at the mention of the Name, especially during mass. Around the time of the second council of Lyon, a Franciscan, Guibert de Tournai (d. 1284), at the request of the Friars Minor, composed ten sermons dedicated exclusively to the Name of Jesus. The work is known collectively as the Tractatus de SS. Nomine Jesu, or Devotissimum Opusculum de Laude Melliflui Nominis nostri Jesu Christi in the early sixteenth-century Lyon edition which attributes the work to Bonaventure.2 Several manuscripts attest to the relative popularity of this treatise, and it is possible, according to Baudouin d'Amsterdam, that an English version is still extant in the British Library.3

Additional investigation is necessary to assess the exact impact of Guibert's treatise on the propagation of the devotion in England and elsewhere.4 It is sig-

1 For a study of Corpus Christi, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1992); for the mention of the Name of Jesus as a eucharistic image, see esp. p. 319.

2 See Seraphici Doctoris S. Bonaventurae Sermones, 'Devotissimum Opusculum de Laude Melliflui Nominis Jesu' (Lyon, 1506), cols 495610.

3 See Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (Paris, 1937), vol. VI, 1143; Baudouin d'Amsterdam mentions a partial English version extant in British Museum, cod. 11748, fol. 147 s.vv. (15th cent.). As I am only at an early stage in my study and investigation of Guibert de Tournay's treatise, I have not yet been able to compare fol. 147 of BL Add. MS 11748 with Tournay's Latin original. Fol. 147, the last folio of the manuscript, contains only two short extracts.

4 Two aspects of Guibert de Tournay's doctrine deserve brief mention here. He seems to have developed appropriation as an art form, which is attested by numerous borrowings from Pseudo-Denys, John Cassian, Aelred of Rievaulx, and especially the Victorines, more particularly Richard of St Victor. Guibert also attributes great importance to the affective part of the soul in its progress towards God. Those two specificities, mentioned by Baudouin d'Amsterdam, make Guibert an interesting thirteenth-century figure in the transmission of the devotion to the Name of Jesus throughout Europe. He stands midway between Bernard of Clairvaux, with his sermon fifteen on the Name of Jesus, and Richard Rolle with his own personal devotion to the Name. Guibert begins his fourth sermon with Canticles 1.2, 'Oleum effusum nomen tuum', and continues

(footnote continued on next page)

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nificant, however, to notice that several treatises devoted completely, or in part, to the Name of Jesus, either followed, or spurred the orthodox church to, the 1274 decision which promulgated the devotion as an official practice. Some of John of Hoveden's texts are a good case in point. His Latin Philomena, and the Anglo-Norman Li Rossignos, a paraphrase of his Desere Iam Anima, generously praise the Name of Jesus:

Cist nons 'Jhesu' qi bien le sone

Tres toz ses enemis estone!

Qui a dire le s'abandone

De vin de vie un muy entone!

Cist nouns est li doz letuaire

Pur le quor refroidi refaire;

Il est li plus grant luminaire

Ou la divinité esclaire.5

(Whoever pronounces this name will surprise all his enemies! Whoever forgets himself in order to utter it will ring a great measure of the wine of life. This name is a sweet delicacy which heals a cold heart. It is the greatest light through which the divinity shines.)6

The whole of section thirty, i.e. 208 lines, is completely devoted to the Name of Jesus.7 Section thirty-one, after a long digression on the Virgin Mary, returns to the Name of Jesus. The dedication of this poem to Aliénor of Provence, wife of Henry III, points to an early lay aristocratic interest in this devotion.8 Several other texts in Latin and in the vernaculars, some of them little studied, testify to the growing enthusiasm for the Name from the thirteenth century onwards.9 If

(footnote continued from previous page)

further with the following explanation: 'Habes igitur Nomen Domini gaudiosum. Hoc est enim effusio cum gaudio, quod oleum eum Jesu. Dei Filio; effusio enim signum est gaudii. Nomen autem Jesu sub metaphora describitur olei; est enim oleum curamentum in languoribus, mitigamentum in laboribus, illuminamentum in obscuritatibus, condimentum in saporibus'; see Bonaventure, 'Devotissimum', op. cit., cols 52526. ('That is why you have the joyful Name of the Lord. It is indeed effusion with joy, because this oil is Jesus the son of God; this effusion is indeed an indication of joy. Thus the Name of Jesus is described metaphorically as oil; this oil is indeed a treatment against illnesses, a relief against afflictions, a light against darkness, a seasoning for meals.')

5 See Andrew Lawson King, 'A Critical Edition of Li Rossignos by John of Howden', 1984, p. 273, in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. This is an unpublished work which, according to the assistant librarian, should have been presented as a doctoral thesis. Li Rossignos is found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 471. For a description of the manuscript, see Nigel Wilkins, Catalogue des manuscrits français de la bibliothèque Parker. (Parker Library) Corpus Christi College Cambridge (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 14648.

6 Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own.

7 The image of the nightingale and the term melos are regularly used throughout Hoveden's writings; see King, 'Li Rossignos', pp. 6785.

8 Wilkins, Catalogue, pp. 14648.

9 For a study of the pervasive influence of the hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria, see Le "Jubilus" Dit de St Bernard, ed. A. Wilmart, Storia e Litteratura II (Rome, 1944); see also Denis Renevey, 'Anglo-Norman and Middle-English Translations and Adaptations

(footnote continued on next page)

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one has to wait for the end of the fourteenth century to see the devotion reach a larger audience and become popular, it is essential to recognise the solid and continuous interest in the Name in the Western tradition, by the religious Orders and the aristocracy, long before that time.10

1

The writings of Richard Rolle attest to the significance of this devotion for his own spiritual growth, and that of his audience. In the Incendium Amoris, considered to be an early mystical piece in the canon, Rolle provides a brief, albeit significant comment on the devotion to the Name of Jesus.11 The passage has often been quoted for the valuable information it provides on the concept of canor, the inner music or sound which Rolle claims to hear at all times, and which turns his utterances into spiritual song, his meditations into poems. As well as its spiritual dimension, Rolle makes canor the agent of his poetic skills. In view of the fascinating comment made at this point in Incendium Amoris, little has been said about how the gift of canor was received by Rolle:

All the same I fancy that no one will receive them unless he has a special love for the Name of Jesus, and so honours it that he never lets it out of his mind, except in sleep. Anyone to whom this is given will, I think, achieve this very thing.12

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of the Hymn Dulcis Iesu Memoria', The Medieval Translator, V, ed. R. Ellis and R. Tixier (Turnhout, 1995), pp. 26483. Guibert de Tournay's Tractatus de SS. Nomine Jesu, John of Hoveden's entire corpus, but more especially his Anglo-Norman Li Rossignos, have received little attention and are not available in modern editions. I plan to devote more attention to those texts while pursuing further research on the devotion to the Name of Jesus in England. For passages dealing with the Name of Jesus in the Philomena, see 'Johannis de Hovedone Philomena', in Hymnologische Beiträge, Quellen und Forschungen, Band 4, ed. C. Blume and G.M. Dreves (Leipzig, 1930), pp. 2931; for other poems by Hoveden, see The Poems of John of Hoveden, ed. F.J.E. Raby, Surtees Society CLIV (Durham, 1939).

10 For a detailed survey on the Name of Jesus, see Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. VIII; see also Irénée Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, trans. Ch. Cummings, Cistercian Studies Series XLIV (Kalamazoo, 1978); on the Jesus Prayer, see Per-Olof Sjören, The Jesus Prayer (London, 1996); see also Un moine de L'Eglise d'Orient, La Prière de Jésus: Sa Genèse, son Développement et sa Pratique dans la Tradition Religieuse Byzantino-Slave (Paris, 1963).

11 For the chronology of Rolle's writings, I follow Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 27394; for a different chronology, see Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography (New York, 1927). For an account of Rolle's doctrine, see Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993), pp. 58115.

12 See Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. Clifton Wolters (Harmondsworth, 1988), pp. 9394; for the Latin version, see Incendium Amoris, ed., Margaret Deanesly (Manchester, 1915).

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In view of the early date for the composition of Incendium Amoris, the brief reference to the Name assumes knowledge and possible practice of this devotion on the part of his audience. The passage makes precise reference to what is known in the Eastern tradition as the continuous prayer, often associated there with Canticles 5:2: 'Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat'.13 Already at this stage of his career, Rolle seems to have mastered the practice of the short prayer which becomes his main exercise to achieve union with the deity. Although one has to make allowances for Rolle's idiosyncratic characteristics, it is important to recognise that the devotion to the Name triggers the mystical phenomena he calls canor, calor and dulcor.

Another Latin work, Melos Amoris, provides a comment on the part of Rolle about the efficiency of the devotion to the Name of Jesus. The entire work is replete with references to the Name and attests to devotional practices puzzingly similar to those expounded by the hesychast movement in the East. In some instances, the Name (nomen) stands as synonym for the Word (verbum), as in chapter twenty-one.14 Here again, as earlier in the Incendium Amoris, Rolle speaks of the benefits one may miss if not practising this devotion:

Nimirum non in hoc necessario nodantur ut noviter nascantur qui nomen nesciunt in iubilum quod gerit et iustificat gementes tantummodo, dumtaxat perfectis place-bit et liquide licebit ludere letanter laudantibus langorem in lucem levatis, qui sciunt sanari ac semper subsistere sufficiunt securi solacio sanctorum et speciem spiritus eciam inter procellas pacifice portare.15

(They are not linked to this essential good by a new birth, those who ignore the name in which one rejoices, the name which gives birth and saves, as long as one repents. The perfecti however know the taste and possess the faculty to exult in joy. They sing their desire, intent on the light. They know they have been healed. They can rest assured for ever of the happiness of the saints, and they maintain without any trouble spiritual beauty in the midst of tempests.)

This passage, like many others in the Latin writings of the hermit of Hampole, relies on his personal experience as practitioner of the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. Rolle claims to have become one of the perfecti through the continuous practice of the Jesus prayer. In Super Canticum Canticorum, a Latin commentary on the first two and a half verses of the Song of Songs, Rolle, in imitation of Bernard of Clairvaux, provides a personal interpretation of the Oleum Effusum

13 For a reference to the Ego Dormio verse, in relation to the continuous prayer, see La Prière de Jésus, p. 74. The standard Jesus prayer in the East is made up of the following words: 'Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me'. However, in La Prière de Jésus, the writer encourages anyone to find one's own invocation, with the name Jesus at the core of the prayer. The simplest, oldest, and most efficient prayer, according to the author, is the use of 'Jesus' on its own. See La Prière de Jésus, p. 72. For a discussion on short prayers, see Hausherr, The Name, pp. 191240.

14 See Richard Rolle, Le Chant d'Amour (Melos Amoris), vol. I, trans. les Moniales de Wisques, Sources Chrétiennes CLXVIII (Paris, 1971), pp. 25867.

15Ibid., p. 272.

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verse. There he offers an example as to the practical effects the invocation of the name had in his personal life as a hermit:

Contingit quod quadam nocte, in principio conversionis mee, michi in statu meo quiescenti apparuit quedam iuvencula, valde pulcra, quam ante videram et que me in bono amore non modicum diligebat. Quam cum intuitus essem et mirarer cur in solitudinem ad me eciam in nocte venerat, subito sine mora vel loquela iuxta me se inmisit. Quod ego senciens, et ne me ad malum alliceret timens, dixi me velle surgere et nos signo crucis benedicere.. . . At illa tam fortiter me strinxit, ut nec os ad loquendum nec manus in me sentirem ad movendum. Quod videns, perpendi ibi non mulierem set diabolum in forma mulieris me temptasse. Verti, ergo, me ad Deum et cum in mente mea dixissem, 'O Ihesu, quam preciosus est sanguis tuus,' cruce imprimens in pectore cum digito qui quodammodo iam mobilis esse inciperet. Et ecce! subito totum disparuit et ego gracias Deo egi, qui me liberavit. Deinceps vere Ihesum amare michi dulcius et suavius sapiebat, et eciam usque hodie non recedit a me. Ergo benedictum sit nomen Ihesu in secula seculorum.16

(It happened to me that on a certain night in the beginning of my conversion in my quiet state there appeared to me a certain maiden, very beautiful; before I had noticed, she was loving me quite a bit with good love. When I had gazed at her and marveled why indeed she had come to me by night in my solitude, suddenly without delay or speech she let herself free next to me. Because, sensing and feeling that she might entice me to evil, I told myself to wish to rise and bless us with the sign of the cross.. . . But she so strongly bound me that I felt neither my mouth for speaking nor my hands for moving. Seeing this, I thought that not a woman but a devil in the form of a woman was there tempting me. Therefore I turned to God and with him in my mind, I said, 'O Jesus, how precious is your blood,' pressing the cross onto my breast with my finger, which now I could move a little, and, behold, suddenly all disappeared and I gave thanks to God who freed me. Afterwards I sought to love Jesus, and the more I advanced in his love, the more the name Jesus was tasting sweetly and pleasantly to me, and indeed it has not receded from me up to this day. Therefore blessed be the name Jesus forever and ever.)17

At an early stage of his career as a hermit, Rolle uses the name 'Jesus' to free himself from temptation and defeat the devil. This corresponds to the first degree in the prayer to the Name of Jesus, as described in the Eastern tradition.18 This is

16 See Richard Rolle, 'Super Canticum Canticorum', ed. E. Murray (unpubl. dissertation, Fordham University, 1958); but see Richard Rolle, Emendatio Vitae. Orationes ad Honorem Nominis Ihesu, ed. Nicholas Watson, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts XXI (Toronto, 1995), pp. 2324.

17 Richard Rolle, Biblical Commentaries, ed. R. Boenig, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies XCII, 13 (Salzburg, 1984), pp. 1067.

18 According to the Eastern tradition, there are several degrees in the prayer to the Name of Jesus. In the first degree, the prayer frees the sinner from temptations. In the second, the invocation of the Name makes the re-enactment of the Passion possible within the heart. In the third, the Name of Jesus is a method of transfiguration. The Name of Jesus is also a way of being unified to the Church (fourth degree). In the fifth degree, the Name is a kind of eucharist. It is an invisible and inner offering of the Lamb to God. It also allows a relationship with the Holy Spirit (sixth degree) and gives its practitioner an insight into the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. To utter the Name of Jesus is to get nearer to the Father (seventh degree); it allows a better understanding of the relationship between the Son and the Father. See La Prière, op. cit., in n. 10, pp. 7290.

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obviously only one aspect of the effects the Name may have for those who practise it. One has to remember that, although Super Canticum is placed after the Incendium Amoris in Watson's chronology of Rolle's writings, the autobiographical episode mentioned here refers certainly to a time when Rolle had not felt all the effects of the Name, as he seems to have in the time he composed the Incendium Amoris.

Rolle's popularity was not based on the clarity and precision of his mystical system.19 However, there is consistency in the way he focuses in most of his writings on the Name. The Latin epistle Emendatio Vitae offers a short commentary on the power of the Name. In the third and highest degree of love, called 'singular', the heavily charged word resonates in the mind as a piece of music:

Ad singularem ergo gradum amor ascendit quando omnem consolacionem, preter vnam que est in Ihesu, excludit, quando nichil preter Ihesum sibi sufficere poterit. In illo gradu anima constituta, illum vnum diligit, solum Christum sitit, Christum concupiscit, in solo illius desiderio anelat, ad ipsum suspirat, ex ipso inardescit, in ipso feruens requiescit. Nichil igitur dulcescit, nichil sapit nisi Ihesu indulcoretur, cuius memoria quasi musicum melos in conuiuio uini.20

(In this singular degree love ascends when all consolation, with the exception of Jesus, is excluded, when nothing except Jesus may suffice him. In this degree the established soul loves him only, yearns for Christ only, desires Christ, bids only his desire, sighs to him, burns in him, lies warm in him. Nothing therefore is sweet to him, nothing has taste except Jesus made sweet, whose mind is as a song of music at a wine banquet).

Further in the same work, Rolle postulates the song of music as the main definition for contemplation, following five definitions borrowed from Prosper of Aquitaine (Julius Pomerius), Hugh and Richard of St Victor. Despite his attempt at presenting a discursive view on the topic of contemplation, Rolle offers his own definition as the concluding and final statement of his discussion:

Michi uidetur quod contemplacio sit iubilus diuinis amoris, susceptus in mente suauitate laudis angelice. Hec est iubilacio, que finis est oracionis perfecte et deuocionis summe in via. Hec est exultacio mentis habita pro eterno dilecto in spirituali canora uoce prorumpens. Et est actus iste consummatiuus et perfectissimus omnium actuum uite.21

(It seems to me that contemplation is a song of divine love, carried in the mind with the sweetness of angels' praise. This is jubilation, which is the aim of perfect prayer and highest devotion in the journey. This is the exultation of the spirit inhabited by the eternal lover breaking out aloud in spiritual song. And this performance is the most complete and the most perfect performance in this life.)

19 It would be difficult even today to present a coherent mystical system for Rolle. For a successful attempt in the case of Bernard of Clairvaux, see Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St Bernard, Cistercian Studies CXX (Kalamazoo, 1990).

20 Rolle, Emendatio, ch. 11, p. 59.

21Ibid., ch. 12, p. 63. Rolle creates a climax in the presentation of his definitions by progressively qualifying the two definitions preceding his own: 'Alii dicunt, et bene . . . Alii dicunt, et optime'; see Idem.

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Such definition of contemplation coincides with the term which qualifies the regular repetition of the Name of Jesus inwardly, i.e. iubilus. If the initial use of the Name by Rolle served to repel devilish temptations in his early career as a hermit, it stands here at the heart of what he calls contemplation, for elsewhere he uses the same terms to express the joyful experience which the practice of the continuous prayer to Jesus entailed.

With the Emendatio Vitae, Rolle uses the epistolary genre which is going to be his main literary tool when addressing his vernacular female audience. As in the Latin epistle, Holy Name passages figure importantly in those pieces. The Commandment, a Middle English epistle written for a nun of Hampole, offers advice to a person as yet unfamiliar with the spiritual life. The three degrees of love, called insuperable, inseparable and singular, offer the nun a system to help her grow in spiritual love. Each degree defines a certain state of consciousness. In the first degree, the soul, by the power of its will, is capable of resting continually in this state of love, despite all temptations. In the second degree, called inseparable, the thoughts and the will are bound to Jesus Christ, without having to exercise any great effort. The third degree defines a state of perfect love, devoid of any inclination for the world and the flesh. The contemplative at this degree is ready to suffer great pains for the sake of such a state.22 Several parts of The Commandment argue for the superior value of spiritual love by the use of enticing sensual imagery in significant didactic passages. The aim of this epistle is to help the recipient fix her will on spiritual love. It is at this level that the devotion to the Name plays its part:

O pynge * I rede the, pat* pou* foryet nat his name Iesus, bot pynke* it in pi* hert, nyght and day, as pi special and pi dere tresour. Loue hit more pan* pi lif. Rot hit in pi mynd. Loue Ihesu, for he made pe* and boght pe ful dere. Gif pi hert to hym, for hit is his dette. Forpi* set thi loue on his name Ihesu, pat is hele.23

Rolle concludes with a few additional lines which describe the effects of the devotion in the inward life. As in his early career as a hermit, emphasis is put first on the power of the Name on the devil and temptations. One of the other degrees of the devotion is its purifying effect on the soul, resulting in the acquisition of grace and virtue, followed by spiritual comfort in the physical life, and entrance within the angelic hierarchies at the time of death, for a vision of the loved One.

Although the recipient of The Commandment may be a novice in the spiritual life, Rolle's hermeneutics on the Name opens promising possibilities. The advice in its practice relies on Rolle's personal experience, as recorded in Incendium Amoris and Super Canticum Canticorum. In fact, the Holy Name material found in this epistle is borrowed and translated by Rolle from the latter work.24 If some

22 See Richard Rolle, Prose and Verse, ed. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson, Early English Text Society 293 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 3435, lines 2435. All references are to the author's name, abbreviated title, page and line number in this edition hereafter cited as Rolle, Prose.

23 Rolle, Prose, p. 39, lines 21418.

24 Watson, Rolle, op. cit., in n. 11, p. 227.

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of the material of the English epistles is a regurgitation of Latin passages, as is the case with the Holy Name passage in The Commandment, then one has further evidence that this devotion is not couched in the epistles in a condescending gesture towards his female vernacular audience. It stands instead as an essential component of Rolle's so-called idiosyncratic mysticism.

The hermit's unceasing interest in the Holy Name is recorded in Ego Dormio, another English epistle, written for a nun of Yedingham. It uses as its prologue Canticles 5:2, 'Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat'. This verse, translated later in the epistle as 'I slepe and my hert waketh', conveys the desire for ceaseless prayer advocated by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.25 Following his translation of this significant verse in the Christian contemplative tradition, Rolle associates the verse with the notion of continuous love: 'Mich loue he sheweth pat * neuer is wery to loue, bot euer, standynge, sittynge, goynge, or any oper* dede doynge, is euer his loue pynkynge*, and oft sithe perof* dremynge.'26 Continuous love is induced by the practice of the ceaseless prayer, which Rolle advocates here for those who have entered the second or third degree of love. Within this epistle, the devotion is part of a larger spiritual context. Meditations on the Passion of Jesus are essential elements of the second degree of love, which are then followed by the practice of the devotion to the Name. On the edge between the second and the third degree, the Name signifies both the humanity and the majesty of Jesus. It stands as an important element for the process of internalisation and abstraction which is required for the contemplative to enter into the third degree of love:

And I pray pe*, as pou* couaitist be Goddis louer, pat pou loue pis* name Ihesu, and pynke* hit in pi* hert so pat pou foryet neuer hit, whar-so pou be. And witterly I hete pe, pou shalt fynd mych ioy and comfort perin*, and for pe loue pat pou louest Ihesu so tenderly and so specialy, pou shalt be fild ful of grace in erth, and be Cristes dere mayden and spouse in heuyn. For no thynge so mych payeth God as verray loue of his name Ihesu. If pou loue hit right and lestyngly, and neuer let for no thynge pat men say or do, pou shalt be rauyst in to a hegher lif pan* pou can couait.27

The moving of the attention from signified to signifier results in the ability on the part of the contemplative to perceive and decode the meaning couched in spiritually charged words. Such sophisticated literary competence is developed in part within the commentary tradition, with the historical, allegorical, tropological and anagogical readings of the text. It is within this literary tradition that the Name

25 These biblical quotations are closely associated with the notion of continuous prayer in the East, and more especially with the prayer to the Holy Name. See Hausherr, The Name, op. cit., in n. 10, pp. 11989; see also note 13. Bernard of Clairvaux mentions Canticles 5:2 only once in his commentary, in sermon 23, albeit in a different context. See The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. III, On the Song of Songs II, trans. K. Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series VII (Kalamazoo, 1983), p. 35. According to Clark, the use of Canticles 5:2 is commonplace in Gregory the Great; see J.P.H. Clark, 'The ''Lightsome Darkness" Aspects of Walter Hilton's Theological Background', The Downside Review xcv (1977), pp. 95109 at p. 108.

26 Rolle, Prose, p. 26, lines 36.

27 Rolle, Prose, p. 29, lines 13947.

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developed all its powerful attributes. As biblical commentator, Rolle flexes his muscles with the devotion within this sophisticated literary genre.28 Ego Dormio translates many of Rolle's hermeneutic practices into the epistolary genre. The imagery of the Song of Songs and its commentaries finds a new lease of life within Rolle's epistolary writings. Cantus Amoris, the second poetic meditation in Ego Dormio, harmoniously blends this imagery with secular love motifs, carefully framed in the invocation to the Name:

Ihesu, my dere and my drery, delites art pou * to synge;

Ihesu, my myrth, my melody, when wil pou cum, my kynge?

Ihesu, my hele and my hony, my quert, my confortynge,

Ihesu, I couait for to dey when hit is pi* paynge.

Langynge is in me lent, pat* my loue hath me sent.29

Cantus Amoris, the 'songe of love', as Rolle calls it, expresses the state which corresponds to the third degree of love. At this stage of the contemplative life, Rolle reverts to the 'I slepe and my hert waketh' verse to express this degree of love which he calls 'contemplatif lif':

And pan* for heynesse of pi hert, pi praiers turneth in to ioyful songe and pi poghtes* to melodi. Pan* Ihesu is al pi desire, al pi delit, at pi ioy, al pi solace, al pi comfort, so pat on hym wil euer be pi songe, and in hym at pi rest. pan may thou say 'I slepe and my hert waketh'.30

This epistle partakes of the same literary tradition which saw the making of Super Canticum Canticorum and Melos Amoris. It is a letter in form of a vernacular postil on this verse from the Song of Songs, written with the needs of a specific recipient in mind, but, however, replete with advice and suggestions for the spiritual life about which Rolle had first-hand experience. As has been seen, the association of this verse with the Name of Jesus attests to a practice in the continuous prayer very similar to that of the Eastern tradition. The process by which Rolle came to an understanding of the verse in such a context is difficult to delineate. Further research into commentaries on the Song of Songs will perhaps unveil material providing evidence for a Western tradition which had already contextuallsed this specific verse with this devotion.31

The Form of Living, the last of the Middle English epistles, also puts attention

28 See J.P.H. Clark, 'Richard Rolle as Biblical Commentator', The Downside Review civ (1986), pp. 165213; see also John Alford, 'Biblical Imitatio in the Writings of Richard Rolle', Journal of English Literary History xl (1973), pp. 123.

29 Rolle, Prose, p. 33, lines 29296.

30 Rolle, Prose, p. 31, lines 23135.

31 The draft of what was to become a more extensive commentary on the Song of Songs by Gregory the Great does not provide any evidence in support of this association. Gregory does not comment on Canticles 5:2, and his brief comment on the Oleum Effusum verse stresses the Incarnation, but does not put particular attention on the Name of Jesus either. See Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, Cistercian Studies Series CLVI (Kalamazoo, 1995), pp. 21555.

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on the three degrees of love, with reference to some verses of the Song of Songs to label the state characteristic of each degree. It is 'Amore langueo', Canticles 2:5, translated by Rolle as 'I langwisshe for loue', or 'Me langeth in loue', which expresses for the first two degrees how the will and the thoughts have turned completely to God to satisfy the spiritual desire of the soul.32 When discussing the state of consciousness which pertains to the third degree of love, Rolle explains: 'pan * pou* may hardily say "I languysshe for loue"; pan may pou say "I sleep and my hert waketh." '33 In the third degree, spiritual desire is partially fulfilled and the soul is content to express its satisfaction by continuous attention on Jesus:

Pan* the sowl is Ihesu louynge, Ihesu thynkynge, Ihesu desyrynge, only in coueitys of hym ondynge, to hym seghynge, of hym brennynge, in hym restynge... Bot pe* soul pat* is in pe prid* degre is as a brennynge fyre, and as pe nyghtgalle, pat loueth songe and melody, and failleth for mykel loue; so pat soul is only conforted in praisynge and louynge of God, and til pe deth cum is syngynge gostly to Ihesu and in Ihesu. And 'Ihesu' nat bodily cryinge with pe mouth: of pat maner of syngynge speke I nat of, for pat songe hath both good and il, and pis* maner of songe hath none bot if pai* be in pis thrid degre of loue, to pe which degre hit is impossibil to cum bot in a greet multitude of loue.34

The ceaseless prayer does not need to be uttered with the mouth.35 Rolle advocates an inner form of prayer, the prayer of the heart, which is marked by the inner invocation of the Name, and which 'shal be in pyn* ere ioy, in pi* mouth hony, and in pin* hert ioy'.36

In each epistle, the devotion to the Name seems to fulfil different functions, at different levels of the spiritual life. Although one could be struck at first by the flexibility by which the devotion can be accommodated to various degrees of the spiritual life in Rolle's system, one finds that, in the Eastern tradition, the Jesus prayer, as the main spiritual exercise, satisfies all levels of the contemplative life, from purgatio to unio. If Rolle was not the first author in England to praise the virtues of this simple exercise, yet, for the first time, someone offered in the English vernacular convincing evidence for its efficacy at all levels of the spiritual life. Rolle's later detractors had no reason to doubt the positive use of this

32 Rolle, Prose, p. 17, lines 56566.

33 Rolle, Prose, p. 17, lines 56364.

34 Rolle, Prose, p. 17, lines 55678.

35 The inner joy caused by the repetition of the Name needs to be voiced. This transfer, or translation, from the soul to the mouth, renders this interior joy into oral and written utterances. Such translation is efficient when the mouth acts efficiently as mouthpiece for the soul. Much of the poetic inspiration of Rolle finds its roots in the translation of this ineffable phenomenon into metaphorical language. See Denis Renevey, 'Encoding and Decoding: Metaphorical Discourse of Love in Richard Rolle's Commentary on the First Verses of the Song of Songs', The Medieval Translator, IV, ed. R. Ellis and R. Evans (Exeter, 1994), pp. 20017.

36 Rolle, Prose, p. 18, lines 61314.

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devotion. On the other hand, they could fear too broad an availability for a method which originated from a specialised milieu, the eremitic movement of the Desert Fathers, of which Rolle claimed to be a modern successor.37

2

Walter Hilton was certainly cautious about some aspects of Richard Rolle's spirituality.38 After the completion of his studies, and practice in canon law, as well as his brief spell as a hermit, Hilton joined Thurgarton priory (c.1386), a house actively engaged in the fight against Lollardy.39 In view of the impact which Rolle's writings had already had during the second half of the fourteenth century, anyone writing and advising on the spiritual life in England would have had to take his teaching into consideration, either to corroborate it, to deny it in parts, or to oppose it completely.40 Hilton obviously has reservations about some aspects of Rolle's teaching, although he does not sound as forceful as one might expect him to be.41 Most of his concerns are directed rather against some followers of Rolle, and they often express warnings about how they fail to understand Rolle's metaphorical utterances. A too literal apprehension of terms such as 'heat' or the 'fire of love' lead to peculiar, devious behaviour which has little to do with

37 See also Rolle, Emendatio, op. cit., in n. 16, pp. 1213.

38 For an account of Hilton's doctrine, see Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics, op. cit., pp. 11664; for a study of some criticism expressed by Hilton, see Michael G. Sargent, 'Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle', Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana LV, Band 1, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1981), pp. 160205.

39 See J.P.H. Clark, 'Late Fourteenth-Century Cambridge Theology and the English Contemplative Tradition', The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 116, esp. p. 4. I do not claim to offer below all the articles by Clark on Hilton, but here are those which have partly informed the writing of the second part of this paper. All are in the Downside Review abbreviated DR. 'Walter Hilton in Defence of the Religious Life and of the Veneration of Images', DR i (1985), pp. 125; 'Walter Hilton and the Stimulus Amoris', DR cii (1984), pp. 79118; 'The Problem of Walter Hilton's Authorship: Bonum Est, Benedictus, and Of Angels' Song', DR ci (1983), pp. 1529; 'Walter Hilton and the Psalm Commentary Qui Habitat', DR c (1982), pp. 23562; 'Action and Contemplation in Walter Hilton', DR xcvii (1979), pp. 25874; 'Image and Likeness in Walter Hilton', DR xcvii (1979), pp. 20420; 'Intention in Walter Hilton', DR xcvii (1979), pp. 6980; 'The "Cloud of Unknowing", Walter Hilton and St John of the Cross: A Comparison', DR xcvi (1978), pp. 28198; 'Walter Hilton and "Liberty of Spirit" ', DR xcvi (1978), pp. 6178; 'The "Lightsome Darkness" Aspects of Walter Hilton's Theological Background', DR xcv (1977), pp. 95109; see also the introduction to Clark and Dorward's modern English translation of The Scale of Perfection, in Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. J.P.H. Clark and R. Dorward (New York, 1991), pp. 1368.

40 See Sargent, 'Contemporary Criticism', pp. 17687.

41 In view of the Defense which Bassett writes against a Carthusian detractor of Rolle, Hilton's voice strikes one as being subdued, if not even sympathetic; for a summary and a diplomatic transcription of the Defense, see Sargent, 'Contemporary Criticism', pp. 182205.

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genuine spiritual experience.42 The primary audience of Book One, a female anchoress recently enclosed, was probably aware of the emphasis put on bodily feelings by some enthusiastic followers of Rolle.43 This would account for the forceful, but sensible account given by Hilton in chapter ten:44

By pis * pat* I haue seid myzt* pou* sumwhat understond pat visions or reuelacions of any maner spirite, in bodily apperyng or in ymaginyng, slepand or wakand, or elles any oper* felyng in pe* bodily wittes made as it were gostly eiper* in sownyng of pe ere, or saueryng in pe mouth, or smellyng at pe nese, or elles any felable hete as it were fyre glouand and warmand pe brest or any oper partie of pe bodie, or any thyng pat may be feled by bodily witt, poz* it be neuer so comfortable and lykand arn nozt* verely contemplacion. Ne thei arn bot simple and secundarie, poz pei* ben gode in regard of gostly vertus and in gostly knowyng and lovuyng of god.45

In Book Two, Hilton further argues against the importance of feelings in the religious life, in the specific context of the process of reformation through the sacraments of baptism and penance.46 The reformation to the image of God must be believed, since it cannot be felt. Hilton continues with a warning against the belief that such conversion keeps anyone free of temptations. We are a long way from the detailed bodily perceptions which characterise all degrees of the spiritual life as described by Rolle. Although no mention of Rolle's system is made here, it is obvious Hilton sets many aspects of his detailed account of the spiritual life in the light of the mistaken uses made with some of Rolle's own explanations. The enthusiasm which Rolle's teaching generated is tempered in several other passages of The Scale.47 Also, when Hilton writes against the recipient's entry into religion in his Epistola ad Quemdam Seculo Renunciare Volentem, his statement may be influenced by his own participation in Arundel's wish to restrain popular enthusiasm for entry into the religious life in general, and the eremetic

42 For discussions on figurative language in Hilton, see S.S. Hussey, 'From Scale I to Scale II', The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, Analecta Cartusiana CXXX, Band 4, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1996), pp. 4667; see also Gunnel Cleve, Mystic Themes in Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection, vol. I, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies XCII. 19, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1989), pp. 914.

43 I follow Hussey in the assumption that the anchoress of Book One is not just a notional figure, but a genuine recipient; see S.S. Hussey, 'The Audience for the Middle English Mystics', De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. M.G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 10922, esp. pp. 11213; Hussey reiterates this point in his more recent article, 'From Scale I', p. 51.

44 While waiting for the modern Middle English edition of The Scale of Perfection by Hussey (Book Two) and Sargent (Book One), I offer here, unless otherwise indicated, Middle English versions as found in the manuscripts which the editors have chosen as their base manuscripts, i.e. Cambridge University Library MS Additional 6686 for Book One, and British Library Harley MS 6579 for Book Two. References to Clark and Dorward's modern translation (hereafter Hilton, The Scale), on which I heavily depend for my editorial decisions, are given in parenthesis.

45 Add. MS 6686, fol. 284 (Hilton, The Scale, pp. 8384).

46 (Hilton, The Scale, pp. 2034).

47 See Clark, 'Liberty of Spirit', p. 61.

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movement in particular.48 It has been argued that Hilton's brief eremitic career was modelled on Rolle's.49 Whatever the case may be, there is plenty of evidence that Hilton knew Rolle's doctrine thoroughly. He is aware of the impact it has on his own readership and he is careful to provide adequate guidance to those who could be misled by some erroneous interpretations of Rolle's most difficult points.

It is with this depiction of a not so unsympathetic reception of Rolle by Hilton that I would like to turn to the well-known Holy Name passage of Book One. According to Hussey, before writing Scale II, Hilton revised Scale I, with the adjunction of the 'Holy Name' passage in chapter forty-four and the 'Charity' passage in chapter seventy.50 In view of the numerous references to Rolle's idiosyncratic spiritual characteristics in Scale I, one has to ask why Hilton did not include the Holy Name passage in the earlier version, and why did he add such a long passage on the Name of Jesus in the revised copy? What are the circumstances which motivated such an important change?

There is nothing unorthodox about the use of this devotion as such, but, as we have noticed, Rolle attributes special powers to the Name, linking to it the gifts of spiritual melody and sweet song, which, if understood in too literal a way, could bring about confusion and, possibly, heretical beliefs. Hilton's two brief references to the Name attest to his knowledge of Rolle's hermeneutics. Chapter seven reads as a paraphrase of Ego Dormio's passage on the role of the Name in the second degree of love:

Bot pe * hezer* degre of pis* partie may nozt* be hade ne halden bot of poo* pat* arn in grete rest of bodie and of soule: pe whilk by grace of ihesu crist and long trauaile bodily and gostly felen rest of hert and clennes in conscience, so pat hem lykes no thyng so mykel forto do as to sitt still in rest of bodie, and forto alwey preye to god and to thynk on our lord, and forto thynk sumtyme on pe blissed name ihesu, whilk is made comfortable and delitable to hem pat pei* by pe mynde of it felen hem fedd in her affeccion. And nozt only by pat name, bot all oper* preyers as pe pater noster or pe aue maria or ympnes or psalmes and oper deuote seynges of holy kyrk arn turned as it were into gostly myrth and swete song.51

One should note Hilton's use of the careful phrase 'as it were', which reduces the metaphorical potential of this utterance to the level of a simile. The more admonitory second passage, 'ilke man what pat he be call pe name of ihesus', precedes the addition in Additional MS 6686 and relies on a biblical quote (Joel 2:32).52 If Hilton shows no particular antipathy for this short prayer, he remains cautiously conservative in his advice on which prayers the anchoress should most often perform. Chapter twenty-seven praises the great value of the Pater Noster,

48 See Hussey, 'From Scale I', pp. 4849; see also Clark, 'Late Fourteenth-Century Cambridge Theology', p. 4.

49 See Helen L. Gardner, 'Walter Hilton and the Mystical Tradition in England', Essays and Studies xxii (1937), p. 110 (cited in Hilton, The Scale, p. 31 and note 103).

50 See Hussey, 'From Scale I', p. 57.

51 Add. MS 6686, fol. 282 (Hilton, The Scale, p. 81).

52 See Add. MS 6686, fol. 315 (Hilton, The Scale, p. 115).

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which Hilton considers the best vocal prayer at hand. Hilton later advocates for more advanced contemplatives some meditations, but not without a word of warning against too quick a move away from the vocal prayer.

The chapters immediately following the Holy Name addition emphasise the power of the name 'Jesus'. Chapter forty-six shows Hilton treating the devotion to the Name in the same abstract terms as Rolle in The Form of Living. But he also makes explicit references to more simple and pragmatic devotions to the Name, such as the name 'Jesus' painted on walls, written in letters in books or uttered with the mouth which attest to much more popular practices than those prescribed by Rolle and Hilton.53 However brief, such mention of other forms of devotions to the Name indicates circulation and transmission outside the fourteenth-century English mystical tradition.54 Hilton takes pains to define his own devotional practice against this more popular form:

Neuerpeles * in als mykel as pou* has nozt* zit* fully seen what it is, for pi* gostly eze* is nozt zit opened, I schal tell one word for al whilk you schalt seke, desir and fynde, for in pat* word is all pat pou has lost. pis* word is ihesu. I meene nozt pis word ihesu peynted upon pe* wal or writen by letters on pe boke, ne fourmed by lippes in soune of pe mouth, ne feyned in pe heft by trauaile of pe mynde, for on pis maner wise may a man out of charite fynde hym. Bot I meene ihesu al godenes endles wisdom, loue and swetnes; pi ioye, pi worschipe and pin* ay lastand blisse, pi god, pi lord and pi sauacion.

Pen* if it be so pat pou feles grete desir in pi hert to ihesu, elixir by pe mynde of pis name ihesu, or by mynde and seyng of any word or preyer, or by any dede pat pou dos . . . pen* sekez* pou wel Ihesu.55

The passage provides interesting evidence for the ways in which the social dimensions of religion shape mystical texts. Hilton shows awareness of the practices of his social group and takes it into account in the writing of his treatises. The traditional tenets of the orthodox church, an influential social body, have also an important role to play in shaping Hilton's spiritual doctrine. The kind of mystical teaching offered by Hilton can be defined, according to Katz' fourfold schema, as 'a personal confirmation of existing doctrine'.56 He defines his under-

53 On Hilton and lay devotion, see Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics, op. cit., pp. 11819. Hilton may have in mind inscriptions of the monogram IHS as found in the Jesus chapel adjacent to the parish church of Ewelme, Oxfordshire; see also Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400c.1580 (London, 1992), pp. 11316.

54 For a brief study of pious expressions of this devotion, see Catherine A. Carsley, 'Devotion to the Holy Name: Late Medieval Piety in England', Princeton University Library Chronicle liii (1992), pp. 15772.

55 Add. MS 6686, fol. 319 (Hilton, The Scale, p. 119). The Cloud-author has the same attitude when prescribing the use of the word 'love', or any other word for the practice of short prayers; see The Cloud of Unknowing, and Related Treatises, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (Salzburg, 1982), pp. 4244.

56 The other categories mentioned by Katz are: the older teachings in a new guise; a legitimate extension of traditional teaching; a development of a new, but authoritative, stage of tradition. See Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions

(footnote continued on next page)

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standing of the contemplative life as being an individual experience of what the church teaches publicly.57 Hilton must have been at pains deciding how authoritative and public a voice he could give to the teachings of the hermit of Hampole, although he could have found support in Yorkshire where attempts were made for his canonisation. Hilton's treatment of the devotion to the Name of Jesus reflects his dilemma in his attempt at satisfying the demands of his readership while remaining conservative in his approach. It is possible that the development of the devotion crystallised into two major strands in fourteenth-century England: Rolle became spokesman of the mystical one, while other, more popular forms of this devotion, well-known in the fifteenth century, already appeared in the fourteenth.58 Hilton has to manoeuvre between the two in order to place his own teaching on the Name.

Since Hilton did not include the Holy Name passage of chapter forty-four in the first instance, one has to investigate what motivated such an omission. In view of the evidence offered above, Hilton already demonstrates his expert knowledge and awareness of the devotion in the unrevised version of Scale I. Lack of knowledge does not therefore account for this absence. On the other hand, Hilton is careful not to put too much weight on the power of the Name. The expression 'name ihesu' does not often find favour with Hilton, while the word 'ihesu' on its own is prominent. There seems to be an initial caution on the part of Hilton in becoming an advocate of this devotion. The recipient of Scale I is a recently enclosed anchoress, for whom Hilton encourages the practice of vocal prayers grounded in the liturgy of the mass, such as the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster. Hilton warns of the dangers of turning too soon away from such prayers and using silent meditations.

The events which lead to a change on the part of Hilton, with the important addition of the Holy Name passage, are of course not clear to us. The only internal evidence we have suggests a request for additional information, not so much on the basis of what the anchoress found in Scale I, but rather based, as she is reported to have said, 'in sume holy mennes sawzes *', a generic term which undoubtedly makes reference to Rolle. The direct-speech report attributed to the anchoress makes careful summary of the power with which some men credit the Name. Provided the anchoress is a real disciple, it is likely her query was oral. Whatever the case may be, the clarity and precision of the written document indicates a significant authorial involvement on the part of Hilton:

(footnote continued from previous page)

(Oxford, 1983), p. 22. For a summary of Katz' schema, see Ellen A. Ross, 'Submission or Fidelity? The Unity of Church and Mysticism in Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection', Downside Review cvi (1988), pp. 13444.

57 See Ross, 'Submission', p. 140.

58 In view of the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux on Walter Hilton, we may safely state that he was familiar also with Bernard's sermon fifteen on the Song of Songs; see S. Bernardi Opera, vol. I, Sermones Super Cantica Canticorum 136, ed. J. Leclercq, C.H. Talbot, H.M. Rochais, Editiones Cistercienses (Rome, 1957), pp. 8288; for an English translation, see The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. II, Song of Songs I, trans. K. Walsh, Cistercian Fathers Series IV (Kalamazoo, 1971), pp. 10513.

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Bot now seiz * pou*: 'If pis* be soth, pen* wonder I gretly for pat* I fynde writen in sume holy mennes sawzes*. Sume seyn, as I understond, pat he pat can nozt* loue pis blissed name ihesu, ne fynde ne fel in it gostly ioye and delitabletie with wonderfull swetnes in pis life her, fro pe* souereyn ioye and gostly suetnes in pe blisse of heuen, he schal be alien and neuer schal he come perto*. Sothly pise* wordes when I hem rede stonez* me and makez* me gretly ferde, ffor I hope as pou* seiz pat mony by pe mercie of our lord schal be saufe by pe kepyng of his comaundmentz* and by verrey repentaunce, for her yuell lyfe bifor don pe whilk feled neuer gostly swetnes ne inly sauor in pe name of ihesu or in pe loue of ihesu. And forpi* I meruaile me pe more pat pei* sey contrarie her to als it semes.'59

I have no doubt about Hilton's real concerns for an anchoress in Scale I, although I suspect that he knows from the onset that his readership is far more extensive.60 Hilton's concluding statement clearly alludes to persons in the active life as potential readers. His comment, 'Also pise wordes pat I write to pe, pei longen noght all to a man whilk has actif life', serves to help those engaged in the active life to discriminate what can be of use to them in this book.61 Similarly the direct-speech query on the Name is attributed to the initial recipient of Scale I, but its content seems to refer to a reader very well informed about Rolle's writings. I am tempted to see this reader as a kind of composite piece, a jigsaw puzzle informed by the anchoress' possible knowledge of the devotion as practised by followers of Rolle, Hilton's own preoccupation with it, and the interest of a much larger public, potential audience for the revised Scale I.

The query reflects part of a process over which Hilton has not complete control: the devotion to the Name of Jesus is demand-led, i.e. stimulated by the requirements of individuals interested in the practice of personal religion.62 Scale I, with forty-five extant manuscripts, reached a wide readership, and the continuous references to the anchoress may have made it more popular to the laity than

59 Add. MS 6686, fol. 316 (Hilton, The Scale, p. 115).

60 As a large portion of the spiritual literature written in England addresses anchoresses, I am tempted to argue for the development of a literary trend in choosing anchoresses as original recipients. A.K. Warren has shown the importance of the involvement of all classes of society in the anchoritic movement of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England. Patronage and support for anchoritic careers are social gestures as well as religious acts. Support of anchoresses is socially well regarded. Writing for the anchoress as original recipient stands also as a social act which, in view of the significant position of anchoresses in the late medieval period, engages other readers to partake in the reading process; see A.K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons (Berkeley, 1985).

61 Add. MS 6686, fol. 361 (Hilton, The Scale, p. 160; for additional evidence of a multi-layered audience, see Hilton, The Scale, pp. 144 and 160).

62 See for instance Lady Margaret Beaufort's own interest in the devotion to the Name; for a short biographical notice, with bibliography, see Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Ecclésiastique, vol. VII, ed. A. Baudrillart, A. de Meyer and E. van Cauwenbergh (Paris, 1934). Lady Margaret Beaufort ordered the English Scale to be printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494; see Hilton, The Scale, p. 33. For further evidence on this demand-led devotion, see Renevey, 'The Name Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England', The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. IX, Analecta Cartusiana CXXX (Salzburg, 1996), pp. 12747.

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Scale II (twenty-six manuscripts), which instead addresses all Christians.63 So, did Hilton offer the anchoress a revised version of Scale I, or did he revise it for an altogether different audience at this stage of the writing process?

The added passage on the Holy Name addresses an issue which goes beyond the cares of a recently enclosed anchoress.64 It gives Hilton the chance to summarise a popular interpretation of Rolle's teaching on the devotion by stating that salvation is not possible without a love for the name 'ihesu'. The anchoress shows great concern, since Hilton has himself argued for salvation without making the love for the Name one of its conditions. Without refuting Rolle, Hilton offers a more traditional hermeneutics on the Name based on etymology. Jesus stands for healer, and Hilton takes great care to emphasise this point. As to the effects which the practice induces, such as the heavenly music and the sweet melody, Hilton finds a way of annihilating its potential dangers by talking of heavenly melody in very general terms. His explanation deals with how one should love the name 'ihesu', but there is no evidence for encouragement in the practice of this devotion. Moreover, even if this is perhaps characteristic for all aspects of Hilton's doctrine, the tone does not suggest active participation in the devotion on his part. Such clinical approach to the devotion suggests an attempt at answering the needs of an audience eager for a simple prayer which had already found a place in the routines of those who were enthusiasts in more personal forms of religious practices.

3

Hilton's revision of Scale I is not his last word with regard to this devotion. Of Angels' Song demonstrates his ongoing concern, and that of his readers, for the devotion to the Name.65 At the request of a male friend, Hilton takes great pains to make a distinction between angel's song, given only to pure souls, and spiritual sounds and sweet songs, induced by keeping the Name of Jesus in the heart. This song of the soul is good, as long as its practitioner remains humble. Perhaps the most striking feat by Hilton in this text, as in The Scale of Perfection, is the importance he sets on distancing himself from an affective approach to the spiritual life. He ends his explanation with the following statement: 'it suffys to me forto lyfe in trouthe principaly, & nouzt * in felynge'.66

The treatment by Hilton of the devotion to the Name of Jesus provides useful

63 See for instance Scale I, chs 1, 3, 9, 16, 17, 37, 44, 55, 60, 61, 62, 80, 83; see Hilton, The Scale, p. 33.

64 See the full Holy Name addition in the appendix.

65 See Yorkshire Writers, Richard Rolle of Hampole and his Followers, vol. I, ed. C. Horstmann (London, 1895), pp. 17582. For a modern critical edition, see Two Minor Works of Walter Hilton, ed. F. Kuriyagawa and T. Takamiya (Tokyo, 1980). For a mention of the Name of Jesus in Qui habitat, see Clark, 'Lightsome Darkness', p. 104, and 'Walter Hilton', p. 250.

66 See Yorkshire Writers, p. 182.

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evidence for his approach to the spiritual life and the demands of his audience. There is evidence that the devotion to the Name became very popular in England, although it had difficulties being accepted in the liturgy as a general feast.67 Hilton seems to have shared the resistance of the official church, although at the same time he felt the need to answer the queries of his readership. There is an interesting gap between Rolle and Hilton in the way they became personally involved with the devotion. Rolle makes it, if not the sole, at least the most pervasive meditative practice of his teaching, while Hilton defines it as one aspect of a larger system where incarnational elements play an important function. Although Hilton gave warnings about the dangers which the practice of the devotion could involve, it seems that, as their marginal annotations attest, Carthusian scribes often reacted to Hilton's temperate approach in a very affective way, very much in the style of Rolle.68

Appendix

The Holy Name Passage

(Cambridge University Library Manuscript Additional 6686, ch. 44, fols 316318)

Bot now seiz * pou*: 'If pis* be soth, pen* wonder I gretly for pat* I fynde writen in sume holy mennes sawzes*. Sume seyn, as I understond, pat he pat can nozt* loue pis blissed name ihesu, ne fynde ne fel in it gostly ioye and delitabletie with wonderfull swetnes in pis life her, fro pe* souereyn ioye and gostly suetnes in pe blisse of heuen, he schal be alien and neuer schal he come perto*. Sothly pise* wordes when I hem rede stonez* me and make* me gretly ferde, ffor I hope as pou* seiz* pat mony by pe mercie of our lord schal be saufe by pe kepyng of his comaundmentz* and by verrey repentaunce, for her yuell lyfe bifor don pe whilk feled neuer gostly swetnes ne inly sauor in pe name of ihesu or in pe loue of ihesu. And forpi* I meruaile me pe more pat pei* sey contrarie her to als it semes.'

As unto pis I may sey as me thynkez* pat her seyng if it be wel understonden is soth. Ne it is nozt contrarie to pat pat I haue seid for pis name ihesu is nozt elles forto sey upon englisch bot heler or hele. Now euer ilk man pat lyuez* in pis wretched lyfe is gostly seke, for there is no man pat lyuez withouten synne pe whilk is gostly sekenes as seint john seiz of hymself and of oper* perfite men pus*: Si dixeremus quia peccatum non habemus, ipsi nos seducimus, et veritas in nobis non est. If we sey pat we han no synne, we bigyle our self, and pere* is no sothfastnes in us. And forpi he may neuer fele ne come to pe ioyes of heuen until he be first made hole of pis gostly sekenes. Bot pis gostly hele may no man haue pat

67 The standard piece on the feast of the Name of Jesus is by Richard W. Pfaff, New Liturgical Feasts in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 6283.

68 For a study of the London group of manuscripts, see Michael G. Sargent, 'Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered', Downside Review lii (1983), pp. 189216.

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has use of reson bot if he desir it and loue it and haue delite perinne *, in als mykel as he hopes forto gete it. Now pe* name of ihesu is no thyng elles bot pis* gostly hele. Wherfor it is soth pat* pel* seyn pat there may no man be saufe bot if he loue and like in pe name of ihesu, for pere* may no man be gostly hole bot if he loue and desir gostly hele. For rizt* as if a man wer bodily seke pere were non erthly thyng so dere ne so nedeful to hym ne so mykel schuld be desired of hym, so bodily hele, for poz* bou woldest zyue* hym all be ryches and pe worchippes of pis world and nozt* make hym hole, if pat pou* myztest*, pou plesest hym nozt. Rizt so it is to a man pat is seke gostly and felez* pe peyn* of gostly sekenes no thyng is so dere, so nedefull ne so mykel coueited of hym so is gostly hele, and pat is ihesu withouten whilk all be ioyes of heuen may nozt like hym. And pis is pe skill as I hope whi our lord when he toke mankynd for our // (fol. 317) sauacion he wold nozt be called by no name bat betokned his endles beyng or his myzt* or his wisdom or his rytwisnes, bot only by pat pat bitokned pe cause of his comyng, and pat was sauacion of mannes soule, whilk sauacion was most dere and most nedefull to man. And pis sauacion bitoknez* pis name ihesu. Pen* bi pis semez* it soth pat pan* schal noman be saufe bot if he loue sauacion, whilk loue he may haue pat lyuez* and dyez* in be lowzest* degre of charite. Also i may sey on an oder maner, pat he pat can nozt loue pis blissed name ihesu with gostly myrth ne enioye in it with heuenly melodic here, he schal neuer haue no fele in pe blis of heuen bat fulhed of soucreyn loye, be whilk he pat myzt in pis life by abundaunce of perfite charite enloye in ihesus schal fele and haue. And so may her seyng be understonden. Neuerpeles* he schal be saufe and haue full mede in pe sizt* of god, if he in pis life be in pe lowzest degre of charite by kepyng of goddes comaundmentz*. For our lord seiz* hymself pus*: In domo patris mei mansiones multae sunt. In my fadres house arn mony ser dwellynges. Sume arn for perfite soules, pe whilk in pis life were fulfilled of grace of be holy gost and songen lowuyng to god in contemplacion of hym, with wonderfull swetnes and heuenly sauor. Pise* soules, for Dei haden most charite, schuld haue hezest* mede in pe blisse of heuen for pise* arn called goddes derlynges. Oper* soules, pat arn in pis life inperfite and arn nozt disposed to contemplacion of god, no hade nozt ze* fulhede of charite as apostles and martires haden in pe biginnyng of holy kirk, pe schul haue pe lower mede in pe blisse of heuen, for pise arn called goddes frende. Pus* callep* our lord in holy writt chosen soules, seyand pus: Comedite amici, et inebriamini carissimi. My frendes ete ze, and my derlynges be ze drunken as if our lord seyd pus: 'ze pat arn my frendes, for ze keped my comandmentz* and sett my loue bifor pe loue of pe world, and loued me more pen* any erthly thyng, ze schuld be fedd with gostly fode or pe brede of life. Bot ze bat arn my derlynges, pat nozt only keped my comandmentz bot also of zour* oun fre will fulfilled my counseilz*, and ouer pat ze loued me only and enterly with all pe myztes* of zour soule, and brenned in my loue with gostly delite, as did principaly be apostles and martires and all oper soules bat myzt by grace come to pe zift* of perfoccion, ze shul be made drunken with pe hezest and pe freshest wyn in my celer: pat is pe souereyn// (fol. 318) ioye of loue in pe blis of heuen.

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A New Look into the Speculum Inclusorum

E. A. Jones

The late medieval guide to the anchoritic life Speculum Inclusorum survives, in its original Latin form, in two manuscripts; a further manuscript preserves a text (unfortunately fragmentary) of a Middle English translation. All three texts are available in print. In 1938 Livario Oliger published an edition of the Latin Speculum based on the earlier and better of the two manuscripts, British Library MS Royal 5 A.v; in 1981 James Hogg provided a facsimile of the other Latin manuscript, St John's College, Oxford MS 177, in which the work is given the title Speculativum Clausorum, and in 1995 Marta Powell Harley's edition of the Middle English translation in British Library MS Harley 2372 appeared under the title The Myrour of Recluses.1 In spite of this editorial interest in the Speculum, however, the work remains little known and little read when compared with other medieval works for anchorites. The present study is the first of any length to be devoted to the Speculum.2

Research for this paper has been made possible by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the British Academy. For permission to make use of manuscripts in their possession I am grateful to the master and fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of St John's College, Cambridge.

1 L. Oliger, ed., Speculum Inclusorum Auctore Anonymo Anglico Saeculi XIV, Lateranum n.s. IV.1 (Rome, 1938), hereafter Oliger; The Speculum Inclusorum, Vol. 2: St John's College, Oxford, Ms. 177 of the Speculativum Clausorum, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana LIX, 2 (1981). M.P. Harley, ed., The Myrour of Recluses: A Middle English Translation of Speculum Inclusorum (Madison, 1995), hereafter Harley. Harley is apparently unaware of Hogg's facsimile of the St John's manuscript, and of his projected critical edition of the Middle English text as vol. I of his Speculum Inclusorum. The Middle English translation was also edited in 1933 by Lilian E. Rogers, 'Edition of British Museum MS. Harley 2372 (Advice to Recluses)', BLitt. thesis (University of Oxford, 1933). Although Rogers did not know of the text's dependence on the Latin Speculum (which was demonstrated by Oliger five years later), much of her introductory material remains useful, and has been drawn upon in both Harley's edition and the present study.

2 The Speculum is listed in both P.S. Jolliffe, A Check-List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto, 1974), item H.28 and 0.40, and C. D'Evelyn, 'Instructions for Religious', in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, vol. I, ed. J. Burke Severs (Hamden, 1970), pp. 45881 and 65059, at pp. 480 and 659. Besides the editions noted above, the only reference either gives is to R. M. Clay's brief account of the Middle English text (written in ignorance of the Latin Speculum) in her Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914), pp. 99100. A similarly brief synopsis is

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1

As a guide to the anchoritic vocation, the Speculum Inclusorum takes its place alongside some of the best of medieval English devotional literature: from the earlier period Aelred's De Institutione Inclusarum and the Ancrene Wisse, and from the later, Rolle's Form of Living and the first book (at least) of Hilton's Scale of Perfection.3 The Speculum is probably the latest of the group. Oliger dates it to early in the second half of the fourteenth century, but his evidence is less than compelling.4 For terminus a quo he has the latest identified sources, Nicholas of Lyra (d.1340), to whose Postilla there is one clear reference;5 and Rolle, whose dulcor is almost certainly being described in the first chapter of Part Four as one of the rewards recluses may receive (or might formerly have received) in this life:

Alii sunt, vel saltem fuerunt, quibus legentibus, orantibus sive meditantibus velut inestimabilis odoris suavitas omnium possibilium specierum fragrancia exsuperans per nares influebat atque per os infundebatur, quasi celestis manna dulcedo, onme delectamentum in se habens, que ad interiora tam anime quam corporis profluens, utrumque hominem, tam interiorem quam exteriorem, inenarrabili dulcore perfudit, quadamque suavi iocunditate et locunda suavitate arras celestis glorie contulit pregustandas (pp. 12829)

(There are others or at least there were into whom, while they were reading, praying or meditating, such a sweetness of inestimable odour, surpassing fragrance of all possible kinds, flowed in by the nose and was poured in through the mouth, as if the sweetness of heavenly manna, having in itself all delights, which, flowing into the interior of both the body and the soul, had poured with inexpressible sweetness into each man the inner and the outer and by a kind of sweet joyfulness and joyful sweetness conferred a foretaste of celestial glory.)6

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given by A.K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley, 1985), p. 297, hereafter Anchorites and their Patrons.

3 I use the following editions and translations: De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. C.H. Talbot in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis I (Turnholt, 1971), 63582; Ancrene Wisse, trans. H. White (Harmondsworth, 1993); The Form of Living in English Writings of Richard Rolle, ed. H.E. Allen (repr. Gloucester, 1988); The Scale of Perfection, trans. J.P.H. Clark and R. Dorward (New York, 1991), hereafter Clark and Dorward. For the Form I have also made use of S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson, ed., Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, Early English Text Society O.S. 293 (Oxford, 1988). For the question of the different audiences of Scale I and II, Clark and Dorward, pp. 1920; S.S. Hussey, 'The Text of the ''Scale of Perfection", Book 2', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen lxv (1964), pp. 7592 at pp. 7679, and 'From Scale I to Scale II', in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, ed. J. Hogg, 8 vols, Analecta Cartusiana CXXX (Salzburg, 1995), IV, pp. 4667 at pp. 5056.

4 Oliger, pp. 3640.

5Ibid., p. 87, n. 2. The reference at p. 101 n. 2 is less certain.

6 Oliger considers Rolle only possibilmente to be the subject of this passage (p. 36), but the details seem very persuasive. Cf. Incendium Amoris, cap. 15 (The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Margaret Deanesly (Manchester, 1915)). All

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The reference is made complete with the words of caution which seem to have become the orthodox response to Rolle's brand of enthusiasm:

Hos autem omnes non extra corpora raptos, sed in corporibus estimo talem consolacionem divinitus habuisse (p. 129)

(I consider all these people to have had such divinely inspired consolation not ravished out of the body, but in the body.)7

A date after 1349 is therefore relatively unproblematic. Oliger's terminus ante quem is, however, less straightforward. His external evidence is the occurrence, in a bill listing the books and other items taken by the Carthusian John Spalding from the London Charterhouse to his own house of Hull, of the 'paruus liber qui dicitur Speculum inclusorum'.8 The document is undated, but Margaret Thompson, who first printed it, estimated that 'from its character [it] may be of the fourteenth century'.9 This dating is accepted by Oliger, but in fact the list, which contains several printed books, must be at least a century later.10 The death of John Spalding, professed monk and vicar of the house at Hull, was notified to the General Chapter of the Carthusian Order in 1528.11

With his external evidence for an early date gone, Oliger's arguments from internal evidence must come under closer scrutiny. He first takes up the Speculum-author's suggestion to the non-Latinate reader to practise lectio in English or French, 'sive in suo ydiomate vulgari' (p. 106) ('or in his usual native language'),

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quotations from the Speculum are from Oliger's edition, and are identified by page number. I do not reproduce his italicisation of quotations from or reminiscences of scripture (e.g. omne delectamentum in se in the present quotation). Where a passage is extant in the Middle English text, I give its translation; otherwise (as here) translations are my own. Chapter numbering is as in Oliger's edition.

7 Hilton, the Cloud-author, and the Carthusian against whom Thomas Basset wrote his Defensorium all suggest Rolle's sensations of calor, dulcor, and canor were physical rather than spiritual. For a useful summary, see Michael G. Sargent, 'Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle', in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, ed. J. Hogg, 4 vols, Analecta Cartusiana LV (Salzburg, 1981), I, pp. 160205, esp. pp. 17780 and 184. Hilton's concession that such feelings may sometimes be had as 'an earnest and as it were a shadow of the glorifying the body shall have in the bliss of heaven' (Scale I, ch. 11, ed. Clark and Dorward, p. 85) may well lie behind the Speculum-author's comment that such sweetness 'arras celestis glorie contulit pregustandas' (p. 129), and his decision to deal with such feelings in this first chapter of Part IV rather than the second, which concerns the 'corpus glorificatus'.

8 E.M. Thompson, The Carthusian Order in England (London, 1930), pp. 32426; the reference to the Speculum is at p. 325.

9Ibid., p. 324.

10 See Oliger, pp. 22, 36. For information on the dating of the Spalding list I am grateful to Dr Ian Doyle.

11The Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter: MS. Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Latin 10890, ed. J.P.H. Clark, Analecta Cartusiana C.23, 3 vols (199697), I, p. 69; J. Hogg, ed., 'Dom Palémon Bastin's Extracts from the acta of the Carthusian General Chapter for the Provincia Angliae: Parkminster MS. B. 77', in The Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter, Analecta Cartusiana C.21 (Salzburg, 1989), pp. 33102, at p. 81.

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claiming, on the strength of the Statute of Pleading of 1362, that French ceased to be spoken in England in the second half of the fourteenth century.12 If he is wise not to insist on this evidence on a date prior to 1362, he is nonetheless confident that the Speculum belongs to the period before the beginning of the Schism (1378) and of Wycliffism (which he dates to 13756), 'of which I do not detect a single echo in the treatise'.13 Apart from being a rather rash argument from silence, this does not register the care the Speculum-author appears to have taken precisely to ensure that no echo of eucharistic heterodoxy should be discernible in his treatise. Warning that meditation may be deleterious if as a result 'intellectus erret in fide catholica seu in articulis fidei ab ecclesia determinatis' (p. 116) ('pe * vndirstandynge or reson inwardly erre in the feyth of Holy Cherche or in pe Artycles of the Feyth determynyd by Holy Cherche', [12001202]), he recommends frequent reflection on the Articles of the Faith and the Apostles'and Athanasian creeds, before expounding more fully the two articles 'que omnem hominis intellectum longe transcendunt' (p. 116) ('pat* passen ful feer the intelligence or reson of euery man', [1219]), the Trinity and the eucharist. 14 Of the two, the latter is given by far the longer treatment, in which the author spells out that, although Christ's flesh appears under the likeness (species) of bread, and his blood as wine, both body and blood are present in both kinds; that, although after the consecration the accidents remain, there is in substance only the body and blood of Christ; that a fractured host nonetheless contains Christ in his entirety, and that each host and each particle of each host contains Christ (pp. 11619). This of course is perfectly orthodox, and orthodoxy (as the orthodox are wont to insist) is timeless; but such a careful statement of the orthodox position would seem more likely to belong to the period after rather than that before the condemnation of Wyclif's doctrines in 1382.15 Indeed, I will suggest below a context for the Speculum's composition which implies a date a generation after this, at the height of the attack on Lollardy.16

12 Oliger, pp. 3940.

13 'Di cui non si percepisce nessuna eco nel trattato' (p. 40). Harley is rightly suspicious of Oliger's use of the Statute for dating (p. xi), but she does not herself suggest a date either for the Latin original or for the Middle English translation she edits.

14 References to the Middle English translation are by line number in Harley's edition.

15 For a survey of the development of eucharistic sacramentology, see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), ch. 1, esp. pp. 3549. For Wyclif on the eucharist, see G. Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1967), pp. 54957; A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988), pp. 28190; M. Keen, 'Wyclif, the Bible, and Transubstantiation', in Wyclif in his Times, ed. A. Kenny (Oxford, 1988), pp. 116.

16 The Sheen reclusory, which I would like to connect with the Speculum, was founded in 1417, the year of Oldcastle's execution.

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2

As a late text, the Speculum may in some respects be grouped with the Form and Scale I against the earlier De Institutione and Ancrene Wisse; in other respects it is a unique and valuable witness to the character of late medieval anchoritism. One thing all five works have in common, however, is a concern to include catechetic alongside more advanced contemplative material. This concern is realised differently in the different texts. The earliest, Aelred's, has the least such material, featuring only a discussion of the vice of pride (which for its distinctio draws on the familiar image of a tree and its branches) and its remedy, humility, and a little later the virtue of charity.17 The second part of Ancrene Wisse is structured around the five wits, and parts three and four include some material on sins and their remedies. Not surprisingly, coming after the thirteenth-century drive for improved education in the faith, the texts of Rolle and Hilton contain more extensive and more systematic treatment of catechetica. Chapter six of the Form of Living lists the sins of heart, mouth, deed and omission, and the three parts of penance, while the seven works of mercy are included in the discussion of active and contemplative lives in chapter twelve, and the compiler of the text in Cambridge University Library MS Dd. v. 54 incorporated an apparently independent tract of Rolle's on the seven gifts of the Spirit as his eleventh chapter.18 Most of the second half of Scale I is devoted to the image of sin that is, love of oneself, which issues in the seven rivers of the seven deadly sins^19 with chapters on discerning each of the sins within oneself, distinguishing venial from mortal incidences of them, and remedying them. In line with this tradition, the Speculum includes, besides the material on the Articles of the Faith and the Creeds already mentioned, a commendation of the Pater Noster, which 'continet omne quod est necessanum ad anime vel corporis humani salutem' (p. 87) ('contenyth & comprehendip * al pat* is necessarie to helpe* of mannes soule & of his body' [6401]); the chapter treating the avoidance of sin as a motive for entering the solitary vocation (Liv) is structured around the five wits, and a model affective meditation in II.ii dwells on the shedding of Christ's blood in the Passion:

septempliciter effusi ad satisfaciendum pro omissione VII operum misericordie et commissione VII mortalium peccatorum (p. 96)

(schede for vs in viie maner wyses to make satisfaccion and redresse for the omyssion and leuynge of be vije werkes of mercy & for pe* offense or trespace in pe vije deedly synnes [898901]).20

17 Talbot, ed., De Institutione, op. cit., in n. 3, caps. 2425, 27.

18 H.E. Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle and Materials for his Biography, Modern Language Association Monographs III (New York, 1927), pp. 27475.

19 Clark and Dorward, c.55, p. 126.

20 The Passion scheme in fact breaks down in the remedy for lechery, which is contemplation of 'sanguinem puerilium membrorum Christi . . . circumcisi cum cultro lapideo'(p. 97).

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Although this is plainly enough the stuff of the manual of religious instruction, it is worth noting that the treatment is often allusive (there is no list of the articles of the faith or the works of mercy, for example), and that in this last instance its introduction is casual and incidental to what is essentially a discussion of affective meditation.21 Such familiar treatment of catechetic material might well argue for an assumed reader who is not a beginner in the religious life.

Already in its treatment of catechetica the Speculum's association with the works of Rolle and Hilton has become apparent. In this case the difference between early and late texts is explained by momentous changes in clerical and lay education over the century which separates Rolle from the author of Ancrene Wisse. The remaining points of contrast arise from developments within the anchoritic vocation itself. At the opening of Part Two of his text, in which he has promised to describe the vocation to which his audience of recluses is called (p. 64), the Speculum-author states unequivocally that 'vocati estis ad exercicium vite contemplative' (p. 85) ('pe * ben callyd to pe exercise or vsage of contemplatyf lyf' [56263]). Although we do well to keep in mind the warnings of Nicholas Watson against imposing too rigid a distinction between the asceticism of Ancrene Wisse and its related texts on one hand, and the mysticism of the 'fourteenth-century English mystics' on the other, remembering 'how conditioned and relative are our assumptions as to the forms taken by mystical experience', the Speculum has, in both the quality and the terminology of its spirituality, a clear affinity with the works of Rolle and Hilton against the earlier anchoritic texts.22 Rolle writes to the anchoress Margaret de Kirkby of 'contemplatyf lyfe, pe whilk pou* hase taken pe till at mens syght', and Hilton reminds his ancboress reader that 'your state requires you to be contemplative for that is the purpose and intention of your enclosure, that you might more freely and entirely give yourself to spiritual occupation'.23 Ann Warren has traced a parallel development in the language of the episcopal administration and supervision of the vocation.24 She characterises the vocabulary of thirteenth-century licences for enclosure and similar documents as 'brief and legalistic'; towards the end of the century new terms appear: 'Solitary, chaste, penitent: the new words reinforce but do not move forward or alter the simplest ascetic conception', and in general in the period to c. 1350, the anchoritic life 'is dealt with in terms of its demands, not in terms of its expectations, its gifts, or its rewards'. Perhaps by coincidence, the first notice of a new mood occurs in a document of 1348 relating

21 The elements the Speculum shares with the manual tradition are discussed by Harley, pp. xxxxiv.

22 Nicholas Watson, 'The Methods and Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion', The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium IV, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 13253 at p. 134.

23Form of Living, ed. Allen, cap. vi, lines 21617; Scale I, ch. 3, Clark and Dorward, pp. 7879.

24 'Old Forms with New Meanings: Changing Perceptions of Medieval English Anchorites', Fifteenth-Century Studies v (1982), pp. 20921. She reuses this material in her Anchorites and their Patrons, pp. 11421.

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to Rolle's disciple Margaret de Kirkby: she desires to serve God 'more quietly with pious prayers and vigils'. Then, Warren notes, 'a new word appears in the limited vocabulary that has been encountered. That word is "contemplative" '.25 She dates the introduction of the term to the beginning of the fifteenth century, but in fact the language of administration and of literary exhortation seem to have been more closely in step: the earliest occurrence I have found is dated 1363.26

Contemplation in the Speculum is threefold, consisting of prayer, meditation and reading, in that non-traditional and (as Vincent Gillespie has suggested) perhaps characteristically lay order.27 After these have been treated seriatim and in detail in Parts Two and Three, and as if prompted by Warren's observation that the earlier anchoritic literature dwelt on the life's demands rather than 'its expectations, its gifts, or its rewards', Part Four turns to consideration of 'quantam mercedis copiam recipietis pro vestra vocacione sanctissima finaliter observata' (p. 125) ('how greatly abundant a reward you will receive for having kept your most holy vocation to the end'). The first chapter details the joy and consolation to be had in this life, with talk of the fire of love, inebriation, sweetness (including the reminiscence of Rolle's dulcor already discussed), the extinction of the will and raptus. The remaining chapters, on the heavenly glorification of the body and of the soul, are a little more schematic and a little less rapturous and perhaps therefore slightly disappointing to the student of mysticism although, as the author reminds us:

25 Warren, 'Changing Perceptions', pp. 21215.

26 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Episcopal Register XII (memoranda volume of John Buckingham; hereafter Reg. Buckingham), fol. 11r. The document relates to the enclosure of Isolda de Nowers at the church of St Peter, Leicester. Warren (following John Nichols, Hist. and Antiquities of County of Leicester, 4 vols (London, 17951811), Appendix to vol. I, p. 65) cites a copy of this document with the date 1405 and attribution to Bishop Repingdon. There is no such document in Repingdon's register (Register of Bishop Philip Repingdon, 14051419, ed. M. Archer, Lincolnshire Record Society LVII, LVIII, LXXIV (196382)). Nichols printed it from British Library MS Harley 2179, which has every appearance of being a formulary prepared for Repingdon's use. The form of the document (it is addressed to 'Isolda N') would confirm this, as would the other contents of the manuscript which are all of a similar nature (A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London, 1808), II, 54750). Warren's earliest example is dated 1403.

27 Harley notes correctly that the triad prayer, meditation and reading is an inversion of the usual order encountered in monastic literature (p. xxv), but the inversion is not as unusual as she believes. Gillespie cites texts of Rolle and Hilton and Gracia Dei alongside the Speculum ('Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies', Spätmittelalterliche geistliche Literatur in der Nationalsprache 2, Analecta Cartusiana CVI (1984), pp. 127, at pp. 36). The triad also appears in this order in the Middle English translation of Aelred's De Institutione in Bodley MS 423 (ed. J. Ayto and A. Barratt, Aelred of Rievaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum, Early English Text Society O.S. 287 (1984), p. 12, line 471)). Perhaps significantly, the sentence is an addition to the Latin original (cf. Talbot, ed., De Institutione, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 654).

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Ad enumeracionem vero celestium gaudiorum nullius hominis intellectus sufficit, omnis lingua deficit, nec ulla mens capere poterit, quanta, quot et qualia gloriosa premia disponit Omnipotens suis electis et his precipue qui Deum in hac vita fervencius dilexerunt (p. 140)

(For the enumeration of heavenly joys no man's intellect is sufficient, every tongue fails, nor can any mind conceive how much, how many and what kind of glorious rewards the Omnipotent has ordained for his chosen, and especially for those who have loved God the more fervently in this life).

The Speculum also agrees with the Form and Scale I in its neglect of what in Ancrene Wisse is called the 'outer rule' the details of the anchorite's domestic arrangements, fasting and other ascetic observances, clothing and furnishings. Both Ancrene Wisse and the De Institutione provide extensive and detailed advice on such matters, the author of Ancrene Wisse at the end of his treatise, Aelred at the beginning.28 There is nothing comparable in Rolle, Hilton, or the Speculum. Indeed in his conclusion, having concerned himself for the whole of his treatise with the 'inner rule', the author of the Speculum asks:

Quid igitur ulterius vobis scribam, carissimi vos inclusi, nisi quod ferventes in amore Dei continue pro finali beatitudine graciosius consequenda, iuxta vestre professionis sacras observancias et beati Alredi doctrinam De institucione reclusi atque aliorum devotorum egregia documenta, perficiatis studiosius ad quod venistis?

(What more therefore should I write to you, you beloved recluses, but that, desiring in continual love of God graciously to attain to the final blessedness, according to the holy observances of your profession and the teaching of St Aelred, De Institutione Reclusi, and the excellent writings of other pious authors, you should zealously arrive at the conclusion toward which you are moving?)

As significant as the continued relevance of Aelred's text (which was translated at least twice into Middle English, in the late fourteenth century and again in the mid-fifteenth),29 is the Speculum-author's recognition of the different and supplementary function of his own treatise. There is also a sense that the 'holy observances' of the anchoritic profession have become established and regularised in a way that appears only to have been in its first, fragile stages as the author of Ancrene Wisse produced the revised version of his text.30 The process by which this came about may be traced in episcopal records, through the synodal legislation of the thirteenth century and, first in evidence in the second half of the thirteenth, but more consistently from the fourteenth century, commissions to deputies to assess and (if appropriate) enclose applicants for the anchoritic life.31

Although the Speculum does not spend time on an 'outer rule', however, it does contain more incidental discussion than either the Form or Scale I of the circumstances of an anchorite's life. One such incidental detail reveals a material

28 The 'outer rule' is the subject of Part Eight of Ancrene Wisse and caps. 213 of De Institutione.

29 Ed. Ayto and Barratt, op. cit.

30 See White, Ancrene Wisse, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 119 and n. 55.

31 Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons, pp. 5391.

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change in the vocation in the period between the early and the late texts. The author of Ancrene Wisse evidently envisaged the anchoress as a rural phenomenon: although she may keep a cow if it is 'of necessity', it is better not to, for fear of becoming entangled in the worldliness of the agrarian economy:

because then she has to think about the cow's fodder and the herdsman's pay, coax the hayward, curse him when he impounds the cow and pay the damages even so. It is a hateful thing, Christ knows, when complaints are made in the village about an anchoress's livestock.32

The author of the Speculum is, by contrast, particularly exercised by the urban recluses 'nostri temporis' (p. 70) ('in pese * dayes' [102]) who profiteer from the vocation, maintaining a great household out of the alms they receive, advance their kin and friends, and 'in omnibus victu delicaciori gaudeant quam in statu seculari verisimiliter potuissent' (p. 70) ('lyue more delicatly pan* pei* were likly haue doon in seculer plyt' [1067]). With the many visitors they receive, they indulge in the kind of gossiping Aelred warns against at the opening of the De Institutione, and which merits the association of the anchor-house in Ancrene Wisse with the mill, market and smithy as a source of scandalous chatter.33 They are the principal examples given in I.ii of those recluses who choose the solitary life 'non primo et principaliter propter amorem Dei, sed propter vitam ducendam iuxta sue voluntatis arbitrium' (pp. 6869) ('nat fyrst ne principaly for pe* loue of God, but for to leede her lyf aftir her lust' [6768]). The remainder of Part One treats the more commendable motives for embarking on the vocation: to practise great penance, to avoid the opportunity for sin, or to be free ('vacandi') for the contemplation and praising of God (pp. 667). These worthy intentions are illustrated from the lives of the Middle Ages' favourite hermit-saints: penitents by the former harlots Thais and Mary of Egypt, anchorites (in the etymological sense of withdrawal) by Paul the First Hermit and Hilarion, and contemplatives by Mary Magdalen who (the author notes, making the usual medieval identification with Mary of Bethany) 'chose the best part' (p. 67).34 The spectre of the Desert Fathers then lingers to haunt the depiction of these false recluses who live 'non in heremo sed in urbe' (p. 70) ('nat in wildernesses but in pe citees' [1012]).

This has something of the reactionary quality of Langland's condemnation of those modern-day hermits who roam in search of alms, rather than living 'in wildernesse among wilde beestes', able to rely, like St Antony, on 'a brid that broughte hym breed that he by lyvede' indeed we may remember his pairing of such itinerant hermits ('londleperis heremytes') with 'ancres there a box hangeth'.35 If Langland's repudiation of mendicant hermits is at odds with the reality

32 White, Ancrene Wisse, p. 192. For the concession that she might 'of necessity' have a cow, see p. 193.

33De Institutione, cap. 2; White, Ancrene Wisse, p. 46.

34 For the exemplary saints, see the very full notes given by Harley, pp. 4850.

35 For St Antony, see B XV, lines 273, 284 in The Vision of Piers Plowman, ed. A.V.C. Schmidt (London, 1987). Langland's fullest comments on the vocation occur in the revised Pardon sequence in C IX. See further my 'Langland and Hermits', Yearbook of

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of the vocation's contemporary realisation, so the Speculum-author's wariness of city-dwelling recluses needs to be read against the historical development of the anchoritic life as a recognisably urban phenomenon. Warren has charted the progression of the vocation from an almost exclusive association with 'village' sites in the twelfth century, through a balance between rural and urban between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, until sites in 'towns' and 'cities' outnumber those in 'villages' in the sixteenth century.36 The canon lawyer William Lyndwood, commenting in 1433 on the investigations a diocesan should make before approving a prospective anchorite's enclosure, recommends he consider

whether the place where someone wants to be enclosed . . . is in a town or the country, since a recluse might be more readily supplied in his needs in a town where there are plenty of people than in the country where there are few and those often too poor to help anyone of the sort.37

The realistic tone of the legist here is strikingly at odds with the rhetoric of the Speculum-author.

A final point of comparison develops the observation that, while the Speculum is to be grouped with the Form and Scale I against the early texts in its neglect of the 'outer rule', it nevertheless contains more specifically anchoritic material than either of the other late treatises. Watson has observed that, where Ancrene Wisse and its related treatises are 'professional and specialised' and manifest at a number of levels 'their commitment to a particular audience', the works of Rolle and Hilton are 'relatively unspecialised, making little distinction between the solitary, the monastic and the secular life'.38 Though the Form is addressed to an anchoress, it reprises material Rolle had earlier used in works for female religious (the Commandment) and the secular clergy (Emendatio Vitae), and quickly found an audience beyond the confines of the anchor-house.39 At the conclusion of Scale I, Hilton broadens his address to include not only the female recluse of the opening chapters, but 'any other man or woman who has taken the state of contemplative life', even suggesting his work's partial applicability to active readers in his final reminder that 'not all these words that I write to you concern a

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Langland Studies xi (1997), pp. 6988. For anchorites with a collecting box, see B XV, lines 21314. Warren's suggestion that Langland would have put his alms into such boxes seems drastically to mistake his tone. See Anchorites and their Patrons, p. 42.

36Anchorites and their Patrons, pp. 3741 (including a note of the testimony of the Speculum at pp. 3940). Her decision to categorise communities by (inferred) population size rather than legal status is not unproblematic, but she is at least explicit about her assumptions. See Table 2 on p. 38.

37Provinciale (seu Constitutiones Angliae) (Oxford, 1679), III, 20.2. Noted Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons, p. 40 n. 40, and paraphrased at p. 90.

38 'Methods and Objectives', op. cit., in n. 22, pp. 138, 140, 136. He does not discuss the author of Ancrene Wisse's observation that his treatment of confession 'pertains to all people alike', and is not written 'with reference particularly to' his primary audience of anchoresses (trans. White, pp. 15758). This is however a unique and perhaps a special case.

39Ibid., p. 137.

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person in active life, but they are for you or someone else who has the state of contemplative life'.40

In this regard the Speculum seems to group itself with the earlier works against the later. The whole treatise is conceived as a commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:26, 'Videte vocacionem vestram', and the anchoritic calling remains in focus in each of its four parts. As the author outlines in his Prologue:

In prima parte, o carissimi vos inclusi, videbitis qualiter sive a quo vocati estis.

In secunda videbitis ad quid vocati estis.

In tercia qualiter exequemini vocacionem vestram.

Et in quarta quantam mercedis copiam recipietis in celesti gloria pro vestra vocacione sanctissima finaliter observata (p. 64).

(In the first part, O beloved recluses, you will see how and by whom you are called. In the second you will see what you are called to. In the third how you are to carry out your vocation. And in the fourth how great a reward you will receive in heavenly glory for having observed your most holy vocation to the end.)

Even in treating standard catechetic material, his discussion is tailored to his audience. He introduces the subject of sins which enter through the sense of touch by conceding that the perpetual physical enclosure of the anchorite is an effective prophylactic 'Ab omnibus huiusmodi luxurie speciebus longe subtrahitur inclusus' (p. 79) ('The recluse has been withdrawn far from all such kinds of lechery 1)41 and confines his discussion to the solitary sin of masturbation.

In spite of this specialisation, however, there is evidence that the Speculum-author envisaged a limited extension of his readership beyond recluses alone. In I.iii he writes of the perfect, who by long fighting against temptations have overcome the flesh and enjoy the sweetness and contemplation of God, but:

Tales humana doctrina non indigent, nec talibus ego scribo, sed tantum imperfectis, qui ad gradum maximum perfeccionis anhelant, quia talibus est vita solitaria valde periculosa (p. 72)

(Suych folk han no nede to pe * doctrine or techynge of man; I write to noon suyche, but al-only to imperfit folk pat* desiren to ascende and clymbe to pe heyest degre of perfeccion, for vnto suiche is a solitarie lif ful perilous. [19093]),

He goes on to focus specifically on this audience of would-be anchorites, emphasising first the problems of 'discretio':

Si quis igitur vitam solitariam desiderat animo penitendi, neque tale propositum sibi simpliciter dissuadeo neque suadebo, quia nescio quis spiritus eum movet, sed consulo per hunc modum consilii (p. 73)

40 Clark and Dorward, ch. 92, p. 160, my italics. On the strength of the first of these comments, Clark and Dorward suggest that the anchoress addressed at the opening of Scale I may be 'a notional figure' (p. 19). Addresses to ghostly sisters are frequent enough in late medieval works of devotion in the vernacular to suggest they may sometimes be convenient fictions, but the repeated and specific references to vocation and enclosure in the opening chapters of the Scale seem to exceed what convention requires.

41 The idiosyncratic Middle English translation of this sentence will be considered below.

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(And therfor, who-so desireth a solitarie lyf, willinge to repente and rewe his offenses & giltes, nouper * wole I conseile hym to take it on hy[m], ne stire ne rede hym to leue it, ffor I woot nat by what spirit he is led, ne what meuyth ne steryth hym [200204]).42

This is the caution of the Cloud-author in A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings, insisting (after the Apostle) that 'No man knowip* whiche ben pe* priue disposiciouns of man bot pe spirite of pe same man, pe whiche is in hymself', and elsewhere, 'proue wel pi* sterynges & whens pei* come. For houso pou* arte steryd, wheper* fro wipinne* by grace or fro wipouten* on ape maner, God wote and I not'.43 He counsels his correspondent not to follow such impulses without 'pe witnes and pe consentes of som goostly techers (I mene soche as haue ben of longe tyme experte in singuler leuyng)'.44 The Speculum-author gives comparable but more detailed advice: the prospective recluse should first reveal his purpose to two or three 'discretis viris et vite laudabilis' (p. 73) ('discret and good lyuers' [206]) for examination, and then, with their assent, he should prove himself ('probet . . . semetipsum') for a term of one year, 'vivens per omnia consimiliter vel arcius quam inclusus facere tenetur' (p. 73) ('lyuynge in alle pinges* lik or moore streytly pan* a reclus is holde to doo' [20910]), at the end of which, if his resolve holds firm, and still only with the agreement of his advisors,

stabiliat animum in hac parte, confirmet propositum et vitam illam assumat sive votum emittat (p. 73)

(pane* lat hym stablissche his wil in this caas & knytte vp his purpoos & take pat* lyf or make his avow perto* [21820]).

Episcopal inquiries into the suitability of prospective anchorites have already been noted. Lyndwood gives a summary guide to the questions to be considered at such times under the headings of 'places' (including the comments quoted above on the benefits of an urban against a rural situation), 'character' (mores whether vicious or virtuous, steadfast, or changeable), 'persons' (religious or secular, clerical or lay, male or female, etc.) and 'maintenance' (since, even if the begging of clerics were not such a scandal to the Church, enclosed solitaries are not best placed to engage in it).45 While such investigations came to be viewed as a canonical prerequisite to enclosure, officially supervised periods of probation seem to have been comparatively rare.46 The Speculum's recommendations suggest that, behind the silence of the record, more informal arrangements may acceptably have been made.

42 In the quotation from the Middle English text, the emendation 'hy[m]' for 'hyur' is my own. Harley's explanation of the reading 'hyur' is inventive, but not persuasive. See her note at p. 51.

43 Ed. P. Hodgson in The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Salzburg, 1982), pp. 10918 at p. 110, lines 1214, and p. 113, lines 1820.

44Ibid., p. 112, lines 2728.

45Provinciale, op. cit., in n. 37, III, 20.2. Warren discusses such inquiries at Anchorites and their Patrons, pp. 6268.

46Ibid., pp. 7172.

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The whole of Part One is ambiguously addressed, equally to such prospective as to established recluses. Its occasional shifts from the second to the third person also seem to bring in those spiritual directors responsible for the proving of the vocation of the would-be anchorite. It is their duty of 'discretio' which provides the focus of the first part's concluding comments:

Ideo quicunque vitam solitariam eligens perceperit in se Spiritum Sanctum per graciam et misericordiam, fervorem devocionis accendere et conservare, firmiter credere debet quod ad statum illum a Sancto Spiritu sit vocatus (p. 84)

[And perfore *, who-so-euere pat* chesip* a solitarie lyf & receyuyth in-to hym pe* Holy Goost by grace and mercy and schappyth hym to conserue & kepe pe feruent heete of deuocion, it ys to leeve stedefastly pat he ys callyd to pat estat by pe Holy Goost [55357]).

Such are the readers apparently imagined by the Speculum-author. It remains to consider the historical audiences for whom the text may have been conceived and whom it may have reached, and the kind of milieu from which it emerged.

3

That the Speculum is a Carthusian production there can be little doubt. Its appearance among the books transferred from the London Charterhouse to Hull by John Spalding has already been noted. A check of the dicta probatoria confirms that this copy of the text is lost, but both extant manuscripts of the Latin Speculum also have Carthusian associations.47 The links of St John's College, Oxford MS 177, the later and inferior copy of the text, with the Order are inferential. The only internal evidence (apart from the Speculum itself) is the inclusion of a tract on the Pater Noster by Denys the Carthusian,48 but this, together with the codicological and palaeographical characteristics of the manuscript, is sufficient for James Hogg to propose that

we are faced, in all probability, with a Carthusian manuscript, whose provenance cannot be exactly established, written by a monk for his private usage or for the library of his house, rather than a professionally produced text from a large scriptorium.49

It is now possible to contribute a further piece of evidence which adds considerable weight to Hogg's surmise. A list of books acquired by the Charterhouse of

47 The possibility should be registered that the book carried by Spalding might be identified with the manuscript of the English text in Harley 2372, since this has lost its first gathering, and the secundo folio of the lost copy, 'Incipit liber videte vocacionem', might as easily be the heading for an English as for a Latin text. I would, however, certainly not want to insist upon the identification.

48 M.W. Bloomfield et al., Incipits of Latin Works on the Virtues and Vices, 11001500 A.D., The Medieval Academy of America Publication LXXXVIII (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), no. 1391.

49 Hogg, ed., Speculativum Clausorum, op. cit., in n. 1, p. 4.

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Witham (Somerset) subsequent to the gifts of their principal benefactor, John Blacman (d.1485), includes a Speculativa Clausorum.50 This odd title clearly recalls the Speculativum Clausorum of the St John's manuscript. The Witham list gives a 'secundo folio, lacione aggredior', but this does not correspond with St John's (in which, in any case, the Speculum/Speculativum is not the first item). It does occur, however, as part of a sentence towards the end of the prologue to the Speculum:

Ex hac igitur confidencia sumpta consolacione, aggredior opus istud exhortatorium ad inclusos (p. 63, my italics).

There is no evidence to say whether the St John's text derives from the lost manuscript or vice versa, though the erroneous (and nonsensical) form of the title suggests a direct relationship. Either way, we have further testimony to the Carthusian associations of St John's MS 177, and an additional lost Carthusian copy of the Speculum to add to Spalding's.

In the case of the earlier and better of the extant manuscripts, British Library Royal 5 A.v, Carthusian ownership is certain. On the verso of the first folio is the inscription:

Hic liber est domus Sancte Anne Ordinis Cartusien. iuxta Couentriam ex providentia et dono domini Roberti Odyham

followed by a list of principal contents.51 Robert Odyham was a professed monk of London Charterhouse, and sacrist of that house before his preferment as prior of the Charterhouse of St Anne, Coventry, in 1457; he held the post until 1467, and his death was notified to the General Chapter in 1480.52 It was probably at Coventry that James Grenehalgh, who was sent there from Sheen as hospes in 1507 or 1508, added his characteristic JG and JGS monograms in the margins of the manuscript.53

Internal evidence also favours Carthusian composition.54 The author is somewhat inconsistent in his division of the contemplative life. At the opening of the second part he speaks of the three parts of contemplation prayer, meditation, and reading (p. 85) but at the beginning of Part Three the occupations of the contemplative have become fourfold: praying, meditating, reading, 'vel aliquid honestum manibus operandum' (p. 108) ('or doing some respectable manual work'). Manual labour is treated very briefly at the end of III.iii, and commended

50 Thompson, Carthusian Order, op. cit., in n. 8, p. 321. For Blacman, see N.R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd edn (London, 1964), p. 317.

51 Quoted by Oliger, p. 16.

52 M.G. Sargent and J. Hogg, eds, The Chartae of the Carthusian General Chapter: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Latin 10888, Analecta Cartusiana C.56 (Salzburg, 1985), I, p. 21, II, pp. 44, 72; Hogg, 'Bastin's Extracts', op. cit., in n. 11, pp. 70, 74, 75, 76.

53 Noted Oliger, p. 18; M.G. Sargent, 'James Grenehalgh: The Biographical Record', Hogg, ed., Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, IV, op. cit., in n. 7, pp. 2054 at pp. 25, 3132. For Grenehalgh's removal to Coventry, see p. 23.

54 It was noted by Oliger, p. 44.

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because it both excludes idleness and accidia, and benefits others. The author gives no examples of the kinds of work appropriate for recluses, except to say that:

presertim autem scriptura sancte et edificatorie leccionis meritoria videtur, que post mortem scribentis forsitan usque ad diem iudicii ipsum quodammodo vivere faciet et mereri in edificacione et profectu singulorum legencium vel audiencium scripta sua (p. 123)

(above all, the writing of holy and edifying reading-matter may seem meritorious which, after the death of the writer, even perhaps until the Day of Judgement, in a way will make him live and gain merit through the edification and advancement of each of those who read or hear what he has written).

Oliger is surely right to see in this an echo of the Carthusian ideal of 'preaching with the hands', first promoted in Guigo's Consuetudines and commended as an 'opus immortale' in his Quadripartite Exercise of the Cell by Adam of Dryburgh.55

That an eremitic Order like the Carthusian should show an interest in works for solitaries is hardly surprising. Their involvement in the reading, transmission and textual criticism of the works of Rolle and Hilton, and the Scale in particular, is well known.56 The list of books transported by Spalding included the Scale (in Latin) and (immediately before the Speculum) a volume of Rolle including the Form of Living.57 Of the half-dozen extant manuscripts containing complete texts of Aelred's De Institutione (which, as we have seen, the author of the Speculum recommends to his readers), Utrecht University Library MS 104 bears a Carthusian ex libris (and testifies also to the Order's internationalism: it belonged to the Charterhouse of Utrecht), Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lat. th. d. 27 is almost certainly from Coventry Charterhouse, and British Library MS Cotton Nero A.III includes Carthusian liturgical material.58 One of the two extant translations of the

55 Guigo and Adam are quoted by Oliger at pp. 12324, n. 4. The passages have frequently been discussed. See Michael G. Sargent, 'The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings', Journal of Ecclesiastical History xxvii (1976), pp. 22540, at pp. 22526, and V. Gillespie, 'Cura Pastoralis in Deserto', in De Cella in Seculum, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 16181 at pp. 172, 17576. The Speculum-author's comments here are also reminiscent of the peroration of the Speculum Christiani, quoted by Gillespie, p. 181.

56 Sargent, 'Transmission'; A.I. Doyle, 'Carthusian Participation in the Movement of Works of Richard Rolle Between England and Other Parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries', Hogg, ed., Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, II, op. cit., in n. 7, pp. 10920.

57 The secundo folio, 'leth hem so pryuyly', is a widely attested (southern) variant of Form, I.35: '(he begyl)es many swa prively'. See Ogilvie-Thomson, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 3 (lines 2627) and variants at p. 88.

58 For a list of manuscripts, see C.H. Talbot, 'The ''De Institutis Inclusarum" of Ailred of Rivaulx', Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis vii (1951), pp. 17576. For the provenance of Lat. th. d. 27 (not noted by Talbot) see J.P.H. Clark and C. Taylor, Walter Hilton's Latin Writings, 2 vols, Analecta Cartusiana CXXIV (1987), I, p. 27. For Cotton Nero A.iii, see J. Hogg, 'Carthusian Liturgical Documents from the MS British

(footnote continued on next page)

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work into English was copied by the Carthusian Stephen Dodesham, of Witham and later Sheen.59

There is, however, rather less evidence of intercourse between members of the Order and followers of other solitary vocations. From the sixteenth century, we have Richard Methley's Pystyl of Solytary Lyf Nowadayes addressed to Hew Heremyte, who was based at 'the place or the chapel of owr blessyd Lady' presumably the Lady Chapel overlooking Methley's house of Mount Grace.60 Documented contacts with the more strictly enclosed order of anchorites are rare. The London Charterhouse does have a connection with an anchoress, but the association does not appear to have been a happy one. There was a cell attached to the chapel in Smithfield which afterwards became the Charterhouse's conventual church, which in 1354 had been occupied by two hermits.61 It is probably a subsequent occupant of this site whom the foundation chronicle of the house identifies as 'an anchorite woman who then lived beside the church' and who (among others) had caused the founder Sir Walter de Mauny 'so great difficulty' and 'such tedious labour' that, on the arrival of the first prior, John Luscote, in 1370, the building of the convent had scarcely begun.62 She may have been the Alicia Clynton, formerly anchorite of London, beside whose tomb in the conventual church Robert Nanseglos of London requested burial in 1464.63

The one very notable exception to the general dissociation of Carthusians and anchorites is the reclusory founded by Henry V at Sheen. Henry had established the Carthusian priory of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen (on the opposite bank of the river from his other great foundation of Syon) in 1414.64 Three years later, he established a perpetual reclusory, to be called 'the reclusory of Bethlehem of Sheen', for one recluse-chaplain, who was to be provided by the convent with food, clothing and sufficient habitation to 'be more free for orisons and divine praises and holy contemplation'; to this end he endowed the monastery with possessions and privileges sufficient to guarantee twenty marks a year for the

(footnote continued from previous page)

Museum Nero A.iii', Analecta Cartusiana XXXI (1977), pp. 12025. He is not prepared to follow Talbot in suggesting a Hinton origin.

59 Ayto and Barratt, op. cit., in n. 27, pp. xxixxxxii. Alexandra Barratt's suggestion of Carthusian influence on the composition of Ancrene Wisse has not met with general acceptance. See her 'Anchoritic Aspects of Ancrene Wisse', Medium Aevum xlix (1980), pp. 3256.

60 There is a convenient recent edition in B.A. Windeatt, English Mystics of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 26571. For the Lady Chapel, see Thompson, Carthusian Order, op. cit., in n. 8, pp. 23536.

61 Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 16769; A History of the County of Middlesex, vol. I, Victoria County History (London, 1969), p. 159.

62 The relevant part of the chronicle is given in translation by W.H. St. J. Hope, The History of the London Charterhouse (London, 1925), pp. 1314.

63Ibid., p. 96.

64 Thompson, Carthusian Order, p. 238; The Victoria History of the County of Surrey, vol. II (Haymarket, 1905), pp. 8994.

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support of the recluse and his two servants.65 The first recluse is named as John Kyngeslowe, chaplain. The cell may have been a building, identified in the 1649 Parliamentary Survey as a dovecote, just outside the precinct to the south-east of the church.66 It was later provided with a garden, for which the recluse paid rent to the prior and convent.67 The reclusory attracted men of some calibre: the fifth recluse was John Dygon, an Oxford graduate and bachelor of both laws, who retired there after a busy priestly career in the summer of 1435. He copied the earliest extant English manuscript of the Imitatio Christi and bequeathed a number of manuscripts to Magdalen and Exeter Colleges, Oxford, and to his successors as recluses of Sheen.68

It has already been noted that, in the sophisticated nature of its introduction of catechetic material, the Speculum appears to assume an audience of some spiritual maturity. Its composition in Latin, and the rather perfunctory concessions to the non-Latinate or illiterate recluse in the chapter on the practice of lectio (II.iii), suggest a clerical readership, and this is confirmed by the proviso which opens the chapter, reminding the reader that all the recommendations which follow are to be considered only 'postquam divini servicii debitum completum est' (p. 102) ('after the duty of divine service has been performed'). Male anchorites were in the minority throughout the Middle Ages, and not all of these were priests.69 There is (as yet) no proof of the hypothesis, but it seems quite possible that the Speculum was written by a Carthusian for the use of the priest-anchorites of the Sheen reclusory, but (in a move characteristic of the Order) with an eye to a wider readership.70

4

The English translation, for which I will adopt the editorial title Myrour of Recluses, testifies to such an expansion of the Speculum's circulation beyond its original audience. The fact that it is a translation into the vernacular already suggests (although it need not presuppose) a female readership; in one instance it does seem certain that the translator has women readers in mind. In rendering his original's 'inclusus' he almost invariably uses the neutral 'recluse'. In the passage where the text considers the avoidance of the sin of lechery as a motive for entering the solitary life, however (and where we might imagine the question of gender to be uppermost in a translator's mind), he adds a brief independent

65Calendar of Patent Rolls . . . A.D. 1416A.D. 1422 (London, 1911), p. 114; Victoria History of the County of Surrey, p. 91; Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 41, 24142.

66 J. Cloake, 'The Charterhouse of Sheen', Surrey Archaeological Collections lxxi (1977), pp. 14598 at pp. 17475 and figs 1315.

67 Thompson, Carthusian Order, pp. 24142.

68 A.B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, 3 vols (Oxford, 1974), s.n.; Ker, Medieval Libraries, pp. 290, 305.

69 Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons, pp. 1922.

70 For Carthusian contacts with audiences outside the cloister, see Gillespie, 'Cura Pastoralis' and the other essays in Sargent, De Cella in Seculum, op. cit.

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excursus specifying the sex of his audience. The text has been expounding the virtues of those who withdraw from worldly vanities, and (naturally enough) makes recluses ('inclusi') its prime example. The Latin reads 'prout patet evidencius de inclusis viventibus sicut debent' (p. 79), for which the Middle English translator gives:

as yt schewith by euydence & tokne of recluses (& naamly of anchoresses) pat * bien more streytly closed pan* opir* religious men & wommen, enclosed in her houses be leue of her souereyns and in alle tymes at her souereyns wyl (lines 39498, my punctuation).71

A few lines later, where the Latin has 'Ab omnibus huiusmodi luxurie speciebus longe subtrahitur inclusus' (p. 79), using the unequivocally masculine singular form of the noun, the Middle English reads 'Alle suych spices of lecherie ben fer from an ancresse' (4056).72

The sole surviving manuscript of the Middle English text belonged to the wealthy (and still extant) hospital of St Mary and All Saints, or Browne's Hospital, Stamford (Lincs.). The donation notice on the verso of the first leaf reads:

Thys ys a good bok ffor holy men or wemen, the whyche bok bylongeth to the almes-howse off Wylliam Brown in Stawnford in the dyocesse off Lyncoln, by the gyft off Sir John Trvs, chapleyn to the seyd Wylliam Brown sum-tyme and prest in the seyd beydhowse.73

William Browne was the head of Stamford's most influential fifteenth-century family, a wool merchant and member of the Staple of Calais, who was still remembered in Leland's time, and was described by him as 'a marchant of a very wonderful richenesse'.74 He founded the hospital in 147576 and endowed it in

71 Harley has parentheses extending from '& naamly of anchoresses' to the end of the sentence, which makes anchoresses a stricter subset of all recluses. All documentary evidence (certainly from this later period) points to the complete synonymity of the two terms, and the reference backward at the opening of the next sentence to 'Swych ancres & ankeresses' (399) would seem to confirm my reading.

72 In discussing the translator's tailoring of the Speculum to a female audience, mention should be made of the state of the surviving text. It is clearly fragmentary, but the fact that it is the chapters on reading from Parts Two and Three (II.iii and III.iii), plus the whole of the more advanced Part Four, which are missing, coupled with the translator's modification of the third element of the triad oratio, meditatio, and lectio to 'edificatyf spekynge' (565 noted Gillespie, 'Lukynge in haly bukes', op. cit., in n. 27, p. 5), might suggest that we are dealing with an abridgement. The evidence of manuscript catchwords, however, suggests a lost fifth quire where II.iii should be, so if the translator did decide to omit the discussion of reading, it was as an afterthought. For collation of the manuscript, see Harley, p. xxvii.

73 Quoted Harley, p. xxviii and (with minor variations) Oliger, p. 24.

74The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 15351543, ed. L. Toulmin Smith, 5 vols (Carbondale, 1964), IV, p. 89. For the Browne family, see A. Rogers, 'Late Medieval Stamford: A Study of the Town Council, 146592', Perspectives in English Urban History, ed. A. Everitt (London, 1973), pp. 1636, at pp. 3436. There is a genealogy in The Town of Stamford, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England (London, 1977), p. 37.

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1485. After the project was frustrated by his death in 1489 his brother-in-law, a canon of York, obtained a licence to re-endow the hospital. Thereafter it provided accommodation for ten poor men and two women, and the warden and confrater who combined the duties of supervisors of the inmates and chantry priests for the founders.75

Trus evidently believed the Speculum to be of potential use for a general audience of 'holy men or wemen', but it has already been suggested both that the author of the original Latin text was less interested than Rolle or Hilton in reaching an audience outside the reclusory, and that the Middle English translator had in mind an equally restricted readership of anchoresses. Although there is evidence throughout the Middle Ages of anchorites (all female) attached to hospitals, there is no record of an anchoress connected with Browne's in general very well-documented foundation.76 Furthermore, if Harley's palaeographical dating of the manuscript of the Myrour to the mid-fifteenth century is accepted, it must predate the hospital's foundation by some years.77 Browne does, however, have an explicit connection with an anchoress. In his will made 17 February 1489 and proved in May of the same year, alongside bequests to his parish church of All Saints and his almshouse, he left twenty shillings to the anchoress in Stamford, to be supplemented by an annual gift of twenty shillings for the next ten years, 'if any be there closid'.78

Is it possible to identify more closely this potential reader of the Myrour? In endeavouring to do so, we should recall that anchorites (and equally hermits) are, with only a few exceptions, not extensively recorded in contemporary documents, and we are unlikely to arrive at a complete register of all the solitaries of medieval England.79 Nevertheless, sufficient records survive for us to build up a

75 For Browne's Hospital, see H.P. Wright, The Story of the 'Domus Die' of Stamford (London, 1890); J.S. Hartley and A. Rogers, Religious Foundations of Medieval Stamford, Stamford Survey Group Report II (1974), pp. 489 and further references there cited; Town of Stamford, pp. 3742.

76 For anchorites attached to hospitals, see N. Orme and M. Webster, The English Hospital, 10701570 (New Haven, 1995), pp. 6667.

77 For Harley's dating of the manuscript (with acknowledged assistance from Malcolm Parkes), see pp. xxviixxviii. I should dispose here of one very tempting but spurious possibility. Warren, following Emden (Biographical Register, s.n. Dygoun), postulates the existence of a second reclusory at Sheen, for an anchoress (Anchorites and their Patrons, p. 182, and n. 98). This is based on an error in H. O. Coxe, Catalogus Codicum MSS. Qui in Collegis Aulisque Oxoniensibus Hodie Adservantur, 2 vols (Oxford, 1852), II, ii.44, reading reclusa for recluso in the donation notice of Magdalen College, Oxford MS 77: the book was given by its female donor to the recluse of Sheen.

78 C.W. Foster, 'Lincolnshire Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 14711490', Associated Architectural Societies' Reports xli (193233), pp. 61114, 179218, at p. 206.

79 The only attempt to provide such a register remains Clay's Hermits and Anchorites, op. cit., in n. 2. Where further research has been carried out, however, her figures have been augmented considerably. See N.P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich (Toronto, 1984), p. 58; E.A. Jones, 'The Hermits and Anchorites of Oxfordshire', Oxoniensia lxiii (forthcoming). I am currently completing the task, begun by Miss Clay

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reasonably detailed picture of the anchoritic scene in late-medieval Stamford, and to suggest a plausible reader of the Middle English translation of the Speculum.

The first references occur towards the end of the fourteenth century. In her will proved 15 July 1380, Blanche of Lancaster, the widow of Thomas Lord Wake, left twenty shillings to each ('chescun') recluse of Stamford.80 It is not clear whether such phrasing is the product of detailed local knowledge, or a catch-all like the bequest three years later of John de Guldeford 'to the hermits and anchorites in and near London and Stannford'.81 Other sources identify only one site in the town before the sixteenth century. In 1382 Geoffrey le Scrope left thirteen shillings and eight pence to the anchorite at the church of St Paul, Stamford.82 More details emerge in 1398, when the bishop of Lincoln commissioned his suffragan to enclose Elena Empingham of Asheby in a chamber in the north part of the church of St Paul; in 1405 she received a licence to choose a confessor.83 She was succeeded in 1435 by Emmota Tong of Brunne, who was to be enclosed in a house attached to the church.84 St Paul's stood just within the walls in the north-east corner of the town, in St Paul's Street, but the buildings were incorporated into a grammar school in the sixteenth century when the parish was united with St George's.85 The church was notable for its association with Stamford's prestigious guild of St Katherine, which maintained lights there and whose meetings were held in a chapel above the church door.86 William Browne refounded the guild in 1480, and was elected its alderman, a post he held until his death, when he was succeeded by his nephew and heir Christopher Browne.87 In the register of the guild, the alderman heads the list of members paying the annual contribution to the maintenance of the guild's lights, or wax-shot. In the

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and continued by Basil Cottle, of revising Hermits and Anchorites. Previous lists of Stamford anchorites have been given by Clay, Hermits and Anchorites, pp. 22829 (Lincolnshire, no. 29) and Hartley and Rogers, Religious Foundations, p. 59. Neither is complete. Hartley and Rogers are probably right to reject Clay's no. 30.

80 Reg. Buckingham, fols 206rv. She was still living in September 1379. See G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, ed. V. Gibbs et al., 13 vols (London, 191059), XII, 3034.

81Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, A.D. 1258A.D. 1688, ed. R.R. Sharpe, 2 vols (London, 188990), II, 23435.

82 C.W. Foster, ed., Lincoln Wills Registered in the District Probate Registry at Lincoln, Lincoln Record Society V, X, XXIV (191430), I, 17.

83 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Episcopal Register XIII (Register of Henry Beaufort), fol. 5v; Register of Bishop Philip Repingdon, I, op. cit., in n. 26, 51.

84 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Episcopal Register XVII (Register of William Gray), fol. 187v.

85 Hartley and Rogers, Religious Foundations, pp. 4142; Town of Stamford, op. cit., pp. 14445.

86 L. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds, Early English Text Society O.S., 40 (1870), p. 188; Hartley and Rogers, Religious Foundations, p. 41. For the guild's social prestige, see Rogers, 'Late Medieval Stamford', op. cit., p. 34.

87 Rogers, 'Late Medieval Stamford', p. 34. The records of the guild from 1480 are contained in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge MS 266/670 (hereafter Register).

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first year in which full details of wax-shot are included, 1482, the list includes 'domina anachorita' who paid the ordinary rate of two pence.88 She appears in each subsequent year (although her name is never given), but William Browne's hesitancy in arranging ten years' support for the Stamford anchoress in 1489 was justified; she paid wax-shot for the last time in 1491.89

Harley has deduced that John Trus probably gave the manuscript of the Myrour to Browne's Hospital between 1489, the year of William Browne's death (he was, according to the donation notice, his chaplain 'sum-tyme'), and 1495 (since, although a 'prest in the seyd beydhowse', he does not appear in the extant records of the hospital, which begin in this year).90 The death of the anchoress in 149192 fits neatly with this deduction. It is tempting to think that Trus may have acted as confessor and spiritual director to the anchoress, and that on her death he gave the Myrour to the inmates of her patron's almshouse as the most likely to find a use for it.

If he did, then he acted hastily. In 1496 Dame Agnes Leche, anchorite, was admitted into the suffrages of the St Katherine guild. She paid her six shillings and eight pence entry money in twenty pence instalments over the next four years, and appears in the list of those paying wax-shot each year for the rest of the period covered by the extant register (viz. to 1527 and, after a gap, 153134), an enclosure of at least thirty-eight years.91 She is doubtless to be identified with the anchoress at St Paul's who received testamentary gifts in 1520, 1521 and 1533.92 In 1505 the mother of Henry VII, Lady Margaret Beaufort, a resident at nearby Collyweston since her vow of chastity in 1499, paid 'for the makyng of a dower in the towne walle in the bake side of the ancrese hous', and Agnes Leche will have been one of the two Stamford anchoresses left ten shillings each in her will made in 1508.93

88 Register, fol. 10v. In all quotations from manuscript sources, I expand abbreviations silently.

89 Register, fol. 27v; cf. fols 29v30r, where she is absent from the list for 1492. One would expect to find details of her enclosure in the registers of the bishops of Lincoln, but after the mid-fifteenth century very few such memoranda seem to have been recorded, at least in the extant volumes.

90 Harley, p. xxix.

91 Register, fol. 38r and passim.

92Lincoln Wills, I, 102; A. Clark, ed., Lincoln Diocese Documents 14401544, Early English Text Society O.S. 149 (1914), p. 162. I have not checked Clay's 1520 reference to a Northampton will.

93 For Lady Margaret, see M.K. Jones and M.G. Underwood, The King's Mother (Cambridge, 1992). For her residence at Collyweston, ibid., p. 153 and M.K. Jones, 'Collyweston An Early Tudor Palace', in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. D. Williams (London, 1987), pp. 12941. The payment for the door to the anchor-house is recorded in the account of the clerk of the works at Collyweston, St John's College, Cambridge Archives (hereafter S.J.C.), D 91.13, p. 98; for confirmation that the reference is to the anchoress of St Paul's, see p. 105. It may have been this anchoress whom she visited shortly afterwards with a gift of apples and wine (S.J.C. D 91.20, p. 156), but she was also closely involved with Stamford's other anchoress (discussed below) at this time. For these and references to S.J.C. in the succeeding paragraph I am deeply

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Beaufort joined the St Katherine guild in 1502, perhaps (as Malcolm Underwood has suggested) under the influence of Christopher Browne, William's heir, who was a leading member of her council as well as his uncle's successor as alderman of the guild.94 Two years later she was followed by the other Stamford anchoress, Margaret White, 'anochorita apud moniales' that is, at the priory of St Michael in the part of Stamford south of the river Welland, in the county of Northamptonshire and known in the Middle Ages as Stamford Baron or Stamford St Martin.95 White was evidently a Beaufort protegée. In October 1505 the clerk of the works at Collyweston oversaw "the makinge of iiij litill Chambres for the Ancreis at the nunnrey in staunfford', and later that year Beaufort personally contributed ten shillings towards her 'ffyndyng'; at her 'profession' on 7 December she made gifts of twenty shillings to the prioress of St Michael's, and of ten shillings to the anchoress herself.96 In her will Beaufort confirmed arrangements made by her trustees to lease land in Maxey for the life of Margaret White, anchoress, all issues and profits to be employed 'to and for the exhibicionn and fynding of the said Ancores: and of an honest womann to attend vpon hir during hit life'.97 In view of these careful arrangements for Margaret White's support after her death, it was almost certainly to her that Beaufort's cofferer Miles Worsley paid out twenty-six shillings and eight pence on 21 June 1506 'for a quarter waygis for the ancryse of Stampforth from oure lady day vnto mydsomer'.98 White appears comfortably to have outlived her patron: as the 'Anachorita apud moniales' she paid wax-shot to the St Katherine guild each year until 1527, when the register breaks off; when it resumes in 1531, her name is absent.99

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indebted to Malcolm Underwood. With Mr Underwood's help, I am now able to clarify the comments on the Stamford anchoress(es) in King's Mother, pp. 1323. Beaufort's will is printed as an appendix to Collegium Divi Johannis Evangelistae, 15111911 (Cambridge, 1911), pp. 10326; the bequest is at p. 121.

94 Register, fol. 49v; King's Mother, p. 132.

95 Register, fol. 53r. For St Michael's, see Hartley and Rogers, Religious Foundations, op. cit., in n. 75, p. 56.

96 S.J.C. D 91.13, p. 89; D 91.20, pp. 179, 183, 184. See also M.G. Underwood, 'Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort', Journal of Ecclesiastical History xxxviii (1987), pp. 3952 at p. 50. It is not clear why her 'profession' should be made a year later than her first appearance as an anchoress, unless in 15045 she was undergoing a year of probation. Hartley and Rogers record a bequest to her in 1504 (Religious Foundations, p. 59), but I have not been able to verify this.

97Collegium Divi Johannis Evangelistae, p. 116. S.J.C. D 3.76 is a confirmation of the lease.

98 S.J.C. D 91.21, p. 30.

99 Register, fol. 54v and passim. For the 1531 list, see fol. 90r. Although she is not listed by name (as Agnes Leche is), no replacement anchoress appears in the lists of new admissions to the guild during this period. On 13 July 1515 Queen Katherine of Aragon gave twenty shillings to the anchoress of Stamford. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, Rolls Series, ed. J.S. Brewer, vol. IV (London, 1876), p. 2732. Hartley and Rogers note this as a gift to the anchoress of St Michael's, but this is not certain. Indeed, both she, and the extra-mural part of

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There is no evidence that either of these late medieval anchoresses were given the opportunity to use the Myrour. If they did, then they will have joined the number of those who profited 'in huius opusculi leccione' (p. 141) ('from the reading of this little work'), and whose prayers were asked for by the author of the Speculum. If they did not, then it is to be hoped that at least today, when interest in the anchoritic life has never been greater, he will reap the benefits of the 'opus immortale':

que post mortem scribentis forsitan usque ad diem iudicii ipsum quodammodo vivere faciet et mereri in edificacione et profectu singulorum legencium vel audiencium scripta sua (p. 123)

(which, after the death of the writer, even perhaps until the Day of Judgement, in a way will make him live and gain merit through the edification and advancement of each of those who read or hear what he has written).

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Stamford in which she dwelt, rarely appear without some distinguising modifier ('apud moniales', St Martin's, etc.), so her contemporary at St Paul's may be the more likely candidate.

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The Madness of Margery Kempe

Richard Lawes

Ever since the rediscovery of the Book of Margery Kempe in 1934, commentators have turned to psychological concepts and psychiatric diagnoses to illuminate the experiences and behaviour of the woman in the text. Atkinson, in her important study, Mystic and Pilgrim states:

Beginning with its opening pages, much of her book is susceptible to psychological interpretation. Indeed, given the manifest content of much of the author's experience, such interpretation is almost irresistible.1

The interest in applying modern psychology to the text continues to be strong. In her recent study of the Middle English mystics, Glasscoe comments:

Perhaps the most helpful perspective from which to view Margery's spirituality is that provided by modern medicine.2

Unfortunately, previous commentators have not always opened up helpful perspectives in their recourse to modern medicine and psychology. A long succession of authors since the 1930s have suggested various diagnoses, often with limited analysis of the phenomenology described, frequently invoking outdated psychiatric concepts in an uncritical and unsophisticated way, and more often than not using them to disparage Margery Kempe's religious experiences.

In what follows, I will propose my own hypotheses, based on relevant ideas from current psychiatric practice, in the belief that these ideas can further our understanding of the nature of Margery Kempe's experiences, of her processes of self-knowledge, and occasionally of the way in which this woman is 'constructed' and presented in the text.

Examining this Book in the light of modern psychology first requires some statement of what is meant by 'modern psychology'. This term can be applied to many different theoretical schools, with different systems of description and classification which are sometimes incompatible with each other. When the first studies on the Book emerged in the 1930s, 'modern psychology' generally meant the psychodynamic theories of Freud, Jung, Adler, Reich and the later Object-Relations theorists. It is these theories and their terminology which have continued to dominate psychohistorical and psycholiterary discourse decades after their widespread decline in influence and in clinical use within mainstream psychiatry and clinical psychology. The last thirty years have seen the rise of

1 C.W. Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe (New York, 1983), p. 209.

2 Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993), p. 274.

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cognitive psychology, and there has been a massive increase in knowledge about the causation of mental disorders. This knowledge has expanded especially rapidly in the neurosciences: the strong biological contribution to human psychology and its disorders is now widely accepted. Scientific evaluation of psychiatric classification systems and of treatments has been increasingly rigorous in the last fifteen or twenty years. This general swing away from dependence on psychodynamic concepts has not, however, had very much impact so far on the application of psychology or psychiatry to literary or historical criticism.3

Purely psychoanalytic studies of medieval or early modern people have been attempted, but encounter the problem that to construct a complex psychodynamic formulation on an individual demands very detailed evidence about them, especially their early development. This is mostly not available in medieval and early modern texts, even in the relatively detailed Book of Margery Kempe. Kroll and De Ganck, in their recent study of the journal of Beatrice of Nazareth, a thirteenth-century Cistercian nun, conclude that an approach based on examination of phenomenology and assignment to modern diagnostic categories is more helpful with medieval texts, because:

While historical source material rarely contains adequate information to support psychodynamic explanations of human motivation and behaviour satisfactorily, it is frequently sufficient to allow medical diagnoses to be made.4

I agree, and I shall follow the same method here.

But is such a diagnostic exercise not bound to lead to the dead end of reductionism? This criticism has been levelled, with some justification, at past attempts to 'psychoanalyse' Margery Kempe. In this paper I will aim to avoid the all-embracing and sometimes overblown hermeneutic ambitions of Freudian psycholiterary studies. I suggest that psychiatric diagnosis can illuminate one aspect of this text, and one level of Kempe's experience, but need not reduce that experience to 'nothing but' psychopathology. A multi-dimensional approach is needed. Several earlier psychological studies, including Kroll and De Ganck's papers on Beatrice of Nazareth, Barton's study of Teresa of Avila and Meissner's more psychodynamically informed study of Ignatius of Loyola, have all been careful to emphasise this point, and they all allow for co-existing theological dimensions and causation for the experiences they discuss.5

3 For an overview of these developments, see, for example R.E. Kendell, A.K. Zealley, eds, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, 5th edn (Edinburgh, 1993); especially pertinent are chs 1, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 39. See also M. Gelder, D. Gath and R. Mayou, eds., Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1989), especially ch. 3. Research methodology in modern psychiatry is well covered in B.K. Puri, P.J. Tyrer, Sciences Basic to Psychiatry (Edinburgh, 1992), ch. 9.

4 J. Kroll and R. De Ganck, 'Beatrice of Nazareth: Psychiatric Perspectives on a Medieval Mystic', Cistercian Studies xxiv (1989), pp. 30123, p. 308.

5 See J. Kroll and R. De Ganck, 'The Adolescence of a Thirteenth-Century Nun', Psychological Medicine xvi (1986), pp. 74556 and 'Beatrice of Nazareth'; M.B. Barton, 'St. Teresa of Avila: Did She Have Epilepsy?', The Catholic Historical Review lxviii

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Another obvious objection to the approach I propose is the uncertainty about the relative contributions of Kempe and her scribes to the complex process of producing the text. The only answer to this is to admit that certainty about the reliability of what is recounted is impossible. There is no sure way of knowing what material came from Margery Kempe and what from her scribes, or the extent to which her life and experience is packaged and refracted according to the conventions and expectations of Church or society. We must either abandon any attempt to understand pathological dimensions of the phenomena described, or accept this uncertainty and keep it in mind.

It is important to remember that to a large extent, a psychiatrist has a similar problem when confronted by a living patient. The mediating processes of editing, self-construction and self-presentation apply to any recounted case history, whether written or verbal. The reliability of any account of psychological phenomena has to be assessed by its coherence in terms of symptom patterns and the extent to which features seem to be included for the sake of factual realism, even when they might prove awkward for strategies of self-presentation.

1

Of the various psychiatric diagnoses meted out to Margery Kempe, by far the most common is that of hysteria. In her notes to the Early English Text Society edition, in 1940, H.E. Allen refers to 'an expert judgement' from Fr. Thurston, who asserted that: 'Practically all neurologists are now unanimous in affirming the great truth that hysteria is before everything else a mental disease consisting chiefly in an exaggeration of suggestibility',6 and: 'That Margery Kempe was a victim of hysteria can hardly be open to doubt.'7 This confident judgement has been echoed by a long list of authors. For instance, Knowles describes her as 'a sincere and devout, but very hysterical woman', who could 'only improperly and accidentally be classed among the English mystics' and maintains that 'little of spiritual instruction is to be found in her Book.'8 Justin McCann refers to the 'violent hysteria' of her weeping episodes. He also writes of the 'repulsiveness' of her revelations, which he sees as evidence of a 'supreme and amazing egoism'.9 Both these authors illustrate the interweaving of diagnosis and disparagement so characteristic of many early commentators. Later writers continue to

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(1982), pp. 58198; W.W. Meissner, Ignatius of Loyola: The Psychology of a Saint (New Haven, 1992).

6 H. Thurston, SJ, 'Pithiatism, Otherwise called Hysteria', The Month cxlii (1923), pp. 97108, p. 100, quoted in S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen, eds, The Book of Margery Kempe, Early English Text Society O.S. 212 (London, 1940), p. lxv. All quotations of Margery's Book are from this edition referenced by chapter, page and line numbers.

7 H. Thurston, SJ, 'Margery the Astonishing', The Month (1936), pp. 44656, p. 452.

8 David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition (London, 1964), pp. 147, 149.

9 J. Mc Cann, 'The Book of Margery Kempe', The Dublin Review (1937), pp. 10316, pp. 110, 113.

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refer to hysteria. Ober, writing in 1985, yet strangely basing his paper on an obscure 1853 classification, refers to Kempe's continuing visions as 'tertiary hysteria', and her weeping episodes as 'a necessary form of self-therapy'.10 Weissman, in 1982, attempts to frame the idea of hysteria in a more positive light, suggesting that: 'By affronting the authority of the patriarchal establishment with her hysteria her woman's disease of womb-suffering Margery transcended its cure.'11 Drucker refers to 'religious hysteria', a vivid term laden with disparaging connotations, but with no status as a separate category in any scientific diagnostic system either past or present.12

In fact, current psychiatric opinion rejects the term 'hysteria' altogether. Over recent decades, the scientific validity of the term has been seen as increasingly suspect. It has been used to refer to several different sorts of psychological disorder, and has very often been used as a term of scientifically sanctioned abuse, particularly when applied to women. The latest diagnostic manuals discard the term entirely, separating out the conditions previously called 'hysteria' into somatisation disorder, conversion disorder and histrionic personality disorder, the latter being the nearest equivalent to most authors' notion of hysteria as applied to Margery Kempe.13

Given these observations, can any case still be made for Margery Kempe having the nearest modern equivalent to hysteria, namely a histrionic personality disorder? The most widely used current diagnostic criteria for this are as follows:

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, beginning in early adulthood, and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1 Is uncomfortable in situations in which he or she is not the center of attention.

2 Interaction with others is often characterised by inappropriate sexually seductive or provocative behavior.

3 Displays rapidly shifting and shallow expression of emotions.

4 Consistently uses physical appearance to draw attention to self.

5 Has a style of speech that is excessively impressionistic and lacking in detail.

6 Shows self-dramatisation, theatricality, and exaggerated expression of emotion.

10 W.B. Ober, 'Hysteria and Mysticism Reconciled', in P.W. Graham, ed., Literature and Medicine, vol. IV (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 2440, pp. 36, 39.

11 H.P. Weissman, 'Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Hysterica Compassio in the Late Middle Ages', in M.J. Carruthers and E.D. Kirk, eds, Acts of Interpretation: The Text in Context, 7001600. Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Honor of E. Talbot Donaldson (Oklahoma, 1982), pp. 20117, p. 217.

12 See T. Drucker, 'The Malaise of Margery Kempe', New York State Journal of Medicine lxxii (1972), pp. 291116, p. 2915.

13 See A. Sims, Symptoms in the Mind (London, 1988), pp. 17982. Also, see World Health Organisation, The I.C.D. 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders (Geneva, 1992), pp. 141 and 15161, especially the discussion on p. 152: American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn, International Version (Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 45870. These issues are also discussed in Kendell and Zealley, eds, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, op. cit., pp. 51018.

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7 Is suggestible, i.e., easily influenced by others or circumstances.

8 Considers relationships to be more intimate than they actually are.

Also listed, under 'associated features' are: 'These individuals are often intolerant of, or frustrated by, situations that involve delayed gratification,' and that: 'Although they often initiate a job or project with great enthusiasm, their interest may lag quickly.'14

Clearly, excessive emotionality alone is not sufficient to make such a diagnosis. Though Kempe's emotions are strong, and often expressed in rather 'theatrical' ways, I would argue that they are not 'shifting and shallow'. Her emotional content is remarkably consistent throughout the Book, and so is her determination in achieving her spiritual ends, often in the face of considerable danger and opposition. Any suggestion of 'lagging enthusiasm' on Margery's part cannot be sustained.

Can Margery Kempe be said to be 'easily influenced by others'? Her steadfastness in arguing against powerful authority figures such as the archbishop of York, and her maintenance of her religious views in the face of vilification from numerous people does not support this suggestion. She does not modify her self-presentation or beliefs to charm or beguile others, and she persists with behaviour likely to offend people.

The charge of attention seeking is more difficult to counter, though the experiment of the priests in chapter eighty-two goes some way to doing so. Wanting to 'preuyn whedyr sche cryid for pe * pepil xulde heryn hir er not', they took her to an isolated chapel where she still 'cryid as lowde er ellys lowder as sche dede whan sche was a-mongys pe pepil at hom' (ch. 82, p. 200, lines 56, 1718). Whether she was merely attention seeking was clearly as much an issue for contemporaries discerning her spiritual credentials as for moderns diagnosing her psychology, and this incident may well have been emphasised by the scribe, or by Margery herself, as a corrective to the impression given elsewhere in the Book.

Is the woman presented in the text overly concerned with her physical appearance, or 'inappropriately sexually seductive'? Her insistence on wearing white clothes could well be seen as a form of attention seeking, though it is clearly also bound up with a deep desire to identify with a spiritual ideal of purity. Otherwise, her only stated concern with appearance is prior to her conversion, when:

sche weryd gold pypys on hir hevyd & hir hodys wyth pe typettys were daggyd. Hir clokys also wer daggyd & leyd wyth dyuers colowrs be-twen pe daggys pat* it shuld be pe mor staryng to mennys sygth and hir-self pe mor ben worshepd.

(ch. 12, p. 9, lines 1318)

There is no later reference to this concern for fashion once the focus of her energies is fixed on the spiritual. The only mention of anything like sexual seductiveness is her being propositioned by a man at Evensong, and later consenting, only to be told 'he had leuar ben hewyn as smal as flesch to pe pott' (ch. 4, p. 15, lines

14 See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edn (Washington, DC, 1994), pp. 65758 and 656.

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2728). This is evidence of Margery's sexual interest, but not of seductive behaviour. The same can be said of her period of dwelling on 'mennys membrys' in chapter fifty-nine (pp. 14445, esp. lines 910).

What of having 'no tolerance for the frustration of delayed gratification'? This charge is countered by her sustained care for an old woman in Rome in chapter thirty-four, though 'pan * was sche ful of vermyn & suffyrd gret peyn perwyth*' (p. 86, lines 23), and by her care for her incontinent husband in his old age, despite hindrance to her religious devotion, her chief source of delight (ch. 76, pp. 17879). Her fasting, hairshirt and other penances (ch. 3, p. 12, lines 21ff), are also evidence of an ability to endure 'delayed gratification'.

As to 'excessively impressionistic speech' which is lacking in detail, then this is certainly not found in the account, which is packed throughout with a wealth of detail both about external events and internal or spiritual happenings.

Looking carefully, then, at the Book in the light of current psychiatric thinking on the old concept of 'hysteria' and its modern near-equivalent, histrionic personality disorder, we must conclude that only her strong emotional expression, coupled with the arguable charge of attention seeking, could be made to fit. This is not enough to meet the diagnostic criteria, despite widespread use of the term 'hysteria' by her detractors and defenders alike.

Other psychiatric interest tends to focus on the episode at the start of the Book, in which, as the text has it 'pis* creature went owt of hir mende' (ch. 1, p. 7, line 21) after the birth of her first child. There is general agreement among commentators from the 1930s onward that this represents some form of psychosis, a term implying serious psychological disorder with loss of connection to reality, lack of insight into the fact of being unwell and, usually, delusional beliefs and/or hallucinatory experiences. It corresponds to what is generally meant by madness. Even those who call her hysterical almost all agree that this episode is not part of the hysteria. There are differing opinions, though, of what sort of psychosis it is, and of whether it is just an isolated episode or the beginning of a disorder which recurs throughout the book.15

The symptoms of Margery Kempe's post-natal disorder are as follows. At the age of twenty, she became pregnant. She:

was labowrd wyth grett accessys tyl pe* chyld was born, & pan, what for labowr sche had in chyldyng & for sekenesse goyng beforn, sche dyspered of hyr lyfe, wenyng sche mygth not leuyn. (ch. 1, p. 6, lines 2832)

The pregnancy was obviously difficult, with the 'accessys' probably representing some form of physical sickness, which is known to be a risk factor for post-natal depression.16 That she 'dyspered of hyr lyfe' may well point to a down turn in her

15 For current thinking on the classification of post-natal psychoses, see the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, op. cit., pp. 38687, which makes no provision for a separate disorder specific to the puerperium, and The I.C.D. 10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders, which briefly discusses the issue on p. 195. See also Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, op. cit., pp. 21112.

16 See I. Brockington, Motherhood and Mental Health (Oxford, 1996), p. 113.

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mood soon after the birth. She became preoccupied with her own sinfulness, a common feature of depressive disorders even in the secular culture of the contemporary West, and with the desperate need to confess some past sin, possibly sexual. Because her confessor was 'a lytyl to hastye' (ch. 1, p. 7, line 16), she was unable to confess the sin, and she became extremely frightened of damnation, again, a very common preoccupation in severe depression even among those not usually religious. The book suggests this as the trigger for her going 'owt of hir mende'.17

She then sees 'deuelys opyn her mowthys al inflaumyd wyth brennyng lowys of fyr as pei * schuld a swalwyd hyr in' (ch. 1, p. 7, lines 2425). This is reported not as an internal impression, but as something seen in external space, and is therefore entirely consistent with a visual hallucination. It is a 'mood-congruent' hallucination, in keeping with her recent preoccupations and with her depression. This is an important way to distinguish an affective psychosis from a schizophrenic one, in which the hallucinations will tend to be more bizarre and disconnected from mood.18

In a similarly mood-congruent way, she is described as hearing the devils, who:

cryed up-on hir wyth greet thretyngys & bodyn hir sche schuld forsake hir Crystendam hit feyth, and denyin hir God, hys Modyr, & alle pe* seyntys.. . . And so sche dede. (ch. 1, p. 7, lines 2833)

The devils are heard as an external sound, rather than the internal voice she often reports in the Book, and this suggests an auditory hallucination. Because they tell her to act, and she obeys them, this would be termed a 'command hallucination', a feature of severe psychoses.19 The text also implies a tactile hallucinatory experience, with the devils 'rampyng at hyr' and 'sum-tym pullyng hyr & halyng hyr bope* nygth & day duryng the forseyd tyme' (ch. 1, p. 7, lines 628).

Her despair of her life gives way to impulses of self harm. The text recounts that 'sche wold a fordon hir-self many a tym' and she carries these impulses out to the extent that 'sche bot hir owen hand so vyolently pat* it was seen al hir lyfe aftyr. And also sche roof hir skyn on hir body a-pen* hir hert wyth hir nayles spetowsly' (ch. 1, p. 8, lines 1, 45). Such impulses, with the agitation that seems to have accompanied them, are common in psychotic depressive disorders.20 In my opinion, this whole initial episode is typical of a depressive psychosis in the

17 These depressive symptoms are discussed in Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, pp. 42829.

18 For a discussion of phenomenology of true hallucinations in various sensory modalities, see Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, op. cit., pp. 6364, 6778. On mood-congruence as typical feature of hallucination in affective disorders, see Gelder, Gath and Mayou, Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 224.

19 On command hallucinations, see Gelder, Gath, and Mayou, Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, p. 9.

20 Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, op. cit., pp. 23435.

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puerperium, the most common of the post-natal psychoses.21 It seems to have resolved in the slightly faster than average time scale of just over eight months.

But one feature of this account is rather puzzling from a psychiatric point of view. Margery Kempe sees Christ:

in lyknesse of a man, most semly . . . clad in a mantyl of purpyl sylke, syttyng up-on hir beddys syde, lokyng up-on hir wyth so blyssyd a chere pat sche was strengthyd in alle hir spiritys. (ch. 1, p. 8, lines 1519)

Unlike later inner communications from Christ, this one is something seen in external space, like the devils, and has the quality of a visual hallucination. The vision is not in keeping with depressed mood, and it heralds her recovery. Yet such vivid hallucinations usually happen at the height of the illness, rather than in its recovery phase. Also, psychotic hallucinations are usually associated with mental chaos rather than this calm, 'healing' quality.22 Meissner, in attempting to distinguish psychotic experiences from those he considers genuinely mystical, states:

Genuine ecstasies, which come from God, bring a sense of humility, inner peace, and a greater readiness to embrace the cross as a means for mystical ascent. They are life-enhancing, whereas pathological states lead toward psychic disintegration and destruction.23

The fact that this vision of Christ fails to 'fit', psychologically, with all the other information we are given about this illness is very interesting. It may, from a theological perspective, indicate a mystical experience which is simply independent of any mental illness. As I noted earlier, there is no reason why psychiatric and theological explanations cannot both be invoked to explain certain experiences, even the same experiences, in the life of an individual. Or the account might be based on a memory, possibly confused, of an hallucinatory experience belonging to an earlier phase of the illness and presented, somewhat modified, in a theologically strategic position by Margery or her scribe, to lend authority to a spiritual turning point. This vision of Christ exemplifies the way in which knowledge of the typical patterns of a psychiatric disorder may generate hypotheses about the construction of the text.

The next important diagnostic question is whether Margery Kempe is ever psychotic again in the book. The most persuasive suggestion of on-going madness in the Book, by Freeman, Bogarad and Scholomskas in 1990, concludes

21 I am by no means the first to conclude that this first episode represents an affective psychosis. For instance, P.R. Freeman, C.R. Bogarad, and D.E. Sholomskas, 'Margery Kempe, a New Theory: The Inadequacy of Hysteria and Postpartum Psychosis as Diagnostic Categories', History of Psychiatry i (1990), pp. 16990, pp. 17981, come to much the same conclusion, in a paper which uses similar methodology to this paper. But, as I shall discuss, I cannot endorse their wider thesis of ongoing psychosis.

22 See Sims' suggested list of factors differentiating religious experience from psychiatric disorder in his Symptoms in the Mind, op. cit., p. 232.

23 See Meissner, Ignatius of Loyola, op. cit., in n. 5, p. 317.

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that the first episode is part of a bipolar affective disorder, otherwise known as manic depression, which recurred in cycles throughout her life.24 Claridge, Pryor and Watkins make a very similar suggestion, though they feel the psychosis is schizoaffective disorder, a variant of manic depression with some features of schizophrenia, including poorer prognosis and personality deterioration.25 Such recurrent psychosis, or madness, would have important implications for our understanding of the Book. For instance, the huge disturbance of memory and lack of insight usually involved in such episodes would tend to greatly dilute the accuracy of her reminiscences.

But I find the suggestion of repeated psychotic episodes problematic, for two reasons. Firstly, after the post-natal illness, it is difficult to find convincing evidence for further psychotic symptoms other than hallucinations, for which, as I shall discuss, there may be other explanations. The most sustained attempt to find such evidence is by Freeman and colleagues. Whilst I endorse their conclusions about her post-natal illness, and their general methodology, the basis for their contention of recurrent 'madness' in the text is less solid. For instance, Freeman and colleagues suggest that answering her husband 'schrewdly & schortly' (ch. 2, p. 9, lines 1920) when confronted about her fashionable clothing suggests the 'grandiose and argumentative mood' found in mania. But this exchange is not really out of keeping with the forthright speech found throughout the Book: Kempe is generally ready to stand up for her opinions, whether they involve religion or, as in this case, fashion. Also, a degree of irritability is hardly surprising in the wake of a debilitating illness which had disrupted her life so drastically. Neither can being 'angry and argumentative' before the bishop of Worcester's men, the archbishop of York and others she confronts in the Book (chs 45 and 52) convincingly be taken as evidence of mania. She had good reason to disagree with these authorities, and her arguments before them are coherent, consistent and persuasive. In manic psychosis, by contrast, thought is generally chaotic, disordered or bizarre in a very obvious way. It is notable that none who listen to her arguments react by declaring her insane.26

Freeman and colleagues cite her failed business ventures as evidence of what they rather vaguely term 'mania-like behaviour'.27 It is true that in mania, people often launch themselves recklessly into grandiose business ventures, at which they generally fail quite rapidly due to the disorganising effect of the psychosis as it progresses. However, we are told that she was 'on of pe * grettest brewers in pe town' for no less than 'iij yer or iiij' (ch. 2, p. 9, lines 3132). For Kempe to be

24 See Freeman, Bogarad, and Scholomskas, 'Margery Kempe, a New Theory', especially pp. 18990.

25 See the chapter entitled 'Medieval Madness' in G. Claridge, R. Pryor, and G. Watkins, Inside the Bell Jar: Ten Psychotic Authors (London, 1990).

26 See Freeman, Bogarad, and Sholomskas, 'Margery Kempe, a New Theory', pp. 186, 188.

27Ibid., p. 186.

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brewing successfully in a manic state for this long seems very unlikely indeed.28 I would also disagree that there is a decline into melancholia, or psychotic depression, after the eventual failure of her business ventures. Being somewhat low in mood after this setback is understandable, and the idea that God might be punishing her is, in this context, entirely in keeping with her own religious beliefs and those of her culture.

The episode of her being propositioned by a man at Evensong, consenting to a sexual encounter with him, and then finding he would rather be chopped into small pieces (ch. 4, pp. 1415) is said to represent a psychotic delusion on Margery's part. But this is to go beyond the text's account to fit diagnostic preconceptions. When the text reports that 'Sche went a-way al schamyd & confusyd in hir-self, seyng hys stabylnes & hir own unstabylnes' (ch. 4, p. 15, lines 2830), the Freeman paper chooses, rather perversely, to take 'unstabylnes' to mean psychological disorder rather than spiritual or moral instability, which seems clearly intended.29 Her rising 'at ii or iij of e clok' to pray in the church (ch. 3, p. 12, line 27) is said to represent the pathological sleep disturbance of mania. The difficulty with this is that a high degree of restlessness, impatience and distractibility would be expected in mania which hardly fits with such long hours of prayer in the same place. Her reported loss of interest in sex at the same period is certainly against a diagnosis of mania, in which libido usually increases.30

Apart from this difficulty of finding clear evidence of non-hallucinatory psychotic symptoms after her post-natal episode, a second reason to reject the idea of repeated madness is that the Book never again describes her in those terms. Margery Kempe was recognised as 'mad' both by herself and by those around her after the birth of her first child, and she seems quite confident in recognising the woman with psychotic symptoms in chapter seventy-five as 'owt hir mende' after childbirth (ch. 1, p. 7, line 21; ch. 75, p. 177, line 35). It is worth noting that this woman is seen as ill by those around her rather than as a victim of her own sin or of demonic possession.31 Margery is thus able to distinguish psychosis, or insanity, when she sees it and it is most likely that she would have recognised a recurrence of such symptoms in herself. But at no point does she refer to herself again as 'owt of hir mende'.

If any event were likely to provoke another bout of psychosis in her, it would be pregnancy and childbirth, the trigger for her first episode. Yet there is no mention of any such disorder in her other thirteen pregnancies. A woman with a

28 On grandiosity and disorganisation in mania, see Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, pp. 42728.

29 See Freeman, Bogarad, and Sholomskas, 'Margery Kempe, a new theory', p. 187.

30 See Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, p. 427.

31 It is interesting to note in this connection that J. Kroll and B. Bachrach, 'Sin and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages', Psychological Medicine xiv (1984), pp. 50714, studying fifty-seven medieval descriptions of mental illness, found an attribution to sin as a cause in only 16% of cases, in opposition to the assertions of, for example, P.B.R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven, 1974), p. 208, that mental illness was mostly associated with sin.

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severe, relapsing, manic-depressive psychosis such as Freeman and colleagues propose, would have a massively increased risk of further attacks after childbirth.32 Another point where psychotic relapse would be very likely is the deaths in quick succession of her son and her husband, for most people very traumatic life events whatever the quality of their relationships, yet none is mentioned.33

It could be argued that accounts of further psychosis might have been left out for 'hagiographical', or theological reasons by Kempe or her scribe. This seems less likely considering the candidness of the descriptions of her post-conversion relapses into sin. A relapse into mental illness would surely be a less embarrassing blot on her spiritual trajectory. After all, her various temptations, chastisements, illnesses and other setbacks are usually presented so that something spiritually edifying is found in them, and it is reasonable to expect that further psychotic episodes could have been presented in the same way, had they happened.

But one feature which does recur throughout the Book is her strong emotionality. Margery has a persistent tendency to 'wepyn and sobbyn ful hedowslyche' (ch. 46, p. 111, line 13). Her strong and immediate emotional reactions to people, events and spiritual experiences are a cardinal feature of the Book. If this cannot be attributed to hysteria, as I have argued, then what are we to make of it? And what of the apparent hallucinations strewn through the rest of the Book?

One diagnosis hitherto given no attention by commentators, though it has often been invoked in writing about other mystics, including Paul of Tarsus, Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa of Avila, is that of temporal lobe epilepsy.34 The few modern commentators on Kempe to consider epilepsy refer to grand-mal epilepsy, which involves convulsions, loss of consciousness, and incontinence of urine.35 Several accounts may bear superficial resemblance to this. For instance:

& whan pei * cam up on-to pe* Mownt of Caluarye, sche fel down pat* sche mygth not stondyn ne knelyn but walwyd & wrestyd wyth hir body, spredyng hir armys a-brode, & cryed wyth a lowde voys as pow* hit hert xulde a brostyn a-sundyr.

(ch. 28, p. 68, lines 1216)

32 See Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, pp. 58182. Women with a previous history of psychosis in the puerperium have a risk of 2033% of relapse in a subsequent pregnancy.

33 For a review of evidence linking severe stressors such as bereavement to relapse of depression and psychoses, see M. Weller and H. Eysenck, eds, The Scientific Basis of Psychiatry, 2nd edn (London, 1992), pp. 495502.

34 See D. Landsborough, 'St. Paul and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy', Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 1 (1987), pp. 65964; Meissner, Ignatius of Loyola, op. cit., in n. 5, pp. 32527; Barton, 'St. Teresa of Avila: Did She Have Epilepsy?', op. cit., in n. 5, pp. 58198.

35 See E. Colledge, 'Margery Kempe', The Month xxviii (1962), pp. 1629, p. 28; Druker, 'The Malaise of Margery Kempe', op. cit., in n. 12, p. 2912. Both consider only grand-mal epilepsy. Freeman, Bogarad and Sholomskas, 'Margery Kempe, a New Theory', do not appear to consider epilepsy at all.

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On one occasion:

sche was in poynt to a fallyn of hir asse, for sche myth not beryn pe * swetnesse & grace pat* God wrowt in hir sowle. pan* tweyn pylgrymys of Duchemen went to hir & kept hir fro fallyng.

(ch. 28, p. 67, lines 2427; cf. also the account on p. 70, lines 17ff)

There is a suggestion in each of these accounts of faintness, but not the loss of consciousness which marks a grand-mal seizure, nor of incontinence. Nor is the expressive flailing of her limbs very like the twitching or rhythmic convulsing of epilepsy.

But temporal lobe epilepsy, known also as psychomotor epilepsy, generally involves no loss of consciousness nor any convulsions. The following relevant features may occur in this condition:

1 Deja-vu: the illusion of having already experienced a situation, which may cause a feeling of being able to predict the future.

2 Genuine auditory and visual hallucinations.

3 Surroundings can seem smaller or deformed.

4 The sight or hearing may be impaired during a seizure.

5 Sensations of smell or taste are common.

6 Changes within the body such as waves of heat in the head, a strange feeling in the stomach which rises to the neck, rapid beating of the heart, or a buzzing in the head and ears can be present.

7 People may laugh or cry during a seizure.

8 Complicated movements can be observed during an attack. Some people may incline their heads forward or lean a long way forward, sway backward and forward with the upper part of their bodies, or lean over backward. Finally, people do not fall during a temporal lobe seizure. There are usually no convulsions, common to major motor seizures.36

There are several points at which Margery Kempe has apparently brief experiences with all the characteristics of hallucinations, yet not occurring in the context of any other psychotic symptoms. Hallucinations of smell are typical of temporal lobe epilepsy, and relatively uncommon in the psychoses. In chapter thirty-five, the Book reports:

Sum-tyme sche felt swet smellys wyth hir nose: it wer swettar, hir thowt, pan* euyr was ony swet erdly thyng pat sche smellyd be-forn, ne sche myth neuyr tellyn how swet it wern, for hir thowt sche myth a leuyd perby* zyf* they wolde a lestyd.

(ch. 35, p. 87, lines 3135)

36 I am indebted to Barton, 'St. Teresa of Avila: Did She Have Epilepsy?', p. 583, for this summary of the account of the phenomenology of psychomotor epilepsy in U.J. Jovanovic, Psychomotor Epilepsy: A Polydimensional Study (Springfield, Illinois, 1974), ch. 1, pp. 336. The symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy are also well summarised in the following: F.E. Dreifuss 'Classification of Epileptic Seizures', in J. Engel, Jr. and T.A. Pedley, eds, Epilepsy: A Comprehensive Textbook, 2 vols (Philadelphia, 1997), I, pp. 51724, p. 521, and, in the same volume, D. Fish, 'Psychic Seizures', pp. 54348, and also W.A. Lishman, Organic Psychiatry: The Psychological Consequences of Cerebral Disorder, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1987), pp. 21820.

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The smell is presented as a true olfactory experience, with all the characteristics of an hallucination. There is a similar account in chapter seventy-one.

Than, as sche went on a tyme in pe * White Frerys Cherch at Lynne vp & down, sche felt a wondyr swet sauowr & an heuynly pat* hir thowt sche myth a leuyd erby wyth-owtyn mete or drynke zyf* it wolde a contynuyd. & in pat tyme owr lord seyd vnto hir, 'dowtyr, be pis* swet smel pu* mayst wel knowyn pat per* schal in schort tyme be a newe Priowr in Lynne.' (p. 171, lines 1118)

Interestingly, this episode involves a smell which is directly linked to ability to foretell the future, a feature associated with the deja-vu encountered in temporal lobe seizures.37

Hearing sounds is a regular feature in the Book. After her initial psychotic episode, the first time she has such an experience is when:

On a nygth, as pis creatur lay in hir bedde wyth hir husbond, sche herd a sownd of melodye so swet & delectable, hir powt*, as sche had ben in Paradyse.

(ch. 3, p. 11, lines 1214)

It is clear that this sound is heard in external space, and so has the quality of an hallucination, rather than being an internal voice, in her 'gostly undirstondyng' as when, for instance, St John the Evangelist appears to hear her confession:

he seyd 'Dominus' verily in hir sowle pat sche saw hym & herd hym in hire gostly vndirstondyng as sche xuld a do an-oper* preste be hir bodily wittys.

(ch. 32, p. 81, lines 58)

This phenomenological distinction between that which is experienced in the 'bodily wittys' and that experienced inwardly by 'gostly undirstondyng', as when Christ speaks to her in her 'feelings', is carefully maintained throughout the Book, giving an impression of psychological authenticity. One occasion:

The seyd creatur, lying in hir bed pe next nyth folowyng, herd wyth hir bodily erys a lowde voys clepyng, 'Margery'. Wyth pat voys sche woke.

(ch. 54, p. 131, lines 1012)

The description carefully notes that she was asleep at the time, indicating either a dream or a hypnopompic hallucination, meaning one occurring on waking, and often a normal occurrence.38 But other passages suggest true auditory hallucinations. For instance:

Sum-tyme sche herd wyth hir bodily eyrs sweche sowndys & melodijs pat sche myth not wel heryn what a man seyd to hir in pat tyme les he spoke pe lowder.

(ch. 35, pp. 8788, lines 352)

37 For a description of the phenomenology of deja-vu and of olfactory hallucinations in association with temporal lobe epilepsy, see Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, op. cit., in n. 13, pp. 43, 56, 7374. On the strong diagnostic association of olfactory hallucinations with temporal lobe epilepsy, see Lishman, Organic Psychiatry, p. 219.

38 On the phenomenology of hypnopompic hallucinations, see Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, pp. 35, 77.

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The Book also mentions rushing sounds which are likened to a bellows in her right ear. The text relates that she heard similar sounds on most days for twenty-five years (ch. 36, pp. 9091, lines 3437).

Apparent visual hallucinations are also described. The only 'complex' vision in the Book is that of Christ sitting on her bed at the end of her initial illness. But other accounts suggest simpler visual hallucinations. For instance:

Sche sey wyth hir bodily eyne many white thyngys flying al a-bowte hir on euery syde as thykke in a maner as motys in the sunne, . . . Sche sey hem many dyuers tymes & in many dyuers placys, bope * in chirche & in hir chawmbre, at hir mete & in hir praerys, in felde & in towne, bothyn goyng & syttyng. And many tymes sche was a-ferde what pei* myth be, for sche sey hem as wel on nytys in dyrkenes as on day-lygth. (ch. 35, p. 88, lines 616)

That they could be seen both in darkness and in light suggests a psychological or neurological cause. They are certainly very much in keeping with temporal lobe epilepsy. Wavering or scintillating lights in the periphery of the visual fields can occur in migraines, but these are usually accompanied by headaches, which are not mentioned in the Book. There is another strange visual experience in which:

On a day as pis* creature was heryng hir Messe, a zong* man and a good prest heldyng up pe* Sacrament in hys handys ouer hys hed, pe Sacrament schok & flekeryd to & fro as a dowe flekeryth wyth hir wengys. & whan he held up pe chalys wyth pe precyows Sacrament, pe chalys mevyd to & fro as it xuld a fallyn owt of hys handys. (ch. 20, p. 47, lines 1521)

It is less clear that this is an hallucination it may be better described as an illusion, a distorted perception of what is actually there. But again, such illusions are quite in keeping with temporal lobe epilepsy.39 As with the auditory experiences, things perceived with the 'bodily' eye are carefully distinguished from dream-experiences such as:

as pe sayd creatur was knelyng be-forn an awter of pe cros & seying on an oryson, . . . sche fel in a lityl slomeryng, & a-non aperyd verily to hir syght an awngel al clothyd in white as mech as it had ben a litylchilde beryng an howge boke be-forn hym. (ch. 85, p. 206, lines 2733)

It is also relevant to note that temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with higher than average interest in religion, and a significantly higher reporting of mystical experiences. Also, during seizures people may often experience emotional lability, expressed in weeping or laughing.40 Many clinicians agree with Beard's research into personality types associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. The characteristics of this so-called 'Geschwind syndrome' include emotionality, manic tendencies, depression, altered sexuality, religiosity, an augmented sense of per-

39 See Sims, Symptoms in the Mind, p. 46.

40 See Lishman, Organic Psychiatry, pp. 21820. See also Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, op. cit., in n. 3, p. 347.

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sonal destiny, guilt, and paranoia. Several of these features are in keeping with the text's account of Kempe.41

So most of the apparent psychological abnormality in the Book fits with a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. Even her initial post-natal psychosis may be tied into this theory, as psychoses are more common in temporal lobe epilepsy and may be precipitated by it.42

2

But to what extent are these modern diagnostic categories compatible with the thought and culture of the fifteenth century?43 This is, in fact, an example of the problem at the heart of cross-cultural psychiatry in the twentieth century. Current psychiatric theory has become increasingly aware of the need to examine cultural difference, and the relative contributions of culture and biology in manifestations of psychiatric disorder.44 If there is a consensus, it is that cultural factors may influence the expression of any disorder, psychological or physical. However, the more a disorder's aetiology is grounded in genetic, biochemical, neurological or other biological factors, the more predictable it will be in its course and characteristics across cultures. For instance, the major psychoses are now known to have a largely biological and genetic aetiology, and have been found to be substantially culturally stable.45 The same may be said of temporal lobe epilepsy, in

41 See D. Bear's list of features of Geschwind syndrome, discussed in D.F. Benson and B.P. Hermann, 'Personality Disorders', in Engel and Pedley, eds, Epilepsy: A Comprehensive Textbook, II, op. cit., in n. 36, pp. 206570, 206667; see also the discussion by M. Dam and A.M. Dam, 'Is there an Epileptic Personality?', in M.R. Trimble and T.G. Bolwig, eds, Aspects of Epilepsy and Psychiatry (London, 1986), pp. 918.

42 For the link between affective psychoses and epilepsy, see M.R. Trimble and B. Schmitz, 'The Psychoses of Epilepsy', in Engel and Pedley, eds, Epilepsy: A Comprehensive Textbook, II, pp. 206579, p. 2079, where they state: 'The link [of affective psychoses] to Temporal Lobe Epilepsy is strong both clinically and theoretically, because there is an acknowledged link between the limbic system and the mediation of emotional and social behaviours.'

43 The desirability of conceptual harmony between modern psychiatric theories of aetiology and those of the subject's culture is widely promoted, for instance in C. Hill and M. Shepherd, 'The Case of Arise Evans: a Historico-Psychiatric Study', Psychological Medicine vi (1976), pp. 35158, p. 351; R. Porter, 'The Diary of a Madman, Seventeenth-Century Style: Goodwin Wharton, M.P. and Communer with the Fairy World', Psychological Medicine xvi (1986), pp. 50313, pp. 5034.

44 An example directly relevant to the area of psychological investigation of religious experiences is D. Lukoff, F. Lu and R. Turner, 'Towards a More Culturally Sensitive D.S.M. IV', The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease clxxx, 11 (1992), pp. 67382.

45 For a review of the cross-cultural evidence, see M. Roth and J. Kroll, The Reality of Mental Illness (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 4044, and Weller and Eysenck, The Scientific Basis of Psychiatry, op. cit., in n. 33, pp. 46990. For an overview of the aetiological evidence, see Kendell and Zealley, Companion to Psychiatric Studies, pp. 40914, 43746.

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which psychological dysfunction is even more tightly bound to brain disease. The physical structure of the human brain is unlikely to have altered or evolved over six hundred years: its features in 1398 should be very similar, if not identical, to those in 1998.

The Book itself proves a useful source for the culture of psychological understanding in fifteenth-century Lynne. Though there are no references to physicians in it, it mentions a number of contemporary reactions showing attempts to diagnose Kempe's behaviour. Her post-natal psychotic episode was clearly recognised as 'psychic disease', and this is how it is presented in the Book. The same can be said for the woman in chapter seventy-five who shows the same symptoms of post-natal disorder that Margery herself had had and is recognised as 'alienyd of hir witte', both by Margery and other townsfolk (pp. 17778, esp. line 8).

Throughout the Book there are sporadic suggestions that Kempe might be ill in some way. Entering Jerusalem on an ass, she seems about to fall off when a priest 'put spycys in hir mowth to comfort hir, wenyng sche had ben seke' (ch. 28, p. 67, lines 2829). But this gentle concern is not always present when sickness is suggested. The reaction of the people in Rome to her weeping 'lowde & horybly' was to consider three differential diagnoses: 'sum euyl spiryt, er a sodyn sekenes, . . . er ellys symulacyon & ypocrisy falsly feyned of hir owyn self' (ch. 33, p. 83, lines 16, 1921). Here, sickness is juxtaposed with evil in a way that is clearly hostile. When the townspeople of Lynne considered the possibility she might be epileptic, they did so with a mixture of fear and loathing:

Sum seyde pat sche had pe fallyng euyl, for sche wyth pe * crying wrestyd hir body turnyng fro pe o syde in-to pe oper* & wex al blew as it had ben colowr of leed. & pan folke spitted at hir for horrowr of pe sekenes. (ch. 44, p. 105, lines 1822)46

A more learned opinion is that of the Franciscan preacher, in chapter sixty-one:

But he seyd, zyf* sche myth not wythstond it whan it cam, he leuyd it was a car-djakyl er sum oper sekenesse, &, zyf sche wolde be so a-knowyn, he seyd, he wold haue compassyon of hir. (p. 151, lines 710)

It is conceivable that her learned friends, men such as Alan of Lynne, might have been versed in the Galenic thought of contemporary medicine. If so it is even possible that Kempe might have had access to it in her efforts at self-understanding. What seems clear from historical studies is that organic causation of psychic disease was stressed as much by late medievals as by the psychiatrists of the 1990s.

In the medieval Galenism which persisted up to the seventeenth century, the soul was seen as immortal and immaterial in keeping with Christian belief, but also thought to express itself through the physical brain. Psychological disorders ultimately had a bodily cause, rooted in imbalance of the four humours. This provided a rationale for physical treatments to influence psychic diseases. Opium, hellebore, mandrake and henbane, bleeding, leeches, mallow oil baths, massages,

46 The 'fallyng euyl' of course refers not to temporal lobe epilepsy but to what would now be termed grand-mal epilepsy.

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infusions and sometimes surgery were employed in this way. The governing faculties, which by the end of the medieval period were thought to comprise imagination, reason and memory, were physically located in the cerebral ventricles. De Pablo, who recently undertook an extensive scrutiny of medieval and Renaissance medical texts concludes that: 'whether psychic in origin from the emotions or passions or from a physical source, the established psychic diseases were, from the medical standpoint of Galenism, always ultimately organic affections with repercussions for the soul.'47 So not only were Margery's contemporaries ready to consider organic and psychological illnesses, including forms of epilepsy, as explanations for her weeping or odd behaviour, but the scientific opinion which could have informed these views used models analogous to those of modern psychiatry.

But accepting that such a diagnostic approach to Margery Kempe is valid and may be of interest from a psychiatric point of view, the next question is whether or not it can shed light on wider issues connected with this text, and be integrated with other Kempe scholarship. Though many answers could be given to this question, I propose to explore briefly two interrelated areas in what follows, those of Discretio Spirituum and of autobiographical realism.

The importance of the tradition of Discretio Spirituum in understanding and contextualising experiences such as Margery Kempe's has been discussed by several authors.48 This Discretio has two aspects. One aspect is of scrutiny of an individual by Church authorities, and I would term this 'external' Discretio. This has received a particularly full and detailed treatment by Voaden, who discusses its scope as presented in such texts as Alphonse of Pecha's Epistola Solitarii ad Reges and the Chastising of God's Children derived from it, and Gerson's De Probatione Spirituum.49

Discretion of spirits involves the recognition of established patterns of inner experience. In this respect it is, in fact, very like the diagnostic process of modern psychiatry. Whereas the psychiatrist consults the body of scientific papers and clinical experience which have formed her understanding, the medieval discerner

47 See A.G. De Pablo, 'The Medicine of the Soul: The Origin and Development of Thought on the Soul, Diseases of the Soul and their Treatment, in Medieval and Renaissance Medicine', History of Psychiatry v (1994), pp. 483516, p. 500. Another useful and relevant source for medieval psychiatry is J. Kroll and B. Bachrach, 'Visions and Psychopathology in the Middle Ages', Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease clxx (1982), pp. 4149. For a persuasive argument for revision of standard accounts and more research based on original manuscripts, see R. Neugerbauer, 'Medieval and Early Modern Theories of Mental Illness', Archives of General Psychiatry xxxvi (1979), pp. 47783.

48 See, for example: E. Colledge, 'Epistola Solitarii ad Reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organiser of Brigittine and Urbanist Propaganda', Medieval Studies xviii (1956), pp. 1949; K. Kerby-Fulton, ' ''Who has written this Book?": Visionary Autobiography in Langland's C. Text', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 10115.

49 See R. Voaden, Gods Words, Women's Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York, 1999).

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of spirits could turn to diagnostic patterns in devotional texts and advice manuals, in the lives of those recognised as holy, and in the exempla and cautionary tales permeating popular sermons. In this discourse, certain things are expected of bona fide visionanies, especially if female, chiefly that they should live under the discipline and guidance of expert spiritual advisers or confessors rather than following their own will, and demonstrate orthodoxy, stability (including stability of residence), and perseverance.50 Voaden points out various ways in which, in contrast to her great model Bridget of Sweden, Kempe fails to meet the Church's expectations, notably by her repeated refusal to accept passively the advice of her confessors and others in authority.

But Discretio is exercised by Kempe not only to justify her experiences to others but in an 'internal', autodiagnostic way, to confirm their validity to herself. At points the Book presents Kempe as apparently self-confident, for instance at her trials for heresy, and her ability to argue against powerful prelates shows a forthright and sturdy confidence in her own spiritual position. However, juxtaposed with this is a much more self-questioning tone:

for reuelacyons be hard sum-tyme to vndirstondyn. & surntyme po * pat* men wenyn wer reuelacyonis it arn deceytys & illusyons, perfor* it is not expedient to zeuen* redily credens to euery steryng but sadly abydyn & preuyn yf pei* be sent of God.

(ch. 89, pp. 21920, lines 3231)

or:

Sum-tyme sche was in gret heuynes for hir felyngys, whan sche knew not how pei schulde ben vndirstondyn many days to-gedyr, for drede pat sche had of deceytys & illusyons. (ch. 89, p. 220, lines 47)

These passages may have been placed strategically at the end of Book I, to temper any appearance of overconfidence in private judgement and persuade the reader of her willingness to test her inner experiences. But they also seem to touch on a psychological reality, a genuine uncertainty about the origin of the 'felyngys' and a need to exercise discernment about them. The 'Prayers of the creature' at the end of the Book, which Margery Kempe recited daily for many years, include a declaration defying:

pe* Deuyl, & al hys fals cownsel, and al pat euer I haue don, seyd, er thowt, aftyr pe cownsel of pe Deuyl, wenyng it had be pe cownsel of God & inspiracyon of pe Holy Gost. (p. 248, lines 2932)51

In a recent book, Bhattacharji suggests that Julian of Norwich's advice to Margery about discernment, particularly the need to trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit in her soul:

Is perhaps a response to what strikes many readers as the most obvious self-advertising aspect of Margery's behaviour: her constant retelling of her experi-

50 For a discussion of Alphonse de Pecha's thought on the criteria for discretio in the case of visionaries see Colledge, 'Epistola Solitarii ad Reges, pp. 4142.

51 Cf. Allen, Book of Margery Kempe, p. 349, n. 248/7.

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ences, and of her whole life, to any person of spiritual authority who crosses ner path.52

Like Margery, Julian had had unusual experiences in the context of intense sickness: perhaps they discussed this and perhaps Julian's own experiences lead her to stress trust of inner locutions despite their possible intermingling with illness.

Julian might also have spoken of the tradition of Nosce te Ipsum. Self-knowledge was widely promoted not only to understand one's own sinfulness but, since man is created in the image of God, to further knowledge of God himself. Self-knowledge is discussed in Julian's Revelations and in Hilton, whose writings Kempe knew. This might have increased introspective monitoring of the psychological pulse on Margery's part.

But Margery's insecurity about her experiences may well be rooted in illness. If her spiritual experiences were bound up at least in some part with a neuro-psychological disorder which could unpredictably produce odd and striking effects, then anxiety about the meaning of these effects seems likely. Ongoing wariness and self-consciousness about odd experiences might certainly be expected in someone who had suffered a full-blown episode of psychosis and would most probably fear relapse, particularly when pregnant with her thirteen other children. That she 'feryd to a lost her witte' during a later bout of physical illness may indicate more than just emphasis on its severity (ch. 56, p. 137, line 18).

Diagnosis of the precise nature of Kempe's illness has implications for the process of discernment. If, throughout her life, she had psychotic episodes, these would involve profound loss of connection with reality and disruption of rational thought, and this would tend to work against any coherent desire or attempt to engage in processes of self-diagnosis. By contrast, temporal lobe epilepsy does not derange the thought processes of the subject. The individual remains both sane and lucid, yet troubled by unpredictable odd perceptions and experiences generated by the brain's electrical activity. The sophisticated psychological processes involved in Discretio would not be disrupted.

It is instructive in several respects to compare the Book of Margery Kempe with the writings of a near contemporary, Hoccleve, which also have a strong autobiographical flavour. Like Kempe's Book, Hoccleve's Complaint contains a vivid description of its subject in the throws of psychological disorder, one which appears to fulfil diagnostic criteria for a severe depressive illness with agitation and possibly psychotic features.53 There is well-known documentary evidence to support the assertion that he was genuinely unwell, for instance that he was

52 S. Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (London, 1997), p. 32.

53 For currently used diagnostic criteria for severe depressive disorder, see Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, op. cit., in n. 13, pp. 32078, pp. 38384. Many examples of depressive symptoms are convincingly described in Hoccleve's Complaint: see particularly, B. O'Donoghue, ed., Thomas Hoccleve, Selected Poems (Manchester, 1982), reference to pessimistic ruminations, p. 19, lines 116; sleeplessness, p. 19, lines 2021;

(footnote continued on next page)

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unable to come to the Exchequer between 1414 and 1417.54 Hoccleve poignantly describes the way in which his friends seem unable to forget his illness, always watching for signs of its reappearance, never quite convinced of his complete recovery.55 This wary vigilance, frequently found in friends and relatives of those who have suffered a serious mental disorder is often matched by a corresponding interior vigilance and uncertainty on the part of the sufferer. There is a tendency to develop a heightened, introspective sensitivity to the motions of one's mental world, and, as Harper has recently discussed, this may result in the sort of subjectivity and of separation of inner and outer worlds which some have claimed is generally absent from medieval literature.56

Why does Hoccleve describe his illness so carefully, and why does his work have such autobiographical realism? Burrow suggests that he is composing poetry with an eye to stimulating his employers to pay him.57 This is certainly plausible, but I would suggest that it may be no coincidence that perhaps the two most autobiographical works in medieval English literature both present lively accounts of serious psychological disorders in their subjects. Illness experience links them, and could be generating both the detailed autobiographical 'inwardness' and the strong realism of description found in both.

Discretio may involve relating experiences to texts by authenticated mystics. For instance, Kempe's sounds and smells find echoes in Rolle. We are told that 'sowndys & melodijs' were a constant and prominent feature of her life for twenty-five years (ch. 35, pp. 8788, lines 3536). Margery might well have found Rolle's descriptions of 'sweet invisible melody' helpful in discerning their nature. On a phenomenological level, there seems a distinct difference between Rolle's accounts, which do not clearly suggest a sound heard in external space and the unambiguous description in Kempe's Book of a sound which actually competes with normal conversation unless people shout. Kempe's description is much more like an hallucination. However, the manuscript's 'red' annotator, most likely a Carthusian of Mount Grace and so probably familiar with Rolle and a variety of other mystical authors, does not hesitate to identify Kempe's experiences with Rolle's. It is likely that Kempe or her scribe might come to the same conclusion. The same applies to smells. As Lochrie comments: 'While these heavenly scents may be found in continental mysticism, in England they are

(footnote continued from previous page)

anhedonia (loss of pleasure in life), p. 19, lines 2728; loss of memory, p. 20, lines 5051 and a vivid description of agitation p. 22, lines 12023 and 133.

54 See A.L. Brown, 'The Privy Seal Clerks of the Early Fifteenth Century', in D.A. Bullough and R.L. Storey, eds, The Study of Medieval Records (Oxford, 1971), p. 271, which is quoted, for instance in J.A. Burrow, 'Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve', Proceedings of the British Academy lxviii (1982), pp. 389412, p. 400.

55 See O'Donoghue, Thomas Hoccleve: Selected Poems, p. 21, lines 6493.

56 See S. Harper, ' "By Cowntynaunce it is not Wist": Thomas Hoccleve's Complaint and the Spectacularity of Madness in the Middle Ages', History of Psychiatry viii (1997), pp. 38794.

57 See Burrow, 'Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages', p. 407.

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almost exclusively characteristic of Rolle and Kempe.'58 Lochrie suggests that Kempe may have drawn upon Rolle, using sounds and smells in a 'metaphorical' way to characterise her mystical experienccs.59 I would suggest that Kempe's smells and sounds are not so much metaphors as descriptions of probably hallucinatory experiences.

One instance of this kind of description may also, I think, exemplify the complex layers of self-presentation which occur in the Book.

Thys creatur had diuers tokenys in hir bodily heryng. On was a maner of sownde as it had ben a peyr of belwys blowyng in hir ere. Sche, beyng a-basshed perof *, was warnyd in hir sowle no fer to haue, for it was the sownd of pe* Holy Gost. & pan owyr Lord turnyd pat* sownde in-to pe voys of a dowe, & sithyn he turnyd it into pe voys of a litel bryd whech is callyd a reed brest pat song ful merily oftyn-tymes in hit ryght ere. (ch. 36, pp. 9091, lines 3435)

On one level, this report has a precision and awkwardness about it which is reminiscent of a medical case history. Rushing sounds and twittering sounds in one ear can occur in tinnitus, but these descriptions fit very well with the auditory hallucinations of temporal lobe epilepsy.

Yet it is also a spiritual description. There is, in medieval iconography, a recurrent motif of the Holy Spirit as a dove speaking in the right ear of a saint. Is this traditional image being deliberately invoked here, or is the specificity of the affected ear simply another piece of realism? Perhaps, not necessarily consciously, Kempe or her scribe are using this motif as a mould into which to pour the raw material of her auditory experience. The rushing sound like a 'peyr of belwys' is transformed in the description into a Norfolk robin redbreast twittering into her right ear. The text tries to encapsulate the experience in a Rollean mystical image, yet it never quite transcends the effect of a medical description. In this awkward synthesis of a spiritual 'template' with actual experience of an illness we see both the clumsiness of expression and the high and ardent spiritual aspiration which so often colour the Book's portrait of Margery Kempe.

58 See K. Lochrie, Margery Kempe and the Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, 1991), p. 117.

59Ibid., p. 116.

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The Role of the Virgin Mary and the Structure of Meditation in the Book of Margery Kempe

Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

The Book of Margery Kempe^1 has generally been judged to be over-emotional and its structures regarded as at worst non-existent, at best naive. Arguably, the key to the organisation of the Book lies in her account of her formal meditations. The meditations are roughly categorized into two kinds: one that appears in a well-defined sequence, using especially the visual imagination; and the other that is understood as Christ's discourse to her held in an intimate, homely manner. Embedded in a matrix of Church-teaching, devotional literature, liturgy, ritual and iconography all interacting in a network of associations, the meditations are relevant to the way she reconstructs the events of her life. Working on the book with her amanuensis, she seems to refresh her memory about meditations she once practised and to relocate them in order to make sense of her unique experience with the divine. She combines external events of her life with spiritual recollections because the events of her life that often involve suffering bring increasing self-knowledge and knowledge of God and thus illuminate the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption.

In looking back on her meditational experience, Margery recounts in chapter eighty-seven that the sweet dalliance by the visitations and holy contemplations continued for more than twenty-five years, and it could only be obtained in great quietness of soul through long exercise. The practice of meditation prepares the heart for penance a penitential process in which she acknowledges Christ's suffering, moves the will from sin and conforms to Him. Meditation is a means by which Margery communicates with God and deepens her understanding of the reality of faith. Her account of her meditations may be understood as witnessing to the development of Margery's character: a growth in her experience with the divine, which might be described in terms of the mystical process from purgation through illumination, towards the hope of contemplative union.

The structure of Book I is multi-layered: a history of the Incarnation and Redemption that develops according to the biblical events; an autobiographical account of Margery which includes her spiritual progress from a novice stage of meditational life towards the illuminated stage and ultimate union with God.

1 S.B. Meech and H.E. Allen, eds, The Book of Margery Kempe, Early English Text Society O.S. 212 (London, 1940, repr. 1961), hereafter the Book. All quotations of Margery's Book are from this edition and will be followed by chapter, page, and line numbers.

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Each meditation that Margery embedded in the chronological movement of her life is significant in the way it illuminates her inner spiritual progress. But there are five major meditational experiences that are of great significance for her progress: the sequence of the meditation on the early life of the Virgin and infant Christ (chapters 6 and 7), that on the Passion in the context of the Easter liturgy (chapters 7881), meditations during the Jerusalem pilgrimage (chapters 28 and 29), on the Purification of the Virgin (chapter 82), and Christ's discourse and monologue (chapter 86).

Analysis of her meditational experience reveals that birth and death are subsumed in her visions and meditations. Opening the Book with the episode of post-partum insanity and the experience of conversion, Margery reconstructs her life by locating in the early and later period of her life two major sequences of visual meditation in which allusions to the mystery of the Nativity and Passion are thematically juxtaposed. The meditation on the infancy and that on the Passion seem to flank the events of her life and other prayerful meditations like columns to build a framework for the Book. Interestingly, Book I opens with her first experience of childbirth and ends with Christ's monologue in which he promises the salvation of her soul in heavenly bliss. The last unction she seems to have received at the first childbirth did not pacify her soul: an unconfessed sin torments Margery and pricks her conscience with the fear of damnation and a sense of alienation from God. The final meditation which accompanies Christ's long monologue, on the other hand, envisions union with God attained through a spiritual rebirth enabled by the Redemption.

At the same time, the role of the Virgin is the key to this progress in her meditations, for the Virgin, who is closest to the Christ-child and Christ crucified, is the source of devotional inspiration for Margery's meditations on the infancy and the Passion of Christ. Furthermore, the meditations on the Purification, and Christ's final discourse and monologue are profoundly inspired by the Virgin in her multi-faceted roles in the mystery of the Incarnation. As an icon for the future bliss enabled by the Resurrection, the Assumption and the Coronation of the Virgin illuminate Margery's longing for heavenly union with Christ.

The relationship between the Virgin and Margery is uniquely intimate. It is first heard about through her talk with the vicar of St Stephen's during her visits to professed religious in Norwich. Margery confides to him that the Virgin and the saints visit her in her meditations. She also recounts that at the request of Christ to tell Margery of the greatness of his love, his Mother, the Queen of Mercy, makes her identities available to Margery as a special privilege:

My derworthy dowtyr, I bryng pe * sekyr tydyngys, wytnessyng my swet Sone Ihesu wyth alle awngelys . . . Dowtyr, I am thy modyr, pi* lady, and thy maystres for to teche pe in al wyse how pu* schalt plese God best. (ch. 21, p. 50, lines 611)

Margery's relationship with the Virgin enriches her understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation through the juxtaposed and overlapping images of the Madonna and Christ-child, and of the crucified Christ and the lamenting Mother as they appear in three major meditation sequences: those on the infancy, Mount

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Calvary, and the Passion. By imitating the Virgin, the supreme model of compassion in these meditations, Margery increases her own compassion and deepens her understanding of the humility and patience of the Incarnation. Furthermore, the Virgin also stands as a model for the beatific salvation which awaits the devout after the sorrow of the Crucifixion.

This paper considers the flow of her meditations and how they are built into the structure of the whole book, in an attempt to illuminate the theme of Incarnational mystery which Margery has embedded in the Book. First I will consider the infancy meditation, referring to the juxtaposed imagery of the Nativity and the Passion that also appears in books of Hours and Prymers designed to aid the devotional practice of the laity and arguing that they might have exerted considerable influence on the way Margery's meditations emerge and develop. Then, following the chronological order of her life and calling on the events relevant and significant to the mystery of Incarnation, I will explore the meditation at Mount Calvary and the Passion sequence in relation to the traditions of Passion literature and iconography that focus on the Virgin those exemplified in the Planctus Mariae, Stabat Mater, and Pietà. Lastly, I will consider the rest of the meditations that appear after the Passion to see how Margery envisions the beatific salvation and how it is revealed to her as a reward for her spiritual pilgrimage.

1

Margery reports that a change in her daily devotion occurred just after her second conversion in the Advent season after the five years of temptation and spiritual despair that followed her recovery from post-partum insanity.2 She experiences the gift of contrition by the return of the figure of Christ, who outlined a new direction of her life. Christ reveals meditation to her as a new way of her devotion: 'Pan * schalt pow* ly stylle & speke to me be thowt, & I schal gefe to pe* hey medytacyon and very contemplacyon' (ch. 5, p. 17, lines 2931). The meditation is distinguished from vocal prayers with beads, bodily penance and fasting: it is a devotional exercise Margery actively controls, putting more conscious effort into using her mind and she seems to practise it by using such a devotional aid as the increasingly popular Hours of the Virgin. As the first meditational sequence demonstrates, Margery's daily use of the Prymer for her devotion to the Virgin seems to impinge on her way of meditation.

Margery recalls that the first sequence of meditation takes place through the

2 Susan Dickman uses 'second conversion' to describe an experience in which Christ ravished Margery's spirit as she prayed in the church of Saint Margaret on the Friday before Christmas. Dickman states that 'comforting and commanding, he converts Margery Kempe to a private religion whose appropriate forms he himself will determine'. Susan Dickman, 'Margery Kempe and the English Devotional Tradition', The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at the Exeter Symposium, July 1980, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1980), pp. 16162.

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words of Christ: 'Dowtyr, thynke on my Modyr, for sche is cause of alle pe * grace pat* pow* hast' (ch. 6, p. 18, lines 1315). This sequence is dedicated to the Virgin, whose obedience ushers in the Incarnation of Christ. By overlapping her birth and that of Christ, Margery reinforces the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption. Margery sees St Anne give birth to Mary, goes with Joseph, and Mary pregnant with God, to Elisabeth, sees Elisabeth give birth to John the Baptist, goes with Mary to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the three wise men, and finally accompanies the holy family into Egypt. During this sequence, she participates in Anne's care for Mary until the Mother of God is twelve, and then acts as Mary's handmaid, making detailed arrangements for lodging and the care of the baby Jesus (chapters 67).

The repetition of the births of the holy infants might invite a psychohistorical approach in which 'the yearly renewal of the sacred feast of Nativity, enshrined within the Church's liturgical calendar, was paralleled by the near-yearly occurrence of childbirth'.3 But a closer examination reveals that Margery juxtaposes the joyful Nativity event with the forebodings of the sorrows of the Passion. Arguably the Hours of the Cross embedded in each Canonical Hour in the Prymer is relevant to this association of birth and death in Margery's meditation.

The Hours of the Cross is a rite of meditation on the Passion added to the Hours of the Virgin. It is closely based on the gospel accounts of the events of the Passion, focusing on the sufferings of Christ and structuring the events of that day around the Canonical Hours. The verse of the Passion seems to stimulate Margery's compassion and to induce in her meditation the juxtaposition of the Nativity and the Passion. The antiphon of Terce in the Hours of the Virgin, for example, celebrates the Nativity: 'Whanne he was born wondurfulliche of a maide, panne* was fulfillid holi writ. Pou* cam doun as reyn iin-to a flees, for to make saaf mankynde: pee* we preisen, oure god.'4 The antiphon is followed by the Crucifige Clamitant of the Hours of the Cross:

At vndren pe false iewis

Crieden with hiz* vois,

'Delyure vs baraban,

And do pis* on pe cros!'

A scharp coroun of pornes*

Pei* diden on his heed;

And dide him bere his cros.

Pere* he schulde be deed.5

The reminder of joyous birth and that of pathetic death work together in Margery's meditation on the Nativity, in which she says: 'Aftyr ward sche

3 Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago & London, 1989), pp. 6061.

4The Prymer or Lay-Folks Prayer Book, ed. H. Littlehales, Early English Text Society O.S. 105 and 109 (London, 18957), p. 21.

5Ibid., p. 22.

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swathyd hym wyth byttyr teerys of compassyon, hauyng mend of pe * scharp deth pat* he schuld suffyr for pe lofe of synful men' (ch. 6, p. 19, lines 1820).

More homely details illuminate the juxtaposition of the Passion and the Nativity: 'fayr whyte clothys & kerchys' (ch. 6, p. 19, lines 1314) which Margery procured for the Virgin to swaddle the infant Christ allude to his shroud. As a nurse to the Virgin in her childhood, Margery accommodated her with fair white clothing and white kerchiefs. Although these details of the Virgin's life are symbols for the Nativity with a stress on the incorrupt purity of the Virgin, they also prefigure the shroud on which she would hold her beloved Son.6 Margery's role as a handmaiden also becomes an impetus for her to penetrate into the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption, for in swaddling him, Margery wept bitter tears of compassion, mindful of the painful death that he would suffer for the love of sinful men, saying to him, 'Lord, I schal fare fayr wyth zow*; I schal not byndyn zow soor. I pray zow beth not dysplesyd wyth me' (ch. 6, p. 19, lines 2123). Furthermore, the iconography of the Nativity predominant in northern European illustrations of the fifteenth century often depicts the manger in the shape of a sarcophagus and emphasises the juxtaposition of birth and death.7

After the Nativity, Margery continues to meditate on the Adoration of the Magi and the Flight into Egypt when she accompanies the holy family to Egypt. In the illustrated Books of Hours which became affordable and popular among the laity at the end of the Middle Ages, the prayer for Vespers is most frequently accompanied by the illustration of the flight into Egypt; while the verse of the Hours of the Cross remembers the Deposition. The juxtaposition of the Nativity and the Passion is obvious: and it makes Margery weep in mind of his Passion. But the infancy cycle of her meditations abruptly ends before Margery meditates on the Purification, the climax to the annual celebration of Christ's birth, and it moves to her weeping in mind of the Passion:

Pan* went pis* creatur forth wyth owyr Lady, day be day purueyng hir herborw wyth gret reuerens wyth many swet thowtys & hy medytacyons & also hy contemplacyons, sumtyme duryng in wepyng ij owyres & oftyn lengar in pe mend of owyr Lordys Passyon wyth-owtyn sesyng, sumtyme for hir owyn synne, sumtyme for pe synne of pe pepyl, sumtyme for pe sowlys in Purgatory, sumtyme for hem pat arn in pouerte er in any dysese, for sche desyred to comfort hem alle.

(ch. 7, pp. 1920, lines 3404)

Following the meditation on the flight into Egypt and the memory of the Lord's Passion, Margery meditates on the bliss of heaven and expressly notes that she then wept 'for desyr of pe blys of Heuyn' (ch. 7, p. 20, line 6). This relates to the theme of mystical espousal which is latent in the infancy meditation. The Church traditionally considered that the Annunciation marked the first espousal between Christ and the Virgin. The Infancy meditation projects the cul-

6 The body of Christ on a shroud parallels the Infant Christ on a swaddling cloth in the Nativities. Cf. Barbara G. Lane, The Altar and the Altarpiece: Sacramental Themes in Early Netherlandish Painting (New York, 1984), p. 95.

7 For sacramental symbolism, see Ibid., pp. 5357.

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minating union between Christ and the Virgin in the heavenly chamber and this relationship was the symbol of mystical union between Christ and his Church and ultimately between Christ and the human soul.8

Keenly aware of the theme of mystical espousal, Margery purposefully locates the meditation on the Mother of Mercy just after the infancy meditation. Margery recalls: 'Anoper * tyme, as pis* creatur lay in hir prayer, pe* Modyr of Mercy, a-peryng to hir, seyd, ''A, dowtyr, blyssyd may pow* be, pi* sete is mad in Heuyn be-for my Sonys kne & whom pow wylt han wyth pe" ' (ch. 8, p. 20, lines 1922).

Reference to the Mother of Mercy is found in the antiphon for Compline, Salue Regina!: 'Hail, quene, modir of merci, oure liyf, oure swetnesse & oure hope . . . to pee* we sizen*, gronynge in pis valey of teeris; per-for* turne to vsward pi merciful izen*, & schewe to us ihesu, pe blessid fruyt of pi* wombe, aftir pat* we ben passid hennes.'9 The iconography of Compline is evocative, for it is most frequently illustrated by the Coronation of the Virgin. The assumption of the Virgin or the death of the Virgin is also used in some books of hours because they are variations of the same theme in the life of the Virgin her triumph over death and the consummation of her espousal relationship with Christ. It is to this bliss of heaven as the bride of Christ that Margery aspires.

In Margery's vision, the Mother of Mercy, who is already secure in heaven, assures Margery that her seat is made ready in heaven before her Son's knee. The seat in heaven is the ultimate destination of her spiritual pilgrimage. Being assured of the seat by the Virgin, Margery's devotional meditation culminates in her renewed faith in salvation. Daily devotion with the Prymer would thus reenact the mystery of the Incarnation, nurture Margery's devotion to the Virgin and Christ through her highly emotive and empathetic meditations, and induce her to envision the bliss of heaven.

2

Her Jerusalem pilgrimage had a tremendous impact on Margery's perception and understanding of the Passion. The practice of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages assumed a partially liturgical function in the way it ritualised memory of Christ's Passion. In the church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example, 'she undertook a twenty-four hour vigil which must have been a powerfully emotive experience, familiar as she was with the Canonical Hours and their daily reminder of the Passion.'10

Her contact with the Franciscans must have stimulated and intensified her emotive awareness of the reality of the Passion. The meditation she had on Mount Calvary focuses on the suffering of Christ on the cross, and it is envisioned in an ardent and highly visual manner:

8 E.g. see Valerie Edden, 'Marian Devotion in a Carmelite Sermon of the Late Middle Ages', Medieval Studies (1995), pp. 10129, p. 113.

9The Prymer, op. cit., p. 34.

10 Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993), p. 293.

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[I]t was grawntyd pis * creatur to beholdyn so verily hys precyows tendyr body, altorent & toryn wyth scorgys, mor ful of wowndys pan* euyr was duffehows of holys, hangyng vp-on pe* cros wyth pe corown of thorn up-on hys heuyd, hys blysful handys, hys tendyr fete nayled to pe hard tre, pe reuerys of blood flowyng owt plentevowsly of euery membre, pe gresly & grevows wownde in hys precyows syde schedyng owt blood & watyr for hir lofe & hir saluacyon, pan sche fel down & cryed wyth lowde voys, wondyrfully turnyng & wrestyng hir body on euery syde, spredyng hir armys a-brode as zyf* sche xulde a deyd, & not cowde kepyn hir fro crying, and pese* bodily mevyngys for pe fyer of lofe pat* brent so feruently in hir sowle wyth pur pyte & compassyon. (ch. 28, p. 70, lines 922)

Margery describes this intense experience of compassion as if it was childbirth with the kind of weeping, writhing and loud cries which accompany labour and it seems to signify the beginning of her spiritual fecundity which is manifested in her spiritual motherhood which Christ praises in his final monologue in chapter eighty-six.

The account of the first crying is followed by the secondary effect of her emotional concentration, her affective compassion to other creatures:

& symtyme, whan sche saw pe Crucyfyx, er yf sche sey a man had a wownde er a best whepyr* it wer, er zyf a man bett a childe be-for hir er smet an hors er an-oper* best wyth a whippe, zyf sche myth sen it er heryn it, hir thowt sche saw owyr Lord be betyn, er wowndyd. (ch. 28, p. 69, lines 16)

The quoted passage illuminates her spiritual transformation, i.e. her compassionate response to the suffering of others. It is indebted to the Planctus Mariae which I will consider in the context of the Passion meditation. The feelings of compassion for the sufferings of Christ and the Virgin extended to the sufferings of all. This development of her response has been enabled by her new awareness of the Passion and marks the initial phase of a longer process during which her understanding deepens.

Significantly for the development of the relationship between the Virgin and Margery, the Virgin is present in her Calvary meditation and orders her to be a partaker of the joy and sorrow of the holy family. By assuming her role as a handmaiden to the Virgin, she deepens her understanding of the Incarnation with her newly acquired capacity to penetrate both psychologically and spiritually into the compassion of the Virgin so dramatically expressed by Franciscan Marian piety.

Margery's mystical marriage to the Godhead in Rome may be considered as the culminating point of the pilgrimage experience. From then on she is entitled to proceed like the spouse of Christ on a level with Mary Magdalen and even with the Virgin. It is intriguing that the mystical marriage occurs in the middle of the book, for the literature of contemplative experience usually interprets the mystical marriage as the ultimate goal of spiritual experience. Yet, the significance of placing this spiritual marriage as an event concluding the pilgrimage is that it signals the new era for her spiritual progress and relation to the Holy Trinity. After the marriage, for twenty five years, especially when she was in devout prayer, she received tokens of smell, sound and the voice that says 'God is in pe & pu* art in hym' (ch. 35, p. 88, lines 1920). Margery also felt a flame of the fire of love burning in her breast. The fire signifies the Holy Ghost residing in her

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and quenching all sins. The mystical marriage thus enabled her to embrace the Holy Trinity in her soul and assures her that God shall never part from her soul, they are eternally united.

The events in Rome that follow the mystical marriage are recalled in the following chapters. Margery's renewed relationship with God is told with matrimonial imagery. Christ also reveals to her that charity is the source of divine love and that Margery is a true mother to Jesus and to all the world, elevating her spiritual identity to an equivalence with that of the Virgin: 'pu * art to me a very modir & to al pe* world for pat* gret charite pat is in pe, & zet* I am cawse of pat charite my-self, & pu* xalt haue gret mede perfor* in Heuyn' (ch. 36, p. 91, lines 1013). And it is these words that usher in her account of the act of charity to which she dedicates herself during the rest of her Roman sojourn.

Margery cultivates meekness and charity in Rome by serving a poor woman, and she makes herself destitute for his love by being as poor as Christ when he hung on the cross. The experience of imitatio Christi becomes the means of her compassion for the suffering Christ. Interestingly, the service of active love is enhanced by the Virgin's charitable begging for Margery. The Virgin begs for her because Margery had many times begged for her and the Infant Christ. This act of begging illuminates not only the virtues of humility, sacrifice and love that the Virgin exemplifies, but also the juxtaposed imagery of the Nativity and the Passion, for Margery's begging for the poor holy family in the infancy meditation evokes the naked and poor Christ on the cross in her affective association of the juxtaposed imagery. Margery's account of her care for the poor woman reveals how she spiritualises the events of her life, sharpens her understanding of the patience of the Incarnation and deepens her spiritual affinity with the Virgin.

Furthermore, her visit to a woman with a boy-child is abundant with symbolic implications:

pe powr woman clepyd hir in-to hir hows & dede hir sytten be hir lytyl fyer, zeuyng* hir wyn to drynke in a cuppe of ston. & sche had a lytel manchylde sowkyng on lair brest, pe whech sowkyd o while on pe moderys brest; an-oper* while it ran to pis* creatur, pe modyr syttyng ful of sorwe & sadness. (ch. 39, p. 94, lines 914)

Margery was moved to thoughts of Christ by the sight of the poor mother and her boy-child. The child sucking at her breast recalls the infancy of Christ, but at the same time the mother full of sorrow and sadness reminds Margery of the sorrow of the Virgin suffering in full association with Christ in the sorrows of his Passion. It would be natural for such a compassionate partaker as Margery to be overwhelmed by the juxtaposed images of the nursing Madonna with the infant Christ in her arms and the sorrowing mother with the dead body of her son on her lap.

Back in England, Margery describes how, clad in poor and white clothes, she cries loudly when the Lord puts her in mind of his Passion. The crying reflects the impact of the Jerusalem pilgrimage and the impact intensifies as she goes through accusation of being a Lollard, blame, slander, and contempt all of which she associates with the suffering of Christ. Margery recounts that her

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heresy trial also happened in this period of her life. The obsession with heresy was the outgrowth of the social religious unrest which swayed England in the late Middle Ages.11 Although orthodox in her understanding of the Church's doctrine, Margery's eccentric behaviour invited suspicion of being a Lollard. But this painful experience also empowers her in her compassionate identification with the suffering Christ.

Having recalled her devotion ever more deeply involved with the images of the humanity of Christ, Margery looks back on her meditation in the context of the liturgical ceremony of Easter in chapter fifty-seven. She selects the Good Friday procession to illuminate the strong hold that the Church's liturgy has on her spirituality:

On a Good Fryday, as pe * sayd creatur behelde preystys knelyng on her kneys & oper worschepful men wyth torchys brennyng in her handys be-for pe Sepulcre, deuowtly representyng pe lamentabyl deth and doolful berying of owr Lord lhesu . . . pe mende of owr Ladijs sorwys whech sche suffryd whan sche behelde hys precyows body hangyng on pe Crosse & sithyn berijd be-for hir syght sodeynly ocupijd pe hert of pis* creatur, drawyng hir mende al holy in-to pe Passyon of owr Lord Crist Ihesu, whom sche behelde wyth hir gostly eye in pe syght of hir sowle as verily as pei* sche had seyn hys precyows body betyn, scorgyd, & crucifyed wyth hir bodily eye, whech syght & gostly beheldyng wrowt be grace so feruently in hir mende, wowndyng hir wyth pite & compassyon, pat* sche sobbyd, roryd, & cryed, and spredyng hir armys a-brood, seyd wyth lowde voys, 'I dey, I dey'.

(ch. 57, pp. 13940, lines 3315)

This meditation seems triggered by the Virgin's sorrows over the crucified Christ and his burial and is evocative of popular lyrics and iconography, such as those based on the Planctus Mariae, which traditionally conveyed the Virgin's sorrow and fortitude over her Son's Passion but developed to portray her maternal anguish in a more dramatic and human way by the end of the Middle Ages.12

Her biographical narrative repeatedly mentions the ordeals that she had in her life poverty, sickness, trouble of tears and crying, and abominable sights that threaten her chastity (chapter fifty-nine), which made her suspect God had forsaken her. But in the darkest period of her life, God reveals to her that through these ordeals she is paving the true way to heaven:

Dawtyr, I must nedys comfortyn pe, for now pu* hast pe ryth wey to Heuyn. Be pis wey cam I to Heuyn & alle my discipiys, for now pu xalt knowe pe bettyr what sorwe & schame I suffyrd for thy lofe, and pu schalt haue pe mor compassyon whan pu thynkyst on my Passyon. (ch. 63, p. 156, lines 914)

It is after this revelation and when she fled from the vicious people into the prior's chapel in Lynn that Margery had an intensified recollection of the Passion

11 For Margery and Lollardy, see S. Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (London, 1997) pp. 3950; for the historical background of fear of heresy, see 'The English Lollards', in Malcolm Lamber, Medieval Heresy (Oxford, 1992), pp. 24382.

12 See Douglas Gray, ed., English Medieval Religious Lyrics rev. edn (Exeter, 1975), pp. 11011, n.22.

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and of the suffering mother, which caused her to say in her crying, ' "Lord, I am not pi * modir. Take a-wey pis* peyn fro me, for I may not beryn it. Pi* Passyon wil sle me" ' (ch. 67, p. 164, lines 2527). Margery deliberately compares herself with the sorrowful Virgin. She increases in her compassion for the suffering of Christ and responds deeply to the Good Friday preaching: 'Ihesu is ded' (ch. 69, p. 167, line 18).

The ordeals are actual steps by which she makes her spiritual development. Significantly, Margery recounts in chapter seventy-two that her mind and thoughts are attuned to God's inward presence by process of time and that these ordeals transformed her seeing of human life: she now sees Christ in and through every human situation she encounters:

So be processe of tyme hir mende & hir thowt was so ioynyd to God pat* sche neuyr forgate hym but contynualy had mende of hym & behelde hym in alle creaturys. & euyr pe* mot pat sche encresyd in lofe & in deuocyon, pe mor sche encresyd in sorwe & in contrycyon. (ch. 72, p. 172, lines 1115)

In chapters 73 and 7881, Margery goes over the events of the Passion within the context of their liturgical re-enactment. She sees the events she describes in chapters 73 through 77 as leading into preparing the way for her account of her meditation on the Passion. During the Holy Thursday procession (chapter 73), Margery first meditates on the Virgin taking her leave of her son: a sorrowful parting and a joyful parting. She continues into the meditation on the Lord's Ascension and desires to go with Him. She recounts that another time she sees the death and assumption of the Virgin in her soul. Margery's longing for heaven increases, and she pleads for the Virgin's intercession for the salvation of her soul. The Virgin's response is gracious:

Dowtyr, alle pes* sorwys pat pu* hast had for me & for my blissyd Sone xal turne pe to gret joye & blys in Heuyn wyth-owtyn ende.. . . But pu mayst not comyn zet*, for pu xalt comyn in ryth good tyme. And, dowtyr, wete pu wel pu xal fyndyn me a very modyr to pe to helpyn pe and socowr pe as a modyr owyth to don hir dowtyr & purchasyn to e grace & vertu. (ch. 73, p. 175, lines 2029)

The Virgin continues to say that plenary remission at Ramleh is confirmed to her and to those who believe that God loves Margery. Thus, before embarking on her account of the Passion meditation, Margery remembers that she obtained the Virgin's pledge of intercession and re-defines her spiritual relationship with the Virgin as a compassionate partner and handmaiden.

Chapter seventy-four reports that in hearing Mass, Margery longs for the time of her death and mourns over the delay. Christ's response to her was so gracious as to identify Margery with his beloved Mary Magdalen: 'l loue pe as wel, & pe same pes pat I zaf* to hir pe same pes I zeue* to pe' (ch. 74, p. 176, lines 1920). In securing her identity with the Magdalen, Margery increasingly feels that God draws her to his love and to the recollection of his Passion. Her compassion culminates in her imitation of St Francis as she kissed the lepers. Her spiritual power is now being operated for the charity of her fellow people in distress. It is in this

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period that Margery helps the woman with post-partum hysteria, just as Jesus had rescued her (chapter seventy-five).

But the summit of her loving charity is attained in her reunion with her senile husband. Her spiritual growth enables her to see Christ in her husband although her clumsy obsession with sexual sin within marriage still overshadows the way she recounts the event. But Margery now serves him as if she were serving Christ:

many tymys sche xuld an yrkyd hir labowr saf sche bethowt hir how sche in hir zong * age had ful many delctabyl thowtys, fleschly lustys, & inordinat louys to hys persone. & perfor* sche was glad to be ponischyd wyth pe* same persone & toke it mech pe mor esily & seruyd hym & helpyd hym, as hir thowt, as sche wolde a don Crist hym-self. (ch. 76, p. 181, lines 915)

These examples of her spiritual transformation usher in the long discourse of Christ in chapter seventy-seven. In her unbidden tears and cries, she feels the force of a power operative in the universe, the working of God, to which she must submit her whole being in obedience. As she is more illumined, God reveals to her five tokens that are known only to chosen souls and assures her that he resides in her soul. She responds to God with obedience that prepares her for transfiguration into ineffable knowing: ' "I wolde, Lord, for pi* lofe be leyd nakyd on an hyrdil, alle men to wonderyn on me for pi loue . . . zyf* pu* wer plesyd perby* & no mannys sowle hyndryd, pi wil mote be fulfillyd & not myn" ' (ch. 78, p. 184, lines 1925).

The Passion sequence in the context of the Easter liturgy starts with the Palm Sunday Procession (chapter seventy-eight). Participating in the procession, her spiritual sight grasps that historical moment in Jerusalem. She is placed within the event she observes in her sense of divine timelessness. Her violent crying, out of compassion with Christ, results in increased contempt from her neighbours. But Christ supports her through holy dalliance and ordains her to be a mirror among the people. He reassures her of the efficacy of her tears and intercessory prayers:

'I haue ordeynd pe to be a merowr amongys hem for to han gret sorwe pat* pei* xulde takyn exampil by pe for to haue sum litil sorwe in her hertys for her synnys pat pei myth perthorw* be sauyd . . . many thowsand sowlys xal be sauyd thorw pi preyerys . . . pi terys & pi preyerys arn ful swet & acceptable vn-to me.'

(ch. 78, p. 186, lines 1325)

Christ's parting from his Mother before going towards his Passion is again narrated in chapter seventy-nine, but this time with a new twist the participation of the Mother in the sorrow of her Son. Margery saw the Virgin falling down in a swoon, saying to him:

'Alas, my der Sone, how schal I suffyr pis* sorwe & haue no joy in al pis werlde but pe a-lone.' 'A, der Sone, zyf pu wilt al-gatys dey, late me deye befor pe & late me neuyr suffyr pis day of sorwe, for I may neuyr beryn pis sorwe pat I xal han for pi deth. I wolde, Sone, pat I myth suffir deth for pe so pat pu xuldist not deyin, zyf mannys sowle myth so be sauyd. Now, der Sone, zyf pu haue no rewth of ii-self*,

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haue rewth of pi * Modyr, for pu* wost ful wel per* can no man in al pis* worlde comfortyn me but bu a-lone.' (ch. 79, p. 187, lines 3139)

In comforting his Mother, he reveals the mystical identity of the Virgin as Holy Church in this world, as the Queen crowned in heaven and the empress of hell:

blissyd Modir, ze* must abydyn her aftyr me, for in jow schal restyn al pe* feith of Holy Chirch, & be zowr* feith Holy Chirch xal encresyn in hir feith . . . cesyth of zowr sorweng, for I xal not leuyn zow* comfortless. I schal leuyn her wyth zow Iohn, my cosyn, to comfort zow in stede of me . . . what wolde ze bettyr pan* per* I am kyng ze for to be qwen, & alle awngelys & seyntys xal be buxom to zowr wil . . . I xal geuyn zow powyr ouyr pe deuelys pat* pei* xal be aferd of zow and ze not of hem.. . . I xal comyn for zow myn owyn self whan ze xal passyn owt of pis world wyth alle myn awngelys & alle myn seyntys pat arn in Heuyn & bryng zow be-for my fadyr wyth al maner of musyk, melody, & joy . . . And per xal ze be corownyd as for Qwen of Heuyn, as for lady of al pe worlde, & as for Empres of Helle.

(ch. 79, p. 188, lines 932)

The Virgin is often called 'Qwen of Heuyn' in Passion lyrics.13 On the other hand, the concomitant title 'empres of helle' is a popular motif in carols to do with Christmas. A fifteenth-century carol blesses God and his 'Moder emperesse of helle':

Now man is brighter than the sonne;

Now man in beven an hye shal wone;

Blessyd be God this game is begonne,

And his moder empresse of helle.

Nowel!14

Another example of 'empress of hell' is found in 'Saluation and Conception', in the Ludus Coventriae in which Gabriel extols Mary:

I commende me on to zow pou* trone of pe trinyte/ O mekest mayde now pe modyr of jhesu/ qwen of hefne lady of erth and empres of belle be ze/ socour to All synful pat wole to zow sew/ Thour zour* body beryth pe babe oure blysse xal renew/ to 30w modyr of mercy most mekely I recomende and as i began I ende ...15

Marian imagery which appears in this meditation suggests that Margery's meditation draws heavily on the traditions of medieval iconography in which the Nativity and Passion are juxtaposed.

13 See the lyric inspired by the image of Mary at the foot of the cross in Ibid., p. 20, no. 23:

Blisced be thou, quen of hevene,

Bring us ut of helle levene

Thurh thi dere sunes miht.

Loverd, for that like blode

That thou sadde upon the rode,

led us into hevene liht.

14Ibid., p. 8. no. 9.

15Ludus Coventriae or The Plaie called Corpus Christi, K.S. Block, ed., Early English Text Society E.S. 120 (London, 1922, repr. 1960), p. 108. See also Pearl, viii, lines 44142, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Malcom Andrew and Ronald Waldron (London, 1978), p. 75.

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Following this revelation, Margery beholds Christ confiding to the Virgin the crucial significance of the Incarnation: 'late me go do my Fadrys wille, for perfor * I cam in-to pis* worlde & toke flesch & blood of zow*' (ch. 79, p. 188, lines 3435). Christ's utterance recalls the popular lyrics known as Stabat Mater. For example: ' "Moder, merci! let me deyen/ For Adam ut of helle beyen,/ And al mankin that is forloren." '16 The flesh Christ assumed is 'the central meeting-point between man and God.'17 Divine love is manifested in the Incarnational mystery fulfilled in the Passion of Christ in human flesh.

This meditation is also purposefully organised to lead into the Good Friday meditation. Christ tells Margery to accompany the Virgin during his Passion and comfort her: 'Be stille, dowtyr, & rest wyth my Modyr her & comfort pe* in hir, for sche pat* is myn owyn Modyr must suffyr pis sorwe' (ch. 79, p. 189, lines 1012). Assuming her role as the partner of the Virgin, Margery now shares in her suffering motherhood as she enters into the meditation on the arrest and flagellation of Christ by the Jews:

pei* bowndyn hym to pe peler as streyt as pei cowde & beetyn hym on hys fayr white body wyth baleys, wyth whippis, & wyth scorgys. & than hyr thowt owr Lady wept wondir sor. And perfor pe sayd creatur must nedys wepyn & cryin . . . and hir thowt pat owr Lady & sche wer al-wey to-gedyr to se owr Lordys peynys.

(ch. 79, p. 190, lines 2230)

Chapters eighty and eighty-one are a Passion meditation following biblical events but influenced by the imaginative accounts and sentiments so popularised by such devotional treatise as Meditations on the Life of Christ, Richard Rolle's Meditations on the Passion, and Nicholas Love's Mirror as well as popular religious lyrics. Margery is strongly present in the intensely visual meditation and cultivates humility as a handmaiden. There is also 'a sense in which intentionally visualised actions become real actions psychologically'.18

Accompanying the Virgin on the Via Dolorosa, Margery sees the Virgin suffer the sorrows of Christ's Passion in full association with him. From the end of the eleventh century, the theme of the compassion was taken up by Anselm and Bernard and it came to be widely known that it is through her compassion, suffering in her heart all the corporeal Passion of her son, that the Virgin shares and co-operates in the Redemption.19 In his Dominica infra Octavam Assumptionis Beatae Virginis Mariae Sermo, Bernard argues that her sorrow was an inward 'martyrium' that made her 'plus quam martyre',20 and that it was overcome by virtue of the intensity of her compassion.

The theology of Redemption juxtaposing passion and compassion is established in both literary and iconographic traditions by the fifteenth century and it

16 Gray, English Medieval Religious Lyrics, p. 19, no. 23.

17 Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake, p. 126.

18Ibid., p. 96.

19 Sandro Sticca, The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan (Athens and London, 1988), pp. 1056.

20 Patrologia Latina CLXXXIII, 438.

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finds explicit expression in the juxtaposition of swoon and death. Roger van der Weyden's 'Descent from the Cross' depicts the swooning Virgin: in collapsing, her body assumes a parallel line with that of her dead son.21 Margery's meditation revisualises the Virgin's share in the work of Redemption with her empathic participation in Christ's agony: 'pan * hir thowt sche sey owr Lady swownyn & fallyn down & lyn stille as sche had ben ded' (ch. 80, p. 193, lines 1819).

Interestingly, the notion of the compassion of the Virgin confers upon her the special title and privilege of being a companion in the Passion and a conqueror with Christ of Satan. This title is relevant to Margery's meditation in which Christ identifies the Virgin as 'empres of helle' (ch. 79, p. 188, lines 32). But in the context of the compassion of the Virgin, the significance of the title is ingeniously elaborated in the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, a treatise in rhymed prose composed in 1324 among the Dominicans of Strasburg:

Herd nowe pat* Crist oiercome the feende be his passioune;/ Heres howe Oure Ladye ouercome hym be compassioune./ What Crist in his passioune suffred, pat evrydele/ Tholid marye be compassioune in hire sowle maternele./ the nayllis whilk handis and fete thirlid of hire dere son/ Perced his swete modris breest be pynefulst compassioune./ . . . And als Crist ouercome the feende be his seint compassioune,/ So dide eke blissid Marie be modrefulle compassioune./ With armes of hire sonnes passioune armed hire blissid Marie/ When sho shuld ageinst the feende to bataille make hire redy.22

But the Virgin's theological identity as co-redemptrix does not undermine the meaning of compassion in terms of human experience. Tender compassion which the mother and the son had for each other is elaborated in Margery's meditation. Margery sees the Virgin complain to the Jews:

'Alas, ze* cruel Iewys, why far ze so wyth my swete Sone & dede he zow* neuyr non harm? ze fille myn hert ful of sorwe.' . . . 'ze cursyd lewys, why sle ze my Lord lhesu Crist? Sle me rapar* & late hym gon.' (ch. 80, p. 192, lines 2426, 2931)

The sacrificial maternal emotion behind the Virgin's complaint is similar to that expressed in a lyric known as Planctus Mariae in which she wishes to be crucified with him:

Wy have ye no reuthe on my child?

Have reuthe on me ful of murning!

Taket doun on rode my derworthi child,

Or prek me on rode with my derling!23

Another eloquent example is found in the Mass of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Sarum Missal^24 in which the sequence runs:

21 Otto G. van Simson, 'Compassio and Co-Redemptio in Roger Van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross', Art Bulletin xxxv (1953), p. 11.

22 Avril Henry, The Mirour of Mans Saluacioun: A Middle English Translation of Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Aldershot, 1986) p. 159, Cap. xxxm, lines 320520.

23 See Gray, English Medieval Lyrics, p. 18, no. 22.

24The Sarum Missal in English, Parts I and II (to be abbreviated as Missal I, II) trans.

(footnote continued on next page)

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Why diest thou transfixed upon the cross,

as if thou hadst been guilty of some crime,

who never didst an evil thing at all?

Ah me! she cries, with deep-drawn sighs,

asking why anxious life doth dure so long;

why die I not? why doth death spare me?

Was there ever a mother could gaze

on a loved son's so great suffering,

and continue to love? (Missal II, 229)

The sorrows of the Virgin prompt Margery's pity and compassion for them: she experiences the psychological state in which 'the Virgin's grief is both an incentive to the meditator's and also a measure of what his should be.'25 overwhelmed by the Virgin's agonised and tormented maternal emotion, Margery thought that:

sche ran al a-bowte pe * place as it had ben a mad woman, crying & roryng . . . seying to hir, 'I prey zow*, Lady, cesyth of zowr* sorwyng, for zowr Sone is ded & owt of peyne, for me thynkyth ze* han sorwyd a-now. &, lady, I wil sorwe for zow, for zowr sorwe is my sorwe.' (ch. 80, p. 193, lines 2026)

The image of the grieving and afflicted Mother is intensified as the Virgin takes care of the dead body of her Son after he has been taken down from the cross:

owr blisful Lady bowyd down to hir Sonys body & kyssyd hys mowth & wept so plentyuowsly ouyr hys blissyd face pat* sche wesch a-wey pe blod of hys face wyth pe terys of hir eyne. (ch. 80, p. 193, lines 3134)

This lament expressing uncontrollable grief through the copious tears that bathed the body of her son is again indebted to the tradition of planctus lyrics, for example from the twelfth century: 'Maestae parentis Christi: Manus extorquens exclamavit/ Fletuque corpus irrigavit/ Stillas ut rivos lacrimans.'26 ('The sorrowful mother of Christ: she cried out wringing her hands, she bathed the body with flowing tears, weeping tear-drops in streams.')

The contrast between the Virgin's present sorrows and her joys at the Nativity is sharpened in Margery's meditation based on the Pietà. This title is given to sculptures and paintings depicting the Virgin holding the dead body of Christ, an iconographical reminder of the Madonna and child; it appeared first in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and established an intimate and sympathetic relationship between the sacred figures and the meditating spectators.27

(footnote continued from previous page)

Frederick E. Warren (London, 191113). All citations to the Missal are from this translation and will be followed by the abbreviated title and the page number in parentheses.

25 Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968, repr. 1988), p. 241.

26 Clemens Blume, ed., Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, vol. LIV (Leipzig, 1915, repr. Frankfurt am Main, 1961), p. 320.

27 Milliard Meiss argues that 'the two [Pietà and the Virgin and Child] are complementary or polar themes, presenting Christ in the lap of the Virgin at the beginning and end

(footnote continued on next page)

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Allusions to the Annunciation and the prophecy of Simeon in Luke 2:35 also define this contrast. The Mass of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary gives a succinct example:

Is that the favour thou broughtest unto me,/ O Gabriel, when thou saidst to me,/ Hail, Mary, full of grace?/ 'Tis the contrary/ of that thou first didst promise,/ when now instead of grace to me/ there cometh grief and suffering./ Among all women/ thou didst call me blessed:/ all may now behold me/ mourning and afflicted./ The aged Symeon prophesied of this,/ saying, as narratcth the evangelist,/ Behold, this thy child is set/ for the falling [of many],/ and through thine own soul also/ a sword shall pierce. (Missal II, 22930)

It is this pathos of the contrast between the Virgin's joy at the Nativity and her grief and misery at the Passion that affects the heart of Margery. This antithesis is elaborated in a planctus lyric which emphasises maternal love for children:

Off alle women pat * ever were borne

Pat* berys childur, abyde and se

How my son liggus me beforne

Upon my kne, takyn fro tre.

Your childur ze* dawnse upon your kne

With lagyng, kyssyng and mery chere;

Beholde my childe, beholde now me,

ffor now liggus ded my dere son, dere.28

Margery's meditation on the lamentation visualises the concrete details of the tender hands of the Virgin and other women extended to touch the dead body of Christ: the Virgin kisses his mouth; Mary Magdalen wishes to kiss his feet; and the Virgin's sisters take his hands and feet and kiss them. This emphasis on motherly affection and sibling intimacy alludes to the motherly love that the Virgin embraced at the joyous Nativity and that should be felt by all mothers when they hold their new-born babies. The allusion to the Nativity, thus, rouses compassion in Margery and encourages her empathetic participation in the Virgin's sorrowing motherhood. Just as she pictured herself serving the Virgin and the Infant Christ in the infancy meditation, Margery fully participates in the sorrows of the Virgin and embraces the reality of the Passion in her service as a handmaiden.

Lamentation, however, does not merely convey a sense of emptiness and despair. The relationship between the Virgin and Christ is significant for the redemption of man and the hope of salvation for each individual. Seen from the

(footnote continued from previous page)

of his life on earth. One of them epitomizes the joys of the Virgin, the other her sorrows.' See Milliard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (Princeton, 1978), p. 145.

28 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1971), p. 13, no. 7. Rosemary Woolf's comment reveals the empathetic effect of this poem: '[as] mothers dandle their children's hands and feet, the Virgin can feel her Child's limbs pierced through and through. The success of this poem lies in fact in the realistic observation of maternal fondness and caresses, and the contrast of this with the Virgin's actions of grief as she holds the crucified body of her Son.' See Woolf, The English Religious Lyric, p. 256.

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perspective of the Resurrection, the present sorrows prepare the way to union with God and to the ultimate hope of salvation. Significantly, Christ's words addressed to the Virgin at their parting reveal the mystery of the Incarnation:

I haue tel[d] zow * ful oftyn pat* I must nedys suffyr deth & ellys schulde no man be sauyd ne neuyr comyn in blisse. & Modir, it is my Fadyrs wil pat it be so, & perfor* I preye zow late it be zowr* wil also, for my deth xal turne me to gret worschep & zow & al man-kynde to gret joye & profyte whech zat* trustyn in my Passyon & werkyn peraftyr*. (ch. 79, p. 188, lines 39)

Furthermore, the compassion inspired by the Virgin's pathos is 'a means to realize didactic and moral purposes'. 29 Participating in the work of redemption, the Virgin expresses the human feeling of sorrows in a comprehensible and accessible way. Margery, through sharing in her experience, learns the mystery of the Redemption and increases in the knowledge of the love of God. The Virgin is an instrument mediating the sacrifice into the fruits of passion and compassion: Margery learns the pain of the Incarnation, sharpens her sense of penitence and pursues the life of virtue and love inspired by this experience. The meditation on the Passion thus works in Margery as a catalyst to the experience of love and faith.

3

The Passion meditation signifies a crucial stage in the meditative and contemplative experience by which Margery's life was redeemed. The rest of her meditative experience in the following chapters reflects the renewed spirituality in the new era opened up by knowledge of the Redemption. Margery's focus is now on the joy of union with the divine will, not on the pains of separation from God. Already when she was rescued by Christ from a state of spiritual despair at her second conversion, he declared that the suffering on the cross was undertaken to win forgiveness for human beings and to overcome their separation from God: ' ''I am comyn to pe*, Ihesu Cryst, pat deyd on pe Crosse sufferyng byttyr peynes & passyons for pe" ' (ch. 5, p. 16, lines 3334).

Meditation on the Purification of the Virgin and Candlemas is the first event to be described in the new era of Margery's meditational experience. Enacted in a liturgical ceremony, the feast of Candlemas concludes the Christmas cycle in the liturgical year and it emblematically unites the juxtaposed themes of Nativity and Passion by highlighting the sacrificial and sacramental nature of Christ's birth. The meditation seems to be located here as the prerequisite for the final monologue of Christ in chapter eighty-six. Furthermore the Purification gives an impetus to the soul's union with the divine concretely envisioned by Margery as an earthly wedding ceremony.

29 George R. Keiser, 'The Middle English Planctus Mariae and the Rhetoric of Pathos, in Thomas J. Heffernan, ed., The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville, 1985), p. 183.

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According to Luke's gospel, after the circumcision of the infant Christ, the Virgin goes up to Jerusalem to be purified and to dedicate the first male child to God forty days after his birth, as prescribed by Jewish law; she presented him to the Lord along with a sacrifice of two turtledoves. In the temple was Simeon, an old man who could not die until he had seen the Lord. When the holy family entered the temple, Simeon, receiving the child, is inspired to recite the canticle, the Nunc Dimittis, 'Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace; Because my eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples: A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory to thy people Israel' (Luke 2:2932).30 But Simeon then turns to the Virgin with the sombre words, 'thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed' (Luke 2:35). The sword which pierces the Virgin's heart alludes to the instrument which pierced the side of Christ.

Candlemas thus unfolds layers of allusion to the Redemption of Christ. As Voragine explains: 'it [the feast] is called Purification in relation to the cleansing from sin, and so is called "salvation". It is called Candlemas in relation to illumination by grace, whence the name "light".'31 In the Book, the ritual released in Margery an impulse of internalising the ceremony by intense meditation. Margery is illuminated by spiritual understanding, as if she had been there in her bodily presence to offer 'hyr blisful Son owr Sauyowr' (ch. 82, p. 198, line 4) with our Lady herself. Margery, offering a burning candle, is presenting the incarnate Christ God's love for humanity. Christ is constantly reborn and presented in those who accept Him. This explains why Margery was so moved at participating in the ceremony and driven into holy meditation.

In the context of purification, Candlemas also illuminates medieval concern with physical and spiritual purity, which culminates in the baptismal image of its liturgy. Candlemas is designed to teach the laity to purify themselves throughout their whole life and to show forth the purity of the Virgin and to impress her purity upon the minds of them all.

John Mirk suggests that a woman after childbirth should be purified in the following manner, emulating the Virgin:

yn mynde of pys * processe, when a woman cometh to pe* chyrche-dyrre tyll pe pryst come and cast holy watyr on hyr, and clansup* hur, and so takyth hyr by pe hond, and bryngyth hur to pe chyrche, geuyng hur leue to come to pe chyrch, and to goo to hur husbandys bed. For and scho haue ben at hys bed befor, scho most take hor penance and he, bothe. Perfor* holy chyrch maketh mynde pys day of candel offryng. ze* seen, good men, pat* hyt ys comyn vse to all crysten men forto come to pe chyrche pys day, and bere a candyll yn processyon, as pagh* pay* gedyn bodyly wyth oure lady to chyrch, aftyr offyr wyth hyr yn worschip and high reuerens of hur.32

30 The Douay Rheims Version of the Bible has been used throughout.

31 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Reading on the Saints, vol. I, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, 1993), p. 148.

32 John Mirk, Mirk's Festial: A Collection of Homilies by Johannes Mirkus, ed. T. Erbe, Early English Text Society E.S. 96 (London, 1905), pp. 5859.

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The priest's act of casting holy water on a woman after childbirth signifies an action similar to baptismal cleansing and it is not surprising that this ritual act invites Margery to meditate on the love of God which was revealed to her by Christ, who promised that he would transform sinful humanity into righteous dwellers in heaven through the well of grace of his blood: 'rygth as pow * seyst pe* prest take pe chyld at pe funt-ston & dyppe it in pe watyr & wasch it fro oryginal synne, rygth so xal I wasch pe in my presyows blod fro alle pi* synne' (ch. 14, p. 30, lines 2124). But, along with the sacramental theology, there is a sexual undertone in Mirk's sermon when he preaches on cleansing of a woman with holy water before she goes to her husband's bed after childbirth.

Margery's obsessive concern with physical purity is a constant preoccupation in her meditational experience. In this she reflects a spiritual and moral strain of the late Middle Ages that evolved in the milieu in which 'discussions of sexual behaviour in marriage . . . centered upon the moral dangers inherent in marital intercourse, save for reproduction.'33

Chastity was a virtue specially valued in the wake of Lateran IV, convened by Innocent III in 1215 to enforce the Church's moral reform. The most important decree which affected medieval spiritual life is Omnis Utriusque Sexus, demanding annual confession and communion. This practice accompanies the private inquisition which was to reveal the faults requiring internal and highly subjective acts of the penitent, crucial for the salvation of the soul.34 Among the virtues, chastity of mind and body was highly valued and aspired to by the devout. The desire to become a virgin was a source of great pain for Margery: she boldly wore white, a colour symbolic of purity and chastity; she took vows of chastity with her husband for their souls' sake; but it is literally an impossible ambition after twenty years of marriage and the birth of fourteen children. Post-conversion Margery was constantly struggling with the essential 'incompatibility of sexual activity and sacred power'.35

The Virgin is the supreme example of purity and chastity which Margery desperately strives to embrace. The Purification mirrors the beatitude of heaven in which the Virgin is crowned as the immaculate bride by virtue of her purity. For Margery, after all, the Purification is an icon through which she envisions her own spiritual purification by offering a candle, i.e. Christ, bodily with the Virgin. She participates in Candlemas to come close to sanctity, eliminating the lustful desires and cleansing her body and soul for the ultimate union of her soul with the divine which is elaborated in the context of communion in chapter eighty-six.

In chapter eighty-four, Margery recounts how she has been transformed through the knowledge of the Redemption: she now leads a life of virtue and

33 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), p. 503.

34 Cf. R.N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 2630.

35 Clarissa Atkinson, Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe (Ithaca, 1983), p. 176.

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charity inspired by this knowledge. God ordained her mission of serving others: he sent her to Denny Abbey to comfort the sisters even when a peril of pestilence is raging, as if he were to test her obedience and her capacity for charity. This spiritual conversation of encouraging good service introduces Christ's thanks and praise for Margery, building a prologue for Christ's long final monologue in chapter eighty-six. He thanks her for her service as his mother's handmaid in looking after him from childhood to his death; he praises her for generous charity and intercessory prayers. He then assures her of the credibility of her prophecy which is bestowed upon only the chosen souls. He concludes the conversation with an exhortation to rejoice in her soul as a maiden in this world so that she may show grace to the world.

Chapter eighty-five recapitulates earlier meditations coloured by vivid visual imagination in an awkwardly unsystematised way: Margery mentions an angel bearing the Book of Life; the Lord being scourged; the Lord's body being cut by a knife; the Lord standing so near her that she is able to touch his toes; and the Virgin showing her the infant Christ. These meditations are placed in the period when Christ ravished her spirit and taught her her particular spiritual path. It is also in this period that she had intensely visual meditations on the infancy of Christ in a sympathetic and homely manner. Importantly, Margery notes that the manhood of Christ was the focus of her visual meditations in her early meditative experience. But in her maturity Christ draws her affection into his Godhead:

sche had ben at Rome and Iersalem & suffyrd mech despite & repref for hir wepyng & hir criyng, owr Lord of hys hy mercy drew hir affeccyon in-to hys Godhed, & pat * was mor feruent in lofe & desyr & mor sotyl in vndirstondyng pan* was pe* Manhod. And neuyr-pe-lesse* pe fyr of loue encresyd in hir, & hir vndirstandyng was mor illumynyd & hir deuocyon mor feruent pan it was be-for whyl sche had hir meditacyon & hir contemplacyon only in hys manhod. (ch. 85, p. 209, lines 311)

It is arguable that Margery deliberately includes in the final chapter of Book I these concretely visual meditations to enhance her matured understanding of the incomprehensible Godhead as she makes spiritual progress in her meditations.

At the same time, a Marian perspective is notable in these meditations; she seems identified with the Virgin. The first vision seems to be based on a combined image of the Crucifixion, in which the Virgin sees the breast of her son pierced by a lance, and the Pietà in which she holds his lifeless body: 'owr Lordys body lying be-forn hir, & hys heuyd, as hir thowt, fast be hir wyth hys blissyd face vpward . . . pan cam on wyth a baselard-knyfe to hir syght & kytt pat precyows body al on long in pe brest' (ch. 85, p. 208, lines 610). The second vision, too, evokes the iconography of the Crucifixion; it shows the Virgin watching the cross raised from the ground: 'sche sey owr Lord standyng ryght up ouyr hir so ner pat hir thowt sche toke hys toos in hir hand & felt hem, & to hir felyng it weryn as it had ben very flesch & bon' (ch. 85, p. 208, lines 2124). This also evokes medieval depictions of the Last Judgement in which the Virgin intercedes on behalf of sinners just below the bare feet of Christ in glory. Significantly, in the last of these visions the Virgin shows the infant Christ in a white kerchief which alludes both to the swaddling cloths and burial shroud after the Passion.

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These visions of the Passion viewed from a Marian perspective clearly nurture Margery's meditations on the Passion and compassion.

Christ's final monologue in chapter eighty-six links the rest of Book I with the previous chapters, winds up the juxtaposed reminders of the Nativity and the Passion which run throughout her meditational experience, and points the way to what lies beyond it union with the divine and ultimate hope of salvation. The monologue represents the reward given to a handmaiden of God who has come closer to the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption through meditations.

Christ's final monologue uses the discourse of the Mass and the Athanasian creed. He commends Margery for receiving the eucharist with a company of saints in her soul because they are reliable intercessors and mediators in whose merits she should trust:

I knowe pe * holy thowtys & pe good desyrys pat* pu* hast whan pu* receyuyst me & pe good charite pat pu hast to me in pe tyme pat pu receyuyst my precyows body in-to pi* sowle, and also how pu clepist Mary Mawdelyn in-to pi sowle to wolcomyn me . . . Pu* thynkyst pat sche is worthiest in pi sowle, & most pu trustyst in hir preyerys next my Modyr . . . sche is a ryth gret mene to me for pe in pe blysse of Heuyn . . . pu thynkyst pi sowle so large & so wyde pat pu clepist al pe cowrt of Heuyn in-to pi sowle for to wolcomyn me. I wot ryth wel, dowtyr, what pu seist, 'Comyth alle xij apostelys pat wer so wel belouyd of God in erde & receyuyth zowr* Lord in my sowle.' Also pu preyist Kateryn, Margarete, & alle holy virginys to wolcomyn me in pi sowle. (ch. 86, p. 210, lines 1127)

Interestingly, his words draw on the 'Canon of the Mass' in the Sarum Missal, though they are more homely and naive:

In communion with and reverencing the memory in the first place, of the glorious and ever Virgin Mary . . . As also of thy blessed apostles and martyrs Peter, Paul . . . and of all thy saints; through whose merits and prayers do thou grant that in all things we may be defended by the aid of thy protection;

To us, also, thy sinful servants, who hope in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with thy holy apostles and martyrs . . . with all thy saints, into whose company do thou admit us, we beseech thee, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offenses. (Missal I, 4344, 48)

This meditation on the communion projects the ultimate bliss in heaven which Margery aspires to attain through the help of the saints.

Following this spiritual conversation, Margery sees the Trinity on the cushion in the chamber of her soul: God the Father on the cushion of gold; the Son on the red one; and the Holy Ghost on the one of white which is symbolic of love and purity. This vision signals that the Holy Trinity resides in her soul, recapitulating the words of Christ: 'I sitte in pin* hert & knowe euery thowt pat is perin*' (ch. 77, p. 184, lines 1213).

With this careful preparation, Christ begins the Athanasian creed-style discourse:36

36 Bhattacharji also noticed that this passage 'sounds remarkably like Jesus rehearsing the Athanasian creed.' See Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake, p. 102.

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[P]u * thynkyst pu* maist not worschepyn pe* Fadyr but pu worschep pe Sone, ne pu may not worschep pe Sone but pu worschep pe Holy Gost . . . pu thynkyst pat* eche of pe iij personys in trinite hath pat oper* hath in her Godhed, & so pu beleuyst verily, dowtyr in thy sowle pat per* be iij dyuers personys & oo God in substawnce, & pat eche knowyth pat oper knowyth, & ech may pat oper may, & eche wil pat oper wil. And, dowtyr, pis* is a very feith & a ryght feyth, and pis feith hast pu only of my gyfte. (ch. 86, p. 211, lines 1126)

Having established a true faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, she is now fully in accord with the will of God, who says: 'pu hast gret cawse to louyn me ryth wel & to geuyn me al holy pin* hert pat I may fully restyn perin* as I wil my-self, for zyf* pu suffyr me, dowtyr, to restyn in pi* sowle in erthe, beleue it ryght wel pat pu schalt restyn wyth me in Heuyn wyth-owtyn end' (ch. 86, p. 211, lines 2731).

Furthermore, the discourse on the Trinity is linked with the sacrament of the eucharist through the concluding doxology of the eucharistic prayer in the Canon of the Mass: 'Through + him, and with + him, and in + him, all honour and glory are unto thee, God the Father al+mighty, in the unity of the Holy + Ghost' (Missal I, 48). It is the grace of the Trinity that unites the human soul with God through the eucharist, in which Christ remains bodily present.

Christ continues to teach her about her response to the eucharist:

haue pu no wondyr pow* pu wepe sor whan pu art howselyd & receyuyst my blissyd body in forme of breed, for pu preyist to me a-forn er pu be howselyd, seying to me in thy mende, 'As wistly, Lord, as pu louyst me, make me clene fro al synne & zeue* me grace to receyue pi precyows body worthily wyth al maner of worschep & reuerens. (ch. 86, p. 211, lines 3238)

Participants, when receiving his body, must cleanse their hearts through contrition, for holy communion is the daily reenactment of his Passion as the memory of Christ's love for humanity.

The collect said at thanksgiving after Mass emphasises this bodily and spiritual purity: 'Kindle our reins and our hearts, O Lord, with the fire of the Holy Ghost, that we may serve thee with a chaste body, and please thee with a clean heart' (Missal I, 57). There is also a similar undertone in the prayers to be said after Mass:

Lord, be merciful unto my sins through the partaking of thy body and blood; for thou hast spoken, saying, Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him . . . I humbly beseech thee, to create a clean heart in me, and to renew a right spirit within me . . . cleanse me from all the snares and vices of the devil, that I may be worthy to be a partaker of heavenly joys. (Missal I, 61)

As spiritual purity is repeatedly emphasised in the Canon of the Mass, purification is the prerequisite for the communion. Christian mysticism has long inter-preted holy communion as the spiritual marriage of the human soul to God through the sacrament of the eucharist. The union of man's soul with God is often elaborated with matrimonial imagery and Margery finds in this imagery a concrete and tactile image of union with Christ at communion:

drede pe not, dowtyr, thow pe pepyl wondyr why pu wepist so sor whan pu receyuyst me . . . but pu seest wel, dowtyr, pi-self*, pat whan pu hast receyuid me

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in-to thy sowle pu * art in pees & in qwyete & sobbist no lengar . . . pu wost wel pat* I far lyke an husbond pat schulde weddyn a wyfe . . . it farith be-twix pe* & me, for pu hast euery weke specialy on pe Sunday gret feer & drede in thy sowle how pu maist best be sekyr of my lofe, & wyth gret reuerens & holy drede how pu maist best receyuyn me to pe saluacyon of thy sowle wyth al maner of mekenes, lownes, & charite, as any lady in pis* werld is besy to receyue hir husbond whan he comyth horn & hath be long fro hir. (ch. 86, p. 213, lines 1133)

Furthermore, the theme of spiritual espousal illuminates the spiritual fecundity which Christ mentions in his thanks to her charity: 'pu* makyst euery Cristen man & woman pi* childe in pi sowle for pe tyme & woldist han as meche grace for hem as for pin* owyn childeryn' (ch. 86, p. 212, lines 79). The spiritual union through communion confers on Margery a new identity as a spiritual mother in the Christian community an identity which has grown out of her experience of sharing the compassion of the Virgin and extending this compassion to include all suffering people.

Chapter eighty-six is thus the culmination of the teaching of Christ which ushers in the hope of the bliss in heaven. In concluding the long monologue, Christ assures her of the reward in heaven, with the beatific vision of heaven recapitulating the pledge of salvation she received early in her life:

For pes* & for alle per* good thowtys & good dedys pat pu hast thowt in my name & wrowt for my lofe pu xalt haue wyth me & wyth my Modyr, wyth myn holy awnge-lys, wyth myn apostelys . . . & wyth alle myn holy seyntys al maner joye & blysse lestyng wyth-owtyn ende. (ch. 86, p. 214, lines 713)

This beatific vision of the heavenly union of the soul with God seems modelled on the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin which bring to a glorious end the Virgin's pilgrimage as the bride of Christ.37 The Virgin serves as the channel of grace through which flow Margery's sentiments about the vision of salvation and eternal union. The Virgin, thus, guides Margery's route to God and inspires her to envision the union with the divine.

In the following chapter, she reveals that holy dalliance which continued for twenty-five years through long exercise in quietness. The holy dalliance, viewed in retrospect, stabilised her faith and increased her meekness and charity. She also mentions the holy conversation with the Virgin and saints who comfort her in her sickness and inform her how she should best please God. This conversation is almost identical with the one she confided to the vicar of St Stephen's in the beginning of her renewed religious career (chapter seventeen), thus implying that she has enjoyed her privileged way of meditation since then. The holy dalliance with Christ and the teaching by the Virgin and saints are synonymous with the manner of devotional life bestowed on chosen souls who are assiduous in contemplative experience. This experience allows Margery to make a gradual shift from her intense focus on the flesh of Christ as a way of entry into a relationship with God to a more sophisticated, abstract way of building that relationship an

37 See p. 174 above.

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illuminated stage in which she finds heaven in the presence of God and embraces the joy of praising God.

This stage recounted in the final chapters is attained through meditation on Christ's humanity as is fitting to simple souls such as Margery and always recommended as an exercise for those wishing to advance their spiritual life. The love of God is known through his humanity; the vulnerable, frail baby Jesus illuminates the mystery of the Incarnation and signals the hope of spiritual rebirth. It is through the devotion to the Virgin and Christ that Margery is awakened to the knowledge of the Redemption. And it is this experience that Margery celebrates and commemorates as she was increasingly illuminated through the meditations given by the love of God.

As we have seen, each meditation is an important event within her spiritual life; the meditations are actual steps by which she grows closer to God. They occupy a central place in her spiritual development and it is these internal and imaginative thoughts in which she performed loving services, for the infant Christ, and out of compassion for the Virgin, that fosters the growth of her understanding of the nature of God which is manifested in the life she leads. And it is through the juxtaposition of birth and death focused in the Nativity and Passion that Margery looked back over her life and evolved the coherent structure of the Book.

I acknowledge my gratitude to Marion Glasscoe for her advice on my work and the Inamori Foundation, Kyoto, Japan, for a grant in support of this research.

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'In the Blessid Vyne3erd * of Oure Holy Saueour':

Female Religious Readers and Textual Reception in the Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Orcherd of Syon

C. Annette Grise

The early fifteenth-century poem Why I Can't be a Nun^1 recounts the story of Katherine, a young girl who desires to become a nun against her father's wishes.2 After praying to Christ for a solution to her difficulty, she has a dream vision in which she visits a nunnery with her guide, Experience, who exposes the corruption and sin to be found there. This dream-vision nunnery is peopled with allegorical female religious such as Pride, Hypocrisy, Envy and Disobedience, who have turned out (or caused to be ignored) those positive attributes who attempted to inhabit the nunnery, such as Meekness, Chastity, Patience, and Charity.3 What troubles Katherine the most is when she discovers that Disobedience is prioress:

And than me thowght alle was schent,

For sugettys schulde evyr be dylygent

Bothe in worde, in wylle, and dede,

To plese her souereynes wyth gode entent,

And hem obey, ellys God forbede.

And of alle the defawtes that I cowde se

Thorowgh schewyng of Experience,

1 Imperfectly preserved in British Library MS Cotton Vespasian D.ix (fols 177r182v, 190rv). See James Dean, Six Ecclesiastical Satires (Kalamazoo, 1991), pp. 22746, and Frederick J. Furnivall, Early English Poems (Berlin, 1862; repr. New York, 1974), pp. 13948, for editions of this poem. All references will be to Dean's edition.

2 Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries c.1275 to 1535 (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 54549, and V.J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1971), pp. 23536, have included discussions of the poem and late medieval anti-monasticism.

3Why I Can't Be a Nun, coming from the continental chanson de nonne tradition, also draws on the tradition of the secular dream vision, and can be compared to other late medieval dream poems such as the Assembly of Ladies and the Flower and the Leaf; see D.A. Pearsall, ed., The Floure and the Leafe and the Assembly of Ladies (London, 1962) both of which also use courtly female narrators and allegorical figures. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost, ed. N.F. Blake, Middle English Religious Prose (London, 1972), pp. 88102), based on the French Abbaye du Saint Esprit, also describes a monastery filled with allegorical figures, yet this late fourteenth-century treatise uses the monastic allegory to positive ends, urging lay-people to consider their spiritual lives in terms of an inner monastery which they can carry with them.

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Hyt was one of the most that grevyd me,

The wantyng of obedyence.

For hyt schulde be chese in consciens,

Alle relygius rule wytnesseth the same,

And when I saw her in no reverence,

I myght no lenger abyde for schame,

For they setten not by obedyence,

And than for wo myne hert gan blede,

Ne they hadden her in no reverence,

But few or none to her toke hede.   (lines 27591)

The satire's strong message that monastic corruption was widespread and was turning away the right sorts of people while attracting the wrong ones echoed a commonly held sentiment in the late medieval period. Geoffrey Chaucer earlier had satirised the Prioress and the Monk in the Canterbury Tales, and the anti-clericalism and suspicion of monasticism exhibited by the Lollards^4 from the late fourteenth century onwards experienced a revival in the early sixteenth century with the movement toward lay religious initiatives. For example, the humanist Erasmus included in his Colloquies (c. 1526)5 a denunciation of the religious life, in which a young woman (who also is named Katherine) is persuaded not to join a nunnery. These kinds of popular opinions and suspicions about female religious circulated throughout the fifteenth and into the early sixteenth centuries.6 In the years leading up to the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII and his supporters could make use of these kinds of criticisms of monastic corruption and luxuria to argue for the benefits of disendowment.

Why I Can't Be a Nun does not take its criticism as far as Erasmus' humanist rhetoric, for when this Katherine awakes from her vision she still holds out hope for correction. She proceeds to rail against hypocrisy and offers the lives of female saints (such as Scolastica, Bridget, Audrey and Sexburgh) as appropriate models for religious life. She begins her speech with the following exclamation:

For nun wold I neuere be none,

For such defawtes that I have see,

But yyf they myght amendyd be,

And forsake her syn both day and nyght.

God yyf me grace that day to se,

And ellys hyt wolle not be a ryght.   (lines 33035)7

4 See Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), and Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation (Oxford, 1988), for the essential discussions of Lollardy. Shannon McSheffery has written more recently on Lollardy, gender, and religion, in Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities (Philadelphia, 1995).

5 Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, pp. 54952, describes Erasmus' Colloquies and their humanist rejection of monasticism.

6 Power's chapter on 'The Nun in Medieval Literature', ibid., pp. 499562, is a well-researched survey of many popular tales, songs, and satires about nuns from across medieval Europe.

7 Dean's editorial punctuation in this passage obscures the meaning. I have substituted a

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Though Katherine here proclaims 'I would never want to be a nun unless they change their ways' there were still many people in late medieval England who pursued a religious vocation. It was around the time that this poem was written that the last medieval monastic foundation containing a female community was established. In 1415 Henry V founded Syon Abbey, a double house of the Order of St Saviour, commonly known as the Bridgettine order and established in 1370 by Bridget of Sweden (130373).8 Bridget (canonised 1391) had gained recognition as a prophet, visionary and reformer; her Order reflected a commitment to the celebration by female religious of God and his mother, supported by a small community of monks. It was in the face of growing criticism of monastic Orders in the fourteenth century that Bridget established her Order. In fact, she considered her Order part of this criticism, a new start that would correct many of the ills reputed to be found in other Orders. Carrying on after her death in 1373, the Bridgettine Order committed itself to peace and asceticism and rose in popularity in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, establishing houses across Europe. Henry anticipated that his founding of Syon in England would participate in the popularity of this new reforming order. The monastery enjoyed a high level of prominence and importance in England that did not fade with Henry V's death; rather, it continued to be well connected to prosperous English families until its suppression in 1539.

Syon Abbey's high profile and excellent reputation countered the kinds of anti-monastic rhetoric expressed in Why I Can't Be a Nun. Indeed, Syon was not only a good example of the monastic life, but in the devotional treatises produced for this community the Syon nuns were portrayed as ideal exemplars of the religious life, on which other vernacular readers were urged to model themselves.9 One early example of Syon's influence on late medieval English culture comes from a poem by John Audelay, a chaplain at the monastery of Haghmond (Shrewsbury, Shropshire). The Salutacio Sancte Birgitte (or Salutation to St Bridget), likely written c.1426, is a verse rendering (206 lines) of Bridget's life

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comma for his period after see (line 331) and changed his comma after nyght (line 333) to a period, so that the passage reads: 'For I would never want to be a nun,/ Because of such faults that I have seen,/ Unless [But yyf] they might be amended,/ And forsake their sin both day and night' (lines 33033) [my italics].

8 See David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. II (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 17581; Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 91131; John Blunt, ed., The Myroure of oure Ladye, Early English Text Society, E.S. 19 (London, 1873; repr. New York, 1981), pp. xixix; G.J. Aungier The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery (London, 1840), and Christopher de Hamel, The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and their Peregrinations after the Reformation (Roxburghe Club, 1991), for the major discussions of the foundation of Syon.

9 For example, Martha Driver has examined the influence of Bridgettine woodcuts in printed devotional treatises of the late medieval period in 'Nuns as Patrons, Artists, Readers: Bridgettine Woodcuts in Printed Books Produced for the English Market', Art Into Life: Collected Papers from the Kresge Art Museum Medieval Symposia, ed. Carol Garrett Fisher and Kathleen L. Scott (East Lansing, 1995), pp. 23768.

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which concludes with an account of the foundation of Syon Abbey by '[o]ur gracious kyng Herre pe * V' (1. 137).10 This account emphasises the holiness of the religious at Syon, particularly their devotion and austerity, as the following stanzas illustrate:

Was neuer a holeer order preueleged in no plas

Fore to red al pe rollis of relegyown.

Fore pai* schal neuer schew chappe ny fygure of face;

Ne with-out lycence or leue speche spekepai non,

Bot pe warden be present.

Noper* fader ne moder ne no mon leuyng

Schal speke to hom no erple* pyng*

With-out per* warden be per hereng

& know bop* here entent.

Redle pei* rysun with gret reuerens oneptes* out of hure rest,

Devoutele with deuocion here seruys to syng & say,

& crucefyen here caren & slen here fleschele lust

With priue prayers & penans pe priynce of heuen to pay.

Deuotle day & nizt*

Pai* prayn to god specialy

Fore al pat* pai here leuyng be

In masse, in matyns, in memore,

To pat lord of myzt*.   (lines 15370)

While Audelay praises the members' obedience, modesty, and silence in the first stanza, in the second stanza he moves on to commend their proper, modest use of voice and body: in their vocal praise of God, and in their prayers and penance. This endorsement of Syon by a chaplain from the West Midlands is an indication of how widespread Bridget of Sweden's cult became in late medieval England, and how quickly Syon Abbey gained a place in England for its exemplary religious qualities.11

Audelay's poem is not the only example of a devotional piece of the late medieval period to attempt to praise, support and influence the position of Syon abbey in the larger community. Syon (with the neighbouring Carthusian house Sheen) developed into a thriving centre for textual production in late medieval England, while the Syon nuns became a reading community and target audience for the vernacular devotional manuscripts produced there. The anchoresses of the early Middle English Ancrene Riwle, and Margaret Kirkeby, the disciple of the fourteenth-century mystic, Richard Rolle, (and the original reader of his Form of Living) are forerunners to the fifteenth-century Syon nuns, who in their turn became a significant reading audience for the vernacular devotional tradition in

10 Oxford, Bodleian MS Douce 302 (fols 25r26r) the only extant collection of Audelay's poems. William Patterson Cumming has included this poem in the Introduction to his edition of The Revelations of Saint Birgitta, Early English Text Society O.S. 178 (London, 1929), pp. xxxixxxvii.

11 See F.R. Johnston, 'The English Cult of St Bridget of Sweden', Analecta Bollandia ciii (1985), pp. 7593, for further discussion.

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late medieval England.12 The function of such readers in this tradition was simultaneously to be the raison d'être of the vernacular devotional text and also the pretext for contributing to this tradition, which almost always found its way beyond the original audience. The best-known vernacular devotional texts to come from Syon are the Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Orcherd of Syon.13 The Myroure of Oure Ladye survives in one manuscript that at some point was divided in two and now is variously preserved in Aberdeen, and Oxford.14 The Myroure is a Middle English translation of and commentary on the Bridgettine Office devoted to the Virgin, which was dictated to Bridget of Sweden by divine revelation. This translation and commentary is prefaced by two treatises, one on the Office and the other on reading, which outline the proper devotional practices for the Syon nuns. The final section of the text details the basic Christian teachings with which the nuns should be familiar and even includes an astronomy lecture, explaining such matters as where the heavens are in relation to the earth. The Myroure was printed in 1530 by Richard Fawkes,15 perhaps almost a century after it was first written, and likely was intended to reach a larger audience in this printed edition.

The printing history of the Myroure bears some resemblance to that of the Orcherd of Syon,16 for the latter was also printed in the first half of the sixteenth

12 David Bell's What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo, 1995), is an excellent academic resource concerning the manuscripts owned by late medieval nuns, including those at Syon. The excellent research of Roger Ellis, Christopher de Hamel and Ann M. Hutchison has provided detailed evidence concerning Syon as a site for the production and reception of devotional texts: Roger Ellis, Viderunt eam Filie Syon: The Spirituality of the English House of a Medieval Contemplative Order from its Beginnings to the Present Day, Analecta Cartusiana LXVIII, vol. II (Salzburg, 1984); de Hamel, The Library of the Bridgettine Nuns, op. cit., in n. 8; Ann Hutchison, 'Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the Late Medieval Household', De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 21528; 'What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from the English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey', Mediaeval Studies lvii (1995), pp. 20522.

13 Blunt, ed., The Myroure of Oure Ladye, op. cit., in n. 8, hereafter Myroure; Phyllis Hodgson and Gabriel M. Liegey, eds, The Orcherd of Syon, Early English Text Society, O.S. 258 (London, 1966), hereafter Orcherd.

14 Aberdeen University Library MS 134 and Oxford, Bodleian MS Rawlinson C.941. For details of provenance, see Blunt in Myroure, pp. viixi, which is corrected and updated by Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 17576, and Hutchison 'Devotional Reading', p. 220; 'What the Nuns Read', p. 208.

15Short Title Catalogue of English Books 14751640, first compiled A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave, 2nd rev. edn begun by W.A. Jackson and F.S. Ferguson, completed by Katherine Pantzar, vol. I (London, 1986), vol. II (London, 1976), 17542 (S.T.C.)

16 For provenance, see Orcherd, pp. vvi; Mary Denise, 'The Orcherd of Syon: An Introduction', Traditio xiv (1959), pp. 26994, and Bell, What Nuns Read, pp. 19293. The Orcherd is an English translation of Raymond of Capua's Latin version of Catherine's Dialogues: see Denise, p. 291, for specific details of the textual history as she has pieced it together. As well, the writing of the text has been attributed to Dan Jamys,

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century, in this case by Wynkyn de Worde (1519).17 The Orcherd is a Middle English translation of the Dialogo of Catherine of Siena (134780), a fourteenth-century Italian mystic whose conversations with the Godhead were recorded and disseminated throughout Western Europe. There are three extant manuscripts of the Orcherd: London, British Library MS Harleian 3432; Cambridge, St John's Library MS 75; and New York, Pierpont Morgan MS 162. The first two manuscript versions date from the early history of Syon Abbey, while the third is from the second half of the fifteenth century. The printed edition of 1519 suggested that the manuscript version of the Orcherd was old by that time and had been forgotten, as is relayed in the colophon:

a ryght worshypfull and deuoute gentylman, Mayster Rychard Sutton, esquyer, steward of the holy monastery of Syon, fyndynge this ghostely tresure (these dyologes and reuelacyons of the newe seraphycall spouse of cryste, seynt Katheryne of Sene) in a corner by it selfe, wyllynge of his grete charyte it sholde come to lyghte that many relygyous and deuoute soules myght be releued and haue conforte therby, he hath caused at his greate coste this booke to be prynted, trustinge that moche fruyte shall come therof to all pat * shall rede or here of it. (fol. B iii v)

Richard Sutton is celebrated as the hero of this brief account for saving this 'ghostely tresure' from obscurity. His title as steward at Syon affords him a certain spiritual authority (as his secular titles of gentleman and esquire display temporal authority) that assisted this printed edition in finding a new audience of both gentlemen and gentlewomen, or those who aspired to their tastes outside the monastery.18 It is likely that the motivation behind the printed edition of the Myroure was similarly to provide 'conforte' to a wider audience than that found at Syon. The underlying aim appears to be to provide the wider audience of printed devotional texts with public, officially sanctioned treatments of Syon and its inhabitants. While readers could then satisfy their curiosity about the devotional character of Syon by participating vicariously in it, Syon in return increased its public reputation and promoted the house, the Order, and its founder. The printers, as well, benefited from the growing lay interest in devotions and from Syon's ability to draw an audience. From this perspective, it appears that Syon and its nuns provided a counter-illustration to those who lamented and criticised the decline in morals and standards at monasteries. This counter-illustration articulated in prefatory materials to the devotional texts written for and about them performed two related functions: it helped support the vernacular devotional tradition and also enhanced Syon's standing in late medieval England. To itself and to late medieval English society, the female

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who is mentioned in the epilogue, but it is more likely he was an assistant; Denise, pp. 29192.

17S.T.C. 4815.

18 Jennifer Summit in 'William Caxton, Margaret Beaufort and the Romance of Female Patronage', Women, The Book and the Worldly, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 15166, considers more closely one example of patronage by the upper class of printed texts, and the ways printers could use such patrons in targeting their audience (which did not always only include members of the upper class).

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community at Syon stood for the kinds of nunneries the dreamer Katherine in Why I Can't Be a Nun yearned to find and join.

The Myroure and Orcherd are typical of the kinds of devotional texts available to late medieval female religious in England. Middle English translations of continental visionaries had gained in popularity since the late fourteenth century, and the cult of Bridget of Sweden and her Order touched many devout people in late medieval England. Margery Kempe, for example, was greatly influenced by Bridget's life and visions, for Bridget (as Kempe was after her) had been a wife and mother before taking religious vows and receiving visions. These texts impress upon their readers the exemplary nature of holy women, such as Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and the Virgin Mary. In the case of the Myroure, the reader gains knowledge about the Office which Bridget instituted for her Order; in the case of the Orcherd, the reader learns about Catherine of Siena's conversations with Christ. But these texts do not stop there. These versions also establish the exemplary nature of the original and ideal readers the Syon nun in the introductory and concluding materials of the two texts. The writers of the Myroure and the Orcherd idealise the Syon nun in order to provide direction for readers in how to rule their lives, and how to read these texts. Both texts describe a distinct vision of who the Syon nun is. In the Myroure she is humble, meek, and submissive to the requirements of all hierarchies, be they political, ecclesiastical or textual. In the Orcherd we have a Syon nun who is studious, serious, peaceful and gracious. The fifteenth-century manuscripts were written specifically with this audience in mind, yet their public, official representation of the Syon female community suggests that they may have been written at least with the understanding that Syon had a responsibility to present itself to the larger community. This sense of communicating a public presence raises the possibility that these texts were not meant only to be read inside the monastery, and that readers outside Syon could also comprise an audience for these texts, as they are invited to be in the printed editions. The idealised portraits of the Syon nuns in the Myroure and Orcherd enforce the monastic ideals of humility, obedience and chastity in order to regulate religious practices inside the monastery. Yet they also serve a function outside Syon Abbey, by illustrating ideals suitable for emulation by other readers, ideals which attempt to regulate devotional practices and especially vernacular reading practices in the growing audience for the devotional literary tradition in late medieval England.

The prefatory materials of the Myroure quickly establish the original readers for this work, addressing the specialised audience of the Bridgettine nuns from the beginning:

Viderunt eam filie syon, et beatissimam predicauerunt.19 These wordes are writen in holy scrypture & are thus to say in englyshe, The doughtres of Syon haue sene hyr (that is to say oure lady) and they haue shewed hyr most blessyd. (p. 1)20

19 Song of Songs 6:9.

20 All references to the Myroure come from Blunt, Myroure, which relies upon the printed

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The writer goes on to say that although the 'filie syon' are actually all Christians, that is, all those who believe in Holy Church, they are more particularly the nuns of Syon, who are the daughters of both the literal and figurative Syon. This point is reinforced later in the text, at the end of the explanation of the Sunday service, where the writer states that the servants and handmaidens in the 'O regis pacifici' are 'not onely the systerne and bretherne of thys order. but all cristen men and women. for youre seruyce ys ordeyned to be sayde in the parsone of all holy chyrche. as I haue sayde often before' (p. 171). These true daughters of Syon are the original readers of this text, yet they are presented in these prologues (and indeed throughout the text) as idealised figures for the religious life: meek, obedient, contemplating (and thus, in their cloister, distanced from) the evils of the transitory world and approaching the bliss of heaven. The implied reader is envisioned as approaching this text and in fact her whole life with a properly devout stance of humility and obedience to God, the Rule, and their abbess (who represents temporally the divine hierarchies):

ye ought to be doughtres of commaundement by meke & redy obedyence to the byddynges of god, and of youre reule, and of youre soueraynes, ye ought also to be doughtres of byholdynge by contemplacyon & specyally in byholdyne of youre owne wretchednes, and of youre vnkyndenes agenste god, and of the charite and goodnes that he dothe to you. (p. 2)

The Syon nun is idealised as humble, devout, and obedient on all levels.

The motivation for this obedience is to make the Syon nuns' worship of Mary more sincere and acceptable, as the prologue explains: '[a]nd yif ye be thus good doughtres of Syon by meke obedyence and by trew beholdyng of these thynges: then ar ye well dysposyd the more worthyly to prayse oure moste gloryous lady' (p. 2). This stance of obedience is of the utmost importance when performing the Office. By reading this vernacular translation and commentary, the Syon nuns will understand their Latin Office better and thus will perform it more successfully:

But forasmoche as many of you, though ye can synge and rede, yet ye can not se what the meanynge therof ys: therefore to the onely worshyp and praysyng of oure lord Iesu cryste and of hys moste mercyfull mother oure lady and to the ghostly comforte and profyte of youre soules I haue drawen your legende and all your seruyce in to Englyshe, that ye shulde se by the vnderstondyng therof, how worthy and holy praysynge of oure gloryous Lady is contente therin, & the more deuoutely and knowyngly synge yt & rede yt and say yt to her worshyp. (pp. 23)

This explanation describes how the text should be used: it will instruct the reader to have a better understanding of her religious duties and will also improve her devotional practices, making her a better religious. As the prologue states, in case the reader still does not understand, 'the maner how ye shall prayse oure mooste reuerende and gloryous Lady . . . [is] openely, mekely, and deuoutly' (p. 6). These

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edition since the second half of the manuscript had not been discovered when Blunt made his edition. Ann Hutchison is currently producing a new edition of the Myroure.

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qualities openness, meekness and devoutness are precisely those which appeared to be lacking in the dream nunnery Katherine visited. The prologues to the Myroure emphasise these characteristics repeatedly in order to prepare the reader to adopt the appropriate stance for her religious observances and the texts she reads.

The Myroure employs two tropes to visualise the attitude of obedience and devoutness which it exhorts the reader to maintain when she performs the Office and reads the Myroure. In the treatise 'Of Diuine Seruyce', which follows the prologues, the scribe explains that an angel dictated the Bridgettine Office for the Virgin Mary to Bridget of Sweden while she was living in Rome. As part of this explanation we learn that the angel who dictated the lessons, after finishing his task with Bridget, described the symbolic function that this Marian Office would hold: 'lo he sayth I have shapen a cote to the quiche of heuen the mother of God. Therfore sowe ye yt together as ye may' (p. 19). The Bridgettines are therefore involved in the domestic female occupation of sewing a coat, but this project is turned to spiritual ends for it is sewn from their praise and worship for Christ's mother. The Myroure continues:

O how glad ought ye to be for to sowe on this heuenly cote, how dylygente and deuoute oughte ye to be to rede, and to here this holy legend. How depe and inwarde comforte shulde yt be to you, to synge, and rede & say thys holy seruyce, wherof the holy goste hymselfe is auctoure and maker, that hath gyuen yt to you by so holy meanes, as by his holy aungell, by holy saynt Byrgytte. (p. 19)

In this passage, the Office becomes a coat worn by the Virgin Mary, adorned and lovingly crafted by the Syon nuns. By likening their vocational occupation that is, to praise God (and Mary) by their song, as their founder ordained^21 to the traditional female occupation of sewing, the Myroure familian'ses their unique Office^22 and envisions it as an elegant, richly decorative effort, creating something tangible of the words she reads and sings day in and day out. This description of the Bridgettine Office depicts it as something that is complementary to

21 'An other thynge that byndeth you to these holy houres is your foundacyon, for your founder hath gyuen you your lyuelode, that you lyue by for that cause specyally that ye shulde prayse god in lays holy seruyce in these seuen howres. And therefore ye ar bounde of deuty and of ryghte, syth ye take the lyuclode; to satysfye them after theyr entente and els ye ar gylty of wronge wythholdynge of youre dette' (Myroure, pp. 2122).

22 See Suzanne Bunkers for a discussion of modern feminist depictions of women's writing as sewing, quiltwork and other traditionally female occupations: '[a]s Showalter puts it, all are acts of ''scarcity, ingenuity, conservation and order". All are delicate forms of skilled labor that function to preserve the fabric of women's experiences, regardless of whether the artistry of the creator's work is visible'. 'What Do women REALLY Mean? Thoughts on Women's Diaries and Lives', The Intimate Critique: Autobiographical Literary Criticism, ed. Diana P. Freedman et al. (Durham and London, 1993), p. 216. See also Margaret Miles' introduction to the collection of essays, Immaculate and Powerful, in which she equates women's creativity with quilt-making: Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Reality, ed. Clarissa W. Atkinson et al. (Boston, 1985), pp. 34.

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other religious Offices and of great honour to the Virgin Mary: they are handmaids to the Lord's handmaid.

Another trope employed in the Myroure also outlines the proper stance of humility and obedience the Syon nun is to adopt, but in this case it concerns not the Latin Office but the Middle English translation she is reading. The title of the Myroure of Oure Ladye first alerts the reader to the use of the mirror trope, which is then explained in the prologues.23 Herbert Grabes defines one major characteristic of medieval mirrors as those 'designed to have a didactic effect through the presentation of positive models' and suggests that 'very many of these writings are directed at readers of a certain age-group, class, or other social, intellectual or professional rank, and this categorization is for the most part clear from the title'.24 The Myroure is directed toward a very specific group of women, the female religious community at Syon. The writer reveals his intentions of how the text should be read by this particular audience by making an important correlation, in the image of the mirror, between the text as object and the life of the Virgin Mary:

And for as muche as ye may se in this boke as in a myrroure, the praysynges and worthines of oure moste exceilente lady therfore I name it. Oure ladyes myroure. Not that oure lady shulde se herselfe therin, but that ye shulde se her therin as in a myroure, and so be styred the more devoutly to prayse her, & to knowe where ye fayle in her praysinges, and to amende: tyll ye may come there ye may se her face to face wythouten eny myrroure. (p. 4)

In this passage the reader is told to see the Virgin Mary reflected and depicted in the text, just as a mirror reflects and depicts a face. In this mirror-book,25 the reader is told to look for the Virgin Mary and to take Mary as an exemplar that will stir her to greater devotion and praise. Mary's face becomes a site of contemplation, a locus for the reader's meditation and thoughts. The writer exhorts the sisters:

lyfte up the eyen of youre soulles towarde youre souerayne lady, and often & bysely loke and study in this her myrroure. and not lyghtely but contynually, not hastynge to rede that ye may se and vnderstonde her holy seruice and how ye may serue her therwyth to her most plesaunce that lyke as it goyth dayly throughe your mouthes so let yt synke & sauoure contynually in youre bartes. (p. 4)

23 On the use of the mirror trope in the Middle Ages see James I. Wimsatt, Allegory, and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature (New York, 1970); Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance, trans. Gordon Collier (Cambridge, 1982); and Anna Torti, The Glass of Form: Mirroring Structures from Chaucer to Skelton (Cambridge, 1991). See Ritamary Bradley, 'The Speculum Image in Medieval Mystical Writers', Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium III, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 927, for a discussion of the uses of the mirror in Middle English mystical texts.

24 Grabes, Mutable Glass, pp. 4849.

25 See ibid, pp. 93ff, for a discussion of the book as mirror.

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In this image the face of Mary replaces the text as written object, so that the vernacular word is translated into pictorial, meditational form, a form that is an appropriate one for the devout.26

The purpose of the study of Mary's face in the mirror is to increase the reader's knowledge of the Office and thus to increase her devotion to Mary and Christ. Divine worship is depicted as an active, continual process: sewing a coat, looking in a mirror and striving to emulate the reflection of another face. Yet these activities define a strict relationship between the self and the action being performed, which is then paralleled by the relationship between the reader and the text. The Syon nun submits herself to an upper-class domestic realm where women sew, look at themselves in mirrors and read. But those actions are turned to different ends. For example, the Myroure increases the reader's understanding so that she can apply this new knowledge to a more devout performance of her Office; her reading supplements and enhances her devotion, and specifically, her saying of the Office. In this way, the vernacular aids the reader in understanding her Latin Office, and brings her to a closer relationship to Mary and Christ, but only if she labours continually to model herself on Mary and to approach her Office with due devotion, humility and sincerity.

In the Orcherd of Syon reading and devotions are still an active occupation, but the Syon readers are not engaged in sewing a coat or gazing in a mirror; instead they are depicted as walking in an orchard. The Syon female community is addressed at the start as inhabiting a monastery devoted to study and prayer:

[r]eligyous modir & deuoute sustren clepid & chosen bisily to laboure at the hous of Syon, in the blessid vynezerd * of oure holy Saueour, his parfite rewle which hym-silfe enditide to kepe contynuly to zoure* lyues eende vndir pe* gouernaunce of oure blessid Lady, lair seruise oonli to rede and to synge as hir special seruaunties and douztren*, and sche zoure moost souereyne lady and cheef abbes of hir holy couent.

(p. 1)

In order to assist in their labours, the conclusion of the second prologue offers this text for 'zoure gostly lernynge, and confortable recreacion' (p. 17). The two activities, learning and recreation, are united in the Orcherd, and are considered of prime importance for the Syon nun: she is both a studious female religious and also a leisured upper-class woman who desires both to be taught and to be delighted by what she reads. Just as the Myroure also emphasises courtly pursuits for women which take place in the domestic sphere, in the Orcherd the writer brings forth an image of the Syon nun that suggests her enclosure in the domesticated space of the monastery.27 In this confined, gendered space, her activities are seen as partaking of two opposing (but not mutually exclusive) elements: study and prayer, and recreation. This vineyard of Syon is idealised as a place of

26 'For those who cannot read, mirrors are in the form of visible examples, both positive and negative', Bradley, 'Speculum Image', p. 16.

27 Mark Wigley provides an excellent discussion of late medieval gender and domestic space, in 'Untitled: The Housing of Gender', Sexuality and Space, ed. Beatriz Colomina (New York, 1992), pp. 32789.

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labour and enjoyment by the chosen of God. Such an image serves to strengthen Syon's place in the community as a worthwhile and necessary enterprise.

The use of the orchard allegory is a striking and effective device. In the opening sentences of the text, the writer is careful to place the Syon nuns 'in the blessid vynezerd * of oure holy Saueour' (p. 1) and he follows up a few sentences later by stating

'pis* book of reuelaciouns as for zoure* goostly cumfort to zou* I clepe it a fruytful orcherd. This orcherd by Goddis grace my wil is to deuyde into scuene parties, and ech party into fyue chapitres, as ze mowe se and rede in pe* kalender folowynge'.

(p. 1)

From the start the orchard allegory directs how the reader approaches this text. In this allegorical framework the text becomes an orchard, with the writer as gardener and the reader as the Syon nun traversing the grounds:

Therfore, religiouse sustren, in pis* goostli orcherd at resonable tyme ordeyned, I wole pat* ze* disporte pou* & walke aboute where ze welch wib zoure mynde & resoun, in what aleye zou lyke, and namely here ze sauouren best, as ze ben disposid. ze mowe chese if ze wole of xxxv aleyes where ze wolen walke, pat is to seye, of xxxv chapitres, o tyme in con, anopir* tyme in anobir. But first my counceil is clerely to assaye & serche pe hool orcherd, and taste of sich fruyt and herbis resonably affir zoure affeccioun, & what zou likep* best, aftirward chewe it wel & ete pereof* for heelpe* of zoure soule. (p. 1)

In setting up the chapter divisions of his subject, the writer delineates the allegory of the orchard of Syon, in which the Syon nuns can take the leisure to 'di-sport' themselves in the orchard, implying that reading is the spiritual equivalent to walking in an orchard. Reading was considered a leisure activity for the upper classes^28 but also a necessary part of the religious life: contemplation, study and prayer were of quintessential importance in the life of the Syon nun.

It is likely that the Middle-English translator of the Orcherd may have conceived of using the vineyard as the allegorical framework for his work from reading the Rewyll of Seynt Saueoure, the Middle English translation of the Bridgettine rule, which also begins with a vineyard allegory.29 In the Rewyll, the vineyard allegory does not act as a structural device (as in the Orcherd), but instead it is employed in order to conceptualise and authorise Bridget's new rule as something that will replace the corrupt monastic institutions in place in her time. Bridget receives a vision from Christ who speaks of a vineyard that has been destroyed by thieves who have entered while the keepers sleep, and

28 Andrew Taylor argued at the 31st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, May, 1996, in a paper entitled 'Privacy on Display: Margaret of York and the Depiction of Late Medieval Devotional Reading', that reading, for secular women, was a leisured activity that was often croticised. While this erotic element is not found in most texts addressed to female religious, the notion of reading as a leisure activity is clearly taken up by the writer of the Orcherd.

29 Bridget's vineyard revelation in the Rewyll recalls such biblical parables of vineyards as Isaiah 5 and Mark 12:111.

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proclaims that it is time to start again with Bridget's help: 'I shal plante me a vyne- zerde * of newe in which poue* shalt bere the brawnches of my wordes, my freende shall sett them, and I myself, God, shall put pereto* fastnesse of grace.'30 It is this revelation that authorises Bridget's founding of a new Order, one that will set things right.31 In the case of the Orcherd, it is clear that the structural allegory provides an aristocratic, leisured model for reading the text. The reader approaches the text as if she were walking through an orchard, sampling the many fruits and herbs which the orchard has to offer, as the writer states in the second prologue:

Lo, sustren, I haue schewid zou* what ympis & trees I haue founde and gaderid to plaunte & to sette in zoure* goostly orcherd. The aleyes of zoure orcherd ben ful longe and brode, whereynne ben many walkynge papis*, whiche schulen lede zou truly to what fruyt where zou lust to feede zou, in what partye pei* ben sett or plauntid. But, sustren, lyke it to zou to knowe plat* in gaderynge delitable fruyt I foond ful bittire wedis. Bittir & soure pei ben to taaste, but profytable to knowe. Siche wedis I purpose to sette among good fruyt. not for feedynge, but to zoure knowing. (p. 16)

Unlike the Myroure's highlighting of the hierarchical nature of religious life and the importance of obedience, the Orcherd's pastoral allegory lays out an orchard of enjoyment and instruction both delightful fruit and bitter weeds that stresses the value of recreation and self-direction for the reader. By treating the text as if it were a leisure activity (walking through the garden), the writer suggests that the reader take what will be of benefit to her from the text, and to enjoy the experience rather than to see it as actual work and struggle, as religious life was often seen, in such texts as Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection and Richard Rolle's works.32 The prologue to the Orcherd thus idealises the life of the Syon nun as the spiritual equivalent of walking through an orchard. Both the Myroure

30 J. Hogg, ed., The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure and Other Middle English Legislative Texts, vol. II; The MSS. Cambridge University Library Ff. 6.33 and St. John's College Cambridge 11, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik VI.2 (Salzburg, 1978), fol. 41r.

31 Because of the authenticating framework in the Rewyll, I would argue that Bridget's conceptualising of her reforming Order as part of Christ's razing and starting anew of his monastic vineyard produced Syon as a particular locus for the orchard allegory. Other late medieval devotional works such as The Devout Treatise of the Tree and XII Fruits, ed. J. Vaissier (Groningen, 1960), which was read at Syon, and The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection, written by Richard Whytford, a Syon monk, ed. J. Hogg (Salzburg, 1979) also illustrate that organic allegories and structural allegorical frameworks were especially popular in this period.

32 The central metaphor of The Chastising of God's Children, ed. Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge (Oxford, 1957) also attempts to emphasise the more positive aspects of living a devout life. In this case the trials and tribulations the reader endures are likened to a mother's loving discipline of her child. The Tretyse of Loue, ed. John Fisher, Early English Text Society, O.S. 223 (London, 1951), also illustrates a changed perspective on the religious life, for it is a fifteenth-century translation of the Ancrene Riwle that addresses not recluses but an aristocratic lay-woman, whose riches and comfortable way of life serve as a foil in her meditation on Christ's life. These texts suggest a revised current of thought on religious devotion in late medieval England, one that

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and the Orcherd make use of the upper-class privileges with which women who had taken vows at a royal foundation such as Syon would likely be familiar. Yet these privileges are set against a backdrop of the monastic vows and religious austerity on which a life at Syon was based. Living in a cloister, these women embodied many ideals of religious living: chastity, humility and obedience; claustration; subordination to religious and monastic hierarchies; and submission to authority in all forms. These are not entirely gender-specific ideals, but the additional gendered associations of obedience, subordination and submission would make them suitable ideals for a cloistered community of women.

While it is highly unlikely that all Syon nuns behaved in an exemplary manner all the time, it is the public, official presentation of this ideal that is significant. This exemplary model emphasises the upper-class privilege and the gendered ideals of submissiveness and obedience of the female community in order to mask or compensate for anti-monastic and anti-feminist sentiments of the period, and to exhibit a unified stand that depicted this monastery both as a female community and as readers in a positive, appealing way. Readers outside Syon were expected to be influenced by this idealised portrait of the Syon nun, just as the use in vernacular devotional texts of exemplary holy women such as Catherine of Siena, Bridget of Sweden and the Virgin Mary could influence readers (including the Syon nuns) to adopt the stances and characteristics of these exemplars. The Myroure addresses and describes an implied and 'ideal Syon reader who reads this text in order to learn how to approach her religious observances more devoutly, sincerely and knowledgeably. By using the Syon nun as the ideal Christian and the ideal reader, the text encourages readers to engage in this process of identification, that is, to aspire to live the idealised life of the Syon nun through reading the Myroure. If the reader lived at Syon then she was urged to approach this ideal version of herself by emulating what she reads in the text. If the reader was not from Syon then she or he experienced the life of the Syon nun vicariously, and implicitly was urged to approach this ideal and apply it as best she or he could to her or his life. This process of identification can be likened to Althusser's notion of 'interpellation', which the feminist film theorist Teresa de Lauretis has succinctly defined as 'the process whereby a social representation is accepted and absorbed by an individual as her (or his) own representation, and so becomes, for that individual, real, even though it is in fact imaginary'.33 In this process, the lay reader comes to read herself or himself into the text as if she or he were a Syon nun. That is, by her or his identification with the Syon nun as reader, the non-Syon reader is interpellated into the Syon nun's idealised stance of humility and obedience to ecclesiastical and textual authorities. This idealised stance extends to the reader's attitude toward the subject of the text. The text attempts to prepare the reader's attitude for the proper acceptance of the devo-

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addressed a wider audience and described a kinder, gentler way of living devoutly that could made to apply to religious and lay-people.

33 Teresa de Lauretis, 'The Technology of Gender', Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction (Bloomington, 1987), p. 12.

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tional material here presented, and includes the interpellation of the reader into the idealised figure of the Syon nun as meek, humble, and devout.

The Orcherd also addresses the Syon nuns in the prologues, but in the translation itself Catherine is the subject of the text and acts as the ideal to which the reader aspires. Yet when God addresses Catherine in the text he also addresses the reader, who experiences vicariously and temporarily what Catherine experiences. This strategy of identification is addressed later in the text when God declares to Catherine, '[n]ow perfore * I speke to pee* in special, and bi pee to alle in general, in satisfaccioun of pi* desier' (p. 231). The universalising gesture of this kind of address is reinforced in the opening of the text, where Catherine is first described more generally as 'a soule' (p. 18). The generalised pattern then becomes specified in the person of Catherine and her experiences in her revelations. The reader is thus drawn into the text and Catherine, like Mary and the Syon nun in the Myroure, acts as a model for the reader. Although the use of the personal pronouns allows the reader to blur the boundaries between Catherine of Siena as the 'she' and the 'I' in the text and her own identity, there is still room for the Syon nuns to play a role in how the reader approaches the text. In this case, the Syon nun becomes the idealised figure through whom the actual reader is interpellated into the proper reading stance and protocols by means of the site of the orchard which the Syon nuns inhabit. The image of the Syon nuns in the orchard directs or guides how the material is provided and then received. The prologues addressed to the Syon nuns in the Myroure and Orcherd thereby establish the original ideal audience as an intermediary that provides an exemplary model for devotional observances and reading practices.

When the Myroure and the Orcherd were printed in the early sixteenth century, the printers (Richard Fawkes, 1530, and Wynkyn de Worde, 1519, respectively)34 targeted a larger audience of readers interested in vernacular devotional literature, continental mystics, and the religious life. The Myroure's title page bills itself as 'very necessary for all relygyous persones', a point which it reintroduced in the colophon, where the Myroure has become '[v]ery necessary for all relygyous persones and other good deuoute persons' (fol. C lxiii r). The colophon to the Orcherd also uses the more general term 'relygyous and deuoute soules' and, further, provides a justification for this text's new audience. The envoy of the printed edition (attributing the translation of this work to one Dan James) explains that '[e]uery good thyng the more it be communycate and dys-parsed abrode the more fruyte and profyte cometh therof' (fol. B iii r). Several other such statements are also rehearsed before the reader is told about Sutton finding the Orcherd in a corner of Syon Abbey. Syon here becomes a figure both for the potential for the monasteries to hoard their spiritual (and temporal) wealth away from lay-people, and for the kind of worth that can be found hidden in monasteries; the second point thereby argues for the importance of monasticism to late medieval English culture. The tension between these two conveys something

34S.T.C. 17542 (Myroure of Oure Ladve), S.T.C. 4815 (Orcherd of Syon).

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of ways in which female religious could be simultaneously idealised and castigated, celebrated and satirised in early sixteenth-century England.

The printed Myroure presents a less ambiguous illustration in its total support of Syon and its inhabitants. The colophon states that '[t]hys Boke was imprinted at the desyre and instaunce of the worshypfull and deuoute lady Abbesse of the worshypfull Monastery of Syon, and the reuerende fader in god, General confessoure, of the same' (fol. C lxiiii r). Interestingly, the printed version does not appear to add substantially to the framing materials of the manuscript Myroure, confining its additional remarks primarily to the title page and short colophon, which I have mentioned in this paper already, plus the addition of several wood-cuts, which I will not examine here. In contrast, the printed Orcherd not only adds woodcuts, a title page and the longer colophon discussed above, it also includes an additional prologue attributed to one Marcus Ciuilis from Brixia (Brescia, in northern Italy) written to Paul Sauche from Aragon.35 This epistle, translated from Latin and attached to Catherine of Siena's revelations as they made their way from Italy to England, begins by making clear that many religious do not live sincere, devout lives, and suggests that if they only applied themselves and considered the many benefits they would change their ways. The writer says he came to understand this after reading Catherine of Siena's revelations, for she is 'a meruaylous myrrour of holyness' (fol. ii r), that is, a shining example of how religious should be. The reader is given the opportunity to consider herself or himself as someone who could emulate Catherine instead of those who live corrupt lives, an argument that is developed through the implicit merging of Catherine of Siena's life with that of Katherine of Alexandria. Catherine of Siena is portrayed (like Katherine of Alexandria) as having been chosen by God 'so weyke a parson of womankind, to confounde the greate men of myghte and al theyr pusaunce' (fol. ii v). In this prologue Catherine of Siena becomes a figure for the reader outside the monastery who deplores monastic corruption (but likely still supported the monastic life) and the inaccessibility of knowledge and learning to those who are not clerics. These kinds of readers like Ciuilis himself are depicted here as looking for access to devotional literature in order to become learned and equal to 'greate men'. As the prologue proposes,

[w]ho sholde not be greately moued, meruaylynge moche suche a yonge mayde of tender age to be lyke in lernynge to noble clerkes and to wryte so profounde sentences so depely drawe fro pe * well of the hye dyuyne wysedorn that it is harde for many to parceyue excepte they haue meke lernynge and ghostly wysdome. So thoughe that her gloryous and excellente holynesse sholde gyue none auctoryte to her doctryne and preceptes, yet from whatsoeuer condyte they come out of they bere moste sure testymony of themselfe without doubt, that they flowe out fro none other but fro the godly funtayne & sprynge of grace. Nor they haue none other begynnynge but that (where vnto) they enforce besyly to brynge the reder vnto, whiche is god hymselfe. (fol. ii v)

Catherine of Siena is a conduit, an intermediary by which the reader is trans-

35 Found on fols ii riii r in the printed edition of the Orcherd, S.T.C. 4815.

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formed and brought to God. After concluding with promises of the text's transformative powers and the traditional humility topos of the translator, the second prologue begins (which is the prologue found also in the manuscript versions of the Middle English Orcherd) with the address to the [r]elygyous moder and deuoute sustren called & chosen besily to labour at the house of Syon' (fol. iii r). The abrupt shift in address from the masculine generic pronouns used to address the reader in the first prologue to the female pronouns used in the second, from the voice critical of corrupt religious and speaking to 'all you pat * be louers of youre owne [spiritual] helthe' (fol. iii r) signals the move to the text proper. The movement from prologue to prologue to the body of the text enacts a shift in perspective, bringing about the transition from the reader's point of view reading the printed edition in the first prologue, to the Syon nun's position reading the manuscript version in the second prologue, to Catherine of Siena's perspective in her mystical experiences in the translation of the Dialogo. The concluding materials function in the same manner in reverse, so that the envoy addresses first the Syon nuns and then concludes with the tale of Sutton's printing of the Orcherd with Wynkyn de Worde.

While the framing materials in the Orcherd distance the reader of the printed edition from the Syon nun and her text, at the same time they effect the transition and make the move from the generic (masculine) lay reader to the idealised Syon (feminine) religious reader, so that the reader is encouraged to adopt the subject position of the latter. The Syon nun and her status both as female and religious is not rejected here or in the Myroure, but rather is held up as an exemplary ideal to which all others should aspire. The portrait of the Syon nun (and the other holy women under discussion in the Myroure and Orcherd) creates a gendered ideal of the proper reader and the appropriate reading stance for vernacular devotional literature: the reader is to be meek, silent, obedient, chaste, pure, submissive and devout. This hortatory process presents the idea of conformity as both a positive, enabling practice and one that allows for the regulation and containment of female religious. Unlike the medieval anti-feminist clerical tradition, devotional texts did not reject the qualities which late medieval culture thought of as feminine. Rather, they used a model of femininity to construct an ideal of meekness, silence, obedience, chastity and purity whose exemplar was, ultimately, the Virgin Mary.

The printing of the Orcherd (1519) and the Myroure (1530) was caught up in the drastic and sudden upheavals that occurred in the early sixteenth century in England. Wynkyn de Worde's printing of Catherine of Siena's revelations suggests that he anticipated this text would appeal to the audience that had earlier bought his editions of the Chastising of God's Children (1492), Hilton's Scale of Perfection and the Mixed Life (1494, 1507, 1525, 1533) and extracts from the Book of Margery Kempe (1501).36 Through the 1490s and into the early decades of the sixteenth century, the devotional tradition prospered with the assistance of

36 George R. Keiser in 'The Mystics and the Early English Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism', Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium IV, ed.

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the printing presses. By the time of the Myroure's printing (1530) Wolsey had fallen and the Reformation Parliament had been elected: the currents of reform were gaining momentum. The printed editions of the Myroure and the Orcherd (printed in the decades in which radical reformers and Protestants were having their say in print, the English bible was sanctioned and the monasteries were eventually dissolved) publicised an ideal of holy living including the monastic ideal of the Syon nuns in the prologue that attempted to adapt to (while at the same time countering) the growing calls for monastic reform. The political consequences of supporting a monastery could be significant, for this support signalled not only personal religious inclinations but also political beliefs and alliances. In the early sixteenth century especially in the late 1520s and early 1530s printing devotional texts associated with a religious order, figure or tenet could promulgate views on the monastic reform policies of Wolsey or the Reformation Parliament; these texts could propose an ideal of monastic reform from within, and could argue for a conservative yet adaptive attitude toward the laicisation of late medieval religion. Owning and reading these texts may have supported these political beliefs, or the political struggles acted out in the printed text may have been lost on the reader. In any case, though the Syon nuns in the prologues to the Myroure and the Orcherd appear to be isolated in a utopian religious community at far remove from the political and religious upheavals of their day, their depiction in these texts cannot be separated from the struggles for political and religious authority that took place in late medieval England. The Syon nuns symbolised a view of monasticism and the religious life that was conservative (and also had upper-class and continental associations) yet still conveyed the potential for change and reform: a view that still had adherents in Henry VIII's reign.37

According to the exemplary models presented in these texts, the Syon reader is exhorted to be meek, devout, attentive, obedient, and to be able to conform herself both to the material and to the affective intent and language of the text. She exhibits a willingness to learn and to be informed or affected by her reading. Conversely, she is the new vine planted by Christ: strong, tall, upright and virtuous in the face of growing monastic corruption. She is also gracious, hard working, studious and leisured. These many and various qualities provide an interesting, if complex, picture of the Syon nun and her reading practices. The Myroure and the Orcherd show us a female religious reader for whom the ideals of obedience and humility are complemented by other qualities, and also by other female exemplars, such as Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena. Yet we

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Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 926, argues that 'in printing Walter Hilton's Scala and the numerous devotional works that followed it, Wynkyn was determinedly catering to an audience whose interests he understood very well' (p. 10).

37 Thomas More was only one of several powerful people (including both Henry VIII himself and Anne Boleyn) to visit Syon in the early sixteenth century. See, for example, Ann M. Hutchison, 'Syon Abbey: Dissolution, No Decline', Birgittiana ii (1996), pp. 24559.

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must bear in mind that these idealised portraits were produced and read in the face of the developing perspectives that countered what Syon stood for. The framing materials for the Myroure and Orcherd (in both the manuscript and print versions) therefore functioned to support monastic ideals and a certain exemplary kind of monasticism: cultured, learned, upper-class, devout and conservative yet supporting monastic reform from within. From this perspective writing, printing and reading the Myroure of Oure Ladye and the Orcherd of Syon was as politically charged and historically specific as the anti-monastic satire Why I Can't Be a Nun. The Myroure, Orcherd, and other texts I have examined here demonstrate that there was no singular perception of female religious in late medieval England. At the close of the Middle Ages, nuns and the qualities which female religious traditionally embodied humility, chastity and obedience were regarded with admiration and suspicion, were criticised and applauded. Syon Abbey contested the anti-monastic sentiments of its day, depicting its nuns as holy exemplars worthy of emulation by the devout readers of the devotional manuscripts produced at Syon and Sheen. They could not turn the tide of popular opinion and of the historical events leading up to the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII (153640), but Syon witnessed to (and participated in) the contradictory, ambivalent attitudes toward women, religion and vernacular reading in fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century English culture.38

38 I am grateful to Nicholas Watson for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its support of this research project.

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Adam Easton's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae

James Hogg

Adam Easton^1 remains a shadowy figure^2, even though Tanner^3 and other writers who copied him without checking the sources attribute no less than twenty-eight works to him. It seems certain that Adam was born of humble parents in the little village of Easton, about six miles north-west of Norwich,

1 The spelling 'Eston' is also found in the older literature.

2 The best accounts of his life and works are to be found in: L.J. Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.' (unpubl. diss., University of London 1955), pp. 134; L. Macfarlane, 'Easton (Eston; Adam)', Dictionaire de Spiritualite (Paris, 1957), vol. IV, fasc. 1, cols 58; David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, vol. II, The End of the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 5658; W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 4, 20, 42, 43, 68, 118, 121, 122, 129, 130, 133, 16566, 17581, 182, 184, 246n; F.R. Johnston, 'English Defenders of St Bridget', Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, vol. I, Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, Analecta Cartusiana XXXV.19 (Salzburg 1993), pp. 26375; J. Hogg, 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, vol. II, Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, Analecta Cartusiana XXXV.19 (Salzburg 1993), pp. 2026; and James Alan Schmidtke, 'Adam Easton's Defense of St Birgitta from Bodleian MS Hamilton 7 Oxford University' (unpubl. diss., Duke University, 1971) this pioneering work offers not only the Latin text of Easton's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae, but also an English translation for those not prepared to wrestle with the original Latin! This study is divided into four sections: I. The Life of Adam Easton, 'Cardinalis Anglie' (pp. 228); II. An Introduction to Bodleian MS Hamilton 7 Oxford University (pp. 2940); III. A Translation of the Defense of St Birgitta from Bodleian MS Hamilton 7 Oxford University (pp. 41165); IV. The Latin Text of Bodleian MS Hamilton 7 Oxford University (pp. 166274), followed by a bibliography (pp. 27683). The dissertation is valuable in so far as it presents Easton's text, but its limitations cannot be ignored. Schmidtke himself admits: 'A word must be inserted here concerning what is perhaps a glaring deficiency of this dissertation. It was my aim to obtain for purposes of collation photostats of another version of this manuscript located in Lincoln Cathedral Library. However, due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, not the least of which was the British postal strike of this year, this has so far proved impossible' (p. viii). So far so good, but his distinguished examiners seem to have been very large minded, as the candidate not only failed to find Easton's text in the most famous Brigittine MS in the British Isles, London, British Library Harley 612, which significantly Macfarlane before him also missed, but just ignored the Uppsala manuscripts, for which he held catalogue numbers, and remained in total ignorance of the Brussels MS. As a minimum one might have expected manuscript descriptions of the further manusripts, even if the candidate was unable to offer a collation.

3 Thomas Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica (London, 1748), p. 266. Most of

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sometime between 1325 and 1330.4 Apparently he received his schooling from the Benedictines at St Leonard's Priory, Mushold or Mousehold, near Norwich,5 before entering Norwich Cathedral Priory, where he was professed c.1348. It has been speculated that the future Benedictine cardinal was 'spotted' by the newly inducted bishop of Norwich, William Bateman, doctor of civil law in Cambridge University, but no documentary evidence is extant.6 He may well have begun his studies at Norwich Cathedral Priory, for the necessary books were available there and at St Leonard's.7 In accordance with the papal constitution 'Summi Magistri',

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these entries appear to have merely been items in Easton's library and were certainly not written by him. For his time, he possessed an important collection of books. Cf. also J. Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum (Oxford, 1902), pp. 46, where he attributes a De Perfectione Vitae Spiritualis to Adam, which has not been traced.

4 Pantin, The English Church, p. 175, places his birth 'about 1325', whilst Macfarlane, 'Easton', col. 5, regards 1330 as more probable: 'Born c.1330, perhaps as early as 1327' [my literal translation from the French]. John Chambers, A General History of the County of Norfolk Intended to Convey All Information of a Norfolk Tour, 2 vols (Norwich, 1829), I, pp. 33536, states that Adam 'was descended of the family of Easton, considerable owners here [the village of Easton] and at Honingham.' He continues: 'His acquiring this preferment [the Cardinalate] is sufficient to contradict any assertion from other quarters that the cardinal was . . . born of mean parents.' This statement ignores the fact that the medieval Church offered scope for those of humble origin to rise to high places in the hierarchy, if they possessed a suitable university training and the necessary adaptability. Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 266, declares 'humilibus in Anglia natus parentibus'. R.L. Poole, 'Easton, Adam', Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), VI, p. 333, H.C. Beeching and M.R. James, 'The Library of the Cathedral Church of Norwich', Norfolk Archaeology xix. (1917), p. 71, and Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, p. 56, all accept his humble birth.

5 See Beeching and James, 'The Library of the Cathedral Church of Norwich', p. 71-unfortunately no document is cited to prove this. St Leonard's was a modest establishment. David Knowles and R.N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses of England and Wales (London, 1971), p. 72, furnish the following entry for St Leonard's: 'Built by Bp. Herbert to accommodate a number of monks while the cathedral church and priory were being erected, to which it became a dependent for 78 monks after c.1101' (V. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Norfolk). There were four monks after the Black Death (J. Cox Russell, 'The Clerical Population in Medieval England', Traditio (1944)) and there appear to have been a prior with at least four monks in 1514 (V. The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Norfolk).

6 See F. Maurice Powicke, ed., Handbook of British Chronology, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks II (London, 1961), p. 243. Soon after his consecration in 1344 he carried through a visitation of his diocese, and would thus have visited St Leonard's: see Canon Venables, 'Bateman, William', DNB, I, p. 1315; A. Hamilton Thompson, 'William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, 13441355', Norfolk Archeology xxv (1933), p. 110; C.R. Cheney, 'Norwich Cathedral Priory in the Fourteenth Century', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library xx (January 1936), p. 94.

7 See N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts from Norwich Cathedral Priory (Cambridge, 1949), which largely superseded Beeching and James, 'The Library of the Cathedral Church at Norwich', pp. 67ff. A number of Norwich Benedictine manuscripts are also listed in N.R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. III, Lampeter Oxford (Oxford, 1983), 'Norwich, Cathedral' (pp. 52734), 'Norwich, Castle Museum'

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decreed by Pope Benedict XII in 1336, whereby each monastery was bound to send one out of twenty members to study for a university degree in canon law or theology,8 Adam Easton enrolled at the Benedictine Gloucester College in Oxford in 1350 or 1351. He certainly must have profited from the customary 'graces', whereby the long years prescribed for the arts programme were often waived in view of studies previously undertaken in the monasteries,9 and was clearly progressing in his theological course when he was recalled to Norwich with his fellow-monk Thomas de Brinton in 1356 or the following year to organise preaching in the cathedral to combat the critical stance adopted by the Mendicant Orders, who denied the right of the monks to hold worldly possessions, although substantial estates were regarded as a necessity by the older Orders to ensure the services they rendered. Adam and his colleague must have been regarded as essential for this preaching offensive in Norwich, if the influence of the Mendicants, who themselves often received legacies through middle men to the detriment of both the secular clergy and the established Orders, was to be diminished.10

At a date between 1357 and 1363 the authorities at Gloucester College wrote to Norwich, asking that Easton should be sent back to finish his studies, but the prior of Norwich explained that the situation was so delicate at home that he could not be spared at that time.11 According to Pantin,12 this letter should proba-

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(pp. 50726), and 'Norwich, Diocesan Record Office' (pp. 53550): one wonders also if some of the manuscripts listed under 'Norwich, Public Library' (pp. 55161) might not ultimately have come from the same source. W.T. Bensly, 'St Leonard's Priory, Norwich', Norfolk Archeology xii (1895), pp. 190227, offers some observations on its library.

8 See Bullarum Diplomaticum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, 25 vols (Turin, 185785), IV, pp. 347ff; David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 4 vols (London, 1737), II, pp. 588ff; and Henricus Denifle and Aemilio Chatelain, eds, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols (Paris, 188997), II, p. 463.

9 See Hastings Rashdall, EM. Powicke, and A.B. Emden, The Universities in Europe in the Middle Ages, 3 vols (London, 1936), III, pp. 7174, 14850.

10 Easton was to discuss this controversy later at length in his Defensorium Ecclesiasticae Potestatis, Part IV, chs 3036 and 6976., See further n. 33.

11 The letter from the prior of Norwich is extant and was printed by W.A. Pantin, ed., Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 12151540, 3 vols, Camden 3rd ser., vols XLV, XLVII, and LIV (193137), vol. III, pp. 2829:

To the venerable fathers and lords, the Prior of the whole company of Black Monks studying at Oxford, from your humble servants the Prior and convent of Norwich, reverences and honours due to such fathers, with all prompt desire to please. By the tenor of your reverend letters, we understand the deplorable infertility of the sons of mother university studying at Oxford, to such an extent, as you assert, that out of the whole order of Black Monks there are scarcely to be found three bachelors studying theology at the present time; among whom your most gracious goodness considers our brother and your fellow, Adam Easton, to be senior, and out of the militia of scholastic labour, in the course of his

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bly be assigned to the period 135760, when the English Benedictines contributed funds^13 to aid FitzRalph, who, as the St Albans' chronicler records, was 'fighting against the friars in the cause of God, as we believe'.14 The controversy

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studies to be nearest to the doctor's reward. Wherefore you have asked us, with sincere affection, to send him back next year and effectually restore him to the maternal bosom of the schools, whence we have recalled him for a short time for a certain cause. Indeed reverend fathers and lords, with the greatest desire we would like to accede to your wishes, as we ought, if we were not hindered by the reasons given below.

For of old, in our cathedral church, situated as it is in such a populous city and country, it has been the custom to have many sermons of God's word preached to the people at certain times; and this duty used to be undertaken, at the cost of entreaties and gifts, yet with some difficulty, by the mendicant friars, who are the enemies of our order, and indeed of all churchmen, loosing their backbiting mouths at everyone. However, with unanimous deliberation, considering it a shame and a detriment to us that these preachings in our own church should be undertaken by friars, we have decided altogether to exclude all friars, and so far have imposed that laborious work upon our own brethren. But because that harvest is laborious and great, and our labourers are wearied and few, we have thought it necessary to set up our said brother [Eston] as a subtle and experienced reeve over these reapers who are thus wearied; lest the sheaves of the word of God, bound up in bundles, be incautiously sown amongst biting, envious men and the mouths of those that speak iniquity. Who also, our said brother, may baffle the backbiting mouths of those that rise up against us, and impose silence upon the Sadducees. For certain matters against sound doctrine and the liberty of the Church were brought forward by certain friars, whom by true doctrine he has restrained from their erroneous way, and will shortly, God willing, completely triumph over them. For blessed be the Most High, his doctrine enjoys special favour among clergy and people. But if his absence came to be known at present, we fear that they [the friars] would at once come up like mice out of their holes, and we have no one else to resist them in wisdom or learning, but they would proudly make broad their fringes exceedingly.

Wherefore, lest these things or worse happen, it seems to us necessary either to recall our brother Thomas de Brinton, or to keep our brother Adam for a short time. We hope indeed soon to exalt them both to the pinnacle of the doctorate, God willing, and with the intervention of your gracious help. May it please your reverend fatherhood and the lordship of your whole venerable company to have us favourably excused in these and in other altogether necessary things. For we should shudder greatly, God knows, to offend such company, or to delude with feigned excuses such a congregated flower of the order. May the wisdom of God the Father enlighten your scholastic acts, to the exaltation of the universal Church and the special honour of the whole order. Amen.

12 Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177.

13 Cf. Pantin, Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 12151540, III, p. 255.

14 H.T. Riley, ed., Gesta Abbatum Sancti Albani, 3 vols, Rolls Series XXVIII (London, 186769), II, p. 405.

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in Norwich and elsewhere seems to have centred on church endowments and possibly the delicate question of the taxation of the clergy.

In 1363 Adam finally returned to Oxford^15 and he incepted in the academic year 136566 according to the Norwich Camera Prioris Roll.16 From this period must date Easton's Quaestiones Disputatae et Determinatio,17 a work clearly showing the influence of St Augustine and the Victorines, but totally ignoring the speculative thought predominant in the Oxford of his time. Probably at this moment he became 'prior studentium' at Gloucester College a post resulting from the constitution of Pope Benedict XII in 1336,18 which demanded considerable tact and administrative ability. The nomination was made by the presidents of the Provincial Chapter and the nominee was introduced into his office by the local ordinary.19 As monks came up to Oxford from various houses throughout the country, obviously not only were there problems concerning the observance but also, more fundamentally, regarding even the Benedictine ideal. One case is recorded where Adam consulted the Abbot President of the Provincial Chapter of the English Benedictines, Thomas de la Mare, concerning the alleged incontinence of one I. Loccombe, 'nuper in universitate Oxon' studenti'. Abbot de la Mare found it necessary to pass on the evidence supplied 'per fratrem Adam Easton monachum Norwicensem ac monachorum studencium in dicta universitate prior inposito' to the Abbot General at Glastonbury.20 Adam may well have quit his post at Oxford with a certain feeling of relief in 1367, probably at the end of the academic year, when he proceeded not to his monastery in Norwich, but to the papal curia in Rome, whence Pope Urban V had transferred his staff from Avignon in that year, before returning to Avignon in 1370.21 It is recorded that the pope sent Adam back to England as an envoy to Edward III in May 1368.22

15 Cf. Pantin, Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, III, p. 28 n. 1, where he cites the Norwich Communarius Rolls.

16Ibid.

17 Preserved in Worcester Cathedral Library, MS. F 65. The Quaestiones are analysed in detail in Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 93114.

18Bullarum Diplomaticum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, IV, pp. 36265.

19 For such a case see Pantin, Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, III, pp. 2324.

20Ibid., p. 60 For information on Gloucester College see ibid., II, pp. 21, 5558, and III, pp. 2324, 7476, and W.A. Pantin, 'Gloucester College', Oxoniensia xi and xii (194647), pp. 6574.

21 The chronology of the next two years was clarified by Schmidtke, 'Adam Easton's Defense of St Birgitta', pp. 1516, where he corrected the faulty sequence of events tentatively suggested by A.B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols (Oxford, 195759). I, p. 620; and also by Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, p. 57, Macfarlane, 'Easton', col. 5, and Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177.

22 See Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland. Papal Letters, ed. W.H. Bliss et al., 14 vols (London, 18931960), IV, p. 27.

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On 22 September 1368 Pope Urban V conferred the purple on Simon Langham,23 the Benedictine archbishop of Canterbury. His elevation to the Sacred College as cardinal priest of St Sixtus entailed residence at the papal curia, but owing to the royal displeasure Langham was only able to leave for Rome^24 in February 1369.25 What function Adam really exercised at the curia is unknown. No document survives confirming his rôle as Simon Langham's secretary or indeed as proctor at the curia for the English Benedictines.26 Cardinal Langham died in July 1376 and Adam was named one of the executors of his will.27

Adam's views on the return of the pope and his curia to Avignon are not recorded, but St Birgitta was outspoken in her advice to the supreme pontiff not to desert the Eternal City. In this passage the blessed Virgin is speaking through Birgitta:

I will speak to you of the Pope whose name is Urbanus. To him the Holy Spirit gave the counsel that he should come to Rome to work justice and to strengthen the Christian faith and renew the Holy Church. And as a mother leads her child whither she will, by showing him her breasts, so I led him to Rome by my prayers. But what does he now? Now he turns his back on me and not his face and would leave me. And a false and evil spirit would entice him to do this. For it wearies him to do his duty, and he is longing for ease and comfort. He is longing for his own country, and his carnally minded friends urge him to depart, for they think more of his temporal welfare and conform more to his will than the will of God and to what serves the glory of God and the everlasting good of the Pope. If he should succeed in getting back to his own country he will be struck such a blow that his teeth will shake in his mouth. His sight will be darkened and all his limbs will tremble.. . . The friends of God will no longer include him in their prayers, and he will be called to account to God for what he did and what he did not do.28

23 For Simon Langham see Charles L. Kingsford, 'Langham, Simon', DNB, XI, pp. 54041, and Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, pp. 5456, 8588.

24 Kingsford, 'Langham, Simon', p. 540, is clearly wrong in stating that Langham travelled out to join the college of cardinals at Avignon, as Pope Urban V only returned to Avignon with his curia in the autumn of 1370: cf. Ludwig v. Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, ed. El. Antrobus, 40 vols (London, 192353), I, pp. 9597.

25 See H.L. Riley, ed., Thomas Walsingham: Historia Anglicana, Rolls Series XXVIII, 2 vols (London, 1863), I, p. 307. In error Walsingham dates the elevation in October and the departure from England in April, however.

26 This does not prevent Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177, from affirming that he was indeed proctor for the English Benedictines in 1373; cf. also Pantin, Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, III, p. 28 n. Macfarlane, 'Easton', col. 5, and Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, p. 57 protect themselves by the use of 'probably' or 'may have'. Thus Knowles writes: 'may have succeeded his friend and confrère of Norwich, Thomas de Brunton, as procurator in Curia of the black monks c.1373.'

27 Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, p. 57, writes: 'He was closely associated with Cardinal Langham in his last months, and as one of his executors was concerned to transmit the legacies safely to Westminster.'

28 Johannes Jørgensen, Saint Briddget of Sweden, trans. Ingeborg Lund, 2 vols (London, 1954), II, pp. 22122.

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Urban V died within weeks of his return to Avignon!

In 1376 Adam wrote from Avignon to Nicholas Litlington, abbot of Westminster (136286), requesting copies of statements of 'magistri lohannis Wyclyf, que contra ordinem nostrum, sicut dicitur, in Oxonia seminavit', along with a copy of his Libellus 'de potestate regali per diversa capitula'.29 Probably it was at Adam's instigation that Pope Gregory XI on 22 May 1377 condemned nineteen propositions from Wyclif's De Civili Dominio in a papal bull.30 According to his prologue, Adam had been working since his Oxford days on his vast treatise, Defensorium Ecclesiasticae Potestatis, which W.A. Pantin heroically rescued from limbo in 1936.31 Marsilius of Padua, John of Jandun, and William of Ockham, who all exalted the royal power over that of the Church, giving monarchs the right to confiscate the property of a defaulting Church, seem to be his principal targets rather than Wyclif, though Adam does specify in his prologue that the immediate impetus for the treatise was 'de novellis opinionibus materie prius tacte per cuiusdam doctoris notabilis determinacionem'.32 This powerful defence of the ultimate papal and ecclesiastical positions in the form of an imaginary dialogue between a bishop and a king, supporting the claims of Church and State respectively, was to have comprised a prologue and six books, but, perhaps fortunately for the modern reader, only the prologue and the first book are extant,33 and one wonders whether the other five books were ever compiled, as

29 See Pantin, Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, III, pp. 7677.

30 See Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177.

31 'The Defensorium of Adam Easton', The English Historical Review li (1936), pp. 67580. Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, p. 4, attributes to Adam treatises entitled, De Potestate Ecclesie, Defensorium Ecclesie, and Dialogus Regis et Episcopi, which almost certainly are identical with the Defensorium Ecclesiasticae Potestatis.

32 Pantin, 'The Defensorium of Adam Easton', p. 677, is surely right in identifying the 'notable doctor' as Wyclif.

33 Extant in the following manuscripts: Vatican Library Latin 4116, copied in Naples as late as 1431 during the conflicts of the conciliar movement; Seville Biblioteca Colombina 82.5.66, Madrid Biblioteca Nacional 738. The plan of the complete work is outlined in the Prologue:

Huius autem dialogi summa parva inter regem et episcopum disputati continet in primo libro in quatuor suis partibus materiam subsequentem; de multiplicitate nominis regis, et unde varie potest dici, de ortu regnorum et dominiorum et sacerdotum et prioritate et dignitate eorundem, et ad quantum potest potestas regia in subditos et sacerdotalis preeminencia in subiectos. Et primo tractatur in hoc libro quomodo ista tria, videlicet sacerdotium, regnum et dominium conveniunt nature divine, in qua residet prima omnium ierarchia. Secundo quomodo ista tria se habent in secunda angelica ierarchia. Et tercio quomodo ista tria se habent in statu innocencie primitive. Et quarto quomodo ista tria se habent in statu lapsus et in ultima hominum ierarchia.

Secundus liber, ut prius dicta uberius fulciantur, continet librum Marsilii de Padua et magistri Iohannis de Ianduno impugnatorem potissimum ecclesiastice potestatis, et ponit capitulum contra capitulum, ut victoria appareat expressius et confutacio impugnantis, et in fine declarat

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the Vatican Library Latin MS 4116 was copied as late as 1431, and there would seem no reason for only presenting the beginning of the treatise, even if it did occupy 366 folios, in one manuscript. To preserve monarchs from the perfidious influence of opponents of papal power, Adam undertook to write a 'tractatum specialem iuxta fundamenta scripture sacre de regum successibus ordinata et tradicionem diversorum doctorum de materiis antedictis'.34 To prepare himself for

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maximam ecclesie libertatem, et quomodo nulli potestati est obnoxia in talliis, tributis, talliacionibus vel gabellis, nec beneficia ecclesie de iure patronatus alicius inferioris potestati de iure subicit, sed pro melioracione ecclesie solum quamdiu placet ita privilegiat et permittit.

Tercius liber perstringit dyalogum fratris Guillelmi Hocham in quantum potestatem ecclesiasticam nititur impugnare, et singillatim respondet suis probacionibus et fingmentis, et interserit quendam alium libellum dicti fratris G. Hockam, quem super eandem materiam composuit in finibus vite sue, et ipsum reprobat et veritatem ecclesie manifestat.

Quartus liber per naturam et rectitudinem nove legis docet auctorem eiusdem fuisse regem humanatum et eciam sacerdotem in statu vie perfectissime veriorem proprietatis et civilis dominii temporalis eciam rerum immobilium, sine inperfectione status sui, aliter quam in testamento veteri factum erat, licitum detentorem, ipsumque doctrine sue tam in se, quam in suis apostolis secundum nove legis perfectionem in preceptis et consiliis sectatorem maximum et factorem, statuum insuper religiosorum diversorum varie in statu perfectionis existencium in expropriacione temporalium seu renunciacione exemplatorem pariter et doctorem, et tamen paupertatis altissime non artissime servatorem.

Quintus liber docet papam vicarium Christi et Petri successorem esse verum monarchum regiminis huius mundi, alios monarchos temporales precedentes non fuisse usquequaque legitimos, sed indebite incoatos, licet per Deum postea approbatos, ut subessent summo mundi monarche Christi vicario hic in terris et sibi fideliter deservirent; monarcham eciam perfectissimum debere habere utrumque gladium in perfectionis apice executorem, et licet non deceat utrumque ab eodem summo principe exerceri.

Sextus liber declarat quod imperium nove legis, prout temporaliter exercetur, dependet a confirmacione et approbacione vicarii Ihesu Christi, regia eciam potestas dependet quodammodo ab eodem, et directiones dominorum omnium inferiorum et eciam potestates ecclesiastice subiciuntur eidem ex ordinacione primaria sui status.' (W.A. Pantin, 'The Defensorium of Adam Easton', pp. 67879.)

Pantin comments:

The Defensorium is interesting as showing an English monastic writer wholeheartedly defending the highest papal claims in temporal as well as spiritual affairs. Easton tells us that his aim was to ''remove ambiguities from the hearts of kings": One wonders whether he hoped to convert Edward III or John of Gaunt or the young Richard II to his views. He was indeed writing just about the time of the negotiations for a concordat, but the English Crown, while ready to come to terms in practice, was always unwilling to concede a principle.' (Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 179.)

34 Pantin, 'The Defensorium of Adam Easton', p. 676.

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this immense undertaking, Adam studied Hebrew with a Jewish scholar, 'fearing that St. Jerome's translation [of the Bible] might not be altogether reliable, and that he might be reproached with ignorance of the "Ebrayca veritas".'35 Apparently thus a new Latin translation of the Old Testament was produced, 'a truly monumental and original approach to political science', as Pantin observes.36 The extant first book:

undertakes a historical examination of three topics, the priesthood, the royal power, and dominion (or lordship); he discusses the nature and relationship of these three powers, as exercised in God's government of the world, in the angelic hierarchy, in man's state of innocence before the fall, under the law of nature after the fall, under the Mosaic Law, and under the Christian dispensation. At every stage he is at pains to demonstrate the superiority of the priestly over the temporal power. The book thus has an elaborately worked-out and symmetrical plan, but from time to time the argument leads to excursions into such varied topics as predestination and the problem of evil, an analogy between the cardinals and the higher orders of angels, powers of legislation, the jurisdiction of infidel kings, the monachies and empires of the ancient world, papal taxation, and evangelical poverty. To Easton the Old Testament seems to have appealed as providing a fascinating field for political analysis and speculation, rather as the Greek city state or the New World have appealed to political thinkers in other ages.37

Macfarlane, however, dismisses its influence as slight:

The real reasons for the failure of Easton's political work do not lie with the man, of course, but with his times. Once the Schism had broken out, Easton's Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis became merely an academic exercise, and was brushed aside in the desperate reality of the situation.. . . His Defensorium Ecclesiastice

35Ibid. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 133, comments: 'Adam Easton spent twenty years studying Scripture (including the study of Hebrew) as an approach to the problems of Church and State, and in presenting his articles in defence of St Brigit of Sweden to the pope, he claimed that "they speak according to the manner of speaking of Holy Scripture and of the holy doctors, especially the ancient ones" [Bodleian MS Hamilton 7, fol. 248].' Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton, O.S.B.' in his Appendix D, pp. 24042, gives examples of Adam's use of Hebrew. Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 266, attributes the following Hebrew titles to Adam: Alphabetum Iudeorum Hebraice, Postillam Hebraicam, Psalterium Hebraicum, Hebraica Saraceni, and Hebraica Ierchi Salamonis. These must, however, have been books in Adam's library. It seems that he also knew Greek, as he possessed De Veritate Catholica Graece and Meteora Aristotelis ex Graeco. Both Rashdall, Powicke, and Emden, The Universities of Europe, II, p. 30; III, pp. 16061, and George R. Stephens, The Knowledge of Greek in England in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1933), p. 90, concede that Greek might have been taught at Oxford in Adam's time.

36 Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 178; see Pantin, 'The Defensorium of Adam Easton', p. 676, n. 5, and Poole, 'Easton, Adam', DNB, VI, p. 334. There is a detailed analysis of the work in Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 13599.

37 Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 17879.

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Potestatis perhaps did nothing else than to expose some of Wiclif's errors, and this, only incidentally it would seem.38

Indeed, Adam handled his opponents very politely, referring to them as 'men of great learning and abundance of sanctity'. The Austin friar Adam Stocton was less conciliatory. After noting Wyclif's Determinatio in 1379 with the marginal note: 'Hec venerabilis doctor magister Iohannes Wyclyf in quadam sua determinacio anno domini 1379', he soon after substituted for 'venerabilis doctor' the epithet 'execrabilis seductor'!39

Whilst Adam was labouring on his theoretical treatise, he was overtaken by the tide of events. Pope Gregory XI died on 19 March 1378 and the conclave that

38 'The Life and Works of Adam Easton O.S.B.', p. 255. He finds:

Easton's debt to the De Civitate Dei . . . is immeasurable. It is true that Easton's arguments on papal and royal supremacy incorporate the whole medieval development of S. Augustine's political thought, of course, and one must also include the influence on him of men like Isidore of Seville, S. Bernard, and John of Salisbury, as well as the whole school of papalist and royal protagonists, which has a history of its own. But even so, Easton drew often from the fountain head, particularly in his views on the sinful origin of kingship, and on the Fall of man itself. Again and again one notices Easton's emphasis on this, in his Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis; and not only on the Fall, but its consequences. For from whom did he, FitzRalph, and Wyclif, draw their arguments on dominion, grace, property, and the like, if not from S. Augustine? Thus we may see that Easton's political approach to his work is consistently Augustinian.

(Ibid., pp. 25253) His final verdict is dismissive:

Looking at the Defensorium as a whole, it is clear that it is basically a collection of theological, political and philosophical opinions, drawn from both camps, with little mark of original thought in it by Easton himself. In the sphere of theology, his own arguments . . . are drawn mostly from the pseudo-Denis, S. Augustine, Hugh of S. Victor, S. Bernard, and Alexander of Hales, backed by his own intimate knowledge of the Scriptures. In the sphere of political theory, he draws heavily on S. Augustine, John of Salisbury, and the corpus of Canon Law, particularly the latter. His philosophical opinions are drawn from Aristotle, S. Anselm and S. Thomas Aquinas. Even the particular emphasis which he gives to his scriptural arguments are drawn from the traditions of Honorius d'Autun, which perhaps found their culmination in Egidius of Rome. Curiously enough, Easton never refers to the latter's De Ecclesiastica Potestate, yet this work bears a very strong resemblance to his own. Perhaps Easton was attempting to do for Urban VI what Egidius had attempted to do for Boniface VIII. But too much water had flowed under the Pont d'Avignon since Egidius's day, and it would seem that the two works met with the same lack of response.

(Ibid., pp. 25455) Adam's knowledge of canon law displayed in this Defensorium is nevertheless impressive, as he bolsters up his arguments with quotes from Hostiensis, Innocent IV, and Boniface VIII. Cf. Walter Ullmann, Medieval Papalism (London 1949), particularly ch. 4, and for the background J. Rivière, Le problème de l'église et de l'état au temps de Philippe le Bel (Louvain, 1926).

39 See Aubrey Gwynn SJ, The English Austin Friars in the Time of Wyclif (London, 1940), pp. 23839.

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was to elect Bartolomeo Prignano, archbishop of Bari, to the apostolic see assembled in Rome on 7 April 1378. On Easter Sunday, 18 April, he was enthroned and crowned with the papal tiara, taking the name Urban VI. Adam'was in Rome at the time and mingled with the excited crowd that assembled after the election and spoke with one of the cardinals. His eye-witness deposition is recorded in Testimonia duo Super Electione Urbani VI, preserved in the Vatican Archives.40 Adam maintained that the cardinals had agreed to elect Bartolomeo Prignano two or three days before the conclave began, declaring him 'papabile'. Thus he was swiftly elected unanimously on 8 April and the unruly throng that assembled only gathered after the election had taken place. Thus the cardinals could not plead that they had acted under pressure and the election was therefore null and void.41 Adam insists that the Sacred College had held Urban VI as 'verus papa' for three months after the election and that Cardinal d'Aigrefeuille had assured him 'that no pope had been more piously elected than Urban VI since St. Peter himself'.42 Furthermore, the fact that these cardinals petitioned Urban VI for benefices and wrote to the rulers of Europe announcing his election and underlining the legality of the conclave proves that they regarded him as validly elected to the papal throne. Adam himself had read and dispatched such a letter to the German episcopate. It was only in August 1378, after learning of his stringent reform plans, beginning with the Sacred College itself, that the cardinals promulgated their Declaratio, maintaining that the crowd had intimidated them, thus forcing them to elect an Italian in the person of Bartolomeo Prignano. In September the rebellious cardinals proceeded to elect Robert of Geneva as pope, who took the name of Clement VII, thus initiating the Great Schism in the Church.43 On 9 March 1379 and again in November Adam testified concerning the validity of Urban VI's election. The Benedictine reached the conclusion that the legal chicanery exercised by the cardinals was attributable to the nefarious influence of Marsilius of Padua and John Wyclif!

Perhaps as a reward for his Defensorium Ecclesiasticae Potestatis, which on its presentation to the supreme pontiff carried a dedication to him, but maybe to placate the English, who remained faithful to Urban VI during the Schism, and to acknowledge his testimony regarding his election, Adam received the purple in December 1381 from the hands of the pope as titular priest of St Cecilia in Trastevere.44 He seemed firmly established in Urban VI's favour, with an outstanding

40 Armarium LIV, vol. XVII. Leslie Macfarlane, 'An English Account of the Election of Urban VI, 1378', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research xxvi (May 1953), pp. 7585, provided an edition of this important document. He also discusses it in detail in his thesis, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 11534.

41Ibid., p. 76.

42Ibid., p. 77.

43 See Walter Ullmann, The Origins of the Great Schism: A Study in Fourteenth Century Ecclesiastical History (London, 1948), and G.J. Jordan, The Inner History of the Great Schism: A Problem of Church Unity (London, 1930).

44 See Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177. It is not certain when Adam took possession of St Cecilia's. From 1378 onwards Bonaventura of

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reputation as a theologian and biblical scholar. In 138283 he was among the cardinals appointed by the pope to summarise the depositions for the canonisation of Birgitta of Sweden. Adam was also to study her writings with a view to establishing their orthodoxy a task rendered more necessary when the Libellus of an unidentified Perugian theologian appeared, casting doubt on the whole corpus. At much the same period Urban VI charged Adam to compile the antiphons, hymns, and responsoria for the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin,45 which the supreme pontiff wished to impose on the universal Church. As a Benedictine monk, Adam would have possessed a sound knowledge of the chant and may have acquired the rudiments of musical composition from Boethius, but such a commission would suggest even greater expertise.

Slowly the tactless Urban VI began to implement his plans for a drastic reform of the clergy, beginning with the cardinals themselves, in spite of the fact that he himself was guilty of shameless nepotism in the case of his worthless nephew, Butillo. Instead of seeking to conciliate those temporal powers which remained loyal to him, he picked an unnecessary quarrel with Charles of Durazzo, king of Naples, and was unwise enough to transfer the curia to the insignificant village of Nocera in 1384, which not only aroused the wrath of the cardinals, but also exposed him to the armed might of the king of Naples.46 Several cardinals were rash enough to consult the canonist Bartolino Piacenza on the possibilities of curtailing the pope's powers for the good of the Church or establishing a council of

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Padua, the prior general of the Hermits of St Augustine, held this church. According to Konrad Eubel, ed., Hierarchia Catholica Medii et Recentioris Aevi, vol. I, 11981431, 2nd edn (Münster, 1913), p. 23, Bonaventura died in 1389. English documents of 138183 style Adam 'Cardinalis Anglicanus', or 'de Anglia', or even 'Norwicensis', but never 'S. Cecilie'.

45Officium Visitationis Beatae Mariae Virginis. For Vespers the antiphons began with 'Adam C'! It was inspired by the rhymed and rhythmic office for St Francis, composed by Julian of Spire in the thirteenth century. Cf. H. Felder, Die liturgischen Reimofficien auf die Heiligen Franziscus und Antonius gedichtet und componiert von F. Julian von Speier (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1901); and G. M. Dreves, Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, vols XXIV and XLVIII (Leipzig 1896, 1905). Compiled before 1385, Adam's Office was only promulgated in 1389, owing to his fall from favour. It is conserved in the following manuscripts: Vatican Libary Ottobono Latin 676 and Pal Lat. 523, Cambridge University Library Kk.vi.49 and Mm.v.21, London, British Library Add. 17294 and 16891, Paris, Bibl. Nat. Lat. 756, and Uppsala University Library C 15, C 23, C 354, C 435, C 463 and C 621. There are doubtless others. Adam's composition was confirmed by the Council of Basle on 1 July 1441, but was swept away as part of Pope Pius V's liturgical reforms, promulgated in his bull 'Super breviario et missali novo', dated 14 August 1571. Pope Clement VIII commissioned new texts from Ruiz. Guido Maria Dreves, Ein Jahrtausend Lateinischer Hymnendichtung, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1909), I, pp. 44245, is in error when he states that Adam's commission emenated from Pope Boniface IX. Adam's Office of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is discussed in detail in Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 20016.

46 See Mandell Creighton, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, 6 vols (London, 1897), I, pp. 6768, 8283; Pastor, The History of the Popes, I, pp. 12224, 13536.

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cardinals, which would control the pope's activities.47 A final possibility would be to deliver the pope into the hands of his now enemy, the king of Naples, who was besieging the pontiff in Nocera.48 Before the conspirators could act, Cardinal Orsini of Manupello betrayed them to the enraged pope.

On 11 January 1385 Urban VI summoned six cardinals before him, including Adam, whom he was said to fear most 'propter profunditatem sensus et scientiae'.49 At the Pope's command, his nephew Butillo cast the six cardinals into a primitive dungeon created out of a disused cistern. Inadequately fed and suffering from damp and cold, with the pope's nephew amusing himself by casting loathesome reptiles down the shaft, they vainly protested their total innocence of Urban VI's charge that they were conspiring to force him into an admission of heresy, so that they might burn him at the stake! They

were submitted to torture, elderly and infirm as they were. The brutal Butillo stood by and laughed at their sufferings, while the Pope himself walked in a garden outside, listening with satisfaction to their shrieks of agony, and reading his hours from the Breviary in a loud voice that the torturer might display more diligence when he knew the Pope was at hand.50

The pontiff was forced to flee from Nocera in the summer of 1385 due to the pressure of the Neapolitan forces, taking refuge in Genoa for slightly more than a year. The imprisoned cardinals had to accompany him on his flight, and all of them except Adam were put to death and buried in a stable before he left Genoa. R.L. Poole suggests that Adam wrote an epistolary lament entitled De Sua Calamitate, addressed to the English Benedictines, at this time, asking them to

47 See Creighton, A History of the Papacy, I, p. 90; Pastor, The History of the Popes, I, p. 137, who states that the cardinals 'determined to take forcible possession of his [Urban VI's] person'; and Jordan, The Inner History of the Great Schism, p. 22.

48 See Louis Salembier, The Great Schism of the West, trans. M.D. (London, 1907), p. 106; G. Persona, Cosmidromius, ed. M. Jansen (Münster, 1900), pp. 97100.

49 Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, II, op. cit., in n. 25, p. 197. The Chronicon Angliae also records: 'Hoc etiam anno papa Urbanus sextus degradavit sex cardinales', E.M. Thompson, ed., Chronicon Angliae, 13281388, Rolls Series LXIV (London, 1874), p. 363. On the same day Adam was deprived of the deanery of York, to which he had been admitted by papal provision on 7 March 1382. (See John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 13001541, 12 vols (London, 196267, rev. edn), VI, 'The Northern Province', compiled by B. Jones, p. 7. Both Poole, 'Easton, Adam', DNB, VI, p. 334, and Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, p. 620, gave an incorrect date for Adam's deprivation, based on an earlier edition of Le Neve. Macfarlane, 'Easton, Adam', col. 6, and Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, p. 620, hold that Adam was entirely innocent of the charges of conspiracy. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, II, p. 57, is more reticent and perhaps more accurate: 'Though originally one of the supporters of Urban VI, he was one of the most determined in his rebukes to the pope, and he was imprisoned by the now frenzied pontiff as the alleged ringleader of a revolt in 1385.'

50 Creighton, A History of the Papacy, I, pp. 91, 9597, based on Theoderici de Nyem, De Schismate, ed. George Erler (Leipzig, 1890). pp. 7779, 9095, 103, 110.

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intecede with the pope on his behalf.51 It may well be that interventions from England saved him from execution, for letters addressed to the pope do exist from a slightly later date one from the presidents of the English Benedictine General Chapter, dated 9 July 1387,52 and another from Richard II, which must have been written some time between 1387 and 1389.53

All pleas were in vain, however, and Adam remained a prisoner until the death of Urban VI on 15 October 1389. With time his confinement cannot have been too harsh, for he appears to have written his Defensorium Sanctae Brigittae during his imprisonment, and, if this is so, he must have had considerable facilities at his disposition. On 2 November 1389 Piero Tomacelli was enthroned as supreme pontiff in Rome, taking the name Boniface IX, the cardinals of the Roman observance thereby preventing the universal recognition of Clement VII residing in Avignon. In his first consistory on 18 December 1389, the pope restored Adam to the cardinalate.54 Thereafter his life was uneventful, and the little that the records reveal show him to have been a formidable pluralist, like many medieval ecclesiastics of high rank. Certainly he could never have even visited most of the benefices that were showered upon him, but it was surely the system that was at fault rather than the recipient.55

51 'Easton, Adam', DNB, VI, p. 334. Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 266, does attribute such a title to Adam, but no copy seems to be extant.

52 'Coram igitur vestrae beatitudinis pedibus, ad terram humiliter provoluti, gratiam et misericordiam petimus pro domino Adam de Eston, quondam cardinali Norwycensi, quatenus a vestra sanctitate, stillata gratiose plena venia de offensis, tantam emanasse praesentiat gratiam a forite vestrae sanctissimae pietatis, ut, reaccepta stola prima, pariter et annulo, pristinisque beneficiis, ac ceteris quae ad cardinalatus pertinent dignitatem, laus vestra ubique praedicetur in gentibus, et in eterna memoria celebris habeatur.' (James Raine, ed., Historical Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers, Rolls Series LXI (London, 1873), p. 424.)

53 'Litteras s.v. direximus repetitis vicibus pro dilecto nobis reverendo patre Adam quondam cardinali Norwicensi, humilime supplicantes ut nostri et regni nostri contemplacione eundem Adam a carceribus et aliis quibus cruciebatur angustiis liberare, statumque suum faisse [sic] Integrum declarare aut saltem personam ipsius nobis precaram in cardinalitatis honore pristino ac in pari ordine dignitatis et aliis statum suum tangentibus collocare sanctitatis affate clemencia dignaretur.' (Printed in Edouard Perroy, ed., The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, Camden 3rd ser., XLVIII (London, 1933), p. 63.)

54 Creighton, A History of the Papacy, I, pp. 11112; Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, p. 620, and Poole, 'Easton, Adam', DNB, VI, p. 334.

55 Thus within three weeks of his being restored to his cardinalate, he was appointed by papal provision provost of the collegiate church of St John of Beverley, valued at 400 marks. A certain Robert Manfeld contested the provision, however, despite a papal 'surrogation' dated 16 February 1393, requiring Adam's installation without further delay. The dispute continued, and in 139798 Manfeld finally triumphed over the cardinal (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal Letters, IV, pp. 343, 45960; Arthur F. Leach, ed., Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book, 2 Vols, Surtees Society XCVIII, CVIII (Durham, 1897, 1903), II, pp. lxxxiilxxxiv). Exaggerated sympathy for Adam is hardly called for, as on 2 November 1390 he was nominated prebendary of Aylesbury, canon of

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Adam died in Rome on 20 September 1397^56 and was buried in his titular

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Lincoln, and canon and precentor of Lisbon. However, the prebendary of Aylesbury was already held by Richard Holland and Adam failed to secure it (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal Letters, IV, p. 335; Le Neve, Fasti, vol. I, 'Lincoln Diocese', compiled by H.P.F. King, p. 25). On 27 January 1391, Boniface IX assigned the archdeaconship of Shetland to Adam by papal collation. (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland; Papal Letters, IV, p. 385). Then he was nominated canon of Sarum and prebendary of Yetminster Secunda (Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, pp. 62021). Sometime before 23 April 1392 Adam exchanged Yetminster Secunda for the church of Heigham in Norfolk (Le Neve, Fasti, vol. III: 'Salisbury Diocese', compiled by Joyce M. Horn, p. 102). At the same period he obtained the rectorship of Hecham (Hitcham) in Suffolk, which he held until his death. Unfortunately, its revenues were less than 100 marks (Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, p. 621; Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, V, p. 80; Calendar of Patent Rolls (London, 190166), vol. VI, p. 536). Despite papal provision, Adam at first could not obtain the rectorship of Monk Wearmouth when it fell vacant, as Roger de Holm 'intruded himself, taking the fruits'. In 1393 Pope Boniface IX issued a papal letter underlining Adam's right to the rectorship and excommunicating Roger de Holm, declaring him incapable of holding any benefice (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, IV, p. 468). The Church was indeed international at this period, for the Papal Register for 1396 shows Adam receiving the rectorship of Hasselt in the diocese of Liege, which he later exchanged without qualms for the church of St Anne in Cologne. Perhaps more justifiable, though he probably never even visited it, was his priorship in the Benedictine monastery of St Agnes at Ferrara, delegated by papal provision on the death of Andrew de Avenantibus, which he gained possession of in September 1396 a post worth 200 gold florins (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, IV, pp. 53637). More modest was the rectorship of Somersham in the diocese of Lincoln, valued at a mere 95 marks, which Adam held until his Maker called the date of his induction is not recorded (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, V, p. 79; Calendar of Patent Rolls, VI, p. 262). Among his last prizes was his appointment as canon and prebend of the church of St Martin in Cedoseyta near Lisbon (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, V, p. 84). When death came, his appointment as Archdeacon of Dorset was pending (Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Papal Letters, V, pp. 82, 206). Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 6372, devotes his Appendix B to 'Cardinal Easton's Benefices'.

56 See Vatican Archives, Obligationes et Solutiones, vol. LII, fol. 92r. His for the times quite extensive library was sent back to his monastery in Norwich in six barrels in accordance with his will, the king granting special clearance through the customs. Some of the titles can be ascertained from Thomas Tanner's list of Adam Easton's writings in his Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, p. 266, where he obviously confused books owned by the cardinal with those written by him. Cambridge University Library MS Li.3.32, containing Denis the Areopagite, Opera Omnia, appears to have been in his possession, as was an illuminated copy of FitzRalph's De Pauperie Salvatoris, depicting friars of the four Orders in the company of devils, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi Library MS 180, and Oxford, Balliol College MS 300B, a copy of John of Salisbury's Policraticus, which must have originally been defective, as over sixty leaves have been inserted containing omissions, possibly in Adam's own hand. The

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church, St Cecilia's, where his tomb can still be admired today.57 He can hardly be counted one of the epoch-making figures even of his own age,58 but W.A. Pantin rightly states:

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number of authors Adam quotes in his writings is impressive, even if he may often have used florilegia. Quotations from the following authors have been identified: virtually all books of the Bible and glosses on a number of them; Aristotle, Politica; Ethica Nicomachea; De Anima; Pseudo-Denis the Areopagite, De Celesti Hierarchia; De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia (sometimes under the title De Angelica Hierarchia); De Divinis Nominibus; St Ambrose, Glossa super Lucam; St Augustine, De Trinitate; De Libero Arbitrio; De Genesi ad Litteram; De Consensu Evangelii; De Predestinatione Sanctorum; De Civitate Dei; Epistola CXXVI; Glossa super Iohannem; Enarratio in Ps. LXVV, Confessiones; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; St Gregory, Dialogus; Homelia super Ezechiel; Glossa super Iob; Bede, Glossa super Lucam; St Isidore, Ethica; De Summo Bono; St Anselm, Monologium; De Casu Dyaboli; St Bernard, De Consideratione; Hugh of St Victor, De Sacramentis; Expositio in Hierarchem Celestem; John of Salisbury, Policraticus; Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica; Peter Lombard, Libri Sententiarum; John Sarracenus, Glossa super III Capitulum Dyonisii 'De Angelica Hierarchia'; Robert Grosseteste, Distinctio xxvi [probable]; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale; Cohen, Vocabulum; Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologica; Henry of Segusia (Hostiensis), Summa Titulorum; Innocent IV, Commentaria in V Libros Decretalium; St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica; Summa contra Gentiles; Henry of Ghent, Quodlibeta; William of St Amore, Collectiones Catholica et Canonica Scripture; Dante, De Monarchia Mundi; John Duns Scotus, Commentaria in IV Libros Sententiarum; Quodlibeta; Summa de Christi Merito [probable]; Augustino Trionfo de Ancona, De Ecclesiastica Potestate; Nicholas of Lyra, Glossa super Genesem; Marsilius of Padua, Defensor Pacis; John XXII, Ad Conditorum; William of Ockham, Dialogus, and a treatise which is not named, but is probably his Octo Questiones super Potestate et Dignitate Papali; Alexander of St Elpidio, De Ecclesiastica Potestate; James of Viterbo, De Regimine Christiano; Richard FitzRalph of Armagh, De Pauperie Salvatoris; In Questionibus Armenorum; John Wyclif, De Civili Dominio; John of Legnano, De Sompnio Viridarii; Anon. of Perugia, Libellus [against St Birgitta]; St Birgitta, Revelationes; Regula Sancti Salvatoris; Sermo Angelicus

57 See Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, I, p. 621; Poole, 'Easton, Adam', DNB, VI, p. 334, Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 177.

58 Schmidtke, 'Adam Easton's Defense of St. Birgitta', op. cit., in n. 2, p. 28, characterises his achievement thus: 'From a rural English village Adam Easton had risen to honored membership in the highest ecclesiastical body of Western Europe. After his potential had been recognized by his diocesan bishop, the means of this rise was one that was increasingly becoming the most frequent method for gaining preferment in both Church and in secular government a university education. The professionalism, in this instance in theology, more and more needed by the Church and obtained by Adam at Oxford was the key factor in his later success and ascension in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.' Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 16566, avoids all excessive eulogy in his assessment:

Uthred of Boldon and Adam Easton are the two outstanding writers and controversialists among the ranks of the English Black Monks in the second half of the fourteenth century. Monastic scholars of this type represent the fourteenth-century outcome of a notable thirteenth-century experiment, namely the establishment of colleges for monk-scholars at

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Adam Easton, the Benedictine monk, theologian and cardinal, was one of the most creditable products of his order and of his age, but there was some absurdity in a system that loaded him with benefices and made him Archdeacon of Shetland and Precentor of Lisbon.59

Dom David Knowles saluted him as a true Benedictine:

His ability is unquestionable, and he did nothing, so far as is known, to further his advancement, from which in fact he reaped more sorrow than honour, and both in his opposition to the outrageous behaviour of Urban VI and in his advocacy of the Swedish saint he shows a sense of spiritual principles and obligations. At the least, he is, as he has been justly called, 'one of the worthiest products of the English Benedictines' contact with Oxford'.60

The Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae survives in at least five copies and a fragment: London, British Library Harley MS 612, the great corpus of Brigittine

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the universities, such as Gloucester College and Durham College, Oxford. This had been a difficult undertaking, but was now beginning to pay a dividend and to produce a new type of monk, 'the moine universitaire'. The English Black Monks had for some time voluntarily anticipated the legislation of Benedict XII (1336), which required one out of every twenty monks to be sent to university. Inevitably some slack or impoverished houses fell below their quota, as complaints in the provincial chapters show, but there is also evidence that there was, especially from the greater and better-ordered houses, a steady flow of monk-students to the universities, and that when these returned home as monk-graduates, they played a dominant part both in their own house and in the provincial chapters. The intellectual achievement of the monk-scholars is more difficult to assess, and will continue to be so until more work has been done on the surviving scholastic literature of the period. The monks cannot claim to have produced so many outstanding schoolmen as the friars, and they came late to the schools, but it would be a mistake to regard the monk-scholars merely as not very successful imitations of the friars.

59The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 43. Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', p. 256, offers a similar verdict: 'Yet if Easton's failure belonged to his age, one feels that Easton himself wrote rather to show forth the truth as he saw it, than for any popular acclaim. In a useful life, with its full measure of disappointment, the philosopher and poet, but above all the theologian in him, must have sought after the eternal values, and been consoled by them. Perhaps like S. Augustine, he realized that "Thou hast created us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts can find no rest, until they rest in Thee." ' In his 'Preface', p. iv, he remarked: 'Easton was a papalist, but he was by no means uncritical of the papacy he served, and one of the most striking characteristics of his writings is, in fact, the detached and critical manner in which he faced up to those acute problems of his day which demanded an urgent and exacting solution. Easton did not attempt to ridicule his opponents, neither did he underestimate their challenge; he met them squarely and forcibly, and with their own weapons. And until we study more deeply the works of other such papal apologists of the latter half of the XIV century, we surely cannot have a balanced conception of the intellectual and theological climate of these difficult years which preceded, and prepared the way for, the Conciliar epoch.'

60The Religious Orders in England, II, pp. 5758.

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writings from Syon abbey; Oxford, Bodleian Library Hamilton MS 7^61 and Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library MS 114,62 both of German origin, the Lincoln MS coming from Erfurt; Uppsala University Library MSS C 193^63 and C 518,64

61 The paper MS is briefly described in F. Maden, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, vol. V (Oxford, 1905), pp. 1415, and in more detail in Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', p. 218. The folios 229248v, containing the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae and Adam's letter to the abbess and convent of Vadstena, are written in two columns in a very clear and regular hand, with few smudges, erasures and deletions. There are numerous abbreviations. The infrequent marginal notes are difficult to decipher on account of the minute writing.

62 The MS was described in detail by R.M. Wooley, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Library (Oxford, 1927), pp. 8082, and again with great expertise by R.M. Thomson, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 8789. Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 21920, also offers a description, but his folio indications are one less than those given by Thomson. Dating from the fifteenth century, written in a uniform hybrid hand, the MS consists of 116 folios, the first folio not being counted in the numbering. The first 11 (of 19) items concern St Birgitta and are mainly conceived to defend the authenticity of her revelations (cf. similar compilations in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS 346 and Oxford, Balliol College MS 225). The Brigittine items are: 1. fols 14v: Selected offices and Prayers for BVM; 2. fols 5v7v: 'Prologus Magistri Mathie in Librum Celestium Revelationum Beatae Birgittae'; 3. fols 7v17: Alphonso of Jaen, Epistola Solitarii ad Reges, chs 17; 4. fols 1718v: 'Incipit epistola uenerabilis uiri fratris Magni Petri generalis confessoris monasterii Watzensteen contra calumpniantes sanctissimas reuelaciones beate Birgitte de regno Swecie olim diuinitus inspiratas. Ad laudem et honorem et gloriam . . . Gratia domini nostri lhesu Christi sit cum omnibus uobis amen'; 5. fols 18v24v: 'Incipit epistola cuiusdam religiosi ordinis fratrum minorum contra impugnantes sanctissimas reuelaciones beate Birgittae de regno Swecie oriunde olim diuinitatis inspiratas. Deus qui est benedictus. in donis suis . . . reduceret in Romam et ecclesias inciperet reformare'; 6. fols 24v49v: Adam Easton, Defensorium Beatae Birgittae; 7. fols 49v50: 'Pater amantissime cum reuerencia et correctione uestre altissime sapiencie et doctrine . . . Et protegat in aduersis ipsa sapientia Dei patris Amen. Adam Cardinalis'; 8. fols 50rv: 'Epistola domini cardinalis Anglie ad abbatissam et conuentum'; 9. fols. 50v54v: 'Sermo sanctissimi in Christo patris domini Bonifatii papae noni pro canonizacione beate Brigitte habitus atque factus'; 10. fols. 54v61v: Vitae Beatae Birgittae; 11. fols 6266: Offices for Birgitta, Visitation, Crown of Thorns. Macfarlane, p. 220, comments on the manuscript: 'It appears to have been copied in 1409, only twelve years after Easton's death, and three years after the marriage of Henry IV's daughter Philippa to Eric XII of Sweden, which brought increased English interest in, and devotion to the Swedish saint.' Items 6, 7 and 8 have been edited by Hogg, 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, vol. II, pp. 2026 the letter is imperfectly dated 'Scriptum Rome ix die Februarii. Adam Cardinalis Anglie'; the years 1390 or 1391 are possible, as Adam was only restored to his cardinalate in December 1389 and St Birgitta was canonised on 7 October 1391.

63 There has been considerable confusion in the literature concerning the Uppsala manuscripts, various authors giving them different numbers, such as C 31 and C 621, neither of which contain Adam's Defensorium! C 193 merely gives 'Article 23' on fols 9v10v.

64 Adam's Defensorium b. Birgittae appears on fols 248r273r. The MS, which came

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both of Swedish provenance; and Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 9523, of unknown provenance.

Soon after the death of Birgitta in Rome on 23 July 1373 her cause for canonisation was urged and as early as May 1376 Pope Gregory XI appointed a commission to consider the case at the request of the Holy Roman Emperor, the king, bishops and nobility of Sweden.65

After the decease of Gregory XI, Urban VI interested himself in the case, appointing in a consistory held on 15 December 1378 four cardinals^66 to examine the evidence collected to date and to scrutinise Birgitta's writings with a view to ascertaining their orthodoxy. Probably in 1382 or 1383 three cardinals were delegated to assess the findings of this commission, John of Amelia, Lucas Radulfulco de Gentilis, and Adam Easton, who had been elevated to the purple in December 1381.67 The selection of Adam may have been due to the reputation he had gained for his recent Defensorium Ecclesiasticae Potestatis. There is no evidence that Adam encountered Birgitta in Rome, and the fact that he makes no allusion to personal acquaintance with the saint even in his letter to the abbess and community of Vadstena is significant. On the other hand, he almost certainly met her daughter Katherine, as he gave evidence on 9 March 1379 along with her and Alphonso Pecha concerning the election of Urban VI.68

Though the form of Birgitta's Revelationes was indeed unusual, Adam, as doctor of theology and deeply versed in the scriptures, found the doctrine con-

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from Vadstena, contains, among other items, a series of Defensoria by various authors. There is a detailed description of the MS in Margarete Andersson-Schmitt, Håkan Hallberg, and Monica Hedlund, Mittelalterliche Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Uppsala: Katalog über die C-Sammlung, vol. V, Handschriften C 401550, Acta Bibliothecae R. Universitatis Upsaliensis XXVI, 5 (Stockholm, 1992), pp. 30712. I am grateful to Håkan Hallberg at the University Library in Uppsala for his gracious assistance in a letter dated 11 September 1998.

65 See Isak Collijn, Acta et Processus Canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskrif tsällkapet, Andra Serien, Latinska Skifter, vol. I (Uppsala, 192431), p. 4. At first little progress was made owing to the disturbed state of the Church at the time. See Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, vol. IV, pp. 46566. For the canonisation procedure of the period see Margaret R. Toynbee, S. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonization in the Fourteenth Century, University of Manchester Historical Series LV (Manchester, 1929), pp. 14695.

66 The four were Thomas Frignano (Gradensis); John of Amelia (Corfiensis), Agapitus de Columpna, and Gentilis de Sangro: see Collijn, Acta et Processus Canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, I, p. 5; and K. Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, vol. I (Munster, 1923), pp. 2324. Agapitus died in 1380 and Thomas Frignano in November 1381.

67 See Collijn, Acta et Processus Canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, p. 600; Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, I, p. 23, lists Lucas Radulfulco (Nucerinus); Acta Sanctorum, Octobris, vol. IV, p. 468. Birgitta's daughter, Katherine, was particularly active in promoting her mother's cause and Urban VI appointed a proctor to commence investigations in the diocese where she had resided in Sweden as regards her life, works, and miracles. (See Collijn, Acta et Processus Canonizacionis Beate Birgitte, fasc. I, pp. 310.)

68 Cf. Vatican Archives, Armarium LIV, vol. 17.

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tained therein fully consonant with Catholic teaching and, when he came to write his Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae, he vigorously opposed the anonymous critic from Perugia, who in his Libellus launched a frontal attack on the Regula Sancti Salvatoris, which had been presented to Pope Urban V in Rome in October 1367 and approved, after some procrastination, in an emended form in 1370, receiving further confirmation from Gregory XI in 1375, before Urban VI formally approved the Brigittine Order and its rule in his bull of 3 December 1378.

The Perugian sceptic clearly must have been a conservative cleric, who distrusted mysticism and was duly aggrieved to see a woman founding a religious Order, particularly when she claimed to be following the immediate directives of Christ, God the Father, and the Blessed Virgin.

Unfortunately, the Perugian Libellus does not appear to be extant, which makes the dating of Adam's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae hypothetical. It would seem, however, highly unlikely that he embarked on such a work before he was officially connected with Birgitta's cause and its composition may well date from some years later, for Adam refers to his Defensorium in his letter to the abbess and community of Vadstena, mentioning also a copy sent to Aphonso de Pecha, who had been assiduously promoting Birgitta's cause, and who died on 19 August 1388. The Defensorium was thus probably conceived as a thanksgiving for Birgitta's intercession for him in 1385, which Adam believed had preserved him from a worse fate than imprisonment. If this was the case, it would have been compiled 138588; it was signed by Adam as cardinal and presented to Boniface IX after his restitution to the cardinalate in December 1391, but before Birgitta's canonisation with the bull 'Ab Origine Mundi' on 7 October 1391.69

69 The Bull is printed in Acta Sanctorum; Octobris, vol. IV, p. 470. The relevant texts in Adam's letter to the Abbess and community of Vadstena are:

Carissime domine et sorores, ad devocionem devotissime domine Brigitte vos exhortor, quoniam nuper tempore Urbani olim pape vi in tribulacione magna positus fueram sine causa, et eius furorem senciens et periculum grande nimis, quod mortem evadere non speravi sine sanctorum miraculo et sanctarum; inter alias sanctas veni ad devotam Brigittam antedictam ut ipsa intercederet pro me ad beatam Mariam et filium eius Christum, quod me a suis periculis tirannicis liberaret, et ad eius canonizacionem ponerem diligenciam meam totam, et hoc continuatis vicibus diu feci. In tantum quod cius adlutorio singulari et meritis eius sanctis spero me fuisse a furoribus predictis tirannicis liberatum. In diversis eciam aliis tribulacionibus fueram circumseptus, et elus adiutorium supplicavi, et semper inveni remedium singulariter, in tantum quod in tormentis supplicavi, et semper inveni remedium singulariter, in tantum quod in tormentis positus, tirannorum nullatenus penam sensi. Quapropter iuxta votum meum predictum vos omnes sollicito quantum possum ut ad eius canonizacionem laborare dignemini cum effectu cum vestris et suis consanguineis et amicis.

(Hogg, 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', op. cit., in n. 62, p. 24, lines 215). The following passage might suggest that Adam's imprisonment was less severe over the years:

Nam vidi quendam libellum in Perusio compositum per articulos contra

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The prologue^70 of the Defensorium, addressed to Boniface IX, may well have been written after the text was terminated, for it summarises the Perugian theologian's objections to Birgitta's writings,71 particularly the Regula Sancti Salvatoris and the Sermo Angelicus, that Adam was to refute in his forty-one articles.

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regulam suam sanctam. Et videbatur michi quod libellus fuit valde difficilis ad solvendum, sed ad ipsam dominam Brigittam perrepi continue preces meas intercedens, quod ipsa pro me apud beatam virginem exoraret, ut in declaracione et dubiis factis contra earn iuxta veritatem scripture sacre lucide me informaret et ab imminentibus periculis liberaret. Et statim perlegi libellum compositum contra earn, et videbatur michi quod habui solucionem et veritatem omnium dubiorum; et quanto magis legi, tanto fueram clarius super tota materia informatus; et libellum contrarium composui iuxta notata per sacrarum testimonia scripturarum et doctores alios approbatos (Ibid., lines 2029)

The reference to Aphonso de Pecha runs: 'Et illum libellum per articulos declaratos transmisi domino Alphonso eius devoto ad Ianuam isto anno' (Ibid., lines 3031). Alphonso had met Birgitta in Rome in 1367; he resigned his bishopric of Jaen in southern Spain the following year to become her spiritual advisor. He wrote down most of her supernatural conversations and put together Revelationes, Book VIII. His Vita S. Birgitte, written in 1377, played an important rôle in her canonisation process. There is a good account of him in M. Seidlmayer, 'Ein Gehilfe der hl. Birgitta von Schweden: Alfons von Jaen', Historisches Jahrbuch L (1930). Further light was shed on him by E. Colledge, 'Epistola Solitarii ad Reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organiser of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda', Mediaeval Studies xviii (1956), pp. 1949. Alfonso of Pecha deals in this Epistola with the discernment of true and false spirits and prophecies, outlining the methods skilled directors must employ to distinguish the genuine from the false, arguing that Birgitta's unquestioning obedience to her confessors showed that her visions were true, stressing that she had prophesied the terrible fate of Cyprus when it was conquered by the Genoese in 1376 after ignoring Birgitta's warnings. Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', p. 248, remarks: 'His letter to the Bridgettine nuns of 1390 laments the injustice of his captivity, but has none of the bitterness which might have betrayed a lesser man. With all its vicissitudes, his life was of a piece.'

70 Printed in Hogg, 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', pp. 2526. Note the printing error on p. 26, line 30, where 'spapiencia' should read 'sapiencia'!

71 Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 22324, points out that the Perugian theologian was probably read with considerable respect: 'In spite of the vehemence of Easton's attack however, the conclusion that the Perugian's Libellus was necessarily heretical, or even unothodox, by no means follows . . . it is sufficient to say that the Church at the time had a healthy suspicion of mystical phenomena, and in a sense the Perugian's attack on St. Bridget and her Rule may have represented the forces of conservatism within the Church perhaps a little excessively, but certainly on the right side, as it were. After all, S. Bridget was not yet canonized, and indeed such a definition was by no means certain. Urban V had appeared to give only grudging approval to her Rule, and the Schism had brought some uncertainty to the progress of the cause. The fact, too, that S. Bridget was probably the first woman in the Church's history to found an Order, heightened, rather than allayed suspicion in the minds of many orthodox churchmen. From this point of view, then, it was clearly her devotees and the enthusiasts for her cause men like Easton and Alphonso Pecha, who were running the risk of being thought unorthodox.'

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Macfarlane esteems Adam's intentions highly, maintaining:

unlike the Perugian it would seem, Easton was not only in a much better position to study the details of the case, but he had heard or read at first hand, all of the evidence of her canonization cause. Armed with this knowledge, Easton was prepared to meet the challenge from the Perugian adversary with a vigour which even his customary courtesy failed to disguise.72 Once again perhaps, he saw the attack as a symptom of the growing instability within the ranks of the Church itself, and one which had now invaded the realms of theology and dogma.73 And this, at least, must be said for Easton. In the 1380s, there were very few cardinals who could have realised, far less cared about, the significance of such an attack upon the writings of a woman, however remarkable a life she may have led. But seeing perhaps another threat of ecclesiastical disunity, he acted with characteristic thoroughness to expose the theological fallacies which he understood the Perugian writer to hold. He was prepared to risk his theological reputation over the matter, in order to further a cause in which he believed, and moreover, one in which he was personally convinced.74

At the beginning of his Defensorium Adam postulates the Perugian's basic objections:

Primo enim exprobatur domina antedicta super contentis in prologo regule suarum monialium devotarum.

Secundo super grosso et rudi stilo et ita defectuoso regule antedicte quod sine supplecione non deberet a sede apostolica approbari.

72 Adam refers to his Perugian adversary as 'dominus et magister' or 'adversarius' throughout.

73 In a note Macfarlane writes: 'S. Kraft, Textstudier till Birgittas Revealtioner, Uppsala 1929, pp. 10809, has traced the pattern of this theological instability to its open manifestation at the Council of Basle, where such discussions as on the nature of the Devil, the creation of angels, and other mystical phenomena, are made to echo the attack made on S. Bridget by this Perugian theologian.' ('The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', p. 224, fn. 1.)

74 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 22425. It requires, however, a certain acrobatic skill on occasion to reconcile Macfarlane's judgments. On p. 256 he asserts: 'His Defensorium S. Birgitte perhaps alone of his works, was the most successful in that it had its desired effect, and Easton must have been happy to know that his work had played such an important part in the cause of S. Bridget's canonization.' On pp. 23334 he concedes, however: 'Yet his work was destined not finally to be heeded. In the case of the Defensorium S. Birgitte it seems to have achieved its purpose in securing S. Bridget's position before the Church set the official seal to her writings in the Bull of canonization dated 7 October 1391. After the Council of Basle however, it was John of Turrecremata's defence of S. Bridget which stood authoritatively at the head of her published works, while Easton's vaster and much more skilful study seems to have slipped into limbo. Perhaps the theologians of the earlier half of the fifteenth century were growing weary with the imponderables of mystical phenomena. In any case, S. Bridget's writings were no longer a subject for discussion.' Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 181, stresses nevertheless: 'It was a true instinct that made him [Easton] support St Brigit and her order, for as the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was to show, the Brigittines, along with the Carthusians and the Friars Observant, represented the most fervent and heroic element in English monasticism.'

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Tercio exprobat regulam domine prius dicte, quia ponit, ut adversarius male capit, patrem in divinis esse de corpore Virginis incarnatum.

Quarto obicit de regula prius dicta quod Christus non dictavit eam proprio ore suo, nec per mulierem eciam fecerat eam publicari, et sic vadit per lecciones et oraciones plurima combinando et magnam partem per articulos depravando.75

Adam's first eleven articles rebut the Perugian adversary's objections to the Regula Sancti Salvatoris,76 articles 1237 refute his attack on the Sermo Angelicus, and the closing four articles exonerate the four Orationes from his criticisms. As Adam presents, in many cases, either a quotation or a paraphrase of the text of the Perugian Libellus he is responding to before beginning his refutation, the reader is able to ascertain fairly accurately the Perugian's positions.

To the first of the Perugian's objections to the rule, that neither Christ nor an angel would have appeared to a woman and dictated a Rule, Adam reminds his adversary that Christ first appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, according to Matthew, chapter 28, and that there are numerous examples in the Bible of prophets having visions of angels, such as Daniel, chapter 10. That Birgitta was a prophetess cannot be doubted, as in Revelationes, Book 6, chapter 63, she foretold the Great Schism and Christ himself had ordered her to make public her visions for the good of the Church. It was too simple to maintain that Birgitta suffered from hallucinations and could not prove that her Rule had been divinely revealed by Christ Himself. In any case both St Basil and St Pachomius had asserted that their Rules also were divinely inspired. Her intense spirituality, humility, mortification, obedience to her spiritual director, and her total surrender to Christ after her husband's death were proof that her message was inspired by God and placed her in close relation with the spiritual world depicted by St Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, chapter 8. In any case, Satan was not capable of forcing human beings to display such virtues as the life of Birgitta showed, and her cure of a demoniac and conversion of a well-known prostitute were unlikely to be the work of the devil!77

To the allegation that the Rule was written in so barbaric a style that it could not have been divinely inspired and was only approved by the Holy See after prolonged procrastination and various revisions, Adam retaliated by citing St Paul's advice to the Hebrews (5:1214) and to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 10). Furthermore, he cited the example of the rule of St Pachomius, which could hardly be regarded as a model of elegance, but which had nonetheless received papal approval, as had the Regula Sancti Salvatoris under Popes Gregory XI and Urban VI, and which was perfectly suited to the aim it intended to fulfil.78

75 Hogg, edition in 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', p. 25, lines 1925, p. 26, line 1.

76 Cf. for the critical edition Sten Eklund, ed., Sancta Birgitta: Opera Minora I, Regvla Salvatoris (Stockholm, 1975), which replaces the text in Lucas Holstenius, Codex Regularum Monasticarum et Canonicarum, 6 vols in III, reprinted in facsimile at Graz, 1958 from the 1759 Augsburg edition, III, pp. 10716.

77 Oxford, Bodleian Library Hamilton MS 7, fols 22931, Articles 12.

78Ibid., fol. 231, Articles 34.

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The Perugian also objected to the bad theology contained in the Rule, apparently claiming that it stated that God the Father was incarnate by the Virgin Mary. Adam repudiates this suggestion as a false reading of the text.79 At somewhat exaggerated length, with hypothetical explanations of the Perugian's misreading, Adam shows that nowhere in her Rule does she state that it was God the Father and not the Son who assumed flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary.

In article seven he disposes of the objection that no Rule could ever be drawn up by a woman, as women were prohibited from preaching and exercising public ecclesiastical functions by Holy Writ, referring the Perugian to St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica Ia, q. 54, art. I, where the Dominican concedes the right to women to engage in such activities in private, which, according to Adam, was Birgitta's case. He then furnishes a number of examples of women receiving special revelations from God.80 Here Adam is almost sarcastic in his treatment of his opponent and it comes as somewhat of a surprise to find the traditionalist Adam making no distinction between the sexes on this point, though it would surely be false to see in him a herald of twentieth-century feminist theology.81

79Ibid., fol. 231v, articles 56.

80Ibid., fol. 231v.

81 Schmidtke, 'Adam Easton's Defense of St. Birgitta from Bodleian MS. Hamilton 7 Oxford University', p. 40, inspiring himself from a remark by Pantin (The English Church in the Fourteenth Century, p. 181), comments:

the fact that Adam Easton entered the dispute over Birgitta's worthiness for canonization and that he accomplished such an admirable piece of advocacy in defending her should correct the estimate of him, derived from the Defensorium ecclesiasticae potestatis, as a thorough-going conservative. That he is found in the camp of a mystic, and what is more, that of a woman, testifies to the existence of a more liberal and perhaps forward-looking bent of mind than that possessed by many of his contemporaries in the Church hierarchy of the later fourteenth century.

Macfarlane, 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 24851, underlines, however, how much his writings were tied to tradition, and particularly the Victorine tradition:

Easton's writings . . . are of a piece, and no surer way may be found of placing them in their proper perspective and historical context than by a study, in the first place of his sources. He was, of course, first and foremost a Benedictine theologian and biblical scholar. It is to be expected at the outset therefore, that in keeping with the intellectual traditions of his Order, he would be a Victorine. In the field which interested him most, Hugh of S. Victor was clearly his master. This is apparent in his Academic Exercises, of course, but his arguments in these, it would seem, do no more than follow the common teaching of the Schools. His Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis, however, is so permeated with Victorine thought, that it is really only intelligible when it is placed against this background. How else may we explain his particular emphasis on the sacramental and priestly elements of his main themes in this work? Indeed, their whole framework lies completely within the scheme of Hugh of S. Victor's own De Sacramentis and Expositio in Hierarchiam Celestem S. Dionysii. And what of Easton's exegetical treatment of many of his scriptural passages, if they do not follow Hugh's own? In fact, Easton some-

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In articles 810^82 Adam exonerates the Regula Sancti Salvatoris from the Perugian's attacks, comparing it with the Rule of St Augustine, on which it was based, and with the Rules of the Benedictine, Franciscan, and Dominican Orders. The fact that Birgitta's Rule envisaged both men and women living in the same monastery was no ground for rejection in view of the severity of its regulations, and the fact that the Holy See had sealed it with its approbation was sufficient proof of its orthodoxy. Furthermore, like other Rules, it was practicable, enjoin-

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times uses the very example provided for him by his master, as at the beginning of his work. So, too, Easton's interest in Scriptural history and in Hebrew, are manifestations of the all pervading influence of the Victorine school upon him. As with Hugh, ''the primary source of world history was the inspired history of Scripture." [B. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), p. 90] Once we recognize this principal influence on Easton, we are half way to understanding what the Defensorium Ecclesiastice Potestatis really is: a scriptural treatise with its political implications drawn to their logical conclusions. And in this sense, Easton is in the long line of biblical scholars who reconstructed the problems of their day in terms of their specialized knowledge of the Scriptures; men like Grosseteste before him at Oxford, who, in his De Cessatione Legalium, worked on lines not unlike Easton's own [Cf. B. Smalley, 'The Biblical Scholar', in D.A. Callus, ed., Robert Grosseteste, Scholar and Bishop (Oxford, 1955), pp. 7097], and for whom "the Bible, as he read it, outlined his full programme of ecclesiastical reform" [Ibid., p. 86]. So too, upon a biblical scholar like Wiclif, the influence of Hugh of S. Victor was immense, and this . . . may account for Easton's profound understanding of Wiclif's reasoning, and his successful attack upon his views.

The influence of Hugh of S. Victor and his school, is similarly noticeable in Easton's Defensorium S. Birgitte. Here the combat is fought out with his Perugian adversary mostly in the realms of mystical theology and scriptural interpretation, and Easton's Victorine training would seem to have stood him in good stead, for we find him constantly turning to the pronouncements of Hugh on difficult passages in the pseudo-Denis and in S. Augustine. The pseudo-Denis was himself, of course, one of Easton's favourite sources, and though Easton used him a great deal indirectly through Hugh of S. Victor's exposition of his most well-known work, one has also to remember that he possessed his own copy of the complete works of the Areopagite. Before attempting to assess Easton's contribution to the political and ecclesiastical writings of his age, therefore, it is of primary importance to recognize how completely he is in the Victorine traditions of scholarship. This has to be emphasized, because the whole tradition had been rather overshadowed by the great schoolmen in the latter half of the XIII, and the beginning of the XIV, centuries. It comes as a shock to realize that the men like Thomas Aquinas and S. Bonaventura were not primarily Biblical scholars. [Cf. Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, p. 329] The progress of Victorine studies is still uncharted for the XIV century, but it is interesting to see how Benedictines like Easton, Boldon and Thomas Brinton still remained faithful to them at the century's end.

82 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hamilton 7, fol. 233rv.

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ing poverty, chastity and humility to promote its strictly enclosed, contemplative ideal. Trivial objections regarding the habit were dismissed as irrelevant, as was the suggestion that Our Lord had laid down the way of life for his disciples in the gospels, so there was no call for new Orders. Adam argued that the Church evolved with the passing of time and that the inevitable changes received papal approbation, concluding with St Augustine's famous aphorism: 'Non crederem evangelio nisi crederem ecclesiae.'

The remaining articles of his Defensorium refute the Perugian's objections to The Angelic Discourse Concerning the Excellence of the Virgin Mary, known more simply as the Sermo Angelicus, constituting the 'Lessons for Matins of the Brigittine Order',83 and the 'Four Prayers' (Quattuor Orationes).84 The dominant theme of the Sermo Angelicus is certainly the honour due to the Blessed Virgin, to whom the Order was specifically dedicated.85 Yet Macfarlane points out:

In fact, however, the Lessons contain a short course of Christian theology. Beginning with God's foreknowledge of the Virgin's creation, they then proceed to trace a brief history of the creation, the fall of the angels and of man, the history of Israel, the prophets' recognition of the Virgin's coming, her birth, life, death and assumption into heaven. The purpose is to reveal her hidden life and virtues in order that members of the Order should meditate on them, and so imitate them.86

The Perugian adversary seems to have maintained that the Sermo Angelicus and the Quattuor Orationes were heretical and constituted mariolatry, being based on apocryphal sources for her life after Christ's ascension and her assumption. In a sharp and sustained attack, he raised the question of the nature of evil, seen as emanating from the free-will of the angels, refuted the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, and impugned the rôle of her suffering in the divine plan of the Redemption. It should be borne in mind that at the time the immaculate conception was still a disputed issue^87 and that the bodily assumption of Our Lady into heaven was only decreed by Pope Plus XII in 1950, whilst the rôle of the Blessed Virgin in the realisation of the Redemption still occupies theologians today. Most modern biblical scholars would share the Perugian's distaste for the apochrypha.

Adam proceeds methodically in his refutation by first quoting the passage in the Sermo Angelicus or Oratio that is under attack. Then he offers his explanation and justification, often demonstrating at this point the orthodoxy of the text by

83 In her Prologue to the Sermo Angelicus, Birgitta explains the circumstances in which they were revealed to her.

84 Texts in Revelationes, Book II, pp. 371414. They are now more readily available in A.J. Collins, ed., The Bridgettine Breviary of Syon Abbey, Henry Bradshaw Society XCVI (Worcester, 1969). See Alphonsus of Jaen, ed., S. Birgittae Revelationes, Regula Sancti Salvatoris, Sermo Anglicus, Orationes Quatuor, Revelationes Extravagantes (Lubeck, 1492).

85Regula Sancti Salvatoris, ch. 3.

86 'The Life and Writings of Adam Easton O.S.B.', pp. 23132.

87 See S.J.P. van Dijk, 'The Origin of the Latin Feast of the Conception of the B.V.M.', Dublin Review cccclxv (3rd quarter 1954), pp. 25167.

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biblical quotations and adding frequently further texts from Fathers or Doctors of the Church, before proceeding to quote or paraphrase the specific allegations of the Perugian. An elucidation of how the objection has already been refuted by the authorities already cited is then presented, sometimes with the support of supplementary authorities, before the whole argument is summarised. Occasionally he is reduced to probable opinions, as in the case of the Immaculate Conception, where he cites miracles in its support that had occurred in France and England, when the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin had been celebrated.88

Certainly Adam's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae shows an impressive knowledge of the scriptures, handling the texts with great dexterity,89 and Birgitta's Revelationes,90 but, in spite of the array of authorities cited, some of the Perugian's objections still leave a certain disquiet in the reader's mind. Is the question of the nature of evil revealed in the free will of the angels entirely explained by Adam's insistence on the enormity of their sin, quoting St Augustine's De Genesim, chapter 4 and his De Civitate Dei, chapters 3, 9, 11, 12, 13, and 15, St Anselm of Canterbury, St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica la, q.61, art. 6, Aristotle, St John of Damascus, and the Holy Scriptures?

In favour of the immaculate conception he quotes Peter Aureola's Tractatus de Conceptione Beatae Virginis Mariae,91 backed up by texts from St Augustine's De Predestinatione Sanctorum 15 and De Trinitate, chapter 16, as well as Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica IIIa, q.2, art. 11, expatiating at length on the sufferings of the Blessed Virgin, utilising Bede's commentary on Luke and all the biblical texts, concluding that her assumption and coronation in heaven were previsaged by Denis the Areopagite, St Augustine, Boethius, St Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyra, and even the Hebrew glosses to the biblical texts. In a

88 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hamilton 7, fol. 239, presents evidence from the abbey of Ramsay.

89 Adam's commentaries on the biblical texts are, however, frequently not his own, but borrowed from Nicholas of Lyra's Postillae Perpetuae, sive Brevia Commentaria in Universa Biblia, printed in Biblia Latina cure Postillis Nicolai de Lyra, 4 vols (Nuremberg, 1487). Cf. C.V. Langlois, 'Nicolas de Lyre, Frère Mineur', Histoire Littéraire de la France XXXVI (1927), pp. 355400; Clément Schmitt, 'Nicolas de Lyre', Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, Fasc. LII-LIII (1981), cols 29192. Nicholas of Lyra favoured the literal sense of the scriptures in his glosses. He is utilised by Adam at least forty-five times in the Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae. Similarly, some texts from other authors are silently taken over from Thomas Aquinas without mentioning the fact. Literary copyright did not exist in the Middle Ages! Quite a few of his quotes from Aristotle may well have been incorporated from Thomas Aquinas' commentaries, cf. Thomas Aquinas [Sancti Thomae Aquinatis], Opera Omnia, 25 vols (New York, 194850): vol. XVIII contains his commentary on Physics, vol. XX on De Anima and Metaphysics, and vol. XXI on Ethics.

90 In Article 23, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Hamilton 7, fol. 239r, Adam maintains that the assertions of the Revelationes are confirmed by the teachings of the doctors of the church on virtually every point.

91 Cf. the entry for Peter Aureola in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, XII (ii) (Paris, 1935), cols 181741, where the Tractatus is discussed (cols 182124).

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concluding article he reveals his own deep personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

His Peticio Admissionis Articulorum shows that he was confident that he had destroyed the Perugian's objections:

Pater beatissime, cum reverencia semper et correccione vestre altissime sapiencie et doctrine omnes predictos articulos per iudicium sufficienti diligencia et vigilancia sicut iacent reputo eos admittendos, publicandos et legendos in ecclesia sancta Dei, quoniam sicut iacent sunt veri et catholici et proposiciones fidei vel sequentes ex fide, vel ex veritate scripture sancte consona et bonis moribus concordantes, ut ex doctrina philosophorum, sanctorum et sapiencium hominum et doctorum. Nec dicti articuli loquuntur inepte sicut adversarius asseruit et confingit, sed loquuntur iuxta modum loquendi scripture sacre et sanctorum doctorum maxime antiquorum; quare evidenter apparet quod erant a Deo specialiter revelati. Et sic non sunt huiusmodi articuli materia heresis, sed materia fidei et devocionis et bonorum morum et operum inductivi, et ad exaltationem sancte matris ecclesie introducti, quam conservet semper in prosperis et protegat in adversis ipsa sapiencia Dei patris. Amen.92

Yet the influence of Adam's Defensorium Sanctae Birgittae seems to have been decidedly limited. After the sixteenth century it may well not have been read again until Macfarlane wrote his thesis in 1951, and if Turrecremata's Defence is less learned and much shorter, it is also easier to read.93 Adam's work, even in this age of the dissertation industry, is likely to find more passive admirers than readers.

92 Hogg, 'Cardinal Easton's Letter to the Abbess and Community of Vadstena', p. 26, lines 1830.

93 There were other Defensoria of Birgitta, including one contained in the Lincoln Cathedral Chapter Library MS 114, fol. 16, by Magnus Petri, the confessor general of Vadstena, stressing the papal approbation of the Revelationes by Gregory XI and Urban VI. Others, briefly indicated in Johnston, 'English Defenders of St Bridget', Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, I, pp. 26375, include those by Geoffrey Pickering, who later became the Cistercian Abbot of Byland (ibid., pp. 26768), one by an anonymous Doctor Anglicus (ibid., p. 268), and two by a Bishop Reginald, who appears to have been English, but has so far defied identification (ibid., pp. 27174). The items by Geoffrey of Pickering and Bishop Reginald are contained in London, British Library Harley MS 612.

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Dial M for Mystic:

Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren

Vincent Gillespie

It is, of course, partly Shakespeare's fault.1 When his Henry V claimed that he had built 'two chantries where the sad and solemn priests/ Sing still for Richard's soul' (Act 4 scene 1), he created (or perpetuated) the popular image of the neighbouring twin foundations of the Bridgettine house at Syon and the Carthusian house at Sheen sending up an endless smoke of prayer to the Almighty in expiation for the Lancastrian usurpation. But even the fifteenth-century chroniclers of London referred to the two foundations as a single project ('the King's great work at Sheen'), although the Houses only finally came to face each other across the Thames late in the 1420s, years after Henry's death in 1421.2

Of course subsequent scholarship has confirmed the close relationship between the Houses, both in terms of local estate management and, most notably, in terms of the production and circulation of (often vernacular) mystical, para-mystical and devotional books throughout the fifteenth century. Shakespeare refers to two chantries of 'sad and solemn priests', and no doubt this has played a part in the sense of a balanced, almost symbiotic relationship that emerges in

1 Actually it is mainly my own fault. Despite the rather polemical tone of parts of this paper, I have great affection for the Syon brethren having spent several years studying their library catalogue. But when I set out to give an account of the mystical holdings of that library, I was surprised at the turn my argument took. There are other possible trajectories through this material, no doubt, but I hope this one may stimulate discussion on the nature and outcomes of the Syon brethren's spirituality, and clarify the distinctive features of it. Marion Glasscoe has been more patient than any editor should have to be, and remaining errors are all my own work.

2 The standard account of the foundation of Syon is still G. J. Aungier, The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery, The Parish of Islewoth and the Chapelry of Hounslow (London, 1840). More recently M. B. Tait, 'The Brigittine Monastery of Syon (Middlesex) with Special Reference to its Monastic Uses', unpublished D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1975) studied much unprinted manuscript material and explored the spiritual and cultural life of the House. See also N. Beckett, 'St Bridget, Henry V and Syon Abbey', in Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana XXXV: 19 (1993), II, pp. 12550 for a recent perspective on the politics of the foundation. For discussion of the spirituality of the Order (and especially of the nuns) see R. Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon: The Spirituality of the English House of a Medieval Contemplative Order from its Beginnings to the Present Day, Analecta Cartusiana LXVIII (1984).

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many discussions of the religious books that passed between or through these spiritual power-houses of late-medieval England. But, in working on a new edition of the surviving early-sixteenth-century Catalogue of the library of the Syon brethren (initially written by Thomas Betson, one of the four deacons of the Order, and later revised and augmented by him and others), I have been increasingly wondering just how balanced that relationship was.3

The standard scholarly accounts of the transmission of the works of Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton, for example, often refer to a Sheen/Syon axis for the production, circulation and transmission of those authors. The typical taxonomy of such explorations reveals that we have named Carthusian scribes or identifiably Carthusian books being read or owned by named and identifiable Syon nuns, thus establishing a de facto (albeit enclosed and silent) textual community across both sides of the river.4 What seems to have been less remarked on is that this pattern of Carthusian scribes and Syon readers effectively denies any role to the Syon brethren in the production of these texts. Indeed it is an agency that they strikingly fail to claim for themselves. No text that has been assigned a Sheen/Syon provenance by modern scholarship has Syon authorship claimed for it in the catalogue of the brethren's library. The important compilation of contemplative materials known as Speculum Spiritualium, for example, is often attributed a Syon/Sheen provenance.5 But none of the five copies preserved in the Syon catalogue claims it as a Syon text. Indeed Betson's index explicitly attributes it to 'Adam monachus Cartusiensis', while the entry describing the copy at M6061 states that the preceding rubrics were 'ex compilacione dompni henrici Domus Cartusiensis de Bethleem monachi' (that is, the neighbouring house of Sheen).

3 The catalogue is now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 141. It was edited by M. Bateson, Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery Isleworth (Cambridge, 1898). A new edition with full annotation will appear in the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues in 2000. The catalogue is arranged in a series of alphabetical sequences (AV) with varying numbers of entries. Most of the mystical books are in section M, hence my title. On Thomas Betson, see A. I. Doyle, 'Thomas Betson of Syon Abbey', The Library, fifth series, xi (1956), pp. 11518. Betson probably entered Syon in or around 1481 and may have been involved with the library up to his death in 1516.

4 See, for example A. I. Doyle, 'Publication by Members of the Religious Orders', in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 13751475, ed. J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 10923; 'Book Production by the Monastic Orders in England (c. 13751530): Assessing the Evidence', in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. L. L. Brownrigg (London, 1990), pp. 121; 'Carthusian Participation in the Movement of Works of Richard Rolle between England and other Parts of Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries', in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana LV:2 (1981), pp. 109120; M. G. Sargent, 'The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings', Journal of Ecclesiastical History xxvii (1976), pp. 22540; and various other essays by both these cartographers of the landscape of medieval religious books.

5 E. A. Jones, 'A Chapter from Richard Rolle in Two Fifteenth-Century Compilations', Leeds Studies in English, new series xxvii (1996), pp. 139162, gives the most recent list of manuscripts and editions.

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So, although the Syon/Sheen textual community comprises a group of monks serving the reading needs of a group of nuns, it is Carthusian monks serving the needs of Bridgettine nuns. This emergent textual community has one striking oddity about it: it almost entirely effaces and marginalises the brethren of Syon. Indeed the role of the Syon brethren as producers of contemplative and other religious works is modest when they are separated out from the male Sheen/female Syon axis.6 So what exactly were the thirteen priests, four deacons and eight lay brethren in Syon for, beyond their obvious immediate function as a kind of en-suite spiritual and sacramental harem for the sixty sisters? Is it possible to bring them far enough in from the margins to discern from their few surviving original works and the holdings of contemplative and para-mystical texts in their library any patterns or priorities in their spirituality? To answer this question it is necessary first to define their literary activity by contrast to that other band of sad and solemn priests, the Carthusians.

1

In May 1456, Edmund Leversedge of Frome, Somerset, had a near-death or out of body experience.7 Edmund Leversedge was a medieval fashion victim. His vision involves him being punished for the excesses of his wardrobe by similarly-clad gallant-demons, who claim him as one of their own and display his extravagant sartorial tastes in a humiliating fashion show. His soul is given an impromptu restyling by a female celestial image consultant, who dictates the cut, colour and cost of his new wardrobe, denies him the use of the washerwoman and, as a final (and particularly cruel) penance, sends him off to Oxford for eight years' theological study under the unpromising assumed name of William Wretch. He is initially also forbidden to kiss women by this authoritative spiritual style guru, but after representations by the soul that this ban would cause undue social embarrassment as kissing was 'be use of his cuntre' (p. 93), he is allowed to kiss provided that he derives no pleasure from it.

The taxonomy of Leversedge's vision is lengthy and distinguished. Particularly interesting comparisons can be made with the English vernacular Visions of

6 For discussion, see, for example, J. T. Rhodes, 'Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century', Journal of Ecclesiastical History xliv (1993), pp. 1125; G. R. Keiser, 'The Mystics and the Early Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium IV, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 925. The foundational survey of this material remains James Hogg's 'The Contribution of the Brigittine Order to Late Medieval English Spirituality', in Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, Analecta Cartusiana, XXXV:3 (1983), pp. 15374.

7The Vision of Edmund Leversedge: a 15th-century Account of a Visit to the Otherworld edited from BL MS Additional 34, 193 with an Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, ed. W. F. Nijenhuis, Middeleeuwse Studies, VIII (Nijmegen, 1991). All page references in the text are to this edition.

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William Staunton and the Monk of Eynsham. There are initial similarities between Leversedge's death-bed experience of demons and the similar experience of Julian of Norwich. Indeed Leversedge's vision compresses many of the tropes of vision literature into its 690 lines, but it also has elements that merit closer attention. For example, his almost obsessive attention to the minutiae of polite dress extends to the description of the appearance of the female authority figure, the 'blissed lady' who wears a distinctive mantle and ring, suggesting affinities with the order of vowesses who gained in strength and numbers in the course of the fifteenth century. Her prescriptions for his dress and hairstyle while at Oxford offer valuable sociological data about academic 'grunge' in the medieval university, while the diabolical couturiers catalogue 'gentil' and 'gallant' dress with a practised eye to value and cut. Given the assertively visual quality of most of the vision, it is striking that Leversedge's encounter with the highest spiritual level takes place in a light so bright that it paradoxically blinds his 'gostly sight' (p. 89). Also notable is the 'disputacyon' on the fate of his soul held between those in the light and the devils 'as wald betwix doctours in per * scolis wen pey* disputen' (p. 90).

But one of the most interesting aspects of the text is its reference to the existence of a Latin version of the vision, apparently written by a Carthusian of Witham Abbey, to which Leversedge alludes in his peroration:

More I can sey and reherse of pis* my vision, but I trist to almyghty god pat* pis my writing, with pe* scripture of my frend of Wytham in Latyn bygynnyng in this wise: In dei nomine. Amen (p. 99).

This witnesses to the Carthusian Order's continuing interest in the raw data of psychic phenomena. It also reinforces the evidence in the Order's chartae that English Carthusians were occasionally involved with the spiritual direction or guidance of laymen.8 As an avowedly contemplative and eremitic Order, Carthusians needed to be able to calibrate their machinery for spiritual probatio and discretio, and no amount of theoretical discussions of the states and levels of mystical experience could substitute for the hard evidence and raw facts of real-life experiences. This much is implicit in the writings of the Cloud-author, and witnessed by the circulation of probation and discretion texts within the Order.9 A text like The Chastising of God's Children, for example, subsumes within itself the probation guidance of Alfonso of Jaen's Epistola solitarii, a work generated to meet the polemical needs of the Bridgettine apologists in the early stages of the process leading to Bridget's canonization. Works like Guigo du Pont's treatise on contemplation, or Hugh of Balma's Viae Syon lugent all provided the machinery for the mystic mill. But the grist had to come from actual spiritual experience,

8 V. Gillespie, 'Cura Pastoralis in Deserto', in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 161181.

9 The probatio tradition is discussed in detail in Rosalynn Voaden, God's Words, Women's Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York, 1999).

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preferably as fresh and verifiable as possible. Leversedge's text falls, I would argue, into this category of raw data, and it is not hard to imagine the Witham monk transcribing and translating Edmund's experience into Latin to facilitate theological analysis of its premises and peculiarities with the intention of offering spiritual counsel and encouragement to the beleaguered Leversedge and with the intention of adding the story to the databank of spiritual autobiographies, probation narratives, heresy inquisitions and other material that was in circulation. Similarly, one might suggest that Carthusian ownership of all three copies of the vernacular translation of Margarete Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, and the translation of that text into Latin by the Mount Grace Carthusian Richard Methley offers a parallel example of the Order's interest both in possessing the ipsissima verba of the account and in translating it into Latin to facilitate rigorous theological analysis and wider transmission within the Latin-speaking community across Europe.10

This interest in close-hand accounts of spiritual experiences might explain why the Carthusians only had a copy of the Short Text of Julian of Norwich rather than the more ramified and theologically more sophisticated Long Text. The Short Text, as has often been observed, is more immediate and personal in the account it gives of the first sequence of showings. It gives us more detail of the physical circumstances of Julian's death-bed experience, tells us much more about the immediacy of her response to the showings, narrates more about the other people present in the room, and the essentially lay circumstances of her receipt of the viaticum and the last rites. It also shows a notable defensiveness of tone in the anxiety Julian expresses about her gender and her claims to be a teacher, consistent we might feel with the Short Text being produced in circumstances where probatio techniques were being employed, perhaps as part of the inquisition procedures prior to her enclosure in the cell at St Julian's church.

By contrast, the Long Text is notably more impersonal in its account of the circumstances of the visions, deliberately generalises the target audience and diminishes the specificity of circumstance and personnel in the account of the locus and circumstances of the first sequence of showings.11 Indeed in all sorts of ways the Long text is a much more 'knowing' work than the Short Text; more subtle in its theological teasing out of difficult issues, more clearcut (though deliberately not clear) in its developmental structure, more subtle in its use of

10 For discussion of some of the reasons for translating vernacular texts into Latin see S. S. Hussey, 'Latin and English in The Scale of Perfection', Medieval Studies xxxv (1973), pp. 45676; J. P. H. Clark, 'English and Latin in the Scale of Perfection: Theological Considerations', in Spiritualität Heute und Gestern, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Car-tusiana XXXV:1 (1983), pp. 167212.

11 See, for example, S. Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection: An Exploration of Christian Spirituality (London, 1984), pp. 187207; Marion Glasscoe, 'Visions and Revisions: A Further Look at the Manuscripts of Julian of Norwich', Studies in Bibliography xlii (1989), pp. 10320; N. Watson, 'The Composition of Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love', Speculum lxviii (1993), pp. 63783; D. N. Baker, Julian of Norwich's Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, New Jersey, 1994).

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stylistic parody and ventriloquism when describing Julian's multi-layered spiritual identity and self-expression. In other words, the Long Text is strikingly more inter-textual and multi-vocal than the Short Text, much more aware of itself as a theological and mystical text in a web of other theological and mystical texts.12 Of course, the quirks and mechanics of manuscript circulation are probably most responsible for the fact that the Carthusians had only a Short Text rather than a Long Text. But from the point of view of their own procedures and professional interests, in a way the Short Text suited their needs for the relatively raw and unvarnished facts in preference to a highly ramified 'finished' product. Indeed other texts in London, British Library Manuscript Additional 37790 (the Amherst manuscript), such as the Mirror of Simple Souls, and Misyn's translations of Rolle's Emendatio Vitae and Incendium Amoris, or the Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God (a translation of the Latin text of Ruusbroec's Van den blinckenden Steen) would have contributed usefully to the Carthusian collection of spiritual and interpretative texts, and it is not surprising that it attracted the annotating attention of the Sheen Carthusian James Grenehalgh.13

We know, of course, that the Carthusians used texts of this kind in their own processes of self-assessment and spiritual calibration. The unique manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe submits Margery's text (if one can call it that) to a post-hoc probatio of the kind that probably explains her reluctance to have her story written down until late in life, despite offers from some very eminent church men.14 Given her almost obsessive need to declare at length the 'maner of her levyng' to any priest who lingered in her presence, Margery's reluctance to commit her story to writing may have been influenced by her knowledge of the fate of other East Anglian women whose stories got written down and are preserved for us today in the documents of the Norwich Heresy trials (a process of probatio that is different in degree rather than in kind): women like Margery Baxter, whose orthodoxy was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Margery

12 For a brief discussion of Julian's skills in stylistic parody and intertextual ventriloquism, see V. Gillespie and M. Ross, 'The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 5377.

13 For a detailed recent description of this manuscript and an account of Grenehalgh's annotations, see Michael G. Sargent, James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic, 2 vols, Analecta Cartusiana LXXXV (1984), 2, pp. 499510. On Ruusbroec, see Michael G. Sargent: 'Ruusbroec in England: The Chastising of God's Children and Related Works', in Historia et Spiritualitas Cartusienses, ed. J. de Grauwe (Ghent, 1983), pp. 303312; 'The Heneage Manuscript of Calculus de Perfectione Filiorum Dei and the Middle English Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God', Ons Geestelijk Erf lix (1985), pp. 53359.

14The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, Early English Text Society, O.S. 212 (1940). All references by page number in the text are to this edition. There are three marginal references to the Mount Grace Carthusian Richard Methley and two to his confrère John Norton added by a late annotator.

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Kempe's but whose actual and devotional literacy was very similar.15 Similarly she may have been worried that the Canterbury monk's wish that she should be enclosed in a house of stone (p. 27) represented one of the most likely responses of the clerical community to her story; that is, the desire to reduce her to some manageable stereotypical form (in this case that of the enclosed recluse). It is surely not accidental that Margery begins to dictate her story very late in life to a layman who may have been a close family member, having resisted the instigations of the clerical institution for so long. And who is to say that Margery was wrong: the printed extracts from her book do indeed refer to her as a devout anchoress, and the clerical scribe who transcribed Book 1 and largely authored Book 2 is palpably at a loss as to how to categorise the narrative he finds before him.16 His prologues are masterpieces of neurotic wrongfooting, attempting to pigeon-hole a hybrid mystical or at the very least a para-mystical text as a treatise on the uses of tribulation and the power of grace. At least in telling her tale in the first-person to priests around Europe Margery retained agency and initiative in the generic classification of her story.

But it is striking that the monks of Mount Grace were interested in Margery Kempe's story, not apparently for the purposes of censure, but once again for the purposes of calibrating their own sense of the repertoire of signs, gifts and showings that might be granted to their own brethren: the marginalia in the unique manuscript relate Margery's signs and wonders to those of professed Carthusian priests: 'so dyd prior Nort. in hys excesse' (p. 105). The late fifteenth-century mystical diaries of John Norton and Richard Methley are clearly and decisively in this tradition of raw psychic data: as unvarnished and as unmediated as possible.

So Edmund Leversedge was in good company when a copy of his experiences was written up by the monk of Witham. He seems to have retained his high regard for the Order as the two West-country Charterhouses of Witham and Hinton received benefactions of twenty shillings in his will, proved in 1496.17 But Leversedge was a layman, and one might have expected that his primary recourse for spiritual direction would have been to his local secular clergy. Unfortunately they emerge from his story with less credit. The angel-guide in the vision rejects several local spiritual advisors suggested by Leversedge prior to his restoration to health and life on the grounds of their non-residence and lack of 'kunnyng' (pp. 967). Three priests from Frome are, however, given approved status, and Leversedge hastens to recount his vision to them, asking for their views as to 'how pat * a man schuld have pe* mercy of God' (p. 97). The manner of

15Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 142831, ed. N. P. Tanner, Camden Fourth Series, XX (1977), pp. 4151.

16 On the printed extracts, see S. E. Holbrook, 'Margery Kempe and Wynkyn de Worde', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium IV, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 2746.

17 His testament is printed by Nijenhuis, The Vision of Edmund Leversedge, op. cit. in n. 7, p. 136.

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their reply is striking, and suggests the degree of autonomy that could be enjoyed by well-to-do and well-connected laity by the middle of the fifteenth century:

And pey * wrot me pere* conseyte and gaf it me in my hand, pe* whiche I have to shew

(p. 97).

So Edmund Leversedge's text offers some intriguing and paradigmatic aspects: it was produced and circulated in vernacular and Latin versions; it was translated into Latin by a Carthusian monk of Witham; it witnesses to lay selectivity in the choice of parochial clergy to approach for advice over spiritual matters; and, not the least significant, it suggests that parochial clergy might on occasion give written spiritual guidance to well-connected laymen.

2

The distinguished role of the Carthusian Order in the production and dissemination of contemplative and devotional materials is now well documented. In his Consuetudines, Guigo envisaged the making of books as the Order's distinctive contribution to the cura animarum. In his well-known dictum, borrowed from Cassian, repeated by Adam in the Quadripartite Exercise of the Cell and reflected and refracted in many Carthusian legislative texts and commentaries throughout the medieval period, Guigo wrote:

Libros quippe tanquam sempiternum animarum nostrarum cibum cautissime custodiri et studiosissime volumus fieri, ut quia ore non possumus, dei verbum manibus predicemus.

(Surely we ought to preserve books most carefully, as immortal food for our souls and to make volumes most assiduously, that, because we cannot preach the word of God by mouth, we may with our hands.)

Preaching with the hands rather than with the mouth, Carthusians become 'heralds of the faith'. They hope for recompense from the Lord for those who are corrected from error by their books, who progress in 'catholica veritate', who repent of their sins and who burn with desire for the heavenly homeland.18 What Guigo's remarks implied was that Carthusians would be involved in the production of different kinds of books, from those refuting heresy, through books teaching the faith and encouraging patience, to those mystical and devotional treatises for which the English province was noted in the later Middle Ages. But, with the exception of Love's Mirror, the English Carthusians are more notable for carefully controlling and limiting the circulation of mystical books (the Cloud, Marguerite Porete, perhaps Margery) than they are for broadcasting their

18Guiges Ier, Coutumes de Chartreuse, Sources Chretienne CCCXIII (Paris, 1984), cap. xxviii, pp. 2234; Sargent, 'The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings', op. cit. in n. 4, pp. 2256; Gillespie, 'Cura Pastoralis', op. cit. in n. 8, pp. 1727.

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book-making activities (though there are non-mystical texts that clearly benefited from their circulation and dissemination).19 Mystical theology was meant to be a 'hid diuinite', they might have argued.

A rare glimpse of how texts circulating inside the Order achieved a wider popularity is found in an account of the transmission of The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters:

A Monke of the Chartre hous of london sent in wryting the Rule and Reuelacion of the forsaid prayer to A brother of the same ordre atte Mountgras in the northe countre.

The monk of Mountgrace, delighted with his new acquisition, replied to the monk of London, sending him a prayer to be added to his devotions:

And more ouere he said in his letter this wyse: In this last yere I sent to a deuoute preest of my knowlegge a copy of the Reuelacion . . . which ye sende me. And the same preste sent dyuers copies to certeyn of his Frendes, of whom ther was a good husbond man harde of the grete vartu and grace of the forsaid prayers he vsed it dayly as deuoutly as he coude.

The chain of transmission is telling: Carthusian to secular priest; priest to layman. This is characteristic of the perceived spread of devotional texts from religious to secular use in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.20

A similar pattern may be noted in the transmission of the life of Jerome by Simon Wynter, Bridgettine brother of Syon, which he produced for his particular friend, benefactor and spiritual client, Margaret, Duchess of Clarence (ob. 1439), instructing her:

pat * hit sholde lyke youre ladyshype first to rede hit and to doo copye hit for youre self & syth to lete oper* rede hit & copye hit, whoso wyll.21

Here the Syon brethren re-enter the story. The Carthusians, despite their strict enclosure, had a pastoral programme of book-making that was defined and

19 On Love, see now Nicholas Love at Waseda, ed. S. Oguro, R. Beadle and M. G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1997) for an over-view of recent scholarship. On the non-mystical texts, see Gillespie: 'Cura Pastoralis'; 'The Evolution of the Speculum Christiani', in Latin and Vernacular: Studies in late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 3962.

20 F. Wormald, 'The Revelation of the Hundred Pater Nosters', Laudate xiv (1936), pp. 16582 at pp. 18081. See V. Gillespie, 'Vernacular Books of Religion', in Book Production, ed. Griffiths and Pearsall, op. cit. in n. 4, pp. 31744.

21 On Margaret's links with Syon (and those of other noble benefactors) see G. R. Keiser, 'Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon Wynter and Beinecke MS 317', Yale University Library Gazette lx (1985), pp. 3246. One of Margaret's gifts, a copy of Symon Wynter's Sanctilogium Salvatoris, originally items M1 and M2 in Betson's catalogue, was copied by Stephen Dodesham, later a Carthusian scribe of some productivity, though this may have been completed before his entry into religion, when he may have worked as a professional scribe; Doyle, 'Book Production by the Monastic Orders in England (c. 13751530): Assessing the Evidence', op. cit. in n. 4, pp. 1415.

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enshrined in their earliest legislative materials, and a proven track record of interest in spiritual experience and the raw data of mystical and para-mystical encounters. The Bridgettine brethren observed a similarly strict enclosure (though there was provision for them to leave the cloister on business) and, as Wynter's text suggests, could on occasion act as the catalysts for the transmission of texts into the wider lay community. Indeed Syon was notable for the powerful friends and supporters it attracted through its life.22 But when one thinks about the spirituality of Syon, it is the spirituality of the nuns that instinctively comes to mind, and this is reflected in the weight of scholarship devoted to their books, to the Mirror of Our Lady and the Orcherd of Syon.23 By contrast, attention has only recently begun to be given to the brethren, and much of that has been focused on the prolific if mundane, predictable and low-key writings of Richard Whytford, the so-called wretch of Syon.24

This relative neglect of the brethren is hardly surprising. It is innate to the Order and explicit in its very foundations: as Christ says in the preamble to the Regula Salvatoris:

This religion perfore * I wyll sette 7 ordeyne fyrst 7 principally by women to the worshippe of my most dere beloued moder, whose ordir and statutys I shall declare most fully with my owne mowthe.

'Per mulieres primum et principaliter.'25 So completely subordinate is the role of the brethren in the Regula Salvatoris that the first reference to them is delayed

22 Much information can be drawn from the Syon Martiloge in London, British Library MS Additional 22285; fols. 70v71r contain a list of 'Nomina specialium benefactorum et amicorum'. Some powerful early friends of Syon are mentioned in F. R. Johnston, 'Joan North, First Abbess of Syon 142033', Birgittiana i (1996), pp. 4765; The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. M. Deanesly (Manchester, 1915), pp. 91130; and Tait, 'The Brigittine Monastery of Syon', op. cit. in n. 2, passim.

23 See for example the sensitive work of Ann M. Hutchison, most recently 'What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from the English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey', Medieval Studies lvii (1995), pp. 20522.

24 For a survey, see Hogg, 'The Contribution of the Brigittine Order to Late Medieval English Spirituality' and Rhodes, 'Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications', op. cit. in n. 6; J. T. Rhodes, 'Religious Instruction at Syon in the Early Sixteenth Century', in Studies in St. Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. J. Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana XXXV:19 (1993), 2, pp. 151169. A sermon on the Syon indulgences by Symon Wynter survives in London, British Library MS Harley 2321, fols. 17r62r, with shorter adaptations surviving elsewhere: S. Powell, 'Preaching at Syon Abbey', Working Papers in Literary and Cultural Studies XXIX (Salford, 1997) gives a full account of this text and of the popular appeal of the pardons.

25Regula Salvatoris, cap.1. The Middle English version is reproduced from Cambridge University Library Ff.6. 33 in The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure and Other Middle English Brigittine Legislative Texts, vols 24 [all published], ed. J. Hogg, Salzburger Studien zur Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Salzburg, 197880), 2, pp. 158, who also reproduces a Latin text from Cambridge St John's College MS 11 (A.11). The Middle English quotation is found on p. 8. The standard edition of the versions of the Latin is Regula Salvatoris, ed. S. Eklund, Den Heliga Birgitta Opera Minora 1, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Andra Serien, Latinska Skrifter, 8:1 (Lund, 1975).

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until after details of the sleeping arrangements and bed linen of the nuns, the habits and Office of the nuns and the rules of silence and of entry to the cloister and the procedures for professing the nuns have been established. Reading the Regula Salvatoris, one might be forgiven for thinking that, beyond the basic sacramental and confessional functions, the Syon brethren were not central to the identity or character of the Order. Doubts about double monasteries were expressed at the highest levels in the fifteenth century, and indeed in 1422, only a year after the first professions at Syon, Martin V had ordered all double houses to separate, only rescinding his decree after great political pressure had been brought to bear on him by the powerful friends of the Bridgettines throughout Europe.26

In the liturgies for profession and promotion, the brethren are instructed to follow the same order of service as the nuns with simple substitutions of the laying on of hands by the bishop in place of the imposition of the mantle and crown, and of grasping of the hands in gesture of fealty in place of the gift of the ring: the female rite is simply adapted for the men. Whereas the nuns have their own specially composed Office based on the Sermo Angelicus, the brethren are told simply to follow the Hours of whatever use is observed by the cathedral of the diocese in which the house is found. In London this was the use of Sarum, and surviving Syon service books show that the brethren acquired second-hand generic Sarum service books and adapted them gradually by the addition of distinctively Bridgettine suffrages and devotions.27

Nor does the Regula Salvatoris provide much more help when it finally, more than half way through its length, turn its attention to itself trying to define what exactly the brethren were for, beyond the spiritual servicing of the nuns. Chapter 13/15 (depending on the version you read) states:

Thes thrittene preestis owe to entende oonly to dyuyne office and studie 7 prayer. And implie then with none othere nedes or offices. Whiche also are bounde to expoune iche sunday the gospel of the same day in the same messe to all herers in ther modir tonge.

They are also 'opunly to preche' on solemn festivals. At Syon, the acquisition of various indulgences and pardons, especially the ad vincula indulgence, soon gave further opportunities for public preaching by the brethren, and it was at one such

26 A very useful account of the political turmoil of the English House in the 1420s is given by F. R. Johnston, 'Joan North, First Abbess of Syon, 142033', op. cit. which highlights the role played by Abbot John Whethampstead of St Alban's and John Duke of Bedford in securing from Martin V in 1425 the bulla reformatoria known as Mare Anglicanum. On the Order's more general problems during this period, see H. Cnattingius, Studies in the Order of St. Bridget of Sweden I: The Crisis in the 1420s, Stockholm Studies in History, VII (Uppsala, 1963).

27 For an excellent discussion of the service-book acquisitions see Christopher de Hamel, Syon Abbey: the Library of the Bridgettine Nuns and Their Peregrinations after the Reformation (London, Roxburghe Club, 1991).

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occasion of this sort that Margery Kempe is in attendance at the end of book two of her Book.28

The divine Office, study, prayer and preaching: these injunctions do not amount to a very specific or detailed job description. There is evidence, however, from outside of the Rule to suggest that the Syon brethren were also expected to accept confessions from outside the house, and the brethren at Vadstena at least had the status of minor pentientiaries.29 There is also some evidence to suggest that they acted as spiritual directors for well-placed laymen and women, as Symon Wynter did for Margaret Duchess of Clarence. But we know that because traces of the relationship occur in Papal records, so perhaps it was less common than it might appear.30 The brethren, many of whom entered Syon after careers as secular priests, academics or administrators, also seem to have offered collegial hospitality to priests and laymen who wished to work in the library. And increasingly as the fifteenth century progressed they would have served as marketing managers for the Syon brand name, as the fame of the Syon pardon spread and crowds flocked to the indulgence sermons and bought the printed versions of the pardon and indulgences. Syon was a fashionable place to visit and the brethren were in the front line of handling the masses of visitors, while the nuns were assiduously protected from exposure to them.

Despite the preponderance of male monastic advisers in the early history of the Order, both in Sweden (where the dominant influence was Cistercian) and in England (where the dominant influence was Benedictine, and especially St Alban's), the role of the Syon brethren seems never to have been very clearly defined. It is only in the later development of the Additions for the brethren (which constituted customary law for the various houses) that most of the detailed development of the role and life of the brethren takes place. This is all the more puzzling as, as Roger Ellis has shown, the early constitutions of the Order went to great pains to dissociate it from earlier and existing monastic practice.31

28 Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, 2, p. 38; Eklund, Regula Salvatoris, cap 15, section 174, p. 121. For the passage in the E text, see cap 13, section 171 (Eklund, pp. 1612). On the complex development of the Rule and its manifestations in England, see Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, op. cit. in n. 2, ch. 1.

29 On their penitential authority, see Johnston, 'Joan North First Abbess of Syon 142033', p. 56, citing Liber Privilegiorum Monasterii Vadstenensis, ed. E. Nygren (Hafniae, 1950), p. 236. The preaching office of the Syon brethren has been carefully and thoughtfully studied by Powell, 'Preaching at Syon Abbey, op. cit. in n. 24; see also her 'Syon, Caxton and the Festial', Birgittiana ii (1996), pp. 187207, which discusses Syon's possible involvement with printed sermons. Tait, 'The Brigittine Monastery of Syon', op. cit. in n. 2, p. 214, notes that Bonde, Fewterer and Reynolds all served as university preachers at Cambridge before joining the Order.

30 Keiser, 'Patronage and Piety', op. cit. in n. 21, pp. 378; Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. VII, 141731 (London, 1906), Vol. VIII, 142747 (London, 1909), p. 174.

31 William Heyworth, Abbot of St Alban's had sat on Patrington's committee in 1416 along with Fishbourn (who may have been a hermit at St Alban's, but is described in

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That the preaching office of the brethren was taken seriously is suggested by the provision in the vernacular Additions for the Brethren allowing a preacher three days remission from choir duties 'to recorde hys sermon'.32 Indeed seven Syon brethren are recorded in the index to the surviving Syon catalogue as having had their sermons preserved in the library at some point, six of whom are credited with no other form of literary output. Several further entries in the catalogue record donations by named brethren of anonymous sermons, and these may camouflage more of their own compositions, though Betson's index usually identifies known works by members of the house.

That the surviving catalogue reports such a large and wide-ranging collection is significant but not surprising. The most cynical interpretation is that the collection was merely the sum of the accumulated personal collections of the brethren, evincing little sign of a policy on acquisitions and use. And indeed it is possible to argue that the brethren's library and community at Syon was not the intellectual treasure house in the first half century of the house's existence that it was later to become.33 Early benefactions to the library are not specifically mentioned in the Martiloge until the record of a community decision reached in 1471, where the status of proto-benefactors goes instead to Thomas Grant, canon and precentor of St Paul's (who died in that year) and to his parents. His gift of twenty-six multi-authored miscellany manuscripts (of a kind very typical of the library in its manuscript phase) prompted the addition of special provision in the Martiloge for benefactors to the library. In other words, over fifty years of library

(footnote continued from previous page)

the document simply as 'priest'). The committee to draw up the Additions probably worked in the second quarter of the fifteenth century (and certainly between 1425 and 1473) and was made up entirely of Benedictines and Cistercians, including Hugo Eyton, sub-prior of St Alban's; The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. M. Deanesly (Manchester, 1915), pp. 91130). Four versions survive of the Additions to the Rule for the English Syon: London, British Library MS Arundel 146 (in Middle English, for the sisters); London, Guildhall Library NIS 25524 (in Middle English for the brethren); Cambridge, St John's College MS 11 (a fragmentary Latin text for the brethren); and a post-medieval Latin version produced in Lisbon in 1607. The first three are reproduced or edited by Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure. Fragments of the Rule and Additions were more recently identified among the manuscripts still in possession of the sisters. N. R. Ker and A. J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, IV (Oxford, 1992), pp. 3489.

32 The Syon Additions for the Brethren (Guildhall manuscript) record in a short chapter headed 'Of the offices of the prechours' that 'Eche of the prechours schal besyde the sermon day haue thre hole days at lest oute of the quyer to recorde hys sermon', ed. Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, 3, p. 122.

33 For the 'cynical' view, see R. Lovatt, 'The Imitation of Christ in late Medieval England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, XVIII (1968), pp. 97121: 'the Syon library impressive though it seems, had a more fortuitous character, and was basically little more than the sum of the libraries of its benefactors' (p. 112). For some recent comments on the growth, care and use of the brethren's library see V. Gillespie, 'The Book and the Brotherhood: Reflections on the Lost Library of Syon Abbey', in Studies in the Late Medieval Book in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths, ed. A. S. G. Edwards, V. Gillespie and R. Hanna (London, forthcoming).

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and literary activity among the brethren of Syon go unrecorded and unacknowledged.34

But, in any case, what exactly did the brethren do with books once they were in the collection of the house? In answering this question, it is probably important to divide the history of the library into two phases: an earlier, largely manuscript phase, up to the 1471 Martiloge resolution to acknowledge library donors, and a later, largely printed phase from 1471 to the dissolution.35 Despite various shadowy possibilities, the early Syon brethren do not emerge as prolific or substantial authors. Indeed only Simon Wynter's life of Jerome and sermon on indulgences survive from the manuscript phase of the House's book culture. And although we can trace the sources of the published writings by post-1471 brethren such as Betson, Whytford, Bonde and Fewterer back to books that were in the brethren's library at Syon, the scale and impact of their literary production was both late (Betson's A Right Profitable Treatise, the first printed book with an irrefutable Syon provenance, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500) and rather modest in both scale and range given the intellectual firepower that was gathered under Syon's roof, especially in the early sixteenth century.

Books ought to have been an important part of the intellectual life of the Syon brethren. The Regula Salvatoris allowed books to be received 'as many as be necessary to doo dyuyne office and moo in no wyse', but also provided that 'Thoo bookes they shalt haue as many as they wylle in whiche ys to seruen or to studye'.36 Books arrived in both houses and libraries at Syon from external benefactors; they arrived with priests entering the Order as brethren; and, judging by the donations attributed to the brethren in Betson's catalogue, they also continued to arrive for the use of those brethren after they had entered the Order. In the early years after the first professions, Syon sought guidance from the mother-house at Vadstena on a number of procedural and constitutional points. Vadstena replied in a series of responsiones dating from 1421 and 1427. Responsio 132 allows brethren to receive books after they have been professed. This seems par-

34Martiloge, op. cit. in n. 22, fol. 17v: (De exequiis pro benefactoribus librarium. Capitulum 7). The decision is dated 7 September 1471, and grants prayers 'in speciali pro anima magistri Thome Graunte et pro animabus Iohannis et Helene parentium eius. In generali vero pro animabus eorum omnium qui librarie sororum vel librarie fratrum aliquem vel aliquos libros ad communem usum eorundem pro Dei honore ampliando contulerunt' (in particular for the soul of Master Thomas Graunte and for the soul of John and Helen his parents. In general for the souls of all those who have contributed to the library of the sisters, or the library of the brothers any book or books for the common use of the same for the augmenting of the honour of God).

35 See further Gillespie, 'The Book and the Brotherhood'.

36 Cambridge University Library MS Ff.6.33 fols. 62v63r, reproduced by Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, 2, pp. 4950. For the Latin text (II version), see cap. 21, sections 2278: 'Libri quoque, quotquot necessarii fuerint ad divinum officium peragendum, habendi sunt, plures autem nullo modo. Illos autem libros habeant, quotquot voluerint, in quibus addiscendum est vel studendum' (Eklund, Regula Salvatoris, p. 127). The E version, cap. 18, sections 2278, is substantially the same (Eklund, Regula Salvatoris, pp. 2045).

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ticularly to have been the case in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, a period of great growth in the size of the library collection, when a number of the brethren had arrived not only with substantial and impressive academic reputations but also with substantial and impressive academic libraries.37

Moroever, Syon embraced the potential of the printing press early. Books printed in the 1460s and early 1470s are easily identified in the surviving catalogue. As so many of the later accessions to the brethren's library were printed books, and because Betson established the practice of recording the secundo folio of nearly all the books he catalogued (a practice continued in the post-Betson recension of the catalogue) it is possible in some cases to identify donations associated with particular priest-brethren which cannot have come into the House with them on their profession because their publication post-dates that profession. Betson's good curatorial habit of including the secundo folio for each press mark is invaluable as it usually allows discrimination between the various early printed editions of a particular work to pinpoint the precise printing that found its way into the library at Syon. Such acquisitions were, of course, in keeping with the permissive tone of the Regula Salvatoris with regard to books for study. But, as we shall see, the pattern of such accessions does not support a view of the brethren as great transmitters or even great acquirers or readers of contemplative texts.

This too is implicit in the early history of the house. The urgent need for books had been recognised by Henry V in the provisions he made in his will for his twin foundations of Sheen and Syon. But his benefactions reveal that it was to Syon that his fatherly interest turned most readily. He leaves the abbey his three-volume glossed Bible and 'omnes libros nostros modo existentes in custodia sua', with the exception of the great Bible owned by his own father which he wishes passed on to his successors. Henry leaves his books of meditation and those useful for preaching the Gospel to be divided equally between Syon and Sheen, stipulating that the preaching-books should all go to Syon because the Brethren there are required to preach and the Carthusians are forbidden so to do. On 26 August 1422, only five days before his death, Henry added a codicil speci-

37 Despite the degree of autonomy allowed to the House by Mare Anglicanum in 1425, Syon seems to have kept in close touch with the Mother-House throughout the 1420s. Robert Belle and Thomas Sterington visited Vadstena in 1427, when they received a bone of St Bridget: Martlloge, fol. 1r. On this visit, the Diarium Vadstenense reports that they raised further questions regarding the Rule: 'In die parasceves venerunt de Anglia duo fratres ordinis nostri petentes et reportantes raciones super aliquibus. punctis regule', Diarium Vadstenense: The Memorial Book of Vadstena Abbey, ed. C. Gejrot, Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis XXXIII (Stockholm, 1988), p. 186. The colophon in London, British Library MS Harley 612 (s.xv med.), the important Syon copy of the Revelations, defences and other para-legislative materials, reports that the accuracy of the text of its exemplar was confirmed for these same brethren by a Swedish notary during the same visit: de Hamel, Syon Abbey, op. cit. in n. 27, pp. 578. The responsiones are preserved in Stockholm, Riksarkivet MS A. 20, fols. 164ff.; Tait, 'The Brigittine Monastery of Syon', op. cit. in n. 2, ch. 3.

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fying again that Syon should have all the preaching-books and instructing that neither house should possess duplicate copies of any work. In practice it seems unlikely that any of these books ever arrived at Syon, as none is mentioned in the catalogue. But Henry's emphasis on preaching-books is a signal that the vocation of the Syon brethren was seen from the outset as different from that of the Carthusians.38

So, explicit in the legislative texts of both the Carthusians and the Bridgettines, and implicit in the terms of the testamentary bequests of Henry V, is the assumption that the external preaching office of the Bridgettines distinguishes them from the contemplative vocation of the Carthusians. The library was generously stocked with a wide range of sermons, manuscript and printed, English and continental. Indeed sermons and materia praedicabilis constitute easily the largest single category of books in the collection as reported by Betson's catalogue. But also explicit in the Revelationes Extravagantes of St Bridget, many of which served as an expansive and explanatory gloss on the text of the Regula Salvatoris, is Christ's instruction that all Bridgettine preaching should be plain and unadorned, based on the Scriptures, delivered with 'verba simplicia et pauca' and avoiding the 'incisiones et distincciones capitulorum' that pass for wisdom among worldly preachers. Preaching at Syon has recently been the subject of a full and perceptive analysis by Sue Powell that suggests that the surviving witnesses would bear out the terms of that exhortation.39 So their preaching-office seems unlikely to have made much demand on their mystical knowledge or diagnostic expertise. Their subsequent role as penitentiaries would have required and encouraged development of skills in forensic asceticism and its application to the spiritual needs of laymen and the nuns. These skills would also indeed have been amply supported by the preponderance of ascetic materials in the contemplative and para-mystical sections of the library catalogue. But apart from preaching and ascetic guidance, what use did they have for those various mystical and para-mystical texts mainly described and grouped together in section M of the library catalogue?

38 P. and F. Strong, 'The Last Will and Codicils of Henry V', English Historical Review xcvi (1981), pp. 79102; Beckett, 'St Bridget, Henry V and Syon Abbey', op. cit. in n. 2, pp. 1278. Bridget is included in the list of saints from whom suffrages are requested at the beginning of the will (Strong, p. 89). K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), Appendix C: 'Henry V's Books', prints a list of the books taken after the seige of the Market of Meaux, apparently from one of the town's religious Houses, which he suggests might have been destined for Syon or Sheen. The books passed initially into the personal custody of the Treasurer, John Stafford, only finding their way into the Treasury itself in 1427, when this list was made. Initially some and subsequently all were given to King's Hall Cambridge, where they are noted by 1440. No reason for over-riding the provisions of the Will and its codicils is given. See further, Gillespie, 'The Book and the Brotherhood', op. cit.

39Dem Heliga Birgittas Reuelaciones Extrauagantes, ed. L. Hollman, Samlingar utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Andra. Serien, Latinska Skrifter, 5 (Uppsala, 1956), p. 133; Powell, 'Preaching at Syon Abbey', op. cit. in n. 24, pp. 2022.

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3

The brethren of Syon do not seem to have had a contemporary reputation as mystics or mystagogues, or even as mystographs. Nothing in the Martiloge suggests special renown or expertise of a contemplative kind among the brethren. (Indeed the entire Order boasts only two saints in its six-hundred year history, one of whom was the English martyr Richard Reynolds, whose heroism was political rather than mystical.) Part of this is, no doubt, because we know rather little about the careers and backgrounds of the brethren, especially the non-graduate brethren and all the brethren in the first fifty years of the house's existence.40 Nor do we know much about the extent and range of their spiritual guidance of lay people. But this is of course a circular argument: their obscurity may be well deserved. It is unlikely in a house so well connected, so keen on self-publicity and so well frequented by the chattering classes of its day that reputations for contemplative or visionary excellence would not have become known.41 Perhaps this is the silence of the dog that did not bark. Why are so many of the contemplative, meditative and devotional texts known to have been in Syon ownership written by Sheen Carthusians? Why was the Sheen Carthusian James Grenehalgh apparently acting as (a remote) spiritual advisor to the Syon nun Joanna Sewell?42 What were the brethren doing at the time? Rowing the boats?

In the early years of the house, Thomas Gascoigne, sometime Chancellor of Oxford University, benefactor and regular visitor to Syon and source of well-informed gossip on the early years of the House and on the cult of Bridget in

40 In this article, obit dates for the brethren and terms of Confessor-General are calculated by reference to the Martiloge. I am grateful to Dr Claes Gejrot for sending me a draft of the new edition of the Martiloge that he is undertaking with Dr Virginia Bain-bridge, who is herself engaged in a much needed prosopographic study of the House's members and friends.

41 It might reasonably be objected that contemplatives lead hidden lives, and that the strictness of the enclosure at Syon might have prevented reputations from being fostered. It might also be argued that contemplative life need not be articulated in written form, and that it is the minority of mystics whose experiences are reported. This is almost certainly true of the nuns at Syon, who were considered the female equivalents of the Carthusians. However, what I am exploring here is the flimsy surviving evidence of a contemplative culture among the brethren. It may be that their manner of life was more like the Benedictines who had such an influence in the early years of the House, in which case a clear discrimination between the nuns and the brethren is necessary.

42 For Grenehalgh's biography, see Sargent, 'James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic', op. cit. in n. 13, 1, pp. 75109. The Grenehalgh/Sewell relationship probably began before her profession as a nun of Syon in 1500 (he was already professed by 1499), but Sargent, 1. pp. 912, makes it clear that any relationship between them would have been in breach of the rules and customs of both Orders. This may be a personalised version of a longstanding textual relationship between the nuns of Syon and the monks of Sheen (though Grenehalgh's injunction to himself to 'forsake Sewell' suggests otherwise), but the important point about the story is, once again, the absence of the Syon brethren from the picture.

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England, praised Fishbourn the first Confessor-General as 'valde Deo devotum', claiming that before his entry into religion 'fuit magnus armiger et deuotus in boria Angliae' ('he was a great and devout knight in the north of England'). Other sources suggest that Fishbourn may have been a hermit or recluse at a cell of St Alban's after a spell as Steward of that house. In the same passage, Gascoigne praises Symon Wynter, another early brother, as 'devotus religiosus in monasterio Syon in Anglia' ('a devout religious in the monastery of Syon in England').43 But these are pretty conventional phrases and do not encourage us to expect heroic sanctity or visionary prowess. Gascoigne was an habitué of the early house, and acquired from it part of a bone of Bridget that had been given to two Syon brethren on a visit to Vadstena in 1427. Gascoigne bequeathed his collected papers to Syon, on condition that a fair copy should be made by the brethren:

Opus meum scriptum manu mea propria qui dicatur liber seu scripture de veritatibus ex sacra scriptura collectis et ex scriptis sanctorum et doctorum, scribitur in vitulino in pergamino expensis ejusdem monasterii, et habeat predictum monasterium utrumque opus scilicet opus meum scriptum et opus per eos scribendum.44

(My work written with my own hand which is to be called the book or writing from the truths collected from holy scripture and from the writings of the saints and doctors is written on calf-skin parchment at the expense of the same monastery, and let the foresaid monastery have both copies, that is my written work and the work to be written by means of them.)

Indeed a copy of Gascoigne's 'collectorium' is preserved in the catalogue as N58 and N59, with Gascoigne recorded as the donor. And its description as a collection of precepts from scripture, and the writings of saints and Fathers, is typical both of the kind of improving and hortatory works found in the Syon catalogue as a whole, and of the kind of literary output engaged in by the brethren themselves. But Gascoigne's requirement that they should make a copy at their own expense does not suggest that he was overly deferential towards the sanctity of the house. Rather, and characteristically, it perhaps suggests that he thought he was doing them a favour, as he was when he translated for the brethren and nuns a life of Bridget (to whom he was devoted) which has not survived.

Indeed if the Syon brethren had a reputation, especially in the later years of the house, it was for secular academic brilliance rather than mystical or spiritual excellence: Richard Whytford entered the Order after a career in academic and ecclesiastical administration and with the accolade of a dedication from Erasmus in his edition of the dialogues of Lucan. Richard Reynolds was reputed to be one of the finest scholars of his day, but proved his heroic virtue not in mystical endeavours but on the gibbet at Tyburn, alongside the Carthusian martyrs of the London house. The supply of recruits to Syon from careers in education, administration and as secular clergy (especially in and around London) is well-

43Loci e Libro Veritatum: Passages from Gascoigne's Theological Dictionary, ed. J. E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford, 1881), pp. 16970.

44 W. A. Pronger, 'Thomas Gascoigne', English Historical Review liii (1938), pp. 60626; liv (1939), pp. 2037. This quote on p. 27.

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documented. In the early sixteenth-century (and perhaps from as early as the 1470s) Syon seems particularly to have functioned as sheltered housing for retiring academics, whereas in the early years a university education was less prized: at the 1428 election for Confessor-General, only John Bracebridge, the largest single benefactor to the library with 111 volumes, is recorded as a graduate, and most of his career prior to Syon had been spent as a grammar master in Lincoln diocese.45 But the fact that John Blacman, advisor of Henry VI and owner of one of the finest private collections of contemplative books in England, chose to enter the Carthusians as a clericus-redditus reminds us that other paths were open to those in retreat from public life. John Colet, for example, built for himself a retreat in the grounds of Sheen that was subsequently used by Cardinal Pole and Cardinal Wolsey.46

The worldly reputations of some of the later brethren should not divert attention from the possibility that one of the reasons that men entered Syon (especially, perhaps, the graduate brethren of the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) was specifically to effect a redirection of their own spiritual lives rather than direct or assess the spiritual lives of others. In this respect, it is helpful to look again at Simon Wynter's life of Jerome, and at the role played by Jerome in the intellectual architecture of the Syon brethren. According to Wynter, Jerome had turned from 'bokys of Poetys and Philysophres' to 'holy bokys'. Jerome's influence on two heathens so changed them that 'levynge all pe * vanytees of pe worlde [they] went yn-to pe monasterye', while two young Romans saved from execution by Jerome 'castynge from theym all wordly bysynesse, entred yn-to pe monasterye . . . entendynge to prayere and to penaunce and to holy lyuynge.'47 In a letter to Eustochium, Jerome tells how he was struck down by illness in Antioch in 374. In his fever and delirium, he had a vision of being arraigned before the judgement seat. When asked who he was, he answered that he was a Christian. 'You lie', came the reply: 'you are a Ciceronian, for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.'48 This triggered Jerome's withdrawal into the desert wilderness. The trajectory enacted by Jerome and described by Symon Wynter is exactly that followed by many of his Syon colleagues and successors.

45 Aungier, The History and the Antiquities of Syon Monastery, op. cit. in n. 2, p. 52; Bateson, Catalogue, op. cit. in n. 3, p. xxiii; Tait, 'The Brigittine Monastery of Syon', op. cit. in n. 2, p. 246, traces his career as a grammar master in Lincoln diocese. Entered in the Martiloge, op. cit. in n. 22, for 27 March (fol. 6r), he is described as 'sacerdotis et bachalarii in theologia'.

46 C. B. Rowntree, 'Studies in Carthusian History in Later Medieval England, with special reference to the Order's Relations with Secular Society', unpublished Ph.D. thesis (York, 1981), pp. 373ff., has a fascinating discussion of the presence of seculars inside English Charterhouses.

47 Quoted by Keiser, 'Patronage and Piety', op. cit. in n. 21, pp. 401. See also his 'St Jerome and the Brigittines', in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. D. Williams (Cambridge, 1987), which was not known to me when I wrote this paper.

48Epistola XXII, para. 30: Patrologia Latina XXII, 416; ed. I. Hilberg, Corpus Christianorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, LIV (1996), pp. 143211.

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Section M of the catalogue has multiple entries for Vitas patrum collections celebrating the eremiticism of the early Fathers.49 Yet the catalogue as a whole is also ample witness to the Ciceronianism of the brethren in their secular lives: there are plenty of classical texts preserved, especially in Section A of the collection given over to the Artes and the reading texts of the liberal arts.

But the example of Jerome loomed large in their lives at Syon. The four deacons were meant to symbolise those four great doctors of the church: Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory and, of course Jerome (all four of whom are represented in the catalogue of the brethren's library, Augustine and Jerome more richly than the others, and Ambrose rather thinly). Thomas Betson, librarian and scribe of that great catalogue, was one of those four deacons and, to judge from the preponderance of material from or attributed to Jerome in his Right Profitable Treatise may well himself have born the diaconate of Jerome. The frontispiece of the book is a woodcut of Jerome and his lion (a story catalogued as present in several books in the library).

In that work Betson cites Jerome's Regula monachorum (a copy of which was in the library at O55) to establish a paradigm of behaviour that must have been amenable to this book-loving man:

Lete none see you from the seruyce of god or unoccupyed. In redynge of propheytes, epystles, gospelles, sayntes lyues and other dedes of vertue doynge, hauynge euer bokes in your handes, studyenge or wrytynge pat * peple seynge you may saye: Beholde here the seruaunt of god and the lanternes of the world.

Yet, as Roger Ellis has pointed out in a fine study of Betson's treatise, even when Betson uses the word contemplation he does so in a context of asceticism rather than of mysticism and visionary experience.50 The reading he and Jerome recommend is of the kind typified by Gascoigne's miscellany of scriptural and patristic extracts. Even allowing for the fact that the treatise was aimed at entrants to religion and at a secondary audience of laymen, Betson's spiritual aim is modest (and characteristically Bridgettine given Bridget's own ascetic view of the world). A similar experience is found in reading Thomas Prestin/Prestius's vernacular version of David of Augsburg's De exterioris et interioris hominis compositionis (of which there were multiple copies of the Latin text in the brethren's library). For Prestin/Prestius, meekness, charity, mildness, devotion, largeness, soberness and chastity are the hallmarks of the highest grade of religious life and the antecedent to any sapiential contemplation.51

The ascetic, pragmatic and aspirational nature of the Rule under which the

49 E.g. M11M13.

50A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland and Ireland 14751640 (STC), ed. A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave (London, 198591), 1978, repr. in facsimile (Cambridge, 1905), sig, c iv v; R. Ellis, 'Further Thoughts on the Spirituality of Syon Abbey', in Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval Rngland, ed. W. F. Pollard and R. Boenig (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 21943.

51 P. S. Joliffe, 'Middle English Translations of De Exterioris et Interioris Hominis Compositione', Medieval Studies xxxvi (1974), pp. 25977.

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brethren lived probably has much to do with this attitude to contemplative and mystical materials:

The begynnyng of this religion and of helth ys very mekenes and pure chastite and wylfull pouerte. Principium itaque huius religionis est salutis, est vera humilitas, pura castitas atque voluntaria paupertas.52

As Roger Ellis showed in his study of the spirituality of the Order, these principles radiate throughout the Rules, additions, extravagantes and writings of the Order. Patient poverty, humility and pragmatism are the touchstone of the Regula Salvatoris, as they are of the Regula Sancti Augustini which the Order nominally took as its Rule in obedience to papal concerns over the proliferation of private Rules and religions. Pragmatic asceticism is the institutional partner of patient poverty, and colours the Bridgettine world view as decisively as the open coffin and open grave that the brethren passed and prayed before every day.

Institutionally the rigour of the Bridgettine life was considered comparable to that of the Carthusians. Indeed there is one recorded instance of transfer from the Carthusians to Syon: Thomas Westhaw, third Confessor-General, had been a Fellow of Pembroke Hall Cambridge in 1436 and had been professed as a Carthusian of Sheen before crossing the river to Syon where he became Confessor-General from 1472 to his death in 1488. This period marks such a change and development in the library collection, including building works on the fabric of the library, the arrival of Thomas Raille to care for the books and the profession of Thomas Betson who acted as custos librarie, that it is tempting to suggest that it is the Carthusian Westhaw's reaction to the state of the brethren's library holdings that may have prompted the reform of the collection in the wake of the 1471 Martiloge resolution.53

Westhaw was himself a bibliophile, owning several collections of early printed sammelbände and contributing about three dozen books to the collection, including a copy of the Donatus Devocionis.54 But is the frequent yoking together of Carthusians and Bridgettines in medieval benefactions and in modern discussions of mystical literature perhaps masking a significant difference in mystical outlook between them? The size and extent of the library holdings at Syon may perhaps be giving a false impression of interest among the brethren in mystical

52Regula Salvatoris. Cap. 1. Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, 2, pp. 89.

53 The 1471 addition of an obsequy for donors to either of the two libraries is recorded in the Martiloge, fols 4rv and 17v18r. The Martiloge also grants prayers for the souls of benefactors of books for 'common use'. Betson seems to have joined the Order in 1481. Thomas Raille seems to have been appointed keeper of the brethren's locutory in 1482. A surviving 1482 ordinance for the making of books refers to 'the kepers of the libraris of the bretherne and [Sys]terne Sydes there', printed by R. J. Whitwell, 'An Ordinance for Syon Library, 1482', English Historical Review xxv (1910), pp. 1213. The relevant entries are usefully collected by M. C. Erler, 'Syon Abbey's Care for Books: Its Sacristan's Account Rolls 1506/71535/6', Scriptorium xxxix (1985), pp. 293307. Thomas Raille's duties at Syon are discussed in detail by de Hamel, op. cit., in n. 27, pp. 8391.

54 For discussion of his books, see Gillespie, 'The Book and the Brotherhood', op. cit. In n. 33.

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texts, especially as the their literary output is heavily tilted towards ascetic adaptations of mystical texts like David of Augsburg and emasculated Rules of life for nuns and lay people. The broadening of audience characteristic of all Syon-produced texts usually required a simplifying of the original's teaching in a pragmatic and perhaps very English way (compare Roger Lovatt's comments on English versions of Suso, for example).55 Although Prestin/Prestius's version of David of Augsburg accurately reflects the source work's teachings on the higher levels of contemplative experience, the primary target audience of contemplative nuns would have recognised in that text much that was distinctive in their own ascetic spirituality. Similarly, John Fewterer's 1534 Mirror or Glass of Christ's Passion, a stylish, powerful and often moving synthesis of earlier affective passion meditations, reflects Bridgettine practice as well as meditative tradition when he argues that:

there is no kynde of spirituall exercise but that it may be founde in the lyfe and passion of Christ, or els by moste plentuose fruyte it may be reduced and applied to it.56

William Bonde, the most mystical of all the Syon authors, is the possible exception to this ascetic rule, but only in his popular work Pilgrimage of Perfection (1526). His other known work, A Devout treatise for those who are timorous and fearful in conscience (published posthumously in 1534) is recognisably severe and uncompromising. But however generously interpreted, the publications of the English Syon brethren cannot support a claim for serious and extensive engagement with the literature of contemplative and para-mystical aspiration. Moreover, because the Order was brought to England as part of a campaign to uphold rigour and orthodoxy against heterodox thought and teaching, it may be that the early brethren in particular deliberately played safe with the materials they produced, especially those which might circulate outside the enclosure, or played safer still by not producing any materials of that kind at all.

And yet. The Bridgettines were an Order founded in response to a mystical vision with a Rule of life dictated to the foundress. They were an Order whose foundress needed strong and stalwart apologists to ensure the confirmation of her sanctity and the reaffirmation of the privileges of her Order even within the lifetime of the founding brethren of the English Syon. It was an Order that honoured the Revelations of Bridget as a canonical text of great authority, but that also found it necessary to list as a more grievous fault 'if any afferme the reuelacions of saynte Birgitte as dremes, or else detracte them'.57 It was an Order, in other words, founded on the visions of a woman that had attracted and continued to attract scepticism, antifeminism and outright hostility as well as veneration and

55 R. Lovatt, 'Henry Suso and the Medieval Mystical Tradition', in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Exeter Symposium II, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), pp. 4762.

56Short Title Catalogue 10838; sig. +iir.

57 Hogg, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure, 3, p. 27; Ellis, Viderunt Eam Filie Syon, op. cit. in n. 2, p. 86.

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respect. So it is hardly surprising that it was also an Order that took an active interest in visionary materials and perhaps particularly in contested mystical territories, even if those territories were not primarily inhabited by the brethren themselves.

By the time Katillus Thorberni returned to Vadstena in 1421, probably with his copies of works by Richard Rolle, including the Incendium Amoris and the Melos Amoris, Rolle had already achieved canonical (and near-canonised) status in the northern province where the failed first plantation of brethren from Vadstena was made. But those texts of Rolle he copied and took back to Vadstena. would have served as raw material for an assessment of the mystical credentials of Rolle as a visionary and an instructor of mystics: both the Incendium and the Melos contain autobiographical elements of an undiluted (but not necessarily unvarnished) sort sufficient to allow probatio and discretio to be exercised on the texts. And Katillus also had a text that articulated in the clearest possible terms the nature of the contested territory constituted by Rolle's works, for another of his manuscripts contained the now unique copy of the hermit Thomas Basset's Defensorium contra oblatratores Ricardi, along with a copy of his Emendatio vitae (incidentally the work of Rolle's which is most heavily represented in the catalogue of the Syon brethren). Katillus would have been able both to assess the status and worth of this northern crypto-saint and to compare the Defensorium with those other Defensoria drawn up by the English friends of Bridget (such as Adam Easton, Geoffrey of Byland and Bishop Reginald) as part of the campaign for her canonization.

In the Rolle Defensorium, the role of the Carthusian prior as devil's advocate against the authenticity of Rolle's experiences is striking. The Order is exercising once again their traditional probatio and discretio functions in assessing raw mystical data. But although Katillus probably visited Syon before he returned to Vadstena in 1421 (and possible again later in 1430), Monica Hedlund has recently shown decisively that he did not get his Rolle materials from Syon, as was previously thought, but from northern exemplars available to him during his time in York. So the legend of Syon as, along with the Carthusians, key links in the chain of transmission of Rolle's works becomes much harder to sustain. Nevertheless Katillus's interest in these materials, and their survival at Vadstena, along with their later augmentation through the manuscript sent to Vadstena by the Syon brother and liturgist Clement Maydestone (which also contained a Latin Scale of Perfection), shows that Bridgettine brethren were interested in the discriminating use of such materials. Even Clement Maydestone's book, however, is overwhelmingly ascetic and eremitic rather than mystical in its contents.58

58 M. Hedlund: 'Katillus Thorbeni, a Syon pioneer, and his books', Birgittiana i (1996), pp. 6787; 'Liber Clementis Maydeston: Some Remarks on Cod. Ups. C. 159', English Manuscript Studies iii (1992), pp. 73101. On Basset's defence of Rolle, see M. G. Sargent, 'Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle', in Kartäusermysti und -mystiker, Analecta Cartusiana LV:1 (1981), pp. 160205. On the defenders of Bridget, see F. R. Johnston, 'English Defenders of St. Bridget', in Studies in St Birgitta, ed. Hogg, op. cit.

(footnote continued on next page)

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Although these Vadstena copies can no longer be seen as evidence of Syon's interest in Rolle, there is plenty of surviving evidence from the catalogue to suggest that he was well represented in the holdings there, even if far and away the most popular Rolle text at Syon was the Emendatio vitae, with eleven copies. Addressed to a male target audience, this is the most orthodoxly monastic and ascetic of all Rolle's epistles of spiritual instruction, and the least explicitly and lyrically mystical. Indeed if we consider those texts that were apparently discarded from the collection (in that they appear in the index to the catalogue but their substantive entry has been erased and replaced with a different book), we find a further four copies of Emendatio vitae, three copies of Contra amatores mundi, two of the lectiones mortuorum and one each of the Incendium Amoris, the Judica me deus and extracts from the Incendium. Among the remaining Rolle texts, the jewel in the crown was M27: a copy of the 'Melos contemplacionis Ricardi hampole & dicitur manu propria hunc scripsisse librum', supported by a copy of 'Canticum amoris de gloriosa virgine per eundem metrificatum'. No donor is mentioned. Elsewhere, only one copy of Contra amatores mundi seems to have survived into the final recension of the catalogue, no copies of the Canticle commentary, a single copy of the Apocalypse commentary and five copies of the Incendium Amoris. For a big library, this is hardly a collection at the cutting edge of Rolle studies. One reason for the popularity of Rolle in the Syon collection may be that he escaped by an accident of chronology the Arundelian prohibition on the posession of vernacular books written in and since the time of John Wyclif. Another may be the popularity of Rolle over the river in Sheen.

Hilton's presence in the collection is perhaps initially at least explained by his stoutly orthodox reputation. But the Hilton holdings in the brethren's library are not very extensive either: a couple of copies of various letters and four copies of the Scale along with a single copy of Qui habitat and Bonum est, and a single copy of Eight Chapters on Perfection. Indeed one of the most common Syon attributions to Hilton turns out (from one of the surviving copies) to be William Flete's remedies against temptations. Hilton's Scale of Perfection was, of course, well represented among books owned by the sisters, some of which share characteristics with the London group of manuscripts probably ramifying from Sheen.59 Nothing from the Cloud-author is found in the collection, though there is a smattering of Richard of Saint Victor. Versions of the Imitation of Christ entered with brethren who had been secular clergy in London, and probably reflect the popularity of the text among that group rather than witnessing to a special interest in it at Syon.60 There is a handful of versions of Suso, a single copy of the meditations

(footnote continued from previous page)

in n. 2, 1, pp. 26375. An important collection of defensoria was in Syon in the large collection of Bridgettine material that is now London, British Library MS Harley 612.

59 M. G. Sargent, 'Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection: the London Manuscript Group Reconsidered', Medium Aevum lii (1983), pp. 189216.

60 Lovatt, 'The Imitation of Christ in Late Medieval England', op. cit. in n. 33, pp. 11213.

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of Uthred of Boldon (not even catalogued by Betson, and only known to have been at Syon because it features in one of the surviving books).61

All this is pretty disappointing in a catalogue with 1465 shelfmarks and well over ten times that many constituent works. There are, of course, four copies of the Speculum Spritualium, one of these a late accession as it is a copy of the Paris 1510 print, and two copies of Donatus Devocionis, a single copy of Ruysbroek's De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum, in the Latin translation by W. Jordaens, given by Richard Reynolds and probably in the edition printed in Paris 1512. There is also a single copy of Hugh of Balma's Viae Syon lugent, alongside a copy of the Speculum inclusorum in M35. There are one or two surprises, like the copy of Ephraem latinus at M82, but that had come to the brethren as part of Thomas Graunt's 1471 bequest. Richard Reynolds also gave the Paris 1505 edition of the Sermones of Ephraem (in fact nineteen tracts in the translation by Ambrosius Traversari, recorded at R4), but even this gloomy compunctionalism does not really count as contemplative theory or praxis. Nicholas of Cusa's 21 opuscula in the Strassburg 1489 edition are there as the gift of Richard Reynolds at O17. But more typical of the tenor of the collection are the quantities of Gerson opuscula that litter the collection with their pithy good sense.

Books lost or removed from the collection (but still recorded in the unrevised index) include Denys the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy with Hugh of St Victor's commentary, though that loss was perhaps rectified by the addition at D118 of a copy of his complete works in the edition of Strassburg 1501 which contains among much else no less than four Latin versions of the Mystical Theology in the translations of Sarracenus, Grosseteste, Ambrosius Traversari and Marsilio Ficino. Other losses include John of Howden's Philomela, influential on the development of the English cult of the Name of Jesus (from M30), a copy of the Revelations of Elizabeth of Hungary in English from M20, and one of Hildegard's prohecies concerning the founding of the Mendicants from S15. Section M naturally has a healthy selection of the Bridgettine opera between M64 and M69, including the Celeste Viridarium, the Quattuor Oraciones and the Sermo Angelicus, and of course Syon possessed London, British Library Manuscript Harley 612, an important witness to the post-Alphonsine development of the revelations, copied from an exemplar that had been notarised as accurate during a visit by two Syon brethren to Vadstena in 1427. But several of these copies go back to Thomas Fishbourn, the first Confessor-General, from 1421 to 28, and the surprising absence from this collection of the great Ghotan 1492 Lubeck edition of the works of Bridget raises serious doubts about the extent of their later commitment to studying her writings. If there was one printed book I had assumed would be in the collection it was this edition: its absence is eloquent, although it could have been held in one of the other collections of books known to have been in the house.

It is, however, perhaps because of the brethren's interest in the contested sites

61 M44 is now in Oxford, Brasenose College MS 15, given to Syon by John Steyke.

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of female visionary activity that the collection has one copy of the Vita and two of the Dialogo of Catherine of Siena (M71 and O70), the latter text of course being reworked to form the Orcherd of Syon. There are also four complete copies (one in English) of Mechtild's Liber specialis gratiae (M47, M59, M94 and a 1513 printed text at M107), an author and a work apparently held in special favour by the Order and quoted with approval by the Mirror of Our Lady.

But rather than cherry-picking texts from a collection that was quite heavily dependent on miscellanies (especially in its manuscript phase), it is more revealing to look at those miscellanies themselves for a flavour of the context in which mystical and para-mystical texts travelled. From the early days of Syon, for example, M14 is one of John Bracebridge's books: full of patrisitic and ascetic oddments and sermons directed at the clergy. M35 is Simon Wynter's book, including the Speculum inclusorum, the meditations of Thomas Remyston, Hugh of Balma, and the Soliloquium of Bonaventure, alongside the pseudo-Bonaventure Meditationes de passione Christi and the pseudo-Bonaventuran passion meditations divided into the seven Hours of the Office, as well as his authentic De triplici via.

768 Symon (Wynter)                                         M 35                                                                                                       rio desideraui

v 29.

a Meditaciones Bonauenture de passione Christi. ¶ b Meditaciones beati Bernardi de passione Christi secundum 7 horas diei. fo. 20. ¶ c Forma regende vite secundum Bonauenturam que dicitur fons vite. fo. 26. ¶ d Sermo beati Bernardi ad Religiosos. fo. 42. ¶ e Speculum inclusorum habens 4or partes. fo. 45. ¶ f Meditaciones Thorne Remyston monachi de Salley ad quemdam anachoritam. fo. 70. ¶ g Meditacio eiusdem laudis diuine & spei incentiua. fo. 76. ¶ h Meditacio diuini amoris desideratissima per eundem, fo. 80. ¶ i Tractatus alms & subtilis scilicet Vie Syon lugent. fo. 92. ¶ j Tractatus contemplatiuus, Flecto genua mea per modum Dialogi in hominem & animam. suam. fo. 136.62

The donor of M94 is not recorded in Betson's catalogue and it is possible that this represents one of the few books actively acquired by the house rather than passively accumulated by it. If so its eclectic, ascetic and catechetic nature is entirely typical of other books in the collection:

827                                                                                                       M94                                                                               bus pers

v 46.

a Quidam reclusus ad quamdam religiosam de forma viuendi. ¶ b Walterus hylton in epistola de vtilitate & origine Religionis ad Adam horsley Baronem Scakkarii Regis. ¶ c Ricardus hampole de regula viuendi. ¶ d Idem de amore dei & contemptu mundi. ¶ e Expositio super antiphonam Salue regina. ¶ f Meditacio vtilis. ¶ g Reuelaciones beate matildis. ¶ h Tractatus de confessione & de septem peccatis mortalibus & de preceptis cum aliis. ¶ i Speculum peccatoris secundum Bernardum. ¶ j Meditacio diuine laudis spei & venie prouocatiua. ¶ k Meditacio diuini amoris desideratissima.

62 The arabic numeral and alphabetisation of the items in the book reflect the practice of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues. Otherwise the entry is as in Betsons's catalogue.

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But M22 (given by a brother who died c.1490) reveals a blend of interests and texts that is most typical of Syon books and perhaps of the Syon brethren, even down to its copy of a vernacular life of Jerome.

755 Edwardus                                                                                       M22                                                                                interemptor  v 52.a Vita sancte Barbare in latino. ¶ b Statuta obseruanda a confessoribus ad extra in monasterio de Syon & de casibus reseruatis. ¶ c Reuelacio beate Marie sancte Matilde de 3busAue Maria. ¶ d Valterus hilton de materia perfeccionis in 8 capitulis. ¶ e Vita sancti Ieronimi in anglicis incomplete. ¶ f Tractatus de canone misse carens principio. g Tractatus de confessione & h de casibus contingentibus circa altare. ¶ i Hore diuine sapientie scilicet Ihesu Saluatoris nostri cum prologo precedenti.

Among the later brethren, there is some evidence to suggest that they continued to acquire a few printed mystical texts until quite late in the house's history. The Paris 1510 edition of the Speculum Spiritualium was added by William Barnarde (ob. 1517). Edyman, Master of Corpus Christi College Cambridge in 1515, gave a copy of the Paris 1513 edition of Liber trium uirorum et trium spiritualium uirginum, ed. Jacques Le Fèvre d'Etaples, which included the Pastor of Hermas, the Liber uisionum of Robert d'Uzes, Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias, the life of Elizabeth of Schönau, and Mechtild of Hackeborn's Liber specialis gratiae. Another copy of the same edition was at M107, given by Selby. It may have been the spiritualium virginum that was the attraction of the volume. Another printed text was a 1512 edition of Gregory of Nyssa in N3.

But the number of contemplative, mystical or para-mystical accessions during this period is swamped by the number of printed sermons, printed canon law and, most notably, more directly 'humanist' editions, especially among the books of Richard Reynolds and John Fewterer. Noted printed humanist accessions include the opera of Vergil (in one of three 1490s editions all sharing the same secundo folio: A62); and two copies of the great Venice 1493 edition of Ptolemy, Zael, Bethen and Messahala (B47 and B55); the opera of Plato (C7, the Venice 1491 edition, containing thirty-nine works and a life of Plato by Ficino) and Plotinus (C3, the Florence 1492 edition with Marsilio Ficino's commentary).

4

There are many dangers in deducing the activities of an Order or a House from the evidence of its library holdings. Too many of the books at Syon (over 1200 out of 1465) are donations from the brethren themselves or from well-wishers to be confident of identifying a purchasing policy or a pattern of acquisition driven by need. Random benefaction is a recurrent problem for all institutional libraries, and unwanted duplication of marginal texts must have been a common complaint of monastic librarians as it is of their modern-day institutional successors. Academic and monastic libraries may always have been victim of the well-intentioned but misguided gift: yet another Speculum peccatoris; yet more copies of the Meditationes of ps. Augustine or ps. Bernard. But the contemplative and

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